several occasions she picked up her mobile and speed-dialled DI Prothero's private line, only to stop before the number reached its last digit. Once, she got as far as listening to the dial tone trill twice, before hitting Disconnect. She wouldn't have minded hearing his voice, even if it had only been his voicemail message. Those roundly singsong Swansea syllables that conveyed a lilt of warmth, however chilly the message of the words they comprised. She missed it. Missed him. Prothero, however, she was sure, had moved on. She doubted he ever even thought about his one-time protegee now. He had a new DS, someone else to chide and coax and mould. She was on her own. As she had been before. As, perhaps, she had always been.
She watched the news. Of course she did. Assiduously, religiously. BBC Breakfast, the ITN lunchtime bulletin, Channel 4 News in the evening. Like a monk observing matins, sext and vespers.
Nothing.
Nothing about the Titans.
The Olympians were keeping quiet too. There would the odd sighting of one of them every now and then. Hephaestus, say, visiting an Athens scrapheap to gather car parts and other metal detritus, for reasons he wouldn't divulge; Artemis fulfilling a longstanding commitment to attend the ceremony announcing the winner of the bid to hold the next Olympic Games (this time round, as it happened, the lucky bidder was the New Democratic People's Republic of North Korea). Other than that, they maintained a low profile, and some observers commented and other commentators observed that with Hermes still missing in action the Olympians were getting out and about much less. Not for them any more the luxury of instantaneous teleportational travel to any point on the globe. Instead, the slight indignity of flights on private chartered aircraft, although at least they were always waved straight through at customs and never asked to present passports or visas. They were Olympians. Who was going to query their travel credentials?
The Japanese navy, such as it was, completed its exercises in the Med. As Landesman had predicted, all five ships travelled far up into the Aegean to the Thermaikos Gulf, bringing them within spitting distance of Olympus. A well-aimed missile from the Takanami — class destroyer the JDS Inazuma Maru could have reached the Pantheonic stronghold some 20-odd kilometres inland, not that the weapon would have been permitted to complete its journey had it been fired. After sailing in circles for several days without getting sunk, the fleet turned for home with everyone on board, from admiral to lowliest rating, astonished and delighted to still be alive. The Greek navy — one frigate, the HS Plataia — played escort down through the Cyclades, politely but pointedly showing the Japanese the way out.
At the newsagent's on the corner, Sam's eye was caught by a headline one morning. It was on the front cover of the Daily Mail, a paper that liked to take an occasional libertarian poke at the Pantheon when it was feeling brave.
CHASTENED?
The headline ran, in 40-point capitals, above a library photo of Zeus looking curmudgeonly and disgruntled. Against all her better judgement Sam bought a copy, but the article turned out to be nothing more than a few paragraphs insinuating that the Olympians might be a little cheesed off about losing their monsters, Hercules, and Hermes. All of it was furtively and carefully worded so that there was no reasonable way anybody could take offence. The copy got no further from the newsagent's than the litter bin on the pavement outside.
She was bored, she had to admit it. Day merged into day and nothing much changed. As her time as a Titan receded further into memory, she found it harder and harder to believe that she had wielded guns, punched through walls, run at extraordinary speeds, and stood face-to-fang with nightmarish creatures and expunged them from the world. But if that all seemed so dreamlike and unreal now, how come ordinary life wasn't acceptable? Why was everything drab and pointless here in Kensal Rise? Why, having been Tethys, was it so difficult to go back to being just plain Sam?
A phrase came to mind: cold turkey.
She'd been on a wild, dizzying trip. She'd come back down to earth with a bump.
It had been her choice to end it, though. She had to keep remembering that. No one had forced her out. She'd taken that step entirely on her own and, indeed, against everyone else's wishes.
And so, like a habit-kicking junkie, a reformed alcoholic, she was having to learn not to look too far ahead or expect too much, to take each day as it came.
Until the day they came.
Ramsay and Mahmoud.
53. DRIFTING SHIPS
S he was making lunch — chicken salad — when they appeared on her doorstep.
'Dead posh round here, isn't it?' was the first thing Mahmoud said when Sam opened the door.
Sam immediately went on the defensive. 'Didn't use to be. Past ten years, we've been getting the overspill from Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. People priced out of the market there but still wanting to be close to all the trendiness. All the bloody celebs as well. When I was young, Kensal Rise was famous for was murders and Irish navvies. Now it's all gastropubs and organic greengrocers. I keep meaning to sell up and move.' She avoided meeting Ramsay's gaze. 'So, to what do I owe the pleasure?'
'Oh come on,' said Mahmoud. 'Isn't it nice to see us? It's nice to see you.'
'Did Landesman send you?'
Ramsay snorted. 'Nope.'
Sam relented, a little. 'Then it is nice to see you. Come on in.'
She made lunch for them too. Mahmoud explained that they had come entirely off their own bat. Landesman didn't even know they were here. In fact, not having Sam's address, and not wanting to ask Landesman or Lillicrap for it, Mahmoud had had to ring an old friend on the force and ask him to look it up for her on the internal police database.
'Mr Landesman thinks I'm just taking Rick sightseeing for a couple of days.'
'Shucks, I just lurve your quaint li'l ole country, ma'am,' said Ramsay.
'He must suspect something, though,' Sam said.
'Well, if he does, so?' said Mahmoud. 'Sam, I won't beat around the bush. We want you back. Please. It's not been going all that brilliantly without you, duck. Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but… No, I will put pressure on you. Frankly, it's been crap at Bleaney lately.'
'What's happened? What have you been up to, mission-wise?'
'Zip,' said Ramsay. 'And that's just the problem. We've been sitting spinning our wheels. Getting on one another's nerves, and worse. Kayla and Therese — Christ, we've had to separate those two a coupla times. Going at it like cat and dog. Once they nearly came to blows, and believe me, angry like they were, I did not much want to have to step between them and break it up.'
'Kayla's been starting it,' said Mahmoud.
'Yeah, but Therese ain't exactly been turning the other cheek. The least thing can set them off. And then there's Dez.'
'Dez has been…' Mahmoud mimed tipping a bottle to her lips. 'A lot. Upset about Anders, but also just bored. We've been hiding the booze, and confiscating his own stash of it when he's not looking, but he always seems to be able to get his paws on more. Cadges off the techs, we think, or maybe bribes Captain Fuller to bring him some over from the mainland. Every night he's sloshed, every morning he's in agony from a hangover. Neither's pretty.'
'Why no ops?' Sam asked.
'Landesman,' said Ramsay. 'Says leave it be for now.'
'But he was all about keeping the momentum going.'
'Was. Now? My guess is he's lost his nerve. New York, then you, and all that stuff about his son. Not that he
