Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  Amanda shook her head. ‘You can stay there. It’s not like you’ll be staying long…’ She tried to remember its name.

  ‘Tatsu. You can call me Tatsu. I have told you this already.’

  ‘Tatsu. You’ve got a job to do. Why don’t you do it and we can close out the contract and get on with whatever comes next. And Tatsu, can you order me some peas while you’re in there?’ She managed not to snort.

  The face on the panel was replaced by the temperature read outs and messages she was used to.

  Amanda checked the time, assuming the AI had started the job for which Tangle had contracted it. How long would it take? And what then? She’d thought the drive was a door through which she could step if she chose, but it seemed she’d already been shoved along, and as much as she wanted to hope otherwise, there was no way back.

  ‘I’m not going to dance just because you whistle a fucking tune,’ she said to no one in particular.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘What now?’ she hissed, stalking out of the kitchen and down the windowless hallway she’d lined with mirrors and lights to make it feel bright and spacious.

  Tatsu’s voice called from the kitchen, but she couldn’t make out what it was saying. Distracted, she wasn’t looking at the door as it opened: ‘Adil, I’ve had a really rubbish day and I’m not in the mood to talk tonight.’

  ‘S’alright,’ said a voice like honey pulled over gravel. ‘I ain’t Adil.’

  Amanda twisted too late, her head coming back around in time to see two men step into her flat, one of them suddenly with his hand at the base of her neck, pushing calmly but firmly, forcing her back as he came forwards.

  Her vision narrowed down, surrounded on all sides by nothingness as the second man closed the front door. The first, his hand still pushing at her, kept going, slowly but remorselessly until she was backed up into the kitchen, her backside against the high back of the sofabed.

  ‘You stay there,’ he said, taking his hand away. She realised he’d bent over to handle her, and now as he straightened, her eyes were level with his shoulders. She was tall enough, as tall as most men, and he towered over her. She scrabbled around the chair and he grunted irritably.

  ‘Stop fucking moving or I’ll really hurt you.’

  Amanda stopped. She’d gotten the kitchen table between them, which gave her space to breathe. She was careful to keep her gaze away from the book and the letter. They were mundane things the intruders had no reason to notice.

  His partner hadn’t followed him into the room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Where’s the other one?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘If you’re going to hurt me—’ She’d started out brave, but her brain checked in and suggested that sheer courage wasn’t going to unnerve men like them.

  He stared at her, waiting. ‘If I’m going to hurt you…what?’

  The confusion on his face wasn’t right. She was reminded of those graduates who arrived at the bank, the children of grandees, throwing their connections about until they realised no one gave a crap if they weren’t also very good at the jobs they’d been unfairly given. Calmed by the comparison, she looked at him properly for the first time.

  He was huge, muscled and definitely the beneficiary of drugs better used on horses. His face was too small for his neck, his hair greasy and receding, but his eyes were like flints beneath soft brows she thought her mother would have loved. He was dressed in a cheap, shiny suit a size too small. Too tight, or poor, to go where they’d have his size, she thought. In contrast, his thick, gaudy watch was as ostentatiously expensive as anything she’d find among her traders on the floor, glinting aggressively at the end of his arm.

  The picture spoke of ill-educated wealth, the type who had cash but not assets, access but no one to tell him how to spend what he had. A teenage football star after their first big signing.

  Her initial fear that the men had been sent by Crisp receded, replaced by a sense of queasy unease that if they weren’t professionals she was still in trouble, but of a kind she couldn’t predict.

  The second man came into the kitchen, walking like he was high, his limbs loose, flapping around, his body swaying from side to side. He nodded at Amanda like they were mates, sidling up to his companion and jittering by his side, short blond hair slicked into place, dressed in navy sports gear detailed in rich red accents. She’d seen mums in Kensington wearing the same outfit.

  They waited in silence. The two men’s faces were deferential, glancing at her but sliding away again if she met their gaze. When she moved they stuttered into action, mirroring her motion to stop her leaving the room.

