Omega

TWENTY-SEVEN

An antique dresser stood underneath the window in the narrow room. The blackout blind was kept permanently pulled down so that no one could look in. Owain didn’t switch on the light but left the door open to the dusky illumination from the hallway.

The room was decorated in faded pink with a bells-and-ribbons motif under the picture rail. A young girl’s bedroom that he’d had neither the time nor inclination to redecorate since moving in.

He’d covered one wall of the room with press cuttings and album photographs of his father. Another held old regiment and rank badges that he’d collected as a child, while his father was still alive; the pips and crowns were arranged in order, showing his father’s steady progression up the military hierarchy. In the dresser drawers was some of the equipment he’d used: gloves, poncho, a hand gun, knife, even an early-issue NBC respirator that still gave off its stink of charcoal-impregnated rubber. Neatly folded in the bottom drawer was the temperate combat dress he’d actually worn before his transfer to the Middle East. Owain had tried it on. It fitted him perfectly, as did the old midnight-blue beret, redundant after the consolidation of the Alliance armed forces.

Finally, in the topmost drawer, were the most valuable memorabilia of all: his father’s letters, sent over the years from overseas postings. At least one a month for ten years until his father’s death, many of them still in their original envelopes bearing the exotic stamps his father had insisted were to be used rather than army franking.

The letters mostly contained snapshot descriptions of locales and army life with the occasional paternal musings intended to be self-improving to the impressionable minds of his young sons. Subtly they stressed the virtues of self-discipline and a sense of duty that should be based on a clear appreciation of the facts rather than a blind following of the rules. For the youthful Owain the letters represented a nurturing wisdom made more potent by distance.

From the living room Owain fetched the helmet he’d brought back from France. He’d paid a fair sum to have it restored. The webbing had been adjusted to his own head size, but he didn’t put it on. Instead he laid it on the dresser next to the last photograph to have been taken of his father, a matter of weeks before his death.

The photograph showed a Jerusalem room with windows open on a balcony. His father was sitting at a table in the foreground, one hand resting across a map, gazing up at the camera, the VC he had won in Istanbul visible on the breast of his uniform. He held a major general’s rank, was one of the youngest in the entire army to do so. His eyes looked bright and steadfast, his mouth slightly upturned in something that was not quite a smile but more an expression of benign tolerance for the intrusion of the photographer. Behind him in the near distance was a pale street frontage whose dark vacant windows carried the suggestion that only its façade remained.

Once, soon after his posting to the Middle East, he’d brought Owain and Rhys out for a brief holiday, a year after their mother had died. One morning he took them on an emergency flight to a place near the Turkish border where archaeologists had been investigating early evidence of agriculture. The site had been razed, re team having been slaughtered by militia vying for control of the region. Watching from a distance, Owain still remembered him looking down into the grain store pits the team had excavated and where their bodies had been dumped in the aftermath. He was rigid with despair.

His father had been a rock to him in those days, something fixed and immutable. Yet he, too, was gone within two years. Apparently he’d been sending regular reports warning of the dangers in the region, where Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups were acquiring ever-increasing stores of arms to fight one another while the Alliance was focused on stabilising the eastern European front. The Palestinian Federation was in turmoil, the Caucasus a breeding ground for renegade groups of zealots and ultra-nationalists, Mesopotamia a lawless zone where Alliance control had broken down through lack of resources.

Despite this, there had been no warning that an attack was coming, let alone a nuclear one. The spasm had occurred over three days, a series of strikes throughout the Middle East, on oilfields, waterways and military headquarters. Extensive areas of the Mediterranean littoral and the Euphrates-Tigris basin had been laid waste; radioactive hotspots stretched from Aleppo to Abadan. Perhaps five million people had died in the immediate aftermath, among them a hundred thousand Alliance troops.

Jerusalem had been hit on the third day, the only urban area to be directly targeted. His father was in the centre of the city, supervising the dispersal of forces, trying to get everyone out.

The Convulsion, as it came to be called, had brought an abrupt halt to hostilities in the east along with vehement Russian denials of any involvement. The crudeness and low megatonnage of the devices pointed to a captured or black market arms store; their trajectories suggested an origin in the disputed territories of the Caucasus and Kurdistan. Retaliatory strikes reduced the entire area to a radioactive wilderness. Regional warlords who had been implicated in the attacks were all declared dead. But for Owain it came far too late: his father was already less than ashes.

Owain heard a movement outside. The window faced out on the balcony, but there was no access beyond it. He retreated from the room, locking the door behind him and slipping the key into his trouser pocket. Now he could hear footsteps just outside his door.

He switched off the hall light and fetched his pistol before positioning himself in the bathroom doorway where he had a clear view down the hall.

His heart was racing with something that might have been excitement. I felt no urge to do anything to interfere; he was far better equipped to deal with any threat.

Into the silence came the sound of someone urinating outside. Owain crept forward and eased the front door open, steeling himself against the shock of the cold night air.

A fur-hatted figure hunched up in a bulky overcoat was copiously relieving himself close to the balcony edge. Owain waited for him to finish. He moved quickly forward, grabbing him by the scruff of his coat with his left hand while bringing his right across his chest and wedging the barrel of the pistol under his jawbone.

The man gave a combination of a shriek and a gurgle as he was hauled back towards Owain’s open door.

Owain dragged him inside and let go. The man sprawled, losing his hat while he fumbled to zip himself up. Expensive navy trousers. Handmade black shoes and a padded barathea overcoat. Black lamb’s-wool lining inside the hat.

“God in heaven!” said Rhys. “You almost made me wet myself.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” Owain told him. “Go creeping around in the dark without announcing yourself and you’re asking for trouble.”

Rhys removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket and began swabbing himself down. He was still sitting on the floor. Owain made no move to help him up.

“Suddenly I was urgent,” Rhys said. He looked and sounded a little drunk. “Besides, I didn’t know you were in.”

Patently a lie. Owain closed the door and bolted it.

His brother climbed to his feet and inspected the scuffed heels of his shoes.

“What do you want?” Owain demanded to know.

Rhys looked warily at him. “I’m in London for a spell. Thought I’d look you up.”

“What’s wrong with the telephone?”

“I heard that Uncle was taken ill. I’ve been to see him.”

The field marshal was still in convalescence. Owain had only seen him once in the last forty-eight hours, and that briefly, while he was sleeping. Though no longer confined to bed, he was apparently still weak and obliged to delegate his duties to others. All the evidence suggested that the food poisoning was a simple mistake, a result of negligence rather than design. But Owain wasn’t convinced; he wasn’t convinced at all.

“So,” he said, “you went to his sick bed. Pleased to see you, was he?”

“I think he appreciated it.”

“And then you came here.”

“I thought you might like some company.”

“That’s a lie.”

Rhys just looked at him with an air of helplessness.

“Where are you staying?” Owain asked suspiciously.

“The Windsor. Waterloo Place. t I’d invite you out to dinner. Unless you have other plans.”

Owain walked into the living room. “Uncle suggest it, did he?”

His brother followed him through. “As a matter of fact, no. After the last fiasco I think he’s given up.”

Rhys had left the house in Paris while Owain was taking the call from Marisa. Sir Gruffydd had told Owain that he’d gone because he didn’t feel welcome. And nothing, as far as Owain was concerned, had changed.

“I think we need to talk,” Rhys persisted. “All I’m asking is for a few hours of your time.”

“I’ve told you before—I’ve nothing to say to you.”

His brother came up close and, before Owain could recoil, whispered: “I know about Regent Street, Owain. And I think I know why.”

“Geoff sends his apologies,” Tanya was saying, her voice carrying from the kitchen. “Something’s cropped up at work.”

A delicious smell of roasting lamb filled the dining room. Earlier I’d been out in the garden, trying to salvage usable leaves from the stringy mass of mint in the herb border. I’d peeled parsnips, scrubbed new potatoes, fetched a couple of bottles of rose from the store in the garage.

Tanya went upstairs. The radio was playing in the kitchen: someone was talking about markets and share prices. I moved around the dining table, laying down cutlery. Four places had been set.

Tanya returned, undoing the straps of her apron. Long neck arching out of a black scoop top, a peachy fuzz on its nape. But she looked distracted, even peevish.

She was holding the brass letter opener. It was shaped like a cavalry sword.

“Have you been trying to get into my writing desk?”

“What?”

“I found this in the lock.”

I just gaped at her.

“You weren’t exactly subtle. You left it jammed in there. What were you after?”

I had absolutely no recollection of doing so. But who else could it have been? Certainly Geoff wouldn’t have wanted to raid his own wife’s bureau, and definitely not as clumsily as Tanya implied.

“Owen?”

My full name. A measure of annoyance. And who could blame her?

font size="3">“What were you after?” she repeated.

I shook my head helplessly.

“If you want something, you only have to ask. Was it your keys and wallet?”

Now I had another brief memory, of trying to access her computer. But I didn’t know the password, hadn’t been able to log on. I recalled it as though I’d been sleepwalking.

“I’m not trying to stop you from doing things,” Tanya was saying. “But I can’t have you skulking around like a burglar. Doing needless damage.”

What had I been after? A means of escape? Two days had passed. What had I been doing in that time?

“Did you need money? Were you planning on going out?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

There was a degree of anger in her voice, but far stronger was her desire for a simple explanation. I couldn’t satisfy her because I had no answers.

“I can’t remember,” I said, angry with myself. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t know what could have possessed me.”

But this wasn’t true. I had more than an inkling.

Tanya unhooked her apron and tossed it on the worktop. “I’m going to take a bath.”

“You’ve got to believe me,” I said, but couldn’t then explain just what it was I wanted her to believe.

Two days had passed. I’d been back at the hospital with Tanya on both of them, doing a lot of sitting around in between various neurological tests that had exhausted me. No Owain in that time, I was certain, just Tanya tending to me. She was feeling the strain. Which wasn’t surprising.

“Anything I can do?” I called up the stairs.

“It’s all under control. Take a look at the meat if I’m not out in twenty minutes. Otherwise, just behave yourself. Stay away from the knives and forks.”

I heard the bathroom door close, the key turn in the lock.

I couldn’t bring myself to face up to what must be happening. It was too threatening, too frightening to contemplate. I had to stay calm, be as mentally strong as possible. Root myself in the here and now as firmly as I could.

I went back into the dining room and began fiddling with the napkins in the wineglasses. I squared and re-squared the place mats, mad"3">Twor adjustments to the chairs. On the mantelpiece there was a photograph of Tanya’s wedding day. I refused to scrutinise it, registering only the flowing but unfussy cream dress, the slimmer-than-ever figure in a navy suit, church ivy framing them.

Tanya and Geoff had married within six months of returning from California. Tanya sold her grandmother’s house and they bought a venerable place in Twickenham. To me, the sales marked the end of our student era, but at least they were now living relatively close. There was the prospect of seeing Tanya more frequently.

Shortly before they returned Tanya sent a postcard congratulating us on Sara’s birth. I don’t know how she found out. The card contained no hint that they might soon be returning to the UK. But one Saturday morning the phone rang and it was Tanya’s voice at the other end of the line, telling me they were home, that they themselves were getting married in the New Year.

I still remember vividly the circumstances of the call. I was reading the colour supplement in an armchair right next to the phone. When I picked it up and said my name, the response was: Guess who?

Of course I recognised her instantly, despite the faint American lilt to her accent. At some point Lyneth came in from the garden and sat down on the sofa opposite me. She looked on with interest, a pair of secateurs in her hand, as Tanya and I brought our respective lives up to date. We kept it brief but ended with Tanya promising she would call again soon. We should get together and she hoped very much that we would come to the wedding.

I told Lyneth that I’d been talking to an old friend from university whom I hadn’t seen in over three years. Without rancour or suspicion she asked me if it was the same woman I’d been seeing as a student.

The phone in the hall was ringing. I picked it up, said, “Hello?”

A silence, followed by a fumbling, as if the receiver had been dropped. Finally a voice said, “Yo, bro.”

“Rees?”

“The one and only. We still on for tonight?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. It occurred to me that Tanya must have invited him to dinner. That was why the table had been set for four. But because I wasn’t certain, and because I wanted to avoid embarrassment I said, “What time did she say?”

“Seven.”

Rees sounded quite definite. Which was a relief in more than one sense.

“Seven it is,” I told him.

“Better get my skates on. Might be bringing someone else.”

“What?”

He had already hung up.

I tried to ring him back but the line was engaged. He was often hard to contact on the phone; he had no mobile and spent hours on the internet when he wasn’t deliberately leaving the phone off the hook.

I couldn’t recall whether I’d seen him since the hospital visit. I thought not. It was impossible to guess what his current state of mind might be. There were times when he could be perfectly normal, times when he flipped between sanity and the skewed world of his illness.

When had he and Tanya first met? Certainly not during my university days. Or in the years afterwards when we’d seen one another clandestinely. Perhaps they’d met at the hospital. And now she was inviting him to her home. To help me, no doubt.

A few months after Tanya’s return the four of us finally met up at a restaurant. Tanya was wearing her hair in an unfamiliar pageboy bob, while Geoff had shed two stone and was dressed in chinos and a button-down shirt so that he looked five years younger. Unsurprisingly they were both Americanised, though lightly so.

The atmosphere was friendly enough on the surface, but with an undertone of tension, much of it emanating from Lyneth. She was scrupulously polite but cool in her responses to Tanya’s queries about Sara, whom Lyneth had insisted on bringing and who remained asleep in her buggy throughout. Geoff was his usual jovial self, which eased matters. Some of the talk inevitably focused on their wedding preparations, and Geoff startled me by asking me to be his best man. I hedged, feeling like a churl.

When we were leaving I managed to get a moment alone with Tanya in the car park. You know I’m still in love with you, don’t you? I blurted. She just laughed and told me to be careful to get Lyneth and Sara home safely.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to attend the wedding, let alone be Geoff’s best man. I contrived circumstances that gave me a get-out clause: I was in Normandy with a film crew, doing location work for a feature about William the Conqueror. I pretended that it had been arranged months in advance, whereas I had actually pressed for the slot only after I knew the date of the wedding.

Afterwards Tanya sent us a card to say: Sorry you couldn’t make it. On the front was the Klimt print “The Kiss”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Rhys turned the Mercedes into a military parking space on the western side of Aldwych. As they were getting out, a couple of security police materialised, both of them women. Rhys was ready with his ID card, which Owain knew would have Special Access status, allowing him to leave the vehicle almost anywhere he wished. Owain was embarrassed by his brother’s ostentation as he attempted banter with the women, joking that he would pay them a retainer if they kept an eye on the vehicle while he was away.

The car, a compact two-seater Kobold imported from Germany, was a twenty-year-old sports model that was no longer in production.Titanium alloy bodywork, leather upholstery, tinted windows—a symbol of conspicuous consumption.

They walked along the Strand, where illuminated restaurants, hotels and bars existed like garish expressions of a world immune to war. The streets were busy with well-heeled people, the privileged and the opportunists who always thrived, no matter how bad conditions were. Restaurant windows gave glimpses of senior commanders entertaining glamorous young women, Priority Provision stores sat snug behind metal shutters, and discreet doorways gave access to exclusive clubs where all sorts of pleasures were available. The Ritz, closed after a salmonella outbreak, was in darkness, but a Future Youth clinic occupied its forecourt, its neon signs urging passers-by to donate eggs and sperm towards the nation’s heritage. On this street, with official sanction, the blackout did not receive even a token observance.

What was he doing here? He had no alternative, he knew. If Rhys had information that might be of use to him, it was essential he extracted it.

His brother led him up the spiral stairs of a restaurant called the Viceroy on the corner of Trafalgar Square. The ground floor of the place was packed with diners, but an upstairs room held only a handful of people. Rhys was greeted without fuss by a maître d’hôel who knew him, and they were promptly led to a table at a window overlooking the square.

Their overcoats were taken, Owain surrendering his self-consciously, hating this enforced participation in his brother’s world, with its snobbery, exclusiveness and indifference to the sufferings of the majority. It was like being in enemy territory.

As if sensing his distaste, Rhys said, “I wouldn’t want you to think I make a habit of eating at these sort of places. I thought it might be a little treat. Uncle says you’ve had a difficult time.”

A bottle of wine appeared, in a silver cooler. The waiter was an elderly man. Before Owain could say anything his brother requested water for him. They were in a little alcove, out of earshot of everyone else. Rhys poured himself a large glass of wine. It was a golden-green.

“You said you knew something,” Owain remarked, unable to keep his impatience in check. “About the explosion.”

His brother nodded sagely. “More in the nature of a discharge than an explosion.”

“What does that mean?”

Rhys took a mouthful of wine. The waiter shuffled back to the table with a dark blue bottle. Water that sparkled as it was poured into his glass. Not what he’d wanted. But he wasn’t going to risk any distraction by insisting on a jug and tumbler.

Rhys waited until the man had hobbled away.

“What do you remember about the Minsk operation?” he asked.

Owain tried to keep his face free from any expressione a surprise. He didn’t want to give his brother the satisfaction.

“You know the one I mean,” Rhys said confidently. “You were the only one to come out of it alive, isn’t that so?”

All his brother’s usual awkwardness was gone. He was only ever self-effacing in their uncle’s company, always playing the dutiful, compliant nephew. Owain had a dawning sensation of the ground having shifted between them. He’d made a tactical mistake in letting his brother dictate the terms of their evening. Here, on his own territory, Rhys was suddenly confident, in full command of the situation.

“Did Uncle tell you?” Owain asked.

Rhys shook his head superciliously, though not necessarily in denial. “It’s my business to know these things. We monitor communications at ASPIC, remember? Among other things.”

Now the menu arrived. The efficiency of the service was beginning to anger Owain. He could do nothing but wait as his brother went through a little ritual of asking for more information about some ok the courses on offer. Owain ordered what was listed as Game Saucission with Creamed Potatoes, pointing to the item but ostentatiously asking for “Sausage and Mash”.

“You’re not going to have a starter?” Rhys enquired.

“Soup,” Owain said. “Whatever’s available.”

He told himself that he had to remain calm, patient. Rhys wasn’t exactly toying with him but was plainly enjoying the power he temporarily held by the promise of disclosure. Had they been anywhere else, Owain would have had him up against a wall by now, wringing his neck until he squawked.

“So,” Rhys said when the waiter had departed again, “what were we saying?”

He was refilling his glass. Owain’s resolve vanished as swiftly as he had made it. He leaned across the table and grabbed Rhys’s wrist, squeezing.

“Do you think I’m going to make frivolous dinner table conversation with you about a mission in which four men were killed and I got this?” He jabbed a finger at his pockmarked face. “Do you, Rhys? Do you?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“I’ll slit your fucking throat if I have to, brother or not, unless you start telling me what you know.”

Owain spoke in a fierce whisper. No one at the other tables was paying them the slightest bit of attention. The violence of his words, which matched the strength of his feelings, shocked me. Even so I couldn’t discern whether he seriously meant the threat. I considered and dismissed the idea of trying to intervene. Something important was brewing here.

Owain released his brother’s hand. Rhys, plainly shaken, said, “It wasn’t a bomb.” He began flexing his wrist. “Nothing to do with any munitions, at least not in the traditional sense. We think of it as a discharge. A release of potential energy.”

