He awoke with a start. Someone was kicking him in the ribs.
“Wake up, you tosser.”
He felt himself being hoisted onto a chair. Someone started untying his hands. His first instinct was to struggle, but his arms were being held tight and brought round to the front, where he could feel more rope and tape being wound round them, binding them to the arms of the chair. The hood was lifted up to expose his mouth and the tape was pulled off.
“Here. Drink this.”
A cup was put to his lips and he glugged down the water. His throat was parched. They let the hood fall back down over his mouth but didn’t replace the tape, thank God.
“What do you want?” he asked, relishing the freedom to move his mouth. No answer.
“Is it money? I can pay you half a million pounds right now. I just need a laptop with internet access. The transfer will go through - you have my word. You’ll be able to check it against your own account.” Still no answer.
The chair was being lifted up off the ground now. He could hear the men grunting with the effort. It felt like they were carrying him up some stairs.
“Will someone please tell me why I am here?” No answer. He felt impatient. Couldn’t they just dispense with the theatrics and get down to business?
At last, the chair was deposited unceremoniously on a flat surface and the hood was taken off.
It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the light. He was facing a large mural of a giant squid in a pinstripe suit with its tentacles wrapped around a globe. The squid had an enormous grin on its face, showing off its vampire-like fangs. The globe, on the other hand, looked to be in a bad way; the cities were in ruins and populated by beggars, the factories were derelict and the oceans, which were painted a sickly green, were full of half-submerged container ships. At the bottom of the picture were lots of tiny starving Africans, who seemed to have fallen off the globe altogether. They were either being throttled by some of the squid’s spare tentacles or drowning in all the blood that was dripping from its fangs.
Then the chair was spun round. Judging from the graffiti on the walls and the lack of any proper furnishings, he appeared to be in a squat. The windows were all boarded up and a single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. Beyond that, there was just a small table with a laptop on it and three wooden chairs.
His captors were all wearing black balaclavas. The one closest to him, who had spun the chair around, was the biggest of the three – over six feet tall and powerfully built, wearing a red and black check shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was standing with arms folded and legs apart in the pose of a nightclub bouncer. His two companions were over the far side of the room. One of them was wearing combat trousers and a faded green top. He was about medium height with a much slighter build and was bent over the laptop. The third was shuffling some papers on a table. This one wore glasses over the balaclava, the stems tucked carefully into little holes next to his ears, giving him a mildly comic appearance. Or at least, Kevin might have found it mildly comic had it not been for the presence of something in the corner of the room which made him wonder if he had seriously underestimated what these people were capable of. It was a video camera sitting on a tripod, pointing straight at him. Jesus fucking Christ, he thought, surely they weren’t planning to do one of those Al Qaeda-style beheadings?
He found himself starting to shake.
“What do you want?” he asked again, aware that the fear was all too evident in his voice, but unable to do anything about it. Why didn’t they answer? The shaking was getting worse. It was making the whole chair rattle around. He didn’t want to die. It wasn’t fair. Why him? Why not some other bastard?
There was a damp feeling around his groin.
The big man noticed it first. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered. “Hey, guess what! Our very own Master of the Universe over here has wet himself.”
The others turned to face him. “If only we’d got that on film,” said the one in the combat gear.
The one with glasses walked across and looked down at the damp patch on Kevin’s trousers. He sniffed and turned to the others. “Make sure we only have his head and upper body in shot. We can’t use that on film. It smacks too much of humiliation.”
“I was only joking,” replied combat-gear man, sounding peeved. He walked over until he was standing in front of Kevin, who continued to shake. “I do feel a sort of sense of achievement, though. I mean, just think, guys like this have been hauled up in front of MPs and Select Committees and stuff and it all seemed like water off a duck’s back to them. But here we are, three ordinary blokes – and that’s enough to make this guy piss in his pants. How the mighty are fallen, eh?”
“Can we stick to the script please?” said the man in glasses, sounding irritated.
At last, Kevin found his voice - although he barely recognised the tremulous noise which emerged from his throat. “What do you want? I don’t want to die. Just tell me what you want. Is it money?”
“Money?” said the big man, scornfully. “That’s all you lot think about it, isn’t it? But you know what? We’re not after your money. We want you to make an apology.”
“An apology?” repeated Kevin, dumbfounded but still shaking.
“Yes,” said the man in glasses. “An apology to the people of this country and the people of the world for the suffering you have caused through your selfish, greedy and short-sighted conduct.”
“But,” added combat-gear man, “it’s not like we’re totally disinterested in the money. Because to show you’re serious about the apology, we want you to donate a million pounds to charity.”
