Outside was colder than he’d expected. Little clouds accompanied each breath; his own heavier, more pungent, than hers.
“We need to leave now.”
He’d been expecting this moment.
Keep her here. No contact with anyone other than me, Louisa or Lamb.
Lech’s instructions, back when his own first concern had been the per diems.
And Lech was his friend, who’d stuck by him through thin times, even though their association had cost the younger man dear. It would be the act of a rogue to betray his trust. So he averted his head to shield Sophie from his phosgene breath before replying, and to the neutral observer must have looked as if he were addressing the terracotta pots and their sleeping citizens when he whispered, “Okay.”
They left the mews in a quiet hustle. Neither looked back, so neither saw the shape at the window, watching; his bulk briefly illuminated, on and off, by the repeated clicking of a lighter which seemed reluctant to burst into flame.
“I always get hungry after a ruck.”
“Me too,” Whelan said.
She shot him a sideways glance.
“Or so it would appear,” he added.
He’d stopped the car and she’d climbed into the front, where the first thing she’d done was snap open the glovebox and peer inside. She was Shirley Dander, and had never, it transpired, been Sophie de Greer, nor even knew who de Greer was. “Does she live in Wimbledon?”
Whelan had always been good at keeping a file in his mind. “Yes.”
“Figures.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “All of what just happened, the violence, everything—it was my fault.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped to a conclusion.”
This, judging by her expression, was a feeble way of kicking off a riot.
I rescued you, he wanted to say. I jumped onto a moving vehicle. Remember that part? I was an action hero.
“Can we stop somewhere?”
“What, you mean . . . a bush or something?”
“Do I look like I want to eat a bush?”
“Oh. Right. No.”
“I meant like a service station.”
“I expect there’ll be one somewhere.”
“Could do with a crap too, to be honest, but mostly I need a burger or something.”
“。 . . Yes. Fine.”
“Or chocolate. Minimum.”
There was little traffic about, but a light shone way behind them: a single headlight. Motorbike, he thought.
“Why were you there?” he asked abruptly. “In the San?”
Fields crawled past. In the hedgerows, tiny lifecycles churned their way through insect millennia.
At last Shirley said, “People keep dying.”
He didn’t know how to reply to that.
“I don’t mean in general, though that too. It’s just that, every time I get close to someone . . . they die.”
She was staring out of the window on her side, though he guessed she wasn’t seeing anything.
“So don’t get paired with me. Not a good idea.”
He said, “I’m sure that’s . . .” but he wasn’t, when it came down to it, sure of much, and whatever he was going to say threatened to dissolve in the space between them. He hauled it back. “I’m sure none of it’s your fault.”
“Keeps happening. So it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is.”
This with the air of one who has reached a conclusion, and accepted that no other was viable.
A few moments later, she added, “I suppose, sooner or later, I’ll be the one drawing the short straw.”
Whelan said, “There’s some kind of service station soon. An all-night garage. They might do sandwiches.”
Shirley nodded.
The fields grew wider apart as the road morphed into a dual carriageway. Not long after he’d spoken, they passed a sign promising a garage, toilets, food, not far ahead.
When the taxi dropped Diana off, two hundred yards from the mews, she waited until its taillights had diminished to pixels before heading for the safe house. The note of grim humour in that name tolled loudly tonight—the safe house was tainted by the funds which had provided it, and if its existence were brought to the attention of the Limitations Committee, which would be pondering her career in a few hours, it would go from des res to memento mori in no time flat. But in her defence—and there was never a time when some part of her mind wasn’t working on her defence—in her defence, her job demanded compromise. It was her ability to function despite its constant presence that made her an effective First Desk.