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  ‘It was luck, but you’re saying you let Bakhtin believe it was cunning. Have I got that right?’ Frank was still frowning.

  ‘Is this dinner or a viva?’ Ben protested. ‘Fair play, right?’

  ‘You’re right, fair play is important.’ Frank made a gesture to move the conversation on. ‘OK, I’m at Hampton because it seemed like a good idea at the time – the relevant time being a long time ago. The college didn’t have much of a research reputation, but the teaching load was light. And I’ve always had a weakness for being a smart-arse on my own.’

  ‘You switched over from physics?’

  ‘Yes. My PhD was in molecular physics, but if you can do the maths, finance pays better. Funnily enough I’ve been looking at some physics recently; the maths is even worse now. Anyway, tell me another way to live by a lake this close to London?’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ agreed Ben. ‘So you sail? You’ve got one of the boathouses, haven’t you?’

  ‘As a kid I sailed all the time.’

  ‘Do you have a boat?’

  Frank laughed. ‘Here? Maybe half a boat. I’m building a replica of the first rowing boat to cross an ocean – Samuelsen and Harbo rowed the Atlantic from America to France in 1896.’

  Ben shifted. On the one hand he was trying to hide a disquiet – a small one, like a mouse nibbling at some unimportant crumbs of cheese. The photos inside the hut showed no rowing boat, half-finished or otherwise. On the other hand, part of him felt more comfortable now that both of them had something a bit uncomfortable to chew on. Not that it was a competition, but one-all was still a decent score. ‘You’re kidding. How long will that take?’

  ‘I should have finished a year ago. It’s just a hobby, really.’

  ‘You’ll need some machinery, I guess, to shape the planks of wood and that? Electrical gear and stuff.’

  ‘No, not at all. The whole point is to do as much of it by the original technology as possible. Hand tools.’ Frank held out his right hand. ‘I’m a bit stronger than I look. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Doesn’t every former student want to discover their star teacher’s human side? You must show me the boat some time.’

  ‘Star teacher? Well, well,’ Frank chuckled. ‘We must do this more often.’

  Ben pushed again. ‘So when can I see the boat?’

  ‘Whenever. Any time after next week – exam-marking week.’ Frank rolled his eyeballs. ‘Care to give a hand?’

  ---

  Ben asked for the bill and for the manager. If possible he wanted to look at the bedrooms. He would bet money on at least one VIPA discovering on Thursday night that they wanted a bed but the Ritz was too far to walk. It would help to have something more presentable than a student bedroom up his sleeve. Frank excused himself for a smoke.

  Since VIP overflow from the college was business the manager wanted to have, he came off his break. Ben was given a quick tour of a ‘deluxe executive double’ (not much different from a college bedroom, but with snobby toiletries) and ‘the kings suite’. The suite had potential, and was available on Thursday night. Although the bedroom was barely larger than its queen-sized bed there was a spacious en suite bathroom and a living room, ersatz in its decoration but with two arm chairs, a period mantelpiece and a desk.

  The manager went back downstairs to check in some guests, leaving Ben with the key. The suite’s rooms were clean. He checked the lights and the taps; they were all fine. The room was non-smoking but that was par for the course. As he turned to go, he noticed the clock on the mantelpiece. A cuckoo clock in the shape of an Alpine hut surrounded by a tableau of rustic figures – an authentic fake, powered by battery.

  Why did he do it? Perhaps the mouse of doubt in his life wanted company. Ben wound the time on from 10.20pm towards the hour. The mechanism swung into noisy gear. A window flew open and let fly a drowning cuckoo sound. He had heard that sound before – in the background of the telephone call in which Alex had fired him. At the time Ben had thought Alex was flying over India. Why would Alex have been in this bedroom of the Kings Arms? And why, if he had been round the corner from the college, hadn’t he given his own speech on Monday night?

  SUNDAY 17 JUNE

  Sunday was Ben’s fourth day in the dean’s office. He arrived early. While so far turning the tower opening around from being a fiasco had gone better than Ben had dared hope, he needed no telling about the dangers of complacency.

