The Red Road (12 page)

“It says it was a
suspected
murder, though,” Sam said. “Not an actual murder. The school are
still playing the accidental death card. At least that’s what my
parents believe. So, what are you all talking about?” he asked,
putting the paper to one side.

“What we’re going to do
career-wise when we finish university,” I said. “Carson’s
thinking of working in the stock market.”

“Really?” Sam asked. “Why?”

“Because they make a shitload of
money,” Carson said bluntly.

“How much?”

“Millions, every year in bonuses.”

“Is that like that place we went
to last year, with all the escalators and the weird lifts on the
outside?” Rob asked.

“Didn’t they ring a bell or
something whenever a ship sank?” Rory added.

“Nah,” I said. “Handjob was
just making that up.”

“No, it’s true,” Dave said.
“But they don’t do it any more. They used to ring it when a ship
was late to port and presumed missing. And that was Lloyd’s of
London we went to; they do insurance. You’re getting mixed up with
the London Stock Exchange.”

“Are you sure?” Rory insisted.

“Yes,” Dave said. “My dad
works at Lloyd’s.”

“Doesn’t your dad work there
too, Baz?” Rob asked.

“No,” Baz said.

He was lying. I didn’t say
anything.

“I bet he does,” Rob continued
on. “I bet Dave’s dad is his boss and Baz’s dad is his bitch.”

“Fuck off,” Baz said.

“Anyway, whatever,” Rob said.
“That place was really boring. Why did they take us there on a day
out, when we could’ve gone somewhere more interesting, like Thorpe
Park or the British Museum?”

“
The
British Museum
?”
I couldn’t help but start laughing.

“Dinosaur skeletons,” Rob said.
“Dinosaurs are cool.”

“True,” I admitted.

“They probably took us to Lloyd’s
and the Stock Exchange to get us interested in stuff like that,”
Sam said.

“And to let us know how much we
could make,” Carson said. “You can make a packet working on the
stock market.”

There were clearly pound signs in
Carson’s eyes. I wondered just how much he had looked into this,
and where he was getting his information from. I couldn’t recall
any of the teachers giving us specifics on the salaries the traders
commanded.

“I still think that’s bullshit,”
Rory said. “
Millions
. That can’t actually be cash. It must
be shares or something, or you don’t get it all at once.”

“It’s not,” Dave said. “Have
you heard of the Stockbroker Belt?”

Shakes of heads all round. It
sounded like a ring around London or something. I imagined it to be a
little like the M25.

“You mean the London commuter
belt,” Baz said.

Carson shook his head. “The
Stockbroker Belt is a different thing – it’s more like a circuit
of mansions that they live in—”

“Mansions?” Rory began to laugh.

“I’m serious,” Carson said.
“They make so much money on the stock market that they can afford
to live in houses worth millions. All paid for, too. No mortgage,”
he added.

“Does your dad live there?” I
asked, looking at Dave. It was somewhat rude to ask, I knew, but I
found myself being swept up in the current of the conversation. I was
probably disbelieving everything I was hearing and wanted closure on
it.

“No,” Dave started. “He lives
in Hampstead.”

“Fucking hell! Seriously?” Baz
said.

“In a mansion in Hampstead,”
Carson grinned.

Dave remained silent, as did Sam.
Sam had been to Dave’s on a few occasions, the longest being the
break we had following the murder. He had clearly been asked by Dave
not to say anything.

“That’s one of the most
expensive parts of London,” Carson supplied. “Does he actually
live on the Heath?” he asked Dave.

Dave nodded, but still said nothing
else. He was perhaps a little embarrassed that his dad lived in such
an expensive place. I wondered where his mum lived.

“Where have you been reading
this?” I asked Carson, deciding to move the conversation on and not
focus on Dave’s apparent incredible wealth.

“In the
Telegraph
,”
Carson said.

“Ah, you mean the
Daily
Torygraph
,” Marvin said.

“What?” Sam asked.

“The
Torygraph
,” Marvin
repeated. “It’s what people call the
Daily Telegraph,
because they have strong links to the Conservatives and is read by a
lot of higher earners.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Marvin said. “Well, I
think so, anyway.”

