Henry, however, was against the expenditure of time. ‘We’ll just be more vigilant,’ he said. ‘Design some more safeguards, more tracking devices. Could you do that, Tim?’
‘I could, with that programmer’s help.’
‘Right. Get on with it. Let us know.’
I wondered aloud to Patty whether someone in her own department, not one of the managers, could set up such a fraud, but once she’d got over her instinctive indignation she shook her head.
‘Who would bother? It would be much simpler — in fact it’s almost dead easy — to feed in a mythical firm who has lent us money, and to whom we are paying interest. Then the computer goes on sending out interest cheques for ever, and all the crook has to do is cash them.’
Henry, however, said we had already taken advice on that one, and the ‘easy’ route had been plugged by systematic checks by the auditors.
The paper-induced rumpus again gradually died down and became undiscussed if not forgotten. Life in our plot went on much as before with Rupert slowly recovering, Alec making jokes and Gordon stuffing his left hand anywhere out of sight. John continued to suffer from his obsession, not speaking to me, not looking at me if he could help it, and apparently telling clients outright that my promotion was a sham.
‘Cosmetic of course,’ Alec reported him of saying on the telephone. ‘Makes the notepaper heading look impressive. Means nothing in real terms, you know. Get through to me, I’ll see you right.’
‘He said all that?’ I asked.
‘Word for word.’ Alec grinned. ‘Go and bop him on the nose.’
I shook my head however and wondered if I should get myself transferred along to the St Paul’s-facing office. I didn’t want to go, but it looked as if John wouldn’t recover his balance unless I did. If I tried to get John himself transferred, would it make things that much worse?
I was gradually aware that Gordon, and behind him Henry, were not going to help, their thought being that I was a big boy now and should be able to resolve it myself. It was a freedom which brought responsibility, as all freedoms do, and I had to consider that for the bank’s sake John needed to be a sensible member of the team.
I thought he should see a psychiatrist. I got Alec to say it to him lightly as a joke, out of my hearing (‘what you need, old pal, is a friendly shrink’), but to John his own anger appeared rational, not a matter for treatment.
I tried saying to him straight, ‘Look, John, I know how you feel. I know you think my promotion isn’t fair. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but either way I can’t help it. You’ll be a lot better off if you just face things and forget it. You’re good at your job, we all know it, but you’re doing yourself no favours with all this bellyaching. So shut up, accept that life’s bloody, and let’s lend some money.’
It was a homily that fell on a closed mind, and in the end it was some redecorating which came to the rescue. For a week while painters re-whitened our walls the five of us in the fountain-facing office squeezed into the other one, desks jammed together in every corner,’ phone calls made with palms pressed to ears against the noise and even normally placid tempers itching to snap. Overcrowd the human race, I thought, and you always got a fight. In distance lay peace.
Anyway, I used the time to do some surreptitious persuasion and shuffling, so that when we returned to our own patch both John and Rupert stayed behind. The two oldest men from the St Paul’s office came with Gordon, Alec and myself, and Gordon’s almost-equal obligingly told John that it was great to be working again with a younger team of bright energetic brains.
November
Val Fisher said at lunch one day, ‘I’ve received a fairly odd request.’ (It was a Friday: grilled fish.)
‘Something new?’ Henry asked.
‘Yes. Chap wants to borrow five million pounds to buy a racehorse.’
Everyone at the table laughed except Val himself.
‘I thought I’d toss it at you,’ he said. ‘Kick it around some. See what you think.’
‘What horse?’ Henry said.
‘Something called Sandcastle.’
Henry, Gordon and I all looked at Val with sharpened attention; almost perhaps with eagerness.
‘Mean something to you three, does it?’ he said, turning his head from one to the other of us.
Henry nodded. ‘That day we all went to Ascot. Sandcastle ran there, and won. A stunning performance. Beautiful.’
Gordon said reminiscently, ‘The man whose box we were in saved his whole business on that race. Do you remember Dissdale, Tim?’
‘Certainly do.’
‘I saw him a few weeks ago. On top of the world. God knows how much he won.’
‘Or how much he staked,’ I said.
‘Yes, well,’ Val said. ‘Sandcastle. He won the 2,000 Guineas, as I understand, and the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot. Also the “Diamond” Stakes in July, and the Champion Stakes at Newmarket last month. This is, I believe, a record second only to winning the Derby or the Arc de Triomphe. He finished fourth, incidentally, in the Derby. He could race next year as a four-year-old, but if he flopped his value would be less than it is at the moment. Our prospective client wants to buy him now and put him to stud.’
The rest of the directors got on with their fillets of sole while listening interestedly with eyes and ears. A stallion made a change, I suppose, from chemicals, electronics and oil.
‘Who is our client?’ Gordon asked. Gordon liked fish. He could eat it right handed with his fork, in no danger of shaking it off between plate and mouth.
‘A man called Oliver Knowles,’ Val said. ‘He owns a stud farm. He got passed along to me by the horse’s trainer, whom I know slightly because of our wives being distantly related. Oliver Knowles wants to buy, the present owner is willing to sell. All they need is the cash.’ He smiled. ‘Same old story.’
‘What’s your view?’ Henry said.
Val shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. ‘Too soon to have one of any consequence. But I thought, if it interested you at all, we could ask Tim to do a preliminary look-see. He has a background, after all, a lengthy acquaintance, shall we say, with racing.’
There was a murmur of dry amusement round the table.
‘What do you think?’ Henry asked me.
‘I’ll certainly do it if you like.’
Someone down the far end complained that it would be a waste of time and that merchant banks of our stature should not be associated with the Turf.
‘Our own dear Queen,’ someone said ironically, ‘is associated with the Turf. And knows the Stud Book backwards, so they say.’
Henry smiled. ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t at least look into it.’ He nodded in my direction. ‘Go ahead, Tim. Let us know.’
I spent the next few working days alternately chewing pencils with the computer programmer and joining us to a syndicate with three other banks to lend twelve point four million pounds short term at high interest to an international construction company with a gap in its cash-flow. In between those I telephoned around for information and opinions about Oliver Knowles, in the normal investigative preliminaries to any loan for anything, not only for a hair-raising price for a stallion.
Establishing a covenant, it was called. Only if the covenant was sound would any loan be further considered.
Oliver Knowles, I was told, was a sane, sober man of forty-one with a stud farm in Hertfordshire. There were three stallions standing there with ample provision for visiting mares, and he owned the one hundred and fifty acres outright, having inherited them on his father’s death.