See No Evil

7

Cornelius’s study was a mess. Every surface of the expensive furniture was covered with paper: spreadsheets, financial reports, printouts of news articles, consultants’ studies, and even some newspapers. Cornelius tried to make sure he read at least the Herald and the Philadelphia Intelligencer every day, but the copies were piling up. There were also back issues of The Times. These he had been studying closely.

Edwin was looking worn. His three-piece suit was intact, he was wearing a tie and the top button of his shirt was still done up, but he was frayed around the edges. Cornelius’s insistence that no one else from Zyl News be involved meant that Edwin had had to do a lot of the work he would normally have farmed out to his MBA grunts. He had done it diligently and well, but he hadn’t slept much.

Cornelius, on the other hand, was a volcano of energy. He found it difficult to sit still for more than a minute or two without darting from one problem to another. He threw himself into the transaction and drove Edwin into the ground.

The Bloomfield Weiss bankers filed into the study. Benton led the way, followed by Dower, but now they had a real deal for which they would be paid fees, the team had grown to six. There was probably a battalion of Bloomfield Weiss’s own grunts back at their office in Broadgate also working on the transaction out of sight.

‘Sorry about the mess, gentlemen,’ Cornelius began. ‘How’s it going with the banks?’

Dower opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Benton spoke. ‘Very well. I think they had some trouble at first, the numbers are a bit tight, there’s no getting around that, but we’ve got National Bank of Scotland interested in taking on the role of lead manager. They’re a good institution, I think they’ll do a fine job for you.’

‘What kind of covenants will they want?’

‘Andy?’ Benton turned to Dower, who was obviously seething. Cornelius could see Dower had been upstaged by Benton and was angry about it. He found investment bankers’ grandstanding tiresome, but after twenty years he had become used to it. For all Bloomfield Weiss’s faults, and there were many, they had stuck with him through good times and bad, and that was worth a lot. Cornelius would never totally trust them, though. They were investment bankers, after all.

Dower went into details of the financial covenants the banks would demand be included in the legal agreements, and the presentation Edwin and Cornelius would have to make to them the next day. Then discussion moved on again to the price they were planning to pay for The Times.

‘We’ve had our analysts take a look at Evelyn Gill’s Beckwith Communications,’ Dower said. ‘Of course it’s totally private, and the accounts are a tangle of holding companies. When they borrow, they tend to go to a tight group of banks in Switzerland. But we don’t think Gill has access to more funding. A cash offer from you of eight hundred and fifty million would be hard to match. He won’t be willing to go to the bond markets for it, and his corporate structure is too messy to be able to get an equity offering away in a hurry.’

Cornelius wasn’t going to fall into the trap of underestimating his opponent. Sir Evelyn Gill was a stout man with a defiant stare and a heavy lower jaw thrusting aggressively forward. He had worked in his father’s business trading steel in Sheffield, but had seen the writing on the wall for the industry and diversified into ever more precious metals, until he had transformed the family firm into an international commodity speculation outfit. He had invested some of his profits in the purchase of Beckwith Communications, a magazine publisher, in the 1980s, before using this vehicle to launch his failed bid for the Herald in 1988 and bagging the tabloid New York Globe the following year. Since then he had bought the London tabloid Mercury and a series of other newspapers and magazines throughout Europe, Australia and South Africa as well as a book publisher in London. Although Beckwith didn’t publish figures, his newspapers were rumoured to be extremely profitable. They all took a populist right-wing stance — anti-immigration, patriotic, anti-bureaucratic — that seemed to strike a chord wherever they were published. Even his more serious political weeklies in France and Sweden subtly followed that line, and circulation had increased. His contribution to the national media was recognized when he was knighted by the Conservative government in 1996, the year before their election defeat.

‘Gill has been trying to talk the price down,’ Cornelius said. ‘You know the game: bait and switch. Agree a price in principle and then negotiate it down because of problems you supposedly discover during due diligence. In this case it’s accounting discrepancies and under-funded pensions.’

