The lift bounced to a halt. ‘Fifty-third floor,’ it said brightly. ‘Conflict Investment division. Please ensure you have a code seven clearance for this level. Have a nice day.’

They stepped out into a small antechamber where a well-groomed security officer nodded to Bryant and asked Chris for ID. Chris found the bar-coded strip they’d given him at ground-floor reception and waited while it was scanned.

‘Look, Chris, I’ve got to run.’ Bryant nodded at the right hand corridor. ‘Some greasy little dictator’s uplinking in for a budget review at ten and I’m still trying to remember the name of his defence minister. You know how it is. I’ll catch you at the quarterly review on Friday. We usually go out after.’

‘Sure. See you later.’

Chris watched him out of sight with apparent casualness. Beneath was the same caution he’d applied to the no-name challenger that morning. Bryant seemed friendly enough, but almost everyone did under the right circumstances. Even Carla’s father could seem like a reasonable man in the right conversational light. And anyone who washed blood off their hands the way Mike Bryant did was not someone Chris wanted at his back.

The security guard handed back his pass and pointed to the twin doors straight ahead.

‘Conference room,’ she said. ‘They’re waiting for you.’

The last time Chris had been face to face with a senior partner was to hand in his resignation at Hammett McColl. Vincent McColl had a high windowed room, panelled in dark wood and lined along one wall with books that looked a hundred years old. There were portraits of illustrious partners from the firm’s eighty-year history on the other walls, and on the desk a framed photo of his father shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher. The floor was waxed wood, overlaid with a two-hundred-year-old Turkish carpet. McColl himself had silvery hair, buttoned his slim frame into suits a generation out of date and refused to have a videophone in his office. The whole place was a shrine to hallowed tradition, an odd thing in itself for a man whose primary responsibility was a division called Emerging Markets.

Jack Notley, Shorn Associates’ ranking senior in Conflict Investment, could not have been less like McColl if he’d been on secondment from an inverted parallel universe. He was a stocky, powerful-looking man with close and not especially well-cropped black hair that was just beginning to show a seasoning of grey. His hands were ruddy and blunt fingered, his suit was a Susana Ingram original that had probably cost as much as the Saab’s whole original chassis, and the body it clothed looked fit for a boxing ring. His features were rough-hewn and there was a long jagged scar under his right eye. The eyes were keen and bright. Only the fine web of lines around them gave any indication of Notley’s forty-seven years. Chris thought he looked like a troll on holiday in Elfland as he moved across the light-filled pastel-shaded reception chamber.

His handshake, predictably, was a bonecrusher. ‘Chris. Great to have you aboard at last. Come on in. I’d like you to meet some people.’

Chris disentangled his fingers and followed the troll’s broad back across the room to where a lower central level housed a wide coffee table, a pair of right-angled sofas and a conspicuously unique meeting leader’s armchair. Seated at either end of one sofa were a man and a woman, both younger than Notley. Chris’s eyes focused automatically on the woman, a second before Notley spoke and gestured at her.

‘This is Louise Hewitt, divisional manager and executive partner. She’s the real brains behind what we’re doing here.’

Hewitt unfolded herself from the sofa and leaned across to take his hand. She was a good-looking, voluptuous woman in her late thirties, working hard at not showing it. Her suit looked Daisuke Todoroki -severe black, vented driver’s skirt to the knees and square-cut jacket. Her shoes had no appreciable heel. She wore long dark hair gathered back in a knot from pale features and minimal make-up. Her handshake wasn’t trying to prove anything.

‘And this is Philip Hamilton, junior partner for the division.’

Chris turned to face the deceptively soft-looking man at the other end of the sofa. Hamilton had a weak chin and a fat bulk that made him untidy, even in his own charcoal Ingram, but his pale blue eyes missed absolutely nothing. He stayed seated, but offered up a damp hand and a murmured greeting. There was, Chris thought, a guarded dislike in his voice.

‘Well now,’ said Notley, in jovial tones. ‘I’m not really much more than a figurehead around here so I’ll hand over to Louise for the moment. Let’s all take a seat and, would you like a drink?’

‘Green tea, if you’ve got it.’

‘Certainly. I think a pot would be in order. Jiang estate okay?’

Chris nodded, impressed. Notley walked up to the large desk near one of the windows and prodded a phone. Louise Hewitt seated herself with immaculate poise and looked across at Chris.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Faulkner,’ she said neutrally.

‘Great.’

Still neutral. ‘Not entirely, as it happens. There are one or two items I’d like to clear up, if you don’t mind.’

Chris spread his hands. ‘Go ahead. I work here now.’

‘Yes.’ The thin smile told him she hadn’t missed the counterblow. ‘Well, perhaps we could start with your vehicle. I understand you’ve turned down the company car. Do you have something against the house of BMW?’

‘Well, I think they have a tendency to overarmour. Apart from that, no. It was a very generous offer. But I have my own vehicle and I’d rather stick with what I know, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll feel more comfortable.’

‘Customised,’ said Hamilton, as if naming a psychological dysfunction.

‘What’s that?’ Notley was back, settling predictably into the armchair. ‘Ah, your wheels, Chris. Yes, I heard you’re married to the woman who put it together. That is right, isn’t it.’

‘That’s right.’ Chris took a flickered inventory of the expressions around him. In Notley he seemed to read an avuncular tolerance, in Hamilton distaste, and in Louise Hewitt nothing at all.

‘That must give you quite a bond,’ Notley mused, almost to himself.

‘Uh, yes. Yes, it does.’

‘I’d like to talk about the Bennett incident,’ said Louise Hewitt loudly.

Chris locked gazes with her for a beat, then sighed. ‘The details are pretty much as I filed them. You must have read about it at the time. Bennett was up for the same analyst’s post as me. Fight lasted to that raised section on the M40 inflow. I swiped her off the road on a bend and she stuck on the edge. Weight of the car would have pulled her over sooner or later; she was running a reconditioned Jag Mentor.’

Notley grunted, a used-to-run-one-myself sort of noise.

‘Anyway, I stopped and managed to pull her out. The car went over a couple of minutes later. She was semi-conscious when I got her to the hospital. I think she hit her head on the steering wheel.’

‘The hospital?’ Hamilton’s voice was politely disbelieving. ‘Excuse me. You took her to the hospital?’

Chris stared at him.

‘Yeah. I took her to the hospital. Is there a problem with that?’

‘Well,’ Hamilton laughed. ‘Let’s just say people around here might have seen it that way.’

‘What if Bennett had decided to have another crack at the post?’ asked Hewitt gravely, detached counterpoint to her junior partner’s hilarity. Chris thought it rang rehearsed. He shrugged.

‘What, with cracked ribs, a broken right arm and head injuries? The way I remember it, she was in no condition to do anything but some heavy breathing.’

‘But she did recover, right?’ Hamilton asked slyly. ‘She’s still working. Still in London.’

‘Back at Hammett McColl.’ Hewitt confirmed, still detached. The jab, Chris knew, was going to come from Hamilton’s corner.