CHAPTER 16

JANUARY




         Steve's mouth was moving but the words were torn away by the wind. Allan put a gloved hand behind his ear to show that he hadn't heard and Steve leaned nearer.
         ‘Have you any idea what the Andes are like?’
         ‘Where I'll be?’
         ‘Aye.’
         ‘Not like this! Dry. Near the Attacama Desert.’
         The ridge was shredding the mist like a comb. A strong wind was blowing from left to right and the mist was being formed by the ridge itself, flowing out to the right in long ragged streamers, pouring through the snow-filled gaps between the red finger-points of crag and then swirling under to fill the corrie with grey billows, obscuring everything. The left side of the ridge was in bright sunlight. With its snow cover, it was almost too bright to look at.
         The draw-cord on Allan's anorak hood was broken so he kept it in place, denying the wind its pleasure, by wearing his balaclava outside his hood.
         Steve raised a mittened hand measuring a height.
         ‘How high?’
         ‘Higher than the Alps.’
         They had tried with the rope but the wind pulled it out to the right in a horizontal catenary between them adding to the wind-drag. The going was not so hard that they really needed it. Steve touched him on the arm.
         ‘You passed your driving test then. Where d'ye get the bus?’
         They were creeping sideways along crest from pinnacle to pinnacle keeping three point contact. On a windless day they would have scrambled over the spikes but with gusts threatening to lift them off their feet they avoided most of the 'gendarme' on the sunny side.
         ‘D'ye not recognise it? It belongs to Cyril McAllister.’ When Steve wrinkled his nose he added ‘ACME School of Motoring.’
         ‘You didn't buy it!’
         Allan shook his head. ‘Naw. Hired it!’
         Steve beamed ‘Did he give you a receipt?’ and his smiled broadened further when Allan shook his head.
         Beyond the pinnacles the ridge rose to a minor summit. The snow slope was brittle bubbly stuff that gave way easily. The scree below was encased in clear ice.
         ‘Not nice!’
         Allan nodded. At the summit they found a sheltered nook behind rocks. The wind shrieked overhead.
         Steve said ‘It had nothing to do with you.’ He was digging into his rucksack. He offered chocolate and Allan took some. ‘We had our eye on Seaton for a long time. He was living beyond his means. We knew he had a racket.’
         ‘What has that got to do with it?’ Allan mumbled through the chocolate. ‘We set him up. We thought we were being bloody smart and we just set him up.’
         ‘You didn't. He set himself up.’
         ‘How do you make that out?’
         Cloud was boiling in the corrie at their feet, lifting and blowing clear to reveal a huge white bowl ringed by broken reddish crags. Beyond, the next hill, a great whaleback of white, was dazzling.
         ‘Remember your theory of global conspiracy plus local enterprise? Well Seaton was the local enterprise.’
         ‘Is there anyone else I should know about? I mean is someone else at MCI likely to strangle himself or stab himself in the back.’
         Steve wiped his nose with the back of his mitt and looked at Allan. His eyebrows were encrusted in hoar. He reached across and took the sandwich which Allan offered. He took a bite and then said, ‘Halpern’.
         ‘You mean ...’
         Steve waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.
         ‘I mean Halpern and Seaton were thick as thieves and, as we now know, probably were thieves. It really was a beautiful set up. Insider trading is the way to make millions with very little risk. The money you get is paid over legitimately. It could be a lucky fluke like a bet on a horse. It's only when you do it repeatedly that people begin to suspect. The weak link is the connection, the information source which can be traced. But in this case there's none. All they had to do was to tap into the computer of a large merchant bank which handles takeovers. They're all using networks and have remote network connections. They don't use desktop machines, at least not in isolation. All their memos and reports will be on their network. They could even get their information from several sources and so we would be put off the scent completely.’
         ‘So Halpern might be for the chop?’
         ‘Not necessarily. Not if he's been careful. But yes, if I was him I'd be having a look over my shoulder.’
         ‘Shouldn't he be warned?’
         ‘That's Chalmers' strategy,’ said Steve. ‘He's planning to contact the guys in charge of the Seaton investigation and suggest that they interview Halpern. And then he hopes to interview Halpern himself and lean on him a bit in the hope that he blows the conspiracy.’
         ‘You think Halpern knows about the conspiracy?’
         ‘He has to. Doesn't he?’
         ‘I take it Chalmers hasn't used the password yet.’
         ‘With the Seaton thing he thought he didn't need to. How did you get the password the second time, by the way?’
         ‘That's my secret.’
         ‘Was it risky?’
         ‘I got it for you. Just leave it at that. When does your transfer come through?’
         ‘Next week. Shall we get on? It'll be dark in a couple of hours.’
         ‘So I won't see you again? Doesn't it worry you that you won't see this thing through to the end?’
         ‘It does a bit. But lots of cases go unresolved. You get used to it. If you get too involved you can't think straight.’
         ‘Chalmers is involved isn't he?’
         Steve looked thoughtful. ‘I'm not sure about this, but there is a rumour that he and Tommy Harkness's mother were pretty close.’
         ‘That explains a lot,’ said Allan. ‘But you didn't say if I would see you again.’
         ‘Probably not. But Bob Chalmers wants to have a way of getting in touch with you. He's a bit put out by you not having a phone but he says he'll send you a postcard. It'll be from 'Uncle Bob' and it will have a date or a day mentioned on it somewhere. That's the signal to meet him on that day.’
         ‘That's a bit vague.’
         They were standing, fixing the straps of the the rucksacks.
         ‘Not really. The date on the postcard will indicate the time to meet and the place to meet will be that lay-by where we met before.’
         ‘Ok for him. I've got to get there by bike. Look at that!’
         He pointed West. A wall of green-black cloud was bearing down upon them.
         ‘Let's get to hell out of here,’ said Steve and made off along the ridge.