‘Those could be real issues for us as well,’ Dower said.

‘Laxton Media think it’s all bullshit. They are pissed off. Even better for us if we come in with a higher offer.’

‘How do we know this?’ Benton asked.

‘Edwin has a source.’

There was a brief uncomfortable silence. Edwin stared at the papers in front of him while the minds of everyone around the table flitted over the possibilities of what Edwin’s source might be. Cornelius knew that Edwin had a reputation for the occasional use of underhand methods to get things done. Cornelius also knew this reputation was justified. He hadn’t asked Edwin about his source; he hadn’t wanted to know the answer. Perhaps he should have done. Cornelius realized that whenever he did retire, his reputation for integrity would retire with him...

‘Excellent,’ Benton said, to break the silence. ‘Now perhaps we can talk about the junk-bond issue.’

‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you back, Zero?’ The Saudi smiled as he sipped his orange juice. The dining room in Claridge’s was quiet this early in the morning. He and Calder were the only two people there, bar a lone businessman in the far corner. Their table was set for three. One chair was empty.

‘I’m quite sure you can’t,’ Calder replied, responding to the old nickname from his bond-trading days. ‘But I do appreciate you asking.’

‘Actually, I will always ask,’ the other man said. ‘Until one day you say yes.’

Tarek al-Seesi had been Calder’s partner and immediate boss at Bloomfield Weiss. He was a small man, with a thick moustache, thinning hair, and large brown thoughtful eyes. He was no more than a couple of years Calder’s senior but he looked and acted much older and wiser. He combined the street-trading talents of the bazaar with a profound understanding of human psychology and good grasp of macroeconomics, backed up with a PhD. He was also a canny political operator, something that Calder emphatically wasn’t. Most importantly he was someone whom Calder not only respected but trusted. When Calder had phoned him the day before with his request, Tarek had been happy to oblige. So Calder had flown his Cessna down to Elstree the previous afternoon, and spent the evening with his sister in Highgate so that he could get up early to meet Tarek at ten to seven.

‘You can’t tell me you don’t miss the markets,’ Tarek said.

‘I suppose I do,’ Calder replied. He was just about to tell Tarek about the little bits of spread-betting he did, but something stopped him. When they had worked together as bond traders they had laughed at ‘dumb retail’, their name for ill-informed individual speculators. Calder didn’t want to admit that that was what he had become. It was only a bit of dabbling anyway. A bit of fun. ‘Thanks for setting this up.’

‘No problem. I’m curious to see what happens. Ah, here’s the man now.’

Tarek stood up and waved, extending his hand. Calder was sitting with his back to the entrance to the dining room. He waited a few seconds and then turned to see Benton Davis striding towards them. The polite smile on Benton’s face froze as he saw Calder.

Tarek shook his hand. ‘Have a seat, Benton. You remember Alex, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Benton said, the smile now gone. He curtly shook Calder’s hand and hesitated. Clearly he had no desire to have breakfast with his former colleague. But although Benton was nominally head of the London office, that was essentially a bureaucratic and ambassadorial role. Tarek was in charge of Fixed Income in Europe, and his group made lots of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Tarek’s star was in the ascendant. Benton sat down.

‘I congratulate you on your choice of venue, Tarek,’ he said, looking around the ornate dining room.

Tarek smiled. He raised an eyebrow and the head waiter came over. He ordered his usual complicated mozzarella cheese, bread and olive-oil concoction, Calder went for a full breakfast, and Benton just a bowl of muesli and some fruit. Calder had forgotten how impressive a figure Benton cut, with his tall trim frame, his perfectly tailored suit and his deep authoritative voice. Outside Bloomfield Weiss he didn’t look like the lightweight glad-hander he had appeared to be from the trading floor.

Benton and Tarek made small talk for a few minutes, ignoring Calder, before Benton turned to him. ‘Well, Alex, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’ He was polite and he kept the exasperation he must surely have felt over Tarek setting him up out of his voice. But his eyes were wary.

‘Alex wants to ask you a question,’ Tarek said.

