“Where the fuck is that lazy cunt?”

John Hildebrand’s voice could be heard well in advance of his corporeal arrival. He stormed past the butler, throwing his hat and gloves at the vestibule table.

“I’m sorry, sir, but he’s indisposed.”

“Which one of his slags is in there with him?”

“Sir, he is sleeping alone this morning.”

“Left already, did she? Well get up there and tell him to get his arse down here now. His airline’s going down faster than one of his cheap conquests.”

“Right away, sir.”

The butler hurried up a structural glass staircase with as much grace as he could muster, happy to escape the man’s surgical gaze. Hildebrand Senior was a tyrant with a fearsome reputation and a temper to match.

JJ stirred on the large bed, the sheets in disarray. His head thumped in time to the knocking on his door. He tried to speak, but the sandpaper in his throat abraded his voice to a croak. The door opened and Manfred peered around its edge.

“Your father is here, Mr Hildebrand. He wishes to see you.”

“Time’s it?” JJ slurred.

“It is past 10 o’clock, sir.”

“Fuck! Whydinya wake me?” JJ struggled up onto his elbows.

“I tried, sir. But you were… ah…” The butler rotated his hands back and forth, as though he was trying to shape the right word.

“My head is killing me.” JJ groaned and flopped back on the pillows.

“Sir, your father. He is insisting on seeing you. Something about Pangaean? What shall I tell him?”

“I’ll be down in ten. Make him a coffee. Or something stronger, if he wants it.” JJ knew his father’s vices well.

“And bring me some goddamn pills.” He started to drag himself from the king-size bed and stopped dead.

“Where’s Keely?”

“Miss Jackson is not here. She left a message asking me to let you sleep. She has cleared your diary for the day.”

The butler glided professionally out of the room, to descend like Dante into the waiting inferno. JJ watched him go, confident in Manfred’s ability to placate his father. He paid the man a substantial salary and provided a large Christmas bonus each year; a little extra went a long way to buying absolute discretion in his staff.

Stepping into the ensuite shower, he struggled to clear the fog in his brain. Where the hell was Keely? And what was this shit about clearing his diary? He never took time off. Except to see his counsellor, but he had a good cover for that. He told his staff he was taking golf lessons down at the pro range. The psych obliged, ensuring she invoiced him using the golf course’s official stationery he provided the receptionist with.

He towelled himself off and jumped into a suit. With no time to shave, he checked his face in the mirror, rubbed some product through his hair, and headed down to the kitchen.

*-*

“Father.”

John Hildebrand Senior turned from the floor-to-ceiling window where he had been surveying the city and inventoried his son from head to toe.

“You look like shit, John.” Never ‘JJ’. Not to his father. Hildebrand Senior viewed the Americanised version of his son’s name with abhorrence.

“What’s this about Pangaean?”

“I have placed the company into receivership.”

JJ reeled as though his father had struck him.

“What right–”

“Shut up. I had no choice. She’s taken it.”

“Who? Taken what?”

“You don’t have a fucking clue, do you? Your whore. The painting. My God, John. No wonder I still have to do every fucking thing myself.” John Hildebrand spat words with the efficiency of a machine gun. “You’re as useless as your mother.”

“I don’t understand.” JJ’s head spun.

He leant against the tiled wall, the cool porcelain soothing his throbbing head, trying to take in what his father was saying.

“Then let me spell it out for you. Judging from the look of you, that bitch slipped you something nasty before your little session last night. While you were impersonating Sleeping Beauty, Keely, or whatever her fucking name is, opened your safe, took the painting and made a run for the airport.”

JJ’s head shot up.

“And how do you know this, Father?”

“I have my sources.”

“Sources?”

The two men faced off against each other like duellists.

“Surveillance, John.”

“You have me watched?”

“Yes, I have you watched.