LIZ: Black
Swans
You’re out of the
office early (flexitime is one of the perks of the back-office
inspector’s rank these days) and go home to get changed for your
date with Dorothy. Not that you’re flustered or anything: If your
life was a house, she’d merely be the unexploded bomb ticking away
in the wreckage of your cellar, capable of blowing you all the way
to Oz at any moment.
You rush home
and:
• dive into the kitchen for a glass of wine, only to stare in dismay at the dirty plates in the kitchen sink,
• dive into the bathroom for a quick shower, only to stare in dismay at your haystack hair in the mirror,
• dive into the bedroom for a fresh outfit, only to stare in dismay at the contents of the wardrobe (two stale party frocks, various jeans and tees, and at least eight neatly laundered business suits and accompanying blouses).
This is your life,
and there’s no rug big enough to sweep it all under—at least not in
the half-hour you’ve allowed yourself for doing the Clark
Kent/Superman phone-booth thing before you rush out again. So you
compromise on:
• a glass of water,
• your hair savagely brushed and tied back to conceal the creeping anarchy and split ends,
• a different trouser suit,
• earrings and a necklace that’d get you sent home from the station in disgrace if you wore them on shift (just to remind you that you’re off duty).
Before you go out,
you stare at the bathroom unit uncertainly, reflecting. You’ve
spent twenty minutes rushing around like a schoolgirl on a first
date, and to what end? It’s not like Dorothy doesn’t know what you
are—faking soft edges will cut no ice. The thought’s meant to
count, isn’t it? Or the gesture. You’re dressing up for her, or not
dressing up for her—you’re old enough that you ought to know your
own mind. You’ve been kicked in the teeth by love often enough that
you should have figured out who you are by now. But you’ve fallen
into an existential trap with this vocation of yours, haven’t you?
It’s easy to know how you’re meant to function when you wear a
uniform: You do the job and follow the procedures, and everyone
knows what you’re meant to be doing. What you wear dictates how you
behave.
. . . But there’s no
uniform for a date with Dorothy.
You panic and get
changed again, and in the end you make yourself late enough that
you end up calling a taxi, sitting twitchily on the edge of the
grey-and-orange seat as it grumbles uphill towards George Street.
It bumps across the guided busway that bisects Queen Street and
chugs up Dundas Street, wheezing to a halt at the corner: You pay
up and climb out, and a trio of miniskirted girls nearly stab you
to death with their stilettos as they stampede to get in. Just
another night out on the tiles in Auld Reekie, nothing to see here
but a single thirtysomething woman in sensible shoes walking
towards a wine bar full of braying bankers.
Dorothy has found a
stool at the bar and is sitting with her back to you, nursing a
caipirinha and keeping a quiet watch on the huge mirror behind the
bar. Stylish as ever, she makes you feel like a gawky schoolgirl
just by existing. You make eye contact through the looking glass,
and she gives a little wave of invitation as you walk towards her,
a flick of the wrist. Then she’s turning, smiling, and you embrace
self-consciously. She smells of lavender water. “Hey, darling,
you’re looking gorgeous! How are you keeping?”
“I’m good. Yourself?”
You step back, find there’s a gap in the row of bar-stools—but the
next one over is already occupied by a bloke who’s the spitting
image of a kiddie-fiddler you helped put away ten years ago. (Only
ten years younger, of course.) You turn away from him hastily as
Dorothy’s smile opens up like the sun, and she waves past you,
attracting the barman’s hypnotized gaze.
“I’m in town for the
next two weeks”—she runs a hand through her hair, which is a deeper
chestnut red than it was last time you saw her, and about ten
centimetres longer—“visiting the Cage out at Gogarburn for an
ongoing evaluation at the bank: Then I’ve got a spot evaluation on
some American company’s local operation.” The Cage is the secure
zone within the National Bank of Scotland campus: Dorothy is an
auditor, the kind who gets to travel a lot. Her little black dress
is more boardroom than cocktail bar—doubtless her brief-case and
jacket are waiting in the cloakroom—but with her string of pearls
and porcelain complexion, she could make it work anywhere. “They’ve
stuck me in a tedious hotel in the West End, Julian is in Moscow
this month, so of course . . .” She raises a meticulously
stencilled eyebrow at you.
