Market Forces Read online

  He’d already eaten. He locked the door and went straight up to the bedroom. Carla had taken her scrubbed granite analogue clock from the bedside table and the only other time-piece in the room was on the dressing table, an old Casio digital alarm they’d bought together at some antique auction years back. Chris lay in the dark for a long time staring at its steady green numerals, watching the seconds of his life turn over, watching as the last minutes of the day counted down to zero and the new morning of the duel began.

  He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t see the point.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  They were talking about him as he turned on the TV.

  ‘—for a driver of that rank. It’s not really what you expect, is it, Liz?’

  ‘I think that depends, Ron.’ She was resplendent in a figure-hugging black scoop-necked jersey, light make-up, hair pinned carelessly up. Looking at her made him ache. ‘It’s true Faulkner’s form since Quain has been variable, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. I know from interviewing him myself that he simply doesn’t see blanket savagery as an asset.’

  ‘Whereas Mike Bryant does.’

  ‘Well, again, I think you’re simplifying. Mike’s form is more consistent, more conservative you might say, and yes, he certainly isn’t afraid to go foot to the floor when it counts. But he’s not cast in the same thug mould as, say, someone like Yeo at Mariner Sketch or some of the imported drivers we’ve got from Eastern Europe. That’s savagery as a default setting. That’s not Bryant at all.’

  ‘You know them both quite well.’

  She made a modest gesture. ‘Mike Bryant was one of the main sources for my book, The New Asphalt Warriors. And I’ve been working with Chris Faulkner, among other drivers, on a follow-up. I hate to plug so blatantly, but—‘

  ‘No, no. Please.’

  Mannered laughter.

  ‘Well, then. It’s called Reflections on Asphalt - Behind the Driver Mask, and it should, my workload permitting, be out some time in the New Year.’ She grinned professionally into the camera. ‘It’ll be a great read, I promise.’

  ‘I’m sure it will.’ Face to camera. Pause, and. Cue. ‘So now, let’s go over to our live-coverage crew at the Harlow helideck. Sanjeev, can you hear me?’

  ‘Loud and clear, Ron.’ The inset screen sprang up. Maximised. Windswept backdrop, rotors and the location anchor sweeping dishevelled hair out of his eyes as he spoke.

  ‘So what’s the weather like up there?’

  ‘Uh, looks as if the rain’s still holding off, Ron. Maybe even some chance of sun later on, the forecast people tell me.’

  ‘Good driving conditions, then?’

  ‘Yes, it looks like it. Of course, we won’t be allowed over the envelope until twenty minutes or so after the duel ends, but I’m told the roads have more or less dried out. And with the summer repairs on this stretch completed well ahead of schedule, this promises to be—‘

  He told the TV to sleep, finished his coffee and left the espresso cup standing on the phone deck. Brief existential shiver as he looked at it and realised it would still be there tonight, untouched, whatever happened on the road today. Wherever its owner was.

  He shook off the chill and settled his jacket on his shoulders. In the hall mirror, he put on his tie with a languid, frictionless calm that was just the right side of panic. His hands, he noted, were trembling slightly, but he couldn’t decide if it was fear or caffeine. He’d dosed himself pretty heavily.

  He finished the tie, looked at himself in the mirror for what seemed like a long time, checked for keys and wallet, and went out to the car. He pulled the door of the house closed and breathed in, hard. The morning air was still and damp in his lungs.

  Gravel crunched to his left.

  ‘Chris.’

  He spun, clawing at the shoulder holster. The Nemex came out.

  Truls Vasvik stood at the edge of the house, hands spread at waist height. He smiled, a little forcedly.

  ‘Don’t shoot me. I’m here to help.’

  Chris put up the Nemex. ‘You’re a little late for that.’

  ‘Not at all. This is what I believe you English guys call the nick of time.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Chris shoved the Nemex back into the shoulder holster, spoiling the blunt gesture a little as the gun failed to clip in. He pushed a couple more times, then left it. Clicked the car key with his other hand and the Saab’s lights winked at him as the alarms disabled. He stepped towards it.

