Iain Banks: The Business

'Hmm,' I said. I let the window down a fraction.

'You cunt,' he hissed, and tried to shove his hands in towards my throat. I leant back and pressed the window up again, trapping him by the wrists. He gurgled, his fingers waving near my face like pink anemones.

I felt in my bag and brought out an aerosol can. 'Not wise, Adrian. This is Mace. Very bad for your eyes and mucous membranes. Could ruin your whole day. I think you ought to back off. I've already called the police. If you behave yourself they may accept it was all a terrible mistake, otherwise I'm going to get very tearful and upset and claim you've been trying to assault me. Put yourself in their place: who would you believe?'

'You fucking bitch,' he sobbed. 'I'll fucking get you for this.'

'No, Adrian. You won't. Because if you try to, I'll do much worse things to you than this. Now, lean back. Lean back on your heels. Let your arms take your weight. That's it.' I pressed the window lift button again; down, then up. His hands pulled free as he staggered back. He stood on the gravel, rubbing his wrists and tenderly massaging his fingers, his face streaked with tears. I held the phone up so he could see it and hit the off button, then dialled Happy Hans and told him where we were.

'What about the police?' Poudenhaut asked, glancing warily up the switchback road.

'Don't worry,' I said. I hadn't called the police, just somebody's answerphone. The Mace wasn't Mace, either; it was a can of Armani. I nodded at the low wall at the edge of the gravel semi-circle. 'Why don't you go and sit down, Adrian?'

I turned the car's engine off. It sputtered down to silence, then started to tick and click behind me.

Poudenhaut kneaded his fingers and looked at me with an expression full of rage and hate, but he went and sat down on the wall.

Hans brought the 7 -series crunching on to the gravel about ten minutes later. He parked opposite, between me and Poudenhaut, then got out and held the door open for me. I waved Adrian goodbye, and got in. I looked back as we drove off. When we were about a hundred metres up the road, while Poudenhaut was staring through the open door at the Ferrari's steering column and turning to look towards us, I lowered my window and threw the 355's keys out.

'Kathryn?'

'Mr Hazleton.'

'I've spoken with Adrian Poudenhaut. He's very upset.'

'Yes, I think I'd be upset in his situation too, Mr Hazleton.'

'Apparently you made some rather wild allegations about me. Which he might have seemed to confirm, though of course it was done under considerable duress. Not the sort of thing that would stand up in court. In fact, the sort of behaviour that could very easily land you in court, Kathryn. I'm not sure what you did to poor Adrian isn't against the Geneva Convention.'

'Where are you, Mr Hazleton?'

'Where am I, Kathryn?'

'Yes, Mr Hazleton. We have these conversations on the phone and you quite often know where I am, whether it's in the middle of the Himalayas or on an obsolete cruise liner, but you're always just this placeless, disembodied voice floating in from the airwaves for me. I keep wondering where you are. Boston? That's where you live in the States, isn't it? Or Egham, on the Thames. That's your UK home, isn't it? Maybe you're here in Switzerland: I've no idea. I'd just like to know for once.'

'Well, Kathryn, I'm on a fishing boat off the island of St Kitts, in the Caribbean.'

'Weather nice?'

'A little hot. Whereabouts in Switzerland are you?'

'I'm walking in the grounds of the château,' I lied. I was nearby, but not in the compound itself. I was in a neat but damp little park in the town of Château d'Oex; I could see the château through the trees on the other side of the valley. If things were going according to plan, Hans the chauffeur would be there now, picking up my things from the rather swish two-balcony room. I walked across springy black rubber tiles and sat on a child's swing. I looked warily around, not so much for Hazleton-controlled Business heavies like Colin Walker as for ordinary Swiss citizens, who'd probably shout at me for sitting on a swing meant for persons of less than a certain height and/or age. Nobody about. I was probably safe. I lifted my feet up and swung gently back and forth.

'There,' Hazleton said. 'Now we each know where the other is perhaps we can discuss more serious matters.'

'Ah, yes. Like your Couffabling antics.'

'Kathryn, you are probably already in deep trouble. I wouldn't make it any worse for yourself.'

'No, Mr Hazleton, I think you're the one in trouble. You're way up ordure inlet with no means of non-manual hydro-kinetic propulsion, and the sooner you drop this patronising now-look-here-young-lady bullshit the better.'

'What a colourful turn of phrase you employ, Kathryn.'

'Thank you. Yes, I'm firing on all cylinders, Mr H, which is probably more than can be said for Adrian's Ferrari.'

'Indeed. As I said, he is very upset.'

'Tough. So, let me run this past you, Mr H: a senior executive in a venerable but still vital business organisation specialising in long-term investment sets up an unofficial and cleverly sited dealing room in a factory which the very people he's cheating on are keeping secure. He makes, oh, I don't know how much money, stashes it in several accounts, probably here in the land of the oversize Toblerone bar, and then sends one of the account numbers to the chief executive officer of a Japanese corporation via an unorthodox route involving somebody's mouth. Oh, and this CEO — according to my latest research — has just resigned and bought himself his own golf course outside Kyoto. Now that must have cost a pretty penny, don't you think? However, most of the money will be used to buy a small and very low-lying piece of oceanic land, a personal pocket state for our enterprising exec. It's all a double-bluff, maybe even three-cup trick. The Business is fooled once, by its own decoy in the Pacific, while the Seats are fooled twice, once in the —'

'Kathryn, if I can just stop you there.'

'Yes, Mr Hazleton?'

'I'd just like to point out that the CIA and other US agencies regularly monitor cellphone transmissions in the Caribbean area. They're usually looking for drug-dealers, but I'm sure anything else of interest they happened to hear would be passed on to the relevant governmental department.'

'Such as the State Department?'

'Exactly. Let's just say I understand what you're getting at without you having to go into any more detail. It's all very interesting indeed, in a hypothetical sort of way, but where exactly does this leave us?'

'It leaves you with a choice, Mr Hazleton.'

'And what would you suggest that is? I suspect you're dying to tell me.'

'Beyond a confession extracted — and recorded, I might add — under some duress, a few specialised land-line connectors and some circumstantial stuff, I don't really have that much evidence.'

'Yes. And? But?'

'But the evidence must be there. I'm sure the Essex kids could be traced easily enough, for example, with the right resources.'

'The Essex kids?'

'That's what the regular people at Silex called the eager beavers wheeling and dealing for you in the secret room.'

'Ah-hah.'

'It wouldn't take much to get a serious investigation going, Mr Hazleton. Frankly I'm not entirely sure if there were other Level Ones involved, but I guess just telling all of them would get things moving.'

'That's the sort of thing that might split the Business, Kathryn. If there were other Board members involved.'

'That's a risk one might just have to take. Anyway, I suspect our fellow was acting alone. The point is that even if one or two others are implicated, the entire Board can't be involved or there would be no need to hide everything like this in the first place. No matter how you cut it, the person behind this scam would be in very serious trouble indeed.'