Jigsaw (41 page)

‘If you're a target …' said Foxie, leaving his sentence unfinished.

‘Then so are you.'

‘A shining thought,' said Foxie. ‘A bright prospect.'

‘And I don't doubt for a moment they'll try again if we keep worrying them. You may be sure they're watching us.'

Pagan shoved aside his sandwich and sighed. He gazed round the crowded bar. You couldn't tell from superficial appearances if anyone in the pub was a potential killer. The plump man jammed in the corner balancing a pork pie, the long-haired kid in a leather jacket deftly rolling a cigarette, the laughing girl near the doorway. You just couldn't tell.

He took from his pocket the scrap of paper Foxie had delivered from the drunken McLaren and looked at it. ‘As to the business of Streik – this Audrey Roczak in Lyon. McLaren said she worked with Streik.'

‘He suggested they might have been closer than mere workmates, actually. They ran errands in the Cold War days. They were postmen.'

‘McLaren's info is reliable?'

‘I'd say so.'

‘At least Lyon narrows our inquiries down geographically.'

‘Except Audrey Roczak's not answering her phone,' Foxie said. ‘I've been trying.'

‘You ever been in Lyon, Foxie?'

Foxie shook his head. ‘It's always had this weirdly inexplicable attraction for me, though.'

‘I hear it's a pleasant sort of town.'

‘I hear the same.' Foxie watched a sly smile on Pagan's face.

‘Billy Ewing can run the show from Golden Square in our absence,' Pagan said.

‘Nimmo wouldn't like that.'

‘By the time Nimmo finds out, it's going to be too late to complain.' Pagan stood up, colliding with a pipe-smoking man in a wet tweed coat, who immediately said he was sorry in an exasperated manner. Pagan scanned the faces as he moved to the door. He thought a subdued air of desperation hung over everything; people had the expressions of mourners awaiting the entry of a corpse with whom they'd barely been acquainted.

He looked up at a small TV that played without volume above the bar. A plane wheeled along a tarmac, stopped, a door opened, a crowd of men in dark overcoats emerged, surveying the tarmac with the stiff neck movements of security guards the world over. And then Vladimir Gurenko appeared and began to descend, flanked by his protectors. He waved a hand, smiled for the camera, a breeze shuffled his already unruly hair. At the foot of the steps he was greeted by the Prime Minister, an overweight man whose customary expression was one of moral rectitude. He gave the impression of a mirthless life. Pagan, who had no great fondness for the PM – a former lawyer, a party hack – felt a small admiration for the Russian. It was given grudgingly; Gurenko was a politician, after all, and
ipso facto
flawed. But Pagan had always considered Gurenko something more than a product of decrepit Russian politics. He was a man of some courage and vision; he had stature – he had, Pagan thought,
soul
– in contrast to the pinheads running most of the governments of the world. Pagan remembered a famous photograph of Gurenko, taken in Red Square after a failed coup attempt by an assortment of superannuated generals and elephant-brained hardliners, depicting Gurenko with a bloodied bandage round his skull and a revolver in his hand and a wild look on his face. Pagan considered it unlikely that Gurenko had actually
used
the pistol in the course of events; but he'd enjoyed the symbolism of the Russian's stance. The photograph had come to represent Gurenko's determination for the future direction of his country. Pagan couldn't imagine, under any circumstances, the PM with a pistol in his hand.

A man with a pipe stuck between his lips said to nobody in particular, ‘Once a Commie, always a Commie. Mark my words.' He looked purposefully at Pagan, as if he longed for one of those interminable pub arguments that resolve nothing. ‘His people don't have enough food, they can't keep themselves warm in winter, and here he is traipsing round Europe like some bloody monarch. What's he playing at? Eh? Eh? Who does he think he is?'

Pagan wasn't about to be drawn into a dreary debate. He looked away from the TV, stepped out of the pub. He turned up the collar of his coat on the wet street. ‘Get us on the earliest flight, Foxie. I just need enough time to pack an overnight bag in case we have to stay in Lyon. Pick me up at my place when you're ready. And tell Billy Ewing he's minding the store.'

‘You're sure about this, Frank? It's a long shot.'

‘Without Jake Streik, what have we got?'

‘A lot of nothing,' said Foxworth.

