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‘Listen,' and Richard scarcely paused, ‘that paperwork you asked me for, I'm having it biked over. It should be with you by midday.'

Strategically, Jimmy thought it would be a mistake to sound too relieved, or too grateful. Instead, he simply told Richard that he was seeing Connor for lunch, which allowed Richard the room to draw his own conclusions. At the end of the phone-call it was Richard who thanked Jimmy rather than the other way round.

In the restaurant that lunchtime Jimmy studied the menu for less than a minute, then ordered a Caesar salad and a bottle of mineral water. It was all he could face. Also, it would fix him in Connor's mind as one of a new breed of marketing executives; the clean-living image was bound to appeal to Connor, who had spent most of the last decade in Southern California.

As Jimmy's decaffeinated
cappuccino
arrived, he began to tell Connor about the meeting with Richard and the subsequent delivery. The American had been looking out across the restaurant floor, thinking he had recognised someone, an old colleague, but now his head turned back towards Jimmy, turned slowly, remorselessly, which gave Jimmy the feeling that he was at the planetarium, observing the movement of a celestial body.

‘You solved it already?' Connor said.

‘I think so.'

Connor wanted to know how.

‘I told him you were thinking of moving the account. I told him I'd try and talk you out of it. If that was what he wanted.'

‘You blamed me?'

A bubble of fear rose through Jimmy as he wondered if he'd
gone too far. ‘It seemed the obvious thing to do.' He paused. ‘It seemed believable. Your reputation …'

‘Yes. I can see that.'

Jimmy reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope. He handed it to Connor, who prised the seal open with his big, blunt fingers. Connor lifted out the invoice and unfolded it.

‘Twenty-five thousand,' Jimmy said.

‘Well,' said Connor, smiling, ‘it's a start.'

For the launch of Kwench! ECSC UK hired the top floor of a five-star hotel in Kensington, complete with roof garden, swimming-pool and a panoramic view of the city. It had been Jimmy's idea to have the water in the pool dyed orange, but Connor had thought of the synchronised swimmers, a stroke of genius which, in Jimmy's opinion, proved the American was worth every penny of his reputedly enormous salary. An orange swimming-pool, it was memorable in itself – but then, while the champagne was being served, nineteen girls stepped out on to the terrace, dressed in tight-fitting orange hats and sleek blue one-piece bathing-costumes. In single file, they marched towards the deep end, their heads thrown proudly back, their toes pointing. They climbed down into the water and, accompanied by the soundtrack from the first Kwench! TV/cinema commercial, they began to run through various routines, their movements graceful, intricate, and perfectly orchestrated. Every now and then, observing a music cue, perhaps, or following some logic of their own, the girls broke out of the patterns they were creating and formed the word KWENCH! on the surface of the pool. The first time this happened, there was an involuntary gasp from the crowd, and then delighted laughter and a small, spontaneous burst of applause.

‘Seems to be going pretty well.'

Jimmy turned to see Raleigh Connor standing beside him.
Connor was wearing a short-sleeved sports shirt and a pair of casual trousers. His forearms, which were thick and tanned, reminded Jimmy of cold roast chicken.

‘It couldn't be going better,' Jimmy said.

During the thirteen-week run-up to the launch he had been surprised by the smoothness of the operation. Their only real worry had been that the advertising spend might be seen to be too meagre (of course, if you counted the cost of Project Secretary, it wasn't meagre at all), but Jimmy managed to take that worry and turn it to the company's advantage. In a daring presentation to the sales force at the end of January, he had stressed the product's secret formula, a cocktail of natural ingredients that would enhance the lives of all consumers, and he had claimed that its unique character would be reflected in the marketing, part of which would be subterranean, invisible – a mystery promotion. In reality, of course, no such promotion existed. It was just a smoke-screen – a sort of double-bluff, in fact – but the sales force went away happy, believing they could create excitement on the strength of what he had said, and the off-trade order figures for the following month showed that his strategy had worked. People sometimes argued that marketing was damage limitation, the art of preventing things from going wrong. If that was the case, then ECSC UK's marketing of Kwench! had been exemplary.

