Her companion said, “I’ve been up for eighteen hours. I’ve spent most of them in my car, and the rest looking at bodies, being lied to, locking up innocent people, and letting a French whackjob steal my gun. Oh, and having what feels like my cheekbone broken by the very hard head of that colleague of yours. Who, when my day started, was dead. I deserve a drink or seven after that.”
“No argument,” Louisa said, who hadn’t been fazed by being in a bar; just by Flyte’s invitation. She was drinking fizzy water: her car was down the road. But Emma Flyte was putting away tequila shots, one either side of a Mexican beer, and nothing about the way she was doing this suggested amateur status.
“Met your boss this morning,” Emma said.
Ah, Louisa thought. It was rare you got the chance to hear first impressions of Lamb. “And how did you get along?”
“He gave me about a dozen good reasons for bringing disciplinary charges against him.”
Louisa nodded seriously. “If you decide to do that, I very much want to be there when it happens.”
“I’m not going to,” Emma said. Her beer bottle had a piece of fruit lodged on its rim for some reason, and she pushed it inside with her thumb. It fizzed. “I mean, he’s a pig. And he lied about whose body he was looking at, which might come back and bite him yet. But I’d sooner have him telling me lies than Diana Taverner. When that lady plays hide-the-soap, she does it for keeps.”
Louisa let that image sparkle and die before saying, “Maybe you and Lamb have more in common than you think.”
Emma’s phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. “The Park.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They probably want to know what happened out there,” Emma said, nodding towards the door, the outside world, Pentonville Road. “And how come Adam Lockhead has, ah, evaded custody.”
“I thought you said his name was Patrice.”
“It’s Cartwright I’m talking about.” Despite the booze, her voice was steady. “That’s the passport he was using. Adam Lockhead. News to you?”
“I’m about three laps behind everyone at the moment,” Louisa said. “All I know is, this Patrice? He’s a pro. And as we’ve established, armed. In fact, his becoming armed is doubtless clocking up views on YouTube as we chat. So all in all, it might be an idea to be out there looking for him instead of in here self-medicating.”
“When we find him, it won’t be because I’m outside getting wet,” Emma said. “It’ll be phoned in by some beat-cop who listened to his radio chatter.”
“D’you think that’ll be before or after he kills Cartwright?” Louisa said. “I realise you’re not that bothered either way.”
“He didn’t look to me like he wanted to kill Cartwright. He looked—startled, I thought. Startled to see him.”
“River can be a pain in the neck,” Louisa agreed. “But he’s not actually alarming. Not at first glance.”
“Where’d he been?”
“I gather he’s spent the day in France.”
“Why?”
“When I see him, I’ll ask. You used to be with the Met, right?”
“Yes.”
Louisa grinned. “Missing it yet?”
The phone buzzed again, angrier this time, the way phones get. Emma sighed, and moved a few steps away. “Flyte.”
“Tell me that’s not you I’m watching. Along with half the population of the western world.”
“I doubt it’s that many,” Emma said. “Most of them’ll be viewing it twice. You have to factor that in.”
Diana Taverner said, “Are you drunk?”
“Not yet.”
“How did this happen? How did any of it happen?”
“It happened because I wasn’t given enough information,” Emma said. “So when we were sideswiped by a professional hitman, we weren’t expecting it. In the circumstances, we got off lightly. Unwelcome publicity notwithstanding.”
“You call that lightly? What would heavy look like?”
“It would involve my body lying in the street. Who was Adam Lockhead supposed to be?”
“That’s way outside your need to know.”
“Fine. So do you want me to forget who he really is? Because another couple of tequilas might do the trick.”
Taverner said, “What are you talking about?”
“The man you sent me to collect, the one whose passport said Adam Lockhead, he’s River Cartwright. Who for a while last night we thought was dead. Stop me if I start making sense. It would be a good note to end my day on.”
In the pause that followed, the usual bar clatter seemed to increase, as if anxious to fill any void in its jurisdiction. Emma wondered if Taverner was running the video again, to check what she’d just said.
Maybe so, because when she next spoke she said, “It does look like Cartwright. Did he say anything?”
“He knew the hitman.”
“Why do you keep calling him that?”
“He hit us with a car. It’s the shortest version of that I can think of.” Emma was missing her drink, so she wandered back to the table. The way things had come undone, it didn’t seem to matter who heard what. “Cartwright called him by name. Patrice.”
“Where are they now?”
“Do you know, that’s a really good question,” Emma said, reaching for her shot. “Not sure. London?”
“Are you anxious to lose your job?”
“I figure that’s out of my hands.” There was a short interval, during which she saw off her tequila. “The Met’s on the case now anyway. Can’t keep this one quiet. He was firing a gun in the street.”
“Your gun.”
“I hadn’t forgotten. You haven’t asked about Devon yet.”
“. . . What the hell has Devon got to do with anything?”
“Devon Welles. He was driving the car.”
“Oh. Right. He’s not dead or anything?”
“Couple of cracked ribs. I packed him off to A&E. You want me to have Giti Rahman released?”
“Why would I want that?”
“Because there doesn’t seem much point hanging onto her. Whatever it is you’re so desperate to keep under wraps is leaking worse than a broken sieve. I’m not sure which’ll happen first, a Freedom of Information request or an offer for the film rights.”
“Ms. Flyte, all that’s been broadcast to an easily amused world so far is your own inability to carry out a straightforward arrest. And if you want your career to survive that hiccup, I suggest you keep a low profile from now on.” She paused. “You’re a disappointment. Go back to the safe house. Sit with Ms. Rahman. And if I ever relieve you from that not particularly onerous duty, you’ll know hell just installed air conditioning.”
Emma put her glass down. She thought: another round exactly like that, and the varying degrees of pain, humiliation, embarrassment and anger she was feeling would subside into a molten mass from which she needn’t emerge until morning. It might even have stopped raining by then.
She said, “Lady Di? I wish I could say the same about you. About being a disappointment, I mean. But no, you more than live up to everything everyone says.”
She disconnected.
Louisa said, “Wow. Was that your career I just saw leaving?”
“Tell me you don’t know what that feels like.”
“You want another drink?”
“What I want is a cup of coffee. Can you organise that? Because I need the bathroom.”
Louisa, watching Emma retreat to the back of the bar, decided to hang on a while; join her in that coffee. Her flat with all its quiet comforts would still be there later. And sticking with Flyte might give her the inside track when River and Patrice broke surface.
Pissed off as she was with him, she had to admit that all the exciting stuff happened round River.
Somewhere not far away—or not as the pigeon flies, though few cared to do so in the cold wet dark: even London’s pigeons have their limit—River was adding this to his list of unexpected beauties: a dazzle ship in the rain, its perspective-bewildering doodles becoming extra smeary, its black-and-white pipe-and-funnel finish ballooning into ever more cartoony shapes. It seemed to shimmer in the downpour, as if the lights trained on it were all that anchored it in place.