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Zack shook his head. ‘Thinking about the data room afterwards, I realised that they’d concealed the first three pieces very carefully. They were a long way apart. Each one was buried in documents almost too boring to read. I realised that they had a perfect bomb, all they needed was some explosive. So then I started looking for the explosive. We used our databases to search the English-language press, then the press worldwide. Up pops this Norwegian article which mentions a sum of ten million pounds. And there we had it: a bomb, primed and ticking.’
Zack tossed the article across the desk with a translation. Daggert scanned it. It didn’t say much: just that there was a problem and that the Norwegians would be putting in a claim for the money. But it was enough.
‘You got notes on the other stuff, the other parts of the bomb?’ Zack shook his head. Daggert looked at his two subordinates: the ones who had been with Zack and Sarah in the data room. ‘Did you pick up this stuff?’ They both shook their heads and the more senior guy glowered at the junior guy, as though it was his fault. Daggert’s voice grew sharper. ‘You don’t have any record of this and you want me to drop my bid by ten million pounds?’
Hanbury leaned forward. Here was a chink of light. They could be honest with the client, but still maybe encourage the client not to change his bid. That would be the best of all worlds. He began to speak, but the arrogant young Gradley beat him to it.
‘I do have records, just not written ones.’
‘What?’ Daggert was pissed off. Was Gradley playing games?
‘I have a good memory. I don’t forget a fact.’
Daggert gave a sharp laugh. ‘That’s easily tested.’ He reached for the yellow legal pad of one of his subordinates. It was crowded with notes from the data room. Daggert flicked through the pages and looked at Gradley, his eyes openly challenging. ‘OK. File fifty-seven. Tab eight. Tell me what it says.’
Zack brought the file to mind, then the tab, then turned the tab to find the first page. He let the page swim out of memory into focus.
‘Employee grievance procedures,’ he said. ‘Disciplinary committees. First and second warnings. That kind of thing.’
Daggert nodded and flicked forward again through the notes. He smiled. This would be a good test. ‘File ninety-one. Tab four. There are some numbers on that page. Read them to me.’
Zack found the page and let it swim into view. Then he smiled and began to go red.
‘What’s up?’ said Daggert. ‘Something amuse you?’
‘Er, well, no not exactly,’ said Zack, his red deepening. This file hadn’t been one of his. It had been one of Sarah’s and he hadn’t looked at it fully. But as he tried to bring the picture to mind, he realised he had seen it after all. He had been standing up, getting a cup of coffee from the table at the side of the room. Sarah had been sitting in front of him, leaning over the file. Her light brown hair fell down either side of her neck, leaving it exposed, vulnerable, kissable – Zack had stared at her with yearning and found himself staring also at the file open in front of her: file ninety-one, tab four. ‘Sorry,’ continued Zack. ‘I was smiling because I remember Sarah – er – walking into the room about that time. I guess that must have been a nice experience for me.’
‘Nice to see a good team spirit,’ growled Daggert, glancing at Sarah, who went red in turn herself. But she wasn’t angry, just embarrassed. ‘Did you get a chance to look at the numbers too?’
‘Yes. Of course. The numbers you wanted were eighteen point six, fourteen point eight …’ He continued flawlessly. Daggert followed from the notes in front of him. Zack was perfect.
‘OK. Stop. You’ve proved your point. Good catch, young man. Piers, we’ll drop our bid by ten million pounds. Is that clear? We offer a hundred and fifteen million only.’
Hanbury swallowed. Damn Gradley. Damn him.
‘That’s perfectly clear. You do of course remember our advice that the winning bid is unlikely to be less than one twenty-five. I must warn you that your revised bid is most unlikely to win.’
The oilman glared at the aristocratic Hanbury.
‘Damn right. And we won’t overpay either.’
12
‘Kiki? It’s me. George.’
‘Georges, darling, how are you?’ Kiki’s English was excellent but she knew that a French accent sounded sexier and she exploited the fact for all it was worth.
‘I’m OK. Look, can you come over to my flat right away? I need to see you.’
‘Now darling? I’m going out right now. I have my hat on.’
‘You’re always just going out. I’ve ordered you a cab and it’s waiting outside your hotel now. Kiki, I need to see you.’
