"Thank you for bringing Kats back to me, Greg," Julia said, abruptly all humble contrition.
Greg gave up trying to find motives for her oscillating moods. She was on an emotional rollercoaster; depressed by Katerina, frightened by Kendric, trusting in him, Gabriel, and Walshaw to deliver her from evil. Poor kid.
"It hurts so much just seeing her," Julia said. "Serves me right, I suppose." She reached round her neck with both hands and unhooked a slim gold chain. "For you. From me. And you don't even have to give me a kiss for it." She favoured him with a sly weary smile.
It was a St. Christopher pendant, solid gold.
"Well, put it on then," Julia said.
He mimicked a grin, feeling itchy under Gabriel's heartily bemused eye, and fastened it round his own neck. The little disk was warm on his skin as it slithered down beneath the open neck of his crisp dress shirt.
"To keep the demons at bay," Julia said. "Even though you're not a believer."
Greg pulled out of the finance division's nearly deserted car park, turning the Duo west on to the artificial lava surface of the A47. There was a single car in front of them. It wasn't quite dawn. The gross Event Horizon sign splashed the surrounding land with a guttering medley of coloured light.
"I feel sorry for that girl, you know," Gabriel said. She was looking out of the window at the clumps of hermes oak scrub along the side of the road. Beyond the bushes was a near-vertical drop to the ruffled waters of the estuary. In the distance were the dark shapes of the hydro-turbine islands, moon-glazed foam rumbling round them.
"Katerina? Who wouldn't?" Greg said.
"No, Katerina is pure survivor breed. I meant Julia; she has no real family, few friends her own age. And you're on the borderline yourself, now, despite her token of esteem."
"How do you figure that?"
"If Ellis hasn't left anything in the Crays, or whatever, about Kendric or the organiser, how do you think she'll feel about you? You've managed to be right all the way so far. She trusts you because of that. Implicitly. Screw up now and it'll all end in tears."
"Not a chance. I know Ellis's type down to his last chromosome. A hyper-worrier. He's a little-man intermediary who's lucked into a real super-rank underclass operation; elated and terrified all at once. He'll have taken precautions. That means a way of pointing his finger from beyond the grave."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yep. Ellis's major problem was that he never got round to telling his paymasters he was insured." Greg slowed as the car in front turned off on to the sliproad for the bridge ahead, then accelerated again as the cutting walls rose on either side.
Gabriel said: "I still don't think Ellis would take such—"
The front nearside tyre blew out.
The Duo veered violently to the left, straight towards the near-vertical slope of the cutting. Greg saw sturdy grey-white saplings, impaled in the headlight beams, lurching towards him. The steering wheel twisted, wrenching at his hands, nearly breaking his grip. He jerked it back as hard as he could, with little or no effect. The Duo's three remaining tyres fought for traction on the coarse cellulose surface. It was slewing sideways, screeching hard. A flamboyant fan of orange sparks unfolded across the offside window. That alpine-steep incline was sliding across the windscreen, rushing up on the side of the Duo. Horribly close. They'd spun nearly full circle and Greg could feel the tilt beginning as the car began to turn turtle. Then there was a boneshaker impact, a damp thud, and they were disorientatingly, motionless. Silence crashed down.
Soon broken.
"Shitfire," Gabriel yelped. She was staring wild-eyed out of the windscreen, drawing breath in juddering gulps. "I didn't know!" She whipped round to look at him, frantic, frightened, entreating. Which was something he'd never ever seen in her before. And that alarmed him more than the blow-out.
"I didn't know, Greg! There was nothing. Nothing, flick it! Do you understand?"
"Calm down."
"Nothing!"
"So what! You're tired, and I'm knackered. It's only a bloody tyre gone pop, small wonder you didn't see it. Non-event." Even as he spoke he could feel some submerged memory struggling for recognition. Something about the tyre performance guarantee. Puncture-proof? That bonded silicon rubber was tough stuff.
Thankfully, Gabriel subsided into a feverish silence; eyelids tightly shuttered, mind roaming ahead. Did she suffer visions of her gland pumping furiously? He'd never asked.
Greg concentrated on his hands, still clenching the wheel, white-knuckled. They wouldn't let go.
What appeared to be a eucalyptus branch was lying across the windscreen. Its purple and grey leaves shone dully in the waning rouge emissions from the office block's sign.
Looking out of his side window he could see the bridge nearly directly overhead. They'd only just missed crashing into the concrete support wall.
"Greg—" Gabriel said in a low frightened moan.
Upright shapes were moving purposefully through the dusky shadows outside the sharp cone of light thrown by the Duo's one remaining headlight.
Greg stared disbelievingly at them for one terrible drawn-out second. "Out!" he shouted, His door opened easily enough and he was diving out, racing for the back of the Duo. A mini-avalanche of loose earth and gravel had digested the rear of the car. His hands flapped across his dinner jacket, hitting every pocket. Panicking. Trying to remember where the fuck he'd left the Armscor stunshot.
There were three of them approaching; two men, one woman. Walking down the middle of the road with a glacial panache, cool and unhurried. A confidence that'd tilted over into sublime arrogance.
The Armscor had gone, swept away by the tide of pitiful sloppiness he was screwing his life with. Given it to Victor? Suzi? Left it in Walshaw's office?
He stuck his head above the Duo's roof, ducking down quickly. The ambush team was closing in remorselessly, empty silhouettes against that idiotic phallic sign and its happy floating Disney projections. They were still carefully avoiding the headlight beam.
Gabriel's door was jammed up against the earth of the cutting; her frantic shoving couldn't budge it more than halfway open. The gap wasn't nearly large enough for her bulk.
One of the men levelled a slender long-barrelled rifle at her. Greg squirreled away his profile: leather trousers tucked into calf-high lace-up boots, last-century camouflage jacket, blind plastic band of a photon amp clinging to his face, designer stubble, small pony tail.
"Mine," the man said.
A narrow streak of liquid green flame spewing from the end of the rifle, and Gabriel was jerking about epileptically.
Greg turned and ran for the slope of crumbling earth, clawing at the dense treacherous scrub lassoing his legs, keeping low. The eucalyptus saplings were neatly pruned, a bulbous flare of foliage on top and bare slim boles, providing a meagre cover. He grabbed hold of them in a steady swinging rhythm, hauling himself upwards, feet scrabbling for purchase. The embankment seemed to stretch out for ever. It was an animal flight. Blind instinct, equating the sliproad at the top of the embankment with the grail of sanctuary. Pathetic, some minute core of sanity mocked.
"There," came the triumphant shout from below.
The shot caught him three metres short of the summit, where the saplings and scrub had given way to a bald mat of grass which bordered the sliproad. The pain seared down his nerves like a lava flow. He saw his arms windmilling insanely, fingers extended like albino starfish.
As he fell there was just one question looping through his brain. Why hadn't Gabriel known?