“We can see about
that.” The barman pauses in front of you. “White wine spritzer,
please,” you tell him, and flash your ID badge before he can card
you. You wait until he delivers before continuing: “Have you eaten
yet?”
“No. But there’s a
place round the corner that’s been getting good reviews.” She looks
at you speculatively.
“Do you have any
plans? Outside of work?” You can’t help yourself: You have to
ask.
“I don’t know yet.”
For a moment she looks uncertain. “This is an odd one.” You catch
the warning before she continues. “I may have to put in lots of
overtime. I was hoping we could catch up if the job
permits.”
Dorothy’s always like
this. Babs accused you of being married to the job (and she wasn’t
wrong), but Dorothy makes you look like a slacker. That alone would
be enough to make your relationship with her an on-again off-again
thing: And that’s before you get round to thinking about Julian,
her primary.
So you nod,
hesitantly. “I don’t have a lot on in the evenings this week. And
I’m free Saturday and Monday. Is there anything particular you want
to do? Theatre, music—”
“I was hoping we
could start by finding somewhere for dinner?” She bites her lip.
“And then I’d like to pick your brains about a little problem I’ve
got at work . . .”
Dorothy is indeed
staying in a boring business hotel in the West End. You end up in
the bar around midnight, by way of a sushi restaurant and a couple
of rounds of margaritas. You’re not sure whether you’re meant to
play predator or prey here—it’s been months since the last time
your paths intersected—but you’ve got a plushly padded booth to
yourselves, and you catch her stealing sly glances at you in the
mirror while she’s at the bar ordering a round. “I can’t stay too
late—I’m on shift tomorrow,” you tell her regretfully, as she sits
down opposite and bends forward to peel off her pumps.
She curls her lower
lip, pointedly not pouting. “That’s a shame,” she says. You freeze,
outwardly expressionless as her unshod left foot comes into contact
with the inside of your right calf. Question
answered. “Didn’t you say you’re free
Saturday?”
You catch your
breath: “Yes, I am.” Actually, clearing weekend leave usually takes
advance notice, but you’re on weekday office hours right now: You
can swing Saturday and Monday if you need to. Maybe even swap
Sunday for Monday . . . Her stockinged foot caresses your ankle.
It’s smooth, muscular (all those hours in hotel health clubs),
reminding you, rubbing. “That’s assuming I don’t get roped into the
latest mess.”
She shows you her
teeth. “What could possibly be more important than next Saturday?”
(She’s playing with you. If her own job demanded it, she’d stand
you up in a split second.) “I thought nothing ever happened in
Innovative Crime? Have they got you back on CID?” She pulls back
her foot, leaving you tingling.
“The day before
yesterday I was on a community team assignment and got called in on
what turned out to be homicide—not your usual ned-on-ned stabby
action: more like Tarantino meets Dali.”
“Wow.” Her eyes
widen. “Why are you here, then?” She nudges your foot again: But
this time it’s an accident, not enemy action.
“Because after I
corralled the witness and set up the incident room, CID turned up
and took all my toys away.” You shrug. “Not that I’ve got a problem
with that. I don’t need an extra helping of crap to top up my
regular work-load. But Dickie—uh, we’re on Chatham House rules
here, aren’t we?” She nods. “He’s the big swinging dick on the
investigation, and he’s your classic narrow-focus,
results-oriented, overdriven, alpha-male prick. He’s treating it as
a regular crime and he’s looking for a suitable perp. Which is
normally best practice and the right thing to do, except I happen
to know that there was a death in, um, another jurisdiction around
the same time, and it bears significant points of similarity. All
of which scream meme at me. Internet
meme, class one, virulent. Only Tricky Dickie doesn’t want to
know.”
“Oy.” Dorothy leans
back and takes a deep breath, then raises her glass. “I didn’t hear
any of that, I take it.”
“No, of course not.”
You nod at her. “What’s your sob
story?”
