Just Business: First 6 Chapters

Prologue

November 2008

I was sitting on the beach watching the two guys hassling the hippy and desperately trying to remember why I should be scared. Even from afar, the two figures looked vaguely familiar, but a dope-fuelled haze prevented me from reaching a vitally important conclusion straight away: if I didn’t leave immediately there was every chance I’d be dead within a minute.

I stood up in as nonchalant a fashion as possible and put my sunglasses on. The two heavily tanned, dark-haired men, one short and squat, the other tall and angular, were showing old Dave a photo and asking questions. Although I couldn’t hear what they were saying their manner was menacing. Even from this distance I could tell that Dave, who was sitting down almost in the lotus position, was nervous.

Diego and Juan had made some effort to not stand out amongst the westerners lying around on sarongs by wearing baggy beach shorts and ill-fitting, garish Indian T-shirts. However, their tidy moustaches and well-maintained haircuts were most certainly out of place amongst the travellers on this particular beach. It was gradually dawning on me that despite their superficially calm demeanour these two men had somehow followed me halfway round the world to kill me.

I turned my back on the sea and began walking towards my battered motorbike feeling the hot sand beneath my feet, my eyes never leaving the two men who were questioning Dave. They stood over him, twenty short paces to my right.

Without looking down, I unzipped my bum bag and started rooting around for the bike key even though the Enfield was still many yards away. My heart was pounding like a bass drum and I was sweating profusely. Beneath my artificial calm, I prayed over and over again that the two guys would not look over in my direction.

Suddenly Dave glanced towards me. The eyes of my two would-be assassins instinctively followed his and immediately widened with recognition. Without a moment’s pause I broke into a sprint. Leaping on to my bike, I flicked up the stand and after two nervous, frantic attempts finally managed to slip the key into the ignition. I twisted it to the right but the Colombians were already running towards me. Juan was reaching into his bag for something – something I didn’t need to see to know what it was.

I now had about five seconds to start my ever-unreliable Royal Enfield Bullet. I tried to steady myself but I was shaking like a leaf. I slammed my right foot down on the kick start but my foot slipped off the greasy pedal, tearing a gash in my ankle. I lost my balance and the bike almost toppled over, but I ignored the pain, stamped the pedal down again, pulled the throttle back and heard what at that moment was without doubt the most beautiful noise in the world – the deep, popping sound of the 350cc fourstroke engine starting up. I pulled the clutch in, clunked into first gear and went heavy on the throttle. I roared off along the sandy dirt track and turned round to see my two assailants shouting obscenities at heaven, but the feeling of relief was momentary – a second nervous glance into my one remaining wing mirror revealed Juan and Diego running towards two nearby Hondas, both holding keys in their hands . . .

I haven’t told anyone what really forced me to leave the City in late 2007 and, believe me, the press reports got it all wrong.

Admittedly, they mainly got it wrong because of the misinformation I drip-fed them – something I had to do in order to protect my bony arse. Now I’m going to tell you what really happened and it’s a story so outrageous that even I can barely believe it, yet all of it is totally true. An insane moment of greed set in motion a series of events that turned my life upside down and means that I will never feel safe again. I have endangered my life and the lives of those I love, and for what? A quick buck in a sick world.

Everything that we’ve witnessed over the past three years reveals just how out of control things have become in the world of finance – the lunatics truly have taken over the asylum. Hardly a day has gone by without some selfish degenerate striving to outdo his twisted banker mates with some appalling act of selfserving greed. For the first few months of my forced exile I could hardly believe what I was reading on the internet. But each callous feat of fathomless avarice seemed to be superseded by the next and I, like most of the dumb schmucks on this planet, grew numb to them. Jérôme Kerviel’s c4.9 billion ‘trading loss’ looks like a rounding error compared to the $50 billion Ponzi scheme organised by Bernie Madoff. Meanwhile, those charmless scumbags at Goldman Sachs keep proving themselves to be the most vicious, repugnant cocksuckers this world has ever seen.

Amazingly, despite bankers’ best efforts to bring pain and suffering to their fellow man whilst lining their own silk pockets, finance remains relatively unregulated and the despicable sluts are still raking in bonuses so vast they bring tears to the eyes of all right-thinking people.

Most Cityboys lie, cheat and steal every single hour of their lives as they strive to accumulate ever more wealth. But I went even further. I loathe the hideous chaos that my former colleagues’ tireless greed has created but I am in no position to judge them, for I am as bad as they are, maybe worse. The only difference between me and the Armani-clad gangsters who plunged the world into recession is that I didn’t get away with it.

It’s going to be payback time for the rest of my sorry life.

Because just one stupid fucked-up decision can destroy everything.

• In 2007 the outgoing chief executive of the City regulator, the Financial Services Authority, admitted that insider trading was ‘rife’. The FSA’s own annual analysis concludes that ‘suspicious share price movements’ took place prior to 29 per cent of the public takeovers that occurred in 2009. The FSA was created in 1997 and in its first decade of existence secured three minor convictions for insider trading.

• In 2004 President George W. Bush justified not increasing taxes for the wealthy by claiming that ‘the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway’. In 2006 the National Audit Office revealed that 30 per cent of the UK’s largest 700 companies paid no tax at all. In February 2009 the Trade Unions Congress published research stating that tax avoidance by wealthy UK residents through tax havens cost HM Revenue & Customs £4 billion every year.

• Despite the trillion-pound bank bailout, City bonuses in respect of 2009 reached close to £8 billion – an increase of almost 50 per cent relative to 2008. So far virtually no concrete changes to financial regulation have been implemented in the UK despite universal recognition that it was bankers who almost brought about the collapse of the global economy.

Chapter One

September 2007

Well, you only get one shot at the title, and she blew it,’ I lied through a coked-up rictus grimace.

The banging house music made decent conversation almost impossible but my clients and I were way too wired to dance properly and so had little choice. Anyway, it didn’t really matter much because conversation with these clowns was always going to be macho horseshit and tiresome oneupman- ship at the best of times. We huddled together on the luxurious cushioned seat just feet away from the dance floor, our eyes darting around checking out the fit young East European golddiggers.

On the low table in front of us were two bottles of Grey Goose vodka, a huge bucket of ice and a shedload of different mixers. All this would set me, or rather my bank, back £500.

