For The Love Of Money - Brian Doswell (speed reading book .TXT) 📗

on his shoulder, “Call your mother.” It was not meant as a suggestion.
Andrew pressed the speed dial and waited for the call to ring out.
“Thank you mum.”
“Yes, we will come over next weekend.”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to Uncle Franz.”
“Yes, we miss you too.”
Andrew wiped the juices from his bacon sandwich from his chin with his fingers and listened with one ear while his mother explained, yet again, how much she enjoyed Peter’s children and how she looked forward to Lucy producing grandchildren. He let her ramble on while he followed the newscast, his eyes locked onto the strap line as it wheeled its relentless way across the bottom of the television screen. He waited for something new to appear. Nothing did.
On Monday morning, the usual line of familiar faces formed along the platform, all waiting to catch the 6:35. On any other day, the carriage would have been silent as its passengers grabbed a last snooze before being disgorged onto the platform at Marylebone. On this day there was a hum of conversation none of which added to the sum total of what was happening in New York.
The underground ride across town to Docklands was the usual crush of anonymous body odours and sullen tempers before emerging into the daylight. Andrew counted off the stations; Limehouse, Westferry, and West India Quay, all familiar territory.
Andrew headed for Starbucks but was distracted by the crowd of people gathered on the stylish marble-paved walkway with its embedded Coulter Brother’s logo proudly displayed outside the main doors. The doors were locked. No one in and no one out. The babble of conversation grew louder as more Coulter Brothers employees continued to arrive. Andrew hung back from the mass, looking for Ed or Alec, he could see neither. He knew their route from the station and he decided to walk towards the corner of the building intending to intercept them before they got enmeshed in the crowd.
Alec arrived on the dot of eight and headed for Coulter’s door. He had not seen Andrew and Andrew was content to let him go by. He would talk to Alec later, when he had more to tell. This was clearly time for step two of his plan, ‘Look out for number one’.
Ed Williams arrived at ten past the hour, looking grey and tired. Andrew spotted him and got to him quickly.
“Ed, what’s going on? We seem to be locked out.”
“Wall Street filed for Chapter 11 as of midnight New York time. The whole firm, world wide, is in the hands of the administrators. That’s all I know. Honest.”
“So, what does that mean?” It was a rhetorical question. Andrew had a pretty good idea what that meant. His high risk investment programmes had sent enough small businesses to the wall over the years. His mind flitted back to the Edelman deal. In a rare moment of familial concern, he hoped Uncle Franz had not signed up for the new factory space because he knew now that Edelman’s was never going to see any of the promised funds. On the other hand, Uncle Franz was still out there, there was still a deal to be had.
A car pulled into the reserved parking bay in front of the building and the driver passed a bundle of leaflets to the nearest person before speeding away again. The leaflets were passed from hand to hand.
‘From twelve o’clock onwards, groups of twenty people at a time will be allowed into the building, under escort, to retrieve personal belongings. Otherwise, the building will remain closed until further notice.’
Andrew grasped Ed’s elbow and steered him firmly towards Starbucks. Oddly, given the hour, the place was empty and all four uniformed girls at the bar turned in unison to serve them. Andrew ordered long lattés and they took the nearest table.
“There’s nothing we can do here, the brass are not going to come near the place until the dust settles, you can be sure of that.” Andrew nudged Ed expecting a response but none came.
“I reckon that we should get away from here, go home before we get pilloried in their place. I’ve got no crumbs to offer. What say you?”
Ed still did not reply and Andrew watched the last of the colour drain from the man’s face.
“Here drink some coffee.” He pushed the white china mug with its distinctive green logo towards Ed, who ignored it.
Through Starbucks windows, Andrew could see a television news van pulling into the space beside the angry crowd of Coulter Brothers employees.
“Ed. We’re going home. I don’t want to get involved with the media. This is not a good place for us at the moment, we’ll be better off somewhere that we can be on the end of a phone and I don’t think this is going to be a mobile phone conversation that I want to have in the street.”
Ed nodded and sipped his latté. Andrew looked closely into the ashen face of his department head. He had known Ed for years, they had worked together on so many deals and he had never suspected Ed to be anything other than solid granite from top to toe. His old friend appeared to be crumbling away before his eyes.
The throng around the locked doors of the Coulter building seethed like a swarm of angry bees, too engrossed in their own business to notice two senior staffers slide away towards the DLR station.
A driverless train slowed to a stop at the West India Dock platform and a West Indian conductress turned her key to open the doors with their customary hiss. Ed wandered onto the train, still looking dazed. Andrew was about to follow when the vibrating started in his pocket, he took the call.
“Hi Lucy.”
