“Good. Between you and me, Chris misread this situation, and he knows it. Unless it turns out that we’re all in the shit together, Chris overreacted massively. I think the stress of juggling six cat-A clients simultaneously may be getting to him.” That’s enough to make you raise an eyebrow, and you file it away for future reference: Normally even full partners don’t handle more than two or three cat-A’s at once, plus a handful of smaller jobs.
Margaret glances across the lobby. “That native guide of yours. Doesn’t look like much, but that was a very slick line of bullshit he sold us.”
“It wasn’t bullshit,” you say defensively. “He’s from the games industry. He probably bought that suit this morning, but he knows his own field like the back of his hand—what did you expect?”
“Not that.” She smiles unexpectedly. “Good luck with your insider hunt. And don’t let the natives pull any wool over your eyes.” She turns and stalks off in search of other minions to intimidate, leaving you flexing your fingers and trying to decide whether you want to strangle her or go down on your knees and beg for lessons.
Right now, you don’t much feel like going along with Chris and the gang and making nicey-nicey. Then you spot Jack across the lobby. He’s dithering around the doorway. You move to intercept him. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He looks uncertain. “I was just heading off.” He looks like an overgrown kid who’s been caught not doing his homework.
For a split second you teeter on the cusp of a choice. You have two options: Do you tell him “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and go back to your hotel bedroom to watch downloads and brood? Or do you take him in hand, and say, “The evening’s young, and I need to get out of here for a bit. Fancy a glass of wine?”
Mm, decisions.
“I need to get away from work for a bit. Do you know any good wine bars at this end of town?” A moment later you kick yourself: What if he thinks it’s a come-on? But Jack is timid, and well trained or sufficiently domesticated to simply nod.
“Beats doing the ironing.” He smiles to show he’s just kidding about comparing you to a pile of rumpled shirts.
“Well, cool.” He holds the door open, then heads off down the street. It’s late enough that the sun’s low and dazzling, forcing you to keep your eyes down rather than goggling at the insane architecture.
“Have you been to Edinburgh before?”
“No. This is my first time in Scotland.” There’s a shop window full of garish tartans and a discount book-shop with a window full of those blue-on-white Scottish flags. They’re big on flags here, almost as big as the Americans: something to do with their new franchise independence, probably. As long as they keep voting the British federal line in Brussels, that’s all the English establishment want: But perhaps things look different from this side of the frontier. “Where are we?”
“This is the West End of the New Town, so-called because they only built it about two hundred and fifty years ago. It’s a world heritage site, hence the manky stonework that keeps falling off the buildings and crushing tourists.” He glances at you swiftly. “Not often, you’ll be pleased to know.” He’s got his glasses on, and they’re lit up, washing the whites of his eyes in kaleidoscope colours.
“I’m reassured. Hey, we’re out of the office. This isn’t billable, you don’t have to keep working.”
He looks startled. “What, my glasses? No, I was just checking the eating-out guide.”
“I thought you lived here?”
“Yeah, but.” You come to a corner and he pauses, waiting for the traffic lights to change. “Wine bars aren’t my usual scene.”
“Oh, it doesn’t need to be a posh wine bar. Anywhere that’s not the hotel bar will do right now—I just wanted to get away.”
He brightens, visibly. “I’m better at pubs.” He pauses as the traffic stops, and the green man lights up. “Um, you seem a little tense.”
“You could say that.” You hurry across the road and realize the house-front you’re walking past is actually a branch of Boots. “I hate that kind of scene. When they break the bad news to you while you’ve got your mouth full, so you can’t tell them exactly what you think.”
“Hmm. It was a stitch-up, then? I’m not used to your kind of work, it sounded like one but I wasn’t sure…”
“Oh, it’s a stitch-up alright.” You take a deep breath. “Nothing to be done about it, I guess. Chris and Margaret are going to take the kiddies home and leave me to sort out everything while they take the credit for it. At least, I think that’s what’s going on—assuming Chris doesn’t have some kind of covert agenda—” You realize you’re babbling at a near stranger and shut up. That’s a bad sign. And your feet are putting you on notice that wearing five-centimetre heels on the Edinburgh streets is probably not a good idea—everywhere seems to be uphill. “Where’s this pub?”
“Not far.” He gestures at another pedestrian crossing and another damned uphill road. “See?” And indeed you do: There’s a pub nestling between a news-agent and a charity shop on the other side of the crossing.
While Jack orders stuff at the bar, you pin down a bench seat at a table in one corner of a big, lino-floored room and take a look around. There’s a TV on a curious inner vestibule over the door, and lots of dark wooden panelling, but it looks less like a pub and more like a railway waiting room from a seventies historical drama. Only the huge row of whisky bottles behind the bar, and the odd, pillar-shaped dispensers suggest that someone other than British Rail does the catering here. Even the games machine is an antique, curved-glass monitor and all. The bar’s almost empty, except for a couple of dour old men hunched over one end of the bar as if they’re afraid of being recognized.
Jack appears, clutching two pint glasses. “I hope this is okay,” he says, “CAMRA rate it highly on their local wiki.”
You look around. “It’s half-empty. Isn’t that usually a bad sign?”
“The evening’s young.” He slides a glass towards you. “And it’s a Monday.”
“Don’t remind me.” God, four more days of this before you get a chance to dash home for the weekend. You’ll miss combat on Wednesday, your evening class on Thursday, and Mum phoning you on Friday to nag you about whatever comes to hand. “Maybe tomorrow we can actually make some headway…”
“Yeah, well.” He takes a mouthful of beer. “Have you thought about paying for a background search on the elusive Mr. MacDonald?”
“Office hours.” You sip your beer. It tastes light and remarkably bitter, but not in a bad way. “Do yourself a favour, don’t carry the job home with you.” You don’t know why you’re warning him off this way—maybe it’s just because he seems a little lost among the sharks—but what the hell.
He sighs. “You’re talking to the wrong guy. I’ve had three years of death marches and no life. If I switched off easily, I’d have fallen by the wayside ages ago.”
“Well. Different workplaces.” You pause, wondering what you’re doing sitting in a pub with a strange man you met this morning at work. “How did you get into it?”
“Oh, the usual. I was about eight when Dad gave me an old box and tried to teach me how to program it in BASIC. He gave up trying to keep up after I discovered assembler. I went to university in Edinburgh, ended up studying CS because it was interesting, nearly failed my course because I spent too much time playing games and working with a couple of friends on an attempted start-up that didn’t go anywhere, and had to get a job. Luckily, one of my other friends was already working for Nutshell Productions and got me an interview, and it went from there.”