The Ego Has Landed (Dave Hart 3) Page 5

  The faces are different from my time – investment bankers are a pretty mobile bunch, moving from firm to firm before their bad deals catch up with them, leaving as soon as their two year guaranteed bonus periods expire to sign on somewhere else on what they hope will be better terms.

  There are twelve men and three women, which seems pretty enlightened by City standards, but then I realise that one of the women is a secretary who is taking the minutes and another is there to pour the coffee.

  Rory clears his throat. ‘Good morning. I’d like to introduce…’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ I cut across him before he can finish his sentence. ‘I think everybody knows me.’ A deathly hush descends. I like deathly hushes. They’re wondering if I’m about to hand out black bin-liners. They really have no idea. That would be far too quick.

  Rory looks flustered. This is his territory, and he wants to re-assert himself. ‘Dave, perhaps we could go round the table and the team could introduce themselves and say a few words…’

  ‘Nah.’ I cut him off with a wave of my hand. There’s a long silence. I stare around the room, looking at each of them in turn. I like long silences even more than deathly hushes. Silences can be hugely productive. They give me the chance to work out who these people are. I spot the nervous ones, the no-hopers, the arrogant ones who couldn’t give a damn, and even one who seems to find it all slightly amusing – probably already has an offer from another firm.

  I clear my throat. ‘Let me introduce two colleagues from Grossbank, Doktor Grubmann, on my left, and Doktor Kuntz on my right. They are going to assess the department’s work, its key client relationships, its skills, experience and track record, and then…’ I pause and look around the table again, ‘…and then they’ll make recommendations.’ I turn to the Mountain Troll, beside whom Rory looks like a primary schoolboy. ‘Doktor Kuntz, would you care to make a few remarks?’

  Kuntz has barely understood a word I’ve said, but Werner has briefed him on what to do next. In his deep, booming, growling voice he launches into a twenty minute speech – all of it in German – that varies between the purely aggressive and the completely totalitarian, punctuated by periodic arm waving and fist-smashing on the conference room table to illustrate a point, while Rory and the team stare in disbelief. It’s 1940 all over again, only without the RAF.

  When he finally finishes, I turn to him and nod my appreciation. ‘Thank you, Doktor Kuntz. I think that concludes the welcoming remarks.’

  Christ, I love my job.

  * * *

  THERE IS a postscript, about three months later.

  I stand watching lines of sad faces trooping out of the Bartons building. They are all carrying black bin-liners with their personal possessions, having cleared out their desks. Nice, discreet black bin-liners of the sort favoured by Human Resources people when they get to have their fifteen seconds of glory and finally nail the arrogant hot shots who have never respected them, and whom they are finally making redundant. ‘Here, take a black bin-liner and clear out your desk. Then off you go, out into the street. No one will notice. We all carry black bin-liners these days.’

  When the last person leaves the building, around eight o’clock at night, I’m filmed standing in front of the main entrance, as someone flicks a switch and the lights go out all over the building. It’s a moment of great symbolism. A hundred and fifty years of British banking tradition. London’s last chance at a home-grown global investment banking player. Stripped of its capital, all I kept was the investment management business that was housed elsewhere. The investment banking business has been written down to nothing in what some in the press have unhelpfully called a scorched earth policy.

  It’s a poignant moment, and I put a handkerchief to my cheek for the cameras, then – yeehaa! – off to celebrate in the private dining room at Colon, the in-place on the King’s Road, Chelsea, with Erica from Amsterdam and Eva from Hamburg.

  A few months later I’ll be back, in the early hours of a Saturday morning, when the City is more or less empty, the whole area cordoned off, and the building swathed in thick plastic sheeting to prevent glass or debris dispersing around the area. That’s when I get to press the button.

  We all have our demons to slay.

  Me especially.

  * * *

  I’M WALKING down the King’s Road, after paying my semi-annual visit to the flat off Sloane Square where Wendy, my avaricious ex-wife, lives with Samantha, our daughter and her meal ticket.

