"So what would you do with it," Yui said. "The name."
"Ask what the paper costs."
She looked at him for a second like he'd offered to buy the weather.
"People don't buy other people's debt."
"Somebody bought yours."
"That's not — " She stopped.
Sebastian waited.
"That's not the same as you being able to."
"No."
"You don't know how any of it works."
"No," Sebastian said. "I don't."
She paused.
"What's your name?"
"Jules."
"Jules what?"
"Jules is the family," he said. "It's what people call me."
She took the pen out from under the rubber band, wrote it on the back of an order slip, and put the slip in her apron. She did not pretend she was doing anything else.
"Ardmore Receivables Group," she said. "It's on every letter. Before them it was somebody else and before that it was the bank. Ardmore's had it about two years."
"And the two men?"
"They work for a servicer Ardmore uses. Their names are on nothing." She started stacking the last of the trays. "You're not paying six hundred on Friday."
"I know."
"No, listen to me, because you haven't. If six hundred dollars arrives on Friday out of nowhere, they don't think good, she found it. They think she found it somewhere. And then they come back and ask for eight, and then for twelve, and they'd be right to, because there'd be somewhere to get it from." She pushed the tray rack against the wall. "That's how it works. That's how it's worked for six years."
"Do you want it gone?"
Yui stopped with her hand on the rack.
"I want eighty thousand dollars to stop being a sentence people can say to my mother," she said. "That's not the same as wanting a favour."
"It isn't."
"Good."
She locked the door behind him and turned the sign. He could still see her through the glass on his way to the car, wiping down a counter she had already wiped, at eleven forty at night.
He got back to the house at half past midnight and the letters came before he had the front door shut.
[Settlement — 00:00]
Qualifying expenditure: $782
Return applied: $7,820
Account balance: $26,447.06
Twenty-six thousand. Against eighty.
He sat on the stairs in the dark hall with Julien's phone and read for two hours.
Most of it was rubbish written by people selling courses. But underneath the rubbish there was a real thing, and the real thing was that a debt is not money. A debt is a piece of paper saying somebody owes money. The paper can be sold. It changes hands at whatever somebody will pay for it, and that is not the number printed on the front. Portfolios of these things moved constantly. There were firms whose entire business was buying them at some fraction and collecting what they could.
That was as far as he got.
He did not know what fraction. He did not know who at Ardmore Receivables Group had the authority to sell one account out of a portfolio, or whether they ever did, or what paperwork made a release a release rather than a promise. He did not know whether Yui's mother's name being somewhere in the file was a problem or the whole problem.
Walking into an office with a bag of money and no idea what to ask for would end badly. He would come out having bought something that did not do what he wanted, and Yui would be where she had been on Wednesday, except that a stranger would now be involved in it.
Someone pays the wrong thing.
Sebastian went upstairs and did not enjoy the next part. He was going to have to hire somebody.
Ruth Callow worked out of two rooms above a print shop on Delaney Street, and the sign on the stairs said COMMERCIAL RECOVERY — CONSULTANCY in letters that had been painted rather than printed.
She was somewhere in her fifties, in a cardigan, with three phones on the desk and a wall of box files behind her, labelled in dates and initials Sebastian couldn't make sense of. There was a kettle on the floor by the skirting board because the desk had no room for one. She let him talk for four minutes without writing anything down.
"The balance is eighty thousand," Sebastian said.
"That isn't what I asked."
"What did you ask?"
"What they're likely to get." Callow moved a phone six inches. "Those are different numbers and the difference is my entire job. Say it again, properly. Who's paying, how much, how long."
"Four hundred a month. Twelve months at least. Probably longer."
"On eighty."
"Yes."
Callow snorted.
"Right," she said. "So what you've actually got is an account that's been performing badly for a long time and has just been escalated, which usually means somebody's reviewed the book and put a red pen through it. Who's the holder?"
"Ardmore Receivables Group."
