فصل 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ed

The Stag and Hounds B and B wasnt listed in any accommodations guides. It had no Web site, no brochures. It wasnt hard to work out why. The pub sat alone on the side of a bleak, windswept moor, and the mossy plastic garden furniture that stood outside its gray frontage suggested an absence of casual visitors or, perhaps, the triumph of hope over experience. The bedrooms, apparently, were last decorated several decades previously—they bore shiny pink wallpaper, lace curtains, and a smattering of china figurines in place of anything useful, like, say, shampoo or tissues. There was a communal bathroom at the end of the upstairs corridor, where the fixtures were an ancient green and ringed with lime scale. A small box-shaped television in the twin room deigned to pick up three channels, each of those with a faint static buzz. When Nicky discovered the plastic doll in a crocheted wool ball dress that squatted over the loo roll, he was awestruck. “I actually love this, he said, holding her up to the light to inspect her glittery synthetic hem. “Its so bad its actually cool.

Ed couldnt believe places like this still existed. But he had been driving for a little more than eight hours at forty m.p.h., the Stag and Hounds was twenty-five pounds per night per room—a rate even Jess was pleased with—and they were happy to let Norman in.

“Oh, we love dogs. Mrs. Deakins waded through a small flock of excitable Pomeranians. She patted her head, on which a carefully pinned structure sat. “We love dogs more than humans, dont we, Jack? There was a grunt from somewhere downstairs. “Theyre certainly easier to please. You can bring your lovely big fella into the snug tonight, if you like. My girls love to meet a new man. She gave Ed a faintly saucy nod as she said this.

She opened the two doors and waved a hand inside.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls, youll be right next door to your children. Youre the only guests tonight, so it should be nice and quiet. We have a selection of cereals for breakfast or Jack will do you egg on toast. He does a lovely egg on toast.

“Thank you.

She handed him the keys, held his gaze a millisecond longer than was strictly necessary. “Im going to guess you like yours . . . gently poached. Am I right?

Ed glanced behind him, checking that she was addressing him.

“I am, arent I?

“Um . . . however they come.

“However . . . they . . . come, she repeated slowly, her eyes not leaving his. She raised one eyebrow, smiled at him again, then headed downstairs, her pack of small dogs a moving hairy sea around her feet. From the corner of his eye he could see Jess smirking.

“Dont. He dropped their bags onto the bed.

“I bags first bath. Nicky rubbed at the small of his back.

“I need to study, said Tanzie. “I have exactly seventeen and a half hours until the Olympiad. She gathered her books under her arm and disappeared into the next room.

“Come and give Norman a walk first, sweetheart, Jess said. “Get some fresh air. Itll help you sleep later.

Jess unzipped a holdall, and pulled a hoodie over her head. When she lifted her arms, a crescent of bare stomach was briefly visible, pale and oddly startling. Her face emerged through the neck opening. “Well be gone for at least half an hour. Or we . . . could make it longer. As she adjusted her ponytail, she glanced toward the stairs and lifted an eyebrow at him. “Just . . . saying.

“Funny.

He could hear her laughing as they disappeared. Ed lay down on the nylon bedspread, feeling his hair lift slightly with static electricity, and pulled his phone from his pocket.

—

“So heres the good news, said Paul Wilkes. “The police have completed their initial investigations. The preliminary results show no obvious motive on your side. There is no evidence that you extracted a profit from Deanna Lewis or her brothers trading activities. More pertinent, there is no sign that you made any money at all from the launch of SFAX other than the same share gains that would be made by any employee. Obviously, there would be a higher proportion of profit, given your overall shareholding, but they can find no links to offshore accounts or any attempt to conceal on your side.

“Thats because there were none.

“Also, the investigating team says that they have uncovered a number of accounts in Michael Lewiss familys names, which suggests a clear attempt to conceal his actions. They have obtained trading records that show he was trading a large volume immediately prior to the announcement—another red flag for them.

Paul was still talking but the signal was patchy, and Ed struggled to hear him. He stood and walked over to the window. Tanzie was running round and round the pub garden, shrieking happily. The small yappy dogs were following her. Jess was standing, her arms folded, laughing. Norman was in the middle of the space, gazing at them all, a bemused, immovable object in a sea of madness. He put his hand over his other ear. “Does that mean I can come back now? Is it sorted out? He had a sudden vision of his office a mirage in a desert.