Seeing as we’d already blown well over a grand on cocktails at Fifty St James and a meal at the Wolseley this night of debauchery was certainly going to take some explaining to the expenses department. Still, a couple of these hedge fund boys were bound to give me some man-sized orders the next day so I’d almost certainly get away with it, again.

‘Well, I’m bored with talking about me . . . so how about you guys talk about me for a while?’ I joked, trying to steer the conversation away from the fact that I had recently been binned by an amazing girl I was still utterly besotted by. I knew I’d fucked up really appallingly and I was suffering as never before. I was in the grip of growing realisation that I’d possibly just lost the love of my life for an office fling that didn’t even get past first base. But the last thing I wanted to mention to these pricks was something ‘vulnerable’ that would detract from the image of God-like invincibility that everyone around the table sought to project. Anyway, the lads were focusing their saucer eyes on some particularly slinky mover, who must have been all of about nineteen. She looked like your standard, slender, barely legal Lithuanian hooker. We all stared at her for a bit and then proceeded to follow the predictable routine of commenting on her attributes in a way that would confirm to each other our rampant heterosexuality as well as our boundless virility.

‘Fuck me, check out the buns on that slapper! You could break fucking coconuts on her arse!’ exclaimed Richard, the richest and evidently the most erudite of the clients I had the dubious pleasure of entertaining that night. ‘And there’s only one thing wrong with her face . . . it ain’t covered in my muck,’ he added with a disgusting leer. Richard was the sort of self-satisfied, loathsome tosspot who didn’t just think the world owed him a living, he damn well knew it did. I had spent four long years buttering up this offensive deviate and it was paying off.

‘Hell’s bells! She’s got a set of Bristols on her that just ain’t quittin’,’ shouted Brad, virtually foaming at the mouth such was his manufactured excitement. He was another foul, depraved human being and was most certainly not the sharpest tool in the box. In fact, we three others often joked that he’d find it difficult to chew gum and walk at the same time.

‘Mate, he who hesitates masturbates . . . why don’t you go and have a boogie with her? Show her some of your moves? Otherwise you’re just gonna spend another night cranking yourself to sleep,’ laughed Dimitri, a diminutive, pox-ridden, sleazy whoremonger

whose dilated pupils betrayed the fact that he was buzzing his nuts off.

‘Yeah, come on, Richard, stop giving it the Terry Big Spuds and strap a pair on, you fucking Wendy,’ added Brad.

‘Yeah, in your own time, Richard, while we’re still young . . .

this side of Christmas would be nice,’ said I, joining in with the general ribaldry.

‘Christ alive! I’m getting advice on picking up girls from the thumb-it-in-soft posse? Fucking hell, I might as well get anger management lessons from Russell Crowe! I’m gonna call up Leslie Ash right now to ask for her advice on cosmetic surgery.

Chaps, I don’t wanna be rude or anything but the only reason you sick onanists ever get laid is because you never leave home without a stash of Rohypnol and a shedload of Viagra, so please don’t give it large.’

Ah . . . we were slipping into the old familiar routine. Good, the evening was going as planned. Although Richard’s little speech sounded angry, which as the hosting stockbroker meant I initially felt a little concerned, a quick glance in his direction assured me that he was merely playing a role, and was very happy to do so. Richard rarely talked, he just held forth, and today was no exception. Of course, I wanted everything to go smoothly tonight but in this context ‘going smoothly’ meant non-stop childish banter that only to the uninformed observer was aggressively hostile. I sat back happy in the knowledge that this false bonhomie would soon translate into some serious commission.

We had spent the earlier part of the evening talking shop over our overpriced dinner and Richard had even been kind enough to share some inside information with us about a transport company that was going to be acquired on Monday at a 25 per cent premium. All of us had virtually promised him that we’d be getting our long lost aunts, great-uncles and anyone else who wasn’t directly connected to us to invest shedloads in said company at the break of dawn. I planned to punt my usual unit size of £100,000 via a cabal of five old school friends and was looking forward to the twenty grand winnings that my three-day ‘investment’ would garner after my pals had each taken their usual £1,000 costs.

Funnily enough, now that the ‘business’ was over, I was almost having fun. This was a pleasant surprise considering the company I was keeping and the fact that the Eurotrash losers at Chinawhite that night were generally at least ten years younger than me – making me feel once again like the worst paedo in the paddling pool. Still, by late 2007 I’d been partying with obnoxious clients for over a decade and faking sincerity had become second nature.

Shit, these smug, charmless idiots probably thought I actually liked them.

The drinks were being downed at a rate of knots, and since my main role that night was simply to ensure that my clients never had an empty glass in front of them whilst providing them with enough toot to keep things rocking, I lined up four more triple vodka and tonics and, as we clinked glasses, proposed a toast of sorts: ‘The liver is evil and must be punished!’ My faithful stooges laughed and repeated the mantra. Richard, seemingly annoyed that I, and not he, had raised a titter, decided he would add further to the general hilarity: ‘A weekend not wasted is a wasted weekend!’

Pleasingly, Brad and Dimitri didn’t laugh quite so heartily at his piss-poor gag. It didn’t make much sense anyway because, as usual, we were having our knees-up on a Thursday – the traditional night for client entertainment. All Richard’s inane joke succeeded in doing was to remind me that it was a school night and I had to be in the office at 6.55 a.m. tomorrow, which was approximately six hours away. My brain quickly calculated that we had at least a gram and a half of wallop left and that meant I didn’t have a chance in hell of leaving the club before it closed at 3 a.m. So, if I was lucky I’d get two hours of moody kip, max. I felt something I’d been feeling increasingly over the previous couple of years: I was getting way too old for this tiresome bullshit.

Richard suddenly stood up and with an extremely unsubtle beckoning hand movement motioned that he was after the Boutros.

‘Oi, pecker breath, quit talking and start chalking. Hand over the ticket now. You’ve been hanging on to it way too long, my son. Mate, if you’re not gonna take a shit, get off the fucking pot!’ He sneered in a dismissive manner which reminded me once again, just in case I’d forgotten, that he was the client and I was his simpering bitch. After numerous years at the beck and call of arrogant clients I instinctively jumped to it and pulled the wrap out of my shirt’s breast pocket.

