The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  Chris found Fletcher and closed. The lawyer was rattled - telegraphed clear in the jerky way the car was handling. Chris took a wide swing out into the other lanes so that he’d disappear from Fletcher’s rearview mirror and matched velocities dead level. One hundred and forty on the speedo again - both cars were running dead level and the underpass was only five miles long. Make it quick. Chris closed the gap between the two cars by a yard, flicked on his interior light and, leaning across to the passenger side window, raised one hand in stiff farewell. With the light on, Fletcher couldn’t fail to see it. He held the pose for a long moment, then snapped the hand into a closed fist with the thumb pointing down. At the same time, he slewed the car one-handed across the intervening lane.

  The results were gratifying.

  Fletcher must have been watching the farewell gesture, not the road ahead and he forgot where he was. He jerked his car aside, pulled too far and broadsided the wall in a shower of sparks. The primer-painted car staggered drunkenly, raked fire off the concrete once more and bounced away in Chris’s wake, tyres shrieking. Chris watched in the mirror as the lawyer braked his vehicle to a sprawling halt, sideways across two lanes. He grinned and slowed to about fifty, waiting to see if Fletcher would pick up the challenge again. The other car showed no sign of restarting. It was still stationary when he hit the upward incline at the far end of the underpass and lost sight of it.

  ‘Wise man,’ he murmured to himself.

  He emerged from the tunnel into an unexpected patch of sunlight. The road vaulted, climbing onto a long raised curve that swept in over the expanses of zoneland and angled towards the cluster of towers at the heart of the city. Sunlight struck down in selective rays. The towers gleamed.

  Chris accelerated into the curve.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The light in the washroom was subdued, filtering down from high windows set in the sloping roof. Chris rinsed his hands in the onyx basin and stared at himself in the big circular mirror. The Saab-grey eyes that looked back at him were clear and steady. The bar-code tattoos over his cheekbones picked up the colour and mixed it with threads of lighter blue. Lower still, the blue repeated in the weave of his suit and on one of the twisted lines in his Susana Ingram tie. The shirt shone white against his tan and, when he grinned, the silver tooth caught the light in the room like an audible chime.

  Good enough.

  The sound of splashing water ran on after he killed the tap. He glanced sideways to see another man washing his hands two basins down. The new arrival was big, the length of limb and bulk of trunk habitually used to model suits, and with long fair hair tied back in a ponytail. An Armani-suited Viking. Chris almost looked for a double-bladed battle axe resting against the basin at the man’s side.

  Instead, one of the hands emerged from the basin and he saw, with a sudden, visceral shock, that it was liberally stained with blood. The other man looked up and met his gaze.

  ‘Something I can help you with?’

  Chris shook his head and turned to the hand-dryer on the wall. Behind him, he heard the water stop in the basin and the other man joined him at the dryer. Chris acknowledged the arrival and gave a little space, rubbing away the last traces of moisture on his hands. The dryer ran on. The other man was looking at him closely.

  ‘Hey, you must be the new guy.’

  He snapped his fingers wetly. There was still some blood on them, Chris saw, tiny flecks and some in the lines of his palm.

  ‘Chris something, right?’

  ‘Faulkner.’

  ‘Yeah, Faulkner, that’s it.’ He put his hands under the flow of air. ‘Just come in from Hammett McColl?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’m Mike Bryant.’ A hand offered sideways. Chris hesitated briefly, eyeing the blood. Bryant picked up on it. ‘Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just in a no-namer, and Shorn policy is you’ve got to recover their plastic as proof of the kill. It can get messy.’

  ‘Had a no-namer myself this morning,’ said Chris reflexively.

  ‘Yeah? Where was that?’

  ‘M11, around junction eight.’

  ‘The underpass. You take him down in there?’

  Chris nodded, deciding on the spur of the moment not to mention the inconclusive nature of the engagement.

  ‘Nice. I mean, no-namers don’t get you anywhere much, but it’s all rep, I guess.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You’re up for Conflict Investment, aren’t you? Louise Hewitt’s section. I’m up there on the fifty-third myself. She was batting your résumé about a few weeks back. That stuff you did at Hammett McColl way back was some serious shit. Welcome aboard.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll walk you up there if you like. Going that way myself.’

