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  ‘Well, look at that,’ she said softly. ‘Got me back here, didn’t you? Is that the kind of powerplay you’re used to? You won’t cut it here, Faulkner. I’ve seen your resume. Big kill eight years back with Quain, nothing much since. You got lucky, that’s all.’

  Chris kept his voice mild. ‘So did Hammett McColl. They saved about fifteen mil in bonus payments when Quain went down. And I haven’t needed to do much killing since. Sometimes it’s just enough to do the work. You don’t have to be proving yourself all the time.’

  ‘Here you do. You’ll find that out.’

  ‘Really.’ Chris pulled out the top drawer and looked in at the contents as if they interested him marginally more than the woman in front of him. ‘You got some toy boy lined up to call me out for this office?’

  For just a moment he had her. He caught it in the way her frame stiffened at the upper edges of his peripheral vision. Then she drew a long breath, as if Chris was a new flower she liked the scent of. As he looked up, she smiled.

  ‘Cute,’ she said. ‘Oh, you’re cute. Notley likes you, you know that? That’s why you’re here. You remind him of him, back when he was young. He came out of nowhere just like you, riding one big kill. He had a tattoo, just like you. Stream of currency signs, like tears down from one eye. Very classy.’ Her lip curled. ‘He even dated his mechanic for about five years. Little zone girl, with a smudge of grease across her nose. They say she even turned up to a quarterly dinner once with that smudge. Yeah, Notley likes you, but you notice something about that tattoo? It’s gone now. Just like that little zone girl. See, Notley gets sentiment attacks sometimes, but he’s a professional and he won’t let it get in the way. Hold that thought, because you’re going to disappoint him, Faulkner. You don’t have the grit.’

  ‘Welcome aboard.’

  Hewitt looked at him blankly. Chris gestured with one open hand.

  ‘I thought one of us should say it.’

  ‘Hey.’ She shrugged and turned to leave. ‘Prove me wrong.’

  Chris watched her go, face unreadable. As the door closed, his eyes fell on the matt black Nemex pistol on the desk and his own lip twisted derisively.

  ‘Fucking cowboys.’

  He swept the gun ceremonially away with the clips and slammed the drawer closed.

  There was a list of induction suggestions on the datadown: people to call, when to call them, and where they could be found. Procedures to implement, the best time to access the areas of the Shorn datastack necessary for each procedure. A selected overview of his caseload for the next two months, flags to indicate which needed attention first. The p.a. package had phased everything into a suggested convenience sequence which got the work done as efficiently as possible and told him he would find it most convenient to go home at about eight-thirty that evening.

  He toyed briefly with the idea of loading up the Nemex with its jacketed ammunition and repeating Hewitt’s target practice on the datadown.

  Instead, he punched the phone.

  ‘Carla, this is Chris. I’m going to be late tonight, so don’t wait up. There’s still some chilli in the fridge, try not to eat it all, it’ll give you the shits and I’d like some myself when I get in. Oh, by the way, I’m in love.’

  He put down the receiver and looked at the datadown screen. After a long pause, he prodded the bright orange triangle marked Conflict Investment and watched as it maximised like an opening flower.

  The backglow lit his face.

  It was past eleven by the time he got home. He killed his lights at the first bend in the drive, though he knew that the crunch of his wheels on the gravel would probably wake Carla as surely as the play of high beams across the front of the house. Sometimes she seemed to know he was home more by intuition than anything else. He parked beside the battered and patched Landrover she ran, turned off his engine and yawned. For a moment he sat in the still and the darkness, listening to the cooling tick of the engine.

  Home for six hours’ sleep. Why the fuck did we move this far out?

  But he knew the answer to that.

  This place is no different to HM. Live at work, sleep at home, forget you ever had a relationship. Same shit, different logo.

  Well, that’s where all the money comes from.

  He let himself into the house as quietly as he could and found Carla in the lounge, watching a TV screen tuned to the soft blue light of an empty channel. Ice clicked in her glass as she lifted it to her lips.

  ‘You’re awake,’ he said, and then saw how far down the bottle she was. ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘Isn’t that meant to be my line?’

