The Money Makers (33 page)

‘Uh-uh.’ Gillingham shook his bead. ‘The meeting’s out of the bank. It’s personal. It starts in three-quarters of an hour.’

Zack looked at his watch. It was only five-thirty now. Nobody left the bank by six. Gillingham was out of line.

‘Hmm. This project is fairly urgent. I wonder if you could postpone your meeting? Maybe move it back by a couple of hours?’

Zack was way junior to Gillingham, but he was within his rights. The bank took priority over everything. Personal meetings couldn’t get in the way of business. Gillingham smiled thinly.

‘It’s not that sort of personal. I can’t move it.’

Zack stared at the older man. Zack wasn’t backing down. Hong Kong closed for the evening soon after London opened in the morning. If
he waited to meet with Gillingham until the next day, he wouldn’t be able to talk to lawyers in Hong Kong until the day following that. Zack said nothing, but his face was stubborn. Hal Gillingham stared at Zack, then looked away.

‘It’s an AA meeting. Alcoholics Anonymous. Every Tuesday and every Thursday. I haven’t missed one for six years, and I’m not going to miss one for you.’

Zack was astounded. He remembered Mazowiecki telling him that Gillingham had taken a break from the bank a few years back. It must have been to go and get dried out. Gillingham must be exceptional if the bank had taken him back after that.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Tomorrow’s fine. Can we say tomorrow morning?’

‘Sure. Eight thirty?’

They agreed the time and wrote it into their diaries. Gillingham’s pencil still hovered over the page.

‘Just remind me of the client? Who are we pitching to?’

Zack licked his lips. The moment of truth was inching closer.

‘The client is Hatherleigh Pacific,’ he said. ‘We’re pitching to the Chairman. Lord Hatherleigh.’

10

Well, he’d done it.

When Matthew got back to his apartment after his crazy Caribbean jaunt, he had spent five solid hours reading and rereading the presentation he’d found on the plane. The more he read, the more solid the case looked. Western Instruments was a lousy company and Cornish just the man to fix it.

Matthew tried to see the presentation from Cornish’s point of view. He tried to pick holes in it. He tried to find flaws in the arguments or weak spots in the numbers. He found nothing. After five hours, he put the presentation aside, went out into the street and hailed a cab. He rode down to Wall Street and entered Madison at ten o’clock on Sunday evening.

On the trading floor he bumped into Fiona Shepperton, who was just leaving.

‘I decided to take your advice and do some homework after all,’ he said, remembering Shepperton’s last caustic words to him.

She half-smiled, half-nodded, and began to stride off towards the elevators.

‘The treat’s on you next time,’ Matthew called. He’d get her to take him to Timbuktu by private jet.

Fiona turned, smiled a twisted smile back at him, and hurried off. It was probably a ‘Yes’, but it was hard to tell. It certainly wasn’t a ‘Yes, with pleasure, just name the day’.

Bitch or sweetheart, Matthew wondered. On current form, there wasn’t much doubting which, but stretched out on the Jamaican sands, eating platefuls of wood­ smoked fish in her fingers and laughing up into the Jamaican night, she had been a joy to be with, and in bed, fire itself. Probably bitch, maybe sweetheart, Matthew decided. But he had bigger decisions to make.

He gathered a couple of things from his desk, then took the elevator up a few floors to the bank’s research department. He wasn’t very familiar with the research area, which was mostly there for those in corporate finance - people like Zack. Traders like Matthew got their information from Reuters screens and Telerate screens and morning meetings and screams echoing around the trading floor. Compared with those supersonic thrills, a library atmosphere was decidedly low octane. But that evening, Matthew had research to do which the trading room could never provide.

