Headhunter

by Robert Young

  *

  The message, when he sends it, is cryptic and encrypted. He is sending this sooner than he had intended to but he cannot wait for Hogg to finish his work. He must anticipate its completion within the time-frame he has set the man.

  There is little real information contained in the message, but it trails the upcoming release of something that everyone on his list will be interested in.

  This project he has been working on, this elaborate construction has not been all for himself, not simply for his own personal enrichment. This, instead, will be the ransom that buys his freedom.

  Once they are all on-board and set up, he will guide them through the whole process, each step, until the end game unfolds and they can all walk away happy.

  There are complex financial structures, shell companies, trusts and pyramids, dizzying chains of corporations and subsidiaries, banks and hedge funds and the only person that knows how it functions, can see which pieces fit where, is Michael Horner.

  It has begun to grow and swell, feeding by itself, an organic and malignant thing, black and greedy. Horner knows what he has set loose, though not its precise dimensions. He will seek to control and manipulate it for as long as he can and then get out with the rest of them. If his enemies feel he owes them something, be it money or pride, then he is banking on their own love of an easy dollar trumping any debt he carries, erasing the red in his ledger.

  Just getting in touch with so many dangerous men is a massive risk. His head is above the parapet now and ducking down again to hide will only work for so long. They will know he is out there and if they are not already looking, will begin to seek him out.

  The plan therefore, must not fail. His next message to them must be soon and must be complete. He will need to present his plan to them all, convince them all of its viability and simple functionality. Simple for them; they need only follow his instructions and trust that the fear he has for them, the threat they carry individually and collectively, is enough to reassure them that he will not be trying to inflict further damage to their wealth or reputations.

  But the plan and its implementation will be anything but simple and if Caspar Hogg and his ultra-secure network fails to function at anything less than perfect, then Michael Horner imagines that he and anyone close to him will spend longer dying than they do running.

  NINETEEN

  Lawson turns up early and of course, looks impeccable. He is wearing a suit today. Full business wear, rather than the posh-boy smart-casual that is his usual uniform. His suit is a deep blue and stylishly cut, evidently made-to-measure. The shirt is crisp and so white that the blood-red tie looks like a thick, fresh stain or an open wound.

  Campbell looks better, for his own part, than he has for some time, testament to the benefits of a good night’s sleep or two. And he is even earlier than his boss this morning too, determined that he will not surrender the upper hand as easily as he has on previous encounters.

  He has spent much of his weekend sleeping and eating well, exercising physically and exorcising mentally, chasing out some of the demons that have taken possession these past weeks. The doubt and the paranoia.

  He has reminded himself of the fact that he has been pursued and recruited, that he did not go hawking his cv around in hope. He replays to himself the scenes in the nightclub when they entertained and flattered him into the small hours, the swiftness and generosity of the job offer that followed. All these things offer the same conclusion to Campbell and it comforts and reassures him. He is wanted and he belongs and he will deliver what they believe he can and will do so without fear.

  ’Ordered?’ Lawson asks.

  ’Just coffee,’ he replies and extends a hand.

  ’What looks good?’ By his tone, Lawson is either more upset at being second to the meeting than he ought to be over something so trivial, or that coffee cannot come soon enough.

  ’The waitress.’ Campbell smiles and arches eyebrows in the direction of the pretty blonde in the tight skirt.

  Lawson is evidently more committed to his chauvinism than his bad mood and he clocks her immediately and smiles at Campbell and nods in approval.

  It's not the way he wanted to play it, but it seemed the quick and easy way to get things running. While he is staring at the menu and being pleased with himself he doesn't notice the waitress arrive.

  ’Eggs Benedict,’ says Lawson and Campbell frowns at him before he realises that he is ordering and that the waitress is now looking at him.

  ’Two please,’ he says quickly and snaps the menu closed.

  ’You want two?’ the waitress asks him, clearly confused that he is ordering two for himself.

  ’One each,’ he clarifies but his tone is sharper than he intends and Lawson smirks as the waitress shuffles away looking embarrassed.

  He feels the slightest shift occur between the two of them and he wonders for a moment how he has managed to somehow mess up even this.

  But the reinvigorated, retrained Campbell remembers that he is not going to play these games, or even to recognise that they are being played. He will simply do his own thing, and get it right.

  ’Can't get the staff,’ says Lawson with that same smirk on his face, the same one that Campbell is refusing even to see.

  ’I don't know. Anyone that wants to bring me extra food is OK with me,’ he says.

  ’Damn. Forgot to order my coffee,’ says the other man as he sees the waitress making her way across the room with a tray laden with cafetiere, cup and a small milk jug and sugar bowl.

  ’Lucky I didn't,’ replies Campbell with a smile and before Lawson can ask he notes the waitress make for their table and set the tray down. ’I assumed you'd want coffee too for when you got here.’

  With that, he has wrestled back a little of the momentum and for the duration of their breakfast, the other man relents from trying to score points or outsmart or out-smarm him. Campbell finds himself again thinking that such things are in his imagination. A new job is stressful enough, in particular one so different to what he is used to. And then there has been the relentless partying and the toll it has taken. He has been unable to settle into the role, unable to find any equilibrium and it has muddied his thinking and set him on edge.

  Lawson explains what it is they want from their new analyst, and how it will be not just delivered, but measured too. Campbell takes it all in, scribbles a few notes on the pad he has brought with him and he asks sharp, perceptive questions, not all of which his new boss can answer.

  The page of the notepad where Campbell has several ideas for trades already written down remains concealed for now. He was ready to share them if pressed but he has not been fighting to keep up today so will keep his powder dry.

  On his return to the office he sets about digging a little more on the company names he has on his list and then spends a lunch break creating a secure online data storage account on a site called Deadlock in order to keep his notes safely hidden. This is not paranoia, just sensible planning. A notepad in his inside jacket pocket is all very well, but this is 2015 and he wants to be able to access this information from anywhere, but without fear that someone else will do so too. These ideas are the only thing that will keep him on the right side of the ’Scorpions’ and if he is to make a success of this, he must have a competitive edge, and guard it closely.

  By mid afternoon he is feeling like the day has gone as well as he'd hoped and that for a change, he was getting in front of things, not trying to keep up. He picks up the phone.

  ’What night’s good for a date night, you think?’

  She pauses before she speaks. ’I'm sorry?’

  ’I like a Thursday. Friday is always a bit too lively, too rowdy. Hard to get a nice quiet drink anywhere.’

  ’Sure. Sound logic.’

  ’But what's your preference? Do you like the idea that there's no work in the morning if you do a Friday?’

  ’Dan, why are you asking me about what night to g
o on a date?’

  Campbell smiles into the handset. ’I’m sorry. Is that not obvious? I'm going to ask someone out, so I need to know this.’

  She says nothing and he waits a beat, wondering if he has gone too far, handled this too clumsily, suddenly feeling a little awkward and foolish.

  ’Lisa, I'd like to take you out on a date. That is to say, I would like to ask you out on a date. Cocktails, or dinner. Cocktails and dinner. Would you let me take you out?’

  Still she says nothing and the feeling of mild exhilaration begins to give way to trepidation. He's had a good day so far by any standards. Perhaps his luck just ran out.

  He sees the phone go dead, rather than hears it, as the red light on the top of the telephone keypad blinks out and for a moment he struggles to believe that this is how she has chosen to respond.

  He begins typing an email to her, then deletes it and considers going to make a tea and walking to the kitchen on a route that passes her desk, but then dismisses that and takes the direct route.

  He dunks the tea bag into the steaming water and stirs it awhile, staring blankly at the swirling liquid, stewing just as much as the tea. As he fishes it out and turns to drop it into the bin he almost bumps into someone standing behind him.

  ’Oops. Sorry,’ says Lisa.

  It is Campbell's turn for silent responses. He stands holding the teaspoon and tea bag in mid air where he has checked himself to avoid the collision.

  ’I had someone hanging at my desk. Didn't seem like a conversation to have with an audience.’

  Campbell nods, drops the tea bag in the bin. Opens the fridge to get milk.

  ’Cocktails and dinner?’ she says and he turns to find her smiling at him.

  TWENTY

  The tall, rangy man with the sandy hair who has been so frequently in attendance with Michael Horner has a name. He may well have a family too. He may even harbour a burning passion for fine art and classical music as well, but for Dusan Rajkovic he has only one use.