  ‘Not tonight, it isn’t. I was wired to the fucking datadown until quarter to ten.’ He bent to kiss her. ‘Rough day?’

  ‘Not really. Same old shit.’

  ‘Yeah, done some of that myself.’ He sank into the chair beside her. She handed him the whisky glass just a fraction of a second before he reached out for it. ‘What you watching?’

  ‘Dex and Seth, ‘til the jamming got it.’

  He grinned. ‘You’re going to get us arrested.’

  ‘Not in this postcode.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He glanced across at the phone deck. ‘Did we get any this morning?’

  ‘Any what?’

  ‘Any mail?’

  ‘Bills. Mortgage repayment went through.’

  ‘Already? They just took it.’

  ‘No, that was last month. We’re over the line on a couple of cards as well.’

  Chris drank some of the peat-flavoured Islay whisky, tutting learnedly over the sacrilege of ice in a glass of single malt. Carla gave him a murderous look. He handed her back the glass and frowned at the TV screen. ‘How’d we manage that?

  ‘We spent the money, Chris.’

  ‘Well.’ He stretched his suited legs out in front of him and yawned again. ‘That’s what we earn it for, I guess. So what same old shit did you do today?’

  ‘Salvage. Some arms supply company just moved into premises out on the northern verge lost a dozen of their brand new Mercedes Ramjets to vandals. Whole lot written off.’

  Chris sat up. ‘A dozen? What did they do, park them in the open?’

  ‘No. Someone dropped a couple of homemade shrapnel bombs through a vent into their executive garages. Boom! Corrosives and fast-moving metal in all directions. Mel got a contract to assess the damage and haul every write-off away gratis. Paid to clear it, and he gets to keep whatever salvage we can strip out of the wrecks. And here’s the good bit. Some of these Mercs are barely scratched. Mel’s still out celebrating. Says if the corporates are going to insist on this urban regeneration shit, we could have a lot more work like that. He must have put a good metre of NAME powder up his nose tonight.’

  ‘Shrapnel bombs, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, ingenious what kids can wire together out of scrap these days. I don’t know, maybe Mel even set them up to do it. Connections he’s got in the zones. Jackers, drugs. Gangwit stuff.’

  ‘Fuckers,’ said Chris vaguely.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ An edge crept into Carla’s voice. ‘Amazing what you’ll get up to when you’ve got nothing to lose. Nothing to do but stand at the razor wire and watch the wealth roll by.’

  Chris sighed. ‘Carla, could we have this argument some other time, please? Because I haven’t rehearsed in a while.’

  ‘You got something else you want to do?’

  ‘Well, we could fuck by the light of the TV screen.’

  ‘We could,’ she agreed seriously. ‘Except that I always end up on top and I’ve still got carpet burns on my knees from the last time you had that bright idea. You want to fuck, you take me to a bed.’

  ‘Deal.’

  After, as they lay like spoons in the disordered bed, Carla curled around his back and murmured into his ear.

  ‘By the way, I’m in love.’

  ‘Me too.’ He leaned back and rubbed the back of his head against her breasts. She shuddered at the touch of the close cropp
ed hair and reached instinctively for his shrunken prick. He grinned and slapped her hand away.

  ‘Hoy, that’s your lot. Go to sleep, nympho.’

  ‘So! You just want to fuck me and leave me. Is that it?’

  ‘I’m,’ said Chris, already sliding headlong into sleep. ‘Not going anywhere.’

  ‘Just use me, and then when you’ve used me you go to sleep. Talk to me, you bastard.’

  A grunt.

  ‘You haven’t even told me how it went today.’

  Breathing. Carla propped herself up on one arm and prodded at the springy muscle in Chris’s stomach. ‘I’m serious. What’s Conflict Investment like?’

  Chris took her arm, folded the offending finger around his own and tugged Carla back into the spoon configuration.

  ‘Conflict Investment is the way forward at a global level,’ he said.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘It’s what the Shorn datadown says.’

  ‘Oh, it must be true then.’

