Come Again

by Robert Webb

  The audience seized the formal invitation to bring this extraordinary spectacle to a close and burst into wild applause.

  When the lights came back up, the volume of the applause doubled as they saw the short, kick-ass woman playing the Karate Expert and the dashing Scot playing the Security Services Officer in a passionate embrace. Kes took the hand of Ariel, his husband, and gathered the rest of the cast on the forestage in a ragged line-up. Miranda and Ferdinand broke up Kate and Toby’s hug, leading them to the middle of the line. Kate and Toby held hands and laughed at each other’s obvious embarrassment.

  But there was nothing else for it: they took a bow.

  Chapter 24

  Kate put the ice-pack down and sipped her tea. ‘What’s going to happen to Petrov?’

  ‘Better if you keep that on your eye.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Toby looked at her for a second and poured a splash of milk into his own cup. He spoke quietly even though this was his office. His tone had something of the ‘bedside manner’ about it. Kate appreciated his softness after all the violence and couldn’t help thinking of the path Luke had nearly taken.

  Another frustrated doctor.

  They sat on opposite sofas across a low glass table at the comfortable end of the room.

  He said, ‘Petrov’s toast. The CPS will go berserk about the concealed weapon. We’ll let the rest of the truth come out when it’s convenient.’

  ‘And what about Charles?’

  ‘I liked your two-million-to-charity idea. I stuck another million on for what he said about Luke. In exchange, I’m going to keep Charles where he is. I’ve a feeling he’s going to be terribly helpful.’

  She was slightly chilled by Toby in spook mode, despite his gentle manner. There again, Kate was content that Charles being blackmailed but protected by MI5 for the rest of his life was a frankly excellent result for such a dangerous fool.

  They had been driven from the theatre by Toby’s young assistant, Leo. Toby had given orders over the phone, holding Kate’s hand all the way. She had appreciated his steady warmth as she encountered some post-traumatic shakes.

  A small medical team from St Thomas’s over the river had been waiting as the dark-windowed people-carrier had swung through the electronic gate at the back of Thames House. She now had a couple of stitches in her forehead and a generous dose of co-dydramol doing its pleasantly dopey work in her system. But the day wasn’t over and she strained to focus.

  She said, ‘What about the file?’

  ‘Kate, we don’t have to do this now.’

  ‘I’m okay. Go on.’

  Toby regarded her with a particular seriousness. Kate wasn’t sure if he was thinking how much he admired her or just assessing her for PTSD. Either way, he replaced his cup in its saucer. ‘Our friends in Moscow know we’ve got the Moncrief tape and who made it – that’ll calm them down for a while. We can’t stop them assassinating everyone they don’t like but they won’t be doing it around here again any time soon.’

  Kate nodded and took another sip of tea. She looked to the far end of the room: his desk and his magnificent view of the Thames. ‘Haven’t you been busy all this time?’ she said quietly.

  Toby eased himself forward and sheepishly looked down at his palms, slowly rubbing them together. ‘I couldn’t tell you, Kate.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They let you tell your parents. A spouse, if you’ve got one. But you sign up to this thing in the knowledge that you’re going to spend the rest of your life lying to your friends.’

  ‘It must be hard.’

  Toby looked up to check if he was being teased and saw that he wasn’t. Disarmed, he said, ‘It’s kind of you to say that. Sir Steve would have been less forgiving. To put it mildly, we’re really not supposed to march into public spaces waving guns around.’

  Kate had been reaching for her teacup but her hand stopped as her fingers met the warm handle. ‘Sir Steve?’ she said faintly.

  Toby was alarmed by her reaction. ‘Oh God, I’m doing this all backwards. Sorry, Kate.’ He got to his feet and strode towards his computer, muttering crossly to himself, ‘Just the vague semblance of competence would be nice.’

  ‘Sir Steve,’ Kate repeated, almost to herself.

