Magestic 1 Read online

  ‘That’s my ex-boyfriend and his mates,’ the first girl whispered at some point, a nod towards the other end of the bar.

  ‘Not to worry, and not a problem,’ Jimmy quietly and confidently assured her, not even bothering to scan the would-be troublemakers.

  I, on the other hand, was worried and glanced their way, a bit too obvious. Now the former Romeo knew we were discussing him, maybe even the size of his dick. Judging by the size of the rest of him - it could well have been a whopper. We were in trouble. Dave was no fighter, and I preferred the run very fast approach to these things.

  ‘I think your ex is still interested,’ I suggested to the girl.

  ‘He’s such a wanker,’ she came back with, shaking her head. ‘Watch out for flying bottles.’

  ‘Shall we … eh … go somewhere else?’ I suggested. ‘Curry maybe?’ That was a bad idea, I just remembered, since I couldn’t have even stuffed a packet of crisps into my bursting abdomen.

  ‘Sounds good,’ Jimmy enthused, a budding world champion at face stuffing; fella had the size to squeeze it into. Outside, in the cool night air and smoke free environment, Jimmy said, ‘Start walking, I’ll be a step or two behind you.’

  With curious frowns, the four of us plodded slowly towards the local curry house, Jimmy trailing behind. We could not have made ten paces before a shout caused the girls to snap their heads around; ‘wanker’ was on our trail. Jimmy waved us on as he turned to face six angry men. We took a step, before what was left of our chivalry caused us to stop and turn, and to wait.

  ‘You six gentlemen must be the local mutual masturbating society,’ Jimmy offered them. I turned my head to Dave. As far as tactics for diffusing situations like this went, it was a first for me. Dave and I exchanged worried looks.

  Neither of us had seen someone move like that. To kick a man across the bonnet of a car, another through a plate glass window. In the time it took me to take three small steps, there were six unconscious men sprawled on the pavement and road. And Jimmy, he stepped casually towards us combing his hair.

  ‘So … curry?’ he said as he joined us.

  Stunned, we fell into step with him and plodded on, numerous glances back. The second girl was most impressed, and linked arms with Jimmy, a come-on smile spread across her face. It was clue number two, number three if you included his very deep pockets. We rounded the corner, and ducked into a curry house just as flashing blue lights flickered by. The waiter offered us a table by the window, but Jimmy - ever the tactical thinker - chose one at the rear, me and him sat with our backs to the wall in an alcove. If the local coppers had looked in they would have seen the girls and Dave, probably not clocking us. I was getting suspicious of Jimmy, pleasantly suspicious. Was he a junior trader like me, or a secret agent of some sort?

  Jimmy faced me. ‘Why don’t you guys just have some drinks, soft drinks, sober up a bit so that after this we can hit Stringfellows. I know the head doorman, get us all in.’

  It was a plan I liked the sound of. Jimmy stuffed down a curry with the girls, God knows how he had the room for it, as me and Dave sipped shandys. And the odd thing about the big fella - he let me and Dave take the lead with the ladies, always managing to put himself down and play us up. He was helping me out like the big brother I never had.

  At Stringfellows we found a monster of a winding queue, and it had just started to rain, but we walked right past everyone. I noticed Jimmy fold a note into his palm before he shook hands with a doorman, who seemed to recognise him. The note changed hands with practised ease and I was back to thinking about secret agents again, as well as how little money I had on me, since drinks in here had to be pricey. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than Jimmy gave me four tens without the girls noticing. Back then forty quid was a lot, especially for a night out.

  ‘Pay me back when you can,’ he whispered as we headed towards the VIP area. He stopped at the bouncer policing the VIP area entrance, another handshake and some whispered words in an ear. We were in, and rubbing shoulders with football players and TV stars. I rubbed my hands with glee.

  Little more than an hour later and Dave was done, well done and wobbling. Someone had given him a half-drunk bottle of champagne, mistakenly believing him to have just won some international award, and he had finished it off. Jimmy grabbed a bouncer and gave him some notes, telling him to stuff Dave in a taxi - whilst placing our address in Dave’s lapel pocket. Smooth, real smooth.