“Who do Labour support?” Baz
asked.

“All the poor people,” Carson
poked more fun at Baz, who only scowled in response.

“The
Sun
and the
Guardian
,”
Rory said. “My dad reads both of them religiously.”

“Mainly the
Sun
for the
Page 3 girl,” Marvin grinned. “For a quick shuffle while he’s
out there on the tractor.”

“Anyway,” Carson continued on
before the bickering started again. “All the stockbrokers live in
mansions, attend a lot of champagne parties, and are all retired by
thirty-five or forty.”

“What?” the room chorused at
once.

“Bullshit, Young,” Rory said.

“It’s hard work,” Carson said.
“They start at about five-thirty in the morning and don’t finish till after
eight some nights.”

“That’s usual for a farm,”
Rory said.

“I forgot to ask you earlier,” I
then said, looking at Rory and remembering what we had been talking
about before Sam had come in. “Are you going to go back to the farm
when you finish here and work there?”

“No way,” Rory answered
automatically. “It’s really hard work. Going home for a holiday
is usually anything but. It’s practically a twenty-four-seven job.
I’d only go back there if I messed everything up.”

“You’ve never told us that
before,” I said.

“Well,” Rory said, shuffling a
little uncomfortably. “It’s not like I don’t
like
going
back home, but it’s just not something I want to do with life. My
brothers and sisters
love
it, but I’d rather do something
else.”

“Just want a bit of an easier
life?”

Rory shrugged, as if a little
ashamed to admit it. I couldn’t see why, given what we were talking
about, champagne parties and all. “But you’re going to inherit
the farm from your dad, right?” I asked.

“No,” Rory shook his head. “My
older brothers will get it before me. I would only get it if neither
of them wanted it. And they really want to work on the farm, instead
of ‘for the man’, so I’m
happy to let them.”

“When would your sister get it?”
Sam asked.

“After me.”

“Really? But she’s older than
you.”

Another shrug from Rory. “It’s
just the way my mum and dad would do it.”

“So, if you’re not going to work
on the farm, what
are
you going to do?” I asked.

“Politics?”

I heard the question mark drift
about the room, visiting each occupant in turn, almost inviting each
of us to pick up on Rory’s clear uncertainty. I made no comment, my
focus mostly on what Carson had been talking about. I was certain
that much of it was exaggerations and even lies, but there would be
an element of truth to it as well.

“So, do you know anyone who works
at one of these places?” I asked him.

“Well, no,” Carson said,
sounding a little sheepish. “But when you’re at university, you
can do a sandwich course and spend a year working for one,” he
added, raising his voice as Marvin, Rory and Sam started to jeer.

“A
sandwich
course?”
Rory started to laugh.

“Are you sure that’s not
something to do with working in catering?” Sam asked, grinning.

“It’s a course that lets you do
two years at uni, a year working for someone, and then your final
year at uni again,” Carson said with a sigh. “It means your
course is four years, instead of three.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Dave
nodded. “My dad says that they get students in there from time to
time. They’re there from the autumn until the following summer.”

“Paid?” I asked. I didn’t
expect they would be. After all, you were a student.

“Yep,” Carson said. “At about
two-thirds or so of what they would pay a graduate normally.”

“And how much is that?” I asked,
still sceptical.

“About thirty grand,” Carson
said.

The room exploded. “Thirty fucking
thousand pounds?” we all breathed. “That’s tons!”

“Fucking hell, and I thought
fifteen grand was a lot,” Baz said.

“Is that what they pay your dad?”
Marvin smirked. Baz didn’t rise to it.

“Thirty grand when you’re on a
sandwich course? So, what do they normally get?” I asked, my mind
embarking on some mental arithmetic before the words had completely
left my mouth. “Fifty?”

“About that,” Carson said.

The explosion didn’t happen this
time, and the Belfry fell silent as we all began to add up what that
implied in the long term, what we would spend the money on, and how
much the salary might actually rise to.