“Work.” She pulls a
face. “Another bloody ethics-compliance audit. You walk in the
door, and everyone gets defensive, like they expect you to put them
on a ducking stool and accuse them of witchcraft or
something.”
“Ethics: It’s not
just next door to Suffolk anymore.” It’s feeble and she’s heard it
a thousand times but it still raises a smile.
Dorothy’s job is an
odd one: catching corporate corruption before it metastasizes and
infects society at large. After Enron collapsed—while you were
still in secondary school—the Americans passed the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act, accounting regulations for catching corporate malfeasance. But
all they were looking for was accounting irregularities: symptoms
of maladministration. The unspoken ideology of capitalism didn’t
admit, back then, of any corporate duty beyond making a return on
investment for the shareholders while obeying the law.
Then the terrible
teens hit, with a global recession followed by a stuttering shock
wave of corporate scandals as rock-ribbed enterprises were exposed
as hollow husks run by conscience-free predators who were even less
community-minded and altruistic than gangsters. The ravenous
supermarket chains had gutted the entire logistic and retail
sector, replacing high-street banks and post offices as well as
food stores and gas stations, recklessly destroying community
infrastructure; manufacturers had outsourced production to the
cheapest overseas bidders, hollowing out the middle-class incomes
on which consumer capitalism depended: The prison-industrial
complex, higher education, and private medical sectors were intent
on milking a public purse that no longer had a solid tax base with
which to pay. Maximizing short-term profit worked brilliantly for
sociopathic executives looking to climb the promotion ladder—but as
a long-term strategy for stability, a spiralling Gini coefficient
left a lot to be desired.
The European
Parliament responded by focussing on corporate governance. If
corporations wanted to be legal citizens, the politicians riding
the backlash declared, they could damned well shoulder the
responsibilities of good citizenship as well as the benefits.
Social as well as financial audits were the order of the day.
Directives outlining standards for corporate citizenship were
drafted, and a lucrative niche for a new generation of management
consultants emerged—those who could look at an organization and
sound a warning if its structure rewarded pathological behaviour.
And as for the newly nationalized supermarket monopolies, a
flourishing future as government-owned logistics hubs beckoned.
After all, with no post offices, high-street banks, or independent
general stores, who else could do the job?
“It’s a bank.”
Dorothy shrugs. “We’re running a three-year review for them,
focussing on human resources, internal promotion practices, and how
they monitor compliance with social-policy directives for dealing
with customers in default.” Defaults are a political hot potato in
this deflationary age. The ground still hasn’t stopped shaking from
the collapse of the noughties investment bubble, and only
government intervention has stopped Scotland—and the other western
EU members—following America down the road of mass repossessions,
Greenspan favelas, and civil unrest. “Bankers aren’t stupid this
decade; they know what happened to their predecessors. What we’re
worrying about is getting to the next
decade’s managers before they unlearn the lesson. And there’s some
other stuff, but I can’t talk about that.”
Her mention of
other stuff is uncharacteristically
low-key. And you know Dorothy well enough to have a clue what makes
her tick. “Usual rules?”
“Cross your heart and
hope to spontaneously combust, more like.”
“Well.” You take a
lick of salt from the rim of your glass, roll your tongue at her.
“We can see about that.”
“I’m serious.” Her
lips pale.
“So am I. What do you
think would happen if I compromised a live intelligence-led
investigation?” (Translation: Why do you want
to tell me this?)
“Much the same.” She
looks at you for a moment. “Is your phone on? Remove the
battery.”
You stare at her.
Then you reach into your handbag and take out your phone and pop
the back of the case. “There’s a camera behind the bar. It’s
overlooking the till, but it can see the mirror.”
“I know. I checked
earlier. It’s hi-def, but we’re far enough away that it won’t
record a good enough picture for lip-reading. And we’re less likely
to be overheard here.” She pulls out her own phone and removes the
battery. You suddenly feel as naked as you’ve ever been with
her.
“You didn’t look me
up just for old time’s sake,” you accuse.
“Not—entirely.” She
doesn’t try to look away. “I’m sorry. Yes, I have an ulterior
motive. I need a sanity check, Liz.”
“A sanity check?