‘Richard, it really is a total pleasure to see you again,’ I said for the benefit of any security guards who might be clocking our moves as I shook his hand and slipped the contraband from my palm into his.

‘Whatever,’ he muttered as he marched off to the toilets, an unmistakable purpose in his stride.

When he got back he looked edgy.

‘Steve, Steve . . . is my tie on straight?’ he said, wiping his top lip frantically. This was our code for whether there were traces of Charlie deposited around the nose.

‘Nah, mate, you’ve got nostril wings to die for!’

We then repeated the preposterous charade of shaking hands and I transferred the wrap on to the knee of Dimitri, who was chomping at the bit like a Glasgow smack addict. He immediately jumped up and strode towards the bogs.

‘God’s teeth! If I have another line of that speedy gak they’re gonna have to peel me off the fucking ceiling!’ shouted Richard, his grinding jaw making his words blend together. ‘Anyway, muppet boys, it’s time for you to watch and learn from the master.’ And with that he moved off towards the slinky girl who was still dancing nonchalantly in her skintight white catsuit. As he did so he rocked from one foot to the other. I imagine this was meant to be some kind of funky move but in fact he just resembled an embarrassing uncle dancing at a wedding, complete with ‘white man’s overbite’.

Brad and I watched his jerky, spasmodic dancing with amusement.

There was no way in hell he was going to get anywhere with the chick and I secretly delighted in the fact that his clumsy attempts to make eye contact with her and garner a smile were being soundly ignored. As soon as Dimitri came back from his nasal mission, gurning as if he was auditioning for My Left Foot, I made my own way to the gents.

It was whilst I was in the cubicle racking up a fat line that I decided I definitely would write a column about this torrid gathering. I’d been thinking about doing so all evening, because tonight clearly had all the ingredients required to keep Londoners amused whilst confirming all their prejudices about Cityboys and their insatiable hunger for debauchery. Of course, I’d omit to mention our drug consumption or the insider trading, as those aspects wouldn’t do any of us any good if my identity were ever revealed.

I’d started writing the column for a laugh. A London-based free paper had come into existence in September 2006 and an old school friend happened to be its deputy editor. She’d told me two weeks before the newspaper’s first edition that they wanted a weekly column exposing the excesses of the City and I’d leapt at the opportunity. Every week I could vent my spleen – anonymously – about the job I’d accidentally fallen into to the half-million or so communters who read the newspaper. I soon found that publicly revealing my internal struggle with my job acted as a kind of therapy for me and helped me overcome my guilt about ‘playing for the wrong team’. Over time, and much to my surprise, the column garnered a cult following.

I’d got away with it for a year but there was every chance I’d be rumbled soon. There’d be quite a few colleagues and clients amongst the bored drones on the tube who read thelondonpaper every Friday afternoon and if one of them recognised the tale I recounted then I could be done for. I was fully aware that I’d lose my job if anyone at my bank could prove I was ‘Cityboy’, and though I desperately wanted to leave the City before I morphed into a rotund, red-faced alcoholic facing my third divorce I wanted to do it in my own time and certainly not before this year’s bonus, which looked likely to be disgustingly huge. That bonus alone would almost certainly be enough to finally make me give up my bullshit career and start living La Dolce Vita on a tropical beach. Truth be told, it was only the image of me smoking a fat joint in a hammock in the cool shade of a palm tree that kept me going through all this relentless two-faced drudgery.

The rest of the night proceeded in a horrifyingly predictable way. The conversation became ever more edgy and the trips to the bogs ever more regular. At some point Dimitri proposed that we pick up some hookers and head to either the Dorchester or the Mandarin Oriental but, I’m pleased to say, that idea was quickly dismissed. The boys were obviously feeling particularly morally upstanding that night. Predictably, none of us managed to pull. The fit, Gucci-clad, Eastern European gold-diggers must, for some unfathomable reason, have decided that their future didn’t lie with four sweaty, wide-eyed buffoons who could barely string a sentence together without first rushing off to the gents. A baffling decision if ever there was one.

When the club signalled the end to the night’s fun by turning on the all too bright lights we filed out with the rest of the punters, trying not to let the bouncers see our horribly dilated pupils. We briefly discussed sharing cabs home and I secretly rejoiced that no one lived in my direction. After allowing my three clients to pick up the remaining taxis idling outside the club I had to wait five minutes before another black cab rolled by. As I entered the taxi I felt a warm glow of relief envelop me as I took on board the fact that I wouldn’t have to kowtow to anyone for at least four hours.

It was whilst my cab was rocketing down a deserted Bayswater Road that an idea I’d been flirting with for several hours began to announce itself more loudly in my psychotic cerebellum. I knew I’d soon be passing close to Jane’s flat in Queensway, and now I decided to call her to see if there was any chance of a latenight rendezvous. Jane was a graduate trainee who’d been with us for a year. She was the confident, sassy 22-year-old Oxford grad I’d embraced in a nightclub whilst pilled off my head.

She was the pretty, sexy Lolita who had cost me my relation- ship. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but after we’d kissed she’d promptly gone home alone despite my overly eager protestations at the taxi rank. It was my bad luck that my girlfriend’s cousin had spied us leaving the club together and informed Gemma of my misdeed. That was two weeks before and Gemma was neither taking my calls nor letting me cross her threshold. Our terse, brief conversations had all been via the intercom. It seemed that no amount of reasoned voicemail, Interflora bouquets or impassioned email was going to disabuse my beautiful girlfriend of the view that I was a grotty little toerag who had ‘snogged the help’ and couldn’t be trusted. That ocean-going, copperbottomed fuck-up was why I faced the world alone again.

I’d just lost someone really special but, I thought, my crime should at least have been worth it. I should try to take something from this catastrophe. I stared at my BlackBerry. I had about a minute before I passed Jane’s road. It was 3.25 a.m. on Friday morning and she’d be getting up for work in about two and a half hours. She had been formal with me at the office since our ‘encounter’ and had indicated in no uncertain terms over the last fortnight that dipping your nib in the company ink is never a good idea. She almost certainly wasn’t remotely interested in her burnt-out, depraved boss who was thirteen years her senior and was rapidly developing such large bags under his eyes that one amusing secretary referred to them as ‘suitcases’. I took all these persuasive points on board . . . and then rang her. Of course, I was sure to dial 141 before her number so she couldn’t see it was me.

