“Did you think I was talking to myself?”
From the footwell behind the passenger seat, Shirley Dander said, “Got anything to eat?”
. . . John
John
“John?”
His name approached him as if down a long corridor, the door at the end of which was ajar, and as usual his waking feeling was one of fear: What would happen next? It would involve that door opening wide. But there was a soft hand on his shoulder, and Sophie was bending over him. The light breaking through the curtains was the now-familiar glow of the sole streetlight that graced the mews.
“Are you awake?”
It was a whisper, so he replied in kind. “Yes.”
“Get dressed.”
He already was.
In the dim light, he could make out the gross and sour-smelling form of a creature that might have slipped through the door in his dreams, but was actually Jackson Lamb. Since he was neither eating nor smoking he was presumably asleep. Bachelor gazed for some seconds before shaking himself free and slipping his feet inside his shoes. His mouth tasted like an abandoned nest, and his bones ached from sleeping in a chair.
Sophie, taking no chances, pointed at the door rather than spoke.
It was what, three in the morning? Bachelor had already been exiled twice tonight, sent walking the streets rather than hear ongoing discussions. On the other hand, this was Sophie inviting him. He risked a taste of his own breath in a cupped hand, and made a mental note to avert his head when speaking. She opened the door so quietly, she might have spent their captivity practising.
Outside was colder than he’d expected. Little clouds accompanied each breath; his own heavier, more pungent, than hers.
“We need to leave now.”
He’d been expecting this moment.
Keep her here. No contact with anyone other than me, Louisa or Lamb.
Lech’s instructions, back when his own first concern had been the per diems.
And Lech was his friend, who’d stuck by him through thin times, even though their association had cost the younger man dear. It would be the act of a rogue to betray his trust. So he averted his head to shield Sophie from his phosgene breath before replying, and to the neutral observer must have looked as if he were addressing the terracotta pots and their sleeping citizens when he whispered, “Okay.”
They left the mews in a quiet hustle. Neither looked back, so neither saw the shape at the window, watching; his bulk briefly illuminated, on and off, by the repeated clicking of a lighter which seemed reluctant to burst into flame.
“I always get hungry after a ruck.”
“Me too,” Whelan said.
She shot him a sideways glance.
“Or so it would appear,” he added.
He’d stopped the car and she’d climbed into the front, where the first thing she’d done was snap open the glovebox and peer inside. She was Shirley Dander, and had never, it transpired, been Sophie de Greer, nor even knew who de Greer was. “Does she live in Wimbledon?”
Whelan had always been good at keeping a file in his mind. “Yes.”
“Figures.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “All of what just happened, the violence, everything—it was my fault.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped to a conclusion.”
This, judging by her expression, was a feeble way of kicking off a riot.
I rescued you, he wanted to say. I jumped onto a moving vehicle. Remember that part? I was an action hero.
“Can we stop somewhere?”
“What, you mean . . . a bush or something?”
“Do I look like I want to eat a bush?”
“Oh. Right. No.”
“I meant like a service station.”
“I expect there’ll be one somewhere.”
“Could do with a crap too, to be honest, but mostly I need a burger or something.”
“. . . Yes. Fine.”
“Or chocolate. Minimum.”
There was little traffic about, but a light shone way behind them: a single headlight. Motorbike, he thought.
“Why were you there?” he asked abruptly. “In the San?”
Fields crawled past. In the hedgerows, tiny lifecycles churned their way through insect millennia.
At last Shirley said, “People keep dying.”
He didn’t know how to reply to that.
“I don’t mean in general, though that too. It’s just that, every time I get close to someone . . . they die.”
She was staring out of the window on her side, though he guessed she wasn’t seeing anything.
“So don’t get paired with me. Not a good idea.”
He said, “I’m sure that’s . . .” but he wasn’t, when it came down to it, sure of much, and whatever he was going to say threatened to dissolve in the space between them. He hauled it back. “I’m sure none of it’s your fault.”
“Keeps happening. So it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is.”
This with the air of one who has reached a conclusion, and accepted that no other was viable.
A few moments later, she added, “I suppose, sooner or later, I’ll be the one drawing the short straw.”
Whelan said, “There’s some kind of service station soon. An all-night garage. They might do sandwiches.”
Shirley nodded.
The fields grew wider apart as the road morphed into a dual carriageway. Not long after he’d spoken, they passed a sign promising a garage, toilets, food, not far ahead.
When the taxi dropped Diana off, two hundred yards from the mews, she waited until its taillights had diminished to pixels before heading for the safe house. The note of grim humour in that name tolled loudly tonight—the safe house was tainted by the funds which had provided it, and if its existence were brought to the attention of the Limitations Committee, which would be pondering her career in a few hours, it would go from des res to memento mori in no time flat. But in her defence—and there was never a time when some part of her mind wasn’t working on her defence—in her defence, her job demanded compromise. It was her ability to function despite its constant presence that made her an effective First Desk.
A role she planned to continue filling for the foreseeable future, and Anthony Sparrow be damned.
The cottage was in darkness, but she sensed company even as she turned the key. That was Lamb, flat on the sofa, cigarette in mouth, one hand rummaging between the buttons on his shirt. A hollow space opened inside her, one that grew as she scanned the rest of the room, and the lightless kitchen through its open door. “Where’s de Greer?”
His gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. “What did Nash say? Apart from the obvious?”
“. . . Which is?”
“That he’s the one gave you the heavy-breath warning?”
She was long past showing surprise at Lamb’s crystal-ball readings. “The court-martial’s set for ten, the firing squad for ten past. Except I’ve a trump card which blows Sparrow’s gunboat out of the water, or I did have. Where is she?”
“Nice to hear ‘trump’ in a positive context,” Lamb offered. “I’d forgotten what that sounded like.”
“Stop arsing about. Where is she?”
Somehow, he managed to shrug without levering himself up. The sofa shifted an inch. “Must’ve dropped off. Woke up and the place was empty.” He removed his cigarette long enough to adopt a rueful expression for the ceiling’s benefit. “I blame myself.”
Approaching the sofa, she was entering the heat-fug of his body. The anger her own was generating was a match for it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m generally a ball of fun, yes. But this time, no. She’s gone.”
“. . . You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”
“Been waiting for what now?”