A Delicate Truth (38 page)

He had woken badly, with feelings he needed
to disown and others he needed urgently to revive. Despite Emily’s consoling words
to him it was Oakley’s anguished face and supplicating voice that stayed with him
when he woke.

I’m a whore.

I didn’t know.

I knew, and led him on.

I didn’t know, and should have
done.

Everybody knew but me.

And most frequently: after Hamburg, how
could I be such a bloody fool – telling myself every man’s entitled to his
appetites, and after all nobody got hurt but Giles?

Concurrently, he had undertaken a damage
assessment of the information Oakley had, or had not, revealed about the extent to which
his extramural journeyings were compromised. If Charlie Wilkins, or his certain friend
in the Met, was Oakley’s source, which he took pretty much for granted, then the
trip to Wales and his meeting with Brigid were blown.

But the photographs weren’t blown. The
path to Shorty wasn’t blown. Was his visit to Cornwall blown? Possibly, since the
police, or versions of them, had trampled all over Kit’s club and were by now
presumably aware that Emily had come to rescue him in the company of a friend of the
family.

In which case,
what
?

In which case, presenting himself to Shorty
in the guise of a Welsh journalist and asking him to turn whistle-blower might
not be the wisest course of action to pursue. It might in fact be an
act of suicidal folly.

So why not abandon the whole thing, and pull
the sheets over our heads, follow Oakley’s advice and pretend none of it ever
happened?

Or in plain language, stop flailing yourself
with unanswerable questions, and get down to Mill Hill for your date with Shorty,
because one eyewitness who is prepared to stay alive and speak is all you’re ever
going to need. Either Shorty will say yes, and we’ll do together what Kit and Jeb
had planned to do, or Shorty will say no and scuttle off to tell Jay Crispin what a good
boy he is, and the roof will fall in.

But whichever of these things happens, Toby
will finally be taking the battle to the enemy.

Ring Sally, his assistant. Get her voicemail.
Good. Affect a tone of suffering bravely borne:

‘Sally. Toby here. Bloody wisdom tooth
acting up, I’m afraid. I’m booked in at the tooth fairy in an hour. So
listen. They’ll have to count me out of this morning’s meeting. And maybe
Gregory can stand in for me at the NATO bash. Apologies all round, okay? I’ll keep
you posted. Sorry again.’

Next, the sartorial question: what does your
enterprising provincial journalist wear on his visit to London? He settled for jeans,
trainers and a light anorak, and – a neat touch in his opinion – a brace of ballpoints
to go with the reporter’s notebook from his desk.

But reaching for his BlackBerry, he checked
himself, remembering that it contained Jeb’s photographs that were also
Shorty’s.

He decided he was better off without it.

The Golden Calf Café & Patisserie lay
halfway along the high street, squeezed between a halal butcher and a kosher
delicatessen. In its pink-lit windows, birthday cakes and wedding cakes jostled with
meringues the size of ostrich eggs. A brass handrail divided the café from the
shop. This much Toby saw from across the road before turning into a side street to
complete his survey of parked cars, vans and the crowds of morning shoppers who packed
the pavements.

Approaching the café a second time, now
on the same side, Toby confirmed what he had observed on his first pass: that the
café section at this hour was empty of customers. Selecting what the instructors
called the bodyguard’s table – in a corner, facing the entrance – he ordered a
cappuccino and waited.

In the shop section on the other side of the
brass handrail, customers armed with plastic tongs were loading up their paper boxes
with patisserie, sidling along the counter and paying their dues at the cash desk. But
none qualified as Shorty Pike, six foot four –
but Jeb come in from under him,
buckled his knees for him, then broke his nose for him on the way down
.

Eleven o’clock turned to ten past.
He’s got cold feet, Toby decided. They reckon he’s a health risk, and
he’s sitting in a van with his head blown off with the wrong hand.

A bald, heavy-set man with a pockmarked
olive complexion and small round eyes was peering covetously through the window: first
at the cakes and pastries, now at Toby, now at the cakes again. No blink-rate,
weightlifter’s shoulders. Snappy dark suit, no tie. Now he’s walked away.
Was he scouting? Or was he thinking he would treat himself to a cream bun, then changed
his mind for his figure’s sake? Then Toby realized that Shorty was sitting beside
him. And that Shorty must have been hovering all the time in the toilet at the back of
the café, which was something Toby hadn’t thought of and should have done,
but clearly Shorty had.

