Some people are convinced they are victims of fate, while others claim to be children of destiny. After thirty years on this often bewildering planet, Bertie Jones had no such delusions. Instead, he assumed that his life was governed only by routine cause and effect. So he believed that all these unlikely events, no matter
how bizarre, could be traced back to a practical joke at an office Christmas party.
It was a sultry night, with the sun setting over the Docklands swamp and the rancid odour of rotting seaweed wafting across the harbour. Bertie followed hundreds of other employees of the Southern Cross Bank into a waterfront bar, under the watchful gaze of a handful of senior executives. No doubt the executives were making sure that there wouldn’t be any trouble.
This was the year of the Banking Royal Commission. A year when teams of young aspiring bankers camped for nights on end in their offices, and lawyers prowled the corridors like the gangs of old New York. A year when risk managers and company secretaries were dragged to the witness box like nobles to the revolutionary scaffold, waiting for their heads to roll into the waiting basket.
And a year when day after day, month after month, there were new revelations of corporate greed and corruption and excess, each more breathtaking than the one before, with saturated coverage in all the newspapers and on radio and television and across the internet. Conflicts of interest. Forgery. Fees for no service. Fees
for dead customers.
Every previous year, the bank had paid for lavish Christmas entertainment. Usually a well-known rock band, although once it was a famous comedian who ranted about the evils of capitalism until the chairman gave the master of ceremonies a sideways nod and the microphone went dead. But this year was always going to
be different. Only the month before, many of Bertie’s colleagues had been retrenched. He was still relieved that he hadn’t been rissoled himself, given that he was a mail clerk: an endangered species…
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