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Hey Ali,
We thought it was so incredibly sad, not to mention utterly infuriating for you, that you only had 10 pages left of the book you were reading – especially when it’s a Brookmyre novel! So we’ve managed to get hold of those last 10 pages for you, so that you know how it ends.
We would like to express our gratitude to Chris Brookmyre for allowing us to do this, and to his publisher, Little, Brown, for making it possible. We can recommend anyone who hasn’t done so already to pick up any of Chris’s books the next time they’re looking for a cracking read. They’re the mutt's nuts.
WARNING for anyone else out there planning on, or in the process of, reading »All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye« by Chris Brookmyre, don’t read the text below – we’re about to spill the beans on how it ends!
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All rights reserved.
© 2005 Christopher Brookmyre
“Willis,” Bett said, shaking his head, “that fly old bastard.”
“You said it to me yourself,” Jane reminded him. “Act awkward and clumsy and people write you off as no threat. He plays the bumbling old fool...”
“And no-one sees him coming until his knife is in up to the hilt. They thought he was there for the taking but he played them all, even me.”
“He played you, how?”
“Oh, a small but crucial role. The real con was in making people believe in the technology, which he did by making it the most jealously guarded secret. Expensively guarded, too: he contracted me as consultant to overhaul Marledoq’s security, and my recommendations weren’t cheap, nor were my services. But that was all crucial to the deception.”
“If he’d paraded them around at an exhibition, people would have been more sceptical,” Jane surmised. “But instead they believed the videos were real because they thought they’d been stolen, and stolen with some difficulty. This Segnier — whoever he really is, and if he really exists — gave Parrier the impression that he didn’t even know what the big secret was. I suppose it might have set off alarm bells if he just handed over the files, so not only did he make out a third party got hold of them during some one-off ‘window’, but he got everyone to pay through the nose for them too.”
“People are always more valuing of things that cost them dear, and information is no different.”
“Any guesses who this third party might have been?”
“Oh, I’m starting to get an idea,” Bett said.
“You okay, girl?” Rebekah asked as Air Bett prepared to touch down on the tarmac inside the Marledoq facility’s recently electrified perimeter fence. Lex had been staring transfixed at the compound as they approached, this place the occasion of an unease that had never quite left her since. She’d been on tenterhooks the whole time Ross Fleming was around Maison Bla, but her fear of what he might say wasn’t the reason she’d felt compelled to take this flight. Having been the fool whose betrayal set this whole thing in motion, she needed the closure of seeing him returned, safe and sound, where it all began, the scene of the crime.
“I’m good,” she said, as the wheels gently took the chopper’s weight.
“You looked kindda spaced.”
“Just weird being back here, you know?”
“Yeah. This was my first real exercise. Looks different in the daylight. Less threatening, though I guess we constituted the real threat that night.”
You got that right, Lex thought.
It did look different, and not just because of the time of day. Bett’s recommendations had all been implemented, such as the removal of the above-ground, sabotage-friendly electrical substation and the construction of a high-security tamper-proof housing for the facility’s previously vulnerable ventilation intakes, pumps and filters. (Bett had opted against pumping the place full of sleep agent on the Tiger Team raid on the tripartite grounds that it was too expensive, too easy and “just no bloody fun”.) Inside the deliberately innocuous-looking warehouses there were now retinal scanners controlling the lifts, with inter-level access (and even certain individual rooms) also protected by optical-recognition equipment. If they were to stage a raid on the place tonight, somebody really would have to lose an eye.
Lex jumped out of the cockpit door while Rebekah killed the engines and reached vigilantly as ever for her paperwork. With the rotor sound dying off, she heard a keening noise from behind her and looked over her shoulder to see someone approach in an electric buggy, coming to pick up the VIPs. She slid open the cabin door and offered both passengers a hand down on to the tarmac. They both looked pretty pleased about something. Fleming came out second. He stopped in front of her and kept hold of her hand a moment.
“Thanks,” he said. “For everything.”
“Don’t mention it. Can I just say, your mom’s an incredible woman.”
“You’re telling me.”
He walked away towards the buggy, which was only yards away, close enough for her to see the driver.
“Oh shit,” she said to herself, as she looked into the face of the nameless man who’d seduced her all those months ago with his talk of influence, contacts and his bullshit promises. He got out of the buggy and shook hands with Willis and Fleming, laughing, ushering them aboard. All pals. Then before he got back into the driver’s seat, he turned to look at her, smiled and put a finger to his lips.
“Son of a bitch.”
Lex watched the buggy drive off towards the warehouses, where the lift down to the installation was concealed. She heard the slam of the pilot-side door then Rebekah appeared alongside her.
“The hell was that about?” Rebekah asked.
“What?”
“That finger-on-the-lips deal? Who was that guy?”
Lex was about to plead ignorance when her cellular began ringing. She fished it out of her pocket and looked at the LCD, saw the name scroll across the panel.
