The Night Manager

Nowhere, Jonathan thought as he opened the ticket and read the time of departure. There's no such thing as a decision. There never was. There's whether you've had a good day or a bad day, there's going forward because there's nothing behind and running because if you stand still any longer you'll fall over. There's movement or there's stagnation, there's the past that drives you, and the regimental chaplain who preaches that only the obedient are free, and the women who say you have no feelings but they can't live without you. There's a prison called England, there's Sophie whom I betrayed, there's an Irish boy without a gun who kept looking at me while I shot his face off, and there's a girl I've scarcely spoken to who puts equestrienne on her passport and annoyed me so much that weeks later I'm still raging at her. There's a hero I can never be worthy of who had to be put back into uniform to be buried. And a sweaty Yorkshire Pied Piper whispering in my ear to come and do it all again.

* * *

Rex Goodhew was in fighting fettle. He had spent the first half of the morning successfully arguing Burr's cause to his master, and the second half addressing a Whitehall seminar on the misuses of secrecy, ending with a pleasurable shoot-out with a young fogy from the River House, barely old enough to tell his first lie. Now it was lunchtime in Carlton Gardens, a low sun hit the white façades, and his beloved Athenaeum was a stroll away.

"Your chap Leonard Burr is putting himself about a bit, Rex," said Stanley Padstow of the Home Office with an anxious smile, falling in beside him. "I don't think I quite realised what you were letting us in for, to be honest."

"Oh dear," said Goodhew. "Poor you. What sort of putting about, exactly?"

Padstow had been up at Oxford at the same time as Goodhew, but the only thing Goodhew remembered about him was that he had seemed to have a mission to the plainer girl.

"Oh, nothing much," said Padstow, trying to sound light. "Using my staff to launder his file requests. Persuading the registrar to lie in her teeth for him. Taking senior police officers to three-hour lunches at Simpson's. Asking us to vouch for him when they get cold feet." He was glancing all the time at Goodhew but failing to catch his eye. "But it's all right, is it? It's just that, with these chaps, one never absolutely knows. Does one?"

There was a small delay while they negotiated themselves out of earshot of a flock of nuns.

"No, Stanley, one doesn't," said Goodhew. "But I did send you a detailed confirmation in writing, top secret for your very own file."

Padstow struggled yet more valiantly for the throwaway tone. "And devilish frolics in the West Country ― I mean, that's all going to be covered, is it? Only your letter didn't seem to make that totally clear."

They had reached the Athenaeum steps.

"Sounds fine to me, Stanley," Goodhew said. "Para three of my letter, as I recall, covers West Country frolics to the hilt."

"Murder not excluded?" Padstow asked urgently below his breath, as they stepped inside.

"Oh, I don't think so. Not as long as nobody gets hurt, Stanley." Goodhew's voice changed tone. "And it's compartmentation, isn't it?" he said. "Nothing to the River boys, nothing to anyone except Leonard Burr and, when you're worried, me. That's all right for you, is it, Stanley? Not a strain?"

They ate at separate tables. Goodhew treated himself to steak-and-kidney pie and a glass of the club's claret. But Padstow ate very fast, as if he were counting his bites against the clock.

SEVEN

Jonathan arrived at Mrs. Trethewey's post office store on a bleak Friday, calling himself Linden, a name he had picked out of the air when Burr invited him to suggest one. He had never met a Linden in his life, unless he was unconsciously recalling something on his German mother's side, a song or poem she had recited to him on her seemingly eternal deathbed.

The day had been sullen and damp, an evening that began at breakfast. The village lay a few miles from Land's End. The blackthorn on Mrs. Trethewey's granite hedge was hunchbacked from the southwesterly gales. The bumper stickers in the church car park told strangers to go home.