"I know them." She wrote that down, the first thing she'd written. "They're not gangsters, before you ask. They're four people and a database. They buy in bulk, they outsource the collection, and every so often they clear out the accounts that aren't performing because their investors want to see the book turning over. That's the good news and I'd like you to not get excited about it, because there's about six ways this goes wrong."
"Go on."
"One." She held up a finger. "You can pay the account off and the debt survives. Interest and fees under a different clause, a second agreement, an assignment they never told her about. She keeps paying, just to somebody else. Two, you can pay it off in her name and she owes you, which I assume is not what you want or you'd have offered her the money already."
"It isn't."
"Then say so on the paperwork or a court will assume otherwise." Second finger. "Three. You said the mother's involved."
"They said she's on the paper. Yui says she isn't."
"They're both saying it about different pieces of paper. That's the most common shape this takes." Callow put her hand flat on the desk. "This is the part where I stop and tell you that I cannot promise you anything at all until I have seen the documents. Not the letters. The original agreement, whatever guarantee or addendum has her mother's name on it, the assignment notices from every time it's changed hands, and the payment history. Without those I'm negotiating for something I can't describe."
"She keeps records."
"Everybody says that. What they mean is a carrier bag."
"She keeps records," Sebastian said.
Callow looked at him for a second and then wrote something else.
"My retainer's a thousand and I'll want it before I make a call," she said. "That buys you my time this week and nothing else. If it goes anywhere you'll be paying the settlement yourself, in full, and I'd like you to understand now that I have no idea what that number is and neither do you."
He paid it there, off the phone.
Daily Spending Limit: $0 remaining
He'd expected that. Services counted; he'd known that since the gutter. It was still slightly obscene to watch a system approve of him hiring somebody.
"Was that your bank app?" Callow said.
"Yes."
"You looked at it like it insulted you." She capped the pen. "Get me the documents."
Yui was on the eleven-to-seven and she came out to the side of the building when he asked for her, and stood with the door propped on her foot.
"You came back."
"I need the paperwork."
"You've been busy."
"I asked somebody who knows more than I do."
"And what did they say?"
"That she can't tell me anything until she's read it." Sebastian put his hands in his pockets. "She wants the original agreement. Any guarantee with your mother's name on it. The notices from every time it's been sold. The payment history."
"No."
"All right."
"I've had this conversation before," Yui said. "Not with you. With a man my mother knew, four years ago, who was going to sort it out, and who wanted the file, and who got as far as writing one letter and then stopped answering the phone, and Ardmore had a copy of everything he'd sent them and they used it. So no."
"Fine."
"That's it? Fine?"
"You said no." He shrugged. "I'll tell her you said no and she'll close the file and I'll be nine hundred dollars down and you'll be six hundred dollars down on Friday. That's the whole thing."
She did not move off the door.
"Say what she said. About my mother."
"That when the holder says your mother's on the paper and you say she isn't, you're both right, and you're each talking about a different piece of paper, and that's normal. Her point was that if I buy the wrong one, they still have the other one, and then you've got the exact problem you told me about at the table."
Yui kept her foot against the door.
"The guarantee was limited," she said. "My mother signed it in 2019 and it was limited to the original amount and it was supposed to fall away when the shop refinanced. That's what the solicitor told her. I've got the letter."
"Do you have the guarantee?"
"I've got a copy of a copy."
"That's more than she's expecting."
"Don't." Yui took her foot off the door and let it rest against her shin. "Don't tell me I've done well. I've been doing this since I was nineteen and I'm not doing well, I'm doing it."
She went back inside. She came out eleven minutes later with her phone and stood under the light by the bins, photographing pages out of the envelope one at a time, squaring each one against the lid of the bin so it would come out flat. She made him read the email address out twice. The second time she repeated one letter back wrong. He corrected her.
There were forty-one photographs. Two of them were of the backs of pages, because there was writing on the backs.
Callow called at four on Thursday afternoon.