  By my rough calculation the visit has cost me about £300,000 – about half a peanut based on my last year’s compensation, but I’m not going to tell Wendy that. It needn’t have cost even this much, but I was always a soft touch, and I definitely don’t want Wendy and her lawyers finding out how much I’m making. Besides, it’s easier to write a cheque than actually do the whole ‘quality time’ thing. Or maybe I’m just lazier than I am greedy.

  Anyway, Wendy obviously needs holidays in Verbier (Christmas), Klosters (February half-term), the Seychelles (Easter) and Tuscany (the school summer vacation) so that Samantha can learn to ski, swim, sail, ride, etc. And now that Samantha is four, Wendy needs more help in the flat, so a second housekeeper is going on the payroll, along with various part-time tutors, and of course she really ought to have her own driver. Then there’s the question of air travel. What with all the security scares, she has to take Samantha by private jet, and so on and so forth. After an hour of this, feeling irritated and vaguely bored, I need a break and some fresh air.

  Tom is driving the Merc slowly along the pavement beside me, the Range Rovers are in convoy, and the Meat Factory are with me, Scary Andy on my left and Arnie the Terminator on my right, with the rest of the team around us. It’s a sunny day and we’re all wearing sunglasses to go with our suits and ties. It could be a scene straight from Reservoir Dogs.

  Anywhere else in the world we’d get curious looks, but this is the King’s Road, Chelsea, and most of the people who live around here are just like me – they live in their own social exclusion zone. If a stranger isn’t famous or useful, they ignore him.

  As we amble slowly along, we come to a series of pavement cafes. At the first one, a pretty young woman with strawberry blonde hair is trying to negotiate a path for her pushchair between the tables. She’s slim, with small breasts and she’s wearing a short denim skirt and a simple t-shirt. There’s a weedy management consultant type dressed in new media black, even down to his collarless shirt and dark glasses, sitting alone at a table, tapping into one of those neat, rinky-dink little laptops that people like that can never be without, and he’s blocking her path. Naturally, he carries on tapping, pausing only to sip his decaf espresso. Jerk. It gets worse. A waiter appears and waves to her. ‘No, madam. You can’t come in here with the pushchair. We don’t have room. You’ll have to collapse it.’

  He’s an olive-skinned, vaguely handsome garlic belt European with a slightly dodgy accent and he really pisses me off.

  I stop. We all stop. The Meat Factory follow my glance and stare at the waiter. I really don’t give a shit about the stupid woman and her pushchair, but it pisses me off when people piss me off. I remove my sunglasses and step forward so that I’m standing in front of the waiter and he can’t ignore me. I pause and look him in the eye, saying nothing. He looks uncertain. His uncertainty visibly increases when Arnie and Scary Andy step forward and stand on either side of me. I lean close to him, so close that he probably thinks I’m going to kiss him. The woman has stopped trying to get her pushchair past the management consultant and is watching what is going on. I whisper in the waiter’s ear.

  ‘Why don’t you go fold some napkins?’

  It’s a wonderful moment. The Sopranos meet the King’s Road, Chelsea. Guess who blinks first. As the waiter scurries off to the back of the café, I hear the door of the Merc slam and Tom appears beside me.

  I nod towards the management consultant, who is tapping into his little machine just a bit too studiously. />
  ‘Tom, could you help this gentleman to get out of the lady’s way?’

  Tom bends down and grasps the man’s chair on either side, and lifts it – and him – up into the air and places them on top of the table. The guy shouts ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ in a terrified, squeaky sort of voice, and hangs onto his laptop and the edge of the chair. Then he’s no longer sitting at the table, but on it. Strange how a few extra feet of elevation can change a man from Cool to Pratt. A couple of Sloane Ranger types walk past and laugh. I nod in their direction. ‘Installation art.’ This cracks them up even more.

  The woman with the pushchair has decided it’s best to leave. I pass Tom a wad of notes. ‘See if you can get the lady a table at the place next door.’

  She’s not sure how to respond. ‘It’s all right, actually I…’

  ‘I insist. You shouldn’t have to put up with crap like that. Let me buy you a coffee.’ I give her what I hope is a dazzling smile. She’s actually quite pretty, with definite possibilities. I look down at the child in the pushchair. ‘And what’s your name?’

