Silent Night - By Tom Barber Page 0,56

Manhattan, a nine year old goalkeeper took a run-up and hoofed a soccer ball up a field. It was the middle of the second half of a kids’ little-league game, the score at 7-8. As the boys ran around on the pitch, swarming after the ball like a flock of headless chickens, their parents watched on the side-lines, wrapped up against the cold and cheering them all on.

One of them was a senior legal partner in his late forties called Alistair Jacobs. He’d been out all morning with his son and hadn’t seen the news reporting the bomb threat at Macy’s or the incident at the Seaport. Seeing that he only had the boy for one day a week, he always turned his phone off until the late afternoon so he could give the lad his full, undivided attention. It was common knowledge that you couldn’t reach Jacobs on a Saturday. Most people never even bothered trying.

Including his ex-wife, which was something he savoured.

Just recently divorced, the court had decided that the boy live with his mother, largely due to Jacobs’ work commitments and unpredictable hours. His allotted timeslot for spending time with him was from Friday night until Saturday night. Seeing the boy tackle someone and steal the ball, Jacobs shouted encouragement, the expensive leather gloves on his hands muffling his enthusiastic clapping.

Watching the game, Jacobs seemed just as engaged as all the other parents standing beside him on the side-lines. However, his mind was somewhere else entirely.

Today was a big day.

He’d set up the law firm with Lloyd and Garrett five years ago, making the move across the Atlantic from London. At the time his marriage had been in pretty good shape and he’d relocated to New York with his son and American wife, not anticipating a messy and expensive divorce. The firm had built an extremely strong reputation and client list since their inception, dealing with everyone from movie stars and professional athletes to Wall Street bankers and Financial District bigwigs. Forty seven years old, good-looking, well-dressed, successful and now single, Jacobs knew that many people at the firm envied him. All the trainees and junior partners looked at him with a mixture of jealousy and respect, believing his life to be perfect.

It wasn’t.

In reality, Jacobs was in deep, deep shit. A series of bad investments, a serious gambling habit and a high-maintenance wife who’d dragged him through the divorce courts had combined to drain his once considerable savings. With an expensive Manhattan lifestyle to maintain and a spiralling debt, he couldn’t just walk into the bank and ask for a loan. And given his gambling addiction which he was currently fighting, he owed serious money to people who were just as serious about collection. Although he still had seven figures in his bank account he was down thirteen million this year.

Not exactly an amount you could ask HSBC to spot you for.

Moving his attention from the soccer match, he glanced around the Park.

He’d been sent an envelope in the mail four days ago containing a series of photos of his son. Someone had snapped them at the game here last week, but a crosshairs had been neatly drawn over each photograph in black pen, centred on the boy’s head.

The people who had sent it were men to whom he owed seven million dollars.

A note inside the envelope told him he had seven days to pay it.

He couldn’t go to the cops. If he did, the people he owed would kill both him and the boy without a moment’s hesitation. And if he got arrested for illegal gambling, he knew they had connections inside. He wouldn’t last a night in jail. Desperate and scared, he’d been searching for a solution. Something. Anything. It had been the longest four days of his life, but in other ways it had been the shortest. Every night since the envelope had arrived at his office he’d sat behind his desk at the firm long into the early hours, frantically trying to think of a way out. He’d fought the urge to gamble further, but it was just as hard as a junkie avoiding the needle and spoon.

You’ll win it back at the table, the voice inside his head kept saying.

You just need a few lucky hands.

Fighting the compulsion, he’d searched for an alternative. His projected solution, as embarrassing as it was, had been to ask the other senior partners for a loan. The firm had enough money to cover what he