“Is that where he’ll be? Judd?”
“We don’t even know for sure—”
“That’s what Devon reckoned.”
“—he’s being targeted.”
“We discussed this.”
“Just saying.”
“You can always get out.”
“And it’s a nightclub?”
“Closed, apparently.”
Louisa looked out of the side window, at London’s streets and London’s pavements, wondering not so much whether this was sensible as to how much—curiously—she seemed to be enjoying herself. She was going to miss this.
“This CC guy—”
“Is this even safe?”
“You’re supposed to be a spook—”
“Because it feels like there’s twelve of us—”
“—not a fucking chicken crybaby.”
“—in a car built for like three.”
“This is a spacious car,” River said. “It is roomy. Shut the fuck up.”
“—is he dangerous?”
Sid said, “He looks like someone you’d not look at twice. Someone who used to be in marketing, or real estate.”
Roddy said, “Sounds lame.”
“What, you think a tat of a baby squid makes you John Wick?”
Well, maybe not miss it. But she would think about it often, at least at first, when she was in her new job, enjoying her new salary, and sitting in an office she didn’t share with any of these people.
Sid said in her ear, “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You’re smiling.”
“Yeah, well. Life’s an adventure.”
River made an illegal turn to avoid an upcoming set of lights, then another, faster one to avoid an oncoming vehicle. They weren’t far from Nob-Nobs now. No: In fact they were here.
They weren’t the only ones.
So. Louisa sometimes felt like she was forever getting out of cars at strange places, like this nightclub, which would be like all nightclubs everywhere, glittery with potential then drab and disappointing as an uncollected ashtray, not that she was here for the usual reasons—at the back of her throat was that catch familiar from previous occasions, ones in which danger was more immediately apparent, such as the time at the top of the Needle with a Russian shooting at her across a carpet of scattered diamonds, or facing that private militia beneath the streets of West London with River, or when she walked down a snow-covered road in Wales, hoping to find Min’s boy before men with guns did, but it was best to put such thoughts aside and concentrate on the task in hand, which was piling out of this vehicle with the other slow horses, so many of them it must have looked like a clown car, and each with different ideas about what to do next . . .
Judd had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, after killing time in a downscale coffee bar, enjoying the sordid nature of his surroundings. The grubby could be attractive, as a memorable tryst in a cupboard after an all-night session in the Commons once proved. With that fond memory tickling his ivories he stepped into early evening to find the city not yet soft but getting there, the honking and squalling of its traffic like a toddler’s last protest before bedtime. He had the keys to the night in his pocket, or the keys to the nightclub, which felt like the same thing.
He was meeting Belwether at eight. Had the club been successful, it would be starting to fizz: lights on, glasses sparkling, sound system thumping; all of it prelude to the serious business—in nightclubs, men bent others to their will. This was what they were for. Nob-Nobs might be on the skids, its very name a portent of abysmal marketing, but here, soon, Dominic Belwether would arrive, the coming man in his party’s ranks, and hardly one of Judd’s natural allies. The task of co-opting him would give a lesser being pause, but lesser beings were always pausing, the ones who hadn’t come to a halt. Sharks kept moving. Wise men took note.
Which Judd had done long ago, a moral absorbed alongside other crucial lessons. A youthful ambition to enter the intelligence world, for example, had foundered on the rock of psychological assessment—apparently he was unsuitable for any undertaking which involved the sublimation of his ego. Okay. But spying wasn’t only about concealing your true self any more than it was all gadgets and gizmos and dead letter drops—spying was persuading others to betray those whom they loved, a game Judd was properly good at. That House of Commons tryst, for example, had been with his opposite number on the shadow cabinet.
The club, a converted warehouse, occupied a corner space, with an alley running alongside and behind it, and two similar properties locking it in place: one a set of temporary offices for startups and wind-downs, the other a collection of rehearsal spaces for bands and drama companies. The stop/start wheeze and whine of uncoordinated instruments suggested that a junior orchestra, or a modern jazz outfit, was in residence.
Using the key he’d been given, Judd let himself in through a side door five yards down the alley, and was swallowed up by darkness.
Devon watched this from across the road. He’d been there ten minutes—most of his job involved waiting. In this instance he was occupying a table outside a bar, browsing his phone, drinking zero-beer from the bottle; every inch the man with nothing better to do and enjoying doing it as the day deflated and warmth settled like a blanket. It was approaching the hour when the city grew calm, or pretended to; the evening’s first drinks lending an amiable slant to everything. Give it time, though, and the picture would grow crooked, alcohol and heat combining to fan that rosy glow into a fire. Not everyone in the city drank. But those who did more than made up the slack.
For the moment, there was peace and city-quiet, like actual quiet, but with the buzzing of traffic pasted on.
He had walked the alleyway bordering the club before sitting down. Beyond the door Judd had just disappeared through, at the corner of the building, a sash window above a larger pane was open a fraction; both were of fuzzy glass. Round the back, a pair of doors had their handles secured by padlock and chain. Beyond that, a rusty fire escape zigzagged roofward. No signs of life within.
It was possible—probable—that nothing more serious than a carnal assignation was planned. It was also possible that Louisa was winding him up; payback for his not having told her Judd was on his client list.
Either way, he sipped his beer and waited.
CC had parked a short distance away. There was a garage with a forecourt on which car washing was taking place: three men with cloths and a hose, creating rainbows in the spray arcing from a windscreen. CC watched, Taverner’s instructions ticking in his head. He could follow them or not. If he didn’t, an old sin would rise from its grave and swallow those he loved. There wasn’t really a choice, not if you were CC.
His phone rang. Avril. Whose soundtrack bubbled with ordinary noise but lacked the rattle and clatter of a track being pounded beneath her.
“Why aren’t you on a train?”
“Because they’re not like Ubers. They don’t just go when you’re ready.”
He conceded this point by leaving it unaddressed.
“Anyway, my watch. It’s slipped off my wrist—it’s always doing that. Please tell me it’s in the back seat.”
“A minute.” He unclipped his seatbelt and twisted round. “Doesn’t seem to be.”
“Maybe behind the cushion? I’m fond of it.”
He let himself out, opened the back door and ran his hand behind the cushions, all the while failing to make encouraging noises. I am on my way to do something that shouldn’t be done. To keep you from harm. His hand encountered an object. He pulled it out. “Got it.”
“I’m so glad. Could you stick it in the post when you get a free moment?”