‘Precisely.' He added, ‘And be careful.'

‘I always am.' Briskly, Foxie moved off down Beak Street while Pagan went to the car park where he'd left his Camaro earlier. He strolled round the car, got down on his knees and examined the underside, ran his fingers over the insides of the wheels. He neither felt nor saw any sign of interference, no hidden attachments, no devastating devices. He unlocked the door and, after a second of hesitation, turned the key in the ignition.

The car started at once.

He drove to Holland Park, went inside the house, headed down the corridor to the stairs. He passed the closed doors of Miss Gabler's flat, hearing choral music issue from the old dear's antique record-player. He took the stairs rapidly, climbing to the landing, where he let himself into his own flat and shut the door behind him.

He found a leather bag in his bedroom closet, tossed in two shirts, underwear, socks. From the bathroom he removed toothbrush, toothpaste, comb. Inside the living-room he walked to the window, drew back the curtain, looked out in a guarded manner. Nobody moved in the colourless street. Nobody was obvious. Of course somebody could be sitting in one of the parked cars or watching from the small winter-dead park across the way. It was impossible to tell. He picked up the telephone, dialled the number of the Hilton and was put through to Brennan's room. She picked up on the second ring, sounding breathless.

‘I was running a bath,' she said. ‘I knew you'd call. When can I see you?' The eagerness in her voice was touching.

He was quiet a second. He looked round the living-room. He had a sense of something out of place, wasn't sure what. He surveyed the bookshelf – mainly paperbacks and the skinny volumes of poetry Roxanne had collected. These books always emitted a damp earthy scent whenever he opened one, which wasn't very often these days.

Carrying the phone, he walked to the kitchen door, nudged it open, glanced inside. The light above the sink was lit, throwing a yellowy bloom into the room. He couldn't remember whether he'd left it on or not. He looked at the dishes arranged in the slats of the drying-rack. For some reason their stillness, so utterly predictable, so ordinary, spooked him.

‘Frank? Hello? You fall asleep?'

‘Sorry, sorry. I was thinking about something.'

‘You OK?'

‘I'm fine.' A lie. And it wasn't just because of the gunman he'd lied. He was thinking of the phone call to Artie Zuboric and chastising himself for his own dark doubts.

‘So. When do we two meet again?'

‘I'm going out of town for a day or so,' he answered. ‘It isn't something I want to do.'

‘It's work. I understand.'

‘Do you know what I'd rather do? You want me to tell you?' He shut his eyes.

‘Tell me.'

‘I want to come to your room. Lock the door. Take your clothes off. Slowly. Very very slowly. As slowly as possible. So softly you can hardly feel me doing it …'

‘I'm approaching meltdown,' she said.

‘Then lay you down on the bed and fuck you until my heart gives out.'

‘The wires are burning, Frank.'

‘More than the wires.' He had an erection. He supposed this was connected to the regression he was undergoing. The way he'd spoken to her, the words that had come tumbling out of him, the visual images that flowered in his head – this wasn't his regular kind of behaviour, he didn't usually speak like some psycho phone-freak in a scruffy call-box.

‘I'm touching myself, Frank,' she said.

He pictured her, perhaps naked, perhaps wrapped in a bathrobe, hair piled up and held carelessly in place with pins, a few blond lanks hanging against her face.

‘You have an amazing effect on me,' she said.

‘Hold the thought.'

‘I'm holding more than a thought, Frank. That's the problem.'

He stared out into the street, looked at the tiny area of park, the empty flower-beds awaiting spring, a couple of tired willows. Life should altogether be an easier proposition, he thought. The pieces should be made to fit. Doubts should be dispelled, shadows dispersed. Sense should prevail. But it didn't work that way.

‘I'll be back from France as quick as I possibly can.'

‘France? I'm envious.'

‘Don't be. I promise I'll take you to Paris one day.'

‘And hold my hand on the boulevards,' she said.

‘The whole thing. I promise.'

‘Frank,' she said, and was silent a second. ‘Tell me you're not playing games. Tell me this isn't some abrupt little affair.'

‘This isn't some abrupt little affair,' he said. Call Zuboric back, he thought. Tell him to forget it. It isn't too late, is it?

