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I closed and locked the door. The smell of her perfume hung in the air, a chilling reminder of her warning. At the drinks cabinet, I stared longingly at the bottles of spirits and champagne. Saliva gathered in my mouth, remembering how alcohol had temporarily solved my problems in the past. I caressed a gin bottle briefly, before grabbing a can of Coke and slamming the door.
Odell was the one person I could speak to. He’d given me an overview of investment management to help my memory return when I was in hospital. I dialled his number.
“Mr Black, how are you?” he said in his usual deferential manner, with an American drawl.
“I’m good thanks, Odell.” A pause. “Actually, I’m not that good. My amnesia’s playing up again and I need some help. Can you come to my office?”
“Sure. Just give me fifteen minutes. There’s an adolescent crypto-currency trending just now and I need to place a trade.”
True to his word, he arrived in the office I’d inherited.
“That’s a killer deal for the Rainbow Funds,” he said, his huge white teeth beaming. He wore a suit and shirt, but no tie.
“Rainbow Fund?”
“Yes, you know?”
“At the moment, I don’t feel like I know anything, Odell. Everything’s a complete blank. I had Cassandra in here half an hour ago accusing me of being someone else. The damn amnesia is wearing me down.” I hoped I wasn’t laying it on too thick, but Odell bought it.
“Who does she think you are?” he laughed. “Sure, you can’t remember a derivative from a dividend some days, but you’ll get better.”
“I’m glad you have my back.”
“Mr Black, you gave me a second chance. I’ll never forget that. When I messed up on Wall Street, you helped me out.”
Odell had alluded to this in hospital, but never gave me the details. “You mean when I—” I left the sentence unfinished, prompting Odell to fill in the blanks.
“When I was up to my eyes in gambling debts,” Odell explained, taking the bait. “I used my firm’s money to plug the hole. You heard about it and you bailed me out in exchange for coming here.”
“There was no one better for the job,” I guessed.
“That’s what you said. You told me I had exactly the right mixture of creativity and cunning to manage the Rainbow Funds for you.”
He took out a cloth handkerchief and cleaned his glasses before continuing. “Mr Black, I’ll do whatever I can do to get you back to full tilt quickly. Like you always say to Cassandra: when you get richer, we get richer.”
“I know you’ve told me bits of this, but tell me again. What do we do here and how do we make money?” I picked up two coffee cups and turned on the Nespresso machine, which sat beside the drinks cabinet.
Odell walked to the door. “Do you mind if I lock this?” he asked. I shook my head, concealing a puzzled expression.
He walked to the corner of the office, where the two walls of full-height windows met. Two black leather sofas faced each other, with a glass coffee table in between. He sat down and stirred his coffee, as if deciding where to start. The deep frown lines on his face looked like those on a pug.
“Janus Angelica is a boutique investment management company. We manage and invest money for ultra-rich individuals,” he said.
“Like who?”
“Oh, we’ve got a wide range of clients.” Odell sipped his coffee. “Your friend the Mayor, for one. Footballers and business people. And, of course, the elite criminal class.”
“Criminal class?” My accent involuntarily slipped into its natural Glasgow twang.
“Yeah, criminals, obviously.” Odell looked sideways at me. “Don’t you remember any of this?” I shook my head. “I admit, you looked pretty vacant when I told you about the deals we were closing the week you left hospital. But I just put that down to the shock of the car crash or something. Do you remember what the Rainbow Funds are?”
I shook my head.
“The Ivory Funds?”
Again, I shook my head. He whistled and sank back in the chair, pushing the air out through the stitches in the leather.
“I’ll start at the top,” he said. “There’s three parts to Janus Angelica. Firstly, we do all the normal stuff an investment firm does, investments, pensions, management buyouts, asset management, and so on. All legit. We call these the Ivory Funds.”
He walked over to the Nespresso machine and made himself a strong ristretto coffee, calmly talking all the time in his smooth American drawl. “And then we have the Rainbow Funds, which are a front for our client’s nefarious transactions. That’s the part of the business that I run.”
I stifled an involuntary cough and reached for my coffee, trying to hide my disbelief. “What sort of investments do you make?”
Leaving his coffee on the conference table, he picked up one of the investment magazines scattered across my desk. For a minute or two he flicked through the pages, then passed me an article on crypto-currency.
“Crypto is hot right now. It’s poorly regulated and nearly untraceable. We hide clients’ investments, launder their money, or manipulate the trading conditions of adolescent currencies so the exchange rate increases rapidly. Our clients then cash out, with a massive profit of clean funds.”
I said nothing. My mouth was dry and my body felt like a lead weight was squashing me into the chair. I stared out the window, before forcing myself to my feet and walking to the coffee machine just to buy some time. My heart pounded. I expected to swap my dead-end existence for the easy life as a rich entrepreneur with a saintly public image. I could confidently, I thought, bluff my financial knowledge, but acting the role of a money laundering fraudster wasn’t on my bucket list. I was in deeper than a reckless cave explorer.
“Do all the staff know about this?”
Odell threw his head back and burst out laughing. “The only people who know about this are you, me and Cassandra.”
“Where does Cassandra fit in?”
“That’s the third part of the business—Trade Deals. These are financial scams, fraud, ransomware, identity theft, and so on. Cassandra is the most devious and disarmingly attractive woman you’ll ever meet. Men are blinded by her sexuality and she’s an expert at manipulating their weaknesses to get the edge.” He gave me a sideways grin. “I love Cassandra to bits, but she’d sell her own mother to make a fast buck!”
He turned to face me and said sincerely, “That’s why Janus Angelica is so successful. Cassandra’s the best in the business. I know everything there is to know about legit and illegit investments—you brought me from New York because of that,” a pause, “even with my background.”
“And what’s my role then?”
He smiled a fatherly smile and walked towards the door. “You, sir, are the man with two faces. Out there,” he pointed to the city below, “you’re a saint with the face of an angel. In here, you’re the devil’s own banker to the criminal underworld.”