He pushed the mirrored door to Roper's dressing room and entered not her childhood but his own. Did my father own a military chest like this, with brass handles to lug it through the olive groves of Cyprus? This folding campaign table stained with ink and sundowners? This pair of crossed scimitars hanging in their scabbards from the wall? Or these dress slippers with their braided monograms like regimental crests? Even the rows of handmade suits and dinner jackets, wine red to black to white, the handmade shoes braced by wooden trees, white buckskins, patent evening pumps, had an unmistakable air of uniforms waiting for the signal to advance.
A soldier again, Jonathan checked for hostile signs: suspicious wires, contacts, sensors, some tempting trap to consign him to kingdom come. Nothing. Just the framed school groups from thirty years ago, snapshots of Daniel, a heap of small change in half a dozen currencies, a list of fine wines from Berry Bros. & Rudd, the annual accounts of his London club.
Does Mr, Roper go to England much? Jonathan had asked Jed at Meister's while they waited for the luggage to be loaded into the limousine.
Good Lord, no, Jed replied. Roper says we're terribly nice, but absolute wood from here up. Anyway, he can't.
Why not? Jonathan asked.
Oh, I don't know, said Jed too carelessly. Tax or something. Why don't you ask him?
* * *
The door to the inner office stood before him. The inmost room, he thought. The last secret is yourself ― but which self: his or mine or hers? The door was of solid cypress, set in a steel frame. He listened. Distant chatter. Vacuum cleaners. Floor polishers.
Take your time, the close observer reminded himself. Time is care. Time is innocence. Nobody is coming upstairs to find you. Bedding at Crystal is changed at midday, after the clean sheets have had a chance to air in the sun: Chief's orders, diligently executed by Jed. We are obedient people, Jed and I. Our monasteries and convents were not in vain. He tried the door. Locked. One conventional lock, pipestem. The room's seclusion is its own security. Anyone found near it will be shot on sight. He reached for his picks and heard Rooke's voice in his ear. Never pick a lock if you can find the key: first rule of burglary. He swung away from the door and ran his hand along a couple of shelves. He lifted the corner of a rug, then a pot plant, then patted the pockets of the nearest suits, then the pockets of a dressing gown. Then he lifted a few of the nearer shoes and turned them upside down. Nothing. To hell with it.
He fanned out the picks and selected the one he thought likeliest to fit. It was too fat. He selected a second and, about to insert it, had a schoolboy terror of scratching the polished brass escutcheon. Vandal! Who dragged you up? He dropped his hands to his sides, breathed slowly a few times to reassemble his operational calm, and began again. Gently in... pause... gently back a fraction... in again. Stroke her, don't force her, as we say in the army. Listen to her, feel her pressures, hold your breath. Turn. Gently... back another fraction... now turn harder... and a little harder still.... You are about to break the pick! You are about to break the pick and leave it in the lock! Now!
The lock yielded. Nothing broke. No one emptied his Heckler in Jonathan's face. He removed the pick intact, returned it to its wallet and the wallet to his jeans pocket, and heard the squeak of the Toyota's brakes as it pulled up in the stable yard. Go cold. Now. The close observer stole to the window. Mr. Onslow Roper has returned unexpectedly from Nassau. Players from across the border are coming to collect their weapons. But it was only the day's bread arriving from Townside.
But nice listening, he told himself. Calm, attentive, panic-free listening. Well done. Your father's boy.
He was in Roper's den.
And if you step out of line, you'll wish you'd never been born, says Roper.
No, says Burr. And Rob says no too. His holy of holies is out of bounds, and that's an order.
* * *
Plain. A soldier's plainness. Everyman's decent moderation.
No embroidered throne, no tortoise-shell desk, no nine-foot bamboo sofas with cushions that send you straight to sleep, no silver goblets, no Sotheby catalogues. Just a plain, boring little office for making deals and money. A plain leatherette-topped office desk with filing trays on a collapsing stand, pull it and they all take one pace forward. Jonathan pulled and that was what they did. One steel tubular chair. One round dormer window staring like a dead eye at its own blank piece of sky. Two swallowtail butterflies. How the hell did they get in here? One bluebottle, very noisy. One letter, lying on top of other letters. The address, Hampden Hall, Newbury. The signature, Tony. The topic, the writer's straitened circumstances. The tone both begging and threatening. Don't read it, photograph it. Calmly extracting the remaining papers from the tray, he laid them out like playing cards face up on the desk, removed the base of the Zippo lighter, armed the camera inside and peered through the tiny eyepiece. Spread the fingers of both hands for range and thumb your nose, Rooke had said. He thumbed his nose. The lens was fish-eye. All the pages were in shot. Aim up, aim down. Shoot. Change the papers. Keep my sweat away from the desk. Thumb my nose again to check the range. Calmly. Now just as calmly, freeze. He stood at the window, frozen. Observe, but not too closely. The Toyota is driving off, Gus at the wheel. Go back to work. Slowly.
He completed the first tray, replaced the papers, took the papers from the second. Six closely written pages of neat Roperscript. The crown jewels? Or a long letter to his ex-wife about Daniel? He laid them out in order, left to right. No, not a letter to Paula. These are names and numbers, lots of both, written on graph paper in ballpoint pen, the names on the left, the numbers set beside them, each digit carefully entered in its square. Gambling debts? Household accounts? Birthday list? Stop thinking. Spy now, think later. He took a step back, wiped the sweat from his face and breathed out. As he did so, he saw it.
One hair. One long, soft, straight, beautiful chestnut strand of hair that should have been in a locket or a love letter or lying on a pillow and smelling of wood smoke. For a moment he was furious, the way explorers are furious when they reach some hellish end point only to find the hated rival's cookpot there ahead of them. You lied to me! You do know what he does! You're hand in glove with him on the biggest dirty deal of his career! The next moment it pleased him to think that Jed had been making the same journey as himself, without benefit of Rooke or Burr or Sophie's murder.
After that he was terrified. Not for himself, for her. For her frailty. For her clumsiness. For her life. You bloody fool, he told her, leaving your handwriting all over the job! Have you never seen a beautiful woman with her face punched off? A small dog ripped from stem to stern?
Curling the telltale hair round the tip of his little finger, Jonathan poked it into the sweat-soaked pocket of his shirt, returned the second file to its tray and was spreading out the papers from the third as he heard the scuffle of horses' hooves from the direction of the stableyard, accompanied by children's voices raised in protest and rebuke.
Methodically, he restored the papers to their rightful home and walked to the window. As he did so, he heard from within the house the sounds of fast-running feet, then Daniel howling for his mother as he came storming through the kitchens to the hall. Then Jed's voice yelling after him. And in the stableyard he saw Caroline Langbourne and her three children, and Claud the stablemaster holding Jed's Arab, Sarah, by the bridle, and Donegal the groom holding Daniel's pony, Smoky, who stood with his head hung in dudgeon as if he were disgusted by the whole display.