by Mick Herron
‘When was that?’ Ben asked. And then said: ‘No, I remember. It was last year, wasn’t it?’
Other people’s memories now.
She tried to shut her mind down.
But found herself asking anyway: ‘What was he doing there?’
Fredericks was smoking again. Chances were, he’d have been smoking even without cigarette in hand: it would be coming out of his ears; comically erupting from sleeves and trouser cuffs.
Not just fucking up: he’d been there before.
But fucking up with the world’s press a typewriter’s throw away.
Faulks had said: ‘There’ll be time for postmortems later.’ ‘Good choice of words.’
‘We don’t need this, Malc. Sir. The important thing is –’ ‘That they’re still inside. I know.’
And okay: world’s press was an exaggeration. But the whole damn story would be on the web before he’d finished his cigarette, which he shouldn’t be smoking in the Incident Vehicle anyway. He dropped it into the dregs of a cup of tea.
It began when he went to Iraq.
Fucking great. His career fizzing out like that butt, and all over spook stuff – they should keep their cloak and dagger games where they belonged, not drag them into a nursery practically outside his office window.
What was he doing there?
Faulks said, ‘That’s the woman. Kennedy.’
‘Do they even know we just tried to get them out? It’s like they’re –’
‘Sir . . . ’
They listened.
‘Talk about Miro.’
‘You are one of them. You are on their side.’
‘I just closed the door, Jaime. I could have walked right through it. The next time they come in, you’re dead. So talk about Miro. Why was he so sure he was in danger?’
‘Because of things he knew.’
‘Not because of what he stole?’
‘He was not a thief.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that. Are you keeping up, Jaime? You have one chance of getting out of here alive, and that’s telling me what you know.’ Ben paused. ‘Please. For all our sakes.’
Jaime said nothing.
‘And don’t think the gun will help. Those weren’t toys those guys had. Pull that trigger, they’ll spray you over the walls. You might as well put it in your own mouth. If you want to live, tell me about Miro.’
Just look at him, Ben thought – his hair sticking up in improbable tufts; eyes wild, sweat glistening on his fore-head. The gun in his fist was an anomaly. You wouldn’t put money on him having strength to pull the trigger. For half a second, Ben thought about striding across and taking it away – it could be done. And then Jaime would be tied up in knots and delivered to Bad Sam Chapman. And that would be the end of him.
‘It began when he went to Iraq,’ Jaime said.
‘When was that?’ Ben asked. And then said: ‘No, I remember. It was last year, wasn’t it?’
‘What was he doing there?’ Louise asked.
They both looked at her. It was as if they’d forgotten there were others present.
Ben said, ‘That’s really not important.’
‘You think?’
‘The reason I’m here –’
‘The reason you’re here is to get us out alive. That’s what you’re going to say. But there’s more to it, isn’t there? The reason you’re here is because this man knows some-thing, and you’re trying to find out what.’
‘This would be a lot easier if you kept quiet.’
Eliot said, ‘This would be a lot easier if we weren’t here.’
Now everyone turned to Eliot.
Who said: ‘None of this is happening by accident. This man called you last night.’ He was looking at Ben. ‘He just said so. And people tried to kill him because of that. That’s why he’s here. That, and because of . . . the “lady”.’
He looked at Louise.
She said: ‘I’ve got no idea what makes me important.’ Though wasn’t sure she believed that herself.
Ben said, ‘You really don’t want to be part of any of this.’ ‘It’s a little late for that,’ Louise pointed out.
Jaime was following this, or not following it, with grow-ing confusion. And like any boy, he grabbed the first thing that made sense and shook it. ‘Yes,’ he said. The others turned to him. ‘I call you. Miro give me the number. Where you work.’
Ben chewed that for a moment. Then asked, ‘What time did you call?’
It had happened subtly, this shift, but it had happened. Jaime still held the gun, but was no longer calling the shots. ‘Late. I do not remember. Ten o’clock?’
‘I’d long left by then, Jaime. Who answered the phone?’ ‘You did.’
‘Ten o’clock, I was in the Three Whistles. And I don’t have call forwarding.’ This left Jaime a good way behind. He tried again: ‘It wasn’t me who answered, Jaime.’
‘The person say it was you.’
‘You got through to the switchboard, right?’
‘. . . Yes.’
‘And asked for me.’
‘I ask to speak to Ben Whistler.’
‘And the woman said?’
‘She put me through.’
Ben was nodding before Jaime had finished. ‘She put you through all right, Jaime. But not to me.’
‘The man say he was you.’
‘Well, like I said, Miro and I weren’t exactly spies. But we work for the security services. A lot of lies get told. What did you tell this man? It was a man, right?’
‘Of course a man. He tell me he’s you.’
‘Sorry. Of course it was a man. What did you tell him?’
‘I tell him who I am.’
‘That you’re Miro’s boyfriend.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what else?’
‘That I am frightened. That I want a place to hide.’
‘Where were you, Jaime? Where were you calling from?’
‘From a phone box.’
‘Not your mobile?’
‘I have no money on my mobile. No pay-up.’
