‘Sorry?’ Barker said.
The cashier turned to him. ‘You know, like in the advert.’
Barker had no idea what she was talking about.
Taking his change, he steered Glade out of the shop. The murmuring of voices, the distant drone of a floor-polisher. For one disconcerting moment he felt that he could actually see the sounds mingling in the air above his head like birds. Glade stopped and slid one hand into the plastic bag that he had given her to carry. She took out a can of Kwench! and opened it, then stood still, drinking fast. Her eyes glazed over, her body strangely disconnected, in suspension. It was as if swallowing the fizzy orange liquid required every ounce of concentration she could muster.
With twenty minutes still to go, he led her through the gate and out along the platform. They walked side by side, in no great hurry. He watched other passengers limp past with heavy cases, one shoulder higher than the other. Towards the front of the train he found an empty carriage. They sat at the far end, by the automatic door. There was no one opposite. Though Glade had quietened down since he had bought her those soft drinks, he had no way of knowing what she might do next. She had already started on her second can. She was drinking more slowly now and looking out of the window.
‘Is this Paddington?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s King’s Cross.’
‘Couldn’t we go from Paddington?’
‘The place we’re going to,’ he told her, ‘you can’t go from Paddington.’
She stared out into the draughty, half-lit spaces of the station. One of her hands rested on the table, holding her new can of Kwench!. The other rose into the air from time to time and traced the outline of her right ear, a gesture he remembered from the day that he first saw her.
‘There used to be a mountain in Paddington,’ she said after a while. ‘I don’t know whether you ever noticed it …’
He shook his head.
‘It’s another story you could have investigated,’ she said. ‘Another mystery …’ She sighed.
He looked across at her, her face turned to the window, her eyes staring into space and, once again, he wondered what she could possibly have done to warrant the attentions of a person like Lambert. He saw Lambert sitting in that restaurant near Marble Arch, his hands folded on the pale-pink tablecloth, the spotlit shrubbery unnaturally green behind his head, and suddenly he felt grateful to have been chosen. Yes, chosen. In a curious way, it was a blessing — a relief. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been somebody else, and he had known a few of them. They weren’t people who should be allowed anywhere near her. His job, as he now saw it, was to keep them away. For good. There was a sense, then, in which you could say that he was protecting her. He glanced at his watch. In less than eleven hours Lambert would be arriving in Bermondsey with a Scotsman and a video camera. Barker leaned back in his seat. He’d be far away by then. They both would.
Almost imperceptibly, the train began to glide out of the station. Thin sunlight filtered into the carriage. They passed signal boxes that were shedding paint, the flakes of white lying among the weeds and stones like brittle petals. They passed thickly braided electric cables, a workman with a spade balanced on his shoulder, a high brick wall the colour of a copper beech. Houses were visible against the sky. Their cream façades, their roofs of shiny, dark-grey tile. Parts of London he had never known, and couldn’t name …
Glade shifted in her seat, her face close to the window, one hand closed in a fist against her cheek. ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘No mountains here.’ She lifted the can to her lips and drank. She hardly seemed to taste the stuff as it went down. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was a long time ago.’
The train picked up speed, beat out a rhythm.
It was a long time ago. Empty cider bottles lined up along the skirting-board, unfurnished rooms, the music turned up loud. Ray had driven Barker to a house in Saltash. Over the Tamar Bridge, with alternating bars of light and shadow moving through the car. He could still see Ray in his black chinos and his red satin shirt with the ruffles down the front.
‘What kind of party is it? Fancy dress?’
Ray stared at him. ‘Why?’
‘Because you look like a Spanish waiter, Ray, that’s why.’
‘One of these days,’ Ray said, ‘you’re going to push me too far.’
Barker shrugged and lit a cigarette.
As a rule he didn’t go to parties — they were too much like being at work — and when he walked in through the front door that night and saw two girls in ra-ra skirts trying to tear each other’s hair out by the roots, he almost turned around and left.
But Ray wouldn’t let him. ‘Give it five minutes, all right?’
‘What,’ Barker said, ‘the fight?’
He found a beer and swallowed half of it, then climbed the stairs. On the first floor, outside the toilet, he ran into a DJ he knew. The DJ had some speed on him. Did Barker want a line? No, Barker didn’t.
‘Fries your brain,’ he said.
The DJ put his index fingers to his head and made a sound with b’s and z’s in it, then grinned and walked away.
Ten minutes later Barker looked through a half-open door and saw a woman dancing. It was dark in the room, one cheap lamp in the corner, forty-watt bulb, and some glow from the street, no curtains on the windows, there were never any curtains. He could still remember the song that was playing, an old Temptations number, vintage Temptations, before Eddie McKendrick left the group. The woman was dancing with a small man who swayed backwards and forwards like one of those bottom-heavy toys — it doesn’t matter how many times you push them over, or how hard, they always right themselves. Barker waited until she was facing him, then he called out to her.
‘Over here a moment.’
The music had changed by now, it was Smokey Robinson, and though she was still dancing, she was looking across at him, trying to understand what he was saying.
He waved at her. ‘Over here.’
She bent down, put her mouth beside the short man’s ear, then she stepped away from him and walked over, her eyes lowered. She had looked good from a distance. She looked even better close-up, black hair to her shoulders, a wide mouth, her body ungainly and voluptuous. He thought he had seen her before — though he wasn’t about to use a tired line like that. Yes, on Herbert Street. She had been climbing out of a car parked halfway up the hill. There was something about her awkwardness that had excited him. In the bright sunshine, her black dress had looked almost shabby, as if it had been washed too many times, and the whiteness of her legs showed through her thin black tights. He put his drink down, glanced over her shoulder.
‘That bloke you’re dancing with,’ he said.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s too short.’
She wasn’t sure what to think, whether to laugh or be insulted; her face remained perfectly balanced between the two possibilities, like a cat walking along the top of a fence.
‘He’s not your husband, is he?’
‘I’m not married.’
‘Are you going out with him?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s just a friend.’
He paused for a moment, but then he saw that she was waiting for him to say something else.
‘You shouldn’t be dancing with a short bloke like that,’ he said, ‘not someone as good-looking as you. It doesn’t look right …’ She was keeping a straight face, as if he was giving her advice, but they both knew it was just talk. ‘I work in clubs,’ he went on. ‘I see people dancing all the time. I know what looks right.’
One song finished, another began. She glanced at her friend, who was standing by the window with a drink, then, after a while, her eyes returned to Barker again, a smile below the surface, shining, like treasure seen through water.