Rat Run

Chapter Seven

The sirens had sounded across the estate and there had been a single shot from a low-velocity weapon, muffled and distant. Then Malachy had slept.

He was curled on the living-room floor, his breathing regular. No dreams to toss him. On the carpet, he was a fallen statue. If he had dreamed it would have been of old Cloughie, sixth-form history, the romantic, who broke up the Thirty Years War or the Industrial Revolution or the Rise of Parliament with un-connected poetry. Sometimes Tennyson, more frequently Keats or Shelley. Hunched, as if broken by exhaustion, he lay without a cushion at his head. If old Cloughie had been with him on level three, block nine, his surrogate parent would have found the relevant passage

Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, and would have recited in his falsetto tone, shrill with excitement. But he did not dream. The images were gone, lost under the shifting sand – he slept deep.

He was naked.

The vagrant's clothing was back in the bin-liner, under the bed in the next room with what remained of the tape, the rope and the plastic toy. When he had come back he had eaten the few biscuits left in the packet and had put the wrapping into the rubbish can.

Then he had begun to clean the shoes. Like a fanatic, fighting off tiredness, he had wiped off the mud that had camouflaged their shine, smeared on the polish and rubbed till they glowed in the dull light. Only that self-given task had kept him awake.

He needed to hear the sirens: they were proof that what he had done was not mere imagination. They had come, finally, before dawn. When the wind had pushed back the curtains and first light had seeped inside, he had heard the shot and had not known what weapon had fired it.

Malachy slept. Far from him, as if briefly he escaped their reach, were the voices that accused. Then…

Maybe a door slammed on the walkway. Maybe a car below screamed when the gears failed to mesh.

Maybe the dream was never far enough away. He twisted and jerked on to his stomach.

He woke.

Rubbed his eyes.

Felt the cold of the air on his body.

Hands on his ears, as if that would shut out the voices that dinned in his mind.

His body shook.

'God,' he cried out. 'What do I have to do? What?'

13 January 2004

'Where's that wretched man now?'

'Outside, sir, sat on a chair.'

'Bloody hell, it's all I need.'

'On a chair, sir, in the sunshine.'

The major, commanding Bravo company, paced his operations bunker, made a little trail of bare concrete where the dust was kicked aside. Frustration, not the Iraqi heat, flushed his face.

'You know, Sergeant McQueen, what I've got on my plate?'

'A whole load of shit – excuse my vulgarity – sir.'

'Piled up and bloody high with it… What's he saying?'

'Nothing, sir. Far as I've heard, not said a word.'

'And lost his weapon?'

'Could say dumped his weapon, sir. The section retrieved his helmet and his jacket, which he apparently abandoned in the street.'

'No explanations?'

'Not that I've heard, sir.'

Around the major were his second-in-command, his signals corporal, the platoon commander of the section involved in the patrol, and his batman, who had brought him a meal-ready-to-eat supper that he had not touched; he did not know when he would get a mouthful down him.

Sergeant McQueen was by the sandbagged doorway and, looking past him, the major could see one of the chair's legs and one of the wretch's shins and boots. None of the men in the bunker would offer help or be asked to.

'I can't go on the net on this.'

'No, sir. It wouldn't be wise. Better to put down on paper what you know. Personal to the colonel. Not clever to broadcast it on the radio. You to the colonel.'

'Where do I find the time to do that?'

'Respectfully, sir, you have to find it.'

'Right now I haven't the time.'

'No, sir.'

T am trying to organize a lift and I have an O Group in an hour, and the chance of getting in at dawn fast and out faster is receding by the bloody minute. I am waiting to hear back from the village elders, who are complaining about the section's response to a full-scale ambush. Christ, what are we supposed to do? Chuck toffees at them when we're taking live rounds? X-ray 12 is reporting barricades going up round the market and they're gathering for the funeral, and… And a high-velocity weapon is missing, and I've got an officer I'm told is a coward.'

'That's what the men are saying, sir.'

'A coward. It's about as bad as it gets.'

'The men with him, sir, they're using choicer language.'

