Evensong (12 page)

She looked up at him sharply. “I didn’t expect that. I thought you were just a Consultant.”

They climbed a stairway up the embankment to road level, just before the old Palace Pier. They walked across Marine Parade and into East Street, which led upwards, away from these a front. It was busy and crowded, a mix of shops and restaurants, mostly upmarket. There was the usual doppler effect of approaching and receding conversations, and the usual mix of smells: things being cooked, substances being smoked. Still nobody appeared to give them a second glance.

He spotted Gaetano’s people. He liked how they worked: discreetly, keeping a distance, constantly changing their patterns. She didn’t seem to see them, but he knew she’d assume they were there somewhere.

Ahead they could now see the original Royal Pavilion in Pavilion Gardens with the Indian Gate. The New Anglicans, careful as always, had made sure the original Royal Pavilion and the New West Pier were never in direct sight of each other.

Leading off East Street on the left was the Lanes district, with small esoteric shops selling bespoke interiors, designer clothes, antiques and curios and books. It was an area of narrow alleyways, sometimes called twittens and catcreeps. The walls were patchworks of old brick, flint, cobblestone, and stucco. The Lanes had been the original fishing village of Brighthelmstone.

Anwar took them to Ramsden’s Bookshop, in Meeting House Lane. The proprietor nodded, apparently casually, but somehow giving the impression that he remembered Anwar from his last visit, two years ago. It was a small musty shop, but carried a good stock of Shakespeares, including the one Anwar had reserved online for collection: a replica of the 1609 Chalmers-Bridgewater edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. So much, these days, was a replica, but this was a very good one.It wasn’t cheap. Even replicas could be valuable in their own right.

They continued along Meeting House Lane.

“There,” she said. “Frobisher’s Tea Rooms. Come on, I’m buying.”

Where Ramsden’s had been genuinely old and musty, Frobisher’s was a modern copy of age and mustiness. None of the darkwood wall panelling or furniture had ever been part of, or even near, a real tree.

It was more utilitarian than its outside appearance suggested, or than Anwar guessed she was used to. It was crowded, and she joined the queue at the counter.

“Self-service for the self-serving,” she muttered. She got a pot of English breakfast tea for both of them, and a selection of cakes for herself.

“Fifty-five euros forty.” The cashier pronounced it with a rising note of accomplishment on forty, as if it was the culmination of a trick he’d done. She’d forgotten she was buying, and took the tray to a table. Anwar paid and joined her.

“So you got your book.”

“Yes, it’s a nice edition.”

“A replica?”

“Partly. It reproduces the typesetting and font of the original, but puts each sonnet on a separate page.”

“May I look?”

“Of course.” He slid the book across the table to her.

“Sonnet 116 is my favourite. Especially the first four lines.” He watched her turn to it, and said the words to himself as he watched her reading them.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

“Each phrase,” she said, “has at least three or four possible meanings. Is that what he intended?”

“I think so.”

“Didn’t he write the sonnets to a mysterious Dark Lady?”

“Some of them, yes. But some might also have been written to a man.”

“Oh.”

Just then her wristcom buzzed. She flipped it open, listened briefly.

“It’s Gaetano. He says they’ve detained a possible suspect on the Pier.”

In the Cathedral complex, a thief had been tempted by an obviously wealthy-looking tourist. But this wasn’t just any tourist.

“The thief,” Gaetano said, “is a twelve-year-old boy,known to police. Dysfunctional parents. The social services put him in Care.”

Care,
Anwar thought.
A dismal word, smug and liberal. The boy was doomed.

“He does petty crime,” Gaetano continued. “Steals purses, wallets,briefcases, anything that looks valuable. Whizzes past on powered rollerblades, snatches and escapes. This man had just taken out his wallet, andt he kid flew past and took it.The man ran—
ran—
after him and caught him. Kept kicking him, even after he’d knocked him down. Broke his arm and collar-bone and three ribs.”

“Where did this happen?” Anwar asked.

“Just outside, in the Garden. We detained him—” (
a simple phrase,
Anwar thought, considering what he’d done) “—until you could speak to him. The boy’s in the Royal Sussex County Hospital.”

