'Michael, is there anything about this project that I should know that I don't?'

'Of course there isn't. Why?'

'They're filing a claim against your patents.'

'Braby?'

'Yup.'

For several seconds Beard slumped at the console, frowning as he reached back into his grey English past. He brought to mind concrete posts, the smell of the beer factory beside the motorway, the mud between the temporary huts, the makeshift tables piled with foolish dreams. It was as though he were recalling an existence before he was born, before dinosaurs had their dominion, when mists were thick over primeval swamps. And now, as those mists began to clear, he could see. How had he failed to predict it? This was how Braby was going to angle in on the revitalised American renewables scene, not by begging favours for advice or introductions, but with the muscle of expensive litigation. It was threatening behaviour, it was an attempted mugging. He would expect to settle out of court and take a share in future projects. And on the basis of nothing at all.

Beard stood suddenly, feeling energised and relieved, and, ignoring an attack of dizziness, tapped Hammer on the chest, as though attempting to correct the faulty machinery of his thoughts.

'Listen, Toby. I've seen this kind of manoeuvring before with institutions and patents. Braby thinks, or he's pretending to think, that I did my photosynthesis work while I was at the Centre and that the rights of exploitation belong there. But I didn't get started until I set up at Imperial and by then Braby had got me sacked. And anyway, under the terms of my employment I was free to pursue my own work. I mean, I was only in there once a week. I have the old contract at home. I'll show you.'

'This could slow us down,' Hammer murmured, still gloomily unconvinced.

Beard said, 'When they see the dates, my sacking, my contract, they'll run for cover. We'll counter-sue for harassment, defamation, whatever. The Centre has even less money than we do. They lost nearly everything on a ridiculous wind turbine they were developing. It was a big public scandal. The place runs on a shoestring.'

Beard noticed his colleague begin to relax. Poverty in a hostile litigant was refreshing.

'Michael, promise me there are no hidden reefs, no shocks, nothing you're holding back.'

'I promise. Braby's a damned opportunist. We'll kick his backside across the Rio Grande.'

'Barnard will be here in fifteen minutes.'

Beard made a show of frowning as he looked at his watch. He wanted his spell with Darlene. Only then could he face the lawyer.

'I have a meeting in town. But he can come and find me at the Holiday Inn this evening. Or in that restaurant across the road.'

As Beard went towards the door, Hammer was already bent over his laptop writing emails and hardly seemed to notice his friend leaving. Normality restored.

It was invigorating, to come out of the frozen air of the control room into the dry heat of the late afternoon, from fluorescent to golden light, from the murmurings of the servers into the din of preparation and the cacophony of two separate sound systems playing country music in different parts of the site competing with the rehearsals of the army band and the whine of a power drill. It was not only the prospect of heading into town with Darlene that stirred Beard. He was enlivened, uplifted by outrage at Braby's clumsy, unjust claims. They added even greater value to the project. The false friend who had turned on him at the lowest point in his career now wanted some small part of the glory. He could not have it, and it was a joy to contemplate the fact. Beard's step was unusually light and quick as he went through the bustle. He slowed as he passed a stall setting up to sell patriotic souvenirs. He could imagine buying a little Stars and Stripes on a stick and waving it with childish malice under Braby's nose. But no. Let him rot with his tinpot helical turbine in the damp grey confines of southern England.

He was twenty minutes early for Darlene, so he headed towards the parade ground and the silvery trills and foghorn blare of the marching band. There were twenty or so men in fatigues, not many of them young, standing with their bandmaster in the shade of an awning at one end of the raw, flattened square. On the south side, workmen had finished erecting a set of steeply raked bleachers for dignitaries and press. Again, he marvelled at all that Toby Hammer had achieved with his emails. As Beard made his way around the ground, the musicians were rehearsing, with just a few cranky, misplaced notes, a Beatles medley, and he assumed that this was not a proper army band but some kind of reservist group of local enthusiasts. The bandmaster's white baton conjured an unpleasant association of Melissa's lover. It was already getting late in London and he owed her a call. But this was not the time.

To the strutting tones of 'Yellow Submarine', he walked towards the stand of bleachers, which rose right up from among the brush and palmillas. There was a figure sitting alone, dead centre, and Beard immediately recognised a fellow Englishman. Was it the cigarette, the stoop of narrow shoulders, or the grey socks and black leather shoes and absence of hat and sunglasses? There was a small carry-all at the man's feet and he was hunched forward, chin resting in one hand, staring not at the band, but past it, in the direction of the Gila hills. Rodney Tarpin, of course. His old friend, come all this way to render his account. After the initial shock of recognition, and some minutes of hesitation, Beard decided to go over to him, certain that it would be better to have a confrontation now on his own terms, and in public, than be taken by surprise. Darlene's hands over his eyes had been a warning.

The stand was unreasonably steep and he paused to rest at the centre row before going sideways along it towards his man. In a display of cool, pretending not to notice or care about Beard's approach, Tarpin continued to stare straight ahead as he smoked, even as Beard sat down next to him. He did not trust himself to speak until he had caught his breath, and still Tarpin did not turn to acknowledge him. This was how momentous encounters were presented in certain movies, and Tarpin would have had time to watch a few. He had not wasted much of his eight years in the prison gym. Confinement had shrunk him. His arms and legs were thin, and the builder's proud gut that once held sway above his belt was now a little pot. Even his head looked smaller, the face more mouse than rat, and the impression of taut nostrils, of eager inquisitiveness, had been stamped out. In its place, a passive watchfulness that might have passed, at dusk perhaps, for calm. But in the golden New Mexico afternoon he looked a harmless wreck, a bum sucking too needily on his cigarette, hardly the man to deliver a slap to the face. Beard felt his spirits glow and swell with relief. This poor lag could do him no harm.

The silence was becoming absurd. Beard spoke up briskly, as though to a dim and wayward employee. 'So, Mr Tarpin. They've let you out. What brings you all this way?'

He turned at last, pinching out his cigarette between forefinger and thumb. In the corners of the whites of his eyes were unhealthy egg-yolk smears. There were broken capillaries too running from the bridge of his nose and across his cheeks. When he spoke he exposed the missing tooth, an upper incisor, that prison dentistry had omitted to fix.

'I thought if I was sat up here you'd be bound to see me.'

'Well?'

'Mr Beard, I need to talk to you, tell you something, ask you something.'

Faintly, Beard's fear revived. He was keeping a watch on Tarpin's hand, and on the bag at his feet. 'All right. But I haven't got long.'

Below them the band ground on through its medley. The final chords of 'Yesterday' dissolved into a chirpy rendition, in strict marching tempo, of 'All You Need is Love'. Hard to credit that millions once screamed and tore at their hair for such staid little ditties.