Watchman

Twenty-Three

The office telephone rang, and since Billy Monmouth was alone, he was forced to answer it for himself.

‘Monmouth here.’

The receiver clicked and went dead. Billy replaced it with a sigh, but left his hand hovering above the desk. The ringing recommenced, and he pounced.

‘Monmouth.’

‘Billy, it’s Andrew Gray. Any word on your friend Miles?’

Billy sighed again.

‘I was about to ask you the same thing,’ he said. ‘No, there’s been nothing at this end.’

‘He’s probably alive then?’

‘Or probably dead. Who can tell?’

‘I bet our mutual friend is shitting himself all the colors of the rainbow.’

‘I doubt that, Andrew. Our “friend,” as you put it, is not one to make himself conspicuous. But let’s hope something happens soon. What about Sizewell?’

‘Leave him to me, Billy.’

‘That’s what frightens me, Andrew.’ And with that he dropped the receiver back into its cradle, which chimed once and once only.

Sheila phoned again from the office, but Colonel Denniston had no news, and Billy had no news. Had her husband disappeared then? she had asked, but both had been cagey in their replies.

‘Well, we don’t know where he is,’ said Denniston, ‘but he may well have gone off on his own for a few days. He completed his work in Belfast before he vanished. You must realize, Mrs. Flint, that Miles has been under rather a strain of late, hasn’t he? Too much pressure and all that.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Merely that he may have felt the need for a break.’

‘Without telling you? Without telling his own wife?’

‘A complete break, Mrs. Flint. I have to say that he had been acting a little strangely.’

‘How strangely?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’ Denniston sounded suddenly and irrevocably bored. ‘Look, I’m sure there’s no cause for concern, but we’ve let the chaps in Belfast know to keep an eye open for him. If there’s been no contact or sighting in the next day or so, we’ll reconsider the situation, reevaluate it.’

‘You talk as though he were a row of figures.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that, Mrs. Flint.’

‘Nothing, Colonel. Thank you so much. Goodbye.’

Colonel Denniston was not stupid. He knew that something was wrong in Ireland. But there were other, more important things on his mind. Another head was due to roll, probably from the very top of the heap. He read again the newspaper report in front of him, its subdued headline — KEW TERRORIST ATTACK KILLS ONE, INJURES SEVEN — serving only to highlight the horror. Londoners were agog. At times like these, he had noticed in the past, a sense of wartime stubbornness overtook the capital. People went about their business, jaws set defiantly against the enemy, and everyone talked to everyone else in bus queues, showing once more that humanity bloomed in adversity.

Heads would roll, for it was already evident that one of those responsible for the bomb was the gardener who had been involved in the Harvest surveillance, and the surveillance, if sustained, must surely have put a halt to this atrocity. Good-bye to the old boy then, and, most probably, hello, Mr. Partridge. Partridge was no friend to Colonel Denniston. There would be hard times ahead, arguments over accountability, the need for a new broom, a clean sweep. All the old clichés of business. It was bound to come out sooner or later that the firm had known about the gardener. Special Branch would blabber, in order to cover their own backs. And who had ordered the surveillance to cease? Mr. Partridge. Perhaps that, if nothing else, would save the watchmen from his wrath. But, of course, they would be in the firing line for everybody else’s sticks and stones. Everything would hit them and would stick to them.

Nothing, of course, would stick to Partridge. He was the Teflon man.

Harry Sizewell wanted to make statements from his hospital bed, but the doctors weren’t having any of it. The best he could manage was to relay messages to the press outside via his agent, and then watch the television in his room as Giles repeated it all to the waiting cameras at the hospital gates. Not very telegenic, old Giles, too nervous, trying to answer any queries truthfully rather than handing out the stock responses. And those journalists knew it. They asked more and more barbed questions, honing them each time, and Giles looked into the camera as though he were a Peeping Tom at somebody’s keyhole. Blast the man. But bless him, too. He had been at Harry’s bedside constantly, probably having nowhere else to go. The whole situation was tailor-made for the creating of political capital and public sympathy, but Giles just wasn’t up to it. Why not? The man had been involved in politics for years, after all. Ah, but always as an invisible man, always one step behind Harry. He was not meant for limelight and the immediacy of media pressure. Poor man. He was making a mess of the whole thing.

The door of Harry Sizewell’s airy room opened silently, and the attractive nurse came in. ‘All right, Mr. Sizewell? Got everything you want?’

‘Oh, just about, nurse, just about.’ And he laughed with hearty false humor. Yes, he’s sitting up and making jokes with the staff, said one pretty nurse earlier today. He’s not the kind of man to let something like this stop him or defeat his principles.

‘Good. Just ring if you need me.’ And with that she was off, vanishing as briskly and as efficiently as Jimmy Dexter had when the bomb had gone off. It had been like a vacuum inside Harry Sizewell’s head, everything being sucked in toward the center, more implosion than explosion, and there had been a smattering of warm rain, light, dust, heat. A moment’s silence, and then the first scream, male, but piercing, and the recognition of carnage, a shattering of the whole scheme of things.

The Home Secretary was elsewhere, probably in a more private room than this private room, or a more private hospital even. But then his injuries were greater than Sizewell’s, if the media were to be believed. Burns, it was said. A team was being flown in from Belfast, best burn specialists in Europe. Well, one could see why. And Jimmy Dexter sprinkled over the turf like so much fertilizer, nourishing the very tree that they had gone there to plant. So there would be a vacant post for someone, and surely he would be the obvious choice from the media point of view.

‘And now today’s other news...’

He pressed the gadget and the television burned out to darkness. Yes, there had been a bout of immediate nausea, followed by a frightening darkness. Dear Lord God, I’m going to die, he had thought, though the notion had seemed quite absurd. In any event, he had wakened to searing white echoes, and then had been given gas, slipping away again, wanting to kick and to shout and, above all, to stay awake. I may never wake up again, you bastards.

MURDERING BASTARDS, the headline had screamed.

Well, of course they were. To pick such an open place, such a public spot. But such a sweet target: how could they have refused the opportunity? There had been security, of course, there always was, but how secure could one be? It was a fact of life that politicians were targets. It was part of the hard-won image. As soon as one gained one’s seat, there were policemen on one’s doorstep, opening car doors, one step ahead and one step behind during every trip. It gave one a sense of power, and Sizewell had always enjoyed it. It was a mark of attention, a badge of his importance in the state.

All the same, intelligence should have caught wind of this one. He knew that he would have to have a few words with his old friend Partridge. But first there was another statement to compose. I would like to be seen as a symbol perhaps of this country’s determination never to give in to...

He thought again of the phone calls and the threats, of the snooping newspaperman. This would settle his hash. Let him try and dig up dirt on me now, thought Sizewell, no one would dare publish it. He lay back contentedly, fingering his singed eyebrows delicately. Partridge would know what to do, he was sure of that.

Partridge was on the hunt, hunting out his superior who had gone underground. Partridge knew that when the old boy needed to think, or to escape, the railway stations were often not enough for him, and he would find a half-decent platform on the underground and sit there, watching the ebb and flow of the day’s travelers, until he had made peace with himself. On a day such as this, though, he might just be of a mind to push his way right to the front of the platform, waiting until the scream of lights from the tunnel gave him the momentary courage to leap onto the rushing tracks.

Bond Street, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Russell Square, King’s Cross, Euston, Warren Street, and Goodge Street took him the best part of the morning, and by the end of it he had only a sense of utter hopelessness and a raging headache to show for his odyssey. The old boy could be anywhere. What was the use? He came up into blinding light, the Ascension-clear light of early winter. The air was as brittle as glass, and the paving stones were like permafrost beneath his feet. He bought the noon edition of the Standard and read of Harry Sizewell’s continuing recovery. Well, that was something anyway. God, what a mess this whole thing had been. What an utter shambles.

He knew of a small sandwich bar near the museum where he might have lunch before heading back (in a taxi perhaps: he could not face the underground). There were reports to be drafted, questions to be avoided (not evaded: he knew the difference), files to be unfiled and refiled, and the Harvest team to be summoned from their individual locations. All except Miles Flint. Where on God’s earth was he? Partridge had read the cryptic note from the mobile support unit: the arrest had been going to plan, but then there had been a skirmish, shots had been fired, and one of the suspects had escaped, taking agent Scott with him. What the hell did it all mean? Had Flint been kidnapped? Partridge had spent a great deal of the taxpayers’ money on telephone calls while he tried to find out. He had been bounced like a rubber ball from one extension to another, from one barracks to another, and always the person to whom he most wanted to speak was not available, was ‘still in the field,’ could not be contacted. What did they mean, ‘still in the field’? The operation should have ended days ago. It looked as though Circe had blown up in his face. And, as ever, Miles Flint was the fuse.

The receiver burning in his hand, Partridge had finally given up. For some reason a poem by Yeats came to him. He had never been one for poetry, but a few lines, rote-learned for school examinations, stayed with him: ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.’ Well, he was damned if he was going to fall apart, though everyone and everything around him might. No, he would be the center, he would hold, he must.

He found the old boy in the sandwich bar, examining his shoes and his reputation, perhaps thinking both to be in need of repair. Partridge sat down at the scarred Formica-topped table.

‘Sir?’

‘Partridge, what are you doing here?’ The voice was tired out, like froth in the bottom of a cup. ‘Harvest went all wrong, didn’t it? We pulled them out too early.’

‘That happens, sir.’

‘It shouldn’t. We should have hung on. London in the middle of a bombing campaign, and we pull out of a terrorist surveillance.’

