He was worth, personally, Rocq guessed, at least £200 million. Rocq thought about how much money he could accumulate himself. He had made just over £50,000 during the past year, which he knew was because of the client list he had: if he lost any of these clients, his income would drop dramatically. But, assuming he could continue at this rate and even better, he figured that by the time he was forty, the most he could possibly have accumulated, assuming he saved assiduously and invested cautiously, would be, net after tax, in the region of £200,000 — approximately point nought one per cent of Elleck’s wealth. His last thoughts before he slid into an uneasy sleep were that if he was to become rich, really rich, anywhere near as rich as Sir Monty Elleck, then he was going to have to do what Elleck clearly seemed to do. He needed to get hold of inside information about what was going on: some inside information that would tell him when a commodity — any commodity, it didn’t matter which — was about to go through the roof, so that he could buy it, quietly, himself, and make a killing.
5
The dimples glinted in the sun as the Dunlop DDH golf ball nestled in the cup of the gold plated tee. In small black lettering down the side of the tee, and across a small area of the golf ball, were the initials T.B-R. The immaculately polished head of the graphite Ping driver wavered uncertainly about three inches off the ground, just behind the ball; it moved slowly up to the ball and sank down onto the ground, the top of the face nestling halfway up the ball. Almost immediately, in a slow, steady sweep, it moved backwards, and then began to arc upwards. Smoothly his shoulders turned until the club was held in the perfect position, pointing directly at the yellow flag four hundred and fifty yards away.
‘Coffee,’ said Theo.
As quickly as it stopped, the club head began to reverse down the same arc in which it had just travelled, accelerating powerfully and twisting, slightly, to approach the ball square-on. It was a text-book golf swing for a full two inches as, by coincidence, in its sweeping descent from the sky, the club found, for this short distance, the correct groove, and then departed from it again. As the head raced the final two feet to the ball it veered, almost imperceptibly, to the left. The far right hand edge of the face connected with the bottom left hand dimple of the ball, sending it tumbling three feet, six inches at a ninety degree angle to where Theo stood, in front of his shattered tee. The club continued its journey and the face ripped into the virgin grass of the first tee, and hurled a foot-long divot out.
The grossly overweight Italian multi-millionaire emitted a sound not unlike a bull elephant that has been stung in the balls by a wasp and, in a fit of rage, proceeded to hack a further large divot out of the unfortunate grass. He looked around him; a dozen stony-faced golfers returned his gaze. He knew what they were thinking, and they were probably right: they were in for a slow afternoon stuck behind him.
‘Bad luck,’ said Rocq, trying to conceal his grin. With one hundred pounds on the game, any sympathy was liable to be lacking in any great degree of heart-felt sincerity.
Rocq’s own ball lay in the centre of the fairway, two hundred and ten yards ahead; he looked down from the first tee of the Dyke Golf Club, across the panorama of Brighton and Hove, towards the tall chimneys of the power station at Shoreham Harbour and the hazy sea beyond.
‘Coffee, you reckon?’
‘For sure,’ said Theo, tugging his three-iron out of his Gucci golf bag and strutting to the edge of the tee, where the ball lay. He lowered his head forward so that he could see the ball over the vast hulk of his stomach, pulled the club back, and swung it ferociously forward. A divot travelled twenty yards; the ball remained stationary. He swung again. In a flurry of grass and mud, the ball travelled in a straight line, towards the pin, for a good nine feet. The Italian grunted and, brandishing his three-iron like a tomahawk and tugging his trolley behind, as if he were a mother tugging a reluctant child, he stomped off forwards.
Rocq and Barbiero-Ruche walked up to the ball; the Italian scooped it up in his fist. ‘I concede ze ’ole.’ He put the ball into his pocket, and the two of them marched off down the fairway.
‘Why are you so sure about coffee?’ asked Rocq.
The Italian stopped and stuck his three-iron back into his bag before answering. Rocq eyed his grotesque shape for some moments, a shape that had been bought and paid for by the Italian’s now legendary capabilities in the world’s commodity markets. Out of the ten most spectacular rises on the world’s commodity markets in the previous ten years, Barbiero-Ruche had published articles, well in advance, predicting not only the rises but, in nine of the ten, the exact days on which the commodities began to rise and the exact dates on which they began to fall. His book, Me and My Frozen Pork Belly might not have knocked any of the international best-sellers off their perches, but there weren’t many commodity brokers in the world who couldn’t quote at least half a dozen lines from it.
‘Brazil supplies approximately one third of the world’s coffee — last year her output was two and a half million pounds of coffee.’
They reached Rocq’s ball, and he picked it up; they carried on walking.
‘Ze ’arvest is in July. Two things can kill coffee — coffee rust disease, and early frost. Even viz a full ’arvest from Brazil, there will still be a shortage of coffee for ze nex’ year. Ze reasons are increased demand, together with ze coffee rust in several other major producing countries — particularly in Columbia, Mexico, El Salvador and Ecuador. So anyway, ze price must go up.’ The Italian stopped for a moment, pulled up his trouser leg, and scratched his ankle. Then they continued, and approached the second tee. ‘I have ze very elaborate computer system in Milano, and I ’ave just had analysed all the weather reports for Brazil for this time of year for the past fifty-five years — as far back as there are records. Ze pattern is exactly as in 1976, when there was a disaster because of early frost in June. You go.’ Barbiero-Ruche waved his hand.
Rocq took his driver and bent down, teeing his ball high; he then stood well back from the ball, swung the club gently a few times, then took a full, hard, practice swing; the bottom of the head cracked across the surface of the grass on the exact spot at which Rocq had aimed. Satisfied, he stepped forward, took careful aim at the marker pin, beyond which the fairway dipped down, out of sight, and steadied the club head behind the ball; he took a slow backswing, winding himself up extremely taut, then brought the club hurtling around and down in a near perfect stroke. The sweet-spot of the club face hit the exact rear centre of the ball, momentarily flattening it into a thin saucer-shaped object as it lifted it clear of the tee. As it sprung back into its round shape, it accelerated for one hundred yards low across the ground and then began an arcing climb for a further hundred yards, and then descended gently for thirty yards, bounced on the dry grass, and then rolled along the fairway, curving almost imperceptibly to the left, and then halted. Rocq stood, club held out in the air in front of him, and watched the ball drop out of sight behind the marker with not a little pleasure.