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the door to his office open and was initially relieved to see that no one was sitting behind his desk. He had expected Anthony to be sitting there with his feet up.
    The Mayor recognised the sound of Anthony's polite cough and turned to face him. By the window were four armchairs. He recognised the occupants of two of them. The third was a man he had never seen before.
    The Mayor put on his game face and smiled at his guests. ‘Mr Bovind and Mr?’
    The third man didn't speak or indeed move a muscle to register the Mayor's presence. He was wearing a black suit over a tough wiry frame and the way he sat in the armchair reminded the Mayor of a cat: relaxed but poised, ready to strike. The man's head was bowed, his hands resting in his lap. He looked asleep, or at prayer. The Mayor noticed a roughly inked tattoo of an angel on the man's right hand.
    Anthony stood up. He could always rely on Anthony's manners.
    ‘Yes, you know Kirk, of course.’
    The Mayor extended his hand to the software billionaire who ignored it but instead stood up and embraced him like a long lost brother.
    Kirk Bovind was one of the world's richest men and certainly the richest man that had ever come from Liverpool since the days of the slavers but he looked like a catalogue model from the seventies. He had a slim build, was tall, had a Californian golden tan, dark brown hair and the shiniest, whitest teeth and eyes that the Mayor had ever seen. Kirk was dressed in a pastel green polo shirt and chinos with bare brown feet wrapped in expensive Italian leather loafers and he didn't look a day over thirty although the Mayor knew that he was at least forty-five.
    The Mayor had Googled Bovind a couple of times but Bovind's lawyers and computer experts were ruthless in the removal of any personal information from the web. Information on his company Intracom was widely available but little was known about its founder, CEO and main shareholder. The Intracom PR department had only released a few scant details: Bovind was born in Allerton, Liverpool, to a single mother and educated by the brothers at St Edward's until the age of sixteen when he left for America having gained a scholarship to study Computer Science at MIT. Ten years later he founded Intracom, providing cheap software solutions to schools and winning contract after contract from state governments before launching the product that made Intracom a global business, its family friendly search engine, Lightspeed. The rest was counting dollars.
    Kirk let the Mayor free from his embrace.
    ‘You look tired, Mayor,’ said Kirk.
    The Mayor tried to laugh it off.
    ‘What can I say, the pressures of the job.’
    ‘I've heard all about it from Anthony and I'm here to help you.’
    Kirk flashed his brilliant teeth at the Mayor and then sat back down in his armchair, looking at the stranger sitting in the other armchair and then at Anthony.
    Anthony stared back at the Mayor but didn't say a word and for an absurd moment Mayor Lynch thought that they would stay stuck in this silence as no one wanted to introduce the man to the Mayor and the man seemed in no hurry to speak or even acknowledge the presence of the Mayor.
    Bovind obliged.
    ‘And I don't think you've met my spiritual adviser, Pastor Thomas Canch?’
    Thomas Canch didn't offer his hand but rather nodded his head ever so slightly in the Mayor's direction. The Mayor got his first proper look at the man. Taut pale skin covered the man's bald head and face. His eyes were sharp flints of grey and shadowed in the recesses of deep sockets. The Mayor nodded back and was relieved that he could turn his eyes away from the Pastor back towards Bovind.
    Anthony sat down. ‘We've been discussing Kirk's kind offer,’ he said by way of explanation to the Mayor.
    Mayor Lynch noticed the ‘we've’ and wondered what Bovind had promised Anthony. ‘You know my difficulties with this proposal,’ said Mayor Lynch.
    Bovind smiled again. ‘I do and I respect that