‘You must be surprised to find me here,’ he said.
But I wasn’t, not really. My capacity for surprise had been exhausted long ago. Instead — for a few seconds, at least — I found I was able to treat Vishram not as my superior, or even as a work colleague, but as yet another stranger whose significance had still to be determined.
‘I hope you’ll forgive me for intruding like this,’ he went on. ‘I wanted to be the first to welcome you when you returned.’ His right foot see-sawed in the air, suggesting that he was both intrigued and entertained by the unusual situation. Either that, or he was nervous. I couldn’t imagine why Vishram might be nervous, though.
I stepped into the room, but chose not to take a seat. I instinctively felt that the act of sitting down would signal acquiescence on my part, if not actual complicity. Whatever we said to each other from now on, it was somehow already apparent to me that our relationship had altered for ever.
I moved towards the picture window that opened on to the terrace. My dim reflection, the darkness of the night beyond. The coolness of the glass. Like Loames, Vishram would be studying my clothes, but I couldn’t imagine what he would be thinking. I had never been able to see into that intricate, shuttered mind of his.
‘You must have been worried about me,’ I said at last.
‘Yes.’ Vishram cleared his throat. ‘We did have some moments of anxiety.’
I looked over my shoulder, waiting for him to go on.
‘There were a number of occasions,’ he said, ‘when you eluded us.’ He paused again. ‘After the bomb, for instance.’
The clock on the nearby church struck midnight.
‘You wouldn’t believe how dangerous it is out there,’ I said.
‘That’s why we had you followed.’
‘How did you arrange that exactly? I’m curious.’
‘I can’t go into specifics, I’m afraid. Suffice to say that we have contacts.’
‘Adrian Croy.’
Vishram smiled to himself, then he looked down and picked a piece of lint off the sleeve of his jacket. For the first time in my life I found myself wondering whether there might not be some higher authority — a committee made up of representatives from each of the four countries, for example, that would convene in secret and oversee the running of the divided kingdom. It would be a natural extension of the clandestine meetings that had resulted in the Rearrangement. A rainbow cabinet … It seemed logical — even necessary. Before I could take the thought any further, though, Vishram spoke again.
‘Was she good?’
‘Was who good?’
‘Your shadow,’ he said. ‘Your guide.’
‘She was very conscientious. I was impressed.’ Then, keeping my voice impartial, I said, ‘You must care about me a lot, to go to such lengths.’
‘I would’ve thought that was obvious.’
‘Because I’m an employee?’
Vishram appeared to hesitate. ‘That would be one way of putting it.’
I studied him as he sat there in my favourite chair. He was wearing a typically elegant and yet understated suit. His feet were neat and slender in their highly polished shoes. He looked immaculate, omniscient.
‘Did you know I was going to do something?’ I said. ‘Have you always known?’
‘Not always.’ Vishram let the words sink in for a moment. ‘I didn’t know what you were going to do, of course, or when you were going to do it. I suppose I expected something out of the ordinary, though.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I would have been disappointed otherwise.’
‘But I broke the law.’
‘Sometimes it’s the only way.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘You’ve been to so many places. You’ve met the people who live there. You’ve learned about their difficulties, their dissatisfactions, and that knowledge is invaluable.’ Vishram paused. ‘I’m almost a little envious.’
‘You could have sent me,’ I said. ‘Officially, I mean.’
‘Not for more than a few days. And anyway, you wouldn’t have seen half the things you’ve seen. You wouldn’t have gone as far as you did.’ He indicated my cloak and boots with one of his vague but graceful gestures.
‘In a sense, then,’ I said slowly, ‘you’ve been using me.’
‘You’re forgetting something. It was your decision to go missing, and yours alone. We had no control over you, and we chose not to interfere. All we did was arrange for someone to keep an eye on you.’
Each time I tried to better him, each time I thought he might be about to yield, he took the force that lay behind my words and turned it back on me. It was as if he had studied an oral version of the martial arts. And yet I sensed a weakness in him somewhere, an uncertainty, which made me want to probe further.
‘How did you explain my absence from the office?’
‘You were ill,’ Vishram said, ‘in hospital.’
‘No visitors?’
‘You were quarantined.’
‘What was wrong with me?’
‘Something that was never properly identified. Something that resisted diagnosis.’
‘A mystery condition.’
‘Exactly.’
We exchanged a smile, our first of the evening.
Rising to his feet, Vishram announced that it was late and that he really ought to be going. He was sorry, he said, if it had upset me to find him in my flat.
‘Have you eaten yet?’ I said.
Both Vishram’s eyebrows lifted. ‘No.’
The wariness in his voice released a kind of adrenalin in me. I felt I had wrested the initiative from him at last.
‘Why don’t you stay?’ I said. ‘I’ll cook.’
Without waiting for an answer, I went out to the hall and fetched the bag of groceries Odell had bought for me. Back in the kitchen, I reached for the frying pan and placed it on the stove. Dropping a wedge of butter into the pan, I lit the gas. I broke four eggs into a pudding basin, then beat milk into the eggs with a whisk, adding sea salt, black pepper, and a few brittle sprigs of parsley from the freezer. When the butter had melted, I tipped the beaten eggs into the pan where they sizzled loudly, as if in protest, and then began to spread.
The phone on my bedside table woke me at five-past nine the next morning. I let the machine take the call. Pulling on my dressing-gown, I opened the curtains. The city glittered beneath a sky of unadulterated blue, every roof and dome and spire clearly defined. From my bedroom window I couldn’t see any checkpoints or watch-towers. They were lodged deep in the jumble of buildings that lay before me, as were the rolls of razor wire and the attack dogs with their sharpened ears. Standing on the sixth floor, looking south, it would have been easy to imagine that the borders didn’t exist, and that the city was a single entity. An illusion, of course. A heresy as well. A crime.
I turned and went through to the kitchen. The frying pan was still soaking in the sink, traces of omelette welded to the rim. Vishram had offered to wash up before he left, but I had called him a taxi instead. I’d had enough of him by then. As I ran myself a glass of water, I remembered how I had brought him back to his moment of hesitancy, asking once again why he had gone to all the trouble of having me followed. I had been thinking he would tell me, with some small show of embarrassment, that it was because he had grown fond of me, because he enjoyed my company, because — who knows? — he had come to think of me as a kind of son. But that was not how he replied.