At Bonus Time, No-One Can Hear You Scream Read online

  Incredibly, the SurroundSound speakers in the conference room blare out a trumpet fanfare, and on the screen behind him the word 'Bartons' appears, but in a new typeface and coloured gold, rather than our traditional dark green. An American voice-over introduces 'Bartons, an investment bank for the twenty-first century — Bartons, the bank that's trying harder — trying to succeed.' Yes, really. The whole time we were sweating our guts out, desperately killing ourselves over the bonus, watching as old colleagues were black-bagged, looking on as poor Bill Myers was taken out and shot, the management were working with a branding agency, spending God knows what to change the colour of our stationery. The scene becomes even more surreal as girls from a PR agency walk down the aisles, handing out T-shirts and baseball caps with the new corporate logo — 'Bartons — we're really trying' — and all the time trumpets are sounding and the American voice-over talks about our corporate values, our noble history and our fine traditions, all of which sit so happily with a spirit of entrepreneurialism and innovation for the twenty-first century. And do you know what we do?

  We cheer.

  Yes, really — none of the polite, measured applause you'd expect from socially inhibited English people — we get up out of our seats and we cheer, with great grins on our faces. Partly it's relief that we haven't been sold, but mostly it's knee-jerk sycophancy, always the safe default position in the presence not only of the board, but so many of one's peers as well. Some people are giving each other high fives, normally sober colleagues hug each other and slap each other on the back, and the room echoes with the noise of our exuberance and enthusiasm.

  On the podium, Sir Oliver looks at his colleagues and nods. Rory nods back. They were right. We really are a bunch of sheep.

  Monday, 13th December –

  B minus 3

  I took a day off sick today.

  Before you say anything, I know that investment bankers, in their capacity as masters of the universe, are not allowed ever to get sick. Illness is a sign of weakness, and weakness is a vice allowed only to the competition.

  The reason I took this unprecedented step is that after one of the worst weekends in living memory, I did not sleep at all last night. I literally stayed up all night, pacing around, convinced that if I went in to work, I would be the one to be black-bagged.

  Wendy was beside herself. She accused me of being crazy — she actually said mentally unbalanced, when in fact I'm the most rational person I know — and if it was going to be me, at least let's find out now, rather than later. She said that running away and hiding achieved nothing, and how on earth had we got ourselves trapped in this worthless life.

  You can imagine what I said to that. Worthless? How many other women get to wear twenty thousand pounds worth of jewellery to a dinner party? How many get taken to Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, Garsington, Ascot, Henley and Wimbledon every single year, and always at someone else's expense? How many get to shop at Harrods and Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason and run up credit card bills of thousands of pounds every month?

  And do you know what she said? She actually said she didn't care about all that, it was like a bad drug habit (how would she know?) and she'd kick it in a second if we could only walk away from all this.

  She said she'd never been happier than when we were first married and living in a rented flat in Battersea, eating takeaway pizza and drinking cheap red wine.

  I just about went berserk. Cheap red wine? Who the fuck drinks cheap red wine? No-one we know, anyway.

  But that wasn't the end of it. There was more. She asked me if I could remember when I last gave her a hug! You can imagine what I said to that. Anyone can give their wife a hug — but how many men give their wives two thousand pound Bulgari bracelets for their birthday? Or three hundred pound bouquets of flowers on their anniversary? Or bring them back a five thousand dollar kimono when they come back from a business trip to Tokyo — and before you say anything, yes I was feeling a little guilty after that trip, and I did charge it to expenses, but that's hardly the point, is it?

  When I'd calmed down, and she'd stopped crying and admitted that yes, she understood that I did all this for her, and she'd been confused and foolish and I should ignore her stupid remarks earlier, there was no way I could sleep and so I stayed up and eventually watched the dawn over the rooftops of London, which was very gratifying, reminding me why a top floor flat in Sloane Square commands such a premium.

  The problem was, by morning I looked like shit and felt even worse. When I rang my number, Nick Hargreaves picked up the line.

  'Nick... it's me,' I croaked.

  'Who?'

  'Me — Dave. I'm feeling awful. Must be a bug of some kind. I've been throwing up all night.'

  There was a silence at the other end. Not a good silence, an embarrassed, awkward silence. A long pause, and then: 'Will you be in later?'

  'No. Not the way I'm feeling. Is there any special reason, Nick? Is there anything I should know?'

  Another long silence. 'I guess nothing that can't wait. See you tomorrow. Get your strength back.' He hung up before I could say anything. 'Get your strength back'? No-one tells you to 'get your strength back' when you're ill. They say things like 'get well soon', or 'I hope you're feeling better tomorrow'. Why should I need my strength? What does he know that I don't? Is there a black bin-liner sitting on my desk with a letter from Personnel?

  I put my head in my hands and almost started to cry.

  It was only much later, around eleven o'clock, when I woke up on the couch in the study and went in search of Wendy. She looked tired too, and stepped away when I tried to put my arms around her waist and kiss her.