She paused for a moment, wondering whether to provoke him with a longer refusal.
‘OK, Georges. But you will need to admire my new suit very much. It is new today.’
George promised.
‘And I really am going out, so I will only be able to stay with you for two minutes.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘Maybe only one minute, if I have to spend time getting ready.’ Getting ready for Kiki meant fussing over her immaculate make-up and leaving expensive brand name cosmetics in other people’s bathrooms.
‘Kiki, I’ll give you a personal pedicure if I have to. Just get a move on.’
She came. An hour and a half late, of course, and carrying a bag from Harvey Nichols. But she came. Her new suit was stunning. Coral pink and perfectly fitted, it was as eye-catching as its price tag. George gave it as much praise as it deserved and almost as much as Kiki demanded.
Nobody annoyed George more than Kiki, but nor had any girl ever attracted him as much. Other than a kiss one New Year’s Eve in Monaco – which had meant a lot to George, but nothing at all, it appeared, to Kiki – nothing had passed between them. He was heavily built and, dressed differently, could easily have passed as a Yorkshire farmer: slow-talking, stolid, strong. She, in contrast, was petite, pretty, brightly coloured, fluttering constantly from one thing to another like a bird hopping from twig to twig. They were unlikely friends, but George kept her doggedly in his sight, as she skipped from Gstaad to Monaco to London to New York to Palm Beach to Milan and back home to her chateau in the Loire valley.
As for her, she showed no outward sign of attraction to George – or at least no more to him than to anyone else in her wide circle of friends. Yet it was noticeable that, wherever she went, her path always circled back to George’s flat in London. She sat on his sofas, showed him her latest purchases, scattered her make-up, showed him photos of the party she’d just come from, agonised with him about what to wear for the next one, patted his cheeks, called him darling, rumpled his hair and left him in a frenzy for the next visit.
At length Kiki stepped down from the coffee table where she had been pirouetting.
‘OK, Georges, my darling, you have been a very good boy. But I think you wanted to see me not just because of my nice new suit. No?’
George seized the moment. In a few sentences, he told Kiki the story about his father’s will, the challenge it threw down, how George and his brothers accepted the challenge, how George now had just three days to find thirty-six grand.
‘Kiki,’ he finished, ‘I have a question. You’ve always told me that you love this flat and how fed up you are staying in hotels whenever you come to London. Well, there’s about nine months rent prepaid on this flat and I’m ready to move out tomorrow. If you can take the flat off my hands, I’ll be eternally grateful.’
Kiki had listened very quietly and seriously to George’s narration. Now that he came to the end, she said, ‘But Georges, this flat is so masculin. I need something a little more feminin, you know. All this blue and gold, it is good for you and it was très fashionable last year, but this year the colours are lighter, you know.’
She waved her hand around but her speech tapered off. Despite her words, her face was solemn.
‘Georges, you really need this money, no?’
George nodded.
‘And if I give you the money, then you will give it to some bank manager who will take it away and not give it back to you, no? And you say that this business of yours is a very bad business, no? That it will probably go down the hole? Oh Georges, and then you will have no money and then I will not be able to see you because you will have holes in your shoes and I do not like men who have holes in their shoes.’
There were tears in her eyes.
‘But I suppose you need to have this stupid money because you are a man and because your brothers are men too I suppose and because you have to look tough with them and so I will have to give you the money and then you will lose it all but you will be a very tough man and you won’t mind and then I will hate you because you have no money and you don’t mind even though you have holes in your shoes so I cannot see you.’
She was crying now. Big tears fell soundlessly from her trembling eyes. George stood up to find her a tissue. In an instant she was in his arms, her face buried in his chest. After a while, she stopped weeping and looked up at him. He held her gaze and bent down towards her. Who kissed whom first? Who knows? But, within a second, each was kissing the other, first on the mouth, then inside. Kiki’s lips and tongue burned with passion. Her tiny body pressed into George’s bulky frame. George hugged her with all the passion that years of longing had given him.
After a time, how long neither knew, they stepped back to look at one another. Kiki had stopped crying, but her cheeks were flushed and damp. George stepped forward again seeking to gather her up with renewed passion but she moved away.
