Trading Reality (50 page)

The axe fell over and over again. Sorenson started to scream again.

‘Who was it, Walter?’ whispered Richard.

‘It wasn’t me!’ shouted Sorenson at last. ‘It wasn’t my idea! It was her fault! She shouldn’t have done it! It was stupid! Stupid!’

There was a pause. I heard Rachel’s voice in my earphones. ‘Right, we’ve got to go live here.’

Until then we had been able to use carefully rehearsed pre-programmed speeches for Richard, which I had recorded over the last few days. But now I would have to ask questions myself. My voice would be synthesised into an imitation of Richard’s in real time.

‘Who was she Walter?’ It was strange to see my words coming out of Richard’s mouth in the virtual world as I spoke them. It still seemed to me as though he was really speaking.

No reply. Just heavy breathing as Sorenson gasped for air.

‘It was a woman, wasn’t it?’

‘I won’t tell you anything. You can put me through this as long as you like, I still won’t tell you.’

‘Here we go again,’ said Rachel. This time, Sorenson had pulled himself together. There were no screams, although I could hear the air hissing through his clenched teeth.

‘Who was she, Walter?’

No response.

‘Was she your wife? A lover?’ I remembered what my father had said about Sorenson’s weakness for women. ‘Was it your mistress who murdered me?’

‘Go to hell!’ Sorenson muttered.

‘It was, wasn’t it? Your mistress. Your lover. It had to be someone who knew Richard. Who was she?’

I thought of the women who knew Richard who might also have known Sorenson. Rachel? No, obviously not.

Oh God. No. No!

‘Switch us back to the meeting!’

Rachel did as I told her. The seven of us were sitting round the mahogany table again. In the virtual world, everyone had deadpan faces.

I turned to Karen.

‘You killed him!’

There was silence. All eyes were on her. She looked from Sorenson to me. In the virtual world it was impossible to tell what her true expression was.

‘I had to,’ she said at last. ‘He was going to expose Walter. It would have been the end of his career. It would have meant there was no future for us.’

‘But how could you do it?’

‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I meant to talk him out of going to the SEC. But he wouldn’t listen. And the axe was right there. It was the only way to keep him quiet.’

I was speechless. My brain was a jumble of unconnected thoughts. So her lover wasn’t Bob Forrester at all; it was Sorenson. Karen had killed my brother. And even after that we had slept together, made love. It was revolting. I couldn’t believe it. It was too horrible to believe.

I dimly heard Rachel’s voice as she took over. ‘And what about Doogie? And Mark and me?’

‘I killed Doogie. And I arranged for those men to kill you and Mark. Walter knew nothing about it. Like he said, it was all my idea.’

‘Did you know anything about this, Walter?’

‘I’m not saying anything without a lawyer,’ Sorenson replied flatly.

‘It was worth it,’ Karen said. ‘It was worth it for you, Walter. Please remember that.’

The anger boiled up inside me. It came from nowhere. At one moment I was stunned, at the next every sinew of my body was filled with fury.

‘You bitch!’ I screamed, and pulled off my virtual glasses. I lunged at Karen, her face hidden behind the headset.

Rachel grabbed my arm and hung on. ‘No Mark! Leave her! The police will take care of her!’

I pulled up short. I couldn’t see Karen’s eyes under the helmet. But I could see her mouth. She was smiling.

We stood outside the small terraced house in Jericho, a former working-class district of Oxford now taken over by students and younger dons. I was nervous. So was Rachel. I rang the bell.

Frances answered. ‘Hi, come in.’

My stepmother was dark-haired and pretty, and only a few years older than me. It was a ridiculous situation.

My father was overjoyed to see us, and grinned broadly as I introduced Rachel. ‘What will you have to drink?’

Rachel, Frances and I opted for beers, whilst my father had the inevitable dry sherry. He had an image to maintain. I thought he looked much better than when I had spoken to him in the King’s Arms. Not so worn, not so dispirited.

Frances had prepared a traditional Sunday lunch of roast lamb. I realised it was years since I had had one, and I was looking forward to it.

‘So, you decided not to stay on as MD of FairSystems?’ said my father, as he cut into the meat.