His face was perfectly serious. He swallowed more wine.

“We?” Owain said.

“What do you remember about the original mission? To the No-Go Zone?”

Owain didn’t want to talk about it. Especially to Rhys.

“Why are you asking me?” he said angrily. “Haven’t you seen the files?”

“It’s important you tell me yourself. Your medical reports suggest you were exposed to CNS agents that might have induced some form of aphasia and possibly selective amnesia.”

It was like a violation of his privacy. His simpering brother, making backroom judgements on his condition. Owain despised the idea that his experiences on the mission could be reduced to a series of impersonal medical syndromes.

“I gave a full report,” he insisted, though he knew it wasn’t true. “I told them everything.”

“What was the purpose of the mission?”

“To take a look at a base where covert activity was suspected.”

“Was that all?”

Owain made himself think about it. “We were field-testing new equipment.”

“What equipment exactly? “

“Does it matter? It’s the sort of thing that goes on all the time.”

“Indulge me, Owain.”

Owain watched him refill his glass.

“A new APC,” he said. “Weapons, radar and landmine detection systems.”

“Nothing else?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“There was a new boy with you. A Corporal John Vassall.”

Owain was unlikely to forget, though he’d never consciously registered the corporal’s first name.

“He was attached at the last minute,” he said.

“Do you remember why?”

“He was a remote operations specialist.”

Rhys looked encouraged. “And?”

“And what?”

“I’m interested in his extra speciality.”

Owain tried to think. Nothing would come except the image of Vassall with his face pressed to the Spectre’s window, white-eyed, his bloody mouth imploring.

“He was sent in specially, Owain. To test the device. You and your commander were fully briefed.”

Owain didn’t know what he was talking about. He had no recollection of himself and van Oost sharing any secret knowledge. But he did remember Vassall at the workstation, pulses of data flowing across the screen. Something he’d never spoken of; something no one had explained.

“What device?”

“You really don’t remember?” Rhys said with a mixture of incredulity and amusement.

Owain wanted to slap him. Rhys saw it and sat back.

“The system that’s finally going to make mincemeat of all opposition?”

Rhys made it sound frivolous, almost a joke.

Owain’s soup arrived. Minestrone, or something resembling it. Rhys had a fancy arrangement of frilly mushrooms around a dollop of greenish puree.

“You say I knew,” he remarked to Rhys when the waiter was gone.

His brother nodded, already eating.

“So why can’t I remember?”

Rhys shrugged. “You tell me. Battlefield trauma? The agents you inhaled? Wilful ignorance?” He forked a mushroom. “You still haven’t told me what happened out there.”

Owain considered. Considered whether to tell him everything or nothing at all.

“There was some sort of eruption,” he said finally. “It was like an earth tremor. The entire ground moved. It knocked me over. At the same time we were being shelled. Earth and shrapnel flying everywhere. The rest of the men were gone, dead. I didn’t hang around.”

His brother had paused to listen. Now he resumed eating.

His movements were delice and precise; he made frequent use of his napkin to swab food or wine from his lips. Owain breathed steadily, waiting.

“What device?” he finally asked again.

Rhys eyed him with scepticism. As if coming to a decision, he picked up the menu card and cleared a space in front of him. After glancing around to check that no one else was looking, he proceeded to fold the card.

Owain watched as he brought its top and bottom edges together and pressed the two end creases flat. He raised both flaps and pushed them down until they sat flat on the tabletop and the central section of the card bulged up. He began to slide both flaps in towards each other so that the dome in the middle became increasingly rounded. He continued narrowing the distance between the folded edges, finally pushing both creases together.

“Voilà!” he said.

In three dimensions the two closed edges shut off a cylinder with the cross section of an inverted teardrop. Rhys held it up so that Owain viewed it edgewise.

“Omega,” Rhys said softly.

TWENTY-NINE

Rhys had the smug air of a conjuror who had just successfully completed a trick.

“Of course on the ground it actually works the other way around,” he told Owain.

He turned the card over and held it up at both edges so that the central section sagged a little. Checking that no one was watching them, he asked Owain to dust some pepper into the middle.

Owain’s patience was rapidly evaporating again.

“Listen,” Rhys said, “I’m only doing this because you claim you can’t remember anything. I’m trying to get you to understand.”

Owain hefted the pepper mill and gave it a vigorous twist, speckling the hollow.

“Those,” Rhys said, referring to the dark grains, “are enemy forces.” Again he glanced around to ensure that no one else was looking. “Which side do you want to be advancing from—left or right?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. The principle’s the same in either direction. Assume you’re attacking from your left.” Rhys tapped his right thumb on the appropriate flap. “Enemy divisions are directly in your line of advance. Naturally you want them out of the way. CommandCom agrees to Omega activation at the target area. It’s a remote weapon, its power transferred via a satellite. The system is initiated. This happens.”

Again he slid both end flaps together so that their folded edges met. The central section had now been warped from sight.

“Gone,” Rhys said. “Taken out.”

Owain tried to match the demonstration to what he had witnessed from the ridge. Tried and failed.

“Not just your enemy,” Rhys was saying, “but the whole section of terrain they’re occupying. You continue your advance not only with them out of the way but also with your lines shortened. And without a single man or piece of equipment having been sacrificed.”

The waiter appeared again to remove their dishes. Owain hadn’t even tasted his soup. He waved it away.

Rhys refilled his glass and asked the waiter for another bottle of wine. He had slipped the folded card onto his lap at the man’s approach.

Owain contemplated all the light leaking out of the unshielded windows of the restaurant. In the square below a Stalwart APC was slowly patrolling under the starless night.

“It’s done by satellite, you said.”

Rhys shook his head. “The business end’s at home. Here. The satellite’s just the relay. We call the process T.”

“T?”

“T-E-E,” Rhys spelled out. “Short for Topographical Enfolding and Excision. You understand that I’m not at liberty to go into all the gory technical details.”

“We were field-testing it?”

After a moment Rhys nodded slowly. “Are you telling me you still don’t remember?”

Owain was too incredulous to be angry. He was being asked to deny the validity of his own experience, to bolt on a memory and submit himself to a fantastical truth that carried no more weight of evidence than his private certainties. And who better to demand this leap of faith than his own brother?

“The larger the area taken out,” Rhys was telling him, “the deeper the cut, so you have to be prudent.” He gave a conspiratorial chuckle. “We thought of suggesting that the code for activation should be Time for TEE’ but it was decided that our continental cousins wouldn’t get the joke.”

You smug provincial bastard, Owain thought.

“We?”

“Well, the team who developed it. A mongrel bunch, but a lot of them Brits. Not surprising, given that the whole thing evolved here.”

Brits. That smarmy, good-or-nothing appellation. Was Rhys doing it deliberately to enrage him?

He forced himself to drink some water. “And you were in the thick of it?”

Rhys smoothed out the menu card and set it aside.

“More an administrator than a boffin,” he said. “But, yes, I played my part.”

To Owain he now looked bloated with his own fatuous sense of self-importance. Deluded beyond measure.

“A phenomenal amount of power must be needed.”

“You don’t know the half of it. And it isn’t like shutting a door. What goes out must come in again.”

“Meaning?”

“Backflash. Like the exhaust from an engine. Action and reaction. You take the topography out, you have to accommodate it somewhere else, otherwise it’s going to coming squirting out where you least want it. Like a big fart at a formal dinner.”

His laugh invited Owain to do the same. Owain remained stony-faced.

“That proved the biggest problem,” Rhys went on. “Finding a way of channelling it. Apart from anything else, uncontrolled emissions would have made it too obvious to everyone else what we have.”

Their main courses arrived, along with a fresh bottle of wine for Rhys. Owain was almost tempted to risk a glass himself, or ask the waiter for a vodka. It was years since he’d had one. But it was vital he remained clear-headed.

“So,” he said very carefully, taking the sprig of parsley off his creamed potatoes, “was our mission successful?”

“The results were most impressive. Of course we knew they would be. We’d already done our own domestic test-runs. But nothing like seeing its effect at a distance, under real combat conditions. Very convenient, too, that almost no one survived.”

Owain looked up. “We were all meant to die?”

“It wasn’t planned that way. But you’d be so close to the enfolding zone we had no means of predicting the outcome. There are those who take the view that it might have been better if none of you came back. From their perspective, the fewer people who know about it, the better. Wouldn’t want loose tongues flapping, would we?”

Rhys was speaking in a sober fashion, but the very fluency of his words made Owain’s rage boil up again. Only someone who had never experienced battle could discuss death so abstractly. To people like Rhys soldiers’ lives had only a tactical or strategic value: they had no human dimension.

">Their ize="3">I willed him to remain calm. His emotions were more volatile than ever.

“None of this explains what happened to me in Regent Street,” he said.

His brother forked a diminutive kidney into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, swabbed.

“That,” he said at last, “is a little more difficult. Or perhaps I should say speculative.” He looked out the window, down into the square. Presently he said, “Remember the old song ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’?”

Owain was still simmering. I made a renewed effort to impose a regular, calming rhythm on his breathing.

“In and out the City Road,” Rhys sang in a low voice. “In and out of the Eagle.”

Once more he laughed. Owain saw that he was staring at the gilded monument at the centre of the Square.

“It’s an emergency exit, of course. For all the staff under Whitehall and the old Parliament buildings. One of several. Do you know how far the underground complex stretches?”

Owain had a renewed urge to throttle him.

“It’s pretty extensive,” he managed to say.

“They’re always adding to it. Perhaps one day it’ll be big enough to house the entire surviving population. Our enemies might have the same idea. We’ll all be troglodytes, still lobbing everything in our arsenals at one another, burrowing deeper and deeper holes into the earth to protect ourselves.”

He found the notion amusing. Owain was suddenly concerned that he was losing coherence.

“What point are you making?”

His brother looked blearily at him. “There was an R&D section. Under Soho. One of the places where some early work was done on a prototype of the device. A kind of pilot plant, if you like.” He smiled to himself. “In those days I don’t suppose anyone realised how potentially dangerous it might be, otherwise they wouldn’t have sited it so close to the heart of things. Must never put all the most important people at risk, must we?”

He took another mouthful of wine, appeared to lose himself in his own thoughts.

“So?” Owain prompted.

Rhys blinked and regained focus. “Problems with backflash started to emerge. Blow-outs. At the time we didn’t know how to control them. In the confined space they were caught up in a kind of geographical Moebius loop, splurges of displaced topography squirting out every time a prototype was used, no matter where they originated from. They’re all linked, you see, routed through AEGIS.”

“AEGIS is controlling them?”

Rhys shook his head emphatically. “It’s just the railway lines. Don’t believe that stuff about it being the network controller. Convenient smokescreen. Believe me, it’s no more than an electronic idiot savant.”

Rhys leaned across the table, red-faced, intense, all pretence of detachment gone now. “Anyway, the site was shut down, sealed off from the rest of the complex. But the loop’s still there. It’s almost run down but we still get the occasional belches. Aftershocks, if you like. We send the dispersal teams in straight afterwards to clear up the place. Have to get the stuff away to stop it piling up. When you were in the vicinity, there wasn’t anything scheduled. That’s why the road was open. Our best thinking is that somehow your very presence actually triggered a backflash.”

Owain had understood very little of this. His brother’s growing intensity was in inverse proportion to his lucidity.

“You were on the very edge of the excision on the front,” he said. “We think that somehow you were still carrying a residual charge of what I can best describe as spatial entropy. A bit like a bare live wire, or one end of a bar magnet. Bring it up close to another pole, and—whammo!”

An insane grin was on Rhys’s face now. As if he had just delivered a message of apocalyptic good cheer.

“Whatever happened, you must have discharged yourself. We know you returned there, and that nothing happened the second time. You’re safe now. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

He lolloped more wine into his glass. Slurped half of it down.

“What happened to my driver?” Owain asked. “Did you get rid of him?”

Rhys tried to pretend puzzlement; then relented.

“Wasn’t he transferred overseas?”

“That’s the official story. What’s the truth?”

“I don’t understand. Are you asking me if he was a security risk? If so, the answer’s no. He just saw a flash. From his point of view it was just an old incendiary going off. No reason to suspect otherwise.”

“So why get rid of him?”

“Personnel are transferred all the time. There’s nothing unusual in that.”

“Isn’t there? He was happy in London. He didn’t say anything about wanting a transfer. Why are you lying to me, Rhys?”

Rhys looked around. Owain’s voice had been rsed. A few heads had turned in their direction. Rhys waited until they resumed their own conversations.

“Owain,” he said quietly, “I’m trying to help you. We couldn’t be sure what you might remember after the backflash. Or what you might say. Safer to get people out of the way. They could be tainted by knowledge you might inadvertently share with them.”

“Really?” Owain said, insulted at the notion.

“There are holes in your memory. False echoes. We’ve been trying to give you leeway, let you come to your senses, but it can’t go on indefinitely.”

Owain couldn’t contain his anger any longer. “There’s only one person at this table who’s fantasising! What sort of game is this, Rhys? What do you really want? “

Again he’d raised his voice. I could do nothing to calm him. We were beginning to attract dedicated attention.

“You’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes,” Rhys said, rising from his seat and dropping his napkin on it. He veered between tables before disappearing down a corridor signposted to the men’s room.

The pulse at Owain’s temple was racing. A couple of people were still peering in his direction. He stared them down. His mind was a swirl of outrage and incredulity.

The sheer preposterousness of it all astounded him. Yet Rhys did have inside knowledge and had been able to answer Owain’s objections—at least in the sense of maintaining a self-consistent story. So self-consistent that it smacked of the most intricate fabrication. Or perhaps he truly believed it. Perhaps it was a paranoid delusion, designed to bolster his own sense of status.

I was fascinated, quite in thrall to his turbulent feelings and the frantic thoughts they engendered. Rhys had been in Geneva. Maybe it had been on recuperative leave. Maybe he’d cracked up again, had spent his time ferreting out facts that he could fit into his fantasy. And clever that he’d made the idea of an Omega weapon central to it. Designing a tale that he hoped would have maximum allure for its intended audience. Everything made sense except for the fact that it beggared belief. But was it just madness or did he have a more calculated aim?

He saw Rhys’s approaching reflection in the windowpane as he returned to the table. Except that it wasn’t Rhys at all.

“Where were you?” van Oost said angrily. “Why are you here?”

The top of his naked head was a mass of gore. Blood fringed it like a ragged inverted crown. He wore no snowsuit but rather a winter-camouflage uniform that was caked with mud. He reeked of cordite and burnt flesh.

“We’re still waiting,” the major said, putting his blackened hands palms-down on the table, fingers splayed. “When are you coming?”

His grimy blood-splattered face was filled with the fierceness of his demand, a dead man’s summons that made Owain go rigid.

“When are you coming?” he repeated with even greater urgency, and it was not clear whether he was demanding rescue or insisting that Owain share his fate.

Now it was Owain who lurched up from the table. His head began to fill up with a siren sound. It was a second before he recognised it as the wail of an air-raid alarm.

Swiftly he moved through the dining area towards the corridor. He half hoped to find Rhys sprawled over a sink or slumped in a cubicle. He’d haul him out as unceremoniously as possible.

But the line of washbasins was unattended. Owain pushed each cubicle door open with his foot. All proved to be empty. He looked around, thinking that Rhys must be lurking in some corner. But there was no sign of him.

He went back out into the corridor. The siren’s wail sounded more urgent. In the dining area people were still sitting at their tables, eating and talking. He could scarcely credit it. Did they think themselves so privileged here that they were immune to the fall of a bomb or the trajectory of a missile? Did they imagine they could survive like superhumans?

He headed for the stairs, certain that Rhys must have fled for safety the instant the alarm began. He had always been one for protecting himself. It was easy to imagine him scampering away into the darkness, consumed with terror.

Outside the siren noise was louder, though no one was panicking. It was months since the last air-raid warning and perhaps people thought there was no longer any danger. The more fool them.

He thought of seeking sanctuary via the Eagle monument, of burying himself in the Whitehall complex. Given his status, he was confident there would be no problem in gaining emergency admission. But no: he would spend the night with the ordinary citizenry, shelter with the anonymous masses.

He sprinted across the street, heading towards the Underground station. The gate at the entrance was already unlocked. He scrambled down the stairs.

Bomb damage had brought about the collapse of the tube system when he was a child, but many stations were still used as air-raid shelters. He swiped his ID card through a slot in one of the turnstiles and pushed through. Pale blue bulkhead lights provided a minimal illumination as he descended, making everything look spectral.

The platforms were deserted: he was the first one in. He paused to recover his breath.

Pallets and sleeping bags were strewn everywhere. Here he would be safe. Here even the ghost of Major van Oost wouldn’t be able to find him. Soon others would come, but for the moment he had the pick of the bedding. He found a dry mattress and dragged an eiderdown across himself, huddling up like a child—excited, relieved and, suddenly, fill/p> an overwhelming weariness.

He could no longer hear the siren, only the sound of water dripping further down the tunnel. He rested his head on the mattress. The solitude and tranquillity accentuated his feelings of escape, of refuge from everyone and everything that oppressed him. It felt like bliss.

A phone was ringing.

Tanya rose from the table. I had an immediate sense of just having left Owain, yet I was sitting in the dining room, the remains of my main course in front of me. The other two place settings at the table were unoccupied.

I struggled to adjust to the abrupt shift in focus. It was all the more disorientating for its seamlessness.

I had a vague recollection of sitting down to dinner, of making conversation with Tanya, though I had no idea what we might have talked about. Owain’s experiences were far more vivid, especially van Oost’s manifestation. A dead man whom Owain plainly imagined was still alive. A hallucination, doubtless like the one of Vassall clinging to the Spectre in the NGZ.

Tanya reappeared, holding the handset. “It’s Rees.”

This was all I needed. Tanya looked a little concerned, and I wondered how I could have been sitting here behaving more or less normally while simultaneously occupying Owain.

“Speak to him, Owen.”

I took the handset from her. “Rees?”

“Sorry.”

I had to focus resolutely on the present moment. “What’s happened?”

“I’m not going to make it.”

“Where are you?”

“Couldn’t programme the video.”

It took me a few seconds to process this. His ancient VCR. He was always having problems with it. It might absorb his whole attention for hours.

“Is everything all right?” I asked gingerly.

“It’s sorted now.”

“I thought you were bringing someone.”

“She had to work.”

He didn’t elaborate. There was an edgy, distracted tone to his voice.

“That’s a pity,” I said.

He was silent. I u the pause to catch a mental breath.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” I asked.

“Couldn’t be helped,” he said. “I think it’s knackered.”

“The video?”

“Should have got a DVD in the sales.”

I almost said that we could have bought him one for Christmas, but the cascade of associations that this precipitated almost swamped me. I swallowed it all back, thinking that if I had done so I would never have been in my present situation.

“Got to go, bro,” Rees said.

“OK,” I said wearily. “But you should have rung earlier.”

“I know. Sorry.”

He cut the connection.

I looked up, flourishing the handset, trying not to think of Lyneth and the girls. “He’s gone. Problems with his video recorder, he says.”

