by which time, Barranco will have your worthless nuts in the fucking vice, you and your whole stinking hacienda clan
The sudden violence of his own thoughts took Chris by surprise.
Francisco Echevarria flickered out. They adjourned to Hewitt’s office to discuss a tentative calendar for Barranco’s revolution.
He went down to the forty-ninth floor to thank the junior execs that had covered the other accounts for them while the crisis was in full swing. He took gifts — cask-strength Islay single malt, Galapagos bourbon ground coffee, single estate Andaluz olive oil - and got into mock sparring sessions with a couple of the known hardcases in the section. No full-force blows, he stayed just the right side of friendly, but he pushed hard and fast and got close-up body contact each time. It wasn’t wise to show raw gratitude, untempered by signs of strength. It could get taken the wrong way.
He got back his caseload. Started mechanically through the detail, building back up to operational pitch where necessary.
He took a basket of Indonesian fruit and a crate of Turkish export beer up to the hospital, and found Liz Linshaw sitting on the corner of Mike’s bed. Mike sat there grinning like a post-blow job idiot, Liz was a study in her usual off-screen rough-and-ready elegance. She showed Chris exactly the civilised blend of camaraderie and casual flirtation that he remembered from their earliest meetings. The downshift cut him to the quick.
‘Listen, Chris,’ Mike said finally, waving a hand at the bedside seat Liz wasn’t using. ‘We’ve been talking about your no-namer problem. Liz says she could ask around, no problem.’
‘That’s great.’ He looked across at her. ‘Thanks.’
‘My pleasure.’
It was more than he could handle. He caught himself with a barbed comment about Suki rising to his lips, and called time. He made workload excuses and got out.
As he opened the door to go, Liz Linshaw called him back.
‘Chris, I’ll be in touch,’ she said.
Back at Shorn, he went down to the gym and did an hour of full contact with the autobag.
He worked late.
He took the Nemex to the firing ranges, and emptied two dozen clips into the ghost-dance of holotargets there. The machine scored him high on accuracy and speed, abysmally low on selection. He’d killed too many innocent bystanders.
And then it was Saturday.
It was time.
Chapter Thirty-Six
There were police trucks gathered at the entrance to the Brundtland. Revolving blue lights slashed the poorly-lit walkways and stair-stacks with monotonous regularity, each touch fleeting and then gone, giving way again to the gloom. Torch beams and bulky armoured figures moved on the exterior walkways. An ampbox blattered across the night.
‘Ah fuck.’ Chris braked the Landrover to a halt.
Carla stared at out at the lights, wide eyed. ‘Do you think ...’
‘I don’t know. Stay here.’
He left the engine running and climbed down, digging in his pocket for corporate ID, hoping the Nemex didn’t show under the jacket. A body-armoured police sergeant noticed the new arrival and detached himself from the knot of figures beside the trucks. He strode across the cracked concrete, torch and sidearm held high.
‘You can’t come in here.’
Chris held his ID out in the beam of the torch. ‘I’m visiting someone. What’s going on?’
‘Oh.’ The sergeant’s tone shifted, abruptly conciliatory. He holstered his pistol. ‘Sorry, sir. With what you’re driving, you know, I didn’t realise.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Chris manufactured a grin of forbearance. ‘Easy mistake to make. My wife’s wheels. Sentimental value. So what’s going on here?’
‘It’s drugs, sir. Bathroom edge. A couple of the local gangwits have been bad boys. Exporting their product across the line, dealing in the Kensington catchment. Hanging around the schools and such.’ The sergeant grimaced in the torchlight and shook his head. ‘Not the first time either, and the community leaders have been warned before, so it’s the next step. We’ve been told to turn up the heat on cases like this. You know how it’s done, sir. Break a few doors, break a few heads. Only thing gets through to these animals in the end.’
‘Sure. Look, I need to get up to the fifth floor and see my father-in-law. It’s quite urgent. Can you do something about that?’
Hesitation. Chris switched on the grin again. Reached carefully into his jacket pocket, well above the Nemex.
‘I understand it’s trouble you don’t need right now, but it is important. I’d be very grateful.’
The torchlight gleamed off the edges of the racked plastic and the Shorn Associates holologo on the front card. At the back, the wallet was stiff with a thick sheaf of cash. The sergeant was looking down at it like someone afraid of falling.
‘Fifth floor?’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Just a moment, sir.’ He dug out a phone and thumbed it to life. ‘Gary? You there? Listen, are we working on five? No? So what’s the nearest? Okay. Thanks.’
He stowed the phone. Chris handed across a slice of currency.
‘Should be safe enough to go up there, sir. I’ll have a couple of my men take you up, just to be sure.’ He folded the notes into his palm with an awkwardness that bespoke lack of practice, and looked back at the Landrover. ‘Your wife too?’
‘Yeah. Tell the truth, she wants to be here a lot more than I do.’
Their escort took the form of two helmeted, body-armoured uniforms with pump action shotguns and hip-holstered pistols. They bounded from the rear of the reserve truck like eager dogs when their names were called. One was white, one black, and neither looked old enough to be shaving yet. They covered angles in the stairwell with a kind of self-conscious intensity that on older men might have looked like professionalism, and once or twice they grinned at each other. The white kid chewed gum mechanically throughout, and the black kid appeared to be rapping under his breath. They both seemed to be enjoying themselves. When the party reached the fifth floor, Chris gave them a fifty apiece and they clattered back down the stairs with what sounded like none of the drilled caution they’d exhibited on the way up.
Carla knocked at the door of fifty-seven. Erik answered, looking haggard.
‘I tried to call. The police—‘
‘Just talked to them,’ said Chris, luxuriating in the advantage. ‘It’s an edge bust. Nothing to worry about.’
Erik Nyquist’s mouth tightened.
‘Yes, I forgot,’ he said thinly. ‘A different matter when you’re a member of the elite, isn’t it. When—‘
‘Dad!’
‘Maybe we could come in,’ added Chris.
Nyquist gave him a venomous look, but he stood aside and they filed through into the lounge. Behind him, Chris heard the door being locked and bolted. Almost as loud through the cardboard-thin walls of the lounge, he could hear raised voices from the flat next door, and what sounded like a baby crying. He glanced around the cramped living space, kept an expression of distaste off his face with an effort, and seated himself gingerly in one of the battered armchairs. He looked up as Nyquist followed Carla into the room.
‘Getting on with the neighbours okay?’ he asked brightly, nodding towards the noise next door. ‘Sounds a little below your level of intellectual debate.’