Personal

She slowed her thumbs, and spoke slowly, too, talking and typing all at once. She said, ‘No, not ahead of time. I wasn’t sure we would actually go. Because I wasn’t sure why we would want to. So all in all I figured a retrospective report would work better.’

‘OK,’ I said. She sped up again, and I watched her. Eventually she stopped typing, and read it all through, and sent it, with the same banana-skin noise. I asked her, ‘Do we have addresses for Miller and Thompson?’

‘They weren’t in the bios,’ she said.

‘Then text Bennett again. I’m sure he knows.’

The next hour was mostly texting, back and forth with Bennett and O’Day, asking and answering questions, and stockpiling data. Miller and Thompson lived in Chigwell too, four streets from each other, and four streets from Joey. No operational reason. Simply that Chigwell was where you went when you made money in Romford. Their security arrangements were the same as Joey’s too, at least on paper. They each had a driver and four bodyguards. Three rotations a day. Miller had a new-model Range Rover, black, and Thompson had a new-model Range Rover Sport, also black. As good as Bentleys, according to many. Three lieutenants, all treated the same. At least on paper. But Bennett said in fact the people assigned to Miller and Thompson were second-rate. Little Joey got the pick of the litter. Partly because he was Little Joey, and partly because Miller and Thompson were bureaucrats. Vital, but not at the heart of the action. Hence a whole different dynamic. Between the two of them, there was nothing to choose. Either one would be a target of equal softness.

‘Comparatively, I suppose,’ Casey Nice said.

I said, ‘We need a vehicle.’

‘General Shoemaker gave us credit cards. We could rent one.’

‘Not a good idea. Too much paperwork.’

‘Maybe Mr Bennett would lend us one.’

‘I’m sure his are all fitted with satellite trackers, in which case he’d be worried about subpoenas.’

‘So how?’

‘Second choice would be steal one. But ideally we should find another pair of foot soldiers and take their panel van. That would buy us a couple of seconds, with Miller or Thompson. They wouldn’t see the threat right away. We’d look like their own people. At least at first.’

‘So that’s two attacks we’re making, not one.’

‘With two more still to go,’ I said. ‘The foot soldiers, then Miller or Thompson, then Little Joey Green, then whoever is still holed up in his house.’

‘So we have to survive four separate times. How likely is that?’

‘Like the World Series. A big ask, but someone does it every year.’

‘It’s a total of eighteen people.’

‘Twenty. You’re forgetting the drivers. Miller and Thompson have one, and Joey has one. But it’s not twenty all at once. That’s the good news here. Maximum of six at a time, when we get to the big names, with the driver each and the four bodyguards.’

‘Some of which are the pick of the litter, standing in front of a guy nearly seven feet tall.’

‘We can aim over their heads.’

‘This seems crazy to me.’

‘Because you aren’t quite sure what to expect. To which I say what?’

She thought back, and repeated it straight up. She had a good memory for words. She said, ‘You say no one ever is sure what to expect. On either side. Which is a good thing. It means the game goes to the fastest thinker. That’s all I need to be.’

‘Correct,’ I said. ‘Weird things are going to happen, and things are going to change, and the ground is going to move under our feet, but if we keep on thinking fast, we’ll be OK.’

‘You sure?’

‘Like you said before, it’s all comparative. Bottom line, it’s about thinking faster than Joey Green. And the data was in on that a long time ago. Modern humans outlasted Neanderthal Man.’

‘What did you mean when you said weird things are going to happen?’

‘Just that nothing turns out like you think it will.’

‘It sounded like you meant something more specific. Do you know things you’re not telling me?’

I didn’t answer.

Then Bennett showed up again in person, and raised the stakes. We got a call in Nice’s room that he was downstairs. He asked us to meet him in the restaurant. He said he would buy us lunch. Nice shut down the tablet computer, which locked his semi-useful pictures behind our twin passwords, and then we rode up in the elevator, and we found him at a table by the window, with our drinks already ordered, bottled water for Nice and black coffee for me, at which point I knew he was about to ask for some real big favour.

Which he did.

He said the behavioural psychology subcommittee had met again, to review the report he had submitted that morning. And apparently the subcommittee had exceeded its brief, by thinking for itself. It had started from the same feeling I had gotten about internecine strife. If Miller or Thompson went down, then depending on the exact distribution between Charlie White and his lieutenants, which was an unknown at that point, then somewhere between perhaps 15 and 20 per cent of the Romford Boys’ net profit was up for grabs. Which would be interesting.