He seemed taller than his six foot four,
probably because he was sitting upright, with both very large hands on the table in the
half-curled position. He had oily black hair, close cropped at the back and sides, and
high film-star cheekbones with a built-in grin. His dark complexion was so shiny it
looked as though it had been scrubbed with a soapy nail-brush after shaving. There was a
small dent at the centre of his nose, so perhaps Jeb had left his mark. He was wearing a
sharply ironed blue denim shirt with buttoned-up regulation patch pockets, one for his
cigarettes, the other for a protruding comb.

‘You’re Pete then, right?’
he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

‘And you’re Shorty. What can I
get you, Shorty? Coffee? Tea?’

Shorty raised his eyebrows and looked slowly
round the café. Toby wondered whether he was always this theatrical, or whether
being tall and narcissistic made you behave like this.

And wondering this, he caught another
glimpse, or thought he did, of the same bald, heavy-set man who had debated with himself
about buying a cream bun, hurrying past the shop window with an air of conspicuous
unconcern.

‘Tell you what, Pete,’ said
Shorty.

‘What?’

‘I’m not all that comfortable
being here, frankly, if it’s all the same to you. I’d like it a bit more
private, like. Far from the maddening crowd, as they say.’

‘Wherever you like, Shorty. It’s
your call.’

‘And you’re not being clever,
are you? Like, you haven’t got a photographer tucked round the corner, or
similar?’

‘I’m clean as a whistle and all
alone, Shorty. Just lead the way’ – watching how the beads of sweat were forming
on Shorty’s brow, and how his hand shook as it plucked at the pocket of his denim
shirt for a cigarette before returning to the table without one. Withdrawal symptoms? Or
just a heavy night on the tiles?

‘Only I’ve got my new wagon round
the corner, see, an Audi. I parked it early, for in case. So I mean, what we could do,
we could go somewhere like the recreation park, or somewhere, and have a talk there,
where we’re not noticeable, me being somewhat conspicuous. A full and frank
exchange, as they say. For your paper. The
Argus
, right?’

‘Right.’

‘That a big paper, is it, or what –
just local – or is it, like, more national, your paper?’

‘Local, but we’re online
too,’ Toby replied. ‘So it all adds up to quite a decent number.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t
it? You don’t mind then?’ – huge sniff.

‘Mind what?’

‘Us not sitting here?’

‘Of course not.’

Toby went to the counter to pay for his
cappuccino, which took a moment, and Shorty stood behind him like the next person in
line, with the sweat running freely from his face.

But when Toby had done his paying, Shorty
walked ahead of him to the entrance, playing the minder, his long arms lifted from his
sides to make way.

And when Toby stepped on to the pavement,
there was Shorty, waiting, all ready to steer him through the teeming shoppers: but not
before Toby, glancing to his left, had again spotted the bald, heavy-set man with a
weakness for pastries and cakes, this time standing on the pavement with his back to
him, speaking to two other men who seemed equally determined to avoid his eye.

And if there was a moment when Toby
contemplated making a dash for it, it was now, because all his training told him:
don’t dither, you’ve seen the classic set-up, trust your instincts and go
now, because an hour from now or less you’ll be chained to a radiator with your
shoes off.

But his desire to see things through must have
outweighed these reservations because he was already letting Shorty shepherd him round
the corner and into a one-way street, where a shiny blue Audi was indeed parked on the
left side, with a black Mercedes saloon parked directly behind it.

And once again his trainers would have
argued that this was another classic set-up: one kidnap car and one chase car. And when
Shorty pressed his remote from a yard away, and opened the
back
door of the
Audi for him instead of the passenger door, while at the same moment his grasp on
Toby’s arm tightened and the heavy-set man and his two chums came round the
corner, any residual doubts in Toby’s mind must have died on the spot.

All the same, his self-respect obliged him
to protest, if only lightly:

‘You want me in the
back
,
Shorty?’

‘I’ve got another half-hour on
the meter, haven’t I? Pity to waste it. Might as well sit here and talk. Why
not?’