‘We may have a larger problem than that, sir.’

‘No sign of Flint yet?’

‘None, sir.’

‘What do you think?’

‘It could be anything, but the probability is that he’s been taken by the IRA, maybe even turned by them.’

‘He knows too much, you know. We can’t let them get anything out of him.’

‘I’m aware of that, sir. There are men in the field just now. They’ll find him.’

‘Then give them the order. Nobody must come out alive.’

‘That’s a bit—’

‘Nobody!’ The director seemed close to tears, but they were tears of anger. Things were moving away from him too fast, and he felt a sudden impotence.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Partridge, realizing for the first time just how close he was to the top job. The old boy would be lucky to last another week. Seven days only, at most. He had been summoned to Downing Street three times in the last five days. He was running out of answers.

‘Bloody Miles Flint,’ he said now, ‘where is he? What’s his game, eh? Just what’s his game?’

Twenty-Four

There were splendor beetles everywhere, which made for a fairly depressing homecoming. Look at them all, besuited and betied, the suits French, the ties silky soft but unobtrusive. Obtrusively unobtrusive. City shoes of polished leather clacking the length of the expensive streets, the streets of gold. There was nothing splendid in this show. Latin, splendere, to shine. But the splendor beetles buffed up to the nines, Buprestidae, their larvae fed on decomposing matter. There was always this furtive decay beneath the casual and splendent display. What secrets did they hide from the world, these busy businessmen, their shoes sounding like the rubbing together of insect legs? Everyone had their secrets, their little cupboards of treasure, private diaries locked away in bureaus, the pile of salacious magazines in the bottom of the wardrobe, the unquenchable taste for the illicit.

Miles heard the sounds of guilt as he walked with Collins, and he thought, is this what I’ve been paid all these years to protect? He had been put in charge of everything, from the whitest lie to the guiltiest of traitors, all in the cause of the sanctity of secrecy itself. Was that it, then? Yes, that was it. That was all. He had been a schoolboy, collecting things for the teacher, no reasons needed, no excuses. He flagged down a taxi and motioned for the sullen Collins to get in. He was fairly certain that Collins wouldn’t attempt to escape, not now that he was in the enemy heartland. Miles had noted the newspaper headlines. The hunt was on for the Kew bombers. Besides, Miles had offered him a very generous incentive to stick around.

The new Miles had not been surprised when their return to England had turned out to be so uncomplicated. He felt that he could accomplish anything. The spider’s bite still tingled in his blood. He ducked into the taxi after Collins, and felt warm and safe and snug.

Snug as a bug in a rug.

‘St. John’s Wood,’ he said to the driver, then sat back to watch, as Collins was doing, the parade of all those who had been fitted out for the annual ugly bugs’ ball.

He couldn’t be sure which, to the taxi driver, would seem the more suspicious — perfect silence during the drive, or Collins’s accentuated brogue. He decided finally to play it as it came. The driver, in any case, seemed preoccupied. He was in the midst of an argument with the world at large and other drivers in particular, and he carried on the argument vociferously from his cab window.

‘Why St. John’s Wood?’ asked Collins, trying, Miles noted, not to make his voice sound too Irish.

‘That’s where I live,’ said Miles, quite loudly.

The driver looked in his mirror, interested for a split second, then turned back to harangue a pedestrian who had dared to step onto a crosswalk.

‘But won’t they be watching your house?’

Miles shrugged and smiled.

The traffic was crawling like flies through a pot of glue. Time was of the essence now that Miles had sneaked back. He had to finish this off while the element of surprise was his.

‘Do you know London at all?’ he asked Collins, whose eyes were transfixed by the passing parade.

‘Never been here in my life.’

‘It’s hell,’ said Miles.

‘Yes, I can believe that,’ murmured Collins, his hands planted firmly on his knees.

St. John’s Wood, however, was reassuringly the same, though the renovating and building work continued all around. Miles held the last of his money in his hand, ready to pay the driver, his wallet empty now, no credit cards, no checkbook, nothing. His identity lay somewhere inside the house in Marlborough Place, but he could no longer be sure that he wanted it.

He realized that it was, in its way, a blessing that he had been ordered to leave his identity behind him, for the firm had given him plenty of cash to make up for the lack of plastic money. The owner of the fishing boat had taken a fair whack, but that had been worth every penny. Then the rail fares had been expensive, but he had never enjoyed traveling by bus. In their carriage, he had read in the newspapers of the aftermath of the Kew bombing. It seemed that two people were still in hospital. Collins read, too, and his eyes registered a mixture of disgust and accusation that Miles found reassuring. He had changed sides once before; perhaps he would do so again. He knew what Collins wanted. He wanted what everyone, be they terrorist or spy, wanted eventually — he wanted out, plain and simple. But it was never plain and simple. It was not like quitting at roulette when you had won or lost. There were forces in this game, the old invisible rules that chained you to the table. No croupier ever said rien ne va plus, no wheel was ever still. But Miles was about to try to beat the table. He was going to break the whole system. And Collins, soulful, questioning eyes or not, was going to help him.

As the taxi turned out of Wellington Road and into Marlborough Place, Miles saw the figure. A woman, standing opposite his house, and quite obviously watching it.

‘Just keep driving,’ he said. The driver nodded. Passing her, Miles risked a glance. She was a brazen one, though, wasn’t she? They didn’t train them well enough these days. Well, let her wait there. He wasn’t going to announce his arrival.

‘I thought this was where you lived,’ whispered Collins.

‘It is,’ said Miles. ‘But I thought you might like to see where the Beatles made Abbey Road. It’s just up here. It would be a shame for you to come to London and not see that famous zebra crossing after all, wouldn’t it?’

Collins shook his head slowly. He had left a nightmare and entered a farce.

He hit him again, and this time the fanged alien stayed down, but as he walked toward the exit, another one came at him, hitting him hard in the back, and just as he crossed the threshold out of the room, his energy pack registered zero and he crumpled to the floor. A small angelic figure left his prone body and, to the music of the Funeral March, ascended to the top of the screen.

‘Damn!’

He had scored twenty-seven thousand, not even enough to put him on the top ten high scores. Jim Stevens turned from the machine and looked around the noisy arcade, seeking out another game to play. Nobody seemed at all curious about a middle-aged man in an amusement arcade full of children, which was just as well, since he was in no mood for looks and stares.

The Sizewell investigation had turned sour on him, and he had a raging toothache at the front of his mouth. He was also a little hung over from the previous night, a night spent wining and dining Janine. She had not fallen for his charm, but he had fallen to her gracefully executed karate chop to the neck. He had forgotten two important points: one, that she was a feminist, and two, that she attended self-defense classes in what free time she had. There was certainly nothing repressed or downtrodden about the blow she had given him. It still hurt when he turned his head to right or left. So, with everything conspiring against him, he had come down to the arcade to blitz a few aliens and shoot hell out of King Kong, Commando, the Frog, and Dizzy Miss Lizzie. All to the accompaniment of bleeps and squeals and the tight, businesslike sound of heavy rock music from the arcade’s sound system.

‘Give me another quid’s worth of change,’ he said to the beautiful, bored girl in the booth, whose languid features had first attracted him to this place. Forget it, he had enough woman trouble as it was. When the bars opened again, he would sink himself in whiskey and beer and damn the consequences. Everything was going wrong. Business as usual. Sizewell would be impenetrable now that he had the media behind him. He almost had a halo over his cursed head. In addition to which, the spy, Flint, had never come home, which left Jim Stevens with nothing but a pocketful of change and a screaming desire to blast hell out of the Zorgon Battle Fleet once and for all.

Sheila parked the Volkswagen with her usual care, reminding herself that the passenger-side taillight needed a new bulb. Taillight, taillight, taillight. She picked up her briefcase and a large hardback book from the backseat. The book was about literary Paris in the 1920s. What she remembered about Paris personally were the appalling toilets in some of the buildings and the outrageously priced café au lait of Montparnasse. She had not caught even a whisper of existentialism there, though she had found plenty of evidence of a dog-eat-dog philosophy.

Taillight, taillight.

The door opened fluidly and closed behind her with a slight echo, as if she needed reminding that she was alone in the house. The silence embraced her like a frozen coat, a chill smother of mothballs. She would cook up some mushrooms in wine and tomatoes, and eat them hot with rice or pasta. Rice probably. There was no pasta in the house.

In the kitchen, she noticed that one of the chairs had been pulled from the small table. It hadn’t been that way this morning. She always pushed it in after she finished breakfast. Always. She felt her stomach constrict and her face begin to tingle. Oh God, she thought, oh God. There were sharp knives hanging on hooks above the stove. She lifted one down and clutched it to her breast, looking around her for other signs of ingress. Hearing a cough from the living room, she took a deep breath and started out of the kitchen.

When the living-room door flew open, the man started up from his seat, ready to do battle with almost anything except the wild-eyed harridan who, teeth bared, held a glittering carving knife before her in striking position.

‘Jesus, missus, there’s no... I can explain...’

She was only a yard away from him, and she looked huge, fear pumping her up to twice her normal size.

‘No need to explain,’ she hissed.

‘No, I can explain, really I can. Your husband...’

She was moving toward him, needing only the excuse of a wrong movement to send the knife plunging down. Two feet from him, then a foot, her breath as loud as any wild animal’s...

‘Sheila?’

Miles came clattering down the stairs.

‘Sheila?’

He was dressed in the blue terry cloth robe she had bought last Christmas. His hair was wet and stringy, his eyes trying to pierce the blurred air. His glasses had been left behind in the bathroom.

