The Man in the Bank Lobby

I put on the black suit.

Preston noticed at once. He stood in the bedroom doorway with his tie half knotted, and his eyes moved from the black jacket to my face.

‘I laid the blue one out for you,’ he said.

‘It felt like a black sort of day,’ I replied.

I kissed his cheek and watched him decide not to push.

He drove. He always drove when it mattered, one hand on the wheel and the other on my knee, his thumb moving in small circles as it had on a hundred other mornings.

I counted the circles and looked out of the window at Halbrook sliding past, its trees in full leaf, its pavement cafés, a boy on a bicycle with a balloon tied to the handlebars.

Ninety days.

I had never noticed how much green there was.

In the corner of my eye, a small blue clock hung in the air, visible only to me.

TIME UNTIL SIGNATURE DEADLINE: 00:51:14.

‘Is Dahlia settling in?’ I asked lightly.

‘She adores you,’ Preston said. ‘She’s family.’

He squeezed my knee.

‘You’re quiet.’

‘Nervous. Forty million is a lot.’

‘You’ll be brilliant. You always are.’

I wondered how many times he had said those words while planning to use my name for something that would eventually kill me.

Halbrook Commercial Bank had an atrium four storeys high, all glass and brushed steel, with a fountain in the middle and a lift that rose through the centre like a silver needle.

I had always loved it.

That morning, I looked at those enormous panes and thought: so many doors, so many ways to lock one.

We were early. Preston went to speak to someone about parking, and I stood alone beside the fountain with my handbag held in both hands.

That was when I saw him.

He was standing at the foot of the lift with a lawyer in a camel coat and a thick black folder under his arm. He wore the grey jacket, the spark inside a circle stitched on the chest, over a plain white shirt.

He was not dead.

I want to describe what that did to me, and I cannot.

The floor of the atrium seemed to tilt. I had looked at his photograph for as long as I dared, and I had told myself I was prepared. But a photograph does not have a voice, and he was speaking, low and dry and unhurried, and I knew that voice.

It had said, Hold on. I mean it.

‘Rafe! Good, you’re here.’

Preston had returned. He went forward with his hand out and the full warmth switched on.

‘Ready to sign? Forty generator units for the Tower. Biggest contract your firm will ever see.’

Rafe Maddox looked at the hand and did not take it.

‘I came to review the generator and fuel-supply agreement,’ he said. ‘I’ve read it.’

‘And?’

‘Your proposed system is designed to support eight hundred people for ninety days.’ He opened the folder and tapped a page. ‘Your sales book has three thousand names in it. I have a friend at the sales agency. Three thousand places, Vance, in a building that holds eight hundred.’

‘Contingency,’ Preston said easily.

‘Contingency is a spare tyre. What you’ve built is a tomb with a sales office.’

He closed the folder.

‘My company isn’t supplying the generators or committing fuel to a project that can’t support the number of people you’ve sold places to. My signature isn’t going on it.’

Preston’s smile held, but something behind it cooled by several degrees.

‘We’ve already discussed the figures.’

‘You discussed them. I questioned them.’

‘The Minister won’t like to hear that.’

‘The Minister hasn’t liked me for six years,’ Rafe replied. ‘I’ve learned to live with it.’

Preston gave a short laugh, as though Rafe had made a joke.

‘Be careful, Maddox. Government contracts have a way of disappearing.’

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to find other work.’

For a moment, neither man moved.

Then Preston adjusted his cufflinks and stepped back.

‘We’ll discuss this again.’

‘There’s nothing to discuss.’

I did not hear Preston’s answer.

I was looking at the scar through Rafe’s left eyebrow, thin and pale, and at his hands, which were clean now. No grease. No blood.

I was thinking how warm they had been.

In another life, this man had held my hand while he bled, and he did not know my name.

He felt it. People do.

He glanced past Preston, and his eyes, grey and level and tired, met mine across ten feet of polished marble.

I stopped breathing.

He did not look away.

He studied my face, a small crease forming between his brows, with the same attention he had given the fuel plan, as though I were a figure that did not add up.

Then he walked towards me, past Preston and the lawyer, and stopped an arm’s length away.

He smelled of cold air and machine oil.

‘Have we met?’ he asked.

I opened my mouth and found nothing in it.

‘No,’ I managed. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Funny.’ He tilted his head slightly. ‘You look familiar.’

I forced a small smile.

‘Perhaps you’ve seen me at a business event.’

‘Perhaps.’

His gaze moved briefly to the small gold emblem on my handbag.

‘Lane Logistics?’

I nodded.

‘I’ve seen your company’s name on a few transport contracts.’

That explained the recognition. At least, it was an explanation I could accept.

He held my gaze one second longer than a stranger should.

Then the lawyer said his name, and Rafe nodded to me, turned and went out through the glass doors into the sunshine.

I watched the spark on his back until it was gone.

Preston’s hand settled in the small of my back.

‘Ignore him,’ he murmured. ‘Ex-army. Bitter. He thinks every business decision is a battlefield.’

‘He seemed to have a problem with the numbers.’

‘He has a problem with me.’

There was no warmth in his voice now.

Then his smile returned, and he guided me towards the lift.

‘Come on, Dess. Forty million won’t sign itself.’

In the corner of my eye, the blue clock ticked on.

TIME UNTIL SIGNATURE DEADLINE: 00:19:40.

I let him steer me towards the lift.

And for the first time since I had woken up, I was more afraid of a man walking away than of the one with his hand on my back.