Anwar, Gaetano, and Olivia were in the Boardroom. She was eating a cake that she’d managed to scoop up in their hasty departure from Frobisher’s. In between mouthfuls, she asked Gaetano, “Were you already watching this man when it happened?”

“Yes. He’d been looking around the Conference Centre.”

“Is that all? You don’t think they’ve already got architects’ plans and computer models?”

“Probably. But this man had the look of a professional. We had a feeling about him.” Gaetano turned to Anwar. “I wish we’d got there before he caught the boy.”

Anwar nodded. “How long can we detain him?” He saw Olivia glance at him, possibly because he’d said
We
, not
You
.

“If we invoke the summit, which I’ve done, the local police will let us hold him for twenty-four hours. He’s in there.” Gaetano pointed to the closed door of one of the Boardroom’s adjoining rooms.

“Is he restrained?”

“Of course. Except for his conversation.”

“What do we know about him?”

“We have his papers, and we checked his DNA, fingerprints, and retinas. His name is Richard Carne.”

I used to have a name that sounded like that
.

“He’s ex-SAS. No currently known employer. Various jobs in the past, some legal and some not. Unpleasant habits. There’s this thing he does with bread.” Gaetano paused, and added, “And he’s a member of something called the Johnsonian Society. He was carrying the text of a talk he gave in London a couple of days ago.”

Anwar stood up. “Thank you,” he said to Gaetano.“I think I’ll go and see him.”

“And something else: we found two poison implants in his teeth. We’ve removed them. But…”

“Yes,” Anwar said, “there’ll be others. And there isn’t time to locate them all. I must speak to him now.”

“He’ll trip them and kill himself, if the interrogation goes wrong...Look, maybe I should do this, I’ve done it before.”

“No, I’ll do it...Gaetano, does the Pier have a medical centre?”

“No. It has a fully-equipped hospital.”

“Could you please ask one of your people to go there and bring me up a medical trolley with a tray of surgical instruments?”

There was an
ease
about Richard Carne. An air of insouciance.

The restraints which held him in his chair were not mono-filament, just extruded kevlar, but they’d been expertly tied. He couldn’t move. But he still managed to give the impression of lounging.

He had straw-coloured hair, brushed flamboyantly back. Slightly pouty lips. Pale blue eyes. A large man, with an obvious Special Forces kind of build. His clothes were expensive: a dark bluejacket, sand-coloured slacks and cream shirt, and jaunty two-tone shoes in blue and cream. Even matching blue and cream socks.

“Do you know who I am?” Anwar asked him.

“I know what you are. Only a few like you in the world.”

Anwar did not reply.

“And now
she’s
got one of you, for the summit. It won’t be enough, not against what they’ll send.”

“What you did was cowardly. That kid was totally out-matched. Why not take on someone who can fight back?”

“Like you? I’d be as outmatched as the kid. And you’d be as cowardly as me. In fact you already are. All you ever do is defeat outmatched opponents.”

Two-nil to him.
Anwar pulled up a chair, and sat facing him. For a while he said nothing, a tactic which didn’t even slightly unsettle Carne.
Three-nil.

He knew Carne was right. The Dead had it easy. Intelligence did all the hard work, before and after. Before, their work was to identify targets: dictators, oligarchs, criminals, political or religious fanatics. Then The Dead came in, to abduct or disable them. Usually abduct, in which case they were handed over to UN Intelligence. Information or compliance would be tricked or blackmailed out of them, or bullied out of them with threats of lifelong litigation or financial ruin.

The Dead had the most simple and self-contained part of the process, though it was physically impossible for anyone else.The parts before and after were more complex, less clear-cut, and didn’t end. The people who undertook them couldn’t go back into a comfort zone afterwards.

“Forty-love to me, I think,” Carne murmured.

But this time, Anwar would have to do the before and after parts himself. He couldn’t just guard her reactively. He had to identify and locate those who threatened her. And here was one of their minor functionaries. Clever and self-assured, and more experienced at this than Anwar; but there might be a way. When the instruments came. Until then...

“So you’re a member of the Johnsonian Society.”

“Yes."

“So am I.”

“Really?” Carne was mildly, but genuinely, surprised. “I haven’t seen you at any functions.”