Unable to raise him on the phone, we had waited over an hour. Tanya had cooked enough for four, just in case Rees turned up with someone else. Geoff, I imagined, was doing one of his evening clinics. In the end Tanya had warmed everything up in the microwave and we’d eaten, just the two of us.

“I’m bloody annoyed with him,” I told her. “He shouldn’t have left it so late.”

Tanya just shrugged and picked up my plate. She was still a little cool towards me, though we hadn’t discussed the letter-opener incident further. It was a relief to be back with her, to have escaped the bizarre assertions of Owain’s brother and Owain’s feverish reactions.

“There you go again,” Tanya said.

“What?”

“On autopilot. Not really here at all.”

Her tone conveyed irritation and concern in equal measure. It was hardly surprising that her patience was beginning to fray. I was a guest in her house, abusing her hospitality. She couldn’t begin to imagine how far away I actually went when I wasn’t there.

I made myself ask: “So who is here?”

“You tell me, Owen.”

But I couldn’t, though it was all too obvious. If I was capable of entering his world, it was equally possible Owain could do the same in reverse. It would explain many of my memory lapses, along with the urgeto wet shave, read coffee table history books and attempt to force the lock on Tanya’s bureau. Sometimes when I wasn’t here, he was.

THIRTY

Owain woke late, alone on the platform. He splashed his face with water from a fire bucket and made for the stairs. Pigeons fled from the shadows as he ascended into the light.

The morning air felt crisp and clean. There had been a dusting of snow during the night. His feet made a virgin path through it towards the observation tower at the square’s western end.

He was a lot calmer than the night before and had already persuaded himself that he had simply had a bad reaction to his brother’s unexpected appearance and his outrageous fabrications. It was even possible that Rhys had spiked his food or water with something. But this morning he felt much more clear-headed.

As far as he could tell, there was no indication that there had been any attack, no new barriers, extra patrols or the wail of emergency vehicles. If anything, the city looked freshly restored under its covering of snow. Security personnel stood calmly at their postings or squatted at braziers, brewing tea and smoking cigarettes.

The mixed-race security policewoman who stood at the entrance to the tower perimeter was tall and slim, about his age. A captain.

“Good morning, major,” she said as he approached.

Owain nodded. “All quiet?”

“Sunday morning. Like the grave.”

Her accent sounded familiar.

“If it’s OK with you,” Owain said, “I’d like to take a look up top.”

“Sightseeing, major?”

“I used to live out in Hampstead. Wondered if you could still see it from here.”

A flimsy story, and he expected her to be at least suspicious. But she didn’t question it.

“Don’t see why not,” she replied. “As long as you surrender any weapons.”

He gave up his handgun and knife without demur, opening his jacket so that she could frisk him. Her hands moved briskly and efficiently over his body.

“You were born in Cardiff?” he guessed.

“The Docks.”

A cosmopolitan area, packed with overseas migrants.

“Haven’t been back in over fifteen years,” she said. “They tell me the castle’s still standing.”

“It’s a regional HQ,” he told her. “More fortifications than ever.”

She led him through the gate. At the base of the tower was a caged lift, crank operated, big enough for perhaps half a dozen people. He secured the door.

“You’re on Field Marshal Maredudd’s staff,” she said to him. “Am I right?”

“How did you know?”

“We get mini-cine briefings these days. I’ve a good memory for faces.”

He started turning the handle. As he rose, the air grew warmer, then colder again. Pockets of smoke were rising from all over the city—rising before merging into a murky layer, as though a threadbare grey blanket had been suspended in the air. From somewhere he caught a waft of frying bacon. It was swiftly gone.

In little more than a minute the cage clanged into place on the platform. A private was there to meet him—a boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, his face stained by a crimson blotch that lay like a distorted map of South America down his left cheek. He saluted Owain.

“Just up for a quick look,” Owain said as purposefully as he could manage. “Any chance of a pair of binoculars?”

The boy, evidently eager to please, hurried around the observation deck. Through the support struts Owain could see two older men hunched down behind the grimy plastic windows of the cold-weather cabin. Both of them were reading the Daily Herald.

Owain moved off in the opposite direction, peering through the haze when he reached the north side. He had an unrestricted view out over Soho. The boy reappeared with a pair of Zeiss, the covers already off. He loitered at Owain’s side. The smoke haze meant that visibility was not as good as he would have liked. But it was clear that nothing had changed on the Soho site: it was a featureless white. The steel gates on the northern side were closed and there was no evidence of recent traffic either inside or out. He scanned the entire area. It was so flat you could have played bowls on it. Virgin territory.

“What are you looking at?” the boy asked.

The question was framed with an adolescent’s simple curiosity. Owain eyed him. A Londoner, by the sound of it, his ears pink under his gunmetal cap. His uniform was too big, the iron-blue jacket sagging at the shoulders, its cuffs turned up. He was thin, pasty-faced, probably suffered from some chronic or congenital condition that meant he would never be of use to the armed forces.

“Nothing,” Owain replied, handing the binoculars back. “Nothing at all.”

The bedroom door opened. Tanya came in, bearing a mug of tea.

“Morning,” she said. “Sleep well?”

I nodded, glad that friendly relations appeared to have been restored. I was also pleased with the brevity of my latest sojourn in Owain’s world. I had occupied his mind in a feather-light way, merely skimming the surface of his thoughts. He was in control of himself again, had put the distortions of the previous night behind him. And he did not appear to have visited me in the interim.

Tanya drew back the curtains, and sunlight flooded in. The tape deck still sat on the table by the window, while beside it was a small pile of newspapers. Until now I’d assumed that I’d been reading them, seeking to catch up with events in the world at large; but perhaps Owain was just as interested in gleaning information about my existence as I was about his. The idea was chilling, but I knew I had to confront the possibility. At the same time I’d never detected anything in his thoughts to suggest he was aware of me or my world. Which didn’t prove he wasn’t.

“I have to go out today,” Tanya told me. “There’s a quiche in the fridge if you want it for lunch and plenty of salad stuff. Or you can have any leftovers from last night.”

She’d said as much during dinner. But I wouldn’t have remembered if she hadn’t mentioned it again.

Tanya was wearing fresh makeup and a navy skirt and jacket over a petrol-blue top.

“Meeting?” I asked, wondering if she’d already told me.

“British Library first,” she replied. “I need to do a bit of burrowing in the archives. After that there’s this thing at the ICA.”

I recalled that she was writing a book about Alfred Wegener and the hostility of the scientific community towards his theory of continental drift. The “thing” at the ICA was actually a presentation she was delivering on the Two Cultures.

“Maybe I’ll come to the talk,” I said.

“The ticket’s on the mantelpiece if you want it. But don’t feel obliged. You’ve probably heard most of it before. I should be back by five. You can always ring me on the mobile if there’s a problem—but not between two and three. I’ll be spouting.”

“OK.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“No problem,” I said. “You in a rush?”

“Not hugely,” she told me. “Why?”

“I wanted to ask you abou something.”

“Go ahead.”

“Multiple worlds.”

This took her by surprise. “What?”

“It’s in one of your books.”

Tanya perched herself on the edge of the bed, looking intrigued. “Uh huh.”

“The idea that all events can have more than one outcome. That histories can branch at any given point.”

A slow nod. “That was the gist of it, yes.”

“Do you think it’s possible? In reality, I mean? That it could actually happen?”

I had her full attention now. “It’s just a theory,” she said. “One interpretation of quantum events. Tiny changes having a knock-on effect.”

“So in one of these branching worlds there could conceivably be alternative versions of you and me?”

She nodded. “Alternative versions of everything. Even universes.”

“Is it given much credence?”

“The theory? Well, as much as any other, I suppose. It’s where physics shades off into metaphysics. Why do you ask?”

“Just curiosity.” I took a sip of my tea. “Could these different worlds be connected, linked to one another?”

“Once they’ve branched? Personally, I don’t see how they could be. They’d be like spokes radiating from a hub. Or different fragments from the same explosion. Flying further and further apart as time went on.”

A little silence fell. I swallowed more tea. Tanya had sugared it liberally, even though I’d always drunk it without. I was, I realised, a little thin. Hadn’t been eating much until recently. She was trying to fatten me up.

“Do you believe that such worlds exist?” I asked. “In practice, I mean.”

She looked contemplative, though I suspected she was thinking more about me, wondering why I was suddenly so interested in the subject.

“Personally I don’t buy it,” she said. “To me, it’s too profligate, it doesn’t have any utility. So anything could and has happened—so what, if you’re never going to be in a position to know one way or the other? I don’t see how it’s open to falsification like the best theories. I also think it flouts the principle of Occam’s razor—the simplest explanation is the best.”

“There could be stuff we don’t yet know about,” I offered.

“Things beyond our ken,” she said in a portentously doomy voice. “Well, no doubt there are. And always will be.” She paused for a moment. “So what about you, professor? Do you think it’s a runner?”

“I don’t know,” I said hastily. “I’m just the layman here.”

“You’re still entitled to an opinion.”

“I’ve no idea,” I insisted. “Really.”

I don’t know whether I sounded agitated, but she laid her palm on my forehead.

“Some of the best scientific minds have been arguing about quantum interpretations for decades,” she told me. “The jury’s still out. For one thing we don’t really understand how the fuzziness at sub-atomic level translates itself into the actualities of the world we live in. It’s slithery, non-intuitive stuff. Maybe, if you go deep enough, the universe just isn’t designed to be comprehensible to the human mind.”

I thought about it. “Fair enough. Though somewhere there could be another version of yourself saying something quite different.”

“Touché.” She removed her hand and eyed me with curiosity. “You look dead worried.”

“Do I?” I manufactured a laugh. “It was just something I read in the paper.”

She must have suspected that there was more to it than that, but she didn’t press me.

“It doesn’t pay to obsess too much about it,” she told me. “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Would it change your life if you knew?”

THIRTY-ONE

“Please wait here, major,” the MP said.

He withdrew, closing the heavy oaken door behind him. Owain lingered for a moment before crossing the lobby to an administrative area.

I didn’t want to be with him. At first I resisted, trying to wrench myself back to my own world. Then it occurred to me that if Owain was active here, he could not be doing anything there. When I occupied him he remained alert to his surroundings; when he occupied me, I was seemingly absent in both worlds. Which meant that perversely I was spared his intrusions when I shared his life.

He perched himself on a stool close to a television that was playing unheeded in one corner. It was the BBC News-24 channel, showing Carl Legr in a meeting with the American chargé d’affaires in Lisbon. The volume was turned down low, but Owain gathered that the discussions had centred on the disputed territorial waters around the Azores. The picture switched to the Chancellor, who was shown giving a speech to a large audience in which he expressed his concern about unprovoked American incursions in the Guianas and Australian territorial waters. His tone was one of measured exasperation. Now there were shots of USAF overflies of the Alliance launch complex in French Guiana, and Nemesis-class submarines that were said to be conducting provocative manoeuvres in the Torres Strait.

The door opened and the MP came out. Owain was on his feet in an instant.

“You can go in, sir,” he was told.

Owain entered the anteroom. It was furnished with antique dressers and upholstered chairs with elegant cabriole legs. The walls were crammed with a variety of paintings from Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” to a 1940s portrait of a tank commander pictured in the turret of his Comet, done in the Documentary Realist style of the period. Owain knew this only because his uncle had told him as much: he had little appreciation of art.

Owain was five floors down in an eastern annex of the War Office where Sir Gruffydd had his private quarters. Bare subterranean tunnels connected it directly to both the Admiralty and the MoD, wide enough to accommodate vehicles in the event of an emergency. By contrast the offices and apartment rooms were fully carpeted and lavishly furnished with items removed for safekeeping from galleries, museums and private houses. Had it not been for the absence of windows, Owain could have imagined himself inside some ancient stately home.

There was a gilded mirror above one of the dressers, folded regimental flags crossed above it. Owain saw that his face looked gaunt, his cheeks sunken. He’d made himself stop at a canteen on the way: porridge laced with currants, followed by a slab of forces-issue fruitcake that sat fermenting in his stomach.

Giselle Vigoroux appeared in full uniform, wheeling a chair in which a withered man sat, grey and trembling. In his initial glimpse, Owain had imagined it was Sir Gruffydd, malevolently wasted away to a wraith in a matter of days. But it was Giselle’s husband, Phillipe. He’d been infected with enhanced-measles virus when insurgents detonated a car-bomb at the Alliance headquarters in Prague ten years before. His head was twisted up, skewed eyes raised to the ceiling, mouth lolling open. Brain-damaged. Quadriplegic. A mangled puppet of himself.

Giselle wiped his chin with a handkerchief and kissed him on the forehead. A young nurse appeared and wheeled him away.

“Good morning, major,” Giselle said to him.

“How is he?”

“Comme ci, comme ça.”

He realised that she was talking about her husband. She’d brought him with her when she was transferred to London, had a special room with all the necessary medical equipment. Shifts of nurses attending him night and day. He remembered her saying, in mixed company, that she had once tried to end his misery by suffocating him with a pillow but had been unable to carry it through.

“I meant the field marshal,” Owain said.

“Ah. There is cause for optimism.”

“He’s still sick?”

“On the mend. At his age, such things take time.”

“He’s not dying, is he?”

She was mildly amused. “Nothing so dramatic. But stomach pumps and purgatives are scarcely tender on the older constitution. Not to mention its dignity.”

“I thought—” Owain faltered. “I hadn’t heard anything.”

“There was nothing pressing to bring to your attention. No point in burdening you unnecessarily.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“He’s not receiving visitors at present.”

“It’s urgent.”

“Not even family. The doctor’s prescribed sedatives. He’s sleeping.”

This wasn’t what Owain wanted to hear. Though he was holding himself under firm control, I could sense his anxiety. There was looming danger, he was certain. Things were happening in the shadows, allegiances were uncertain, too much was unclear.

“What is it?” Giselle said.

“Did you know my brother was in town?”

Her husband’s nurse appeared again from a side room. She approached Giselle and murmured something in her ear in French. Owain didn’t catch it.

“Give him a blanket bath,” Giselle said, speaking clearly in English. “He also needs a shave.”

The nurse went off. As she re-entered the room, Owain caught a glimpse of two male figures in conversation. One of them was Tyler, the other a taller man in a dark suit standing with his back to Owain. The door closed.

“Did you know?” Owain said again to Giselle.

“Of course,” she replied. “It was only a temporary posting to Switzerland. I’m

sure he spoke of it when we met in Paris.”

Owain didn’t contradict her. Perhaps she imagined he and Rhys had had a proper conversation rather than a series of verbal skirmishes.

“He came to see me last night,” he said.

“Oh? A social call?”

Was she being sarcastic? Often he found it difficult to tell. Not that he saw it as anything more than affectionate. It was as if she was an indulgent aunt, amusedly tolerant of his social awkwardness. She felt he needed looking after. Perhaps that was why she was prepared to facilitate his meetings with Marisa.

“What he had to say to me was highly disturbing,” Owain told her.

“Indeed?”

“It’s vital I talk to the field marshal.”

He expected her to ask him to elucidate, but she did not.

“He must rest, Owain,” she insisted. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Perhaps you can help me.”

“Of course. In whatever way I can. Though I think we should find another place for our discussions, yes?”

He knew what she meant. Privacy was impossible here. Every room, corridor and alcove would be planted with surveillance equipment.

“I have to go out,” she told him. “To Northolt. Would you care to accompany me?”

I wandered in from the garden. My clothes were damp. I’d been inspecting the unkempt flowerbeds, absurdly thinking I should weed them. I used to do the same in the garden of my own house, letting Sara and Bethany “help” me, supplying them with plastic trowels so that they could dig holes and emphatically flatten anything green.

I was smiling at the memory. Why had I let Lyneth take them to Australia? What could I have done to make this possible? And why on earth was I outside in the rain?

I’d not been able to find the front-door keys, so I’d unbolted the back garden gate and gone wandering down the overgrown lane at the rear of the house. But I knew I couldn’t leave the place unattended, the conservatory doors open. Duty—and the fact that it was raining—had overcome my urge to explore.

But something else had brought me in from the garden. I couldn’t think what. I stood motionless in the kitchen, the silence of the house somehow eloquent, like a pause in a conversation.

There was a packaged meal sitting on the worktop next to the chrome toaster. Macaroni cheese, still frozen. It wouldn’t have been my choice. When had Owain taken it out of the freezer?

There was no other evidence that he’d been up to anything else. Perhaps it was me after all. Or perhaps Geoff had come back. I went through into the hallway and listened, looking up the stairs.

“Geoff?” I called somewhat tentatively. “Are you there?”

Silence. I waited, listening again for the merest hint of movement somewhere in the house. I could hear only the muted pneumatic thrumming of the central heating system. There was no one at home but me.

The phone gave a little peep. It was mounted in the hallway next to the living room door. I stared at it, finally realising that someone had probably just left a message. The phone must have switched to the answer service before I could get there.

I lifted the handset and tapped out 1571.

One message, I was informed, received a minute before. I let it play.

There was a pause before a querulous elderly male voice said: “Hello? Is anyone there?” A longer pause, and now the voice saying at reduced volume: “He’s not there. Shall I say who’s calling?” A further silence before the voice spoke directly into the receiver once more: “It’s me. Are you out? They didn’t tell me you were going anywhere.” Yet another long pause. Finally: “Goodbye.”

Throughout all this his tone had veered between the quizzical and the perplexed, his voice sounding fractured with age.

My father. It felt like decades since I had last heard him speak. Before I was fully aware of it I had pressed 3 to delete.

The helicopter was a diminutive de Havilland Sprite. Owain sat next to Giselle as she took off, banking away from the landing pad on the War Office roof.

Despite many helicopter rides, Owain had never flown up front before, let alone in a light craft whose bubble canopy gave him an intimate identification with the vast grey spaces beyond it. Giselle was already radioing ahead, confirming clearance for landing. No problem, she was told by another female voice. We’re expecting you. There was no other low-altitude traffic en route.

They followed the line of Western Avenue, flying below five hundred feet, overtaking a convoy of supply trucks. Giselle handled the craft with a minimum of fuss, maintaining a steady speed and altitude. Encased in her pilot’s helmet, she looked born to it.

I didn’t bother to try to reject the transition. I just sat there in the back of Owain’s mind, once again finding no sign that he was actually aware of me as a distinct presence. He evidently swamped my consciousness when he occupied me, whereas I had barely left a footprint in his world. But then I had so far been too curious about his world to be single-mindedly active. From his own visitations he must have known of my existence and my world, yet he continued to rationalise my sporadic interventions as a renegade aspect of his personality. This was to my advantage: it meant I still had room for manoeuvre. Sooner or later I would have to act decisively; but not before I had a better understanding of what was going on.

“I didn’t know you flew,” I heard him remarking to Giselle.

“I used to be an instructor,” she told him.

“Really?”

“In my younger days.”

“Helicopters?”

“Combat trainers. Demons and Chouettes.”

“Dassaults?”

“Of course.”

“You were in the air force?”

“Army. I like to—what do you say?—keep my hand in, when I have the chance.”