  He is a message. Rather, he is a means by which a message will be communicated.

  They debated, he and Hari, on the way back to the hotel how to do it, or indeed whether they should do anything. But in the end they both recognised the value in making Horner aware of them.

  The message Horner had sent was vague and obviously meant to be more than a little enticing. That lack of detail would inflame the impatience of many, and they both knew that this was something Horner must have sent to any number of people, but they had a head-start.

  Here in Grand Cayman it was clear that Horner had chosen to set himself up for more than its tropical climate and excellent diving, or even the remoteness of the place. There were plenty of places to go to ground if you were trying to hide from the dangerous people you'd upset, but this place had other things to offer the erstwhile businessman and cunning, inventive entrepreneur.

  Whatever he was cooking up, they would know about soon enough. But they both agreed that if Horner thought that he was ahead of the game, he should be reminded where he stood in the scheme of things. He should be reminded that the people that he was indebted to had reach and power that he could only wonder at, and be fearful.

  They separated at the lift and Hari headed up to his suite. Dusan made for the bar.

  The beer was crisp and frosty, but Dusan picked absently at the label and stared past the ranks of beautiful women in swimwear and their corpulent consorts in their tiny trunks and before he'd made it halfway through the bottle it was getting warm.

  He left a tip on the bar and headed back through the lobby of the hotel in search of another taxi. He checked his phone as he directed the driver back to the rental car place and saw that Hari had made no attempt to contact him, which meant that his boss was either sleeping, or making use of some of the hotel’s facilities. He pictured him face down and half draped in white cotton towels as a young masseuse worked at his doughy shoulders. There would be little more than that though. There was no Mrs Harimau nor any more casual companions. He still hadn't figured out if that was a deliberate ploy to keep his life simple and uncluttered or whether there was something else at work. Did the man’s tastes run to different persuasions or certain other predilections? If they did, Hari was certainly very discreet about it. Either way, Dusan reflected, whatever nubile young woman was currently running her hands over the relaxed prone form of his boss would leave the room unharassed and well paid.

  Taking a different car off the lot, a bigger, more comfortable one than earlier in the day, he parked up under a different tree, on a different corner outside Horner's building and sealed himself in with the air conditioning and the stereo, playing with the Bluetooth hook-up so he could play his own music through the car’s speakers from his smartphone.

  An hour passes and nothing stirs and then a car pulls up and three men get out. One is fixed immediately in Dusan’s mind for his sheer size and the large red birthmark across much of his face. His demeanour marks him out as subordinate to the other two, but not afraid.

  The tall man with the sandy hair looked every very inch the guy in charge here, ushering the fat man toward and through the gate before striding through himself, pointedly in front of the third man, solid and silent and withdrawn. But then tall-and-rangy did something that put a smile on Dusan’s face. He adjusted his black jacket and for a moment, just the smallest sliver of time, he runs his hand over the armpit area before smoothing the material down, a gesture designed solely to divert from the previous one. The armpit.

  He was checking for his gun.

  It gave him away. It wasn't like checking for your keys or making sure you had your wallet before you left the house. Any pro would know he'd got his piece locked and loaded in place. He was touching it for reassurance.

  Chink in the armour.

  So tall-and-rangy had picked himself out for the job of messenger. Dusan would not know his name or whether he had kids or passions, but when he was done with him, Horner would know just enough. Just as much as he needed to.

  TWENTY ONE

  On his down time, tall-and-rangy carried himself in much the same way as his on-duty persona, the bravado and confidence put on like a suit. Watching him wander through the bar of another exclusive hotel (was there any other kind here?) he saw why that might be. Within the hour the man had struck up a cosy conversation with a tanned and slender middle-aged woman, the third such that he had spoken with, the first who had not stopped him dead with a deep-freeze attitude.

  Tall-and-rangy had taken those on the chin but third time was a charm, and so was he by the way the woman smiled and fluttered eyelashes at him. He ordered champagne, second cheapest on the wine list, and she shifted her chair closer and began to get giggly with the bubbles and the dusk.

  Dusan nursed a whiskey and picked his way through the paperback he'd picked up at the newsstand in the lobby as he'd followed tall-and-rangy in here. It was entertaining but Dusan was focused and noted that he needed to take few precautions to hide himself. His target was interested only on the job in hand and the simpering, tipsy woman in the flimsy dress, the neckline of which seemed to get lower with every glass of champagne.

  Eventually she succumbs to her full bladder and she stands and smiles and makes for the bathroom. She holds up two fingers to the man to indicate the two minutes she will take and then wags the fingers in a cutesy little wave. He watches her across the room and his eyes are fixed on her backside, the hips swinging like a hypnotist’s watch.

  Dusan intercepts her at the edge of the room. The drunken stumble is less than convincing to the discerning eye but for those who have been drinking all evening, passes for what it is supposed to. He trips and falls into her, grabs at her to steady himself and though she keeps her feet, she loses her bag and lets out a squeal of alarm.

  He hears the other man get on his feet and knows he has only a few seconds but as he rights himself, rocking forward on his knees, he has all the time and cover he needs to si
ft the spilled content of her bag and palm the keycard to her room.

  He makes a show of scooping things up and into the bag as she crouches next to him and he apologises profusely in English and then French.

  When tall-and-rangy arrives he may as well be on horseback. He snatches up Dusan by the lapels and noisily upbraids him as the woman gathers the last of her things.

  ’Marcus, it's OK. He's just a little drunk. He tripped,’ she says, and the way in which he responds, without a pause or a flicker, tells Dusan that the name is his real one. Even in this he lacks for any wit or subtlety.

  ’I'm so sorry, so sorry,’ repeats Dusan. He raises hands in surrender and remorse. ’Let me get you a drink,’ he says addressing the woman who is recovering her poise, though not so much to hoist up the drooping neckline of her dress, where already he notes Marcus’ eyes have been drawn once again.

  ’We’re fine,’ replies Marcus, all squared shoulders and I’m-in-charge.

  ’Please. I'm so sorry. Let me get you something,’ he repeats, this time to Marcus, who has already learned his steps almost perfectly in the dance that Dusan is leading them on. He is deferring to Marcus, handing him the initiative he wants, giving him the easy win in front of this woman that he hopes is his prize.

  ’OK,’ he says, although he is looking at the woman as he speaks - breasts then eyes - ’Champagne.’

  She smiles at the man and they share a conspiratorial look before she attends to the task at hand and makes again for the bathroom. Dusan drifts to the bar, gestures at Marcus as he retakes the seat and offers another silent apology across the room.

  She arrives at the table a moment before the ice bucket and Marcus whispers something to her that makes her giggle and nod and then he turns the waiter with the ice bucket around and points back toward the lobby.

  He watches as the waiter leaves to deliver the champagne to her room as instructed, then as the couple meander through to reception where she explains that she has misplaced her key somewhere. She gives her name and thanks the receptionist for their help once they have verified her as a genuine guest, all the while Marcus fondling her shapely backside.

  Dusan watches them to the room - ground floor, beach front - and when he passes the door hears the cork pop and the woman squeals with delight. On his second pass a short time later, he hears music, and as he stands closer, notes that it is all he can hear: no voices, no conversation.

  He slips the keycard in and pops the door open, steps inside.

  The music is loud and the lights are out. Dusan listens for someone to respond to the intrusion but they are engaged in something altogether more diverting and he can hear the moaning of the woman and the gravelly purr of Marcus, murmuring his approval.

  Dusan hangs in the shadow of the hallway and ventures a look.

  On the bed she sits astride him, her lean shoulders white in the soft light penetrating the glass doors that open onto the lawn outside and the beach beyond. Her toned back tapers to her waist and then softens and widens out at her round buttocks. Marcus lies beneath her as she grinds on top of him, his hands kneading roughly at her breasts. Both of them have their eyes closed and for a moment Dusan simply admires the view, watching her hips rock and thrust, her back arch.

  Then Marcus drops a hand from her chest, reaches down, and slaps her sharply on the rump. With a smile, Dusan sees that it's time to get on with it. He steps quickly to the bed and as Marcus opens his eyes, he jabs knuckles into the knot of nerves behind her ear and jaw and she is unconscious even before she slumps forward and her forehead smacks heavily into Marcus’s teeth.