  'Please don't.' There was a tightness to her, a fragility that I hadn't noticed before.

  'Okay, I'm sorry. Let's just put last night behind us. It's almost over now. I'm going to take a shower, shave and go out for a breath of air.'

  She looked relieved as I headed off to the bathroom.

  When I was ready, I stepped out into Sloane Street and headed off, walking aimlessly as I enjoyed an unusually pleasant winter's day, with a clear blue sky and a crisp coldness in the air that sent shivers right through me, chasing away the fatigue of the previous night. I walked and walked, much further than I'd intended, and eventually found myself in Piccadilly. I stopped briefly at the Fountain Restaurant in Fortnum's for a light lunch and a glass of wine, feeling strangely exuberant, like a child playing truant from school. Afterwards I wandered off around the side streets of St James's until I found myself, just after two o'clock, outside Christie's.

  The Africa sale had just started.

  You know what happened next.

  Afterwards, when I emerged once more onto the pavement, it was already getting dark. The air was damp as well as chilly, and I hurried to find a cab to carry my purchases home, thinking how I would explain to Wendy that I'd just blown nearly five grand on a bunch of nineteenth century relics of the Great Age of Exploration.

  Tuesday, 14th December –

  B minus 2

  I went in two hours early today. I was at my workstation at five-thirty, while the cleaners were still vacuuming, and searched everywhere for evidence of either a black bin-liner or an envelope from Personnel. When I was sure there was nothing waiting for me — I even checked the contents of my drawers three times — I looked on everyone else's desks, checked their drawers and then tried Rory's office, though that was locked. Nothing. I wondered then if Nick had been playing some cruel trick on me yesterday, trying to spook me. Or maybe someone else had gone. I looked around, but none of the other workstations looked particularly vacant.

  There was a time, about two years ago, when someone played a cruel trick at Hardman Stoney, during the annual cull to thin out the headcount immediately prior to bonus, and placed a black bin-liner and an empty sealed envelope on a colleague's desk. It was meant to be a laugh, a hysterical, quite near the knuckle, risque joke. But it backfired. The individual concerned arrived, saw the bin-liner an
d the envelope, threw the bin-liner on the floor and took the envelope into the Heads of Department meeting, where his boss was discussing the business of the day ahead with his opposite numbers from around the bank. He grabbed his boss, pinned him to the table, and tried to shove the envelope down his throat. You can imagine what happened next. By the time he was restrained, and what was left of the empty envelope had been opened, his team had removed the bin-liner — doubtless fearing the worst — and swore blind that they knew nothing about whatever it was he was alleging. He was summarily dismissed, of course, saving his boss another tough decision ahead of their annual payday. As they say on Wall Street, all's fair in love and the bonus round.

  I hung around, drinking coffee from the machine, waiting for the others to arrive, and all the time wondering if Nick had been playing something similar on me. Interestingly, he was the first to arrive, and smirked when he saw me, though he wasn't obviously carrying a spare bin-liner to place on my desk.

  'You're in early — must have made a full recovery?'

  I could have killed him. It actually occurred to me to leap across the desk at him, put my hands around his throat and keep squeezing until his eyes popped out of their sockets and he stopped breathing forever.

  Instead I just smiled. 'Much better, thanks. Thought I'd make an early start and catch up. How was yesterday?'

  You may find this hard to believe, but I am capable of being both devious and ruthless. Which brings me to my revenge on Nick. I sat seething all morning, thinking of different ways to torture and humiliate him. Just as I was finishing a particularly exquisite fantasy, in which I was appointed Rory's deputy with specific responsibility for compensation and expense monitoring, his boyfriend called. His boyfriend is an interior designer called Charles. I've only met him once, and he struck me as a really nice guy. Naturally that wouldn't stop me getting my revenge.

  I only caught one side of the conversation, but it was enough to realise that they were meeting after work for a drink with some friends, and his other half would be downstairs at 7:30 pm.

  So I ordered flowers. Flowers? Sure — a huge arrangement, a hundred pounds worth, lilies and white roses, to be delivered to Nick, here on the trading floor, unsigned, but with the message, 'The earth moved for me' and lots of kisses. He was amazed when they arrived, just before six, and one of the security guards brought them over to his workstation amidst much cat-calling and whistling from the traders. When he looked at the message, he went bright red, and looked very unsure of himself. I thought to myself, do you have some guilty secrets, or what? So at seven-fifteen I went down to reception, hung around until I spotted Charles, went over and re-introduced myself, and asked if he was there to meet Nick. When he said he was, I invited him up to the trading floor, and swiped him through the security turnstiles on my card, so that I could take him up to our floor and over to the team area. When he got there, Nick was on the phone to a client in the States, and since I made sure we approached from behind, he never spotted us, until his boyfriend tapped him on the shoulder and grinned.

  Nick's face was a picture.

