McCoy forced his lids further open, bruising them with the motion of his arm, and sat up. His white skin seemed curiously weak and without sinew till the body swivelled, and Famy saw the reddened, puckered mess of a bullet wound, on McCoy's left side, just below the rib cage.
'Probably just some bugger on the scrounge looking for a few pence
… '
Famy cut across him, excited, talking fast, 'Nothing was taken. I couldn't see all that was searched, but no sound of money being taken. My trouser pockets, they were looked at, the money remains. It's the wrong place for us here, not the place I was expecting, not familiar.'
'Well, it's here you're bloody well staying.' McCoy was close to shouting. 'You'll stay where I bloody well say, and that's here. It's an out-of-the-way, quiet, no-questions place. If some sod comes wandering about in the middle of the night frightening you I can't help it. Shouldn't believe in bloody fairies.'
'And if you're wrong?' Famy asked. if I'm wrong? What the hell does that mean? What I say is we're better off here than with the usual crowd, the ones who might want to know about us — our bloody lot.'
He quietened suddenly, recognized the anxiety as genuine, and became anxious to allay and calm. 'I'll ask around downstairs, put a bit of heat on, but gently. There's all sorts of buggers just drifting round these places, looking for a bed, or for something to pinch. Nothing extraordinary about the night. Remember it's London you're at now, and it's Saturday, and the man you want is here on Monday, whatever it is you call him…'
'Al Kima.'
'Whatever that means.' it is the man who grows mushrooms. The Mushroom Man. My friends would like me to meet him. They would believe that I would avenge them.'
Crisis over, calmed the little bugger down, chance of more sleep. McCoy turned away from Famy to face the wall.
'There's nothing much to do today. Lie up. Tomorrow we start working. For now it's sleep we want, there's nothing today but a walk round the university. Tomorrow it gets interesting.'
The Irishman could not see the gleam in the other's eyes, the brightness that comes from an erotic and compulsive anticipation; the dream of the shudder of gunfire, blood smears on the concrete, the international headlines, and the adulation in the tents far away in Fatahland.
When Famy looked again across the floor of the room he saw McCoy was asleep, with his left arm high round his head to shut out the light, so that the bullet wound below was exposed. The thought of it bruised the Arab.
He who had come so far, and who now assumed leadership, was virgin and unconsummated, had never known the reality of conflict. He could not know how it would affect him, the moment when it came. Famy lay on his back staring at the ceiling, while deep in the sleeping bag his legs trembled.
Jones was padding down a ground-floor corridor at the back of Leconfield House on his way to the canteen kitchens. They'd be empty, but he could heat a kettle there and make himself a cup of tea with the tea bags he kept in his desk drawer. He was without either shoes or socks, having washed his socks last thing before getting into bed.
They were still damp, and he would leave putting them on till the last minute, before the walk up the stairs to the early morning meeting. After the tea he would shave, make himself presentable. The way it was supposed to be in the department.
As he stood facing the window, running the water from the taps into the opened top of the kettle, he saw the Director General's Humber turn into the narrow entry to the underground car park, wire portcullis raised as the vehicle was expertly manoeuvred by the young man in the front. In the back there was nothing much to see, an opened newspaper masking the figure, well down in his seat.
The alarm bell, furious, demanding attention, woke Helen.
She reached forward, pressing herself up with one hand, the other straining across Jimmy toward the bedside table and the offending clock, till she found the button and the silence. He hadn't moved all night, the bastard. Sprawled on his back with his eyes tight and hermetically sealed, mouth open, his pyjamas buttoned protectively up to his neck. Bloody good weekend entertainment you make, Jimmy. A great porpoise up a beach, with no prospect of another high tide. She made one more concerted effort to work some life into the marooned carcase next to her, slipping her hands beneath the material and working with her nails at his chest, slowly and with consideration sketching out small patterns of the skin. Jimmy slept on.
'You're bloody hopeless,' she told him, mouth close to his ear. 'Understand, hopeless, a great dump of garbage.
Come on, wake up! Stir yourself!'
No response. She moved her hands lower, indenting a line where the beginnings of his paunch slunk down to his hips. Then there was movement. Convulsive, total, as his arms came up and around her, gripping the shoulder blades, pulling her down on to him. His eyes opened for a brief flicker, then closed again, and his arms went slack.
'Better, Jimmy, fractionally better. One out of ten for trying, zero for everything else.'
He hadn't seen a razor the day before, nor the day before that, and his chin was close-set with a tight brush of hair. It bit into her skin, a myriad of needles.
'Not so fast, lover-boy, or we'll have the bloody department wanting a blow-by-blow account if I turn up with half my face scraped off by your beard.'
He spoke for the first time, but as if the effort were all but beyond him, the ultimate struggle, it's Saturday, you're not going in today, and what bloody time did you get here last night? I'm sitting here half the bloody evening waiting for you.'
'I'm going in today, and I'm going in now. Jones's special request. There's a big flap, all hands to action-stations.' She slid out of his grasp and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She wore no clothes. Wishful thinking, you silly bitch, she told herself. Leave him past midnight and you're always the loser.
Jimmy had began to take an interest. Not in me, she thought, wave him the boobs and the backside, but it'll take second place to the department. He was half up, almost sitting.
'What's going on, what's the flap?'
'Don't worry, lover-boy, you're included in the cast.
Some hit-and-runners reached inside base with a nice plum. Yiddisher target all to themselves, and second, third and fourth floor are running round like it's Declaration of War day. Big enough for the DG to be arriving before breakfast, then a full scale bit of summitry at zero-eight-thirty hours on the precise stroke.'
He was still trying to focus on her: rounded, pink, but not clear lines yet. Striving for concentration. 'What way is it for me?'
Helen moved off the bed toward the chair draped with her clothes, and began to pull them on. 'Don't know yet.
Jones mentioned you just as I was pulling out in the wee small hours. Said he might be needing you. All fit and fighting fresh. Be bloody lucky, won't he? That was all he said, and I was just on my way. Wasn't social chat, I was on my way then.'
'He didn't say anything else?'
'Nothing at all.'
'Bloody fine message for crack-of-dawn Saturday. What am I supposed to do? Sit here all through the weekend hanging on the edge of the phone waiting for him to ring?'
'That's what you do every weekend. God, these tights smell. Not as though anyone will notice. They all slept in.
Jones, dreary old Duggan, Fairclough, all doing the boy scouts' bit, kipping on the premises. They'll all be high, smelling to the ceiling. I'll be in good company.' She eased her skirt into position, and grimaced as she looked at herself in the mirror.
'Look like a bloody wreck,' she said.
Jimmy called across from the bed, 'But he said nothing more?'