“Battleship Potemkin,” Diana said. “He was laughing at us.” She looked at Lamb. “How much of this is guesswork?”
“Most of it. But Rasnokov’s nickname, and firestarting habits, come from Khan as well as Doctor Toblerone here. She might have her uses after all.”
“And I assume Ho tracked down the fire and the body and the bottles.”
“He’s a treasure,” Lamb agreed. “I plan to bury him someday. Though, point of fact, I haven’t actually spoken to him. Apparently he’s suffering severe mouth burns.” He adopted a pious expression. “Can’t think how that happened.”
De Greer was looking from one to the other. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“So that when we send you back to Moscow,” Diana said, “you’ll be able to let them know your whole operation was a smokescreen. That should make Vassily popular. Not to mention dead for real, if the Gay Hussar has a hangnail that day.”
“I don’t want to go back to Moscow.”
“Too bad.” Diana stood. “I need to make a call.” She had to call Judd, to forestall him dropping any info-bombs on the Park. “And I don’t seem to have a phone.”
“There’s a landline upstairs,” de Greer said. When Diana had left the room, said, “Will she really send me back?”
“Probably.”
“They’ll think I was part of it. That I knew what he was up to.”
“Then I wouldn’t bank on them declaring a public holiday.”
“Can I have a cigarette?”
“No.”
De Greer stared, then looked towards the window. There was no sign of Bachelor returning. Her gaze fixed in that direction, she said, “You forgot for a moment, back there.”
“Forgot what?”
“Forgot to be yourself. You were too caught up in explaining what’s going on. Being clever instead of being gross.”
He sneered.
“I’d have been better off letting Sparrow’s men grab me,” she said. “At least he’d have tried to bribe me.”
“Well, he’s not gunna find you here,” Lamb said. He drained his glass. “Let’s face it. He thinks you’re somewhere else entirely.”
The day finished early—or night came too soon—so Shirley was contemplating getting into bed at a time she’d normally have been pre-loading. Midweek she rested, like any sane person—her Wednesday evenings were sacrosanct—but otherwise she’d be on the prowl, looking for something she’d recognise when she found it. A want, awaiting fulfilment. And it was in the night—in its bars and backstreets; in its clubs and on its buses—that she hunted it down, usually finding that the search itself, and the consequent adventures, placated her want for a while. But here in the San, with its well-swept floors and clean sheets, with its constant hush, she found herself all want, all neediness, and hated it. Stripped of camouflage, stranded like a chameleon against a neutral background, she was the centre of her own attention, and subject to its moods.
There were few other resources available. The bed on which she lay, fully clothed; the lamp, which she hadn’t switched on. The moonlight falling through the window, whose curtain she hadn’t yet drawn. Though she was on the third floor, the available view was of various kinds of nothing, all of them shrouded in darkness. There was no TV, no radio; they’d taken her phone “because you won’t be needing to make calls, will you?” She couldn’t decide whether it was the content of that clause or the way it was framed as a question that most made her want to punch the speaker in the face, though accepted that either on its own would have done the trick. It was as well she was maintaining the quiet dignity thing. There was a coffee-table book on a coffee table: One Hundred Things to See in Dorset. Fat chance. There was a picture of a tree. And there was almost no noise.
Which was what most bothered her. Ignore the San’s various other hatefulnesses, like its institutional odours and the trademarked smile of its staff, and that picture of a tree, and what most bothered her was its hush. It felt like a religious undertow, its effect being to magnify every unintended noise. A coat hanger shifting in a wardrobe. The chink of a cup on its saucer. The people here—the “guests”—might as easily be called ghosts. They might not move through walls, but they were careful to enter rooms quietly. The loudest thing Shirley had witnessed since her arrival had been a jigsaw puzzle. It was enough to make her want to scream, and what worried her most was the fact that she hadn’t. That she was as quiet as everyone else, after only a couple of days.