She leaned up and kissed him; he kissed her back, looking over the bridge of her nose at the road ahead. The Volvo that had been on his tail seemed to have vanished. He wondered idly for a brief second where it had gone, because he hadn’t seen any turn-offs; then it went completely from his mind. He slid his hand up inside her skirt, pushed his fingers down inside the top of her tights, and slid them deep down into her silk panties; she breathed in sharply, and ran her tongue over his nose.
He was already starting to feel horny again; it was a long time, he reflected, since he had felt horny so often, a long time since he could remember feeling almost permanently horny, the way he did now. Too damned long. He didn’t ever want to have bad times again, didn’t ever want to be poor again, didn’t ever again want to go through the hell of the last three years.
Amanda began to blow a sweet warm hurricane into his ear. He saw a patrol car racing up the westbound carriageway, blue lights flashing, headlights on. A couple of minutes later, an ambulance, siren screaming, was tearing up the road; somewhere back there there must have been an accident, he figured.
Rocq pulled the Porsche up at the high kerb in Knightsbridge, and Amanda opened her door. He looked at her. ‘Would you consider me forward if I asked if you’d like to come out and have a drink tonight?’
She grinned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘My mother always warned me about strange men.’ She hoisted her soft Enny overnight bag from the rear seat.
‘Maybe if I write and ask nicely?’
‘Maybe!’ She grinned again, blew him a kiss, shut the door and stepped, with the careless abandon that only a very pretty girl can get away with, out into the thick lunch-time traffic.
Rocq turned to watch her; she had already reached the safety of the traffic island in the middle of the road. She turned, saw he was still there, and smiled again.
Rocq put the Porsche into gear and pulled back out into the traffic. He drove slowly, in a contemplative mood. He went around Hyde Park Corner, down Constitution Hill, the Mall, then along the Embankment, heading towards the City. At the end of Lower Thames Street, he cut through Mark Lane, into Fenchurch Street, and turned left into Mincing Lane. For the first time in two years, there was an empty parking bay in the street; not only that, it was slap outside the front entrance to Number 88. Right now, he decided, he really did not have a lot to grumble about.
The man standing on guard outside the front door was wearing a uniform that would have made the full battle-dress of a Brigadier look like a boiler suit. It was a tribute to his physical strength that under the full weight of the several yards of braid, the tonnage of glistening brass buttons, the acreage of immaculately blancoed webbing and the battery of medals, he was able to remain upright.
‘Good afternoon, Sarge,’ said Rocq to Retired Sergeant-Major Horace Bantram, the security guard and live-in caretaker.
‘Good afternoon, Sir, nice one today, Sir,’ he said to Rocq. Then, as he always did, with the knuckle of his index finger he pushed his nostrils sideways and sniffed loudly. ‘Smells like rain later, though, Sir,’ he said.
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t,’ said Rocq, walking swiftly past him. He had learned, a long time ago, the folly of engaging Sarge in a conversation about the weather: it had cost him an entire morning. He walked past the discreet sign, in the shape of a gold ingot, with the words GLOBALEX LTD engraved on it in small block capitals, through the revolving door, and down the white marble corridor, past the receptionist, Mrs Deale, a smart woman in her early forties. She gave him a brief smile of recognition whilst struggling hard, with considerable dignity, to hold her grip on a switchboard which sounded as if it had gone berserk.
He took one of the four elevators up to the fourth floor, and stepped out into a carpeted corridor. Opposite was another sign on the wall, again in the shape of an ingot; it read: GLOBALEX METALS DIVISION. Rocq looked at his watch; it was just on two o’clock.
He walked down the corridor and turned left into his office. It was an extremely large room, in the centre of which was a massive oval console around which sat twenty people, each with two telephones, an intercom, a computer terminal and a small flat work-top containing a switchboard with one hundred telephone lines, known as a Dealer Board.
Globalex Limited was one of the largest commodity broking firms in Britain, with additional branch offices in Zurich, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Chicago and New York. The company dealt in all types of commodities, from foods, such as soyabean, grain, barley, sugar, cocoa, coffee and frozen pork bellies to materials, such as plywood, rubber, cotton and wool; to minerals, such as tin, copper, lead, zinc and precious metals, such as silver and gold.
Commodities are basically just raw materials, and the world commodity markets began life simply as places where raw materials in wholesale quantities could be bought and sold. From these, developed futures markets. With massive price fluctuations in raw materials — depending on supply and demand in any given year, or part of a year — and international currency swings, users of commodities, in planning their end products, need to insure against massive rises in the price of their raw materials; similarly, producers of commodities need to insure against massive price drops. Out of these two needs came the practice of ‘buying long’ — agreeing to buy a commodity on a specific date in the future, often three months, for a specific price. If the commodity then rose in price, the vendor would still be obliged to sell the product at the price agreed upon three months before. The purchaser is protected against a price rise, but loses out if the price has in fact dropped in the meantime. Also out of the two needs came the practice of ‘selling short’ — agreeing to sell a commodity on a specific date in the future, for a specific price. This protects the producer against a drop in price; however much the price of the commodity may have dropped by the delivery date, he is covered by having sold it at a prearranged price.
Whilst the producers of raw materials and the manufacturers who use the raw materials make up an important part of the world commodity markets’ clientele, there are also numerous speculators, who invest in commodity futures but have no interest whatsoever in the end products themselves. They trade purely in paper, and have almost always sold on the paper before the delivery dates are due. Not many punters want to have twenty thousand tons of soya-bean meal delivered to their back yards.
The attraction of the commodity market to the speculator, both institutional and private, is the ability to make far higher profits in a short space of time than are usually attainable on the stock exchanges. This is for two reasons. The first is the high rate of fluctuation of the price of commodities. The second, and more important, reason is the gearing: in buying commodities, the purchaser is only required to pay a deposit, normally ten per cent of the total price; if the purchaser does not take delivery of the goods, but sells them on or prior to the delivery date, he is not required to pay up the balance of the price. In effect, this means that he is able to gamble with ten times more money than he actually has. If the commodity rises in value ten per cent, he ends up doubling his money; but the risk is in proportion. If the commodity drops ten per cent, he will have to find and put up ten times his original stake. Fortunes are made every day in the world’s commodity markets; equally, many men are bankrupted every day.