Personal

‘On any level, do you want me with you?’

I said, ‘Where do you want to be?’

‘I want to be part of it.’

‘You are part of it.’

‘Entering a phase not entirely suited to my skills.’

‘What’s wrong with your skills?’

‘I’m an average shot with no aptitude for hand-to-hand combat.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll complement each other. Because the physical part is the least of it. The game goes to the fastest thinker. Which is what you’re good at. Or at least, two heads are better than one.’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘We start again at seven o’clock in the morning. Take the rest of the night off.’

We rode down in the elevator together, but I got out alone, on my floor, which was a couple above hers. The turn-down lady had been in my room. I reopened the drapes and looked out across the rooftops. I guessed most of what I was seeing was about a hundred yards away. The comfortable middle distance, in a crowded city. An easy angle, and some kind of default focus. I raised my eye line a little, and tried to guess double, for two hundred yards, and again, for four hundred, and again, for eight hundred, and then one last time, for sixteen hundred yards.

I was staring into the far, far distance. If Romford was Mayfair, we’d be searching ten thousand locations.

Kohl had asked, Will you let me make the arrest?

I had said, I want you to.

As a reward, really. Or an acknowledgement. Or a compliment. Like a battlefield decoration. An earned privilege. She had done all the work. And had all the ideas, and made all the breakthroughs. Hence the reward. Which was substantial, in the coded language of the military, because we had a big enemy. Not physically. Not as I recall. I stuck a chisel in his brain, many years afterwards, and I don’t remember a big man. But he was big in terms of power. And prestige, and influence. A real long shot. Especially for a woman. Which was part of it. It was a long time ago. Recognition was important. And she deserved it. She did the work, and had the ideas, and made the breakthroughs. She was very thorough, and very smart.

Hadn’t saved her.

I took my clothes off and got into bed, but I left the drapes open. I figured the city glow might comfort me, and the dawn might help me wake.

At one minute past seven the next morning we were on our way to Wallace Court, in Bennett’s car, which was no longer an anonymous blue Vauxhall, but an anonymous silver Vauxhall. Otherwise identical. Like rental cars. We drove most of the same route, but faster, because the morning traffic was running the other way. Into town, not out. Rush hour, but not for us. Bennett looked tired. Casey Nice looked OK. We didn’t talk. Nothing to say. No doubt Bennett thought I was wasting his time. Which was possible. Or probable, even. But there’s always a percentage chance of something. Maybe of not having to say if I had known then what I know now. Which phrase is used a lot. My mother said it all the time. In her case, she meant it sincerely, but she said it like an elocution exercise, like a person learning a foreign language, which she was, with all her attention on the three cascading vowel sounds at the very end, and none at all on the consonants along the way: If I ’ad known zen what I know now.

I know now

, like drumbeats. Portentous, and a little sinister, like tympani strikes at the start of a gloomy symphony. Shostakovich, maybe.

I know now.

I knew twenty minutes into the visit.

FORTY

WHEN WE GOT close I started to recognize some of what we had seen from the minicab, the second one, the one properly pre-booked on the telephone. I had seen some of the streets before, suburban but compressed, a little busier and narrower and faster than they really wanted to be. I remembered some of the stores, even. Carpets, cell phones, chickens, cheeseburgers, kebabs. And then the sudden green space, and the fine old house, and the crazy wall, still shouldering London aside after all these years.

The same squat tough guy was on duty at the gate, with his Kevlar vest and his sub-machine gun. Bennett nodded to him, and the guy took a step towards the gate, but his gaze fell on me, and he came back and said, ‘You’re the gentleman with the guidebook. Sixpence to see the grounds. Welcome back, sir.’ Then he set off again and opened up. No radio check, no paperwork. No badge. Just a nod and a wink. The guy was in combat gear, basically, but it was blue, and it had Metropolitan Police on it here and there, embroidered on tapes and silk-screened on Kevlar, subdued order, with black thread and black ink, plus monochrome versions of their helmet shields, like corporate branding, so I had no doubt the guy was a cop, but equally I had no doubt Bennett wasn’t, yet Bennett was nodding and winking and the guy was hopping right to it.

It’s all pretty fluid at the moment.