Читать книгу The Money Makers - Harry Bingham - Страница 31

It’s a common problem amongst bankers. You work hard all day. You come home tired as a dog in a heatwave. Then when at last you collapse into bed, you can’t even sleep. Worse still, you do sleep and your dreams are full of the rubbish you’ve spent your day with. Numbers walk past in an endless stupid procession. You’re no longer you. You’re just a cursor flashing in a crowded spreadsheet, roving up and down, sorting out numbers, the last traffic cop left alive in Gridlock City.

It was three o’clock in the morning and Zack threw off the covers. He groaned. Outside there was a distant whistle of traffic from Camden High Street and the sound of a milk float clinking. Zack tried to let the sounds drift in and over the clickety-click of marching numbers.

He put the light on, splashed water on his face, then decided to have a shower. Maybe that would wash the rubbish away. He stood under the jet of water and scrubbed himself with the Boots aromatherapy shower gel which Josephine had given him for his birthday. It was a rather pointed present, bought for less than a tenner – Josie’s way of reminding him that she was struggling to cope. Damn her. She’d quit complaining when Zack saved their father’s fortune single-handedly. When she had a few million quid in her pocket – money which Zack would have put there – she could buy him a decent present. The purple gel (‘Refreshing and Relaxing’) dripped off Zack’s bony figure under the spray. Numbers still chattered, but not as much.

He threw on a dressing gown stolen from the New York Plaza in happier days, and padded into the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge except a yoghurt past its sell-by date. He opened it and sniffed it. It smelled OK. What’s the difference between a yoghurt pot and Australia? The yoghurt’s got a living culture. Ha, ha. Zack ate the yoghurt and stared at the lid. The sell-by date. More numbers. He’d be dreaming about the bar code next. If he scrabbled around in the dustbin he could probably find a till receipt to read.

He went back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Sarah Havercoombe seemed completely indifferent to him and, besides, she was engaged to be married. Coburg’s was beginning to bore him and he wasn’t close to his million pounds. He didn’t even know how he was going to make it. Meanwhile, Matthew was on Wall Street learning to trade, and George was god-knows-where doing god-knows-what. Maybe Josie was right, maybe they were all a pack of fools. Still, there didn’t seem to be much else to do except try. Go on trying until they’d reached their sell-by date.

Why was that phrase in his head so much? Sell-by date. The numbers had gone, but the phrase stayed. Probably something to do with that blasted Aberdeen Drilling data room. All those piles of contracts and accounts. Random phrases stuck around just like the numbers. Zack got into bed again and turned off the light. The yoghurt sat in his stomach feeling funny. It probably had been off. He tried to sleep. Sell-by date. Sell-by date.

Five minutes later, he threw off the covers and turned the light back on. Frowning with concentration, he began to bring a page from the data room into his mind’s eye. The page came, blurry at first, then in sharp focus: ‘Standard Warranties for Consultancy-type Agreements’. Zack read the words below the title. It was drafted in legal language so dense you could saw it into blocks and build with it, but to Zack the meaning was clear. He brought another page to mind. It appeared, then cleared, like the one before: ‘Insurance Arrangements: Provisions and Exclusions’. Zack gazed at the remembered page. Things were becoming clear. No wonder he couldn’t sleep. Just one more check to make: ‘Schedule of Principal Consultancy Projects, 1988–98’. The page began to clear, but Zack hardly needed to look at it to know what it said.

He turned off the light and slept like a baby.