Katinsky’s debriefing hadn’t actually been serious. Katinsky had been among the sweepings; the exodus of minor hoods triggered by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, all desperate to convert scraps of intelligence into a harder form of currency. They were hardly Grade-A candidates. But all had to be processed, and kicked out the other side, and some even sent back, to prove there was no such thing as a free ride.
Those allowed to stay were given a small lump sum and a three-year passport they sweated over each time the renewal date came round. It was always handy, as Lamb’s mentor Charles Partner once remarked, to have a supply of expendable Russians on the books. Apart from anything else, you never knew when the wheel would spin again, bringing the world back where it started. “Where it started” was a phrase neither questioned. The Cold War was the natural state of affairs.
Katinsky, anyway, had been among the lucky. And look at him now: the once-minor hood, running his own “school” … Late sixties, Lamb supposed. His arms twitched under various sleeves: charity shop tweed jacket, holey grey V-neck, scruffy white collarless shirt. And there was something off about him, even leaving aside the secondhand clothing, the stained walls, the desperate address. Something off; like that gap between the use-by date, and the moment the milk turns.
“We’re busier than we look,” he said, answering Lamb’s question about the school. “We get a lot of enquiries. Web traffic. Foreign students. You’d be surprised.”
“You’d be surprised how little surprises me. Who’s we?”
“It’s a useful plural.” Katinsky smiled thinly, showing grey teeth. “The school has a full complement of pupils at present, but happily we are able to offer places on our subsidiary teaching scheme. A distance-learning arrangement.”
Lamb ran a thumb down a ream of stiff paper stacked on the nearest shelf, then slid the topmost sheet off the pile. A diploma: Advanced Studies, it read, specialising in, with three rows of dotted lines underneath. Board-certified, a little rosette-shaped logo promised, without going into detail about which board, or how certified.
Katinsky said, “We get the odd dissatisfied pupil, sure. But you consider the source, yes? The other day there’s a letter, the stupid bastard can’t spell bastard, that’s how stupid the bastard is. I’m supposed to care what he thinks?”
“I’d have thought teaching the bastards to spell would come within your remit,” Lamb said.
“So long as they sign the cheques,” Katinsky said. “Won’t Demetrio be wondering where you are?”
“He’ll be reading the paper. Picking his nose. You know Demetrio.”
“But not as well as you.”
“Probably not.”
“Which is strange, as I’m the one who made him up. Have you finished playing games yet, Jackson Lamb? And if you have, would you mind telling me what you want?
Much earlier the pale-blue sky had been cross-hatched by contrails, and Shirley Dander was deep in unreclaimed countryside; sheep, fields, and an unignorable smell of shit. There were occasional rows of roadside cottages; one with a peacock strutting outside, for Christ’s sake. Shirley stared as it swept across the road and round a hedge. Chickens, maybe, but a peacock? It was like a Richard Curtis movie.
None of which got her there faster, but at least she knew where she was going. Mr. B—Jackson Lamb’s bald man—had stepped off the delayed Worcester train at Moreton-in-Marsh, which turned out larger than its name suggested. It had a reasonably substantial shopping drag, at any rate, including some outlets Shirley wouldn’t have minded browsing. They weren’t open, though. It wasn’t long past seven. Shirley had been up all night.
The station boasted a car park and a space for taxis, currently vacant. Shirley sat under an awning while morning activity unfolded: citygoers were dropped off by tracksuited spouses, looking ever-so-harassed behind the wheels of their 4x4s; bolder types arrived on bikes which they locked to the nearby rack, or folded into complicated quadrilaterals. Some saddoes even turned up on foot. A taxi arrived, and disgorged a significant blonde. Shirley watched as she smiled and paid and tipped and smiled and left, then slipped into the back seat before the driver knew she was there.
“Miss your train?”
“Not even a bit,” she told him. “Do you just do mornings, or do you take the evening shift too?”
And because a suffering look was now unfolding across his wide country features, she snapped her fingers, propelling a ten pound note from its hiding place in her watch’s wristband; a trick she pulled on waiters, when they were worth the bother.
“Last week, for instance. Were you picking up in the evenings last week?”
“Boyfriend trouble, is it?” he asked.
“Do I look like boyfriends give me trouble?”
He reached a hand out and she dropped the note into it. Then he drove them away from the neat little station just as another taxi arrived to take his place, and gave Shirley Dander a quick tour of the village while she pumped him for info on local taxi services.
A large, very large, woman lumbered past: she didn’t look more than early twenties, but had amassed at least a stone for each year. She snagged Louisa’s attention. Gravitational pull, probably. “What must that be like?”
They were sitting on a stone plinth wrapped round a column, takeaway coffees in hand. Around them was a constant stream of people: heading into or out of Liverpool Street Station; disappearing round corners, or into shops and office blocks.
“Not just the effort of moving,” she went on. “The whole shebang. How’d you get a man when you’re shaped like that?”
“You know what they say,” Min said. “Anyone with one of those can always lay their hands on one of these.”
His head movement indicated the corresponding parts of their bodies he meant.
“I wouldn’t be too sure. I know some pretty lonely women.”
“Oh, well, if you’re gunna have standards …”
Of the people heading by, none showed interest in them. Somebody would, sooner or later: Spider Webb had set a meeting up.
“There’s two of them,” he’d said. “Kyril and Piotr, they’re called.”
“Are they Russian?” Min had asked.
“How will we know them?” Louisa said hurriedly.
“Oh, you’ll know them,” Webb said. “Pashkin doesn’t get here for another couple of weeks. You can talk through the itinerary with this pair. They’ve been told you’re from the Department of Energy, for what that’s worth. Let them know to keep their feet off the furniture, but don’t go putting collars on them. Never wise to stir up the gorillas.”
“Gorillas?” Min had asked.
“They’re on the big side,” Webb admitted. “They’re goons, what did you think? He’d have a pair of mini-mes?”
“How come they’re here already?” Louisa had wanted to know.
But Webb had no information. “He’s rich. Not Rolls Royce rich—moonshot rich. If he wants his cushions plumped up weeks in advance, that’s his privilege.”
Gorillas, then, was already in Min’s mind, but it would have popped up anyway, because they approached now like a pair of silverbacks. Both were broad-shouldered, and walked in a way that suggested their suits were chafing. One, who would turn out to be Piotr, had a tennis-ball fuzz of grey across his scalp. Kyril was darker and shaggier.
“This will be them,” Louisa said.
Really? You think? Not stupid enough to say that out loud, Min stood, sucked his gut in and waited.
The pair reached them and the one who was Piotr said, “You’re with Mr. Webb, right?” His voice was low and unmistakably eastern European, but he spoke fluently. Introductions made, the pair sat. Louisa waved for more coffee from the nearby booth. It might have been pleasant; four people sitting down to business in a capital city, mid-morning; coffee on the way, and the possibility of sandwiches later. You couldn’t throw a stone from here without hitting someone on their way to such a meeting; but it would have been trickier, Min hoped, to target one where half those convened were carrying guns.