*      *      *      *      *

         ‘What exactly do you do with Rosa?’
         ‘Are you jealous?’
         Dianne lay naked beside him pinning his right arm down with her stomach. He was on his back and she was trying to arrange a lock of his hair in a romantic curl across his brow.
         ‘No I'm not. I'm curious to know why my father is so worried about you.’
         ‘Is he worried? I don't know why he should be. Did you know he wants me to go to South America?’
         ‘Yes. They say Ocean Springs is a beautiful place. Will you go?’
         ‘I'm not sure. I'm thinking about it.’
         She treated Burnside Cottage as a kind of quaint beach hut. She had only been a couple of times. The first time she tried sitting outside with a book in the sunlight but the sunlight was an illusion. A chill wind drove her indoors again.
         She talked a lot about `Charles' who had a yacht and a lot of other yuppie toys. Allan was not too concerned. Her affections, he knew, rotated like a lighthouse. When it was his turn to be caught in the beam he was transfixed like a rabbit but at other times he could be sanguine. The trip to the opera, however, was a score. It had just the right ingredients. Dianne turned up in a peach coloured-off-the-shoulder gown which she set off with jet black hair The opera was pretty good too. Afterwards they went to a fashionable cafe and dallied over a vegetarian dish. A driving licence had released his love life from a logistical straight jacket. They took Dianne's Fiat and he drove back. She had stayed that night with him at the cottage.
         ‘He makes tape recordings of people. Did you know that?’
         ‘Who does?’
         ‘My father. He has recorders all over the place and he's got a whole collection of conversations between people. When he is not playing with his microcomputer he listens to the tapes and makes notes. He's paranoid.’ She gave up on the lock of hair and ran a finger down his nose to his mouth where it stopped and began tracing out the shape of his lips. Her finger-nails were long and pointed.
         ‘He's even got a recording of you.’
         ‘How do you know that?’ The finger at his lips made him mumble.
         ‘I heard your voice one day when I was outside his room. I knocked and went in and he was alone and he switched the tape recorder off in a hurry.’
         ‘Well .... actually I did know.’
         Suddenly alert, she raised herself on her elbows exposing a tantalising vista of dangling breast and then shot a hand under the bedclothes and seized his testicles.
         ‘How do you know?’
         He gasped and folded up, but her grip tightened.
         ‘Come on. How do you know?’
         ‘Ouch! The day I climbed into his study ... Ahhhaaa! ... there was a tape recording of Rosa and myself lying on his desk.’
         Dianne let go and rolled over on her back and let out a peal of laughter.
         ‘That's why he nearly swallowed his tie that night! Caught with his pants down. What a hoot! Did you take it?’
         ‘Of course not!’
         She had pulled most of the bedclothes off him. He struggled to get them back.
         ‘I would have,’ said Dianne. ‘Here! Maybe I could get it for you.’ She turned to him leaned over and kissed him on the tip of his nose. One nipple brushed over his. ‘If you're nice to me that is.’
         ‘What does he do with his microcomputer?’
         ‘He sits up in his room with it for hours every evening. Sometimes I think he is having sex with it.’
         ‘Now that's what I would call 'virtual reality'.’
         He grabbed her round the waist and pulled her close.
         ‘I wonder if I could program you into Stephen's adventure game. Of course I would need to gather a lot of data first, by first hand experience you understand.’
         His hand was exploring, gathering information. She wriggled against him.
         ‘I don't want to be in Stephen's game thank you. I'm not having little brother seeing me in the altogether. Did you know Daddy has a radio transceiver built in to his computer and he talks to people all over the world? He's got a broker in Tokyo who buys and sells a lot of shares for him. He's a bit of a wizard at it actually. He bought Mummy a cottage in France last year on the proceeds.’
         ‘I thought your mother was the one with money.’
         ‘She used to have. But all her money is tied up in Garloch. No, he's the one with the purse strings so I have to stay in with him even if I do think he's a bastard. Are you going to go to South America?’
         ‘Yes, I think I will. But not just yet. I have said I will go in the Spring. I've got some unfinished business here.’
         She stiffened again but he warded off another attack on his private parts.
         ‘What kind of unfinished business?’ she demanded. ‘ Are you talking about me or are you talking about Rosa Telman?’
         ‘You've got Rosa Telman on the brain.’
         ‘I'm afraid you may have her on something else. I might come out and see you in South America. Just to keep an eye on you.’
         ‘That would be nice.’



