The block where O’Hagen rented office space for Firedrake was eight stories high, its exterior white marble and copper glass. Satellite uplink antennae squatted on the roof inside their weather domes; an indicator of just how much data traffic the building handled. Richard pulled up in the visitors’ car park, then took the lift to the sixth floor.

Firedrake had one employee. Apparently she did everything in the office: personal assistant, receptionist, site maintenance, made tea and coffee, handled communications. Like O’Hagen, she wasn’t what Richard was expecting, but for very different reasons. She was small, though he quickly redefined that as compact. He didn’t think she’d take very kindly to people who called her small. Every look was menacing, as if she were eyeing him up for a fight…a physical one. Her dress had short sleeves, showing arms scuffed with what looked like knife scars, and a tattoo: closed fist gripping a thorn cross, blood dripping.

After he’d given his name she reluctantly pressed her intercom button. “Mr. Townsend to see you,” she growled.

“Thank you, Suzi,” O’Hagen answered. “Send him in, please.”

Her thumb jabbed at a door. “In there.”

Richard went past her and found himself in Alan O’Hagen’s office. “That’s some secretary you’ve got there.”

“She’s cheap,” O’Hagen replied with a grin. “She’s also surprisingly efficient. And I don’t get too many unwanted visitors barging in.”

“I can imagine,” Richard muttered.

O’Hagen indicated a woman who was standing at the side of his desk. “My accountant, Mrs. Jane Adams.”

She gave Richard a curt nod. Her appearance was comfortable after the girl outside; she was in her late forties, dressed in a business suit, with white hair tidied in a neat short style.

“I understand you intend to invest in Firedrake,” she said.

“That’s what I’m here to decide.”

“Very well.” She gave O’Hagen a disapproving look. “I’m not sure I should be endorsing this kind of action.”

“Jane, neither of us is getting any younger. If Firedrake works out the way we expect we’ll have a decent nest-egg to sell to some kombinate or media prince. Hell, even Richard here might buy me out.”

“Let’s take it one step at a time, shall we,” Richard said. “If I could see the accounts.”

With one last reluctant look at O’Hagen, Mrs. Adams handed Richard a pair of memox crystals.

“They’re completely up to date,” she said.

He put the first crystal into the slot on his cybofax and began scrolling down the columns of figures.

O’Hagen had been optimistic rather than honest when he said the company’s turnover was 70,000. This year was barely over sixty, and the year before scraped in at fifty. But it was an upward trend.

“I’ve already identified several new software products I’d like Firedrake to promote,” O’Hagen was saying. “I should be able to sign exclusivity rights for the English market on the back of this expansion project.”

“May I see the painting, please?” Richard asked.

“Sure.” O’Hagen picked up a slim kelpboard-wrapped package from behind his desk. Richard had been expecting something larger. This was barely forty centimeters high, thirty wide. He slipped the thin kelpboard from the front. “What is it?” he asked. The painting was mostly sky sliced by a line of white cloud, with the mound of a hill rising out of the lower right corner. Hanging in the air like some bizarre obsidian dagger was an alien spaceship, or possibly an airborne neolithic monument.

“View of a Hill and Clouds,”O’Hagen said contentedly. “Remarkable, isn’t it? It’s from McCarthy’s earlier phase, before he moved from oils to refractive sculpting.”

“I see.” Richard pulled the kelpboard wrapping back on. “I’d like to get it valued.”

“Of course.” O’Hagen smiled.

Richard took the painting to the So the by’s office in Stamford on his way back from Thistlemore Wood.

The assistant was appreciative when Richard told her he wanted it valued for his house-insurance policy.

She took her time, checking its authenticity before giving him an estimate. Eighteen thousand New Sterling. Once again Mr. Alan O’Hagen was being financially optimistic. But all things considered, it wasn’t a bad price for endorsing the Zone 35 development.

“I think we have an agreement,” he told O’Hagen over the phone the next day.

There was a chuckle from the earpiece. “I thought you’d be able to appreciate a good deal. I’ll get the paperwork over to you right away.”

“Very well. I’ll notify the precinct’s banking consortium that I have another client.”

Suzi turned up mid-afternoon carrying a small leather satchel. She opened it to produce a thin folder.

There were two partnership agreement contracts to sign, both dated two years previously; even his signature counter-witness was filled in and dated. Mrs. Adams, he noted.

“It says here my partner in Firedrake is Newton Holdings,” Richard said.

“Yeah. So?”

“I thought it was held by Mr. O’Hagen.”

“Newton belongs to him; it does his imports. You want to call him?”

He couldn’t meet her impatient antagonistic stare. “No.” He signed the partnership contracts.

“Mr. O’Hagen said to say you can owe him the pound for the share,” Suzi said. She gathered up one copy of the contract and handed him a share certificate with his name on it: again dated two years ago.

“Tell him that’s very generous of him.”

She scowled and marched out of the office. Richard glanced over the certificate again, then locked it and the partnership agreement in the wall safe.

Richard was having breakfast the next morning when the police arrived, hammering so hard on the door he thought they were trying to smash it down. He opened the door wearing just his dressing gown, blinking…partly from confusion at the team of eight armed uniformed officers standing on his front lawn, and partly at the bright morning sunlight.

The person knocking aggressively on his paintwork identified herself as Detective Amanda Patterson, holding her police card out for him to verify.

He didn’t bother to show it to his cybofax. “I don’t doubt who you are,” he murmured. Three cars were parked on the street outside, their blue lights flashing insistently. Neighbors were pressed up against windows watching the drama. A Globecast camera crew lurked at the end of the drive, pointing their fat black lenses at him.

“Richard Townsend?” the detective demanded.

He put on a smile as polite as circumstances would allow. “Guilty of that, at least.”

“Would you please accompany me to the station, sir. I have some questions for you.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I will arrest you.”

“For what, exactly?”

“Your suspected involvement in the murder of Byrne Tyler.”

Richard stared at her in astonishment, then managed to gather some dignity. “I hate to ask you this in such a public arena.” He indicated the camera crew. “But are you quite sure you have the right house?”

“Oh yes, sir. I have the right house. It’s yours.”

“Very well. May I at least get dressed first?”

“Yes, sir. One of my male colleagues will accompany you.”

He gave a grunt of surprise as he realized just how serious she was. “I think I’d like my one phone call now as well.”

“That’s America’s Miranda rights, sir. But you’re certainly free to call a solicitor if you think you require one.”

“I don’t require one to establish my innocence,” Richard snapped. “I simply wish to sue you into your grave. You have no idea how much trouble this mistake will bring down on your head.”

Richard suspected the layout of the interview room at Oakham police station was deliberately designed to depress its occupants. Straight psychological assault on the subconscious. Drab light-brown walls shimmered harshly under the glare from the two biolum panels in the ceiling. The gray-steel desk in front of him vibrated softly, a cranky harmonic instigated by the buzzing air-conditioning grille.

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