  ’Aah, shit!’ he says and grabs at his mouth and tries to wrestle with the weight of her on top of him.

  ’Never had a date pass out on me before,’ says Dusan with a shake of the head and as Marcus rolls the woman off of him he feels the cold, hard tip of the snub-nose revolver pressed into his bloodied lip. 'Too much champagne.'

  Marcus fixes him with a look of cold rage, furious to see this man's face again, furious that he's let Dusan get this close without seeing it coming.

  ’Up,’ Dusan says and Marcus extracts himself from the heavy twist of limbs and does as he is told.

  Dusan looks him over in the gloom of the room and shakes his head again and tuts. ’You see, this just shows the importance of safe sex.’

  ’So, why don't you go and fuck yourself,’ Marcus says, his voice thick and wet with the drink and the pain.

  ’Clothes,’

  ’What about her?’

  ’She’ll wake up with a headache and an empty bed.’

  Marcus stares at him as he dresses and Dusan notes that he is not armed.

  ’What are you thinking Marcus? Apart from “why didn't I bring my gun?”’ he says. ’Maybe you think the gun is too loud for me to use in here. Maybe you think I would have used it by now if I wanted to kill you.’ Dusan shrugs. ’Maybe.’

  ’I think you're after someone else.’

  ’Yes, no.’

  ’You want me to take you to him? I was thinking of quitting anyway.’

  ’He needs to hire better people.’

  ’You pay asshole money, you get assholes.’

  ’I've been on you all night. You have no gun. You fall for the thing with the bag... Yeah. Asshole.’

  ’Shall we speed this up?’

  ’Door,’ Dusan says and waves the snub-nose toward the large glass doors and follows Marcus out into the night. ’Beach. Let's take a walk.’

  Marcus watches as the gun is holstered and then heads toward the sound of the waves. Whatever Dusan’s plan is here, he has decided to let it play out.

  ’He's got something in the pipeline yes?’

  Marcus nods. ’Don’t ask me what it is or how it all works but there's been a load of paperwork and the man has three computer terminals in his office. One of them weird-looking, all black with green and red and yellow keys on the keyboard. Screen’s old fashioned, you know. No graphics. Lots of numbers and charts.’

  Dusan says nothing, keeps a pace or two behind the other man who looks back at him and sees his information has registered no response.

  ’He's building some computer network thing too. It's part of it, but not the main thing. He has some fat, geeky fuck doing it all.’

  The man from the car earlier, the one with the large birth-mark on his face.

  ’I can show you where-’

  Dusan cuts him off. ’You don't need to show or tell me anything. You need to get a message to him.’

  Marcus stumbles then, goes to his knees on the sand. As he stands, he spins and whips his left arm up and aims a handful of sand for where Dusan’s eyes should be and drives upward from the ground with a thrusting right hand uppercut.

  Dusan is not there though. He has correctly read the stumble as a ruse and moves low and to the right in time to dodge the sand and the rising fist.

  Marcus is quick and recovers himself fast enough that Dusan’s advantage is too slender to press aggressively. He rights himself and draws his hands up in front of him. That tall, rangy build gives him the edge in terms of height and reach and after a pause, both men unleash a flurry of blows, some landing, some blocked.

  Marcus clips the other man’s chin but Dusan was moving in the same direction with his dodge and it glances off. He counters with a solid right to the ribs, then moves fast back to the side and jabs two lightning punches to the kidneys. Marcus yells out but doesn't shift. He is stronger and better than Dusan had credited him, which means this will take longer, but at least it will feel fairer.

  Marcus pulls his arm in at his side, catching Dusan’s fist there before he can pull away from the second punch and he twists and then strikes down with his free hand into the trapped elbow, then strikes down again hard, chopping at Dusan’s temple.

  Dusan feels something in his arm give, maybe a tendon, but he drops away to free himself, into the sand and rolls away.

  As he rises, Marcus comes at him fas
t and Dusan throws a punch at his kidneys again but stops short. Marcus buys the feint and pauses. Dusan does not hesitate, stabbing straight fingers into the Adam's apple with astonishing force. He feels it shift and crunch under the impact.

  The eyes go wide and his knees give out and Dusan steps away as he hears the sound of the other man begin to choke on his own oesophagus. He claws at his throat, as if he might somehow pluck it free and clear his airway.

  It takes a long time for a man to suffocate and Dusan settles on his haunches as he waits and watches Marcus sink into the sand, blood flecking his blue lips as he chokes out his final desperate breaths.

  Before the end, when all the fight is gone out of Horner's asshole-cheap hired help, he grips him beneath the armpits and drags him twenty yards across the sand to a small wooden row-boat. Flipping him over, he hoists him up and drops him face down against the raised and splintered lip of the bow and watches blood and spittle splatter the wood beneath.

  He fetches a large piece of drift wood from further down the shoreline and drags it through the tracks that Marcus’s body has made and then leaves it a few inches behind his feet, as though the tall man with the alcohol in his bloodstream has merely tripped in the darkness and landed here, like this, the way he’ll be found. The force of the impact on landing having crushed his windpipe.

  He will have been seen with the woman in the bar all evening. She will report that she woke up alone, with no sign of the man she slept with. She will admit, with no small amount of embarrassment that she does not remember much of what happened, that she may have passed out. No wonder he left.

  Dusan slips the wallet from his pocket and picks through it, finding bank cards, credit cards and his driving licence. He takes the licence, returns the cards and places the wallet carefully back in Marcus’s jeans pocket.

  TWENTY TWO

  The message that Horner sends to London is no less clear than the one he receives and is sent with no little haste.

  The envelope was plain white and blank though he suspected that it came from one of the more upmarket hotels near the beach. The contents, small and hard from the feel of it, and when he opened it his eyes fell immediately on the face in the small photograph. There was no need to read the name or date of birth. No need to look for a letter of explanation.

  It would be a few more hours before he heard anything official about the death of his main security man, or the nauseating manner of his demise. He would not need to think too deeply about whether what seemed like an accident was just that or merely designed to look that way.

  Horner understood the message every bit as clearly as he was supposed to. He did not communicate this to anyone close to him in any more detail than he needed to. Explaining why Marcus had been killed in the way he had, why his killer had delivered his ID through his front door, would have meant telling them more; about why the scheme he was arranging was about emancipation as much as enrichment, and who and what he needed to be free from, who he would need to make rich in order for them to forgive or forget his previous transgression and the nature of that transgression.

  Would any of these men, hired help, either care about or understand the scam he had arranged through various companies and British Government overseas aid contracts and the blackmail that underpinned it? Of course not. They were here for the money, nothing more. There was no sense of duty or of loyalty amongst them. The disparate, cellular structure of the organisation was designed to keep them separate from one another as far as possible, such that nobody knew any more than he needed to of the whole. It kept Horner in sole control of the operation, reduced the chances of any of the other actors over-reaching themselves and complicating the plan.

  Horner called on the next-in-line to Marcus and told him what had happened. The man, a quiet and intense former British serviceman named Rookes who had some Special Forces experience and had served in Afghanistan, took the news with scarcely a change in expression, accepted his promotion with a nod and when Horner asked him whether he could get three or four more guys on board to beef up the security detail he nodded again and did not ask why the boss might need to replace one body with four. Marcus had never been that good.

  Once done with that, Horner contacted the relevant person in London and made his position plain. It was time to move things forward and specific instructions would follow. He was careful however, under this new pressure, not to forget the other thing. Pulling this whole scheme off would give him immense satisfaction, with all the trimmings of residual wealth, freedom and forgiveness from those he had offended and affronted so deeply and a restoration of his own reputation. But it wouldn't give him pleasure.

  Someone else would need to provide that.

  Warmed by that thought, he took a pen and a clean pad and began to sketch out an untidy diagram of the plan he was forging.

  It was hard to make anything on the page reflect the concepts in his head and the organisation of the numerous facets of the plan; the bank, the shell companies, Hogg's secure network, the share issues and the derivatives contracts. They all fitted together in constructing the whole. Not like a jigsaw or a 3D model. It was more abstract than that, less tangible.

  But it was taking shape now and as he balled the paper and tossed it aside, Horner assured himself that all that was needed now was nerve and resolve and a dose more ruthlessness than he had deemed necessary last time around.