  And then I said to Charles, 'What fantastic flowers'. He looked puzzled, and with Nick looking on nervously, still stuck on the phone and unable to stop him, he picked up the card that was lying next to the bouquet.

  The thing about revenge is that it can be the sweetest feeling. And when it comes after what has really been a gruesome time, it tastes sweeter still. So when Charles turned bright red with anger, picked up the flowers, hit Nick over the head with them not once, but seven — yes, seven — times, and stormed off, snarling over his shoulder that Nick needn't bother to come home, it was a huge effort on my part to retain my dignity and not to double up laughing. When Nick finally finished his call, he picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, threw a horribly accusing glance in my direction, and rushed after his partner.

  Now is that devious, or what? Not as devious as what came a few minutes later, when I wandered over to Rory's office to ask his PA (in a suitably loud voice — Rory was sitting at his desk) if she knew where Nick was, because his jacket was gone from his chair and a client in Chicago needed him urgently.

  Now that is devious.

  Wednesday, 15th December –

  B minus 1

  It's almost over, at least for another year. Tomorrow is Bonus Day. The day after tomorrow, the day when We All Know, the start of another year, well... that's B minus 365.

  Yesterday I caught Rory staring at me from his office. He looked away, turned to some papers spread out on the desk in front of him, shook his head and scratched something out with his pen.

  This was very unsettling, but not nearly as unsettling as what happened next. Nick was fired!

  It was the last thing any of us expected, obviously including him, because even by investment banking standards, firing someone on the day before bonus is pretty brutal.

  But Nick had been a naughty boy, and someone had tipped off the Compliance Department, the internal 'police' who keep us on the straight and narrow. Nick had been dealing in shares.

  Now, before you say anything — yes, it was Nick's job, in a manner of speaking, to deal in shares. But these were illicit dealings, unauthorised by the Compliance Department, for his own account. The earlier rumours had actually been true, though I would never have imagined that Nick would be the guilty party. He had opened a personal dealing account with another broker, based in Geneva, and had been using inside information to profit at the expense of our own clients. When he heard a big purchase order was coming in to buy a particular company's shares, he quickly bought some of the shares in question himself, for his own account, and then waited for the big purchase to push the price up higher, making him a tidy profit. Quite illegal, of course, it's called dealing ahead of a client. It was common practice in the old days, but today we're all too ethical to do this stuff — unless, like Nick, we're in such a hurry that we're willing to break the rules.

  So who'd have thought it? Rory's blue-eyed boy is escorted off the floor to an interview room, where the police are waiting to talk to him. Now, normally I wouldn't spare a second thought for the dear old boys in blue, who after all earn next to nothing compared to investment bankers, and funnily enough don't live in top floor apartments around Sloane Square or eat at Colon, but this time I really admire them and wonder how they actually caught him. Apparently they were put onto him by an anonymous tip-off, but who could have known? Certainly not me, or I wouldn't have bothered to play the flower trick on him — I'd have done for him this way instead. Privately, I'm relieved, because I know he knew it was me, and he would have wanted his revenge too, and these things have a way of getting out of hand — turning into vendettas. Publicly, I'm delighted. We all are — think about it. Any nervousness that I felt about tomorrow evaporates as I think what Nick might have made. He looked as if he was onto a winner, he'd been so far up Rory's arse for the past month that only his ankles were showing, and now that money is up for grabs. This could be a great year.

  Then comes the bad news. Jean-Luc calls to say that Rory could be in trouble. Where he gets his information I can only guess, but word spreads across the floor like wildfire. Nick is going to be charged. He'll probably go to prison. There'll be no cover-up on this one, they're looking for someone to make an example of — and Nick has just been volunteered.

  Can you imagine, an investment banker going to prison? It's absurd. Even Nick doesn't deserve that — prison is for other people, ordinary people: criminals. But anyway, Rory now has to see Sir Oliver to account for what's happened. He's brought the reputation of the bank into disrepute — in a hundred and fifty years, nothing like this has ever happened before. Or at any rate, no-one's been caught, which must say something for the calibre of people we hire.

  Our moral standards are of the highest and our reputation is our greatest asset — at least that's what it says on the corporate website. Worst of all, Rory's judgement may be called into question. All of the
numbers might have to be re-visited. This is terrible.

  On the other hand, it could be great. What if Rory gets fired? What if his enormous share of the bonus pool is up for grabs? What if the board needs to find a successor in a hurry? I could do that job — and if I don't, someone else will. I glance around the desk. Has it occurred to anyone else? Let's hope not.

  Cometh the moment, cometh the man. With trembling fingers, I dial Sir Oliver's number. Amazingly, his PA says she'll put me straight through. There's a click and a faint background noise that tells me I'm on a speakerphone. Jesus, I'm playing for high stakes, but fuck it, you only live once. As I'm about to introduce myself and ask for a meeting so that I can formally offer to step into the breach and lead the team forward, a gravelly, older voice growls at me, 'Were you after me or Rory, who's sitting here beside me?'