‘Oh, Miles.’

They embraced, pulling each other inward hard.

‘Oh, Miles, where have you been? I’ve been so worried.’

‘No need,’ he whispered, stroking her soft hair, feeling her weight against him, and then, in embarrassment, remembering the presence of Collins, he pulled away from her, but slowly, tenderly.

‘How did you get in?’ she asked. ‘You left your keys behind.’

‘Through the back garden. My friend here is a dab hand with a locked door. This is Mr. Collins, by the way. Will, this is my wife, Sheila.’ Miles examined the knife, which was still trapped in Sheila’s fist, as incongruous now as some cheap joke-shop toy. ‘It looks,’ he said, ‘as though you’ve already been introduced.’

Sheila smiled toward Collins, her face as red as a funeral wreath. Collins shrugged and smiled back, a little humiliated at his own show of cowardice. It surprised him that he could feel humiliation without any concomitant anger. Something was changing inside him, but what?

They ate the mushrooms, which Sheila had cooked from her special recipe. During the meal, Miles and Collins glanced at each other, smiling conspiratorially. Both were thinking how strange this food seemed after the huge Irish breakfasts, the solid and comforting amounts of fatty meat, the potatoes and veg. While they ate, Sheila asked her questions, and Miles tried to parry them, feigning tiredness and artlessness. He had introduced Will Collins as a friend of long standing, but Collins was no actor and Sheila, sensing that here was the weak point in her husband’s armor, had begun, gently but skillfully, to interrogate Collins. At last, some scraps of rice still untouched on her plate, Sheila put down her fork.

‘You’re lying through your teeth, both of you. It’s quite transparent. Miles, I thought we had some kind of an agreement. Truth in marriage and all that. Is our agreement at an end?’

Miles chose to stare at Collins. ‘Not here, Sheila, not now. Later.’

‘Why don’t you trust me, for Christ’s sake? Why does there always have to be this screen between us?’

‘Of course I trust you, Sheila. Don’t make a scene.’

‘Am I making a scene, Mr. Collins?’

‘No, Mrs. Flint, you are not.’ Miles looked at Collins in silent horror, while Sheila turned to her husband in victory. ‘Your husband,’ Collins continued, ‘likes to think that he’s armor-plated. That much I do know. But’ — he paused to sip some wine — ‘I never set eyes on him until last week. I don’t know why he’s lying to you, frankly I don’t care, but I don’t see what point there is to it. He... we need all the friends we can get. You’ve got to see that, Flint. Else we could both be corpses by the morning.’

Sheila put her hand to her mouth, her eyes dancing with shock.

‘For God’s sake, Collins,’ spat Miles.

‘It’s true, though, isn’t it?’ asked Sheila quietly. ‘Isn’t it? Tell me.’

‘Over coffee then,’ said Miles, placing his napkin on his plate. ‘The dinner table is no place for a horror story.’

So they cleared the table, mouthing pat phrases and stock responses, and Miles poured out the last of the wine into their glasses and found a bottle of Bowmore whiskey.

‘Take this through, will you?’

‘All right.’

‘And some glasses.’

‘Will these do?’

‘Yes, fine.’

‘Coffee ready?’

‘Just about. Do you take sugar, Mr. Collins?’

‘Three, please.’

‘And two for me, dear.’

‘But you don’t take sugar, Miles.’

‘I’ve changed.’

It was all very civilized, but it was fake, too, and they all knew it.

‘Will you help me?’ Miles asked.

Collins sat in the corner, realizing that he could be nothing more than an onlooker here. He smoked a cigarette, but Miles had refused the offer of one.

‘Not unless you tell me what’s going on.’ Sheila had folded her arms, such an obvious gesture of defiance that Miles was forced to smile.

‘I need your trust,’ he said, ‘and I need you not to ask questions.’

‘Then I simply won’t help you, Miles. I want to know what it’s all about.’

‘So do we,’ muttered Collins to himself. He stubbed out his cigarette and drew another from the packet. Miles signaled that he would like one, too. Collins had already started to place both cigarettes in his mouth to light them when he realized what he was doing. They both laughed, and he first offered Miles the packet, then threw across the lighter. Miles lit and drew on the cigarette as though it would be his last.

‘Sheila,’ he said, ‘I’m a spy.’

‘Of course,’ she said calmly.

‘You had an inkling?’

She laughed at this.

‘More than an inkling, darling. You didn’t marry a wooden doll, you know, you married me. And I wasn’t born yesterday.’

Miles sat back, not daring to look toward Collins, who might be smiling a little too happily. Had it always been like this? Had he always been slower and more naive than those around him, standing outside the door listening while Sheila heard his every breath?

‘Yes,’ he said, playing for time, ‘of course.’

‘That reminds me actually,’ said Sheila.

‘What?’

‘A man’s been pestering me. Said his name was James Stevens and that he wanted to see you on business. I know who he is, though.’

‘Who?’

‘He’s a journalist on one of the Fleet Street — or should I say Wapping? — dailies. Investigative reporting is his forte, I believe.’

‘What the hell does he want?’

‘I rather thought you’d know that. Or perhaps Mr. Collins does?’

‘Not me, missus. I don’t even like reporters.’

‘I wonder what he’s after?’ Miles said quietly.

‘Oh, we’ll find out, no doubt, now that you’re back. Anyway, forget all that for the moment. What is it that you want me to do?’

It seemed to Miles that he did little else these days but take deep breaths and steel himself for action. He took one now, just for luck, and felt himself grow in confidence again. He went to the window and looked out to where a blackbird had balanced itself precariously on the pliant branch of a tree. The woman, standing across the road, turned and walked away toward Abbey Road. He had decided, after all, to give them a fighting chance. Let her call in. They wouldn’t have time to react. Miles drew the curtains closed.

Janine had been mad as hell’s own fires with Jim Stevens for his absolute lack of subtlety. The irony was that she rather liked him — not just admiration for his journalist’s skills, but an actual like of the occasionally boorish personality that lay behind those skills. Yes, it was his plain and honest stupidity that had angered her, the way he had suddenly come to the conclusion that because he had had a bellyful of drink, she would suddenly be putty in his arms, leading to a warm bed and a late breakfast the following day. He had thought wrong, and she hoped that his neck and head hurt as much as she suspected they would. He had deserved everything he got, except perhaps her offer of money for a taxi when it transpired that he had spent every last penny on alcohol.

She was, however, seriously thinking of resigning her thankless commission. She had come here today only to show faith, so to speak, to work out her final days for him so that he could not turn around and accuse her of slacking. But she was glad that she had come, and felt sure that Jim would be interested to hear what she had to tell him. All she had to do now was find a telephone that still worked. In St. John’s Wood, she didn’t think that would be a problem.

Twenty-Five

Billy Monmouth leafed through a book on Brueghel, purchased on his way home for no good reason except the sudden and desperate need to spend money. He skipped the commentary and concentrated on the paintings themselves, solid representations of peasant life and the natural cycle, followed by those few but powerful images of death and hell and the whole works. Billy clutched his whiskey glass as though it were some kind of crutch, while the book, resting on his thighs and knees, seemed as heavy as sin.

From the seldom-used stereo came the sounds of the Rolling Stones. They were another of his secret vices, though he played their albums seldom and selectively. They were to him predictions of chaos as potent as any Cassandra’s. Hell, Billy knew, was not some far distant region. It was a millimeter away, and all one had to do was scratch at the surface with one’s fingernail to reveal it.

He thought of Sheila’s insistent phone call. She had to see him, it was as simple as that. He supposed that she would need comforting now that Miles was gone, but he did not relish the task. And so he would allow her to see him like this, bemired in self-pity, allowing himself to be led into the Dance of Death to the music of a 1960s guitar wail. He just didn’t care anymore.

There was a knock at the door. Why didn’t she use her key? The knock came again. Ah yes, she had sent back the key, hadn’t she? Well, he supposed he could just about manage to lift himself from his chair. He heaved the book onto the floor and heard the stereo switching itself off, the record finishing with a nice sense of timing. Should he choose something else? No, let silence be their coda.

As he opened the door, he felt it push against him, causing him to stagger back, so that he was already — physically as well as mentally — completely off balance when Miles Flint strode into the room. He seemed taller than Billy remembered, and behind him came a taller man still, a mercenary-looking character with thick black hair and the beginnings of a beard, who seemed to have been conjured out of his own thoughts.

‘Miles...’

‘You’d better sit down, Billy. You look a little weak. Been having a drink? Perhaps we might join you. Mr. Collins, see Mr. Monmouth here to his seat.’

It was Miles all right, but it was like no Miles Billy had ever encountered, not even the one who had slapped him on the face at the Vorticist exhibition. Miles’s eyes roamed the room, checking this aspect and that, avoiding Billy. There was something sharper and quicker about him, as though he had been working on half power before. He seemed larger, too, muscular, his eyes keen and ready for anything. Billy might have taken this for posturing, but knew instinctively, despite the haze of alcohol around him, that this was something real, something dangerous. He wanted to be very sober for this, whatever this might be, but instead found himself feeling woozier still. He needed cold water for his face and coffee for his bloodstream.

‘Miles...’

Miles nodded, seeming to read his thoughts.

‘Wait,’ he ordered his accomplice, who remained silent and impassive as a golem. ‘Take Mr. Monmouth to the bathroom and allow him to wash himself. I’ll make some coffee, Billy. Oh, and Mr. Collins?’

