Capital

already on champagne, which was a good sign. A couple of people had clear fizzy drinks which might have been vodka-tonics but which could also be fizzy water. Surprise, surprise, his deputy Mark was one of them. One or two of the better traders were already half-cut. Jez, the best of them all, was three-quarters cut, which wasn’t surprising, since he was drinking Jägerbombs. Good, all good.
    At about eight they went into the separate room that Roger had booked. It was dark, with a low ceiling and a hard-to-define catering smell of old or stale or ignored food. There were two oval tables, each with a dealer sitting at the end wearing a red waistcoat; nine seats for players; nine stacks of chips. Some jostling for position took place, as people chose where they wanted to sit. That was always one of the informative things about team-building exercises, who ganged up with whom, and who was left out. It was like the moments at school when the boys were allowed to pick their own teams – it was useful information to see who was left for last.
    His crew were who they were: they wouldn’t respect Roger if he didn’t try to win; in fact the thought of doing anything else never occurred to him. So who was at his table was an issue. Roger ended up at the same table as Mark, which wasn’t what he would have chosen. Nothing specific, just that slight awkwardness which hovered around his deputy and his too-willingness, his too-eagerness, his unctuous body language. Nobody ever seemed to dislike Mark, but he was too whatever-it-was for anyone to actively like him. Roger, with a large Talisker inside him, thought: just another mystery not worth solving. More of a problem was that he was sitting to the right of Slim Tony, called thus to distinguish him from Big Tony, who had in fact left Pinker Lloyd before Slim Tony arrived, but whose nickname lingered in the collective memory, not least because of his habit of always eating at his desk, and never one of anything – three Pret a Manger sandwiches, four Big Macs. Slim Tony was a pointy-faced ‘Essex boy’, in reality from High Wycombe, who had paid his way through university by playing poker online. Roger knew that, because that was the reason he had hired him. The place you didn’t want to be seated in poker was to the right of the strongest player. So that wasn’t good.
    On his right was Michelle. Female traders, in Roger’s experience, either went super-girly and manipulative, or were more like alpha males than the alpha males. Michelle was the second type. She was about thirty and came from Bristol. She had a uniform: pinstripe trouser suits, worn with lots of make-up and very short, almost cropped, hair. She was deliberately abrasive and swore conscientiously, painstakingly, as if she had taken a course in it. And yet there was a femininity to her too; her clothes were always slightly too tight, as if her womanliness wanted to burst out, to contradict the rest of her persona. When Roger wondered about it, which he quite often did, he would speculate about her weekend and holiday self, whether it was gentler and softer. To see her cursing and rowing at work was to wonder if she spent the weekend lying on a chaise longue, having her toenails done while eating Turkish delight and watching Sex and the City . He slightly fancied her, truth be told, but Roger was very careful at work, well aware of the ancient City motto, borrowed from the Italian restaurant trade: you fugga da staff, you fugga da business.
    Their dealer explained the rules: blinds going up every thirty minutes, to keep it interesting. Roger knew that you had to keep your stack up at least to the level of the average, allowing for the fact that people had been knocked out. No rebuys allowed – when you were out, you were out. Eliminated players could go home or start playing at a separate table with their own money – which is what Roger felt sure they would do. Roger brought his attention to the table. He had played enough poker to have a clue, but not enough to be really good; who had the time for that?
    After two hands, there was an all-in after the flop. Michelle, of course it would be her. It was hard to tell whether this was a clueless move or an astute one, making a point of establishing a reputation for crazy aggression right at the start – which would be very Michelle. The hand had been checked all the way round to her, so she could assume no one had anything. Based on what he knew of her,