“. . . We will be able to anticipate major trading strategy shifts among the quant-determined strategies of our rival institutions. This is medium-term stuff—a one to ten day lead—but with this fantastic new algorithmic approach we should be able to consistently anticipate the commodities markets. Ironically, the worst drawback is that it’s so good it’ll look eerily like front-running to an outsider—and we don’t want to lay ourselves open to accusations of malfeasance. So we intend to bulletproof ourselves from a regulatory perspective before we go any further, which is why I invited you all here today—”

What Oscar and Mhari have in mind is not front-running. Front-running is the practice of executing your own trades on the basis of information about pending trades your clients have told you to perform on their behalf—a form of insider trading. But it’s not insider trading if you gaze into the eyes of your opposite number from a rival brokerage or investment bank over an after-work cocktail, calmly order them to adopt a specific spread the next day, and then tell them to forget the conversation ever took place. It’s almost certainly illegal, but vampiric mind control is much harder to prove than front-running. For their part, Oscar and Mhari are happy to leave the question of which laws (if any) have been broken to the eventual SFO investigation, because by the time it happens they intend to be over the horizon and far away.

Oscar’s voice is intense but somehow mellow and pleasing to the ear: he’s a hypnotic speaker, and Mhari is pleased to see that his small audience is nodding along with him in perfect harmony.

“I need access to a trading fund with an initial one hundred points of liquidity.” (A point is a million pounds sterling.) “I’ll need to liaise with you, Steph, about setting up appropriate accounting and oversight controls on the new fund, with full record-keeping so that it’s clear that we’re perfectly clean—that we’re genuinely anticipating market movements. Ari, to minimize latency I need to move my group further into the bunker”—the basement levels below the Bank, windowless subterranean vaults full of servers and roaring air conditioning—“and, Sir David, I thought it would be best to keep you in the loop on this because the profits this pivot will generate will show up on the company-wide balance sheet by Q1 next year at the latest, and you’ll want to be fully informed ahead of the next AGM.” Oscar smiles, almost (but not quite) baring his new and very expensive dental work. Mhari runs her tongue around the inside of her upper jaw in unconscious sympathy: it’s still sore and they’re very tender, but at least her teeth won’t raise any awkward questions if she’s seen in public.

“Thank you, Oscar,” says Sir David. “But you haven’t told us exactly what this new breakthrough is yet. Would you like to elaborate?”