  ‘Great.’

  They stepped out into the broad curve of the corridor and a glass-wall view of the financial district from twenty floors up. Bryant seemed to drink it in for a moment before he turned up the corridor, still scratching at a persistent speck of blood on his hand.

  ‘They give you a car yet?’

  ‘Got my own. Customised. My wife’s a mechanic.’

  Bryant stopped and looked at him. ‘No shit?’

  ‘No shit.’ Chris held up his left hand, the dull metal band on the ring finger. Bryant examined it with interest.

  ‘What’s that, steel?’ He caught on and grinned suddenly. ‘Out of an engine, right? I’ve read about this stuff.’

  ‘Titanium. Got it off an old Saab venting chamber. Had to resize it, but apart from that—’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ The other man’s enthusiasm was almost child-like. ‘Did you do it over an engine block, like that guy in Milan last year?’ The finger snap again. ‘What was his name, Bonocello or something?’

  ‘Bonicelli. Yeah, like that, pretty much.’ Chris tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. His engine-block altar marriage pre-dated the Italian driver’s by some five years, but had gone almost unnoticed in the driving press. Bonicelli’s ran for weeks, in full colour. Maybe something to do with the fact that Silvio Bonicelli was the hellraising younger son of a big Florentine driving family, maybe just that he had married not a mechanic but an ex-porn star and blossoming manufactured pop singer. Maybe also the fact Chris and Carla had done it with a minimum of fuss in the backyard at Mel’s AutoFix, and Silvio Bonicelli had invited the crowned heads of corporate Europe to a ceremony on a cleared shop floor at the new Lancia works in Milan. That was the trick with the twenty-first century’s corporate nobility. Family contacts.

  ‘Marry your mechanic.’ Bryant was grinning again. ‘Man, I can see where that would be useful, but I’ve got to tell you, I admire your courage.’

  ‘It wasn’t really a courage thing,’ said Chris mildly. ‘I was in love. You married?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He saw Chris looking at his ring. ‘Oh. Platinum. Suki’s a bond trader for Costerman’s. Mostly works from home these days, and she’s probably going to quit if we have another kid.’

  ‘You got kids?’

  ‘Yeah, just the one. Ariana.’ They reached the end of the corridor and a battery of lifts. Bryant dug in his jacket pocket while they waited and produced a wallet. He flipped it open to reveal an impressive rack of credit cards and a photo of an attractive auburn-haired woman holding a pixie-faced child. ‘Look. We took that on her birthday. She was one. Nearly a year ago already. They grow up fast. You got kids?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Well, all I can tell you is don’t wait too long.’ Bryant flipped the wallet closed as the lift arrived and they rode up in companionable silence. The lift announced each floor in a chatty tone and gave them brief outlines of current Shorn development projects. After a while Chris spoke, more to drown out the earnest synthetic voice than anything else.

  ‘This place have its own combat classes?’

  ‘What, hand to hand?’ Bryant grinned. ‘Look at that number, Chris. Forty-one. Up here, you don’t go hand-to-hand for promotion. Lou
ise Hewitt’d consider that the height of bad taste.’

  Chris shrugged. ‘Yeah, but you never know. Saved my life once.’

  ‘Hey, I’m kidding.’ Bryant patted him on the arm. ‘They’ve got a couple of corporate instructors down in the gym, sure. Shotokan and Tae kwon do, I think. I do some Shotokan myself sometimes, just to stay in shape, plus you never know when you might wind up in the cordoned zones.’ He winked. ‘Know what I mean? But anyway, like one of my instructors says, learning a martial art won’t teach you to fight. You want to learn that shit, go to the street and get in some fights. That’s how you really learn.’ A grin. ‘Least, that’s what they tell me.’

  The lift bounced to a halt. ‘Fifty-third floor,’ it said brightly. ‘Conflict Investment division. Please ensure you have a code seven clearance for this level. Have a nice day.’

  They stepped out into a small antechamber where a well-groomed security officer nodded to Bryant and asked Chris for ID. Chris found the bar-coded strip they’d given him at ground-floor reception and waited while it was scanned.