'I'll hear it again – warts and all. Makes no difference that he's an officer… Wrong, does make a difference because he is not an eighteen-year-old Jock, first time away from his mum with eight weeks' Basic behind him and never out of the UK before. He's a bloody officer, experienced, supposed to lead from the front. Tell it to me, and don't stop if I throw up.'

He was told the story for a second time. He recognized the canniness of Sergeant McQueen: no opinion of his own offered. As he listened, the major cursed the interruption to his planned lift. He saw the interpreter – a former policeman, not trusted a bloody inch – hovering at the door, and gestured irritably for his second-in-command to field him.

He thought his section had done well: the corporal had shown fine leadership, and the Jock who was the marksman had performed in the best traditions of the regiment. In his grandfather's war, the wretch on the chair outside the bunker would have been tied up to a post, blindfolded, given a lit cigarette and shot. In his father's war, there would have been a stamp on the file: 'LMF' – dismissal and disgrace for lack of moral fibre, and a job digging field latrines. The second-in-command handed him a scrawled note: the elders would be at Bravo's main gate in two hours, after the O

Group briefing. Then he might get down some of his bloody meal-ready-to-eat, if the flies had left any.

'… So, that's it, sir, according to what the section members have said. Do you want me to bring him in, sir?'

I do not.'

'They're all good men, sir.'

'1 think I've heard enough.' He broke the pacing. In his own war, somewhere buried in a filing cabinet, was a paper he had never bothered to read: it was titled Battleshock.

Might as well have been Bullshit. He felt no guilt that the paper was unread. He could not have imagined that one of his own men, his Jocks, would ever be labelled a coward.

'What's to happen, sir?'

'Put him somewhere in isolation where he can't infect anyone else. He can be shipped down to Battalion in the morning with prisoners. We've ivasted enough time on him.

They can sort him out down there.' The major's voice softened, as if puzzlement caught him. 'It'll run with him for the rest of his life, won't it? I don't know how you'd ever get shot of it, being called a coward. Can't imagine there's any way back.' He paused. 'Right, the world moves on – without him. I'll do the O Group myself

'I'll find him somewhere to sleep, sir,' Sergeant McQueen said, impassive. 'It's not your worry, sir, what his future is or isn't, and what he does with it or doesn't.'

Her knee nudged the bucket, spilling it. The water flushed out over the floor and the suds went with the flow. The tiled floor of the first storey of the ministry was, momentarily, awash. Dawn's stockings were soaked, as were the hem of her skirt and her dull green regulation apron.

The bucket, on its side, rolled crazily and noisily away from her. Her supervisor came running.

Dawn should have had a look of humble apology on her face, should have ducked her head in shame at her clumsiness. She had been late to work that morning, and in less than twenty minutes the first of the gentlemen and ladies who occupied the ministry's offices would be pouring through the main door to be confronted by a danger zone of slippery tiles. She laughed, and saw a frown pucker her supervisor's forehead.

The response was icy. 'Perhaps you'd care, Dawn, to share the joke with me.'

She pushed herself up, took her weight on the mop's handle, grimaced, righted the bucket, then began to swab the river and shepherd the suds towards her. She didn't care about the frown and the scowl. She had been with the ministry early-morning cleaning team longer than any of the other women, had a reputation for reliability. .. but that morning she had been late to work, then tipped over her bucket. She laughed again and the echo rang down the corridors off the landing.

'Are you well, Dawn? Do you need to go and lie down?'

Her laughter, infectious, wiped the frown and warmed the chilliness of her supervisor. The young woman squatted beside her. 'Well, you'd better tell me.'

She lowered herself, laughter shaking her body, and sat on the top step. 'I was late, Miss.'

'Correct, Dawn, you were late.'

'I was late, Miss, because I just seen the best thing ever.'

An audience had gathered, the rest of the cleaning women, brought by Dawn's laughter.

'You'd better tell us, Dawn, or the place'll be a tip.'

One more convulsion, then she launched: 'The Amersham is tough. The Amersham is a hard place. I know, I have been there twelve years. The Amersham is the toughest and the hardest. Druggies, thieves, muggers, we've all of them – but what we don't have is police officers. Maybe the Amersham is no-go for them. My friend next door, she is in the hospital and they have pinned her arm because the druggies thieved off her. There is no law on the Amersham.

