Knife Edge

5.03 P.M.

The plane was going down.

Flames were pouring from its tail and one wing, smoke trailing behind it.

Paul Mortimer raked it with machine-gun fire once more and grinned as the stricken craft finally hit the ground, exploding in a great yellow fireball.

GAME OVER flashed up on the screen and he chuckled to himself as his score appeared on the top right-hand corner of the screen.

On either side of him similar sounds joined together to form one discordant cacophony.

The punches and kicks from the combat games, the explosions emanating from the shoot-em-up's. And through it all, the shouts and joyful exclamations of those playing the games.

The bank of arcade games was on the first floor of the Trocadero complex between Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus. The building itself housed shops, the Guinness Book of Records exhibition, places to eat and a twelve-screen cinema.

It was towards the main entrance that Mortimer briefly glanced.

Penny was in there now with their two children, wedged in with the masses of others who had flocked to see the newest Batman film on its first day of release. The queues had been massive. Paul had bought the tickets himself a week earlier as a birthday treat for Jake, their elder child.

Mortimer had wanted to see the film himself but, as ever, something had come up at the last minute and he'd been forced to pack his wife and the children off together, arranging to meet them outside when the performance ended.

When the work was there he had to take it.

He'd run his own photographic business for the last eighteen months and things were going well. Better than even he'd dared to hope. It had been a tough decision to take in the first place, striking out alone. The photographic firm he'd worked for since leaving college eight years earlier had provided steady and well-paid work, but Mortimer had wanted to escape the shackles of being an employee.

Besides, he felt his talents could be better used in fields other than taking pictures for the Next and Top Man catalogues.

Mind you, the work had been pleasant, he had to admit that and, while shooting part of the lingerie section for a Freemans catalogue, he'd met Penny.

The attraction had been instant.

They'd married seven months later. Two years on she was pregnant with Jake.

Kelly followed eighteen months after.

When he'd first suggested going it alone Penny had been her usual practical self, sitting down and working out, to the last copper, how much he would need to earn to maintain the comfortable life-style which they had built for themselves. It wouldn't be easy, they'd both realised that, but Mortimer had many contacts in the business and Penny herself had been asked to return to modelling on a part-time basis. Just hands, face and feet (even a body as well preserved and cared for as hers hadn't quite recovered sufficiently from producing two children to allow her back into the lingerie business). But the offers coming her way were good too.

They had decided they could make a go of things and the best way to prove it was to do it.

Mortimer had worked steadily, sometimes fren-ziedly, Penny thought, since forming his own company.

He'd received the phone call from the Athenaeum Hotel that morning, asking him if he would come in and speak to them. Discuss the possibility of him taking on a long-term contract to photograph their promotional material.

They had agreed to his price on the spot.

Mortimer smiled, spun round in the seat and fed more coins into the video game.

One more go before he met his family.

Two teenagers stood watching him as he gleefully racked up another huge score. Perhaps they wondered why this man in his early thirties was so engrossed in the game they were waiting to play. He looked old enough to be their father, they thought.

Nevertheless they watched intently.

He was pretty good for an older bloke.

The explosion which killed all three of them was enormous.

A sudden screaming eruption of fire and smoke seemed to fill the entire building as it roared outwards from its source.

Before the screen they were watching dissolved, Mortimer and the two youths saw just two words before them.

GAME OVER.