He was asked if he wanted paper and pens and said yes, reflexively, then didn’t know what to do with them. He tried to write an account of the events leading up to Philip Hamilton’s death, as much as anything to get it clear in his own head, but he kept having to cross out what he’d written and start further back. When his first line read my father was murdered by an executive called Edward Quain, he gave up. Perhaps inspired by the novel he was trying to read, he wrote an imaginary brief for the NAME account set five years into a future where Barranco had taken power and instituted wide-ranging land reform. It also seemed very far-fetched.
He started a letter to Carla and tore it up after less than ten lines. He couldn’t think of anything worth telling her.
The week ended. Another started.
Shorn came for him.
He was on morning walkabout, cheated of his usual seat at the fountain by a persistent, heavy drizzle that drenched the exposed patio area and kept him penned under the glass roof. His escort had obligingly dragged a bench out from somewhere for him, and now he sat at one end of it and stared out at the curtain of rain falling a half metre away.
The plants, at least, seemed to be enjoying it.
The door to the quad snapped open and he flicked a surprised glance at his watch. He’d only been there twenty minutes. He looked up and saw Louise Hewitt standing there. It was the first time he’d seen her since she shot him with the stungun. He looked back at the rain.
‘Morning, Faulkner. Mind if I sit down?’
He stared down at his hands. ‘I guess they’ll stop me if I try to break your neck.’
‘Try to lay a fucking finger on me, and I’ll stop you myself,’ she said mildly. ‘You’re not the only one with karate training, you know.’
He shrugged.
‘I’ll take that as a yes, then.’
He felt the bench shift slightly as she lowered herself onto it at the other end. They sat a metre apart. The rain fell through the silence, hissing softly.
‘Liz Linshaw says hi,’ Hewitt told him, finally.
It jerked his head around.
‘Well,’ she amended. ‘That’s paraphrase. Actually, she says, you fucking bitch, you can’t hold him without charges this long, I want to see him. She’s wrong about that, of course. We can hold you pretty much indefinitely.’
Chris looked away again, jaw set.
‘We don’t plan to, though. In fact, your release papers should come through some time tomorrow morning. You can go home, or back to that expensive hotel fucknest you’ve been maintaining. Want to know how come?’
He locked down the urge to ask, to give anything. It was hard to do. He was hungry for detail from outside, for anything to engage the frantically spinning wheels in his head.
‘So I’ll tell you anyway. Tomorrow’s Thursday, you should be out by lunchtime at worst. That gives you the best part of a day before you drive. We’ve posted for a Friday challenge, it’s traditional at Shorn. Gives everyone the weekend to get used to the result.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about, Hewitt?’ The insolence shrouded the question enough that he could justify breaking his silence. ‘What challenge?’
‘The partnership challenge. For Philip Hamilton’s post.’
He coughed a laugh. ‘I don’t want Hamilton’s fucking job.’
‘Oh yes, you do. In fact, you issued a formal notice of challenge just before you killed him. Citing unprofessional conduct over the NAME account, ironically enough.’ She reached into her jacket and produced a palm-pad. ‘I can show you it if you like.’
‘No thanks. I don’t know what shit you’re cooking up, Hewitt, but it won’t start. You know the policy, you told me yourself last week. No partner-employee crossover.’
‘Well, yes, granted your actions were unorthodox. But, as you know, our senior partner is a big fan of policy-making by precedent. He’s agreed that we can blur the distinction in this case. Apparently, he’s had you in mind for partner status for quite a while. You or Mike Bryant, of course.’
And then it all came crashing down on him, like a slum clearance he’d watched as a kid. Explosions ripping through what he thought was solid from one side to the other, clean straight lines of structure tipping, curtseying and dissolving into a chaos of tumbling rubble and dust while a huddled crowd watched. He couldn’t see the resulting wreckage clearly yet, but he sensed its outlines.
‘Mike won’t drive against me,’ he said without conviction.
Hewitt smiled. ‘Yes, he will. I’ve talked to him. More precisely, I’ve talked to him about equity, capital wealth, partner-safe status, professional versus unprofessional behaviour and the dangers of unmanageability. Oh, and the identity of your mystery hotel guest over the last couple of weeks.’
‘The fuck are you talking about?’ But as he said it, the sliding sense of despair was overwhelming, because he already knew.
‘Don’t be obtuse, Chris. I’ve got indesp microcam footage from Liz’s house and the hotel too. Should have seen Mike’s face when he saw that stuff.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No,’ she said almost kindly. ‘I’ve been modelling this one for months, Chris. I mean, come on. Who do you think sent you Donna Dread’s little performance in the first place?’ She waited for a response, saw she was getting none and sighed. ‘Okay, Linshaw was already leaning pretty hard in your direction, she’s such a little tart with the driving thing anyway. But even so, I think I deserve some credit. If it weren’t for me, you’d probably still be grinding through the same stale old fidelity numbers with your Norwegian grease monkey.’
Chris nodded to himself. The shock was still coming, in waves. ‘You set me up with Hamilton, didn’t you. You knew what I’d do.’
‘It seemed likely.’ Hewitt examined her nails modestly. ‘To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I’d get a result this good. Putting you and Hamilton on a collision course was an obvious no-lose strategy, the Lopez-Barranco stuff looked likely to pull you in, you proved that with Echevarria senior. Little favour called in at the Langley end, tip you off the account and off we go. But even so, Chris, I was impressed . You really managed to fuck up beyond my wildest dreams. I don’t know what you were thinking. If you were thinking.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Chris said distantly.
‘No, I do understand. You’re hooked on Barranco’s shiny new dream - actually, it’s a pretty grubby, old dream, but let’s leave that - and some macho loyalty thing for Joaquin Lopez. I just wonder what you think trashing Hamilton was going to achieve.’
It was a ray of light, worth an almost-grin. ‘You’re wrong, Louise. Trashing Hamilton was incidental. He was just in the way. The point is, your deal with Echevarria is fucked. He’ll never touch Shorn again.’
‘Well, that remains to be seen. He’s a smarter young man than you give him credit for, and if we can show him your charred corpse with Mike Bryant’s boot on it, well, who knows?’
He folded his arms. ‘I’m not doing it, Louise.’
‘Oh, yes you are.’ Her voice turned momentarily ugly. ‘Because if you don’t drive, then Phil Hamilton’s death is just murder, and you’ll be getting a swift ride to the organ bank. Those are your choices, Chris. Die on the road or die strapped to a gurney at St Bart’s. Either way is fine with me.’
She leaned closer. Close enough that he could smell her perfume under the rain, clean and sharp and lightly spiced. Her voice was a serrated murmur.
‘And whichever it is, Chris, when it happens, as you’re going under, you just remember Nick Makin.’
Chris looked at her, not really surprised. ‘Makin, huh?’
‘That’s right.’ She sat back again. ‘Makin.’
‘So I called it from the beginning. Your toy boy got bumped for me, and you sent him to kill me.’ He shook his head. ‘Him and his gangwit proxies. That was brave of you.’
‘There’s no sent about it, Chris. He hated you for free. If anything,’ she closed her mouth, looked away. She blinked. ‘If anything, I tried to talk him down because I knew it wasn’t necessary. I knew you’d fuck up sooner or later. And don’t talk to me about brave, Chris. Not with Mitsue Jones shot through the head at close range while she was injured and trapped in wreckage. Not with the blood of an eighty-year-old man on your hands. You’re no fucking different to me in the end.’