  TWENTY THREE

  It's like a thread on his jumper or a scab on his knee. He sees it and knows that it might best be just left alone, but he has not got the wherewithal to ignore it.

  Lisa gives him the first hint of it one night, over the promised cocktails. She reveals how little time she has been with Scorpio, how few months she spent there before his own arrival. Nothing strange in that, he thinks. Indeed, it goes some way to explaining why a girl like this, with the looks and the brains and the smile that she smiles, remains single in a place like this, with all these shark-eyed, sharp-suited young men.

  But she mentions that her colleagues are in much the same boat and then alludes to how young Scorpio Capital is as an organisation. At the time she says this he considers it to be a reference to the fact that there appear so few staff members of any sort of age, so few in fact that are north of thirty.

  But later he will find that is not what she meant. He stumbles across it, because it is not the sort of thing that he would otherwise have thought to look for, but the relevance of it will loom and linger in his mind with the passage of time. He dismisses it at first but there will come a moment when he regrets ignoring his instincts.

  Scorpio Capital is barely a year and a half old as a company. It is not the result of two or three smaller merging ventures and a rebrand, or, so far as he can tell, a company spun out of another, a group of disgruntled staff or Directors jumping ship and setting up on their own, taking clients and expertise with them. It is a start up, plain and simple.

  The whole operation came into being barely a year and a half ago, and had swelled to a half-dozen bodies now. He'd been getting a feel for the set up and he supposed that where much had been outsourced he could understand now why that was the case - so little time and so expensive to set up a fully functioning outfit with a department for everything. Easier to buy the expertise in ready made and fit around it, focus on the things you wanted to focus on, the things you were good at.

  He was sitting at his desk trawling through a data-heavy report when Lisa appeared over the top of the computer monitors on his desk.

  'I've often wondered what people mean when they use the word "quizzical" but thanks to your expression, I no longer need to,' she said.

  Campbell felt the furrows unfold on his brow and he smiled at her. 'Oh. Yeah. Just doing this ... ' he wafted a hand at the screens. 'Something weird... dates.' He shook his head when the sentence failed to form.

  'Dates. Weird. OK. It is good that our relationship at this stage consists more of that early stage frisson and excitemen
t and less of your conversational acumen. Or we'd be fucked.'

  He looks up and smiles. 'We can't both rely on dazzling good looks.'

  'Or charm.'

  'What's up?'

  'Little bored.'

  Campbell smiles at her and wonders how that feels. 'You quiet are you?'

  'Nope. Loads to do. It's dull,' she says. 'Want to swap?'

  'You really want to do this? You want to compete on who's workload is most grinding?'

  'A dull-off? That might be simultaneously more and less exciting than the actual work.'

  'Still, bonus day Friday,' Campbell says. 'For you.'

  'Are you angling for dinner on me by any chance?'

  'I wasn't,' he says. 'I am now.'

  The timing of their financial year-end has meant that Campbell has not been on board long enough to earn any kind of bonus entitlement but the rest of the staff are all waiting on the payment of whatever sums those above them have seen fit to bestow.

  'Hmm, maybe,' she says and then her face brightens. 'Ooh! Yes. I know. I know the place to take you.'

  He feels the smile on his own face bloom across his cheeks so infectious is she. 'So you are buying me dinner?'

  'This place near me. It's just... oh. Love it. Shall we do Saturday night? Are you good for Saturday?'

  'Don't want to do tomorrow?' he asks, hopefully.

  'Everyone's out tomorrow. Bonus splurge.'

  He knows this of course, but was angling to avoid another heavy session and late night.

  'Don't worry Dan,' she says as she pats his arm. 'Everyone knows you're not up for a bonus, you won't have to pay for anything.'

  Except that he will as he always does but there's no sense arguing the point, not least because she is clearly looking forward to it, but given the enthusiastic offer of dinner, it seems churlish to protest.

  'Where's Giles by the way?'

  'Dublin. Back Friday.'

  'I thought he went to Jersey on Monday?'

  Campbell nods. 'Yep. Then he went off to Dublin.'

  'Apparently I might have to go with him next week. Giles also mentioned New York. Not sure about that though.'

  'Oh, what? New York? You're smuggling me with you.'

  'Sure, that's absolutely a done deal. Failing that, I do recall him mentioning something about Delaware as well.'

  She makes a face like she's tasted something sour and then seems to spot something at her desk and hurries away. Campbell can't see what it is that has called her away but no doubt a disapproving look from a colleague has been enough to do it. Their burgeoning romance is not public knowledge within the firm but people cannot have failed to notice the increasing frequency of their conversations, the more familiar manner of their exchanges.

  She will probably be busy denying things right now as she sits and gets back to her own pile of paperwork.

  He looks again at the date that had caught his eye before she interrupted his train of thought. It is the date of the founding of a company that Scorpio has made some large investments in and the reason for his interest is the proximity of the date to the founding of Scorpio.

  It can be nothing more than a coincidence of course, and he thinks no more of it than that before another part of his mind flags something up. The place that Lisa is taking him to on Saturday is near where she lives.

  He follows the steps along that path of logic; they will eat out in the evening, perhaps go for a drink afterward depending on the hour or how full they feel after eating, or how much of the wine list they get into. And then they will perhaps need to go somewhere else. Somewhere close.

  Campbell stares at and through his screen for a long while then, but he is not seeing it. He is seeing her, and how she might look, dressed up for the restaurant, smiling across a small table. He keeps looking, keeps seeing. Keeps smiling.

  TWENTY FOUR

  Campbell makes an effort and puts on a suit. Lisa tells him that the restaurant is not especially formal, not "maître d 'formal" is how she puts it, but nice nevertheless and the way she tells him to wear "something nice, smart" seems unambiguous enough for him to bypass most of his wardrobe and reach for his best suit and shine his shoes.

  He rises early in the day in order to confront the inevitable hangover head-on, although the various evasive manoeuvres employed during the bonus-night party have certainly helped avert the worst. Never mind that he scarcely put his hand in his pocket or that he made the last tube home, it is the physical cost of the intake rather than the price of drinks that he counts these days.

  Up early and out running, hard and long, followed by a leisurely swim. He's home in time for a light lunch and some domestic tasks so as to keep his Sunday free, and then he dives into some more research and reports for a couple of hours which culminates in an hour of sleeping on the sofa.

  Refreshed from the mental and physical work-out, recharged from the nap, he is feeling bright and sharp for the date but the closer it gets, the more nervous he becomes.

  Campbell is surprised by this. It's not a first date, and though their relationship is hardly serious yet, or well established even, here he is, pulling in the occasional deep breath to settle himself and frequently flattening the creases from his shirt or adjusting the jacket, buttoned, unbuttoned.

  He waits at the bar, the specified place to meet, at the specified time and even the specified spot at the end, near where the empty glasses are collected. He orders a drink and then frets over how fast he drinks the first third, frets over how late she is and if she has changed her mind, frets that he is reacting this way over a five minute delay and that, it being a date, she is to be afforded at least twenty minutes before he as any rightful cause to object or to worry. He worries anyway, that something has happened to her. Then that he has drunk the second third of the drink and now it might look as though he is making a point about how long she has made him wait if she walks in at this point and sees so little left in the glass. Should he finish and get another so it looks like it's barely been touched and he's not been here doing this the whole time?

  He gathers himself and tries to ignore the mirror behind the bar that will serve only to fuel his self-consciousness.

  What he feels when he sees her step through the door is equal parts panic and soaring, lifting euphoria; a thrill-seekers' fear of flying.

  The worries disappear but the nerves linger a while longer as he greets her and buys her drink. She is nervous herself and if he were more calm and relaxed he would spot it in the way she touches her hair and adjusts and smooths her blouse.

  They drink quickly and the nerves melt away so that they are arm in arm as they leave and she leads the way to the restaurant. It is small and intimate, low lighting and quirky decor. Campbell is hit by the smell of spices as he walks through the door, saffron and Harissa and cumin. The tables are arranged so that each one has its own space and is separate from the next but they follow the waiter through a passage and into another room where the tables are lower and the floor covered with elaborately woven rugs. There are soft cushions at these tables and Lisa turns to smile at him, clearly delighted at this touch of middle-eastern authenticity.

