By Thursday, Tracy was bored of the assignment. Another 5 a.m. rise, another headlight drive to Kentish Town. She didn’t get called by Taylor all that often, and had been hoping for a decent black bag, a job that entailed something more than just fiddling about with someone’s post. Taylor had recruited her straight out of prison six years earlier, hoping, he said, to take advantage of her ‘unique gifts for theft and petty larceny’. He was a right twat, Taylor. Ten stone of Yorkshire ponce who treated her like a street urchin. Still, the money was good, and it was nice to get out of the house. Tracy wondered what she’d buy for her boys when the cheque came through. Come to think of it, she wondered what she’d buy for herself.
At eight on the dot, Mark came out. A bit nervous this morning, looking a bit stressed and concerned. He was wearing a classy suit cut in navy blue corduroy with trousers that flared just above the shoe. Tracy thought he looked handsome; she wondered what he did for a living, whether he had a girlfriend or family. That was an element of the workshe really enjoyed, the mystery of a target’s identity. Once, she had broken into an office block in Bracknell and seen the company chairman that very same night on the news. To get so close to someone, to see their furniture, their clothes, to riffle through drawers and cupboards and leave no trace of her passing. There was real skill to it, a gift for ghosting through. It annoyed Tracy when intelligence people made a mess of things, when there were stories in the papers about break-ins going wrong. She couldn’t see any excuse for it, for leaving a room disturbed. They’d all been trained properly; people just got sloppy, stopped taking pride in their work.
Mark came towards her now and, for the first time in three days, walked right past Tracy’s vehicle. She had to pretend to apply make-up in the rear-view mirror as he headed south for the tube. Then it was another two-hour wait for the postman, finishing the Grisham as the minutes crawled by. At 10.05, a woman wearing a dark-blue Post Office uniform with a red canvas bag turned into the avenue and began distributing letters, working more quickly than the overweight blob, who must have been off sick. Four minutes later she left her trolley at the gate of Mark’s house and took three letters up to the door, pushing them through the letter box and then turning backto the road. When she was out of sight, Tracy moved quickly. Reaching into the backseat for her clipboard and charity ID, she stepped out of the car, made a brief check of the surrounding doors and windows and walked across the street. She was inside Mark’s house within four seconds — her quickest time so far — and closed the door behind her with a soft bump. An airmail envelope had floated out about four feet into the room. Flipping it over, she read the return address on the reverse side:
Robert Bone US Post Office/Box 650 Rt 12 °Cornish New Hampshire 03745 United States of America
Bingo. She would get it to Taylor by noon. A quick glance through the front door’s fish-eye lens and Tracy was out on the street. Job done. With any luck, she’d be home by three.
32
It wasn’t there.
Ben rummaged through the contents of the shoebox where he had hidden the original copy of Bone’s letter, but there was no sign of it. Tapes, random playing cards, paper clips, packets of gum, but no trace of an airmail envelope bearing Bone’s handwriting. Just two days before, Ben had come home, made a photocopy of the letter at a local news agent and placed the original for safe keeping in his studio. Alice could not have taken it because she would not have known where to look. And yet somebody had been through the box.
He shouted down stairs:
‘Have you seen the letter?’
Alice took a long time to reply. It was Saturday morning and she was reading the papers in bed.
‘What’s that?’
‘The original copy. The letter from Robert Bone. Not the one in the car.’
Again, a long delay. Then, tiredly, ‘No.’
He walked down stairs and went into their bedroom.
‘You sure? You didn’t send it to your friend in Customs and Excise, the one who was going to check on Kostov?’
‘I’m sure.’
Alice looked puffy and tired, trying to lock herself into the privacy of a weekend and not wanting to be disturbed. Ben had brought her a cup of coffee at ten and barely received a word of thanks. He was trying to make an effort with her but she seemed distant and cold. In the past, Saturday mornings had been almost consciously set aside for sex, but even that was a chore now.
‘I’m going out,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Thought I might go for a walk round Regent’s Park, maybe take a look at the roof on the British Museum, go to an exhibition or something.’
‘All day?’ Alice asked.
‘Probably, yeah.’
She had told him that she was having lunch with a friend and afterwards going into the Standard. Another Saturday apart. Another weekend when they did separate things.
‘Did Mark ever call you back?’ she asked.
‘No. I’ve left twenty messages, sent a dozen emails. He must be ignoring me.’
Peeling a satsuma in bed, Alice said, ‘Now why would he do that?’
The tone of the question suggested that she could well imagine why.
‘I have no idea,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m trying to make it up to him.’
Didn’t she realize that? Hadn’t she seen that he was trying to move on? Or was it simply that she didn’t care?
‘I mean, maybe he’s busy,’ Alice suggested. ‘Maybe his phone’s not working. Maybe he just wants to be left alone.’
‘Well that’s great, isn’t it? I have a lot of stuff I need to talk to him about and he won’t fucking get in touch.’
‘Relax,’ she said, an instruction that had the effect of making Ben feel even more on edge. ‘Where do they say he is when you call Libra?’
‘They say he’s around. That’s all they seem to know. That he’s around or in a meeting and can they take a message? And his mobile just rings and rings. I don’t even get to say anything.’
Alice smiled as juice from the satsuma dropped on to the sheets.
‘So, as I was saying, I’m going out,’ Ben told her. ‘Thought I might take the car.’
He picked up a bottle of mineral water from the floor, took a slug and scratched at his neck. Alice said, ‘OK,’ then, out of nowhere: ‘By the way, I had lunch with Sebastian yesterday.’
The water caught in Ben’s throat. He had been walking out of the room.
‘Sebastian?’
He knew exactly who she was talking about.
‘That’s right. Sebastian Roth.’
Why was she telling him this now? To start a fight? To assuage her guilt? To bury the news in everyday chit-chat in the hope that it would just go away? Alice never did anything without first exactly calculating its impact.
‘How did that happen?’
‘He invited me.’
‘He invited you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Just you? Nobody else?’
‘Just me.’ She was pretending to read the paper.
‘And how was he?’
‘Great.’
Ben moved across to the window and stared out at Elgin Crescent. He was aware of Alice chewing elaborately.
‘So did you get a story out of him? I mean, that was the point of the meeting, right? For the paper?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, go on then.’
‘Go on what?’
‘Well, what was the scoop? Why else would you bring it up? There must be a point to this announcement.’
It depressed him that they had so quickly descended into yet another argument.
‘There’s no point to it,’ she said. ‘You’re making too much of a harmless piece of information. I just thought that you’d be interested.’
‘Well, I am.’
‘Well, good.’ Alice sighed theatrically and let the newspaper flap on to the bed. ‘We talked about your father, actually. Then we talked about Seb’s new restaurant…’
‘ Seb? ’ Ben said sarcastically. ‘You call him “ Seb ”?’ Alice ignored this.