involved. He feels he could be compromised.’
‘Tough.’
‘Exactly. Do what needs to be done, and I want minute-by-minute sit reps from you on the ground. Roger that?’
‘Roger that.’
He’d be lucky. I cut him off and called to Suzy, ‘No time to clean up. Get your phone on. Fuck-face is going to call.’
Suzy got the boot open and started preparing the new NBC kit for the ready bags. I helped take it out of its packaging, and punched through the arms and legs.
Damp from the rain, we jumped into the car and she got her foot down towards the flashing light, wipers on double-time. It turned out to belong to an MoD police Land Rover, parked by one of the crash safety gates in the chainlink fence that marked the airfield’s perimeter. The yellow fluorescent-jacketed MoD plod waved us through and closed the gate behind us. Not having a clue where to go from here, we just headed for the lights we thought were the A40, then chucked a left, heading east towards the city, every speed camera we passed flashing us a hello.
We didn’t speak much: there was nothing much to say. I didn’t know what was preying on her mind sufficiently to keep her quiet, but I had more than enough on mine.
I took the antibiotics out of the glove compartment and swallowed four, not having a clue if I was overdosing with these things. They certainly gave me a stomach ache, but didn’t they turn your teeth yellow or something? The plastic-coated capsules scraped down my throat as I pushed out another four for Suzy and handed them over on an open palm.
‘I’ll take ’em once we get there.’ She passed a couple of cars on the inside lane and their spray splashed against our windscreen. ‘I can’t dry swallow, fucking horrible.’
I felt my guts start to rumble. Either they were telling me it was a long time since tea at Morrisons, or the antibiotics were already hard at work killing off all my flora. I didn’t care how much good stuff they took with them as long as they blitzed every atom of whatever-it-was-called-
38
It was fifteen past midnight by the dash clock as we hit the elevated section of the A40, past the BBC buildings and White City redevelopment site. Fuck it. I pulled my phone from my bumbag.
Suzy was still focused on the oncoming lights, but knew exactly what was happening. ‘You really want to talk to her, don’t you? Make your last call? You know, just in case?’
I turned the phone on and the welcome screen glowed at me. ‘Sort of.’ I hadn’t thought about it quite like that. I never did: it wasn’t as if I’d be leaving much behind, and right now she probably felt I’d be doing her a favour.
I hit the numbers and got the ringing tone at the Sycamores. It seemed to go on for ever before Carmen answered.
‘Hello? Hello?’ She sounded confused.
Jabbing a finger in my left ear, I leant down once more into the footwell. ‘It’s me, Nick. Listen, I need to talk to her.’
Carmen wasn’t listening. ‘It’s past midnight. I told you, I’m not—’
‘Carmen, please – please wake her up. I really want to talk to her before she leaves. I might not get another chance. You understand, don’t you?’
There was a heavy sigh, and I listened to the rustling as she walked out of her bedroom, on to the landing. ‘I’m turning the phone off after this. We need to sleep, you know, we have a busy day ahead of us.’
I heard some mumbling that I couldn’t make out because of the noise of the car, but to my surprise Kelly answered quickly and sounded quite awake. ‘Where are you? I can’t hear you.’
‘I’m in a car. You’re up late.’
‘Well, yeah, just doing stuff. You know.’
‘I’ve got to drive up north, so I won’t be able to come and see you off. But Josh will pick you up, yeah?’ I carried on before she had a chance to respond. ‘I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. I’ll try to get there but, you know . . .’
She was scarily calm. ‘It’s OK, Nick.’
‘I want to see you. I want to say sorry you’ve had such a crap time here, us not being able to spend much time together, not being able to see Dr Hughes any more, but—’
‘Hey, really, it’s OK. Josh called and it’s cool. He’s going to call Dr Hughes on Monday and sort things out with a therapist back home. Everything’s cool. You know, I think coming here really did help me.’
‘He’s talked to you already?’
‘Sure, and we’ve got it all sorted out.’
‘Really? That’s fantastic. Look, as soon as I’ve finished this job I’ll fly over.’
‘Will you call me when I get back to Josh’s?’
‘Try and stop me.’
‘’Bye, then.’
‘OK, ’bye.’
‘Nick?’
‘What?’
‘I love you.’
The antibiotics attacked my stomach again. ‘Me too. Gotta go.’ I hit the off key.
The traffic had built up now we were entering the city proper. Suzy’s eyes were still on the road as we jumped a red. I was curious. ‘You’ve really got no one to call?’
‘No one.’
Her ops phone rang and it went immediately to her ear. ‘Yes?’ There was no reaction in her face as she listened, her eyes still fixed on the road ahead. ‘We don’t give a shit – stay there and watch, we’ll meet at Boots.’
He must have closed down. ‘Fucking slope.’ She put away the cell. ‘He’s complaining this isn’t what he’s here for. Says he could be compromised. Who gives a shit?’
‘Has he seen anything?’
She shook her head.
We passed the British Library on the main, Euston Road, just short of King’s Cross. The roadworks stretched towards us from the station, clogging the late-night traffic. Huge concrete dividers and red and white fluorescent tape channelled vehicles and pedestrians through what felt like a series of sheep pens. I pointed up at a blue parking sign and she turned left, taking us down the side of the library to some roadside pay-and-display parking bays. At this time of night there was no charge.
We double-checked the doors and the inside of the Mondeo, then went back on to the main and turned left towards the station. It was less than a hundred metres away. The fast-food joints were doing a steady trade. Wobbly twentysomethings, with wet jackets and hair, tried to walk in straight lines as they attacked their doner kebabs after a night on the Bacardi Breezers. A couple of hookers in a shop doorway tried to catch their eye, and grimy figures were curled up in blankets and greasy sleeping-bags in every vacant doorway.
Suzy tilted her head and I looked over. The girls had cornered a Breezer boy as he tried to eat from a polystyrene tray. ‘It’s nothing like as bad as it used to be,’ she said. ‘But it’s not as if anything’s been sorted – they’ve just been moved on elsewhere.’
We were almost at Boots, but there was no sign of the source. We had a clear view of the target, maybe sixty metres ahead. The triangle of buildings looked even more like the bow of a cruise liner bearing down on us through the falling rain. It had probably been quite a grand sight when it went up in Victoria’s reign or whenever, but now the ground floor consisted of boarded-up shopfronts, and the three above of smoke- and dirt-blackened
