The Ego's Nest (Dave Hart 5) E-Book

David Charters

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 268

Beschreibung

Dave Hart, charismatic leader of the fallen giant, Grossbank, is dead. But it's worse than that. He's in love. In the midst of an opium-and-sex-fuelled haze in the heart of Cambodia, having made billions of dollars from Grossbank's collapse before faking his own death, he is desperate to return to London and get The Girl. And in this case, it's not just any girl - it's Laura 'Two Livers' Mackay, the most intelligent, independent, powerful woman around … with the kind of figure that would make a dead man restless. But how exactly do you rise from the dead? How do you go about resurrecting the financial world following a devastating economic crash? And why are some of the shadiest figures in organised crime so keen to give you upwards of a hundred billion dollars? The Ego's Nest is a witty, gripping, fast-paced tale of one man trying to stay true to his beliefs no matter how jaded and immoral they may be, in a world where ethical business is obviously bad business.

Leseprobe

THE EGO’S NEST

DAVID CHARTERS

For unreasonable men and women everywhere.

Contents

Title PageDedicationAuthor’s noteThe Ego’s NestEPILOGUECopyright

Author’s note

HE HAD to come back. Why is it that bad people are so resilient? And, I suppose he had to try to get the girl. Not just any girl, but The Girl. As investment bankers go, Dave Hart is now operating not at the 30,000 feet altitude of the senior manager, but at 90,000 feet, as only he can. Helping me get him there have been a number of people, who made suggestions, read and re-read, and gave me thoughts and ideas, and I remain grateful to them as ever. In particular, Adam Shutkever, Joanna Rice, my son Mark and daughter Anna, and of course Jane, all deserve special mention, as well as Lorne, Olivia and the team at Elliott and Thompson. And for the inspiration for Dave Hart, my thanks to the men and women who work in the Square Mile and the West End, in particular my friends in the hedge fund industry.

David Charters

London

May 2011

The Ego’s Nest

I’M ABOUT to blow up a cow.

Not an inflatable one. My lips will not be involved. A real one. An actual bovine monstrosity.

It’s standing quietly, chewing moronically on some grass, about thirty yards in front of me. It’s vaguely off-white, not the clean Friesian black-and-white I’m used to in England, and it’s tethered to a wooden stake.

I’m crouching behind a fence, preparing to fire an ex-Soviet rocket-propelled grenade launcher – an RPG-7 – that is going to convert my vegetarian friend into lumps of red meat.

Why am I doing this? Because I can. I’ve never done it before and I’m told it’s interesting. I’ve done everything else. Well, everything you can do unless you’re the president of the United States. I haven’t declared global thermonuclear war. Not yet, anyway.

So here I am, a former investment banker who made out like a bandit – arguably was a bandit – but who escaped before the full awfulness of the crash and squirreled away his haul, his billions, in a mega scam before the music stopped.

I was short. And I don’t mean physically challenged (although I am). Indirectly, I’d sold the shares not only of my own company, which I was steering resolutely on to the rocks, but also of every other firm. I knew the whole industry would be caught out when the world finally woke up and realised that investment bankers were indeed naked emperors, wandering around in the ultimate glass house, their firms trapped in a cycle of inter-dependency that meant when one went down, they all would. And I was certainly going to make sure that mine did.

I was running the Erste Frankfurter Grossbank, the biggest bank in the world (at least by some measures), and with remarkable prescience I saw the crash coming and, with some well-placed co-conspirators, made my plans. We were short when it made sense to be, placed our bets ahead of the crowd – big bets – and my friends profited handsomely.

And so did I. Privately. And Grossbank was brought to its knees by its own management. By me. And then the whole pack of cards came down.

All those trillions that were pumped into the system by the world’s central banks had to go somewhere, didn’t they? For every trade in the market there are two sides, a buyer and a seller – or, in this case, a winner and a loser. I was the winner.

