A Colder War

24

‘Sorry,’ Kell told her. ‘Work.’

‘That’s all right. I wondered where you’d gone. Went outside for a cigarette and saw you talking.’

‘I was meant to be buying you a drink.’

Rachel scrunched up her nose, shook her head like a shiver. ‘I’ve probably had too much already.’ Kell took out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. This time Rachel lit her own. No need to touch his cupped hands. ‘What do you make of Ryan?’ she asked.

‘Seems nice enough. Good-looking fucker.’

The response produced a cheeky smile. ‘Isn’t he? I think he might be quite clever, too. I hardly spoke to him at the funeral.’

Kell found himself saying: ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.’

Rachel joke-choked on her cigarette and stared at him. ‘What does that mean, Shakespeare?’

‘I’m just saying. He might be clever. He might be good-looking. But he might also be a wanker.’

‘Isn’t that true of anybody?’

‘Of course.’ They began walking back up the street towards the bar. ‘Not my kind of place,’ he said, in an attempt to change the subject.

‘Mine neither.’ Rachel inhaled on the cigarette, touching the back of her neck. ‘The first place to be blown up in the event of a revolution.’

She was exactly right. Bar Bleu had been wall-to-wall with that new international class — over-educated, over-privileged — who are dedicated solely to the accumulation of wealth and status and to the satisfaction of vast, insatiable appetites. That had been one of the noticeable things about Kleckner. The people at the party — intellectually incurious, devoid of self-doubt, somehow making a virtue of distilled greed and social ambition — had happily wallowed in the euro-trash nirvana of the bar. Girls, coke, champagne, designer labels … It was all there, all on show, all for the taking. Yet Kell had sensed in Kleckner a reluctance fully to embrace such a lifestyle. Had he found himself part of a fast diplomatic and entrepreneurial ex-pat set, swinging from bar to bar, from nightclub to nightclub, and simply decided to enjoy it for what it was? Or was there an operational agenda, an advantage to be gained from doing so?

‘I ought to say goodbye to Ryan.’

Rachel had decided on behalf of both of them that they would not be going back to the party. Five minutes later she had emerged from the bar with a smile on her face and a promise that their night was not yet over.

‘So,’ she said, looping her hand through Kell’s arm and guiding him down the street. She was holding his body close to hers. ‘Where are you taking me?’

Kell could smell her perfume, his arm enclosing her waist, the suppleness of her.

‘Where do you feel like going?’ he asked.

‘How about your hotel?’