‘Okay, I’ll try it.’

She pressed on the selection and swept a hand across the send patch. At the bar, the woman looked down, face stained red by the flashing table alert on her worksurface. She glanced across at them and nodded.

‘So, Chris.’ Liz Linshaw sat back and smiled at him. ‘Where did you develop your taste for expensive whisky?’

‘Is this part of the interview?’

‘No, just warming you up. But, I’m curious. You grew up in the zones, didn’t you. East End, riverside estates. Not much Islay malt around there.’

‘No. There isn’t.’

‘Is it painful to talk about this, Chris?’

‘You’re a zone girl yourself, Liz. What do you think?’

The drinks came, hers with ice. Liz Linshaw waited until the waitress had gone, then she picked up her tumbler and looked pensively into it. She swirled the drink and the ice cubes clicked about.

‘My zone origins are mostly, shall we say, artistic licence. Exaggerated for exotic effect. The truth is, I grew up on the fringes of Islington, at a time when the lines weren’t as heavily drawn as they are now. My parents were, still are, moderately successful teachers and I went to university. There’s nothing that hurts in my past.’

Chris raised his glass. ‘Lucky you.’

‘Yes, that’s a fair description. You weren’t so lucky.’

‘No.’

‘Yet age nineteen you were driving for Ross Mobile Arbitrage. You were their top paid haulage operative, until you moved sideways into LS Euro Ventures. Two years after that Hammett McColl, headhunted. No qualifications, not even driver’s school. For someone with zone origins that’s more than remarkable, it’s nigh on impossible.’

Chris gestured. ‘If you want out badly enough.’

‘No, Chris. The zones are full of people who want out badly enough, and then some. It gets them nowhere. The dice are loaded against that kind of mobility, and you know it.’

‘I know other people who’ve made it out.’ It felt strange to suddenly be on the other end of the argument he’d had with Mike Bryant that morning. ‘Look at Troy Morris.’

‘Do you know Troy well?’

‘Uhh, not really. He’s Mike’s friend more than mine.’

‘I see.’ Liz Linshaw lifted her drink in his direction. ‘Well, anyway. Cheers. Here’s to Conflict Investment. Small wars.’

‘Small wars.’ But there was something vaguely disquieting in hearing it from her lips. He didn’t like the way it sounded.

She set down her tumbler. Beside it a microcorder. ‘So. How does it feel to be the rising star at Shorn CI?’

The interview went down as smoothly as the Port Ellen. Liz Linshaw had a loose, inviting manner at odds with her screen persona, and he found himself talking as if to an old friend he hadn’t seen in many years. Such areas of resistance as he had, she picked up on and either backed smoothly away from the topic or found another way in that somehow he didn’t mind as much. They laughed a lot, and once or twice he caught himself on the verge of giving up data that he had no business discussing with anyone outside Shorn.

By nine o’clock they were working up to Edward Quain, and he had drunk far too much to be able to drive the Saab safely.

‘You didn’t like him, did you.’ There was no question in her voice.

‘Quain? What makes you think that?’

‘Your form.’

He laughed, slurring slightly. ‘What am I, a fucking racehorse?’

She smiled along. ‘If you like. Look, you’ve made a total of eleven kills, including Mitsue Jones and her wingmate, plus the Acropolitic driver on the same run. Eight before that. Three at LS Euro, two tenders and one Prom and App duel. Then the move to HM, and out of nowhere you take Quain down.’

‘It was the easiest way to get up the ladder.’

‘It was off the wall, Chris. Quain was the top end of your permissible challenge envelope. As senior as it gets without exempted partner status. At that level in some companies he -would have been an exempted partner.’

‘Yeah, or out on his ear.’ Chris drained his current whisky. ‘You want to know the truth, Liz? Quain was a burnt-out old fuck. He wasn’t bringing in the business, he drank way too much, did too much expensive coke, he fucked his way through every high-price whore in Camden Town, and he paid for it all with bonuses taken out of money junior analysts on a tenth his income were generating. He was an embarrassment to everyone at Hammett McColl, and he needed taking out.’

‘Very public-spirited of you. But there must have been easier targets on the way up the HM ladder.’

Chris shrugged. ‘If you’re going to kill a man, it might as well be a patriarch.’

‘And what I find curious is the duels after Quain. Four more kills, none of them even close to as brutal as Quain’s and—‘

‘Murcheson burnt to death,’ Chris pointed out. The screams, he did not add, still came back to him in his nightmares.

‘Yes, Murcheson was trapped in wreckage. It was nothing to do with you.’

‘Hardly nothing. I created the wreckage.’

‘Chris, you ran over Quain five times. I’ve seen that footage—‘

‘What are you, Liz? An X fan?’

The crooked smile again. ‘If I was, I’d have been pretty unhappy with your performance for the next eight years. Like I said, four more kills, all clean bar Murcheson, who was an accidental burn. And alongside that, another seven inconclusives, including one you actually rescued from wreckage and drove to hospital. That’s not going to get you an honourable mention on any of the Xtreme sites, is it.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘Relax, Chris. I didn’t say I was an Xer. But when you’re trying to build a profile, this stuff matters. I want to know what you’re made of.’

He met her eyes, and the look lasted. Went on far longer than it should have. He cleared his throat.

‘I’m going to go home now.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to drive?’

‘I.’ He stood up, too fast. ‘No, maybe not. I’ll get a cab.’

‘That’s going to cost you a fortune, Chris.’

‘So. I earn a fortune. ‘s not like the fucking army, you know. I get well paid for murdering people.’

She got up and placed a hand on his arm.

‘I’ve got a better idea.’

‘Yeah?’ Suddenly he was aware of his pulse. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘I live in Highgate. That’s a cheap cab ride, and there’s a spare futon there with your name on it.’

‘Look, Liz—‘

She grinned suddenly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Faulkner. I’m not about to tear your clothes off and stuff your dick down my throat, if that’s what you’re worried about. I like the men I fuck to be sober.’

Unwillingly, he laughed. ‘Hey, give it to me straight, Liz. Don’t let me down gently.’

‘So.’ She was laughing too. ‘Do we get this cab?’

They ordered the taxi from the same table menu as the drinks. This early in the evening, it wasn’t hard to get one. Liz cleared the tab, and they left. There was frenetic dancing in the Iraq Room, harsh, mindless beats drawn from early millennium thrash bands like Noble Cause and Bushin’. They ducked through the press of bodies, got the stairs and made it out into the street, still laughing.

The taxi was there, gleaming black in the late evening light like a toy that belonged to them. Chris fetched up short, laughter drying in his throat. He glanced sideways at Liz Linshaw and saw the hilarity had drained out of her the same way. He could not read the expression that had replaced it on her face. For a moment they both stood there, staring at the cab like idiots, and like a Nemex shell the realisation hit Chris in the back of the head. The sardonic amusement on the phone, the maddeningly familiar note in her deep-throated laugh. The sense of recall about this woman came crashing down on him.

She reminded him of Carla.

Carla when they first met. Carla, three or four years back. Carla before the creeping distance took its toll.

Suddenly, he was sweating.