  ‘Wait. Chris, wait a minute.’ Vasvik moved to block him, hands still held placatory at his sides. ‘Think this through. Bryant’s going to kill you out there.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘And - what? That’s it? The great macho sulk? Kill me and be done with it. See if I fucking care. What does that achieve, Chris?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

  ‘Chris, I can get you out of here.’ The ombudsman pointed. ‘Back that way, through the woods. I’ve got a three-man team back there and a covered van. Sealed unit, medical waste documentation. It’ll get us through the tunnel without checks. You get your million dollars, you get the job. All you’ve got to do is come with me.’

  Out of nowhere, Chris found he could grin. The discovery made his eyes prickle, and put a ball of sudden, savage joy in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘You’ve not been keeping up on current events, Truls,’ he said. ‘I’m globally famous these days. My face is right up there with Tony Carpenter and Inez Zequina. Everybody knows who I am. What kind of ombudsman is that going to make me?’

  ‘Chris, that isn’t important. We can—‘

  ‘What are you going to do then, give me a new face?’

  ‘If necessary. But—‘

  ‘And the million dollars, well.’ Chris tutted regretfully. ‘That just isn’t such a lot of money any more, Truls. I’m up for junior partner. That’s equity. Capital wealth. Several millions, plus benefits.’

  ‘Or cremation later today.’

  Chris nodded. ‘There’s a risk of that. But you know what, Truls. The thing you guys will never understand. That risk is what it’s all about. Risk is what makes winning worth it.’

  ‘You aren’t going to win, Chris.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’ll see if I can live up to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me—‘

  He stepped forward. Vasvik stayed where he was. Their faces were a handsbreadth apart. Eyes locked.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Chris.’ The ombudsman’s voice was low and taut. ‘You think this is going to pay off what you’ve done to Carla, and everybody else? Don’t be a fucking child. Being dead doesn’t solve anything. You’ve got to live if you’re going to make a difference.’

  Chris grinned again. ‘Well, that’s about as good a defence of cowardice as I’ve ever heard. I guess you need that, working where you do.’

  He saw the flare in Vasvik’s eyes.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it, Truls. Back the fuck off. Go file a report or something. You came and asked, and I turned you down.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Chris. You’ve pissed away your marriage, pissed all over your wife—‘

  The Nemex came out again, smoother this time, and he jammed it under Vasvik’s chin.

  ‘Hey. That’s my fucking business.’

  The ombudsman smiled with one corner of his mouth. He went on talking as if the Nemex wasn’t there. ‘—and now you’re going to piss your life away too. Just to make Carla Nyquist cry over your corpse.’

  Through gritted teeth. ‘I told you—‘

  ‘And she will.’ Vasvik saw the change in his face, and reached up for the Nemex. He curled his fingers around the barrel and pushed it away.

  His eyes were icy with disgust. ‘Yeah. She’ll cry for the next ten years of her fucking life over you, Chris. But then, she would have done that anyway. Whatever happened. Whether you were dead like you’re going to be, or just dead inside like you already are.’

  Chri
s gave him a fixed little smile and stowed the Nemex again.

  ‘Get out of my way.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Vasvik stood aside and watched him climb into the Saab. The engine awoke with a rumble like distant thunder. Chris closed the door and put the car in gear. As he let out the clutch and the Saab began to crawl forward, something in the ombudsman’s face made him crank down the window.

  ‘Oh, yeah, Vasvik. Speaking of millions, I forgot. You heard they’re going to make a movie about me?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The Norwegian nodded sombrely. ‘I heard. Make a great ending if you and Bryant managed to kill each other both.’

  Gravel crunched under the wheels. ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘No, really. I’d go and see it.’

  He hit the turn for the ramp going too fast, ignored the bounce and accelerated down onto the motorway. Vasvik’s offer was gone, like Vasvik himself, like conscious long-term thought, bundled up and flung out behind him, flapping on the road in the rearview. Over and out of reach. There was only the road ahead and his hold on the car around him. The Saab snarled throatily to itself as he picked up the centre lane and flipped on the comset.

  ‘Driver Control.’