Bett.
She pressed Talk. “Sir?”
“I know,” he said simply.
Oh shit. She swallowed, tried to think of a response, felt as though her throat was swollen, blocking her words.
“Fool me once, shame on you, they say. Fool me twice, shame on me. You’re about the only person who I believe could fool me twice, Alexis, and I can’t afford to let that happen. You’re fired.”
She gasped, the sudden intake of breath about the only sound she felt capable of making. A thousand thoughts rushed around her head, none of them lucid.
“Okay, fired is a little harsh. But definitely suspended. Or rather, indefinitely suspended. Mrs Fleming has informed me you’re under the misapprehension that there’s something you could still be taught about computers if you went to college. As I believe the only way you could be disabused of this notion is to actually go there, I am prepared to facilitate it in any way I can. And given that I now understand you’re not quite as adept as your ‘data salvaging’ achievement suggested, then who knows.”
She felt her eyes fill up. Her throat still felt swollen, but she managed three weeping, whispering words.
“Thank you, sir.”
“There is a condition.”
“Uh-huh,” she managed.
“Stay in touch. Because once you’ve gone back to Canada, got your degree, worked in an office for a while and generally acquainted yourself with how tedious normal life actually is, there will still be a job waiting for you here.”
“Sure,” she sniffed. “You’d always be able to find me anyway.”
“This is true,” he said, and hung up.
“Is everything okay?” Rebekah asked.
“Yeah,” Lex replied. “Everything’s okay.”
Jane found Bett in the big drawing room where they’d first met, standing by those big windows and looking out upon the gardens in the twilight. A call had come through from the hospital, which he had transferred to her in her bedroom where she was getting herself ready for dinner. A final meal here, a time to say thanks, a time to say goodbye. His voice had been soft but a little stiff as he informed her of the call, as he’d been any time the subject of Tom came up. She knew, then, that he’d be in that room, knew that he would be by those windows. He had his sanctuary upstairs, but that was where he retreated to be alone; this was the place he felt most robust in dealing with others.
“Tom’s awake,” she reported. “I’d better go in and see him. I know we’re supposed to have dinner, but...”
“Not at all. I understand. I’ll drive you.”
“No, no, never bother. Best that I go myself,” she suggested.
“Of course. But before you do, before you see him, we have to talk.”
Jane wanted to procrastinate, tell him she had to go right away and that tey could talk later, but she knew neither of them would buy that. She took a seat at the big table. “Okay,” she said.
Bett walked over and sat down next to her.
“You’ve taught me a great deal this past week or so, Jane,” he said.
“I’ve taught you?”
“Yes. And I’ve very much enjoyed having you around. Which is why I have to ask, before you see your husband, whether I might yet be able to tempt you to stay.”
Jane thought this sounded as desirable as it sounded insane, and her self-defence mechanisms went into operation upon reflex.
“We were two people thrown together in extremely emotional circumstances,” she said, thinking aloud. “I don’t believe in fairytales, Bett. I can’t see a happy ever after for the two of us here in your mansion.”
“I don’t believe in fairytales, either Jane. What happened between us meant a lot to me, but I’m not kidding myself.”
“Then why are you asking me to stay?”
“Because I just let my most talented protégé go and I need a replacement. I’m offering you a job.”
“Oh come on, Bett. I survived the week but I don’t think I’d be so brave or daring when it’s not my nearest and dearest that’s at stake.”
“Neither do I, but your judgement and discipline would be the better for it. You’re a natural, Jane. You were born for this.”
She looked at his face, realised he wasn’t kidding. Bett was never kidding. That, of course, left deluded, but she knew he was never that either. And she knew the only reason she was trying to convince herself that this idea wasn’t viable was that she wanted it so much. It was like all her life she’d had dreams she could fly, and every morning she woke up and found her feet stuck to the ground; but this past couple of weeks, she had flown, she had soared, and now that she had, she wasn’t coming back down again.
“You can stay here until you find a place of your own. I can offer good wages, foreign travel, company car. Not that company car. Okay, if that’s what it takes. Name your terms.”
“I have only two. One, plenty of time off to see my family.”
“Not a problem. What’s two?”
“The firm does a wee ‘homer’ for me before I start.”
Jane let him off with the offer of the Diablo and instead borrowed his other car, a Porsche Carrera, to get to the hospital in San Raphael. She stopped it at the end of the drive watching the gates slowly open, her eye caught again by the name etched amid the iron creepers and thorns, and then it hit her. Maison Blah, she’d heard Lex say, as in blah blah blah, but it wasn’t, and nor was it Maison Rla. She’d misread the curlicued lettering: it was Maison Bla. Bla an Tir. Gaelic.
She laughed to herself as she put it together, where he was from: a town by a river, sure enough, but not one you’d want to grow up in if you were a boy called Hilary. No wonder he’d learned how to fight.
