Not Dead Enough

look convincing in jeans and a blazer. Then, as the banks foreclosed on his twenty-home development which ran aground on planning issues, he reinvented himself yet again as a financial adviser to the rich. That business hit the buffers too.
    Now he was here in the hope of convincing his old friend Joe Hatcook that he knew the secret of making money out of the new future golden goose, biodiesel. Joe was rumoured to have made north of a billion in derivatives – whatever they were – and had lost only a paltry couple of hundred thousand investing in Ronnie’s failed estate agency business ten years ago – and, claiming to accept all Ronnie’s reasons for the failed enterprise, assured Ronnie he would back him again one day.
    Sure, Bill Gates and every other entrepreneur on the planet were looking for the way forward in the new, environmentally friendly biofuel market – and had the money to throw at it to make it happen – but Ronnie reckoned he had identified a niche. All he had to do this morning was convince Joe. And Joe was sharp, he’d see it. He’d get it. It ought to be – in New York parlance – a slam dunk.
    In fact, the further the train headed downtown, while he mentally rehearsed his pitch to Joe, the more confident he became. He felt himself turning into the character Michael Douglas played in Wall Street . Gordon Gekko. And he sure looked the part. In his Brooks Brothers shirt, chalk-striped suit and tasselled loafers, he passed muster as an Ivy League New Yorker. Just like the dozen other sharply dressed Wall Street players sitting in this swaying carriage with him. If any of them had just half his troubles, they kept them well hidden. They all looked so damned confident. And if they bothered to glance at him, they would have seen a tall guy with lean good looks and slicked-back hair who looked equally confident, quietly beaming to himself, and flipping through a fifty-page business plan with coloured flow charts and all kinds of convincing looking graphs.
    He had read somewhere that if you hadn’t made it by the time you were forty, then you were never going to make it. And he was coming up to thirty-eight in just three weeks time.
    And he was coming up to his station. Chambers Street.
    He emerged into the fine Manhattan morning, and checked his bearings on the map the hotel concierge had given him last night. Then he looked at his watch. 8.10 a.m. From past experience at navigating New York office blocks, he reckoned he should allow himself a good fifteen minutes to get to Joe’s office once he reached the man’s building. It was also a good five-minute walk to get there from here the concierge had told him – and that was assuming he did not get lost.
    Passing a sign informing him he was now on Wall Street, he walked past a Jamba Juice shop on his right, then a shop bearing the sign Expert Tailoring and Alterations, followed by the New York Dolls Gentleman’s Club, then entered the packed Downtown Deli.
    The place smelled of stewed coffee and frying eggs. He sat on a red-leather bar stool, and ordered freshly squeezed orange juice, a latte, scrambled eggs with a side order of bacon, and wheat toast. As he waited for his food, he flipped through the business plan once more. Then he looked at his watch, and mentally calculated the time difference between New York and Brighton, England.
    England was five hours ahead. Lorraine would be having lunch. He gave her a quick call on her cell phone, told her he loved her. She wished him good luck in the meeting. He told her he loved her again, then hung up.
    Twenty minutes later he paid the bill, stepped out into the street, and continued his journey towards Joe Hatcook’s office, which, according to the information that had been emailed to him, was on the eighty-seventh floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
    It was 8.35 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, 11 September 2001.

2
    October 2006
    Abby Dawson had chosen this flat because it felt secure. At least, inasmuch as she was ever going to feel secure anywhere .
    Apart from the fire escape at the back, which could only be opened from inside, there was just one entrance. It was eight floors directly below her, and the windows gave her a clear view up and down the street.
    Inside she had turned it into a fortress. There were panic buttons in each room. Unbreakable glass with locks on every window. Reinforced hinges, steel plating, three sets of deadlocks and safety chains on the front