  Suddenly, Jimmy and the girls seemed to be getting ready to go somewhere else, a worry for me because I was struggling as it was. ‘I’ve got the use of a friend’s penthouse flat, not far,’ Jimmy told me. ‘C’mon, let’s get you some fresh air.’

  We took a taxi around to Belgravia, pulling up in front of a very posh set of marble pillars, a doorman coming out to greet us, a strange fella in a long green coat and green top hat.

  ‘Evening, Jimmy,’ the man offered, holding open a set of glass doors.

  Jimmy slipped the man a note without the girls noticing as we stepped inside, the girl’s heels clattering on the marble. We took a gold coloured lift up to the tenth floor and opened to a corridor with just the one door, which I found puzzling in my drunken state. Jimmy turned a key in the door and we stepped inside, the heating already on, a champagne bottle in an ice bucket on a coffee table.

  With a frown, I touched the bottle. ‘Is he in … your mate?’

  ‘No, away working,’ Jimmy replied, slipping off his jacket. ‘We can crash here, and then go home in the morning on the tube.’

  As I stood there I was waiting for the girls to object, or to run off. I avoided eye contact with them and I waited; no objections came, no running off. Oh bloody hell - did I have clean underwear on?

  Jimmy opened a door, and said, ‘Your room. Try the balcony, get some cool air.’

  I stepped in and glanced around, almost fainting; it looked like the inside of Buckingham Palace, making me terrified to touch anything. Stepping across the vast room, I noted the en-suite bathroom before opening a glass door onto a balcony. Breathing the cool air, I tried desperately to sober up, finally turning around and closing the door to find Sophie, the girl I had spent most of the time chatting with, bouncing on the side of the bed. Something started to get hard.

  ‘Very posh,’ she joked, kicking off her shoes with scant regard for whatever they impacted with.

  ‘Er ... drink?’ I asked, taking off my jacket.

  ‘Champagne,’ she said with that look in her eye. Actually, I had very little experience of that look up to that point, but I figured it out all by myself. Back in the lounge, I found Jimmy sat alone, sipping the cooling champagne.

  ‘So?’ he asked. ‘All … OK?’

  ‘It’s like frigging Buckingham Palace,’ I said as I eased down opposite, two champagne flutes already full and fizzing. ‘What does your mate do?’

  ‘Trader, like us. Older and richer.’

  ‘Where’s your bird?’ I whispered.

  ‘Shower,’ he mouthed.

  ‘Have you got any –’

  ‘Bedside cabinet,’ he said with a grin. Easing forwards, he softly said, ‘Let me be so bold … as to offer some advice.’ I was all ears. ‘Shower together, do the business, robe on, back out here, cool off, coffee, do it again … then to sleep. Get up first, shower – smellys in there, coffee, make her a tea, do it again, give her money for cab home and get her number. Fix a provisional date for tomorrow … here.’

  ‘Money –’

  ‘Beside cabinet. Now, take the glasses and … have fun.’

  I was terrified and exhilarated, but I had been given a plan. I was even tempted to stop and write it down in case I screwed it up. As it turned out Sophie was great, not pushy, and quite understanding of my drunken state. Coffee was waiting for me in the kitchen as she lay in bed and round two was better than round one.

  In the morning, I found Jimmy reading the papers. God knows where they had come from, since I hadn’t heard anyone go out.


  ‘Well?’ he gently probed. I gave him a thumbs-up sign and a silly grin. He pointed at the second coffee mug. ‘I heard you moving. Milk ... and plenty of sugar.’ I sat. ‘Oh, if you need to take a dump then use that door there, separate small bathroom that she won’t be able to smell.’

  God he was good. I took my coffee and made a horrendous smell, extractor fan turned on. After another shower, and a firm wake-up call for Sophie, we both got dressed, finding Jimmy and his girl sat in robes.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘Starved,’ we both said.

  Jimmy checked his watch. ‘Be some food brought up in … oh, about ten minutes or so. Grab yourselves a fresh tea, it’s all laid out in the kitchen.

