Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Now I’ll tell you who you don’t want near your kids,’ Howie says, and proceeds to give a libellous but extremely well-informed account of a British cabinet minister’s private activities. Kevin gazes at him with naked adoration; James Harper punches him matily on the arm; the room revolves on its hitherto unused axis. No one has mentioned caliphs, banks or investment opportunities since the presentation. What time is it? Three? Four? Ish’s face has taken on a greenish look, either from the whiskey or the prostitute jokes; more of both keep arriving, like gatecrashers to an already oversubscribed house party, as well as a man Howie refers to only as ‘the Bulgarian’, who has made two visits to our table, on both occasions performing an elaborate handshake with the trader and then leaving again, without taking off his sunglasses. On the way to the bathroom I notice the floor canting to the left, as though tipping me towards the exit. Inside I find Howie and James Harper huddled in conversation by the cubicle doors. As soon as they see me come in they break apart.

‘Claude!’ Howie exclaims, as if I am a long-lost friend, or any kind of friend. ‘I was just telling James about you. This guy,’ turning to James, ‘is the best wingman you’ll ever have.’

‘Oh yeah?’ James squints at me sceptically.

‘Women go crazy for him. ’Cos he’s French, see? They’re light years ahead of us over there. In France they actually teach you how to eat pussy in school.’

‘That’s exactly the kind of fing they ought to be doin’ in England,’ James Harper says seriously, regarding me now with a certain amount of appreciation.

‘Claude, we’re thinking about going somewhere a bit more lively, what do you say? How about VD’s?’

My heart sinks. ‘Fantastic,’ I say.

‘Jimbo, why don’t you go and round up your troops and we’ll get a taxi,’ Howie says. When the Londoner is gone he puts his arm around my shoulder and leans in to me. It seems I can feel heat blasting from his face. ‘We’re going to nail these bitches, Claude,’ he says in a low voice. ‘We’re going to rape them and cut off their heads and bury them in the forest.’

‘Very good,’ I say uncertainly.

‘Do a line, it’ll keep you sharp. Do it,’ he commands, shuttling powder out on to the cistern.

Now as I walk back the floor is trying to flip me up towards the ceiling. But I’m too smart for it! How brilliant and talented I am! Of course this deal is going to come off! There is no way anyone could resist our intelligence and charm. I put on my coat, wink at one of the hobbits. But as soon as the door opens, everything begins to slide again. Outside? Do we really have to go outside? Outside is not inside. A rash of oily sweat breaks out on my forehead. Fresh panics crowd in on the initial outside/inside scare. Howie couldn’t actually be planning to rape and murder the Caliphate’s sovereign wealth fund, could he? Sometimes with traders it is hard to tell.

People are hurrying back and forth across the plaza with their briefcases and box files. We step between their grey insubstantial bodies as if through a sea of wraiths. The sounds of the city, the sky, the river, all of these things seem at one remove.

‘You’ve got these twunts too, ’ave you?’ James Harper flicks a hand at the sagging tents and wayward signage of the zombies encamped outside Royal Irish. ‘They’re all over the Square Mile. Facking waste of space.’ Putting his hands together, he bellows at them, ‘No one cares, you twunts!’

Chris Kane grabs my arm. ‘This is going great,’ he mutters. ‘Those pie charts really got their attention.’

I grin back at him as one might at a figment of one’s imagination one doesn’t want to offend. The hobbit beside me elbows my ribs. ‘Ten o’clock, mate,’ he says. I turn my head, my all-purpose false grin at the ready — and then see he is pointing to the window of the Ark, where Ariadne is on her hands and knees cleaning up a spill and inadvertently revealing most of her cleavage. The hobbit launches into an impressively comprehensive list of things he would like to do to Ariadne. I pretend I have not heard, step quickly ahead to the kerb.

Glowing yellow roof-signs swim like radioactive clots down the artery of the traffic. Howie holds out a hand, and one cab, then a second, pull up to us. ‘Why don’t you ride with these two boys,’ Howie suggests to Ish, nodding to the two younger delegates, who gaze out of the cab’s dark interior like baby owls.

‘Actually I thought I might head home,’ Ish says.

Howie is dumbfounded. ‘What?’

‘You’re going to VD’s!’ Ish protests. ‘You don’t want me there! I’d be cramping your style!’

Gripping her shoulder, Howie takes her aside and hisses to her, ‘That’s the whole point! We’ve got gash coming to the club with us! That’s what makes us cool, and Danske squares!’

‘Gash?’ Ish repeats.

‘Do I have to tell you your job? Just get in the car. When you get home you can wipe the tears away with your big fat fucking bonus.’

With her mouth tight shut, Ish climbs into the back of the cab. ‘I will ride in this car too,’ Jurgen says judiciously, and goes to the passenger door.

The rest of us set off in the other taxi. Traffic is heavy: we move at a crawl past sparkling new office blocks, others barely begun, cranes that have not moved an inch in two years. ‘So free years ago this was the fird-richest country on the planet,’ James Harper observes. ‘And now it’s facked.’

‘Property bubble,’ Howie says. ‘Crashed the banks.’

‘They didn’t actually crash,’ Chris Kane interjects hurriedly. ‘The Minister guaranteed them.’

‘I ’eard about that,’ James Harper says. ‘Not just the deposits, right? He said they’d cover every fackin’ bond and loan and dodgy deal wiv the Russian mafia the banks was into. Why’d he do that then?’

Howie shrugs. ‘Stupidity.’

‘The banks lied to him,’ I qualify. ‘About the size of their debts.’

‘And now Paddy’s got to pay for it, and the whole place is in the shitter, just like Greece.’

‘It’s different,’ Howie counters. ‘The Irish aren’t going to cause trouble. They’ll do what they’re told. Anyway, the problem here is the banks. In Greece, the problem is Greece.’

‘Yeah, but your Minister’s made the banks and Ireland the same fing, ’asn’t ’e, wiv ’is magic fackin’ wand of incompetence.’

Howie shakes his head. ‘Greece is finished. This place will recover.

In the meantime, there’s a lot of money to be made. It’s a national fire sale. You can get the whole water grid for half nothing. What’s that going to be worth in twenty years?’

‘Wawter’s been pushin’ us to get into Royal Irish.’ James Harper is silent for a moment.

Howie glances at me. ‘Don’t know that that’s the first call I’d make. Word is they’re sitting on a black hole.’

‘Don’ tell Wawter that,’ James Harper says. ‘’E’s in ’em up to ’is tits.’

I turn in my seat. It is very important, at a meeting like this, never to show your ignorance. But in my many conversations with Walter Corless I have never heard him mention Royal Irish, let alone seen any of their stock in his portfolio. Is he keeping secrets? Or is James Harper simply misinformed?

Howie is telling him about other investment possibilities, retail banks with a million depositors available for 2 or 3 per cent of what they were worth two years ago. But the Londoner is hard to impress.

‘We’ve ’eard all the ’ard-luck stories. Every sodding bank in Europe’s been over looking for a few quid from the Gaffer. Most of the Yanks as well.’

‘But he could do very well out of it. Real estate, too.’ Howie gestures out the window at the pristine rows of empty buildings. ‘What is it they say? When there’s blood on the streets, buy property?’