None of it was public. I was chairman of Grossbank, a pivotal figure for the biggest player in the market, and of course, my actions were always in the interests of shareholders, employees, customers, market counterparties, regulatory authorities and all of our other stakeholders.

Yeah, right. When the banking sector collapsed and share prices fell through the floor, the smart money made billions.

I like billions.

The cow turns its head and looks in my direction. It’s a Cambodian cow. That’s where I’ve been since faking my death – a melodramatic simulated death plunge from Blackfriars Bridge onto the heavily-cushioned deck of a barge owned by an associate of mine.

So now I’m a dead man. Officially. Now I have a new name. I’m no longer Dave Hart. Pity. I liked Dave Hart, was kind of used to it. But now I’m someone else. And I’m here in Cambodia, discreetly enjoying whatever pleasures remain to the jaded, saturated, cynical, worn-out ex-investment banker who’s finally come to the end of his road.

This is what the Cambodians allow super-rich hedge fund managers, private-equity gurus, investment bankers and other grotesquely wealthy, time-sensitive, adrenalin junkies to do to their livestock for what they think is a lot of money. Stupid? Of course they are. But it’s amazing what poor people will sell for the wrong price. Speaking as a rich person, I have no problem with that.

I squeeze the trigger.

‘Th … whoooop!’

A brief kick in my shoulder and out it goes. The ex-Vietcong instructor gives me a supportive pat on the back as the projectile flies high in the air, missing the cow by about ten yards. I wish I could have tethered some of my old colleagues from Grossbank there but obviously that’s not practical, though it might have improved my aim. We wait, and after a few seconds the grenade explodes somewhere vaguely in the distance. I hope it didn’t hit a village.

Big loss of face. Or not. I’m paying the fees, after all. My instructor shouts at the black-pyjama clad team members who have appeared from nowhere and are untethering the cow to bring it ten yards closer. Whatever happened – or didn’t – was clearly their fault. He berates them appropriately and nods at me encouragingly. It’s just a matter of time.

They reload me and I stare down the sights a second time. The cow fills them completely. I can see nothing other than the cow. I know I’m an investment banker, but surely even I can’t miss?

‘Th … whoooop!’

Gotcha! Awesome. A huge thump, followed by a flash and a bang, and lumps of meat are flying through the air.

Thought you could defy me, you fucking bovine loser? Think again. You are Lehman Brothers in my sights.

Then something wet thwacks me in the face, something clingy and unpleasant. Something that bursts my bubble …

I’M AWAKE.

My eyes open and I stare at the fan on the ceiling. I’m lying on a monster-sized semicircular bed that is covered with beautiful, naked Cambodian women with long, dark hair that reaches almost to their waists, their bodies still glistening with the oils they rubbed into each other and then into me. Full body massage by numbers. Why choose when you can have them all? I count six, seven, eight of them, all stunning, lithe and, most of all, available. They are snoozing, or pretending to, after the exertions of last night. Or, at least, the pretend exertions. I didn’t make much effort myself, just took in the show and let them do their stuff.

There are guys who call them LBFMs – Little Brown Fucking Machines. I hate that term. For one thing it’s inaccurate. These girls suck as well. Boy, do they suck. And they have wonderfully delicate hands, and some of them have an amazingly firm grip. And the best part of all is the well-oiled body-to-body massage. I’m no misogynist. I love women. All of them.

Or I used to.

I glance down at an empty bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. The ice has long since melted. There’s an ashtray next to it with a couple of cigar stubs and a lot of ash. The detritus that remains from another great time. Yeah, right. I’m getting bored with all these good times.

There was a moment last night when one of the girls was kneeling at my feet, about to go down on me, staring up at me with her huge, dark eyes, and she asked if I was ready. Ready? Me? Is the Pope a Catholic? But, then it struck me, just how unexcited I actually was at the prospect of yet another technically perfect, brilliantly executed professional blow job that meant absolutely nothing and would be forgotten the next day.

