Fatal Error (46 page)

‘Are you sure Guy will be there?’ I asked her.

‘I think so. Hang on. I’ll check.’

She pulled out her mobile and dialled a number. ‘Hello, Guy, it’s me … Any news? … Nothing? … OK, just checking. Bye.’

‘He’s there?’

‘Yes.’

‘How’d he sound?’

‘Tense.’

‘Do you think Owen’s with him?’

‘I don’t know. He left with the rest of us. I suppose he might have come back. I could hardly ask Guy, could I?’

‘No.’

In silence we pondered the possibility that Owen might be in the office with Guy. It was a risk we would just have to take.

We were taking big risks. People had died. More people might die. Including Ingrid and me.

I worked through the logic of what we were about to do. It held together. Just.

I thought I understood Guy. He would be pretty strung out. I knew that Ninetyminutes meant everything to him. But I also knew that our friendship meant something. He wouldn’t callously kill me. Or Ingrid. Nor would he stand by and let Owen harm us. I was pretty sure of that. Wasn’t I?

I would just have to trust him.

The taxi turned right off Clerkenwell Road down the much quieter Britton Street. We stopped outside the familiar building and I paid the driver. He disappeared, leaving Ingrid and me on the empty pavement looking up to where Guy was sitting, we hoped, alone.

I glanced across at her. Her face was pinched. She was as nervous as me.

‘You really don’t have to do this,’ I said. ‘I can go in by myself.’

‘I know.’

‘It might be dangerous. You might get hurt.’

She turned to me and smiled, a small nervous smile. ‘So might you. I’m coming with you.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go, then.’

We took the stairs up to the fourth floor. We pushed open the door bearing the ninetyminutes.com logo and entered the large open-plan room.

Guy was sitting there, staring at his computer screen where a half-finished game of Minesweeper was displayed.

Alone.

We walked towards him. He turned. He looked worse than I had ever seen him, and I had seen Guy pretty bad. His eyes were set deep in dark shadows, their habitual bright blue now dulled. Stubble sprouted out of his chin and pale puffy cheeks. His yellow hair was greasy and uncombed.

‘Hi,’ he said, his voice flat, defeated.

‘Hello, Guy.’ I walked towards him.

‘Sit down.’ He waved distractedly at my desk. I sat in my old chair. Ingrid perched on the desk next to me.

‘Heard anything?’ I asked him.

‘No.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Ten past ten. I’m not going to hear anything, either. If Mercia Metro were going to do it, they’d have done it by now.’

‘They never were going to do a deal, Guy,’ I said.

He looked at me vaguely, his eyes unfocused. ‘No,’ he said quietly. Then he glanced at Ingrid. ‘Are you two …?’

I nodded.

‘For how long?’

‘Not long. Since you fired me,’ I said.

He smiled. More to himself than to us. ‘That’s nice.’ Then he seemed to notice us again. ‘Are you going to wait with me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Because I wanted to be alone. Here. At midnight.’

There was something in what he was saying that scared me. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why do you want to be alone?’

Guy didn’t answer. He stared at his screen. He clicked the mouse. We let him play. Then he swore to himself as he clicked on a mine.

He pushed the mouse away. ‘Ninetyminutes is over, isn’t it, Davo?’

I nodded.

‘All that work. All those hours. All the worry, the arguments, the triumphs, all crumbling away into nothing.’

‘The site will live on.’

‘Yeah, but that wasn’t what Ninetyminutes was about,’ Guy said. ‘It was about you and me becoming new people. Better people. And for a time I thought we’d made it. For a long time. I was the entrepreneur who could make anything happen. You were my right-hand man who made sure that once it happened it didn’t all fall apart. We were good, Davo. We were really good. It shouldn’t have gone wrong.’

‘No, it shouldn’t.’

‘But it did. Tonight we sell out. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, there’s nothing.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ingrid.

Guy didn’t seem to hear her at first. Then he smiled a small quick smile, and bent down to open the bottom drawer of his desk. He straightened up. In his hand was a gun.

It was silver-grey, quite large for a handgun, I thought, not that I knew anything about handguns. It was one of those that have a magazine in the handle. He weighed it in his hand. It looked quite heavy.

‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.

‘Owen got it for me,’ Guy said. He chuckled. ‘It’s amazing what you can buy over the Internet these days. Shootsomeone.com. Why didn’t we try that one? Or
www.blowyourbrainsout.co.uk
.
Not many repeat customers, though. And it’s all about repeat customers, isn’t it?’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Use it,’ Guy said. ‘On myself. Don’t worry. I won’t take you with me or anything. I was going to wait till twelve. But if you force me, I could do it now.’

