Mr Hua flicked back through the atlas. Ellis showed him the way to High Wycombe. Sunday night, he said, the traffic out of London should be light, though returning to the Savoy might be trickier. Mr Hua made a note of the directions, then reached for the ignition key. Seconds later, the Daimler was easing away from the kerbside.
Ellis stifled a yawn, watching the car disappear in the direction of Wandsworth Bridge. The route Mr Hua had been so carefully planning on his atlas would take him to Portsmouth but Ellis, try as he might, couldn’t think why.
Chapter Two
Billy Goodman was still trying to tune the radio when he saw the parking space. He checked in the rear-view mirror then braked sharply. The pub car park, as usual, was full. Fifteen feet of car space, so close to the Finches, was a godsend. He eased the Audi into the gap between the two cars and turned off the engine. Only then did he notice the Cavalier waiting to back in.
He looked at it a moment, then shrugged. Parking in this city was a game. Unless you got in first, you didn’t get in at all. Even guys who drove Cavaliers knew that. He reached for the radio again, looking for Virgin AM. He’d spent most of the afternoon trying to sort out a clean signal on the medium wave and he thought he’d cured the interference with a new suppressor but now he wasn’t so sure. He found the station and started the engine again, cursing as the hum returned. Kate wanted the car back by ten. No excuses.
He glanced at his watch, wondering whether he ought to skip the pub. Another hour in the workshop might see the problem sorted. He glanced up, hearing a car door slam. The Cavalier was still parked in the middle of the road. A bulky youth about half his age was striding towards him. He was wearing jeans and a sports shirt and his hair was freshly gelled. His girlfriend was still sitting in the car, her body half turned in the passenger seat, watching.
The youth stopped beside Billy’s window. He wrenched open the door. ‘You fucking blind or something?’
Billy eyed him without enthusiasm. The boy had used far too much aftershave. ‘You got a problem, son?’
‘No, mate, but you do.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ The youth nodded at the Cavalier. ‘I was backing in. It was my space. Until you fucking nicked it.’
‘Nicked it?’ Billy looked injured. ‘Nicked it?’
The youth stared down at him. Anger did nothing for his composure. He glanced over his shoulder at his girlfriend. She was making a loose movement with her wrist. He nodded, turning back to Billy. ‘She’s fucking right,’ he said. ‘Wanker.’
Billy was fiddling with the radio again. When he got the station dead centre, he pulled the door shut, ignoring the string of oaths through the open window. A taxi had arrived, the cabbie leaning on the horn, and the noise brought a couple of drinkers out of the pub. They read the situation at once, settling by the kerbside with their pints of lager, awaiting developments.
The youth beside Billy’s car took a step back then swung at the door panel with his boot. The Audi shuddered as he did it again, harder this time, and Billy carefully stowed his screwdriver under the dashboard before getting out. The youth looked uncertain for a second or two, then threw a long, untidy right hook. Billy ducked it, closing with the youth, seizing him by the collar and driving his forehead into his face. He heard the youth’s nose break and, as his hands went up to shield his face, Billy drove his knee into his unprotected groin. The bellow of pain became a whimper as the air whistled out of him, and he collapsed onto the road, his body curled into a tight, protective ball.
His girlfriend was out of the Cavalier now, and the sound of her screams brought more drinkers flooding from the pub. She gestured hopelessly at her fallen boyfriend, begging someone to do something, but most eyes were on Billy. He was standing over the prostrate youth, gazing down. At length, he tried to stir a little movement with his foot but the youth was still fighting for breath. A moment or two later, he groaned and began to vomit. Billy bent quickly, hauled him across the road by his armpits and left him curled in the gutter, still throwing up. The girl was hysterical, flailing at Billy with her fists. She’d call the police. She had his number. He was a bastard. He was sick. She’d make him pay. Billy ignored the threats, suggesting she move the Cavalier. She was causing an obstruction. People were trying to get past. The girl stared at him, then began to wail again, and in the end Billy left her to it, getting back in the Audi and starting the engine. Driving away, he paused beside her in the road. The youth was up on one elbow, looking dazed. His nose was pulped and blood was dripping off his chin. Billy smiled at him, then indicated the parking space he’d just abandoned outside the pub.