The problem with meaningless, empty sex is that it’s so meaningless and empty. Better a well-intentioned amateur who puts her heart into it than the most technically perfect professional who really doesn’t care.

When a man tires of blow jobs he tires of life. Surely a man in his forties can’t tire of life? I should have decades of blow jobs ahead of me. Am I having a nightmare? Is that what my future holds? Desperately searching the globe for something stimulating to do, because I’ve ticked all the pleasure boxes I know and I can’t live without the possibility of something new?

The problem is I have to remain hidden. I committed the perfect crime, a crime which no one knows has been committed and, anyway, they all think I’m dead. Ask the average banker if he’d turn his back on his life and disappear forever, given a few billion to cushion the blow, and he’d say yes in a heartbeat. I did. But now I’m more than nine months into my new life of anonymous super-wealth and I’m already regretting it.

The point about success is that you enjoy it principally through the eyes of others. People who spend their lives in the jungle of the City are fundamentally empty on the inside. I know I was. I believed in nothing, wanted everything, and my goal was to have more and more. Of everything. Money, power, possessions, booze, drugs and, of course, pussy. But I wanted most of it, not for the rush it gave me, which was only ever temporary, but because others didn’t have it. Or, if they did, I got there first and had more than they did. And that’s why I came up with the greatest scam of all time.

And it worked.

It worked because a few of us, myself on the inside and my two co-conspirators on the outside, brought down the global financial system. It needed an insider. I was that insider. I drove Grossbank onto the rocks and, in the process, blew the whistle on the rest of the major investment banks. I called time. But only when I was ready and my friends were ready too.

Rom Romanov was the big financial muscle, awesomely connected in a London-Russian-global-Jewish kind of way. Hugely wealthy, a man of a certain age who appears totally ageless, dark-haired, fresh-faced, apparently woken from whatever cryogenic chamber the undead are kept in. He even has a clammy handshake. But there are worse sins. At least from the undead.

Bang Bang Lee is easier. He’s a classic Chinese tycoon, known for his propensity for offering competitors two lead injections in the back of the head, which makes even the most difficult counterparties review their position. It’s amazing how often people see sense once they have the time to reflect.

So Rom and Bang Bang are friends and collaborators. And billionaires – even before the crash. Now they won’t have enough fingers and toes to count their billions.

They brought a lot of other people in too – friends of theirs, Chinese tycoons, Russian oligarchs, Mafia dons and cartel chieftains. The villains had a good crash.

Some people would feel uncomfortable about that. Not me. Markets are morally neutral swings and roundabouts. And as an investment banker, I really don’t care who the winners and losers are, as long as I get my cut. And I certainly did – the biggest ticket of my life.

Which makes it strange that I really don’t feel happy. Or proud. Or even satisfied. They say it’s better to travel than to arrive. But what if you arrive and nobody notices? Something’s missing. No. Someone’s missing. The only person who could really touch me.

Two Livers.

The woman I’m thinking of is unique. Yes, yes, they’re all unique, but this one really is. Laura ‘Two Livers’ MacKay – the smartest woman in the City of London – named for her massive capacity for consuming alcoholic drinks of every kind while remaining not just bright, sober and charming, but utterly, timelessly, breathtakingly beautiful. An intelligent blonde who could melt my heart.

While I was sailing away into history, she was round at the Bank of England, desperately trying to save the firm. Someone had to.

Christ, how I miss her.

I’M IN a cage underwater, attached to the back of a large motor cruiser, breathing off a regulator which is attached to a compressor on the boat, staring out into the deep blue waters of the Pacific. The boat itself is superbly luxurious. I could afford to buy half-a-dozen and not even notice, but I’m following the golden rule of wealth preservation: if it floats, fucks or flies, rent it. Beside me, an instructor shares the cramped space in the cage, scanning the ocean around us.

We have full face masks and a radio that allows us to talk.

He’s shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry, this has never happened before. That huge one seems to have disappeared.’