  ‘This is Chris Faulkner, driver clearance 260B354R.’ His voice was even in his own ears. He felt a quickening of the joy in the pit of his stomach. He felt armoured. ‘Inbound on M11 for partnership challenge. I’m looking for the duel envelope.’

  There was a brief pause. He wondered suddenly if any of the same crew that had worked the gangwit car-jack fiasco were on today.

  ‘Got you, Faulkner. You’re about twenty kilometres off the northern edge. We will advise when you breach. Leave the channel open.’

  ‘Traffic?’

  ‘Executive traffic has been disallowed until nine-thirty. You have two automated bulk transporters currently inbound within the envelope, moderate loads, and maintenance vehicles at junction eleven. Please note that collateral damage to said vehicles is not permitted within the duel protocol.’

  ‘Noted. So where’s Bryant, then?’

  Another pause. You could hear the outrage.

  ‘That information is classified under duel protocol. Please do not request it again.’

  ‘Noted. The sense-of-humour failure, I mean.’

  ‘Please also note that selective jamming is in effect within the envelope. You will be unable to receive outside transmissions other than our own.’

  ‘Thank you, Driver Control. I have done this before a couple of times.’

  He settled into his speed. The overgrown margins of the motorway flashed past on either side in a bumpy green blur. The asphalt fed thrumming under his wheels and fled in his wake. The sense of power grew, feeding off the caffeine and adrenalin. Dying suddenly seemed a long way off, a ridiculous rumour he didn’t believe, something he wouldn’t get round to.

  Reality was the road.

  He hit the duel envelope, tore through it at a hundred and sixty. Driver Control squawked the fact, whole seconds late. Peripheral glimpses of huddled vehicles on the bridge and ramps. Police lights, news crew vans and a rising boil of activity as the Saab slammed past them. He thought he felt the lenses of the cameras swing hungrily to follow.

  No, you’ve just had way too much coffee.

  A slightly hysterical laugh sat behind the thought. He forced it down and watched the hurrying perspective of the road, keyed up for the evening-blue flash of Mike’s BMW. His speed sank to a more cautious hundred and thirty. The ghost of strategy floated up behind his eyes. Retained knowledge of the route from the blow-ups, sense of how Bryant drove.

  Bryant! He grinned wolfishly. Folded away his misgivings, gave in to the pure hot flow of too-fucking-late-now.

  Come on, you motherfucker. I took Liz off you, now let’s see about that pretty blue car. Let’s see about your plastic.

  Lopez. Barranco. The men and women in the gunship-tortured highlands of the NAME. But most of all Bryant, Bryant and his craven fucking, keep-the-rain-off-me need for Hewitt and Notley and all the rest of it.

  He mapped the faces over - Bryant into Quain. Just another murderous fucking suit. Just another—

  The Saab hammered down towards junction ten. The first of the automated transporters blew up in his vision, nailed to the centre lane. Chime from the proximity alert, as he swung the Saab out and past. Gut-deep satisfaction as the car swayed and then straightened out under his hands. The high metal wall slid away on his left and he swung back in.

  The road ahead—

  Impact!

  He was still swimming in the warm gutswirl of car control. Flash of twilight blue in one wing mirror, metallic screech of impact from the rear. Jolt of the crash, the seatbelt webbing grip across his chest. He braked instinctively, remembered the transporter and slewed the Saab hard right. The automated vehicle’s collision alert split the air, blaring banshee outrage above and behind him. He didn’t have time to see if it had braked. Mike Bryant’s BMW shot past on the left, shedding speed and hauling across to stay with the Saab. Forcing the duel, right here, right now, right under the grille of the transporter.

  He swam the blind spot, Chris knew numbly. Shadowed the automated vehicle from the front until he spotted Chris in the depths of the wing-mirror, falling back on the left as Chris overtook right, timing it on instinct, pinning the Saab’s blind spot as it emerged ahead of the transporter, getting up close for the ram—

  Even drunk, even like that, he’s the best I’ve seen.