Ingrid let out a short gasp.

‘Let’s wait till twelve,’ I said. ‘There’s still a couple of hours.’

Guy contemplated the gun in his hand. ‘I don’t know. Two hours is a long time to wait with you two staring at me.’

He lifted the weapon.

‘You were a crap businessman, you know,’ I said. I had to say something. For a second a spark of anger lit up Guy’s eyes. But then it died down.

‘I know.’

‘Nowhere near as good as your father.’

He lowered the gun. I had caught his attention. ‘You’re right.’

‘You’re good at the big-picture stuff. The vision thing. But you never really understood that it was all about money, did you? I did, but you fooled me too.’

Anger smouldered in Guy’s eyes.

‘Your father knew about profit, didn’t he? Let’s face it, if we’d done what he’d suggested and linked up to a porn site, the money would be rolling in. Sex ’n’ soccer. The tabloids would be queuing up to buy us. And the NASDAQ could just go screw itself.’

‘I could never have run a site like that,’ said Guy.

‘Neither could I. Could you, Ingrid?’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s our problem. You’d never have made it in property, either.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I remember reading an article in
Private Eye
about your father. How he had bribed a local council to allow planning permission for some shopping centre in the north. And how he screwed his partner in the seventies.’

‘That was all libel!’ Guy protested. ‘
Private Eye
settled out of court. They paid Dad a substantial sum and printed an apology.’

‘Course they did. Just like they did to Robert Maxwell. I wouldn’t want to mess with your father in court.’

Guy sighed. ‘So what are you getting at?’

‘You built something much greater than your father could ever have done. Ninetyminutes was one hell of an achievement. Not financially, maybe. But I don’t know anyone else who could have created the best soccer website in Europe from scratch.’

‘Big deal.’

‘It
is
a big deal. It impressed the hell out of me. And Ingrid. And Gaz. And Michelle. And every one of the people who work here.’ I leaned forward. ‘Guy, you’ve always impressed the hell out of me. For a while I thought that you would be a great entrepreneur. So you’re not. So what? I’m still impressed.’

‘You’re just saying that because I’ve got a gun in my hand.’

‘I’m not, and you know it. I knew your father. I know you. Believe me, Guy. You’re a better man than him. You don’t have to prove that to me, and you shouldn’t have to prove it to yourself any more.’

Guy looked again at the gun. Very slowly he placed it on to the desk next to him. Even more slowly I got to my feet and reached across towards it.

Guy snatched it up and pointed it somewhere between me and him. ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this thing, so don’t rush me.’

I eased back into my chair. ‘OK,’ I said.

We sat in silence, the three of us. But I was thinking about a fourth person. Clare.

Slowly, I pulled the note she had received out of my jacket pocket and handed it to Guy.

‘What’s this?’

‘Clare got it yesterday. It’s from Owen. Read it.’

Guy read it, frowning. ‘You think Owen wrote this?’ he said, when he had finished.

‘I know Owen wrote it. And he sent an e-mail to Clare today, telling her he’s serious.’

Guy was silent, staring at the letter. Eventually, he spoke. ‘I don’t think this is Owen.’

‘Of course it’s Owen,’ I said. ‘It was Owen who threatened Henry. Owen who planted the computer virus in Goaldigger’s system. Owen who has been threatening me. You know yourself Owen killed Dominique. I think he killed Abdulatif as well. And now he’s going to kill Clare. Unless you stop him.’

Guy looked confused. Unsure of himself. Unsure of his brother.

‘You are the only person who can stop him,’ I said.

Just then the door to the office banged open. We turned.

Owen.

He pushed his way through the door carrying a flat brown carton. ‘Hey, Guy?’ he called. ‘Guy? I got pizza! Pepperoni feast.’

Then he saw us.

‘What are these people doing here?’ he demanded, placing the pizza box on a nearby desk and moving over to his brother. ‘I thought you said you wanted to be alone?’

‘They came to talk to me about this.’ Guy handed him Clare’s letter. ‘They tell me you wrote it. Did you?’

Owen read the letter. He chuckled softly to himself.

‘Did you?’ asked Guy again.

Owen shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Guy’s eyes narrowed. He glanced at Ingrid and me. ‘Owen, if you did write this, it’s pretty dumb. If Ninetyminutes does get sold, killing Clare isn’t going to bring it back.’