  Roger Sling’s agitation had reached far enough to leave his home number in the message, so Ben called him. They batted apologies back and forth and agreed to meet at the college first thing on Monday. The main focus of the site meeting was on the announcements. By 10am the team in Bangalore had had a full 24 hours working on the problem remotely. Rakesh’s optimism was unshakeable that Proximity Communications would have the issue properly licked. By contrast Ben and Tom continued to draw comfort from their private fall-back – simply switching the announcements off.

  The announcements issue wasn’t the only thing needing proper licking – there were the VIPAs. Among these, Casey was the prince. Like playing tennis with a nutcase, all Ben could do was to keep returning the serves and banging the idiotic ideas back to his opponent’s baseline. It was exhausting.

  ‘Good to speak to you too, Mr Pinnacle. I got your message. Funnily enough, I do have in mind that Thursday is the one-hundredth birthday of VST. A display by the Red Arrows aerobatic team would indeed be a lovely surprise for your father, to mark the occasion. The Red Arrows have no problem doing very fine displays. And I’m sure they would have no problem doing orange-and-gold coloured smoke in your corporate colours.

  ‘Here’s what would be a problem, to the point where anyone could forget about me doing it: any suggestion that I ring our Ministry of Defence on a Sunday to ask for a Red Arrows flypast at Hampton this Thursday, when they have taken the trouble to produce a very fine website explaining that all requests for each summer need to have been made by the preceding September.’

  Ben paused. ‘Yes, indeed. You are American, and we are British. As we speak our armed forces stand toe-to-toe with yours, blood brothers and sisters in the unceasing war on terror. Moved as our Ministry of Defence will undoubtedly be by this fact, as well as by the urgency with which the one-hundredth birthday of Virtual Savings and Trust has arisen, I fear it will not suffice. On their website – did I mention they have a website? – the Red Arrows thoughtfully explain that they do not do weddings, funerals or birthdays.’

  Another pause. ‘Quite. Exactly. Now, to be the epitome of helpfulness is my only goal. At any other moment of the year, I would offer to spend the rest of my Sunday compiling a spreadsheet of all the countries in the world whose air forces have aerobatic teams, and how much it would cost to source alternate supplies. But it being as we speak almost exactly one-hundred hours to the opening of your father’s tower, and with the odd thing remaining on my ‘to do’ list, with huge gnashing of teeth I must refrain from making this offer.’

  ‘By all means. Try entering “small country with aerobatic team” on eBay. Why not? It’s my pleasure, sir. Dean Gyro’s delight that you will be joining us on the day is surpassed only by my own.’ Ben replaced the receiver.

  The mouse of Frank’s lie was still in Ben’s mind, but overshadowed now by a giant rat. To the mystery of Alex making one of his top achievers redundant, without warning, apparently to cut costs, had been added the mystery of where he had been, and why, when he had done the deed. Round the corner?

  Of course Alex was a lord now. Ben was on the point of sending Alex a congratulatory email blind-copied to Gyro when he took a leaf out of his mother’s book and called Bakhtin’s office on his old number. In his time only occasionally had Tahmina needed to come in on Sundays to catch up, but now struggling with two jobs she might well be there. If she was, Sunday would be a good day to ask her where Alex had actually been on Monday night. Wha
t he heard made hara kiri unnecessary; he was humiliated and disembowelled by the words.

  ‘Lord Bakhtin’s office, Charlie Driesman.’ Charlie – his friend. His rival too in the Bakhtin empire, hardworking as anything but not quite so smart – or had Ben called that wrong? Charlie – sitting in his old seat on a Sunday. His job had not been made redundant after all; just given to someone else.

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Is that Ben? Good on you, mate, what are you up to?’

  ‘Congratulations. I guess you got my job.’

  ‘Thanks. I was gutted to get it this way. What Alex was thinking I have no idea. But I knew you’d land on your feet.’

