of nothing, but you will, when it's your turn… What do you think's happening? You got any idea? Big man, you know everything – wait till it's your turn and see what you know… I want to be there, watch it, when it's your turn… '
'Come on, guys,' Ricky said.
He was walking past Charlie, standing and rooted.
Charlie caught Ricky's arm, held him.
George Wright, from the ground, yelled, 'Want to hear it, then, want to? Bloody funny, Ricky Capel, about a chip fire. I was a target! It was petrol – petrol through the window. The target was me. Three kids on the Amersham estate were found hung upside down off a roof – did you hear that? Fucking didn't, did you? You know nothing. They pushed. Next it's the dealer. The dealer sold to the kids on the Amersham. He was tied up to a lamp post, and now he's gone. You don't know where the Amersham is?
Too low for you, Ricky Capel… I sold to that dealer.
It's a line. Me to the dealer, the dealer to the pusher kids. I had petrol chucked in my home. Does the line go the other way? Think about it, Ricky bloody Capel.
Look over your shoulder.'
Ricky pulled himself clear of Charlie.
'Mad, isn't he? Crazy man. He'll come up with it, he'll pay.' The big smile breezed on his face. 'May have to go on sticks to the bank, but he'll pay.'
It was a joke between Charlie and Benji that Davey was plank thick. He could always see when something major exercised Davey's brain. Nothing of a flywheel, like a slow set of cogs turning without oil to help. Always frowned, always blinked, always seemed to rub the side of his face hard, before spewing it.
Davey said, 'Couldn't think of it, Ricky, what the stink was. The dosser down the close, outside your house. The dosser that was there, and his stink.'
Ricky was at the car. 'What you trying to say?'
Davey blurted it: 'The stink, it was petrol. On his coat, he had the stink of petrol.'
'Forget it,' Ricky said, and dropped into the car.
Charlie didn't. And he hardly listened as they drove through the Kent countryside back towards
Lewisham, and Ricky retold stories of his grandfather's war fought alongside the father of Timo Rahman whom he was flying to meet the next day, in Hamburg.
'I want to move her there. I really urge you to sanction Polly Wilkins going to Hamburg, as a matter of urgency.'
The assistant deputy director sat, so Gaunt paced. If the ADD had stood, Gaunt would have taken a chair.
Contrariness was a trusted weapon. His stride across the carpeted office was fast, intended to create an atmosphere of crisis. To wrongfoot the man was his aim. The supine beggar would buckle, he knew it.
'I can't say I'm happy… '
'It's what's necessary.'
'… and Fenwick in Berlin, he won't be happy.'
'I'm up to speed and Polly Wilkins is.'
'It's his territory, that's what Fenwick will say.'
Gaunt rapped his response: 'Rather than satisfying Fenwick's turf aspirations, it would be better to put in place, under my control, an officer who has the feel of him.'
No name, but two faces. Last thing before coming to the assistant deputy director, on high, he had sat in his desk chair and had tilted it back and made the request of Gloria that she describe the faces. She was expert at the task, and he believed he saw better into a man's soul when his eyes were closed and he listened as she portrayed him, the quarry: so much better, so much greater insight, than when he stared at a two-dimensional photograph. She had said, 'The hair is thick, dark and worn long, but it is not unkempt and is cared-for. In the centre the hair curls back, and I don't believe that is accidental, more of a style. There is a high forehead, clean and without the skin cracks of anxiety, that pushes up on either side where the hair recedes. The forehead is that of an intelligent man, not of a brute. The eyes are big. They are open, they do not evade; there are rings under them but that is from tiredness… more than rings, almost bags. I like the eyes. They persuade, but do not threaten.
They have a confidence. Yes, you would trust the eyes.
The nose is prominent, straight and without blemishes. It is not the nose of a fighting man, has not been broken, fractured or lost alignment. I discard the moustache and the beard. They are from the passports used for the first stage of his journey, not from the second stage. If they have been shaven off, he cannot have regrown that degree of facial hair. The mouth, with or without a beard and moustache, is distinctive
– distinctive because it is unique to him. Two aspects – his smile, we'll start with that. Few men smile for a passport picture. He does in each case. It is a good smile, one of honesty. I like his smile and I warm to him, open and frank, showing no deviousness. The second aspect is the teeth. The teeth are dreadful, but clean. The upper bite comes down over the lower teeth and is overfilled and prominent. Big incisors that are packed too close, so they bulge. I venture, he never met an orthodontist – sorry, Mr Gaunt. His ears are not flappers but are close back against his hair, those of my dog when it is listening, keen and alert. He is not big-boned, and from the set of him I would hazard that he is slightly built… If I had to pick on one point, I'd say that most of our guests, given wall space, have a deep-rooted suspicion of the camera, but this man is not frightened of it… Put another way, there's nothing in the face that demonstrates the stresses of anxiety.' He had heard Gloria out, then had buttoned his waistcoat, lifted his tie, shrugged into his jacket and taken the elevator up to where the Gods rested.
'You promised me the moon last time. All bottled up in Prague.'
'And did not deliver because of Czech in competence.'
'Hamburg would be different enough to override Fen wick's irritation?'
'I think so.'
'Think? Is that all you have for me to bite on?'
'I believe so. That we are this far forward is due to Polly Wilkins's efforts. She deserves the chance…'
He stopped, gazed without mercy into the assistant deputy director's face, then resumed pacing. 'After what was done to her she most emphatically deserves the chance.'
'Sanctioned.'
'A good decision.'
Not a time to hang about. Gaunt had what he had come for. He was heading for the door, anxious to be away before riders were attached. He heard the bleat at his back.
'He's dangerous, isn't he? Our man who's on the run – dangerous, yes?'
'Exceptionally so.'
'Murderous little bastard.'
The mischief caught him as he went into the outer office. Gaunt said, 'Perhaps, but rather a nice face, don't you know?'
She packed.
'Don't I get told where you're going?'
Ronnie was watching from the door. It was her apartment and Polly was the guest imposed on the girl from the visa section. Polly would not have said that she was going to Hamburg, but could have said she was going to Germany and left it vague. She did not answer but went on folding blouses and skirts, laying them over the shoes at the bottom and her smalls – didn't really have an idea of what she needed, whether the spring came warm up there or whether it would be perishing cold. The sharing arrangement had been intended as temporary, while a one- bedroom apartment for herself was redecorated, but then a refurbishment budget had gone dry and time had slipped on. It wasn't satisfactory for an officer in the Service, however junior, to share but having her own room was good enough and she'd given up nagging the man at the embassy who allocated premises. She was precious little use to Ronnie, a lonely woman. Too early at work and too late back to offer company.
'Well, how long are you going to be away?'
She didn't know how long she would be away, and didn't answer, just went on filling the case. She could share the apartment but not her life.
The bridling voice whipped her. 'Don't mind me.
I'm not important. I'm not need-to-know. You have a good time, wherever. I'll say this, you look like the cat
