Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

Liam explains that the market consensus is that AgroBOT is not too big to fail after all, only almost too big to fail — a crucial difference.

‘So nobody’s going to die,’ Gary says.

Liam shakes his head.

‘But tomorrow’s Casual Day,’ Kimberlee says sadly. ‘We can’t close on Casual Day, it’s always such a laugh.’

‘Casual Day would be one of the less significant movers in global capitalism,’ Liam tells her.

‘And where’s Porter, in the middle of all this?’ Brent Kelleher erupts. ‘Hasn’t he got anything to say? Shouldn’t he give some bloody account of himself, before they send him off into the sunset with his fifty-million-dollar severance package?’

‘There’s not a lot Porter can do,’ Liam says. ‘If there’s going to be a rescue, it’ll have to come from outside.’

So it’s back to the wait. Dave Davison reads the racing pages; Thomas ‘Yuan’ McGregor arranges pebbles on his mouse mat. Knots of panic become interfused with a weird, blissed-out lethargy, the kind of light-headedness you get when the oxygen is running out. From the window, I can see the shutters are down on the Ark, making it look like a sarcophagus; I keep imagining Ariadne is trapped inside, have to stop myself from running to help …

‘Three feet high and rising, eh, Claude?’ Ish says.

‘What?’

‘The river.’ Below, filthy water is frothing ever closer to street level.

‘The Liffey has never burst its banks.’ This is what I hear people telling each other in supermarket queues.

‘Yeah, well, banks have been known to fail, haven’t they?’ She doesn’t sound overly concerned; in fact, she’s been quite blithe since the prospect of AgroBOT’s imminent destruction emerged, possibly because Skylark Fitzgibbon and all mention of golf courses disappeared around the same time. This seems disloyal: I feel a surge of anger, but before I can say anything Kimberlee appears and hands me a piece of paper.

‘Fax for you, Claude.’

‘You don’t have to keep bringing them,’ I say. But she’s already gone.

‘Someone still loves you, eh, Claude?’ Ish says, pinching my arm.

Mike Purzel comes running in. ‘Barclays is looking into a buyout.’

Everyone jumps out of their seats and crowds around him; then Liam English comes out of his office, and they leave Mike and gather around him instead. Liam confirms that Barclays has made contact. Cheers resound through the room. ‘Talks are at a preliminary stage,’ Liam warns, but he doesn’t object to following further developments from the pub.

‘Are you coming?’ Ish is halfway out the door.

‘In a minute.’

I remain at the window, looking at the fax in my hand. At the top, somebody has carefully printed, FAO Claude Martingale. Then follows the now-familiar block of assiduous blackness. It occurs to me that instead of an attempt to use up ink, you could read it, if you wanted, as a story — the story of Claude, the real one, with which the version I’d hoped for, Ariadne, love, adventure, all that, has been overwritten. Because even if a buyout materializes and the bank is saved, the Ark will still be gone, won’t it? And Ariadne with it? Leaving me with nothing but the present, the never-ending present, on which to inscribe myself over and over, in letters that are skyscraper-high …

A man is standing in our office. Stubby, moustachioed, he stares directly at me. Where have I seen him before? ‘Looking for Howard Hogan,’ he says. He speaks in an even, courteous tone, but specks of sweat glisten on his temples, and the brilliant-white collar of his shirt digs deep into his pink neck. It is the man we saw when Ish and I visited Howie’s fund, I realize — the chortling fellow who left the bag full of banknotes.

‘Upstairs,’ I say, jabbing at the ceiling. ‘Ninth floor.’

‘Doesn’t seem to be anyone there,’ the man says. His tone remains steady, but his eyes boggle at me, seize me by the lapels and shake me.

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ I tell him. ‘This is Agron Torabundo Bank. Agron Torabundo Credit Management is a separate enterprise.’

He stares at me another moment, then seems to wilt: a merchant prince stripped of his belongings, lost among savages. A door opens and in rush the two burly men who accompanied him on the ninth floor that day. He raises his eyebrows; they shake their heads. He emits a low gurgle as if inside him something were being throttled. Without another word he turns on his heel and heads for the lobby, phone pressed to his ear.

When he is gone, I climb the stairwell to the ninth floor. A fire extinguisher has been used to break down the door. Inside, the beautiful artwork is gone, as well as most of the furniture. None of the staff seems to be here either, though a residue of panic remains etched in the air, conjuring images of rushing bodies, boxes hastily filled …

On Howie’s desk, an empty bottle of whiskey sits by a sticky glass. One edge of the keyboard is sprinkled with powder. I touch a key and the screen comes to life: a game of Tetris, coloured blocks piled claustrophobically all the way to the top. The ledgers that line the shelf on the back wall are all empty, the drawers likewise, except for a pair of pink panties and a biography of Steve Jobs. I find myself thinking of Paul’s red notebook, page after page filled with cartoon penises.

Hearing a noise, I leave the room and turn a corner to find Tom Cremins and Brian O’Brien hard at work, one feeding documents into the shredder, the other smashing up hard drives with a hammer. They look up momentarily but don’t speak to me. Beyond them is a wall safe, empty; beside the safe is another door. No one answers when I knock; in fact there is no sense the room has ever been occupied. No files, no phone, no stationery or computer clutter the beautiful maple desk; the softest veil of dust lies over everything, like a protective covering. In the corner, however, is a large cupboard. On a hunch I turn the handle.

‘Go away,’ Grisha says.

‘What are you doing in here?’ The closet is just big enough for a mop and bucket, on the latter of which the quant is sitting.

‘Maths. You are not understanding.’

‘On the walls?’

His shoulders snap up and down. I gaze around me at the algorithmic scrawl that covers the cupboard’s interior. Even the ceiling has been inscribed with tiny pinched print, and with a shiver I think again of the Texier painting: the proliferation of minute brushstrokes, tiny bricks in a huge altarpiece to Nothing.

‘Everyone’s gone,’ I say. ‘Howie, everyone.’

He ignores this, continues his calculations.

‘The fund’s finished,’ I tell him, and when he doesn’t respond to this either, push a little harder: ‘It was all a fraud. A Ponzi scheme. I imagine the money Howie paid out to the investors was the money he was getting from new clients. Everything else he took for himself.’

Scritch-scratch goes the pen, filling the wall with infinitesimal signs.

‘He didn’t use your model,’ I say gently. ‘Do you understand? You, your providential antinomies, you were just props. None of it was real.’

‘None of this is reality!’ Grisha rejoins, with an impatient wave at everything outside the cupboard. ‘Only this !’ He taps vehemently on the walls with his pen.

‘The instrument?’

He scowls, scrubs his shaggy head, muttering under his breath; then, twisting quickly, as if he is about to rise and strike me, he says, in a high, querulous voice, ‘You peoples are thinking you can use maths like slave! Do this, do that — I laugh at you, ha! ha! ha! You are like shadows who think they can direct the sun!’

He stops, looks over my shoulder. Someone is standing in the doorway. It’s Howie’s Bulgarian dealer. In his hand is an ice pick. We don’t move; we don’t even breathe. He has lost his sunglasses; for a long moment he stares at us with incomprehensible eyes. Then he turns away. A moment later, from down the hall, we hear rampaging noises, terrorized cries.