  'You like Lebanese food?' she asks and Campbell is about to shrug but stops himself and nods instead, smiling. He's never eaten Lebanese, never been to Lebanon, but the effort she has made and the eager look on her face deserve better than a shrug.

  'We sit on the floor?'

  'Why do you think I'm not wearing a skirt?' she says as the waiter helps her off with her coat. She turns and lets it drop from her shoulders into his hands and Campbell gets that feeling again, the same one as when she walked into the bar. She has long fitted black trousers that reach up over her hips and above her waist. She wears a sheer cream silk blouse and as the waiter takes her coat she smooths her hair down over one shoulder where it sits on her collarbone like a curled up cat.

  When their eyes meet, she has a quizzical look on her face and she looks briefly to his right.


  'Sir?' Another waiter has appeared next to him and is offering to take his coat.

  He flushes in embarrassment at having been caught staring, and he turns away a little as he takes his coat off and hands it over, so as to hide his reddening cheeks.

  He recovers his composure sufficiently to offer a hand as she sits down and then he lowers himself in opposite her.

  They order prosecco and she guides him through the menu, pointing out her favourites and asking what he likes, what he wants to order, but he places himself in her hands and she orders for the both of them.

  As the alcohol does its work, Campbell begins to relax and notices the nerves that seem to underlie her chattiness and excitement. He is happy to let her do the talking, to listen to her, and he lets himself think, just for a moment or two, that she might be nervous about what might follow the meal or what she has in mind.

  Quickly he chases the thought away. He has no time for such distractions, but as he tries to stay focused and in the moment, tries not to think about her bedroom, his mind snags on something else that throws him completely.

  It is hard to pin down at first, just a fleeting sense of fear, of more than simply making a fool of himself. A sense of deja vu, or of standing too close to the platform edge and feeling but not seeing what is coming.

  He feels his guts shift and he knows that his expression has changed even before he can stop it and fake his way through. She sees it and she stumbles a little, her enthusiasm dented. He hurries a smile up onto his face and blurts something bland in response to what she was saying.

  'Are you alright Daniel?' she says with a frown that he recognises it is his sole responsibility to shift.

  'Fine, yeah. Food's lovely.'

  'Mmmn,' she murmurs a response that lacks conviction but not because she disagrees about the food. 'You just... you looked a bit off for a moment. Like I said something awful, or you're having second thoughts.'

  Oh God, he thinks, now he's going to have to say something to convince and reassure, something he might not really want to say right now. Not with that unnerving edge-of-the-platform feeling still nagging at him.

  'No, no. It’s... I...' the words are not caught in his throat, they just aren't there.

  'Oh no. You think this is a mistake. You think you've made a mistake.'

  Somehow, for a moment, he does. He has no idea why he thinks that, but is equally certain he cannot say so. The look on her face, wounded vulnerability, cracks a line through his heart. Steals it.

  Campbell crumbles. Before his head knows what his hands are doing they are reaching for hers and holding them.

  'Lisa, no. I've made plenty of mistakes in my life and a ton of bad calls but this is not one. This is the opposite of that.'

  She looks at him, up through thick eyelashes and long hair.

  'You're lovely, you're gorgeous - proper actual gorgeous. And smart, and lovely...' he says, knowing his cheeks are red and that he is talking over the voice in his head that wants him to listen.

  'You said lovely twice.'

  'I meant both.'

  'Table seems quite big, all of a sudden.'

  She pivots from sitting to kneeling and places her hands on the table and leans forward. He sits forward to meet her, raises a hand to push back the hair that has dropped from behind her ear.

  The kiss is brief but seems to linger long after she sits again and the silence that follows is pregnant and electric and awkward all at once. She tops his wine glass off and he breaks the silence with a 'thank you'.

  'Look, it was just work stuff, if I looked off. It just pops in there sometimes and I can't switch it off.' She nods, like that could well be the sort of thing to explain it, like she is accepting the plausibility of the explanation, rather than the explanation itself.

  The tension dissipates as more wine flows and he takes a bathroom break to gather himself, staring at his own reflection and tries to summon up a good explanation for that creeping unease that won't quite shift.

  He's just scared, he decides, because he hasn't been close to anyone for a long time. Not since the incident three years ago.

  TWENTY FIVE

  Lisa makes the universal gesture for the bill by signing an imaginary signature in the air at a passing waiter and then leans in.

  'Coffee is terrible here, I have the good stuff at home.’

  That, he supposes, must constitute an invitation. She takes her coat from the waiter so that Campbell can help her into it, a small gesture of contact and intimacy. As they step through the door and into the blustery night, he feels her small warm hand slide into his and he squeezes silently.

  She leads the way and Campbell squints into the wind and rain that has whipped up whilst they were inside. Headlights glare up from the wet road and a sharp gust whips her hair across her face, making her shriek and then giggle.

  Campbell notes the empty streets and the cosy looking homes, everyone indoors, TV on, cup of tea.

  He sees someone jogging at the far end of the street, in a t-shirt and shorts and a woolly hat the only concession to the weather. He admires the hardiness and determination on display, then feels Lisa press closer to him, notes the fuzzy feeling of the booze and the full belly and reconsiders that the hardiness and determination might just belie loneliness and a lack of options. Campbell considers that it is him, with the sated appetite and the wine-buzz and the beautiful girl on his arm, whose lips he can still feel somehow that is worthy of admiration.

  Such is the way of things, he knows well enough from experience, that before the fall comes the pride. Tonight is no exception. Lost a moment in his reverie and starry-eyed daydreaming he pays no heed to the sound of someone approaching from behind. Too late he registers that where those feet are heading is not past him but for him.

  The attack comes fast and the manner of the targeted blows tells of experience and purpose. A jab to the kidneys, a kick across the back of his legs buckling his knees and he goes down fast, his hand still gripped by Lisa who takes longer still to realise what is happening.

  Turning to see what it is that Campbell might have tripped over, she sees the two of them looming over him, dark clothes, hoods and gloves and she is paralysed by indecision. He feels her grip his hand tighter then loosen it, like she is deciding whether to stay or to flee. He cannot see her, and does not hear much more than a frightened squeal of exclamation. He too does not know whether to keep hold of her hand, or have her run, get clear. Holding on seems at once both a protective gesture, and one which keeps her directly in harm's way.

  The pain in his kidney is intense and spreads across his lower back and his knees jar and sting where he lands on them. His free hand, the one not holding Lisa's, is not free enough, stuffed into his coat pocket, but he gets it clear in time to break some of the fall and stop himself landing totally flat. He feels a kick to his back and it shunts him forward and then a fist glances off the side of his head on the left. The timing and spread of those two blows confuses him for a second but then he does the maths and realises there must be more than one attacker.

  That decides it for him, to keep Lisa close. If she runs, if they are at all interested in her, then they can split up, one keeping him occupied whilst the other chases her down.

  The thought galvanises him and as another solid boot lands in his side Campbell lets himself go with the momentum, going to ground, releasing Lisa's hand and rolling over on his back so that he can recover his feet the quicker and out of their range.

  He grabs her again and pulls her fast toward him as he steps in front of her. He sizes up the two of them and they waste no time in coming after him. They are bigger than he thought and though he can see little of their faces, they seem surprisingly old, adult. Not the no-good youthful street thugs he might have expected, with the loose-fit clothing and the wild fists.

  They come at him with fast straight punches aimed high and then low, deliberate and accurate. He ducks one, takes another and sees stars dance as
he tries to blink away the dazing effect of hard knuckles on his cheekbone.

  He fires back at them, no idea which to aim at, just swinging wide and aggressive, catching air twice, before being winded. He swings again, backs away, pushes Lisa behind him and his next punch lands hard and heavy on an unguarded chin. There is no discernible effect on his assailant and the pain in his fist tells him something he feels all too clearly - even if he lands more punches, he'll still be worse off. What then? Surrender?

  Right there, cocooned in the furious moment, he cannot see what the way out might be, nor what they want, other than to beat him. They will get what they want in that respect, but for now, for Campbell, it’s all about delaying it.

  He feels his lip burst and fatten and when another fist - or was it a knee? - lands in his guts, he feels them both smother him and he is bundled over. He feels strong prying hands on him and realises that his pockets are being searched, feels them emptied.

  And then it stops.