The ring tone sounded once, then again. My heart began to quicken. After six rings she finally answered. ‘Hi, it’s Jane Saint here—’ I interrupted her way too enthusiastically. ‘Listen, it’s Steve. I know this is crazy, but I’m in the area and . . .’

‘I’m sorry I can’t get to the phone right now so please leave a message after the tone.’

On arriving home in Shepherd’s Bush I spent five drunken minutes trying to remove my contact lenses, only stopping when I remembered that I’d had laser surgery at the beginning of the year and hadn’t worn lenses for over six months. I slumped into bed wishing desperately that I had more than two hours of coked-up, restless sleep ahead of me.

Chapter Two

Please do be fucking quiet, James,’ hissed Chuck through clenched teeth, spitting out each individual syllable. My fifteen fellow research department MDs seated at the boardroom’s impressive oblong table all looked at poor James. Most had a slight smile that betrayed the joy they were feeling at their colleague’s obvious discomfort. Whilst the boss was berating someone else, they could momentarily rest easy . . . and Chuck’s diatribe wasn’t finished.

‘Stop being so damn negative and start offering me solutions, not problems, OK? This little sub-prime issue is going to blow over and most of the people around this table will still be getting a decent bonus this year and hopefully next year too. However, some of you, especially those who are telling all and sundry that Geldlust bank is in big fucking trouble, might not even be here to receive said bonus – so let’s start being a little bit more positive, OK?’

There it was again. I was feeling like a leprous crack baby on cold turkey, but even through my debilitating, soul-destroying hangover I knew there was simply no way in hell it was just my imagination. My boss, Chuck, had blatantly singled me out with his steely stare when he produced that last little threat. The fat fuck was on my case. The malicious, power-hungry cocksucker was going to do me – it was just a question of when, not if.

This was definitely not a delusion, unquestionably not just a product of my fetid, addled brain. The simple fact was that I’d been slapdash. On a couple of occasions I’d sent my column to thelondonpaper from my work email address rather than my hotmail account by mistake. Everyone knows that work emails are randomly checked by Compliance and I remember thinking at the time that I was probably done for.

Then there was the little fact that two of my colleagues had recently found out what I was up to. About two months before, my secretary Claire had found a column that I’d left on the printer during an especially virulent hangover. She’d soon put two and two together and no amount of bullshit was going to persuade her that I wasn’t the increasingly notorious columnist ‘Cityboy’. Benjamin, the oil team’s graduate trainee, had also worked it out after I’d made the mistake of drunkenly recounting a story to him about bumping into two clients at a fancy dress party I’d attended at a stately home in Shropshire. When he saw the same tale appear in thelondonpaper two weeks later he didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out my dual identity. I’d taken both Claire and Benjamin into what I referred to as ‘my inner circle of trust’ but the simple fact is that no one keeps a secret in an office. Clearly, one of them had got arseholed at some work knees-up and word had now reached Chuck – probably via the secretary network. If you want to know anything at Geldlust bank, or any major firm for that matter, first port of call should always be the secretaries.

If I was right, then this was truly appalling. I understood exactly what Chuck’s evil little game was. It was September and I’d been working my arse off all year. He obviously knew about my column, so he’d probably checked out my website too. That meant he would have seen the backlog of articles I’d written – some of which were scathing about Geldlust and, indeed, him.

Christ, I’d written one entitled ‘Herding Cats’ in which I’d mocked an appalling, ineffectual management chat he’d delivered a few months before. I’d actually referred to him as ‘a failed broker who was too expensive to fire’ and even mentioned the old adage that the scum always rises to the top. Make no mistake, I was in big effing trouble.

As I sat there among the other MDs, with a film of nervous, toxic sweat rapidly spreading over my forehead, my mind went into overdrive trying to anticipate Chuck’s likely agenda. It soon became clear that he was going to do the old City trick of sacking me just before bonus day. That way his department would benefit from all the commission I generated until the last possible moment without reducing the firm’s bonus pool one iota. No doubt the flabby, vicious wanker was looking forward to the look of shock on my face when he handed me a P45 instead of half a million quid.

Of course, any objections I might raise would be totally pointless as I’d clearly broken about three contractual restrictions. If Chuck wanted to play hardball there was every chance I wouldn’t just be kicked out but also be classified as a ‘bad leaver’. That would mean I’d forfeit nearly all of the equity in Geldlust bank that I’d accrued over the years. A third of my previous three bonuses had been paid to me in Geldlust shares that I wasn’t able to touch for three years and those would automatically not vest if it could be proved that I had in any way badmouthed my former employer. That wasn’t going to be too hard to do seeing as there was a year’s worth of columns out there stating what a bunch of worthless scumbags Cityboys were.

I cursed my stupidity at having started writing the column in the first place. My egotistical urge to spill the beans on the financial world was going to cost me not just my job but also about three hundred grand. The column might have been a kind of confessional for me, allowing me to get off my chest the countless misgivings I had about my chosen career, but now it was going to hit me where it hurt most – my wallet.

I sat there in the hallowed directors’ boardroom on the eighth floor playing with my food, feeling far too rancid to even consider eating the rich, creamy dish festering in front of me. I’d only been a managing director for just over a year and was happy not to get involved in the tedious point-scoring discussion that was taking place around me. There seemed to be an unofficial competition going on amongst my colleagues as to who could spend the longest licking Chuck’s sweaty, pock-marked arse. It was the same story at every one of these ‘quarterly performance meetings’ but, of course, this time it was even worse than usual as bonuses would be being decided within a month. James had clearly screwed up big-time by querying how Geldlust was going to be impacted by the sub-prime crisis that had caused a run on the Northern Rock Building Society just the week before.

I took no pleasure from his obvious distress. He was just another mindless drone sleepwalking his way towards a bloated middle age of varicose veins, gout and coronary embolism. At least the poor bastard actually gave a shit about his job. For years I’d viewed my pinstriped drudgery as nothing more than an unpleasant stopgap that I had to endure before I could trip the light fantastic. The non-stop pretence that I actually harboured any ambition other than the procurement of sufficient cash to be able to waltz around the planet whilst still young enough to know the steps was tiring me out. I just needed to survive one more bonus round – one more officially sanctioned robbery from the unsuspecting shareholders of Geldlust bank – and then I could spend my remaining years sucking the marrow out of this all too short life.

