Colin pulled a face. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“She never said that,” Tim assured him.
“And she’s certainly got bigger tits than Vanessa,” Martin said.
“Will you pack that in!” Colin said. “I don’t just go for their tits.”
“’Course not. There’s legs to consider as well.”
“Fuck off. Hey Tim, have they told you when your dad’s out yet?”
“Oh my,” Simon called out. “Did someone change the subject? It was all done so smoothly I can’t tell.”
“Four days,” Tim said. Lucy Duke had told them last night. It was the first time he’d spoken to her for more than thirty seconds, but he was desperate for every detail. The prospect of his father’s return left him elated and apprehensive at the same time. “We’ve got to take the Eurostar train over to Brussels on Tuesday. There’s going to be a big press briefing. The prime minister and the president will be there and everything.”
“Bloody hell,” Martin exclaimed. “You’re going to meet them?”
“Suppose so.”
“Well, make sure you tell them what we all think of them.”
7. AUNTIE
TIM HAD BEEN GIVEN the Honda e-trike for his sixteenth birthday. It was powered by a three-cell regenerator module, which gave it a top speed of eighty kilometers per hour; on a full tank of recombined electrolyte its range was six hundred fifty kilometers. The manor’s garage, with its solar panel roof and domestic regenerator module buried under the concrete floor, was capable of supplying enough electricity to keep three big cars running all year round. An e-trike barely registered on the supply monitor. Not that Tim used it much during the winter months: Riding in the icy insistent rain was difficult and dangerous. Now that April was here, ending the succession of miserable damp days that comprised England’s new wintertime, he was taking it out again.
It took him barely ten minutes to ride over to Manton on Sunday morning, and that was using the shabby D- class roads linking the villages around the vast reservoir, the Europol team following a constant hundred meters behind in their Ranger. Manton was perched on the brow of the slope above Rutland Water’s eastern shore. What once had been a small village had been bolstered over the last four decades by a sprawl of extensive houses that all looked out over the water. They were primarily retirement estates, closed and protected from the rest of the world by a solid foundation of wealth, providing for every domestic and health requirement.
Tim’s aunt Alison lived there. She’d bought a two-bedroom bungalow, one of the smallest homes on the estate, but with the best view across to the reservoir’s peninsula. Tim braked the e-trike beside the wide gates that guarded the entrance to the estate and flashed his identity smartcard at the sensor post. They swung open slowly, and he drove in past the sign warning that Livewire Security guarded the estate with an armed response team. The Ranger slid in behind him.
Every house along the avenue had an immaculate garden, as if that was a clause of occupancy. This season’s daffodils and tulips were in full flower, carpeting the borders between perfectly geometrical GM conifers that came in an astonishing variety of colors. Jet-black, hemispherical mower robots grazed slowly on the lawns, the only source of activity while the residents sat around on their patios, warding off the sunlight with big canvas parasols. They were all over fifty, their skin and hair belonging to people twenty years younger. It was their movements, methodical and considered, that gave away their age. That and what Tim regarded as a truly awful dress sense— circa nineteen fifties golfers—which seemed to afflict the whole community.
There was a small burgundy-red BMW 23 series parked on Aunt Alison’s drive. Tim pulled up behind it and locked the e-trike. He had his helmet under his arm as he rang the doorbell.
“Tim!” his aunt exclaimed as she swung the door back. Her eyes narrowed as she saw the Europol team in their Ranger. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Oh.” A palm slapped theatrically against her forehead. “You did. Didn’t you? Come in, darling. Sorry about the mess. Do the police have to come in with you?”
“No,” Tim said firmly.
Aunt Alison was his father’s sister, ten years younger and, as far as Tim was concerned, a lot more lively. She had the huskiest voice he’d ever heard; a gin-and-forty-cigarettes-a-day voice, his mother called it. Her whole easygoing attitude, her casual old-fashioned dress sense (though infinitely superior to that of her neighbors), and complete lack of domesticity made it plain to Tim that she’d had one hell of a good time when she was younger— and not so young, as well. He really liked Aunt Alison; they’d always got on well together, mainly because she always seemed to treat him like an equal. The one time he’d run out of the manor, age thirteen and after a particularly bad fight with his mother, this was where he instinctively headed.
“Are we going out for lunch?” Alison asked as she led him through the chaos that was her living room. Every wall was covered in big stainless-steel poster frames, holding blowups of the fantasy books she used to write. Nubile women in brass bikinis—or less—clung to bronzed, muscle-bound men as they fought off wyrms and goblin hordes with magic glowing swords; gloomy forests and dark castles tended to feature heavily in the background. The scenes had always inspired Tim when he was younger. He’d even loyally read a couple of Alison’s books, though he preferred straight science fiction himself.
“No. I was just coming to see you about dad and next Tuesday.”
“Oh right.” Alison went out onto the patio. “You remember Graham, don’t you, Tim?”
“Sure.”
Graham Joyce was sitting in one of the sunloungers. He leaned forward and gave Tim a firm handshake. “Tim, greetings and salutations.” For a man in his eighties he retained a remarkably vigorous air, possessing a gaunt face that genoprotein treatments had never quite managed to soften and a shock of unruly snow-white hair. His voice was like a forceful foghorn.
Tim smiled. “Hiya.” The old novelist was one of his favorite adults, even more disreputable than Alison, if such a thing were possible. Graham had won the last Booker Prize, back in 2012, as the publishing houses collapsed in tandem with the copyright laws. That didn’t make him as famous as Jeff Baker; these days novelists belonged to the same chunk of history as Hollywood and rock and roll, but Tim had plenty of respect for Graham. It was more than just the elder statesman thing; he always spoke with such passion that it was impossible to doubt what he said.
“What are you two cooking up?” Tim asked.
“Murder! Revolution! Martyrdom!” Graham chuckled, a sound like an aggressive avalanche. “Going to join us?”
“I’ll give it a miss, thanks. I’m seeing my girlfriend later.”
“How is Zai?” Alison asked.
Tim winced. “Annabelle.”
“God, you’re as bad as your father,” Alison said. She settled back into her own sunlounger and picked up a tall glass of gin and tonic. “I remember what he was like back in the seventies and eighties. Not that the nineties were much better. I had to be very careful about introducing him to my girlfriends. He tried to get most of them into bed.”
Tim was fascinated by this sudden revelation of parental behavior. “Really?”
“Pay no heed, Tim,” Graham commanded. “Alison’s so-called history is all feminist revisionism. Your father was a fine bloke. I’ll overlook the fact he annihilated my world and cast all us delicate sensitive artistic types into eternal purgatory. So who is Annabelle?”
“She’s a friend. Lives over in Uppingham. I really like her.”
“Good for you. Is she pretty?”
“So much!” Tim looked around the patio. The wisteria creepers that twined round the awning poles were in full flower. Alison’s garden was shaggier than those of her neighbors, but it was just as attractive. And the view across the water as the sun shone on the ripples was fabulous. “Do you really think you’re in purgatory?”
“Come on, you know we were the lucky ones, Tim,” Alison said. “The only reason I can afford to live in this dreadful ghetto is because I made a mint writing…what do you call it? Pre10. Yes, pre10 console games.”
“Right.” Tim produced a mildly awkward grin. He’d grown up with every byte in the datasphere being free.