  After that, as the frenzied, crowded night opens out again and the air and rain get back in, he lies there long minutes slowly unfurling himself from the foetal bundle of limbs he's formed himself into and lets the rain soothe his face. The smart dark suit that he's made an effort for her with is torn and scuffed and soaking and somewhere along the line he has lost a shoe and it is only when the wind drops and stops hissing through the trees that he picks up on the other sound, of Lisa quietly sobbing.

  TWENTY SIX

  The death of the man named Marcus has rattled Hogg, but not just because he'd regarded the man as hard or dangerous, which he had, but because it has rattled Horner.

  There had been changes in personnel and a clear ratcheting up of Hogg's side of the project. He had been issuing login details, ID codes and secure passwords, activating the dummy email accounts that each new user would need to plug themselves in to the network. Everything encrypted and scrambled, the message content not text based, but rather imaged, like a graphics file where the wording was stylised and hard to read, even to a human eye, impossible for a computer searching for words and sentences. Each image had a cypher key to run it that would make it viewable.

  Horner had been talking to him weeks before about each phase of the plan and its roll out and Hogg had the clear sense that it would be carefully controlled and each participant's involvement dependent on some form of agreement.

  Now though, with the pace stepped up, Horner was dropping some of his rigid requirements and pressing Hogg into cutting corners. He had asked at one point to abandon the single message approach and send everything out at once, a deluge rather than the drip-drip of data that Hogg was managing.

  He had won that point, calmly explaining that considering the sensitivity of the operation, any such large scale burst of communication might catch the eye of a watching surveillance agency. And God knew these days they were always watching.

  The subsequent phases would add layers to the process, making the trail that much harder to detect, by using mobile phone SMS and social networking sites to send out information. Eventually they would all find themselves on the inside of the wall, locked into a secure site on the hidden internet, unfathomable URL web addresses, unfindable by search engines.

  From there instructions would be posted, clear and simple, and they would begin with a demonstration so that everyone could see for themselves that what Horner was telling them was about to happen would do so exactly as described. They would need convincing, and all of them would no doubt suspect a trap.

  So Hogg kept at it, fuelled by energy drinks and regular fast food deliveries he maintained a constant output and monitored reactions; seeing where messages were opened and read, where instructions followed and the next step in the chain completed. He had it mapped out on his screen and watched as the reds turned green, words and numbers denoting targets and progress.

  In under 12 hours he would finish his work and he would put phase one, and himself, to bed.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  He feels that urge to get back in the gym, or run until it burns, to incinerate some of the creeping sense of frustration and impotence. But the cracked rib is making breathing uncomfortable as it is, let alone any greater exertion. His arms and his legs ache and the patchwork of bruises and scabbed cuts that are flowering from his face down to his legs are going to leave him marked for some time, in lots of ways.

  He tries not to think about Lisa and the way he left her in the morning. She had struggled to get him up off the wet ground, had almost had to fight him to agree to go home with her, so strong was his instinct to be alone. But the torn, sodden clothes and the missing wallet had put paid to that argument. When she tried to help him change and to patch up the worst of the wounds he had pushed her away, irritated by the feeling of emasculation, mummy's little soldier.

  He had to use her phone to report his lost cards and mobile phone but doing so through a fat lip and bruised jaw had been an awkward and repetitive task and the more humiliating for it. He imagined her sniggering when he had been forced to correct the call centre operative that his name was Campbell, not camel. She had turned away then, perhaps laughing, perhaps just from pity, though neither of those was any comfort.

  He had shared her bed, at her insistence, but balled up and with his back to her, not so much sharing, as simply occupying. Bruised body clenched like a fist.

  He rose early, having slept badly, and left before she could get up and offer any help or hospitality.

  Campbell had made his way home with a borrowed ten pound note and tried his best to duck and hide from the sense of deja vu, the burgeoning discomfort about the way things had gone with Lisa, though what was nagging him he could not pinpoint, or didn't want to.

  Something had snagged during dinner, well before the attack had left him so exposed and helpless. An idea, a memory, maybe just a reaction to feeling open and comfortable and where that might lead; lowered defences and a weak spot.

  So back at home he is happier in his own space and can pretend that there is no shadow looming over him, no blot on his emotions that looks and sounds like a woman he has tried his very hardest to forget about but who Lisa has made him remember.

  He scrubs and scalds himself under the shower, like the bruises might rinse away, or the scratches sear off his skin. He dumps the suit and the shirt. Too tattered to rescue, it will be marked by the event far longer than any repairs can fix. He will know. So he tosses the whole thing and shrugs off the fact of the price tag and that it was his favourite. He even throws the socks and underpants away after them, a symbolic gesture, but one that feels good all the same.

  Though Campbell has tried hard of late to limit how much of the job comes home with him, physically and psychologically, he has found that it is more about rationing than cold turkey. Stopping completely would just leave too much on the desk, which means too long in the office. There's a small stack of reports for him to sift through that he's skimmed off the work pile through the week and brought back home, so he settles himself in with a hot drink and the stereo on low to trawl his way through the pages in search of signs of strength or weaknesses, of some truth amid the spin.

  Campbell goes over those files of his own that he has been sitting on - some trade ideas that he is confident have some long term merits and that he has been acting on with small sums of his own money over the passing months, equal parts conviction and wanting to check that he's right before he puts them in front of Lawson.

  But there are four slim but densely packed documents that need his attention and will demand a little more than a skim. All of them are filled with charts and tables and each of those cross-referenced with footnotes. Campbell chases his tail through the pages and the small print, finds dead ends where the notes are supposed to lead, or data and conclusions that appear to come from nowhere, based on nothing previous.

  He puts some of it down to inexperience but there are patterns swirling in the mist and as he gets near to pinning somethin
g down the soft bing of his phone distracts him.

  The text from Lisa has been there ten minutes already, but the pages had him locked in and engrossed.

  She asks how he is and whether anything needs rubbing better.

  Such a thing would - should - put a smile on his face and be thinking up a flirtatious, entendre-laden reply. He begins typing a brief response, but then thinks better of even that. Figures a bad reply is worse than none at this stage. He's not sure about how he's feeling right now - the troubling echo of Sarah that he seems to hear is not something he can ignore, but neither is it something he should let get in the way. Perhaps a little perspective is what is needed. Perhaps a little time and a decent bit of sleep will clear his head. She would, surely, excuse him for failing to engage just now. He'd just had his ass comprehensively kicked. What did she expect?

  Back into the pages, he puts down the third report and begins leafing through the fourth before he realises that he has read it once already, that it is in fact the first one he read. Confused he lays them out on the carpet.

  Crystal Dynamics

  Forward Solutions

  Hunter Technologies

  Orbit Capital

  There is nothing in the names that strikes him as unusual, but for a moment their blandness, their very corporate-predictability seems odd. Like they are too nondescript, wanting not to be noticed.

  But that's not it. That's nothing more than a sore head, lack of sleep and spending his weekend checking through dry corporate analysis when he thought he might instead have spent the day with Lisa, his clothes discarded for different reasons.

  There is something formulaic about the reports, something not quite cut-and-paste, but not clear and distinct enough from each other than he might expect. It is hard to know what exactly he expects to be seeing that sets one report apart from another given the subject matter. But as he jumps between them, though it takes another hour, he begins to tease out the clue, deep and delicate though it is, like a splinter in skin.

  There are names in amongst the reports, names of holding companies, or custodians. No people, but names that repeat where he cannot see reasons for it. They all seem to relate to different companies in different sectors. Separate and unconnected.

  So why these names? Why the link?

  Was it one? There was every chance that with the exhaustion and the unceremonious humbling he has suffered at the hands of two burly assailants, in front of his would-be girlfriend, that his synapses are misfiring.

  But he wants something to grab on to that helps him not think about Lisa or about Sarah, or about hard boots and wet streets and so he grabs it and holds.

  He gathers the reports into a backpack, finds a spare Oystercard that he keeps handy for travel or cash-flow emergencies and heads out.

  There is much to be said for working at home, but sometimes, there's really no substitute for being in the office if you want something done.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  It's four pm when Campbell gets there and the guy on the security desk scarcely acknowledges him as he passes through the lobby and heads for the lifts.

