He cranked up text-only and read from the autobiography of Lyoto Machida, a Japanese-Brazilian fighter from the civilised days of MMA cage fights. The samurai mindset was admirable, except for the daily drink-yourown-urine ritual, allegedly traditional. Josh glanced at the dregs of his pea-and-milk shake, and shook his head.
Then, hoping that Suzanne was an early riser, he placed the call.
"Hey. How are you this morning?"
"A little surprised that you're calling."
"You mean, at this hour. I don't have any news."
"All right."
"You must be busy. Can I buy you lunch later on?"
"I'll be at Elliptical House working with clients. Is two pm too late?"
"Perfect."
"Then I'll see you."
"See you. Cheers."
Outside the window a silver summer rain began to fall, rippling with sunlight, like magic. Probably it was there all the time, the wonder, but people were too busy to see it.
Two o'clock. Lunch.
"Oh, yeah."
Good news. He could almost forget Sophie lying comatose, the beeping life support, or the wreckage of his marriage to Maria, testament to a decade or more of bad decisions.
Like hell he could forget.
The Tube carriage rocked, half full, as Josh checked the hidden and not-so-hidden cameras. They were potential routes into the surveillance net – most transmitted realtime to relays and servers outside – but too restricted for what he needed. At the far end of the carriage, two men bumped into each other, hands going for hilts, then stopping as they rethought their situation. An abbreviated apology, a delayed nod, and they moved away from each other, eye contact broken.
Josh's phone gave a characteristic vibration.
Who's sending this?
There were people looking relaxed or bored or hacked off by their jobs; none looked away suddenly at his gaze. Someone professional then, who had redfanged a short-range message while his attention was on the two guys. There was no easy way of telling who it was; and besides the train was slowing. This was his intended stop.
"Victoria Station. Mind the gap."
He could have played tag games, trying to flush out the message sender, but instead he got out as planned, keeping in the midst of other passengers as he ascended to the mainline station. Far outside rush hour, the concourse was still busy. Hunching his shoulders, he pulled out his phone, tilting it so no surveillance cams could see the screen.
TELL YOUR GIRLFRIEND
Slipping the phone into his pocket, he headed outside, walked the single block to the red brick cathedral, and went inside. Heavy darkness seemed a permanent denizen in here. In a pew at the back, he sat down, then knelt, cupping his phone again to read the words in full.
TELL YOUR GIRLFRIEND TO LEAVE HER PHONE AT HOME. BIG EARS EVERYWHERE.
Getting to his feet, he crossed to one of the shadowed side-chapels, and stopped at a metal stand bearing rows of candle holders, some two-thirds in use. He used cash, bought a candle and lit it, then pressed it into place. Call it cover, acting like the real worshippers. Or call it a prayer to an imaginary entity he had no belief in: a plea to the universe for a miracle, for Sophie's sake.
Get out of here.
Leaving, he kept his head down, using natural movement to disguise the way he scanned the environment, checking everyone, detecting no patterns, knowing that the real watchers were everywhere: lenses ranging in size from pinholes to golf balls, overtly on posts and hidden in nooks, outside and inside the buildings, reporting every second of every day on the ant-like behaviour sweeping through their fields of view. A camera does not blink; a server does not sleep.
Why was someone eavesdropping on Suzanne? And who was the helpful message from, if it was real?
He wandered into Stag Place, buffeted by wind – some kind of tunnel effect produced by the glass buildings – and found Elliptical House, its outline living up to its name. Inside, a receptionist with weightlifter muscles nodded at Josh's name, and said he was on the visitor's list.
"Fourth floor. Lift is over there."
"Thanks."
There was a mutual nod, a recognition of physical potential; then Josh made his way to the lift, wondering what Richard Broomhall had thought as he made this journey, and what had flipped inside his head to make him act so differently afterwards. On the fourth floor, he found a mother-and-daughter pair just leaving Suzanne's office. Consulting room. Whatever.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." Suzanne watched her clients go, then: "Come in while I grab my things."
A smart remark rose up inside him, about grabbing her things, and he pushed it back down. As he followed her inside, he checked the observation vectors – the placement of the four internal office cameras was obvious – then turned his phone towards her, its screen hidden from surveillance.
LEAVE YOUR PHONE HERE A blink of polished-chestnut eyes; a raised eyebrow. "Least I can do is buy you a sandwich," he said. "A sandwich? Is that all you're offering?" "I could have made cheese sarnies in my hotel, brought them along in a plastic box."
"Lucky escape for me, then."
By this time they were out in the fourth-floor lobby, and Suzanne was checking that her door was shut, while her phone remained inside atop her desk. She looked at Josh; he dipped his chin, then asked her about the rubbish strike, whether she thought the dustbin collections might restart any time soon, and if she had seen any rats around where she lived.
"Not as yet, but I'm hoping," she said inside the lift. "Think of all those phobic patients I'll be gaining."
"All coughing at you and spreading their bubonic plague."
"There is that."
Outside, they strolled past the mall, then Josh pointed as if suggesting a place to eat, and led her between a glass pillar and the main exterior wall.
"Dead zone," he said. "Your phone is compromised, or so I've been told."
"Compromised?" Her expression looked like the beginning of a smile; then she glanced to her left. "The police gave me a replacement handset."
"We're on the same side."
Except that my search methods are illegal.
"So what now?"
"We go to lunch. I'm going to ask you to come somewhere with me tonight, and we can talk about that openly. If you do say yes, can you remember to forget your phone?"
Her smile was unrestrained.
"Josh Cumberland, you have a way with hypnotic language."
"Er…"
Some ninety minutes later, in another dead zone free from surveillance, Josh made a call.
"Tony? How're you doing?"
"OK. Just on a break."
"Good guess on my part."
"Guess, my arse. Some of us are organised, stick to a timetable."
"Uh-huh. Does Terry B still have his black cab?"
"Big Tel? Course he does. Want me to have a word with him?"
"I was hoping to book a taxi for, say, six tonight."
"Christ, leave things till the last minute, why don't you? This job working out, is it?"
"Keeping me busy."
"And you need Tel? It's that sort of gig?"
"Just for the wheels."
"Huh. Call you right back."
"OK."
At twenty past six, Suzanne stepped from a doorway in a Bloomsbury sidestreet, and slid into the black cab that had just pulled up. Josh, on the bench-seat beside her, smiled at her.
"We can talk." He pointed at the ceiling-mounted cam. "We won't be recorded."
"Is that legal?"
"Not in the slightest."
From the driver's seat in front of the plexiglass partition, a big hand waved in greeting.
"He's a friend," Josh added.
"If the police check his video log," said Suzanne, "he'll be in trouble."
"Actually, there'll be a perfectly good-looking record of someone making this journey, with the correct background showing through the windows and all, but it won't be us. Two other people, having a harmless conversation, and the lighting on their faces just right, matching the light from outside."