I was bowled over by what
Carson had said. If he was being honest and wasn’t on a mission to
wind us all up that night, it meant I could pull in more money in my
first year of employment than my own mother did right now. Maybe even
surpass my father’s after ten years. Thirty thousand pounds while
still a student? My six years’ tuition at St Christopher’s had so
far cost my parents something in the region of sixty grand. It
suddenly sounded like nothing.

“See? You all thought I was making
this up,” Carson smiled, taking the opportunity to defend himself
now that he had everyone on the back foot.

“You could buy loads of cars with
that,” Rob said.

“Or just one very flash one,”
Marvin said, picking up one of the copies of
GQ
that littered
Carson’s room and starting to thumb through it, Rob similarly
pawing at the pages. It was obvious that he was already spending
Carson’s salary in his head, looking at the watches, gadgets, and
all else that were reviewed in the magazine’s pages, creating a
mental shopping list of must-haves. “I’d go for a Lambo.”

“You couldn’t afford one of
those on fifty grand a year,” Baz said.

“
You
couldn’t,” Marvin
said, without lifting his eyes from the page, “not with your mum
and dad being poor and living in a shoebox.”

“I’m not poor!” Baz glared.

“Yeah, okay,” I then said,
looking back to Carson. “But that doesn’t sound like it’d make
you a millionaire all that quickly. You’d need ...” I embarked on
another round of maths.

“Around twenty years to make a
million,” Sam said.

“And you’ve got to take the tax
off and other things like that,” Rory added. “So it would take a
lot longer.”

Marvin and Rob looked up from the
magazine, both appearing a little deflated. The magazine was open on
a double-page spread of a car they both had been gazing at, likely
one that carried a six-figure price tag. It would take them both an
age to pay for one of those, even if they combined their salaries. It
was already sounding like we had found a gaping hole in Carson’s
get-rich-quick scheme. Carson only started laughing.

“That’s the
basic wage
,
and you don’t make the money that way, anyway,” he said.

“How do you make it?” Marvin
asked.

“Bonuses. Your basic salary is
only about fifty or sixty grand—”

“
Only
,” Rory snorted.

“—but you get hundreds of
thousands at least a year in bonuses.”

“Jesus!” I was unable to help
myself.

“Really?” Marvin said.

“Really,” Carson said, genuinely
serious in both his tone and expression.

Marvin’s eyes flicked instantly
back to the magazine as Rob tried to yank it from his grasp, the two
boys starting to fight over what had now become their fantasy
shopping catalogue.

“Oh, fuck off, Young, you’re so
full of shit,” Rory then said angrily. “Not even doctors get that
much.”

“I’m not making this up,”
Carson said. “That’s what they get. The CEOs of the banks get
tens of millions in bonuses every year. Seriously, go ask Mr Davies.”

“Who?” Marvin said, as the
magazine continued to suffer the attention of Rob and his tussles.

“Mr Davies, the A-Level economics
teacher.”

I had never heard of the man before.
Quite likely, this was because he only taught the sixth form, and so
I would have no interaction with him. It was possible that I had met
him on the odd occasion, but I suspected that he only visited the
school on the days he taught. There were a handful of teachers at St
Christopher’s that could be described as part-time staff.

“So, do you already know who you
want to go and work for?” Marvin said, finally losing the struggle
over the magazine to Rob.

“I was actually thinking of
working in America,” Carson said with a glance in Sam’s
direction. “If I can get in.”

“You’ll need a work visa or
sponsorship,” Sam said.

“You can’t just go?” I asked.

“No,” Sam shook his head.
“Employment laws in America are really strict. You can’t just fly
over there and ask for a job.”

“That’s the same with most
countries, though,” Marvin said. “Except Australia.”

“
Except
Australia?” Sam
asked.

“Yeah, there’s no one there.
They always want people to come over and work there from what I hear.
Especially teachers.”

“So why do they always come to
teach over
here
?” I chuckled, along with everyone else.

“Because it’s
boring
out
there. There’s nothing to do.
Neighbours
isn’t true to
life,” Marvin said.

“Shame,” Rob said, without
looking up from
GQ
. “The girls on there are fit. I’d go
tomorrow, if I could.”