‘It looks so effortless, doesn't it,' Connor said, and, as he spoke, the girls sprang up out of the water, their bodies vertical and seemingly suspended for a moment in mid-air. ‘You have to watch what's happening below the surface, though. You have to see the work they're putting in.' Moving closer to Jimmy, he pointed down into the pool. Jimmy saw the girls' hands rotating frantically.

Connor shook his head, impressed. ‘They say it's like running the four hundred metres without breathing.'

‘You don't notice it, do you,' Jimmy said. ‘I mean, you're not supposed to.'

They might have been discussing their own clandestine schemes, Jimmy thought, and, judging by the smile on Connor's face, he thought so too. During the past few weeks they had developed a peculiar affinity, a kind of understanding; at times they seemed to be able to communicate in code. Connor gripped him briefly by the upper arm, sealing something, and then withdrew into the crowd.

Jimmy remained beside the pool. As all the girls were wearing identical hats and bathing-costumes, it was hard to tell them apart, but Jimmy had already decided which one was the prettiest: whenever they formed the word Kwench! in the water, she simply turned on to her back, became the top half of the exclamation mark. He watched the swimming until it ended, then he moved away. He had been drinking champagne since midday, and he thought it was probably time he did some of the coke Zane had biked over that morning. A shame he had to do it alone, but then he could hardly offer it to Richard Herring, could he?

The toilets were spotless – gleaming sinks and mirrors, white towels piled in downy heaps, the hypnotic trickling of water. Once he was locked into a cubicle he felt in his pocket for the tiny envelope. He chopped the coke on the cistern, which was flat and black, almost as if it had been designed for that very purpose. Yes, the smoothness of the launch had astonished him. In January, for instance, the agency creatives had presented to the company again, and this time they hadn't tried to be too clever. They had produced a three-stage poster campaign, based on a gradual revelation of the Kwench! logo, and a TV/cinema commercial that did the same job, only in a slightly wittier and more dramatic way, the central image being a visual pun in which the top half of the Kwench! exclamation mark doubled as a glass filled with the product. The tagline said, simply,
Kwench it!
Straightforward advertising, but effective, energetic – bold. During the presentation Jimmy had applauded the agency's achievement. He had also coined
a new phrase,
exclamation marketing,
which Connor had been repeating ever since.

He ran one finger across the top of the cistern, collecting the last few grains, and licked it, then he pulled the chain. His heart was jumping. Probably the cocaine had been cut with amphetamine. Unlocking the cubicle, he opened the door. Directly in front of him, no more than ten feet away and bending over a wash-basin, was Tony Ruddle. As Jimmy hesitated in the doorway, Ruddle looked up and saw him reflected in the mirror. Ruddle swung round, hands dripping.

‘Constipation?' he said.

Jimmy stared at him. ‘I'm sorry?'

‘It took such a long time,' Ruddle said and, smiling unpleasantly, he moved towards the hand-drier on the wall and pressed the silver button.

He must be drunk, Jimmy thought, as he walked over to a wash-basin and turned on the hot tap.

‘You enjoy yourself,' Ruddle shouted over the roar of the machine. ‘Enjoy your fifteen minutes. Because that's all you're getting.'

Had Ruddle guessed what he'd been up to? Surely not.

‘I'm watching you,' Ruddle shouted. ‘You just remember that.'

Jimmy pictured the miniature white envelope at the bottom of his pocket. 1903, he thought. The year they took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola. Almost a century ago. And that was probably the closest Ruddle would ever get to it. Suddenly he was grinning. Though he knew it wasn't wise.

The roar of the machine cut out and in the sudden hush Ruddle walked up behind him. He could feel the push of Ruddle's breath. Its sour, brackish reek thrust past his shoulder, hung under his nose.

‘… and I'm going to be there when it does,' Ruddle was saying. ‘Oh yes, I'm going to be there, don't you worry.'

Jimmy turned to look at him. ‘Does what?'

Wrongfooted, Ruddle gaped.

‘I have to say,' and, once again, Jimmy couldn't keep the grin off his face, ‘that suit with that bow-tie, it's fucking terrible.'

Ruddle took another step forwards. Backing away, Jimmy felt the thick porcelain lip of the wash-basin press into the small of his back.

