Congrats on the SAG Award, cast of Downton! Happy AU weekend, S/T lovers!
Never get tired of saying thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing this story. I hope everyone continues to enjoy it. This chapter gets into Tom's work now that he's back at the office. I hope the scenes in the newsroom are not super boring or confusing. Scenes with more than two people in them are not my strength.
I've modeled the reporting team, including the names, after characters in State of Play—not the movie with Ben Affleck, but the original British mini-series with Bill Nighy. If you haven't seen it, it's FANTASTIC (and there's bonus James MacAvoy). It's also about a reporter working on a big story even though he has a very personal connection to it.
Regarding the financial story, what they are investigating is a detail from an actual trade that happened on Wall Street in 2008, grandly embellished by my imagination. If anyone is reading who knows anything about finance, here's my disclaimer: No realism actually intended. Just having some S/T fun here.
Shout out to repmet, for recommending the story on tumblr.
Anyway, without further ado . . .
The next morning, Tom woke up marginally less sexually frustrated and ready to start his job for real.
He changed several times before deciding on a white button down shirt, navy trousers and a gray sport coat. Looking at himself in the mirror that hung on the back of his bathroom door, he laughed thinking how much his clothes, matched with the cane, made him look like an aging college professor. But it couldn't be helped.
He'd been limping around his flat for days, but if he did so too long without rest or the support of the cane, his knee would start throbbing, which frustrated him. The loss of the crutches had made him feel like the end was close, but Sybil, as gently as she could, had reminded him that it only meant he was about half-way through.
"Tom, a piece of your hamstring is now acting as your central knee ligament, and it needs time to learn how to do that," she'd told him. With an impish twinkle in her eye, she'd added, "More to the point, it needs to be strong enough to do what I'm going to need it to do."
"And how's your flexibility? Because I have some ideas in mind for you, too, you know," he'd responded, with a grin.
All of that, of course, made Tom all the more anxious to be at full strength.
Still, he was happy that there was progress. His rehab sessions were down to two days a week. Sybil had him riding the stationary bike and doing squats and leg extensions to strengthen the replacement ligament.
He liked to joke that she was only making him do all that exercising so he'd have a nicer bum.
"I won't deny it'll be an added benefit," she'd say with a smile.
"I doubt mine will ever be as nice as yours," he'd respond.
Then he'd see that smile, and those beautiful, blushing cheeks.
No. Full strength couldn't come soon enough.
XXX
As soon as Tom stepped into the newsroom, carrying a messenger bag full of as many of his notes and files as he could comfortably carry, the receptionist ran up to meet him.
"Hi, I'm Molly," she said, eagerly shaking his hand. "You're Tom Branson, aren't you?"
"Yes," Tom said, smiling. "Is there a desk for me?"
"Oh, yes, right this way." She walked him through the roughly arranged desks, stopping at an empty one adjacent to the three head offices in the back. "You'll find working near Michael and Cameron a blessing and a curse. Fair warning. Cameron likes to bark orders through the glass."
As he set his bag on the desk, he noticed the hastily made handwritten sign directly above it. It read, "Finance desk."
"Only the best in decorative services here," Molly said, rolling her eyes. "I put the paperwork for your credentials in the top drawer. Fill it out, then ask Charles over in photo to take your headshot and bring everything back to me, and I'll have your badge ready before you go this afternoon. Anything else?"
"I'm good, thanks."
Molly turned to leave then turned back around, "By the way, your phone extension is under the phone. Your cards will be ready next week. Some reporters like to give out the general number instead of their own so I'll screen their calls. Except than when they do that, I'll go into the car park and take the air out of their tires. Just something to think about."
She smiled brightly, then walked back to her desk.
Tom laughed. He set his cane down then moved to grab the papers for his credentials from the drawer.
A few minutes later, he'd just sat down and turned on his computer when two women approached him, one about his age, the other just a few years older.
"Branson, right?"
Tom grabbed his cane and pushed himself up.
"I'm Della Smith," said the younger of the two. "This is Helen Pregger. We're the ones who've been pulling the FSA stuff for you on HG."
"It's Tom," he said, shaking both their hands. "Thanks so much for that. I know filing public information requests is not very fun."