There were research assistants on duty all night. There were also a dozen or so groggy-looking analysts who had clearly worked all through the weekend to complete some project for Monday morning. They looked like they still had a few hours work to do. A slogan had been taped up on the side of one of the data terminals:

‘Definition of deadline - If it’s not DEAD on time, your job’s on the LINE.’ Elsewhere another humourist had pinned up a note headed ‘Lifecycle of a Deal’. Phase one was Excitement. Phase two was Disillusion. Phase three was Despair. Phase four was Failure. Phase five was Punishment of the Innocent and Reward of the Guilty.

Christ, thought Matthew, echoing the thoughts of countless traders before him, why the hell would anyone actually choose to work in corporate finance? Like them, Matthew could come up with only one possible answer. Corporate finance was for those who couldn’t hack it on the trading floor.

But to work. With the help of a patient research assistant, Matthew dug out research reports on Western Instruments, press cuttings, stockholder reports, share price graphs, profit estimates, and anything else he could think of. He also built an impressive collection of cuttings on Nick Cornish and his exploits. In the course of his career, he’d been nicknamed Black Nick, Nick the Knife, Vampire Nick and simply The Ogre. Matthew printed or copied everything he could, and, bundling his information together, set off home.

Once there, he opened the presentation again, and checked everything he could. Everything seemed to hold up. The presentation proved conclusively, as far as Matthew was concerned, that Cornish stood to make a killing. And if Cornish did decide to launch a raid, the bonds of Western Instruments would jump from being worth eighty-two cents to one dollar exactly, a rise of more than twenty percent. Those kind of returns sim­ply weren’t available on the bonds Matthew normally traded. But if he wanted to be king of the trading floor, make his million from bonuses, then those were the returns he needed.

By four in the morning, Matthew had made up his mind.

After two hours’ sleep, he rose, showered, dressed, drank some coffee, and headed off for Wall Street. He attended the Monday morning meeting, greeted Alan and Rick, listened to Saul Rosenthal moaning about his weekend, drank more coffee, and went to work. As soon as the market opened, he began to buy Western Instruments bonds. He bought four million dollars’ worth that day. Over the next week, he bought another sixteen million dollars’ worth. The week after he added another five million. Twenty-five million all told, the maximum holding he was allowed under the bank’s rules. Buying that much that fast was difficult, especially with a bond that was hardly traded. Matthew paid over the odds for the privilege, but, for once in his short trading life, he didn’t especially care. The thing was to get the bonds before Cornish attacked.

Nevertheless, Matthew wasn’t exactly forgetful of the prices he’d paid. At the end of each day, every trader is forced to ‘mark their portfolio to market’. That means looking at what you hold and comparing the prices you paid to the current market price. Matthew had paid an average of eighty-three cents on the dollar for his bonds, against a today’s closing price of eighty-two. Building up his twenty-five million dollar portfolio had cost him two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, a loss that cancelled about half his trading profits in his brief career.

Matthew checked his monitors one last time that day for news. Nothing. There wouldn’t be. Nobody launches a bid in the evening, something to do with the Protestant work ethic probably. He’d have to wait until the markets opened again on Monday. But as he reached to switch off the monitors, he noticed his hand shaking. His lips parted, in an almost silent whisper.

‘Come on, big guy. Come on.’

11

‘What’s that, Josie? Looking for a job?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Josie, embarrassed. ‘Just reading, that’s all.’

She folded the bank’s newsletter and thrust it away from her. It had been open on a page advertising internal vacancies. Apart from that, there had been nothing else to read.

‘We wouldn’t survive without you, you know.’ Her boss smiled at her, meaning what he said. He was a nice man, not bureaucratic like some of them, and he added,

‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but I’ve put you up for promotion. I know you’re young, but the department depends on you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Josie. ‘Thank you, really.’

‘So you’re not going to leave us?’

‘No, honestly, I was just reading.’

Her boss turned to leave. He’d only been passing by. Josephine had turned red; red from her collarbones to her hairline; red as a beetroot with sunburn. She hadn’t blushed like this, not even when he’d teased her about Miklos Kodaly, her tame computer nerd. And Josie hadn’t just been reading. She’d had a pen in her hand and thought in the creases of her forehead.

