The Crash, page 5
He grunts. I can hear phones ringing off the hook in the office behind him; they must be going into meltdown. ‘What do you want?’
‘Why did your website crash last night?’
It wasn’t the question he was expecting. ‘Why do you care?’
‘Because it contributed to the hysteria that caused the bank run.’
‘You caused the hysteria,’ he says. Then, grudgingly, ‘But it was certainly inconvenient that customers couldn’t log in to find out what was happening.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Off the record? No attribution, not even to “bank sources”?’
I sigh. ‘Sure.’
‘No idea. We increased server capacity just a few weeks ago, and stress-tested the site against a surge in customer activity. So we don’t know what caused the shutdown. We’re looking into it.’
‘Can you let me know when you have an answer?’ Sam’s response is a noncommittal exhalation. ‘Look, I know I am not your favourite person, but I want to tell this story fairly and accurately.’
‘Better late than never.’
It’s one of those days when I seem to be on air more or less every minute. An hour and a half later, after the Six O’Clock News has broadcast my package and I’ve done a live with George Alagiah, I am in the News Channel studio, being grilled by the anchor, Brian Radford, about whether NewGate’s problems are a one-off or whether we can expect other banks to get into trouble. I am trying to convey that NewGate’s overreliance on bond markets made it more vulnerable to collapse than other banks, while also making clear that what’s happened today is the beginning of a story, not the end.
‘So you are saying that we may see other banks get into difficulties,’ says Brian, in his clipped public-school English.
Janice’s warning repeats in my head. Don’t cut corners and choose your words carefully. ‘The closure of the bond markets is hugely important, Brian. But most banks have other sources of finance.’ What can I say that isn’t going to set hares running? As usual, I am not wearing an earpiece and am therefore not hearing the gallery. But I can see Brian taking in information from the programme editor, through talkback, and reading a screen set underneath the tinted glass table at which we’re sitting.
‘We’re briefly going to the weather,’ Brian tells viewers, ‘and then we’ll have more on the NewGate crisis from our business editor, Gil Peck.’
The programme cuts to the weather studio. Brian turns to me. ‘Gil, the editor has asked if you can stay to talk about a breaking news story.’
‘What is it?’
‘Death of a director of the Bank of England. Apparently police have found a body in West London.’
What has he just told me? No time to think.
‘Welcome back. Our business editor Gil Peck is here. But first, let’s go to our reporter Dan Hillman, who is outside the Bank of England with some breaking news.’
Hillman is where I’ve stood and recorded lives and pieces to cameras innumerable times, on the pedestrianised triangle between Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, to the right of Royal Exchange. The white, prison-like facade of the Bank is immediately behind him.
‘Thanks, Brian. I’m here because the Bank of England has just announced what, in its words, is shocking and upsetting news, the death of a director, and one of its rising stars.’
His words are daggers of ice.
‘Marilyn Krol, who was director of financial stability, has been found dead in her home.’
Chapter 4
M
ARILYN KROL, WHO WAS DIRECTOR of financial stability, has been found dead in her home.
I know what the words mean and yet I don’t understand them. It’s as though I am listening to a language both familiar and incomprehensible. Each individual word – Marilyn, dead, home – is one I recognise. But as a collection they make no sense.
‘This is a developing story and not much more is known about the circumstances of her death,’ says Hillman. ‘We’ve asked the Met Police for more information and will keep you updated. In its statement, the Bank said, “Marilyn Krol was an outstanding public servant. Her death is a tragedy for her family, friends and colleagues.”’
She didn’t have family, you arsehole.
Brian picks up and turns to me. ‘Gil, you would have known Marilyn Krol, I assume?’
I spoke to her this morning. We had sex a few days ago.
I’ve lost the power to articulate thoughts. Brian has seen many reporters freeze over the years, it’s just one of those things that happens. He covers up my silence. ‘As Dan has just told us, this is profoundly shocking news. As business editor, what is your assessment?’