"Michael's been sending us your memos," Helen said. "It definitely feels like we're close to something. Did you get the salary disclosures from Pete as well?"
"Yeah, and I think I may have found what we're looking for. I was going to update Gregson on it today."
"Are you ready now?" Della asked.
"Sure."
"I'll get Pete and Dan," Helen said and headed toward the other end of the newsroom.
As Della went to knock on Gregson's door, Tom smiled to himself. Less than ten minutes in and he was already in the thick of it.
A short while later, Tom was at the conference table in Cameron Foster's office with Gregson and the four other reporters on the team: Della, Helen, Pete Cheng and Dan Foster. Cameron, a tall man in his late 50s with a mane of blonde hair, had served as Tony Blair's head of communications for four years and was the journal's founder and principal financial backer. He'd tapped Gregson to run the newsroom, but as the publisher, Cameron involved himself in the editorial decisions on the journal's big stories. If they could nail it, this would be the biggest one yet.
Sitting there, Tom couldn't help but feel a little intimidated. What exactly had Gregson seen in my clips from the Indy that made him think I would be ready for this, Tom thought. What made me think I was?
"Well, Branson," Cameron started off, "We've been paying you to stay at home and put your feet up for three months. What do you have to report?"
Tom took a deep breath. This is it.
"Do you remember Smith Brothers going under?"
"Who doesn't?" Cameron asked with a laugh.
"Well, a day before the stock started dropping, someone spent 1.7 million pounds on options that shorted the stock by half over nine days."
"You're kidding!" Gregson said.
"I heard about that actually," Cameron said. "A few MPs made some noise about it, but FSA didn't get deep into it, with the LIBOR issue heating up."
"There was a letter about it in the files Della and Helen sent. I don't know whether that meant they suspected HG Bank or if it was just a form letter, but that's what brought it to my attention, so I looked into the details."
"What was the payout?" Gregson asked.
"276 million pounds."
Helen raised her hand. "At the risk of sounding completely daft, I don't understand."
Dan, who was sitting next to her, spoke up, "Shorting stock means you reserve the right to sell it for less than its current price. It pays off when the stock goes down below the price you reserved. If a company's stock is being shorted it means that company might be in trouble. Basically, someone made a 1.7 million pound bet on the market that one of the oldest financial houses in the U.K. was going to go belly up in a week."
"But they couldn't have known," Helen replied. "The Smith Brothers bankruptcy came out of nowhere—that's what everyone was saying at the time."
"It was a shock," Cameron said seriously. "Anyone who shorted Smith Brothers stock to the tune of 1.7 million knew something the rest of us didn't. It's insider trading, at very the least."
Gregson looked back at Tom. "Are you saying it was HG?"
"It's complicated, but yes."
Cameron leaned back in his chair. "Uncomplicate it for us."
Tom looked around the room. All eyes were on him. "Martin Grey's name is on all three hedge funds in HG's portfolio as principal manager, but there are a half-dozen junior managers who do the actual work. The bank takes a fifteen percent fee on all gains on the funds. Martin takes five of that. The other ten goes into a pool from which the junior managers' get bonuses according to their activity."
"How so?" Gregson asked.
"They get ten percent of each trade they were responsible for. If a fund brings in 150 pounds in a day based on two trades, one that made 100 and one that made 50. Martin gets five percent of the 150 pounds. The manager who made the trade that netted 100 pounds gets ten percent of the 100 he made, and the manager responsible for the 50-pound trade gets ten percent of the 50 he made."
"So the more you bring in, the bigger the bonus you get?" Helen asked.
"Yeah. But their cut doesn't go to them directly. It goes into a savings account, from which each of the bonuses is paid out of at the end of each quarter in a lump sum."
"My head hurts just listening," Della said. "It must be a nightmare for their accountants."
"That's the whole point," Cameron said. "You think an underfunded, understaffed government agency has the wherewithal to find a needle in this kind of haystack?"
"That's the issue," Tom said. "On one side of the ledger, the funds each send a certain amount into the market and get back a certain amount of returns. On the other side, you have the account that parcels out the bonuses, but because all junior managers work on all the funds, the money is virtually impossible to follow from one side to the other. Trying to identify which of the managers shorted the Smith Brothers' stock would take an act of God or—"
"Or the luck of the Irish?" Cameron said with an impish smile.