‘Now look what you have done, you beastly man,’ she said, dabbing her face. ‘I will have to start over now. Then we have to go and find your stupid money. Then we have to go and find some proper curtains. What do you think? Maybe pink? I have seen some oh-so-nice ones in that gorgeous little shop on the Fulham Road, but they are silk of course, so then we would need to get rid of these funny old sofas which would be all wrong. Oh, Georges, you are nothing but a problem to me.’
She whisked off into the bathroom. He was molten with feeling for her. But already he could sense her tripping away again, a kingfisher pursued by a bear.
In due course she emerged from the bathroom looking immaculate. She took George off to see her ‘avocat’. The avocat was a London solicitor retained under the terms of Kiki’s trust fund with the near impossible responsibility for keeping some sort of hold over Kiki’s purse strings. The solicitor approved the proposal gratefully. Kiki’s London hotel bills were astronomical. There was, however, a problem. The solicitor was more or less obliged to meet any bills which Kiki ran up as long as the goods purchased were bought at a ‘fair market value’. Unfortunately the nine months rent remaining on George’s flat were valued at only £27,000 under the existing tenancy agreement. The solicitor, despite Kiki’s despairing wails, insisted that he would be in breach of trust if he paid any more than this for the flat.
There was only one solution. George asked Kiki if she wanted his car. Of course she wanted his car. She berated him for ever having considered that she might not want his car. She had no driver’s licence (she admitted in response to the solicitor’s enquiry) but how could she ever learn to drive if she wasn’t even allowed a car?
And so the deal was done. George gave up his flat and sold his car in exchange for a total of £47,000. The money flew from Kiki’s trust fund into George’s account. From George’s account £36,000 sped into the Gissings company account and from Gissings straight to David Ballard’s bank. The final transaction was cleared at four o’clock on the Friday afternoon.
Kiki told George off for ruining her week, making her see that beastly avocat, spending so long on the telephone and making all the wrong choices when he’d had his flat decorated the year before. George and Kiki swept around the most expensive boutiques in Sloane Street, the Kings Road and the Fulham Road ordering items for the flat. At the rate she spent money, she would get through another £50,000 within a matter of weeks.
At two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Kiki remembered she was meant to be at a cocktail party in New York that evening and she shot off to the airport to jump on the next Concorde. George saw her off. At the fast-track customs channel, they stopped. They couldn’t delay a goodbye any further. Kiki turned to her companion, her face showing the signs of passionate struggle.
‘Goodbye, Georges.’
‘Kiki.’
George wanted to kiss again properly, as they had done before. He couldn’t believe that she didn’t want to too, but she shook her head and her troubled eyes were begging him ‘No’. She reached up to kiss him high up on the cheek and hugged him as she hugged practically everyone she knew.
‘Good luck with your horrid factory.’
‘Bye. Don’t … don’t lose touch.’
She left him there, watching till she passed out of sight. George ached with longing. He wondered if he would ever see her again. He also wondered where he was going to spend the night.
13
Zack was depressed. He was working hard on stuff so boring it hurt. The Aberdeen Drilling deal, as expected, had run into the sand. Tominto Oil had put in a bid of £115 million and been politely told that its bid was too low but thanks so much for trying. It was goodbye and good riddance. The winning bidder hadn’t yet closed the deal, but it hardly mattered. Whoever won, it wasn’t Tominto. Zack’s first deal was a washout. In climbing the ladder to a million quid he still hadn’t put his foot on the first rung.
What was worse, he was beginning to realise something about his chosen profession. To make money in corporate finance you don’t just have to be good, you have to be old. Chief executives making life and death decisions don’t simply want wise heads, they want old ones. Forced to choose between the two, they’d pick the old one every time. It’s not like that on the trading floor. In the markets, you can be old and grey, but if you bet wrong and the office boy bets right, then, before you know it, you’ll be sweeping the floors and the office boy will be on the phone to the Long Island estate agents. Zack could be the most brilliant mind in the City of London, but without long years of experience he’d never make bonuses big enough to release his father’s fortune. If he weren’t careful, Zack wouldn’t just be beaten by Matthew. He’d be humiliated.
And there was one final irritation. Every day he had to see Sarah, work with her, be professional, keep his hands off, not make love. He was as hopelessly in lust as he’d always been and he was being forced to sit and watch politely as she and her millions got married to some aristocratic lumphead. Zack was depressed.
