‘Deal.’
After, as they lay like spoons in the disordered bed, Carla curled around his back and murmured into his ear.
‘By the way, I’m in love.’
‘Me too.’ He leaned back and rubbed the back of his head against her breasts. She shuddered at the touch of the close cropped hair and reached instinctively for his shrunken prick. He grinned and slapped her hand away.
‘Hoy, that’s your lot. Go to sleep, nympho.’
‘So! You just want to fuck me and leave me. Is that it?’
‘I’m,’ said Chris, already sliding headlong into sleep, ‘not going anywhere.’
‘Just use me, and then when you’ve used me you go to sleep. Talk to me, you bastard.’
A grunt.
‘You haven’t even told me how it went today.’
Carla propped herself up on one arm and prodded at the springy muscle in Chris’s stomach. ‘I’m serious. What’s Conflict Investment like?’
Chris took her arm, folded the offending finger around his own and tugged Carla back into the spoon configuration.
‘Conflict Investment is the way forward at a global level,’ he said.
‘Is that right?’
‘It’s what the Shorn datadown says.’
‘Oh, it must be true then.’
He smiled reflexively at the scorn in her voice and began to drift away again. Just before he slept, Carla thought she heard him speak again. She lifted her head.
‘What?’
He didn’t respond, and she realised he was muttering in his sleep. Carla leaned over him, straining to catch something. She gave up after a couple of minutes. The only sense she succeeded in straining out of the soup of mumbling was a single, repeated word.
checkout
It took a long time to find sleep for herself.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Conflict Investment is the way forward!’
Applause rose, and clattered at the glass roofing like the wings of pigeons startled into flight. Around the lecture theatre, men and women came to their feet, hands pumping together. The entire CI contingent of Shorn Associates were gathered in the room. The youngest, Chris noticed, were the most fervent. Faces gashed open with enthusiasm, teeth and eyes gleaming in the late afternoon sun from roof and picture window. They looked ready to go on applauding ’til their hands bled. Sown in amongst this crop of pure conviction, older colleagues clapped to a slower, more measured rhythm and nodded approval, leaning their heads together to make comments under the din of the applause. Louise Hewitt paused and leaned on the lectern, waiting for the noise to ebb.
Behind his hand, Chris yawned cavernously.
‘Yes, yes,’ Hewitt made damping motions. The room settled. ‘We’ve heard it called risky, we’ve heard it called impractical and we’ve heard it called immoral. In short, we’ve heard the same carping voices that free-market economics has had to drag with it like a ball and chain from its very inception. But we have learnt to ignore those voices. We have learnt, and we have gone on learning, piling lesson upon lesson, vision upon vision, success upon success. And what every success has taught us, and continues to teach us, again and again, is a very simple truth. Who has the finance.’ A dramatic pause, one slim black clad arm holding a clenched fist aloft. ‘Has the power.’
Chris stifled another yawn.
‘Human beings have been fighting wars as long as history recalls. It is in our nature, it is in our genes. In the last half of the last century the peacemakers, the governments of this world, did not end war. They simply managed it, and they managed it badly. They poured money, without thought of return, into conflicts and guerrilla armies abroad, and then into tortuous peace processes that more often than not left the situation no better. They were partisan, dogmatic and inefficient. Billions wasted in poorly assessed wars that no sane investor would have looked at twice. Huge, unwieldy national armies and clumsy international alliances; in short a huge public-sector drain on our economic systems. Hundreds of thousands of young men killed in parts of the world they could not even pronounce properly. Decisions based on political dogma and doctrine alone. Well, this model is no more.’
Hewitt paused again. This time there was a charged quiet that carried with it the foretaste of applause, the same way a thick heat carries with it the knowledge of the storm to come. In the closing moments of the address, Hewitt’s voice had sunk close to normal conversational tones. Her delivery slowed and grew almost musing.
‘All over the world, men and women still find causes worth killing and dying for. And who are we to argue with them? Have we lived in their circumstances? Have we felt what they feel? No. It is not our place to say if they are right or wrong. It is not for us to pass judgment or to interfere. At Shorn Conflict Investment, we are concerned with only two things. Will they win? And will it pay? As in all other spheres, Shorn will invest the capital it is entrusted with only where we are sure of a good return. We do not judge. We do not moralise. We do not waste. Instead, we assess, we invest. And we prosper. That is what it means to be a part of Shorn Conflict Investment.’
The lecture theatre erupted once more.
‘Nice speech,’ said Notley, pouring champagne into the ring of glasses with an adept arm. ‘And press coverage too, thanks to Philip here. Should profile us nicely for license review on the eighteenth.’
‘Glad you liked it.’ Hewitt lifted her filled glass away from the ring and looked round at the gathered partners. Excluding Philip Hamilton at her side, the five men and three women watching her accounted for fifty-seven per cent of Shorn Associates’ capital wealth. Each one of them could afford to acquire a private jet with less thought than she gave to shopping for shoes. Between the eight of them, there was no manufactured object on the planet that they could not own. It was wealth she could taste, just out of reach, like bacon frying in someone else’s kitchen. Wealth she wanted like sex. Wanted with a desire that ached in her gums and the pit of her stomach.
Notley finished pouring and raised his own glass. ‘Well, here’s to small wars everywhere. Long may they smoulder. And congratulations on a great quarterly result, Louise. Small wars.’
‘Small wars!’
‘Small wars.’ Hewitt echoed the toast and sipped at her drink. She surfed the polite conversation on autopilot and gradually the other partners began to drift back to the main body of the hotel bar, seeking out their own divisional acolytes. Hamilton caught her eye and she nodded almost imperceptibly. He slipped away with a murmured excuse, leaving her with Notley.
‘You know,’ she said quietly, ‘I could have done without Faulkner falling asleep in the front row. He’s too impressed with himself, Jack.’
‘Of course, you never were at his age.’
‘He’s only five years younger than me. And anyway, I’ve always had these.’ Hewitt set her glass aside on the mantelpiece and cupped her breasts as if offering them. ‘Nothing like a cleavage for reducing professional respect.’
Notley looked embarrassed and then away.
‘Oh, come on Louise. Don’t give me that tired old feminist rap agai—’
‘Being a woman around here makes you tough, Jack.’ Hewitt let her hands fall again. ‘You know that’s true. I had to claw my way up every centimetre of the way to partnership. Compared to that, Faulkner got it handed to him on a plate. One big kill, catch the imagination of App and Prom and he’s made. Just look at him. He didn’t even shave this morning.’
She gestured across the bar to where Chris appeared to be deep in conversation with a group of men and women his own age. Even at this distance, the dusting of stubble on his face was visible. As they watched, he masked another yawn with his glass.