The last meeting had been a difficult one-for Liz at least. She had asked Sohail if he would consider putting off university for a further year in order to remain in place at the bookshop, and for the first time she saw the twenty-year-old flinch. He had been counting, Liz knew, on being free of the intense pressure of his double life by the following autumn. The sense of an end-date had probably made the whole business supportable. And now she was asking him to remain there for a further twelve months-twelve months in which, for all she knew, anything could happen. Pressure might be put on him to undergo training as an undercover fighter-several of the young men who had drunk mint tea and talked of jihad in the bookshop’s upstairs room had made the journey to Pakistan and the camps. At the very least the delay would seriously threaten his dream of becoming a lawyer.
His distress had been almost invisible-a momentary shudder behind his eyes. And then, with a quiet smile, as if to reassure Liz that all would be well, he had agreed to continue.
His bravery had wrung Liz’s heart. She prayed that she would never have to meet Sarfraz and Rukhsana Din, never have to tell them that their son had died for his faith and his country.
“Bad one?” asked Dave Armstrong from the next desk.
“You know how it is,” said Liz, exiting the Marzipan file and kicking her chair back from the desk. “Sometimes this job can be really shitty.”
“I know. And that supposed goulash I saw you tackling in the canteen can’t have improved your mood either.”
Liz laughed. “It was kind of a wild choice. What did you have?”
“A sort of chicken thing, glazed with Ronseal.”
“And?”
“It did exactly what it said on the tin.” His hands flickered briefly over his keyboard. “How was the meeting this morning? Legoland team fashionably late again, I hear.”
“I think they were making a point,” said Liz. “There was a new guy there. Ex-Harrovian. Rather pleased with himself.”
“Don’t tell me MI6 have started recruiting smug ex-public schoolboys,” murmured Dave. “That I can’t believe.”
“He stared at me,” continued Liz.
“With or without shame?”
“Without.”
“You’ll have to kill him. Kick him in the ankle with your pointy shoes, Rosa Klebb-style.”
“OK… hang on a sec.” Liz leaned forward towards her screen, where an icon had appeared. She clicked her mouse.
“Trouble?”
“Flash from German liaison. UK driving licence ordered from one of the fake documents guys in Bremerhaven. Four hundred marks paid. Name requested, Faraj Mansoor. Ring any bells?”
“No,” said Armstrong. “Probably just some illegal migrant who wants to rent a car. Or some poor sod who’s been banned from driving. You can’t shout terrorist every time.”
“Six reckons there could be an ITS invisible on the move.”
“Where from?”
“One of the North West Frontier Province camps.”
“Definitely?”
“No. Just smoke.” She saved the message and scrabbled the mouse to check her messages.
The office door swung open and a hard-faced young man in an Aryan Resistance T-shirt strolled in.
“Yo, Barney!” said Dave. “How’s the world of the Far Right? I take it from the haircut and the utility footwear that you’ve got a social engagement later on?”
“Yeah. In East Ham. A lecture on the European Pagan Tradition.”
“Which is?”
“New Age Hitler-worship, basically.”
“Excellent!”
“Isn’t it just? I’m trying to look nasty enough to get alongside our man, but not so bloody horrible that I get my head kicked in by the Anti-Nazi League before I get there.”
“I’d say you’ve struck pretty much the right note,” said Liz.
“Thanks a lot.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Can I show you guys something?”
“You sound like a flasher. Quickly-I’ve got a very full in-box here.”
Barney reached beneath his desk, bringing out a limp rubber mask and a scrap of red felt. “It’s for the Christmas party. I’ve found this place that makes them. I’ve had fifty done.”
Liz stared incredulously at the mask. “It’s not!”
“It is!”
“But that’s brilliant! It’s so like him.”
“I know, but don’t say anything. I want it to be a surprise for Wetherby. No one in this department can keep a secret for five minutes, so I’m not going to hand them out until the actual day.”
Liz laughed out loud, the plight of Sohail Din temporarily but absolutely displaced by the thought of their section leader-customarily a late arrival at staff functions-faced with fifty beaming David Shaylers in Santa hats.
6
When Liz arrived back at her basement flat in Kentish Town, the place had a reproachful air about it. It wasn’t so much untidy as neglected; most of her possessions still lay where she had left them at the beginning of the weekend. The CD dusty in the jutting maw of the player. The remote control in the centre of the carpet. The cafetière half full. The Saturday papers strewn about.
A faint funereal smell lingered; the armful of winter jasmine that her mother had given her, and that she had meant to put in water before going to bed the night before, was now a sad tangle of stalks on the table. Around it, and thick on the floor below, a constellation of dying five-pointed petals. On the answering machine, a tiny pulsing red light.
Why was the place so cold? She checked the central heating and found that the timer was two hours behind. Had there been some sort of power cut during the weekend? Possibly, but then as far as Liz was concerned, thermostats and the like had always seemed to wield some strange whimsical power that rendered them unaccountable. Moving the time forward to 19:30, she heard the boiler start up with a satisfactory whoomf.
For the next half-hour, as warmth permeated the small basement flat, she tidied up. When the place was well enough ordered for her to be able to relax, she took a cook-from-frozen lasagne from the stack in the freezer (had they defrosted and refrosted in the power cut, if indeed there had been a power cut? Was she about to poison herself?), pierced the protective foil with a series of neat incisions, slid the package into the oven, and poured herself a large vodka-tonic.
There were two messages on the answering machine. The first was from her mother: Liz had left a suede skirt and belt on the back of her bedroom door at Bowerbridge-would they keep until next time?
The second was from Mark. He had rung at 12:46 that afternoon from Nobu in Park Lane, where he was waiting to give an American actress an expense-account lunch. The actress was late, however, and Mark was hungry, and his thoughts had turned to the basement flat in Inkerman Road NW5, and the possibility of spending the night there with the flat’s owner. Following a drink and a bite to eat, perhaps, at the Eagle in Farringdon Road.
Liz deleted both messages. The idea of meeting in the Eagle, a favourite hang-out of Guardian journalists, was insane. Had he told people at the paper about her? Was it common knowledge that he had that most chic of journalistic accessories-a pet spook? Even if he had said nothing to anyone it was clear that the game had moved beyond the realm of acceptable risk into crazy-land. He was playing with her, drawing her inch by inch towards self-destruction.
Taking a deep swallow of her drink, Liz called up his mobile. She was going to do it right now-finish the thing once and for all. It would hurt like hell and she would feel wretched beyond description, but she wanted her life back under her own control.
She got his voice mail, which probably meant that he was at home with Shauna. Where he bloody well should be, she mused sourly. Pacing around the flat, she was brought up short by the sight of the washing machine, and the inverted semi-circle of greyish water. Last week’s washing had now been stewing there for two and a half days. Despairingly, she reached for the knob, and the machine lurched into life.