Chris Brimley slowly came to the realization that his life didn't offer much in the way of interest to his newfound soul mate. They began to venture out at the weekends, then it was two or three nights a week. They discovered L'Amici, which Amanda loved, which made him happy. Col Charnwood introduced himself, so delighted to be their friend he gave them a gift. Nibbana, one of the most expensive designer drugs on the market, though Chris Brimley didn't know that.

He tried a few chips on the table, egged on by an excited Amanda. It was fun. The manager was surprisingly relaxed about credit.

After two months Chris Brimley had a nibbana habit that needed three regular scores a day to satisfy, and a fifty-thousand-pound New Sterling debt with L'Amici. They couldn't afford to go out any more, and now Amanda cried a lot in the evening, showering him with concern. Chris Brimley had actually slapped her once when she found him searching her bag for money.

Josh Laren's office was a dry dusty room above L'Amici, the only furniture his teak desk, three wooden chairs, and an antique metal filing cabinet. Ten cases of malt whisky, smuggled over the Scottish border, were stacked against one wall.

Col Charnwood spent an hour going over the room with a sensor pad, sweeping for bugs. It wasn't that Suzi mistrusted Josh Laren; in his position she would have wired it up.

The trembling Chris Brimley who walked into that office was unrecognizable as the clean-cut lad of two months previously. Suzi even felt a stab of guilt at his condition.

"I thought—" Chris Brimley began in confusion.

"Sit," Suzi told him.

Chris Brimley lowered himself into the seat on the other side of the desk from her.