‘If they get caught. And revenge is a powerful—‘

‘You think I don’t fucking know that. I—‘ Chris got a leash on himself, appalled at what he’d been about to tell the other man. ‘You’re reaching, Mike. How many families of men you crashed have come after you?’

‘None, but—‘

‘That’s right. None. This is the way things get done, Mike. Road-raging is here to stay. No one breaks the rules any more. They test, they probe, they hammer out new road precedent, but nobody does this. Nobody goes to the trouble unless there’s a hard cash reason. And that means someone inside Shorn.’

‘You’re thinking Makin?’

‘Or Hewitt.’

Bryant shook his head. The Shorn block appeared and he drew to a halt a few metres off the car deck security entry. He leaned his arms on the steering wheel. Stared up at the blank face of the tower.

‘Alright.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s assume you’re right.’

‘Yes, let’s.’

‘Let’s assume the fix was in, like you said, from inside Shorn. That means you were right about Driver Control as well. You know Liz has got contacts with those guys. Maybe I’ll give her a call, get her to do me a favour and ask some questions in the right places.’

‘What?’ Chris looked round, tried to squeeze the sudden pulse of alarm back out of his voice. ‘Liz Linshaw? Ah, maybe that’s not, I mean, is that a good idea? Involving her?’

‘Relax. You could trust Liz with your life.’

‘Yeah, but. I thought you and her were, you know. Over.’

Mike grinned. ‘That woman? No way. It runs hot and cold, depends on what else is going on in our lives. But it’s like gravity. No escape for either one of us. Longer we stay apart, hotter it is when we finally fuck. The last time, she left this bite on my shoulder you wouldn’t believe.’

Chris stared hard at the dashboard. ‘Yeah? What did Suki have to say about that?’

‘Well.’ Mike’s grin turned conspiratorial. ‘You’re not going to believe this either, but you know what I did? Went back to the office, smashed myself in the nose with the end of that baseball bat I’ve got.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah. Fucking agony. Gave myself a serious nosebleed. Dripped it all over my practice gi. Told her I’d snagged a psycho in a sparring session.’

Chris remembered the bruised nose from a few weeks back.

‘That’s what you told me, too.’

‘Well, yeah. Didn’t want to force you to lie for me if it ever came up with Suki.’ Mike Bryant’s expression grew musing. ‘You know, if it weren’t that I already had Suki and Ariana, I really think Liz might have been the one.’

‘You think so, do you?’

Mike nodded sagely. ‘Yeah, I do. She’s really something, Chris.’

On the Shorn car deck, the Saab stood isolated in the gloom. Anyone else clocking weekend time had gone home for dinner. Chris sat in the car for a long time before he started up. The quiet whined in his ears. Across the deck, a faulty roof light spattered on and off like an obscure distress signal. It felt as if he was waiting for someone.

When he finally powered the Saab up and got out into the streets, it was like driving in a dream. The city slid by on either side of him as if cranked past on rollers. The Saab’s interior was a bubble of neurasthenic calm, a safe place he was scared he might not be able to leave easily. The dashboard and wheel, pedals and shift, gave him remote control and a distant, autopilot strength. Options murmured in his ear. Let’s go there. No, here. No. Fuck going anywhere, let’s just leave.

Leave it all behind.

He was almost into the streets of Highgate before the autopilot neurasthenia cut out and he realised this was not the way home.

File #4:Capital Volatility

Chapter Thirty-Three

Carla was already asleep when he got in. He vaguely remembered she’d told him something about a crack-of-dawn start with Mel’s recovery unit on the western periphery. Partnership trials in some structural adjustment consultancy. Chris had never heard of them, but these days that wasn’t so unusual. He had a lot less to do with adjustment programmes now he was out of Emerging Markets, and new SAP consulting groups were always springing up, like mushrooms on a manure heap. It wasn’t rocket science, after all. Slash public health and education spending, open to foreign capital flows, dynamite local blockages in the legal and labour sectors. Lie about the results, and get the local military to crush inconvenient protest. A trained ape could do it. You could get the paper qualifications by distance learning inside ten weeks. Then all it took was a suit and a driver’s licence.

He stood in the bedroom, watching Carla sleep, and was overcome by a wave of almost unbearable tenderness. He pulled the quilt up a little higher around her shoulders and she muttered something without waking. He slipped out, closed the door gently behind him and went downstairs to the study. Behind another closed door, he ran the porn segment of Liz Linshaw and her plastically enhanced playmate.

He sat for an hour, head propped on one hand, trying to sort out what he felt.

He slept badly, twisted by brutal dreams that evaporated in vague traceries of impending menace when he finally woke. Carla was gone, her side of the bed was almost cold, and light was streaming in through half-open curtains. The bedside clock said ten past eight.

‘Fuck.’

He got out from under the quilt, groped after shirt and trousers and got them on. In the bathroom mirror, he stared at the angry eyes and the stubble, picked up a razor then flung it into the basin and settled for sticking his head under the cold tap. Chilly water trickled around his neck and down his back. He raked it out of his hair, crushed a towel over his head without taking it off the rail and closed his shirt. Slung a tie around his neck. Shoes and cuffs. Wallet and watch. Into the jacket and out the d—

Keys, fuckwit.

He ran back upstairs, couldn’t find them on the bedside table. Remembered his vigil in the study, darted in and grabbed them up off the desk. He kicked the Saab backwards out of the driveway, swerved untidily round in the road at the bottom and left rubber on the worn grey asphalt as he took off westward. He made the Elsenham ramp in record time.

Rolling in past junction ten, he checked his watch. Couple of minutes off quarter to nine. Great. Fucking great. He put through a call to Barranco at the Hilton. There was no answer from the room. Growing irritation sprouted suddenly into irrational fear. He cut the connection, redialled for the security detail. Someone answered on a yawn.

‘Yeah?’

‘Faulkner. What happened to Barranco?’

‘What’s the matter, he not turn up yet?’

Chris felt a spike of ice run him through the heart.

‘Turn up where?’

The voice on the other end got suddenly deferential. ‘At Shorn, sir. Weren’t we supposed to let him go? He took the secure limo. Called Shorn for it to come and get him.’

Foot to the floor, now. Head still fogged. Think.

‘Who authorised the fucking limo?’ he grated.

‘I, uh, I can check.’

‘You do that. Do it now. And stay on the line.’ He summoned a map of the day from memory and tried to place Hernan Echevarria on it. His head refused to cooperate. Breakfast with the partners, or was that Tuesday? Touring Mil-Tac’s new smart-mine facility in Crawley? If that was it, he was already out of town, under Mike Bryant’s watchful eye. He felt the tension ease a little.

Security came back on line from their room in the Hilton. ‘Transit was authorised at partner level,’ the voice said, smug with belated relief. ‘Louise Hewitt. She said she was surprised you weren’t around to cover it.’

‘Ah, shit.’

‘Was there anything else? Sir?’

Chris made a noise in his throat and killed the connection. The Saab barrelled down the approach road to the first underpass.