Reconstruction (26 page)

He had already shown her as much identification as he was prepared to, and wasn’t about to let her see it again.

It was 11.59.

Not a long walk from Louise Kennedy’s place, but a different world all the same. After leaving Kennedy’s mother, Bad Sam had walked back up the road; had had to make his way round the crowd at the junction waiting for events to percolate. This was the reality beaming into Kennedy’s living room, and bore little more clarity than the on screen version. The crowd was Press plus slack-jawed accident-watchers, one of whom had stepped back without looking. Bad Sam – a tube-wars veteran – had brought his heel down on the man’s instep without breaking stride. Then he’d walked as far as the river; over an iron bridge beneath which fuzzy lumps of froth floated, clinging to polystyrene flotillas and soggy cardboard rafts. Oxford or not, this wasn’t quite punting in boaters.

He’d lit a cigarette while waiting for Whistler’s Black-Berry to buzz.

One day, the next inevitable step would be taken, and hand held gizmos like this would come with video link-up. Until that happened Chapman had Whistler’s BlackBerry, and as far as the queens of the database were concerned, that meant it was Whistler asking, and they’d provide the required information. Whistler was an agent in the field for the moment, and joes always took priority.

Which was a joke. Bad Sam had served in the field. There’d been boys and girls at Vauxhall Cross who’d waited anxiously for his every transmission, true, but fur-ther up the ladder all you had was suits measuring budget shortfalls. These days, Bad Sam’s own suit was a budget shortfall all its own. He was staring down the barrel of forced retirement – he’d last no longer than Nott, and Nott was on the skids – and the rewards of his service were pennies in a tin compared to what he’d be worth if he’d taken the corporate shilling. How surprising was it when an old hand went freelance? In his years as a Service dog – since his cover had grown too tattered for
foreign holidays
, as every joe called them – Bad Sam had collared former colleagues whose treacheries would have been stillborn if their pensions had matched their valour. These people had heard the call, and replied, You point me, I’ll march. In return they got a handshake and a pat on the back: now piss off. It wasn’t that Chapman was sentimental – those same former colleagues would testify to that. But he understood the nature of loyalty, if only because he’d learned the hard way about betrayal.

Betrayal began with the small stuff; the lapses that didn’t seem to matter.

I didn’t mean to spy on her. You’ll think that’s funny, I sup-pose,
a man in your profession. But I really didn’t. It’s just . . .
It was just that Louise’s mother was on the scene, and how could she help knowing what she knew?

‘This man Crispin was married, of course. I expect he gave Louise the usual story – that he’d leave his wife, set up home with her. Promises are cheap, aren’t they?’

‘Does she keep a diary?’

‘You think I’d read my daughter’s diary?’

Bad Sam hadn’t answered.

She’d said, ‘Sometimes, when I was visiting – this was when she had the London flat – there’d be a phone call she didn’t want me to overhear.’

He waited.

‘She’d pretend it was work. But there are tones of voice, aren’t there? The kind you use when you’re talking about work, and . . . the other kind.’

Crispin
was another query Chapman had fed into Whistler’s BlackBerry.

He’d been about to leave when she’d said, ‘There was a night last week . . . ’

‘He rang?’

‘No. We were supposed to go out to this school quiz, not Louise’s school, a different one. A fundraiser. And I . . . well, I told her I wasn’t feeling well. I thought it would do her good, to get out on her own. Meet new people.’

He waited.

‘She brought a man back with her. Probably she thought I couldn’t hear them, but . . .’ Her eyes strayed back to that TV set. ‘Do you have children?’

‘No.’

‘It’s hard to know what to wish for them. You want them to be happy, but the things that make them happy aren’t always . . .’

Maybe, back in her daughter’s sitting room, she was still finding her way to the end of that sentence.

On the bridge, a cigarette later, some answers had come streaming through the ether: Crispin was Crispin Tate, and came attached to one of those job titles that had been strung together from executive fridge magnets: Vice-Control, European Investments. Rearrange these words in any order. It was possible Bad Sam would have to call on Crispin Tate. It depended on how the dominoes fell. Also, he now had Judy Ainsworth’s address: she lodged with a woman called Deirdre Walker. He put the BlackBerry away. Sooner or later it would start asking questions of its own, but until then he’d hang on to it.