Owain changed conversational tack, asking her about his uncle again. She insisted she was not unduly concerned about his condition. She was attending the briefing in his stead, a bulging briefcase tucked in the luggage compartment. It was something to do with revised emergency procedures in the event of attack; he knew better than to ask about details.

Soon the aerodrome was in sight, its square control tower surrounded by slab-faced ziggurats, runways radiating from it, sprinkled with aircraft. Since the destruction of Heathrow it had been steadily expanded and was effectively an airport in its own right, though with few facilities for civilian craft.

Giselle was occupied with taking guidance for landing. As they closed on the aerodrome Owain could see the artillery platforms and missile silos in concentric rings around it. Beyond, the landscape was a mixture of derelict houses and scrubby white fields.

Giselle made an expert landing on a platform jutting from the rear of the control tower. She killed the engine and waited for the rotors to die to a whisper before saying: “So—what is it that is disturbing you, Owain?”

He saw that they were sitting directly under a cluster of radar dishes and antennae. They were all pointing to the sky. It was a perfect “shadow” where they would be free from electronic eavesdropping.

He decided to be as direct as possible. “Rhys talked about something called Omega.”

She was taking off her helmet, replacing it with her cap. All she said was: “And?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Everyone’s heard of it, Owain. It’s whispered like an incantation.” Already out of her seat, she pulled her briefcase from the luggage compartment.

“Does it exist?”

She screwed up her eyes in a manner suggestive of incredulity. But incredulous of what? The very idea? Or the fact that he should question it?

Two ground crewmen and a trio of aides had appeared and were approaching. Giselle unbolted the door and slid it open. Cold air gushed in.

“Come,” she told him.

He clambered down after her on to the platform. She surrendered her luggage to one of the aides, whom she clearly knew well, and said she would join him shortly. Putting an arm through his, she led Owain away as if they were close companions.

Presently, when they were out of earshot, she said, “Tell me what happened.”

At every turn she was surprising him. He still had the feeling that she wasn’t taking him seriously, considered the whole thing a mere diversion. Which made it all the more vital that he was clear and concise in what he had to say to her.

“He turned up last night. More than a little drunk. Persuaded me to have dinner with him. We went to the Viceroy on the Strand. He talked about Omega, some kind of miracle weapon that was going to win the war. A means of folding up terrain, getting rid of it completely. He said that I’d field-tested it on the Minsk mission.”

Giselle led him to the parapet railings. There were extensive views out over the runways.

“So,” she remarked after a moment, “what was your reaction to this?”

“I didn’t say anything. Just asked questions.”

She eyed him. “But what did you think?”

“I thought it was madness. In more than one sense. Madness to have come up with such a preposterous story and expect me to believe it. Or, in the unlikely event that it did exist, madness to be revealing such a secret to an unauthorised person, brother or no.”

Giselle kept staring at him, a smile slowly gathering on her lips.

“You have a remarkably proper sense of duty, major.”

“Was he lying?”

“What do you think?”

“I began to suspect that it was all bluster, some sort of vainglorious attempt to impress me. But why would Rhys go to such lengths?”

“Why indeed?”

“Perhaps he has an ulterior motive, something none of us are aware of. Perhaps he wants to throw me off the scent.”

“Of what exactly?”

“I don’t know. But it may represent danger.”

Giselle appeared to give this serious consideration. “Was he lucid?”

“I think he might be dangerously unhinged. He’s never been a particularly stable character.”

She turned up the collar of her coat. “What do you remember of the mission he mentioned?”

“It’s hazy,” he admitted. “But why would I pretend ignorance of something I knew about to my own brother?”

“Perhaps you don’t trust him?”

“Well, I don’t deny it. Are you trying to tell me that what he said was true?”

She took his arm again, began walking him along the parapet. Snow had started to drizzle down from the sky.

“I’m not telling you anything of the sort,” she said. “Operational details are not my brief. Access to them is strictly limited.”

“Is it possible,” Owain said, “that there could be such a device as Rhys mentioned and that Sir Gruffydd doesn’t know about it?”

“I’ve learned to assume that anything’s possible,” Giselle said bluntly. “But your uncle is C-in-C of all Alliance forces here. He is effectively the head of state.”

“But what if someone’s deliberately trying to outmanoeuvre him? Or worse?”

“What do you mean?”

Feeling melodramatically furtive, Owain glanced around to ensure that no one was in hearing distance. The ground crew was inside the helicopter, well out of earshot. Otherwise the platform was deserted.

“I’ve no hard evidence,” he admitted. “It’s just a feeling. Generaloberst Blaskowitz was an ally of my uncle’s.”

“Sir Gruffydd had great admiration for him,” Giselle agreed.

“They talked together in Versailles about the limits of war and the need to find new solutions to the problems we face.”

She waited.

“Now tz is dead. Uncle was poisoned. I find this sinister.”

Snow was beginning to settle on the shoulders of her overcoat. “You suspect a conspiracy?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I think we need to be careful who we trust. I think my uncle’s life could still be at risk.”

He could tell that at last she was beginning to take him seriously.

“Do you have any other evidence?” she said after a moment.

He shook his head. “It’s more of a feeling that something might be brewing in the background.”

“So much of what you’ve told me is based on speculation rather than fact.”

“I know,” he conceded. “But presumably there are other members of the Council who don’t necessarily share uncle’s views on everything.”

“That’s inevitable. There are always differences of opinion.”

“Is it possible that those differences may have reached breaking point?”

Giselle was looking down over the jumble of Pelican transporters and Vantage interceptors that were parked in front of the airport buildings. No planes were coming or going on the runways.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked.

“Warn Uncle. Tell him that something needs to be done about Rhys. I think it’s essential to establish if he’s sane. And, if so, where his loyalties truly lie.”

“Are you suggesting we arrest him?”

“It would be more a case of taking him into protective custody. But keep it in army rather than CIF or SP hands. What harm can it do? After all, Sir Gruffydd’s his guardian.”

The rising whine of jet engines drowned out her reply. Beyond the clutter of military aircraft on the runway a white Nimbus-9 passenger jet was slowly taxiing. The aeroplane appeared newly refurbished, its domed back housing a retractable radar dish. One of a small fleet of AWACs craft that could also be used as aerial command-and-control centres during emergencies. It looked like the aeronautical equivalent of a swan drifting serenely past a gaggle of ugly ducklings.

Giselle’s pager bleeped on her belt.

“I must go,” she said.

Owain had hoped for more: more time and more information.

“Will you speak to him? Even if I’m wrong, ital to ess better to be prudent.”

“Of course. I promise.” She led him to the top of a fire escape and jangled a set of keys in front of him.

“What are they for?”

“Did you expect to fly home yourself?”

He hadn’t even thought about it.

“There’s a Panache in the car park.” She pointed through the snow and he saw it, the only civilian vehicle amidst ranks of staff cars and Land Rovers. It was the blue of a cloudless sky, the colour of memory.

“It’s yours?” he said.

“A good friend in the Admiralty. He needs it delivered to the bays there. You can leave the keys in the ignition. And no scratches, please. I will see you tomorrow. Bon voyage!”

Before he could thank her, she was striding away, leaving him thinking that she had revealed nothing of what she knew or thought.

He didn’t linger, hurrying down the fire escape, swiping his ID card through unmanned security barriers, nothing hindering his progress.

The Porsche was a custom-built model of a similar vintage to Rhys’s Mercedes. Snow was beginning to fall more thickly, but he was confident of its road handling. The height-adjustable black leather seat oozed comfort, the vehicle’s walnut-panelled dashboard a refined expertise.

He gunned the engine and reversed out of the parking space, for once determined to indulge himself in unaccustomed feelings of luxury. It was easier to do when he was alone. When he knew it was only borrowed time.

Evidently the car’s number plates had already been security flagged on the way in, and he was not delayed at any of the checkpoints. Within minutes he joined the A40 from the slip road.

There was no traffic about. He depressed the accelerator pedal steadily and felt the car pushing him back in the seat. As the interior began to warm up he caught a hint of Giselle’s lingering scent. Was it the car of a lover? No business of his if it was.

The needle was at eighty. For prudence’s sake, he moved out into the middle lane, where the view was better on both sides. Turning the wipers up to maximum he kept accelerating, fat snowflakes hurling themselves at the windscreen with exhilarating abandon. He felt like he was sweeping the storm aside, that nothing could hinder his path. With any luck he’d have a free road until Paddington.

The formalities of rank had prevented him from pressing Giselle more strongly about what was going on. In the end, he could do no more than defer to her and hope that she respected his misgivings sufficiently to take appropriate action. But two realisations were pressing in on him. The first was that Giselle hadn’t actualenied that Omega existed. The second was that the man he’d glimpsed through the doorway with Tyler was more than familiar. Almost certainly it had been Carl Legister.

THIRTY-TWO

One of my father’s favourite epigrams was that history is just informed opinion. He often bestowed such nuggets of wisdom on Rees and me as we grew older and he sought to challenge our views. “Examine the facts with as little preconception as possible,” he would tell us. “Assume nothing that is not implied by the evidence.” Not that he believed in an absolutely objective view about anything: even science wasn’t free of human bias. It used the same methods as the best historians, the analysis and interpretation of evidence, but it was also a product of personal prejudices and—a favourite word of his—the Zeitgeist.

So dark was the shadow he cast over my youth I suppose it’s not surprising that I should end up rejecting both him and his works. Not to read his books, in particular, was a way of countering his dogmatism with blithe neglect. They filled the shelves of my childhood, those volumes of his, all stripped of their dust jackets, which my father considered vulgar. I can see them now with their dark spines and daunting titles such as The Origins of Totalitarianism and Patriots and Scoundrels: Nationalism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. He had also written a memoir of Harrow school and a biography of Neville Chamberlain.

I never doubted that he deserved his eminence, or that he had had important things to say about the course of human affairs in the twentieth century, the era in which he specialised. But the austerity of his judgements meant that charity was often lacking in his work. At times it had an air of ruthlessness, most starkly illustrated in his expropriation of my grandfather’s diaries for a book that took no account of my mother’s feelings.

At fewer than three hundred pages, In the Eye of the Storm was a slimmer volume than he usually produced. It was originally published in hardback under the title: Duty Bound: The Diaries of Colonel Heinz Thom, and for once his original title better captured the essence of the book. Heinz Thorn (he lengthened his surname to Thomas on immigrating to England) had been a young officer who was attached to the general staff of the German army shortly before the outbreak of the war. He served under its chief, Franz Halder, and his successor, Kurt Zeitzler, until a bout of ill health forced his retirement from active duties in the summer of 1944.

The colonel, who never joined the Nazi party, was the son of a Lutheran pastor from Osnabruck in Lower Saxony. Between 1940 and the end of the war he kept diaries that revealed a romantic, philosophical bent. A description of linden blossom glimpsed on an otherwise grey morning might lead him into a disquisition on the evanescence of beauty. The fall of light on a polished table might give rise to reflections on the subjectivity of perception. The sound of a horse clattering over cobbles might catapult him back to childhood and the smell and feel of such a creature in a humid stable when he was lathering it after a gallop. My grandfather had obviously read Proust; he was clearly a man of refined sensibilities.

No mention was made in any of the entries of hisday-to-day duties, and he kept them scrupulously free of any political comment. There were only passing references to the war, as when a joyous family Christmas in 1942 was contrasted with the plight of the troops in the east, by which he doubtless meant the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The regular entries ended when he was transferred to Munich after a bout of tuberculosis; after that they became infrequent, and much more focused on his joy at having his wife close at hand. They didn’t record what must have been his growing horror at the advance of the Red Army. Though he never expressed any untermenschen sentiments in his writings he plainly had a great love of his country and its culture. He also had a deep commitment to the ties of blood and family. He recorded his delight at his wife’s pregnancy and the eventual birth of my mother in early 1945, then mere weeks later his despair that his wife, who had gone to Danzig to rescue her elderly parents, had been trapped there and consumed in the Soviet onslaught, missing presumed perished.

The diaries alone, as an unadorned source, were interesting as a human document; but my father found a way to give them much wider moral significance. He did this by interleaving them with accounts of the concurrent administrative activities of my father’s office, the most notorious of which was the framing of the so-called Commissar Order prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union. This had authorised the immediate arrest and summary execution of all Communist officials by occupying forces. It was held to be the point at which the German Army surrendered its military orthodoxy to the insane imperatives of the Nazi regime.

My father’s insertions were presented without comment, except for a crucial and damning passage in his preface, where he pointed out that Heinz Thorn was one of Halder’s senior subordinates and would have been intimately involved in his office’s administrative activities. Halder, who after the war was eventually honoured with the Meritorious Civilian Service Award by the US government for services to the state, was one of the senior generals who had helped formulate the Commissar Order; he had also advocated blanket reprisals against groups containing hostile individuals. The implication was clear: despite all his aesthetic scruples, my grandfather was deeply complicit in the brutalisation of the war in the east, a brutalisation that had led to the death of millions.

The book was a modest but unexpected success when it appeared in paperback, its cover adorned with a misty black-and-white photograph of my grandfather. A handsome man, he was shown in uniform with a peaked cap on which the Nazi eagle and swastika were prominent. My father freely confessed that this had outraged my mother as much as anything else, because my grandfather had destroyed everything from the war years apart from his diaries, forcing the publishers to use a post-war civilian photograph on which they had superimposed the uniform. My father was dismissive on this matter, claiming that the cover was meant to be symbolic, was actually better than the unadorned image since it conveyed the extent to which my grandfather had been compromised by the Nazis, despite his intelligence and culture. He was an exemplar of the moral corruption that had destroyed Germany. To me this was the height of hypocrisy, especially coming from a man who’d always been intolerant of anything but typographical covers.

What had my mother made of it all? Had she voluntarily surrendered the diaries to him in the first place? He always claimed so, though it was all too easy to imagine him taking them witho her knowledge, using them for his own ends.

After reading the book following Rees’s accusation I had a long telephone conversation with Tanya in which I damned it as nothing more than character assassination. To my surprise, Tanya confessed that she had also read it, a matter of months after we first met. And while she sympathised, she could also see my father’s point of view. Modern research was showing a greater complicity on the part of the German armed forces in Nazi war crimes; a similar re-evaluation was taking place about Soviet excesses. Uncompromising ideological forces had swept along even the good-hearted. The savagery of the times had tainted everyone but the most saintly.

It was only years later that I discovered Father had donated all the royalties from the book to the Institute for Holocaust Studies.

Again a telephone was ringing. I lay in the bath, surrounded by mounds of foam. I was holding a framed family photograph, a rare one showing all four of us, Rees and I not yet teenagers, huddling in the loose embrace of my mother and father, who were standing like two strangers in front of a sign advertising a ghost train.

With an agility that surprised me I pivoted out of the bath, grabbed a towel and padded into Tanya’s bedroom. By now the phone had stopped, but it started again. I snatched up the receiver, somehow convinced that it was going to be Lyneth.

“Hello?”

“O? Is everything all right?”

Tanya.

“Fine,” I said. “I was in the bath.”

She’d obviously rung off and tried again because she didn’t want to leave a message. She wanted to talk to me direct, make sure I was behaving myself.

“Did you have some lunch?” I heard her asking.

Had I? To my relief I remembered putting the macaroni cheese back in the freezer and preparing a tuna salad. I had done it myself. Sometimes my lapses were just that—lapses, not indications of Owain’s manifestations.

“Yes,” I told her. “I’ve even washed up. How did the talk go?”

“I haven’t given it yet. I’m on my way.”

The bedside clock showed one-thirty.

“I’m missing you,” I said.

“Are you all right?”

“You’ve already asked me that. Don’t worry. I can cope. Are you nervous?”

“About what?”

I’d meant the talk, but I said, “About leaving me alone.”

I heard her laugh, though it wasn’t entirely spontaneous. “I’m sure you can look after yourself. Just don’t forget to take your tablets. The little red ones.”

Antidepressants. I said, “Do you think they’re working?”

“What?”

“The happy pills.”

I heard her fumbling with the phone. “Do you?”

This wasn’t fair on her. “Absolutely,” I said. “But I couldn’t get my electric razor to work in the bath.”

“Owen!”

“Joke.”

I heard her breathe in. “Not funny.” She sounded distinctly peeved. “Not funny at all.”

“Sorry. I was just trying to demonstrate that I haven’t entirely mislaid my sense of humour.”

“Do you want me to come home now?”

“Of course not. I didn’t mean to rattle you.”

“You’d better behave yourself. Don’t do anything daft.”

“Well, I’d decided against sunbathing.”

“Listen, I need to go. Are you positive you’re all right?”

“Scouts’ honour.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Break a leg.”

When the line went dead I felt a sense of my own foolishness. Dredging humour out of a situation that was not at all funny, least of all for her.

The wardrobe doors were open; sweaters, shirts and underwear poked out of drawers. I’d been going through my clothing again, searching for keys, money, anything that would give me information or facilitate my urge to go exploring. But everything important was locked away. Including the smallest bedroom across the landing, whose door in my frustration I’d only just refrained from forcing.

I put on my towelling robe and tidied everything as best I could. I set the photograph back on top of the dresser by my bed. It was the only one there, another relic that Tanya must have salvaged from my hous. The empty house whose phone might be ringing even now, with Lyneth calling, wondering where I was. No that was ridiculous. Tanya or someone else would have told her I was here. So why hadn’t she rung, or at least put the girls on the phone to speak to me? Had she taken all the family photographs when she left? Had I done something so terrible she’d shut me out of her and the girls’ life completely?

I went back into the bathroom and pulled the plug. The right arm of my robe was now wet to the elbow. I stood there in the steam and spicy bubble-bath fragrance, watching the mountain range of foam slowly collapsing as the water drained. Tanya and Lyneth. Lyneth and Tanya. The two fixed emotional points of my adult life that I’d orbited like a planet around a binary star. I just hadn’t been able to stay away from Tanya.

About six months after she’d married Geoff I phoned her at home one weekend, ready with a cover story in case Geoff answered. But she took the call, and in no time I was confessing that I yearned to have regular contact with her. Was it possible that perhaps we could meet on an occasional basis, just as friends, just to keep in touch?

She sounded mildly amused but remained noncommittal, saying only she would think about it. A month later she phoned to say that she would be in London in a few days’ time and would I like to meet up for lunch?

By now she had learnt that Lyneth was pregnant again and must have known that this had prompted me to call her in the first place. I expected her to warn me off completely, but in fact we spent three hours at a pavement cafe near the British Museum over toasted sandwiches and endless cups of coffee.

Tanya was genuinely pleased that we were having another child. She made it plain that she intended to do nothing to compromise her marriage to Geoff, or mine to Lyneth. At the same time she admitted to having missed my companionship and said that she would be happy to see me when circumstances permitted. I suggested that it would be better if we said nothing to Geoff or Lyneth about such meetings; Lyneth in particular would not have reacted kindly to them. Tanya agreed but insisted we didn’t pretend we were doing something that wasn’t deceitful.

So we began what I suppose was a chaste affair, though it was certainly far from platonic. Tanya and I never disguised our continued attraction for one another, but we never quite articulated it either. We talked of Geoff and Lyneth only in passing, though Tanya was always interested in the doings of the girls. She would have made a terrific mother.