Finally I can speak, but I hear myself as though I am listening to a stranger. ‘Yes, Brian. Marilyn Krol was a high-flyer at the Bank of England, tipped by some as a future Governor, potentially the first ever female Governor. I did know her, had known her for many years. Her death will send shockwaves beyond the City. She was a close advisor to the former prime minister Johnny Todd, both when he was leader of the opposition and after he entered Number 10. She was widely credited with a central role, alongside Todd, in transforming the Labour Party of the mid-1990s into Modern Labour, which of course won that landslide ten years ago.’
Marilyn is dead. She’s dead. Kill me now, kill me now, kill me now. I should have chanted my spell before the news was announced, and maybe they’d have said somebody else had died. It’s too late for Marilyn. It’s too late for me.
In his treacly Old Harrovian accent, Brian is wrapping up this segment of the news hour, and is handing over to the sports presenter. At last. This will give me space to escape. The studio manager signals for me to make a swift exit. Brian takes off his spectacles and turns to me. ‘You OK, Gil? I’ve never known you dry up like that.’
I am in a kind of trance, barely registering what’s happening. ‘Truthfully, I was taken aback by the Marilyn Krol news. I’d known her for a while. Wasn’t expecting it.’
‘It’s awful,’ says Mary, the studio manager. ‘You take care of yourself, Gil.’
The sports presenter is saying something about Manchester United’s slow start to the season as I take off my lapel mic and hand it to her. I fetch the Brompton from my office. I know where I have to go.
As I leave Television Centre, the lights in the doughnut flicker on behind me. As if triggered by the same switch, there’s an urgent vibration in my pocket. On autopilot I pull out the phone, though I don’t want to speak to anyone. Well, just one person.
‘Jess?’
‘I’ve seen about Marilyn. You OK?’
‘Yes. No. Don’t know. Am processing.’ What happened? I have to know. ‘I’m going to the apartment.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m going to the apartment.’
‘You mean her apartment? You can’t. The police will be there. No one will be allowed anywhere near.’
‘I don’t care.’
I disconnect and climb on my bike. In a brain fog, I pedal south-east down Wood Lane, past unremarkable Victorian terraced houses, then left onto the Uxbridge Road. A bus pulls out. The driver sees me at the last moment, and lets me pass. Out of the corner of my eye I see his enraged swearing face. Why didn’t you just flatten me? The air is choked with car fumes, uncleansed by Shepherd’s Bush Green on my right. Drunks and tramps sprawl on benches, as though they’ve been swept down here by the plutocrats who live yards away in Holland Park’s mansions.
Across the roundabout, I am gripped by the idea that if I power up Holland Park Road to Notting Hill Gate I can still save her. I know it’s crazy, but I pedal with demonic fury. As I reach the row of unremarkable supermarkets and cafe chains, which seem anomalous surrounded by so much wealth, a left turn takes me into bankers’ paradise, new money’s invasion of what was – not so long ago – one of the most bohemian and multicultural communities. Marilyn shrewdly bought her first flat here, at a time when someone on a civil servant’s salary could afford the prices. She never left. God knows what her place is worth now, although there’s no one to care or suffer unworthy thoughts about whether they are in line to inherit – because there is no close family. Although there must be someone? Funny that I could know every inch of someone’s body, know every book she’d ever read, know what those books meant to her, and not have a clue about her closest relatives.
Her place is on the top floor of a generously proportioned, white stucco, mid-nineteenth-century townhouse, not quite large enough to be a mansion, though only a few feet shy. You probably know the ones I mean; they look like white-iced wedding cakes. From fifty yards away, I see all the furniture of an official investigation into a tragic incident: a police van, two police saloon cars and an estate, all in their yellow and blue liveries, uniformed and plain-clothes officers milling around. So many cops. No passerby can doubt something bad has happened.
The key to Marilyn’s apartment is in my rucksack, where I always keep it. I’ve had it for years: for the convenience of letting myself in, and because she had a phobia that if she left a key with the neighbours that might mean she’d have to talk to them. Helmeted, I carry my bicycle towards the portico.