  ‘Yep. I should have told you this first.’ Toby was suddenly energised and leaning into his desktop as a laser printer beside him whirred into life. ‘My bad!’ he yelled to her. ‘Don’t get to come out, as it were, very often. Last time was when I was living with Kes in 1998 and he got quite good at following me to work.’ He snatched a page of A4 from the printer and walked back. ‘Unemployed actor with nothing better to do. Got him to sign the Official Secrets Act. People tend to take that quite seriously, even Kes.’

  For a second it looked like he was going to sit next to her on the sofa but then he seemed to think better of it and retook his seat opposite. He placed the page face-down on the glass table. ‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you know about Sir Steve.’

  Kate was distinctly vexed. Toby was treating this like some kind of mildly dysfunctional Radio 4 panel game. She just stared at him for five seconds, waiting for the puppyish enthusiasm to die on his face. It did. ‘Sir Steve,’ she said at length, ‘is a name I know from my childhood.’

  ‘Right,’ Toby replied sheepishly, calming down and apparently remembering that the person opposite had recently hospitalised four men. He started to pour himself more tea but his cup was full so he put the teapot down again.

  ‘He was someone that my dad used to go fishing with,’ Kate said deliberately.

  ‘Yes, indeed. The ponds on Clapham Common.’

  ‘So I suppose my question would be … WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?’

  ‘Sorry, yes. Let me try and put this in a sensible order. Sir Stephen Bellingham was my immediate superior here. He’s no longer with us, sadly. He became friends with Bill in the early nineteen-eighties – through, as you say, fishing. Most Sunday mornings, I believe.’

  ‘Every Sunday morning.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But we never met him. Mother was beside herself that Dad never invited him back – imagine Madeleine entertaining an actual Knight of the Realm. We started to think he wasn’t real.’

  ‘No, he was very real. And he was my predecessor in this job.’ Toby produced a pair of reading glasses and began to polish them.

  Kate considered this. ‘It says on your door, “Director”.’

  ‘There are several directors – we’re in charge of different things.’

  ‘What are you in charge of?’

  Toby put his glasses on and looked at Kate. ‘Recruitment.’

  Kate began to shake her head slowly, not sure whether to burst out laughing or just upend this table into Toby’s face.

  Hastily, Toby said, ‘Your dad wasn’t one of us, Kate. He didn’t lead a double life and I doubt he ever needed to lie to you.’

  Kate made a slow beckoning gesture with her bruised hand. ‘But …?’

  ‘But … as he and Stephen became friends, he was allowed to know what Stephen did for a living. And they began to talk about London taxi drivers.’

  The first curl of a smile appeared on Kate’s lips. Something was falling into place. And instead of feeling ambushed or cheated, she experienced the beginnings of this new understanding of Bill as a wave of pride. There was something inevitable about this. ‘The early eighties,’ she said. ‘National Front on the streets. Militant tendency eating Labour alive. Danger to the right, danger to the left.’

  ‘That’s how they both saw it, from their own respective sides of the fence. Stephen was what used to be called a “wet” Tory. Bill, as you know, was a socialist but with zero patience for the Bolshevik headbangers. No offence.’

  Kate reflexively touched the stitches in her forehead. ‘None taken.’

  ‘Between them they hatched what I gather a lot of people around here at the time saw as a rather outlandish project. But it’s been use
ful. A small group of heavily vetted London cab drivers – publicly-minded but no extremists – were put on a small retainer to keep their eyes and ears open around, for example, the Chinese and Russian embassies. Where those people go for a drink to let their hair down. What they might be chatting about at the end of the night. They’re modestly trained in what to look for and what might be useful. Supplied with certain bits of kit for co-ordinated action. It’s officially known as HPS-156.’ He turned over the piece of paper in front of him and slid it towards Kate. ‘But they call themselves Bill’s Brigade.’

  Kate cautiously took the printout. The first thing she saw was the image that Toby had copied with his phone in the 10,000-day kitchen: the snap of the nine-year-old Kate with her dad in his taxi, giving a big thumbs-up. Second, she recognised her stolen cab’s number plate and a code that would allow the recipients to track its location. And last, a message: ‘BILL MARSDEN’S DAUGHTER PURSUED BY UNFRIENDLIES – HELP HER FIND HER WAY HOME – RENDEZVOUS 19’.