I was still in the bathroom, wiping my arm on one of Tanya’s towels, inhaling its smell of her. It was far more familiar to me than Lyneth’s, which I couldn’t bring to mind. Poor Lyneth, whose loyalty and industry I’d always taken for granted. Sara and Bethany, her finest creations. They’d been gone for months. But I still didn’t know why.

I unhooked the showerhead and rinsed out the bath. I went back into Tanya’s bedroom and stood at the bay window. No cars on the driveway. Tanya had driven to the station, and Geoff was always up at six each morning so that he could get into work before the rush hour. I had a recollection that he was attending a conference in Nortmpton, would be staying overnight.

Two o’clock. Nothing living was moving, outside or in. The house felt unoccupied. I had a sense that even I was not truly there, had become my own phantasm.

THIRTY-THREE

The snow kept tumbling down. It was already up to the ankles of his boots. Owain tugged at his cap brim, wishing he’d picked up something warmer from the stores after dropping off the Panache.

A squad of cadets from a youth brigade was doing manoeuvres near the Guards Memorial in St James’s Park, their drill sergeant forcing them to hunker down in the snow with their replica rifles and submachine guns. The wooden weapons used by recruits were usually crudely carved, making splinters as much of a risk as chilblains or sprains. In his youth they had been weighted with lead shot or horseshoes. He’d done his early training on the Brecon Beacons, under conditions far more desolate. According to a report he’d seen recently, forty percent of the brigades were now made up of female conscripts.

He crossed The Mall. The missile battery at the Admiralty Arch looked deserted, everyone doubtless huddled around the nearest stove.

Ghostly figures were emerging from a ruined building, spilling out of its rubble-strewn entrance. They flooded forward, passing through him, blurred images talking soundlessly to one another, as insubstantial as smoke. He shut his eyes and kept walking until he knew they would be gone. Nothing was going to hinder him. He wouldn’t allow it.

Perched in his head, I was astonished both by the phantoms and the realisation that they might actually be emanating from the ICA in my own world. Minutes before they could have been Tanya’s audience. They were fleetingly manifest in this world because of my link to Owain.

He found the Windsor easily, saw that it was a Georgian remnant squashed between the egg-box façade of a furniture repository and a big rectangular water tank on galvanised trestles. It looked as if it had been converted from some earlier use decades before, its red plastic lettering faded, the crown over the W askew. A hoppy aroma in the snow-filled air told him that there was a brewery in the vicinity.

The hotel foyer was full of dark wood, crystal chandeliers and framed photographs of young servicemen. Owain stamped his feet on the doormat and dusted the snow from his cap.

An elderly woman wearing gold-framed bifocals was sitting behind the reception desk.

“Good day, major,” she said to him in an impeccable English accent. “Isn’t it appalling weather.”

“Awful,” he agreed. “I’ve come to see my brother, Rhys. He told me he was staying here.”

She didn’t check the register but slowly swivelled her chair to glance at the rows of keys hanging on brass hooks.

“I do believe he’s at home,” she told him.

A quaint way of putting it, and rather contrived, too: as far as he could see, only one key on the board was missing.

She was in her seventies, wearing an expensive silver cardigan that long had seen better days. Blue rinsed hair and a string of what might have been real pearls at her neck. Withered, arthritic hands. A relic, like the hotel itself, of another age.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said, reaching for the telephone.

“I phoned earlier,” he lied. “He knows I’m coming.”

The furrows on her brow deepened. He guessed that she had been at the desk all morning.

“I rang his portable,” he improvised. “By a miracle there was a signal. We had dinner together yesterday evening.”

“Ah.” She was mulling it over. “I do believe I remember him mentioning that at breakfast. He was rather late coming down.”

“Between you and me,” Owain said, “he’s never been much of an early riser.”

His tone conveyed sympathy with her disapproval of such tardiness. She looked mollified. Part of him was relieved to hear that his brother had returned safely. He needed him in one piece, and fully sober, if he was going to get any sense from him; but he also wanted to catch him off guard.

The keys were arranged in rows that he suspected represented the six floors of the building. The absent one was in the upper right-hand corner.

“Top floor?” he guessed.

“Of course,” she told him. “The suite. It has the best views.”

He was doing his utmost to be diplomatic and withheld his smile. The place was as quiet as a deserted barracks. It was probable that none of the other rooms was let.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to catch him,” he remarked. “The line was poor. I thought perhaps it might just be an overnight stay.”

“No, no,” she assured him, not even pretending to check the register. “Payment for three nights has already been made.”

“Ah. I’ll go straight up in that case, if it’s all right by you.”

“I’m afraid the lift isn’t working. You must forgive us. It’s such a problem these days. One simply cannot get the tradesmen.”

All this was said with an eggshell dignity. Her head was shaking slightly as if to say: What could you do? When would this intolerable state of affairs ever end?

“Please don’t concern yourself,” Owain commiserated. “I’m used to the exercise.”

“Turn right at the top of the stairs,” she told him. “It’s the third on the right. You remind me of him, you know.”

“Sorry?”

“Griff.”

It took him a moment to realise she was referring to his uncle. “You know him?”

“When I was younger. We were good friends in those days. I haven’t seen him in years. Your brother tells me he’s in fine fettle.”

What was the point in disabusing her? “Hale and hearty,” he said.

“We used to go dancing.”

“Ah.”

He thought she looked misty for a moment, but she quickly pulled herself together.

“Well,” she said, “you mustn’t let me delay you.”

The carpets were threadbare, dark with age. None of the sconced lights on the stairway were working. He ascended into the gloom, past landing windows thick with outside grime. All the corridors on the left side of the building were boarded up, with hazard stickers on them. It was probably bomb damage, judging by the way the repository next door abutted it as if to shore up the facing walls. Of course there might have been an outbreak of something, especially if the place had been used to house refugees. Few establishments could afford the expense of decontamination, and fewer still had the contacts to expedite the work. Its aura of shabby gentility would not be likely to appeal to

Rhys. Sir Gruffydd had probably arranged the accommodation as a favour to an old friend fallen on hard times. And as a means of keeping Rhys close on hand—but not too close.

His brother’s room turned out to be at the end of the corridor along the topmost floor. It grew colder as he moved down it. He didn’t knock but turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked.

Owain stepped quietly inside to a stale unventilated heat. A pair of shoes lay on the lounge floor, and there was a copy of the News Chronicle on the coffee table. Yesterday’s edition. The room gave no other evidence of habitation.

He slipped into the bedroom, where the contrast was stark. The bed was unmade, items of clothing scattered on it, an open paperback lying on the pillow. The Rake of the Main, a trashy TripleX adventure novel, sold in PP outlets only. A tale of de-may-care pirates, of lust and vengeance on the high seas, it said on the back. They sold for thirty euros or more on the black market.

The door to the en suite bathroom was open, a razor and brush on the sink, the sides of the bath still wet. But Rhys was gone: he must have exited the room minutes before.

Owain pocketed the book and went outside. The fire escape door opposite was open a crack, the cold air seeping in. There were fresh footprints on the snow-covered steps. He followed them down, treading carefully. They continued along an alleyway that gave out on a ramshackle open space of stalls, barrows and braziers arranged around three sides of a flagstone square.

A rich mixture of smells reached his nostrils: wood smoke, curry sauce, and the ammoniacal smell of raw fish turning rank. Civilians and soldiers of many nationalities milled around in the dirty slush, buying and bartering all manner of goods from bowls of glistening offal to galvanised bathtubs. Two carthorses were munching straw in one corner, while corrugated sheets framed a latrine in the other.

There was no sign of Rhys amongst the crowds. Had his brother spotted his arrival and made haste to flee? Probably, though an odd reversal given his previous eagerness to make contact. Owain’s premonition of impending danger, and of the need to get some straight answers from his brother, was merely heightened.

He swiftly abandoned the idea of attempting to find Rhys by hunting through the bustle. Instead he went into a pub that stood on the corner of the square. From its front window he would have a clear view of the entrance to the alleyway. Assuming that Rhys returned via the same route, it was the perfect place to spot him.

The pub, like the square, was crowded, mostly with customers he judged to be ex-servicemen or manual workers from exempted industries. The place was thick with cigarette smoke, raucous voices and the reek of spilled beer. A large alcove was packed with spectators watching horseracing on a dusty track. He found an empty stool at the window and wedged himself in.

Within minutes of sitting down he realised he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything all day. When a young boy pushed through the crowd with a basket holding brown paper bags of nuts, Owain bought one and wolfed them down. They tasted of little but salt and left his mouth feeling stripped of its juices.

He put his hat on his stool and pushed his way to the bar. A hollow-eyed Dravidic woman was serving. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty, her hair dyed the colour of dirty straw.

“What can I get you, major?” she asked.

Owain realised he had no idea. I seized my chance, said, “Beer.”

“Pint?”

I waited for him to say something; he simply nodded.

“Dimpled or straight?”

It felt like a test. “As it comes.”

He was given a dimpled glass with a handle, the beer a mahogany brown with caramel-coloured foam. She slopped a portion of it as she pushed it across the counter, already taking an order from her next customer.

Owain manoeuvred his way back to the window, only to find that a beefy, florid-faced man now occupied his stool. He looked like a stereotypical butcher.

“I was sitting there,” Owain said to him.

He was already tensed, expecting a confrontation, but the man merely picked up his drink and slid himself off the stool. He said something in what sounded like Norwegian before merging into the crowd. Owain saw that his hat had been carefully placed on the ledge, propped by its peak against the window to minimise seepage from beer puddles.

He seated himself and put the glass to his mouth. It smelled like yeasty bilge water. He swallowed a big mouthful. A shudder went through him as the liquid went down, bitter and earthy. Steeling himself, he took another mouthful, determined to moisten his mouth, sloshing it through his teeth, not swallowing until it was warmed to body heat. All the while he was looking out the window, searching for a glimpse of Rhys.

He set the glass down, made himself more comfortable. Outside the snow had stopped falling and the crowd in the square had thinned. Stallholders were starting to pack up for the day. Though it was still early, the sky already held the first hint of the darkness to come.

THIRTY FOUR

“Owen?”

“Rees?”

“You’re there.”

“Where else would I be?”

There was a pause. Phone at my ear, I looked around the hallway, trying to remember what I had been doing.

“Sorry about the cock-up yesterday,” Rees said.

“You should be.”

“Lost the plot. She told me off.”

“Tanya?”

“Keisha.”

I took the phone into the living room and sat down. “Keisha?”

“My girlfriend.”

I wondered: was this the “someone else” he was supposed to have been bringing to dinner? Hardly surprising that neithert of the dad showed. Rees had never been able to maintain a settled relationship.

“A girlfriend,” I said carefully. “That’s nice.”

“We met at the support group.”

“Oh?” I didn’t like the sound of this. “Is she—what does she do?”

“She’s a nurse. At the centre. I’m teaching her chess.”

It was hard to know what to say to this. “Is that so? Do you mean generally or at this very moment?”

An over-emphatic laugh. “You’d like her, Owen. She’s funny.”

I couldn’t resist it: “Peculiar or ha-ha?”

“Ha-ha,” he replied, as though it had been a perfectly serious question. “We laugh a lot.”

“Well,” I said, “they say that laughter is the best therapy.”

No response to this.

“How long have you two been together?”

“Just a couple of weeks. I think dad might like to meet her.”

“Dad?”

“She says she’s up for it. I thought we could all go.”

I wasn’t expecting this. “All?”

“Me and Keisha and you and Tanya.”

His voice had the usual edgy quality it always took on whenever he had to speak at length on the phone. He disliked not being able to see the person he was talking to. He also tended to make inappropriate comments and suggestions. It wouldn’t occur to him to consider that Father might find a visit from four people rather overwhelming, especially since two of them would be strangers.

“I’m not sure that would be appropriate, Rees. He’s always better with one person at a time.”

“When did you last see him?”

I tried to think. “Well, it was a while ago. A few months. Six, maybe.”

“I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. We’re overdue, bro.”

“I’m not ready for it at present.”

“Might b just the tonic you need. Remind you that there’s always others worse off.”

I stifled my surprise. It was rare for Rees to make a non-subjective observation.

He went quiet again. His telephone silences always made you feel you were in danger of losing him, that he was already shunting off down a mental siding where the conversational track would abruptly end.

“Funnily enough,” I said, “he phoned last night. Left a message.”

After a moment: “How did he sound?”

“The usual. Vague and confused. I didn’t actually speak to him. Does he know about my accident?”

There was a silence suggestive of the idea that he was thinking about it.

“Would he remember if anyone told him?”

“Probably not.”

“Perhaps Tanya’s been in touch. Did you ask her?”

“No. Are you sure everything’s all right, Rees?”

“Ticketyboo, bro. Ticketybro, boo.”

He sounded a little manic. “You taking your medication?”

“’Course. Keisha makes sure of that. She’s a stickler.”

“Can I speak to her?”

“She’s in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Bean curry. Some like it hot.”

It was an L-shaped bedsit, the kitchen tucked in one corner. I couldn’t hear any sounds of cooking in the background.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Five five.”

“Fifty-five?”

He sniggered. “Squared. We’ll come and see you soon so you can get to know one another.”

“Really?”

“Honest. Listen, got to go. Think about what I said, eh?”

It was dark, the square practically deserted. Owain drained the last of his pint and belched, tasting the curried pastie he’d eaten earlier. The pub was popular because street vendors called in, offering leftovers at bargain prices.

There were two other empty glasses in front of him. The crowd in the pub had thinned a little but the bar was still busy. He could hear darts thudding into a board above the hubbub. The TV was now showing an old black-and-white Hollywood movie. Men and women in dinner jackets and gowns moving around an elegant apartment with a skyscraper horizon visible beyond the window. Even more people had crowded into the alcove to watch it.

Fog was starting to fill the square. With the wagons and stalls gone Owain had had an unimpeded view of all approach points to the alleyway until now. But there was still no sign of Rhys. His brother hadn’t returned—at least not via this route. Soon the fog would prevent him from knowing even if he did. He saw to his surprise that it was after six o’clock. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Getting down off the stool, he almost fell forward. As he traversed the bar he heard peevish voices and realised that he had walked across the line of sight of the darts players. He found the door, lurched outside.

The cold lunged at him. He took a few steps and threw up into the snow. Rummaging in his jacket he found a handkerchief and swabbed his face. His thoughts were tumbling over one another. Giddy myself, I couldn’t get a grip on them.

The snow was inches deep. He made his way down the alley to the fire escape. With extreme deliberateness he mounted the stairs, gripping the handrail, setting his feet down firmly on each snow-coated step. He looked neither up nor down but straight ahead, concentrating utterly on not losing his footing.

The fire door was still open a crack. He stepped through, crossed to his brother’s door. Turned the handle with as much stealth as he could muster.

Rhys hadn’t returned. The room was exactly as he had left it hours ago.

There was no sign of any briefcase or documentation. He checked the bedside dresser: the drawers were empty. In the wardrobe hung shirts, jackets and trousers, all freshly pressed, three or so of each. Underwear and sweaters still inside his suitcase at the bottom of it. Enough clothes for a few days’ stay but no more. Nothing except for loose change in any of the pockets. No wallet or ID card. No evidence that he’d shared the suite with anyone else.

Owain briefly contemplated scribbling a message but rejected the idea. If Rhys had actually fled from him there was no point in giving hints of why he had come. Of course he could pretend that it had just been a social call. But would Rhys believe it? Unlikely. Better to leave him guessing.

He also considered and rejected the idea of leaving via the foyer, and perhaps giving a message to the old woman at the desk. A stupid idea. She would want to know what he had been doing in the interim. Possibly she had phoned up to let Rhys know he was coming, giving him time to flee. It was odd that no one had come upstairs to check what was going on. Maybe she was too arthritic for the climb. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone else to hand. More likely she knew better than to meddle in anything involving the military.

He exited again, going down the fire escape with even more caution than he had ascended. By the time he reached the bottom he needed to pee. The alleyway was deserted, the walls framing it blind brick. He relieved himself under the stairway.

The fog was thick. He had just finished when he glimpsed a movement in the square. A figure in a bulky coat, moving stealthily around.

Owain crept forward. The murky light spilling out from the pub showed the figure crouching, picking up something from the impacted snow, edging closer to the alleyway. Pausing and looking around, as though to check that no one was looking. Head swathed in a fur cap.

Owain waited until it turned its back on him. He raced out, clamping one hand across the face, the other grabbing an arm and twisting.

There was a brief struggle, buttons popping on the coat, a mound of flesh under his hand, the cap dislodged, dark hair spilling out. He saw the grimy face of a girl.

He pushed her into the alleyway and up against the wall. She was perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Owain had a sense of having known from the outset that it wasn’t Rhys but being compelled to take action in order to be certain. He was spoiling for a fight.

I willed him to restrain himself, and he did pause for a moment. The girl went motionless under his grip. Her hair was ragged-edged, her fur coat worn and fetid. Underneath it she wore layers of blouses and shirts, all of which had parted effortlessly under the thrust of his hands. No bra, her left breast squashed under his palm. He slid it up towards her shoulder. A pretty face. Lean-bodied but soft in all the right places.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded to know, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Her fearful eyes flickered. She held herself absolutely still except for the rise and fall of her chest.

“I come—” she began, and faltered. “There is food. I am come for gathering food.”

An eastern immigrant. The fanciful idea that she might be a gypsy took hold of him. In the snow he saw the grubby canvas bag she’d been carrying. From it had spilled scraps of cabbage leaf, cheese rinds, a trodden onion.

Owain’s exertions had set the blood sloshing in his head, and suddenly he felt as if he was going to lose his balance. He took his hand from the girl’s shoulder and flattened it against the wall to support himself. Almost instantly she slipped her free hand into the pocket of her coat and brought it swiftly out again.

A knife. He had been half-expecting something but was a fraction slow in reacting. She brought the blade straight out towards his midriff, but he managed to pivot so that it caught in the open flap of his jacket. He grabbed her wrist and twisted. She instantly ceased struggling again, the knife falling to the ground.

He saw that it was a short-bladed kitchen implement, sharened on both sides. Breathing heavily, he pressed his hands all around her to check that she was carrying no other weapons. He was thorough, unable to stop himself from relishing her fleshiness under his probing fingers. She stared over his shoulder, holding herself rigid. Mustering all my willpower I urged him to draw back.

There was no other weapon. He relaxed his grip a little, shook his head at her, forcing her to look him in the face.

“Not a good idea to be out here on your own,” he said. “Not a good idea at all.” He swallowed air. “Have you any family?”

Nothing at first. Finally a curt nod.

“Mother and father?”

“Father.”

“Brothers and sisters?”

She looked away, towards the square. Yearning to be able to flee.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

He was wavering a little, the words coming out thick and slow. The girl glanced back at him, and her expression changed. Fear giving way to something more calculating.

“You want?” she said.

“What?”

“If you pay, I will do it. Money in front, yes?”

It dawned on him what she was suggesting. He was holding her pinned with her arms splayed, her front open. He, too, was open, even down to his fly, which he’d neglected to zip up.