  It was as if, having burst into her house, they’d run out of ideas.

  Deciding the imminent danger was past, Amanda attempted to take control of the situation, as much as she could.

  ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’

  The larger of the two looked delighted, his friend more surprised. ‘Really? That would be great.’

  Amanda walked to the hot water dispenser, pulling mugs down from the cupboard, grabbing them firmly to stop the shaking. ‘I’ve only got Assam—builder’s tea, basically. That okay?’

  The larger of them nodded. The other looked a little sheepish. ‘Would you have peppermint or something?’

  Amanda could feel the world tilting around her but focussed on the act of putting the bags into the mugs, of filling them with hot water from the dispenser. ‘I’ve got three mint? I think it’s a bit stronger and not quite as sweet.’

  ‘Sure, I’ll give it a go.’ She recognised a hint of Dublin in the wiry one’s accent. The big one was as north London as they came.

  Handing them their drinks she suggested they sit down at the table.

  ‘Shall I order some more milk?’ asked the fridge.

  ‘Yes?’ said Amanda, figuring it was Tatsu, but having no clue what it was trying to tell her. Hopefully that it had called the police to come to her rescue.

  ‘I’m Haber,’ said the Irishman, his voice deep for someone with so much nervous energy he was jiggering his leg at the table.

  ‘I’m Stornetta,’ said the other.

  ‘I guess you know me? Amanda.’ It felt weird giving them her name, but she wanted them to see her as more than an object, to push them into treating her as if she mattered.

  ‘Amanda Back,’ said Stornetta, his voice soft and a little relieved, as though they hadn’t known for sure. ‘You owe us fifty grand.’

  ‘Give or take,’ said Haber.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘I DON’T,’ SAID Amanda. ‘I don’t even owe anything on credit, never have done. My parents worked so hard to give me a chance, to help me get to university. I’m the only one in my family to have gone. I’ve never had much.’ She stopped, looked around the kitchen. ‘Everything I’ve got has been bought when I could afford it. So I can’t owe you anything. I’ve never even met you before. I can’t be the person you’re looking for.’ With a conscious effort, she stopped rambling.

  ‘Really?’ asked Stornetta, looking genuinely appalled, like a surprised date.

  ‘You’re Amanda Back, though, aren’t ya?’ asked Haber, panic crossing his face.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But I must be the wrong one.’

  ‘Back’s not a common surname, to be honest,’ said Haber. ‘We checked. Lots of Blacks and Becks, but there ain’t many Backs.’

  ‘Can I ask? Adil. Is he okay?’

  They looked at one another blankly. ‘Who?’ asked Haber.

  ‘The concierge? Big smile, short, wearing a uniform?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Haber, looking abashed. Amanda’s heart lurched at the thought they’d hurt Adil. ‘Yeah. He’s fine. We gave him twenty quid to get lost.’

  ‘Really?’ Amanda realised her mouth had dropped open and closed it.

  ‘Don’t be daft, we hit him hard and convinced him that calling the police would get him hit harder. Little fella, not a lot o
f fight in him.’ It was said matter of factly, as if he’d been judged an unripe fruit.

  She wanted to shout at them, to call them out, but was stuck. It wasn’t as if she were challenging a bully of a client; these two were happy to hurt people they disagreed with, and three half-hearted self-defence classes ten years ago weren’t about to help her if they decided she needing the same treatment. People who hit others casually weren’t the type of people whose behaviour was going to be altered by a hit to their social credit score.

  Haber jumped about, hoping from one foot the other. ‘I got it! It ain’t your debt, is it? You don’t owe us direct. It’s your man, he’s the one who owes us.’

  Stornetta nodded, clearly expecting the explanation to make everything clear.

  ‘I don’t have a man,’ said Amanda slowly, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘’Course you do. Tangle owes us. He’s disappeared and left us a letter saying you were good for it, that you owed him, and so through the magic of accounting, you now owe us. Factoring, I think it’s called.’