  ‘Look, Chris, I’ve got to run.’ Bryant nodded at the right hand corridor. ‘Some greasy little dictator’s uplinking in for a budget review at ten and I’m still trying to remember the name of his defence minister. You know how it is. I’ll catch you at the quarterly review on Friday. We usually go out after.’

  ‘Sure. See you later.’

  Chris watched him out of sight with apparent casualness. Beneath was the same caution he’d applied to the no-name challenger that morning. Bryant seemed friendly enough, but almost everyone did under the right circumstances. Even Carla’s father could seem like a reasonable man in the right conversational light. And anyone who washed blood off their hands the way Mike Bryant did was not someone Chris wanted at his back.

  The security guard handed back his pass and pointed to the twin doors straight ahead.

  ‘Conference room,’ she said. ‘They’re waiting for you.’

  The last time Chris had been face to face with a senior partner was to hand in his resignation at Hammett McColl. Vincent McColl had a high windowed room, panelled in dark wood and lined along one wall with books that looked a hundred years old. There were portraits of illustrious partners from the firm’s eighty-year history on the other walls, and on the desk a framed photo of his father shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher. The floor was waxed wood, overlaid with a two-hundred-year-old Turkish carpet. McColl himself had silvery hair, buttoned his slim frame into suits a generation out of date and refused to have a videophone in his office. The whole place was a shrine to hallowed tradition, an odd thing in itself for a man whose primary responsibility was a division called Emerging Markets.

  Jack Notley, Shorn Associates’ ranking senior in Conflict Investment, could not have been less like McColl if he’d been on secondment from an inverted parallel universe. He was a stocky, powerful-looking man with close and not especially well-cropped black hair that was just beginning to show a seasoning of grey. His hands were ruddy and blunt fingered, his suit was a Susana Ingram original that had probably cost as much as the Saab’s whole original chassis, and the body it clothed looked fit for a boxing ring. His features were rough-hewn and there was a long jagged scar under his right eye. The eyes were keen and bright. Only the fine web of lines around them gave any indication of Notley’s forty-seven years. Chris thought he looked like a troll on holiday in Elfland as he moved across the light-filled pastel-shaded reception chamber.

  His handshake, predictably, was a bonecrusher.

  ‘Chris. Great to have you aboard at last. Come on in. I’d like you to meet some people.’

  Chris disentangled his fingers and followed the troll’s broad back across the room to where a lower central level housed a wide coffee table, a pair of right-angled sofas and a conspicuously unique meeting leader’s armchair. Seated at either end of one sofa were a man and a woman, both younger than Notley. Chris’s eyes focused automatically on the woman, a second before Notley spoke and gestured at her.

  ‘This is Louise Hewitt, divisional manager and executive partner. She’s the real brains behind what we’re doing here.’

  Hewitt unfolded herself from the sofa and leaned across to take his hand. She was a good-looking, voluptuous woman in her late thirties, working hard at not showing it. Her suit looked Daisuke Todoroki - severe black, vented driver’s skirt to the knees and square-cut jacket. Her shoes had no appreciable heel. She wore long dark hair gathered back in a knot from pale features and minimal make-up. Her handshake wasn’t trying to prove anything.

  ‘And this is Philip Hamilton, junior partner for the division.’

  Chris turned to face the deceptively soft-looking man at the other end of the sofa. Hamilton had a weak chin and a fat bulk that made him untidy, even in his own charcoal Ingram, but his pale blue eyes missed absolutely nothing. He stayed seated, but offered up a damp hand and a murmured greeting. There was, Chris thought, a guarded dislike in his voice.

  ‘Well now,’ said Notley, in jovial tones. ‘I’m not really much more than a figurehead around here so I’ll hand over to Louise for the moment. Let’s all take a seat and, would you like a drink?’

  ‘Green tea, if you’ve got it.’

  ‘Certainly. I think a pot would be in order. Jiang estate okay?’

  Chris nodded, impressed. Notley walked up to the large desk near one of the windows and prodded a phone. Louise Hewitt seated herself with immaculate poise and looked across at Chris.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Faulkner,’ she said neutrally.

