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I shook my head. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
I gave him the short version. When I’d finished, he said flatly, “What you describe doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
I pulled out my notebook. “Can you be a bit more specific?”
Just for a moment, Murdo looked anxious. “This is off the record, right?”
“If you like.”
He nodded. “I met Miles when he joined Hardings. He was headed for the top—a golden boy. A few people thought it odd he’d moved jobs every couple of years before coming to us, but since he’d always moved to more senior positions or for a bigger salary, you could read it as smart career planning. This wasn’t long after the crash, and everything was changing—the regulators were insisting on banks setting up internal compliance departments, risk assessment experts were getting seats on the board, that kind of stuff.” Murdo took a pull of his beer. “The traders all hated it, but we could see why it was necessary. Miles’s specialty was spotting gaps in the new regulations and gaming them. Nothing wrong with that, of course—it was what we were paid to do. And ultimately, if Compliance was happy, fine.”
“But Miles went further?”
Murdo nodded. “In that environment, it was all too easy to start thinking, How do I package this so Compliance approves it, even though I know it’s actually against the rules? At the end of the day, they were just another bunch of muppets you had to outsmart. And Miles was good at it. He was a bloody professional banker—focused, driven, with an unbelievable work ethic, but he never got stressed or shouted at people. And believe me, that’s unusual—trading’s a high-pressure environment. He was put in charge of a team, and although he drove them pretty hard, they all seemed to like him.”
“So what happened?”
“Rogue trading,” Murdo said shortly. “We were both working with complex equity derivatives that most people in the bank couldn’t even spell, let alone understand. But essentially, if you made a bet on a particular asset rising, you had to hedge it by making a bet on another asset that could be counted on to move in the opposite direction. That way, you limited the bank’s risk, so you were allowed to make a bigger initial bet. It’s a bit like taking out an insurance policy against your house burning down—it means you can risk buying a bigger house than you otherwise could. Miles had found a way to make the risky trade without taking out the insurance, by making fictitious hedges. To begin with, he mostly got his bets right, which meant huge profits for his desk. He concealed the source by making more trades, and so on and so on. It was crazy, really—he was bound to get found out eventually. In the event, it was a whistleblower—someone on his team who wasn’t quite as brainwashed as the others.”
“And Miles got fired?”
“In the end, yes. But before that, there was an investigation. That was the first I knew of it—when the audit people started crawling all over him. The sensible thing to do at that point would have been to clear his position, deny everything, and keep his head down. But he didn’t.” Murdo shook his head in disbelief. “He came to me after work one day and casually asked if I’d set up a trading account he could use, now the heat was on him. As a fellow Mayfly, he said, he knew he could trust me. I told him I’d have to be mad to do that—I’d end up getting dragged into it, too. He just laughed and said, ‘Well, why not? This is the most fun I’ve had in ages.’ He was actually enjoying the whole damn thing. It was as if he thought he was invincible.”
“So you refused to help?”
Murdo nodded. “But the bastard told the investigators I’d been part of it anyway. There was absolutely no truth to it, of course. But I knew I was under a shadow after that, so I left.”
“When was all this?”
“Just over two years ago.”
About the same time David and Theo were in hospital. “And what about the Mayflies? He left the team because of a knee injury, I heard?”
Murdo snorted. “Who told you that? He got thrown out because he took it too damn seriously.”
“In what way?”
“Look—we’re a pub team. A bunch of guys who all played at a decent level at university and aren’t quite ready to hang up our boots. Miles became captain because no one else wanted it. And to be fair, because he was the best player. But he hated losing—just hated it. Pretty soon he was giving us prematch pep talks. We even had to chant stuff out loud—‘Desire. Hurt. Dominate. Destroy,’ that kind of thing. That one was actually an England dressing room chant from the 2003 World Cup, but we played in a Sunday league, for Christ’s sake. And then, in one match, when we were losing sixteen to twelve, there was a scrum in our half near the touchline and Miles gouged out the opposing player’s eye with his thumb. The poor guy had to go straight to hospital and have the rest of it removed—he’s got a glass eye now. Miles didn’t even apologize to him. We took a vote after the game and told Miles he was out. He just shrugged. It was weird, really. He went all quiet and still, almost blank, and said, ‘You’re losers anyway. I’m bored of the lot of you.’ It was as if he’d turned into a robot.”
I nodded. “I know that voice.”
“So anyway,” Murdo said, “my advice to anyone, and the reason I agreed to meet you, is to say: Steer clear of Miles Lambert.”
“I wish I could.”
Murdo hesitated. “Look, there’s something else. It’s probably nothing, but…”
“What?”
“You know I said it was a whistleblower who first raised concerns about Miles? It’s meant to be a confidential process, but the consensus around the office was that it was a guy called Anand, a young analyst who’d only recently transferred onto the team. About a month after Miles left, Anand was out jogging when he was the victim of a hit-and-run. It was raining and visibility was bad—no one saw anything, least of all Anand. He broke his pelvis in five places—he was lucky not to be killed. There was no evidence it was anything to do with Miles. But put it this way, a few of us Mayflies took to running in pairs for a while after that.”
I thought of Jane Tigman, knocked off her bike after complaining about Theo.
“I don’t think it’s nothing,” I said slowly. “I think it’s what he does.”
Murdo nodded, and finished his drink. “And remember, all this is off the record. The last thing I want is Miles waiting outside my front door.”
78
Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 41. Retrieved from Maddie Wilson’s iPad internet history. Peter Riley’s laptop was in police custody at the time.
THE PSYCHOPATH TEST
Do you have psychopathic traits? Take our test to determine whether you share any of the characteristics of a high-functioning psychopath.
People generally take to me straightaway.
? True ? False I rarely get tongue-tied.
? True ? False I am easily bored.
? True ? False I rarely feel guilty.
? True ? False When I move jobs, I am unlikely to stay in touch with old colleagues.
? True ? False When I move towns, I am unlikely to stay in touch with old neighbors.
? True ? False If I fail at something, it is usually because I have been let down by others.
? True ? False I enjoy taking risks.
? True ? False Most of my exes are a little bit crazy.
? True ? False I don’t like to stay too long in one situation.
? True ? False When others panic, I keep a clear head.
? True ? False I don’t get bothered by the suffering of others.
? True ? False If I accidentally walked out of a restaurant without paying, I wouldn’t go back—it’s the waiter’s fault for not realizing.
? True ? False Burglars who get shot have only themselves to blame.
? True ? False I will take responsibility for something, but I will not express remorse.
? True ? False I would probably be unfaithful if I could be sure there would be no repercussions.
? True ? False I rarely cry at sad films.
? True ? False I would make an excuse to avoid going to a colleague’s funeral.
? True ? False Change excites me.
? True ? False The best decisions are often made quickly.
? True ? False I don’t get mad, I get even.
? True ? False
SCORING: Count all the TRUE boxes you have checked and deduct the number of FALSE boxes. If you have a score of more than +10, you score highly for psychopathic traits.
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MADDIE
