‘Yeah.’ Chris laid a proprietorial hand on the car’s flank. ‘Saab combat chassis. Carla’s family are Norwegian, but she did her apprenticeship in Stockholm. Been around Saabs and Volvos all her life. She says the Swedes were building cars for road-raging decades before anybody even thought of it.’

Bryant nodded. ‘It looks pretty mean. But I reckon you’d still lose on speed to an Omega.’

‘She’s faster than she looks, Mike. A lot of that bulk’s Volvo spaced armouring. Strut-braced stuff. It isn’t solid, and the slipstream channels through flues on the outer edges for stability, but by Christ you’d still know if it hit you. Volvo’ve crash-tested the struts at aeroplane speeds, and they hold.’

‘Spaced armouring, huh?’ Bryant looked thoughtful for a couple of moments, and Chris had the unsettling sensation that he had given something important away to the big man. Then another grin swept the calculating expression out of his eyes. He clapped Chris on the shoulder. ‘Remind me to divorce Suki and get a Swedish mechanic to shack up with.’

The parking deck was filled with a soft chime. The Shorn elevator voice announced two o’clock for the whole building. Mike glanced reflexively at his watch.

‘That’s me,’ he said sourly. ‘Look, Chris, I’d better run. Corporate police can be a real drag when they’re determined to do something by the book. See you tonight, alright?’

‘Yeah.’ Chris watched him stride away towards the double doors that led upwards into the Shorn tower. ‘Hey, Mike.’

‘Yo.’

‘Good luck.’

Bryant raised a hand and waved it sideways. ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. Piece of piss. Be out of here by three. See you tonight.’

‘He said what?’

Carla paused in the act of fastening one earring and stared disbelievingly at Chris in the mirror. Chris looked back at her, confused.

‘He said it’d be a piece of piss and they’d—‘

‘No, before that. That stuff about divorcing Suki.’

‘He said to remind him to get a divorce so he could shack up with a Swedish mechanic’ Chris saw the look on her face and sighed, feeling the edge of the row they were teetering on. ‘He’s just trying to be friendly, Carla. It’s a kind of compliment, you know.’

‘It’s a load of sexist shit is what it is. Anyway,’ Carla finished with the earring and came away from the mirror. ‘That’s not the point.’

‘No? Then what is the point, Carla?’

This time it was Carla that sighed. ‘The point,’ she said heavily, ‘is that I’m not some curiosity for you to show off. This is my wife, by the way she’s a mechanic. I’m sure it’s fun to say. The shock value. The looks you get. I know you get a kick out of taking me to these corporate functions, showing everyone what a rebel you are.’

Chris stared at her.

‘No, it’s because I love you.’

‘I—‘ She’d been about to raise her voice. Something broke in the effort. ‘Chris, I know that. I know. You just, you don’t have to prove it against overwhelming odds all the time. It’s not a-a battle or a quest. It’s just, living.’ She saw the pain flit across his face and went to him. Her hands, scrubbed clean with aromatic oil, cupped his downturned face. ‘I know you love me, but I’m not here just to be loved. You can’t use me as a statement of how strongly you feel about everything, how loyal you are.’

He tried to turn his head away. She held it in place.

‘Look at me, Chris. This is me. I’m your wife. Mechanic is just a job, just a statement of financial disadvantage. I don’t let it define me, and I don’t want you doing it behind my back. We’re more than what we do.’

‘Now you sound like your father.’

She paused for a moment, then nodded and let go of his head. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ She touched her throat. ‘Should be fucking miked up, huh? And that reminds me, you said we’d go and see him this weekend. Whatever happened to that promise?’

‘I didn’t think we’d—‘

‘Oh, forget it. I don’t really want to go anyway. I don’t feel up to the refereeing. Once you two get at each other’s throats ...’ she sighed again. ‘Look, Chris, about this mechanic thing. How would you like it if I dragged you over to see Mel and Jess and said you’d just love to have a look at their tax returns.’

Chris’s eyes widened with outrage. ‘I’m not a fucking accountant.’

Carla grinned and dropped into a defensive boxing stance. ‘Want to bet? Want to fight about it?’

The bravado ended in a shriek as Chris hurled himself at her and rugby-tackled her back onto the bed. The brief tussle ended with Chris straddling Carla’s body and struggling to hold her flailing arms at bay. He could feel the strength leaking out of his grip in giggle increments.

‘Sssh, sssh, stop it, stop it, behave yourself. We’re going out.’

‘Fucking let go of me, you piece of shit.’ She was laughing as well, breathlessly. ‘I’ll claw your fucking eyes out.’

‘Carla,’ Chris said patiently. ‘That’s not really an incentive. You’ve got to learn the art of negotiation. Now—‘

An incoherent squeal. Carla tumbled him. They grappled at each other across the bed.

Chapter Eight

Out, driving through Hawkspur Green in the waning light of evening, while Carla tried to do something with her dishevelled hair. The sex had taken half an hour, and it still lurked in the grins at the corners of their mouths.

‘We’re going to be late,’ said Chris severely.

‘Ah, bollocks.’ Carla gave up on her hair and settled for pinning it untidily up. ‘I don’t know why we’re doing this anyway. Going out to dinner with some guy you’re going to wreck in a couple of years’ time. It doesn’t really make sense, does it?’

Chris glanced across at her, the implied confidence in the remark warming him inside. There was always an intimacy to the conversations they had while driving, maybe born out of the secure knowledge that the car was clean. Carla swept for bugs on a regular basis, and her knowledge of the Saab meant they were sure of their privacy in a way they never quite could be at home.

‘You know it might not come to that,’ Chris said, feeling his way through his own thoughts. ‘A wreck. We don’t have to run for the same promotions.’

‘No, but you will. Like at Hammett McColl. It always works out that way.’

‘I don’t know, Carla. It’s strange. It’s like he’s just decided he’s going to be my friend and that’s it. I mean, there’s a lot about him I don’t like. That stuff in the zones was pretty extreme—‘

‘No shit. The man sounds like a fucking crackhead psycho to me, Chris. Whatever you say.’

Without actually lying to his wife about anything specific, Chris had somehow managed to omit Bryant’s execution-style dispatch of Molly and her jacker colleagues. The way it came out, it really had been self defence against armed and violent attackers. In retrospect, Chris was almost starting to believe it himself. The gangwits had wrecking bars. Not much doubt they would have used them if Chris’s unloaded gun had given them the chance. Carla remained unimpressed.

‘He’s just like a lot of the guys at Shorn—‘

‘Well, I certainly believe that.’

Chris shot her an irritated glance. ‘He’s worked hard for what he’s got, Carla. He just got angry because someone was trying to take it away from him. That’s a natural reaction, isn’t it? How do you think Mel’d react if someone turned up and tried to trash the workshop.’

‘Mel doesn’t make his money the way you people do,’ Carla muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

‘Mel doesn’t make his money like me and Mike Bryant?’

‘I said, forget it, Chris.’

‘That’s right, he doesn’t, does he? Mel doesn’t do what we do. He just makes a living fixing our cars for us, so we can go out and do it again. Jesus fucking Christ, don’t you take the high moral ground with me, Carla, because—‘

‘Alright.’ Her voice caught on the second syllable. ‘I said forget it. I’m sorry I said it, so just forget it.’