‘Yeah, or out on his ear.’ Chris drained his current whisky. ‘You want to know the truth, Liz? Quain was a burnt-out old fuck. He wasn’t bringing in the business, he drank way too much, did too much expensive coke, he fucked his way through every high-price whore in Camden Town, and he paid for it all with bonuses taken out of money junior analysts on a tenth his income were generating. He was an embarrassment to everyone at Hammett McColl, and he needed taking out.’
‘Very public-spirited of you. But there must have been easier targets on the way up the HM ladder.’
Chris shrugged. ‘If you’re going to kill a man, it might as well be a patriarch.’
‘And what I find curious is the duels after Quain. Four more kills, none of them even close to as brutal as Quain’s and—’
‘Murcheson burnt to death,’ Chris pointed out. The screams, he did not add, still came back to him in his nightmares.
‘Yes, Murcheson was trapped in wreckage. It was nothing to do with you.’
‘Hardly nothing. I created the wreckage.’
‘Chris, you ran over Quain five times. I’ve seen that footage—’
‘What are you, Liz? An X fan?’
The crooked smile again. ‘If I was, I’d have been pretty unhappy with your performance for the next eight years. Like I said, four more kills, all clean bar Murcheson, who was an accidental burn. And alongside that, another seven inconclusives, including one you actually rescued from wreckage and drove to hospital. That’s not going to get you an honourable mention on any of the Xtreme sites, is it.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘Relax, Chris. I didn’t say I was an Xer. But when you’re trying to build a profile, this stuff matters. I want to know what you’re made of.’
He met her eyes, and the look lasted. Went on far longer than it should have. He cleared his throat.
‘I’m going to go home now.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to drive?’
‘I.’ He stood up, too fast. ‘No, maybe not. I’ll get a cab.’
‘That’s going to cost you a fortune, Chris.’
‘So. I earn a fortune. ’s not like the fucking army, you know. I get well paid for murdering people.’
She got up and placed a hand on his arm.
‘I’ve got a better idea.’
‘Yeah?’ Suddenly he was aware of his pulse. ‘What’s that, then?’
‘I live in Highgate. That’s a cheap cab ride, and there’s a spare futon there with your name on it.’
‘Look, Liz—’
She grinned suddenly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Faulkner. I’m not about to tear your clothes off and stuff your dick down my throat, if that’s what you’re worried about. I like the men I fuck to be sober.’
Unwillingly, he laughed. ‘Hey, give it to me straight, Liz. Don’t let me down gently.’
‘So.’ She was laughing too. ‘Do we get this cab?’
They ordered the taxi from the same table menu as the drinks. This early in the evening, it wasn’t hard to get one. Liz cleared the tab, and they left. There was frenetic dancing in the Iraq Room, harsh, mindless beats drawn from early millennium thrash bands like Noble Cause and Bushin’. They ducked through the press of bodies, got the stairs and made it out into the street, still laughing.
The taxi was there, gleaming black in the late evening light like a toy that belonged to them. Chris fetched up short, laughter drying in his throat. He glanced sideways at Liz Linshaw and saw the hilarity had drained out of her the same way. He could not read the expression that had replaced it on her face. For a moment they both stood there, staring at the cab like idiots, and like a Nemex shell the realisation hit Chris in the back of the head. The sardonic amusement on the phone, the maddeningly familiar note in her deep-throated laugh. The sense of recall about this woman came crashing down on him.
She reminded him of Carla.
Carla when they first met. Carla, three or four years back. Carla before the creeping distance took its toll.
Suddenly, he was sweating.
What the fu—
It was the fear sweat, chasing a rolling shudder across his body. A feeling he’d left behind a decade ago in his early duels. Pure, existential terror, distilled down so clear it could not be pinned on any single identifiable thing. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of everything in between and what it would do to you in time. The terror of inevitably losing your grip.
‘Oy, are you getting in or what?’
The driver was leaning out, thumb jerked back to where the door of the black cab had hinged open of its own accord. There was a tiny light on inside, seats of cool green plush.
Liz Linshaw stood watching him, face still unreadable.
The sweat cooled.
He got in.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Westward, there were mountains spearing up grimly under gathered blue cloud. Weak ladders of late afternoon sun fell through at infrequent intervals, splashing scant warmth where they hit. Carla shivered slightly at the sight. There was no darkness yet – this far north, daylight held the sky as it would for another full month, but the Lofoten skyline still looked like the watchtowers of a troll city.
‘Cold?’ Kirsti Nyquist glanced sideways from the jeep’s driving seat. Her ability to pick up on her daughter’s moods and feelings sometimes verged on the witchy. ‘We can close the hood, if you want.’
Carla shook her head. ‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’
‘Not happy thoughts, then.’
The road unwound ahead of them, freshly carved from the bleak terrain and laid down in asphalt so new it looked like liquorice. There were none of the luminous yellow markings as yet, and they kept passing raw white rock walls that still had defined grooves where the blasting holes had been sunk. A sign said Gjerlow Oceanic Monitoring – 15 kilometres. Carla sighed and shifted in her seat. Kirsti drove the big Volvo All-Terrain with a care that, to Carla’s London-forged road instincts, seemed faintly ridiculous. They’d seen five other vehicles in the last hour, and three of those had been parked outside a fuelling post.
‘Tunnel,’ called her mother cheerily. ‘Mittens.’
Carla reached for her gloves. This was the second tunnel of the trip. The first time, she’d ignored her mother’s warning. They were less than two hundred kilometres inside the Arctic circle, and the weather had been pleasant since she got off the plane at Tromsö two days ago, but tunnels were another matter. Deep in the mountain rock, an Arctic chill hit you in the lungs and the fingers before you’d gone a hundred metres.
Kirsti flipped on the headlamps and they barrelled down into the sodium yellow gloom. Their breath frosted and whipped away over their shoulders.
‘Now you’re cold, hey?’
‘A bit. Mum, did we really have to come all this way?’
‘Yes. I told you. It’s the only chance we’ll get to see him.’
‘You couldn’t invite him up to Tromsö?’
Kirsti made a wry face. ‘Not any more.’
Carla tried primly not to laugh. Kirsti Nyquist was well into her fifties now, but she was still a strikingly handsome woman and she changed her lovers with brutal regularity. They just don’t grow with me, she once complained to her daughter. Perhaps that’s because they’re all young enough to be your children, Carla had retorted, a little unfairly. Her mother’s choices often were younger men, but not usually by more than a decade or so, and Carla herself had to admit most of the options in the fifty-plus male range weren’t much to look at.