Paul Murray: The Mark and the Void

Essentially, he tells me, the process would be a more intensive version of what he has been doing already: following me around, observing at close quarters, focusing, as much as is possible, on my work for the bank.

‘What would I have to do?’

‘You wouldn’t have to do anything,’ Paul says. ‘Just be yourself. Just be.’ He glances at the bill, takes a note from his wallet and lays it on the plate. ‘I don’t expect you to make a decision like this on the spot. To lay yourself out for a perfect stranger — that’s a big thing to ask. I wish I could say that you’d be handsomely rewarded, but right now all I can offer is the dubious honour of providing material for a book that might never get published.’ He cracks a grin. ‘Still, I bet the girls in the office’ll be interested to find out you’re a character in a work of fiction.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Think about it — Heathcliff, Mr Darcy. Captain Ahab, even. Women go nuts for them.’

‘Although those characters are imaginary,’ I say slowly.

‘Exactly. But you’ll be real. Do you see? It’s like you’ll be getting the best of both worlds.’

As if to bear out his words, the beautiful dark-haired waitress flashes me a smile as she glides past.

My head is spinning, and it really is time for me to get back to the office. But there is still one question he has not answered. ‘Why me? There are thirty thousand people working in the IFSC. Why did you choose me?’

‘To be honest, that’s what caught my eye initially,’ he says.

‘That? Oh.’ I realize he’s pointing at my jacket, which I am in the course of slipping back on.

‘The black really stands out, especially with the tie. Most people here seem to go for grey. Must be a French thing, is it?’

Yes, I say, it’s a French thing.

‘Makes you look very literary,’ he says. ‘And when I got closer I could see you had a certain … I don’t know, a sensibility. I got the impression that you were different from the others. That you weren’t just going through the motions. That you were searching for something, maybe. It’s hard to explain.’ He rips a scrap of paper from a little red notebook and scribbles down his number. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I could be completely wrong, but I think there’s a really important book to be written about this place. And I think you’d be perfect for it. If it doesn’t feel right to you, for whatever reason, I promise I’ll disappear from your life. But can I ask you at least to think about it?’

‘Here he is!’ Jurgen says as I enter the Research Department. ‘We were beginning to think we must send out the search party!’

‘Where d’you disappear to?’ Ish inquires, through a mouthful of paper clips.

‘Nowhere,’ I shrug. ‘I ran into someone and went for a coffee.’

‘Casual Day.’ Jurgen shakes his head. ‘Anything can happen.’

Kimberlee comes in from Reception. ‘Claude, Ryan Colchis called about some numbers on a Ukrainian outfit you were digging up for him.’

‘Okay,’ I say.

‘And Walter’s PA called to say he’s coming in.’

‘There goes your weekend,’ Ish says.

I sit down at my terminal, confront the wall of fresh emails. Already the writer and his strange proposal are beginning to seem distant and unreal, one of those hazy episodes you can’t be sure you didn’t dream. And yet the familiar objects of the office have acquired a curious sheen — appear to resonate somehow, like enchanted furniture in a fairy tale that will dance around the room as soon as you turn your back.

‘Hey, has Claude heard the news?’ Kevin calls from his desk.

‘What news?’ I say, with a curious feeling of — what, synchronicity? As though someone is looking over my shoulder?

‘Blankly’s the new CEO,’ Ish says. ‘Rachael’s office just sent down word.’

‘Blankly got it,’ I say. ‘Well, well.’

‘Things will be changing, Claude,’ Jurgen says. ‘This is the whole new beginning of the Bank of Torabundo story.’

‘Yes,’ I say, and then, ‘I should call Colchis.’

‘Are you feeling better?’ Ish catches my arm. ‘You looked a bit off earlier.’

‘Yes, yes, I just needed some air,’ I tell her, but she is not deterred: she continues to scrutinize me.

‘Are you sure?’ she says. ‘You seem, I dunno, different somehow.’

‘Claude is never different,’ Jurgen says, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘Claude is always the same.’

‘Yeah …’ Ish wrinkles her nose thoughtfully; and I turn my eyes to the screen, as if I have a secret to keep.

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80–20 rule, is one of the first things you learn in banking: for any given area of life, 80 per cent of the effects come from 20 per cent of the causes. Thus 80 per cent of your profits come from 20 per cent of your clients, 80 per cent of your socializing is with 20 per cent of your friends, 80 per cent of the music you listen to is from 20 per cent of your library, etc. The idea is to minimize the ‘grey zone’ that devours your day, the 80 per cent of your reading, for instance, that yields only 20 per cent of your information.

Walter Corless is very much aware what side of the rule he’s on. He knows he is the wealthiest and most powerful man you have ever met, and as such he demands 100 per cent of your time and attention. A meeting with or even a call from Walter is like some supermassive planet materializing in your little patch of space — blocking the sun, overwhelming your gravitational field, so that you can only watch as the entire structure of your world goes hurtling off to rearrange itself on his. He started off selling turf from the back of a flatbed truck; thirty years later, he is chairman and CEO of one of the biggest construction companies in the British Isles. Even the worldwide slump hasn’t hurt him: while his peers put all their chips into housing, Dublex diversified into transport, logistics and, most profitably, high-security developments — military compounds, fortifications, prisons — which, as unrest sweeps across Europe and Asia, constitute a rare growth area. That a company he named after his daughter now builds enhanced interrogation facilities in Belarus gives a good indication of the man’s attitudes to business and life in general. (That daughter, Lexi, now runs a string of nursing homes known informally as the Glue Factory.)

His driver calls me shortly after six; I go outside to find Walter’s limo parked — in contravention of all of the Centre’s rules — on the plaza in front of Transaction House. Walter is sprawled across the back seat. He stares at me as I squeeze into the fold-down seat opposite him, breathing heavily through his nose. He is a dour, grey-faced man, who looks like he was dug up from the same bog he got his first bags of turf. Newspaper profiles refer to his ‘drive’ and his ‘focus’, but these are euphemisms. What Walter has is the dead-eyed relentlessness of the killer in a horror movie, the kind that lumber after you inexorably, heedless of knives, bullets, flame-throwers. Though his fortune runs into the billions, and he employs a team of accountants in tax havens around the world, he still enjoys calling on his debtors personally, and the pockets of his coat are always full of cheques, bank drafts, rolls of notes in rubber bands. Sometimes he’ll present me with a fistful, with instructions to invest them in this or that. This is not strictly my job, but then Walter doesn’t care what my job is; or rather, as our biggest client, he knows that my job is whatever he says it is.

Tonight he wants to ask my thoughts on a tender. Dublex has been approached by the interior ministry of the Middle Eastern autocracy of Oran to fortify the private compound of the Caliph.