Two days ago, three boys of a gang that pushes drugs were attacked and hung upside down from a roof, which was good, but today was better.'

'So, what was the big joke today, Dawn? And do hurry it up if this floor's to be done.'

'Yes, Miss. Of course, Miss. Today would make a dead man laugh, I promise you. On the estate, the dealer is untouchable. Everybody is frightened of him. Jason Penney. We all know his name. The police, who we never see, are alone in not knowing his name.

I don't know where he lives but we know his name – don't speak it, I am afraid if I say it, but know the name. This morning I came out of my block to go to the bus – I am not going to be late – and I hear the sirens. The Amersham now is filled with police. I follow the sirens. I see Jason Penney. It is very funny, Miss… Jason Penney is tied to a lamp post, tied at his ankles with tape and his arms are behind him and round the lamp post and the wrists are tied. He has this cloth in his mouth and cannot shout and there is more tape over his eyes. It is better, Miss, more funny

… Also tied to the lamp post, with rope, is his dog.

The dog is a brute. The dog strains to attack the policemen who want to come close to free Jason Penney. The dog does not understand – it will not allow them to be near. None of the police will approach the dog. They are on their radios. He has been there all night, with his dog, and his woman will not telephone the police because he deals heroin and cocaine, and the neighbours, all old people, will not telephone because that involves them. He wants to be freed, Jason Penney does, because he has been there all night and he needs to pee. But the dog keeps the police back. He has to piss. It's all down his leg, steaming. I promise, you can see the steam because the morning is cold. Everybody there, watching, is laughing at Jason Penney. Nobody before, nobody would laugh at him. We are all laughing. The police bring an officer with a gun. It is the Amersham, not Baghdad. Because of the dog they have a gun, and the dog will have to be shot. I would not have complained but this woman pushed to the front. She works at the Dogs' Home, at Battersea. I clean the offices here, she cleans the pens there. She said the dog must not be shot, must be put to sleep.'

'Tranquillized, Dawn, that's the word tranquillized.'

'Yes, Miss, put to sleep. Everyone now is shouting at the police that the dog must not be killed. We wait some more. Jason Penney, he cannot wait, he pisses again in his trouser. Another man comes and he shoots at the dog with a dart, but that is not enough.

The dog is too powerful for one dart. Another is used.

Then we have to stay back until the dog is asleep.

Only when it is snoring, like a man with beer, do the police go forward. What I then heard – because Jason Penney is finished, cannot make fear any more and we have laughed at him – a woman who knows took the police to a place in the children's play area where the drugs are stored, and the police took them. It is what I heard. What I know, the police cut the wrist binding and put handcuffs on him. He will never come back. Nor will his woman and his baby. We are rid of them.'

'I have to say, Dawn, that vigilantism can be ugly and is dangerous.'

'No, Miss, you do not live on the Amersham. You do not know how rare it is for us to laugh. I promise you, Miss, if you had seen the steam on his trouser leg then you would have laughed, however wrong it was.

I am happy… '

She squeezed the last of the water off her mop and it dripped back into the bucket, and from the high windows above the landing the sunlight glistened on the tiles.

'I think it will be dry, Miss, when the gentlemen and the ladies come.'

The trawler rode the light swell, made seven knots, and pulled the net behind it on the North Sea's bed.

The speed Harry made with the Anneliese Royal was enough to keep the mouth of the net open. The radar had shown him that fish were there but he could not know till the net was retrieved what he would find in the 'cod end', the pouch where the catch was trapped.

Billy was out at the stern watching for the drag on the tackle that would tell them they had snagged an obstruction. He had the boy, Paul, with him in the wheel-house and he talked of what he loved.

'All done by sail by men who knew the sea and had the skills handed down to them. A hundred years ago those men were lucky to make a wage of twenty shillings a week, a pound of our money a week.

