Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

Praying that no one else was looking out of their windows while this farrago was unfolding, he rose from his chair and headed downstairs to instigate some disciplinary action. He wanted everyone else cleared from Vince's path now. If the girl or anyone else turned up again, he would have their bodies dumped in the river before dawn and low tide.

'WHAT'S THAT game show where they had to find things like the portrait of Elizabeth the First?' asked Stanley Purbrick. 'They had teams, and maps, and an annoying woman who kept barging about in a jump suit.'

'This is not a game show, Stanley,' said Masters, clearing a patch on the table and heaving a mildewed cardboard box onto it. 'There's a very good reason why our help is needed. If this boy is defeated and halted in his path, just as I was four years ago, the corruption will just continue to deepen, and soon the stain will be so ingrained that it will never be removed.' He began pulling damp cardboard files from the box and passing them to Arthur Bryant. 'It's not as if we have a constitution for our protection. Up until the Thatcher years we relied on a certain amount of common sense to guide us. Now the profit motive makes every action suspect.'

'Harold, dear, take your medication,' said Jane Masters. 'You know what happens when you get overexcited.'

'Well, it makes me angry,' he countered. 'I'm a so-called respected academic, I sit on a dozen advisory boards and yet I'm as powerless as a child dossing down in a shop doorway. What I don't understand is why we, as a country, aren't angrier about the erosion of our liberties. Look at the way we allow our Members of Parliament to retain positions in companies that show direct conflicts of interest. And good God, the opportunism! Shaw said that liberty means responsibility; that is why most men dread it.'

'He also said that an Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable,' interrupted Bryant. 'Who exactly are Sebastian Wells's parents?'

'His father is a former darling of the far right, bring back hanging, to hell with Europe, that sort of thing. He would have made the perfect conservative MP somewhere in the shires, a nominal position, a nice safe seat. Unfortunately it was his lot to be high-born. He's fascinated by the accumulation of corporations, and that's where it starts to get interesting.'

'Oh, why?'

'One senses there are all kinds of infringements. His wife is represented in a number of companies, either as a shareholder or on the board, and when you put their joint assets together – well,' he looked pointedly at Stanley Purbrick, 'a true conspiracy theorist would draw conclusions from their surprisingly fortuitous connections. For example, he has a company dealing in arms, she has machine exports, he has a shipping corporation, she has a security firm. They dovetail a little too neatly, and one could say that a pattern emerges. Old family connections aside, they seem to be part of a clique of business colleagues and friends that, if sat all together in a room, represent most of the more dubious financial fixers of the government's outer circle.'

'So we'd be stupid to mess with these people,' said Maggie airily, waving her wineglass at arm's length. 'This is nothing new. By the very nature of its existence, a modern government is always tainted. How can it not be? We can't live by Grecian ideals. This isn't a republic. Big business is not nice. We know that, and nobody can stop it without stopping the world.'

'We can stop Wells,' said Jane Masters. 'Can't we?' Arthur Bryant looked up from the clipping he had been studying for the last few minutes. 'I don't know about that yet,' he said, 'but I rather think we have a way into the problem.'

Louie bought two doughy slices of pepperoni pizza from the Turkish vendor who was arguing in French with his Nigerian helper, and passed one to Vince. The traffic around Piccadilly Circus was pulsing slowly now, the city's breath shallow in the deepest part of the night, but most of the billboard neon was still ablaze, reflecting a sullen glow at the clouds racing low overhead.

'Thanks,' he said, barely comprehensible through his mouthful of food. 'I didn't realise how hungry I was. You shouldn't be seen around me, Louie. Everyone who comes close risks getting hurt.'

'Don't worry, mate, I've already given one bloke a punch up the bracket, trying to save your sodding book. I can look after myself. We'll see who gets hurt now.'

'Do you think Esther is really dead? I called her, but there was no answer.'

'I don't know. I guess you have to prepare yourself for the chance that she might be.'

'He mentioned Pam. There's no answer from her phone, either. Christ, if he's touched -'

'All right, calm down. You're not gonna help anyone by going crazy now. Tell you what, make this call while I get us some coffees.' Vince accepted the mobile phone from Louie. His fingers were still frozen, even though he had been holding the microwaved pizza slice. If only he hadn't bought that damned society magazine in the first place, no one would have been hurt. There was no way of turning back the clock, but there had to be some way of making amends. He called Harold Masters.

'I only cut it out because there was a picture of Sebastian Wells at the top,' said Masters. 'He cuts a terribly dashing figure, don't you think?'

The article was headed:

Mystery death at Howarth Lodge -

Open verdict forced by inquest.

The undergraduates who attended a post-exam house party at the country seat of Sir Nicholas Wells were expecting a weekend of fun and frivolity, but on Sunday the hi-jinks ended in tragedy when the body of an unconscious girl was pulled from the property's ornamental lake. For a few brief weeks Melanie Daniels was the pretty blonde girlfriend of Nicholas Wells' son, Sebastian. She had apparently fallen from the lake's jetty in a state of inebriation, and died on her way to hospital.

An inquest led by the Hon. Jasper Forthcairn, QC found no evidence of foul play, but suggested that the combination of barbiturates and alcohol found present in Daniels' bloodstream in large amounts was a major contributing factor to her death.

'Melanie was a happy girl with everything to live for,' commented Anne Daniels, her mother. 'She had fallen in with the wrong crowd.'

Despite a recent public break-up with his son over issues raised by the controversial first annual conference of the Without Borders Initiative, Sir Horatio told the press: 'Sebastian is a clean living, decent young man. These girls are unable to resist the lure of an eligible, wealthy bachelor, and often succumb to addictive antisocial behaviour.'

Sebastian Wells had recently been suspended from college attendance after his controversial views on racism were made known at the WBI conference.

'There's something about the man I can't make out.' Bryant's eyes grew distant with thought, so that he looked more than ever like a ruminating tortoise. 'The family certainly seems to dominate, doesn't it? In nearly every one of these interviews the father has something strong to say about his son. Suggestive in itself.'

Maggie couldn't see how. She studied the photograph of Sebastian Wells on the front of a pamphlet entitled 'England and Her Foreign Population: Seduction of the Innocents' and noted his colour combinations, unusual for an Aries. The telephone, which had now been placed in the centre of the table like an altar-piece, rang suddenly and she swept it up in a jewelled paw.

'Vincent! Where are you? We've been so worried!' She listened, then threw her hand over the mouthpiece. 'He's eating pizza in Piccadilly Circus, apparently,' she told everyone. 'Do you have any idea how bad that is for you? Do you have the next challenge? Then give it to us.' She waggled her fingers in front of her. 'Pen, pen, pen.'