  ‘I know what it’s called,’ said Amanda testily. ‘I don’t see how it works in this case. I haven’t seen him for years. As for owing him, the bastard took tens of thousands of pounds of my money when he went, together with my ID. Have you seen my social credit score? It’s as good as it gets.’

  ‘We saw that,’ said Stornetta thoughtfully. ‘To be honest with you, Amanda, we haven’t seen him for a couple of years neither. Bugger just upped and disappeared on us. We’d basically written it off. But then he sent us a letter telling us you’d pay up.’

  ‘If you don’t pay us, then who’s supposed to make us whole?’ Haber looked around the kitchen. ‘You look like you got plenty of currency in offline wallets. If not you, then who?’

  ‘I don’t owe him any money,’ she hissed. ‘You can’t just have my money because I look rich,’ said Amanda, outraged.

  ‘I think that’s the whole point of extortion. Don’t you, Haber?’ asked Stornetta, picking at the cuticles around his fingers. ‘He owes us, you’re connected and we’re collecting.’

  ‘I don’t just have that kind of money lying around,’ tried Amanda.

  ‘Ya see, now,’ said Stornetta. ‘That’s the beauty of electronic currency, isn’t it? You’ve got wallets where they sit, like gold, but accessible from anywhere.’

  ‘None of my accounts are with anonymous ledgers,’ said Amanda, feeling her defences falling one by one. Best not to mention most of her money was tied up in investments.

  ‘You let us worry about what we’ll do with the money once we have it.’

  Haber cracked his knuckles and fixed her with a clear stare. ‘Now, why don’t you log onto wherever you store your investments and transfer our cash like a good girl?’

  ‘No need to be patronising, Haber,’ said Stornetta. ‘Just because we’re threatening the woman, doesn’t mean we have to be rude.’

  ‘God’s sake, Stornetta. Who gives a fuck about manners? I want our money.’

  ‘How much do you want?’ Suddenly worried they’d take everything she had. Trying to work out if she could hide her accounts and how much she’d have to show them to make it seem plausible that she wasn’t obviously attempting to dupe them.

  ‘Just what Tangle owed us.’

  ‘Shame about him disappearing. Doesn’t look good.’

  ‘Nor does sending you here,’ said Amanda, unsympathetically. ‘Besides, if it’s been a few years, and you’d already written it off, I’m sure a discounted amount would do? Say, ten thousand?’

  ‘You don’t get it,’ said Stornetta.

  She assessed them without eye contact. She had a chance to get them out of the apartment, to get one thing sorted out of the mess she was already in. She had cash sitting in a savings account, where she’d been lazy in assigning it to proper investments.

  She hesitated. It couldn’t be a coincidence that they’d arrived now, but they didn’t seem inclined to do anything except rob her.

  She nodded in surrender.

  Stornetta motioned for her to bring up her internet access, which she did with a wave of her hand, her homepage floating between them three feet above the floor.

  ‘Nice setup,’ murmured Haber, taking in the small swivelling projectors embedded in the ceiling.

  Amanda was half way through the log-in procedure when there was another knock at the door.

  ‘Who’re you expecting?’ asked Stornetta, sounding disappointed.

  ‘No one. No one’s supposed to be able to get up here without a pass. The concierge is supposed to stop people from coming in, and we’ve got security systems too.’

  ‘I’ve got his pass,’ said Stornetta, fishing Adil’s security pass from a trouser pocket. ‘Must be someone from the building.’

  ‘No one just drops in,’ said Amanda. The idea of her less-well-known neighbours coming around unannounced made her shiver uncomfortably. It was bad enough that Minti had rung the door. Fortunately, he didn’t make a habit of it, he liked his privacy more than she did. ‘It’s just not what we do.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Stornetta. ‘My lot are in and out like it’s Piccadilly Circus. I have to retreat to the lav just to get a moment’s peace.’

  ‘Look,’ said Amanda, realising she was going to have to take control. ‘What are we going to do about the door? There aren’t more of you, are there?’

  Haber shook his head, stepping away from the table and out into the hall, his footsteps muffled on the soft carpet beyond the kitchen.