‘Yes, Mr. Flint?’

‘Don’t let him out of your sight.’

‘I surely won’t.’

Sweet mother, thought Billy, being led away, this man is Irish. Who the hell is he?

Miles watched the wretched Billy being led away, his face ashen as though the extermination trucks were parked around the corner of the lounge. So far so good. Miles felt rather pleased with himself, and noticed that Collins was entering into the spirit of the thing, too. They had scared the utter living shit out of an utter living shit. Now they could examine at their leisure Billy’s hollow shell.

He drank the first scalding cup of coffee without his lips once leaving its rim. Miles stood over him with the steaming jug, pouring more out when requested. The second cup Billy drank more slowly, almost gingerly, taking deep breaths between mouthfuls. Collins, standing behind him, mimed the sticking of fingers down his throat to Miles, indicating that Billy had made himself sick in the bathroom. The weak strands of Billy’s hair were still beaded with water, a few drops falling occasionally onto his pale, heavy face, where they sought the safe shadows of his throat.

‘OK?’ asked Miles.

‘A bit better, yes.’

Miles motioned for Collins to sit in the other armchair, and then made himself comfortable on the sofa.

‘I have a lot of questions, Billy, and I know that you know the answers. Before beginning, I should point out that Mr. Collins here is a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and I’ve given him a promise that if I’m not satisfied with your answers, I’ll hand you over to him. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Collins?’

The nod was slow, the eyes fixed on those of the trembling Billy. Miles decided to himself that he would have made a damned good interrogator. No, perhaps not: he was enjoying it too much.

‘Miles, what is this all about?’

Miles pulled a small cassette recorder from his pocket and switched it on, placing it on the low coffee table.

‘That’s not the kind of answer I need, Billy, that’s not a good start.’ Billy looked down into his lap in a show of obeisance. ‘Do you remember,’ continued Miles, ‘on one of our lunch dates, not so very long ago, how you introduced me to a... how did you put it?... an “old friend” of yours, someone you saw only at dinner parties?’

‘Yes,’ replied Billy, holding his coffee cup in both hands, quite sober now. ‘It was Andrew Gray.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Miles, nodding, ‘yes, that was the name, Andrew Gray. Do you happen to know, Billy, why Mr. Gray should have gone to Ireland looking for Mr. Collins here?’

If such a thing were possible, Billy actually grew paler. He looked over to Collins.

‘Time for explanations, Billy. Time to get it all off your chest.’

‘Miles, this is madness. Do you know the danger you’re in?’

Miles shrugged. Billy rested for a moment, seemed to make up his mind, then leaned forward in his chair.

‘You know me, Miles, I’ve always liked to know what’s going on in the world and in the firm particularly. I like to think of myself as the eyes and ears of the place. Well, that goes for past events as well as present. You know that your sidekick here murdered Philip Hayton?’

‘In exchange for some guns, yes.’

‘And that the middleman on the job was—’

‘The Israeli assassinated by Latchkey, yes.’

Billy nodded.

‘Then you know a great deal,’ he said.

‘But you, Billy, you knew it all the time. And you knew that something was up, that someone was trying to get me out of the way.’

‘I tried to warn you when you were leaving for—’

‘Some warning,’ spat Miles. He rose to his feet and walked around to the back of the sofa, where heavy net curtains hid them all from the darkened city.

‘Some warning,’ he repeated evenly. ‘You let me walk right into it every step of the way, without knowing what I was getting into. You and your friend Gray. He’s CIA, yes?’

Billy nodded.

‘Something like that.’

‘And you’re his eyes and ears, Billy, his puppet, nothing more than a puppet. Yes?’

Billy touched the side of his face, but said nothing.

‘Yes,’ Miles answered for him, ‘or maybe a performing monkey would be a better description. At first I suspected you of being behind the whole thing, but it didn’t fit. You wouldn’t have gone near Sheila if you had been.’ He turned toward Billy and rested his hands on the back of the sofa. ‘She had nothing to do with this, did she?’

Billy thought about his answer for a long time. He had detected a hint of pleading in Miles’s voice. If he were to lie and say yes, she was involved, then he could reverse the roles, could... But he was past all caring. The game had become too complex, and he couldn’t be bothered anymore to read the new rulebook. So he shook his head.

Miles nodded, thankful and satisfied. Collins just sat there. This was a revelation to him, like some grand, unfolding soap opera. But, he had to keep reminding himself, this was for real. He couldn’t allow himself to forget that.

‘So,’ Miles continued, ‘you were a magnet for gossip, bits and pieces of information, and Gray used you as an informer.’

‘It was mutual,’ said Billy, growing more confident. ‘He gave me information, too. He knew quite a lot about the other side, about his own people, and’ — he paused — ‘about us. He knew, for example, about the Hayton business, not all of it, but enough. Between us we put together a pretty fair picture of the whole thing. Philip Hayton had been... involved.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The love that dare not speak its name.’

‘He means homosexuality,’ Miles said to Collins, who had furrowed his brow.

‘Yes,’ said Billy. ‘Well, nothing new in that, is there, Miles? Not in our profession. But the man with whom Hayton was involved was trying to break it off. Perhaps he had been scared by the whole “Fourth Man” business. Hayton didn’t want to lose him, was threatening public exposure, moral blackmail, all that sort of thing, I suppose. I’m a bit hazy on this part of the story. There was a kind of triangle, you see, and Hayton was going to cause trouble for all. So he was eliminated. It looked like a terrorist killing’ — he looked to Collins — ‘and so was hushed up, but it had been arranged from within the firm, quite clandestinely, utilizing the firm’s own channels and techniques.’

‘All a very long time ago now,’ said Miles as Billy sipped at his coffee, made a face, put it aside, and rose to fetch a bottle from the cabinet. They all sipped the whiskey for a moment or two, savoring the break in tension. Miles checked the tape in the cassette recorder.

‘It’s not as good as the Irish stuff, is it, Mr. Flint?’ said Collins.

‘You’re right, Mr. Collins,’ said Miles.

‘So,’ began Billy, not sure quite whether he were joking, ‘you’ve gone over to the other side, eh, Miles?’

‘Perhaps,’ answered Miles. Then, ‘Do go on with your story, Billy.’

‘That was it so far as the Hayton thing went. No one was any the wiser. He was seen as a victim of the troubles, nothing more. But Gray got hold of something, I’m not sure what. Hayton’s lover, having used the firm as cover for the operation, had aroused some interest. The Israeli, I would guess, worked for everyone: CIA, Mossad, us. I think Gray got his information from him.’

‘And?’

‘And’ — Billy paused again, rather overplaying his hand — ‘the trail led back to our own Mr. Partridge.’

‘Partridge?’

‘None other. He’d been Philip Hayton’s lover all those years ago, had tried to break it off, and had, well, finally taken stronger action.’

‘My God,’ whispered Miles. It was beginning to fit into place. ‘You mentioned a third man?’

‘Quite a lowly political huckster then as now. Harold Sizewell.’

‘Who was almost blown up at Kew?’

‘Quite. He’s my local MP actually. I’ve a place in his constituency, Chillglade.’

‘Well, well.’ Miles had the feeling that he was burrowing quickly into some warm and rotten piece of wood.

‘But all this was, as you say, Miles, a long time ago.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Several things. A concatenation of circumstances, you might say. For one thing, Partridge has worked his way up to a position where he is next in line to run the show.’

‘He’s worked hard and fair to get there, hasn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m not disputing that. But skeletons do have a way of appearing from the cupboard just when one doesn’t want them to. So our friend decided to tie up the only loose ends in his past.’

‘Which necessitated putting out of action those people who could be dangerous to him: Mr. Collins here, the Israeli, and Sizewell.’

‘As to Sizewell I can’t be sure. Gray seems to think that the bombing was coincidental. No, Sizewell wasn’t the threat. He would have as much to lose as Partridge should anything have emerged from the cupboard. But as for the others, yes.’

‘Where do I fit in to all this, Billy?’

‘You were an accident, Miles. Partridge had arranged it so that the tail on Latchkey should lose him. Gray reckons it worked something like this.’ Billy was on the edge of his chair now, becoming something like his old brash self again. ‘Partridge had found out that Latchkey’s target was to be the Israeli—’

‘How?’

‘Well, the closer you come to the top of the chain of command, the more intelligence comes your way. Perhaps it was a trade-off with one of our allies or our enemies.’

‘Go on.’

‘All Partridge had to do, having gleaned this information, was to ensure that the surveillance, which had already begun by this time, botched the job. Voilà, one of the thorns in his past disappears, and no one’s any the wiser. It was beautifully simple really. He must have thought it divine intervention when the opportunity arose. But then you entered the picture, just when you weren’t supposed to. You went along on the surveillance, you ended up being the one to lose Latchkey, and you became suspicious. In Partridge’s mind, you became another problem.’

Miles shook his head.

‘He was way off the mark, Billy. Yes, I was suspicious, but I hadn’t a clue what was going on, and I certainly wasn’t getting any closer to solving it.’

‘I know that, Miles, but Partridge thought that you were. That was what was so important.’

‘Sounds to me,’ said Collins slowly, ‘as though you were set up, Mr. Flint. Set up by this bastard here and the Gray character.’

Miles nodded.

‘That’s the way it looks to me, too. What do you say, Billy?’

‘Well, Miles...’ Billy had already lost what confidence he had gained during the telling of his tale. ‘It was Gray, you have to understand that.’

‘You were trying to flush Partridge out using me as bait?’

