Suddenly, he felt sick.
When he got up to his room, the sense of unreality was complete. The only visible change since he left for work the day he murdered Philip Hamilton was the absence of Liz Linshaw’s sleeping form curled into the bedclothes.
And the document pouch on the desk.
He ripped off the seals and skimmed through the paperwork -standard challenge documentation, agreement to waive normal legal protection, itemised rules and references to the 2041 (revised) corporate road charter. Duel envelope details, satellite blow-ups and recent road surface commentary from the relevant service providers. It was the M11 run, practically from his front door, down through the underpass and up over the vaulted section, the Gullet, across the north-eastern zones and down. The old favourite. No motorway changes, no ramps, just into the pipe and drive. Brutal, simple stuff.
In his jacket pocket, the mobile queeped. After ten days without the phone, it took him a moment to realise what it was. He took it out, identified a video call from Liz and accepted.
‘Chris.’ She stared out of the tiny screen at him, a little haggard around the eyes, he noticed, and couldn’t help being slightly flattered. ‘Thank Christ for that, you’re out.’
‘You must be paying a lot for your tips.’
Her smile was strained. ‘Tricks of the trade, Chris. Journalism, I mean. You know what’s happening, I take it.’
‘Yeah, I got a full briefing yesterday. Has Mike been in touch?’
‘Yeah.’ She winced. ‘Not a conversation I want to repeat.’
Chris tried to think of something vaguely intelligent to say. ‘I guess he was a lot more serious about you than he liked to show.’
‘Yeah, and about you too, Chris. That’s what really hurt, apparently. As far as I could make out between the expletives.’
‘Yeah, well.’
A long pause.
‘Chris, are you really going to—‘
‘I don’t really want to talk about it, Liz.’
‘No. Right.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you want me to come over?’
Again, the pitching sickness in his stomach. The sheer fucking disbelief at what was going to happen. A rising, swelling bubble of fear.
‘I, uh ...’
‘Fine. It’s okay, I understand.’
‘Good.’
The conversation fizzled for a few more seconds, then died. They said goodbyes that were almost formal, and he hung up.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the phone for a while. Finally, he called Mike.
‘Hello, Chris.’ There was a flatness in Bryant’s voice and eyes that told him everything he needed to know. He could have hung up there and then.
He gave it a shot.
‘Mike, you can’t be serious about this shit.’
‘What shit is that, Chris? The trail-of-bodies-in-Shorn-conference-chambers shit? The political-alignment-with-terrorists shit? Or did you mean the fuck-your-best-friend’s-woman shit?’
‘Hey. You’re married to Suki, not Liz.’
‘Do the words you don’t fucking make my marital decisions for me sound familiar?’
‘Listen Mike, I’m coming in to the office. We’re going to talk about—‘
‘No, we’re not. I’m taking a half day today. Spending it with Suki, you’ll be pleased to hear.’
‘Then I’ll come and see you there.’
‘You do and I’ll kick your fucking teeth down your throat on the doorstep.’ Mike’s top lip drew back from his teeth. ‘You just stay where you are and fuck Liz a couple more times, while you’ve still got the chance. If you can get it up right now, that is.’
Chris snapped.
‘Ah, fuck you then. Asshole! I’ll see you on the fucking road!’
He hurled the phone across the room. It hit the wall and bounced, undamaged, to the floor.
He made one more call. Two, to be completely accurate, but when he called the house in Hawkspur Green, no one answered. He shrugged philosophically and dug Erik Nyquist’s number out of the phone’s memory. Leaking oil in a head-on collision. It could hardly hurt more than what he’d already swallowed.
The Norwegian was curiously gentle with him.
‘She’s not here, Chris,’ he said. ‘And honestly, even if she was, I doubt she’d talk to you.’
‘That’s fine, I uh, I understand. Uh, do you know if she’s gone home? To the house, I mean. I tried her there, not to talk to, only to warn her I’m coming, I mean.’ He heard the choppy stumbling of his own speech and stopped. He rubbed at his face, glad Erik didn’t have videophone capacity. ‘I’m going out to collect the Saab this afternoon. I didn’t want to surprise her, you know, if she didn’t want to, uh, to see me.’
‘She hasn’t gone to the house,’ said Nyquist, and Chris knew then she was there, maybe standing next to her father in the cramped, damp smelling confines of the hall, maybe off in the kitchen, back to it all, trying not to listen.
‘Okay.’ He cleared his throat of an unlooked-for obstruction. ‘Listen, Erik. Tell her. When you see her, I mean, tell her she needs to stay resident in the UK for the next six months. Otherwise, uh, the terms of my will are invalidated. You know, the share options and mortgage insurance on the house? If she’s gone, back to Norway, Shorn’ll get the lot. So, uh. Makes sense for her to stick around, you know.’
There was a lot of silence before Erik answered.
‘I’ll tell her,’ he said.
‘Great.’
More silence. Neither man seemed ready to hang up.
‘You’re going to drive then?’ Nyquist asked him finally.
Chris was relieved to find he could still manage a laugh. ‘Well, let’s just say the other options aren’t great.’
‘You can’t run?’
‘Shame on you, Erik. Run, from the filthy corporate monsters of Conflict Investment?’ He grew abruptly serious, fighting the up-bubbling fear. ‘There’s no way, Erik. They’ve got me checked, filed and monitored. That fucked-up system you’re always raging about? That system’ll be locked up against any move I try to make. Plastic selectively invalidated, corporate police checking ports and airports. To put not too fine a point to it, if I don’t roll out the wheels tomorrow, I’m a common criminal on my way to the jag gurney.’
Nyquist hesitated. ‘Can you beat him? Carla says—‘
‘I don’t know, Erik. Get back to me tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have an answer for you.’
The Norwegian chuckled dutifully. Chris felt his own face take up the echo. He was suddenly, almost tearfully thankful for the older man’s unhostile presence on the line. The instinctive male solidarity, the shoring up of his desperate bravado. He suddenly understood how badly he had failed to do the same thing for Erik at the crisis points in his father-in-law’s life. How he’d taken the Norwegian’s own cornered bravado at face value, failed to see it for what it was, berated him for it and cut him loose to suffer alone. With the realisation, something lodged in his throat.
‘From what I understand,’ Nyquist was saying, ‘we’ll all know by then. In fact we’ll all be watching you crack open the champagne. The networks have been ad-screaming about full coverage since yesterday. Sponsored by Pirelli and BMW, they say.’
Chris’s grin melted into a grimace. ‘So. No prizes for guessing who they think’s going to win, then.’
‘Almost worth beating him just to piss them off, huh?’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’ He could feel another bubble of fear coming up. He cleared his throat again. ‘Listen, Erik. I’ve got to go. Things to do, you know. Got to get ready for all that publicity tomorrow. Interviews, fame, all that shit. It, uh, it isn’t easy being a driving hero.’
‘No,’ said Nyquist very gently. ‘I know.’
He signed the challenge documentation, got the hotel to courier it across to Shorn and sat waiting for receipt confirmation. He studied the route blow-ups and the surface reports with desultory attention, tried vaguely to imagine his way inside something resembling a strategy.