Carla appeared, knuckling grease across her nose. There was a fairly obvious scowl under the black marks. ‘What happened to you, then?’
‘Uh, I stayed over at Mike’s place. There was some, uh.’ He glanced at Bryant who was listening to the other end of his own call with a face like thunder. ‘Trouble.’
‘Trouble? Are you—?’
‘No, I’m fine.’ Chris forced a grin. ‘Just a headache.’
‘Well, why didn’t you call me? I was worried sick.’
‘I didn’t want to worry you. It was late, and I was going to call first thing this morning. Must have overslept. Look,’ he turned to Bryant again. ‘Mike, are you going in to Shorn today?’
Bryant nodded glumly, covering the phone mouthpiece again. ‘Looks like it. I’ve got to fill out half a hundred fucking incident reports, apparently. Say an hour?’
Chris turned back to Carla’s waiting face. ‘I’m going in to pick up the car with Mike in about an hour. I’ll pick you up from the garage and tell you all about it then. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ It was grudging. ‘But this had better be a fucking good story.’
‘Deal. By the way, I’m in love.’
Mike Bryant shot him a peculiar glance across the kitchen.
On screen, Carla kept her scowl. ‘Yeah, yeah. Me too. See you at four. And don’t be late.’
She reached for the phone and the image faded. Chris turned just in time to catch the last of Bryant’s call.
‘Yes, I am aware of that, detective. Well next time I’m attacked on the street, I’ll be sure and remember it. Goodbye.’
He snapped the phone shut angrily.
‘Asshole. Get this, the corporate police, our fucking police want to conduct an investigation into whether this was an unlawful shooting. I mean.’ He gestured helplessly, lost for words. ‘Defend yourself, and you’re fucking breaking the law. Meanwhile, some piece of shit gangwit cracks a fingernail in a back alley and you’ve got Citizens’ Rights activists screaming for someone’s neck. What about us citizens? Who’s looking out for us? What about our rights?’
‘Michael!’ Suki appeared in the kitchen doorway, a coffee cup in each hand. ‘How many times have I told you, don’t use that language in front of Ariana. She just comes right out with it at the playgroup, and I get dirty looks from the other mothers.’ She put the coffee cups on the table and went to clean some of the surplus food from around her daughter’s mouth. Ariana made half-hearted protests, all the time squinting shyly at Chris. ‘That’s right, don’t you listen to Daddy when he talks like that.’ She turned a fraction of her multi-tasked attention in the same direction as her daughter. ‘Take no notice, Chris. He’s always moaning about citizens’ rights. This’ll be the second time he’s been in trouble, there, is that better darling, the second time he’s been in trouble with the police this year. Use of undue force. Yes, who’s a clean girl? I think he just likes living dangerously.’
Bryant made a disgusted noise. Suki went to him and put an arm round his waist. She kissed him under the chin.
‘Maybe that’s what I see in him. You’re married, aren’t you Chris? Was that her on the vid?’
‘Yeah.’ To Chris, his own voice sounded unfairly defensive. ‘She’s a mechanic. Got to work most Saturdays.’
He sipped his coffee and watched for a reaction, but Suki either didn’t care one way or the other or had been trained to black belt in social graces. She smiled as she unfastened Ariana from the high chair.
‘Yes, Michael said. You know, one of the Shorn partners had a girlfriend who worked in auto reclaim. Now what was his name?’ She snapped her fingers. ‘I met him at the Christmas bash.’
‘Notley,’ said Bryant.
‘That’s it, Notley. Jack Notley. Well, you must both come over for dinner, Chris. What’s your wife’s name?’
‘Carla.’
‘Carla. Lovely name. Like that Italian holoporn star Mike gets so turned on over.’ She put a playful hand over Bryant’s mouth as he protested. ‘Yes, ask her to come over. In fact, why don’t you come over tonight? We’ve got no plans, have we, Mike?’
Bryant shook his head.
‘Well, then. I’ll cook sukiyaki. You’re not vegetarian, either of you?’
‘No.’ Chris hesitated. There had been some notion of going to visit Carla’s father today, and in the whirl of the week just gone, he wasn’t sure quite how solidified the plan was. ‘Uh, I’m not sure if—‘
‘Not to be missed, that sukiyaki,’ said Michael, draining his coffee and setting down the mug. ‘Beef direct from the Sutherland Croft Association herds. Hey, you reckon Carla’d like a look at the BMW? Seeing as she’s a mechanic and all. That’s the new Omega Injection series under the bonnet. State of the art, not even on general release outside Germany yet. I bet she’d love to watch it turn over.’
Chris, aware suddenly of the exact depth to which he did not want to visit his father-in-law, made a decision.
‘Yeah, she’d like that,’ he said.
‘Good, that’s settled then,’ said Suki brightly. ‘I’ll get the beef this afternoon. Shall we say about eight-thirty?’
Mike insisted on dropping Chris right beside his car. The underground parking decks beneath the Shorn block were largely deserted and the level Chris had parked on showed only three other vehicles. Bryant slewed to a halt across the battery of empty spaces opposite, killed the engine and got out.
‘Hewitt’s,’ he said, nodding at the nearest of the isolated vehicles. ‘Audi built it for her to spec when she made partner. Fancy seeing that coming up in your rearview?’
Chris looked at it. Broad black windscreen, heavy impact collision bars that jutted from the end of the raked hood.
‘Not much,’ he admitted. ‘But I thought Hewitt was a BMW fan.’
Mike snorted. ‘Hewitt’s a fan of money. Back when she made partner, Shorn had this deal with Audi. They supplied all our company cars and hardware, and the partners got special edition battlewagons thrown in for free. Two years ago BMW made Shorn a better offer and they went with it. As a partner, Hewitt can opt for any vehicle she likes but when this baby gets written off or superseded, you can bet she’ll just take a top-of-the-line Omega with all the armour options, free to partners of BMW clients. To her, it’s all just a cost-benefit analysis.’
‘So what does Notley think of all this?’
‘Notley’s a patriot.’ Mike grinned. ‘I mean, in the real, uncut sense of the word. Last of the diehard anti-Europeans. Anti-American too, come to that. He actually believes in the cultural superiority of England over other nations. Shit like that. I mean, you’d think he’d be able to see a little more clearly from the fiftieth floor, wouldn’t you. Anyway, when he made partner, he didn’t want to know about the German makes. He had Landrover build him a customised battle-wagon from scratch. And he’s still driving it ten years later. Fucking thing looks like a tank but it’ll do nearly two hundred kilometres an hour. Except he won’t use metric, so that’d be ... what, about a hundred and twenty-something? Miles an hour? Whatever. That’s what his speedo reads in.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘No, really. He made them fit an imperial speedo. Miles per hour. Ask him to let you look at the dashboard some time.’
‘He’s not here today?’
‘No way. You won’t catch Notley working weekends. Calls it the American disease, working all the hours God sends you.’ Bryant’s eyes flicked away with recollection. ‘I remember one quarterly do, I ran into him in the men’s room, we were both pretty pissed and I was asking him if being a partner was really worth all the extra shit, the weekend work, the all-nighters and he looked at me like I was insane. Then he says, still treating me like I’m a headcase, talking very slowly, you know, he says, Mike, if you make partner and you’re still working weekends then there’s something wrong somewhere. You make partner so they can’t tell you to do that shit any more. Otherwise, what’s the point? You believe that?’