The giant he’s talking about is a great white shark, all of four metres long and with the kind of cold, killer eyes that I never saw on the trading floor. At least not at my firm. I heard that the US firms might have been different.

Anyway, we’d been circling in the boat for the two hours, searching the sea for fins, dragging lumps of tuna on lines behind the boat and tipping buckets of blood into the water. Finally our patience was rewarded, not just with fins, but with an explosion of activity as the bait was taken. The lines were severed by rows of razor-sharp teeth and a huge predator cruised past, its head breaking the surface as it seemed to stare up at us, weighing us up as its next potential meal.

Another day, another adrenalin rush. Cage diving with a great white shark. It’s there so it had to be done.

I’d shaken off the topless blonde Ukrainian who was massaging suntan oil into my shoulders. I’m wearing tiny Speedo budgie smugglers and she’d offered to cream me up everywhere if I was willing to do the same for her. What could I say? I’m a guy. Don’t expect depth. But she’d still be there later, so I headed below with my instructor and kitted up in double-quick time, climbed into the cage and we were lowered to the optimal viewing depth.

Which is when nothing happened. As soon as I entered the water, the shark circled once, having a look at us, then took off. The crew kept throwing in buckets of blood and dangled more lumps of tuna next to the cage, but it was hopeless. So they keep us down there for another twenty minutes because it’s possible the shark was spooked by an even bigger shark – the only thing that scares a great white is an even bigger great white – and there had been reports in the area of a monster up to six metres long.

But if there’s a monster around, I figure it has to be the one in the cage.

The instructor turns to me and points to the surface with his thumb. I nod and they raise the cage and release us.

When we’re back on board they all look uncomfortable. They say that they have never seen them behave that way before. Its fins broke the surface, heading fast away from us, as if all it wanted was to get out of Dodge.

There isn’t much I can say, so I crack a few jokes about ex-bankers and professional respect, but privately I see it differently.

Living this life has made me toxic, even underwater.

I WISH I was at Duke’s – the hotel in St James’s Place. Or, more specifically, the bar where Alessandro – London’s finest barman – produces the best dry martinis on the planet. And I only drink Uluvka, the world’s best premium vodka. When it comes to indulging myself, I like to think I’m not only knowledgeable, focussed and determined, but utterly uncompromising. If self-indulgence were an Olympic sport, I’d be a gold medallist.

The act of preparing a martini is an art in itself. A sort of hushed reverence surrounds the ritual by which pre-chilled glasses are anointed with the tiniest hint of vermouth before frozen vodka is poured in and a twist of fresh lemon added, in a precise, unhurried process that defies the pressures of the twenty-first century.

No matter how much I try – and I have, in countless places all around the Pacific Basin – no one has come close to matching London’s finest. Which is irritating, because being super-rich is supposed to mean I get to have it all. And the thought of never going back there again is intolerable. What are my billions for if I can’t get a decent martini?

On the other hand, being dead has its lighter side.

The best bit was the obituaries. I’d never really thought before about the process by which lives are assessed, summarised, put on paper and preserved for all time. Real life is full of ambiguities, half truths, accidents and happenstance. Life in the obits is linear, deliberate and one dimensional, with only the occasional allusion to the multiple shades of grey that make the real thing infinitely more interesting than the 2,500 words squeezed between a World War Two fighter ace and a long-retired chief government scientist.

I could detect the hand of Ball Taittinger, my ace public-affairs advisers, and specifically the Silver Fox, their sixty-something, seen-it-all, smooth and charming chairman – at least in the friendlier ones: ‘… the greatest banker of them all, a man who built the biggest firm in the world only to see it crash before his eyes as the result of market forces beyond his control. But unlike lesser men, he took responsibility for what he felt was a failure of leadership, and he paid the ultimate price.’

I read these sitting in the sun on a beach with perfect white sand in Thailand, the sound of the ocean gently lapping against the shore in the background. I had the whole place to myself, except for the beautiful Thai girl whose head was bobbing up and down in my lap while I flicked through the papers. Dead? Moi? You must be kidding.