“If you wish,” added the man in glasses, “you can choose which one, but it will need to be approved by us. We thought that splitting it fifty-fifty between a charity tackling poverty in the third world and a debt advisory service for people on low incomes here would be appropriate. You see, despite appearances, Mr Samworth” - he gestured at his own balaclava – “we’re really quite reasonable people. We just feel that no one has been properly held to account for the banking crisis. It has cost UK taxpayers alone billions of pounds – to say nothing of all the losses incurred elsewhere around the world. It was caused by conduct of the utmost greed and stupidity by you and people like you. Yet no one responsible for this state of affairs has gone to prison or been faced with any meaningful sanction. Instead, people like you have gone back to their jobs, with your multi-million pound bonuses, fancy cars and fancy houses, while others are made to suffer. It is a grave injustice. And since governments aren’t doing anything to make you face up to your responsibilities, we feel that we have no choice but to take matters into our own hands.”
“An apology?” repeated Kevin. So they weren’t going to execute him on live TV. A sense of relief flooded through him and the shaking began so subside.
“Yes,” said the man in glasses, “an apology.” He gestured at the video camera. “As you can see, we plan to film it and then post it on the internet. Our hope is that it will be a cathartic moment – that once people see a proper, full apology for what has happened, they will demand that everyone in senior positions in the banking industry does the same. The pressure will simply be too much to resist. Governments will then be forced to take meaningful action to hold you people to account and tackle the problems which caused the crisis in the first place. We’ve taken the liberty of preparing a text.” He held out a piece of paper in front of Kevin. “As I say, we’re reasonable people, so we’re prepared to discuss changes to the final text. But there needs to be a full acceptance of responsibility and a genuine apology. Take your time reading it.”
There was silence as Kevin looked over the text. It said:
“My name is Kevin A. Samworth and I am head of the investment banking division at Royal United Bank. I wish to apologise to the British people and to people around the world for the greed, short-sightedness and serious errors of judgmen
t of which I and others in similar positions in the banking industry are guilty. I realise the massive damage which my actions caused to the world economy and I profoundly regret the unnecessary suffering and hardship which I have inflicted upon many millions of people. I accept that I and others in positions of responsibility at major banks and financial institutions could and should have foreseen the risks of our activities and taken action to prevent the crisis which resulted from our conduct. I would also like to express my heartfelt gratitude to British taxpayers and taxpayers around the world for the incredibly generous support which they have provided, both in order to avert an even worse crisis and to rescue the Bank which I helped to ruin. Furthermore, I profoundly regret the fact that even after this assistance was provided, people such as myself have continued to receive massive salaries and bonuses, despite the scale of the financial problems faced by our employer and despite all the evidence that such excessive remuneration was a major cause of the banking crisis…”
And so it went on, for nearly two whole pages. Kevin stopped reading and came to a decision.
“Fuck you,” he said. “I’m not apologising for anything.” And he began to laugh. The big man and the one in combat-gear turned to look at the one with glasses, apparently expecting him to take the lead. But he too seemed lost for words. Kevin decided to spell it out for them.
“You can’t force me to apologise. What are you going to do, shoot me? If you do that, you’ll all go to prison for life. You know that as well as I do. So you’re the ones with the most to lose here, not me. But here’s the deal. Let me go now and I won’t go to the police.” He paused, before adding: “It’s a good deal. Think about it.”
The man in glasses sighed disapprovingly: “Mr Samworth, I don’t think this is the moment for macho posturing. That sort of behaviour may go down very well in the boardrooms which you frequent, but out here in the real world, people see things differently. What they want is an apology. That’s all you have to do, then you’re a free man. My colleagues and I have waited long enough for this moment. If we have to wait a few more hours or even days, then so be it. You never know, you might even feel better about yourself afterwards.”
Kevin laughed again. He hadn’t meant to, but he found that he just couldn’t help himself.
“A few minutes ago you were asking for a million pounds as well. Didn’t take long to drop that demand, did it?”
“We haven’t dropped it,” snapped the man. “That’s not what I said.” Kevin thought he sounded slightly rattled now. “I was just making the point that an apology isn’t much to ask. Perhaps you need to spend some more time in the cellar in order to come to your senses,” he added, ominously.
“I don’t think so,” said Kevin. “Like I said, I’ve got nothing to lose. You lot, on the other hand, have everything to lose. So let me go now and we’ll say no more about it. But I’m not apologising. There’s nothing to apologise for.”
The big man suddenly lunged forward, seizing the arms of the chair and bringing his face right up to Kevin’s.
“I could hurt you,” he said, softly. Kevin caught the smell of stale cigarettes on the big man’s breath.
Now that he was sure he wasn’t going to die, Kevin no longer felt afraid. He sensed that he had thrown them off balance. He looked back at the big man. He knew it was a provocative thing to say, but what the hell, he was going to say it anyway:
“I think I’ve seen you,” he replied, coolly, “waiting around outside my house.”
“Bollocks.”
“Hmmm, let’s see, you’ve got ginger-ish hair, but it’s starting to recede quite badly now. You look a bit like Wayne Rooney before he had that ridiculous hair transplant – only rounder and chubbier. Most of the time you were stood outside my house, you were wearing the same shirt you’ve got on now and you were chain-smoking...”
* * * * * * * *