‘Did she fold?’ Owen asked.

‘No,’ said Guy. ‘We haven’t heard anything from her. Or from Mercia Metro TV.’

‘Then I guess it was pretty dumb,’ said Owen.

‘There’s no point in harming Clare now,’ I said. ‘Ninetyminutes is going to be sold to Champion Starsat whatever you do to her or anyone else.’

Owen glared at me. His small black eyes gleamed with anger. He was about to say something when he noticed the gun on Guy’s desk. He reached over and picked it up.

I tensed. Owen was dangerous enough. Owen with a gun was lethal.

‘So, you had a use for this after all,’ he said to Guy. ‘I was scared you were going to, like, top yourself with it.’

Guy looked uncomfortable.

‘You
were
going to top yourself.’ Owen pulled up a chair next to Guy’s desk and lowered himself into it. ‘That’s why you wanted to be by yourself tonight. Then these jerks disturbed you. I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone.’

‘What about Clare?’ I said.

Big mistake. Owen exploded. ‘Screw Clare! I don’t give a shit what happens to her. She’s given Ninetyminutes away.’ He jabbed the gun towards me, using it more as a finger than as a weapon. ‘And screw you too. Can you see what you’ve done to my brother? It was you who totally fucked up Ninetyminutes. If it hadn’t been for you, he’d be fine now, not sitting here planning to blow his brains out.’

‘Give me the gun, Owen,’ Guy said quietly.

‘So you can use it on yourself? No fuckin’ way. I’m gonna use it. On this bastard.’

He raised the gun and pointed it towards me. He was aiming now, not jabbing.

‘Owen, wait!’ Guy protested.

‘No. This fucker deserves to die. He’s gonna die.’

Ingrid let out a small scream.

‘You too, baby. One goes, you both go.’

‘Don’t do it, Owen. It’s stupid.’

‘Of course it’s not stupid. If I hadn’t shown up just now, you’d have shot yourself. And all because of him.’ Owen stared at me hard down the barrel of the gun. He was angry, but he wasn’t out of control. He was very much in control. He knew what he was doing and he was determined to do it.

‘I’m telling you. Give me the gun.’

Guy’s voice was firm. But Owen ignored it. He didn’t move his eyes away from me. I heard the click of the safety catch. He was going to pull the trigger.

‘OK, OK.’ Guy ran his fingers through his hair. His expression changed. From a state of confusion, he suddenly became focused. Angry. ‘You’re right, Owen,’ he said. ‘It is all this bastard’s fault. But let me think. There’s no point in shooting him and waiting for the police to arrive.’

I stared at Guy. Had he gone mad? He looked very sane. Angry, but sane.

Owen stared at his brother too.

‘Guy?’ I said.

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘Guy. You can’t let Owen do this.’

‘I said, shut the fuck up!’ Guy screamed. ‘Owen’s got it dead right. I should never have hired you. I shouldn’t have listened to you whining about Owen and Henry and my father. I shouldn’t have let you sell Ninetyminutes out from underneath me. I should have fired you months ago.’ He leapt out of his chair, placing his face inches from mine. It
was full of hate. I had never seen him like this, even in his worst moments.

Guy had cracked.

‘You speck of shit. You’re going to die, Davo, and I’m going to enjoy it when you do.’ He stepped back and spoke to his brother. ‘But we’ve got to think about this, Owen. Give ourselves time. Kill these two and then get out of the country before anyone realizes they’ve gone.’

Owen nodded his head. He didn’t actually smile, but you could see him swell with pleasure. His big brother was on his side. They were going to run off together, just the two of them, looking after each other as they should have done all along.

‘I’m gonna shoot the fucker,’ he said. Just to be clear.

‘Yeah, I know. But not here. Not now. We need to take them away somewhere.’

‘We can shoot them and move the bodies.’

‘Hey, let me do the thinking, will you?’ snapped Guy. ‘I sorted things after Dominique, I can sort things now. People will see us shifting bodies around. I’ll go and get your car and bring it back here. We’ll put them in alive, and take them somewhere a bit more remote. Maybe somewhere on the way to Dover. Give me the keys.’

Owen thought for a second and then reached into his pocket. He threw Guy a bunch. ‘I’ll get your passport while I’m at it. I’ve got mine here.’ He reached down into the bag by his desk and pulled out his own passport, showing it to Owen. ‘I won’t be long. Keep them covered. And if they try anything, shoot them. It’ll be messier, but we’ll figure something out.’