She said, ‘I couldn't take disappointment. I don't handle it well. I'm not built for heartbreak.'

‘No disappointment. No heartbreak. I promise you.'

When he'd put the receiver down he was beset by the need to call her again at once and try to clarify his feelings – an elusive task – but instead he wandered the rooms of his flat, feeling a weird emptiness. He found himself in the kitchen, brooding beside the big humming refrigerator.

The kitchen is wrong, he thought. Something is altered here. He opened the drawers of the dresser, saw knives and forks where they were supposed to be, spoons in their allotted slots, everything the way he'd left it. And yet. He couldn't finger it. He couldn't place it. Maybe it was just the fact the light was burning over the sink: had he forgotten to switch it off when he'd hurried out the previous night? And now – was this just his imagination whispering that somebody had been here in his absence, somebody with an expert touch had turned the place over, looking for God knows what? He shivered. Had Bryce Harcourt felt like this when he'd told Victoria Canningsby he was being watched and followed – jumpy, hounded by seemingly irrational thoughts?

He reached back, touched his gun as if for reassurance, but the feel of the Bernardelli didn't assuage him. He picked up his leather bag, tossed in his passport, zipped the bag shut. And when he heard the sound of Foxworth banging the horn of his car in the street he was happy to leave the apartment and lock the door behind him – even as he imagined strange characters emerging from closets and cupboards to continue their grim search of his possessions in his absence. Halfway down the stairs he heard his phone ringing, but he had no urge to go back and answer it, consequently he had no way of knowing that the caller was Artie Zuboric.

On the motorway to Heathrow, Pagan directed Foxie to an exit that led down some narrow suburban streets of terraced houses. ‘Park here,' and he gestured to a space outside a corner grocery store whose steel-barred window was filled with assorted foods from England and the East, cornflakes and couscous, marmalade and jars of satay marinade, tins of custard powder and garam masala.

Foxie switched off the Rover's ignition. ‘Now what?' he asked.

‘We'll sit a moment. See what happens.'

Foxie looked at his watch. ‘Our check-in time is at four-thirty.'

‘We'll make it.' Pagan sat very still, looking now and then in the passenger-side mirror, seeing only grey houses. No traffic moved on the street for about five minutes, and then a delivery van unloaded some packages at the grocery store before pulling away again. After that, nothing save a few schoolkids screaming into view, swinging satchels round their heads as they passed the Rover. Foxie looked at his watch again.

‘Satisfied?' he asked.

‘I'm not sure.' Pagan turned in his seat, stared the length of the street. It was all very ordinary. Streetlamps were coming on, burning against the fringes of a cold twilight. If anyone had been following them on the motorway, they hadn't come off at this particular exit. Pagan put his hands in his pockets. Another few minutes passed. Nothing, nothing at all. A light flickered on in the grocery window and created shadows from the steel bars. The small shop might have been built to withstand a siege.

‘OK,' he said. ‘Let's move.'

‘Back to the motorway or what?'

‘I don't think so, Foxie. Use the back roads.'

‘Time-consuming.'

‘We'll make the flight. Don't worry.'

Foxie drove the Rover through more suburban streets, then skirted an industrial estate illuminated by ghastly orange lamps. Every now and then Pagan swung his head round to look behind. More suburban streets. TV lights fluttered behind windows. Then there were signs to Heathrow, and roundabouts clogged with traffic, and Pagan began to relax.

‘I think we lost them,' he said. ‘If there was anyone to lose …' It was odd how quickly you adapted your thinking to the possibilities of being followed. You developed a kind of force field. You had your antennae in position to detect murderous interference.

They plunged into the tunnel to the airport, found a parking space, walked to Terminal 2. Inside the crowded building they checked-in and passed through security, where Pagan was briefly detained by a bewhiskered official who examined his Special Branch identity card and his weapon. The man gave Pagan a knowing look, as if they were partners in a conspiracy.

In the departure lounge, Pagan ignored the No Smoking sign and lit a cigarette, which he puffed on reluctantly for a few seconds before stubbing it out. He stared at the departures screen, contemplating the vicissitudes of an investigation that had begun in an Underground tunnel and was now about to take him upward into the skies, from one extreme to another, as if the various bits of the puzzle had been scattered in a purgatorial place between heaven and earth.