Toby still hesitated, as well he might, for
surely the normal thing to do, for any two men who want to talk privately in a car, far
from what Shorty insisted on calling the maddening crowd, was to sit in the front.

But he got in anyway, and Shorty climbed in
beside him, at which moment the bald, heavy-set man slid into the driving seat from the
street side and locked all four doors, while in the offside wing mirror his two male
friends settled themselves comfortably into the Mercedes.

The bald man hasn’t switched on the
engine, but neither has he turned his head to look at Toby, preferring to study him in
the driving mirror in darting flicks of his little round eyes, while Shorty stares
ostentatiously out of the window at the passers-by.

The bald man has put his hands on the steering
wheel, but with the engine not running and the car not moving, this seems odd.
They’re powerful hands, very clean and fitted with encrusted rings. Like Shorty,
the bald man gives an impression of regimental hygiene. His lips in the driving mirror
are very pink, and he has to moisten them with his tongue before speaking, which
suggests to Toby that, like Shorty, he’s nervous.

‘Sir, I believe I have the singular
honour of welcoming Mr Toby Bell of Her Majesty’s Foreign Office. Is that correct,
sir?’ he enquires in a pedantic South African accent.

‘I believe you do,’ Toby
agrees.

‘Sir, my name is Elliot, I am a
colleague of Shorty here.’ He is reciting: ‘Sir – or Toby if I may make so
bold – I am instructed to present the compliments of Mr Jay Crispin, whom it is our
privilege to serve. He wishes us to apologize in advance for any discomfort you will
have sustained thus far, and he assures you of his goodwill. He advises you to relax,
and he looks forward to a constructive and amicable dialogue immediately upon arrival at
our destination. Do you wish to speak personally to Mr Crispin at this moment in
time?’

‘No, thank you, Elliot. I think
I’m fine as I am,’ Toby replies, equally courteously.

Albanian-Greek renegade, used to call
himself Eglesias, ex-South African Special Forces, killed some chap in a bar in
Jo’burg and came to Europe for his health?
That
sort of Elliot?
Oakley is asking, as they sip their after-dinner Calvados.

‘Passenger on board,’ Elliot
reports into his mouthpiece, and raises a thumb in his side mirror for the benefit of
the black Mercedes behind them.

‘Sad about poor Jeb, then,’ Toby
remarks conversationally to Shorty, whose interest in the passers-by only
intensifies.

But Elliot is instantly forthcoming:

‘Mr Bell, sir, every man has his
destiny, every man has his
allotted time span, I say. What is written
in the stars is written. No man can beat the rap. Are you comfortable there in the back
seat, sir? We drivers sometimes have it too easy, in my opinion.’

‘Very comfortable indeed,’ says
Toby. ‘How about you, Shorty?’

They were heading south, and Toby had
refrained from further conversation, which was probably wise of him because the only
questions he could think of came out of a bad dream, like: ‘Did you personally
have a hand in Jeb’s murder, Shorty?’ Or: ‘Tell us, Elliot, what did
you actually
do
with the bodies of that woman and her child?’ They had
descended Fitzjohn’s Avenue and were approaching the exclusive marches of St
John’s Wood. Was this by chance ‘the wood’ that Fergus Quinn had
referred to in his obsequious conversation with Crispin on the stolen tape
recording?

‘… all right, yes,
fourish … the wood suits me a lot better … more
private.’

In quick order, he glimpsed an army barracks
guarded by British sentries with automatic rifles, then an anonymous brick house guarded
by United States marines. A sign said
CUL-DE-SAC
. Green-roofed villas at
five million and rising. High brick walls. Magnolia trees in full bloom. Fallen cherry
blossom lying like confetti across the road. Two green gates, already opening. And in
the offside wing mirror, the black Mercedes nosing close enough to touch.

He had not expected so much whiteness. They
have negotiated a gravel circle edged in white-painted stones. They are pulling up
before a low white house surrounded by ornamental lawns.
The white
Palladian-style porch is too grand for the house. Video cameras peer at them from the
branches of the trees. Fake orangeries of blackened glass stretch to either side. A man
in an anorak and tie is holding the car door open. Shorty and Elliot get out, but Toby
out of cussedness has decided to wait till he’s fetched. Now at his own choice he
gets out of the car, and as casually stretches.