Billy looked into his lap again, but saw little comfort there. ‘Something like that,’ he mumbled.

‘But why was Gray so interested in the first place?’

‘Oh, good reasons. For one thing, and even you must see this, Miles, it is in nobody’s interest for someone like Partridge to step into the old boy’s shoes. The Americans have been nervous of our setup here since the 1970s. They’ve kept tabs on us. And for another...’

‘Well?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Billy, it looks to me as though Mr. Collins is itching to do you some violence.’

‘A lot of violence,’ corrected Collins.

Billy sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. ‘Then go ahead and do it.’

It was Miles’s turn to lean forward in his seat. ‘You were going to tell me about Gray, I think. Well, you’re not the only one who can put two and three together and come up with a conspiracy. What about this: Sizewell is on a committee investigating cooperation and the lack of it among the security services, as well as other highly secret and confidential proposals. The Americans would like to know what’s being said, and would simply love to have someone in there putting forward their own views. Sizewell was the obvious candidate because of the Hayton killing. They’d had him tucked away in their files since then in the hope that they could use him in just such a way at a later date, and that date is now. So your friend Gray was attempting to frighten a member of the British Parliament, to blackmail him, and the only way to stop blackmail like that, as we both know, is to root out the evidence. So Sizewell got in touch with his old friend, and Partridge was given another reason for eliminating the past. They must have thought the world was falling down on top of them.’ Miles looked over to Collins, who had started to sweat a little, though the central heating was temperate at most. ‘You’re a wanted man, Will. You’re the last one left alive who can jeopardize this whole stinking thing.’

‘Except that now you have it all on tape,’ said Collins.

‘Suppositions, theories. You’re the only witness, the only physical obstacle left.’

‘Which is why this CIA bastard was looking for me, to protect me?’

‘Yes. Where is Gray by the way, Billy?’

Billy shrugged. ‘France maybe. He’s heavily involved over there just now. Antiterrorism.’

‘A real troubleshooter, eh? It’s a pity. I’m sure we’d have liked to meet him, wouldn’t we, Will?’

‘Yes, Mr. Flint, we would.’

‘So, Partridge had set it up so that Latchkey could escape. Simple enough to do, I expect. An anonymous warning that he was being followed. But one of our men had to be in on it.’ Miles thought of splendor beetles and Sobranie cigarettes. ‘Phillips?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes, he of the lateral promotion.’ But hadn’t Phillips been in Mowbray’s camp? ‘What about Mowbray? His little setup was surely more of a threat to Partridge than I was?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Not with Phillips in his camp, keeping Partridge informed of all Richard’s doings?’ Miles was thinking back to that night at the Doric. But hadn’t Felicity first approached him while Phillips was parking the car? That would mean that her first sally had been... coincidence.

‘What about Cynegetics? Where does it enter the scheme of things?’

‘Well,’ said Billy, ‘shadowy as it is, we do know that Partridge set up the group and staffed it with agents loyal to him so that he could monitor anyone within the firm who might be trying to dig up the dirt on him.’

‘But he never guessed that it was you who was doing the burrowing?’

‘There were too many others for him to keep busy with. Andrew Gray saw to that.’

‘Others like me you mean?’

‘Yes. But now I have a question to put to you.’ Billy was rubbing at his face tiredly.

‘What?’

‘Just what happened to you in Ireland?’

Collins manufactured some rough and ready sandwiches, and they ate them, washing each one down with mouthfuls of tea. During which time Miles, as he thought only fair, told Billy his own story.

‘Incredible,’ was Billy’s response. ‘Partridge didn’t overestimate you. If anything he underestimated you. We all did, Miles.’

‘What’s this fellow Partridge’s first name anyway?’ Collins asked, through a paste of cheese and tomato.

‘Nobody knows,’ said Billy, still in awe of the Irishman.

‘Somebody must know,’ said Collins, ‘even if only his mammy.’

‘Let’s come back to Gray,’ said Miles. He was obsessed now, and was not about to be led away from his obsession. He had turned the tape over, and now he switched the cassette recorder on again.

‘Gray,’ he repeated, ‘was using me as bait, was he?’

‘Not especially,’ answered Billy lethargically. ‘But you did help discomfort Partridge, which was all to the good. Gray wanted to create the maximum panic so that Sizewell would give in. It wasn’t just you. I think he kept dropping hints and clues to Mauberley, too, knowing that Richard, no matter how stupid, was bound to come up with something eventually. Then there was a newspaper reporter called Stevens. Andrew did his anonymous phone call routine on him, sending him clues, so that Stevens would go after Sizewell. He’s probably still after him.’

‘Stevens, you said?’

‘Yes.’

Miles looked at Collins.

‘That’s the man Sheila said had been pestering her about me.’

‘Well, well, well,’ said Billy, ‘he must be a better reporter than we’d thought if he’s tracked you down.’

‘But all this,’ persisted Miles, ‘the reporter, me, the whole thing, was designed merely to pile on the pressure?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘Using human lives as bits and pieces in a game?’

‘Isn’t that what we do for a living, Miles?’

A fair answer, thought Miles, but it didn’t help to make any sense of it all. But, he supposed, if he were in a game, or even a game within a game, there must be a way out. All he had to do was keep on playing.

‘I’ll tell you this, Billy, it’s got to end, and it’s not going to end with me as the corpse and you lot as the grieving colleagues.’

‘It was never planned that you’d—’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Christ, Miles, how long have we known each other? If I’d thought that Partridge was planning anything so drastic, I’d have stopped you from going to Ireland, and I mean that.’

Miles stared at him hard, and Billy had to fight to keep his gaze matched to that of this new Miles.

‘I wonder,’ said Miles, not in reproach or disbelief but with real curiosity. ‘You know, Billy, you’ve been sitting back throughout, letting anyone and everyone become involved except yourself, afraid of committing yourself, of being on the losing side. We’ve been walking around with third-party insurance, and you’ve been fully covered. I could admire that to some extent. I could, but I don’t.’

‘What’s done is done, Miles. There’s no escaping it.’

‘True.’

‘Listen, confession’s over on my part, no more to tell. Except to say that you must be mad, running around with the man behind the Kew bombing. He’ll be public enemy number one any day now. But I suppose none of this is my concern. Do you mind if I put a record on, something relaxing?’

‘No, go ahead.’

Billy went to the stereo, slipped the record back into its sleeve, and began to search through his collection.

‘You’ve got a lot of records,’ said Miles, coming up behind him.

‘Oh, yes, well, I like to think that my tastes are eclectic.’ He brought out a classical album, thought better of it, and looked for something else.

‘Can’t you find anything suitable?’ said Miles.

‘Well, it is rather a strange occasion.’

‘Do you mind if I take a look?’

‘Not at all. What are your tastes, dear boy?’

‘Oh, eclectic, I suppose, like yours.’ Miles crouched down, while Billy, having decided upon a Dave Brubeck album, stood in front of the stereo. ‘I usually just start at the beginning,’ said Miles, ‘and work my way through. Take this section, for instance. I’d start here on the left with Pink Floyd, Liszt, Janis Ian, Michael Nyman, Tchaikovsky’ — Miles fingered each record in turn — ‘and so on, right up to... let me see, yes, Miles Davis.’ Billy had moved back from the stereo without switching it on. ‘Look, Billy, it’s a funny thing, but if you take the initials of these records there’s a message spelt out. It says, “Flint onto you.” Isn’t that a coincidence?’

‘Sheila told you about our little code?’

‘Of course,’ said Miles, rearranging the records. ‘Oh, you’re the clever one, Billy. And I’ve been your dupe for far too long. Time for a change, my dear old friend and comrade. Time for everything to change. But you needn’t bother with this little code. We’re not taking you anywhere.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Well, firstly I’m going to have this tape copied, and the copies sent to Richard Mowbray and to this journalist Stevens. That should ensure that, even if I don’t survive, something is done to pull this whole cheap façade to bits. Then I am going to demand your silence.’

‘You’ll have it.’

‘I know I will. You’re going to arrange for me to “come in.” Get in touch with the old boy and insist that Partridge and he fetch me themselves. Tell them that something went badly wrong in Ireland, but that I’m sure it was all a mistake and now I want to be met by people I trust.’

‘Partridge won’t fall for it.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping for. But then he won’t know about Mr. Collins here, will he? As long as I have Mr. Collins with me, I hold the trump card. I can expose Partridge.’

‘That brings me to another question, Miles. Our friend here’ — Billy pointed a brittle finger at Collins — ‘how did you ever enlist his cooperation?’

Miles smiled, then produced a gun from his pocket.

‘Cooperation is a dead principle, Billy. You of all people should know that. The new religion is coercion. From the Latin, meaning to shut in. I feel as though I’ve been shut in for far too long. It’s time to close some doors on Partridge. And I know just the place to do it.’

‘Where?’

‘My home territory,’ said Miles, smiling a smile that would have chilled a good glassful of gin. ‘I’ve been playing away from home for far too many matches, and I’ve only just realized it.’

It was as dark outside as the half-moons under Jim Stevens’s eyes when he finally switched on his answering machine and heard Janine’s excited voice.

A few minutes later, he was wrestling with his jacket again, trying to pull it on with one hand while he tied his tie with the other. He staggered against a wall, swore to himself, and opened the door back into the wide and humorless world. He was relieved to have an excuse to get out of the flat. He loathed its emptiness and the fact that he maltreated it. But now he had a mission, and had evidence, too, that Janine had forgiven him, though she had said nothing on the telephone. Well, all that could come later. The spy was back in town, and Jim Stevens was ready to confront him.

