River stood, turned and faced the traffic. Faces stared back: Of course they did. Where else were people going to look, stuck in a queue of cars? He pulled his phone out, called Stamoran, then held the phone away from his ear, straining to catch a telltale ringing inside the house, but there was nothing, and when he put the phone to his ear the silence was dead and echoey, as if he’d stuck his head inside a dustbin. He had the feeling he was running out of options, with a long drive home ahead, and no answers found. Automatically—his fingers doing the work by themselves—he called Sid again. Now might not be the time to explain where he was, but now was definitely the time to hear her voice. The numbers did what numbers do; they reached out and rang bells in someone else’s life. In between one breath and the next a connection was made, and Sid’s phone rang. Soon it would go to voicemail again. But until it did, he could hear it twice; once in his ear, and once behind the door he was standing by. And because this made no sense at all, he disconnected, then did it again, and then did it again, each time expecting a different result.
But the ringing didn’t stop.
PART TWO
GLOVES OFF
Louisa, on the phone, behind the wheel, said, “Can we get in the back?”
“We’d have to go through three gardens, all with high walls. We’d be spotted.”
“And we can’t wait for dark.”
“And it’s on a main road. Did I mention the traffic lights?”
“You’re right, we’re fucked. Shall we go for a drink instead?”
River didn’t laugh. “Are you with me?”
“You know it.”
His next question—did she have a crowbar?—indicated both that he had a plan and that it wasn’t subtle.
There were hardware places off Oxford’s ring road. She swung into one, made the purchase and swung out again inside eight minutes, River still on the line, his voice cold as bricks. He had gone to Oxford looking for a former colleague of his grandfather’s and had found Sid’s phone instead, behind a safe house door. She’d left a note that morning, See you later. Now he’d thought about it, this left a lot unsaid.
Louisa tried for reassuring. “Look, so her phone’s in there but that’s all we know. She’s probably fine. Trust me.”
“There are so many things wrong with that, I’m not even going to start. How far away are you?”
Not very.
When she pulled up he was leaning against his car, his face taut. “Did you get the crowbar?”
“I already told you. Do you want to slow down a second?”
“No.”
There were cars at the lights, but not many: It was outside rush hour, outside school set-down. At a rough estimate—and not counting the three adults supervising children in the play area, the old man walking his dog and the two couples playing tennis—only eight or ten people saw River carry a crowbar to the mild-looking house midway down the row, apply it to the door at lock height, and put his whole body weight into leverage. The lock gave way with a splintering noise and a small cloud of dust, and he was inside, shouting Sid’s name; Louisa, in his wake, pointlessly trying to shield him from view, but conscious of being the object of stunned attention. River dropped the crowbar in the hallway. Someone sounded their horn, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was all the sounds Louisa couldn’t hear; the alarm that had been triggered when the crowbar’s edge slipped into place and was now bellowing their presence; the clatter of boots hitting the ground. River shouted Sid’s name again, but no one replied.
Nice plan, thought Louisa.
We’ve got three minutes.
In his days of spads and lackeys—political appointments made by party bosses to ensure he didn’t get into trouble, or no more than could be kept from public view—there would have been smoke signals going up: PJ is bored. Never a good sign. PJ is bored, meaning he’d be seeking adventure. The best that could happen was he’d disappear for an afternoon with his best friend’s wife, “PJ’s best friend” being a temporary post, candidates assessed largely on the condition of their wives. The worst-case scenario was that he’d start creating policy, and nobody wanted that. But those days were behind him, and the only brakes on his behaviour were those imposed by his own self-restraint, so it was pure chance he wasn’t snorting coke off a teenage hooker’s breasts when his phone rang, early afternoon. His screen read “Number withheld.”
“Diana. Lovely to hear from you.”
“I’ve set up a meeting.”
“How splendid.” Judd was looking through his study window onto the garden, where Xanthippe and some friends were recovering from the previous evening’s excesses, the four of them sprawled across three sunbeds like an exercise in fractions. “But I’m pretty sure the, ah, whispering of sweet nothings into receptive ears was your function.”
“Peter, we can do this two ways. You can insist on being a pompous prick, and we’ll get nowhere. Or you can listen to what I’ve arranged, agree that it meets your requirements, and put your happy face on. Shall we continue?”
“Since you put it like that, I’ll choose door two. Who’s my lucky confidante?”
“Dominic Belwether.”
He allowed silence to gather. Belwether, the new Security Minister, was a rarity among the current intake of MPs inasmuch as he had a hinterland, having done several tours of duty with the armed forces, and generally kept quiet about it. Because of this, he was one of the political faces of the moment, and if the face was somewhat round and a bit shiny, that did him no harm with the electorate, particularly that large and growing sector which didn’t give a fuck about politics. And if the Whitehall rumour tree was still reliable—its rustlings reached Judd through his erstwhile party colleagues, the way sound travels through dead leaves in autumn—Belwether was being groomed for higher things.
Judd said, “Interesting choice.”
“Because?”
“Because you’re not famous for cosying up to rising stars. And nor, unlike every career pol ever, do you grow moist in the company of graduates who’ve seen active service. But then . . . Do you know, I heard a rumour about Belwether. From a friend of a friend.” He paused, allowing Diana time to draw up a mental family tree: what kind of friends friends of Judd might have, given that Judd didn’t have any friends, not really. She was doubtless picturing trolls. “That in his army days, he worked on . . . special assignments.”
“Peter—”