He heard himself utter a laugh. Very carefully she brought up a knee and stroked it against his groin. The fear wasn’t exactly gone from her face but superimposed on it was a harder-edged look of extreme practicality.

“Twenty-five euros for mouth,” she said softly. “Forty for condom.”

He just kept staring at her.

“Fifty bare. Any way. But no kiss or hit, yes?”

There was an instant when he hesitated before pushing himself away from her, sickened by her brazenness, disgusted also with himself.

As soon as he had retreated sufficiently the girl crouched down and snatched up the knife. She held it out in front of her, pulling her coat together with her other hand. Though he knew it was cruel, Owain couldn’t stop himself: he withdrew his Walther and levelled it at her.

She froze again. It was so easy to return her to a state of fear. The power was his again. Easy to do whatever he wanted with her. If he killed her, who would know? Who would ever find out? It happened all the time.

In that moment he felt that the whole world had descended to a grubby tableau which he and the girl were enacting in this desolate fog-bound space where nothing, not even God, existed apart from the two of them. And he was the absolute dictator of it.

He started laughing, but it came out shrill. Her eyes had filled up. With a fierce effort I made him say: “Go. Take yourself from here.”

She didn’t move immediately. I lowered his pistol. She took a step towards the square. And another, watching him all the while. I expected her to run the moment she reached the square, but she crouched down and began scooping the spillages back into her bag.

I made him lift Rhys’s paperback from his pocket and toss it at her. “Take this,” I said. “Sell it.”

It fell in the snow in front of her. Still watching us, she picked it up, dusted it with her sleeve and even glanced at the cover.

She looked uncomprehendingly at us.

“It’s valuable,” Owain said. “Don’t take less than the price of a fuck.”

He broke into brittle laughter again. The girl pushed the book into her bag and fled.

“Owen? It’s me. Sorry I’m late. I’m on my way.”

I was still reeling from what had happened in the square. I stumbled into the living room, the phone at my ear. The clock on the mantelpiece said five past six.

“They insisted I stay behind for a few drinks,” Tanya said. “I couldn’t really say no.”

I knew I had to maintain some semblance of a normal conversation.

“Did it go well?”

“Well enough. A few googlies from the audience afterwards, but nothing I couldn’t bluff my way out of. Everything all right at your end?”

I thought of the phantoms, of Owain’s inebriated state. What could I say? Tanya sounded uplifted, full of life. A little tipsy perhaps.

“All’s quiet,” I told her with as little edge as possible.

“You haven’t eaten, have you?”

“Not since lunch.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be up for cooking. All right if I pick up some akeaway on the way home?”

“Fine.”

“Indian or Chinese?”

“Chinese,” I said at random. “Sweet and sour?”

“OK. I should be back by seven. Let’s eat on trays in the front room. Put a bottle of white in the fridge.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Sorry. Just trying to think ahead. It’s been a long day and I’ll be glad to put my feet up. Are you sure you’re OK?”

“You keep asking me that.” I made a concerted effort to re-orient myself. “Rees phoned.”

“Oh? How is he?”

“Says he has a girlfriend. I’ll tell you about it later. You going to be all right to drive back from the station?”

“Probably not. I’ll get a cab if I have to. Is the hot water on?”

“Everything’s as warm as toast. Looking forward to seeing you.”

“Plain or fried?”

“Eh?”

“Rice.”

“Um, plain.”

“Anything for afters?”

“A snog on the sofa wouldn’t go amiss.”

I don’t know what made me say this. Tanya laughed and said, “You must be feeling better.”

Like a ghostly background image to our conversation I was seeing Owain’s view of the foggy city as he trudged his way home, reeling slightly with each step. It was as if I’d inherited a little of his drunkenness.

“Don’t forget the wine,” Tanya said, and hung up.

On the television screen the newsreader was talking about EU commissioners. What did Owain make of the European Union that existed here? I had no access to his thoughts on anything he had experienced when he occupied me.

I was pretty sure he hadn’t recently been active in my life—with one striking, intimate exception. His encounter with the girl in the alleyway had left us both with an erection.

THIRTY-FIVE

Owain got a lift from a security patrol that stopped to check his ID and offered him passage across the river. The three-man crew, which comprised a Scottish woman, an Armenian and an oriental from Solihull, were bored but jovial: they were on a dusk-to-dawn patrol, with a long night ahead of them. The fog had reduced visibility to a few metres, the patrol itself to a lengthy exercise in futility.

Ensconced in an old command post Saxon with a bronchitic engine, they took a circuitous route to the south bank, following in the wake of a snowplough. The Armenian, who spoke little English, offered him a swig of liquor from the little nest of bottles on one of the map tables. Normally Owain would have refused, but he was chilled and needed to rid his mouth of its sour taste.

He selected the only one that wasn’t coloured, swallowing the shot whole and not flinching as it raged down his throat and filled his head with the fruity chemical aromas of esters. At once revolting and liberating. Anything to keep the dreariness of the night at bay. He declined the offer of more, noticing that all three were invalids of some sort, the woman with a cloudy eye, the Armenian subject to an involuntary tremor, the Chinese with a pancake burn scar at the side of his neck and an ear that looked melted into his skull. All of them were in their forties, too worn out to be of use elsewhere.

They dropped him in front of the Barracks, the Saxon swiftly consumed by the fog as it drove away. Owain climbed the stains, feeling light-headed. Not that he was hungry; he’d gone beyond it He felt as if he were floating, a ghost drifting through the featureless limbo of some eerie afterlife.

His door key was gone from the ledge. He checked the windows: the blackout blinds were down. The door was unlocked, but as he eased it open it came to rest against the security chain.

He could feel the warmth seeping out. There was the merest hint of a familiar scent from within.

He felt an irrational urge to kick the door open, to pretend he didn’t know who was inside. To scare her. But he suppressed it and merely called in the loudest whisper he could muster: “Marisa!”

There was no immediate response. He called again, raising his voice a little, tempted once more to announce his arrival by hammering on the knocker. A dim light filled the hallway, and seconds later he saw her fingers fumbling with the chain, heard her saying his name.

As usual she wore a black dress more suited to the summer. Her hair had been trimmed, styled into a bob whose inward arcs were like commas punctuating the soft curves of her cheeks.

She immediately embraced him, pressing herself into his chest, her fingertips scrambling along the ridges of his collarbones.

“You’re back,” she said, her head in the crook of his neck.

It was the most wholehearted greeting she’d ever given him. But Owain was peering beyond her, looking down the hallway, wanting to be sure tha she had come alone. The living room door hung open, a single white cup visible on the arm of the empty sofa. No sign of anyone else.

Owain smiled to himself and said, “What an unexpected surprise.”

“Ouch!” Tanya cried, pulling her hand back from the edge of her plate, almost slopping a spoonful of black bean sauce on the carpet.

“They’re hot,” I said redundantly. “I overdid them in the microwave.”

I pulled the cork on the wine and poured out two glasses while Tanya spooned food on to our plates. She’d insisted on showering when she returned and was wrapped in her cream towelling robe. Nothing else. I’d had the heat on full all day and the house was baking.

She passed me my tray and I handed her a glass of wine. We were perched opposite one another on the big sofa with a cushion’s space between us.

“Any calls?” she asked.

“Only Rees.”

“So how was he?”

“How do you tell? He was pretty buoyant, but that could be the rise before the fall. He claims he has a new girlfriend. Keisha. Wants us all to meet up.”

“That would be good.”

“You believe him?”

“Depends on who shows up, doesn’t it?”

“My family,” I said with a weary fatalism. “One basket case after another.”

Tanya grinned at me and swallowed a mouthful of rice. “You’re not so bad. I’ve seen worse.”

I could tell she’d had a few drinks: she was slightly flushed and her eyes had a loose, relaxed look. She took another mouthful of her dinner.

“Have you spoken to Geoff?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“He hasn’t rung here.” Id made a point of checking the messages, just in case I’d missed one.

She just shrugged and kept on eating, looking at the TV, some sketch show. As if it didn’t matter. As if all that mattered was the here and now.

“You’ve had a drink,” Marisa said, a half-question that contained both surprise and amusement.

“It was my birthday,” Owain replied.

She looked puzzled. “Really, Owain?”

“No. I just fell into bad company.”

She passed him a cup of coffee, replenished her own and sat down on the sofa, tucking her bare feet underneath her. Her boots were outside in the hallway. How effortlessly she d made herself at home.

“One of the night patrols,” Owain said. “They gave me a slug of engine fuel.”

Plainly perplexed by his levity, she said, “Aren’t you going to take your jacket off?”

He’d flung himself into the armchair on entering, was sitting facing her.

“In a minute,” he said. “I thought you were on holiday.”

“We came back early. It was as I said it would be. Two days in Lisbon. Carl was in meetings. Always there was something pressing.”

“I saw him on TV. Peace talks, was it?”

“I’ve never known him so severe. I think perhaps this time it is serious. He only said that all leave is being cancelled. Do you know what is happening, Owain?”

It was finally dawning. How subtle she was. And what a fool he had been.

“Perhaps there’s going to be a big parade,” he said.

Her quizzical look became a frown. “Is something wrong?”

“That’s just what I was wondering. How long have you been waiting for me?”

“A few hours. Giselle did not know your whereabouts. So I thought I would wait.”

“Won’t Carl be worried?”

“He told me not to expect to see him tonight.”

“Very convenient.” Owain swallowed a belch and loosened his jacket. “In that case you’re free to spend the night here, aren’t you?”

The frown was now serious. “Something is wrong, Owain. What is it?”

“You tell me.”

He saw her afresh, as someone whose innocent veneer was the perfect cover for something more sinister and predatory. Legister’s whore, sent by him for the purpose of extracting information. The insight was oddly liberating.

“Has something happened?” Marisa asked anxiously.

“How would I know?” he replied. “I’m just an aide.”

“Now you’re frightening me,” she said. “Something has happened. Is that why you are drunk?”

“Not drunk. Loose. Chasing phantoms.”

She didn’t pick up on this. “What is it? Tell me.”

“Nothing to tell.” He shrugged off his jacket and sat down beside her on the sofa.

“More wine?” Tanya asked, waving the bottle.

“I haven’t finished this one.”

“Lost your appetite?”

“Not for some things.”

I picked up the trays and took them out to the kitchen. When I returned Tanya was using the remote to channel-hop. Finally she blanked the screen.

The half-light accentuated her beauty. As I knelt down in front of her to retrieve the lid from one of the cartons, I could see one of her breasts pouched in the folds of her gown. I brought my head up. She was smiling at me. I pushed my mouth on hers.

Marisa drew back as Owain pressed himself against her but she didn’t try to wriggle away. He began kissing her on the lips, his hands on her bare upper arms as he insinuated his legs between hers. Tanya responded without inhibition, pulling me on to her. I lost myself in our kissing, forcing her mouth open, forcing my tongue between her teeth, feeling her beginning to twist, to move around and give me a better position.

“Owain,” I could hear her say breathlessly as I dragged the shoulder straps right down her arms, feeling them tighten. “Owain, please!”

I freed one hand to get my trousers open, tugging them down to my knees. Then up underneath her skirt to grasp her tights, pulling at them while she pleaded and twisted, allowing me to free them, to peel them away. I crushed my mouth on hers again, shifting my weight forward, pressing my erection between her legs, already full to bursting.

“Take it easy,” I heard Tanya say. “Slow down!”

She wasn’t ready. I had a partial recovery of my senses. I used my tongue to lubricate my fingers, began stroking her. She writhed beneath me, playing the game of subdue and conquer to the hilt. I pushed my face into the crook of her neck, feeding on it, fumbling between her legs. I found a slickness there, exploited it instantly, surging in.

Marisa beneath me, slim and olive-skinned, head twisted back, the skirt of her dress thrust up to her wast, its straps pinioning her at the elbows. Tanya more ample, her gown a pool of cream at her midriff. I had my hands on her shoulders, pressing down as I thrusted, looming over her. She was squashed into a corner, uncomfortably twisted. A voice was repeating my name in feverish entreaty, but I couldn’t stop myself. Within a matter of seconds I was lost, jetting a few instants of my entire consciousness into them.

A long silence. No movement apart from the pulse of my heart and the diminuendo of my breathing. Finally I raised my head.

Marisa continued to lie absolutely still. She was gazing at the ceiling.

Owain withdrew, getting up and stumbling away from her. He went into the bathroom and began swabbing himself down with toilet paper.

Revenge. It had been revenge. All this time he’d trusted her, assumed that she was genuinely interested in him, had feelings for him. Now he was certain she was working for her husband. A spy planted to extract information from him about what his uncle was doing.

He splashed water on his face and dried it. Took the remainder of the toilet roll into the living room.

Marisa was sitting up, her knees clamped together. Owain offered her the toilet roll. She just looked at him.

Her hair was tousled, her face flushed. I couldn’t tell whether the muted look in her eyes was a result of abuse or consummated desire. I didn’t know whether she had been pleading with him to continue or to stop.

Owain himself scarcely cared. He tossed the toilet roll onto the sofa beside her.

I slumped back, looking at Tanya with bewilderment. I’d been gripping her shoulders so hard I’d left imprints on them.

She untangled her legs from mine and eased herself up to a more comfortable position. She looked disturbed but not exactly outraged. Unsure as I was about Marisa’s compliance, I knew that Tanya had been a willing partner, at least at first.

“I can’t believe I did this,” I told her.

“You were pretty rough.”

Not exactly the response I had expected. As if she was more concerned with style rather than content. Which was a relief in one sense but shameful in another. That she’d wanted me and that it was Geoff I had betrayed. Geoff, who’d offered nothing but utter generosity of spirit.

And not only Geoff. What about my own family? Until I knew what had happened to them I couldn’t take anything for granted. There was also the sudden emergence of Owain’s sexuality. He’d been impotent, or at least functionally celibate, for years. Had I had any influence over that?

“This is such a mess,” I said, as angry as I was ashamed. “It’s such a bloody mess.”

Tanya was calm. She looked less distressed than exasperated.

“O,” she said finally. “What is it? What’s really wrong?”

I knew she wasn’t asking about Lyneth and the girls: that was given. I had a feeling that she already suspected more than I imagined about the power and pull of my secret life. How much had I already given away? Had I called out Marisa’s name again? Or been supplanted by Owain in more blatant ways than I’d assumed? She needed some truth from me, if only in recompense for what had just happened.

The truth about where I went when I wasn’t there.

Owain heard water spurting erratically from the shower. The supply was never reliable after dark, little more than tepid bursts. But Marisa persisted: he could hear her lathering herself, pausing each time the flow ceased before resuming. She was being thorough, taking her time, enduring whatever discomfort was necessary.

She’d taken her clothes in with her. Hadn’t asked for a towel. He went to the cupboard in the hallway, found a white one he’d never used. He laid it outside the door and called through to say that he had done so.

No reply. He hadn’t expected one. In the back of his head there was a high-pitched whine, only just within the limits of audibility. For once he didn’t quite know what to do next. He wanted to leave, to walk away for an hour, so that by the time he came back she would be gone. But he refused to be a coward.

He felt no sense that he had done anything wrong: merely something irrevocable. He’d wanted to challenge her that she’d been making sexual overtures to him ever since they had started seeing one another; but she’d gone into the bathroom and locked the door before he could say anything.

He sat in the armchair and waited. At length he heard the water stop. The door opened and closed again. She was still inside. She’d taken the towel.

The mosquito whine would not go away. As a purely academic exercise he began to contemplate what the outcome might be if he simply killed her. He would have to dispose of her body, and also her car. He could take both and simply dump them somewhere, make it look like a random assault. But unlikely to be convincing, especially if Legister had dispatched her to him. No, it was neither necessary nor desirable. If she cried rape, he’d take whatever measures he could to protect himself, though somehow he doubted that she would actually tell Legister what had happened. It would be like a confession of professional failure, an admission that her cover had been blown in the most naked fashion.

He was smiling to himself. The door opened again, and he heard her come out. He didn’t get up from the armchair.

She came into the doorway, her hair still damp. Bare-legged, looking more waif-like than ever, a little lost girl done up as a woman. It was such an artful pose that a renewed slus to violence took root in him. I did my utmost to dampen it, but his emotions were at boiling point.

There was an English sergeant he’d served with at the Konigsberg garrison who liked urchin refugees, who boasted that he held them tight as he took them from behind, one hand wrenching their chins up so he could slit their throats in the instant of his climax. A little death and a big death, he liked to joke. He kept his knife honed and oiled because you never knew when the opportunity would arise. Smiled like an alligator. Said that it was easy, made you feel like a little god. All-powerful. Answerable to no one in the blind, heedless universe.

“I must go,” Marisa said, looking straight at him.

Owain’s hand was already resting on his knife.

“Owen!”

I was slumped on the carpet. Tanya helped me back up on to the sofa. I’d fallen off, fainted.

“I’m all right,” I assured her, though I was in fact a little groggy.

She went into the kitchen and came back with a damp towel which she insisted I press against my forehead.

“Was it—him?”

She meant Owain. I’d tried to stifle him, to black him out: which had presumably made me pass out here.

“Not exactly,” I told her. “I wanted to stop him.”

She didn’t pursue this. I could tell she was still trying to decide whether I was totally mad or not.

It was late. I had no idea how long I had been talking, but the TV was off. Tanya had listened with absolute attention while I’d told her about the major’s world and my connection to it. I’d kept talking even when I was back with him, interrupting my narrative to let her know what he was doing and thinking, even telling her about his murderous thoughts. I saw her stiffen at this and look at me with something more than vast curiosity: it could have been shock or recognition or perhaps even terror.

Into the silence she said, “Is he there now?”

I shook my head. “No. He’s gone. I’ve lost him.”

She had her arms clasped around her shins, was bunched up protectively.

“What did he do?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t immediately say anything further. I expected questions about Owain, about the people and places in his life, the texture and depth and extent of my experiences, and about their relatonship to the world I inhabited with her. I was ready for fascination, scepticism, anxiety or outright incredulity. But there was none of this.

Finally she said, “Did you want to make love? I mean with me?”

I nodded wholeheartedly, though I still felt ashamed.

“It wasn’t you, Owen. You may have started it. But you’d gone before you came.”

If it was a joke, she wasn’t smiling. And of course I knew what she meant. But she was missing the complexities of it.

“It was me, Tan,” I insisted. “It was him, too. In both places. It was both of us.”

THIRTY-SIX

He dreamt that he was stumbling through a blinding light. The instant he woke he knew the light was in his bedroom, shining directly into his face. A gloved hand clamped itself across his neck, thumb and forefinger squeezing.

The torch was high-powered, its radiance a bluish-white. The man leaning over him relaxed his grip slightly, tugging him forward. He sat up slowly, trying to peer beyond the glare.

“Out you get,” said a voice from the foot of the bed. “Nice and steady.”

A northern accent. Yorkshire. Owain slid the heel of his hand back. His pistol was gone from under his pillow. The beam wavered a little as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. The CIF man standing beside him had the stubby black barrel of his automatic pointed almost nonchalantly at his chest.

Owain’s brain was thick with sleep and alcohol. He wondered if Marisa had told them he usually slept with the pistol close at hand. But how would she have known? They’d never shared a bed. No, it was just standard procedure. He knew that any acts of bravado would be futile. Stupid to get shot before he even knew why they were here.