‘All yours,’ he said, reaching again for the radio.
Kate Frankham sat in bed, trying to ignore the lure of the Sunday papers. They lay in an untidy pile beside her supper tray, a constant reminder of the world to which she knew she belonged. Eighteen months in local politics had taught her a great deal, and the most important lesson, by far, had been the realization that nothing was probably beyond her.
She moistened the tip of her finger and began to flick through the thick raft of paperwork on which tomorrow’s meeting would float. The committee met on the first Monday of every month. In the council circulars, and on the public boards in the Civic Centre, it was known as the Cultural and Heritage Services Committee, and the first time she’d attended it, the experience had scared her witless. She’d been a stranger to this world of proposers and seconders, of minutes and addenda. She’d known nothing about procedures and protocols. Even the simple business of taking a vote had been a mystery. But Kate had never been slow to learn and it had dawned on her very quickly that the language of committees, like any other language, was simply the insiders’ way of protecting their own interests. Nothing, in the end, was alarming or impenetrable. Indeed, most of the time, committee work was a statement of the blindingly obvious.
She smiled to herself, leafing through a long report on the future of the city’s museums. She’d been Chairperson of the Heritage Committee for just six months. She’d been voted into the position because she belonged to the ruling group – a coalition of Labour and the Lib-Dems – and because it was generally accepted that she’d do the job well. She was young. She was bright. She was committed. And, most important of all, she’d already made her mark by winning a number of battles over local issues, some of them dauntingly complex. That, she now saw, had given her enormous clout. She’d been out there at the grass-roots. She’d done her research. She’d taken on the experts and trounced them with their own statistics. Before she’d cast a single vote, she’d acquired the aura of the veteran.
She leaned back against the pillow, stretching her arms wide, arching her back. Tomorrow, as usual, each party would hold pre-meetings before the committee formally convened. Behind closed doors, her own Labour group would thrash out a line, and the Tories would separately rehearse their objections, and half an hour later, around the committee table, they’d all go through the motions again. Any member of the public who took the trouble to attend might – first time round – be impressed by the workings of democracy, but anyone with any knowledge knew that the whole thing was a stitch-up. The real business of committee work was about scoring as many political points as you could. The decisions that mattered had already been taken.
Kate tossed the museums report onto the growing pile by the bed, then she reached for the remote control and turned on the television. The local ITV company was running the edited highlights of the day’s events on the Common and she watched for a moment or two, regretting that her dad hadn’t survived to be there. Unlike Kate, he’d loved occasions like these: the bands, the uniforms, the ceremony. She supposed that it must have had something to do with his war service, that unconditional loyalty to King and Country. She didn’t share those feelings herself – indeed she viewed the monarchy as just another excuse to keep power out of the hands of the people – but she’d never once presumed to question her father’s allegiance. It had s
uited him. It had made him happy. Enough said.
She leaned back against the pillows, trying to picture him. Above the bookshelf across the room hung the single framed photo that had survived the clear-out after his death. It showed him as a young able seaman on a quayside in Liverpool. In the background, on the flat grey water, rode the small corvette on which he’d spent the first two years of his war service. The boat, HMS Kingston, had finally hit a mine in the Western Approaches and Arthur Frankham had been one of a bare handful of survivors. He’d rarely talked about the incident but Kate was convinced that the loss of his shipmates like that had shaped the rest of his life and, looking at the big toothy grin in the photograph, it seemed obvious why he’d later become such a committed trade union official. In the end, as he’d so often told her, it’s down to your pals: looking after them, treasuring them, making sure they always got the best.
