Carla turned round to face him again. It was hard to tell which was uppermost in her expression, affection or exasperation. ‘You worry about me? Chris, listen to yourself, will you? Next Wednesday you’re out on the road, duelling, and you’re worried about me sleeping in some substandard housing. Come on.’

‘There’s been a lot of violence on that estate,’ said Chris doggedly. ‘If I had my way—‘

He stopped, not entirely sure what he wanted to say next.

‘You’d what?’

He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. Forget it. I just think, why can’t Erik come and stay here with us for a change?’

‘You know why.’

Chris sighed. ‘Yeah, because I’m a fucking suited parasite on the lives of honest working men and women.’

‘Got it in one.’ Carla kissed him. ‘Come on, I’ll be alright. You just worry about keeping my spaced armour intact. If you come back with the wings all chewed up like last time, you really will see some violence.’

‘Oh yeah?’

She jabbed him in the ribs. ‘Oh yeah. I didn’t put in all that work to have you broadside and stick like a fucking no-namer. You drive like it matters what happens to your wheels, or that’ll be the last blowjob you see this year.’

‘Have to go to my usual supplier then. Ow!’

‘Fucking piece of shit! Usual supplier did you say? Who else are you getting blowjobs from, you piece of—‘

‘Blowtorch! I thought you said blowtorch.’

Their mingled laughter penetrated the glass of the window and sounded faintly, in the still of the garden beyond. Had Erik Nyquist been there in the darkness, he would have been forced to admit that what he could hear was, indisputably, the sound of his daughter and the man she had married having fun. He might even have been glad to hear it.

Unfortunately, Erik Nyquist was nearly a hundred kilometres southwest of the laughter, listening instead through paper-thin walls to the sounds of an edge dealer beating his girlfriend to pulp. In the garden, the only witness to the noise of Chris and Carla’s hilarity was a large tawny owl who watched the window unwinkingly for a moment, and then turned its attention back to the more pressing matter of disembowelling the half-dead field mouse in its talons.

Chapter Twelve

Apparently, it was a long-standing Shorn tradition to do final briefings down among the variously stripped and jacked-up bodies of the company workshops. Chris could see where the custom originated. Nominally, it gave the executives the opportunity to do some corporate bonding with the mechanics overseeing their final vehicle checks. Far more importantly, the scattered flare of welding torches and the stink of scorched metal put the hard edge of reality on what might have otherwise seemed very far removed from the air-conditioned civility of a more conventional briefing room. In Shorn parlance, it avoided any potential ambiguity.

Accordingly, Hewitt kept it brutally short. Keep it tight, don’t fuck up. Come back with the contract. Leave the others in pieces on the road. She thanked the chief mechanic personally for his team’s hard work, and walked away.

After she’d gone, Bryant went for Indian carry-out and Chris sat in the open passenger doorway of the Saab, leafing absently through the background printout on Mitsue Jones, while two mechanics in logo-flashed company coveralls strove in vain to find anything worth doing to the engine that Carla had not already done.

‘Chris?’ It was Bryant, somewhere off amidst the clang and crackle of the body shop. ‘Chris, where are you?’

‘Round here.’

There was the sound of stumbling, a clatter and cursing. Chris repressed a grin and did not look up from the printout. Ten seconds later Bryant appeared round the opened hood of the Saab, cartons of take-out food in his arms and a huge naan bread jammed into his mouth. He seated himself without ceremony on a pile of worn tyres opposite Chris and started laying out the food. He took the naan bread out of his mouth and gestured with it towards two of the cartons.

‘That’s yours. Onion bhaji, and dhansak. That’s the mango chutney. Where’d Makin go?’

Chris shrugged. ‘Toilet? He looked pretty constipated.’

‘Nah, Makin always looks like that. Anal-retentive.’

A shadow fell across the food cartons and Bryant looked up, biting on the naan again. He talked through the mouthful.

‘Nick. Your tikka’s in there. Rice there. Spoons.’

Makin seated himself with a wary glance at Chris.

‘Thanks, Michael.’

There was silence for a while, broken only by the sounds of chewing. Bryant ate as if ravenous and finished first. He cast glances at both men.

‘Make your wills?’

‘Why? I’m not going to die.’ Makin looked across at Chris. ‘Are you?’

Chris shrugged and wiped his fingers, still chewing.

‘See how I feel.’

Bryant coughed laughter. Makin allowed himself a small, precise smile. ‘Vewy good. It’s good to have a sense of humour. I hear they ah big on it at HM. Must make losing more beahable.’

‘Yeah.’ Chris smiled gently back. ‘It can make winning pwetty wadical too, you should twy it.’

Makin tensed. His glasses gleamed in the overhead arc light.

‘Does the way I speak amuse you?’

‘Not weally.’

‘Hey, you guys,’ Bryant protested. ‘Come on.’

‘You know, Chwis,’ Makin looked down at his open right hand as if considering using it as a fist. ‘I’m not a chess player. Not much of a game player at all. Oh, I know you like symbolism. Games. Humour. All good ways of avoiding confontation.’

He tossed his fork into the cooling sauces of Chris’s carton.

‘But tomorrow is a confontation. You can’t laugh it away, you can’t turn it into a game. Mitsue Jones won’t play chess with you. She’ll hit you with evything she’s got and she’ll hit you fast.’

On the last word he clapped his hands violently and his eyes pinned Chris from behind the rectangular-paned screens of his glasses.

‘There’ll be no time to consider your moves out there. You must see it coming.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And act. Nothing else.’

Chris nodded and looked down at his food for a moment. Then his hand whiplashed out and snatched Makin’s glasses from his nose.

‘I think I see what you mean,’ he said brightly.

‘Chris.’ There was a warning in Mike Bryant’s voice.

Without his glasses, Makin looked a lot less sharkish, for all his clear lack of vision defects. The narrowly watchful face now looked simply thin. When he spoke, his voice had gone thick and slow with rage, but there was nothing to back it up.

‘Michael, I don’t think I want to dwive with this clown.’

Chris held out his hand. ‘Would you like your glasses back?’ he asked innocently.

Oddly, it was Bryant who snapped.

‘Alright you two, that’s enough. Nick, you asked for that, so don’t act so fucking superior. And Chris, give him back his glasses. Jesus, I’m going up against Nakamura with a pair of fucking kids.’

‘Michael, I don’t think—‘

‘No, you didn’t think, Nick. You just opened your fucking mouth. Louise asked me to head up this team. When she asks you, you can pick who drives with you. Until then, just get in line and keep a lid on it.’

The small circle of space between the three men rocked with silent tension. Behind them, the two mechanics looking over the Saab had stopped what they were doing to watch the action. Nick Makin drew in a compressed breath, then took his glasses back without a word and stalked away.

Bryant prodded at the food cartons for a while. Finally he glanced up and met Chris’s gaze.

‘Don’t pay any attention to him. He’ll have calmed down by morning.’ He brooded a little. ‘I think this chess thing might be backfiring. Symbolic conflict isn’t what you’d call a popular concept around here.’

‘What, no game-playing? Come on, you’re winding me up.’