  The woman is flustered, unsure whether to get the hell out of Dodge or be charmed. ‘Her name’s Ruth. She’s nearly two.’

  ‘Fantastic age. Come on, let’s go next door and have that coffee. I’m gasping for one. My name’s Dave, by the way, Dave Hart.’

  ‘I’m Paula. Paula Hayes.’ We shake hands, and she has a delightfully powerful grip. I’m a sucker for a woman with a firm grip.

  We leave the dork to climb down by himself and go next door for a coffee. Christ, I’m nice. If I was this nice all the time, even I might start to like me. I ask more about the baby, and coo and gurgle at her, and I ask about Paula, what she does (nothing, she lives in Chelsea), where in Chelsea she lives (just off Sloane Avenue) and finally, having spotted her wedding ring, what her husband does.

  ‘Sean’s a banker.’

  ‘Really? Small world. I’m in banking too. What area does he work in?’

  ‘Syndicated loans. Please don’t ask me to explain. I have no idea what it is he actually does.’

  ‘Syndicated loans? You’re kidding – is that the Sean Hayes?’ She shrugs, embarrassed, not sure how to respond. Actually I’ve never heard of Sean Hayes, and have no interest at all in syndicated loans. But I am interested in her. I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out a business card, which I slide across the table. ‘I run Grossbank in London, Sean will have heard of me. We’re desperate to hire a new head of syndicated loans.’ At least we will be as soon as I get into the office and fire whoever it is who runs syndicated loans at the moment. ‘We’re paying top dollar.’ She reaches out to pick up the card and I place my hand on hers. ‘You will promise to get him to call me, won’t you?’ She blushes and gently pulls her hand away.

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  I smile and lean forward, looking her straight in the eye. ‘You see? We were meant to meet.’

  Awesome. I try to imagine her face when she’s having an orgasm. I always do this with women. I think she’d be a screamer, or at least she would be once I’d had my way with her.

  I signal the waitress to come over. ‘Check, please.’

  The waitress is late teens, Eastern European, slightly dumpy with a spotty complexion. No possibilities there. I hold out my Grossbank corporate Amex card, and she plugs it into a portable credit card reader.

  ‘Two coffees, nine pounds fifty pence.’

  I tap my PIN number into the machine, and when it prompts me to give a tip, I tap in ten thousand pounds, press Enter and hand it back to the waitress. She’s pressed the button and a receipt is printing out before she realises what I’ve done.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I think there is some mistake.’

  I shake my head. ‘No mistake, just one condition.’

  ‘One condition?’ She looks dubious. I look her up and down. Nah, she must be kidding.

  ‘The condition is that you show it to the wanker who runs the place next door.’

  Beside me, Paula Hayes can’t stop laughing.

  * * *

  I’M SITTING in traffic on Piccadilly, my little convoy half way to the bank, caught in another snarl-up that just goes to show how ineffective the congestion charge has been in clearing the riff-raff off the streets of London. It may surprise you to know that I’m a huge supporter of the Green agenda. I want road pricing, congestion charging and higher petrol prices, and all as soon as possible. Drive the poor off the roads. Motoring should be the privilege of the rich. And as for air travel, even more so. Half the problem at airports is all the tourists going on holiday, the vast fungible masses moving around the world, taking their lager swilling, fish-and-chip habits to ruin beautiful places. Why can’t they just stay at home and lie on the sofa watching day-time TV, ThickTalk with Jessy Swinger, or the latest reality zoo-show?

  By the time I get to the bank I’m in a foul mood.

  I’m worried that some people are starting to think I’m nuts. Or maybe I just think they do. Maybe I’m paranoid. It could be the drugs. And I think I’m getting predictable. In investment banking, predictable is dangerous. It means you’re losing your edge. The other day I was chairing a Management Committee – I had nothing better to do – and we were discussing what to do with operations staff who have been at Grossbank for twenty-five years. Fire them, I hear you say, but you’re wrong. Back office staff who stay in one place are good news. They give you continuity while all the hot shot front office revenue-generators come and go through the revolving doors.

  Anyway, someone suggested we give them classy watches – Rolex or Patek, say – and someone else suggested we send them on holiday with their wives – a couple of weeks in a villa in Spain. Can you believe that I’m dealing with this stuff? Such is the burden of leadership.