She remembered when Ross was a wee boy, how Tom used to tick him off if he left his bike lying outside rather than store it in the garage.
“If you don’t look after it, some bad boy from Blantyre will come and take it away.”
Pity he hadn’t heeded his own lesson. Now a very bad boy from Blantyre was taking away his wife.
She found Tom sitting up in his hospital bed, reading a copy of the Daily Record. He was in the south of France, but there was some alchemy by which West of Scotland males could always procure a copy of that rag no matter where they were.
“Catching up on the Celtic?” she asked.
“Aye. I’d forgotten all about the UEFA Cup. We ended up watching the Barcelona game on that boat, can you believe that?”
“After the past fortnight, I can believe anything. Who do they have in the next round?”
“Some mob called Villareal. Never heard of them. It’ll be a scoosh. Shooty-in.”
“Good, good. How’s the wing?”
“Well, we’ve Agathe down the right and...”
“I meant your arm, Tom. Sore?”
“A wee bit, but I’ve got this PCA thing. I just push a button when it starts to hurt.”
“So you’re sitting comfortably, then?”
The homer
He stood with his back to the bar, a bottle of lager in his hand, and surveyed his men, assembled around him and awaiting his command. It was half past midnight and they had a lock-in, the landlord turfing out all but his crew when the time came. But this wasn’t for a bevvy session. This was for business. Serious business.
They had all answered the call: Tommy, Deek, Panda, Jai, Goggsy, Wee Flea, Fat Paddy. All, that was, except Big Chick, who wasn’t expetced to be answering any calls for a while. The poor cunt was couped up in his bedroom back at his mammy’s house, a quivering wreck who couldn’t get to sleep at night because he went mental if the lights went off.
Two days they’d been chained up in that basement, in the dark, in complete blackness. Two fucking days. Pishing where they sat, drinking water through a tube, starving hungry and all the time having no idea when or if they’d ever get out.
But one thought had sustained him throughout it all, and now it was time for that thought to be made flesh.
The bitch had been seen again, at last. She was back in EK, arrived just today. He knew, because he’d had somebody watching the house for a week. She had returned, stupid or arrogant enough to think she could just walk back into town and forget who ran the fucking show, forget the liberties she’d taken. He didn’t care who she thought she was or who her chinas had been. The point was, they weren’t fucking with her now, were they?
The way he saw it, she’d left him no choice. This wasn’t just about revenge, it was about reputation. So far, nobody else knew what had happened in Barcelona, other than that it had left Big Chick greeting like a wean every night, but it was only a matter of time before the rumours started. He couldn’t afford that, and he really couldn’t afford the truth to get out.
So tonight was a simple necessity, and one he was sorely looking forward to. He’d soon see how she liked being tied up and knocked fuck out of, how she enjoyed all the things he’d been dreaming up for her while he rotted for two days in that stinking hole.
“Right, boys,” he announced, calling them to order.
Which was as far as he got. The lights went out, and a fraction of a second later there was a deafening crash of glass, like every window in the place had been simultaneously smashed. He heard panicked shouts, soft impacts, groans and heavy thumps, sensed movement all around him but saw nothing. Then he felt arms about him, struggled in vain as he was pinned and twisted, then hauled off his feet and brought down, hard and horizontal, on the pool table.
The lights came on again. He sat up and looked around. All his men were unconscious, lying on the floor where they had fallen, the end of a dart jutting from each of their chests.
But he was not alone.
There were three figures standing before him, dressed all in black, each holding a pistol, their faces masked by some kind of goggles, presumably for seeing in the dark. The one dead ahead began walking slowly towards him, the other pair moving in again to hold him as the figure approached. Some craven sensation of fear told him he knew that walk, a woman’s walk, that he’d seen it before in Y-pishingly familiar circumstances.
She put a hand to her face and removed the goggles.
Oh shite.
The other two sat him up to face her. She stood and stared at him, grim-faced, contemptuous, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. She unfolded it and handed it to him.
“Read it,” she said. “Aloud.”
He looked at the sheet, his hand trembling as he held it. It looked like a blown-up photocopy, the type oversized and slightly distorted.
“READ IT,” she shouted.
He read.
“Retribution,” he began. “Noun. Punishment or retaliation for an insult or injury.”
“Very good,” she said. “You see, Mr Connelly, it occurred to me that following our last encounter, in your juvenile wee mind you may believe you’ve some account you need to settle with me and mine. So I ask you: Retribution. Do you know the meaning of the word?”
“Aye,” he told her. “I just fuckin’ read it to you.”
She shook her head and took back the paper. Then she scrunched it into a ball and the other two held him as she stuffed it into his mouth.
“No, Mr Connelly, that was just the dictionary definition. You come anywhere near my family again and I’ll teach you the fucking meaning.”
***
All rights reserved.
© 2005 Christopher Brookmyre
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