“Get your boots on, major.”

A second man at the foot of the bed threw them into his lap. The one standing beside him stepped back, keeping his weapon trained on him as he laced them up. A Sterling TMP.

The torch was clicked off.

As his vision adjusted Owain realised that a murky dawn light was seeping into the room through the open door. The two men both wore full body armour and wraparound helmets with night-vision goggles perched on them. Crack troops, he didn’t doubt that, so best be obliging. They resembled bulky pilots that had just dropped out of the sky.

His jacket was tossed on to the bed. He put it on, asked for a glass of water. They ignored the request. He felt less hung-over than deprived of good quality sleep, as though he’d spent the st few hours merely floating in the shallows of unconsciousness.

“Let’s go,” said the man with the Yorkshire accent.

They marched him outside, the northerner going ahead of them. He wore a section commander’s patches, while the younger man was unit leader. No ordinary rankers for him: special duty operatives.

A tall, lean figure in a long overcoat was standing at the balcony, staring towards a band of light in the east. The blood-orange half-disc of the sun could be seen, squatting in a gap between the horizon and a line of thick cloud.

“Good morning, major,” Carl Legister said without turning around.

He was hatless, his dark hair slicked back on his scalp, delineated by the sharp lines of a recent haircut.

“Where is she?” he asked.

His men took up flanking positions. Both carried Sterlings. They were compact and lightweight, capable of single shots or rapid fire. At close range they could put a hole through you the size of a fist.

It was obvious Legister was asking about Marisa. A muted panic blossomed in him. He’d had vivid nightmarish dreams in the few hours he’d been asleep, dreams of flight, of chases, of corpses and ghosts pursuing him across blasted landscapes. Before that, there had been his conquest of Marisa. The empty aftermath. Her face at the door, hair still damp from the shower. After that? He couldn’t remember. It was all completely blank.

“She’s gone,” was all he could muster.

Legister didn’t move. “That much is evident, major. The question is—where?”

Owain was still trying furiously to recall. Nothing would come.

Legister turned to face him. “You don’t deny she was here?”

Owain knew that before he spoke, he had to think. I sat perfectly motionless within him, wanting to do nothing to disturb the dangerous fragility of his situation.

“You know that already,” he said. “Didn’t you send her?”

Legister’s hands were buried in the pockets of his overcoat. He had the look of someone engaged in a tiresome distraction, who wanted swift answers but knew that the protocols of their respective positions would have to be observed, if only for the sake of his own decorum.

“You say she’s gone,” he remarked. “An interesting choice of phrase. In what sense do you mean exactly?”

“She left. Hours ago.”

“What time?”

“I’m not sure. Around midnight.”

Legister made a motion of his head to the men, who retreated out of earshot. Owain was confident that their weapons were still trained on him. He wondered if Legister was also holding his own gun in his right-hand pocket. The thick navy serge of his overcoat made it difficult to be sure. No, he decided; it wouldn’t have been dignified.

“Was the rendezvous pre-arranged?” Legister asked softly.

“Why are you asking me?”

A slow exhalation that sounded like a sigh of impatience. “Tell me, major.”

It was hard to get his thoughts in order, especially when they contained such a crucial gap.

“She was here when I arrived home,” he admitted. “I wasn’t expecting her.”

“What time was this?”

“I’m not sure. I’d had a few drinks. Ten, eleven o’clock.”

“And then what?”

He had penetrating eyes and the capacity for making his whole being go so abruptly still that he became like a lens concentrating your attention, making you the focal point of his.

“We had coffee. Talked. She left.”

“Is it a sexual relationship?”

Owain managed to turn his surprise into a soulless laugh.

“Aren’t all the details of my recent conquests on file? My endless affairs and frequent visits to the city’s brothels? I imagine you have a good account of such activities.”

Legister didn’t react to this. He merely waited. Owain hadn’t considered until now the impact of negative evidence. It was perversely redemptive: a secret disclosed through the very absence of disclosure.

“Didn’t she tell you?” he said. “About my—difficulties? I thought that was part of the appeal.”

Nothing altered in his face. “She left around midnight?”

“I think so. I wasn’t watching the clock.”

“And you did—what? “

“Went to bed. Slept. Until your wake-up call.”

“You saw her drive away? “

“Yes.”

There was no way of telling what he was thinking. But if the car was gone, Marisa or he must have driven it. If he had done so, perhaps he had killed her. But no memory would surface. How long had he been sleeping? When had he actually gone to bed?

“I assumed she was going home,” he said, trying to project himself into the spirit of his fabrication.

Legister turned to one of men flanking him. “Go back inside and take a thorough look.”

He did so, the other remaining in position.

Owain didn’t move but merely stared beyond Legister, watching the burgeoning dawn. The sun had already been absorbed into the cloudbank, its light drowned. He heard the commander shift his position, moving behind him. There was the chink of something on his Sterling. Owain had a sense of being impaled between Legister’s stare and the unseen muzzle of the man’s weapon.

I couldn’t believe how calm he was remaining. Partly it was his training, of course, but I thought I detected a new brazenness in him. I continued to keep myself very much in the background, doing nothing to endanger us. At the same time I was eager to discover what had become of Marisa.

Owain was acutely aware that he must show no sign of wavering. Legister would pounce on any kind of weakness or inconsistency. He had a formidable reputation. It was he who had overseen the amalgamation of the civilian police force and the security services into the Security Police, he who had formed the Counter Insurgency Forces, giving them quasi-military ranks and equipment to rival the best of frontline units. While the SP was becoming a refuge for invalids and incompetents, the CIF had grown into a private army, increasingly answerable to him alone.

The younger man emerged and walked across to Legister. He was holding Marisa’s bunched-up tights in his gloved hand.

Legister took them from him and put them to his nose. Sniffed.

“Difficulties, major?” he said, holding them up, letting the legs dangle so that their soiling was clearly visible. Their withered emptiness declared both his crime and his damnation.

Briskly Legister stepped forward, producing a slim silver cylinder from his overcoat pocket. He thrust it towards Owain’s face and something hissed from its end.

A waft of menthol-like vapour, swiftly followed by a numbing flood, as though his body had been severed from his head. As he fell, it was Legister himself who caught him.

I came surging out of Owain, and my first thought was that I too was paralysed. But no. I was lying alone in the single bedroom, dawn light seeping through the open curtains.

My heart was racing. I lay there until it had slowed, wondering what had happened to Owain. Not death, at least not yet: I had a continuing sense of his undeclared presence. But Legister had done something to incapacitate him. For once he had looked angry.

Had Owain actually killed Marisa? I could only find out by returning to him. And I had my own reasons. Like Owain I had a feeling that I was about to be exposed. I’d told Tanya everything but I had no idea what the consequences might be. Was my admission proof that I was making progress? It didn’t feel that way to me; if anything, there was a renewed sense of crisis.

For Owain it was literally a matter of life and death: for me it was a question of culpability. If my presence had somehow stimulated his assault on Marisa, I was partially responsible for whatever had happened to her.

I went into the bathroom to pee. The house was already warm, the blurred outlines of the garden visible through the dimpled window glass. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror. In case I saw him there.

I flushed the toilet and went out on to the landing. There was no sound elsewhere in the house. Carefully I crossed to Tanya’s door. Slowly turned the handle.

She had locked it from inside.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“You must forgive me,” Carl Legister was saying to Owain without a trace of regret. “It was an infantile act, and one that inconvenienced all of us. Not least the men to whom I should be setting an example.”

They were in the back seat of Legister’s Bentley, which was moving along the street at a pace barely faster than walking, its engine noise muted.

The two CIF men sat in the front behind steel-meshed glass. They had bundled him down the Barracks steps and into the car, he semiconscious, completely numb from the neck down, breathing raggedly through his lolling mouth. Only now was the feeling beginning to return to his body.

“They tell me it’s a combination of an opiate and a motor inhibitor,” Legister remarked without looking at him. “N-pentathio something or other. One of the boffins at Porton Down christened it nepenthe.”

Owain managed to sit himself fully upright. The smell was now vaguely medicinal. The after-effects of the drug? Or did it come from Legister himself? Owain was drawn to notions of formaldehyde, as though the Secretary of State had been pickled, was no more really alive than the Silicon Chancellor. He gave off no body heat, was merely an animated object, instilled with sentience and intelligence but containing nothing visceral.

Legister gazed out the window as they drove along the Embankment, rolling a slender gold ring between his thumb and forefinger. It looked like one of Marisa’s but it hadn’t come from his quarters. They’d found only the tights.

The Bentley had special identification plates, was instantly recognisable. They passed through a checkpoint without delay, the duty guards coming to brisk attention, salutes held until they passed. Legister, hidden from their view behind mirrored bullet-proof glass, showed no interest.

Gingerly I probed Owain’s mind, but he still had no memory of what had happened the night before. Had I blacked him out? Possibly, but he’d woken in his own bed. Had he got rid of Marisa before succumbing to alcohol-induced amnesia? Or was it merely a symptom of a more general mental disintegration?

At present I had no answer. I could only wait and see what emerged.

The morning was bright, the sky filled with a seizure of magnesium light, as if someone had exploded an enormous flare. There were fewer civilians and more security police on the streets than usual. All the observation posts and gun emplacements they passed were fully manned.

The two CIF men in front had removed their helmets and replaced them with padded black forage caps. The younger man, who was driving, glanced into the back at one point. He was orange-haired, perhaps ten years younger than Owain, a sprinkling of acne blotching the florid skin of his face. Hazel eyes, whose irises appeared slightly inward-looking, giving the impression of perpetual intense yet mindless concentration.

The Bentley stopped outside a community medical centre, a green cross on a white disc painted above its entrance. The commander climbed a flight of steps into the building, walking past a straggly queue of civilians who were waiting to redeem their prescriptions. Though the main entrance was open, the shutters were still down on the dispensing hatches. Everyone was slouched patiently against a retaining wall, studiously not showing any lingering interest in the car.

Presently the commander came out, leading another man in a grubby white laboratory coat. He was Owain’s age, good-looking but with an apparent crook in his neck. Owain saw him shake his head when questioned. When he replied he squinted in the direction of the rooftops, as though anticipating sniper fire.

Owain became aware that Legister was looking at him.

“Dr Marcel Hanson?” Legister said, making it sound like a question.

Owain merely indicated his incomprehension.

“You’re not familiar with him?”

This time it was more of a statement than a query.

“Should I be?”

Legister buried the ring in his overcoat pocket. He waited until the commander came back down the steps. Owain saw the doctor edge back inside the building, reaching out to touch the doorjamb as he did so. He was blind.

Legister touched a button and the window glided down.

“No sign of her,” the commander told him. “He was here all night. All day yesterday. Other staff have verified. Dysentery outbreak at a school.”

Legister absorbed this and gave a single nod. The man climbed into the car. They drove on.

“Who is he?” Owain asked.

Legister removed a leather document holder from a pouch in front of him. Its clear plastic compartments held files on five or six men. Owain glimpsed a photograph of himself among them. Legister flipped to a picture of the doctor, an enlarged ID face-and-profiles stapled to a sheaf of multicoloured papers and stamped with the SP shield. Surveillance documents. Pastel greens, pinks and blues containing details of everything from personal characteristics to most recent movements.

“No one of any special account,” Legister told him. “A medical doctor of Anglo-Belgian ancestry. Three children in Community Centre care. A family man who has to accept that we cannot spare unattached medical personnel for parenting. He was blinded in the same explosion that killed his wife. A land mine. Apparently they were on a bus. A sightseeing trip.”

Was Legister amused by this? Perhaps not, though as always it was difficult to judge. The curve of his lips had a multitude of possible meanings, the least of them a smile.

“Marisa sometimes helped out at his surgery,” Legister went on. “They occasionally had lunch together. She liked to take him to places he wouldn’t be able to go on his own. While he ate she might read the newspaper or his mail to him. Keep him abreast of things.” Legister paused. “How very unnerving that I should already be speaking of her in the past tense.”

Owain swallowed. “She’s seeing him?”

Legister flipped to another compartment. This showed a swarthy young man of Marisa’s age.

“Naium Sadiku,” he said. “Turkish Cypriot. No family. He was invalided out of the navy after suffering second-degree burns following a magazine explosion. He’s scarred from his neck to his knees. Ruined.”

The ID photographs belied this, suggesting a vigorous young personality with sleek skin and eyes that held a hint of mischief.

“She helps him bathe and assists with his physiotherapy. They met at Dr Hanson’s surgery, though I don’t believe the good doctor knows that she still sees him.”

Another flip. “Malcolm Mosekari. A former premier’s son from one of the old colonies. I remember introducing them at a reception. Nineteen years old. A handsome man, wouldn’t you agree? He has a mental age of six. She takes him on excursions to urban farms. He has special fondness for piglets.”

Legister closed the folder. He hadn’t looked at Owain throughout his recital and only did so now.

“Of course you thought you were the only one.”

Somehow Owain knew it was all true, that it wasn’t a ploy.

“She always told me she was bored,” he said. “She claimed she was lonely, had too many hours to fill.”

“And so she does. Some of these are irregular acquaintances. I think you had even become her favourite. But you will note consistent themes.”

Again it was a statement couched as a question, though when he said nothing, Legister provided his own elaboration: “All personable men in their different ways. All somewhat, shall we say, compromised in terms of what might be expected of them. As fully functioning representatives of masculinity.”

He was waiting for Owain to say something.

“Did you assault her, major?”

“No! It was—she gave me every reason to believe that it was what she wanted.”

“Indeed? That would represent quite an unexpected volte-face.”

“What do you mean?”

Legister looked as if it would be too distasteful for him to discuss it. Then he changed his mind. “Has she ever discussed with you what her existence was like before she was delivered to me in Alexandria?”

“She said she’d been in hiding. On the run.”

“And that was all?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“She was a captive, major. Held for the pleasure of her captors. For three months. They used her in any way they saw fit, though they were careful to preserve exterior appearances. When she was delivered to me her belly was bursting with them. Am I being sufficiently graphic?”

Owain found it hard to imagine, though all too conceivable.

“The foetus was already dead. She had to deliver it stillborn. Fifteen hours of labour, with few resources for medical intervention. Can you imagine it? Of course you can’t. After all, we are men.”

Owain looked away.

“You can understand then, why my wife might be averse to full-blooded intimacy. Can you not?”

Despite his distancing manner of expressing it, Legister nevertheless conveyed a sense of real if cold-blooded anger.

“Yes.”

“She is a young woman with youthful appetites, and I allowed her a certain latitude. But she did not return last night. She always comes home before dawn. We have a satisfactory account of the movements and whereabouts of all her other acquaintances. You were the last person to see her. Where is she?”

The car was moving slowly down a side street, going nowhere in particular, its journey merely an exercise in keeping him contained. Owain, still finding nothing to fill the void in his memory, wrestled with what to say next.

“I don’t understand why you’re asking me this,” he said. “If you’ve been monitoring her movements, you must know.”

Legister shook his head impatiently. “There’s not the personnel for blanket surveillance. We’re not the many-headed Hydra of popular legend. There are always more urgent priorities.”

Owain salvaged a scrap of scepticism: “I find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t make special arrangements for your own wife.”

He thought he saw a fresh flash of anger in Legister’s face. “It wasn’t considered necessary for established acquaintances whom we had no reason to suspect might harm her. Have I misjudged you, major?”

Owain took a gamble: “I think you’re the one who’s lying to me.”

Legister sighed, nothing changing in his face. “She was followed to your home. The men in question withdrew. They were summoned to an emergency briefing that I myself was conducting.”

“Really?” said Owain, growing bolder. “What emergency?”

Legister looked contemptuous. “The likelihood that war is about to break out. What could be more pressing?”

Owain decided that Legister was probably telling the truth about Marisa not being under twenty-four-hour surveillance. If she was reporting back to him, such security wasn’t necessary. So what had happened to her? Why couldn’t he remember? He’d poisoned his brain with drink, surrendered to his urges. But how far had he gone?

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

“My dear major, are you really intent on testing my patience to destruction? You expect me to believe that the field marshal has said nothing to you? You, his nephew, not party to his confidences?” Legister paused. “Unless, of course, your amnesia is a more pervasive affliction than I imagined. In which case I would consider myself culpably negligent in leaving Marisa unsupervised with you.”

Owain had full mobility back, but he still didn’t feel himself. The whine was beginning to insinuate itself into his head again. The car was airless. Trapped within its armour-plated confines, he was already in prison. Were they taking him to CIF headquarters? Was he to be incarcerated in some subterranean cell?

“I’m inclined to think that it’s a more selective affliction,” Legister persisted. “Rooted in a sense of self-preservation.”

“Sir Gruffydd’s been sick,” Owain managed to say. “He’s still convalescing.”

“Really? He was remarkably himself at our morning meeting yesterday.”

Owain’s hands, clamped on the curve of the leather upholstery at his thighs, felt tacky. He was sweating, certain that Legister could smell it.

“Well, no matter,” Legister said. “You’ve had the consolation of a recent reunion with your brother, I gather. Dinner, wasn’t it?”

He had no reason to deny it. “Is that illegal?”

“I’d gained the impression from your uncle that the two of you weren’t particularly close.”

“He was in town. He looked me up.”

“He had important things to discuss?”

Legister removed one of his contact lenses and inspected it on the tip of his fingers. For a few moments he looked vulnerable, a skew-eyed mole forced abruptly into the light; but Owain knew it would be foolish to assume he had gained any temporary advantage.

“Didn’t you have microphones planted in the salt and pepper pots?” he retorted. “Someone squatting under the table?”

Legister slipped the lens back into his eye. “If only our budget allowed such luxuries. He was anxious to speak to you?”

“Who says?”

“A visit to your quarters. A three-course meal in privileged circumstances. Past differences reconciled?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t just a social meeting?”

“He was trying to mend fences. To impress me.”

“Indeed? And how, precisely?”

Owain was finding it difficult to adjust to this new line of interrogation. Difficult and dangerous. Suddenly Legister was more interested in Rhys than the fate of his wife. He needed to be very careful about what he said.

“Hard to imagine he wouldn’t have shared confidences with you. You were together—what was it?—three or four hours?”

“You’re asking me to inform on my own brother?” Owain said with as much indignation as he could.

“Ah.” Legister invested the exclamation with feline satisfaction. “Am I to assume he was rather indiscreet?”

“No.”

The car abruptly darkened. We were travelling down the Whitehall Underpass, its overhead necklaces of red and white lights almost festive. The tunnel was closed from dusk to dawn to non-military traffic, and any civilians seeking shelter there risked being shot on sight.

“What did you and your brother discuss?”

An image of Rhys, swilling down wine and jabbering at the table.

“Old times,” he said.

“You understand what I am asking you. Did he talk about his work?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Owain said angrily. “What has this to do with your wife? Do you think they’ve eloped together?”

It was a stupid, tactless piece of flippancy. Legister did not even deign to comment on it. “You said he was trying to impress you. What did he talk about? The latest initiatives in the military sphere?”

Too quickly Owain said, “I know nothing about that.”

“About what exactly?”