Though he had forgotten for the moment just why he wanted to speak with him in the first place.

He rode the tube for two stops, began to feel dizzy and sick, and came up into the chilled night. A black cab was there, as though he had hailed it, and he stepped inside, pulling open the window so that he could breathe whatever was out there. It had been a very long forty-eight hours.

The streets were empty, and the traffic lights were with him. Soon enough the taxi came to a halt.

‘Marlborough Place, guvnor. That’ll be eight quid and tenpence.’

Muttering to himself, he paid off the cabbie and felt a sudden tiredness descend upon him as he climbed out.

‘Jim.’ It was Janine, standing before him in her private-eye raincoat and headscarf.

‘You look the part,’ he said. Then remembered. ‘Look, Janine, I’m sorry about — well, about everything. I mean it.’

‘This is not the time for self-pity, mister. Where have you been? No, never mind. I can guess from your look. Come on, let’s go get your spy.’

He watched her cross the road, wondering what he was doing here so late at night when he could be zapping aliens at one of the all-nighter arcades down by Piccadilly. But the way she moved... There was nothing to do but follow, even though it took the final drops of his energy to climb the half-dozen steps to Miles Flint’s front door. By the time he pushed at the doorbell, he was dizzy again and breathing hard. Janine gave him a peck on the cheek.

‘Forgiven,’ she said with the briskness of a priest.

Flint’s wife opened the door. She looked drawn, as though they had disturbed her in the midst of a crisis. She looked dazed, too, with the sluggish motions of a shell-shocked survivor. She didn’t seem to recognize Stevens and spent the first few seconds concentrating her attention on Janine.

Stevens himself felt about as unhealthy as a human being could come without actually being on a slab.

She recognized him at last.

‘Not you again,’ she said.

‘I know he’s here,’ puffed Stevens. ‘He’s back. Can I speak to him now?’

‘He’s gone off again.’

‘But I saw him this evening,’ said Janine.

‘Yes, but now he’s gone.’ Sheila Flint opened the door wide. ‘Take a look if you like. He told me never to let strangers in, but I don’t suppose it matters now.’

The look on Jim Stevens’s weathered face would have melted the heart of the meanest crone. Janine thought he was about to cry and put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him.

‘Where’s he gone?’ he asked.

‘Edinburgh, I think,’ said Sheila Flint, her face wrinkling slightly as she remembered something. Then, slowly and quietly, she closed the door again.

‘This is a nightmare,’ said Stevens. There was no other explanation for it. Soon now he would wake up and everything would be as it had been five years ago, when he was on the crest of his career. Edinburgh? People came from Edinburgh, they didn’t go there. Why in God’s name had Flint gone to Edinburgh?

‘We can follow him,’ Janine was saying. ‘You can pay for the fares out of the money you’ve saved by not paying me any money this past week.’

‘How did he get away? I thought you were watching?’

‘Well, I had to find a phone, didn’t I? There was this pub, and I thought I could call from there, but then the barman offered to buy me a drink. He was Scottish, and the place was quiet. I suppose he wanted the company. Anyway, I had a drink and then I telephoned... Jim? Jim?’

Slowly, with great calculation and perhaps even a touch of heroism, Jim Stevens had begun to bang his head against the solid mahogany door.

Twenty-Six

‘I’d be a lot more use to you if you’d give me a gun.’

Miles blew his nose, breathed in the sharp, brand-new air, and examined the Sir Walter Scott monument. He was seated on a damp bench in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens, with Collins, cold and looking it, standing in front of him.

‘How do you know that you can trust Monmouth? He’s been screwing you around all this time, what’s to stop him now?’

The monument, darkened by time to a suitably Gothic shade of black, pleased Miles more than he could say. He remembered climbing to the top once, back in his student days, and feeling claustrophobia while he climbed the narrow, winding stairwell, then fear when, at the top, he found that there was only a narrow circuit to traverse, the wind blowing fiercely and too many people trying to move up and down the stairs. It had seemed the perfect image of Scott’s novels.

‘I suppose this is why they called you Walter Scott, eh?’ said Collins now, changing the subject in an effort to elicit any kind of response from Miles.

A bitter wind was blowing the length of the gardens, and Miles was the only person mad enough to be sitting down in such unpleasant conditions. Those who walked past, swinging heavy shopping bags, mistook him for a tourist and smiled sympathetically, as if to say, fancy coming to Edinburgh at this time of year.

Collins didn’t look like a tourist. He looked like a beggar. He wrapped his coat a little more tightly around him and decided that if Flint would not answer him then he would not speak. He had been to Edinburgh once before, many years ago, on a fund-raising venture. He knew that fifty minutes would take him to Glasgow, and that from there it was a simple if lengthy journey by train and boat to Larne. Waverley Station was a short walk away: why didn’t he just make a run for it? Would Flint be crazy enough to shoot him in so public a place? One look at that contemplative face gave him his answer: of course he would. Flint had changed into the kind of man Collins was used to dealing with, and he wasn’t sure that he liked the change. He had felt some sympathy for the old, scared, confused Miles Flint. This new character would not appreciate such sentiment. But then what did it matter? He couldn’t run back to Ireland anyway, not like this. Those men in the meat van would still be sniffing around, and what could he tell his commanding officer about his own kidnapping by a member of MI5? If he had blown great big holes in Flint and that snake Monmouth, then yes, he could have returned. But he was not at all sure that he wanted to go back, for he knew that once back he would be forced to take sides again. He wanted to disappear, to become ordinary and invisible, to escape Miles Flint’s smile...

Miles was thinking of Sheila. He had come to this spot with her several times, of course. Right now, following his instructions, she would be clearing out of the house and selling the Jag to the dealer in Highgate. He had emptied their bank account for the price of the train fares north and the hotel. No one would think of looking for him at the most expensive hotel in Edinburgh, would they?

He watched Collins shuffle backward and forward in front of him, becoming ever more impatient, becoming agitated. That suited his plan, too. Everything would fall into place. He had given Collins his own room, showing his trust. But there was a connecting door. The hotel clerk had looked askance at the request, but Miles had gone on smiling. Trust me, his smile said, as I am trusting Will Collins, the enemy become ally.

Collins sat down on the damp bench. He needed Flint’s trust, the trust that would give him one of the handguns. With a handgun he would feel warmer and so much more secure. He still couldn’t believe Flint’s tale of finding the pistol in Champ’s tea caddy. What had the old fool been doing hiding it there in the first place? With a gun in my hand, he thought, I would shoot Miles Flint. He didn’t want to, but he would, in the way that one would extinguish a smoldering fire. Miles had become too dangerous by half, and did not realize that he could not win whatever game it was he thought himself playing. Collins would shoot him, but only enough to cripple him and make him safe again.

Then he would head south and seek out Monmouth, and he would shoot him dead. There was no question of that.

‘Let’s go up,’ said Miles.

‘Up where?’

‘Up the monument, of course. Come on.’ And he almost sprinted to the doorway, where the attendant took his money and mentioned that this was the last day the monument was open.

‘Closing for the season,’ he said.

‘Is there anyone else up there?’ Collins asked.

‘On a day like this? No, not a soul.’

Good, thought Collins, then this is where it ends.

Miles climbed ahead of him, his hands touching the cold stone walls. He had given Billy precise details of which train Partridge and the old boy were to take, and what they were to do upon arrival. He was not giving them time to think or to plan. He wanted them dazed, fuggy, off balance. Especially Partridge, for whom this little circus had been arranged. They would travel north by the slowest of trains, one which stopped at countless small stations. They would feel like death when they arrived.

But could he trust Billy? The man had betrayed him, had betrayed everyone. He was an agent of chaos, and he would produce chaos whenever and wherever he could. Miles didn’t care. No matter how much Billy gave away, Partridge would still come north. He might not come unprepared, but he would come.

And that was all Miles needed.

‘Not far now,’ he said, feeling the blood pumping through him, taking rests at the various levels of the ascent. Still, he didn’t feel like a museum beetle any more. He was the hunter.

‘Why is it,’ he called back to Collins, ‘that human colonies work toward chaos while insect colonies work toward harmony?’

‘You and your bloody insects,’ came the reply up the steps.

Collins was gaining strength with every moment, filling himself with the power and the speed that would be needed to disable Flint, to take him out of the game. He had to exhaust him, had to keep him talking, using up vital stamina.

‘We’re dead men,’ he called into the half-light. ‘I can see it clear as day.’

‘The good guys never die,’ said Miles Flint, his breath short.

‘Yes they do, they do it all the bloody time. Give me a gun.’

‘You’re going to have to trust me, Will, at least until tomorrow morning.’

‘Well, don’t blame me if you die a terrorist instead of a martyr.’ Collins had reached the top step and walked out into a fierce squall. The walkway was tiny, and there was no safety mesh, nothing to stop anyone from plummeting to the well-tended ground below.

‘Jesus,’ he whispered.

‘Scared of heights?’

‘Not until now.’ His face had lost all color, and he began to feel a vein of sweat on his spine.

‘But what a view, eh?’ said Miles, pointing northward towards the Forth estuary. ‘I should never have left this place.’

‘There’s probably some truth in that sure enough.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. It’s just this wind, it could blow a man right off here to his death.’

‘Do you think that’s why I brought you here?’

‘Well, is it?’

‘No, but I did think you might have a similar plan in store for me.’

‘Maybe I did.’

‘You’ve changed your mind?’

Collins pointed to Miles’s coat. ‘Your hand’s not in that pocket because it’s cold.’

