The office still looked like a bombsite when I got in the next morning, conspicuously the first to arrive, and I sat for a while surveying the wreckage. The computers – powered up by one of Tim's contrivances as I'd come in through the door – blinked and bleeped and generally let me know that there were emails and voice mails and RSS updates and all the rest waiting for me but I ignored them.

One of the shards of crockery, I noticed, belonged to a mug given to me by a favourite ex-girlfriend, another had crumpled the perspex and wire model of The Idea that I'd used to get Tim interested in the first place. Which was one evening in the pub, I felt, almost nostalgically, that really had had consequences. Still, the model was gone, now – and so was the mug – so I thought I might as well do something about salvaging the company it had helped create. Which probably should have involved trying to track down my errant colleagues – or even just checking the messages, in the unlikely event that either of them had bothered to phone in – but instead I called Steve.

Steve from Flexible Energy Technologies – or FlexEnTech as he preferred ... or FlexEnBalls as he generally got – and, more relevantly, the Steve who'd been on the receiving end of Stage One of Maggie's meltdown the previous afternoon. And, yes, in my pacifistic, non-confrontational, argumentophobic way I did want to make peace with him, to an extent. But mainly I just wanted to talk about engineering for a while, share a gripe or two with a fellow entrepreneur ... or moan at a more or less sympathetic ear, basically.

It wasn't what I got. Actually, pretty much as soon as he took the call – or as soon as he'd clocked my voice – he started shouting. Quite loudly.

"Nyah," he started, or at least made the sort of strangled noise its difficult to spell. "Just the man I wanted to talk to. You guys involved with that bastard Simon, these days, man? Actually, we've had a stream of calls from our backers this morning, so I know you are, but I thought you'd like to know that the shithead's been doing some pretty comprehensive mailing – bigging you up and dissing all the rest of us."

He paused, not long enough for me to say anything coherent in response, then went on.

"Oh, and dissing the rest of us with shit we told you in confidence, off the record, in the fucking pub. I mean, we all got to eat, man – so you got a very flash DVD – one of our contacts sent us a copy – and I bet Ruthless Ruth had a hand in that – but even if you're desperate enough to do business with that fucker – and frankly, that's your problem – I for one don't take kindly to details of my business being passed on to my funders by a third party. And especially when the stuff's just plain wrong – we sorted that seal weld problem fucking weeks ago – I mean, it'll take me sodding months to get everyone back on board ..."

I was rocked, reader, I was stunned. And even as bits of my brain struggled to process a rather large wodge of new information, I sort of knew what had happened. Well, had happened if I was lucky – was still happening if I wasn't. Someone had pissed Steve off and it wasn't Maggie, someone had disclosed some untoward information and it wasn't me. So it didn't take a genius to resolve that conundrum. I began to try and calm Steve down a bit ... even as most of my brain was wondering what Steve knew about Simon that I didn't.

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I think I did succeed in mollifying the bloke a little – he ended the call almost amicably, or at least with his normal tone of voice and grasp of sentence structure restored – but, unfortunately, concentrating on the human side of things – such as being nice, and conciliatory – meant that I singularly failed to get any knew information viz a viz Simon and his apparently multifarious shortcomings. Or about – what was it? – oh, yeah, Ruthless Ruth. Which gave me pause to ponder.

And ponder I did, albeit without much result. I was, in fact, still pondering when Maggie arrived – or, rather, swept in. Even in my preoccupied state I could see that she was unusually resolved, so I wasn't all that surprised when she simply ignored the evidence of yesterday's shenanigans and proceeded to collect a variety of personal belongings from her desk. Yep, I thought, the body language is clear enough – this is a woman making a life change, specifically chucking in a job – or ceasing to work for (and with) me. Unfortunately, said body language was also screaming 'Don't ask!' quite ... stridently.

So I didn't. I observed, of course – it wasn't a big office – and somehow what I saw was vaguely reassuring. She wasn't, I decided, angry, nor was she actually all that committed to her course of action ... she was a bit too hunched, too defensive for that. Of course, my analytical side chipped in, she is a Catholic, so she's probably guilty about something. So maybe she's doing all this because its simply easier than trying to explain to me what ever – whatever, indeed – might be on her mind. So let her be. See what happens.

And I did that, too. I had things – possibly world shattering things, from my particular perspective – to think about, after all, and over the years I've learned to trust those little inner voices. And, sure enough, after a fairly short while, Mag stopped collecting all her various bits and pieces into a bag ... and noticed the unattended PCs. Maybe she noticed me, too, but somehow I doubt it. In any case, some inner sense of responsibility – possibly even a maternal instinct – cut in and she sort of flipped into work mode.

As to whether she felt maternal towards me or the bloody computers, well ... that was a question ...

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In the end, though, we got work done. Tim didn't appear, which I for one didn't find all that surprising, but possibly that was for the best, just at that point in time. Because the messages that Maggie ploughed into turned out to be more than usually interesting. Well, not interesting, exactly – more bloody annoying. Turned out it wasn't just Steve's crew who were – umm – taken aback by some of the stuff that, we learned, had gone out in our name.

Actually, pretty much the entire alternative energy community were ... well, not exactly pleased. Terminally fucked off and really, really angry were probably closer to the mark, but ... not close enough. I was still trying to think of a more accurate description – homicidal rage figured in quite a lot of the attempts – when Maggie interrupted.

"This is Tim's fault, isn't it?" she said, simply enough. I shrugged.

"Oh, Tim is the source, no doubt. But, no its not his fault. He's an engineer: indiscreet, inappropriate and socially inept, yes, but ... this is deliberate. This has been put together by someone who knew what they were doing, someone who wanted to inflict maximum damage on our "competitors" ... and didn't know, or didn't care, that doing so would blow us out of the water, too."