Chance had brought Sam in the right direction; Ainsworth lived the other side of the estate the bridge led to. Some while ago a tin of paint had been dropped on the concrete apron near the bridge’s stairwell, and its contents had hardened to a mustard-brown tattoo. A stained mat-tress germinated against a wall. He caught a whiff as he passed, on his way to the house with two ducks on the wall.

She was waving her cigarette packet at him, a beat behind what would have been polite.

‘Thank you.’

‘So you’re not with the police.’

He leaned forward to take the light she offered, and said, ‘Tell me about Mrs Ainsworth.’

‘I thought there’d have been someone here by now. I rang the police earlier, of course.’

‘Why was that?’

She shrugged. The movement came with exhaled smoke, like a well-rehearsed piece of stage business. ‘That’s where she works. The nursery where those gun-men are.’

The TV had told her this. It stuttered away in the background: the same unvarying pictures of a building under siege. A reporter in a corduroy jacket was repeating a well-aired slice of speculation, and soon they’d cut to the studio, where an expert would attempt to speak for a whole minute without saying
Stockholm syndrome
. Any useful information was under wraps. The locals had a bug inside those walls – in the mobile the fat cop had given Louise Kennedy – and Bad Sam would have given anyone else’s left nut to be listening in on it. He was trying to cover his arse, and all he could manage was background information.

‘They said her name a while ago.’

‘You must be worried about her.’

‘Well, of course. She pays her rent on time, not like some of them.’

‘How long has she been here?’

‘I’d have to check.’ She had the pinched look of a woman who gave nothing for free. ‘But around a year.’

‘And did you know her before?’

‘Most of my circle live in North Oxford. I prefer it here. It’s handy for the city centre.’

Spies have to learn foreign languages. Deirdre Walker’s circle didn’t take rooms.

‘And do you get on? What’s she like?’

She lifted an eyebrow. Surprisingly, she did this without using her fingers; her facial hydraulics evidently accustomed to the cosmetic weight they bore. ‘Well . . .’

He waited.

‘She’s not exactly . . . a
people
person, our Judy.’

Not exactly a people person himself, Sam Chapman

nodded understandingly.

‘Bitter isn’t the word.’

Which meant it was.

‘I think when her husband left her – well . . . You can see why he did, actually.’

‘She’s divorced?’

‘She’s a widow. Like me.’

He waited.

‘But would have been divorced.’

He waited some more.

She took a last drag on her cigarette, then crushed it in an ashtray embossed with Princess Diana’s portrait, though which event in that short, hysterical life it commemorated wasn’t clear. ‘He went off with another woman. Then they were killed in a car crash.’

‘I see.’

She looked at the TV screen, which had just flipped pictures and was now showing an airport scene: hostile crowds waiting while security measures eked themselves out. Chapman recognized stock footage when he saw it. Somebody was making connections: hostages equals terrorism. Terrorism causes death and panic and outrageous queues at airports.

‘It’s one of those Arabs, isn’t it? At the nursery school.’

‘Is that what they’ve said?’

‘More or less. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not prejudice.’ The
d
had dropped off the end: strange how often that happens with this particular assertion. ‘But I once had a tenant from that part of the world. Saudi or wherever.’ She waved an airy hand. Don’t bog her down with geographical precision. ‘She barely
bathed
, I can tell you. The atmosphere became quite oppressive.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Not as bad as darkies, though,’ she dared.

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Talk about filthy habits.’

‘My place is full of them,’ Bad Sam Chapman told her.

‘The government makes you, I suppose. I watched that spy thing on telly. There was a blackie in that.’ She exhaled smoke. ‘Course, they shot him in the head in the end.’

‘Does she talk much about him?’

‘Keeps herself to herself, mostly. Only told me that much when she’d . . . ’ Walker made a tippling motion. ‘Shame. But she’s not got much else in her life.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Would you like one, by the way? It’s after twelve.’

‘That would be kind.’

‘Well, maybe I’ll just have a small one.’ He was twist-ing her arm, judging by her tone. She moved into the kitchen where he heard her opening a cupboard, then a bottle, then two, then the fridge, with such unclumsy swiftness it was difficult to believe she didn’t do this regularly. When she returned she had a fizzing G&T in each hand. As soon as he’d relieved her of one, she reached for her cigarettes.

