He hesitated before bursting out laughing. ‘Well, you’re direct. All right, the truth is I’m getting divorced, but it’s not yet final. And I have a daughter. She’s a lovely girl. Very sensitive. Not like her mother.’
I wasn’t sure how I felt about all that. ‘You sound like you can’t wait for the divorce.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Is she that bad? What’s she like?’ I tried not to sound jealous.
‘An actress. She was a bit of a star for a couple of years.’
‘Fancy.’ I hated her.
‘Sometimes. But not me, I’m just your average family doctor.’
‘You’re not, though, are you?’ I said, meaning it. ‘Average, I mean.’
‘Well, who wants to be average?’ He thrust his hands in his pockets and suddenly he seemed like one of the boys I had had to tell off for making the others giggle in class. ‘Right, well, let’s head for Covent Garden. Scene of drunks and reprobates for four hundred years.’
‘All right.’
We spent the day wandering around Covent Garden, watching the musicians and Punch and Judy shows. The big theatre there was once Britain’s finest opera house, Nick told me. Now it sported mass entertainment for the workers’ tastes – vaudeville acts, gay singers and slapstick comedy. We arrived back at Waterloo Station as the sun was setting but didn’t say much – we were a bit too thoughtful, I think. I climbed up to the carriage and leaned out the window.
‘I would like to see you again,’ he said.
‘Why?’ I asked. I genuinely couldn’t understand why someone like him would be interested in someone like me.
‘Kindred spirit,’ he said.
7
Checking to make sure that the waitress was in the café kitchen, I flicked quickly through Lorelei’s book. It was written in watery ink, spread through twenty-odd sections. Each section was separated from the next by a blank page. Each had two columns. The first was a column of strings of two letters followed by thirteen digits. The second was a column of three-letter strings.
The first section in the book had four lines. They remained throughout the book, but more lines were added from time to time, growing to seven lines in the final section:
DD2261033445298 wfn
VN1081209994632 str cor
TW3284408109028 pro wfn
AM7126026369346 cor
VN4653310089328 cor str
DO5574301038201 wfn pro
TL2159414038033 nor
Throughout the book, the first column of letters and numbers would always be complete, but sometimes the second column would be blank.
I spent a long time trying to guess what it could all mean, but in the end I could make nothing of it other than that Lorelei had had something to hide and had gone to some effort to do so.
I suppose I have never had the sort of mind suited to deciphering codes: I was the very last person you would describe as devious, I just tended to take things at face value. It made me a pushover for my pupils, of course: if they had failed to complete their homework or turned up late, I would believe any excuse if it were told with an honest-looking face.
It would take some puzzling over – and Hazel was waiting at home for me, I reminded myself. So I placed the book back into Lorelei’s bag and set off for home. I would try to decipher it there.
Outside, I kept up a good pace despite the smog and it wasn’t long before I caught sight of our house. It seemed like a sanctuary now, and it was a relief just to come within a hundred paces of it. With Lorelei’s secrets in my possession, Nick might soon be back with us, I told myself.
As I drew close, a beam of light from the front window pierced the mist and I saw my two-year-old ginger cat, Julius, sitting neatly on the step, watching my approach. His amber eyes blinked at me but he jumped up and bounded away when a noise spooked him. I glanced around to see a vehicle coming to a stop behind me: a delivery van with its passenger door open. A man got out, silhouetted by the van’s headlights. ‘Jane Cawson?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ I replied, taken aback and worried by the thought of who he might be.
He took me forcefully by the arm and pulled me around to the back of the vehicle. ‘Come on, be a good girl.’
‘Have I done something wrong?’ I asked fearfully. I was just metres from my house but couldn’t reach it.
‘You’ll find out.’ Someone opened the van’s rear door and I was pushed inside to find two narrow little cages made of fine steel mesh. I tried to protest but the sound wouldn’t come and a slender young man who had been waiting inside grabbed my leather bag, before shoving me hard into the far cage. The van door slammed closed and for a moment we were in perfect darkness. Then a very dim blue light came on above his head. Under its pale glow, he flicked open the bag’s tarnished brass clasp and turned it all upside down. My purse and the handkerchief dropped out. I prayed that neither the book nor the card box that I had taken from Hazel’s room would fall out from under the stiff base where I had slipped them.
The guard opened the purse and turned his nose up, as if its contents weren’t even worth pocketing. ‘Load of shit,’ he muttered, tossing it aside.
‘Please,’ I said. He just snorted. ‘Why are–’ He smacked a baton across the steel and the vibrations went through me, making my teeth grind. He took hold of a hand grip set in the roof, flicked a switch and the light was off again. ‘Please, are you NatSec?’ I said, just wanting to know what was happening. The only answer I got was the sound of the engine gunning, and the wheels turning on the tarmac.
We bounced along through potholes for a while before turning this way and that. I tried to keep my mind focused, but the panic was rising and I had to fight a surge of sickness as I braced myself against the two sides of the mesh cage. The floor of the van shook hard under me and I gave in, slumping down. It was all a whirlpool.
We stopped from time to time, once coming to what seemed to be an emergency halt that slammed me against the side of the cage. The guard must have been thrown too, because he mumbled something angry under his breath. And then, finally, after what must have been half an hour, we slowed and made a series of small manoeuvres.
I stood up, trying to find some sort of purchase on the wire mesh, but didn’t dare say anything. The back door was opened and I had wild thoughts of somehow breaking free and running out into the darkness, although I knew it was impossible. Instead, I watched the young man squeeze out, his feet clunking on the floor as he went, and wondered if I would be dragged from the vehicle, to some unknown building like so many others were said to have been. But the guard’s place was instead taken by another, bigger man who clambered inside before closing the door behind him, making everything black again.
The faceless man trod gently from the back to the front of the van, shifted his weight and leaned on the side, saying nothing. In the silence I had no choice but to listen to every breath he sucked in, heavy and long like an athlete’s, until, finally, the dim bulb clicked on and I saw a face I recognized: Grest, the NatSec officer from Lorelei’s house. His eyes were no more than a hand’s breadth from mine but in the blue light everything was indistinct. He stayed silent, tilting his head to the side to examine me. His heavy muscles made him look like an animal through the mesh of the cage.