Zero History (41 page)

“Rhenium,” corrected Heidi.

“Rhennish is the hock, yes, and I might well ask for some, shortly. But you,” he said to Hollis, “you appear to have signed on to a firm in transition.”

“And on whose recommendation?”

“Am I prescient? Have you known me to be prescient?” He tried his tea. Returned his cup to the saucer. Added a second lump. “Angelina tells me that the London PR community are behaving like dogs before an earthquake, and somehow everyone knows, without knowing how, that it’s about Bigend.”

“There’s something going on in Blue Ant,” Hollis said carefully, “but I couldn’t tell you exactly what. I mean, I don’t
know
exactly what. But Hubertus doesn’t seem to be taking it that seriously.”

“Whatever that was in the City last night, he doesn’t take
that
that seriously?”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing, exactly. But I can’t talk about it.”

“Of course not. That oath you swore, when you joined the agency. The ritual with Geronimo’s skull. But the tonality Angelina’s picking up isn’t that he’s in trouble, or that Blue Ant is trouble. It’s that he’s about to become exponentially
bigger
. PR people
know
these things.”

“Bigger?”

“Whole orders of magnitude. Things are shifting, in anticipation. Things are getting ready to jump on the Bigend boat.”

“Things?”

“The ones that go bump, darling. Like tectonic plates, colliding, in this city of ancient night.” He sighed. Tried his tea again. Smiled.

“How’s with the Bollards?”

His smile vanished. “I’m thinking of taking them to Tucson.”

“Whew,” said Heidi, “
lateral
fucking move.”

“I’m entirely serious,” said Inchmale, and sipped his tea.

“We know,” said Hollis. “Have you told them?”

“I’ve told George. He took it remarkably well. The novelty of working with exceptional intelligence. Clammy, of course, is pissy.”

“Then change his name,” said Heidi, squeezing a lemon wedge above her tea with the filigreed instrument Inchmale had used before.

“What happened after you left with Milgrim last night?” Hollis asked her.

“They followed us. Probably picked up by the other car, the one that faked us into the alley. Figured out which way we were heading, got ahead of us, dropped the guy with the bandaged head, and another one. They waited for us, got behind us, followed us. Clueless. I stopped and bought some clothes, pretended we were changing our look.”

“There was something open?”

“
Street
clothes. For their benefit. Then we headed for the subway. When I saw that they didn’t intend for us to get on the subway …” She shrugged.

“Heidi—”

“In the
head
,” said Heidi, tapping the roots of her bangs with a forefinger, in an inadvertent little salute. “It’s
bone
. His head was probably sore already …”

“Milgrim’s in trouble for that. They’re blaming him, apparently.”

“Your boyfriend’s hired Ajay. What’s that about?”

“Milgrim. It’s complicated.”

“It’s got Ajay over the moon. Gave notice at his bouncing job.”

“Bouncing?”

“Security at some pervy club.” She looked around at the evening crowd. “Now he’s gone all Secret Squirrel on me. So have you.”

“Come to Tucson with us,” said Inchmale to Hollis, suddenly appearing, in his way, from behind what she thought of as his exterior asshole. “Get some sun. Mexican food. You can help in the studio. George likes you. Clammy, amazingly, doesn’t hate you. I don’t like the weather around Bigend now. It’s all on the label. You can have associate producer credit. Let Bigend reach whatever critical mass he’s headed for. Be elsewhere. You can bring your boyfriend, of course.”

“I can’t,” said Hollis, reaching across the hassock and the tray with the Bunnykins service, to give his bony knee a squeeze, “but thanks.”

“Why not?”

“Garreth’s trying to straighten out the trouble with Milgrim for Bigend. They have an agreement, and it involves me. I’m with Garreth now. It’ll be okay.”

“As a middle-aged human of reasonably sound faculties,” said Inchmale, “I must inform you that it may well
not
be ‘okay.’ ”

“I know that, Reg.”

Inchmale sighed. “Come and stay with us in Hampstead.”