“I don’t often get to London, but I’ve been a member for years. I keep all the Society’s newsletters.”

“You’ll have seen my articles, then.”

“Yes, that’s where I remembered your name…What makes you a Johnsonian?”

“Oh, that’s easy. He had an opinion about everything. His own, original opinion.”

“Exactly,” Anwar said, nodding enthusiastically. “Always an original opinion. He was High Church, High Tory, but anti-slavery. Risky, in those times. For a man of his class and profession.”

Carne was now genuinely excited. “Did you hear about my talk the other day? It was called...”

‘Mask: The Nature Of Individual Identity In Postmodern Literature.’ Yes, I saw it advertised in the newsletter. No offence, but I thought it sounded rather pretentious.”

“None taken. I was never really happy about the title.”

“Also,” Anwar continued, “it didn’t sound like the kind of literary criticism Doctor Johnson would have recognised…Ah, here are the things I asked for.”

He turned as Gaetano wheeled in a hospital trolley full of surgical instruments.

“What is it she usually says?” he asked Gaetano.“Leave us. Give us this room.”

Carne was looking at the surgical instruments, almost as dispassionately and appraisingly as Anwar.

“Let’s save time,” Anwar told him. “I’m supposed to ask who you’re working for, and you’re supposed to say nothing. So let’s assume we’ve had that conversation. Now we move to the part where I help you.”

Gaetano had arranged a good selection of laser scalpels on the surgical trolley.

“Never mind these things here. I promise I won’t kill you, and I won’t cause you pain. I do have the necessary surgical skills...”

There were even some antique stainless steel scalpels. All arranged neatly.

“...and before I start using these things, I’ll give you a local anaesthetic. So. No death and no pain. This is what I’m going to do.

“I’ll trap you, permanently, inside your own head. No light, or sound, or touch, or words, or communication of any kind. I’ll give you to yourself. You’ll inhabit yourself, and nothing else.

“How will I do that, Mr. Carne? Your Eyes. Eardrums. Tongue. Hands. Feet. I’ll surgically remove them all. I’ll leave your eyes to last, so you can see everything I’m doing.”

Carne said nothing. His expression hadn’t changed.

“I could leave you in some stinking twitten or catcreep in the Lanes,” Anwar went on, “but I won’t. I’ll leave you near a hospital, where people will find you and care for you. But you’ll never be able to communicate with them. Or with anyone, except yourself.”

Carne spoke at last. “You know, I’ve actually done things like that; but I bet you haven’t. You’ve only read about them.” He smiled. “I must read the same books you do.”

Anwar had thought that would be his ace. He’d remembered it from a biography of Parvin Marek, who’d used the threat very successfully in interrogations. And Carne had just batted it back.

“And you couldn’t do it,” Carne added. “You can keep me for twenty-four hours, then you have to place me in the custody of the local police. They’d probably notice if you’d removed my—what was it?—hands, feet, tongue, eardrums and eyes.”

“Then we’d ship you by VSTOL to Kuala Lumpur and do it there.”

“No you wouldn’t. Even Rafiq wouldn’t sanction it.”

“The Controller-General wouldn’t know.” Anwar didn’t like the ease with which Rafiq’s name rolled off the other man’s tongue.

“Yes he would. Rafiq knows everything. Or you think he does. Actually, about now Rafiq is probably beginning to realize he doesn’t know everything.”

Anwar’s turn not to answer.

“I know what you are,” Carne added conversationally. “Only a few like you in the world.”

“Yes, I heard the first time.”

“Two less, now.”

“What? What did you say?”

Carne smiled but didn’t reply. Still, he hadn’t tripped any poison implants yet.

Desperately, Anwar ramped it up. “There are surgical techniques to restore some of what I’ll do to you. New eyes and eardrums and tongue. Prosthetic hands and feet. But they’re expensive. When the hospital identifies you from your DNA, they’ll check your bank accounts, but the UN will have emptied them.”

Still Carne smiled but said nothing.

Anwar pushed again, inexpertly, trying to amplify the threat but still speaking quietly. “So that leaves your employers, and they won’t want to be identified. For the rest of your life, the whole world will be a darkness the size of the interior of your head.”

The quiet voice was intended to sound menacing, but Carne wasn’t buying it.