Tom smiled, his cheeks blushing ever so slightly.
"Don't keep us in suspense, here, Branson, I've got a heart condition," Cameron prodded.
"As I said, the managers' fees go into a savings account. It gains a small amount of interest, which is why they have to disclose it, and the interest is divided evenly among the managers, but it's not much because the account is supposed to zero out at the end of each quarter, when the bonuses are paid out."
"Supposed to?" Gregson asked.
"At the end of the third quarter last year, the account had 27.6 million pounds in it, or in other words—"
"Ten percent of 276 million," Gregson said.
Cameron was smiling giddily. "And to think I almost stayed home this morning."
"So they made an illegal trade and made a massive return, but nobody collected the fee?" Dan asked.
"Not then," Tom said.
"Is it not still there?" Gregson asked.
"At the end of the quarter that ended two months ago the account was zeroed out again."
"Won't it still be hard to figure out which manager it is, though?" Helen asked.
"It wasn't actually."
"You know who it is!? How?" Della asked.
"I don't know the name, just a personnel ID number. The bonus check he or she got was for the exact amount."
"Couldn't that be a coincidence?" asked Pete.
Dan piped up, "Why would a manager who didn't make any other gains last quarter cash in on a one-year-old deal that raised red flags. He had to have known it would give him away."
"Thing is, it's not a coincidence. I looked back, and that manager hasn't collected a bonus for the last five years. I went as far back as the records we were able to collect let me, and there isn't a single bonus check in that manager's disclosures. He took a base salary. That was it. Whoever it was, this was the only trade he ever made as an HG employee."
"OK, say we run the story," Helen said. "If that trade really is traceable to one manager, it'll be easy for HG to hang the guy out as a rogue trader, fire him and evade actual scrutiny, won't it?"
"Not if the manager is the boss's kid," Cameron said. He waited a beat for everyone to absorb what he'd just said. "That's who you think it is, don't you, Tom."
"I do think it's his account, but I'm not convinced Larry Grey himself made the trade. And I don't understand why he would have taken the money out now."
Suddenly, Gregson stood up and started talking in rapid fire. "We need to document this to the cent. Della and Helen, take Tom's notes and do as much digging as you can in the data we have to trace the money from the pool account back to the trade itself. Work with graphics to get the process of how the money is parceled out visually. We need people to understand how they obfuscate where the money goes. Pete, find out who sent the FSA letter about the trade and why they didn't follow up—make sure you don't talk to anyone who might tip Martin off as to what we're looking into. Cameron, Dan, Tom, my office."
The three men followed Gregson next door. He started pacing excitedly, then stopped in front of Dan.
"Dan, I'm about to tell you something about Tom only Cam and I know. It stays in the room."
Dan nodded quickly and seriously.
"Tom was the Grey family chauffer for three weeks until Larry hit him with the family Rolls Royce in an alley near a night club three and a half months ago, which is why he's been working from home and using a cane. Later that night, Larry got picked up for driving drunk. The arresting officer suspected a hit and run, but had nothing to go on. Then, a security guard from the club near where this happened called the police about it but when police called him back, he'd conveniently forgotten what he saw. I knew all this, except for the fact that it was Tom, before he started working for us from a tip from a reliable source at City Police. Tom revealed it was him when we met the day he was supposed to start."
Then turning to Cameron and Tom, he continued, "Now, this is for all of you. The last week of June, my source told me the security guard came back. He'd been fired and was ready to sing about everything from drug sales to prostitution at the club. He said he saw a girl get out of the back seat of Larry Grey's car and come back into the club. Then he saw Larry get out of the back seat and into the front and drive off. The guard thought he heard Larry hit something. So he walked to the end of the parking lot. Larry was about half a block away but he was out of the car, apparently, and leaning over something in front of the car. The guard was called back into the club, but when he went to the end of the alley in the early morning, when the club closed, there was nothing there."
"Point, Michael," Cameron said with a roll of his eyes.
"The guard's statement prompted City Police to open an official inquest. Larry Grey was contacted by police four days before the end of the fiscal quarter. He's been out of the country since."
