Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘After speaking to you, Jurgen had some concerns about your report’s content, so before releasing it I called it up here and went through it with him. What the Department saw was the revised version.’

‘In which you advised them to continue the bailout?’

‘In which we advised that Royal Irish had a short-term liquidity issue, owing to the ongoing outflow of corporate deposits and overnight funding. Nasty, but fixable.’ She steps away from the window and takes her seat opposite me, regarding me impassively for what seems a very long time.

‘My figures were accurate,’ I say slowly. ‘The evidence is there. Royal is finished. No amount of money will fix it.’

‘So you advised it should be wound down and its bondholders go unpaid,’ she says.

‘Why should public money be used to pay off private business debts?’

‘And did you wonder at all who those bondholders could be?’

‘That did not seem pertinent.’

‘Claude,’ she says — at that moment, the secretary’s voice issues from the phone, and Rachael roars a single, terrifying ‘ No! ’ before returning affectlessly to me — ‘Claude, we have some extremely important clients who bought heavily into Royal Irish. How do you think they would feel if they discovered that we had advised the government to let the bank go down and their investment with it?’

I begin to say that most of the original bondholders sold on at a loss some time ago, but she cuts me off. ‘No, Claude. I want you to think about this. What would our clients think if we were responsible for them losing millions of euros?’

I clear my throat. ‘I take your point, but the Irish government is also our client.’

‘The Irish government commissioned a single report.’

‘Yes, but to avoid a conflict, surely best practice is to —’

Rachael beats her fists on the desk. ‘I told you, Claude! The best outcomes for the key players, that’s what I asked you to find, can’t you read between the lines?’

‘But to pretend the bank is still alive, when clearly it is not —’

‘What is wrong with you people?’ she exclaims. Her eyes hold mine, as if she is genuinely seeking an answer; for a moment she looks terribly young, like a teacher at her wits’ end with an intractable group of infants. ‘Do you know what we are to a man like Porter Blankly, Claude? We’re nothing. We’re irrelevant. We’re a godforsaken rock in the middle of the ocean. If we sank under the waves tomorrow, he’d barely even notice. Now, I’ve been trying to change his mind. I’ve been trying to put this place on the map, prove to him that our office can be a serious contributor to the company. And then I have one of my analysts advising government to burn our biggest client?’

She blinks at me as if inviting a response. But I have nothing to say. She takes a deep breath, unknots her fists and, in a more controlled voice, says, ‘Walter’s built up a 25 per cent stake in Royal Irish.’

‘Walter?’

‘Walter Corless. Dublex. When the share price started to fall, he took the opportunity to double down. Then he doubled down again — indirectly, through a broker, so nobody knew it was him.’ She pauses. ‘From your reaction I’m guessing it wasn’t your idea.’

I’m speechless; in fact, my whole body has gone numb. At a certain level of success, it’s not unusual for major clients to imagine they achieved it all by themselves; they’ll dismiss their advisers, start making decisions led purely by their gut, keep going until their empires are in ruins. But Walter always seemed too smart for that; or rather, he seemed such a monster in every other regard that I assumed he must be possessed of a sterling business sense to balance it all out.

‘When your report came in I called our major clients on spec before submitting,’ Rachael says. ‘That’s when he told me.’

‘How could he even afford it? A quarter of a bank ?’

‘It’s in CFDs. He only needed to put down the margin. But that means now the bank’s in trouble, his losses are amplified. It’s already been making loans to him to cover the margin calls. If the share price falls much further he’ll be wiped out.’ She locks her eyes on me again. ‘I don’t need to tell you that if Dublex went under, there would be major consequences for AgroBOT. Cash flow, legal — I don’t even want to think about it.’

And that would be the tip of the iceberg, for us and for Ireland. Dublex employs thousands of people; whole towns are built around its operations. Its implosion would make the crash to date look like a day at the races.

‘The government can’t prop up Royal Irish indefinitely,’ I say. ‘There isn’t any money left.’

‘Not indefinitely,’ Rachael says. ‘I thought it might give us some time. Only now it appears someone in the Department of Finance has leaked the report to the press and they’re starting to ask questions.’

‘Yes, someone called me only a few minutes ago.’

‘Well, you can call him back and confirm that you stand by every word,’ she says. ‘After careful analysis of their accounts you concluded, blah blah blah.’ She swivels in her chair; her face is recast in the greenish light of the terminal, giving it a submarine chill. ‘Be thankful we got your report before it was sent, Claude. Otherwise we would be having a very different conversation. Take your gift.’ She points to the bottle of whiskey on the desk. ‘And send up Ish.’

Ish isn’t here: she has just left for a meeting in London and won’t be back until tomorrow. I think about texting to warn her of what’s in store, then decide she’s better not knowing. There is nothing she can do; at least this way she can get a good night’s sleep.

Three more journalists call that afternoon, as well as the man from the Record. I do as I’m told, telling them that the report’s recommendations are sound, and that the question of how to pay for them was not part of my remit. By four o’clock, a picture of me taken at a conference two years ago appears on several news websites with the caption Martingale: Cold or Martingale: French . Later, a story runs in one of the tabloids with the headline Fat-Cat Banker Who Thinks We Haven’t Suffered Enough .

‘This fat-cat thing is such bullshit,’ Kevin opines. ‘Since when are bankers fat? We’re in the gym like every day.’

‘Criticize if you want, but at least be accurate,’ Jocelyn agrees.

‘When you think of what they could have said — you know, Crazy Frog Says, Let Them Eat Cake , that kind of thing.’

‘It’s just lazy journalism,’ Jocelyn says.

Coincidentally, Walter calls too, in order to rant about some regulatory hold-up or other. I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying: it takes all of my restraint not to break in on him and bellow, ‘You told me you didn’t have a holding in Royal Irish! You told me!’ But maintaining these charades is what professionalism means; and anyway, when I investigate, I find that the arcane derivative he used to make the investment means that he didn’t actually own anything, but instead was making a kind of leveraged bet on shares held by a broker-dealer, so technically he was telling the truth.

The market’s lending to the government, the government’s lending to Royal, Royal’s lending to Walter to cover Walter’s own stake in Royal, pulled ever-downwards by the market … I draw a diagram on a scrap of paper, trying to work it all out, but very quickly it turns into a self-devouring incomprehensibility, an uroboros of debt like the black twin of Ish’s kula ring …

I ask Jurgen what will happen next.

‘Rachael is trying to persuade Walter to get rid of his holding, before the market finds out about it and the Royal Irish black hole becomes a much larger and more dangerous Royal Irish-Dublex black hole,’ Jurgen says. ‘The problem is that Walter is still under the impression that Royal is about to bounce back.’