‘Sounds fun,’ she smiled. ‘Looking forward to it.’
The audience broke into enthusiastic applause as the speaker brought his presentation to an end. Up on the low stage, Dr Adam O’Connor smiled from the podium, thanked them all for listening and started gathering up his notes. People rose from their seats and started filtering out towards the exit. Adam folded up his laptop, walked over to the projector and turned it off.
He was pleased with himself. The last fifteen minutes of the talk had been a Q and A session and, judging by the level of interest, he was pretty sure he’d get back home to find some new orders coming in. ‘The smart house is the home of the future’ had been his closing line. It looked as though his audience felt that way too.
As he wound up the cable from the laptop to the projector, Adam cast his mind back, thinking about the last eighteen months and how well things were going. His academic colleagues at City University NY had all thought he was crazy, giving up a plum academic position to go off and start up a new business from the ground up. Back to the old country, they’d joked. But Adam was serious about his Irish roots – virtually the first thing he’d done on hitting these shores was to change his surname from Connor and reinstate the missing ‘O’ that the English had forcibly removed from the names of his ancestors.
As for the business side, what he didn’t like to boast about to his former colleagues was that selling smart house technology installations was able to bring him in ten times his old academic salary, and rising fast every month. Not bad for a physics geek. He should have done this ages ago. Everything was better here – the air was cleaner, the countryside was lush and beautiful, the people were open and friendly. He felt he’d come home at last. The new environment in the Wicklow Hills was wonderful for his thirteen-year-old son, Rory, and the house itself was fantastic. Seven months of sweating over architect’s plans, but it had been worth it. Stunning lakeside view, a dozen large open-plan rooms, beautiful wood and acres of glass, incorporating many of his own patented designs.
For a fleeting moment he thought about Amy and wondered where she was now. Last seen heading off towards southern California on the pillion of a chopped Harley with her arms around some large, hairy guy in denim and leather. Never a thought for her kid, let alone her husband.
The last time they’d spoken was over a year ago. Seemed like a different life now. And Rory seldom asked about his mom any more.
The last of the delegates were filtering out of the entrance as Adam zipped up his bags, looked at his watch, picked up the copy of the
Just then, he heard a little cough behind him, and turned to see who was there. Stepping furtively out from behind one of the curtains that flanked the entrance was a figure he recognised. Someone he hadn’t heard from in quite a while.
‘Lenny,’ he said, surprised.
‘Hi, Adam,’ Lenny Salt muttered in a low voice. He walked up between the empty rows of seats, glancing nervously about him.
So nothing had changed, then, Adam thought. Still the same old Lenny, always acting as though the Men in Black were just one step behind him. Physically, he hadn’t changed much either. A little more stooped, maybe. A little greyer and, as he came closer, it seemed to Adam as though his teeth were fewer and blacker.
Adam put out his hand. The limp handshake was still the same, too.
‘What brings you here, Lenny?’ he said, smiling pleasantly, while wondering what the hell this was about. ‘Good presentation, man.’
‘You’re in the market for a smart house?’ Adam knew he wasn’t.
Salt shook his head. ‘No, man. We need to talk.’
Ten minutes later they were sitting over coffees in the hotel bar downstairs. Adam wanted to make this quick. Salt was a rambler, especially when he got started on his pet subjects – and if it was radical and wacky enough, he was up for it. UFOs one year, the fake moon landings the next. He’d hold you with his glittering eye, and, three hours later, you’d still be sitting there none the wiser and your smile beginning to freeze on your lips, wishing you were somewhere else or just had the courage to ask the silly old bastard to shut up.
Today, Lenny Salt looked especially spooked. Maybe he was just getting crazier with age, Adam thought.
‘What did you want to talk about, Lenny? I don’t have a lot of time.’ He slipped a hand in his pocket and restlessly fingered the key to his Saab. ‘My sister’s coming to stay for a few days, I have a new housekeeper arriving after lunch, and Rory’s on his own. Need to get back.’ He reached for his cup.
But Lenny Salt didn’t seem interested in Adam’s home life. He leaned forward.
‘Julia’s dead.’
Adam’s cup abruptly stopped halfway to his mouth.
‘You heard me.’
Salt nodded.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘She fell off a mountain in Spain. They found the body last week. She’d been down there a while. Very nasty.’
Adam put the cup down on its saucer with a rattle. Sank his head in his hands, his mind suddenly filled with images and memories. ‘This is awful. Poor Julia.’
‘It wasn’t an accident, man.’
Adam looked up sharply.
‘Nah. It was just made to look like one. Nobody had heard from her in three months. She apparently just went off on her own. Doesn’t that sound a bit strange to you?’
‘She was into hiking in a big way.’
Salt raised an eyebrow.
‘Come on, Lenny. This is nuts. Isn’t it awful enough that she’s dead, without making up crazy—’
‘I know what you think about me. But this isn’t crazy.’
Adam felt a flush of anger in his cheeks. ‘Then tell me how you know there’s something strange about it. What makes you so sure?’
‘Because there’s more to it that I haven’t told you,’ Salt said. ‘If you’d let me finish.’
‘Then what?’
‘Michio’s gone too.’
‘Michio often goes off places without warning,’ O’Connor said testily. ‘His research takes him to every desolate corner of the planet. He’s probably wandering about on a glacier somewhere as we speak, collecting ice samples.’
Salt shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. He’s dead as well.’
Adam stared at him.
‘Died of a scorpion sting out in Arizona. Forgot to pack his anti-venom, apparently. Oh, and his heart pills too. Very convenient.’
Adam took a few seconds to digest all this, staring into his coffee. He couldn’t drink any more.
‘How come you know so much, Lenny? How come I haven’t heard anything?’
‘I’m not the one who cut himself away,’ Salt replied. ‘I didn’t turn my back on my friends, man. I stayed in
