"I–I thought they hadn't got on this quick," Banks faltered. Marian glared at him, as if he had been a subtle enemy, persuading her of David's guilt.
Marian's disappointment was vivid and ridiculous, even embarrassing. It reminded her of the mockery of some of her most complacent colleagues in the House who referred to her as Rent-a-Moral, because they easily tired of her obsessive, always challenged sense of justice. She had sometimes made herself ridiculous, her perennial outrage manipulated on sundry occasions by people who had no real claim upon it. As now, apparently.
The finished metro station, entire even to the awaiting, empty advertising hoardings. The succession of building sites through which she had travelled, and on which she had erected a castle of venality and fraud, had ended here, in these pristine, functional, completed surroundings.
"I—" She cleared her throat.
"I'm just going to have a look down the tunnel," she announced. I'll borrow your lamp, Ray, if I may."
"But it's all finished," he grumbled.
"Nevertheless…"
"Oh, I'll come with you."
"Good."
She strode off along the platform. The hard hat was making her forehead damp; a headache encroached, but its cause was sheer bloody frustration, she decided. Her shoes clicked along the platform. She almost expected a sleek, blazoned train to sweep from the tunnel. She hesitated, staring into its darkness. The dry breeze of every underground station. The scent of concrete and dust, as the rails ran into the darkness.
"It's not live, is it?"
Banks chuckled, his masculine superiority comfortably worn once more.
"I shouldn't think so. Come on, then, let's get it over with."
A sparrow fluttered against the glass roof, as if intent upon damaging itself rather than on freedom. The sight pained her.
"Right. Shine that lamp—" A noise startled her, filtering down the steps and along the platform, echoing in the empty station. A car engine approaching, then the silence as it was switched off then the slamming of a door… He and Burton seemed the only heated and animate things in the aseptic hospital corridor off which were the doors to the intensive care unit. Windows looked out over Helsinki, now bathed in early-afternoon sunshine, appearing like a pallid ghost of Venice, with white buildings and open stretches of green and the grey sea beyond.
"If your theory's correct," Burton was arguing once more, 'then you're making suppositions about motive and instigation that don't hold up and I should know!
These people ruin, they don't needlessly kill they work by means of the rumour, the dawn raid… it's the letter that killeth." He surprised Gant with a boyish smile.
Gant merely shook his head, holding his hands together in front of his knees as if to still them. He felt himself becoming more impatient; a truant listening to a homily while his adventure waited outside for him. Vance had suffered a second, and more massive heart attack in the air ambulance. Barbara's reaction had been a pallidity, an ashen ness that suggested she had suffered the coronary. Vance had been unconscious for the remainder of the short flight. Mocking first sunlight had glared on his white face through the helicopter window.
They had rushed him to intensive care… an hour ago. Gant believed that Vance must be dead. Twice in the helicopter they'd tried to jump-start his heart, as if he was a car with a drained battery. The body had shown the feeblest response, to which Barbara had clung as to the spars of a life raft Her grief washed her sunken cheeks and dead eyes with tears.
"It isn't like that not anymore," he said softly. They do what they have to… and the kind of people I know, who I've worked for in the past, they're looking for work now." He looked up bleakly.
"You just don't get it, do you? You think yours is the world of grown-ups and you know the rules. It's the world I come from which has the adults in it people who think nothing of walking through other people to be where they want to be. Not just walking over."
"You're suggesting that intelligence people are involved herein my business?"
"Why not?" Gant shrugged.
"Your membership rules say they can't join the country club?"
Burton glowered and was about to reply when his mobile phone trilled, as it had done a half-dozen times during the hour they had been seated in that corridor. He snatched it from his pocket. Gant stared down the narrowing perspective of the corridor, its walls and floor gleaming from the sun coming in through the glass.
"Yes?" Burton snapped wearily.
It was Stuart, his MD. He turned away from Gant towards the windows and the view of the city, which rendered the hospital corridor the comfortable anonymity of a hotel room. Gant's slumped, still form on the hard chair was too suggestive of defeat, of impotence.
Tim when are you flying back?" he heard.
"I think the sky's fallen in on us, sorry to have to—"
"What's wrong now?"
"We're being deserted in droves by passengers. Booking cancellations are into thousands for the Atlantic flights. Doesn't seem to matter which aircraft type it's just having Artemis painted on the tailplane.
And the big European carriers and the Yanks are making the most of it fly safely, was one slogan in today's papers. I've managed to get that retracted by threats of legal action… Sorry to sound such a Job's comforter, but—"
"It's all right, Stuart," Burton answered mechanically. Even to himself, his voice sounded remote, belonging to someone in the hunched, defeated-looking posture of Gant.
"We can't give tickets away, right?"
"Not without a lot of effort."
"OK, I'm coming back as soon as I can get a flight." He sensed Gant look up at him, but ignored the tightness between his shoulder blades.
"Sure. Yes no, I don't know what we can salvage… No, nothing here that helps us." He paused, then added: "It's gone to hell in a handcart, Stuart. But don't quote me."
There was no rally in his voice.
"See you—" He switched off the phone and turned back to Gant, as if expecting his decision to be challenged.
There's nothing you can do," Gant said.
"Can you do anything?"
"Not fast enough to make a difference."
Think I'm finished correct?"
"So is he in there maybe permanently." Gant's eyes were bleak, his cheekbones prominent, as if he was facing a hard, chill wind. Burton recognised an empathy with Vance, a remote kind of pity, emotions written in a tiny, minimalist handwriting on his features. There's nothing you can do. I'll tell her you had to leave."
Thanks—" Burton hesitated.
"I if there's anything you can do… I mean, I'm employing you, in a way. I'll go on doing that, if you'll pursue—" Gant smiled wintrily.
I'll pursue. Someone did this to his airplane just for money. The guy who planted the device got paid, and the guy paying him expects to turn a profit. That's all it is… I'll pursue."
Burton nodded.
"Good. Let me know what you decide to do, what you need—"
"Sure."
"Goodbye, Major." Gant smiled.
"I must hurry—" Gant watched him stride down the corridor, his steps threatening to become a fleeing run at any moment. When he had disappeared, Gant settled back on the hard moulded plastic of the chair and stared out towards the city. There were golden roofs down there, and neat parks, afternoon traffic, all of which remained ordinary.