Brixham men were the finest in all England, could handle the deep hull and the long keel in any weather, brilliant men – and they fought. Fought so bad when they muscled in on the Newlyn fishing port that there were pitched battle riots there and the Royal Navy sent a destroyer to make peace. In 1896, imagine it, a destroyer with four-inch guns sent to break the fighting. Now, look, I've every device science can make to take me where I'm going and show me where the fish are. A hundred years back, under sail with a sloop rig, they had only their experience to guide them. No radar, no GPS. They were fishing right round the waters of the UK – Channel, North Sea, Atlantic, Irish Sea, the Western Approaches – and the skippers knew where they were from a lead line because there were no charts. They'd smear tallow – that's grease from sheep fat – on the lead at the end of the line, and the length of line out would tell the skipper the depth and when the line came in there were scraps of the sea bed stuck in the tallow, and they'd recognize it.

They could "taste" the bottom from the tallow and know where they were. They was brilliant men – and the sea was filled with fish, like they were shoulder to shoulder, belly to back. They were the best.'

Harry sat in his swing chair and sipped the coffee the boy had brought him, and the boy lounged back against the chart table. He thought the boy was interested. He heard the clump of boots and saw Billy at the open wheel-house door.

'It was Brixham men, in 1837, who sailed right up the Channel, right out into the North Sea, and they were going for the Dogger Bank between Tynemouth and the Danish coast, and they found the Silver Pits, just south of the Bank. No lie, in one haul of the trawl, one boat brought in two thousand and forty pairs of flatfish, sole… They were pioneers, wonderful men.'

'And we're crap. Right, Dad?' Billy chuckled. 'Any chance of some work getting done?'

The boy followed his father away, back to the stern.

Soon the trawl would be over and the diesels would turn the capstans to drag the nets in, and they would spill the catch down into the fish room – no bloody way would there be 2040 pairs of sole, not even if the whole of Lowestoft's fleet was out, but it was Harry's dream that he would find an old boat and work it back to seaworthiness and, if he were blessed, the boy would help him sail her… if Ricky Capel freed him.

If he were ever freer than the catch, struggling and thrashing, in the cod end of the trawl.

The morning sunlight splashed through the windscreen. Ricky sat in the front passenger seat and was driven over Tower Bridge into the City of London. He looked away from his cousins and down on the river-boats, on the column of barges being towed downstream and the pleasure-craft with tourists on the open deck. There'd come a time, Ricky reckoned, when the cousins outgrew their usefulness to him.

Like old shoes, old socks, too holed and too worn.

What then? That was his problem: he did not know. In the future, for another day… Right now, they headed for the narrow streets of the City. Charlie reckoned the City might be a step too far, but acknowledged the market-place there. Benji had identified the hole, then had seemed to back off and shelve his enthusiasm. Davey hadn't an opinion on it.

Three guys had gone down in the Crown Court in south London. Twelve years, nine years and eight years. 'Dumb/ Ricky had said. 'Bloody mad.' Charlie had murmured that the Assets Recovery Agency was now looking for the profits the trio had made from a trade of seven million a year turnover and that was big bread, and Benji had stated the obvious: cocaine in the City was good money and there was a vacuum in the market-place. 'Fucking idiots,' Ricky had called them. 'Fucking idiots to flash their money.' Davey's job: the car had been swept that morning for bugs, was in a secure garage each night. It was an ordinary saloon that attracted no attention. Inside the car they could talk.

Turning in his seat, smiling the baby grin at Benji, Ricky asked, 'You going to fight me on it?'

'You'll do what's best, Ricky. It's off our territory.

What I'm saying… '

'Go on, say it.'

'We don't have people here. It's not our place.'

'Big bucks. What's your take on it, Charlie?'

'The wankers want cocaine, can't sit in front of their little screens and press the tits without it. We know that. We know also that they're mega-rich, can't spend it fast enough. But unless they're dosed up, they don't perform and get ditched. Against that, we've no organization up here, we don't know people. We don't know the suppliers and we don't know the dealers – we don't know who to trust.'

'It's just to have a look,' Ricky said softly, and still smiled, but his eyes played the menace they'd recognize. 'Just to get a feel.'

