Hood considered this. For every one who used the city as an occasion to perform, a thousand chose it as a place of concealment. In its depths bombs were stifled. His own was local, personal, a family matter; it had not been heard here. On the platform at London Bridge there were travellers still waiting in the shadows, not hiding but hidden. He had thought this world was his to move in, an extension of his own world. But he had seen it grow unfamiliar, and smaller, and he was not moving at will. He had been driven here, to a narrowing space in the vast now featureless city where if he was not careful he would be caught. You were allowed to hide if you made no sound. The city confounded like a sea; it was penetrable, but it was endless and neutral, so wide that on a train tossing between stations — those named places, those islands — you could believe you had gone under and were dead. You verified your existence by taking out the ticket once more. You were your ticket.
Replacing his ticket he touched the rolled-up painting in his inside pocket. The last business. He would surrender that and so surrender himself. He knew the face in the self-portrait now: it was the man he had killed, months ago, and he had become that man.
The train was nearly empty; there were few people at Charing Cross, and from there to Kilburn on the Underground there were only workers returning home late and tired, sitting singly, using the satchels on their knees to doze on. It was the dead hour before the pubs shut, before the theatres let out, a chain of hollow platforms all the way to Queen’s Park. Five miles away there had been a bomb. Here, no one knew. The city dissolved the shock in the slow swell that hid its tide-rip, and it slept on, deaf and dark.
He retraced the route he had taken with Murf, from pub to pub, and found Finn at the second, standing glassy-eyed in a corner of the saloon bar near the telephone, sucking at the froth on a pint of Guinness.
‘Evening, sarge,’ said Hood. ‘Where’s your friend?’
Finn blinked. He had a sliver of discoloured foam on his upper lip. He peered into Hood’s face, searching it as though studying a mirror. He said, his eyes still darting, ‘He’s expecting you, is he?’
‘Stop scratching your ass and find out.’
Finn put his glass down. He nodded thoughtfully at the telephone, then chewing his lips in protest, left the bar. Hood looked around and noticed, as he had once before, that he was being eyed suspiciously by the other drinkers. He chose one and stared until the man turned away. He chose another, and he was still squinting at that man when Finn appeared, snatched up his glass and took a swig. He said confidentially, ‘You can go up.’
‘Smile,’ said Hood. ‘Business isn’t that bad, is it?’
‘You’re keeping him waiting.’
‘Did you say something, sarge?’ Hood went close to him and menaced him with a smile.
Finn muttered. He turned his back to Hood and faced the telephone.
‘If anyone rings, tell them I’m busy.’
Upstairs, the door was ajar, and before Hood could knock, Sweeney called out, ‘Come in!’
The room was unchanged — the dart board, a dirty ceiling, the shades drawn, the large table almost filling the rented space they called the High Command. Sweeney was seated at the far end of the table, in a pretend posture of authority. He put his mutilated hand out, but Hood ignored it and sat down at the opposite end.
Sweeney said, ‘Finn says you slagged him.’
‘Finn needs his engine tuned.’
‘You got me out of bed this morning. What’s the big idea?’
‘Like I said. I heard that guy was rumbled. Rutter. I figured if you knew him you’d better look out.’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know him?’
‘Don’t be so defensive,’ said Hood. ‘That’s why I got you out of bed. To find out.’
‘I don’t know the boyo.’
‘I heard you the first time. But it’s odd. I see him at the dog track now and then. He’s into arms dealing, and’ — Hood smiled — ‘so are you, right?’
‘London’s full of arms dealers,’ said Sweeney. ‘The world is.’
‘But this one was dealing with your actress. I assumed he was dealing with you, too.’
‘Did you now? You seem to know a lot. But you did the right thing. Let me know if you hear anything else.’
‘I won’t hear anything else.’
‘You might. At the dog track — Jesus, I used to go to the dog track. Haven’t got the time these days. Murf knows his way around the fellas. He’ll tell you what he hears. He’s a good lad, is Murf.’
Hood said, repeating it slowly, giving each word equal weight, ‘I won’t hear anything else.’
‘No? And why is that?’
‘Because I won’t be listening.’
‘Listening’s the whole game,’ said Sweeney. ‘If you don’t listen you’re no good to us.’
‘You bet.’
Sweeney laughed without pleasure. He lifted his damaged hand and pointed his scarred fingers at Hood. He said, ‘If you’ve got something to say, man, say it.’
‘I’m quitting,’ said Hood. He knew what he wanted to do next. He put his hand into his inside pocket and felt for the roll of canvas. He had gripped it and was about to throw it on the table when Sweeney lurched forward.
‘Take your hands out of your pockets!’
Hood showed his empty hands.
‘You’re quitting?’ said Sweeney disgustedly. ‘You think you can jack it in just like that?’
‘That’s what I’m doing. Are you going to plead with me?’
‘Listen here. No one quits the Provos. You join for life. That’s what I did — that’s what everyone does, including you. I said, including you. It’s like a family, see. No one quits a family.’
‘I never joined,’ said Hood.
‘Oh, didn’t you? What about that passport you made for us?’
‘A cunt’s passport.’
Sweeney said, ‘That was your membership card.’
‘I smartened up.’
Sweeney spat. ‘The last time you were in here you were full of ideas. I thought we were getting somewhere. I put my trust in you.’
‘Your trust isn’t worth a fart,’ said Hood. ‘I know. I checked.’
‘Where did you check then?’
‘Millwall,’ said Hood, ‘the Isle of Dogs. Don’t tell me you weren’t there. I saw you sitting in his house, waiting for him. He’s a fucker and you’re his friend.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re lying. You’re Rutter’s buddy. What did he tell you? That he was onto something big? Did he say he’d have to beat the daylights out of a woman to find out where the arsenal is?’
‘I’m not saying I know Rutter, and I’m not saying I don’t know him.’ Sweeney shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters,’ said Hood. ‘Because he’s a creep and that means you trust creeps.’
‘I trusted you.’
‘So much for your offensive.’
‘You know Rutter, too.’
‘I know his victims. I know who he leaned on. You put him up to it.’
‘If you don’t like people being leaned on, Hood, what in the name of Jesus are you doing here?’
It was unanswerable. Again he reached for the painting, to surrender.
‘Hands down,’ said Sweeney, but it was not a threat. ‘You can’t quit. You know too much. You’re part of the family now — you know all our dirty secrets. I can’t let you go.’
‘You won’t miss me.’
‘I will,’ said Sweeney in a friendly way. ‘I like a fella with some fight in him. And what about our English offensive?’
‘It’s all yours — everything.’ He wondered as he looked across the room at Sweeney’s grizzled face and the scar tissue shining on his damaged hand, if he had been right before in thinking that the onset of sympathy was the end of belief, and that sympathy could only curdle into pity. He said, ‘But the English offensive. I hope it never happens.’