  Kate looked up at Toby. ‘You sent them this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The taxi rank on Bracewell Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is no taxi rank on Bracewell Street.’

  ‘I was surprised you didn’t notice that at the time.’

  ‘I was a bit busy.’

  ‘Fair enough. No, usually there’s no taxi rank there.’

  ‘You got your ten cabs to assemble in one location in a matter of about five minutes?’

  ‘No, I got the ten nearest cabs to do that.’

  ‘How many have you got working for you?’

  ‘These days? Just over nine hundred.’

  Kate sprang to her feet and clapped her hands together in a near-hysterical mixture of delight and outrage. ‘Are you fucking KIDDING me!?’

  ‘Noop.’

  She began to pace around the room, occasionally glancing back at Toby. He kept his seat and reached for his tea.

  Kate turned and said, ‘You’re telling me that you’ve got – no, hang on – my DAD and your boss started a scheme that now means you’ve got NINE HUNDRED London cabbies spying on private citizens?!!’

  ‘Foreign nationals. Diplomats and the like.’

  ‘British politicians you don’t like the look of?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lefties? Greensters?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Extinction Rebellion?’

  ‘Kate, if I didn’t work here I’d probably join them.’

  Despite her recent encounter with the braided and ponytailed young Toby, Kate raised an eyebrow at this. ‘But you do work here.’

  He shrugged. ‘They can do what they like as long as no one gets hurt.’

  Kate remembered she was essentially talking to a posh policeman. She gave herself a moment to collect herself and slowly crossed to the window. A tourist pleasure-boat was making its way slowly upstream. She thought of the picture of herself and her dad and how warmly Toby had spoken of him; as well as her dad’s obvious admiration for Toby. She sensed him joining her at the window.

  ‘He recruited you, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘My dad. He’s the reason you’re here.’

  Toby followed her gaze and watched the same boat. ‘Yes.’

  Kate chuckled to herself and said, ‘There was some conversation where Dad will have been “casting off”, or whatever anglers do, and he’d have said’ – and here, Kate did a fair impression of her father – ‘“By the way, Steve. As you know, my Kate’s just finishing at York and she’s pally with this young bloke called Toby. He fancies the civil service and I reckon he’s got his head screwed on. What d’you think? Shall I send him your way?”’

  Toby replied in a spirited English RP. ‘“Good God, Bill! Why didn’t you tell me before? Let him complete his civil service exams and I’ll take a look at him. Assuming he’s no duffer, then we might—”’

  Kate interrupted. ‘“Oh, he’s no duffer, Steve. Very bright lad.”’

  ‘“Is this a romantic relationship with your daughter, Bill? This Toby sounds wonderful as well as very good-looking.”’

  Kate loved the cheek of this. She replied, ‘“Well, I’m no judge, Sir Steve. But yes, I’d say he’s a comely lad.”’

  ‘“She should bonk him immediately. That’s what young people call it? Bonking?”’

  Kate sniggered. ‘“Young Kate has very firm views about who she might or might not bonk. Toby may be out of the picture, despite his many qualities.”’

  ‘“What a pity.”’

  Kate sensed Toby introducing a serious note to the playfulness. She met him there. ‘“The thing is,”’ she said, ‘“she loves this other lad. Luke, his name is.”’

  Another pause. Toby’s voice softened. ‘“Tell me about this Luke.”’

  ‘“You seem very interested in my daughter’s love-life, Sir Steve.”’

  ‘“I’m a student of human nature.”’

  Kate kept her eyes on the boat as it followed the bend in the river and disappeared from sight. Her own voice was merging with Bill’s. ‘His heart’s in the right place, our Luke. But a bit of a dreamer if you ask me. Anyway … they look set.’

  A pause opened up and then Toby said, also in his own voice, ‘I’m sure they’ll be happy.’

  ‘They were,’ she said simply. She turned to him. ‘But things change. And life goes on. You can only fall in love for the first time once. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.’

  Toby searched her eyes helplessly. ‘But this conversation didn’t happen.’

  ‘Yes, it did. Just now.’