  There is an eerie, deserted feeling about the office, as there always is when a place associated with bustling activity is found empty and peaceful. The large glass double doors are open so he breezes past the cleaning lady and her trolley and keeps his security pass in his pocket, making him feel intrusive and clandestine.

  He sits at his desk and checks his impulse to turn on the computer and log in. There is nothing there he needs, the reports he wants are all paper documents in the stacks around his desk. But there's also that lingering feeling, from ghosting through the doors, that he is not officially here, his presence unrecorded, and he is happy to extend that.

  For a minute, looking at the ordered bundle of documents, he wonders whether he has made a rock for his back. There are so many, all blurred in his memory that even if he could recall which one referred to which company, which prospective trade, that isn't really what he wants anyway. If pressed, by Lawson or Burlingham, he could rattle off the basic details of each firm - their main function, market capitalisation, share price, balance sheet. These details he has sifted and filed in his head.

  But what he seeks are smaller, more arcane pieces of information. He has become more certain, from seeing those names in the four reports at home, that they are familiar from somewhere else. He has seen them before, several times, in the same context. In these reports. Somewhere in this haystack there are needles and there is only one thing to do.

  He skims at first, flicking pages and scanning fast over the lines and charts for the keywords he is after.

  Seven Mile Securities. It almost eludes him at the first pass but his brain is telling him to hold up, go back. He puts the report aside and leaves it open at the page.

  Three more reports yield nothing and his pace is slowing as he finds himself skimming less and reading more, determined to see it again, certain that it’s more than one.

  Icarus Financial.

  It stands out because it is trying so hard to hide, the smallest of small print, deep in a dense paragraph of legalese that nobody reads.

  Icarus. The more he looks, the more strange it seems. It was there in the Crystal Dynamics document too. And in the Hunter Technologies report. But it's the name that jars. Wasn't Icarus' story a cautionary tale? The man who flew too high, too close to the sun, brought about his own downfall?

  Why name your company that? Most firms went for names that suggested strength, dynamism, innovation. They use cod-Latin or referenced mythology. Or simple family names.

  He sifts through more bound pages, his eyes straining as he picks through line after line of words that have lost any meaning. Inside thirty minutes he has two more hits; Icarus appears again in a report on a company called Bodden Ventures, and one called Barracuda Trading. Both of those throw up another name. Stingray Securities pops up in both, twice in the pages of the Hunter Technologies report when he checks back and again in Crystal Dynamics.

  Campbell stacks all the reports on his desk and looks at them. He has an itch he cannot scratch as he stares at the pile. Something.

  Something.

  Yes. He'd left a half dozen reports in Lawson's office earlier in the week with his own notes and feedback scribbled in the margins.

  Campbell swivels the chair until he's facing the office door, which is open, but feels as though any entry would be barred if he tried. He looks around the empty office a while, swivels the chair, like a naughty child contemplating mischief. Then the decision is made and he is up and across the room before he can chicken out.

  The chair in here is plush and luxuriously comfortable. It seems designed to remind the backside that occupies it of how wealthy and important it must be to get such a chair. For Campbell it just seems to tell him he doesn't belong here, which is correct in more sense than one.

  He finds the reports quickly and in them sees the same names pop up again; Icarus, Bodden, Stingray. All appear in one document with the words Seven Mile Solutions embossed on the front page. Campbell's own scrawled handwriting is barely legible, even to his own eye, but he remembers the note he made about the hard-to-trace source of funding and cash flow that should serve as a red flag for Lawson: avoid.

  Campbell gathers the reports up and starts to replace them as tidily as he can, but then a light bulb goes on in his head and he makes instead for the copy room.

  Rounding the corner he stops and almost shouts aloud his surprise. Someone is in there, bent over the shredder, stuffing wads of papers into the chewing metal jaws of the machine. Campbell steps backward out of sight and looks again.

  Giles Lawson looks odd without the posh-boy outfits Campbell is so used to seeing - the expensive knitwear, brown suede loafers, chinos. The plain white t-shirt and jeans look borrowed on Lawson, but it is Sunday after all.

  So why is he here? He sees Lawson reach for another fistful of pages and notices the size of the stac
k he is taking them from which rises more than a foot from the table top.

  The grinding whirr of the machine drones on and slowly, quietly Campbell backs away and returns to Lawson's vacant office with the armful of reports. Hurriedly he fishes the smartphone from his pocket and turns on the camera. Quickly he begins to scan the relevant pages, feeling all the time the agonising slowness of the process. Lawson will be tied up for some time judging by the size of the stack he was shredding but there's no way to know that he'll stay there until he is done or come wandering this way.

  He trots back to his desk, gathers his things and makes for the main door when he spots the door to the staircase is closer by and makes for a quieter exit. He dabs his pass on the sensor and drops quickly down the several flights of stairs to the lobby where the security desk is unmanned now.

  Campbell steps on the floor sensor that triggers the automatic door and waits for the large plates of glass to move.

  'Bye,' says a voice from behind and he spins to see the tall shape of the security man making his way back from the rest room to his seat.

  Campbell waves and steps through the door into the wet early evening.

  He cannot pinpoint why he feels so rattled, why he avoided contact with Lawson. The feeling that the pieces don't fit is worming into his guts, eating at him. It chases at his heels as he quickens his pace and when he looks back over his shoulder, up at the floor of the building he was just on, he can see a backlit figure against the glass looking down onto the street.

  He cannot make out much more than a silhouette, but to stare any longer to try to make out if it is Lawson will only allow whoever is looking at him - if indeed they are looking at him - to get a clear view of his face. He turns away and keeps walking, only breathing when he is round the corner and out of sight.

  All this effort to avoid thinking about the night before and to escape ghosts of his past that are stalking him and where has it led?

  In fleeing trouble, Campbell reflects, he has simply run into more. Story of his life.

  The feeling of deja vu is strong and persistent, like a scream in an echo chamber.

  TWENTY NINE

  This was, Michael Horner supposed, something like the way an architect must feel. All the careful conception and planning and painstaking design, attention to detail and clear technical specifications and then you had to hand everything over to someone else. After that you just watched and waited and hoped that the appointed personnel could adequately follow instructions to turn into reality, that which exists only in your mind.

  With luck, what they did would closely enough resemble the glittering perfection of the idea.

  But this was probably more complex than that, more delicate. Sure, a building would have elevators and air ducts, plumbing or wiring to ensure that the whole thing would either function or fail. But what Horner was building, or having built, was more organic and animate than a building, more abstract. It was frail and intricate but with the capacity for great strength and potential for significant power.

  Having to stand back and see it constructed and grown into reality was agonising for Horner. Not just the loss of control, but worse, the surrender of it. The necessity to involve others, to give them tasks and then trust them to carry them out properly went against the sense of caution that had developed so keenly in the wake of the fiasco with the dam project and the young man who had sabotaged his best laid plans with such adroitness.

  Horner had to be as careful as he had ever been. This for a man who had picked his way through international embargoes on the transport of arms to West Africa, the processing and distribution of conflict diamonds.

  But the game he played then was for different stakes and contained a frisson of risk, the thrill of evading detection, of beating the system, being better. Now, there was simply no margin for error. Any mistake would be punished. Any oversight terminal.

  At such times Horner knew that trust was a luxury that did not exist, fool's gold. Did he trust Hogg, or the new security guy Rookes? Had he trusted Marcus? The answer was no to each of them, he had no trust nor true faith in any of them and he knew that their loyalty was a tradable commodity.

  What was important, more so than reminding himself of these bitter truths, was to keep them paid for and extracting the maximum possible value from them all. Hogg was key and his work so far had proved pivotal. Horner understood precious little of the technical workings of the system that Hogg was constructing but knew enough to know that he was building it the way he was instructed and that Horner was getting what he paid for.

  That had not been the case with Marcus of course, but the man had paid a higher price for his shortcomings than Horner had been paying him so he'd shrugged off the loss. If anything it simply served to accelerate the schedule.

  Horner knew now that they could get to him and also that they had chosen not to. The message was a clear one and clearly received. Had they wanted him dead, then it would have been his corpse discovered on the beach with the crushed oesophagus and missing ID. That same ID dropping through his letterbox told him that they knew where he was, that they could get to him.

  They wanted him alive and to finish what he was working on. Which meant that not only had they given him a chance to deliver, that they also backed him to do so.

