The Fix Read Free

last.’
    â€˜Are you planning to give it all to me one page at a time?’
    â€˜I didn’t want to overwhelm your Gen Y concentration span.’ It was a longstanding joke making a comeback.
    We were a clear half-generation apart in age, and it mostly felt like one of those halves that rounded up. We hadn’t had enough common ground to work the way brothers were supposed to, but on our better days we had still connected in some ways – the music he brought home, mainly, and movies. And I had of course spent my teenage years in a relationship with a photo of the woman he later met and married.
    â€˜Somewhere out there is a demographer I want to slap over all that Gen Y stuff,’ I told him, ‘but I’m too distractable to find out who.’
    He laughed. ‘I’d give you more, but that’s all I’ve got. Just those articles. I’m sure the firm’ll have more.’
    The older article had more details of the siege, though it hadn’t really been a siege, not in the way it was conceived or carried out. Perhaps the word siege had come along early in the coverage, and stuck. The gunman was an aggrieved or troubled client. He had taken Ben and the managing partner, Frank Ainsworth, hostage and blocked the exits. Ben had saved the day but, in the struggle, the man had been fatally shot by his own weapon. I got the impression it hadn’t lasted long enough to become a siege.
    â€˜So, Ben Harkin’s a friend of yours?’ Brett was saying.
    I didn’t look up. There was a photo of Ben being led to an ambulance, and an older man – Frank Ainsworth – on a stretcher with a bandage wrapped around his head. ‘Well, I’d happily never see him again, but don’t let that bother you.’
    Brett picked at his nails. It was a habit that had always irritated me.
    â€˜But you’re okay with this?’ he said, as nonchalantly as he could manage. ‘I’ve told them it’ll be you doing the job. I’ve pitched you based on what you did in the UK.’
    â€˜I’m okay with it.’ I straightened the two sheets of paper out in front of me, one on top of the other. ‘I’m a professional. Watch me. I can be the most professional guy you’ve ever seen without a tie.’
    â€˜Remember that job you did with the contaminated water in the UK? That went really well. You’ll be great with this. And it’s easy. In and out in a week or so.’
    â€˜I did practically nothing on that. The contaminated water job.’ I had already said I was okay. I didn’t need to be persuaded. ‘I was really junior then.’
    â€˜Maybe, but it was a tough sell. This is good news. The water story shows you know how to find the angles to play. It’s a good example.’ It wasn’t any kind of example, but I was going to take the work, even if Ben Harkin was to be right at the centre of it. ‘And there was more, right? Privatisations? A toll road through some piece of unspoiled wilderness?’
    â€˜It wasn’t exactly unspoiled wilderness. It was the Midlands. But, yeah, I ran interference on that kind of stuff. Spun it till its eyes popped, if I had to. A good-news story like this looks like a gift in comparison. I’m your man, Brett. So stop pitching. At least stop pitching me to me. Or to you.’
    â€˜Just talking things through. You’ll be great.’ He looked at his watch, then straightened it on his wrist. ‘Mum said you picked up the camp stove from her a week ago.’
    â€˜Yeah. My oven kind of conked out.’
    So this was where it all came together – my oven, the visit to my parents, the out-of-the-blue call from Brett offering work. Not so out of the blue, as it turned out. Aspen now sounded too obvious, a cliché. I wondered if the job was complete charity. I took a long slow breath, and I sucked it up.
    I was tucked under the overhang of a mortgage, I had money