All the obits mentioned the fact that my body has never been found. Of course it hasn’t been found. I still have it. It’s where I live. But they don’t know that, and it adds a touch of mystery and glamour.

But some of the other remarks were less flattering. ‘He lived life to the full’ was probably the most euphemistic, penned, I suspect, by the Silver Fox or one of his team, in sharp contrast to others. ‘He was a notorious womaniser and bon viveur, frequently under the influence of drugs and alcohol, even while at work, and determined to push the boundaries of excess to the limit.’ Well, yes, but what are boundaries for? And are you jealous, or what?

Another mentioned the succession of lawsuits from female employees claiming sexual harassment that plagued me at Grossbank. As if history will give a damn about whines from the little people who won’t even merit a footnote.

Yet another described me as having a naturally addictive personality. Well, yes, I’m addicted to pleasure. Isn’t everyone? It’s just that some of us do something about it.

I felt a strange detachment from the things I read, as if they were written about someone else, which, in a sense, they were. But the memorial service was different.

The memorial service was held at St Lawrence Jewry, the official church of the Corporation of London. Three hundred people attended. Three hundred! If you want a packed church, die young. The whole of the City establishment was there, presumably because for one hour, starting at eleven o’clock that Thursday morning, it was the place to be and to be seen. The greatest irony was that, like almost everyone there, I was – and still am – an atheist, but that minor detail shouldn’t get in the way of a good show.

The reality in twenty-first century Britain is that money is the one true god. We all defer to it, and I suppose people realised I had a lot of it, so deserved respect. They had no idea quite how much.

Looking at photos of those who attended, the people I worked with for years, my friends, my comrades in arms, I felt … nothing. I recognised people whose fortunes I had made with my decisions in the annual bonus round, with a move to Hong Kong or New York, a promotion, the authorisation for a particularly risky trade. And there were others there whom I had destroyed with a signature on a piece of paper or a click of my mouse to send an email. Sometimes they were the same people, with only an alarmingly short time between the two moments. It rarely had much to do with talent or hard work, or even that most fickle of mistresses in the Square Mile, actual success. When you play in the high-stakes room in the casino, you don’t complain when you win, and you shouldn’t when you lose, however random, arbitrary and utterly unfair it all seems.

And then there was my ‘family’, that is to say my ex-wife, Wendy, and Samantha, the daughter I never bothered to know, but for whom I cleaned out Hamleys and the toy department at Harrods on countless occasions. She’s almost seven now, and what amazes me most of all is my complete absence of curiosity about her. She’s a stranger and I see no reason to change that. Does that make me a monster? Or just a realist? All I see is another appalling Chelsea teenager in the making, yah-yahing her way along the King’s Road, wearing the same awful skinny jeans, Ugg boots and hoodie and spending her time building up to the amazing moment when Rupert or Rodney, a handsome but vacuous, well bred but inbred twenty-three-year-old estate agent, who served in the Guards or the Cavalry, will ask her to be his bride: ‘Daddy, I’ve got wonderful news! I’m engaged. Rodney asked me to marry him!’ Yippee, squeal, jump up and down, put the hand out for the wedding, the honeymoon, the starter apartment near Sloane Square, the little BMW to run around town in, and eventually the private room in the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Paddington as the babies pop out and then the school fees fund, and the whole self-perpetuating charade grinds on. Why can’t I get excited about it the way other fathers do? They do, don’t they? They always say they do.

I’ve learnt that Wendy has engaged some expensive probate lawyers to fight about my estate. She had a shock when she learnt about my will. Apparently, she doesn’t see the funny side of my leaving everything to the Battersea Dogs’ Home and thinks she should have it instead – for Samantha’s sake, of course.

