I knew he’d been drinking even before he stumbled into the living room and collapsed on to the sofa. He looked between me and the two computers—Paul and Annabel’s—still sitting on the table in the corner, and then to the laptop perched on my knees. As his eyes moved around the room, they shifted in stages, like they were dragging on something. He was finding it hard to even focus. “Fun night?” He shrugged. “Same old.” I went back to what I was doing. After getting off the phone to Task, I’d googled Carter Graham. Sixty-seven. Divorced. Born in south Devon—hence him having a home at Farnmoor, about seven miles east, along the coast—but in pieces I’d read in Forbes and Business Week, and a profile in the Financial Times, it sounded like he spent most of his time eating plane food. His company, Empyrean, provided what they called “investment opportunity analysis,” and had offices in London, Frankfurt, New York, LA, Sydney and Tokyo.
