asked.
'Well, when a market is falling, natural buyers tend to delay their purchases until they think all the bad news is out of the way,' Hamilton said. 'And there are people like me who are tempted to buy bonds at low prices.' Hamilton talked slowly and deliberately, and I hung on every word, trying to extract the maximum amount of knowledge I could from what he had to say.
'But what about the economic fundamentals? What about the threat of inflation if the US has full employment?' I asked.
'That fear has been in the market for at least a month. Prices have been discounting that for weeks.'
I thought about what Hamilton had said. It did make some kind of sense. 'So one of the reasons the market went up was because everyone was so pessimistic?'
'Precisely,' Hamilton said.
'One last thing I don't understand,' I said. 'If all that was the case, why did the market wait until the release of the figure before moving up?'
'Before taking the decision to buy, investors wanted to wait until the last major uncertainty was out of the way. Once they saw that the unemployment figure, although bad, was no worse than expected, they had no reason to put off their decisions. They bought.'
I had a lot to learn in this business, I thought. I knew you needed a cool, calculating mind to be a good trader. But Hamilton was more than just an expert at analysing numbers or economics. He analysed human nature, weighing up the exact balance between fear and greed amongst the thousands of individuals who collectively make up 'the market'. And he was very good at it.
'I think we can leave this market to its own devices now,' Hamilton said. 'You wanted to see me about something.'
I told Hamilton everything that Debbie and I had found out about Tremont Capital. I told him it looked to me as though we would never see our $20 million again.
In all the time I had worked with Hamilton I had never seen him shaken. He was shocked now. He had lost control, a rare feeling for Hamilton.
'How could that happen? Didn't we check the documentation?'
I shook my head slowly.
'Why didn't I get Debbie to check the documentation?' he muttered, biting his bottom lip. 'That bastard Callaghan! He must have known about it all the time!'
'I heard Cash sold you the bonds?'
'He certainly did. At the time those bonds were yielding 1? per cent more than US government's. Not bad for bonds with a triple-A guarantee. They were the cheapest bonds around at the time.'
'And you think he knew that the guarantee was worthless?'
'He must have done,' said Hamilton bitterly. 'If the library at Bloomfield Weiss knows nothing about the bonds, you can bet no one else there does. He must have set this thing up himself. I do my best never to rely on that man. I can't imagine how I let him get away with it.'
'Couldn't Cash have been passing on the bond prospectus in good faith? Perhaps someone in his corporate finance department is behind this? Claire mentioned a chap named Dick Waigel.'
'Maybe. But I don't think so. I think it's Callaghan.'
I hesitated. I wasn't sure whether to mention what was in my mind. Quietly I asked, 'Do you think Cash had something to do with Debbie's death?'
Hamilton looked at me, puzzled. 'That was an accident, wasn't it? Or suicide? Surely not murder?'
'I'm not sure what it was,' I said. 'Remember I told you that I saw a man just before Debbie's death?' Hamilton nodded. 'Well, that man turned out to be Joe Finlay, Bloomfield Weiss's US corporate trader. Now, I told the police this, but it appears that Joe had a couple of friends who said they shared a taxi with Joe immediately after they all left the boat.'
'Joe Finlay?' said Hamilton. 'I've met him. He's not a bad trader. But from what you said, the police have ruled him out?'
I sighed. 'Yes, they are going to put Debbie's death down as an accident. But I just don't believe it.'
Hamilton looked at me for a second. 'I suspect the police know what they are doing. In any event, I doubt that Cash had anything to do with it.' He lapsed into silence, an unusual fire in his cold blue eyes. Then, slowly, he began to relax. He rhythmically stroked his beard. He was back in control. Thinking. Calculating all the angles.
'What shall we do?' I asked. 'Shall we confront Cash? Go to the president of Bloomfield Weiss? Go to the police?'
'We shall do nothing,' Hamilton said. 'At least not for a while. My guess is that Tremont Capital will continue to pay interest for several years so as not to arouse suspicion. It is the principal we will never see again. So we have time. It is our turn not to arouse suspicion. As soon as Cash finds out we are on to him, then the money will be gone and we will never see it again. So we act as though nothing is amiss.'
'But we can't just do nothing!'
'We won't just do nothing. We will get our money back.'
'But how?'
'I'll find a way.'
And somehow, I thought he would.
CHAPTER 10
I had quite a backlog of work to catch up on. Accounting discrepancies, monthly valuation commentaries, a pile of reading. I ploughed through it all afternoon and the early part of the evening.
I left the office at half past seven and sauntered down Gracechurch Street towards the Monument underground station. I couldn't work out how we could try to get the Tremont money back. I had no idea how Hamilton would go about it, although he seemed confident he would think of something.
I was interrupted by a voice next to me and a hand slipping through my arm. 'Paul, why so miserable?'
It was Claire. I caught the same subtle scent she had been wearing in Luc's the day before.
'I'm not, I'm just preoccupied.'
'With work. But work is over for the day! It's time to play.'
I smiled weakly. I couldn't tear my mind away from the Tremont Capital disaster.
'Look, you've been worrying too much lately,' Claire said. 'You take it all too seriously. I am meeting some old friends of mine tonight. Do you want to come?'
I hesitated.
'Oh, come on!' she said. She raised her arm at a passing taxi which screeched to a halt. She bundled me in. I didn't resist. She was right. All that I had learned over the last few days was weighing heavily on me.
Claire directed the taxi to a small wine bar in Covent Garden. It was dark and wooden and crowded. Her friends were there already. Denis, Philippe and Marie. They had all been to university together at Avignon. Denis was doing a Ph.D. in Anglo-Saxon history at King's College, London, and Philippe and Marie were both teachers in Orleans. They were in England on holiday. And only Denis spoke English.
My French is barely up to conversational standard, but I did my best. I was encouraged with enthusiasm by the others, who derived no end of amusement from my Yorkshire French accent. I got by pretty well, although the conversation took some strange paths since my comments were dictated more by what words I knew than what it made sense to say. The wine flowed. The volume of the conversation rose, punctuated by bursts of hysterical laughter. No one mentioned bonds, markets, interest rates, Tremont, Joe, or Debbie.
As the night wore on, I found it more difficult to focus on what was being said or where the conversation was going. I just sat back in my chair and watched.
In particular, I watched Claire. God, she was sexy! She perched, cross-legged on her chair, her tight black skirt riding up over her well-shaped thighs. Her white blouse was tucked firmly into her skirt, stretching over the curves of her breasts, as she leaned forward to make a point. Her lips were full and pouted frequently as she talked. The