Miles nodded.

‘Even so,’ said Collins, moving forward, ‘maybe it’s worth the chance, eh? I mean, if someone was pushing you toward your grave, wouldn’t you try just about anything to stop him?’

‘You know what I’d do.’

‘Well, what are you going to do now?’

They were a foot apart, and as Miles began to draw his hand from his pocket, gun firmly in place, and Will Collins made to grab his shoulders, planning to break maybe both legs, they heard a noise on the stairwell, and both froze, listening as the steps grew nearer, two individual rhythms, two people approaching. Miles angled the pistol away from Collins and toward the doorway.

The face in the doorway froze, eyes fixed on the gun, then was framed by the two arms that came up, trying to stretch above the head in a show of surrender.

‘Mr. Flint? Mr. Miles Flint?’

‘And you are?’

‘Jim Stevens, Mr. Flint. I’m a reporter.’

‘Well, Mr. Stevens, you’d better join us. And this is—?’

Stevens was followed onto the walkway by Janine. She had her hands in her pockets and seemed determined not to look afraid.

‘My assistant,’ said Stevens.

Miles recognized the woman who had been watching his house.

‘Put your hands down, Mr. Stevens. I’ll put this away. It wasn’t for your benefit, rest assured.’

Miles slipped the gun back into his pocket, and Stevens lowered his arms.

‘I want to ask you a few questions about—’

‘No need,’ interrupted Miles. ‘I’ve sent a tape recording to your newspaper office. It should make everything clear.’

‘But I don’t work there anymore.’

‘You don’t what?’ This from Janine, who had taken her hands from her pockets and now stood with them planted firmly on her hips.

‘This is Mr. Collins, by the way,’ said Miles. ‘His is one of the voices on the tape.’ Collins smiled toward Janine, who smiled back at him, her eyes showing interest.

‘By the way, how did you find us?’ asked Miles, resting against the parapet.

‘Oh, I’ve still got friends here. I worked here for years. A wise newspaperman gets to know the hotel clerks, the night porters. And then I thought, well, you’re the boardinghouse type, quiet, anonymous, but you’re playing some sort of game, so you’d go for the opposite, try to outmaneuver anyone who might be looking for you.’

Collins gave Miles a contemptuous look. Miles knew what he was thinking: if this man can outwit us, others can too.

‘Oh, and I’m not the only person looking for you.’

‘What?’

‘And what’s your first name, Mr. Collins?’ Janine was asking.

‘William.’

‘What do you mean,’ said Miles, ‘someone else is looking for me?’

‘That’s right,’ said Stevens, part of his attention lost to the dialogue going on between Janine and Collins.

‘Yes?’ prompted Miles.

‘Well, according to the hotel clerk I spoke to, someone else has been asking questions, flashing around a bit of cash. Only they didn’t have my sources.’

‘Any idea who?’

‘No.’

‘It looks to me,’ said Collins, ‘as though that snake Monmouth’s been blabbering.’

‘Who’s Monmouth?’ asked Stevens, nose twitching. Janine had started to point out local landmarks to Collins.

‘The other man on the tape,’ said Miles.

‘And this tape will answer all my questions?’

‘Oh yes, definitely.’ Miles was examining the parapet. ‘Long way down, isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

‘I love your accent,’ Janine was telling Collins. ‘Irish accents make me all shivery.’

‘Yes, it is a bit chilly up here,’ Stevens called to her, and she stuck out her tongue at him. ‘Look, why don’t we all go for a drink, eh? I know a pub near the station—’

‘Sorry, we have work to do.’

‘Well, later maybe. Or tomorrow?’

‘OK,’ said Miles. ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Fine.’ Stevens was smiling. He knew when someone was selling him Korean tartan. ‘Do you know the Sutherland Bar?’

‘I used to drink there as a student.’

‘Well, that’s fixed then. Janine, let’s go. I want to phone London and get someone to send me this mysterious tape.’

But Janine and Collins were busy in conversation, their voices muted. They seemed not to have heard Stevens, who, beginning to blush, turned back to Miles Flint and returned his grin. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘she can catch me up.’ He made toward the stairwell. ‘Oh, and Mr. Flint?’

‘Yes?’

‘I hope you have a permit for that gun.’

Twenty-Seven

Waverley Station, lying under glass and metal, had changed much since his last visit. It had become fashionably and garishly open-plan, with a taped skirl of maltreated bagpipes and a bevy of high-profile station staff ready to answer the traveler’s every question. The flooring reminded him of some dappled ice-rink surface, and video screens everywhere informed passengers that all trains were running upward of five minutes late due to a local dispute.

By the look of things, the early morning commuter rush had just ended. Taxi drivers were catching up on the day’s news headlines, their beefy arms resting against warm steering wheels. The station was lit, the day being dark, a real hyperborean landscape. The glare of the interior was igloo-like, while the ramps leading up to Waverley Bridge were like boltholes to the surface of the world.

There was little hurry here, the people moving at a winter’s pace, retaining their energy. There were no tourists to deal with, only some business travelers and people coming into the city for a day’s shopping. Although a public place, it was openly private in its attitude. It would do nicely. He signaled to his companions.

‘You know what to do?’

‘Yes, Mr. Partridge,’ said Jeff Phillips.

Billy Monmouth had told Partridge all he had needed to know. He had said that Flint was planning a nasty little surprise. He had said that Flint was not coming in alone, but had Collins with him. These revelations had made the logistics nice and easy. It didn’t matter so much about Flint himself. For the moment, Partridge really wanted only the Irishman, for he was the last piece of evidence. He felt the absurdity of it all. At first it had seemed so simple and so viable, but when one killed someone, a whole chain of events came into being which grew and grew and would not stop growing, leaving everyone powerless and trapped within the chain. He couldn’t break that chain now if he wanted to. He wasn’t coming empty-handed to meet Flint. He had a good enough proposition to put to him, one which Flint was certain to accept. They would play it like an honest game of cards between two players who know each other for incorrigible cheats.

He had questioned Billy Monmouth thoroughly. Did Flint have any other evidence? No transcripts? No signed statements? Billy had been very definite in his answers, and it seemed that Flint had slipped up here: he had thought Collins such a strong trump that he had dispensed with any alternatives or backups. That was foolish of him. Billy had said that he was a changed man, that the incident in Ireland had unhinged him. He was uncoordinated, rambling, half living in a fantasy world of Berlin Wall shootouts and car chases. There would be none of that today.

Partridge felt himself prepared for any scheme Flint might throw at him. Slowly, with Phillips and the woman a few yards behind him, he made his way across the concourse toward platform 17.

He wished that he had taken the opportunity on the train to wash himself and maybe even shave. It had been an appalling journey, and the more frustrated he had become, the slower the train had moved, until it had seemed that everything was standing still and that he was moving forward by himself, was running, having broken free of his chains.

He walked to the end of platform 17, his hands by his side, intimating that he was not in possession of any kind of weapon. In fact, he was carrying a small revolver in his jacket pocket. To combat the cold, however, he wore an overcoat, and the gun, buried beneath this coat, was for use only in the direst emergency. He didn’t believe he would have any need of it.

There were no train spotters about. The end of the platform did not offer overhead shelter from the morning’s needle-fine drizzle, and he turned up his coat collar. The trains that arrived at this platform were local services from Dundee and Fife, no farther. He saw from the flickering video screen that a train was due in from Cowdenbeath. Now where on earth was that? He seemed to recall that a football team from there appeared somewhere in the Scottish league, but couldn’t be sure. Looking back up the length of the platform, he saw Phillips standing with the woman, who was held in toward him as though unwillingly. He motioned for Phillips to move farther away. It would ruin everything if Flint were to see them both. Phillips moved away quickly, right out of Partridge’s sight. He would reappear when the time was right.

There were no obstructions to Partridge’s view. He would have fifty yards’ warning of Flint’s approach. It seemed extraordinary that he should have enlisted the aid of Collins under any circumstances. Partridge was still not sure that he fully believed it. Perhaps Monmouth was playing some sort of trick on him. Well, he would soon know one way or the other. They would be here at any moment.

From out of the Waverley tunnel came a slow, tired-sounding diesel engine, pulling three dingy carriages behind it. The Cowdenbeath train, he presumed. It pulled into platform 17 and drew to a halt. A crowd of people began to disembark. This, he thought, must be Flint’s plan: he will arrive just at the height of the confusion, hoping to catch me off guard. Partridge craned his neck to search above the heads of the herd, who were now walking briskly along the platform away from him.

And so did not notice the last door of the train open and the two figures jump out, beside him in an instant.

Startled momentarily, he managed somehow to return Flint’s smile and even held out his hand.

‘Miles,’ he said, ‘good to see you. A nice trick that.’

‘We took a train out to Haymarket and another one straight back.’

‘Yes, damned ingenious, really.’ He turned to Collins. ‘And this is?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Miles, ‘I’d forgotten that any introduction would be necessary. This is Will Collins. Will, this is Mr. Partridge, the man for whom you murdered Philip Hayton.’

Partridge managed a low chuckle.

‘Well, yes, poor Philip. He was quite mad, you know. If he hadn’t died, well, he could have done great harm to the firm.’

The Irishman’s hand was like a mechanism of steel and taut wires, not a human hand at all. The eyes were glassy, as though they too had been jogged into life by a motor of tiny coiled springs.

‘Yes,’ Partridge said again, not knowing what to say.

‘You don’t seem surprised to see Mr. Collins,’ said Miles. ‘I presume that’s because Billy told you about him.’