There was one heart-rending moment, just one, when I flicked open The Times and saw a photo of Two Livers, radiant in a black dress – it looked like silk, by Chanel – with a matching black wide-brimmed hat with a veil, being supported by the Silver Fox, sombrely dressed in a dark suit and tie, leaving the service, visibly distressed.

I carried that image round in my head for months, imagining her tears. What must she have thought? Would there forever be a gap in her life? She’s still in her thirties, her whole life ahead of her, but can there ever be someone like me again?

Impossible. But it doesn’t stop me scrutinising the gossip columns and the announcement pages of the British press from afar, torturing myself that she’s decided to settle for second best and is about to announce her engagement to some unworthy, unrighteous moron who couldn’t possibly deserve her.

Why do I miss her so much? Was it the sex? Well, that goes without saying. She was the only woman I ever met who knew without fail when to be a goddess – slow, languorous, divine in her sensuality – and when to be a porn star. She could do both, and did, but it wasn’t just that. There was something more. Was she my soulmate? Of course not. I don’t have a soul to mate with. But even so, it makes me think. She was the one woman who never bored me.

With others, it could take as little as a few hours, sometimes minutes, before I was mentally yawning and checking out, sometimes literally looking over their shoulder to try to spot someone – anyone – more interesting. They say we can always forgive those who bore us, but never those whom we bore. I don’t know about that. If I was lucky it lasted weeks, even months, but that was rare. Even with my ex-wife. Especially with my ex-wife, which tells you just how ill-judged that relationship was. How many times was the sex just a form of displacement activity, a way of making time pass until I could do something more interesting, or at any rate lose myself someplace else, generally with chemical assistance? Probably most of the time. After the first thousand there’s really little new that any woman has to offer you. I know. I’m shallow. Profoundly shallow. Shallow all the way through and then some. And no doubt psychologically and emotionally inadequate. I think you have to be to make it in investment banking. Maybe self-awareness at least makes me honest. That would put a positive spin on it. But with Two Livers it really was different. With her I was the one who had to do the running to keep up. She made me raise my game, made me think and, in the end, made me better. Or, less bad.

On reflection, being dead isn’t much fun at all. Even dead rich doesn’t help. This can’t go on. In the long run we’re all dust, so while we’re here we need to do things. Real things. Eventually hedonism becomes boring. We need to be stretched and tested. At least I do. All my life I’ve struggled – well, relatively – and now I’ve got the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, in fact a super-jum-bosized one, I see just how worthless it is. Not that I’d ever give it back. But I want other things more now. Things I haven’t got.

I need a nest. Banal as it sounds, I realise it’s true. Or at least I think it is. Could I really settle down? Probably not for long. But with Two Livers there might be a chance.

A memory comes to mind. It was a Saturday afternoon, a couple of years ago now, and I was spending a lazy day at Two Livers’ place in Mayfair. She had a giant-screen TV and I was flopped on a sofa watching a rugby international from Twickenham. England were kicking the arses of the Welsh. What happened next is as real today as it was when it happened, and I can still recall every detail.

Two Livers comes in, wearing a skimpy tennis outfit.

‘How was your lesson?’ I ask.

‘Fab.’ She leans forward and kisses me. ‘I’m hot. I’m going to take a shower. Do you want a beer and a blow job first?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

She disappears to the kitchen, where I hear the sound of a bottle top being removed, then comes back, hands me an ice-cold beer, kneels down, slips her top off and starts to unzip me.

‘Oh, and after the match I want to run through my thoughts on the Asia-Pac conference.’

‘The what … ?’ I look at her, puzzled.

‘The spring conference we’re organising with business leaders from across the region. You’re giving the keynote address. I’ve drafted your speech. You’re going to say some radical things. They won’t know what’s hit them.’

‘Radical? Oh … sure, great.’

Maybe a similar sort of thing was happening in millions of rugby-watching households up and down the country.

