The fire’s light lay yellow and gentle and unstable on the things in the room, the room was smaller now, shrunk to the reach of the flames.
79
…LONDON…
Palmer sat behind the desk, hands together, fingers steepled.
‘Come in,’ he said.
The man came in, looked at Palmer and Charlie Price and Martie and Carrick, looked around with an air of distaste, like a First Class traveller allocated a seat in Economy by mistake.
‘Couldn’t we have done this another way?’ he said. ‘I’m not ecstatic about coming here.’
‘I don’t have time for the cloak-and-dagger,’ said Palmer. ‘And I wanted to impress on you this business has been fucked up to high hell. There’s shit flying, there’s no error margin left.’
‘You may consider me impressed,’ said the man. His eyes panned over the three other men. ‘The committee may also consider me impressed.’
Palmer thought he would like to kick the man’s arsehole north of his eyebrows. He said, ‘There are possible complications.’
‘Life’s a vale of possible complications.’
Palmer looked at his reflection in the glass door behind the man. He could just make out the furrows on his forehead and the deep folds flanking his mouth. When the kick urge had subsided, he told him about the problem.
‘Well,’ said the man, ‘that’s a pity. And it’ll make the laundry work troublesome. Where are we talking about?’
‘Right here,’ said Carrick.
He had the maps out on the table. ‘It’s difficult country,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk you through the…’
‘Just point, darling,’ said the man. ‘I was reading maps when you were doing wee-wees and poo-poos.’
80
…WALES…
He was in the kitchen, filling the kettle. Jess came up behind him and ran a hand up the back of his head, from nape to crown. He shivered like a puppy.
‘I meant to say,’ she said, ‘before you grabbed me and did those awful things to me, Dai at the garage says he’ll ring if anyone asks the way here. I gave him my cellphone number.’
‘You know him?’
‘From the other times I’ve been here. Four slices be enough?’
He loved her lilting voice. He loved everything about her.
Nothing in his life had prepared him for her. He could not believe that she had happened to him. He knew about luck. He had survived things by luck and chance and fate, if there were such things, Greeks seemed to think so.
He turned and grabbed her by the hips and kissed her.
It went on for a time, it could go on forever. They parted and she drew the back of her right hand across her lips.
‘Good kisser. I’ve been meaning to ask, what does your name mean? Does it have a meaning?’
‘It means no one.’
‘No one?’
‘No one, nobody.’
She raised her right hand and drew her fingers across his mouth.
‘Good mouth,’ she said. ‘You have a very good mouth. Good for many things. You’ll never be no one to me. Well, never’s a long time. Let me work now. We have a long afternoon ahead. And then there’s the night.’
She went to the bench top beside the stove. She was spreading bread when she said: ‘Dai at the garage says the bank thinks my card’s been stolen.’
Niemand thought the room seemed dimmer, the light through the small windows seemed to have faded.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Why would the bank think that?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘When did you use it?’
‘When I filled up. Then I went to the shop and when I was coming out Dai came over and said the bank rang and asked if he knew the person, the cardholder. He said yes, so they said that was fine.’
Niemand went to her, stood behind her, put his hands on her shoulders.
He felt no alarm, no urgency, only a terrible certainty of what his stupidity had wrought and a terrible sadness.
‘Jess,’ he said, ‘you have to go now, soon. Get in the car and go.’
She turned, mouth open. ‘Why?’
‘They’ve found us. Your card. They’ll be on the way here now.’
She closed her eyes. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll try to do a deal with them.’
‘Then I’ll stay.’
Niemand put fingers to her lips. ‘No. I can’t take that chance. I’ll tell you what to do and when it’s over, I’ll come to you.’
She put her right hand under his chin, pushed his head back.
‘I’m in love with you,’ she said. Her eyes were closed. ‘That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it?’
His chest was full, his throat was full. He found it hard to speak. He kissed her closed eyes, so soft, so silky, he could have died in the moment, been spared the rest.
‘We’ll go to Crete,’ he said. ‘You’ll like it.’
81
…WALES…
When the old Morris Countryman was out of sight, Niemand reversed the Audi out and parked it in plain sight. He had to assume that there was time, that they were not already there, watching the farmhouse, waiting for dark.
He went back into the barn and took a reel of nylon fishing line off its peg under the rods. He closed the barn doors and went inside the house, put on his own clothes. There was a dark-blue jersey in the dressing table drawer and he put that on. He went to the fireplace and reached in for soot, rubbed it on his face, his throat, his neck, his ears, on his eyelids, into his hair.
He left his hands clean. That would be the last thing.
The gun cupboard Jess had shown him was in the smallest bedroom. He unlocked it and took out the shotgun, a double-barrelled Brno, and the old.303, a Lee Enfield bolt-action with a ten-round magazine. It would have been better to have the machine-pistol he had taken from the man on the roof but Jess needed a weapon in case they were lying in wait along the narrow road. There was an unopened box of shotgun cartridges and five clips of.303 rounds. He filled the magazine, pressing in the cold brass-jacketed shells with a thumb. The other clips he