I remembered how I’d promised myself that I’d only throw away five years chasing the dollar before pursuing something more worthwhile, something I vaguely believed in. The day before I started at a piss-poor French investment bank I’d ceremoniously removed my silver hoop earrings, ponytail and goatee beard – the last vestiges of my previous hippy identity.

That had been over ten years ago. After five years of selling my soul my annual pay packet had hit £350,000 and friends and parents alike had convinced me that, in the absence of a serious alternative, I should keep milking the system. My elder brother, a fund manager at a sleepy mutual who’d conned some greedy salesman into giving me my first job, had left finance himself but even he had argued that I should cling on to the gravy train with all my might while it was still steaming along. He and most of my senior colleagues had been saying for years that the party was going to come to an end soon and that chaps like me needed to make hay while the sun shone. Christ, my whole life had been dictated by a series of tiresome clichés! But now the end was in sight – just one more big score and then I could start living . . . really living.

‘I was only trying to say that there’s gonna be a lot of resentment . . . from equities, corporate finance, commodities and bonds . . . if the bonus pool for all is hit just because the boys in structured finance . . . well, specifically, in mortgage-backed securities . . . screwed up big-time,’ spluttered James, trying to sound confident but failing dismally. That one ill-thought-out comment was probably going to cost him about forty grand come December and he knew it. He was flapping badly and the other MDs could hardly disguise their glee at his schoolboy error.

‘As I said,’ replied Chuck through gritted teeth, ‘most of the people around this table are gonna be all right. Most, but not all.’ Oh, Christ, I swear he looked at me again. I was clearly going to be fired and almost a million pounds less well off than I’d estimated come January ’08. I could feel the colour drain out of my face as I took on board this new financial reality.

‘Are you OK there, Steve? You’re looking a little peaky,’ sneered Chuck.

I was feeling absolutely shattered and the black rings under my bloodshot eyes were signalling to anyone who had the misfortune to survey my blotchy face that the previous night had been disgustingly debauched.

‘Er . . . truth be told, I’m not a hundred per cent. I’ve got this nasty flu that’s been going around. But I came in because I didn’t want to miss this important meeting and because my clients really need guidance in these tricky times. Anyway, I just want to say that I, for one, am not concerned about this Northern Rock thing – my customers are still trading and I know that Geldlust will reward those who bring home the bacon.’ Phew.

After another fifteen minutes of meaningless wibble Chuck indicated that the meeting was over by simply standing up and saying, ‘OK, that’s it. Keep up the good work, guys.’ Before he reached the door he turned round and said, ‘I hope to see you all at the next meeting in three months’ time . . . though who knows who will be here and who won’t, eh?’ He was looking at me again, the sadistic wanker. He was smiling but it was the evil grin of a concentration camp warden about to fire a bullet into my brain. The game was surely up. He wasn’t even being subtle now. I was doomed.

We all followed Chuck out towards the lifts, a couple of our number asking tiresome sycophantic questions as we did so. I sidled off from the group to the toilets and splashed water on my face. Then I stared at my pale, sickly countenance in the mirror and took several deep breaths. After a few minutes of garbled introspection I headed down the stairs to the trading floor to see my trader for our usual Friday after- noon chat about what the next week held for the ever-exciting utilities sector.

This was, after all, an integral part of my job as a research analyst at Geldlust – a mid-tier German investment bank with all the long-term prospects of a turkey on Christmas Eve. These deluded Continental firms kept on trying to compete with the American bulge bracket banks like Goldman Sucks and Organ Stanley but were merely wasting their shareholders’ capital in the pursuit of an impossible dream. We Cityboys simply wanted to rinse these European dimwits of their cash before their misguided executives realised that they didn’t have an icicle’s chance in hell of beating the big boys. Fortunately, my team of analysts was a big fish in a small pond. We had a solid reputation for advising our clients to invest in sensible stocks and were one of the highest ranked teams at Geldlust. Day in day out we told fund managers across the world whether shares in the thirty or so listed European electricity, gas and water companies were good bets or bad ones, and for some sick reason they took us seriously and executed many of their utility share trades through us.

Geldlust made about c15 million of commission annually from trading utility shares and the whole team hoped to see some of that come December . . . unfortunately, I was becoming ever more doubtful that I’d see a penny.

I tentatively pushed open the glass doors to the vast trading floor. I had spent the morning cocooned in the research department desperately avoiding any contact with salespeople, traders or clients, and I was immediately overcome by the sheer energy that now faced me. As I entered the humming, buzzing heart of Geldlust investment bank a wave of nausea swept over me but I suppressed the urge to run away and resolutely stumbled towards the far corner where the traders sat. I passed row upon row of desks behind which sat hundreds of men and the occasional woman shouting into phones, all looking as if they took their job extremely seriously. Someone was talking on the mike about an explosion at an oil refinery in Nigeria and its impact on the oil price. Salespeople were shouting clients’ orders at the traders: ‘Fifty thou BP to sell at 546’, ‘Hundred thou Next at 954 to buy’, and so on. All the commotion was causing my headache to intensify exponentially. I kept my head bowed as I negotiated my way past the salespeople chatting away excitedly to their clients, praying that no one would draw attention to my plight.

‘ ’ello, ’ello, ’ello – what have we here? Everybody, look what the cat dragged in! Shit, Steve, either you had a massive one yesterday or I just accidentally entered the space–time continuum and am meeting a version of you that’s twenty years older! Fuckin’ ’ell! What did you get up to last night?’ shouted my everthoughtful trader Gary for all to hear. Everyone within about twenty feet who wasn’t on the phone turned round and stared at me. Several nudged their neighbours who, on looking up, giggled to themselves. It’s at times like these that you find out about yourself.

‘Dude, you’re not looking too hot yourself. At least when I wake up tomorrow morning I’ll be back to being my gorgeous self but you, my friend, will still be a fat, ugly bastard!’

‘Oooh,’ trilled Gary’s fellow traders at my journeyman riposte.

