Black Teeth Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’ll never give evidence again. This is also the point where I pray to the God of Long Questions that he send down a doozy right this second.
    ‘Given your talent for cyber-vetting, is it fair to say that Revue Technologies would have saved themselves considerable grief if they’d come to you prior to contracting with Mister Chapman?’
    Chapman’s barrister stands up. God bless you, sir. He too is robed and self-important like a skeksi.
    ‘My friend knows full well that it is not fair to say—’
    The judge: ‘We won’t ask the witness to speculate, Mister Perry.’
    I take the chance to suck in air.
    ‘The question is withdrawn, Your Honour.’
    But remembering to breathe is only half the game; the other halfis remembering what breathing is. How much is too much? Too little? On my wrist is a lacker band I keep there for just this situation. It’s a method I read about online: flicking it against your skin can keep you in the present, stop you goosing out. I’m flicking it hard now, sending a telegram in Morse code. So hard the tipstaff scowls, wondering what that noise is.
    ‘Mister Ginaff.’ Somehow Perry has received my telepathic all-caps to slow down. ‘If you were not engaged to vet Mister Chapman prior to his engagement as financial consultant, what was it that Revue Technologies asked you to do?’
    He’s back to the script. The thumping in my brain tapers. I start to notice my surroundings again: the sparse public gallery, the mouth-pink walls, the array of flat-screen televisions that they use for, I don’t know, watching the cricket.
    ‘Um…My job was to interrogate the claims…claims made by Mister Chapman at the time he came on as…financial consultant.’
    ‘Were you told why they wanted you to do that?’
    I remember the answer to this one and the adrenaline is dropping off, leaving a familiar thrill in my blood. It’s the same feeling I had after a big crying jag during my mother’s illness. A hollowing out, like nothing even matters.
    ‘They said they were surprised at the poor standard of Mister Chapman’s performance and this had led them to doubt the veracity of representations made by him at the time of contracting.’
    ‘All right,’ says Perry. He nods, supportive. ‘This is still the conversation of the seventh of April, to which you’ve alluded?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Do you recall anything else from that conversation?’
    I make myself comfortable in the court’s spongy office chair. The sweat’s still coming but slowing. My body language is no longer signalling to the court that I’d rather be dead.
    ‘They told me there was a time factor. They suspected Mister Chapman would commence proceedings like these.’
    ‘So…’ Perry actually hooks his thumbs into the collar of his robes. ‘You were commissioned to determine whether there had been any false or misleading statements made by Mister Chapman at the timeof his engagement as senior financial consultant. In broad compass, how does one go about that?’
    ‘Mostly I look at the documentation.’
    ‘By documentation, you mean…’
    ‘His résumé, primarily.’
    ‘Right. So your job was to scrutinise his CV.’
    ‘That’s correct.’
    ‘I see. And when you’re scrutinising a CV, and there is a time factor that you’re very much aware of, where do you begin?’
    ‘It’s different every time.’
    ‘How about in this case?’
    ‘In this case?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘In this case,’ I say, ‘He’d misspelled Rhodes Scholar.’

4
    I push out the revolving doors, welcome the cool air, but the wind goes straight for my ears like they’re the most delicious part. Cold needles my face and I drive my hands into my pockets, remember what a dickhole I was for not bringing gloves or a beanie or a scarf. I feel the cold more than most people because, according to my mum, I am ‘traumatically skinny’. She used to say I look like someone starved Keira Knightley to death. Combine that with my stature
    A long walk