  He’s harder and faster than you—

  Chris saw the BMW coming side-on and hauled over savagely. The two cars met with a shriek. Flayed paint and sparks in the crushed air between. Counterforce tried to push them apart again. Chris kept the clinch, steering against the other car so the grating scream ran on like nails down a blackboard. Bryant rode it, forcing him back and closer to the central reservation. The BMW’s greater weight was telling, the plan loomed massively clear. Side impact at this speed would smash the barrier down but not clear it. The wreckage would kick the Saab into the air like a toy.

  Options.

  Behind them somewhere, the automated transporter came on, an unknown quantity Chris didn’t have time to look for.

  Desperation crept out, flicker-tongued in his guts.

  He floored the accelerator, but the BMW’s nose already had him blocked. Bryant had locked with careful malice, a half metre ahead of neck-and-neck, enough to cut off any escape forward. Now, through both side windows, he looked over at Chris and ripped a cocked thumb across his own throat. He was grinning. The crash barrier—

  Chris hit the brakes with everything he had.

  The Saab staggered. Jerked free of the sparking, sandpapering fury on its left flank. There was time for a flash glimpse of the transporter coming up and he hauled hard left across Mike’s rear, across the centre lane and out of the automated vehicle’s path. Another blaring of machine rage and the transporter thundered past on his right cutting off vision of the BMW and what it was doing. Chris gritted curses and let them both go. Junction eight. His speed bled down to an unsteady ninety. Adrenalin reaction sloshed in his guts.

  He caught a distant glimpse of the BMW disappearing down the incline towards the underpass.

  It didn’t take much imagination to work out what was coming. He had about a minute, he reckoned. After that— After that, somewhere down in the gloom of the tunnel, Mike Bryant would have executed his one-hundred-and-eighty degree crash-stop turn, would be barrelling back up the road towards him for the head-to-head chicken.

  That old number. The Mike Bryant profile - fearless, headlong, savage. Conservative to the end.

  Chris built speed. Cranked his nerves back up to drive tension. He passed the transporter again. Head buzzing with calculation.

  Two outcomes for this. The head-to-head kills the duel, one way or another. Saab or BMW out of the game, turned too hard, too late and tumbled, into the path of the long-suffering transporter maybe, or maybe both ca
rs, clipped against each other, tossed effortlessly apart with kinetic energy raging off at all angles, looking to shed itself in impact and flame. Or—

  Or we both make it, and you’re south, up and into the Gullet, no way to fight but slow down and let him ram you off into space like Hewitt did to Page, or try for the turn, a hundred and eighty screaming degrees on a vaulted highway only two lanes across.

  He thought of this. He thought it out. Three-stage play, the crash barrier, the head-to-head, the end game in the Gullet. And he knows you can’t make that turn. The BMW bloomed in the road ahead. Up out of the tunnel ramp. Very fast.

  He had time for a glance at the speedo, saw a hundred and something insane, doubled it in his head for Bryant’s share of the speed, saw the BMW’s armoured snout coming at him, rock steady and directly ahead—

  He’s harder and faster than you— —and yelled, and hauled hard right.

  The BMW flinched fragments of a second later. Flashed past. Was gone.

  Chris floored the accelerator and the Saab dived for the tunnel. Again, he had a minute at best. Not the time he needed, he’d have to make some more. The tunnel flew past in the hollow roar of the Saab’s echoed passing. Up, out of the gloom and into sudden, watery sunlight. The Gullet flung itself down at him like a massive asphalt loading ramp. He rose to meet it, took the first curve at the very edges of his driving ability.

  Felt his heart stumble as the Saab palpably gathered enough sideways momentum to skid. He dared not brake, there wasn’t time. He needed the straight at speed. He unhinged the angle of the turn a miserly couple of degrees, slewed back across the double lane, fishtailing, muttering imprecations to the car. The Saab came back to him. He picked up the long rise-and-fall of the straight and ran for the next curve.

  Almost to the end of the gut-tickling swoop, almost on the curve, he choked off his speed and threw the Saab into a shrieking, gibbering handbrake turn.

  For one very long moment, he thought he’d fucked up. Thought he’d lose a tyre and then the car and plunge with it through the crash barrier into the zones below. The car slithered, tripped drunkenly across a badly mended pothole, screamed protest and tyre smoke he could suddenly smell—