  ‘I did, thanks. I’m doing a project for Hampton – pulling chestnuts out of the fire for this big opening we’ve got on Thursday.’

  ‘I know. It’s in Alex’s diary.’

  ‘Of course it is. Anyway, it’s high exposure. I’m going to meet more bosses of large companies in a day than I would’ve in a lifetime, so hopefully I’ll land something interesting.’

  ‘You lucky bugger. Anyway, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Easy enough, just pass on congratulations to the boss, from Dean Gyro and myself. And tell him I’ll particularly look forward to seeing him on Thursday.’

  ‘I tell you what, he’ll probably hire you back. Now he’ll have to do speeches in the House of Lords, and he loved your speeches. I can’t write speeches for toffee.’

  ‘ “Sorry” isn’t a long speech. He could try saying it to me on Thursday. But he won’t, of course.’

  Charlie grunted. ‘True.’

  There was a silver lining in Charlie being a mate – it was no sweat for him to right-click on Bakhtin’s diary to see not only what it said for Monday night, but what it had said previously. The entries had been made by Tahmina. Originally, it had shown the glass-chair presentation at Hampton College. That had been changed in favour of en route to India, which in turn had been replaced by ‘KA private’.

  ‘So who’s KA then?’ Charlie’s curiosity was aroused. ‘I assume it’s a she.’

  ‘That’s my assumption as well,’ said Ben disingenuously. His next call would be to Greg. They could trade information. Ben could confirm that for whatever reason (private sexual practices? But with a portable petrol generator?) Frank wasn’t telling the truth about the contents of the boathouse. Greg could confirm where he had driven the dean’s wife on Monday night, returning her to the college before the end of Ben’s speech. The only good thing about being shafted by Bakhtin was that by the time he told Connie about it, the two of them would be on the same side.

  ---

  Seth Carter could have been excited or forewarned by the fact that full written details of his new remuneration and benefits arrived from his employer by email on a Sunday; he chose to be excited. At quarter to five he drove his VW hatchback (goodbye to that, soon enough) into the college car park, where Connie and two others were waiting for him.

  Seth had raided the Alderley shopping centre for two drinks coolers and ice, one of them for food. Between them they also had a rug, a solar-cell garden light and an old, pre-Walkman, ghettoblaster. They drove a few minutes along the Crassock road and parked past the staff houses by a couple of soaring plane trees, their bark scraped by winter storms and a few JRs and APs who had loved TCs and LGs.

  Sitting in a grass meadow by the water’s edge the group was easy to see from the far side of the lake. By twenty past the party had started, with all but three of the 25 course members there, the course administrator, a couple of faculty and Ben. Feeling flush with his guaranteed first-year bonus Seth had gone a bit mad on Waitrose champagne. Exercising her clout as a governor, Connie had persuaded the college to lend them glassware, so the party was bubbling. Chilled jazz played quietly. Fish in the lake popped up from time to time to approve.

  ‘Very nice party,’ Ben complimented Seth, who had his arm around Connie’s shoulders.

  ‘She’s worth it, believe me. Connie’s a special lady.’

  ‘Congratulations on your job. I gather it’s one with sane people like me in the private sector?’

  Seth carried on through Connie’s derisive snort. ‘Oh, thanks. The NHS has been really great to me, and I may well come back, maybe as a chief executive.’ Connie redoubled her snort. ‘In the meantime I feel like I’ve escaped under the barbed wire. Connie went the other way, you know; she started in the private sector and then decided she couldn’t stand the crap. Anyway, she reckons I’ll last about five years. Why not, make some money, and then see what’s around. Who knows? Maybe I’ll set up my own business!’

  ‘Exactly. Make some money, buy out the college and have this as your back garden.’ Ben gestured around him. Yesterday’s weather had vanished without trace. The sunset looked promising. ‘Anyway, what’s the business you’re joining?’