‘Mate, that’s not what your missus says to me when she’s whisperin’ sweet nuffinks in my ear every night.’ ‘Well, I did tell her to get her eyes looked at . . . and any- way she’s a Star Wars fan and always had a thing about Jabba the Hutt,’ I replied half-heartedly.

‘She’s told you what she calls my knob?’

‘Yeah . . . she’s told me a few names: Tiny Tim, the angry inch, the acorn . . .’

I suspect both of us were no longer finding this verbal banter much fun and were only continuing it because we had an audience and didn’t want to lose face. One of us had to bring the nonsense to an end or it could go on for ever. I decided to do the honours.

‘Anyway, enough of that horseshit. I’ve got something even more interesting to talk about than your penis – the European utilities sector.’

Gary’s fellow traders saw that the game was over and swivelled round in their ergonomically designed black leather chairs to assess what had happened to the stocks they traded in the previous twenty-five seconds.

I proceeded to bore Gary about the potentially price-sensitive events that were to occur in my sector over the upcoming week.

But as I banged on about ‘a pre-closed-season trading statement from United Utilities’ and ‘a merger update from the Spanish electricity regulator’ I could sense myself feeling more and more uneasy. My mouth continued talking shite, but my mind drifted off to what lay in store for me come December. I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna just sit around on my bony arse waiting to get the chop. I needed to have it out with Chuck there and then and find out what my fate was to be. There was no way he was going to just string me along paying me a measly £10,000 a month until December and then promptly give me a zero bonus and sack me. If he thought I was gonna sit back and give him that pleasure he had another fucking thing coming.

I’d always had a tense, difficult relationship with Chuck. I’d once made the mistake of beating him at squash and he’d never forgiven me. I despised him and the bank he worked for and I think he sensed this. The only reason he tolerated me and paid me half-decent bonuses was because I was bringing in the commission and corporate fees. The more I thought about his smug demeanour the more I refused to just sleepwalk blindly towards my dismissal. I could see he was going to love humiliating me and ruining my plans for a better life. I just needed that one big bonus and I’d reach the two million savings target that I’d made when I first entered this shady business. If I could just last another four more months I could leave this job a winner with my head held high. I could prove my doubters wrong whilst showing my colleagues how to quit whilst ahead as they had all promised themselves a hundred times. If Chuck had his way I’d leave with my tail between my legs with no prospect of ever getting another job in the City. If Chuck had his way I’d not only forfeit my bonus but lose all my Geldlust equity as well. As my spiel drew to a close I vowed that I would confront Chuck right then about my situation. Since Gary’s eyes were beginning to glaze over, it was probably no bad thing.

‘Suzie, I need a quick word with Chuck,’ I said with all the false authority I could muster.

‘Oh, Steve, I’m sorry but he’s just left for Heathrow. He’s on the six p.m. flight to New York. Back on Tuesday,’ she said, fluttering her eyelids as she always seemed to when we spoke.

Suzie was an attractive thirty-year-old Essex girl with bobbed dark hair and big brown eyes. She was the kind of bubbly, funloving person who’d have joined the Spice Girls without a second’s thought had there been a vacancy. She’d probably have been called Happy Spice or Giggly Spice or some such bollocks.

There had always been a funny vibe between us ever since we’d had a lashed-up snog at the previous year’s office Christmas party. We’d been sharing a cigarette outside and suddenly she’d lunged for me. I seem to remember that it was actually a lot of fun but it hadn’t gone any further and neither of us had mentioned it since.

‘Shit,’ I said without thinking and turned round to consider my options, which essentially involved calling him on his mobile or waiting until Tuesday.

After I’d taken a few steps away from Suzie I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks and slowly turned round. An idea was forming in my confused brain.

‘Listen, Suzie, I didn’t really come up here to talk to Chuck,’ I lied. ‘The truth of the matter is that I came to see you.’ Her eyes visibly widened and she seemed to blush slightly. She looked around to make sure she had no audience and said, ‘You’re having a laugh, intcha?’

‘Not at all. In fact, I was wondering if you’re free tonight for a drink. I think we should leave this hell-hole at half past five sharp and get properly bladdered together. Maybe go for dinner at Nobu or something . . .’

After a moment’s pause she smiled sweetly and said, ‘That doesn’t sound such a bad idea . . .’ 

Chapter Three

Darling, pass the cigarettes, will you?’

‘Oh, “darling” is it now? You say the occasional

word to me for nine months and then suddenly it’s all lovey dovey. You really are a card, you are!’ cackled Suzie as she leant over to get the fags, the top of her pert arse revealing itself briefly from under the covers.

The night had worked out perfectly. The first vodka and tonic at the Fine Line had begun the process of making me feel almost human again. As I got steadily drunker, the feeling that my soul had been ripped out of me by Beelzebub himself gradually became a distant memory. We were genuinely having a proper giggle and even managed a little kiss in the back of the cab on the way to Nobu in Mayfair. Over black cod in miso and a twohundred- quid bottle of champagne I mentioned that I thought it would be wise if we went back to mine, since she lived in darkest Essex and my place was only twenty minutes away. Somewhat to my surprise, she concurred. As soon as we were back, after more drunken snogs in the back of the cab, I led her upstairs.

It was the next morning, when we were both still a little befuddled, that I decided to try to extract the information necessary for my nefarious plan to work.

‘By the way, it’s Chuck’s fiftieth birthday next month, isn’t it?’ I said, lighting two cigarettes and passing one to her, the ashtray balanced precariously on my chest.

‘Yes, October the twelfth.’

‘Well, some of the MDs and I want to do something a little bit different for Chuck this year. We’ve been talking about it for a while now. Basically, we want to make a special birthday presentation pack. We’d like to use PowerPoint and we’re thinking several of the sheets should have a photo of him and his wife or kids on them. We’d also like to compose a few funny graphs showing Geldlust’s stellar profit growth since he joined and that kind of bullshit. The problem is that none of us have got any photos of him . . . but I know there are loads on his computer, since its screensaver shows a whole gallery of them on loop, doesn’t it . . .’

‘Yessss . . .’ There was already a certain suspicious tone in her voice.

