Harry’s fingers relaxed. The woman’s blonde streaks were new, but otherwise she looked just like her photograph on the website.
She waited till the woman had disappeared. Then she flung some coins on the table and crossed the street.
It was cooler and quieter on this side of the glass doors. Harry strode up to the receptionist, checking out her surroundings as she went. A low table with business magazines stood against one wall. To her left was a set of large double doors, and another to her right. Her only escape route, should she need one, was back out the way she’d come in.
Harry selected another smile from her repertoire, the grimace of an uptight businesswoman with no time for fooling around.
‘Hi, I’m Catalina Diego,’ she said to the girl behind the desk. ‘I’m here to see Sandra Nagle.’
The girl kept her gaze fixed to the computer screen in front of her. ‘She’s just gone to lunch.’
‘But I’ve an appointment with her for twelve thirty.’
The girl chewed on the end of a pencil and shrugged. Her lips were a sticky mess of pink lip-gloss, and some of it had strayed on to the pencil.
Harry leaned in closer over the desk. ‘I’m here to run the training course for the helpdesk. Just how long is she going to be?’
The girl shrugged again and clicked the mouse on her computer. Harry wanted to snatch it out of her hands and rap her on the knuckles with it.
‘Well, I can’t hang around,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll have to start without her.’
She turned towards the doors on her left, as though she knew where she was going. The receptionist half stood from her chair, her pencil clattering to the desk.
‘I’m afraid I can’t let you in there without Mrs Nagle’s permission.’
‘Look –’ Harry turned back and peered at the girl’s name badge ‘– Melanie, this course has taken a month to arrange. If I leave now, it’ll be another month before I come back. Do you want me to explain to Sandra just why I couldn’t get started?’
Harry held her breath and braced herself. If someone had tried to bully her like that there’d have been quite a backlash. But Melanie just blinked and sank back in her chair. Harry didn’t blame her. She’d talked to Sandra Nagle for the first time that morning when she’d called the bank with a bogus customer complaint. She’d found her name and photograph on the bank’s corporate website, in the section that boasted of its unrivalled customer service. After two minutes’ conversation with her, Harry had the woman pegged as a complete bitch, and it looked as though Melanie agreed with her.
Melanie swallowed and shoved a visitor’s book across the desk. ‘Okay, but you’ll have to fill this out first. Name and date here, sign there.’
Something flickered in the pit of Harry’s stomach as she scribbled in the details. Melanie handed her an identity badge and pointed to the doors on Harry’s left.
‘Through there. I’ll buzz you in.’
Harry thanked her and gave herself a mental high five. She remembered the high fives her father used to give her whenever her poker bluffs paid off. ‘Nothing like the rush that comes from winning with an empty hand,’ he’d say, winking at her.
Empty hand was right. She clipped the badge to her lapel and stepped over to the doors. The safety lock clicked and a green light blinked on the wall panel. She straightened her shoulders and pushed open the heavy doors. She was in.
Leon Ritch hadn’t heard from the Prophet in over eight years, and had hoped to Christ he’d never hear from him again. He scratched his two-day-old stubble and read the email again.
Maybe it was a hoax. After all, anyone could sign himself ‘The Prophet’. He checked the sender’s address. It was different from the last time, but just as obscure: [email protected]. He thought about trying to trace it but knew it wouldn’t do any good. They’d tracked the Prophet’s last address to some anonymous re-mailer system. A dead end. Whoever he was, he knew how to conceal his identity.
Apart from himself, only three other people knew about the Prophet. One of those was in prison and another was dead. That just left Ralph.
Leon dialled a number he hadn’t used in a long time.
‘It’s me,’ he said.
‘Sorry, who’s this?’
Leon could hear the rumble of men’s voices in the background. Ralph was probably in a meeting with the bank VIPs, fighting for elbowroom at the corporate party. It was a world he’d once thrived in himself.
‘Don’t be a prick, Ralphy.’
The men’s laughter roared in his ear, and then grew gradually fainter until there was just an echoing hollowness. Sounded like Ralphy-Boy had moved into the gents.
‘Comfy now?’ Leon said.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Just looking up old pals. Seems to be a day for calls from the past.’
‘What are you talking about? I told you never to call me.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen Ralphy-Boy, are you near your office?’
‘I’m in the middle of a board meeting and I don’t –’
‘Good. I’m sending an email to your private account. Go and read it.’
‘What? Are you out of your mind?’
‘Just do it. I’ll call back in five minutes.’
Leon hung up and turned back to his PC. He brought up the email again and forwarded it to Ralph’s alias address.
He swivelled his chair to stare out the window at the bottle banks and wheelie bins that lined the small car park behind his office. Directly opposite him was the grimy back wall of the local Chinese takeaway, the Golden Tigress. A classy name for a seedy health hazard.
A young Chinese man in white overalls trudged out of the back door and flung a bag of God knew what kind of crap into the wheelie bin beneath Leon’s window. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of garlic and his gut clenched. Most of the shopkeepers around here gave off the same rank smell, filling Leon’s tiny office with it when they came in with their accounts. His ulcer bit into him.
‘Leon-the-Ritch’, people used to call him. He’d worked sixteen-hour days and managed all the big deals. He’d been a real player then, with millions in the bank and a glitzy wife on his arm. Now his twenty-year-old marriage was down the toilet, right there alongside his reputation and his bank balance.
Leon squeezed his eyes shut. Thinking about his marriage made him think about his son, and that was worse than the ulcer. He focused on the searing pain in his belly, trying to obliterate the image of Richard at the train station that morning. It was the first time he’d seen his son in almost a year.
He’d been up all night at a poker game and had travelled to his office on the train, vacuum-packed with the city’s commuters. Their looks of disgust had told him what he already knew: that his eyes were red-rimmed, his breath stank, and the bacteria in his armpits had metabolized up a storm.
His carriage had pulled up alongside a knot of schoolboys on the platform at Blackrock. He’d stared idly at them through the window. Then his breath had caught in his throat. Dark hair, round eyes, freckles like mud splats. Richard. Passengers pushed in front of Leon, but he elbowed them out of his way, straining for another glimpse of his son. A head taller than