From between its classical columns, a chunky uniformed constable raises his palm and directs me to stop.
‘Sorry, sir. This is a crime scene.’
‘What do you mean, a crime scene? What happened?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘Marilyn Krol was my best friend. Please can I go in?’
I feel such an idiot. I should have had a better plan. ‘I’m sorry, sir. We’re not even letting the other residents in for now. It’s forensics, you see.’
Behind me, a car pulls up. I turn to see a large BMW double-parking. The driver gets out. She runs round to the front passenger seat to open the door for a stocky, brunette, female officer, silver brocade on the navy collar, royal insignia on the epaulettes, black and white checked neckerchief. Top brass.
And, as chance would have it, someone I know.
‘Assistant commissioner Jansen,’ I say. ‘Kim.’ We were at uni-versity together, not exactly close though friendly enough. Our careers have been diverging lines, investigators whose aims only rarely align. We’ve had sporadic contact since Oxford, though not much at all since I implored her for information after my sister died.
Her stare freezes the air. ‘Peck. I should have guessed you would be here.’
She may have been in the Met for more than twenty years, but she’s as posh as ever she was. ‘I am sure you’ve already been told there’s nothing more we can tell you.’ She walks straight past me towards the front door, assuming I am trawling for tawdry facts about a tragedy.
‘Kim, I am not here as a reporter.’ I turn towards her and blurt: ‘Marilyn and I were friends. Good friends. I might be able to help you.’
I have her attention. ‘OK. I naturally assumed . . .’ She tails off. ‘The press office has been inundated with prurient calls from your colleagues.’
‘I get it. Don’t worry.’
‘There is one thing. We are struggling to find next of kin. Mum and dad. Brothers, sisters.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
Marilyn and I kept our family lives very separate from our capsuled relationship. But too drunk one night, years after we’d started sleeping together, she slurred why she found it even harder than me to forge ties with others.
‘She’s an only child, an orphan,’ I tell Kim. ‘Her parents both died when she was nineteen. Car accident. In all the years I knew her, she never mentioned relations.’
Jansen purses her lips and looks at the air above my head, for what feels an age. ‘OK. That’s a problem. You and she were close?’
I nod.
‘Can we chat off the record, not for reporting in any way? This is sensitive, and we’re still establishing the facts.’
‘That’s fine. I can’t really report on it anyway. As I’ve told you, I have a personal interest.’
‘And you won’t repeat any of this to a colleague?’
I mouth ‘No’ and shake my head.
She orders her thoughts. ‘All the evidence suggests Marilyn Krol killed herself, and obviously we want to know why.’
That horrifying idea has been going round and round my head, taunting me. I’ve been refusing to acknowledge it. ‘That’s impossible. She would never do that.’
‘Friends, loved ones, often say that in these circumstances. Lots of people commit suicide seemingly out of the blue, with no hint in advance, even to those closest to them. Sometimes it’s only afterwards you see the warning signs.’
I try to remember. Marilyn had been telling me for weeks that she was feeling overworked. But that was the whole of it. ‘We spoke first thing this morning. She had a lot on her plate. You’ll have been aware of the crisis at NewGate?’
Kim Jansen shows the hint of a smile.
‘But she was dealing with it,’ I say. ‘It was the job.’ And then something occurs to me. ‘If I’m honest, she seemed more worried about me than herself. You must have got this wrong.’
Kim is blunt. ‘You can’t hang yourself without meaning to.’
I’m caught off guard, no space to ward off a nightmare image of Marilyn’s distended neck, her face in agony. I powered here on my bike with the insane hope of cutting the rope and rescuing her. I automatically squeeze my right earlobe, harder and harder until the pain supplants the nightmare.
‘Isn’t it relatively rare for women to hang themselves?’ Jess is next to me. I don’t know when she got here – she stole up unnoticed – but she’s beside me and articulating my thoughts.
