“You asked me—you asked me quite specifically whether there was anything unusual in his life. Do you remember?”
Isabel nodded. She looked down at the sherry glass in her right hand and took a small sip. It was very dry; too dry, Toby had said when she had given him a glass. Too dry and it gets bitter, you know.
“And then I said that there was nothing,” Neil went on.
“Which was not true. There was.”
“Now you want to tell me about it?”
Neil nodded. “I felt very bad about misleading you. I don’t know why I did it. I suppose I just felt annoyed that you had come round to talk to us. I felt that it was none of your business.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Which it isn’t, thought Isabel, but did not say it.
“You see,” said Neil, “Mark said to me that there was something happening. He was scared.”
Isabel felt her pulse race. Yes, she had been right. There had been something; Mark’s death was not what it had seemed to be.
It had a background.
Neil unclasped his hands. Now that he had started to speak, some of the tension appeared to dissipate, even if he still did not appear relaxed.
“You know that Mark worked for a firm of fund managers,” he said. “McDowell’s. They’re quite a large firm these days. They handle a lot of big pension funds, and one or two smaller people.
They’re a well-known firm.”
“I knew that,” said Isabel.
“Well, in that job you see a lot of money moving. You have to watch things pretty closely.”
“So I believe,” said Isabel.
“And you have to be particularly careful about how you behave,” Neil said. “There’s something called insider trading. Do you know about that?”
Isabel explained that she had heard of the term, but was not sure exactly what it meant. Was it something to do with buying shares on the basis of inside information?
Neil nodded. “That’s more or less what it is. You may get information in your job which allows you to predict the movement of share prices. If you know that a firm is going to be taken over, for example, that may send up the share price. If you buy in advance of the news getting out, then you make a profit. It’s simple.”
“I can imagine,” said Isabel. “And I can imagine the temptation.”
“Yes,” agreed Neil. “It’s very tempting. I’ve even been in a position myself to do it. I assisted in drafting an offer which I T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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knew would have an effect on the value of the shares. It would have been simple for me to get somebody to buy some shares on my behalf. Dead simple. I could have made thousands.”
“But you didn’t?”
“You go to prison if you’re caught,” Neil said. “They take it very seriously. It’s because you’re getting an unfair advantage over the people who are selling the shares to you. You know something that they don’t. It undermines the market principle.”
“And you say that Mark had seen this happen?”
“Yes,” said Neil. “He told me one evening, when we were in the pub together. He said that he had discovered insider trading going on in the firm. He said that he was completely sure of his facts, and he had the means of proving it. But then he said something else.”
Isabel put down her sherry glass. It was obvious where this disclosure was going, and she felt uncomfortable.
“He said that he was worried that the people who were doing it knew that he had found out. He had been treated strangely, almost with suspicion, and he had been given a very strange little pep talk—a pep talk about confidentiality and duty to the firm—
which he had interpreted as a veiled warning.”
He looked up at Isabel, and she saw something in his eyes.
What was it saying? Was it a plea for help? Was it the expression of some private agony, a sadness that he was unable to articulate?
“Was that all?” she asked. “Did he tell you who gave him this talk, this warning?”
Neil shook his head. “No, he didn’t. He said that he couldn’t say very much about it. But I could tell that he was frightened.”
Isabel rose from her chair and crossed the room to close the curtains. As she did so, the movement of the material made a soft noise, like the breaking of a small wave on the beach. Neil watched her from where he was sitting. Then she returned to her chair.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“I don’t know what you want me to do with this,” she said.
