Revenger

51

Robbie Bell made his living by watching, assessing and calculating. He’d long ago perfected the art of feigning interest; faking the smile that seems like a response, watching and waiting while other people dug themselves into deeper and deeper holes. And while one part of his mind was occupied with the problem of how to keep Adams from doing anything too stupid before Crewson and his people had come up with a containment plan for the Netherton Street disaster, the other was thinking about Alix Vermulen’s boyfriend, Sam. Something about him wasn’t right.

No, make that lots of things.

For a start, the Vermulen woman had only introduced him as ‘Sam’, no surname. Bell hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, assuming she was just being informal. But on reflection it seemed bizarre for a grown man to sit down to dinner with a senior politician and not give his full name. Most people would want to be remembered by a powerful man who might be the next prime minister. But Sam did not, and that was odd.

Then there was the whole way he’d raised the subject of the riot. He’d had that ridiculous macho-bullshit conversation with Adams about fake guns and waited until two entire courses had been cleared away — long after it was obvious no one on the table knew about the riot — to mention the minor fact that there were dead bodies littering the streets of South London. By Sam’s own account, he’d heard about it in the cab on the way over. So why wasn’t that the first thing he had mentioned? Why hadn’t his first words been, ‘Have you heard about the riot?’

Next, there was the whole business about his friend — the one who’d called Adams a typical fucking glory boy. (A perfect description, Bell thought. He’d use it too, one day.) Sam had said that he was another Marine, and there’d been the strong hint that they’d both been more than that, which meant special forces. But there was just something about the way Sam had spoken about this man, something, well… elegiac, like he was remembering a lost friend. But how could that be? Sam had said that they’d been having a drink together earlier in the evening, watching the beginning of the speech.

And then the penny began to drop and something else struck Robbie Bell. Sam had been wearing a suede jacket — a good one. A man as well-off as he seemed to be would take the trouble to have a jacket like that cleaned on a regular basis. But there had been marks on it, like brown sprinkles… or spatters…

Bell realized that Nicki Adams was saying something to him. She was asking him when the taxi would arrive to take her home. He looked her, nodded and said, ‘I’ll go and check right away.’ But all he could think was: Crewson needs to know about this.