  He smiled reflexively at the scorn in her voice and began to drift away again. Just before he slept, Carla thought she heard him speak again. She lifted her head.

  ‘What?’

  He didn’t respond, and she realised he was muttering in his sleep. Carla leaned over him, straining to catch something. She gave up after a couple of minutes. The only sense she succeeded in straining out of the soup of mumbling was a single, repeated word.

  Checkout

  It took a long time to find sleep for herself.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Conflict Investment is the way forward!’

  Applause rose, and clattered at the glass roofing like the wings of pigeons startled into flight. Around the lecture theatre, men and women came to their feet, hands pumping together. The entire CI contingent of Shorn Associates were gathered in the room. The youngest, Chris noticed, were the most fervent. Faces gashed open with enthusiasm, teeth and eyes gleaming in the late afternoon sun from roof and picture window. They looked ready to go on applauding ‘til their hands bled. Sown in amongst this crop of pure conviction, older colleagues clapped to a slower, more measured rhythm and nodded approval, leaning their heads together to make comments under the din of the applause. Louise Hewitt paused and leaned on the lectern, waiting for the noise to ebb.

  Behind his hand, Chris yawned cavernously.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Hewitt made damping motions. The room settled. ‘We’ve heard it called risky, we’ve heard it called impractical and we’ve heard it called immoral. In short, we’ve heard the same carping voices that free-market economics has had to drag with it like a ball and chain from its very inception. But we have learnt to ignore those voices. We have learnt, and we have gone on learning, piling lesson upon lesson, vision upon vision, success upon success. And what every success has taught us, and continues to teach us, again and again, is a very simple truth. Who has the finance.’ A dramatic pause, one slim black clad arm holding a clenched fist aloft. ‘Has the power.’

  Chris stifled another yawn.

  ‘Human beings have been fighting wars as long as history recalls. It is in our nature, it is in our genes. In the last half of the last century the peacemakers, the governments of this world, did not end war. They simply managed it, and they managed it badly. They poured money, without thought of return, into conflicts and guerrilla armies abroad, and then into tortuous peace processes that more often than not left the situation no better. They were partisan, dogmatic and inefficient. Billions wasted in poorly assessed wars that no sane investor would have looked at twice. Huge, unwieldy national armies and clumsy international alliances; in short a huge public-sector drain on our economic systems. Hundreds of thousands of young men killed in parts of the world they could not even pronounce properly. Decisions based on political dogma and doctrine alone. Well, this model is no more.’

  Hewitt paused again. This time there was a charged quiet that carried with it the foretaste of applause, the same way a thick heat carries with it the knowledge of the storm to come. In the closing moments of the address, Hewitt’s voice had sunk close to normal conversational tones. Her delivery slowed and grew almost musing.

  ‘All over the world, men and women still find causes worth killing and dying for. And who are we to argue with them? Have we lived in their circumstances? Have we felt what they feel? No. It is not our place to say if they are right or wrong. It is not for us to pass judgment or to interfere. At Shorn Conflict Investment, we are concerned with only two things. Will they win? And will it pay? As in all other spheres, Shorn will invest the capital it is entrusted with only where we are sure of a good return. We do not judge. We do not moralise. We do not waste. Instead, we assess, we invest. And we prosper. That is what it means to be a part of Shorn Conflict Investment.’

  The lecture theatre erupted once more.

  ‘Nice speech,’ said Notley, pouring champagne into the ring of glasses with an adept arm. ‘And press coverage too, thanks to Philip here. Should profile us nicely for license review on the eighteenth.’

  ‘Glad you liked it.’ Hewitt lifted her filled glass away from the ring and looked round at the gathered partners. Excluding Philip Hamilton at her side, the five men and three women watching her accounted for fifty-seven per cent of Shorn Associates’ capital wealth. Each one of them could afford to acquire a private jet with less thought than she gave to shopping for shoes. Between the eight of them, there was no manufactured object on the planet that they could not own. It was wealth she could taste, just out of reach, like bacon frying in someone else’s kitchen. Wealth she wanted like sex. Wanted with a desire that ached in her gums and the pit of her stomach.

