Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka Page A

to let Maroushka in. She’s wearing pale green today, with a string of silver baubles around her neck. She slinks past them on her way to the glass-walled office, pausing for a minute by his desk to ask, ‘Everything normal?’
    Should he ask her about the Château d’Yquem? No, that would be the ultimate loss of face. He’ll sort it out with the restaurant, or ask the guys to chip in.
    He can’t phone the restaurant until he gets the chance to nip out of the building at lunchtime. Unless … The disabled loo is the only room on the floor which you can lock from the inside, and is rumoured to be a den of illicit sex and prohibited phone contacts with headhunters. He slips away from his desk and loiters until the coast is clear, then sneaks in, locks the door behind him and whips his phone out. It’s hot and airless in there, and stinks of chlorine, pee and … what
is
that smell? A familiar odour pricks his nostrils, a familiar odour that belongs to a different context. He focuses on its distinctive components. Benzene. Aniseed.
    The restaurant doesn’t seem to have a website, so he has to call Directory Enquiries. When he finally phones the number it rings and rings, and he’s just about to click off when an angry female voice answers, ‘Yes?’
    He asks to speak to the manager.
    The woman says, ‘If it’s La Poire d’Or you want this is the wrong fucking number, and it’s the fourth today, and just between you and me I wouldn’t bother because the food’s crap and they rip you off.’
    ‘I’m sorry, miss. But you don’t have to be so shouty.’
    ‘Fuck off!’
    The phone goes dead.
    He looks again at the receipt in his hand. There’s something about the number that seems odd – £13,107.01. That 1p at the end – where did it come from? There was nothing on the menu that ended in 1p, in fact everything was in multiples of £20, even the water. Nor could it be a percentage added as a service charge. It’s more like a number pulled out of thin air, with a few pence stuck on at the end to make it seem precise. No, he’s seen that number somewhere before. He stares: 131071. Isn’t it the sixth Mersenne prime? M p = 2 p – 1, where p is a prime, in this case 17? Yes! A coincidence? A pattern?
    Back in the trading hall the buzz has stepped up a notch as the traders get into gear. All around him, money is being made at a phenomenal rate – in fact, he’s helped to make quite a chunk of it himself. These guys aren’t any brighter than he is, they probably couldn’t even recognise a Mersenne prime, yet they’re making shedloads of money. Most quants don’t trade, though some VPs, like Timo Jääskeläinen, straddle both roles. He’s often sat at Timo’s elbow and watched the dance of the data, as they’ve tried to pin it down in an algorithm. Timo is an able guy, but a bit of a plodder. The rumour is that it was Timo who ‘discovered’ Maroushka, when he was fretting over an algorithm one night while she was hoovering around his desk. She pointed out the mistake, then carried on hoovering. Surely if Timo can make money trading, then he could do the same. He could avoid all this hassle by paying the bill off himself, then claiming it back off the other guys if the restaurant doesn’t cough up.
    This isn’t the first time he’s thought of doing a bit of personal trading. When he was first buying his flat and needed a deposit, he started investigating some of the engineering companies around Doncaster, partly out of sentiment and partly because he thought his local knowledge would give him an edge. But then his broker offered him a 110 per cent mortgage, so he put the idea on the back burner. Now this sticky patch with the bill and Otto’s cash-flow problem gives him a reason to follow it up sooner rather than later. He’ll play it careful, set himself tight limits. He won’t go mad, like he’s seen other guys do.
    He sits back and takes the time to study the FTSE Fledgling, Small Cap and AIM