Chase took another sip of lime cordial and watched as Backdoor Harry, with a smile as wide as the mouth of a urinal, took his bishop with a knight. “Check,” said the perpetually teenage programmer. “Mate in three, I think you’ll find.”
“You’re right, of course.” Chase pulled out his wallet. “Double again?”
“Are you sure? That’s three in a row I’ve won.” Harry stuffed the forty in his pocket. “Not that I’m complaining, mind. Forty quid is forty quid.”
“I know it is.” Chase began setting up the pieces. “Money I can ill afford to lose, let me tell you.”
Harry took a pull of his cigar. “I’ve told you before, my man. Never gamble with money you can’t afford to lose. Having the attitude makes you eight percent more likely to go home without a burger.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Chase looked enviously at the packet of cigars. “You have the money to lose.” He moved the first pawn in a classic French Defence.
“I worked hard for it,” said Harry, moving his King’s knight to attach the pawn. “You don’t get as rich as I am without working hard for every penny.”
“What about the chap in the bookshop?” asked Chase. “He doesn’t work very hard and yet he spends more money on toiletries than the King does on household wages.”
“Ah.” Harry looked shifty. “I wouldn’t know about him. He’s got more security on his systems than the Pentagon.”
“How do you know that?” Chase defended his pawn. “Have you tried to get in?”
“I don’t have to.” Harry moved a pawn into attack. “I know it’s good because I sold him the system.”
“I see.” Chase replied with a bishop. “Any ideas on how I can come up with a ton of cash quickly? I can pay it back eventually. I just need some starting capital.”
“Maybe.” Harry moved his queen. “I could design you a viral marketing plan if you had something you could sell on the net.”
“How about a pig?” Chase thought of the sanctuary and the bane of his life that lived there. “Can you viralise Kermit the Pig’s future?”
“No. It has to be something you can upload. Something digital you can copy and sell again and again.”
“There’s my book,” he said. “It’s not quite finished but I could sell that as an e-book.”
“What’s it about?” Harry looked dubious. “Checkmate again, by the way. That’s another eighty quid you owe me.”
“Here. That’s the last of my money.” Chase handed over his cash. “It’s about the challenges I faced in the field of genetic research and what happens when you gene splice cattle from two different continents in order to raise a cow that has triple the milk yield for almost half the consumption of grain.”
Harry still looked doubtful. “Any sex in it?”
“Not unless you count test tubes and microscopes.”
“No, that won’t do at all. We need something we can market that everyone will want to see.” Harry put a hand up to forestall Chase’s next suggestion. “Something legal in both England and the US of A.”
Chase shook his head. “I can’t think of anything,” he said.
“Let me know if you do.” Harry packed up the chess set and nodded toward the door. “You can see yourself out, can’t you? I’d open the door myself but I don’t want to be seen with a loser.”
“Yeah, I love you too.” Chase stood and made his way to the door.
It was already one o’clock in the morning and the woman at the counter sounded tired, as she took his order for a double King-burger and chips to go.
He trotted through the parking lot, checking for messages from television producers and journalists about his idea of using creatures to get the message about saving energy across. Cottonworks had a display of televisions in the window and Chase paused to watch an advertisement involving a family of cows turning off lights to save energy. “Pathetic,” he said.
He looked around to ensure there was nobody near and took out his notebook. “Real animals,” he said, making notes and sketches. “A cow in a field and a family going out for the evening. Little Johnny leaves a light on and gets into the car. Meanwhile, in a sunny field somewhere, a cow starts to bleed from a cut. The car drives on and the cut gets worse. The cow staggers, and as the cow is about to die, we cut to a timer unit and the light clicks off. The cow heals up again.”
“That’s the stupidest idea for an advert I’ve heard in a long time.”
Chase looked up. Leaning over the pedestrian bridge was a dark -skinned woman. “Were you talking to me?” he said.
“There’s no-one else here.” She climbed onto the handrail. Chase gasped as she dropped the twenty feet to the tiled area below, certain she was leaping to her death but she absorbed the shock, ending in a crouch with one hand out for support. Chase was put in mind of a television vampire. She stepped up to him, a half-smile on her face and a leather coat swishing at her heels. “I’ve heard better pitches from children, and they have the cute advantage.”