‘I did my best in a crisis, but I’m sure Rachel will do a much better job than I ever could. Besides, trading is in my blood.’ I had persuaded her that it was something she not only could do, but should do. The idea was growing on her.

‘And are you staying in the City?’

‘No,’ I smiled. ‘I’ve just accepted a job with Hunter Merchant. They’re a fund management firm in Edinburgh. It’s a lot less money, but they have an excellent reputation. And it will be good to live in Scotland. They’ll let me spend a couple of days a month at FairSystems. It should work out well.’ I smiled at Rachel. I had had enough of Edinburgh airport. I didn’t think much of the idea of weekend commuting.

‘How are the police getting on with the prosecution?’ my father asked.

‘It’s not easy,’ I said. ‘Sorenson is keeping quiet, except to deny everything. Karen says she was responsible for the whole thing.’

‘What do you think happened?’ asked Frances.

‘I can piece most of it together. Sorenson met Karen several years ago, probably at one of the Harrison Brothers conferences. Sorenson runs American companies, Karen sells their stock, so it wasn’t really surprising that they should meet. Then he chucked her, she cracked up, and I picked up the pieces.

‘Sorenson got into the insider trading game through lack of money. He had an expensive lifestyle, and most of his wealth was tied up in the shares of Softouch, which went bust. He met Hartman, and started giving him inside information. It was easy money. Then Richard got suspicious about FairSystems’ stock, and asked Karen and me to help him find out what was going on. Karen guessed Sorenson was involved, and contacted him to warn him. She had seen him at BGL’s party just a few days before. It must have been about then that their affair restarted.’

I could hear the bitterness creeping into my voice. I remembered Karen’s sudden trips to Paris and Amsterdam, her evenings spent entertaining clients. ‘Karen fell for him again. When Richard threatened to expose Sorenson, she was desperate. She couldn’t face the thought of losing him once more. So she flew up to Scotland to talk Richard out of it, and when he refused, she killed him.

‘She must have told Sorenson what she had done. She says she was proud of it; it was a way for her to show him how much she loved him.’ I shuddered. Tm sure Sorenson had no idea what Karen was going to do. Neither did she, probably. But once Richard was dead, they were both deeply involved. They had to kill Doogie and try to kill Rachel and me to cover their tracks.’ And all the time she’d kept up the pretence of our relationship. So as not to raise suspicions, I supposed. And to keep an eye on me. My skin crawled to think of it.

‘It must have been Sorenson who murdered Doogie,’ I continued. ‘After all, Karen was still in my flat, but he would just have had time to go up to Scotland. Either one of them could have hired those men to kill us.’

‘I still can’t believe Walter could get himself involved in something like this,’ said my father. ‘He was always so straight, so above board.’

‘I think that was exactly the reputation he was trying to protect,’ I said. ‘If he had been exposed insider dealing, it would have ruined him.’

Dad nodded. ‘I can see that. He was always proud of his achievements. But to kill?’

‘Once Karen had killed Richard, it probably seemed to him that he had no other option. And he’s certainly a man of action.’

‘She must have been a seriously mixed up woman.’

‘She was,’ I said. ‘More than I could ever guess.’

I sighed. ‘I saw her mother last week. She called me a while ago saying she was worried about Karen, but I ignored her. I had other things to think about. Anyway, she told me that Karen’s breakdown when her father left was even more serious than I realised. Apparently the “other woman” ’s house was burned down. Karen was ruled out as the arsonist, but only because her mother covered for her. When Karen stayed with her the night after Richard was murdered, she was in a terrible state. Although Daphne wouldn’t admit it, I think she suspected her daughter had killed Richard.’

A thought struck me. ‘Did you guess something, Rachel? Is that why you insisted Karen should be at the demonstration?’

Rachel smiled. ‘It was no more than a guess. Just intuition, really. I had no evidence to back it up, so I thought it best not to tell you, just in case I was wrong. But I was pretty sure that if Karen was there, we would find out if she were involved or not.’