Tom's mind was reeling. He sat down in a chair in front of Gregson's desk. The other three, still standing, turned to look at him, as if expecting him to say something. "I had no idea."
Dan rehashed the details. "He gets a call from police. He needs to head out of town, so he makes a call in to work to ask for his bonus, gets a check for almost 28 million pounds and hops a plane. Not a bad plan."
"But why would he need that bonus. He's already rich, isn't he?" Tom asked.
Cameron answered. "Martin makes a good deal of money, but the family lives off of Elizabeth Grey's trust. That's likely the primary source of Larry's income. The base pay he gets from HG would help, but the bulk of his money would be what his grandfather earmarked for him."
"Point, dad," Dan said with a smirk.
"Contingency fund."
"What do you mean?" Dan asked.
"Elizabeth's father, Hamilton Pierce, was a proud Brit. He was in the diplomatic corps his entire career and he made a point of keeping his money—and it was a lot—in UK banks, instead of sending it to Swiss banks. Police have the power to freeze the accounts of fugitives as long as those accounts are local, so if Larry's lawyers are good—and we know he can afford the best money can buy—they would have told him not to leave without a contingency fund in case things got ugly with police."
"What do you think, Tom?" Gregson asked.
"It makes sense. But I'm still not sure Larry was the mastermind behind all this. He never works. I mean, never. Would he really have gone in to make not just any trade, but this one?"
"We could call him up to ask," Dan said with a laugh. "Getting a location and number out of Sally wouldn't be that hard."
Tom looked up at the mention of Elizabeth's secretary.
"Dan's been cultivating her as a source," Gregson explained.
"She's certainly chatty," Tom said.
"No joke," Dan said, smiling widely.
"There's no way he would agree to an interview," Gregson said. "What leverage do we have?"
Tom stood up again. "Actually, I have something that will make him talk."
It took Tom about ten minutes to explain the photo, why Larry had taken it and how it came to be in Tom's possession. He stressed that he wouldn't be going to the police about the matter, that he wanted to protect Sybil and his family at all costs and that he wanted to keep his connection to the Grey family out of the story—even if it meant he had to remove his byline.
"Surely, it won't come to that!" Dan said. "Anyone who took the time to look through that mountain of disclosures and paperwork would have found the evidence just the same. The hit and run is a totally separate issue. It doesn't have to come up in the story."
"Even if we use the photo to get Larry to talk to us?" Tom asked.
"We're only going to ask about his job at HG," Dan responded. "I've used stiffer forms of blackmail to get a source to talk."
"Of course, you have," Cameron said with a roll of his eyes.
"He's right, Cam," Gregson said. "This is nothing. The only way the hit and run becomes a part of the story is if Martin wants to try to discredit Tom by saying, 'This man is biased because my son hit him with my car.' Even I don't think Martin Grey is capable of making his son a sacrificial lamb like that."
"You don't?" Tom asked, skeptical.
"No, and if he does, it doesn't matter. As long as the facts regarding the trade are with us, he'll look desperate, like he's trying to deflect attention. We'll triple check the figures. That's the only defense we need. "
Cameron walked over to Tom and put his hand on his shoulder. "This story is going to make your career kid. Put your name on it."
Gregson turned to Dan. "Dan, work on Sally and see if she'll put you in touch with Elizabeth Grey. We'll try to get at Larry through her first. My guess is she'll definitely try to protect him. Don't mention or send the photo except as a last resort, got it?"
"I'm on it," he said and headed back out to the newsroom.
"I'll start wrangling our legal team," Cameron said. "Martin's going to come at us with everything." Then he added smiling and rubbing his hands together, "This is going to be fun."
Gregson and Tom laughed as he left for his own office.
Gregson sat down at his desk and put his feet up on his desk. "You know, Tom, when I was at university, I went to a lecture by this old reporter who was covering the mining industry in Northern England. It was the mid-80s, during the big miners' strike. The professor who introduced him said that this guy's reputation as an investigative reporter was such that if your name appeared in the lead of one of his stories, it was time to call your lawyer. This is that kind of story. Great work, truly."
Tom smiled, feeling a bit overwhelmed.