‘Well, I know it’s a bit tricky, but if you gave me the password to his computer then I could get those photos off it and we could get this special birthday presentation pack made and—’ ‘There is no way in hell I’m giving you his password!’ she exclaimed with a look of utter horror on her face. My heart sank, my hopes of breaking into his computer and discovering his bonus plans for me rapidly fading. Fortunately, before I had to resign myself to simply waiting until December to find out my fate, she relented . . . a little.

‘But it is a lovely idea – quite a surprise really, coming from you guys. Didn’t know you had the heart. What I will do is go with you on Monday and we’ll get the photos together, OK?’ ‘Yeah, absolutely. That’s fine. It’s just about getting the photos on to a memory stick, that’s all.’

‘Well, OK. Now let’s see if that’s a memory stick you got down there or if you’re just pleased to see me . . .’ So, on Monday at precisely 7 p.m., as we had planned, I stood up and walked nonchalantly towards Chuck’s office for my secret rendezvous with Suzie. The weekend had been a lot of fun and when she’d left after a boozy pub lunch on Sunday I’d felt a genuine affection for her. But this was business and I needed to forget emotion for the time being.

I studiously avoided eye contact with my diligent co-workers, who sat at their desks fretting over balance sheets that didn’t balance and lives that suffered from the same defect, and passed two junior analysts chatting about their weekend around the water cooler. One was an officious, limp-dicked little creep who’d always struck me as having some sinister agenda, whilst the other was a boorish, rugby-playing thug who foolishly believed brute force would make up for his lack of brain cells.

When they saw me they lowered their voices and then dipped their heads in an unspoken acknowledgement of my presence.

The almost imperceptible nod with which I responded asserted my superior status, as was appropriate for an MD. My heart was quickening and, despite my best efforts, I could feel my gait becoming stiff and unnatural. Fortunately the last few desks before Chuck’s office were bereft of life.

‘Hello, my dear, how are you?’ I whispered conspiratorially when I finally reached Suzie’s domain.

‘Oh, not too bad. I spent the weekend with this right joker and he put a smile back on my face.’

‘Really? I’d like to meet him. He sounds pretty damn cool.’ ‘No, not really . . . and he was rubbish in bed.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’d advise you to meet a real man at some point – stop wasting your time with these pencil-neck losers! Anyway, let’s implement plan X.’ Suzie looked around somewhat nervously and saw that there was no one in the immediate vicinity. Her desk was just outside Chuck’s office, which was in the far corner of the research floor.

Because there were two other offices between it and the openplan area, it was relatively well concealed. Like two mischievous schoolchildren breaking into the headmaster’s office we sloped in as unobtrusively as possible. Somewhat to my surprise, my heart was pounding away despite the fact that we had a perfectly legitimate excuse should we be caught. Once we were in and the door had closed behind us Suzie immediately grabbed me and planted her lips on mine. After acquiescing for a few seconds I pushed us apart.

‘Come on, gorgeous, we need to be a bit careful now . . . If you get caught having a snog with me your reputation really will be ruined.’

Suzie raised her eyebrows with a look of mock surprise at my caution. She was clearly enjoying the danger a little but for the moment I definitely had bigger fish to fry.

We both crept round Chuck’s huge desk. It was covered in files, documents and a photo of Chuck with his wife and kids in a park. I’d met Mrs Johnson at a couple of work events and she ticked all the boxes of a classic investment banker’s wife – well manicured, expensively dressed, extremely polite and never a hair out of place. Anna Wintour with a gnarly stick up her arse.

As Suzie fired up the computer and reached the screen demanding a password I theatrically covered my eyes with my left hand and turned my head to the right. Of course, I ensured that there was a slight gap between my thumb and my face so that I could just see what she was typing through the bottom corner of my left eye: R – – L I – G – T O – – S.

Bollocks! I didn’t catch it all. She had touch-typed the password and it hadn’t been easy to pick up even those letters.

Still, it gave me something to work on. All I needed to do now was go through the charade of putting Chuck’s photos on to a memory stick and then I could come back later and sort out the rest. As soon as I’d downloaded the photos I left, having told Suzie that I had to see my parents for dinner. In fact, I went straight to the nearest pub, which as always on a Monday was virtually empty, settled into a dingy corner with a pint of wifebeater and a pen and paper, and began trying to work out what the hell Chuck’s password was.

Rillingtons . . . Religiontones . . . Reliving tonnes . . .

I began to curse my inability to do crosswords or any kinds of word games. After about twenty frustrating minutes I was seriously considering going home when I suddenly spied something on the television suspended high on the wall to the left of the bar. It was tuned to MTV as usual, and playing some black and white footage of the Beatles performing on the Ed Sullivan show. I sat back and enjoyed their rendition of ‘I want to hold your hand’. Just a minute! What was Chuck always saying about the Beatles? Ah yes, that only choirboy fags liked them, and that the Rolling Stones wiped the floor with them. Of course! Chuck was always banging on about his favourite rock group despite being occasionally told over a few glasses of Sancerre that he should consider listening to musicians who’d been on this earth for less than sixty years. If Chuck wasn’t waxing lyrical about the Rolling Stones he was boring everyone senseless about how there had never been a better guitarist on this planet than Jimi Hendrix.

With a big grin on my face I left the pub and walked back to the office, swiped my way through the security barriers and took the lift to the research floor. I’d already prepared the excuse that I’d forgotten my bag should I bump into any colleagues who might otherwise have been surprised at my new-found diligence.

Much to my horror, and despite its being around 8 p.m., Jane was still at her desk. Jane was outrageously conscientious despite the fact that her family connections meant there was simply no way she was ever going to be treated badly. Her uncle was a large American bank’s overall chief of investment banking whilst her father had just been appointed head of the Financial Services Authority – the City regulator. She would have got her job had she merely succeeded in gaining a third in Land Economy at Loughborough Poly. As it was she had managed to leave Queen’s College, Oxford with a starred first in economics. Still, there were plenty of smart cookies trying to enter investment banking in the boom year of 2006 and the fact that she had got her foot in the door was mostly due to good, old-fashioned nepotism.

Hell, at least a third of the people in our department had got their initial entry into this money machine via a friend or relative.

Yet for some sick reason, despite her virtually invulnerable position, she still worked like a Trojan day in day out.