  Notley finished pouring and raised his own glass. ‘Well, here’s to small wars everywhere. Long may they smoulder. And congratulations on a great quarterly result, Louise. Small wars.’

  ‘Small wars!’

  ‘Small wars.’ Hewitt echoed the toast and sipped at her drink. She surfed the polite conversation on autopilot and gradually the other partners began to drift back to the main body of the hotel bar, seeking out their own divisional acolytes. Hamilton caught her eye and she nodded almost imperceptibly. He slipped away with a murmured excuse, leaving her with Notley.

  ‘You know,’ she said quietly, ‘I could have done without Faulkner falling asleep in the front row. He’s too impressed with himself, Jack.’

  ‘Of course, you never were at his age.’

  ‘He’s only five years younger than me. And anyway, I’ve always had these.’ Hewitt set her glass aside on the mantelpiece and cupped her breasts as if offering them. ‘Nothing like a cleavage for reducing professional respect.’

  Notley looked embarrassed and then away.

  ‘Oh, come on Louise. Don’t give me that tired old feminist rap agai—‘

  ‘Being a woman around here makes you tough, Jack.’ Hewitt let her hands fall again. ‘You know that’s true. I had to claw my way up every centimetre of the way to partnership. Compared to that, Faulkner got it handed to him on a plate. One big kill, catch the imagination of App and Prom and he’s made. Just look at him. He didn’t even shave this morning.’

  She gestured across the bar to where Chris appeared to be deep in conversation with a group of men and women his own age. Even at this distance, the dusting of stubble on his face was visible. As they watched, he masked another yawn with his glass.

  ‘Give him a break, Louise.’ Notley took her shoulder and turned her away again. ‘If he can do for us what he did for Hammett McColl, I’ll forgive him not shaving occasionally.’

  ‘And if he can’t?’

  Notley shrugged and tipped back his champagne. ‘Then he won’t last long, will he.’

  He put down the glass, patted her on the shoulder again and walked off into the press of suited bodies. Hewitt stayed where she was until Hamilton appeared noiselessly at her side.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  On the other side of the room, Chr
is was in fact deep in nothing other than the classic party nightmare. He was becalmed at the edges of a group he had only passing acquaintance with, listening politely to conversations he had no interest in about people and places he did not know. His jaws ached from trying not to yawn and he wanted nothing more than to bow out quietly and go home.

  Five days into the new job? I don’t think so, pal.

  Out of boredom he went to the bar for a refill he didn’t want. As he was waiting, someone nudged him. He glanced round. Mike Bryant, grin on full beam, with a Liz Linshaw clone in tow and a tray full of drinks in his hands.

  ‘Hey, Chris.’ Bryant had to raise his voice above the crowd. ‘How did you like Hewitt? Talks up a storm, doesn’t she?’

  Chris nodded noncommittally. ‘Yeah, very inspiring.’

  ‘You’re not kidding. Really gets you in the guts. First time I heard her speak, I thought I’d been personally selected to lead a holy fucking crusade for global investment. Simeon Sands for the finance sector.’ Mike did a passable burlesque of the satellite-syndicated demagogue. ‘Hallelujah, I believe! I have faith! Seriously, you look at the productivity graphs following each quarterly address she gives. Spikes through the roof, man.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Hey, you want to join us? We’re sitting back on the window flange there, see. Got some of the meanest analysts in creation gathered round those tables. Isn’t that right, Liz?’

  The woman at Bryant’s side chuckled. Shooting a glance at her, Chris suddenly realised this was no clone.

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. Liz Linshaw, Chris Faulkner. Chris, you know Liz, I guess. Either that or you don’t have a TV.’

  ‘Ms Linshaw.’ Chris stuck out his hand.

  Liz Linshaw laughed and leaned forward to kiss him on both cheeks. ‘Call me Liz,’ she said. ‘I recognise you now. From the App and Prom sheets this week. You’re the one that took down Edward Quain in ‘41 aren’t you.’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  ‘Before my time. I was just a stringer on a pirate satellite ‘cast in those days. Quite a kill. I don’t think there’s been one like it in the last eight years.’