‘You think you're clever,' Ruddle hissed.

Christ, the man was frightening close-up. Those teeth crammed inside his mouth like an untidy shelf of books. That breath …

Ruddle stepped back, panting.

‘We'll see about that,' he muttered. ‘We'll see.'

Jimmy watched Ruddle lunge towards the toilet door, trousers slightly flared, hands flapping at hip-level. It must be that mid-life crisis people talk about, he thought. Ruddle ought to be careful. What happened if your blood pressure got too high? That was a stroke, wasn't it?

On his way back to the roof garden Jimmy took a wrong turning. He found himself in a kind of corridor or hallway, an artificial lemon fragrance in the air. The overhead lighting was discreet, indirect, but somehow he still felt exposed, as if Ruddle might, at any moment, spring foaming from a hidden alcove. He noticed a pink upholstered chair with slender golden arms. He sat down. Plants grew complacently around him in brass tubs. In the distance he could see three silver doors. A bank of lifts.

As he sat there, not sure what to do next, a door opened halfway down the corridor and a girl appeared. She was looking over her shoulder; one of the straps on her backpack had twisted, and she was trying to straighten it. She had short blonde hair, which was still damp from the shower. She wore a loose cotton shirt and clinging lycra cycling shorts. Her legs were bare.

‘You were part of the exclamation mark,' he said.

She looked round. She had the coolness, the stillness, of a vision. She seemed familiar – or, at least, not unexpected – though he knew he had never met her before.

He stood up, moved towards her. ‘When you made that word in the water,' he said. ‘You were part of the exclamation mark, weren't you?'

‘Oh yes.' She laughed a little, lowering her eyes. ‘Yes, that's right.'

‘It's the first time I've ever seen it …'

‘Synchro?'

‘What?' He didn't follow.

‘That's what we call it,' she said. ‘It's such a mouthful otherwise.' Slightly self-conscious, she reached up and pushed her fingers through her hair. He noticed that it had a greenish tinge to it, the same colour as young corn.

‘I thought it was great,' he said. ‘I really did.' He saw her look beyond him, towards the lifts. ‘You're not going, are you?'

She smiled. ‘Well, yes …'

‘Do you think I could see you again?' His boldness took him by surprise.

She looked at him quickly, and seemed to hesitate.

‘Are you with anyone?' he asked.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘kind of.'

‘So am I. Kind of.' He saw a barren mountainside with wreckage scattered over it. Men picking gingerly through split suitcases and pieces of twisted metal. Bridget's bedroom. ‘Well, not any more, actually,' he said. ‘Are you in the phone-book?'

‘No.'

‘So how will I find you?'

She thought for a moment. ‘I train at Marshall Street Baths most evenings.' She began to walk away from him, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. ‘Or sometimes it's Seymour Place.'

He watched her step through the silver doors and press the button for ground floor. As the doors closed over her, she was looking downwards, at her feet.

He found the roof garden eventually, asking the housekeeper first, and then a waiter. When he walked out into the sunshine, most of the guests were staring up into the air. Bill Denman had just released one thousand orange balloons over the city, each one stamped with the Kwench! logo. Jimmy stood next to Richard Herring and watched the balloons shrink against the bright-blue sky. He wished he had been able to implement his traffic-light idea. He had wanted to jam all Central London's traffic-lights on amber. Not for long. An hour or two would have been enough. Imagine the chaos! The publicity!

‘Jimmy,' Richard said. ‘You having fun?'

That night, on his way home, Jimmy tried to decide whether or not he was worried about Tony Ruddle. He didn't think he was, not really. Not so long as he continued to be indispensable to Raleigh Connor. After all, what real leverage did Ruddle have? What strings could he pull? Jimmy could only see two options. Either Ruddle would have to try and turn Bill Denman against Connor – and Jimmy couldn't imagine how Ruddle's influence on the managing director would be stronger than Connor's – or he would have to resort to blackmail. To blackmail someone, though, you need information, and Ruddle didn't have any – at least, not yet (though he did appear to sense that he was being excluded from something, which might explain his rancour and frustration, that tantrum in the hotel toilet). Still, Jimmy thought it would do no harm to cover himself.