“Who are you?” Chase held his notebook defensively against his chest. “Are you a TV producer?”
“Not exactly.” The woman put an arm around Chase’s shoulder. “I’m more of a solutions finder. I understand you’re having a bit of a cash flow problem.” She began to walk.
“That’s right.” Chase stumbled and fell into pace with her. “How did you know that?”
“I know people who know people.” She lowered her voice. “I could make you a lot of money,” she said, “if you were willing to bend a rule or two.”
Chase looked around. As far as he could tell, they were the only two people in the whole pedestrian precinct. “Go on,” he said. “You’ve piqued my interest.”
“The woman you were with earlier today, how well do you know her?”
“Pennie?” Chase looked puzzled. “I’ve known her a while, why?”
“We have a vested interest in her.” The woman lowered her voice even further, forcing Chase to concentrate to hear her. “She was married to one of our agents and now he’s disappeared.”
“Steven?” Chase crouched down, the better to catch her voice. “What about him? They’ve been divorced some time as I recall.”
“But still friends. Steven had infiltrated Magelight and was on the verge of passing us the secrets of their new line of robots. I got a message to say he’d smuggled out some papers but not where he’d stashed them. We’ve searched his house with no luck and now hers.”
“Hang on a minute.” Chase stood up. “It was you what wrecked her flat? You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Shh!” The woman looked annoyed. “Don’t spread it around. I have reason to believe she has the papers. Steven would have passed them on by now but for his disappearance. I suspect foul play.”
“Thought as much myself,” said Chase. “I didn’t want to upset her. Who do you think topped him?”
“Magelight, naturally.” The woman pulled on his arm. “They probably discovered he was working for us.”
“Who’s ‘us’ exactly?” said Chase. “How do I know I can trust you? Especially after you turned over my fiancée’s flat.”
“You don’t really have any choice, do you?” The woman gave him a smile so fleeting that he was uncertain if her mouth had even moved. “At least we don’t kill people. Not often, anyway.”
“So all you want is these papers?”
“That’s right. Then we’ll know what Magelight are up to and if they pose a threat to our global position.” She gave a snort at Chase’s expression. “Of the robotics market.”
“Oh.” Chase grinned in relief. “How much are they worth, then, these papers?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Why?”
“I’ve seen them,” he said. “I know where they’re kept.”
Her demeanour changed. “Look,” she said. “If you can get hold of those papers for me, I’ll see that you get the finder’s fee all to yourself.”
“That sounds promising.” Chase grinned. “How much are we talking?”
“Five hundred?”
“Five thousand.”
She snorted. “Don’t be daft. Six hundred.”
“Now who’s being daft? Two grand.”
“One. Take it or leave it.” She stood and made to leave.
“All right. A grand. In cash.” Chase held out his hand and she took it.
“Nice to do business with you, Mister Spencer,” she said. “Here’s my card. Ring me when you have the papers.” She took out a purse and handed him a business card. He squinted at it in the dim light from the streetlamp.
“Rebecca Weston,” he said. “Mensign. Is that your company?”
“It’s the company I work for,” she said, “though you won’t find it mentioned in Companies House or Top Secret Government funding. You know the sort of thing.”
“I do.” Chase pocketed the card, anxious to terminate the meeting. When Rebecca had taken out the business cards, Chase had spotted the gun. This was England. People didn’t have guns in England. “Right,” he said. “I’ll give you a ring when I’ve got the goods.”
“Make sure you do.”
Chase watched as Rebecca Weston, if that was her real name, vanished into the sodium vapour fog.
He set off the other way, the splintered ghost of a tune eking out from between his lips. His eyes were momentarily drawn to a huge, muscled woman wearing little other than black leather and a smile but although her eyes flicked toward him, she was more interested in the music on her i-pod and her male companion than Chase. He speeded up, eager now to get out of the precinct.
Felicia watched his retreating figure. That was Pennie’s shagpiece, she was sure of it. She recognized his scent from her flat. What was he doing talking to another woman in the dead of night? She gave Winston a nudge and nodded toward the hurrying man.