Calder thought he noticed a flicker of relief in Benton’s eyes. He suddenly realized that Benton’s first assumption was probably that Tarek wanted to offer him his old job back, and this breakfast meeting was actually an interview. But a mere question couldn’t be that difficult.

‘Sure,’ Benton said, with a quick smile. ‘Shoot.’

‘Do you remember Martha van Zyl?’

Benton hesitated, taken aback by the course Calder was taking. ‘Yes, I do. She was Cornelius van Zyl’s wife. She was murdered, wasn’t she? In South Africa. Horrible business.’ He shook his head. His concern seemed genuine.

‘Martha’s son, Todd, has some questions that he wants to ask you about the death. I’m a very old friend of his wife, Kim. She asked me to talk to you.’

‘Ah,’ Benton said. ‘I was aware that Todd was trying to speak with me about that.’

‘And you avoided him?’

Benton smiled. ‘Cornelius van Zyl is an important client of the firm. It seemed inappropriate for me to be speaking with his relatives about his wife’s death.’

‘Did you check with him whether you could talk to Todd?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Benton said. ‘Successful men often have complicated families. Martha was Cornelius’s second wife, I believe. He has a third now. And Edwin, the son from his first marriage, works for him. I have no idea what the tensions are in that family, but I know I don’t want to find out. And if I’m not going to discuss these things with Todd van Zyl, I’m certainly not going to discuss them with you.’

Calder had been expecting this. ‘Todd’s in hospital in a coma at the moment. He was involved in an aircraft accident a few days ago. We both were.’

Benton frowned. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he’s going to be OK.’

‘So do I,’ said Calder. ‘But his wife is anxious to get an answer to his questions. Which is why I’m here.’

‘It must be a very trying time for her. But I’m afraid I can’t help.’

Calder took a deep breath. ‘You remember Jennifer Tan?’

Benton sighed. ‘I wondered when this would come up. I’ve discussed the whole business with Sidney. It’s over now. It’s in the past.’

Sidney Stahl was Bloomfield Weiss’s chairman. To Calder’s disappointment, he hadn’t fired Benton after Jen’s death.

‘It’s not in the past though, is it, Benton? There isn’t a week goes by that I don’t think about her.’

Benton glanced at Calder quickly. Calder knew he had hit a nerve. Benton might have been misguided, callous even, in the way he had treated Jen, but Calder didn’t believe he had intentionally driven her to her death. Whatever his protestations, however well he covered his arse, Benton knew he shouldn’t have suspended her when she brought the sexual harassment suit against her previous boss. The boss in question was a jerk, everyone knew that, he was just a jerk who made the firm a hundred million dollars a year. So when one of them had to go, Benton had made damn sure it was Jen.

‘The answer to my question is important to me, and it’s important to people I care for. I really would appreciate a reply.’

Benton shifted in his chair. Calder waited. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘As long as this doesn’t get back to Cornelius. What’s the question?’

Calder described the letter that was found in Todd’s grandmother’s papers, and its mention of Benton. Benton listened intently. ‘So. What was it that Martha wanted you to tell her mother?’ Calder asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Benton. ‘I really don’t know. The old woman came to see me right after Martha died. It was a shock, Martha’s death. I didn’t know her well, I’d only met her once or twice, but to die like that. Ugh.’ He scowled. ‘South Africa was a sick, sick country. Still is, probably. I won’t go back there.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her I didn’t know what Martha meant. I wracked my brains. My only guess was it was something I let slip when we were having dinner in Cape Town. I was sent down there shortly before she died to do some due diligence on Zyl News’s South African newspapers. The plan was to sell them off or close them. I found South Africa a loathsome place and she took pity on me. I guess I implied, probably not much more than that, that Zyl News was running out of cash. I think Martha assumed Cornelius’s businesses were worth tens of millions. Well, they were, of course, but then so was his debt. He was finding it tight meeting the interest payments. The acquisition of the Herald, bringing with it yet more debt, was a brave move. I guess when a rich man’s wife discovers that her husband’s net worth is close to negative, it comes as a bit of a shock.’