Banking ethics isn’t my—”
“This isn’t about
banking. You’re on my disclosure notice; nobody’s going to think
twice about me hooking up with a girl-friend.”
The indefinite
article stings, a reminder of where you stand with Dorothy.
“Disclosure notice. I’m not sure I like the sound of
that.”
She waves it off.
“It’s a sealed declaration of interests, for the enhanced
background enquiry—so I can’t be blackmailed. It’s basically just
an enhanced CRB check with extras, Liz.” She pauses. “You’re not in
the closet. I mean, at work. Are you?”
“Not for
years.”
“Good. Look, what I’m
concerned about is that nobody’s likely to listen in on this, and
anybody who notices us here is going to assume the obvious.” She
slides her leg against your knee again. “Oh yes, I’m looking
forward to Saturday. Are you?” Her eyes are gleaming. You focus on
her lips, glossy and plump with anticipation, and
shiver.
“If I were a man, I’d
call you a cock-tease.” You manage to summon up something not
unlike a coy smile.
“I’d like to take you
upstairs after this drink, but I think my room’s probably bugged.”
She says it so casually, it takes you a moment to understand her
words. “I can understand if you don’t want that. Listening in, I
mean.”
It’s like a bucket of
cold water in the face. “Who’s bugging you?”
“I’m not entirely
sure. It goes back about two months; I ran across some rather weird
correlations when I was going over the transactions for—um, never
mind. Anyway, my boss buried my email and reassigned me when I
tried to raise it with him last month. Said it was circumstantial,
and we didn’t have the resources to go after random leads. Well,
I’ve been doing some more digging, and when I got here, I found a
concealed camera in my bedroom and one in the shower.”
There is a famous
optical illusion: a silhouette of a vase, which—once you know what
to look for—suddenly flips into a silhouette of two faces looking
at each other. (Or vice versa.) You’re looking at Dorothy’s face
and one moment you could have sworn she’s excited, turned on—and
the next, she’s frightened. Context is
everything.
“What do you think’s
going on?” you ask her.
She shoves her glass
to one side of the table and leans forward. “I can’t tell you the
details. But part of what we do is abstract social-network analysis
on waves, IM, email, phone calls—looking for indicators of
pathological communications patterns. If you can track who’s
talking to who, you can work out which parts of an organization
work together, and see emergent patterns of behaviour. It goes back
to the classic study on Enron’s email corpus in the noughties, but
there’s been a lot of work since then on agent-assisted NLP and
transitive clique identification . . . There’s also some promising
work on determination of ethical or conspiratorial networks. There
are other data sets we can trawl exhaustively—the banking crisis,
the full corpus of internal communications left behind in the wake
of the Goldman Sachs collapse. All the data sets from businesses
we’ve audited since the corporate-responsibility criteria were
introduced, suitably blinded and anonymized. We use them to spot
warning signs. You get a different pattern of communication in
groups who’re colluding to instigate a cover-up, for
instance.”
At this point, you’re
working hard to keep your eyes open. Dorothy would have made a
kick-ass accountant if she hadn’t decided to go into corporate
psychoanalysis: She could bore for Europe in the Olympics if she
wanted to. But you ken where she’s going with this. It’s not so
dissimilar to what you do in the Innovative Crime Investigation
Unit—which, come to think of it, is how you met her in the first
place, at a conference on pre-emptive gang-crime prevention. “What
did you find?”
“What got my
attention is the bank I’m here to audit—I got an anonymous tip to
look into something and, well, there’s a pattern of communication
in their investment arm that looks worryingly similar to some of
the crazier stuff that was going on in 2007. Subprime investments,
dangerous quant stuff. Unethical, if not illegal. Only it’s not
real estate this time, Liz. I pulled the audit trail, and it turns
out they’re investing heavily in options trades based on government
bonds from a breakaway republic in the back end of
Asia.