  But in necessitating this change of pace they had done him a small favour. The waiting was killing him. Now he could really shift gears.

  THIRTY

  Monday is uncomfortable for Campbell for a number of reasons. The cuts and bruises and swellings on his face attract much unwanted attention and he bores quickly of telling the story of the assault and more quickly still of the tide of sympathy that buffets him all morning. The injuries are themselves painful of course, aching and stinging to differing degrees, his joints stiff and sore.

  But worse than this is the rock and the hard place he feels like he is sitting between with Lawson somewhere unseen on one side of the office and Lisa on the other. He prays fervently that he will not need to speak to either but is resigned to having his prayers ignored.

  Lisa is unlikely, he feels, to avoid him and will want to check that he is OK. It took until nearly nine in the evening to reply to her text messages asking how he was, too cruel to say nothing in response, given her evident and genuine concern. But his words were carefully chosen to discourage any kind of conversation. If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.

  Lawson was another matter. Campbell had drifted from one extreme to another in response to what he had seen, convinced that he had stumbled on something of real significance, that Lawson was not only up to no good, but that what Campbell had seen him doing was inevitably linked to whatever malfeasance was lurking in all those reports.

  But then he would catch himself and try to douse the rising flames of his paranoia. Lawson was shredding papers; so what? Every office built up a surfeit of unnecessary paperwork; an overlarge order of marketing materials that were expired, research papers from long-dead deals and aborted trades. Perhaps Lawson felt that such a menial task was a waste of time for any of the staff in the office and a poor use of his own business hours and had dropped in to bury a couple of dead Sunday afternoon hours with something useful.

  'Wow. How does the other guy look?' says Lawson appearing from nowhere.

  Campbell smiles stiffly but says nothing.

  'Well when you hit it as hard as you do Dan, sometimes it hits back right?'

  'Funnily enough I was being very well behaved when this happened,' he says, trying to sound breezy and unaffected.

  'What did happen?'

  'London,' he shrugs. 'Shit luck.'

  'You're hanging out with the wrong people.'

  'Plus ca change.'

  'Indeed. Anyway Rocky, you got my reports?'

  His guts drop and he wonders if the bruising and scrapes hide the fact that the blood has just left his face. The flat delivery is so matter-of-fact that for a moment he reads it as more than just an a
ccusation, but a simple statement that Lawson knows exactly what he has been up to.

  The silence seems sharp-edged and dangerous and Campbell dare not break eye contact.

  'Come on. You took about four home this weekend right?'

  He tries, fails, to hide his relief when the penny drops and he begins to rifle clumsily through papers on his desk.

  'Look, drop them in when you find them, yeah?' says Lawson. 'You written notes up on them yet?'

  Campbell thinks fast about what he has scribbled in the margin and how much of that he wants seen by his superior, that paranoia seeping back in again, the reluctance to trust anyone but himself. He knows where it stems from, the roots are buried deep, but he is surprised at the persistence of these new green shoots.

  'Not yet, no. I'll load them on before eleven.' The in-house software uses a database of the various stocks that are considered for investment, with all manner of information against them so that they can be accessed by anyone with the relevant clearance.

  Lawson looks like he's thinking about it and then has a better idea, though in truth it does not look like the better idea has only just occurred to him.

  'No, that's OK. Just email me a few thoughts.'

  Campbell nods and watches the other man's back as he leaves and the green shoots of his burgeoning paranoia begin to lengthen and unfurl.

  He pulls his smartphone out and brings up the internet browser, thinks for a second and flicks off the Wi-Fi so the handset is operating on his mobile network alone, not the office internet connection. He finds a common email provider and he sets up a brand new account, under the pseudonym of Griffin@gmail.com. It is done in minutes and he makes sure not to link the account to the email app on the handset.

  He types up his feedback on the four company reports and sends it to Lawson and blind copies the email to this new covert account.

  As he sends it he finds himself peering over the desk dividers and out at the office, as though he expects to catch someone watching him.

  Ridiculous. He sees his own reflection in the glass of a meeting room twenty yards away and almost laughs aloud. Get up Campbell, he tells himself, get up and walk around and stop acting like an idiot.

  He grabs his mug from the coaster and heads for the kitchen to do as any self-respecting Englishman in trying times would, to make a nice cup of tea.

  When he rounds the corner he sees them immediately, though Lisa is harder to make out, obscured as she is by the tall, broad frame of Lawson.

  Campbell is considering how best to deal with them when he registers the strangeness of their interaction. Lawson seems to be penning her in - not aggressive per se - but domineering and Lisa herself seems apologetic, obsequious and defensive all at once.

  He is making his point firmly, whatever it is and she is nodding her surrender and dropping eye-contact. For an uncomfortable moment, it flashes into his mind that they might be romantically involved, which would make everything even more intractably complicated - or maybe much simpler - but he sees straight away this is no lover's tiff. There is no affection in their body language, and though they stand close together, there is still a clear boundary of personal space.

  No, this is clearly an impersonal exchange, but the manner of it, the way he leans over her and exhorts and pressures does not seem appropriate in a professional capacity.

  In the blink of an eye, Lisa is looking right at Campbell and then everything is slower. She drops her gaze to the floor and says something. Lawson's shoulders lift and unfold and he pivots away from her and strides off, hands in pockets, back to them both the whole time.

  Campbell wants to dodge her all the more now, but he cannot look away. He had doubted his first thought about some romantic tryst, but the manner of their reaction was strange in the extreme. Why act that way if Lawson was simply upbraiding Lisa for some work related shortcoming; persistent lateness or ignoring the corporate social-network policy? Why get so in-her-face for spending too much time on Facebook?

  She looks to be heading to her desk again and keeps her eyes on the carpet but then she steals a look at him and changes direction when she sees Campbell watching her.

  'How you bearing up?' she asks. Too casual. Anxiety not hidden well enough.

  Today her hair is up and she wears very little make up and a scoop-neck top that draws his eye.

  'What was that? Campbell says nodding in the direction of where she had been talking with Lawson.

  'Nothing, just...' she looks at him as the sentence trails off and then raises a hand to his swollen, cut face.

  He pushes it away. 'Just...?'

  She retracts her hand, looks stung at the rebuke. 'Giles knows about us,' she says.

  'Why should he care?' he says and there's a tone of accusation there that she cannot miss.

  'I don't think he approves of office...' and she lets it hang there as she looks him in the eye.

  Romances.

  He feels it like a jab to the ribs, like a well-aimed blow to his weak spot. Does it hurt because he wants it to be true, wants her words to be an affirmation, or because he feels himself recoiling, a woodlouse curling into a ball?

  For a second he feels cornered and he simply returns her gaze, unable to decide on his next move, to reassure her, or to flee. He opts for deferral and raises his empty mug.

  'I really need a brew. You want a brew?'

  'Sure. Sounds good,' she says as though good is the last thing it sounds.

  'Daniel,' she begins as he busies himself with the kettle and the milk. 'I don't know what I did wrong the other night.'

  He turns and raises a hand to stop her but she ploughs on.

  'Maybe I should have tried to help or done something like scream to get some help. Used the rape alarm maybe.'

  'No, Lisa,' he starts, horrified that she seems to think that she carries some blame for not intervening.

  'Or maybe you felt embarrassed and I didn't say the right thing.'

  'I wasn't embarrassed,' he says sharply, giving himself away. He was humiliated in fact, getting beaten so badly, so helpless to defend himself, much less her.

  'Sorry. I just feel as though... as though... I don't know what I should say to you. Like I made it worse, or I just didn't make it better and like you don't want to know me now,' she says and her eyes are trying to meet his but struggling.

  'Lisa.'

  'I don't want you to not want to know me. I want to have done the right thing, or to do it now.'

  He cannot find the words or the reserves of energy or emotional composure to deal with this, to ease her guilt and confusion when he is shouldering so much of his own. It is more than the simple fact of the humiliation he suffered, but that he had felt that first pang of doubt worm into his guts at dinner beforehand.

  With the incident of seeing Lawson in the copy room and then with Lisa, and with all the rivers of data sluicing through his head he is incapable of clear thinking and decisive action in such a delicate matter. He opts again for deferral, putting off giving her any kind of answer in the hope that when he figures out what the answer is, she will still want to hear it.

  'There's just too much going on, too much to think straight. Everything hurts Lisa.'