  It was, and the damn kitchen was as big as the bedroom. Ten minutes later a woman appeared with a trolley, leaving with only a smile and a nod; four English breakfasts and extra everything. We settled around the kitchen table and tucked in, Jimmy and me trying to explain derivatives trading to the girls, who were both secretaries up the East End somewhere. After an hour of munching, we flopped on the sofas around the coffee table and dozed, except Jimmy, who read the papers, circling a few articles. The girls eventually had to head off and change, arranging to meet back here at 8pm for dinner; Jimmy was taking us somewhere - and it was a surprise.

  With the girls gone, I said, ‘I’d better get back and get some clothes.’

  ‘In the left-most wardrobe, have a look.’

  I found shirts of all sizes still in their packets, socks, pants, even trousers and shoes. Many were my size. ‘Won’t your mate be pissed?’ I asked as I re-entered the lounge.

  ‘No, he owes me loads-a-money. Help yourself, I’ll settle it when I see him.’

  I sat, my brain starting to play catch up. ‘What do you do for McKinleys … exactly?’ Up to that point I had not even seen where he sat in the office.

  ‘Private client investments and company trades.’

  That put him about a million grades above me. ‘At your age!’ I blurted out, immediately regretting it.

  He smiled. ‘I’m very good at what I do.’

  ‘So why are you staying at my gaff, you must be on good money?’

  ‘Money’s OK, but I tend to spend it quickly. I needed a room … and you’re a trader from the firm, someone who’s not going to go through my company papers at home.’

  ‘Oh, well … yeah, naturally like.’

  Jimmy checked his watch. ‘It’s 2pm already –’

  ‘Shit!’ I said, checking mine.

  ‘So why don’t you get some sleep, and be fresh for the ladies when they return.’

  ‘You think they will, you know, come back?’

  He smiled a knowing and confident smile. ‘I’d bet good money on it.’

  ‘Right, well, er … I’ll crash out for a bit then.’ I headed for the door and stopped. ‘Thanks … you know… for all this.’

  ‘Someday you can help me out, when I need it. I’ll call Dave and see if he got home OK.’

  ‘Ah … fuck ’im,’ I said, and got some sleep in a bed so big I couldn’t touch both sides, still smelling Sophie on the pillows.

  That weekend’s format was repeated three times before we took the girls down to the coast, Jimmy borrowing his mate’s posh Mercedes. Dave got transferred to an office in Leeds for six months and so he moved out. It was just me and superman, and sometimes the girls, since they only lived a few streets away with their parents.

  One long weekend, we drove the girls across to France, to a secluded chateau that Jimmy said he read about in The Times. And I was heavily in his debt, something that was starting to weigh on my mind. We took the girls on trips down to Bournemouth and to the Cotswolds, before Sophie had to move with her family to Germany for a year. We said we’d stay in touch, but I never saw her again. By then I was cool and relaxed about the whole sex thing, and one of Jimmy’s numerous mates was teaching me to drive. I didn’t work on Jimmy’s floor, but I began to visit regular, often surprised to find the senior managers in with him having coffee; everyone treated him like he owned the damn place.

  Six months in, and Jimmy said he was going it alone, going to trade some private client funds, and would I like to join him. There was the worry about making enough money to cover my salary and to live, but Jimmy showed me a trading statement that indicated he had millions of pounds of client money under his control. I took the chance, afraid to upset him, not least because he could always sniff out a beautiful woman whose mate would shag me.

  Jimmy explained that the owner of the posh apartment had moved to Singapore for at least a year, and that he could now afford to rent it. A side room was converted to an office, and it soon housed a multi-coloured live computer feed, stock prices ticking over. The second bedroom was now my room and the side room our office; no more trains to work. Jimmy was paying me more than I had been on, no rent for the room, so my money was mounting up nicely. As was my debt to him, and my concern about it.

  My old landlord took back the house, and I threw out a lot of stuff, buying new clothes. I had to look the part, and I even thought about a pink shirt and a mobile phone. I never did get a straight answer from Jimmy about Maradona’s handball, or a bunch of other things, but life was too good to knock it. But something was always nagging at me, and for good reason.