‘No prepay, okay. So a call box. Where?’
‘Near the Marble Arch.’
‘Why there?’
‘It is near where I work.’
‘Okay. And you wanted to talk to someone. Someone who might know where Miro is. Did you tell him – this guy you thought was me – did you tell him where you were calling from?’
‘Yes. He tell me to wait there. That he come to collect me.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because you’re here, Jaime. What happened at Marble Arch?’
‘I wait near corner. Near underground. Not in main road. By a turning.’
‘Okay.’
‘I am not the only person waiting near there.’
‘I can imagine. What happened?’
‘A car arrive.’
‘Just one car?’
‘Lots of people come and go. People getting into cars. I think some are prostitutes.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. And a car came for you, right?’
‘Yes. But it have two men in it. I tell you – tell him, the man who answer phone – I tell him to come alone. I trust no one else.’
‘How did you know they were looking for you?’
‘I can tell. They are serious people. They look at faces. They see me straight away.’
‘Tell me what they looked like.’
‘First is big man. He have close haircut.’ Jaime ran his free hand through his own locks. ‘And big grey coat.’
‘Right.’
‘Other man is short and dark. But scarier.’
‘Right . . . ’
Ben looked around. Nothing much had changed. The daylight had shifted slightly, perhaps. He glanced up at the skylight; wondered if anyone was on the roof. But that was corrugated iron: only a pixie could get up there with nobody inside knowing. On the other hand, there were any num
ber of policemen mere yards away, and sharp-shooters well within killing distance. But all of that, right this moment, was irrelevant. There was an ear inside the annexe, and it was picking up everything. And pretty soon, Ben thought, the conversation was going to take directions nobody out there should know about. One nobody in particular.
He left the wall, and walked to a table in the corner.
‘Where you go? You come back.’
Ben put a finger to his lips: the universal sign for silence.
‘You come back now!’
Jaime raised the gun.
Ben put his hands in the air. ‘It’s okay,’ he said softly. ‘Everything’s okay.’
‘You go back against wall. You go back now!’
‘There’s something I need to do.’ Again, he spoke softly; his words only just carrying. ‘It’s all right. Don’t panic. Stay calm.’
He turned, and made for the table once more.
Jaime pointed the gun at his back.
‘No!’ Louise said.
The twins tried to melt into Eliot’s legs.
Ben heard the bullet pass through him just as he reached the table; felt the clean round hole it cut in his body before passing through the outer wall of the annexe – on and on it flew, leaving clean round holes through everything in its path, before tiring of flight and burying itself in the earth miles away. Strangely, this was painless. He put a hand to his chest and found no hole; there had been no shot – only Louise’s cry. Almost immediately the mobile in Jaime’s pocket rang; that dreadful, irritating Nokia tune, more ubiquitous than the Beatles.
He picked up the sheet of paper he’d come for, and a thick black marker pen, and turned round.
Jaime was still pointing the gun at him.
‘Better answer that,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t want to alarm them.’
He walked back to the wall, and joined the others.
It was so much a cliché it had passed through to the other side, re-emerging as irony. Three ducks on the wall went with everything else in this little house – the bookshelves loaded with knick-knacks and videotapes; the sofa sheathed in protective covering; the Toby jugs on the mantelpiece. What bothered Sam Chapman was that there were only two of them. Ducks, he meant. One of those details he’d find hard to forget.
‘So you’re not with the police,’ Deirdre Walker was saying.
She was upper-fiftyish, and not giving ground grace-fully; her hair not so much permed as soldered into place, and enough make-up to keep a clown troop on the road. Whatever perfume she was wearing had a cloying, insect-repellent quality, and only just made its presence felt above the mustiness of stale cigarette smoke. A situation whose parameters Deirdre Walker altered now by adding fresh cigarette smoke, belatedly waving the pack at him.
‘Thank you.’
‘So you’re not with the police.’
He had already shown her as much identification as he was prepared to, and wasn’t about to let her see it again.
It was 11.59.
Not a long walk from Louise Kennedy’s place, but a different world all the same. After leaving Kennedy’s mother, Bad Sam had walked back up the road; had had to make his way round the crowd at the junction waiting for events to percolate. This was the reality beaming into Kennedy’s living room, and bore little more clarity than the on screen version. The crowd was Press plus slack-jawed accident-watchers, one of whom had stepped back without looking. Bad Sam – a tube-wars veteran – had brought his heel down on the man’s instep without breaking stride. Then he’d walked as far as the river; over an iron bridge beneath which fuzzy lumps of froth floated, clinging to polystyrene flotillas and soggy cardboard rafts. Oxford or not, this wasn’t quite punting in boaters.
He’d lit a cigarette while waiting for Whistler’s Black-Berry to buzz.
One day, the next inevitable step would be taken, and hand held gizmos like this would come with video link-up. Until that happened Chapman had Whistler’s BlackBerry, and as far as the queens of the database were concerned, that meant it was Whistler asking, and they’d provide the required information. Whistler was an agent in the field for the moment, and joes always took priority.