“Nothing.”

“I would have thought that both of you would be eager to share your intimate knowledge of recent developments. After all, you are the commander-in chief’s aide.”

“My uncle doesn’t confide in me.”

He felt that in a sense this was true. Or that somehow he was being deliberately excluded from the old man’s confidence.

They came out into daylight again. A trio of aeroplanes swept overhead: RAF Swordflashes, their wedged wings in forward-facing position. Though they were flying low, their passing was silent: the car was well soundproofed.

“You’re his nephew,” Legister said. “He’s always taken care to nurture and protect you.”

The Whitehall bunkers faced him. The Bentley pulled over.

“Even to the extent,” L went on, “of salvaging both your careers.”

It was like a slur. Owain didn’t hide his anger.

“I didn’t ask for a staff posting,” he said hotly. “I’d rather return to combat duties.”

“No one doubts your bravery, major. But the times also demand balanced judgement. I rather feel you show tendencies to martyrdom arising from a misplaced sense of loyalty. Things are not always what they seem. Even within a family.”

Words. The more Legister spoke, the more his meaning slipped away, was swallowed up into the shrill noise in his head.

“Whatever you want from me,” he said, “I can’t provide it.”

Legister opened the door and climbed out. He indicated that Owain should do likewise. Somewhat awkwardly, feeling as though his limbs were newly bestowed, he did so.

We were outside the road that led to the Westminster complex. I made Owain take a deep breath of air, as much for my own relief as his.

“You have been most unhelpful, major,” Legister said without resentment.

“Do you expect me to compromise myself?”

“Of course not. I expected that you would dissemble. But if I discover that Marisa is dead or harmed on account of your activities, even your uncle’s protection will not save you.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

I was standing beside a reedy pond with pollarded willows. A pub on the corner opposite. Intermittent traffic passed, going around a mini-roundabout. In the near distance stood a substantial spired church in buff stone that sat like a becalmed vessel in a sea of grass. Beyond it was a line of buildings.

Something in my overcoat was vibrating.

I fumbled in my pocket, pulled it out. Tanya’s mobile. I pressed the answer button. “Hello?”

“O? Where in heaven’s name are you?”

I looked around again. “Blackheath.”

“What?”

“I’m by the pond. Opposite the Hare and Billet.”

“I’ve been frantic. How did you get there?”

I struggled to remember. “Bus.”

ÜA bus?”

“To Lewisham. Walked up the hill.”

There was a pause before Tanya said, “Why?”

Why indeed? Had it been a whim?

“I needed to get out,” I told her. “I think I’d started to scare you.”

“This is what scares me, Owen. What have you been doing?”

“Just walking around. Taking in the sights.”

“You’re all right?”

“Fine.” At least I’d had the sense to take her mobile.

“It’s been over an hour. I didn’t know where you were. I’ve been driving the streets, phoning everyone I could think of. Geoff’s on patrol even now. We were going to phone the police.”

“Ah. You didn’t notice your mobile was gone?”

“That’s the only reason we kept hanging on. There’s half a dozen messages on it. You didn’t have it switched on.”

Perhaps I’d activated it by accident. Or more likely unconscious design.

“Sorry. I was going to leave you a note. Your bedroom door was locked.”

She said nothing to this non sequitur.

“I thought you might need a little space,” I said.

“Not at the expense of total loss of peace of mind,” she told me with feeling. “It was really irresponsible of you.”

“I know.”

“You haven’t done anything, have you?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Accosted strangers. Run around naked singing the national anthem.”

“I’ve been walking. Keeping myself to myself. Shoes are a bit muddy.”

“I’m coming to get you.”

“OK.”

“Stay there.”

“Righty-ho.”

“Please. Don’t go anywhere.”

There was a quaver in her voice. Only now did it fully dawn on me how much I must have scared her. And what I’d been doing.

I’d gone looking for my house. Spent the best part of an hour traipsing the streets, trying to find it. But I couldn’t remember the address and didn’t have a clear idea of its specific location. I’d begun to panic, clinging on to my memory of the girls’ bedroom, with its amethyst walls and big heart-shaped mirror on the back of the door. I must have climbed the hill until I reached the top.

“Owen?”

“I’m still here.”

“I’m on my way. Don’t move.”

“If you can’t see me,” I told her with a levity I didn’t feel, “I’ll be in the pub.”

“No, you won’t,” she said firmly. “It’s only nine-thirty.”

Two young boys were standing under one of the bridge pontoons, trying to make a hole in the ice with a broken propeller blade. A crude fishing rod and a small canvas bag lay on the ice beside them. They were totally focused on the task, ignoring the steady trundle of military traffic overhead that was passing from south to north across the bridge towards Parliament Square.

Owain was mentally subdued. We sat in moist chilly air on a riverside boulder, the smell of exhaust fumes and vegetable broth in Owain’s nostrils. A paper bowl was cradled in one hand. The broth had come from a soup kitchen on the embankment above.

Military police were everywhere, redirecting what few civilian vehicles were braving the streets. There were new roadblocks and diversion signs, helicopters patrolling, sirens in the distance that doubtless signified traffic patrols swooping on vehicles or citizens who were in the wrong place.

Owain used a husk of bread to scoop the last of his broth from the bowl. He waited until the bread was saturated before swallowing it. The food sat like a warm dense mass in his stomach. He screwed up the bowl and tossed it aside.

The convoys mostly comprised trucks and ATVs, with the occasional ambulance and mobile missile platform. Nothing tracked or too heavily armoured: the bridge wouldn’t have held them. Supply columns, most likely, headed out of the city. Something was definitely afoot. Which was what had made him take pause, seek a little time alone. He had waited until Legister’s car had driven out of sight before heading down towards the relative tranquillity of the river margins. Close at hand a waste pipe was leaking steam into the air, its warmth having melted the snow round about and provided a micro-climate in which he’d been able to sit comfortably for—how long?

His thoughts were muted, with little volition. I willed him to look at his watch. It was not yet ten o’clock. He became aware that one of the boys was standing in front of him, was asking him if he could spare a little bread.

He’d eaten it all, but croutons lay scattered on the pebbles where he’d tossed them earlier. The boy was about eleven, his dark hair severely shorn around his ears. He was filthy but looked reasonably well fed. There was an enterprising air about him.

“Take those,” Owain said, pointing.

The boy gathered up the croutons, putting them into a little canvas bag. He scampered back across the ice to his friend, whereupon they proceeded to peer into the bag as if beholding treasure.

Bait. Bait for fish they were never going to catch, even if they succeeded in penetrating the ice.

An MP on the bridge had spotted the boys. He called another man over. There was a brief discussion before the second man went off.

The first man drew his pistol and began firing shots into the ice near the boys, making them leap and scurry for cover under the bridge.

“No! No!” Owain heard him yell. “Out! Out where I can see you!”

The boys emerged reluctantly. The MP flourished his weapon at them, indicating that they should move further back from the bridge. Warily they did so.

The second man reappeared, leaning over the parapet, the squat tube of a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

Without any warning, he fired.

The back flash and the impact were instantaneous, the shell striking close to the boys, showering them with debris.

As the smoke slowly dispersed, Owain saw that a neat hole had been punctured in the ice. It was still bubbling, churning with white-streaked water. They’d probably used an armour-piercing shell without the explosive charge.

He heard the men laughing, saw one of the boys smear blood from his cheek. Both began to scramble around, one retrieving the rod and the bait bag, the other dragging a large stone across the ice for a seat.

Owain rose. Nothing had come back to him to fill the gap in his night’s recollections. It was still a void. A blank confusion was his prevailing emotion, along with uncertainty about the allegiances of those closest to him. What was Rhys up to? Where was he? Why was his uncle apparently avoiding contact with him? What did Legister want, beyond information on Marisa’s whereabouts?

He crossed a path through Parliament Gardens, past the concrete flowerbeds and blackened saplings. A corpse lay frozen in the derelict gazebo, a drift of snow covering it like a bed sheet. He was conscious of the labyrinth of rooms and chambers far beneath his feet that would be bustling with subterranean activity, all of t dedicated to the preservation of the state. He felt like an ant on the skin of a whale, out of place, at sea. His entire career as a soldier had been geared towards taking pragmatic action according to clearly defined circumstances. There was seldom the time to dwell on matters of morality or cause and effect; any such inclinations were positively discouraged in the field. Here, very little was clear, while taking any sort of action precipitated a host of unforeseen consequences. Webs of intrigue in which he felt ever more entangled.

He approached the first of the guards outside the building and showed them his ID. The man checked through sheets on a clipboard. He saluted.

“I’ll notify them you’re on your way, sir,” he said. A walkie-talkie was crackling at his hip.

“Am I expected?”

“You’re listed personnel, sir.”

A female guard at the main entrance didn’t even bother to check his ID; she stepped aside to let him through. He didn’t have a cap or beret and felt somehow naked as he entered the bustle of the main hall. But no one paid him any attention. Everyone was busy on telephones and typewriters. Much ado about something very pressing indeed.

I made him head for one of the lifts. Their buttons had a granular texture, were supposed to contain circuitry that gave an instant thumbprint match with a personnel catalogue on AEGIS. Or so it was rumoured: no one would ever confirm such things.

The lift arrived empty. I’ve no gun, Owain thought as it took him down. Legister’s men had never returned it. His usual anxieties about confinement and falling didn’t surface. Possibly it was my influence: probably he had more urgent priorities.

Another guard in the lobby, a Sikh in an incongruously white turban. His homeland was now under American administration. How does it feel? I felt like asking. Would you rather be there or here? What difference would it make to your loyalties?

The man escorted us to Sir Gruffydd’s quarters. Knocked on the outer door and opened it.

Giselle Vigoroux was just getting up from a desk, a sheet of paper in her hand. On seeing Owain, she put it down.

The guard withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“Major Maredudd reporting for duty,” he said with ostentatious formality.

“Where on earth have you been?”

She sounded irritable, looked less than pleased to see him. There was a young female secretary working at another desk nearby. Apart from this, the administrative area was empty.

“Out and about,” he said. “Walking.”

“Your phone’s dead. We sent a car around for you.”

“Really? When?”

“Two hours ago.”

Probably the ginger-haired CIF man had ripped out the wires when he was searching the place.

“Carl Legister was there first,” he said.

She frowned at him.

“An early morning call. He took me for a little ride.”

She put the paper down but didn’t move from the desk. He could see her thinking, wondering what tack to take.

“Apparently Marisa’s missing,” he said, feeling both brazen and foolish. “He wanted to know if I’d seen her.”

She looked angry, but in a steely sort of way. Arms spread, hands flat on the desk top.

“He was also asking about Rhys.”

Still nothing, though he was certain she knew something.

“You haven’t seen either of them, have you?”

“Ingrid,” Giselle said to the secretary, “would you leave us, please.”

The girl rose and went out. Attractive, though overzealous with the lipstick, and slightly on the buxom side, the brass buttons on her jacket under strain. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

“We’re leaving within the hour,” Giselle said when she was gone. “Do you have anything to pick up from your quarters?”

“Where are we going?”

“The field marshal’s decided to make the journey by car. You’ll be riding with us.”

Her tone was barely civil. She looked like she’d hardly slept.

“Better, is he?” Owain said.

“He’s been asking about you all morning.”

“That’s good to hear. I thought I’d become persona non grata.”

“We may be gone for several days.”

He couldn’t decide how much of her attitude was pure hostility, and how much mere suspicion.

="3"size="3">“Don’t you want to know what Legister wanted?”

“You’ve already said. He was looking for Marisa.”

“He was also very curious about what Rhys might have said to me. When we had dinner together.”

She’d started gathering up the papers on her desk.

“Did you talk to uncle about him?”

“I told him, yes.”

“And what did he say?”

She was busy slipping the papers into files and wallets, not looking at him.

“There really isn’t time to discuss it now.”

This was more than military need-to-know: he was plainly being kept out of the picture. Things had changed. There was no longer any basis for trust between them.

He waited while she checked through the drawers, locking each one after doing so.

“Any chance of a cup of tea?” he said. “It’s cold out there.”

He could almost smell her impatience, her urge to be done with him.

“Sit down,” she said, indicating the leather chair to the side of the desk.

He did so. She emptied the trays on her desk, putting the papers on top of the pile, which she carried out.

Owain didn’t move. He just sat there, closing his eyes and putting his thoughts on stand-by. I was surprised at his insolence, his almost wilful disrespect for her authority. That he should react to perceived threats with aggressive defensiveness wasn’t unusual, but not with those he considered his patrons and superiors.

I couldn’t get access to his deeper thoughts. They were less concealed than absent, as though he would not permit himself the luxury of any sort of reflection.

A side door opened and Owain was startled when a brigadier emerged, accompanied by the Chancellor.

Automatically he stood bolt upright and saluted. The Chancellor wore a dark suit over a white open-necked shirt. He didn’t even glance at Owain as they exited. Owain overheard him talking in a broad West Country accent.

Of course it wasn’t really the Chancellor, but a flesh-and-blood sighting was always remarkable. A look-alike, one of several in existence throughout Europe, created by a combination of plastic surgery, posture training and suitable applications of hair dye. Doubles of a non-existent person, indispensable for public displays such as ades or television footage of assemblies that demanded an extra degree of three-dimensional realism. Everyone knowingly entered into the spirit of the fabrication.

The secretary, Ingrid, returned with a mug of tea. Louche blue eyes, an accommodating smile. A seduction, he suspected, would be easy. He let her go without a word; it was enough to relish the notion of it.

The tea was liberally sugared. Perhaps he should have come to the office with more humility, though he doubted it would have changed Giselle’s frosty attitude. Clearly she knew far more than she was prepared to tell him—but about what exactly?

He wandered over to Ingrid’s desk and glanced at the paperwork there. A list of provisions that included chocolate-cream biscuits and hot-water bottles. Four-day weather reports for the North Sea littoral, detailing wind patterns, cloud cover, likely precipitation. The text of “Armour Excelsior”, a popular patriotic poem, torn from a book with Ingrid’s spiral doodles around a colour picture of warring thunder gods. A computer printout of support personnel with most of the names highlighted in pink.

“Curious, major?”

Giselle had returned.

“Just browsing,” he replied. “I didn’t open any drawers.”

She stood in the doorway, holding a big bunch of keys.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Am I under suspicion?”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. Stupidity? Lack of common sense? Murder?”

He knew it was a gamble to say the last word, but the uncertainty was paralysing him.

“Do you feel as if you are?”

That was their way: to turn your questions back on you.

“I feel excluded,” he said. “A liability. As if I’m not trusted.”

“No. That’s not the case.”

“So why wouldn’t you let me see my uncle?”

“He was very busy. He didn’t want any distractions.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes other matters have to take priority.”

“What about Rhys?”

“What about him?”

“Why is he here?”

“Here?”

“In London.”

“Because he’s needed.”

“For what?”

She went back to the desk and put the keys down. “Sir Gruffydd will explain everything later.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s exasperated with you, Owain.”

“Why? Because I wasn’t around when I was needed?” He allowed a pause. “Or is it something else?”

He wanted her to tell him what she knew, however damning it might be.

“I’ve arranged an escort to take you back to your quarters,” she said. “Pick up whatever you need and be quick about it. Be back here within half an hour.”

“An escort? Am I under arrest?”

“I want to make sure you don’t go wandering off again. You need to be ready to go.”

Owain thought about it. “There’s nothing I need there.”

She looked mildly surprised at this but didn’t question it. He had no desire to return to what might be the scene of a crime.

THIRTY-NINE

“Listen,” I said to Tanya, “I’m really sorry about what happened last night. It was unforgivable.”

She was driving the Toyota, taking us back home. I’d waited faithfully outside the pub, even when it had started to rain. She’d been more relieved than angry with me but had insisted I promise never to go walkabout again. I was surprised she had come alone, without backup. Apparently Geoff had returned to work as soon as he knew that she had located me.

We turned down a side street that I thought I recognised. And there was the house, near the end of the street, with its white wooden fence and black wheelie bin tucked in a little brick enclosure. Curtains half drawn on the window, no sign of present habitation. But no, the door was navy, the windows PVC rather than wood. Had I misremembered it?

We turned on to another road. I glanced at Tanya, but she wasn’t looking my way. Had she deliberately driven down the street to see how I would react? There was no evidence that she had.

“Why he?”

“This alter-ego of yours,” Tanya remarked. “Do you think he’s real?”

Did I? On arrival she’d quizzed me remorselessly about Owain’s existence while swabbing mud from my shoes with a rag. She had taken it perfectly seriously, avoiding the obvious judgement that it was all a huge figment of my disturbed imagination. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t think it, merely that she wanted to be clear about its extent.

“He seems real enough,” I said. “With a life of his own. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, except for the fact that we’re counterparts, linked. Does that make sense?”

“And you think he’s cracking up, becoming homicidal?”

“It certainly feels like it. As if something’s awakened in him.”

She glanced at me. “Intriguing way of putting it.”

I saw what she was getting at. “The thing is, at first I just assumed that it was me who was inhabiting him. It didn’t occur to me that it might be the other way around as well.”

“You think he’s looking to set up permanent home here?”

I couldn’t believe she was discussing this madness so calmly. “If I was him, I would. Believe me, this is a much better place than where he lives.”

“But it has its attractions?” She was eyeing me. “You describe it with a certain sort of relish.”

I couldn’t deny it. “It’s alluring,” I admitted. “Exotic in a morbid sort of way. And the game’s not yet up.”

“No,” she said, with what I thought was a note of regret. “I can tell that it isn’t.”

“Are you going to say anything to Geoff?”

“About this?”

“About what happened last night?”

“You must be joking.”

We stopped at traffic lights. I recognised the Catford one-way system. Everything looked so blandly normal, people scurrying by with umbrellas and hunched shoulders.

Neither of us said anything further for the rest of the journey. It was a silence clamorous with unspoken thoughts.

Tanya’s house was in a quiet leafy street in Sydenham. She reversed the Yaris into the driveway.

“Well,” she said as though there had been no pause in our conversation, “the thing I want to know is what you’re doing to do about it.”

Assertive action. She was always one for sorting out problems by doing something rather than waiting for things to happen.

“It isn’t that easy,” I said, following her out, my legs feeling wobbly. “I keep coming and going.”

“You’re indulging yourself, Owen.”

This sounded harsh. Or was it? The truth was, a part of me enjoyed the escape. But not at the expense of ending up there permanently. That was the ultimate danger.

The first thing Tanya did when we were inside was to check the telephone messages. I watched her face shift from disinterested curiosity to vague puzzlement and finally to a weary exasperation.

She put the phone down and looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“It’s Rees.”

“Oh?”

“Calling from a mobile. I rang him earlier but no one was answering.”

“But he called you back?”

She shook her head. “He was obviously in transit. Now he’s in West Byfleet.”

The place was familiar but it took me a moment to recall its significance. My father was in a nursing home there.

“Did you arrange something with him, Owen?”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“He thinks you did. He’s asking where we are. According to him, we’re supposed to be meeting up at the home.”

I remembered the conversation, but we’d made no firm plans. It was the last thing I wanted, or expected, to hear.

“He’s already there,” Tanya said.