He rarely came into the City. He would have needed Charlie to tell him how many millions he had invested – after laundering – in bonds, shares and trusts that were handled behind the Monument, in Cheapside, Leadenhall Street or Cornhill. His face was pressed against the window. He watched the ones Charlie called the 'wankers', young men striding the pavements, or loitering outside for a cigarette, or carrying sandwiches and coffee beakers from the fast-food counters. Some of them, a few – dosed up on snorted cocaine – might have taken responsibility for seeing those bonds, shares, trusts grow. Other than the apartment in Chelsea Harbour, he had no use for the money Charlie washed for him. To spend it was to flash it, to flash it was to be a 'fucking idiot', to be a fucking idiot was to go down in a Crown Court for a dozen years. What was it for?

It bothered him. Late at night, Joanne's back to him, looking at the bloody ceiling, hearing the goddamn clock chime downstairs, it turned in his mind. What was it for? He was the clever boy who'd never been lifted, never pushed himself up the snouts of the Crime Squad or the Criminal Intelligence Service, lived like a bloody virgin with his legs crossed in Bevin Close. He didn't do yachts down in the South of France, didn't do private jets to the Mediterranean, didn't do big charity bashes with celebrities and camera flashlights… and didn't do time. Every move he made was weighed; each place he spoke his mind was swept for bugs. No mates to be with like his grandfather had had, or like Mikey, with his friends from inside… Percy had never had power; neither had Mikey. Ricky had power.

They went past banks, the old buildings used by the traders, the new towers for the insurance people, the wine bars they filled during the lunch hour and for binge-drinking after work, the sandwich outlets at which they snatched their lunch, the subways they poured from in the mornings and dived into in the evenings. For an hour they drove. Davey let the traffic hold them, was not impatient when they were blocked by delivery vans. The cousins all kept their peace. Ricky swallowed the sights, absorbed them.

He thought – and it frustrated him, but he did not share it – that risk ruled him… just a local boy and happy to do a patch of south London. No flair, no balls. Safe and comfortable. Around him there was a market, bigger than anything he'd ever gone for, of cocaine addiction, and the market was holed because three 'fucking idiots' had gone down. 'Don't try to run till you've learned to walk,' Charlie always said.

They were up by Aldgate and turning into Jewry Street. Davey had taken him on two full City circuits.

Ricky said, 'I've seen enough. God, what a bloody awful place. This is how it'll be. Start at the bottom and test it. I'd say a sandwich bar. Put a new man – better, a new woman – into a sandwich bar, just one of those holes in the wall, and sell out of it. Don't touch any of the dealers or the suppliers who are already there. Set up from scratch. A new man or a new woman who is a cut-out. Get some kid from the north, wherever, someone who's not known or doesn't know us, to act as courier – take the stuff in and bring the cash out. Wrap it round with cut-outs. Let it run for a year, then maybe it's another sandwich bar. There's a hole to be filled and we're going to fill it. You OK, guys?'

Benji said quietly, 'One thing, Ricky. What about the Scrubs? What about gaol delivery? The Scrubs or the City? I mean, you can only take on so much new stuff. Which comes first?'

'Both of them. They both come first.'

They all nodded with enthusiasm.

'Spot on, Ricky,' Benji said.

Polly ducked her head to the policeman. That gesture, and she was a master of it – humble and requiring help – always opened doors for her. Ludvik was supposed to have phoned ahead, had promised he would, and she had told him, with true sincerity creasing her face, that all she wanted was a few minutes' poking time around the cafe: 'You know, Ludvik, only to get a sense of where we're at. I wouldn't want to waste your time, and I'm better on my own.'

For a moment the policeman hesitated. If the phone call had been made – it probably had not – the officer guarding the cafe's front door had not been warned to expect her. Her ducked head, a glimpse of her knee below her skirt, her smile and the flash of her diplomatic card were sufficient for him to stand aside.

Excellent… She had dreaded delay, a radio trans-mission to a senior officer, a senior officer speaking to a lord high panjandrum, and her left to kick her heels.