  Amanda followed him, trying to keep her voice down. ‘Why don’t I get it? Whoever it is won’t be expecting you and I’d rather avoid awkward questions if I can, right? My bloody credit scores are going to take a battering after today as it is, and the blockchain keeps this kind of shit eternally pristine.’

  Haber stopped advancing down the hall, shifting his weight from one side of his body to the other, like a crab unsure which way to go. He looked over his shoulder at Stornetta, who’d followed Amanda out. They nodded at one another and backtracked towards her bedroom.

  She hurried to block them, just as the visitor banged on the door again. ‘I have a spare room.’ Pointing at it with her chin as her hands gripped the doorway behind her. ‘Go hide in there, will you?’ They looked abashed and scuttled into the spare room, closing the door gently behind them.

  Amanda stood staring at it, the silence filling her brain with static until she remembered the front door. Taking a breath and adjusting her outfit to try to smooth out the more obvious signs of the day, she opened the front door.

  A tall woman stood on the other side, her appearance impatient, as if she’d rather be somewhere else. Long black hair pulled up into a knot, a tidy two-tone suit that suggested someone keen on running. Her face was broad and pale, with thin lips and unremarkable brown eyes. She’d never make it in sales, thought Amanda. The first impression was of someone lost, who Amanda would forget before the end of the day.

  Until she met Amanda’s gaze. In those eyes she felt as if she were being dissected, a poorly prepared dinner presented to a refined, unforgiving diner.

  ‘You are Amanda Back?’ The accent Germanic, clipped. Berlin, thought Amanda.

  ‘Sorry. Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I am Ule Herz.’

  ‘Like the physicist?’ asked Amanda, stalling but sincerely curious.

  ‘No,’ said Ule flatly. She put her hands on her hips, waiting to be invited inside.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is it normal to be this rude to visitors in your country?’ she asked.

  ‘In this country,’ began Amanda, ‘with strangers who don’t announce they’re coming and slip past security… yes. Yes, it’s about normal.’

  ‘I did not “slip past security,” as you say. I told your man I wanted to see you and he waved me through. He said I was welcome to come up because everyone else did and he didn’t want any more trouble.’ She smiled, half fox, half c
rocodile. ‘Is that normal?’

  Amanda sighed. ‘Come on in.’ Everybody else is. She waved the screen away before she got to the lounge and swept up the wrapping, depositing it in the bin under the counter as casually as she could manage. Her fingers itched to move the book and letter to safety, but she held back, determined not to draw attention to them unnecessarily. It was too late to do anything else.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were entertaining,’ said Ule when they were in the kitchen.

  ‘I’m not,’ replied Amanda, unnerved, before spotting the fresh mugs of tea she’d made Haber and Stornetta on the kitchen table. She collected them up, still steaming, and poured them away as if she’d made them for that exact purpose.

  Ule watched without commenting, waiting until Amanda had finished fussing over the dirty mugs. She stood just inside the doorway, her back to the wall, arms folded over her chest.

  ‘Nice shoes,’ said Amanda. They were beautifully put together, shining black leather with white lace stitching, low slung and with good heel support. ‘I bet you can run in those without regretting it.’

  Ule looked down, checked her own shoes out. ‘That’s the idea. I found them in a small shop in Florence. They had a pair in scarlet, but I couldn’t think of when I’d wear them.’ She looked up at Amanda as if she might know the place.

  ‘You travel a lot with work, then?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘It is not so glamorous as people believe,’ said Ule.

  Amanda clapped her hands together. ‘God, it’s so boring. You arrive, see a hotel, do your work, meet people with whom you have nothing in common and then fly home. Rinse and repeat. It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s all the same.’

  ‘Few people understand the nature of such work,’ said Ule carefully, rubbing her hands on her thighs, top to bottom.

  ‘I work for a bank,’ said Amanda, suddenly keen to distance herself from the woman casing her home.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Ule pointed at the table, gesturing for Amanda to sit down. ‘I’ve got questions I’d like to ask.’