“Hold your horses. Heres the less-good news. Michael Lewis wasnt just trading stocks he was trading options on the stock.

“Trading what? He blinked. “Okay. Youre now speaking Polish.

“Seriously? There was a short silence. Ed pictured Paul in his wood-paneled office, rolling his eyes. “Options allow a trader to leverage his or, in this case, her investment, and generate substantially more in profits.

“But what does that have to do with me?

“Well, the level of profits he generated from the options is significant, so the whole case moves up a gear. Which brings me to the bad news.

“That wasnt the bad news?

Paul sighed. “Ed, why didnt you tell me youd written Deanna Lewis a damn check?

Ed blinked. The check.

“She cashed a check written by you for five thousand pounds to her bank account.

“So?

“So, and here, from the elaborately slow and careful tenor of his voice, it was possible to picture the eyes roll again, “it links you financially to what Deanna Lewis was doing. You enabled some of that trade.

“But it was just a few grand to help her out! She had no money!

“Whether or not you extracted a profit from it, you had a clear financial interest in Lewis, and it came just before SFAX went live. The e-mails we could argue were inconclusive, but this means its not just her word against yours, Ed.

He stared out at the moorland. Tanzie was jumping up and down and waving a stick at the slobbering dog. Her glasses had gone askew on her nose and she was laughing. Jess scooped her up from behind and hugged her.

“Meaning?

“Meaning, Ed, defending you just got a whole lot tougher.

—

Ed had only utterly disappointed his father once in his whole life. Thats not to say he wasnt a general disappointment—he knew his father would have preferred a son who was more obviously in his own mold upright, determined, driven. A sort of filial marine. But he managed to override whatever private dismay he felt at this quiet, geeky boy, and decided instead that as he so clearly couldnt sort him out, an expensive education would.

The fact that the meager funds their parents saved over their working years sent Ed to private school and not his sister was the great Unacknowledged Resentment of their family. He often wondered whether, if they had known then what a huge emotional hurdle they were planting in front of Gemma, they still would have done it. Ed never could convince her that it was purely because she was so good at everything that they never felt the need to send her. He was the one who spent every waking hour in his room or glued to a screen. He was the one who was hopeless at sports.

But no, against all available evidence, Bob Nicholls, former military policeman and later head of security for a small northern building society, was convinced that an expensive minor private school, with the motto “Sports maketh the man, would maketh his son. “This is a great opportunity were giving you, Edward. Better than your mother or I ever had, he said repeatedly. “Dont waste it. So at the end of Eds first year, when he opened the report, which used the words disengaged and lackluster performance and, worst of all, not really a team player, he stared at the letter as Ed watched uncomfortably while the color drained from his face.

Ed couldnt tell him he didnt really like the school, with its braying packs of mocking, overentitled posh boys. He couldnt tell him that no matter how many times they made him run round the rugby field he was never going to like rugby. He couldnt explain that it was the possibilities of the pixelated screen, and what you could create from it, that really interested him. And that he felt he could make a life out of it. His fathers face actually sagged with disappointment, with the sheer bloody waste of it all, and Ed realized he had no choice.

“Ill do better next year, Dad, he said.

Now Ed Nicholls was due to report to the City of London police in a matter of days.

He tried to imagine the expression his father would wear when he heard that his son—the son he now boasted about to his ex-army colleagues “Of course I dont understand what it is he actually does, but apparently all this software stuff is the future—was quite possibly about to be prosecuted for insider trading. He tried to picture his fathers head turning on that frail neck, the shock pulling his weary features down even as he tried to disguise it, and his gently pursed lips as he grasped there was nothing he could say or do.

So Ed made a decision. He would ask his lawyer to prolong the proceedings as long as possible. He would throw every penny of his own money at the case to delay the announcement of his supposed crime. But he could not go to that family lunch, no matter how ill his father was. He would be doing his father a favor. By staying away he would actually be protecting him.

Ed Nicholls stood in the little pink hotel bedroom that smelled of air freshener and disappointment and stared out at the bleak moors, at the little girl who had flopped onto the damp grass and was pulling the ears of the dog as he sat, tongue lolling, an expression of idiotic ecstasy on his great features, and he wondered why—given that he was so evidently doing the right thing—he felt like a complete shit.