The Czechs of the BIS could share with her, but she would not reciprocate. The cafe's door was splintered at the lock where it had been battered open. If she had been delayed, explanations would have been demanded of her, and she had no intention of offering them.

She went inside, and pointedly pulled the door shut behind her. She wanted no witnesses.

In that basement cell, where the cafe's owner had been beaten, where nothing of value had been recorded on the interrogation tape, only Polly Wilkins had registered the spots of white paint on the man's hands. Had it not been for the black-and-white images of his crumpled body and bruised knuckles, she might not have seen them. In the cell, when she'd held the hands, the spots had been more indistinct, but they were there.

Chaos in the cafe bar. Every table turned over, most of the chairs broken, a carpet of smashed cups, plates and glasses, and the chrome coffee machines split open. She thought it pure vandalism – and unnecessary, stupid. If a forensics team had followed inside the men who had broken down the door they would have found nothing, everything contaminated.

She looked around her. Pictures of mountains hung askew on the walls or had been ripped off their hooks and lay smashed on the floor. Posters for last year's rock concerts in Albania were shredded. Photographs of a football team survived behind the bar counter; she noted them. It was all about detail, not about the most that could be broken, ripped, smashed, shredded. Her flat shoes crunched glass and china as she went through the cafe bar to the back. Every door of the ovens left open, every pot and every pan dropped, every cupboard searched through and the contents scattered. When she cabled Gaunt, when she had something to signal him, there would be one tetchy paragraph about the need for a new item on the courses for the BIS: search procedures and good housekeeping. The walls in the kitchen were lime green, but dumped out from under the sink was a small tin of paint: white. She moved on. She had seen from the street, before she had used her little-girl-lost eye-flutter on the policeman, that there was a side door beside the cafe entrance with two bells. Above the cafe were three floors. Simple to deduce. The floor immediately above was part of the cafe's premises; the two top floors were separate.

She climbed the stairs, difficult because the carpet had been pulled from its nails. There was a living room, a bathroom and a bedroom. More devastation.

From the landing she glanced briefly into the living room, but the walls were pink. Yellow-painted walls in the bedroom, of no interest to her. The bathroom had white walls. A picture of the sequence played in her mind. A dishcloth hung out above an alley behind Kostecna. A man comes, perhaps the cafe owner himself, and notes it. Inside the cafe, time racing, a frantic effort to hide evidence. A stash point is made, filled, hidden. She roved over the toilet, the stained old basin, the shower cubicle with the collapsed screen, then saw the fractured mirror, and the smear of new paint at its side.

She put her fingers behind the weakened fastenings of the mirror and heaved. It came away and plaster spattered from the screw holes.

The paint behind the mirror should have been grey-white, but it was pristine. Not so good, not so smart.

Everybody told her, when they bent her ear, that the Albanian crime gangs were the most sophisticated in Europe… but not with a paintbrush. She ran her fingers over the white patch, felt its slight tackiness, and could smell it. She could not see a join – that, at least, was clever. She made a fist with her hand and hit the patch hard with the heel. Her hand came back and she yelped with pain.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, she found a hammer.

Back in the bathroom, Polly swung her arm back and belted the whitened patch where the mirror had been. Hit it again, and again.

Paint cracked, a wood screen splintered, a brick was loosened.

With the hammer's claw she prised it out. She grinned: she was Carnarvon in the pharaoh's tomb.

She slipped on plastic gloves from her shoulder bag, and made ready a clutch of plastic bags. She reached inside. First, she extracted the money, euros and dollars, maybe five thousand in all-denomination notes and put them into the first bag. Then she lifted out four passports, one from Argentina and one from Lebanon, one from Syria and one from Canada; she flipped the pages of the visa and immigration stamps.

Syria and Argentina were a pair; Lebanon and Canada matched them. She could follow the trail of two men.

Saudi, Jordanian, Syrian and Turkish stamps in two passports; Bulgarian, Romanian and Hungarian in the Argentine and Canadian documents. No Czech visas.

