‘Here goes,’ he said. ‘I’m dying for a pint.’
They walked into the bar by its car park entrance. There were couples at three tables, and a group of possibly underage teenagers huddled around another. A game of darts was taking place, and three men propped up the bar, as though the activity gave their life all meaning. The barman smiled at Hepton and Sanders as they approached.
‘Evening, gentlemen. What’s your poison?’
‘Two pints of Courage bitter,’ Sanders said. He turned to Hepton. ‘That okay with you?’
Hepton nodded dispiritedly. There was no sign of Nick Christopher in the spacious bar, and it was well past his designated time. Either he’d been and gone, or he wasn’t coming. Had Fagin got to him? And if so, what would happen next? Everyone in this bar could be implicated, could be working for Villiers and Harry. He tried not to stare, but it wasn’t easy.
Sanders was managing to look casual about the whole business. Just two men out for a drink. He raised the straight glass to his lips, gulping at the first couple of mouthfuls.
‘Not a bad pint,’ he said.
One of the three men nearby seemed to hear him, and turned his head.
‘You from London?’
Sanders smiled pleasantly. ‘Not originally. But I live there now.’
‘Thought you did,’ said the man, turning back to his friends. ‘Beer’s like piss down there,’ he informed them. ‘And the water, you can’t drink the water. Been through seven pairs of kidneys before it gets to you, been pissed out seven times before you drink it.’
His friends wrinkled their faces and chuckled. Sanders reddened. He was trying to keep up the facade, but Hepton could see he was having trouble. His eyes had acquired a fiery tinge to them, and his free hand rubbed at his armpit, just where the holstered gun nestled.
‘Cheers,’ Hepton said, trying to distract him, lifting his own glass to his lips.
Sanders twitched his head towards a table and carried his glass over to it. Hepton followed closely, placing his beer on one of the mats on the highly polished tabletop. The men at the bar were sharing a joke. He couldn’t help thinking they were discussing him, and he too reddened slightly at the cheeks.
‘Where’s your friend, then?’ Sanders asked, his voice sharp, kept low only through the greatest restraint.
‘I don’t know,’ Hepton said. ‘Maybe he couldn’t make it.’
Sanders shook his head. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Go back to London?’ Hepton offered.
Sanders stared hard at him. ‘Where are these video tapes?’ he asked. ‘We’ll just have to go fetch them.’
It was Hepton’s turn to shake his head. ‘That isn’t possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would mean going into the lion’s den.’
‘Better that than sitting in this particular den.’ Sanders threw a baleful glance towards the bar.
‘I could try phoning him again, let him know we’re here.’
Sanders considered this. ‘Might be an idea,’ he said.
Hepton stood up. ‘Back in a second.’ He took a look around but could see no sign of a telephone. He went to the bar. The barman had the same fixed smile on his face.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Do you have a telephone?’
The barman shook his head theatrically. ‘Not as such, no. We don’t have a public telephone, but there’s one behind the bar.’ He reached down and lifted an aged Bakelite handset onto the counter. ‘Provided it’s a local call, that is.’
‘Oh yes,’ Hepton assured him. ‘It’s local. We were supposed to be meeting a friend here, but we got held up. He’s probably been and gone.’
‘Would that be Mr Christopher?’
Hepton stared in surprise at the man, who was fussing beneath the bar again. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said the barman, as if this explained everything. ‘Mr Christopher said there’d just be the one of you. Victor, he said it would be.’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘Only,’ the barman continued, ‘he said he couldn’t stop, since things are so busy back at that spy place of his where he works. So he asked me to give you this.’
Hepton stared at the plain white plastic carrier bag. The two black video cases were visible inside.
‘Dirty films,’ said one of the locals. ‘That’s what we thought, isn’t it, Gerry?’
The barman’s smile broadened, and the three locals gave throaty laughs. Hepton joined them, elated.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not dirty films. Just tapes of a friend’s wedding.’
‘Including the honeymoon?’ rasped the first man, causing more laughter.
Hepton had brought a ten-pound note from his pocket.
‘I think this calls for a round,’ he said. ‘Whatever these gentlemen are having, and one for yourself.’
The barman nodded, lifting the telephone back off the bar-top, and the three locals made appreciative noises, none of which sounded like ‘thank you’.
‘Nothing for yourself, sir?’ one of them asked Hepton as the pint glasses were being refilled.
Hepton shook his head. ‘We really should be going,’ he said.
They watched as he went back to his table and spoke a few words to the Londoner. Then both men left the bar without so much as a wave of the hand or a nod of the head, carrying the bag with them.
‘Forgot all about his change,’ the barman noted drily.
‘In that case,’ said the oldest of the locals, ‘keep the beer coming, Gerry.’
At one of the tables by the window, where a middle-aged couple were sitting, the wife suddenly produced a portable telephone from her handbag. The man took the phone and pressed a lot of digits, then waited. Eventually he said a few words, not much more than a sentence, and in a quiet voice. Then he gave the contraption back to his wife, who replaced it in her handbag. They finished their drinks and left the pub, the woman bowing her head slightly towards the bar as she left.
‘Cheerio then,’ the barman called in response.
‘There’s a lot of queer folk about,’ said one local. The others nodded agreement and went back to their drinks. The rest of the night was to come as something of an anticlimax.
28
Hepton considered that he had seen Sanders’ driving at its absolute worst. The journey back to London, however, served to impress upon him that this was an age without absolutes. Sanders seemed seized by demons, and determined to get back to the relative safety of the city as soon as he could. The men at the Bull had angered him, that was for sure. He was used to being undermined by his superiors, but not by people he would consider his inferiors by a fairly large margin. The needle on the dashboard flickered wildly around the seventy mark on the narrower roads, and Hepton felt sick in his stomach, the beer inside him sloshing wildly. On wider roads, they hit one hundred and ten miles per hour. It was, thank God, the only thing they hit.
Hepton, however, said nothing. He too was keen to get back to the safe house. Keen to watch the video tapes and see what he might discover. It was dark when they arrived, the sky spotted with yet darker clouds. The air was growing chill, so that they had to close the car windows and put on the heater for a little while. The night became greenish-yellow as the London street lights began to shine.
‘Here we are,’ Sanders said as they entered St John’s Wood and turned into Marlborough Place. There had been little conversation on the drive back. It struck Hepton that the two of them had nothing in common, and that if they had not been thrown together like this, they would never have chosen one another as companions.