  Anyway, I said bullshit, we should hire a stretch limo full of hookers and champagne and send them off for a night on the town. At least they’d remember it – well, maybe. Paul Ryan objected.

  ‘Come on, Dave, we can’t do that. We’re a respectable firm.’

  I looked at him and replied, ‘Yes we can. We’re Grossbank, and we can do anything.’ And do you know what? They all mouthed the words in time with me. Predictable, or what?

  If I don’t re-invent myself soon, I’m toast.

  Today I’m due to be briefed by some young guys who are working on a pitch for a major piece of business in the Middle East. We want to win the mandate for the stock market flotation of a state-owned oil producer controlled by the Sultan of Dahar. I’m doing this one personally, to show the bank’s commitment to the business. Or at least I’ll be wheeled in to perform some ceremonial, and with any luck as the Senior Resource on the deal, I won’t blow it – what investment bankers call a ‘blue on blue’ – by getting the name of the company wrong or thinking it’s a hotel business or a ball-bearing manufacturer.

  The team are led by one of our young Turks, a Brit called Mike Hanlan, only five years out of university – a Cambridge rowing blue – and are all high-testosterone, pumped-up types except for a bookish, young woman with glasses, short sandy hair and freckles, who looks like she should be a librarian rather than an investment banker. Even sitting down she’s very tall – I guess over six feet – and somehow looks out of place with the guys. She’s slightly stooped, the way tall people sometimes are when they are too conscious of their height. There’s an undercurrent of tension in the room as I come in. We run through the presentation, I make appropriate noises, and she says very little, though whenever there’s some additional follow-up work to do, it seems to get pushed her way. When we’re done, I push back my chair and stare at them.

  ‘Good effort, guys, but you’ve forgotten one thing.’

  Hanlan’s immediately on the defensive. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The human element.’

  Still they look dumbly back at me.

  ‘The Sultan’s got notorious… appetites.’

  ‘Appetites?’

  I nod and gaze
across at the librarian. I bet she doesn’t get laid that often. Maybe not at all. ‘When he comes over to London for the presentations, he’s going to want… entertaining. That’s where we have an opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the competition.’ I stare at her, poker-faced.

  She blushes and the others nudge each other and try not to laugh. Finally she takes a deep breath and fixes me with an icy stare. I like her more this way. At least she has guts. ‘Exactly what sort of entertainment do you have in mind, Mister Hart?’

  I look straight back at her, equally icy. ‘Whatever it takes.’ I turn and look at the guys. ‘We do this for the firm.’ They are nodding their agreement now, enjoying this unexpected turn of events. ‘We’re committed.’ I turn to Hanlan. ‘Aren’t we, Mike?’

  He gives an emphatic ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We want to win and we’ll go the extra mile – or more…’

  She looks as if she’s about to burst into tears. I put on a puzzled look.

  ‘You seem upset. What’s the problem?’

  Far from crying, she’s bursting with anger. I like her more and more. ‘Mister Hart, I will not be used as some piece of corporate meat for the sake of winning this or any other business.’

  Hanlan can’t resist. ‘But it’s for the firm. Think of the fees, the bonus…’

  I nod my agreement. ‘Exactly. And besides, it’s not as if it’s you who’s being asked to make the sacrifice.’

  She looks up, puzzled.

  ‘The Sultan’s gay. It’s Mike here who’ll be going the extra mile.’ I get up, smiling, and slap Hanlan on the shoulder. ‘Way to go, Mike. I’ll let you know when and where you’re needed.’

  He’s staring at me, suddenly rather pale. I turn to the others. ‘We may need more of you than just Mike. Depends what the Sultan wants on the night. I’ll find out and let you know. Think of yourselves as Team Harem, and remember, you’re doing this for Grossbank. Think of the bonus, guys.’

  I leave the room with an unaccustomed spring in my step. Christ, I’m good. The only question now is whether to get Dan Harriman to black up and tie a sheet around his head in a hotel suite in Mayfair, so we can film Mike and the guys doing the dance of the seven veils for the Christmas party.