She would have bet on it that one passport was charred and unrecognizable in the debris of the top-floor apartment, and that another was in the inner pocket of the man who had slipped through the cordon's net. She flipped back the pages. In those from Syria and Argentina she found the photograph – easy to match from the files sent by Gaunt – of Muhammad Iyad, dead because of a present to his wife. She stared at the photograph in the passports of Argentina and Canada, and whooped in excitement.

They went into another bag. Last out was a cheap stationer's notepad, bound with a wire coil. The writing, she knew it but could not read it, was in Albanian Tosk, page after page of scribbled accounts, notes and phone numbers, but before the blank pages, shreds of paper were lodged in the coil as if the last sheet used had been torn out. The notepad went into a third plastic bag. She put all the bags at the bottom of her shoulder bag, then covered them with the makeup sack she never used, her spectacle case, her mobile, her headscarf and, finally, her purse. She replaced the mirror, used her thumbnail – swore when she broke it – to tighten the screws and cover the hole she'd hammered, then kicked the debris on the floor to the far side of the bathroom.

She thought of Gaunt. Poor old Gaunt, who had had his share of slings and arrows, who had had to tramp up to the top floor and tell the weasel, the ADD, that a storm assault had failed to net the prize. She would have him singing. She went down the stairs, steadying herself on the rail so she did not slip on the uprooted carpet, left the hammer in tire kitchen. She emerged into the light, but the policeman looked away from her evasively.

Ludvik leaped out of a car parked on the far side of the street. He hurried to her. 'What was your business there?'

'Like I told you, just "to get a sense of where we're at". That's all.'

'Did you find anything?'

'Of course not. Your people had searched with impressive rigour.' Innocence, no sarcasm.

Did she want a lift? No. She thanked him. Trust nobody, Gaunt had told her when she'd gone to work for him. 'Not your best girlfriend, Polly, not the man you sleep with, not your mother. Only trust yourself.'

The savaging of the WMD team, Gaunt's fall and her shuffled out of sight – others drifting to shamed retirement – had shown her the truth of it. She went back on the Metro to her office in the embassy, clinging to the strap of her bag.

Gaunt had said on the phone, 'I'm not fucking about, Dennis, don't have time to. I'm the opposition and I'm trying to hurt us – who's the man that's most important to me? Who, above all others, do I protect? I think I know but I want confirmation.'

There were three police at the first checkpoint. A handsome woman, her figure set off by her uniform, fair hair protruding from under the back of her hat, looked at his offered ID, then checked for his name on her list and ticked it flamboyantly. The other two police were dour, with Heckler amp; Koch rifles slung from straps across their flak-jackets. Gaunt did not queue with the riff-raff, but drove to the head of the next line, was again scrutinized, was again passed through. There were more guns on the approach road, more on the perimeter fencing, and on top of the building ahead he saw the dark uniforms and jutted shapes of marksmen's rifles. Dennis had said he would be at the magistrates' court that morning. If Gaunt wanted advice, counselling – maybe a shoulder to snivel on – this was where he had to come. Behind the court building were the high walls of HMP

Belmarsh.

Gaunt had never been here before, far out to the east of London. The drive had taken him an hour and he was late and irritable, but he needed the answer.

The prison and the magistrates' court were set on the flat, reclaimed land of Plumstead Marshes. It would take more than sunshine, he thought, to brighten the place.

More checks, and inside the building's hallway he had to pass through a metal detector, empty his pockets on to a tray and put his briefcase through the scanner.

He and Dennis had been at Officer Training School together, then done time as junior cavalry officers – a unit of Lancers – before they reached the rank of major. Both had been washed up, having failed to make the promotion grades, and both had gone the civilian route; the difference was that Gaunt had taken a position in the Secret Intelligence Service, while Dennis had entered the Security Service. In Gaunt's mob, Dennis's crowd was regarded as junior, second best – not that he would show it that morning, whatever the provocation.

Having produced his ID for the fourth time, he was issued with a clip-on card, then led by a clerk to the canteen.

Dennis was there. 'Good to see you, Freddie. Been so long. Tell you the truth, I was quite surprised to get your call. You know, we hear things. I'd assumed, what with the spring-clean in your lot – the