Kim’s eyes narrow. ‘Who are you?’
‘Jess Neeskens. I’m Gil’s friend. He needs support – obviously.’
I mouth ‘Thank you’ to her.
‘I’ll repeat what I said to Gil,’ says Kim. ‘I am talking to you on the basis that none of this is ever repeated. Do you agree?’ We both nod. ‘So, yes, it is more common for men to hang themselves than it is for women. But it does happen. And it certainly looks like that’s what happened in this case.’
‘Is there a note?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘So it is possible she was murdered, that it was staged to look like suicide?’
Jess shoots me a pained look. Kim’s voice softens. ‘Gil, I know this will be very hard for you. Of course I remember all our conversations about your sister. But I’ve seen too many of these. I am pretty clear this was suicide.’
I’m not convinced. I clutch my right side and inwardly chant: Murder me now, murder me now, murder me now.
‘I am really sorry to ask. But if we can’t find close family, would you be able to help us with the formal identification of the body?’
Shit. Shit. ‘Oh God. Really? I guess so. When?’
‘Tomorrow morning. Can you do that?’
I screw up my eyes. ‘OK.’
‘One of the team will be in touch.’
There is nothing to be gained from staying longer. Yet I can’t move. I am rooted to the spot, as if I can still undo Marilyn’s death. No one says anything. I look at my shoes.
‘I should have said this earlier. I am sorry for your loss,’ she says, nodding to an unseen officer over my shoulder. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’
Jess finds my hand and squeezes it. ‘Come on, Gil. We need a drink.’
*
The Ladbroke Arms decks itself out as though it’s in a prosperous country market town, rather than a part of London where the collective net worth is equivalent to that of a small African country. It’s wall-to-wall Sloanes, braying hedgies, barking investment bankers, chirruping consumer public relations executives. The scuffed wood tables, pews and cottage-style wooden chairs are rammed.
‘I’ll buy,’ I say. ‘See if there’s anywhere to sit.’
‘Sauvignon Blanc,’ she says. ‘Large.’
At the polished dark wood bar, the steward is doing his best to show he is not one of the clientele, two small golden hoops dangling from nose cartilage, ‘fuck da police’ tattooed on his left forearm.
‘I don’t suppose you have a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc?’
‘Rhetorical question?’
‘Two glasses, please.’
‘Medium or large?’
I turn around to see Jess has procured a table in the corner. ‘How large is large?’ He shows me. It’s not far off half a bottle. I have to broadcast later. But. ‘Large, please. And two bags of nuts. Not dry roasted.’
I carry the glasses to the table, retrieve the nuts from the pocket of my Paul Smith jacket, and sit. I’m crumpled, outside and in.
Jess gives me a minute to take a few gulps of wine in silence before she asks, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Maybe. Yes.’ Not the answer I was expecting to give.
‘Were you still seeing her?’
‘We never stopped. Though maybe we never started.’
The sluice gate lifts and out it all comes. ‘For a whole variety of reasons – personal, professional – we never had what the outside world would have called a proper relationship. But the attraction, the physical attraction, was intense. It never waned.’ Jess was looking straight at me, but now her eyes move to the table. Have I embarrassed her? I can’t stop though. ‘We talked all the time. About politics. About our work. But never about the two of us. We never talked about a future together. But we were together. In our own way.’
Jess tears the corner of the bag of nuts with meticulous precision. She shakes out three. ‘In all the years you two were not committing to each other, I married, had a kid, divorced, and now have a toxic relationship with my ex. And my attempts to date are a comedy classic.’
‘Well at least you tried to be normal.’
She gives a rueful half-assent.
‘Would it be wrong to smoke?’ I ask.
‘Yes. But I’m gagging.’
We’ve both given up, many times over many years. But it’s an emergency. Not the first, probably not the last. Jess goes to the bar to buy twenty Marlboro Lights, while I carry our drinks outside. There’s nowhere to sit, so we put our drinks on the window ledge and light up.
