Cutting through to Euston Road, Toby thought of an extra bit of cover, and darted into the twenty-four hour grocery store to buy himself a pack of low-tar cigarettes and a lighter. He hadn’t smoked since he’d left school, but he’d made a point of being able to feign doing so. Another bit of window dressing to differentiate himself from Toby Greene.
The front of Euston Station was a good choice for a meet. It was enclosed and congested, a concourse of takeaway outlets boxed in by the bus station on one side and the entrance to the train station and Underground on the other. There was nowhere he could stand maintaining a distance while reliably keeping an eye on the whole area. He went into the small supermarket, bought himself a can of lager and took up residence at one of the outside tables. He opened the lager, lit a cigarette and began to watch.
It was half an hour before he was supposed to meet whoever had left the note, but he was sure they’d be early. It was as quiet as the area ever got – in that hinterland between going out and coming home. He hoped the restricted visibility would affect both of them equally. The person meeting him could no more stand back and observe than he could. They would have to be here, moving amongst the listless shoppers, the residents picking up forgotten milk, and the tourists between trains – eating takeaways from Nando’s and topping up on caffeine.
He looked around the quad, assessing the people. A middle-aged man in a cheap suit stood to one side of the automatic doors, sucking on a cigarette as if it were keeping him alive. A young woman paced nervously, obviously fighting the urge to check her watch. If she doesn’t know how late they are, thought Toby, she can still pretend they’re coming. A pair of Japanese students were laughing over a pasty bought from a takeaway stall, pulling it apart gingerly and giggling at the sharp bite of the steam nipping at their fingers. Four girls overfilled a coffee shop table, checking their lives on their mobiles and sharing the results. A pair of bus drivers worked their way through sandwiches with no love in them, just limp ham and wilted lettuce, suffocated by cling film and neglect. An ageing soak sucked enthusiastically at the hole in his can of beer, every mouthful leaking, demanding a wipe from the back of a woolly, gloved hand. A burst of music washed out of the automatic doors as they hissed open to expel a man wearing his headphones loose around his neck. He seemed disappointed when nobody turned to look at him. An elderly couple shared custody of a shopping basket that fought to be free of them as they aimed it towards the entrance to the Underground.
Toby discounted them all.
A young man in a business suit styled in ‘flashy off-thepeg’ made a show of his phone call, a one-sided affair ripping verbal chunks from a mutual work colleague. Toby gave him special attention. A phone call was easy to fake. The man went on Toby’s list of possible targets. He was joined there by a quiet woman who studiously pushed her way through documents on her iPad, scrutinising everything as if it were a revelation. A man in a heavy anorak sat at another table, taking out serious frustration on a paperback thriller. He throttled it in his hands, snapping the spine back with every turn of a page. Toby couldn’t decide if the book’s violence was infecting him or he just hated it. Either that or he was playing too hard at being ‘a man reading a book in public’.
Toby checked his watch. Only five minutes to go before the planned meeting.
He took another sip of the lager and lit one more cigarette, gathering his cover around him as the clock ticked closer to his rendezvous.
A woman entered the quad dressed in standard office uniform, a light raincoat, dark blue skirt and matching jacket. Toby pegged her as a civil servant and immediately focused all his attention on her. She loitered by a takeaway baguette kiosk, glanced at her watch and looked out over the people around her, clearly searching for someone she was due to meet. As her attention swept over him Toby lifted his lager can to his mouth, blocking what little view of his face she might have had. Her gaze passed by him and she looked towards the entrance from Euston Road. She seemed innocuous enough, skin pale from too much office strip lighting and not enough sun. Her brown hair came from a supermarket shelf, and she wore no discernible jewellery. Probably born blonde, Toby decided she was a woman on the defensive in an aggressively male environment, trying to avoid preconceptions. London was full of such women, trying to dismiss their femininity in an environment that might see it as weakness. She certainly could be in intelligence. Despite a series of successful female operatives, the old guard could be a bigoted, patriarchal lot. The only thing that concerned him was that she seemed…
‘Far too obvious?’
He turned to find a woman had joined him at his table. She could hardly have been more different from the one he had been watching: brash in appearance, her hair a violent shade of red with streaks of white, face heavy with make-up and a neck laden down with so many bead necklaces she could have substituted for a grocer’s curtain. Toby placed her in her late forties.
‘Sorry to sneak up on you,’ she said and reached for his pack of cigarettes. She paused while withdrawing one, raising an eyebrow by way of asking permission.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, ‘they’re obviously no use to me.’
‘Now don’t be like that, they were a nice touch. I’m just exceptionally good at finding the people I want to find.’
Patronising bitch, he thought and scooted the lighter across the table to her with a flick of his fingers. He looked over at the civil servant that had caught his eye, watched her greet a man with little enthusiasm – a colleague not a friend – and vanish into the station with him.
‘Thanks for coming to meet me,’ the woman said after lighting her cigarette, ‘I felt sure you would. After a day in Section 37 you’re bound to be curious. It’s not the world you’re used to, is it?’
Toby shrugged. He had already decided to say as little as possible, let her do all the talking.
‘And Shining is hardly the most conventional section head in the Service, though he may well be the oldest…’
The table of girls with smartphones erupted into a brief and universally fake explosion of laughter at a YouTube video.
‘Have you considered applying for another transfer yet?’ the woman continued. ‘You might think that they won’t grant you one but don’t discount it. There are those in the Service who are far from happy to see Section 37 allocated an extra man; you might be surprised at how easily you could be elsewhere.’
Toby remained silent.
‘I see, you want me to do all the talking.’ She smiled. ‘You young officers are so charming; every move comes straight from a manual.’
‘Perhaps I just don’t like being played?’ he replied, his anger finally coming to the surface. ‘If you have an issue with Shining might I suggest you take it up with him direct? Given how few people take him seriously I’m surprised he’s worth this bother.’
‘I take him seriously,’ she said. ‘You’re quite wrong about that. This isn’t about petty, inter-departmental politics, this is about people who stick their noses where they’re not welcome. I met you as a point of courtesy, a polite opportunity for you to step off the field.’
‘Really? In my experience there is very little courtesy in our line of work. If you want me gone then it’s because I’m an inconvenience to you.’
Her smile switched to a sneer. ‘Get over yourself.’ She stubbed the cigarette out on the surface of the table. ‘You’re nothing to us. You’re a silly little child that’s about to get caught up in matters he has no hope of understanding.’