Kate’s eyes went back to the television. The service was over. The limousines were being readied for the fourteen heads of state and the commentator was saying something portentous about the importance of treasuring images like these. Kate thought suddenly of Hayden Barnaby, wondering whether he, too, was watching. Like her dad, he’d always been a sucker for state occasions. They seemed to appeal to something primitive in him though not, she suspected, in the same way as they had to her father. Barnaby’s interest had always been transparent. He loved power. He loved show. He loved an audience. That’s maybe why he’d become a lawyer, she thought, smiling at this morning’s memory of him standing in the pool, discomforted by the success of her little ambush. He’d put on a bit of weight and it showed in the way he’d tried to suck in his stomach as they swopped gossip in the shallow end. There’d been something different about his face, too, an air of slight wistfulness, as if life had robbed him of something indescribably important.
After the second pint, Billy Goodman knew he’d had enough. Putting the nut on the kid in the Cavalier hadn’t been quite as inch-perfect as he’d have liked, and the Castlemaine was doing nothing for his headache. Out in the car park, he took several deep breaths before climbing back into the Audi. With luck, Kate would have something in the bathroom cupboard to sort him out. She suffered from migraines herself and was always dropping pain-killers.
Billy drove west, through a maze of narrow side-streets. He’d no idea whether the youth’s girlfriend had been serious about calling the police but he had no appetite for getting stopped. Back on the main road, he slowed for a gaggle of D-Day veterans spilling out of a pizza restaurant, then took a right turn into the street where Kate lived. Her house was at the far end, one of a terrace of Georgian properties that had recently been tarted up. A modest conservation grant had paid for railings and a paint job, and Billy lingered in the Audi, looking up at the single lit window at the top of the house. Half past ten, he thought, and already in bed.
He let himself in through the front door, stooping to pick up the cat. The kitchen was on the first floor, and he paused to swallow half a carton of mango juice from the fridge. There was a bowl of hummus in there, too, and he broke off a dried corner of pitta bread, dipped it into the bowl and ladled the stuff into his mouth. It tasted of olive oil and lemon juice and he was going back for more when he heard footsteps descending from the bedroom above.
He turned round in the narrow kitchen. Kate was standing in the open doorway. She was wearing a long black singlet and not much else. She had a pencil in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.
‘Go ahead,’ she said drily. ‘Help yourself.’
Billy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He’d heard this tone of voice a lot lately. It meant he’d taken liberties, trespassed. It meant he should have asked. He grinned at her. ‘Hungry.’ He gestured at the half-empty bowl. ‘Starving.’
‘Then why didn’t you come earlier? Sit down for a civilized meal?’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
Billy closed the fridge door with his foot. As he stepped towards her, she saw the bloodstains on his shirt. She peered at them for a moment, uncertain, then asked him what had happened. Billy described the incident outside the pub.
‘So you hit him?’
‘Yeah.’ Billy gestured at his shirt. ‘And he bled on me.’
‘How badly?’
Billy thought about the question, remembering the youth sprawled in the road.
‘It wasn’t as bad as it looked,’ he said defensively. ‘Not as bad as she thought.’
‘Who? Who thought?’
‘The girlfriend.’
‘There were other people there? Witnesses?’
‘Yeah,’ Billy nodded, ‘blokes from the pub, too. You know what it’s like with a fight. Everyone thinks it’ll go on for ever. Thank Christ it didn’t. Thank Christ I got lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
Kate let the word hang between them. Like most women she had a deep mistrust of violence, believing that men were never happier than when they were belting the shit out of each other. Billy shook his head, trying to downplay the incident. The other guy had come on far too strong. He’d attacked her car. He’d been completely out of order.
‘The car doesn’t matter,’ Kate said at once. ‘Bugger the car.’
‘You won’t say that tomorrow. Not when you see the dents.’
‘Sod the dents. It’s you I worry about. Thirty-eight and still picking fights. When do you start talking your way out of these things? Why so aggressive all the time? Look at you, it’s like having a kid around. Jesus, Billy, you might have really hurt him. Didn’t that occur to you? Or am I being naïve?’
