Uncommon Enemy (27 page)

Later, in his hospital bed, he tried to get his memories into chronological sequence. It was difficult, because his only connected narrative was what people told him had
happened, and he couldn’t always distinguish between what he remembered and what he imagined as a result of being told. He definitely remembered the ambulance interior, but not whether it was
as he was taken in or taken out. He remembered more shouting but not by whom, when or what. He remembered bright lights and a man’s voice saying, ‘We can’t leave them like that,
we’ve got to turn one over.’ He remembered pain around his eye and in his back but not whether it was at the time or afterwards, when he came round and had thought he must have been
playing rugby again.

Then there was a pleasant, timeless period, a dreamy state in which he drifted in and out of consciousness, couldn’t concentrate on anything and didn’t mind. It was like floating.
Another voice, a woman’s, said, ‘Tell the police they’ll just have to wait. He’s not ready yet.’

Next came the long monotony of consciousness, discomfort and weakness. He was by himself in a white room overlooking the hospital car park with houses beyond and hills in the distance. By
resting his eyes on the hills he could almost persuade himself he was in them, or forever approaching them. He couldn’t get Housman’s line about blue remembered hills out of his head,
but nor could he remember the rest of the poem. Everything else in his head was bad. Mostly he thought about Martin.

Various doctors came and spoke to him and, one day, the police. On another day the door opened and instead of food or a change of dressing – an uncomfortable procedure – it was Nigel
Measures. He wore a green tweed jacket, with green jumper and brown corduroys. He looked unconvincing in country clothes. He was smiling.

‘Just popped up to see you, Charles. Didn’t take long. Wanted to see how you are, how you’re getting on. And to thank you.’

Charles began the slow business of sitting up. ‘Thank me?’

‘For tracking down al-Samit. Gladiator. Pity it ended in his death. But at least you’re okay, thank God. Ricochet, wasn’t it? Nothing broken, they tell me. Didn’t
penetrate too deeply because of the splayed-out shape. Is that right? Plus your black eye, of course. Quite a shiner you’ve got there.’ Still smiling, he pulled up the chair.
‘Apart from that you’re looking well. You were lucky. We all were.’

Charles controlled himself. ‘Except for Martin,’ he said. He managed to make it sound almost jocular.

‘Gladiator. Yes, well, most unfortunate, as I said. Understandable, from the police point of view. Dark night, him holding what looks like a gun; then when they challenge him he
doesn’t drop it but turns towards them with it. They’re entitled to shoot if they think there are lives at stake, including their own. There’ll be an enquiry, of course. Police
Complaints Commission and all that. Always is when they shoot someone. They’ll want to talk to you, find out what happened from your point of view. What d’you think you’ll say?
Hard to remember clearly, I suppose?’

His energy was as relentless as his smile. Charles let him talk, feigning greater weakness than he felt and watching the play of Nigel’s ceaselessly mobile features. Now was not the time;
but it would come. He pictured Nigel skewered against the white wall, writhing silently. He didn’t argue with anything, not even the identification of Martin with al-Samit. Especially not
that.

‘Must be upsetting for you,’ Nigel continued, ‘given Gladiator’s origins. I know your relationship was purely professional, and that he knew nothing about it, about your
being – about your relation to him and all that. That’s right, isn’t it?’

It was the first time Martin’s paternity had been mentioned between them. Possibly Sarah had told him. More likely, he had read it in the file, in the secret annex that recorded his own
dealings with French intelligence. Charles replied slowly, as if with difficulty.

‘No, he never knew. Makes me sad to think of that.’ He paused, then added. ‘You knew all about it, of course.’

‘God, yes. I was briefed on it ages ago by Matthew Abrahams. He thought I should know about it when I was saying I wanted you back on the case, to find Gladiator.’

Another lie, as pointless as it was ineffectual. The man inhabited a web of lies. Charles wanted to ask what he’d done with the secret annex but it was more important to appear
unthreatening. He nodded.

‘You heard he’d died, Matthew?’ Nigel continued. ‘Two days ago. Not unexpected, of course. But sad all the same, very sad.’