‘Oh, well, yes, Monmouth did mention him, I think.’

‘I told you you couldn’t trust that—’ Collins was silenced by a wave of Miles’s hand. Miles turned to Partridge.

‘Where’s the director, by the way?’

‘Couldn’t make it. Poor old chap’s become a bit... well, emotional of late. No, he couldn’t risk the trip.’

‘In other words, you’ve kept it all from him.’

Partridge’s face became a parody of concern.

‘He’s past it, Miles. He doesn’t care anymore. Doesn’t it make sense for someone to take over, someone who knows better than he does? Anyway, I thought it best to keep this strictly between ourselves. To save future embarrassment.’

‘There’ll be plenty of embarrassment over those tapes.’

‘Tapes?’ Partridge’s face became quizzical. Caught you, thought Miles, caught you at last.

‘Yes, you know, the tapes I made of Billy’s confession and of Mr. Collins’s version of events. Didn’t Billy tell you?’

‘Perhaps it slipped my mind.’

‘Well, they’ve been sent to the proper authorities, the PM, the press, that sort of thing.’

Partridge’s face had become the color of sticky bread dough before the flour is sprinkled on. All it needed now was the kneading. He looked quickly along the platform but could not see Phillips. Phillips would not come forward until he was sure that Miles Flint had arrived, and how could he know that, since they had not been expecting him to arrive by train?

‘Looking for someone?’

‘Well, you never know who’ll turn up at these dos, do you?’

‘Still cracking jokes.’ This from Collins. ‘Aye, you’re a tough one all right, but we’ll see just how tough.’

Miles rested a hand on the tensed arm of the younger man, and left it there.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘we should make a clean breast, don’t you, Partridge?’

Partridge shrugged his shoulders, rubbing his numbed hands together. He dearly wanted to push them deep into the woolen haven of his pockets, but felt that it was important to keep his body gestures open, unlike the heavily attacking stance of the Irishman.

‘You know,’ Miles began, ‘I was never a threat to you, never.’

‘With respect, Miles, I have to disagree. The very fact of our meeting here today is proof of that.’

‘It wasn’t until you sent me to Ireland, sent me to my own execution, that I began to piece things together, and then only with the help of Mr. Collins. I was never close to finding out your dirty little secret. It was Billy you should have been watching, Billy and his friend Andrew Gray.’

‘Gray?’

‘An American operative. He was putting a sweat on your friend Sizewell.’

After a moment’s thought, Partridge shrugged his shoulders again and looked back along the platform.

‘Well, what does it matter now? I’ve never been one for postmortems.’

‘Just so long as the executions went off all right. This all started so neatly, didn’t it? A single death, all those years ago, hidden by time as you thought. But it’s been growing, Partridge. And you can’t kill everyone.’

‘I don’t want to kill anyone.’ He pointed to Collins. ‘Except him. Give him to me, Miles, and that can be the end of it.’

‘What about the tapes?’

‘They can be recovered. It’s him I want.’

Collins made a leap forward. ‘You filthy bastard!’

Miles’s hand tightened its grip on Collins’s arm, and he looked at him the way a parent would look at an errant son.

‘I’m going to have him, so help me,’ hissed Collins.

‘This man is our enemy, Miles,’ said Partridge, ‘you must see that. He’s everything we’ve been fighting against for twenty-odd years. What’s more, he murdered Peter Saville, or, rather, one of his devices did.’

‘Pete?’

‘Blown to bits in Ganton Street.’

‘But they said in the papers that they couldn’t establish identity. So how the hell can you know that it was Pete?’

Partridge faltered, looked down at his feet.

‘Unless,’ said Miles, ‘your Cynegetics bullies, your little private army was following him. Maybe putting the chill on him, eh? Frighten him off, was that it? Yes, I’ll bet that was it. Your own little army. I’ll bet that appealed to you, didn’t it? Speaking of which, how did you inveigle Phillips’s help?’

‘Simplicity itself. He had a fairly shaky time getting into the service. I helped him. Old family ties, you understand. So he owed me something deeper than loyalty to the firm.’

Miles nodded, trying to look calm though his nerves were like sparklers.

‘And you were the man at the Doric Hotel, the man who paid that girl to keep me occupied?’

‘Yes. Jeff telephoned me. I live close by, so it was no trouble. The firm had used Felicity before, so I thought she might be there. Actually’ — Partridge’s voice had taken on a confidence it should not have possessed — ‘speaking of Phillips, there’s something I’ve brought with me to trade off for our friend here.’ He nodded toward the far end of the platform, where Phillips was standing with his hand firmly attached to the arm of a woman in a green coat. Miles thought he recognized that coat...

Good God, it was Sheila’s!

‘Sheila,’ he whispered.

‘Quite so,’ said Partridge, seeming to grow physically, while the color flooded back into his cheeks, the drought of uncertainty at an end.

‘You’ll never—’ started Collins.

‘Oh, but I will, won’t I, Miles? A fair swap, I think. I’m told that Sheila and you are getting along quite famously now.’

Miles seemed to wilt. His grip on Collins’s arm was already loosening, and Collins could feel, with the release of pressure, that he was being pushed away from his ally and toward his assassin.

‘No,’ he hissed. ‘For Christ’s sake, Miles!’

‘Well, Miles?’ Partridge’s was the smug voice of every schoolboy smarter than Miles and every tutor who had rebuked him, and every moralistic preacher and politician. It was the voice, too, of a universal evil, a hypocrisy that had taken over the world, the sweet-smelling breath of chaos. It always won, it always won.

‘It always will,’ he whispered from his tainted mouth, where bile and fear had suddenly become tangy beneath his tongue.

‘Well, Miles?’

He couldn’t see Sheila too clearly, she was muffled up against the chill, but that was definitely her coat. People were walking up the platform now, boarding the train that still waited there, ready to take them to their momentous destinations. Yes, that was the green coat he had bought for her on a whim...

And that she had never liked.

A guard was standing nearby now, checking his watch. He too looked along the platform, saw that no one was hurrying for the train, then blew his whistle.

That coat, she had hated it. Hadn’t she said something to him? What was it? Yes, hadn’t she said that she was throwing it out for jumble? Jesus Christ, yes, and she had thrown it out, he had watched her doing it. She could never have worn it here today, unless... Unless...

‘That’s not Sheila!’ he shouted above the new roar of the engine.

‘What?’

‘That’s not my wife. I know it’s not!’

‘Son of a bitch,’ said Collins, reaching into his coat. Miles made no attempt to stop him; rather, as had been half formulated but never really discussed between them, he opened one of the train’s slowly moving doors and heaved himself in.

Partridge found his mouth opening in a silent O as he saw the gun appear in the Irishman’s hand, but then there was too much noise all around him and a hissing of pressure in his ears as he fumbled at his own coat, wherein was hidden, too deep, too late, his own pistol.

And then he screamed as the bullet leaped within him, burrowing its way like a beetle into the warm, dark interior. Collins, his teeth bared, turned to look at the train, but there was no sign of Miles Flint’s head from any of the carriage doors. He hadn’t even bothered to watch.

Past the guard, who was running in a stiff panic back down the platform, Collins could see the other man let go of the woman’s arm and begin toward him, before thinking better of it. But by that time Collins had made up his mind. He moved past Partridge, who was frozen against a dripping pillar, and homed in on the other one. He’d have as many of them as he could. Now that Flint had left him, what else could he do? The train had been the only means of escape. He was at the end of a blind alley, and the only way out of it was to move back into the heart of the station, back toward the terror of the crowd, the shouts of the guard. He passed the woman in the green coat. She had tripped and fallen, revealing short fair hair beneath her hat. Miles might have recognized her as Felicity, but Collins did not even glance down at her.

Phillips was climbing some stairs, loud metal stairs leading to a walkway. He looked scared to death and tired out, his legs moving with fatal slowness. Collins knelt and took aim, while people dived to the floor or knelt behind their cases.

‘Will, no!’

The shot went wild, about a meter high of the target, but it froze Phillips. Collins took aim again.

‘Will!’

It was Janine, running toward him, having shaken herself free of Jim Stevens. Stevens was holding a camera by its strap. He had been taking photographs of the whole thing! Collins gritted his teeth and brought the pistol in an arc until he had Stevens dead in the sight.

But Janine swerved into his path, blocking out the reporter.

‘Get out of the way!’ he yelled. But she had stopped and didn’t seem able to move.

But Phillips was moving, damn him. He had found the top of the stairs and was above Collins now, careering along the walkway toward street level. Collins rose to his feet and followed, ignoring the cries from behind him. He took the steps two at a time, feeling able almost to fly, and heard the sirens below him, entering the concourse, filling the air with new panic. So quickly? Perhaps they had been alerted by that snake Monmouth. Well, he’d get him too, one of these days. So help him. But first this one.

On the street, though, there was no sign of Phillips, no sign at all. He hid his gun beneath the folds of his coat, Miles Flint’s old coat, and looked up and down the street. A car swerved toward him and screeched to a halt at the curbside. The passenger door was pushed open from within.

‘Get in!’

He had his gun out again, the gun Miles Flint had given back to him that morning. His hands shook almost uncontrollably as he tried to aim it at this new stranger in his life.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘My name is Gray, Mr. Collins, and right now I may conceivably be the only person in the world who wants you kept alive and well. Get in. I can always use a man like you.’

The approaching howls of more police cars made up Will Collins’s mind. There could never be any escape for him. Not now, not ever.

He stepped into the car.