‘No?’ He spotted the weak spot and stabbed at it. He mimicked her savagely. ‘Tried to talk him down? Come on, Louise, if you’d wanted to stop Makin, you could have. He wasn’t that strong. You let it happen because it suited the play. Tell yourself what you like in the wee small hours, but don’t try and sell that shit to me. In the end, he was just another pawn.’

‘Pawn. Ah, yes, the chess player.’ Her colour was hectic again, but her voice had evened out. ‘You know, I play a little chess myself, Chris. I never made a big splash about it, like some people, but I play. And it’s a very limited game. In the end, it’s just you and the other guy. That’s not a good model for what we do, Chris. Not a good model for life in general. Of course it’s very male, one-on-one combat, nice and simple. But it isn’t real. You need to upgrade, play something like AlphaMesh or Linkage. Something multi-sided, something with shifting alliances.’

‘Yeah, that sounds more like your speed.’

‘It’s the speed of the world, Chris. Look around you. See the chess players? Sure you do, they’re the stupid third-world fucks sending out their pawns to kill each other over a fifty-mile strip of desert or what colour pyjamas God likes to wear. We’re the AlphaMesh players, Chris. The investment houses, the consultants, the corporates. We shift, we change, we realign, and the game keeps flowing our way. We move around these horn-locked back-and-forth testosterone dickheads, we play them off against each other and they fucking pay us for the privilege.’

‘Thanks for the insight.’

‘Yeah well.’ She got up to go. ‘Here’s another one. When Mike Bryant drives you off the road on Friday, Mr Chessman - and he will, because he’s harder and faster than you - when that happens, just remember. You didn’t lose to him, you lost to me.’

Chapter Forty-Five

It rained on and off through the night and into the next morning. The last of the showers sputtered out as Chris was eating breakfast, and by the time he finished, the sky was brightening. His release order came through about an hour later. The meal tray detail turned up, looking unusually cheerful, and told him he could leave whenever he wanted. They’d brought his phone and wallet, a small black carry-all for his clothes, and the one who’d loaned him the books said he was welcome to keep anything he was still reading. Chris said he couldn’t possibly.

Outside, the city was still damp from the rain, and the air smelled rinsed. The weather had cleared the streets of people, leaving a forlorn Sunday feel on everything. A moisture-beaded Shorn limousine was waiting for him at the kerb, engine idling.

‘We’ll need to hurry, sir,’ the chauffeur told him. ‘The press release said four this afternoon, but you never know. Even the corporate cops have been known to leak. Always a price for drive data, eh?’

In the event, his cynicism proved unfounded. The drive to the hotel was uneventful, and the chauffeur left him alone. Only once, as his passenger was getting out, did the man’s professional lacquer crack. He waited until Chris started up the steps to the hotel, then climbed half out of the driver-side door and leaned across the roof of the limo.

‘Good luck, sir,’ he said.

Chris turned to look at him. ‘Not a Bryant fan, then?’ he asked, not quite steadily.

‘No, sir. Didn’t want to say anything before, in the car, in case you thought I was brown-nosing. But I’ll be watching you tomorrow, sir. Betting on you too.’

‘That’s. Very kind of you.’ The attempt at irony wavered away, unnoticed. ‘Any particular reason you’re not backing Bryant?’ Because he sure as fuck is a better driver than me.

The chauffeur shrugged. ‘Can’t bring myself to like the man. ‘course, you didn’t hear me say that, sir.’

‘Say what?’

The chauffeur grinned. ‘Like I said, sir. I’ll be watching.’

Chris watched him drive away, gripped by a powerful desire to exchange places with the man. Secure service job, preferential housing as likely as not. Modest means, a modest life and a probable future measured in decades, not days. Look at him, not a care in the fucking world.

Suddenly, he felt sick.

When he got up to his room, the sense of unreality was complete. The only visible change since he left for work the day he murdered Philip Hamilton was the absence of Liz Linshaw’s sleeping form curled into the bedclothes.

And the document pouch on the desk.

He ripped off the seals and skimmed through the paperwork -standard challenge documentation, agreement to waive normal legal protection, itemised rules and references to the 2041 (revised) corporate road charter. Duel envelope details, satellite blow-ups and recent road surface commentary from the relevant service providers. It was the M11 run, practically from his front door, down through the underpass and up over the vaulted section, the Gullet, across the north-eastern zones and down. The old favourite. No motorway changes, no ramps, just into the pipe and drive. Brutal, simple stuff.

In his jacket pocket, the mobile queeped. After ten days without the phone, it took him a moment to realise what it was. He took it out, identified a video call from Liz and accepted.

‘Chris.’ She stared out of the tiny screen at him, a little haggard around the eyes, he noticed, and couldn’t help being slightly flattered. ‘Thank Christ for that, you’re out.’

‘You must be paying a lot for your tips.’

Her smile was strained. ‘Tricks of the trade, Chris. Journalism, I mean. You know what’s happening, I take it.’

‘Yeah, I got a full briefing yesterday. Has Mike been in touch?’

‘Yeah.’ She winced. ‘Not a conversation I want to repeat.’

Chris tried to think of something vaguely intelligent to say. ‘I guess he was a lot more serious about you than he liked to show.’

‘Yeah, and about you too, Chris. That’s what really hurt, apparently. As far as I could make out between the expletives.’

‘Yeah, well.’

A long pause.

‘Chris, are you really going to—‘

‘I don’t really want to talk about it, Liz.’

‘No. Right.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you want me to come over?’

Again, the pitching sickness in his stomach. The sheer fucking disbelief at what was going to happen. A rising, swelling bubble of fear.

‘I, uh ...’

‘Fine. It’s okay, I understand.’

‘Good.’

The conversation fizzled for a few more seconds, then died. They said goodbyes that were almost formal, and he hung up.

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the phone for a while. Finally, he called Mike.

‘Hello, Chris.’ There was a flatness in Bryant’s voice and eyes that told him everything he needed to know. He could have hung up there and then.

He gave it a shot.

‘Mike, you can’t be serious about this shit.’

‘What shit is that, Chris? The trail-of-bodies-in-Shorn-conference-chambers shit? The political-alignment-with-terrorists shit? Or did you mean the fuck-your-best-friend’s-woman shit?’

‘Hey. You’re married to Suki, not Liz.’

‘Do the words you don’t fucking make my marital decisions for me sound familiar?’

‘Listen Mike, I’m coming in to the office. We’re going to talk about—‘

‘No, we’re not. I’m taking a half day today. Spending it with Suki, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

‘Then I’ll come and see you there.’

‘You do and I’ll kick your fucking teeth down your throat on the doorstep.’ Mike’s top lip drew back from his teeth. ‘You just stay where you are and fuck Liz a couple more times, while you’ve still got the chance. If you can get it up right now, that is.’

Chris snapped.

‘Ah, fuck you then. Asshole! I’ll see you on the fucking road!’

He hurled the phone across the room. It hit the wall and bounced, undamaged, to the floor.

He made one more call. Two, to be completely accurate, but when he called the house in Hawkspur Green, no one answered. He shrugged philosophically and dug Erik Nyquist’s number out of the phone’s memory. Leaking oil in a head-on collision. It could hardly hurt more than what he’d already swallowed.