Twenty
Alone in the house for a final precious few minutes, Emma made herself a cup of green tea and sat at the kitchen counter, looking out over the Common.
The kids had stayed over with their friends, the Finches’ twins, and when Emma had rung that morning to ask about picking them up, Melanie Finch had said, ‘God, no, don’t rush. They’re having a great time. A well-behaved pair you’ve got there, Em.’
Melanie said she’d drop Jack and Niamh back at Emma’s around lunchtime. It was now half past twelve. The live-in nanny, Ulyana, would only be back the next morning.
Emma had arrived home the night before at two-thirty, tiptoeing through the silent rooms, carrying her guilt like a burden she might drop at any moment and wake Brian. She’d slipped in beside him, hoping he wouldn’t wake up, but he’d half-rolled sleepily towards her.
‘Busy night, love?’
For an instant she was convinced he’d smell James in the bed with them, even though she’d showered back at the hotel before changing back into her day clothes. But he turned on his back and put out an arm for her to lie across, and she did so, snuggling into the crook the way she’d done for years, in the beginning.
She felt the slow rumble of his breathing in his chest beside her ear. It was at the same time deeply comforting, and almost unendurable in the way it stoked her guilt and shame.
He hadn’t driven her into James’s arms. Hadn’t done anything except bore her. And he didn’t even do that, really. He was witty, clever, interesting, and interested in her. If his job as a Physical Education teacher at the local private boys’ school didn’t present as obvious a topic of conversation at parties as hers as a GP did… well, so what?
No. Emma was honest enough with herself that she could recognise what a walking cliché she was. It was the danger in James she was attracted to. There was something of the bad boy about him. And like a teenage ingénue, she felt herself drawn in.
When she woke, the slanting sun indicated it was after nine o’clock. Emma glanced across but saw Brian’s side of the bed empty, the pillow neatly plumped.
The relief made her slump back on the sheets, the guilt close behind. Of course. He was coaching cricket today. It meant no awkwardness this morning, no struggling to ignore the lingering sensation of being in James’s arms. By the time Brian got home, she’d have got through a normal day, and would be more herself again.
Sitting at the counter, waiting for the children to arrive, Emma had a sudden, insane urge to phone James.
She suspected he used a special, pay-as-you-go phone to communicate with her, rather than his work one or even his main personal one. It was the sort of thing an agent in his position would do, secrecy coming instinctively. But she knew she couldn’t risk calling him.
She was due to see him again on Monday, two days from now. Last night had been an unexpected bonus, and should be enough to tide her over. But like the opiate addicts she’d seen as patients through the years, she craved James’s company only all the more for the increased exposure.
Emma noticed she’d left her handbag on the shelf where they kept the keys, and went to retrieve it. She looked inside, saw the makeup she’d spent a fair amount of money on yesterday before meeting James. Would Brian notice if she wore a different shade of lipstick from usual? Probably not, or even if he did he’d think she was doing it to please him. But she decided to keep it for her encounters with James.
As she replaced the makeup, her fingertips felt a slight irregularity in the seam of the handbag. She peered in, saw a tiny frayed thread.
Great. The bag was a Louis Vuitton, and hadn’t been cheap.
Pushing the lining of the bag so that it protruded out, she examined the seam. Something looked odd about it. She rubbed a fingertip over it.
A definite bump.
With a fingernail, she prised another thread free. Holding the seam inches from her face, she detected a dull glint from within.
Her nailtips plucked a couple more threads loose, and she worked them into the gap and pulled the object free.
It was a perfectly round, slate-coloured bit of metal, no bigger than a pinhead. Emma turned it round. There were no markings.
Had it been there before last night? She supposed she might not have noticed.
She emptied the bag out on the kitchen counter and turned it inside out. With eyes and fingers she examined every millimetre of the lining, but found nothing else.
She watched the tiny ball, as though she thought it might suddenly start rolling across the granite surface of its own accord.
James. He was the one to ask. James would know whether it was something of significance, or whether she was being ridiculous, fretting over a bead which had found itself in the design of the handbag by accident.
James. She thought of him, among the rumpled sheets last night, managing to look lazy and intense at the same time, watching her as she headed for the shower.
And left him alone. With her handbag.
The thread of unease snapped then, as Melanie Finch’s station wagon pulled into the driveway and the carefree yelling of the children dragged her into a different world.
Twenty-one
Hannah handed Purkiss the small, hardbacked notebook.
‘You have a look through,’ she said. ‘See if you spot what I did.’
They were on a mezzanine level at Victoria Station, seated at a table which was part of the sprawling fast-food dining area. Hannah had rented one of the station’s lockers to keep the notebook in.
‘I didn’t feel safe leaving it at home,’ she said. ‘Nor carrying it around with me.’
They’d left the café and headed for the nearest A amp;E department, where Hannah had been seen promptly and had her leg wound dressed. She’d slipped and fallen at a dump, she said, and cut herself on corrugated iron. None of the staff appeared inclined to disbelieve her, or particularly interested one way or the other. The hum of conversation in the department was about the car bomb and how many likely casualties there were going to be.
While Hannah was being seen to, Purkiss watched a television set on the wall in the triage area. The reporting was all very preliminary, with little to be seen on camera beyond the bustling of the police, ambulance and fire services, but the excited reporter revealed that there appeared to be at least ten people killed or injured.
Hannah emerged, having changed into a pair of jeans she’d bought along the way. She’d washed the dirt off her face and arms, and looked pale underneath.
‘Did they look at your back?’ Purkiss asked.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Sunburn.’
At Victoria Station now, Purkiss perused the notebook. Almost every page was crammed with crabby lettering and symbols. Most of it, as Hannah had said, was unintelligible, a highly personal form of shorthand. But he saw the names leap out at times: Al-Bayati, Iraqi Thunder Fist.
And another: Arkwright, preceded once by the first name Dennis.
‘Heard of him?’ asked Purkiss.
‘No.’
The name hadn’t come up in the Morrow files Kasabian had given him.
‘Why would Charlie leave these names unencoded like this?’
Purkiss shrugged. ‘Insurance, I suppose. In case anybody else ever needed to use the information in the notebook. Like us, now.’
She swept a hand across her forehead. ‘If I could only access the Service database… But if this Arkwright is important in some way, his name will be flagged. Any search will not just set off alarms, but will probably lock his data and prevent anyone reading it.’
‘There’s another possibility,’ said Purkiss.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a long shot.’ He took out his phone and dialled Vale’s number.