Then there was my birthday. I think it was the same year. We had dinner by ourselves at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, still the best restaurant in London, and afterwards went to Mimi, off Berkeley Square, for a nightcap. Two Livers was wearing a vivid red ‘look at me’ cocktail dress by Zac Posen, with diamond cluster earrings by Graff, and predictably turned every head wherever we went. As did I, but only because they were all thinking, ‘Who is that guy and how come he won the lottery?’ That’s where we ‘bumped into’ Anne-Marie Chantalle, the stunning nearest thing the French have to an equivalent of Two Livers, but brunette, with smaller breasts than Two Livers’ perfect 34DDs and what the French call a ‘gamine’ air to her.

She was sitting alone at the bar drinking a champagne cocktail, wearing an Emilio Pucci peasant-style lace-up top that she’d left invitingly open at the front to show she was bra-less underneath, with tight knee-length leather boots and bare, tanned legs that were begging me to run my hand up them to discover whether she’d dispensed with underwear altogether for the evening. Anne-Marie runs a small investment banking boutique in Paris, and I’d wanted to hire her – and much more – for years.

There were squeals of ‘surprise’ from the two ladies, kisses on each cheek, more cocktails, then it was back to my apartment. I was in the kitchen opening another bottle – or was I scoring another sneaky line? – either way, when I came back into the living room the ladies were gone. I could hear them in the bedroom and quietly opened the door. They were naked, save for their jewellery – always a nice touch – and making out on my mega double bed. They looked up. Anne-Marie spoke first.

‘The birthday boy. Come on, Dave. Déshabille-toi.’

What followed was one of the all-time great experiences of my life. So good, in fact, that I regretted the drink and the drugs, because I wanted to feel every second of it and imprint it on my memory forever. When they had finished with each other, they went to work on me. Together. But it was my birthday, and I suppose that Two Livers had simply organised the kind of treat that every girl does for her man on his birthday.

It was a memorable day. And if I have a chance of getting her back, it has to be worth a shot.

RETURNING FROM the dead is never straightforward.

I’m in, of all places, an opium den, when I realise how I’m going to do it. Or maybe it’s because I’m there that I finally achieve clarity. Or something. Whatever it is, everything suddenly becomes clear.

I’m lying on a pile of silk cushions, smiling half-wittedly at a beautiful Indonesian girl who is kneeling at my feet, her long hair tumbling down over her bare breasts, preparing me another pipe.

She has amazingly detailed, elaborate tattoos over most of her back and arms, and I find them utterly tantalising. I’m not normally an admirer of tattoos, especially on women. And I particularly despise the tasteless, vulgar slag tags and tramp stamps that British women go in for – some idiotic phrase in Sanskrit or ancient Greek, or some other language their under-educated brains wouldn’t understand – located at the base of their back to remind you they’re slappers when you’re humping them from behind. Or worse still the twee ‘discreet’ little pictures that teenagers have somewhere on their bodies – flowers, dolphins or butterflies – normally hidden by clothing, so they can all show just how identically individual and daring and mysterious and sexy every single one of them is – in exactly the same way.

This is different. This really is extraordinary. One could spend days exploring her body. Her skin is a work of art, and I could lose myself in it.

I inhale deeply from the fresh pipe that she hands me. The feeling of relaxation is total. Nothing matters any more. It isn’t that I’ve forgotten everything; on the contrary, I can see it all perfectly clearly and I realise that none of it matters. Except perhaps one thing. The one thing I never conquered. Everything else I had, generally more than once, both good and bad. And it was all irrelevant compared to the one thing I never achieved. Happiness in love.

Christ, this stuff is good. I had to try it because it was on my list and I’d never done it before. I’ve now tried it three times, and this is definitely the last, because it’s so good I’d happily surrender to it. You really don’t need to try this stuff. Trust me, I’ve done it for you.

The girl moves her hand to my crotch.

‘Would you like me to make you comfortable?’

‘No. But thank you. You’re very kind.’ I decline as politely as I can, and just in case she’s offended, or might be missing out on a money-making opportunity, I reach into my pocket and pass her an enormous wad of notes.