Charles stared. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Nice obituary in the
Times.
What he deserved. But well done to you, Charles, with Gladiator. Very proper. Must’ve taken a great deal of self-discipline not to tell him. Very
professional of you. I wonder what made him turn against us. Any ideas?’

Charles was still thinking about Matthew. Hardly unexpected, as Nigel had said, but the permanent loss of his friend, that wise and playful mind, would take him a while to absorb. However, there
was no time now for the luxury of private indulgence, as Matthew himself would have put it. ‘I wasn’t in touch with Martin when he converted,’ Charles said. ‘How was he when
you saw him, just before he went back?’ That was an unnecessary pin-prick, but he couldn’t resist it.

Nigel folded his arms and glanced out of the window. ‘Fine. Quite calm and collected, determined to go. He said nothing about his motives when you were with him last? Nothing religious, no
ideological confession, no outpouring of hatred of us or the west or anything? No hint of why he’d become al-Samit?’

Was Nigel always this good an actor? Charles asked himself. He thought of their late-night conversations in Oxford, the early morning encounter on the Cherwell bridge, that awful dinner at the
Elizabeth. Self-dramatising, perhaps, like nearly everyone at that age. But the Nigel of those days had not acted to deceive. Well, he wasn’t the only one doing it now. It was essential that
he should think that his invented identification of Martin with al-Samit was unquestioned. ‘Nothing much in the way of outpourings,’ he said. ‘Not that I remember now, anyway.
Mind you, I seem to have forgotten a lot, from what people tell me.’

Nigel brightened. ‘You trained him well, I’ll say that for you. Too bloody well.’ He laughed. ‘But I was so relieved when I heard you weren’t seriously injured. Not
only for your sake, I admit, but for all of us. Mine as well. Even more explanations to the Police Complaints Commission if you’d died too. Now you can tell them the whole story yourself, as
I’m sure you will, very competently.’ He paused and then, as if flicking a crumb from his sleeve, asked: ‘What d’you think you’ll say to them?’

He is transparent, Charles was thinking, clear as water. Perhaps he always had been. The puzzle was not so much how had he got away with it, but why had he not done even better for himself?
People so often took you at your own evaluation; you could get almost anywhere by flattering and smiling. But the most adept were often also the most vulnerable to the same tactic. Charles forced a
weak smile.

‘Just pleased I didn’t let you down,’ he said. ‘My first thought when I came round was that I’d cocked it up. I thought Martin must’ve attacked me. He
wasn’t always an easy man to be with. As for the PCC, I’ll confine myself to what happened that night, what little I remember of it, just as I did when the police interviewed
me.’

‘They’ve spoken to you already, the police?’ Nigel’s tone was sharper.

‘Yesterday or the day before. Can’t remember which. I had the impression their main concern is to avoid blame for shooting another unarmed man. They’re not interested in the
background or anything in the past. Especially the deep past.’

Nigel relaxed and nodded encouragingly. ‘The deep past. A good phrase for all that’s dead and buried.’

Like Martin, Charles thought, thanks to you. Except that Martin was not yet buried but lying chilled in a mortuary drawer, a piece of evidence. He couldn’t help picturing it; the more so
because Martin had been such a warm and vigorous presence.

Nigel left with the assurance he wanted, knowing nothing of Sarah’s visit the previous day. It was that which had given Charles the strength to hold back what he had most wanted to say.
Self-control had always come naturally to him, perhaps too naturally; but this time she had provided crucial, if unintended, reinforcement.

He had been dozing when she arrived and had awoken to see the door closing behind her. He struggled to sit up, embarrassed by his awkwardness and his black eye. She was wearing jeans with long
brown boots and a suede jacket.

She smiled and laid some flowers on the bedside table. ‘Don’t. Stop it, Charles.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Trying to sit up. Just keep still. You’re all right as you are. I was warned about your black eye.’

‘Tea?’

She shook her head and pulled up the blue plastic chair. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Fine. I could go home, really, as soon as the anaesthetic wears off completely. Keep falling asleep. I’ll go as soon as I feel I can drive.’

‘Don’t even think of it, it’s too far. Anyway, your car needs repairing, Nigel told me. It was hit by bullets and the police have taken it away. Nigel says the office will get
it back and repair it for you.’

It hadn’t occurred to him that the Bristol might be damaged; nor had he realised until then that he no longer had the keys. ‘How bad is it?’