“Andrew, the bank just called, apparently the cheque for the car has crossed with the mortgage payment and there are not enough funds available. They want to know your instructions. Shall I tell them your quarterly bonus will be in at the end of the month, or do you want to call them yourself?”
“No, don’t bother; they will have seen the news. Lucy, the firm has gone bust. We’re all locked out. I don’t know for sure but I think I’m out of a job. There will be no quarterly bonus or monthly salary come to that.”
There was a loud silence on the end of the phone.
“Lucy, I didn’t want to tell you over the phone but there’s no point in hiding it. It’s all over the papers. I’ll be home soon. I’ll call you. Don’t worry, we’ll sort something out.”
He slid the phone closed and started to put it back into his pocket as the train moved away from the platform. He watched Ed’s slumped figure through dusty windows as the carriages rolled by. He had intended to catch the train but on reflection, Ed was no use to him now.
“Farewell old friend.”
He was about to wave but he remembered the phone still in his hand. He slid down the face and speed dialled the number of an old drinking pal.
“George? This is Andrew McAllister.”
“Andrew, -how you?”
“Fine thanks. I suppose you’ve seen the press this morning.”
“Looks grim, will you be OK?”
“George, do you want to make a safe five million euros before the weekend?”
“Do bears piss in the woods?”
“OK, see you for lunch at Carluccio’s, my treat. Twelve thirty OK with you?”
It was close to seven in the evening when the car rolled up the drive in Gerrards Cross. Lucy was waiting by the door. It was not in her nature to panic but today was not a natural day. She rushed out to meet Andrew before he had finished parking the car.
Lucy threw her arms around Andrew’s neck and he lifted her feet off the ground as he swung her round in their embrace.
He had already given her the details over the phone so there was little else to tell. Lunch with George Padworth had been well worthwhile. Tonight they would celebrate his appointment as Head of European Investment at Wilkinson International with an opening salary payment to be deposited immediately, followed by an estimated bonus payment at the end of the quarter, coincidentally also the end of the month. Wilkinson’s European portfolio was worth close to five billion euros so his quarterly cut would be close to a million. Four million per year would suit him nicely especially as it was to be calculated as a percentage of managed funds, regardless of the state of the market, and not geared to earnings. Wilkinson’s were keen to recruit good staff, especially as they had just received a substantial, multi-billion pound bailout from the Her Majesty’s Treasury and did not need to report back on the use of those funds until the fiscal year end in April of next year. Andrew felt quietly satisfied with his day.
European deal number one would be the purchase, break-up and disposal of a small engineering works south of Stuttgart. It would mean the end of Edelman’s after a century of specialist engineering work, tough on poor old Uncle Franz.
Andrew swung his suit jacket over his shoulder; an envelope fell from his pocket and fluttered down onto his neatly combed gravel drive.
“Good job I forgot to pass mother’s address on to Uncle Franz,” Andrew thought, “she would never understand the com-plexity of investment banking.”




Monday morning found Harry Joyce looking blankly at the screen on his desk. He had spent the weekend, well most of Sunday, playing golf at Northwood with his usual gang of four. They always played nine holes before lunch, then a full round in the afternoon, to walk off the lunch time beer. Over a forgotten number of years, the four friends had walked and talked their way through every subject you might care to mention. This weekend had been business finances. Harry’s removals business had literally grown from a hand cart shifting stuff for his dad, while he was still at school, to five vans on the road every day of the week, with a minimum of two movers on each van, three on bigger jobs.
The home base was on the edge of Ruislip, an old farmyard off North Breakspear Road, with a big old cracked concrete yard surrounded on three sides by barns that Harry had refurbished as storage units. The site had belonged to Harry’s dad, now long departed. Harry had funded each of the improvements from the cash in hand so he had never needed to talk to the bank. Coming up to forty years since Joyce & Son Removals started in business and never so much as an overdraft. A tree-lined lane screened the yard from the road and with nothing but open fields behind him, Harry had asked the council for permission to extend the site by erecting four more storage units. The Council had agreed in principle but needed full architect’s plans before anything could be considered formally.
Harry looked up from the screen, tugging at this chin with one hand and scratching his leg with the other. The wall in front of him was effectively one long notice-board covered in marker pen and post-it notes. To a stranger this wall was a mystery, to Harry it was everything he needed to know about the location of every van and every job for the next ten weeks.
Harry’s secretary Sandra, had two main jobs, keep Harry’s tea mug full from nine to five, and keep everyone else off the wall. The computer had been her idea. It certainly produced a very nice quotation letter and according to Sandra it kept the accounts and made wages easy. Meanwhile, Harry had barely mastered solitaire.
He returned to the screen. It had