Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

And I keep coming back to the fact that this is where Paul said the story should go. True, he said it in the course of trying to rob the bank. But could it be that his instincts remained sound, even when used to deceive? Could he have picked up on something between us, a latent connection waiting to be made? Is it my imagination or has Ariadne noticed it too? Does she look at me now with a clouded sort of a frown, as though there’s some fact about me that she can’t quite lay her hands on? On some unconscious level, is she too waiting for our story to begin?

As the meeting with Tordale draws closer, though, it squeezes out everything else. No more lunches, no staying up late, reading philosophy; we are in the office till the small hours, making calls, talking to the number-crunchers, pulling together every available scrap of information on the Irish banking system.

Most of our meetings are pedestrian affairs, quibbling over financial models with pension managers, fund managers, treasury people. This is different. The Caliphate’s fund is worth several billion dollars. The day before the presentation, Rachael calls me to her office and promises me a guaranteed bonus if Tordale signs up with BOT. The figure she names is astronomical; she makes it sound like a threat.

‘These guys are not messing around.’ Howie, who finds most of our work laughably dull, has taken an interest in this particular encounter. ‘They’re averaging a 13 per cent annual return on a fund bigger than some countries’ GDP. You need to go into that conference room and slaughter them. You need to literally take your figures and stab them in the eyes with them, and when they scream, reach down their throats and yank out their hearts. Then you can start talking.’

‘Where will we put their bodies, Howie?’

‘I’m not kidding. I know these types of guys. They’re cannibals. They’re not going to hire the team with the nicest biscuits.’

I am in the gym at five the next morning, trying to work off some of my nervous energy. Ish arrives at half six with her hair newly and spectacularly blonded. For the next couple of hours we swivel in our chairs, drink endless coffee, leaf unseeingly through documents like students before a final exam.

I’m talking to Brent ‘Crude’ Kelleher, trying to get a read on the latest shifts in the oil market, when there is a groan. A group of analysts is gathered in front of the TV, where the German chancellor is making an announcement. Even without hearing her, I can tell the news is bad. ‘Look at that fucking face,’ Dwayne McGuckian says. ‘She looks like she just ate a bag of dicks.’

It had been hoped that at the latest summit Germany, as the only country in Europe with any money, would come forward with a plan to stabilize the teetering banks and the increasingly rickety-looking governments holding them up. Instead the Chancellor is giving a lecture on responsibility. Committed as we are to the European project, we cannot endorse reckless fiscal behaviour …

‘Switch it off,’ Gary McCrum says.

‘Spread’s already gone up half a point,’ Jocelyn Lockhart reads off his terminal.

‘ Scheisse ,’ Jurgen mutters.

‘What’s going on?’ Kevin says, arriving on the scene. Ish explains that Germany is refusing to step in to cover the losses of the weaker nations; even before the press conference has ended, the amount of interest investors are demanding before they’ll lend any more money to Ireland has jumped. Some of the ratings agencies are now publicly doubting the country will be able to pay its bills for much longer.

‘What happens then? If it can’t pay its bills?’

‘Someone else takes over. Probably someone with a German accent.’

‘Maybe they could send ’em a few slave girls,’ Kevin says. ‘Till they get the accounts sorted out.’

No one laughs. This is not good news: not even a high-risk investor wants to put his money in a country about to go belly-up. Eleven o’clock comes and goes with no word from Tordale. Ish sits tentatively prodding her hair, as if it were a wild and unpredictable animal. Jurgen paces up and down, flipping a pen between his fingers. Kevin alone is oblivious, calculating in a spreadsheet what he might do with his bonus. ‘We’ll be promoted too,’ he tells me. ‘You should go for MD.’

Losing patience, I’m about to snap that they aren’t coming, when Kimberlee rings through from Reception to say they’ve just arrived. Ten minutes later, they are on their way down from Rachael’s office; we put on our best smiles.

I had imagined the fund would be staffed by Arabs, but the four men who step out of the lift are white and English. The eldest is maybe twenty-five. The others are barely more than boys, slight-framed, tender-skinned; with their braces and slicked-back hair, they resemble corporate hobbits, on their way to do a deal with Sauron. Their eyes are bloodshot and their faces pale, and one of them has skinned the knuckles on his right hand. The leader introduces himself as James Harper. The others, who all seem to be called Olly, eye Ish and nudge each other. Rachael’s expression as she hands them over to us is unreadable.

Jurgen takes the party to the meeting room. The delegation doesn’t reply to his questions with anything more than monosyllables. Their suits reek of cigarette smoke and I can see a murky brown sweat-line ringing the collar of the boy walking ahead of me.

‘You had a chance to see the city yesterday?’ I ask him, when he catches me looking.

He turns away again and says loudly, ‘This bloke wants to know if we saw the city yesterday.’ The other three emit low, lurchy laughter. ‘We saw a bit of it,’ he says to me, with a leer.

‘You boys have been “on the tear”, as we are saying here in Ireland,’ Jurgen says. ‘Maybe you are drinking a few Guinnesses, ha ha?’

Ish shoots me a look that says, We are doomed .

In the conference room we’re joined by Chris Kane from Sales, who makes a brief speech about Bank of Torabundo punching above its weight post-crash, adding that as our new CEO is a good friend of the Caliph’s, he looks forward to BOT and Tordale becoming friends too. Then we crack open our laptops and begin the presentation, a concise but forensic breakdown of the major and minor Irish banks and their prospects in this volatile environment. The visitors aren’t listening. They fiddle with their BlackBerrys, they smirk into space. It’s only when one of his team actually falls asleep and starts to snore that James Harper confesses — though this is not quite the right word, as his tone is more smug than contrite — that they didn’t get much sleep. ‘The lads from Danske Bank took us out for a pint last night,’ he says. ‘Though it ended up bein’ a lot more than one.’ He hooks an extremely expensive leather brogue over his knee and draws himself back in a yawn. ‘Those boys know how to ’ave fun,’ he says.

‘But do they know how free cash flow will bear on future share performance?’ Jurgen asks.

I lean over to Kevin and mutter in his ear, ‘Get Howie.’

What’s the difference between a dead prostitute and a Ferrari? Did you hear about the Irish prostitute? What do you call a prostitute on a fishing expedition?

Around the table, shiny pink faces grin at us. Howie snaps his fingers at the waitress; a minute later a fresh tray of lagers with single-malt chasers appears. ‘Now that’s the kind of woman I would love to have dead in my garage,’ Howie says as the waitress walks away.

We are in Life Bar, treating the Londoners to ‘hair of the dog’. I am not used to drinking this early in the day, and already the room is swimming slightly. The Tordale delegation, however, look decidedly more lively.