Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham
under the Schoolroom and all around it, till it was swaddled like a baby on New Year’s Eve, peering up at them like a giant white eye.
‘D’you want to feed it?’ he asked. ‘Get it some treats for the journey?’
Kati looked at him, her face still clear and pretty after an exhausting night. ‘Don’t joke,’ she said. ‘The Schoolroom is your future now. You’d better take care of it.’
The comment shot home like a crossbow bolt. The Schoolroom is your future now … Was he really going to throw in one of the most lucrative careers open to a human being, in favour of … what? Some twenty-something scientist who did good things for rats, whom he’d met properly little more than twelve hours before, who’d had her paper rejected by a top American medical journal, who’d been accused of cheating and was unable to clear her name?
‘I must be mad,’ he said, settling the blankets more closely round the big white dome. ‘Mad as they come.’
6
There remained one last ritual of departure.
Bryn woke the sleeping Cameron, and let her blink and stretch her way into wakefulness.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘If I’m not still dreaming, I’m in trouble.’
‘Good morning,’ said Kati, stroking her hair clear of her eyes.
‘What’s good about it?’ said Cameron, shaking it back again. ‘I am still dreaming, right?’
Kati ruefully shook her head.
‘Delirious? Suffering from a rare idiopathic brain disorder?’
Kati shook her head.
‘Maybe to all of those,’ said Bryn, ‘but we still need to get out of here.’
Cameron stared at him: the ultimate proof of the weird turn her life was taking. She stretched some more, allowing the kinks and pressure points down her spine to give a full report on their night’s entertainment. ‘God, could you guys really find nothing more comfortable than chipboard?’
Bryn gave her a sheet of paper and a pen. ‘You need to write a message,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s going to wonder why you’ve just upped and gone. You need to give them a reason.’
‘Reason? Well, hell, that’s easy. Dear Everyone, I cheated and now I’ve gone to hide. Or how about, Dear Everyone, this English guy I hardly know thinks that everyone’s out to get me and it turns out that paranoia is infectious.’
‘Welsh,’ said Bryn. ‘I’m Welsh. Say anything except the truth.’
Cameron ignored him and wrote fast, holding the paper so only she could see it. Once done, she folded it, addressed it, and left it in plain view for anyone to find. Despite her self-control, her hand trembled slightly and her ears burned at the shame of finding herself in this situation. Bryn didn’t ask to read the note, Kati gave her boss a supportive squeeze, and the three of them marched to the loaded truck.
Bryn put the key into the ignition, but before switching on, he made a speech.
‘From now on,’ he said, ‘secrecy. Our first and only rule. Other companies have assets. They have mines, or power plants, or aeroplanes, or shops, or miles of phone cable, or factories, or warehouses. We have none of that, just knowledge, the information that’s in this truck, and the genius that’s in your heads. We need to take care of it.’
‘Better get another driver, then,’ said Cameron.
‘Buckle up,’ said Bryn, doing as he advised and checking the empty road in his wing mirror. ‘Corinth went to considerable trouble to ruin you – trouble and expense. They’ll be watching carefully now, to see which way you jump.’
‘And?’ said Cameron. ‘Which way are we jumping?’
Bryn grinned at her, turning the key in the ignition until the big truck vibrated with the desire to leave. ‘You’re not just jumping,’ he said. ‘You’re going to disappear.’
1
The Arctic Circle was having a good month for the export trade. Not content with dumping a shedload of snow on Boston, it had delivered a country-sized blanket overnight express to the British Isles, with further deliveries already in transit. At London Heathrow, nervous air traffic controllers watched their disappearing runways and reached for the panic buttons.
Somewhere off the west coast of Ireland, Bryn’s jet nudged its course northwards by a few degrees and a not-very-apologetic pilot informed the passengers that their new destination would be Birmingham, not Heathrow. A ripple of conversation flowed through the economy seats at the back of the plane, but up in business, where Bryn sat, there was barely a flutter of interest as the travel-hardened veterans of the air revised their plans and helped themselves to sausage and egg.
At Birmingham International, Bryn hired a car and pointed it not south-east down the M40, but southwards down the M5. Six weeks since Cecily’s departure, he still hadn’t admitted the fact to his parents, and the time had now come.
As he drove into Wales, climbing out of the Wye valley into the Brecon Beacons, the snow on either side of the road thickened to a mantle six inches, sometimes a foot deep. For all his initial swerve in the truck in Boston, Bryn was well used to driving through snow, and he negotiated the ascending lanes skilfully, coming to rest at a farm on the top of the road, the last farmland before the open hills. He honked his horn, a clear note in the crystal air.
Hearing the sound, his mother came anxiously to the door of the slate-roofed farmhouse. She looked at the unknown car with suspicion, before lightening into a flurry of smiles and greetings as Bryn swung his bag out of the boot. Welcoming him, scolding him, offering food by the bucket-load, she bundled him indoors.
‘If only you’d told me, I’d have got something ready. As it is, there’s nothing except a couple of pasties and last night’s shepherd’s pie and a bit of beef left over from the weekend and I could warm up –’
‘Mum, please. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, and I had breakfast on the plane.’
‘On a plane again? There was a crash last week. In Delhi, was it? I wish –’
‘Not last week, the week before. And it wasn’t a crash, it was a near-miss. And as you say, it was in Delhi.’
‘So not Delhi, then?’
‘No, Mum – coffee, please, yes, but no beef, honestly – I was in America. Boston.’ Gwyneth Hughes’ expression puckered in a look of renewed concern, as America was, to her, a land awash with gangsters, guns and drive-by shootings; the only place on earth more dangerous than London. ‘And yes, I was careful. And yes, I did get Dad some Jelly Beans.’
Her next two questions having been taken care of, her frown smoothed away, although a hint of caution remained in the eyebrows as though reserving the right to be worried at any time. ‘And Cecily?’ she asked. ‘How is she? No news, I suppose?’
The question meant, ‘Have you got her pregnant yet?’ As the daughter of one sheep farmer and wife of another, Gwyneth had always known that fertility is the first and most important property of the female.
‘No, nothing like that, anyway.’ Bryn breathed out in a long sigh. His mother’s anxiety to be hospitable had released itself in his coffee. Six spoonfuls of coffee granules, a splash of water, and milk so thick it was virtually cream. He sipped it, knowing that he had to finish, even though he had a passion for real coffee, carefully blended, properly made. ‘Cecily and I have decided to separate. She’s gone her own way. We’ll get a divorce through in time.’