without taking out the insurance, by making fictitious hedges. To begin with, he mostly got his bets right, which meant huge profits for his desk. He concealed the source by making more trades, and so on and so on. It was crazy, really—he was bound to get found out eventually. In the event, it was a whistleblower—someone on his team who wasn’t quite as brainwashed as the others.”
“And Miles got fired?”
“In the end, yes. But before that, there was an investigation. That was the first I knew of it—when the audit people started crawling all over him. The sensible thing to do at that point would have been to clear his position, deny everything, and keep his head down. But he didn’t.” Murdo shook his head in disbelief. “He came to me after work one day and casually asked if I’d set up a trading account he could use, now the heat was on him. As a fellow Mayfly, he said, he knew he could trust me. I told him I’d have to be mad to do that—I’d end up getting dragged into it, too. He just laughed and said, ‘Well, why not? This is the most fun I’ve had in ages.’ He was actually enjoying the whole damn thing. It was as if he thought he was invincible.”
“So you refused to help?”
Murdo nodded. “But the bastard told the investigators I’d been part of it anyway. There was absolutely no truth to it, of course. But I knew I was under a shadow after that, so I left.”
“When was all this?”
“Just over two years ago.”
About the same time David and Theo were in hospital. “And what about the Mayflies? He left the team because of a knee injury, I heard?”
Murdo snorted. “Who told you that? He got thrown out because he took it too damn seriously.”
“In what way?”
“Look—we’re a pub team. A bunch of guys who all played at a decent level at university and aren’t quite ready to hang up our boots. Miles became captain because no one else wanted it. And to be fair, because he was the best player. But he hated losing—just hated it. Pretty soon he was giving us prematch pep talks. We even had to chant stuff out loud—‘Desire. Hurt. Dominate. Destroy,’ that kind of thing. That one was actually an England dressing room chant from the 2003 World Cup, but we played in a Sunday league, for Christ’s sake. And then, in one match, when we were losing sixteen to twelve, there was a scrum in our half near the touchline and Miles gouged out the opposing player’s eye with his thumb. The poor guy had to go straight to hospital and have the rest of it removed—he’s got a glass eye now. Miles didn’t even apologize to him. We took a vote after the game and told Miles he was out. He just shrugged. It was weird, really. He went all quiet and still, almost blank, and said, ‘You’re losers anyway. I’m bored of the lot of you.’ It was as if he’d turned into a robot.”
I nodded. “I know that voice.”
“So anyway,” Murdo said, “my advice to anyone, and the reason I agreed to meet you, is to say: Steer clear of Miles Lambert.”
“You know I said it was a whistleblower who first raised concerns about Miles? It’s meant to be a confidential process, but the consensus around the office was that it was a guy called Anand, a young analyst who’d only recently transferred onto the team. About a month after Miles left, Anand was out jogging when he was the victim of a hit-and-run. It was raining and visibility was bad—no one saw anything, least of all Anand. He broke his pelvis in five places—he was lucky not to be killed. There was no evidence it was anything to do with Miles. But put it this way, a few of us Mayflies took to running in pairs for a while after that.”
I thought of Jane Tigman, knocked off her bike after complaining about Theo.
“I don’t think it’s nothing,” I said slowly. “I think it’s what he does.”
Murdo nodded, and finished his drink. “And remember, all this is off the record. The last thing I want is Miles waiting outside my front door.”
78
Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 41. Retrieved from Maddie Wilson’s iPad internet history. Peter Riley’s laptop was in police custody at the time.