Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,16

Brannigan?" I demanded, my voice surprising even me with its harshness.

Bill picked up the curly Sherlock Holmes pipe he occa¬sionally smokes when he's stuck on a problem, and started fiddling with it. "I'm sorry, Kate, but I'm going to have to sell my share of the partnership. The problem I've got is that I need to realize the capital I've got tied up in the business so I can start again in Sydney."

"I don't believe I'm hearing this," I said. "You think you can just sell us to the highest bidder? Your parents own half the farmland in Cheshire. Can't you get them to stake you?"

Bill scowled. "Of course I bloody can't," he growled. "You didn't go cap in hand to your father when you wanted to become a partner. You funded it yourself. Besides, life's not exactly a bed of roses in cattle farming right now. I doubt they've got the cash to throw around."

"Fine," I said angrily. "So who have you sold out to?"

Bill looked shocked. "I haven't sold to anyone," he protested. "How could you think I'd go behind your back like that?"

I shrugged. "Everything else seems to have been cut and dried without consulting me. Why should that be any different?"

"Didn't you bother reading the partnership agreement when we drew it up? Paragraph 16. If either of us wants to sell our share of the business, we have to offer first refusal to the other partner. And if the remaining partner doesn't want to buy, they have the power of veto over the sale to any third party on any reasonable ground."

"'The final decision as to the reasonableness or other¬wise of that ground to be taken by the partners in consul¬tation with any employees of the firm,' " I quoted from memory. I'd written most of the agreement; it wasn't sur¬prising I knew by heart what the key parts of it said. "It's academic, Bill. You know I can't afford to buy you out. And you also know damn well that I'm far too fond of you to stand in the way of what you want. So pick your buyer."

I jumped to my feet and wrenched the door open. "I'm out of here," I said, hoping the disgust and anger I felt were as vivid to him as they were to me. Sometimes, the only things that make you feel good are the same ones that worked when you were five. Yes, I slammed the door.

I sat staring into the froth of a cappuccino in the Cigar Store cafe. The waitress was having an animated conver¬sation with a couple of her friends drinking espressos in the corner, but apart from them, I had the place to myself. It wasn't hard to tune out their gossip and focus on the implications of what Bill had said. I couldn't believe what he planned to do to me. It undercut every¬thing I thought I knew about Bill. It made me feel that my judgment wasn't worth a bag of used cat litter. The man had been my friend before he became my business partner. I'd started my career process serving for him as a way of eking out my student grant because the hours and the cash were better than bar work. I'd toiled with him or for him ever since I'd jacked in my law degree after the second year, when I realized I could never spend my working days in the company of wolves and settled for the blond bear instead.

There was no way I could afford to buy him out. The deal we'd done when I'd become a partner had been sim¬ple enough. Bill had had the business valued, and I'd worked out I could afford to buy thirty-five percent. I'd borrowed the money on a short-term loan from the bank and paid it back over four years. I'd managed that by pay¬ing the bank every penny I earned over and above my previous salary, including my annual profit shares. I'd only finished paying the loan off three months previously, thanks in part to a windfall that couldn't be explained either to another living soul or to the tax man without risking the knowledge getting back to the organized criminals who had inadvertently made me the gift. It had been a struggle to meet the payments on the loan, and I had no intention of standing under the kind of trees that deliver such dangerous windfalls ever again.

I had to face it. There was no way