do you think you’re doing?” Del Tilley demanded.
“I’m trying to find Patrick O’Neill’s laptop,” Shoe said, peering over Tilley’s head into his office. It was dark and windowless, the only illumination supplied by a small halogen desk lamp that cast a bright circle of light in the middle of the desk.
Tilley stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. “Well, I don’t have it,” he said. He moved away from the door so he could stand farther from Shoe.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t. Now go bother someone else. And don’t fool with the lock to my office again.”
Shielding the lock with his body, Tilley entered the code that unlocked the door, opened it partway, and slipped into his office, leaving Shoe standing in the hall. Shoe stood there for a few seconds, staring at the closed door, then went looking for Charles Merigold.
With a hiss, Del Tilley slammed the lid of the laptop shut. “Shit, shit, shit!” he swore. He’d tried everything he could think of, from O’Neill’s birthdate to Victoria’s name spelled backwards to O’Neill’s mother’s maiden name, but still the computer refused to start up. What, he wondered, was so important anyway that O’Neill needed a boot password to prevent anyone else from starting up his computer?
He lifted the lid, fearing that he may have damaged the fragile liquid crystal display, but it seemed all right. Gently, he closed the computer and put it in a drawer of his desk. Although there probably wasn’t anything of vital importance on the hard drive, he knew a hacker who, if he couldn’t crack the password, could dump the contents of the hard drive to a data file.
His telephone rang. He looked at the call display before answering. It was an outside call on his direct line, but no number was displayed.
“It’s me,” a voice said when he picked up the phone. A woman’s voice, but not a feminine one.
“You got my message?” Tilley said.
“No,” the woman replied. “I’m psychic.” She sighed heavily, breath hissing in the earpiece of Tilley’s phone. “Of course I got your message. What do you want?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Tilley said.
“Very funny,” the woman said. “But feel free to waste my time. It’s your nickel.”
“That’s right. You would be wise to remember that.”
The woman sighed. “Tell you what, bud. Next time you want something, call someone else. I got no patience for amateurs.”
Tilley’s knuckles cracked on the handset. He forced himself to relax. If this woman needed to think of him as an amateur, that was fine with him. It afforded him an additional layer of protection should she ever be turned.
“My situation has changed,” he said. “I won’t be needing that last shipment after all. I’m sending it back.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman said. “It still goes on your bill. Which, I might add, is overdue.”
“You’ll get your money,” Tilley said. “But I’m not going to pay for equipment I don’t use.”
“This ain’t Sears, bud. All sales are final. Once you take delivery, the equipment is yours. It don’t matter to me whether you use it or not. All I care about is getting paid.”
“I told you,” Tilley said. “You’ll get your money. Something’s come up, though. I’ve had to adjust my timetable, move things up. You’ll have to give me a little more time.”
“How much more time?”
“I don’t know. Not long.”
The woman sighed. “Listen, bud,” she said, “we all got problems, but if I don’t get my money soon, one of the problems you’re gonna have is me. And, trust me, you don’t want that.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat,” the woman said.
Tilley’s teeth ground. “All right. You’ll have your money by the end of next week. Now, what about that other matter?”
“Yeah, about that,” the woman said, the brusqueness gone from her voice. “The little dyke may have made me.”
“What do you mean, made you?” Tilley snapped.
“Yeah, well, it happens.”
“You’re supposed to be a professional.”
“Up yours, donkey kong. It was you that wanted me to get close enough to pick up their conversation on the tape. Aw, fuck it. I’ve had it with this amateur-night shit. You want the tapes, pay me what you owe me. All of it. In cash. Today.”
With an effort, Tilley controlled himself. “I can’t get my hands on that much cash today,” he said, his voice grinding in his throat.
“Tough titty,” the woman said.
“Can you give me till Monday?” Tilley said, despising himself for pleading with this woman. It would clean out his bank account and max out both his personal and company credit cards, but he could probably manage it.
“Fine. You got till Monday. But if you’re not here by twelve hundred with the cash, the tapes go into the bulk eraser.” The line went dead.
Stifling a howl of rage, Tilley slammed the handset down. Something snapped off and flew across the office, ricocheting off a cabinet. The handset hung on the base unit in two pieces, joined by thin coloured wires. Tilley swept the ruined device to the floor. The dial tone taunted him. A quick slash of his boot heel shattered the base unit but failed to silence the tone. He wrapped the cable once around his fist, ripped the jack from the outlet under the desk, and threw the mangled telephone into the wastebasket.
Victoria was awakened by the sound of the telephone ringing, but when she picked it up, all she heard was a dial tone. Had it been part of the dream? she wondered. She looked at the clock beside the bed, the numerals glowing bloody in the darkened bedroom. Jesus, she’d slept most of the afternoon away. And yet she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all.
This was no good, she thought. As much as she might want to, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in bed. She might as well just kill herself and get it over with, but she knew she no longer had the strength, the courage, or the will. Christ, what a bloody awful mess she’d made of her life. The British had an expression: cock-up. That certainly summed up her life. Cock-up.
She got out of bed and went downstairs. The house was dark and quiet. She turned on some lights and the kitchen radio. It was tuned to Consuela’s “oldies” station, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing “Ebony and Ivory,” insipid and obvious. She turned it off. She was hungry but didn’t feel like eating. A nagging urge somewhere inside her called out to her to have a glass of wine, but she ignored it and made a cup of herbal tea instead.
The dream had left her depressed and physically drained, although she couldn’t remember any of it. She opened the sliding glass doors onto the broad kitchen patio where on summer mornings she and Patrick would sometimes eat breakfast together. Today the stones were slick with rain and the rooftops lower down the mountain were shrouded in impenetrable grey mist. She stood in the doorway, breathing the cool, wet air. A pressure between her shoulder blades propelled her forward, out onto the wet stones of the patio, where the rain beaded in her hair and soaked through her blouse. She was aware of the cold, but it was soft and soothing against her skin.
She closed her eyes and saw herself standing naked in the rain in an unkempt garden. It was night, and the pale, diffused light shining through the misted glass walls of the small conservatory off his kitchen cast grotesque, desultory shadows before her.
“For god’s sake,” he said. “Someone will see.”
She