“You’re going to Tucson.”

“I’m the decider,” said Inchmale. “Haven’t decided when to go yet. And there’s the business of convincing Clammy and the others.”

“Is Meredith around?”

“Yes,” said Inchmale, as if not entirely pleased by the fact. “She distracts George, and is entirely concerned with her own agenda.”

“I’d hate to run into anyone like
that
,” said Heidi, looking at Inchmale. “I don’t think I could handle it.”

Hollis’s iPhone rang, in the left pocket of her Hounds jacket. “Hello?”

“Are you in the bar?” Garreth asked.

“Yes. What are ‘curly stays’?”

“What?”

“ ‘Curly stays.’ Pep said.”

“Forks. Front and rear. On a Hetchins frame, they’re recurved.”

“Okay.”

“Can you go out front for me and watch for a van? It says ‘Slow Foods’ on the side.”

“ ‘Slow Foods’?”

“Yes. Just have a look at it for me.”

“For what?”

“If you think it looks right.”

“What’s right?”

“If it’s reasonable-looking. Whether or not you’d notice it, remember it.”

“I think I might remember what it says.”

“I don’t mind that, actually,” said Garreth. “It’s the plain white ones people imagine are watching them.”

T
he toilet in Bigend’s cube was like the coach toilet on a plane, but nicer: Scandinavian stainless, tiny round corner sink to match, bead-blasted faucet-handles. The plumbing under the sink reminded Milgrim of aquarium tubing.

He was brushing his teeth, after shaving. Fiona was with Benny, supervising the mounting of something on her bike. Periodically, above the buzz of his toothbrush, he could hear, from the garage, the brief but enthusiastic whoop of what he assumed was a hydraulic driver of some kind.

Something was happening. He didn’t know what, and didn’t want to ask Fiona, else he destabilize whatever it was that had allowed her thigh and calf to find themselves across his thighs. And not be, he checked his memory again, immediately withdrawn, upon her waking. And she hadn’t volunteered anything, other than that Bigend had delegated something to someone named Wilson, whose orders she now followed. She seemed quietly excited, though, and not unhappy to be. Focused.

There weren’t enough towels in Bigend’s toilet, though what there were were Swiss, and white, and very nice, and had probably never been used before. He finished brushing, rinsed, washed toothpaste from his mouth with cold water, and dried his face. The hydraulic driver whooped three times in rapid succession, as though recognizing one of its kind across a clearing.

He opened the bifold door, stepped out, closed it behind him. You could barely see where it was, at the edge of its white wall.

He put his toothbrush and shaving things away in his bag. Fiona had collected everything when she’d checked him out of the Holiday Inn. He tried to tidy the cube, straightening chairs around the table, spreading the sleeping bag on the foam in case Fiona felt like another nap, but it didn’t seem to help. The cube wasn’t very large, and now there were too many things in it. The weird-looking rectangular helicopter-drone on the table, his Air, the cartons and elaborate packing she’d removed the various segments of the drone from, his bag, her armored jacket and his tweed from Tanky & Tojo on the backs of chairs. The way this kind of space suddenly looked so much less special if you had to live in it, even for a few hours.

His eye went back to the Air. He sat down, logged on to Twitter. There was a message from Winnie: “Got my leave call me.”

“No phone,” he typed, then wondered how to describe where he was, what he was doing, “I think B has me on ice. Something’s happening.” It looked stupid, but he sent it anyway.

Refreshed twice. Then: “Get phone.”

“Okay.” Sent. Or tweeted, whatever it was. Still, he was glad she had leave. Was still here. He scratched his chest, stood up, put his shirt on, buttoned the front and a few of the cuff buttons on either sleeve, left it untucked, put on his new shoes. His old ones were more comfortable, but they wouldn’t go with whipcord. He went to the door, tried it. Not locked. He hadn’t thought it was. The driver whooped, twice.