  First day at school

  Jimmy sat me down after we got the IBM PCs set-up and running, a link to the stock exchange via a dedicated phone line.

  ‘Right,’ he began. ‘Trading: lesson 1.01. Don’t trade when you’re bored. Don’t trade because you’ve just made a mint. Don’t trade when you’ve just lost your shirt. In essence … don’t trade unless you planned it. I make good money by holding out for the right trades. I may make no trade for the next six weeks, or fifty. It depends.

  ‘If I have a feeling for which way the FTSE is going then I’ll rotate overlapping Index trades, never selling against my stock or reserves. If I have such a feeling, as I do now, I’ll tell you what I think the FTSE may do … and you can manage the small overlapping positions. That’s the trading part of what we do. There’s also investing, some of the stock tucked away for the long term; you’ll see them listed, so don’t go selling them. I’m hanging onto Microsoft, Apple Computers, and Nokia in Finland. When there are large market corrections on the downside I often pick up more stock, sometimes off-loading first.’

  I was following so far.

  Jimmy continued, ‘So … at the moment I think Unilever will break out. Watch the FTSE and Unilever, wait for the index to stop falling and start to level out, then we buy about a hundred grand’s worth of shares, not options, and hold for around six to eight weeks. I’m expecting a thirty-five to forty-five percent return.’

  I did the sums quickly in my head. It wasn’t hard. ‘Not bad for six weeks.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Read the FT, do your bits, I’m off to the gym for three hours.’ He stood.

  ‘Any totty in this gym?’ I enquired.

  ‘Some, yes. And no, you can’t come. I’ve got to have some time away from you … employee.’

  I read the papers, checked the charts, had several cups of tea and made myself scrambled eggs, and stood on the balcony a great deal. Soon, I had a work from home routine going, long before it became trendy - or even financially expedient. But also long before internet porn and music downloads.

  We hit the nightclubs Thursday through to Saturday, so we were not always in the apartment, and Jimmy disappeared for a few hours every day to the gym. But the trading was worrying me. I was starting to believe there might be some insider-dealing going on here, but Jimmy firmly denied it when I nudged. Still, we were one hundred percent right in our trades, numerous accounts set-up with half a dozen brokers so that money could be spread around. Jimmy said it was in case one went bust, but he always said it with a grin. We had made our client fund two hundred thousand pounds in eight weeks, not including investments. For the 1980s it was a shit load of money.

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nbsp; But it was not just the stock market that Jimmy was good at predicting. He also had a bad habit of predicting world events with uncanny accuracy. Looking back, I was being a bit thick, blinded by the money and the lifestyle. And the big guy often joked about crystal balls and other mumbo-jumbo stuff, joking away reasons to make trades - and anticipating what the news would bring. It was as if he wanted me to catch him out, to confront him. I was just being slow. A good salary, and a posh apartment and an endless supply of pretty girls will do that to you.

  One day I bumped into a senior trader from the old firm.

  ‘Ah, Paul, how’s it going? You learning loads from the big guy?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I said, since Jimmy had been teaching me a thing or two that I didn’t already know.

  ‘Must be great to be a trader … and a fucking clairvoyant!’ the man joked.

  As I walked off a bad penny finally dropped. I stopped in Oxford Circus and stood rigid for so long that a copper came up to me and asked me if I was OK. Back home, I found Jimmy sat reading the papers, something he spent an inordinate amount of time doing.

  ‘Er … tea?’ I asked, trying to summon up some courage.

  ‘Take a seat, Mr. Holton,’ Jimmy said without detracting from his study of some obscure war in some obscure country that I had never heard of. As I eased down, he lowered his paper. ‘Something on your mind, young man?’ He waited. I didn’t know where to start. ‘Guess you’ve been wondering about … many things. Such as … my ability to predict the future, and not just in stocks.’

  ‘It’s a bit … you know … spooky.’

  ‘But a good kind of spooky … because it makes me plenty of money, and allows me to have nice apartments and cars and the money to … well, help you live the life you’ve become accustomed to.’