“Did it work?”
“It hurts,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s actually a good thing, in this case. Perhaps you should close the door?”
“I don’t want to let go of you.”
He rubbed her lower back. “Better behind a locked door.”
While she was putting the chain on, he asked: “Who’s this for?” She turned. He was looking down at the fetish head. “To do with this deep shit your lairy drummer says you’re in?”
“Heidi?”
“Left a voice mail herself. About an hour ago.”
“How did you convince Robert to bring you up here?”
“Showed him the head-mount video of the Burj jump. Handicapped access is through the rear here. Your man had to help me in. When you weren’t here, I said I’d wait in the rear lobby, do some work on my laptop. He came back to check on me, of course. Saw the video, we got talking. I explained I was a friend of yours.” He smiled. “Is that whiskey?”
“Want some?”
“Can’t. Painkillers. Thought you might. You’re looking a bit pale.”
“Garreth…”
“Yes?”
“Missed you.” It sounded incredibly stupid.
“Mutual.” He wasn’t smiling now. “Knew I’d fucked up, really. When the Lotus hit me, actually.”
“You shouldn’t have jumped.”
He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have left.” He went slowly to the bed, supporting himself with the four-footed cane. Turned, as slowly, and carefully sat. “Himself,” he said, “sends regards.”
She had no idea how old the old man was. She would have thought seventy, at least. “How is he?”
“None too happy with me. I’m not likely to be that operational again for him. I think he sees the tricks are over, for both of us.”
She poured herself a half-inch of whiskey, in a highball glass. “I never understood exactly what motivated him,” she said.
“Some sort of seething Swiftian rage,” he said, “that he can only express through perverse, fiendishly complex exploits, resembling Surrealist gestes.” He smiled.
“And that was one, in Vancouver?”
“That was a good one. And I met you.”
“And then you went off to do another, before the election?”
“Night of the election, actually. But that was different. We were simply making certain that something didn’t happen, that time.”
The whiskey burnt the back of her throat. Made her eyes water. She sat down, gingerly, beside him, fearing that she might hurt him if she made the mattress move.
He put his arm around her waist. “I feel like a schoolboy at the theater,” he said. “With a date who can’t stand whiskey.”
“Your hair’s longer,” she said, touching it.
“Grows out in hospital. Quite a few procedures. Yet to murder a physiotherapist, but then I’ve not had my last chance.” He took the glass from her, sniffed at it. “Deep shit, your Heidi said. Harsh woman. Tell me: how deep?”
“I don’t know. I was in a truck tonight, in the City, leaving a meeting with Bigend, and a car cut us off. Our driver went into a passage, sort of alley, and I think we were meant to, because another car drove in at the other end, and drove right up to us. That driver had a balaclava, pulled down. We were trapped between the two cars.”
“What happened?”
“Aldous, our driver, pushed the car in front back out into the street, then crushed the front corner of it. It’s an armored truck, a Toyota, like a tank.”
“Hilux,” he said. “Jankel-armored?”
“How did you know?”
“It’s a specialty of theirs. Whose is it?”
“Bigend’s.”
“Thought you wanted shut of him.”
“I did. Do, actually. But he came back, a few days ago, and I agreed to a job. But it’s all gone sideways.”
“Pear-shaped. But how exactly?”
“His IT man and security expert’s defected. He has big plans for military contracting. In the United States.”
“The IT man?”
“Bigend. He wants to design clothing. For the military. Says it’s recession-proof.”
He looked at her. “It is that,” he said. “Do you know who was after your truck?”
“Someone Bigend pissed off. Another contractor. I heard the name earlier tonight but can’t remember it. An American arms dealer, I think.”
“Who told you that?”
“Milgrim. Someone who works for Bigend. Or is a hobby of his, more like it.”
“Crepuscular in here,” he said, looking around.
She got up, carefully, and went to the control. Turned up the halogens.
“Someone’s been to a lot of boot sales,” he said. “Regular Museum of Mankind in here.”
“A club,” she said. “Inchmale joined. It’s all like this.”
He looked up at the whale ribs. “Portobello Road on acid.”
She saw that the right leg of his black trousers had been split neatly up the inner seam, from hem to crotch, and reclosed with small black safety pins. “Why is your leg pinned up?”
“Going goth. Difficult to find just the right black ones. Change the dressings myself, this way. Have the kit for it in back of my invalid chair.” He smiled. “Sutures are already starting to itch.” Then he frowned. “Not pretty, though. Best leave that.” He sniffed at the whiskey again, took a tiny sip. Sighed. “That’s your deep shit, then?”
“There was a tracker bug in this,” she said, picking up the Blue Ant figurine from the nightstand. “It may have been there since Vancouver, or it may have been put in later.” She opened a drawer and produced the bug, in its baggie. “Bigend? Sleight?”
“Who’s that?”
“Bigend’s IT specialist. The recent defector. Ajay left it out, when Heidi put this back together for me. Said there were more options, leaving it out.”
“A.J.?”
“Ah-jay. Heidi’s favorite sparring partner, at her new gym, in Hackney. He’s a fan of yours. Total fanboy.”
“That would be a change,” he said, “wouldn’t it?” Then he patted the embroidered velour beside him. “Come back and sit here. Make an old man happy.”
52. THE MATTER IN GREATER DETAIL
Heidi said there was no cellular connection on the London subway, so Milgrim hadn’t bothered trying the dongle. The trip to Marble Arch had been a quick one, Milgrim seated and Heidi standing, ceaselessly eyeing the other passengers for signs of incipient Foleyism.
Heidi still had her jacket inside out. As she’d swayed in front of him, on the balls of her feet, he’d been able to look up, the jacket repeatedly swinging open, and identify what he’d earlier taken for a brooch as having been three darts, the kind they played a game with here, in pubs. He’d sometimes, on hotel television, glimpsed hypnotically tedious competitions that made golf seem like a contact sport. But now he understood what she’d done. There were two left. Not good. He supposed he should be grateful for her having done it, under the circumstances, but still, ungood. Though he noted that he didn’t find her frightening, however little he’d want to get on her bad side.
There was a KFC adjacent the Marble Arch exit, he saw as they emerged, but it was closed. It smelled horrible, and this struck him with some full and unexpected force of nostalgia and desire. Homesickness, he thought, another feeling he’d tamped down beneath the benzos, in whatever unventilated chamber of the self, however abstract the notion of home might be.
But then Fiona pipped her bike’s horn, twice, at the curb, gesturing to them. He walked over as she flipped her visor up, the particular angle at which the line of her cheekbone intersected the yellow helmet-edge striking him in some nameless but welcome way. “Coming with me,” she said, offering him the black helmet. Raising her chin slightly to make eye contact with Heidi, who’d come up beside Milgrim. “I’ll send a car for you.”