All three of them were looking at me: Frances, my father and Rachel. I answered the unspoken question. ‘I just felt sorry for her,’ I said. ‘I knew she’d had a rough time, and that vulnerability made her more attractive, made me feel I could be useful.’

‘I hope you’re not going to burn down our house,’ said Frances.

‘No.’ I smiled at her, and then at my father. ‘No, I won’t do that.’

The German took off his virtual glasses and leaned back in his chair. ‘Wonderful. This is truly amazing,’ he said, staring at the Jenson Computer in front of him. I had just run him through ‘Virtual Building’, a program that simulated all the details of an office block design.

‘You are sure that I can put all my architects on the same network so that they can all work on the same design?’

‘Quite sure. The program will work with all the major networking software. Your people will be able to walk around and work in the same virtual building, or they can try out their own variations.’

‘And what about all the software we have on our PCs at the moment? Will all that run on this machine?’

‘Anything that will run on an IBM PC with a Pentium chip will run on this,’ I assured him. ‘And you will be able to access the program directly from Windows. In time, your customers will be able to view your designs through their own computers.’

The man stood up. He worked for one of the largest firms of architects in Germany, and he was obviously impressed.

He shook my hand. ‘Very interesting, Mr Fairfax. When will the system be available?’

‘September,’ I said. ‘Shall we get in touch with you then?’

‘Please do.’ He handed me his card. As he walked away from the stand, he kept looking back over his shoulder at the system.

‘Will he buy?’

I turned to see Rachel at my shoulder.

‘Oh yes, he’ll buy,’ I answered.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here. I need a ciggy badly.’

I hesitated. The stand was crowded with eager onlookers, many of them potential buyers.

‘Hey, we’ve been at this for four hours, we deserve a break.’ She took my arm and pulled me away from the stand.

We pushed through the crowded exhibition centre, making our way towards the exit signs. Huge banners hung down from the ceiling proclaiming SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH was the major exhibition in the virtual reality year, and this year’s in Orlando was the biggest yet. Jenson had spared no expense on the joint FairSystems/Jenson stand, and it was the highlight of the show. There were some other products that could do as much as ours, but none that was anywhere near as cheap. And none that would be bundled up in every copy of Windows sold. We really would bring VR to the masses.

It was the third day of the exhibition. Project Platform, renamed ‘VR Master’, had been announced on the first day and had caused an immediate stir. FairSystems’ shares were already up to eighteen dollars and were still rising. Orders were flooding in, and the assembly lines in Jenson’s Palo Alto factory were rolling. Richard’s dream was becoming reality.

We emerged from the huge, air-conditioned hall into the early afternoon brightness. It was hot and clammy, but Rachel didn’t care. She reached for a cigarette and took a long drag. We sat on the steps just outside the hall. People milled about, moving slowly in the heavy July heat. Twenty yards away, a group of a dozen or so were eating sandwiches, sprawled on a square of freshly sprinkled grass.

I glanced at Rachel’s face. I knew she hadn’t slept very much over the past week, but you couldn’t tell. Her dark eyes still glowed brightly under her tousled hair. She saw me watching her and smiled, putting her arm round me. We sat in silence for a minute or two.

It was all coming together. Jenson was proving to be an energetic ally, and had pushed strongly for Rachel to take the role of managing director of FairSystems. I was happy to step back and watch her, and help out where I could. The bond markets beckoned. Once you’re hooked, it’s difficult to give up.

Just then, the group finished their sandwiches and stood up. They moved towards us and began to march round in a circle in front of the exhibition centre. They were wearing ‘Brave Old World League’ badges. They shambled round, laughing and chatting, handing leaflets to anyone who would take one. Some of them carried placards: ‘SAVE OUR CHILDREN’, ‘VIRTUAL HELL IS HERE’, ‘KEEP REALITY REAL’.

I watched them thoughtfully. I remembered the intense high I had felt while trading the market through Bondscape, and the extreme trauma we had put Sorenson through. Richard was right; virtual reality could do good. But I also remembered Doogie’s words. What would happen when virtual reality was available to everyone, to the mentally sick, the lazy, to perverts, psychopaths, sadists?

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Rachel softly. ‘But it’s too late now.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’ve got some VR machines to sell.’