I let the thought hang, the implications coalescing in my mind as they did in Maggie's.

"You mean Ruth, don't you?", she said, at length.

"Well, yes. But I think her wonderful old man might be more directly involved..."

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Maggie got the short straw, I felt – in that I asked her to go and see if she could find Tim. God knows how all this would affect their relationship – if it even deserved the name, given Mag's expression on her way out – but that was for another day. As it was, we needed to know just how helpful he'd been, and that meant talking to him directly ... wherever he might be lurking. So off she went.

I closed things down, stepped carefully over the remaining debris and girded the proverbial loins.

And not just for a rush hour tube journey. If I survived that, there would, I hoped, be Simon. Which I wasn't looking forward to ... any more than the chaos that is the Victoria Line.

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Simon's offices were, as a venture capitalist – and, I now knew, a complete arsehole – were commendably discreet. Pretty average location, in fact, just on the edge of Islington, almost no door security, not until you got to his actual office suite.

Now, I'd been thinking about this. Ever since talking to Steve, through the on-going trauma of dealing with those e-mails, listening to the voice mail, I'd been brooding. Sending Maggie off on her unlikely quest, the sardine stuff on the tube, none of it had improved my temper. Nor, I realised as I lurched in to come face to face with a typically immaculate looking, utterly vacuous receptionist, had I actually come up with any brilliant ideas as to what to do next.

So I took a deep breath, watching, despite myself, to see whether Ms Perfect Coiffure would press anything vaguely alarm like and finally announced, harshly, that I wanted to see Simon. I think I probably said something about wanting to see him now, possibly with exclamation marks and, possibly, just possibly, a slight hint of aggression. Not that Ms P batted a perfectly plucked eyebrow. Rather, she motioned to a seat – you know, one of those unbelievably uncomfortable corporate reception ones – and I sat on it. On autopilot, really – clean out of ideas as to what to do next. 

Except that pretty much as soon as I'd parked myself, I heard myself being greeted, by name. So I hauled myself upright, again, and turned to meet my greeter.

It was Ruth.

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Ruth in charming mode. No, Simon wasn't available, he was in Conference. But she was free if there was something I particularly wanted to discuss? It was wonderfully done – and left me completely unable to express any sort of anger, which was, of course, the idea. I couldn't even get it together to point out that she was supposed to be employed doing something entirely different, somewhere else, and that it was a little convenient for her to be here just at this moment?

Instead, I found myself agreeing that it would be good to talk, and that we might best have the conversation somewhere more comfortable – such as this wine bar she knew – and then I was being led out the room, Ruth's hand companionably on my arm, guiding the way as if we were old friends, maybe even lovers.

As we left, I'm sure I heard the receptionist snort.

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The 'wine bar' wasn't anything of the sort, at least in my opinion – it was rather more a rather high end restaurant that happened to serve wine, at least to early evening customers. Pleasant, though – very attentive service, very discreet,given that we were instantly seated in what was in effect a private room, a bottle of chablis on the table even before we'd sat down. It made me wonder quite what Ruth's relationship to the place might be. And maybe she read my mind – or maybe she was just used to working with cynics – because she simply nodded, thoughtfully, and commented,

"Yes, my father does happen to own this place. Hence, we get served promptly, we get left alone and, by the by, that wine you're sniffing at is not house white. Actually, if you knew how much we charge for it you'd probably embarrassed to be seen drinking it."

Which was interesting, I thought, still not knowing where this was going. I had come to have a big argument with her father, now I was being treated to a rather fine – and, I didn't doubt for a minute, incredibly expensive – wine while sitting in quite a comfortable seat, in a very plush room and in the company of a stunningly attractive woman. Who seemed both to be able to read my mind – or, at least, to know me better than she had any right to do – and to be hell bent on being disarmingly nice. It made me extremely uncomfortable – or maybe just deeply suspicious, given that there was nothing remotely uncomfortable, at least physically, about the situation. So I reverted to type, asked her rather bluntly what on earth she was trying to do, what game she thought she was playing.

Disarmingly, she told me. Or, at least, she said,

"I wanted to talk to you." Pause, breathtaking smile. "Oh, I've seen some of the e-mails that have been floating about – my father makes a lot of money out of being very well informed – and I can see how someone like you might see them as a bit of an issue, but its about rather more than just that."

She made it sound like pissing off just about everyone I'd ever talked to – everyone I could ever have hoped to collaborate with – was just so much water under the bridge. Just one of those things, collateral damage in the great game that was making pots of money. And maybe it was, if you had that sort of world view. Problem was, I didn't, and I was just about to tell her so, forcefully, when she cut me off with another of those smiles, this one combined with a demure downward glance at what I'm sure was also a very expensive rug, before continuing.

"I think you're a very interesting sort of guy," she said – or maybe purred, it was that sort of voice. "And I like to get to know interesting people. People who have interesting, maybe revolutionary ideas, people who've been pushing boundaries to do their thing, their way. And, yes, I hope, you'll help my family make even more money, but that's not the point. I've done my research, you know – and, yes, your friend Tim was very helpful, but so were quite a lot of other people – and you have a reputation, you know, in your field. An intriguing reputation, to someone like me, given that it involves honesty, decency and a fair smattering of genius."

This time the brief pause was accompanied by a subtly provocative gesture, leaning forward just a little more than she had to top up my glass, the smile as captivating as ever but somehow more personal.

"So," she breathed, "I'd like to get to know you a lot better."

And said it so sincerely that, for a second, I felt almost guilty that I didn't believe a word of it ... 