Kate stared at him, waiting for an answer, then turned on her heel. Billy heard her footsteps on the stairs, then the slam of the bedroom door. He looked at the fridge, wondering whether to finish the hummus. Lately, things hadn’t been great with Kate. She’d become irritable, impatient, almost disenchanted, and in his heart he knew that the relationship had cooled. He still had his uses, the practical stuff she found hard to cope with by herself, but he suspected that the R&B gigs and nights of endless Guinness were probably over. Like everyone else in the Labour Party, she’d had her fling with the working class. And like the rest of them, she’d decided it was time to move on.
He bent to fondle the cat again, wondering whether he could be bothered with the inevitable scene. When they’d first met, a week before Christmas, she’d found it hard to get enough of him. She’d dragged him back to this house of hers, poured Irish whiskey down his throat and kept him up all hours with her plans and ambitions and endless analyses of just where the party had gone wrong. His own years with the Socialist Workers Party had given him a real taste for this kind of tussle, and for a while – weeks certainly – he’d tugged her steadily leftwards until her own position had seemed indistinguishable from his. They’d agreed on the sanctity of Clause Four. They’d shared a contempt for rentier capitalism. She’d even agreed with him that sometimes – just sometimes – direct action was the only answer. How else to rid the country of the poll tax? How else to lobby for the teachers? Or the miners? Or any of the other class warriors battling this insane government?
The new year had come and gone and they’d still been friends, allies, fellow travellers on the road back to socialism. By now, the relationship had developed a physical side, her initiative, not his, and more and more often he’d find himself staying the night, waking up in the small hours to find her looming over him. From the start, she’d had a frankness about sex and about her own appetites that had first surprised and then alarmed him. Whatever he did, however often, it was never enough. She wanted to be stretched. She wanted to be tested. She wanted him, in her own phrase, to fuck her until her lights went out. This he tried to do, but with the growing certainty that his own role was entirely symbolic. He wore a leather jacket. He lived on his wits. He occasionally kept heavy company. He was, in every conceivable respect, the antithesis of the other politicos she was obliged to mix with. Thus, perhaps, his appeal.
Billy tempted the cat with a saucer of milk and toyed with beating a retreat and going home. He shared a small terrace house about a mile away with two students and an out-of-work chef. Sunday nights, they generally watched football videos. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, asking himself whether he was really up for another hour of Eric Cantona, then he abandoned the idea and began to climb the stairs. The bedroom was at the top of the house. Kate was propped against the pillows, reading the Sunday papers. The lead story speculated on the latest Tory initiative on Europe. IS IT TIME TO LEAVE? went the headline.
She glanced up at him, dispassionate, one eyebrow raised. ‘Where’s the car?’
‘Outside.’
‘Key?’
Billy fumbled in his pocket and tossed it onto the counterpane. He could hear the cat outside, scratching at the carpet.
‘I tried to fix the radio,’ he said at last, ‘but it’s still not sorted.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘No?’
She glanced up, shaking her head. There was a long silence. At length Billy took off his jacket and began to unbutton his jeans. Kate was back in the paper. By the time she looked up again he was naked beside the bed. She studied him briefly then abandoned the paper and reached out for him. Often it started like this, sometimes his call, sometimes hers. Either way, the transition was always abrupt, a shoe-horn that took them from one life into another.
Afterwards, he tried to join her in bed but she pushed him away. When he tried again, she rolled over onto her side, nodding at the pile of clothes on the carpet. ‘Take the cat with you,’ she said sleepily. ‘He needs to go out.’
Hayden Barnaby awoke at dawn, reaching automatically for the glass of water beside the bed. According to the digital clock, it was 04.16. He blinked in the half-darkness, feeling the tightness of the bands around his head. He and Charlie had finally got to bed past midnight, the roast beef still in the oven, three bottles of Burgundy up-ended in the bin.
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