"Work with Della and Helen on crafting the main story. Dan will do the interview sidebar with Larry, and Pete will take care of the FSA piece."
"When do you think you'll want to run it?"
Gregson sighed. "We need to document every step the money took. By the time, we do that, Pete gets some good info at FSA and Dan makes contact with the family, prepares for an interview and actually conducts it . . . a month, I'm guessing."
"Best get to work, then." Tom walked to the door, then stopped. "Thanks for the chance, Michael."
Gregson smiled and said, "Welcome to the big time."
XXX
That evening, Tom met Sybil out for dinner and filled her in on his first real day at work, not sparing a single detail. Sybil was happy and proud, and glad that his months and months of educating himself on finance and then sifting though endless boxes of files while his body healed had been worth it. There was a spark, an enthusiasm in him that she'd never seen before.
When she first met him on her first date with Larry and when she first got to know him on their drive up to Downton together, she had liked him, but she'd also believed she wasn't seeing him as he really was, the circumstances blurring the true possibilities between them. Then, when she became his nurse, it was his injuries and his frustrations that got in the way. Slowly, over the last few months, those barriers had melted away and their relationship—such as it was—strengthened and deepened. But it wasn't until tonight, listening to him talk about his work and about having the chance to make a difference in people's lives, that she believed she saw him. The real Tom Branson.
She had told him last night that she loved him, and she had meant it. She might not have believed it possible then, but tonight, she loved him more.
XXX
After dinner, Sybil stood outside of the restaurant where they'd met up as Tom walked onto the street to hail a cab for her. One quickly pulled up. Sybil stepped off from the curb and kissed Tom lightly on the cheek over the door he was holding open for her. She was about to step in when he stopped her.
"I almost forgot." He pulled something out of the front pocket of his messenger bag and handed it to her. It was a picture of him from a vacation he had taken with Kieran and his family to the Irish coast, near Galway.
Sybil took it with a smile. "Thank you very much."
"You'll notice I'm topless."
Sybil looked at the photo, and indeed, Tom was standing on a beach in his swimming trunks. "Who knew chest hair could be so sexy?" She said with a twinkle in her eye.
Tom laughed. "I point it out only in case, you know, you have something in that vein you'd like to give me."
Sybil threw her head back in laughter.
"I'm being entirely serious. We have several more months of this, in case you've forgotten."
"I'll see what I can do," she said, winking, and stepped into the taxi.
She had been home for about 20 minutes and had started to get herself ready for a dip in her bathtub, being sure to put Tom's photograph within reach, when she heard her mobile ring. She went over to get it and rolled her eyes, smiling widely, when she saw that it was him.
"Hi," he said when she had answered.
"When I gave you my photo, I made the point of not calling you so you would have ample time to enjoy it."
Tom laughed. "Don't tell me I caught you in the middle of something."
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"I would like to very much, actually, but my reason for calling is important."
"What's that?" Sybil asked, genuinely curious.
"My sister-in-law has just gone into labor, and I need to go over to their house to watch my nephews tonight and get them off to school in the morning. This might be a bit too much to ask, so feel free to say no, but . . . would, um, would you be able to come over to help me? They're a bit of a handful."
Sybil smiled to herself.
"Text me the address. I'll meet you there."
XXX
It had taken all of Sybil and Tom's energy to wrangle Liam and Kellen, given the excitement of the now imminent arrival of their new baby brother or sister and the presence of Sybil, who was declared "the prettiest girl in the world" (according to Liam) "except for mam" (according to Kellen). Once the boys had finally fallen asleep, it had taken less than 10 minutes for Tom and Sybil, snuggled up on the sofa together, to fall asleep themselves.
The following morning, they called in late to work, got the boys off to school and went over to the birthing center where Liz and Kieran were enjoying their new baby daughter, Katie.
Sybil was a bit nervous at the prospect of being introduced to Tom's family at such an intimate moment, but Liz immediately put her at ease, warmly welcoming her into their fold and even handing Katie over to her.
"She's so darling!" Sybil said cooing over the tiny bundle.
Watching her, Tom felt a lump form in his throat. His head didn't understand why it was there. His heart knew it was because he was seeing his future.