Part 10 (2/2)

'I suppose I should be grateful you didn't go with them. Keep the client sweet.'

He gave her a hard look.

'It was a joke, Mark.'

'It needs work.'

'And you need this.' She gave him a cup of coffee.

'No, what he needs is a hair of the dog,' said Gerard, entering. Then, at the look Mark gave him, laughed and said, 'But it'll keep. Actually, I wanted a word, Mark, since you're up. Don't mind, do you?' He addressed the question to Sarah.

Be a good girl, now. Run along and play. But residual guilt from snooping, or from being caught snooping, left her unable to object.

Gerard handed her a bunch of newspapers and took Mark up to his study, while a still interestingly pale Paula mumbled something about a lie-down, and disappeared. Sarah took her bundle into the garden, and spent the next hour reading what appeared to be the same set of articles in three different papers, before drifting softly to sleep in the suns.h.i.+ne. She was woken by a hand stroking her cheek, though Mark's words weren't as affectionate as his gesture.

'When you were in Gerard's study,' he said suspiciously, 'did you mess with his palmtop at all?'

'Did I what?'

'His electric notebook. Only it wasn't closed down properly.'

'Maybe he forgot to last time he used it,' Sarah said, fully awake this time.

'That's what I said. He said, Hmmm.'

'I only turned it on. I'd never seen one before.'

'Jesus, Sarah! That's like looking at somebody's diary. It is looking at somebody's diary.'

'Well, if it had been a diary, I'd not have been interested,' she lied. 'I was thinking of getting you one for Christmas. I wanted to see how they work.'

He became thoughtful. 'It'd come in very useful.'

'I can't get you one now, can I? It wouldn't be a surprise.'

She left him to mull that over and went inside, where Gerard was in the kitchen, preparing lunch: a joint of beef, the usual veg. Traditional, as she'd have expected, though he wasn't the one she'd have thought would be preparing it. 'Anything I can do to help?'

'I think it's under control, thanks.'

She looked out of the window at Mark, who'd settled down with the papers now; was reading the Middle East news with a worried frown which might have related to world events or just to his hangover, she couldn't tell. When she turned back Gerard was studying her with an evil look on his face.

'Is there a problem?'

'One thing would be useful.'

'Yes?'

He pointed at the bottles on the table. 'You could clear up the dead soldiers,' he said.

IV.

Amos Crane tall, grey, crewcut, a bit of a problem; his face that of a man in the last stage of something wasting sat in the glow of a VDU, whose green wash made unearthly the crags and hollows of his head. Beneath the surface wreckage, though, everything pumped in order. The body was a tool. An early riser, Amos Crane jogged three miles before breakfast; ran past Chinese supermarkets as they opened, blowsy strip clubs as they closed, and considered the lives grouped round these exits and entrances as being connected to his own by an invisible network of alliances. Crane was not a Londoner, and never imagined himself one. But on the city's early streets he felt part of a larger community, and regarded the tired dancers and busy grocers as his equals, at least in as much as they led lives outside the jobsworth's timetable. He was their secret sharer. He understood their pa.s.sions. Now, though, he was at his desk.

He preferred to work without overhead lighting; with just an Anglepoise bent so low it scorched rings on the desk's surface, and the light of the computer screen, whose lettering reflected on his spectacles. A computer, too, was a tool only. He had no patience with those who subst.i.tuted this magic box for the real world, looking to it for answers: it held only clues. All the information in the world didn't give you the answers. For these, you had to close with flesh and bone.

His brother used to accuse him of attempting philosophy.

'It doesn't hurt to think,' Amos would say. And then amend it, adding, 'It doesn't hurt me to think. I can see where you'd have problems.'

'Always the kidder.'

'You rush into things.' Serious now; it was Axel's big fault. Always doing, and working out the total later. Or letting somebody else do that part, which bored him.

Axel would blow him a smoke ring. Change the subject. But it was true: over the years, Amos had tried to steer his brother right over and over. Telling him a hundred different ways, he had to get a grip on the politics of the situation. Probably there was nowhere left in the world you could do the wet work and not worry about the consequences. Well, America. The Far East. Africa too, come to think of it. And most of Eastern Europe. But Oxford, no, you had to be more circ.u.mspect. Blowing up a house, even Axel had to a.s.sume there'd be raised eyebrows afterwards.

'It got the job done.'

'Half the job done.'

Axel had blown another smoke ring.

And it had been up to Amos to work out the details: get the kid out of hospital, fas.h.i.+on a lid to pop on the story; plus the tricky bit, which was letting Howard believe he'd been the one doing all the work. Credit had a way of calming him down. Thinking about Howard now, he tapped out a little riff on his keyboard, squirting a meaningless jumble of letters on to the screen.

'Your brother,' Howard had said, 'is certifiably wacko.'

'Please.'

'You're supposed to be his control on this operation. Did you have any idea what he was planning?'

'The agent in the field has the last word. Or didn't you know?'

Howard was strictly a desk-man, and didn't enjoy being reminded of the fact. He'd flushed, said, 'An innocent woman was killed. Are you aware of that?'

So Amos had told him about the early forties, in Mongolia. The experiments with the rats and the prisoners.

'You can't compare us with them,' Howard had said. And then shut up, perplexed, while Amos laughed at him.

He'd just come into the room, now. Howard. Without turning, Amos knew it was him: something about the clumsy way desk- men moved, even (especially?) when they thought they were sliding like grease. On the nights he worked late which, to be fair, were frequent Howard always let you know. 'I was in the office till almost twelve last night': not complaining, just filling you in. Wanting everybody to appreciate, Amos Crane thought now, that he had it tough too. Till almost twelve.

'Howard,' he said, before the other announced his presence.

'Any . . . developments?'

'Not exactly.'

'Are you aware of the pressure I'm under?'

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