Calder stared hard at Benton. ‘Was that all?’

Benton shrugged. ‘It’s all that I could think of.’

‘What was Martha’s mother’s reaction?’

‘She was disappointed. I think she expected more.’

‘Did she ask about a diary?’

Benton frowned. ‘It was a while ago. She might have done. I really don’t remember.’

‘You didn’t see a diary anywhere? Martha didn’t give you a diary to look after?’

Benton snorted. ‘I really didn’t know her that well. I liked her, but I have no idea if she kept a diary and she certainly wouldn’t have shown it to me if she did.’

‘And finally, does the word “Laagerbond” mean anything to you?’

Benton shook his head. He drained his coffee and put his napkin on the table. ‘If that’s all, I need to get on to the office.’

‘Thank you, Benton,’ Calder said.

‘That’s OK. Just make sure Todd or his wife don’t tell Cornelius that I spoke with you. And I hope Todd recovers soon.’

Calder and Tarek watched Benton stride out of the dining room. ‘Did you get what you wanted?’ Tarek asked.

‘I asked the question. He answered it,’ Calder said.

‘Do you believe him?’

Calder glanced at his friend. ‘Don’t know. Do you?’

Tarek shrugged. ‘Actually, I’m not sure. But I think that’s the best answer you are going to get.’

‘Was Zyl News in trouble back in 1988?’ Calder asked. ‘This was all way before my time.’

‘And mine,’ said Tarek. ‘If you’ve got a moment we could talk to Cash Callaghan. I’m pretty sure he was selling junk bonds back then.’

The two years since Calder had left Bloomfield Weiss was long enough for him to feel a sense of nostalgia as he followed Tarek into the familiar dealing room on the second floor of their Broadgate offices. There were many faces he knew who smiled and nodded to him, but there were just as many he didn’t. Young, fresh-faced, intense-looking men and women, sucked into the Bloomfield Weiss machine to replace those that had been spat out or tempted away by six-figure guaranteed bonuses from other firms. As he caught glimpses of the screens crammed with rows and columns of figures, Calder couldn’t repress a surge of excitement, a tingle of curiosity. What was going up? What was going down? What was happening out there in the markets? And in here in the Bloomfield Weiss trading room? Who was making money, who was losing it, who was riding the big positions, who was sitting on the big losses? And the biggest question: was it really possible for him to walk away from all this for ever?

They threaded their way through the maze of desks, computer equipment, chairs and bodies to the Fixed Income sales desk and paused next to an overweight American in his fifties leaning back and talking. Talking fast.

‘OK, Josie, you’ve got close to five hundred million in asset-backeds, right?’ The man was in full spiel. ‘You switch those into five hundred million Treasuries. You give up yield but you get convexity, right? Oodles of convexity. The markets bounce the way you’re telling me they’re gonna and you got yourself a rocket-fuelled portfolio. I mean you’re going to the moon, Josie. Top-quartile performance, investment manager of the year, promotion, big bonus, new car, new Jimmy Choos. Think of the Jimmy Choos, Josie.’

Calder and Tarek could hear the female laughter on the other end of the line.

‘OK, you think about it,’ the man said. ‘But think fast. ’Cos if you think about it for a week, that’s not thinking, that’s sleeping, know what I mean?’

He put down the phone and turned to Calder. ‘Hey, Zero, my man! How are you doing?’ He leaped to his feet and held out his hand. Calder took it.

‘I’m very well, Mr Callaghan. What was all that about convexity?’

‘It’s Josie’s new word for the week. Every now and then your clients learn a new word and you gotta pay attention. She’s a nice kid, but I doubt she’s seen her first bond mature. You still out in the boonies playing with model airplanes?’

‘More or less.’

‘You getting him back to work for us, Tarek?’

‘I tried,’ Tarek said. ‘He’s a tough nut to crack.’