*      *      *      *      *

         Jack poked a finger into the eye of the CD machine. Like a stone idol on some Polynesian Island the eye glowed yellow and the tongue extended slowly and deliberately in a rude gesture. He fed it, laying the disc like a communion wafer on the surface of the tongue and poked the eye again. The tongue retracted. There was a click and a second later the sound of a rock band shook the room like an earthquake. The stone idol was venting its anger.
         He sat down at his computer and stared at the exaggerated technicolor landscape on the screen which was rushing towards at him at an impossible speed. The control lever was by his hand but he made no effort to grasp it. He watched, passively, as a large pointed mountain rotated into centre screen and exploded in his face. The noise of the impact was horrendous but barely audible over the industrial clamour of the CD player. He went on staring at the screen while the message displayed told him he was not only dead but had been demoted to novice-level 2.
         Life had lost some of its zest. Flying rocket machines through simulated landscapes or defeating animated slime patches from the plant Zontor no longer held his interest. Depression, someone had told him, was a symptom of suppressed anger or desire. Jack had several suppressed desires. One was a simple sexual desire for Alison. Another was a desire for a well cooked meal of the traditional non-carryout variety. But the third and most pressing desire was the burning urge to break his promise to Allan not to use the password to the secret passage. Someone, he argued to himself, had to prove that it could be done. Unless it was proved, everything was hypothesis.
         Jack found it hard to admit to himself that the motivation was actually a need to demonstrate his prowess - to score where others failed or feared, to show that he had knowledge which others lacked, that he could find his way around the 'system' - that incredibly complex maze. He wanted to demonstrate that he could walk through it in ways that others did not know exist, to pop up like a wraith where he was least expected, and to disappear again leaving others stunned and disbelieving.
         When he made the promise he had done so with sincerity, but he was secretly surprised that Allan had trusted him. He would not have trusted another with the knowledge Allan had given him. He would have pretended to have done so, and given the unsuspecting 'other' a false password which would have left him thinking he had the key to the universe, and then made him promise not to use it. That would be beaut. What a con! Dead ultimate!
         And then an uncomfortable thought struck him. Perhaps that's exactly what Allan had done to him. The thought began to eat into his soul as his rocketship crashed yet again on the planet Zor-2. Dead for the second time and demoted to novice-level 1.