Guy was sitting there, staring at his computer screen where a half-finished game of Minesweeper was displayed.
Alone.
We walked towards him. He turned. He looked worse than I had ever seen him, and I had seen Guy pretty bad. His eyes were set deep in dark shadows, their habitual bright blue now dulled. Stubble sprouted out of his chin and pale puffy cheeks. His yellow hair was greasy and uncombed.
‘Hi,’ he said, his voice flat, defeated.
‘Hello, Guy.’ I walked towards him.
‘Sit down.’ He waved distractedly at my desk. I sat in my old chair. Ingrid perched on the desk next to me.
‘Heard anything?’ I asked him.
‘No.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Ten past ten. I’m not going to hear anything, either. If Mercia Metro were going to do it, they’d have done it by now.’
‘They never were going to do a deal, Guy,’ I said.
He looked at me vaguely, his eyes unfocused. ‘No,’ he said quietly. Then he glanced at Ingrid. ‘Are you two...?’
I nodded.
‘For how long?’
‘Not long. Since you fired me,’ I said.
He smiled. More to himself than to us. ‘That’s nice.’ Then he seemed to notice us again. ‘Are you going to wait with me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Because I wanted to be alone. Here. At midnight.’
There was something in what he was saying that scared me. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why do you want to be alone?’
Guy didn’t answer. He stared at his screen. He clicked the mouse. We let him play. Then he swore to himself as he clicked on a mine.
He pushed the mouse away. ‘Ninetyminutes is over, isn’t it, Davo?’
I nodded.
‘All that work. All those hours. All the worry, the arguments, the triumphs, all crumbling away into nothing.’
‘The site will live on.’
‘Yeah, but that wasn’t what Ninetyminutes was about,’ Guy said. ‘It was about you and me becoming new people. Better people. And for a time I thought we’d made it. For a long time. I was the entrepreneur who could make anything happen. You were my right-hand man who made sure that once it happened it didn’t all fall apart. We were good, Davo. We were really good. It shouldn’t have gone wrong.’
‘No, it shouldn’t.’
‘But it did. Tonight we sell out. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, there’s nothing.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ingrid.
Guy didn’t seem to hear her at first. Then he smiled a small quick smile, and bent down to open the bottom drawer of his desk. He straightened up. In his hand was a gun.
It was silver-grey, quite large for a handgun, I thought, not that I knew anything about handguns. It was one of those that have a magazine in the handle. He weighed it in his hand. It looked quite heavy.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.
‘Owen got it for me,’ Guy said. He chuckled. ‘It’s amazing what you can buy over the Internet these days. Shootsomeone.com. Why didn’t we try that one? Or www.blowyourbrainsout.co.uk. Not many repeat customers, though. And it’s all about repeat customers, isn’t it?’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Use it,’ Guy said. ‘On myself. Don’t worry. I won’t take you with me or anything. I was going to wait till twelve. But if you force me, I could do it now.’
Ingrid let out a short gasp.
‘Let’s wait till twelve,’ I said. ‘There’s still a couple of hours.’
Guy contemplated the gun in his hand. ‘I don’t know. Two hours is a long time to wait with you two staring at me.’
He lifted the weapon.
‘You were a crap businessman, you know,’ I said. I had to say something. For a second a spark of anger lit up Guy’s eyes. But then it died down.
‘I know.’
‘Nowhere near as good as your father.’
He lowered the gun. I had caught his attention. ‘You’re right.’
‘You’re good at the big-picture stuff. The vision thing. But you never really understood that it was all about money, did you? I did, but you fooled me too.’
Anger smouldered in Guy’s eyes.
‘Your father knew about profit, didn’t he? Let’s face it, if we’d done what he’d suggested and linked up to a porn site, the money would be rolling in. Sex ’n’ soccer. The tabloids would be queuing up to buy us. And the NASDAQ could just go screw itself.’
‘I could never have run a site like that,’ said Guy.
‘Neither could I. Could you, Ingrid?’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s our problem. You’d never have made it in property, either.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I remember reading an article in Private Eye about your father. How he had bribed a local council to allow planning permission for some shopping centre in the north. And how he screwed his partner in the seventies.’
‘That was all libel!’ Guy protested. ‘Private Eye settled out of court. They paid Dad a substantial sum and printed an apology.’
‘Course they did. Just like they did to Robert Maxwell. I wouldn’t want to mess with your father in court.’
Guy sighed. ‘So what are you getting at?’
‘You built something much greater than your father could ever have done. Ninetyminutes was one hell of an achievement. Not financially, maybe. But I don’t know anyone else who could have created the best soccer website in Europe from scratch.’
‘Big deal.’
‘It is a big deal. It impressed the hell out of me. And Ingrid. And Gaz. And Michelle. And every one of the people who work here.’ I leaned forward. ‘Guy, you’ve always impressed the hell out of me. For a while I thought that you would be a great entrepreneur. So you’re not. So what? I’m still impressed.’
‘You’re just saying that because I’ve got a gun in my hand.’
‘I’m not, and you know it. I knew your father. I know you. Believe me, Guy. You’re a better man than him. You don’t have to prove that to me, and you shouldn’t have to prove it to yourself any more.’
Guy looked again at the gun. Very slowly he placed it on to the desk next to him. Even more slowly I got to my feet and reached across towards it.
Guy snatched it up and pointed it somewhere between me and him. ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this thing, so don’t rush me.’
I eased back into my chair. ‘OK,’ I said.
We sat in silence, the three of us. But I was thinking about a fourth person. Clare.
Slowly, I pulled the note she had received out of my jacket pocket and handed it to Guy.
‘What’s this?’
‘Clare got it yesterday. It’s from Owen. Read it.’
Guy read it, frowning. ‘You think Owen wrote this?’ he said, when he had finished.
‘I know Owen wrote it. And he sent an e-mail to Clare today, telling her he’s serious.’
Guy was silent, staring at the letter. Eventually, he spoke. ‘I don’t think this is Owen.’
‘Of course it’s Owen,’ I said. ‘It was Owen who threatened Henry. Owen who planted the computer virus in Goaldigger’s system. Owen who has been threatening me. You know yourself Owen killed Dominique. I think he killed Abdulatif as well. And now he’s going to kill Clare. Unless you stop him.’
Guy looked confused. Unsure of himself. Unsure of his brother.
‘You are the only person who can stop him,’ I said.
Just then the door to the office banged open. We turned.
Owen.
He pushed his way through the door carrying a flat brown carton. ‘Hey, Guy?’ he called. ‘Guy? I got pizza! Pepperoni feast.’
Then he saw us.
‘What are these people doing here?’ he demanded, placing the pizza box on a nearby desk and moving over to his brother. ‘I thought you said you wanted to be alone?’