‘Delightful,’ muttered Chris.

‘Fuck it, Chris, he deserves it.’ Bryant’s brow creased with good-humoured exasperation. He held out his hands, palms up. ‘That’s our investment he’s fucking with. If he can’t cut it, well, get someone who can. Anyway, not my account, not my call. Speaking of which, I’ve got some calls to make. You coming out to play tonight? Up for the Falkland again?’

Chris shook his head. ‘Promised Carla we’d eat out in the village. Maybe some other time.’

‘Okay. What about cutting work early, coming down to the firing range with me. Just for an hour or so, before you go home. Get the feel of that Nemex, in case you ever decide to put bullets in it.’

Chris grinned reluctantly. ‘That’s not fair. At least I was carrying mine. Alright, alright. I’ll come down and play in the arcade for an hour. But that’s all. After that, I’m off. Meet you down there at six, say.’

‘Done.’ Bryant shot him with the finger pistol and left.

Chris stood and looked at the chessboard for a while, then he moved the black king’s pawn hesitantly out two spaces, so it was faced off against its white counterpart. He frowned over the move, shifted the piece back a space, hesitated some more then pulled an irritated face and restored the pawn to the face off position. He went back to his desk and stabbed rapidly through a number from memory.

‘Panama Trade and Investment Commission,’ said a Hispanic woman’s voice in English. The speaker swam into focus on the screen and recognised him.

‘Senor Faulkner, how can we help you?’

‘Get me Tendering,’ said Chris.

‘I don’t know,’ he told Carla that evening over margaritas and fajitas in the village Tex-Mex. ‘I thought after that shit on the orbital last week, the battle lines were drawn. I felt like a fucking idiot for all that stuff I’d been saying to you about us staying friends. But I was right. He wants to be my friend.’

‘Or he’s scared of you.’

‘Same difference. I seem to remember someone telling me once that same-sex friendships are just a way of negating competition. Now who was that?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said that’s what Mel thinks. I didn’t say I agreed with him.’

Chris grinned. ‘Well, he’d know about same-sex friendships, I suppose. From a real in-depth point of view.’

‘Don’t be a wanker, Chris.’

‘Hey, come on. It was a joke.’ Chris hung onto his smile, but there was a tiny feeling of slippage somewhere inside him. There had been a time, he was sure, when Carla could read him better than this. ‘You know I’ve got nothing against Mel or Jess. A whole stack of the people I worked with at HM were gay. Jesus Carla, before I met you I was sharing a flat with two gay guys.’

‘Yeah, and you used to make jokes about them.’

‘I—‘ But the oozing sense of unfairness was already setting in, like cold mud, chilling his mood and tugging his smile away. ‘Carla, they used to make jokes about me too. They called me the household het, for fuck’s sake. It was all part of the banter. I’m not homophobic. You know that.’

Carla looked at her food, then up at him.

‘Yeah, I know.’ She mustered a small smile. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired.’

‘Who fucking isn’t?’ Chris took an overly large pull at his margarita and said nothing more for a while.

Fajitas are not a dish to be eaten in resentful silence, and neither of them did much more than pick at the food. When the waiter stopped by he sensed the mood radiating out from the little table and took the cooling dishes away without comment.

‘Any dessert?’ he asked carefully when he returned.

Carla shook her head, mute. Chris drew a deep breath.

‘No thanks.’ He made a sudden decision. ‘But you can bring me another margarita. In fact, make it another pitcher.’

‘I don’t want any more, Chris,’ said Carla sharply.

He looked at her with a blank expression he knew would hurt her. ‘Who asked you? Pitcher’s for me.’ He nodded at the waiter, who withdrew with obvious relief. Carla put on her disdainful face.

‘You’re going to get drunk?’

‘Well, looking at the logistics, I would think so. Yes.’

‘I didn’t come here to get drunk.’

‘I didn’t ask you to.’

‘Chris ...’

He waited, going nowhere near the opening the forlorn fade in her voice had left him. Her shoulders slumped.

‘I’m going home,’ she said.

‘Okay. Want them to call you a cab?’

‘I’ll walk,’ she said coldly. ‘It isn’t far.’

‘Fine.’ He buried himself in the margarita glass as she got up. She hesitated towards him for just a second, barely leaning, and then something stiffened in her carriage and she walked away from the table. Chris very carefully did not look round to watch her leave and when she stalked past the window of the restaurant, he busied himself with his drink again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she did not look in at him.

He worried for a while about her walking home alone, but then stopped himself, recognising the feeling for guilt over the fight. Hawk-spur Green was a hamlet, made ludicrously prosperous by the influx of driver-class professionals and their families. It had crime levels appropriate to a playgroup, nothing beyond occasional vandalism and even that mostly graffiti tagging. Plus Carla could look after herself and the house was barely fifteen minutes away. He was just manufacturing excuses to go after her.

Fuck that.

The pitcher came.

He drank it.

Chapter Ten

South-west zone. The Brundtland.

The decaying concrete bones of the estate squatted mostly in darkness. A handful of unsmashed lights cast sporadic stains of sodium orange on walkways and stairstacks. Isolated lit windows stamped the darkened bulk of buildings in black and yellow code. Child-sized shadows scurried away from Carla’s headlights as she parked the Landrover. Once outside the protection of the vehicle, it was worse. She could feel professional eyes watching her set the anti-theft systems, professional ears listening to the quick, escalating whine of the contact stunner charging from the battery. She walked as rapidly as she could without showing fear, away from the vehicle and into the lobby.

Miraculously, the lifts appeared to be working.

She had stabbed at the button more to vent frustration than anything else, and was almost alarmed when the lights above the battered metal doors blinked and the downward arrow illuminated. She blinked a little herself, wiped angrily at a tear that had leaked out from under one eyelid, and waited for the lift to arrive. Her right hand was wrapped tightly around the stungun Chris had bought for her and there was a can of Mace in her left. The lobby at her back was coldly lit by grating-protected halogen bulbs and starkly empty, but the wired glass portals she’d come through were cracked and pushed in at a height suggesting kicks, and the damage looked recent.

FUCK YOU ZEK-TIV CUNTS said a wall to her left in daubed red lettering. Pointless rage; no self-respecting executive was going to be seen dead in the Brundtland.

The lift arrived, but when the doors opened the stench of urine was so thick she gagged. She deliberated for a moment, then compressed her lips and headed for the dimly-lit stairwell to her right. Holding the Mace, hand extended, and keeping the stungun hidden behind her back, she climbed the five double flights of stairs and marched down the corridor with steps intended to convey to anyone who might hear her that she was at home in this stinking pit.

She stopped at number fifty-seven and hammered on the door with the bottom of the Mace can. There was the sound of slow, slurred movement inside and a light sprang up under the door.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Dad, it’s Carla.’ She tried to keep her voice even, partly out of pride, but more out of a desire not to alarm. Only a year ago, her father had told her, one of the local edge gangs on the estate had forced an elderly woman to open her door by holding a gun to her daughter’s head on the doorstep. Once in, they’d ransacked the flat, raped the daughter while her aged mother was forced to watch and then beaten both women into unconsciousness. Apparently, they hadn’t bothered to kill either of their victims. They knew there was no need. The police attitude to the zones was containment, not law enforcement. Raids were infrequent and unrelated to actual crimes committed. The estate was gangwit-run. Rape and burglary were not considered transgressions of gang law.