I desperately racked my brain for something ‘appropriate’ to say. (This was the first time we’d been alone since our little tryst.) She looked beautiful as she worked away at her spreadsheet. Her long auburn hair rested on her shoulders and there was something very attractive about seeing her so intensely engrossed in her work. A familiar feeling stirred in my loins. When I was within about ten feet of our shared desk she lifted her head and fixed me with her green, feline eyes. She was clearly shocked that I was in the office at such an ungodly hour.

‘Hi, Steve . . . erm, have you forgotten something?’ She hardly even pretended not to be astonished that I’d turned up at such a late hour.

‘Hi, Jane. Working late, eh? Well, keep it up . . . I remember at your stage in my career I was often in the office until ten,’ I lied. I felt self-conscious – this was after all my grad and I was her boss and this conversation was taking place in our office. Our previous encounter had been completely by chance. We’d met at a club in King’s Cross and after the initial embarrassment of bumping into a colleague when we were both clearly off our heads on Ecstasy we started really enjoying each other’s company.

We managed to lose our pals and before you could say ‘sexual harassment’ our lips met during a somewhat incongruous slow dance whilst everyone around us jumped around to some nosebleed techno. We had melted into each other, and aided by the elephantine quantity of MDMA I’d consumed my feelings for her grew stronger with every kiss. After about ten minutes she pushed me away and told me she had to go. I’d followed her out like a lost puppy, and I’d lost my beautiful girlfriend as a result.

‘Really?’ She didn’t look convinced. ‘By the way, I got a call on Friday at around four a.m. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you?’

She was staring directly into my eyes, seeking out any indication of guilt. Fortunately, I had prepared for the question and so looked suitably unfazed as I responded: ‘Me? Call you three hours before you’re due at work? I don’t think so. What could I possibly want with you at the dead of night?’ I grinned.

‘No . . . I didn’t think it was you. Probably just a wrong number.’

There was an awkward silence. We both looked at the floor and then Jane started moving some documents around in the filing cabinet next to her desk. I sat down opposite her and wondered how I could excuse myself and then walk into Chuck’s office. I logged on to my computer and checked a few emails. It would be so much easier if she’d just leave. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding; a film of sweat appeared on my forehead. After another few minutes of pretending to work it was time for decisive action. I logged off and stood up.

‘I’ve just remembered I left the EDF file in Chuck’s office.

We were talking about pitching for the placement. And I might use the phone when I’m in there . . . there’s a confidential chat I’ve got to have with the head of sales in New York. If you’re not here when I come back I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘No probs. See you later.’

As soon as I was in Chuck’s office I locked the door behind me, then crept to his computer and pressed ‘Ctrl’, ‘Alt’ and ‘Delete’ together until a box appeared in the centre of the screen requiring a user name and a password. The username was, as always at Geldlust, the first six letters of first name and surname together – so ‘chuckjohnso’ in this case. I typed in the password ‘rollingstones’ and smiled to myself as Chuck’s computer leapt into action. If I searched around his work email inbox and maybe checked out the latest spreadsheets he’d been working on I was pretty sure I’d find out if I was going to get a polite ‘fuck off’ or half a million quid come December. My fingers were actually shaking with nervous excitement. This time, if I was caught, there’d be no easy excuses.

After about ten minutes I hadn’t found anything relevant to me. However, I had discovered a lot of extremely interesting things about a possible merger with another bank, a forthcoming job cull in the corporate finance department and some concerns the chief executive had about Geldlust’s exposure to the subprime issue.

Frustrated, I decided that it was worth checking whether Chuck had a roving email account, since that was more likely to contain something juicy than his work one, which, of course, was monitored just like mine. I double-clicked on his internet explorer icon and then used the history button to discover what he’d recently been accessing. After Google, the work intranet and a skiing holiday company’s website there was hotmail, which looked promising, but when I double-clicked another password was demanded. My shoulders slumped with disappointment, and I was about to go back to Chuck’s spreadsheets when a moment of genius touched me.

I typed in ‘jimihendrix’. Bingo! I now had access to all of Chuck’s personal emails.

I felt like a spy as I read his personal emails to his wife, his kids and his friends. I was becoming more nervous with each passing moment, and kept looking up from the computer half expecting to see Chuck march in all guns blazing. Suddenly, after another five minutes of trembling excitement, I came across the email I was looking for . . . or at least the one I feared existed. It had the word ‘Cityboy’ in the title and was from the overall head of investment banking.

The Compliance Department has confirmed that Steve Jones wrote an email to someone at a News International email address with an article attached that two days later appeared in the anonymous column ‘Cityboy’ that features every Friday in thelondonpaper. This is definitely a sackable offence as he has criticised the bank in numerous articles (and for that matter you – read about yourself and Geldlust on his website www.

cityboy.biz). Although he has not named Geldlust our legal department tells me it still constitutes ‘criticism of parent company’. Compliance has also confirmed we will be fully justified in defining him as a ‘bad leaver’, which will mean that he forfeits all his vested equity (approx. £350K). As discussed, taking into account the cost-cutting we need to do before the end of the year, firing Steve seems like the best course of action. So I think we should include him in December’s pre-bonus ‘unlucky list’ but it’s up to you. If you don’t want to do that because he’s bringing in the commission we could just warn him and demand he stops writing the column.

The only words in the reply from Chuck were ‘Steve goes on 15 December’. I could envisage him licking his lips with unconstrained pleasure.

I slumped down in Chuck’s seat. Christ almighty. My life was falling apart. I’d lost the love of my life. I was going to get fired before bonus time. I’d also never get another job in the City, which was the only type of work I was remotely qualified for even if I found most of it desperately tedious. Worse still, I was going to forfeit all the share options and equity I’d accrued over the previous three years. My plans to sail away into the sunset next year safe in the knowledge that I had enough cash to last for decades out there were disintegrating around me. What should I do? I couldn’t let that slimy bastard Chuck win this game.

I don’t know why I decided to read some more of Chuck’s emails. I had nothing better to do and, as The Art of War written by the sixth-century Chinese warlord Sun Tzu (required reading for any would-be stockbroker) claimed, informational advantage is vital in any battle with a superior opponent. I was not going to take this lying down. The war was not over yet.

I began reading through his recent emails. It was the seventh I checked out that would change everything.