  She reached up and kissed him. He placed a tender hand on the non-bruised side of her face, the same side as when they were standing in the middle of the Blossom dance floor. She was only one kiss ahead of him: and this one was as good as new.

  She had no idea what would happen next. Even better, she didn’t know what ought to happen next. She let the moments fall before her, each with their own potential. She broke off and glanced at Toby’s computer screen. ‘Just one thing,’ she whispered.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When I came in downstairs and walked through that grey archway thing in reception …’

  ‘The metal detector?’

  ‘Is that …? Oh right. It’s not one of those x-ray scanners where you can see people naked?’

  ‘No. You’re thinking of Heathrow Airport. We’re spies, not perverts.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t have looked.’

  Kate smiled at the thought of his awkward chivalry in Amy’s room when she was putting on her jeans. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’ She adopted a very solemn expression as if she was about to say something deeply significant. ‘I just wouldn’t want your first sight of my bare boobs to be with them all squished up in this bra. I imagine that looks weird.’

  This remark delighted Toby on about sixteen levels but he just about kept his cool. ‘Is there then … some likelihood of my seeing your unsquished boobs in the near future?’

  Kate jabbed him in the ribs. ‘Ooh, Mr Darcy! Now you’re asking!’ He laughed as she put her hands behind her and took a few paces backwards. ‘Well, you would certainly have to ask me out on a proper date.’

  ‘Gladly. Coffee? Lunch? Dinner and a movie?’

  Kate’s mind was in blossom. ‘Take me dancing,’ she said.

  Epilogue – Nine Months Later

  ‘Marsden! You’ve eaten all the Kettle Chips!’

  ‘You’re sitting on them.’

  Kes shifted his weight on the battered old sofa and retrieved a half-full bag of crisps. ‘Oh yes. Nice and warm now. Perfect.’

  A small afternoon gathering in the basement of Danielle’s bookshop was breaking up. Danielle and her partner Betty would be holding a proper retirement party that night upstairs. It would feature as many regular customers as could be safely squeezed into the shop, as well as a couple of local authors. Celebrity attendance never did the shop any
harm and Danielle had asked them to give a reading from their latest work in the hope that they would have the tact to say no. They had all done so, with the exception of a YouTube star turned children’s writer.

  ‘The poor dear will be reading some of it for the first time,’ Danielle said. ‘Let’s hope her ghost-writer hasn’t suddenly branched out into words of more than two syllables.’

  ‘Some people might call you an appalling snob,’ said Kate.

  ‘But you wouldn’t.’

  ‘No. I think you’re exactly the right kind of snob.’

  ‘Then the shop is in safe hands.’

  Danielle had given the bookshop to Kate.

  It was a family business but Danielle had run out of family. Over the last nine months, Kate had spent more and more time helping out as Betty’s arthritis had begun to make a serious impact on all the lugging and humping involved with the technology of very large amounts of glued-together paper. Here in the basement, the pre-party was as much for Kate as for the retiring booksellers. The bequest in Danielle’s will was already in motion: Kate was the new manager of Northcote Books.

  Toby had sold his flat and moved into her house. They were in the midst of a long domestic honeymoon of fantastic sex and semi-hysterical bickering over the best way to scramble eggs. As she had predicted, Toby was almost infuriatingly easy to live with. He was self-sufficient but still just young enough to rediscover cohabitation as a pleasure. A few more years of living alone and Toby might easily have gone Full Bachelor, with all the usual neurotic schedules and nudist ironing. Kate knew she had risked slotting into similar tramlines, despite the return of her health and the fact that she could now miss Luke without reliving his absence as a presence. Most days, at least. Sometimes he was still there in a song or a peach or a weather forecast – but this was another welcomed cohabitation: she was making her peace with the present.

  In the basement stockroom, Kes finished the crisps in a couple of huge mouthfuls while his husband Josh plonked his trilby on his head and said, ‘Come on, dear heart, we don’t want to be the last to leave again.’

  Kes mildly belched and stood. ‘Darling, you know perfectly well that when you leave a room, the party dies anyway.’ Josh had the young-actor vibe of studied diffidence and now rolled his eyes without particularly arguing.