Which was a joke. Bad Sam had served in the field. There’d been boys and girls at Vauxhall Cross who’d waited anxiously for his every transmission, true, but fur-ther up the ladder all you had was suits measuring budget shortfalls. These days, Bad Sam’s own suit was a budget shortfall all its own. He was staring down the barrel of forced retirement – he’d last no longer than Nott, and Nott was on the skids – and the rewards of his service were pennies in a tin compared to what he’d be worth if he’d taken the corporate shilling. How surprising was it when an old hand went freelance? In his years as a Service dog – since his cover had grown too tattered for foreign holidays, as every joe called them – Bad Sam had collared former colleagues whose treacheries would have been stillborn if their pensions had matched their valour. These people had heard the call, and replied, You point me, I’ll march. In return they got a handshake and a pat on the back: now piss off. It wasn’t that Chapman was sentimental – those same former colleagues would testify to that. But he understood the nature of loyalty, if only because he’d learned the hard way about betrayal.
Betrayal began with the small stuff; the lapses that didn’t seem to matter.
I didn’t mean to spy on her. You’ll think that’s funny, I sup-pose, a man in your profession. But I really didn’t. It’s just . . . It was just that Louise’s mother was on the scene, and how could she help knowing what she knew?
‘This man Crispin was married, of course. I expect he gave Louise the usual story – that he’d leave his wife, set up home with her. Promises are cheap, aren’t they?’
‘Does she keep a diary?’
‘You think I’d read my daughter’s diary?’
Bad Sam hadn’t answered.
She’d said, ‘Sometimes, when I was visiting – this was when she had the London flat – there’d be a phone call she didn’t want me to overhear.’
He waited.
‘She’d pretend it was work. But there are tones of voice, aren’t there? The kind you use when you’re talking about work, and . . . the other kind.’
Crispin was another query Chapman had fed into Whistler’s BlackBerry.
He’d been about to leave when she’d said, ‘There was a night last week . . . ’
‘He rang?’
‘No. We were supposed to go out to this school quiz, not Louise’s school, a different one. A fundraiser. And I . . . well, I told her I wasn’t feeling well. I thought it would do her good, to get out on her own. Meet new people.’
He waited.
‘She brought a man back with her. Probably she thought I couldn’t hear them, but . . .’ Her eyes strayed back to that TV set. ‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’
‘It’s hard to know what to wish for them. You want them to be happy, but the things that make them happy aren’t always . . .’
Maybe, back in her daughter’s sitting room, she was still finding her way to the end of that sentence.
On the bridge, a cigarette later, some answers had come streaming through the ether: Crispin was Crispin Tate, and came attached to one of those job titles that had been strung together from executive fridge magnets: Vice-Control, European Investments. Rearrange these words in any order. It was possible Bad Sam would have to call on Crispin Tate. It depended on how the dominoes fell. Also, he now had Judy Ainsworth’s address: she lodged with a woman called Deirdre Walker. He put the BlackBerry away. Sooner or later it would start asking questions of its own, but until then he’d hang on to it.
Chance had brought Sam in the right direction; Ainsworth lived the other side of the estate the bridge led to. Some while ago a tin of paint had been dropped on the concrete apron near the bridge’s stairwell, and its contents had hardened to a mustard-brown tattoo. A stained mat-tress germinated against a wall. He caught a whiff as he passed, on his
way to the house with two ducks on the wall.
She was waving her cigarette packet at him, a beat behind what would have been polite.
‘Thank you.’
‘So you’re not with the police.’
He leaned forward to take the light she offered, and said, ‘Tell me about Mrs Ainsworth.’
‘I thought there’d have been someone here by now. I rang the police earlier, of course.’
‘Why was that?’
She shrugged. The movement came with exhaled smoke, like a well-rehearsed piece of stage business. ‘That’s where she works. The nursery where those gun-men are.’
The TV had told her this. It stuttered away in the background: the same unvarying pictures of a building under siege. A reporter in a corduroy jacket was repeating a well-aired slice of speculation, and soon they’d cut to the studio, where an expert would attempt to speak for a whole minute without saying Stockholm syndrome. Any useful information was under wraps. The locals had a bug inside those walls – in the mobile the fat cop had given Louise Kennedy – and Bad Sam would have given anyone else’s left nut to be listening in on it. He was trying to cover his arse, and all he could manage was background information.
‘They said her name a while ago.’
‘You must be worried about her.’
‘Well, of course. She pays her rent on time, not like some of them.’
‘How long has she been here?’
‘I’d have to check.’ She had the pinched look of a woman who gave nothing for free. ‘But around a year.’
‘And did you know her before?’
‘Most of my circle live in North Oxford. I prefer it here. It’s handy for the city centre.’
Spies have to learn foreign languages. Deirdre Walker’s circle didn’t take rooms.
‘And do you get on? What’s she like?’
She lifted an eyebrow. Surprisingly, she did this without using her fingers; her facial hydraulics evidently accustomed to the cosmetic weight they bore. ‘Well . . .’
He waited.
‘She’s not exactly . . . a people person, our Judy.’
Not exactly a people person himself, Sam Chapman
