Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

I ran after her. I knew she had a gun, but I was angry and I was determined to stop her. I rounded a corner. She turned and fired. She was only a few yards ahead of me, but she was holding the gun unsteadily and the bullet whined harmlessly over my head. I ducked back out of sight.

Mel ran on and I followed. She was not a good shot and at that moment I didn’t care too much for my own safety. But I would have to figure out how to get close enough to disarm her. How many bullets did she have in her magazine? I had no idea.

Another corner, another alleyway. This time at the far end was Fleet Street, with its traffic, busy even at this time of night. Mel stopped and turned towards me. I was closer to her now. She raised her gun towards me. She was so near it would be hard to miss.

I thought about trying to run back to the corner. But she would fire then for sure. And she might hit me.

So I walked on.

‘I’ll shoot!’ she said, her voice catching with hysteria.

‘Don’t, Mel. Put the gun down.’

‘No!’ She was grasping the gun so tightly in front of her that it was shaking. But at least part of the time it was pointing straight at me.

‘There’s no point, Mel. You’ve shot Guy. He’s back there lying on the pavement in his own blood. He’s not coming with you.’

Mel bit her lip. Her shoulders hunched as she tried to control herself, tried to keep the gun pointed at me. ‘Is he dead?’ she said, in little more than a whisper.

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. Give me the gun.’

I took another step forward.

Mel braced herself and stared along the barrel of the gun straight at me. Then she slumped backwards into the wall. The gun dropped to her side.

I walked swiftly up to her and prised the weapon out of her fingers. The barrel was warm. She slid down to the ground, put her head in her hands and sobbed.

A policeman arrived breathing heavily. I left Mel and the gun with him and ran back to the small square.

Guy was lying where he had fallen. Ingrid was with him, as were three or four armed policemen.

I pushed my way through to him.

He had a single wound to the chest. Blood was pumping out. He was finding it very difficult to breathe, but his eyes were open. His skin was pale under his stubble, so pale.

He saw me.

‘Davo.’

I knelt down beside him.

‘Is Clare OK?’ he asked.

I looked up. She was standing a few yards away, her face white, her hand to her mouth.

‘Yeah. You saved her.’

‘And Owen? How’s Owen?’

‘I don’t know.’

He tried to speak, but could only cough. Blood dribbled out of the side of his mouth.

‘Easy,’ I said. ‘The ambulance will be here soon.’

‘Can you find out? About Owen?’ It was little more than a whisper.

I looked up. Spedding was standing over us, catching his breath, splashes of Owen’s blood still on his clothes. I raised my eyebrows. He stepped back and spoke into his radio. After a few seconds he caught my eye and shook his head.

I looked down at Guy. He hadn’t seen Spedding.

‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘He’s going to make it.’

Guy smiled. Or tried to smile. He coughed. More blood. He coughed once more, and then he was still.

Ingrid wept quietly. I put my arm around her and squeezed her tight. As I watched the paramedics cover his body and load it on to a stretcher, I realized that in the end I had trusted Guy.

And he hadn’t let me down.

November 2000, six months later, Mayfair, London

The twenty-six-year-old ex-investment banker finished his PowerPoint presentation with a flourish and sat down expectantly. I glanced at Clare. This was the third Wireless Application Protocol deal we had seen in a month, and easily the worst. By a slight twitching of an eyebrow, Clare signalled that she agreed with my assessment. We asked the two-man team some questions for the sake of politeness, and then kicked them out.

‘We were never that bad, were we, Clare?’ I asked her as we made our way back to the small office we shared.

Clare laughed. ‘Not quite. But those guys were geniuses compared to some of the bozos we used to get in here a year ago.’

The dot-com bubble may have burst, but the venture capitalists lived on. They now counted me as one of their number. I enjoyed the job: finally I had found something that played to my analytical strengths and allowed me to take the occasional risk. Orchestra Ventures was doing well, partly owing to one of Henry’s deals, a chain of coffee shops that had been bought by a multinational for tens of millions. So Henry was still a partner; it is amazing what venture capitalists will forgive someone who makes them money.

I sat at my desk and stared at my computer, remembering our own pitch to Orchestra. I called up the web browser and typed in www.ninetyminutes.com. The familiar bubble design appeared, although one of the bubbles now bore the words Number One Soccer Site in Europe . I smiled. With Champion Starsat’s funding, Gaz’s writing and Ingrid’s editorial skills, Ninetyminutes had wiped the floor with the opposition. Sure, retailing had been closed down, and there were prominent links to Champion Starsat services all over the site, but none the less Guy would have been pleased. I was glad Madden had succeeded in persuading Ingrid to stay on. I still saw a lot of her. I was glad of that, too.

The legal machinery was grinding on towards Mel’s trial. I wasn’t planning to attend, but I assumed I would be called as a witness, something I was not looking forward to. Mel had spent most of her adult life feeling guilty. I hoped she would plead guilty now.

Guy was lying next to his father and brother in the village churchyard, but it seemed to me that he had finally broken free of both of them. All his thirty-two years he had been at war with himself to prove that he could make something of his life. And he had: I was staring at it. For the hundredth time since his death I felt a wave of sadness wash over me.

Then I heard his voice whispering in my ear: ‘Get on with it, Davo!’

I smiled to myself. With a couple of clicks of my mouse I left the Ninetyminutes website. And got on with it.

None of the characters in this book represent real people. The explosion of new internet companies over the last few years has made it virtually impossible to find a company name that is both plausible and hasn’t been used before somewhere, some time. Although a few real companies have been given peripheral roles in the book, Ninetyminutes, Goaldigger, Babyloves, Lastrest, Sick As A Parrot, Orchestra Ventures, Bloomfield Weiss, Howles Marriott, Coward Turner, Leipziger Gurney Kroheim, Champion Starsat and Midland Mercia TV are all fictional.

A great many people have helped with the writing of this book. In particular, I would like to thank Will Muirhead of Sportev, Sheona Southern and her colleagues at Teamtalk, Eldar Tuvey of Mailround, Anne Glover and her colleagues at Amadeus, Toby Wyles, Peter Morris, Tim Botterill, Troels Henriksen, Saul Cambridge, Douglas Marston, Jonathan Cape, Richard Horwood, Simon Petherick, my agent, Carole Blake and my editors, Beverley Cousins and Tom Weldon.

This book is dedicated to Hugh Paton, a skilful and safe pilot. I miss him.

Michael Ridpath

London

September 2002