It was eight o’clock in the evening and he was finishing up for the night. On his way out he walked by Sarah’s desk. She was still there working, bent over a presentation, hair tucked behind her ears.
‘Hi, Sarah.’
‘Zack. Hi. On your way out?’
‘Yes. I wondered if you’d like to come out for a beer?’
This was the first time either of them had suggested moving beyond careful professionalism into something like friendship. Sarah hesitated.
‘Um. I’d like to, but I’ve some stuff to finish up. Robert’s coming to pick me up in forty-five minutes.’
Robert Leighton, the fiancé. The obstacle. Zack sighed.
‘OK. Some other time? Tomorrow? It’s stupid you and me working together so closely and pretending we hardly know each other.’
‘Yes, but let’s be realistic. You would never have chosen me as your colleague and I wouldn’t have chosen you. But that’s how it is and so far it’s worked. Why mess things up?’
Zack spread his hands. He didn’t tell her, ‘Because I’m filled with lust and I want your money.’ Instead he said, ‘A drink can’t hurt. It’s been years now. I’ve changed. I know I was difficult then, but it doesn’t have to be that way now.’
‘Not difficult, Zack. You were impossible.’
She was pushing him. In the old days, he would never have let himself be pushed. They were already on the brink of an argument. Zack defused things carefully.
‘OK. I was impossible. I apologise. I was impossible and you were stubborn.’
His turn to challenge her. Would she acknowledge any fault? She nodded.
‘Yes. I was stubborn. I still am. I haven’t changed. I still like all the things I used to like. Hunting, balls, everything you loathe.’
‘That’s OK. You can murder every furry thing in England for all I care. It doesn’t bother me now. It’s Robert you have to share a life with. I’m just inviting you to share a drink.’
Sarah took a deep breath and looked at Zack. It felt like the first time they’d properly looked at each other in all this time. They hadn’t changed much. He was tall, angular, dark, intense. She was fair, square-chinned, athletic, honest-looking. Physically, everything had always worked between them, the only thing that ever had.
‘OK. A drink sometime. That’d be nice.’
‘Good. Great. I’ll hold you to that.’
They nodded at each other, Zack’s cue to leave. But he couldn’t tear himself away. His body fizzed with desire. Sarah had pulled her hair from behind her left ear and was fiddling absent-mindedly with the short brown strands. Zack watched. He knew Sarah. Playing with her hair meant she was thinking about sex.
‘Working on anything interesting?’ he asked, not because he wanted to know but because he wanted to stay.
Sarah laughed. ‘Not unless you count tax loopholes as interesting. It’s the sort of thing you’d probably be good at.’
‘I’m interested already.’
‘Well then, you’d better take a copy of this presentation and read as much as you want to. It’s as boring as hell to me.’
Zack took the presentation that Sarah gave him and riffled through it. He felt a sense of gathering excitement.
‘What’s the idea?’
‘It’s all in there,’ said Sarah, but Zack wasn’t leaving. She pushed her chair back and began to explain. ‘In every tax law, there’s a loophole. The point of this game is to find ways of passing as much money through the loopholes as fast as you can, until the tax authorities catch you at it and stop you doing it.’
‘And if they catch you?’
‘Well, you’re not doing anything illegal. In fact, you’re following the law to the letter, you’re just doing something completely different to what was originally intended. So when the taxmen discover their tax revenues are vanishing out of sight, they get a new law passed to block up the loophole. Then our tax experts put their twisted minds to work thinking up new ways to subvert the law. That’s why you’d be good at it. You’ve got the most twisted mind of anyone I know.’
‘And I can take a copy?’ asked Zack, waving the presentation.
‘Yes,’ replied Sarah laughing. ‘I’ve already said so. Just bring it back.’
Zack impulsively moved forward. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to kiss Sarah on the cheek or on the mouth, but anyhow she moved in surprise and he ended up kissing her half on the mouth, half on her upper lip. It was awkward and stupid. He apologised for his clumsiness and rushed off to copy the presentation, excited as a six-year-old.
Corporate financiers need to be old and wise and grey. Tax dodgers don’t. They just need to be right.