“What’s alarming me
is . . . round about 2009, one of the things that happened during
the great recession was that banks almost universally ran out of
liquidity, all over the world, simultaneously. It got to the point
where national regulators started turning a blind eye when their
banks accepted deposits in cash from, uh, irregular sources. Money
laundering. Some say up to a third of a trillion dollars in black
money was laundered into the global banking system during the
crash. It was the last hurrah of the great drugs cartels:
Decriminalization and the dollar collapse effectively bankrupted
them over the next decade. But ending the war on drugs didn’t end
organized crime, and there are still gangs out there with money to
launder. Anyway, I got a tip-off. Began looking for signs of
weirdness in the money supply in the, the Republic of
Issyk-Kulistan. We’ve got far less data on them than on our own
banks, but I didn’t have to look hard. If they’re so poor, and
they’ve got a 40 per cent unemployment rate, how come their GDP
rose 30 per cent on independence?
“Anyway? I took it to
my line manager, and he told me to lay off. It’s all inconclusive,
and anyway, it’s outside our purview. Drop it completely, in other
words. Then I got sent up here to do a routine audit, and it turns
out that my hotel room’s bugged. Also—I think I spotted a man
following me yesterday. On the tram, home from work. I never
thought I’d say this, but I’m scared, Liz.”
There’s a time to
stand on your work/life balance metric, and a time to throw the
rule-book out the window. Dorothy is clearly frightened—so scared
it took her three cocktails and a presumptively bug-free bar to
open up to you. Unfortunately, a lot of what she told you is as
confidential as the contents of your own ongoing investigations
(i.e. it’s a honking great disciplinary—or even criminal—offence to
talk about it out of school), not to mention reeking of some kind
of artificial reality game to anyone who doesn’t know that she
really is a chartered social-pathology
analyst who works for the Department of Trade and Industry’s
Ethical Oversight Inspectorate. (A fancy way of saying she’s a
canary in the kind of coal mine where they call the Serious Fraud
Office to deal with the cave-ins.)
So, despite being off
duty, you put the battery back in your phone and file, in quick
succession: an open case report (“female reports being trailed by
unidentified male”) with a note that this is subject to
investigation under the Protection from Harassment Act; a note for
the intelligence desk (subject reports threatening behaviour: Due
to sensitive nature of employment they suspect a possible violation
of Whistleblower Protection Act); and finally a memo to yourself
(“look into organized crime/connection with Issyk-Kulistan”), which
you will probably off-load onto Moxie’s overflowing to-do heap on
the morrow.
The latter might be
treading dangerously close to misuse of police resources for
personal gain, but your soft-shoe shuffle if anyone asks will
revolve around a third-party tip-off about persons of interest to
an ongoing organized-crime investigation in another force area: At
worst, the skipper will yell at you and deliver his #3 Not Getting
Distracted lecture again.
All of which adds up
to this: If Dorothy needs to talk to a control-room officer in a
hurry, they’ll clock her CopSpace trail, realize that a detective
inspector’s taking her concerns seriously, and listen. (Probably.) Which is the sort of thing that
sometimes saves lives, and certainly you’ll sleep a wee bit more
soundly for knowing she’s safe under the watching eyes of your
colleagues. “That’s filed,” you tell her, and yawn. “Are you going
to be okay for the now?”
“I’ll have to be.”
She smiles shakily as she stands up. “I’ll not be asking you to
come up to my room.” She rolls her eyes in the direction of the
camera dome behind the bar, and you don’t have the heart to remind
her that for every one she can see, there’ll be at least two that
she doesn’t. “Saturday . . . your place?”
You stand up, too.
“It’s yours. If you want to come back with me
tonight—”
She leans forward,
and of an instant you’re hugging each other. Her breath is hot
against your neck. “Better not,” she murmurs. “If I’m really being
watched, I’m contagious. All the same, I’m going to check into a
different hotel tomorrow and hope it throws them, whoever they
are.”
“Sounds like a good
idea.”
“I think so. So. Are
we on for the weekend?”
“If you
want—”
She turns her head
and kisses you hard on the mouth. You swallow a gasp, suddenly
acutely aware that you’re in public—then she pulls back, leaving
your lips tingling. “Yes, I want. Good
night, darling.” Her smile is a fey thing. It fades as she walks
towards the lobby, leaving you standing by the table, your nipples
tight, your breath stolen, and your head full of harm.