‘I’ve been investigating you,’ she said. ‘Your father’s a junkie, has been for thirty years.’
It shouldn’t hurt when people say these things to me. I’ve known my dad was an addict since I was twelve. He was quite matter-of-fact about it once I’d found out, and keen to make sure I understood what it meant – he didn’t want me following in his footsteps. He was one of the few people in the UK who still got his heroin on prescription, courtesy of a GP who was a big fan of London’s least successful jazz legend. He’s never been clean but he’s always been under control, and it shouldn’t hurt me when people call him a junkie, but of course it does.
‘Damn,’ I said. ‘He’s kept that really quiet. I’m shocked.’
‘Disappointment runs in your family, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Your chemistry teacher was so disappointed in you that he wrote a letter to the Guardian about it. You were his blue-eyed boy – figuratively speaking.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘My dad keeps the clipping in his scrapbook.’
‘When they sack you for gross misconduct,’ said Tyburn, ‘will he keep that clipping as well?’
‘Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom,’ I said. ‘He’s your boy, isn’t he?’
Tyburn gave me a thin smile. ‘I like to keep track of the rising stars,’ she said.
‘Got him twisted around your little finger?’ I asked. ‘It’s amazing what people will do for a bit of slap and tickle.’
‘Grow up, Peter,’ said Tyburn. ‘This is about power and mutual self-interest. Just because you still do most of your thinking with your genitalia doesn’t mean everyone else does.’
‘I’m glad to hear that, because somebody has to tell him to trim those eyebrows,’ I said. ‘Did the gun come from you?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said.
‘It’s your style. Get somebody else to solve your problems for you. Machiavelli would be proud.’
‘Have you ever read any Machiavelli?’ she asked. I hesitated and she drew the correct conclusions. ‘I have,’ she said. ‘In the original Italian.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘For my degree,’ she said. ‘At St Hilda’s, Oxford. History and Italian.’
‘Double first, of course,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘So you understand why I don’t find Nightingale’s shabby gentility impressive in any way.’
‘So did you provide the gun?’ I asked.
‘No, I did not,’ she said. ‘I didn’t need to engineer this failure. It was only a matter of time before Nightingale screwed up. Although even I wasn’t expecting him to be stupid enough to get himself shot. Still, it’s an ill wind.’
‘Why aren’t you inside right now?’ I asked. ‘Why are you stuck in the coach house? It’s very impressive in there, got a library you wouldn’t believe and you could make a fortune hiring it out to film companies as a period location.’
‘All in good time,’ she said.
I fumbled my keys out of my pocket. ‘Here, I can lend you my keys,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you can talk your way past the paras.’ She turned away from my outstretched hand.
‘The one good thing to come out of this,’ she said, ‘is that now we get a chance to make a rational choice about how these matters are handled.’
‘You can’t go in,’ I said, ‘can you?’
I thought of Beverley Brook and her ‘inimical force fields.’
She gave me the Duchess look, the old money stare that footballers’ wives never get the knack of, and for a moment it rolled off her, the stink of the sewer and money and the deals done over brandy and cigars. Only, Tyburn being modern, there was a whiff of cappuccino and sun-dried tomatoes in there as well. ‘Have you got what you came for?’ she asked.
‘The TV’s mine,’ I said.
She said I could pick it up whenever I liked. ‘What did he see in you?’ she asked, and shook her head. ‘What makes you the keeper of the secret flame?’
I wondered what the hell the secret flame was. ‘Just lucky, I guess.’
She didn’t dignify that with a reply. She turned her back on me and returned to rummaging in the trunks. I wondered what she was really looking for.
On my way out through the coach yard I heard a muffled barking behind me and looked back. A pale, mournful face was watching me from a second-floor window – Molly, holding Toby tightly to her chest. I stood and gave them what I hoped was a reassuring wave, and then headed off to see if Nightingale was still alive.