She shook her head: didn’t know. Time was elastic after you were thumped in the head. Minutes twisted round each other, and hid in each other’s pockets.
In her pockets.
Stones.
There were stones in her pockets, which she didn’t remember putting there. But of course, they weren’t her pockets.
Maybe we should swap coats.
“I’m not wearing that scuzzy thing,” Emma had said, and meant it. A white puffa jacket, visibly torn at the breast, and overdue a launder. Not her usual look.
On the other hand, Louisa had had a point . . .
“Come on. Faster.”
Emma moved faster, but stumbled deliberately and fell to her knees. Let him think she was already finished.
Instead of hauling her up this time, he took a step backwards.
“Do that again, I’ll assume you’re faking. Is that what you want?”
What she wanted was a moment—half a moment—where his attention was elsewhere.
“I fell,” she said thickly. Her voice was not her own. “That’s all.”
“On your feet.”
Something slumped to the ground a few yards behind them, but he didn’t even blink.
Snow, dropping from high branches in response to a gust of wind.
Climbing to her feet, she slipped a stone from her jacket pocket. In her hand it felt seamless, egg-shaped, brilliant. One of nature’s pointless perfections, smoothed by time.
It wasn’t the weapon she’d choose to face an armed man with, but in the absence of anything else, it was a comfort.
“Let’s go.”
She’d expected a prod from his gun, but he was keeping his distance now.
Emma started walking, her legs genuinely wobbly. Partly because of the blows she’d taken, but partly, too, for fear. This man’s job was to eliminate witnesses. He might have been sent here for Lucas, but his brief had expanded now.
She thought about last night, and the moment in the graveyard. Bringing her pursuer down, and the bare second she’d spent wondering whether to go for his gun. She’d decided it was too dangerous: pity. It would have been good to have it now.
Instead of this stone, so smooth, so feeble.
In real life, Goliath crushed David every time.
But don’t think of that.
One half moment where his attention was elsewhere . . .
“It’s just up ahead,” she said.
And then the man’s phone rang.
The stubby length of wood in her hand, Shirley edged her way round the barn. Still there came that murmur of voices, like something heard on the edge of sleep, or a rumour of distant weather.
Something slipped into her eye, and she blinked it away. A snowflake.
It was odd to be here, but that was okay. It was odd to be anywhere, really. You just got used to some places faster than others. Like any slow horse, Shirley hated Slough House, but had grown accustomed to it too. You had to accept that you belonged somewhere, and it wasn’t up to you where that was. Memories weren’t optional, any more than fate. Marcus had died in Slough House and it was possible she’d die here, on a snow-blown Welsh hillside, checking out a bloody barn. Of course, she could just duck and cover, wait until the danger, if that’s even what it was, passed along, but if hiding were in her blood she’d not be here in the first place. Things were what they were. And she couldn’t be different now.
Her blood was tickling in her veins. Partly the speed doing its job; partly the knowledge that she was out here on the edge.
Capsizing a klieg light onto a parked van.
Firing bullets into a derelict building. . .
Moments when she knew she was alive, largely because people around her were trying to change that.
The voices stopped.
Perhaps they’d heard her. Hard to move silently through packed snow, so perhaps they’d heard her, which meant Shirley had to sacrifice stealth for speed, because once you thought someone might be sneaking up on you, you didn’t forget about it in a hurry, and they’d be ready for her, another two seconds they’d be swords drawn. So she ran, as best she could, carting the lump of wood two-handed like a rifle, and Marcus would be proud of her if he could see her now; Marcus would think she was a bloody idiot, but still, he’d be proud of her, taking the fight to the enemy; who was, it turned out, a young woman in a donkey jacket and wellies, reaching up for a transistor radio on a hook; the look on her face one of amusement rather than alarm, as if energetic strangers were part of her morning round. In the darkness behind her Shirley could make out the heavy shape of animals, fed and resting among straw; warmth radiating from them in industrial waves.
The young woman shook her head. “Look at you, where did you spring from? You must be freezing!”
Shirley couldn’t speak, but found herself nodding.
“Cat got your tongue? You’re another lost one, aren’t you? My second this morning.”
She dropped the transistor into her jacket pocket.
“Well, I’m all finished here. And you look like you could do with a slice of toast, am I right?”
Well, Shirley reflected, if this wasn’t death, it might at least be heaven.
“You are,” she said. “I’m starving.”
“Come on, then.”
Shirley tossed the lump of wood aside, and followed her saviour.
It didn’t, in the end, take half a moment.
“What?” the man said into his phone and Emma moved; her fist, clamped round the stone, heading towards his face; her elbow angled to knock his gun arm aside in the same movement. Muscle memory suggested she’d done this before; wearing sweats, on a padded mat. A risky move, but they were the only kind available; he wasn’t going to let her go, not now she’d had contact with Lucas. I don’t even have to kill him he’d said, but not in the expectation she’d believe him. Simply because some things always got said; some lies needed the light.
Punch him in the face.
Knock his gun arm aside.
Some of this happened, but not enough.
No special noise was involved; Emma heard not much more than a cough. That, and the overhead branches sawing each other in the wind, and the soft whumps their burdens of snow made when they laid them down. The sound winter sunlight makes when it passes through dead leaves.
And then nothing.
She supposed she’d get used to wearing Emma’s coat sooner or later; probably around the time Emma wanted it back.
Unless Emma fell in love with Louisa’s own white puffa, of course. Never too late to change your image.
Lucas was pulling ahead; not quite walking fast, more like running slowly. Which presupposed that safety lay ahead, whereas all Louisa was confident of was that danger lay behind.
“Lucas . . .”
“What?”
“Let’s take it easy.”
In case they had to make a sudden reversal. In case they found themselves walking into the other half of a pincer movement.
She wasn’t sure how much more she could manage. Her safe, secure little flat felt a long way away; its bed and fridge like details from a fairytale.
Way behind her, out of sight along the wooded track, she thought she heard something: a snapping branch, a breaking limb.
And then they were in daylight; ahead of them the estuary, broadening as it greeted the sea, and to their left a steep hill, lumpily white, up which there must be a footpath, because Louisa could make out a stile at the bottom, underneath a signpost loafed with snow. That would lead up to the coastal path. Descending the hill now, trudging carefully, was a bundled-up figure using a stick. And ahead of them was a building; a pub, its wooden sign flapping in the wind. A single car had been there some time, judging by its rich crop of snow. The pub wouldn’t be open, but the car suggested there might be someone inside. And Louisa would pay way over the odds for a sandwich, a cup of coffee.