  ‘Great.’

  Still neutral. ‘Not entirely, as it happens. There are one or two items I’d like to clear up, if you don’t mind.’

  Chris spread his hands. ‘Go ahead. I work here now.’

  ‘Yes.’ The thin smile told him she hadn’t missed the counter-blow. ‘Well, perhaps we could start with your vehicle. I understand you’ve turned down the company car. Do you have something against the house of BMW?’

  ‘Well, I think they have a tendency to overarmour. Apart from that, no. It was a very generous offer. But I have my own vehicle and I’d rather stick with what I know, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll feel more comfortable.’

  ‘Customised,’ said Hamilton, as if naming a psychological dysfunction.

  ‘What’s that?’ Notley was back, settling predictably into the armchair. ‘Ah, your wheels, Chris. Yes, I heard you’re married to the woman who put it together. That is right, isn’t it.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Chris took a flickered inventory of the expressions around him. In Notley he seemed to read an avuncular tolerance, in Hamilton distaste, and in Louise Hewitt nothing at all.

  ‘That must give you quite a bond,’ Notley mused, almost to himself.

  ‘Uh, yes. Yes, it does.’

  ‘I’d like to talk about the Bennett incident,’ said Louise Hewitt loudly.

  Chris locked gazes with her for a beat, then sighed. ‘The details are pretty much as I filed them. You must have read about it at the time. Bennett was up for the same analyst’s post as me. Fight lasted to that raised section on the M40 inflow. I swiped her off the road on a bend and she stuck on the edge. Weight of the car would have pulled her over sooner or later; she was running a reconditioned Jag Mentor.’

  Notley grunted, a used-to-run-one-myself sort of noise.

  ‘Anyway, I stopped and managed to pull her out. The car went over a couple of minutes later. She was semi-conscious when I got her to the hospital. I think she hit her head on the steering wheel.’

  ‘The hospital?’ Hamilton’s voice was politely disbelieving. ‘Excuse me. You took her to the hospital?’

  Chris stared at him.

  ‘Yeah. I took her to the hospital. Is there a problem with that?’

  ‘Well,’ Hamilton laughed. ‘Let’s just say people around here might have seen it that way.’

  ‘What if Bennett had decided to have another crack at the post?’ asked Hewitt g
ravely, detached counterpoint to her junior partner’s hilarity. Chris thought it rang rehearsed. He shrugged.

  ‘What, with cracked ribs, a broken right arm and head injuries? The way I remember it, she was in no condition to do anything but some heavy breathing.’

  ‘But she did recover, right?’ Hamilton asked slyly. ‘She’s still working. Still in London.’

  ‘Back at Hammett McColl,’ Hewitt confirmed, still detached. The jab, Chris knew, was going to come from Hamilton’s corner.

  ‘That why you left, Chris?’ The junior partner was right on cue, voice still tinged lightly with derision. ‘No stomach to finish the job?’

  ‘What I think Louise and Philip are trying to say,’ Notley interposed, the kindly uncle at a birthday-party dispute, ‘is that you didn’t resolve matters. Would that be a fair summary, Louise?’

  Hewitt nodded curtly. ‘It would.’

  ‘I stayed at HM two years after Bennett,’ said Chris, keeping his temper. He hadn’t expected this so early. ‘She honoured her defeat as expected. The matter was resolved to my satisfaction, and to the firm’s.’

  Notley made soothing gestures. ‘Yes, yes. Perhaps, then, this is more a question of corporate culture than blame. What we value here at Shorn is, how shall I put it? Well, yes. Resolution, I suppose. We don’t like loose ends. They can trip you, and us, up at a later date. As you see with the embarrassment the Bennett incident is causing us all here and now. We are left in, shall we say, an ambiguous situation. Now that couldn’t have happened had you resolved the matter in a terminal fashion. It’s the kind of ambiguity we like to avoid at Shorn Associates. It doesn’t fit our image, especially in a field as competitive as Conflict Investment. I’m sure you understand.’

  Chris looked around at the three faces, counting the friends and enemies he appeared to have already made. He manufactured a smile.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Nobody likes ambiguity.’