‘Where?’ he said, sitting up, aware of his clammy skin as the duvet slipped off his upper body.
‘Tunis,’ the voice in his ear said, adding in a sympathetic tone, ‘Sorry, Stephen.’
The voice belonged to Martin ‘Harry’ Palmer, Holm’s friend in SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, better known to the public and journalists as MI6. Palmer worked the North Africa desk and was Holm’s contact at SIS and his sometime drinking partner. They’d known each other for years, since way before either of them worked for the security services, and Palmer was an old hand to whom Holm could express his frequent dissatisfaction with work and life in general. If he wasn’t a friend then he was as close to one as Holm had, and Holm always appreciated the way Palmer managed to sound calm even when chin-deep in shit, his tone being similar to that of a weather forecaster reporting the possibility of a short rain shower: Pack an umbrella or a lightweight mac. Don’t worry, it’ll be brighter by the afternoon.
‘Tunis?’ Holm threw off the rest of the duvet, climbed from the bed and staggered from the bedroom. He headed down the hallway of his little flat and into the living room. The location given by Palmer had momentarily thrown him, and he tried to work the angles and come up with something that made sense. Nothing did so he picked up the remote for the TV and blipped it on. ‘How bad?’
There was a momentary pause before the answer came. ‘At least four UK citizens so far. Three other fatalities, a dozen critically or seriously injured. The total death toll could well rise into double figures.’
‘Right.’ Holm was staring at the TV screen, taking in the news footage at the same time as his mind began to run the numbers. The casualty figure was bad but manageable. The location – Tunis – was a nasty surprise.
Holm moved back into the hall and towards the bathroom, wondering if there was going to be time for a shower, thinking no, a squirt of deodorant would have to do. ‘Random or targeted?’
‘Targeted. It appears the attackers were after the head of a British-run women’s charity. She was killed along with a journalist who happened to be interviewing her at the time. The other dead are tourists: British, American, French and German.’
‘Shit.’ Holm worked the facts. American. French. German. Non-UK dead complicated the matter. For a moment he scolded himself for forgetting these were people no matter what their nationality. ‘Have we got anything from the Yanks yet?’
‘No, but BND has been in contact. They’re pretty upset at the misinformation you sent yesterday.’
‘Misinformation?’ BND. The Bundesnachrichtendienst. The German intelligence agency. Holm could imagine the director fuming at the killing of one of his citizens, irate that the warning the British had issued was so bungled. ‘That’s unfair.’
‘Fair or not, most of Europe went on high alert because of you lot and yet nothing happened. Then you cancelled the alert and when the attack happens it’s somewhere completely off the radar.’ There was a pause before Palmer continued. ‘You might like to start devising some elaborate excuse for the Spider on why you fucked up on this one, OK?’
Holm shivered as Palmer ended the call. The Spider. Real name Fiona Huxtable, Holm’s immediate boss and the deputy director of MI5. The Spider lived on the fifth floor at Thames House and spun sticky webs that could trap the unwary. Like many female arachnids, she enjoyed eating the male of the species alive, although in Huxtable’s case it didn’t involve sex beforehand.
He tossed the phone onto the sofa. In the bathroom he splashed water on his face and groped in the cupboard for a can of deodorant. The aerosol hissed out as he sprayed himself and he was struck by the thought that no amount of deodorant was going to prevent the stink Huxtable was going to kick up over this.
Silva turned away from the car park and back to the job in hand. She walked round the corner to where depressing flats stood above tired shops. She opened her postbag and took out a bunch of letters. Flat 2. She stuffed the letters into the slot, heard them fall onto the mat, let the flap clang shut, turned away.
The uniform. Red and blue, and she really hoped the boy in the car park aspired to be something more than a postal worker.
Next address. More letters. A dog growling behind the door. She shook her head as she heard the dog rip into the mail. Not her problem. She moved on. In the next flat a baby was crying, and over the child’s distress a couple argued. Obscenities flew back and forth. What love there ever was drained away by poverty and circumstance. Silva didn’t care. She drifted up the street and the day drifted with her. Just like every day. Work the round, deliver the mail, end the shift. In the evenings she retreated to the little boat she called home. It sat on a berth at the end of a pontoon in a rundown marina where nobody bothered her. She could cook herself a meal and try to sleep. Wake the next morning. Do it all over again. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. She took all the overtime she could and enjoyed the fact the job involved walking everywhere. She relished the constant movement, finally understanding Itchy’s affliction: if you kept moving you didn’t have to think. You lived for each step, each swing of the arm, each twitch of the head. Seventeen strides to the front door. Push the flap, shove in the letters, walk away. Twenty-five strides to the next house. Push the flap, shove in the letters, walk away. Walk, push, shove. Each bag of mail represented ten thousand steps. Ten thousand little segments of