‘It’ll be fine when it gets over the anaesthetic.’

There was a pause, which for him was filled by the presence of Martin. ‘You heard what happened?’

She nodded.

‘The police firearms team thought he had a gun,’ he said. ‘They’d been briefed that he might have. But it was his walking sticks, which he’d just taken out of the
boot of my car. Most of the people they shoot seem to be unarmed. There was that man in London who came out of a pub carrying a chair-leg in a plastic bag. They shouted at him from behind and he
turned round. To see who they meant, presumably. It’s what people do. I expect that’s what Martin did.’

He saw her eye caught by the small misshapen lump of metal on his bedside table.

‘My bullet,’ he said. ‘They dug it out of my shoulder. Hit the wall first, they think.’

‘Just as well. Horrible thing. You were so lucky.’

‘Martin isn’t – wasn’t – al-Samit, the one who’s allegedly coordinating terrorists here. Nigel knew that when he persuaded him to go back to Afghanistan to
find out who the real al-Samit is.’ He spoke slowly, watching the effect of his words like an observer noting the fall of shot.

She stared. Her features showed nothing except concentration.

‘When Martin got there he realised he’d been set up, betrayed,’ he continued. ‘They were going to kill him, but he escaped. He went into hiding when he got back here but
he did ring the office and tell them the only thing he knew about al-Samit. She’s a woman. Nigel would have known that when he told the police that Martin was al-Samit, and probably
armed.’

She continued staring.

‘His body fell on top of me, apparently. Knocked me flat. Gave me my black eye.’

‘Perhaps you should keep that, too.’

Her words were muffled as her face suddenly crumpled, almost as in laughter. She bowed her head and opened her handbag, her shoulders shaking. He struggled to sit up further and touch her but
she waved him away, holding a tissue to her face and repeating that she was sorry. When he eventually got himself upright he leaned forward. He couldn’t reach her hands but could just touch
her knee.

She was sobbing wholeheartedly now, hiding her face in both hands. ‘If I’d known he was the only baby I’d have – I’d have – I’d never have—’
She let the tissue fall and clutched his fingers with one hand, pressing them to her knee.

A nurse holding a tray and tea-cups opened the door. ‘Cup of tea, anyone?’

‘Thank you, just—’ Charles tried to indicate with his bad arm that she could leave the tray with them but she backed out, saying she would come again later.

Sarah bent to pick up the tissue, then let go of his hand and stood to repair her face in the small wall mirror, working deftly with aids from her bag. ‘Sorry about that. Took myself by
surprise.’ She made it sound as if she’d spilt something on the tablecloth.

‘Does Nigel know you’re here?’

‘No.’

‘May I come and see you when I’m out?’

She nodded and turned from the mirror to look at him. ‘He loves me, you know. Nigel. He still loves me.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ She turned back to the mirror. ‘Nor do I blame him,’ Charles said.

A different nurse knocked and entered with tea. Sarah sat again to drink it while they briskly discussed the practicalities of his discharge, how he would return to London, how helpful the
police had been in getting his possessions and his bill from the Feathers, what the PCC inquiry would involve, how fortunately limited was the press coverage.

She put down her cup and stood. ‘Sorry I was so pathetic.’

‘You weren’t.’

‘I came here to cheer you up. Didn’t do a very good job.’

‘You did.’

‘’Bye, Charles.’ She bent swiftly and kissed his forehead, leaving him in a waft of perfume he thought he knew, or should know. But he thought that about most perfumes.

S
onia drank green tea, barely separating cup and saucer when she sipped. The faint click they must have made when she reunited them was inaudible
because of the hotel harpist.

‘Fancy her, don’t you?’ said Sonia.

Charles looked at the harpist as if noticing for the first time her long hair, strong slender arms, graceful figure and young face. He and Sonia had agreed that the risk of surveillance was
negligible now that its purpose had been so definitively achieved, so far as Nigel was concerned. ‘Haven’t thought.’

‘Come off it, you’ve hardly taken your eyes off her since she started playing. Always a harpist or pianist or waitress or something for you, isn’t there? In the background.
God, it would be awful to be married to you.’

‘Helps me think.’