12

On the far horizon, in the low-lying country around Leeds, the helicopter rose and flew a little further on, nearer to them this time. It descended once again, out of sight. George, Val, Darren and Jeff Wilmot, the accountant, noticed it, then ignored it. There was work to be done.

‘Let’s face it,’ said Darren, ‘the marketing boys keep getting decent crosses into the box, but we don’t have a bleeding striker to convert the chances.’ He stopped, thinking he had made himself perfectly clear, but George nodded at him to continue. ‘What I mean is, we need a bigger production area and some proper kit. There’s no point handing out brochures full of brilliant furniture at brilliant prices, then telling our customers to sod off because we can’t meet their orders.’

He was right. Sales were strong and rising. The Bright and Beautiful range was their bestseller, but all their products were doing well. George had started to insist that Gissings turn away new customers, in order not to disappoint existing ones.

‘I understand your concern,’ said Wilmot, ‘but unfortunately these things need to be paid for. I’m afraid we don’t have the cash to go and get the Alan Shearer of furniture factories.’

He looked around, wanting applause for his little joke. Everyone ignored him. Even accountants found him dull. Outside, the helicopter bobbed up again and drifted closer. It wasn’t military and wasn’t police.

‘Remind us of the numbers, Jeff,’ said George.

‘Well, it’s simple enough. We’re making a decent profit now, but we still owe over four hundred and sixty thousand pounds. The bank will never let us borrow more, and if we spend all our profits on new equipment, then the debt will be hanging round our necks for ever. We just need to sit tight, pay off our debts, and then start thinking about investment.’

‘How long will that take, Jeff?’ muttered George. He was looking at the helicopter, which had apparently landed again. It wasn’t more than two or three miles away now.

‘If we keep on doing as well as we are now, then we’ll be free of debt in less than four years. To be on the safe side, I’d say four to five years.’

George shook his head. In four to five years, he could pay off the debt. In another ten years, he might have collected his million pounds. By that time, Matthew or Zack would have been enjoying their father’s money for the last twelve or thirteen years. They could sell off Bernard Gradley’s beloved company and use the proceeds to buy themselves an island in the sun. They could have servants, yachts and cars. With thirty or forty million quid, they could buy a stackload of shares, pay as much tax as their lawyer thought prudent, and still have an income of a million pounds a year, every year. The helicopter had risen again and was zigzagging across the sky like a drunk. It shot up into the air, hung for a moment, then dived down again. It had landed about half a dozen times since George had started watching, but never stayed put for more than a minute or two. George gazed at it gloomily.

‘Jeff, we need to expand production. I don’t give a monkey’s about the debt. The only questions are, how much is it going to cost and where can we find the dosh. Do you have the latest cash flow forecast, please?’

The way he saw it, he hadn’t a hope of making a million quid out of Gissings. All the same, he might as well try to build up the business, so he didn’t have to feel ashamed when Matthew and Zack competed with each other to plonk the biggest pile of money on the table at the end of the three years. One of them would get their million, he was sure of that.

Wilmot and Darren started to argue again while Wilmot searched his fake leather briefcase for the cash flows. Darren wanted the biggest, shiniest factory they could afford. Wilmot wanted the smallest, oldest one they could get away with.

George liked Darren. You couldn’t imagine Val or Wilmot having a good time with thirty million quid. Val would still be Val. She’d probably work at Gissings, the same as usual. Wilmot would take off to the Costa del Sol, but he’d still dress in cheesy little suits and still turn pink at the first hint of sun. Darren, on the other hand, would take his thirty million, spend it in a couple of years, then be back where he’d started, a scruffy young man with a big mouth and not a moment’s regret for what he’d enjoyed and lost.

Darren and Wilmot squabbled, subject only to Val’s quiet interventions. In blacker moods, George was amazed to find himself still shacked up with her, but she was of more value to Gissings than anyone else, bar none. Wilmot couldn’t find the cash flows and went off to look for them.