"They'll sell."
"Good."
"Don't say good yet. They opened at thirty-two thousand."
Sebastian was standing in the yard behind the stables with the phone against his ear, looking at nothing.
"I don't have thirty-two thousand."
"No. Nobody has thirty-two thousand for this, which is why it's an opening number rather than a price." Papers moved on her end. "It's what they'd want if they thought a family member had come into money. I've told them you're a third party with no obligation and no sentiment, which is a lie about the sentiment but it's the useful lie."
"How much do I actually need?"
"I don't know yet. Less. The guarantee's the leverage — it's limited, it's badly drafted, and their own assignment notice in 2021 doesn't reference it at all, which means either it didn't come across with the account or somebody was sloppy. They will not want that examined by anybody. They'd rather sell."
"So offer them everything I've got."
"No."
"It's twenty-five thousand."
"I heard you and the answer is still no. If you offer twenty-five they will take twenty-five and then think about what else you might have. You are not buying a house here. You are buying the end of a thing, and the end of a thing costs what it costs, and you have hired me specifically so that you do not do what you have just tried to do."
Sebastian stood in the yard.
"Understood."
"I doubt it, but you've said it." A phone rang on her end and she ignored it. "Friday. I'll have a number by Friday. Don't call them. Don't go anywhere near the diner tomorrow."
She hung up.
At midnight the letters arrived.
[Settlement — 00:00]
Qualifying expenditure: $1,000
Return applied: $10,000
Account balance: $35,447.06
Ruth Callow had cost him nothing at all, and he could not tell her that, and would not have anyway.
Friday she called at twenty past two.
"Seventeen five. All in, today, cleared funds by four."
"For what, exactly."
"Say it back to me and I'll correct you, that's faster." She had the tone of somebody reading down a list. "Ardmore assigns the account to a nominee entity of mine for the purpose of discharge. The account is marked satisfied in full. Written release for Nakamura Yui, written release for Nakamura Sachiko under the 2019 guarantee, both signed by somebody at Ardmore with authority to sign. Collection authority terminated in writing to the servicer today, copied to you. No residual balance, no fees, no interest, nothing survives, and there's a clause saying they won't resell or reinstate. You get none of it. You do not own a debt at the end of this. There is no debt at the end of this."
"And the two men?"
"Get an email this afternoon telling them the account's closed. They'll stop because they don't get paid for stopped accounts and there's nothing in it for them." Papers again. "Seventeen five is high. I want you to know that. Left alone I'd have got it to twelve or thirteen over about three weeks, and they know I know that, and they've priced today accordingly. You're paying about four thousand dollars for it to be finished before six o'clock this evening."
"That's fine."
"It's your money. Say yes or no."
"Yes."
"Then I need it in the client account in the next hour," Callow said, "and I need you to not do anything clever between now and four o'clock."
He sent it at ten past three from the desk in Julien's room, on Julien's phone, with the account details typed in twice because the app made him.
Seventeen thousand five hundred dollars.
The confirmation came back. The balance under it read seventeen thousand nine hundred and forty-seven dollars and six cents. Two hours ago it had been thirty-five.
Nothing happened.
He'd half expected something to. The counter in the corner of his vision sat where it had sat all morning, at a thousand. The money had reached Callow's client account and she had not released it yet.
At six minutes to four Callow sent a photograph of a signature page, badly framed, with her thumb in the corner.
At four minutes past four she sent nothing at all.
At nine minutes past four an email arrived with him copied in at the bottom of it. Ardmore to the servicer, four lines, no greeting: the account was closed, collection authority was withdrawn, and no further contact was to be made with either name on the file. Callow's firm was in the header. His own address sat under hers in the copy line, where anybody who later asked to see the correspondence would find it.
At eleven minutes past four the counter moved.
Daily Spending Limit: $0 remaining
Sebastian put the phone face down on the desk.
