In the lounge, a thin black man in his early twenties sat twitching restlessly in one of Troy’s armchairs. There was a scar across his lower jaw and his clothes said zone gangwit. He surveyed the new arrivals without enthusiasm.

‘This is Marauder.’ Troy told them. ‘Marauder, this is Mike Bryant. Chris Faulkner. Friends of mine.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever.’

‘Mike, Chris, you want to sit down? Get you a drink?’

Mike Bryant nodded, most of his attention fixed on Marauder. ‘Some of that Polish vodka you keep in the freezer. Small one.’

‘Chris? Single malt, right?’

‘Yeah, if you’ve got it. Thanks.’

‘Aberlour or Lagavulin? Or I’ve got Irish.’

‘Lagavulin’s good. No ice.’

‘Marauder?’

The gangwit rolled his head once back and forth, slowly. He said nothing. Troy shrugged and went out to the kitchen. They sat and waited.

The silence stretched.

‘Who you run with?’ asked Mike suddenly.

Marauder lifted his jaw. ‘Fuck’s it got to do with you?’

Chris tensed. Neither he nor Mike were carrying, and Marauder looked street enough to be a problem in a straight fight. He checked Mike out of the corner of his eye, but saw no signs of impending violence.

‘Just curious,’ said Mike lazily. ‘Just wondered what kind of fuckwit outfit lets its soldiers get strung out on the merchandise.’

Marauder sat up. ‘Hey birdshit, you want to fuck with me?’

‘You don’t understand.’ Mike Bryant’s voice was patient. ‘I’m a suit. I represent the establishment. I wanted to fuck with you, you’d be in a penal hospital donating a kidney to society and your momma’d be out on the street, evicted and giving blowjobs to pay your post-op. Sit down.’

The gangwit was up out of his chair. On the way there, he’d magicked a blade out between the knuckles of his right hand. He brandished it.

‘Hey, fuck you, birdshit.’

‘I’d put that away as well, if I were you. Touch me, and I’ll have your fucking house bulldozed. That’s a promise.’

Marauder dithered, rage etched into his stance. If Mike had got up to meet him, Chris reckoned the gangwit would already have slashed at him.

‘Ernie, put that fucking thing away before I take it off you myself.’ It was Troy, back with a tray of bottles and glasses and an exasperated look on his face. ‘What do you think this is, the Carlton Arms lounge bar? This is my fucking home.’

‘Ernie?’ A huge grin lit up Bryant’s face. ‘Ernie?’

‘You behave as well, Mike. You should know better.’ Troy nodded at the gangwit, who looked away and snicked the blade back out of sight. He lowered himself onto the front edge of the armchair. Chris felt the tension leaking slowly out of him, and breathed again. Mike examined the nails of his right hand. Troy Morris hadn’t even put down the drinks tray.

‘That’s better.’

‘Call yourself a black man,’ muttered Marauder weakly. ‘Fucking line up with them every time, you’re nearly birdshit yourself.’

‘Ah, belt up.’ Troy wasn’t even looking at him any more. He handed drinks round and parked the tray on a coffee table. Settled into the remaining armchair with a whisky of his own, and gestured. ‘This fine example of urban youth has a story to tell. I told him you’d pay him.’

‘Well.’ Mike looked up at the ceiling. ‘That seems fair. Let’s hear it. Ernie.’

There was a sullen, hate-filled pause. Everyone looked at Marauder.

‘Going to cost you,’ he said finally, looking at Chris.

‘Two hundred.’ Chris told him. ‘That’s a promise. Maybe more, if I like it.’

‘You ain’t going to like it at all,’ the gangwit sneered. He seemed to be getting back his poise. ‘You’re Faulkner. Knew that ‘cause I seen you on the TV. Big popular driver, right. Well, turns out you ain’t so fucking popular after all. Turns out someone thinks you’re a fucking sellout.’

Chris felt his guts chill. ‘Go on.’

Marauder nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Crags Posse got the word. Jack a wagon, put a sicario behind the wheel. Someone paid out fifty grand to have you bunnied.’

‘That’s not so much.’

‘It is around the crags, Alike,’ Troy said sombrely. ‘You can get a sicario hit on Iarescu’s patch for a grand, grand and a half. Maybe five, if they have to go into town.’

‘Well, expenses.’ Mike gestured. ‘Jacking the car.’

Marauder sneered again. ‘Wasn’t no fucking jack, birdshit. That guy, he knew they were coming. Iarescu sent a sparkman and datarat up to Kilburn to wire that wagon two days before it was jacked. Fucking suit knew, man, they paid him for it.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Chris asked him.

‘Defector. I run with the Gold Hawks—‘

Mike Bryant threw up his hands. ‘Well, why was it such a big fucking secret before, you’re telling us now like it was nothing? Fucking—‘

‘Mike, shut up.’ Chris looked back at the gangwit. ‘Yeah, the Gold Hawks. And?’

Marauder shrugged. ‘Like I said, defector. The sparkman, he came over. He’s black, the Crags are a birdshit gang, they only ever tolerated him for the wirework. He’s got a new girl in Acton now, suits him to get out from under Iarescu. He told me this shit couple of nights ago. I heard Troy was asking, so. Like that.’

Troy leaned forward. ‘Now tell them what the sparkman was doing to the wagon.’

‘Yeah. Said they put in a frequency jammer.’

Chris and Mike looked at each other.

‘A what?’

‘Sparkman didn’t know much about it.’ Marauder seemed to be settling into his role as storyteller. ‘The datarat did most of the work. Seems like he told him it was a system to trick out some kind of alarm. Very expensive, he said. Iarescu got it given to him specially.’

Chris nodded to himself. ‘Uh uh. Mike? Believe me now?’

‘Shit.’ Mike threw himself to his feet. Marauder twitched, but by then Bryant was at the window, staring out. ‘Shit.’

‘You said someone thinks I’m a sellout.’ Chris focused on the gang-wit. He had to ask. ‘What does that mean? Who told you? The sparkman?’

‘Sure. Iarescu was full of it, talking up how the suits were selling each other out. How this guy Faulkner wasn’t a team player, he didn’t belong and that’s how come he was getting greased.’

‘Chris, that could just be Iarescu reinforcing his own loyalty system. Look how much better we are than these fucking suits. Fucking each other over at every opportunity. Not like us, we stand together, and I’m the best fucking boss you ever had. Someone outside Shorn could have got hold of the prox frequencies on the Saab, if they were jacked in at the right level. Lloyd Paul. Nakamura, maybe. Any of them could have bought the information.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Outside the car, it was getting dark. The buildings of the financial district loomed around them as Mike threaded the BMW through deserted streets towards the Shorn block. Most of the lights in the towers were out, and there was a ghost town hush over the whole place. The emptiness of Sunday dying, like the last day of some cycle of civilisation now reaching its end. Chris felt the chill leaking into him again.

‘Why would they do it that way, Mike? It doesn’t make sense. Why trust some punk sicario more than one of their own drivers? Comes to another tender, they can field the best they’ve got against me.’

‘Not if they wanted to use that trick with the jammer. Trade Standards authorities’d be all over them like a crack whore. They’d fine them into bankruptcy.’

‘Exactly.’ Chris shook his head. ‘It doesn’t pay a major corporation to break the rules for the sake of a single driver. Not when there’s no money in it.’

‘So maybe it was personal. Mitsue Jones’s family or something.’

‘Same applies, Mike. They lose the insurance, the pension, the bereavement pay. Fuck it, they go to jail. Nakamura would drop them like vomit, and with no corporate protection more than likely Shorn would have them greased just to make an example.’