‘Here. Have one of mine.’

‘Don’t mind if I do.’

She steadied his rock-steady hand with her own as he offered his lighter.

Chapman said, ‘So where did it happen?’

‘This is like an interrogation, isn’t it?’

‘Except without the rubber truncheon.’

She wagged a finger. ‘Now now. I may be a single woman, but that doesn’t mean you can take advantage.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Mrs Walker.’

‘Deirdre.’

She looked at him over the top of her G&T and sniggered. ‘You ever do proper spying? Or just go round talking to people?’

‘You’d be surprised how much spying gets done, just talking to people.’

‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

‘I could answer that,’ he said. ‘But then I’d have to kill you.’

She sniggered more, then stopped.

Something in Chapman’s eyes made his joke a lot less funny.

Jaime put the mobile back into his pocket.

Ben wrote on the sheet of paper he’d collected.

‘I tell them everything is okay.’

‘I heard you.’

‘What you do now?’

Ben shook his head.

‘I am in charge here!’

Jaime’s voice rose at the end of that. Jaime’s voice nearly broke.

Ben held the paper up.

SAY NOTHING

‘What the hell’s going on in there?’

‘Sounds like our spook is taking control.’

‘Trying something on, you mean.’

Faulks said: ‘Whatever just happened, Jaime didn’t pull the trigger. And you heard him just now, he says every-thing’s all right.’

‘But it isn’t,’ Fredericks reminded him.

Because they were still out here, and the kid with the gun was still in there. Jaime. He didn’t like it that Faulks was calling him ‘Jaime’; he’d preferred it when they’d all agreed that the kid with the gun was the bastard.

‘What’s Whistler playing at?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He’s supposed to be calming things down. Finding out what the bastard wants.’

‘He’s the one with the gun pointed at him,’ Faulks said. ‘Meaning?’

‘I doubt he’s deliberately trying to wind Jaime up. Where would that leave him?’

It is not on.

‘What’s not on?’ Fredericks immediately asked.

Doesn’t matter.

‘Hush a mo,’ Faulks said quietly.

In the Major Incident Vehicle, time ticked on at the same speed as everywhere else. But as the voices coming through the speakers thinned, it seemed to Fredericks that it slowed to a crawl; that he’d be here forever, head tilted slightly upwards to catch whatever might come next: a random word, a shriek, a gunshot. Or a sudden unexpected splash, followed by nothing at all.

SAY NOTHING

Jaime looked at the paper.

THE PHONE IS BUGGED

His face creased.

Ben was starting to feel like Rolf Harris. Or someone, anyway. He wasn’t positive it was Rolf Harris.

THEY’RE LISTENING TO EVERY WORD WE SAY Jaime looked at the phone in his hand, then back at Ben. ‘It is not on.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ben whispered.

Eliot said, ‘Look, exactly what the –’ ‘Shush.’

‘It’s not up to you to –’

Ben looked at him.

Eliot shut up.

Ben scribbled again, the black marker pen squeaking as he wrote: THE MAN WHO TRIED TO KILL YOU IS OUTSIDE

‘Are you crazy?’ Louise said, in a harsh whisper.

‘Make him angry, and he might kill all of us,’ Eliot said, same volume. ‘I have children here. Or had you forgotten?’

Ben looked at Judy. ‘Anything to add?’

‘Don’t fucking talk to me.’

‘Fair enough. Now shut up, all of you.’ He turned to Jaime, holding the paper at arms’ length: Here is the news. The word KILL arrested him, Ben could tell.

For a wonder, they’d all done what he’d said. The only noise leaked through from outside: no discernible voices, but an overlapping murmur, and the occasional electronic squawk. They might have been trapped in a zombie movie: just the odd shuffling sound breaking in, as if there were a braindead army hovering out there, waiting for a clue as to their presence.

At last Jaime said, ‘What we do, then?’

We.

He was holding the mobile phone in his gunfree hand, staring at it as if he’d wound up holding a live grenade, with no idea how.

Ben turned the sheet over and started scrawling again, then thought better of it. Dropping both pen and paper, he held a hand out to Jaime, who didn’t notice.