He had spent a hundred dollars on a gutter, five hundred on a groundskeeper's back wages, and a thousand on Callow. This was seventeen and a half thousand paid to make a stranger's obligation stop existing, and the system had taken a thousand of it and called it spending.
He got the notebook and wrote:
Other people's debt counts.
Then he crossed out debt and wrote it again as money owed, and then crossed that out too and put debt back, because he did not have enough of it yet to be careful about the wording, and pretending otherwise was how he'd got the gold coin.
Then:
[Hidden Quest Complete: The Waitress's Debt]
Reward:
150 Credits
Daily Spending Limit +$9,000
[Daily Spending Limit Increased]
Daily Limit: $10,000
Remaining Today: $9,000
Credits: 150
He read it twice.
Ten thousand dollars a day.
At full return that was a hundred thousand back and ninety thousand gained each day, if he could actually spend the cap. Against thirty days, that was finally a real number. Earlier that week he'd sat in Julien's room working out that a million dollars was a hundred and twelve days away. It was now eleven.
Credits: 150.
He had no idea what a Credit was. Nothing offered to tell him. He wrote 150 credits — for what? in the notebook under the debt line and left it there with the other unanswered ones.
Then he looked at the first number again and worked out the actual problem.
It was twenty past four on a Friday. He had nine thousand dollars of unused cap and seventeen thousand in the bank. Every shop he could reach in the time available shut between five and six, and half of them had already had his money this week.
He drove into town anyway.
There was a hardware place on Bell Street he had never used. He stood in the middle of it at ten to five, looked down the aisles, and did the sum. Paint, timber, tools, the lot of it, everything on every shelf, and he'd have been at three or four thousand and they'd have had to order a van to bring it. Everything in the shop was not enough. He bought nothing. The man at the counter said good afternoon to him twice on the way out and looked at him the second time.
He still had nine thousand dollars to spend, ninety minutes before most places shut, and no merchant he could safely go back to.
He sat in the car outside with the engine off and started a page in the notebook headed THINGS THAT COST TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. He got as far as three entries. Two of them were boats and the third was a horse, and he did not know the first thing about horses, and had written it down because it was the only other object he could think of that a rich idiot might buy on a Friday.
At a thousand dollars a day he could improvise. Ten thousand needed planning, and he did not have the first idea how to do it, and it started again tomorrow morning whether he'd worked it out or not.
He drove home.
At midnight he got ten thousand dollars for a debt he'd paid at three in the afternoon. The account read twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and forty-seven dollars and six cents. He lay in the dark thinking about butchers' shops and boat rentals and how many restaurants there were in a city.
Aldric was in the hall on Saturday morning with a small pewter jug and a cloth.
"There's a young woman at the gate, sir."
Sebastian stopped on the third stair.
"Since when?"
"Twenty minutes. Thomas offered to bring her up and she declined, and offered to take a message and she declined that as well. He then offered her a chair from the lodge, which she also declined." Aldric turned the jug over. "She asked whether Mr Jules was the one who had been in a diner on Renny Street on Wednesday. Thomas didn't know, so he came and asked me."
"What did you say?"
"That I would enquire." He set the jug down on the tray. "She has a folder, sir."
"A folder."
"A ring binder, in fact," Aldric said. "With dividers."
Sebastian went down the rest of the stairs and out across the gravel, and the drive was longer than he remembered.
Yui was standing on the other side of the gate in the coat she'd had on Wednesday, hair up, with the binder held against her chest in both arms. She had come on the bus. He could tell because she'd walked from the road and the bottom of her shoes were wet.
She had been there twenty minutes in the cold and she had not leaned on anything. There was a bench inside the gate, on his side, and a low wall on hers. She had used neither.
There was a sheet of paper in a plastic wallet clipped to the front of the binder, facing outward, so that it could be read through the bars by somebody standing where he was standing. He did not look at it yet.
Sebastian stopped at the gate.
"Morning."
"No," Yui said.