This Thing of Darkness (41 page)
Books, sometimes, arrive backwards. This one certainly did: my first really clear idea about this novel was that the denouement would come at sea, in a storm. I also knew, very early on, that Fiona would end up sinking the ship and would do so by tipping a bucket of fishguts into the engine.
But an ending isn’t a story and the biggest question I had to answer was what on earth Fiona was doing at sea anyway. What crime could bring her out into an Atlantic storm? I mulled over lots of possibilities (shipping? fishing? something to do with oil? smuggling?), but then it came to me in a flash. Oxwich Bay is the launching point for some big international cables and those things trail out, under the sea, invisible and mostly unthought of. What if someone were attempting to sabotage one of those cables? That insight gave me, more or less, the story you’ve just read: an old-fashioned fraud, remade for the Internet age.
And that – give or take plenty of hard work – was that. Except that as I was in the course of writing, reality came jogging to catch up.
Atlantic Cables is a completely fictional outfit, of course, but it has real-life analogues which do much the same thing and for much the same client base: hedge funds, investment banks and anyone else with an interest in high-speed trading. Because the sums at stake are so huge, the investments are also huge. The high-speed trading community has spent billions of dollars, probably tens of billions, on fancy telecoms, fancy computers, and lots and lots of program code.
And so what, you might think? Who the hell cares?
The answer is simple.
You
should care because, it turns out that, those people are stealing
your
money. Let’s say, for example, that the outfit which manages your pension money decides it wants to sell some of its stocks. Your pension manager will place a ‘sell’ order, which will work its way through to the exchange to be settled. Unfortunately for you, it turns out that those high-speed traders are able to ‘see’ that sell order before it’s executed, so they can nip in ahead of you to make their trades, confident in the knowledge that they know what’s coming. On the buy side, the same thing. It’s like a guy who adds a penny to the price of tomatoes every time you enter the store. A guy who knocks prices down any time you have anything to sell. You get a worse deal; he gets to profit from the difference.
Because this is the financial industry, it works on a massive scale, ripping off everyone except those with no savings at all. Unless you are yourself a high-speed financial trader, you will find that your savings are lower, your pension crappier and your children poorer than they ought to be. It’s theft, and one that operates on an almighty scale. If that seems improbable to you – surely not even bankers could behave like that? surely the authorities couldn’t be so comatose as to allow it? – then it’s worth reading a book, a superb exposé of the scam, which was published about the time I was nudging Fiona Griffiths into a barn near Rhayader.
That book is
Flash Boys
, by Michael Lewis. And it’s like this book, except that the villains are real, the proceeds of theft much greater – and there’s no Fiona Griffiths storming in to put things right.
Harry Bingham
Some readers will have noticed that I’ve had a little game with the character names in this book. Indeed, if you put aside names belonging to series characters, my game extends to pretty much everyone else. You’ve probably figured it out already, but if you haven’t, then try playing around a bit on a search engine: I don’t think it’ll take you long.
I’m aware, however, that crime readers are a redoubtable breed and puzzles that can be solved by a little gentle Googling are hardly mysteries worthy of the name. So I’ve put together, below, a more challenging quiz, consisting of seven short questions. Just email me the answers via HarryBingham.com and, if you’re the first person to get everything right, I’ll send you a signed copy of every book so far. I’ll also publish the winning entry on my website, so you can see the answers for yourself.
Oh, and if
your
name has found its way into this book, please don’t think that the character concerned is a portrait of you. It isn’t: this is a work of fiction. But since (to put it mildly) it’s quite hard to meet the criteria for inclusion in this game of mine, I hope you enjoy being part of it. Truly, you walk among heroes.
1. Describe what happened on the First Date.
2. ‘A face etched with the realisation of the final act in her lover’s biography’. Where might you find that realisation? Or, indeed, biography?
3. The lighthouse at Linton Hill stands on ‘a kind of nose or headland’. What remarkable nose springs to mind?
4. When Fiona escaped from the barn near Rhayader, did she do so with a bang or a whimper? Please explain.
5. Rank the following: the Bellavista clinic, the
Isobel Baker
and her successful spells, the
Kate of St Ives
and her butterfly’s dream, Jose Bereziatu’s bloodbath.
6. Jackson mutters about the hi-jinks that his exhibits officers got up to in Central London. Just how high were those jinks? Answers in feet or metres, please.
7. Where is Mr Ondra?
Cotard’s syndrome is a rare but perfectly genuine condition, and an exceptionally serious one besides. Its core ingredients are depression and psychosis, which together bring about an extreme form of depersonalisation. Or, to put the same thing in plainer language: sufferers believe themselves to be dead. Patients frequently report ‘seeing’ their flesh decompose and crawl with maggots. Early childhood trauma is implicated in pretty much every well-documented case of the syndrome. Full recovery is uncommon, death by suicide all too frequent.
Fiona Griffiths’s own state of mind is, of course, a fictional representation of a complex illness and I have not sought to achieve clinical precision. Nevertheless, the broad strokes of her condition would be familiar to anyone unfortunate enough to be acquainted with it.
About once a year, I send out an email alerting readers when I’m about to release a new book. If you would like to join my mailing list you can do so via
HarryBingham.com
. I promise not to clog your inbox with rubbish. I won’t sell your details to the good folk who sell Viagra. And if you ever want to unsubscribe from my mailings, it’ll be incredibly easy to do so.
I’d be thrilled if you did want to stay informed. Books need readers, and Fiona and I are blessed with an unusually committed and intelligent bunch. We’re both mightily grateful.
HB
Harry Bingham is an author of fiction and non-fiction. He also runs The Writers’ Workshop, an editorial consultancy, and Agent Hunter, a service which helps connect writers with literary agents. When he isn’t working, he’s probably looking after not one but two sets of twins, but can still just about remember a time when he found time for rock-climbing and wild-swimming. He is married and lives in Oxfordshire.
Fiction
Talking to the Dead
Love Story, With Murders
The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths
The Money Makers
Sweet Talking Money
The Sons of Adam
Glory Boys
The Lieutenant’s Lover
Non-Fiction
This Little Britain
Stuff Matters
Getting Published
How to Write
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Orion Books
This ebook first published in 2015 by Orion Books
Copyright © Harry Bingham 2015
The right of Harry Bingham to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means, without the prior permission
in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published without a similar condition, including this condition,
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any
resemblance to actual persons living or
dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 5273 6
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An Hachette UK Company
To N, as always
You who are so beautiful
Have called my soul to wakefulness
The moon stands still.
A singing rib in my aching side
You shall abide.
Bright, arterial, true.
Contents