  Connie roared with laughter. ‘Oh boy, this a good one. Do your stuff, Seth. Show us your A-grade private-sector bullshit. We know you can.’ She bit into a king prawn that had fallen into a linen cupboard of filo pastry. Just as men were either wimps or bastards, it struck her that the same was true of king prawns. Too often they turned out either to be wimp prawns that were barely worth eating, or unnaturally macho prawns which had been using various gym supplements on the side. But these ones hit the spot, cold and delicious with the champagne, of which Ben was well into his second glass.

  Two enjoyable nights out in a row, Ben thought. He didn’t like to think when was the last time that had been true. ‘What’s the business?’ he repeated. ‘I might know it.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Seth. ‘It’s a bit specialised. Proximity –’

  ‘Lift announcements!’ Ben interrupted.

  ‘You might think of lift announcements as a simple business.’

  ‘I do,’ said Connie.

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you. But it isn’t – it isn’t simple, and it isn’t just lift announcements. There’s all kinds of stressful communications situations in confined spaces when the wrong message, the wrong tone of voice, the wrong speed of speaking, could make the difference between life and death.’

  Connie could not suppress her giggles any more. They flooded out like passengers down the exit slides of a 747 in which a man in a hood had smoke coming from his shoes. But Seth’s 747 was at full throttle down the runway, reaching for lift-off into his new intercontinental role. The NHS was just Britain, but now he was joining the global village (business class).

  ‘Think about the voice alarms in the Eurofighter, or on the space shuttle. They’re all Voice 2.0. The system detects how you are responding to the announcement and adapts to your stress level. All kinds of predictive algorithms kick in to adjust what the announcement is saying and how to say it.’ Seth put his glass down in order to gesture with both hands. ‘Proximity’s mission is the creation of calm focus. For example, we might switch to an older man speaking more authoritatively, or a woman speaking more gently, or an African voice. It’s interactive. It depends on you.’

  Ben said, ‘Come on! Give a serious example.’

  ‘Believe what you like but in five years, every new car sold in the United States or Europe will have one of our smart boxes inside it. It will sense if the car has been in a collision, and if so what type of collision, and if you are conscious. It will speak to you to provide you with information which will keep you alive and calm until help arrives. Shock, and mistakes made during shock, is one of the biggest killers in accident situations, and we can halve it.’

  ‘Blimey. But what will your role with them be? Not the crash dummy in the car programme, I hope.’

  ‘No. For some of our most exciting applications, we think the British NHS could be in the vanguard worldwide.’

  Connie cut in at the mention of her employer. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Number one on the list – self-surgery. Within two years this wi
ll be ready to hit the big time and the British NHS is perfect for it.’

  Did Proximity have a special training course to ensure its people always said ‘the British NHS’, Ben wondered? It did make the company sound effortlessly global. ‘Does self-surgery mean what I think it means?’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not on your own. You’re in a specially designed chair environment. We set up two cameras, one as back up, hook both of them through to the computer, and the computer talks you through the whole thing. Calmly. Appropriately. And Voice 2.0 will produce that calm focus.’

  ‘Well, I can see that. It wouldn’t do to stress out in the middle of transplanting your own brain, would it?’ Connie pushed Seth away playfully, holding her head in her hands exaggeratedly. ‘God save us from the private sector.’

  ‘Of course it won’t be suitable for all procedures, or all people. That’s where your GP will continue to play a critical part. But for other procedures, it’s got huge advantages. No waiting lists. A surgeon – yourself – who speaks your language and has got all the time in the world because he isn’t operating on anyone else. And right now it takes years – sometimes 10 years – for improvements in surgical procedures to filter down to the man in the gown with a knife in his hand. That means patients die.

  ‘With self-surgery, your computer guidance will always be up-to-date through the internet. In terms of front-line care, it will be like a 10-year leap forward – at practically no cost. I shouldn’t really say this, but in fact we’ve already done a demonstration at Number Ten.’

  Connie came back with a vengeance. ‘You gave the occupant a brain transplant, I hope. For God’s sake give it a rest, Seth. They don’t start paying you any bonuses for another month. Put my CD on.’