‘Come on, Zero. We need you here. We need a guy with balls.’ He looked contemptuously towards the parallel row of desks where the traders were seated. Cash Callaghan was a salesman, the most successful in Bloomfield Weiss’s London office. He had been around a long time, but he hadn’t lost any of his energy. Despite appearances, he was well known for his memory. Bonds might come and go, but Cash would remember them all, who issued them, who bought them, who sold them, what happened to them.

‘Actually, he wanted to ask you about one of our favourite junk-bond issuers,’ Tarek said. ‘Zyl News.’

‘Ah, yes. So is there something in the rumours they’re taking a run at The Times?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Calder said. ‘I want to ask you about 1988.’

‘Hmm... 1988.’ Cash thought a moment. ‘I remember. The Herald takeover. Two hundred million dollar issue, thirteen and a half per cent coupon, maturity two thousand, boy was that difficult to get away. It was less than a year after the October ’87 crash and the junk market was just opening up again to good issuers. Zyl News was not a good issuer.’

‘What was the problem?’

‘There were rumours they were in trouble. Their cash flow was barely covering their interest costs. We’d backed Cornelius van Zyl all through the eighties. He bought all kinds of papers in the states — the Philadelphia Intelligencer was the biggest, but there were many more, including a couple of major metros in Indiana and Ohio. And he did a great job turning them around, cutting costs, jacking up advertising rates, that kind of thing. But he kept paying up to make these acquisitions and borrowing from the banks and the junk market to do it. It was all great as long as we could keep lending him the money to feed the machine. In ’86 he tried a start-up in the Los Angeles market against the LA Times — that was an expensive disaster. Then in October ’87 the stock market melted down and it looked like the junk-bond market was history. Guys like van Zyl were in big trouble. Without the junk market they couldn’t do any more deals, and without new deals they were left struggling to meet the interest payments on the old ones. The only way out of the bind was to buy a larger company and use its cash flow to service the debt. So the Herald acquisition was an important one. Make or break.’

‘Was anyone else interested in the Herald?’

‘Yeah. Evelyn Gill. No one had heard of him back then. He’d made his money in commodities and he owned a small magazine publisher. Then he suddenly decided he wanted to use his cash to buy a newspaper. It was his first deal. He ended up offering a higher price than Zyl News, but the Herald went to Zyl anyway. Gill was pissed. He and van Zyl have been big enemies ever since. Of course, Gill has bought a whole bunch of other titles since then, including the New York Globe and the Mercury.’

‘But you say it was difficult to get the Zyl deal away?’

‘Oh yeah. They had to jack the coupon up, I think they started at twelve per cent and had to raise it to thirteen and a half. I was worried about it, to be honest. You hate to sell something to your customers that’s gonna blow up in their face.’

‘So you didn’t sell any yourself?’

Cash grinned. ‘They doubled the sales credit, I had to rethink my priorities. I sold forty million in Europe. The guys in New York loved me.’

Calder rolled his eyes.

‘Hey!’ Cash said. ‘I’ve dug you out of a hole on more than one occasion.’

‘That’s true.’ Calder had made use of Cash’s sales skills to get rid of troublesome positions that the rest of the market didn’t want. Calder had had to put up with a certain amount of stick from him, but Cash had been able to sell the bonds. Cash was always able to sell the bonds. ‘How’s Zyl News been since then?’

‘Well, they did a good job. They turned the Herald around and met all their interest payments, and although they’ve done more deals — some regional papers in this country, a couple in Australia and Canada, some more in the US — they’ve learned their lesson. They’ve only got one bond issue outstanding at the moment and that’s trading well.’

‘Thanks, Cash.’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got to figure out what I’m gonna do with those five hundred million asset-backeds if Josie does sell them.’

As Calder left the Bloomfield Weiss building his mobile phone rang. It was Kim. She sounded agitated.

‘What is it?’ Calder asked.

‘When are you getting back?’

‘I was planning to fly up this afternoon. Why? What’s up?’

‘Well, hurry up. I’ve just been talking to the police. I was right, I knew I was right. The plane crash wasn’t an accident. It was sabotage.’