He opened the door, stepped out, amazed to find the day gone. The filthiness of Benny’s garage, under bright fluorescent light, instantly made the cube seem surgically clean. Fiona and Benny were looking at Fiona’s bike, which now had a shiny white box with slightly inward-slanting sides fastened where Milgrim had sat, behind her. It looked solid, expensive, but sort of like a beer cooler. There was something on the side, in black, neatly lettered.

“Red crosses?” Fiona asked Benny.

Benny had a yellow power wrench in his hand, a red rubber hose trailing away from it. “Punters would be flagging you down for first aid. This is bog standard for hauling fresh eyeballs. Copied from one that does just that, by the look of it.”

“The name and numbers?”

“You see it as received. Truck was from a prop house, Soho.” He removed the cigarette tucked behind his ear, lit it. “Film and telly. That’s the plan, then? You’re doing telly?”

“Pornos,” said Fiona. “Saad’ll like that.”

“Won’t he just,” said Benny.

Fiona, noticing Milgrim, turned. “Hullo.”

“May I borrow your phone? Have to call someone.”

She fished in her slouchy armored pants, came up with an iPhone, not the one Milgrim had used with the Festo ray, and passed it to him. “Hungry? We can have doner sent in.”

“Dinner?”

“Doner. Kebab.”

“Ready for a curry, myself,” said Benny, studying the lit tip of his cigarette intently, as though it might suddenly offer curry reviews.

“I’ll just make this call—” He froze.

“Yes?”

“Is this … a Blue Ant phone?”

“No,” said Fiona. “Brand-new. So’s Benny’s. We’ve all been freshly resupplied, and the old ones taken away.”

“Thanks,” said Milgrim, and went back into the Vegas cube. He found Winnie’s card, on which he’d added the dialing prefixes, and dialed.

She answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” said Milgrim.

“Where are you?”

“Suth-uk. Over the river.”

“Doing?”

“We had a nap.”

“Did you have story time first?”

“No.”

“You think something’s happening? You tweeted.”

The verb sounded off, the more particularly because he knew it wasn’t part of a nursery theme. “Something is. I don’t know what. He’s hired someone called Wilson, and delegated.” He was glad he’d remembered the word.

“Threat management,” she said. “He’s outsourcing. Shows he’s taking it seriously. Have you met Wilson?”

“No.”

“What’s Wilson telling them to do?”

“They put a box on the back of Fiona’s bike. The kind they haul eyeballs in.”

There was a perfect digital silence, then: “Who’s Fiona?”

“She drives. For Bigend. Motorcycles.”

“Okay,” said Winnie. “We’ll just start again. Tasking.”

“Tasking?”

“I want you to meet Wilson. I want to know about Wilson. Most importantly, the name of the firm he’s working for.”

“Isn’t he working for Bigend?”

“He works for one of the security firms. Bigend is the client. Don’t ask him. Just find out. Sneaky-ass, though. You can
do
sneaky-ass. Instinct tells me. Whose phone are you using?”

“Fiona’s.”

“I just e-mailed the number to someone, and they’re telling me the GPS is very amusing. Unless you’ve taken up marathon randomized teleportation.”

“It’s new. She just got it from Bigend.”

“That might be Wilson, the threat management consultant. Earning his keep, if that’s the case. Okay. You’re tasked. Go for it. Call, tweet.” She was gone.

The room filled with that weird chicken-scratch sub-Hendrix chord. He rushed out the door, tripped on part of an engine, and nearly fell, but managed to thrust the phone into Fiona’s hand. As he did so, he wondered whether or not it might be Winnie.

“Hullo? Yes. It’s on. Very convincing. Having my dampers replaced next. They’re a bit rough. You would? Certainly. I’ll borrow a bike. Fast? My pleasure.” She smiled. “What he was wearing yesterday?” She looked at Milgrim. “I’ll tell him.” She put the phone in her pants pocket.

Milgrim raised his eyebrows.

“Wilson,” Fiona said. “You’re required soonest, over the river. Wants to meet you. And you’re to bring what you were wearing yesterday.”