Lee Child - Personal

‘And General Shoemaker knew?’

‘He was an accidental witness.’

‘Did he object?’

‘Not in principle. He understood. He was in military intelligence. Ask around. The CIA was just the same. It was a pragmatic period.’

‘So how do you owe him a favour?’

‘I shot the guy’s friend, too.’

‘Why?’

‘I got a bad vibe. Which ended up righteous, because the guy had a gun in his pocket, and his home address was a treasure trove. He turned out to be my guy’s contact. As an espionage thing, they got a twofer out of it. More than that, in the end. They made arrests up and down the chain. But the inquiry panel wanted to be absolutely sure I had seen the gun first. Some legal thing. And the truth is, I hadn’t. And Shoemaker didn’t rat me out.’

‘So now you’re going to fight his battle for him. That’s a lot of payback. Seems out of proportion.’

‘That’s how favours work. Like in the mob movies. Some guy says, one day I will call on you to perform a service. You don’t get to pick and choose. And anyway, maybe it was Shoemaker’s battle in the beginning, but it’s mine now. Because O’Day was right. It’s a big world, but I can’t be looking over my shoulder all the time. So Kott gets a rematch.’

‘Do you want me with you?’

‘Only if you want to be. On an ethical level, first. The favour is a hint. Like a script for me to follow. O’Day wants an executioner. He doesn’t want arrests and trials.’

‘On any level, do you want me with you?’

I said, ‘Where do you want to be?’

‘I want to be part of it.’

‘You are part of it.’

‘Entering a phase not entirely suited to my skills.’

‘What’s wrong with your skills?’

‘I’m an average shot with no aptitude for hand-to-hand combat.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll complement each other. Because the physical part is the least of it. The game goes to the fastest thinker. Which is what you’re good at. Or at least, two heads are better than one.’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘We start again at seven o’clock in the morning. Take the rest of the night off.’

We rode down in the elevator together, but I got out alone, on my floor, which was a couple above hers. The turn-down lady had been in my room. I reopened the drapes and looked out across the rooftops. I guessed most of what I was seeing was about a hundred yards away. The comfortable middle distance, in a crowded city. An easy angle, and some kind of default focus. I raised my eye line a little, and tried to guess double, for two hundred yards, and again, for four hundred, and again, for eight hundred, and then one last time, for sixteen hundred yards.

I was staring into the far, far distance. If Romford was Mayfair, we’d be searching ten thousand locations.

Kohl had asked, Will you let me make the arrest?

I had said, I want you to.

As a reward, really. Or an acknowledgement. Or a compliment. Like a battlefield decoration. An earned privilege. She had done all the work. And had all the ideas, and made all the breakthroughs. Hence the reward. Which was substantial, in the coded language of the military, because we had a big enemy. Not physically. Not as I recall. I stuck a chisel in his brain, many years afterwards, and I don’t remember a big man. But he was big in terms of power. And prestige, and influence. A real long shot. Especially for a woman. Which was part of it. It was a long time ago. Recognition was important. And she deserved it. She did the work, and had the ideas, and made the breakthroughs. She was very thorough, and very smart.

Hadn’t saved her.

I took my clothes off and got into bed, but I left the drapes open. I figured the city glow might comfort me, and the dawn might help me wake.

At one minute past seven the next morning we were on our way to Wallace Court, in Bennett’s car, which was no longer an anonymous blue Vauxhall, but an anonymous silver Vauxhall. Otherwise identical. Like rental cars. We drove most of the same route, but faster, because the morning traffic was running the other way. Into town, not out. Rush hour, but not for us. Bennett looked tired. Casey Nice looked OK. We didn’t talk. Nothing to say. No doubt Bennett thought I was wasting his time. Which was possible. Or probable, even. But there’s always a percentage chance of something. Maybe of not having to say if I had known then what I know now . Which phrase is used a lot. My mother said it all the time. In her case, she meant it sincerely, but she said it like an elocution exercise, like a person learning a foreign language, which she was, with all her attention on the three cascading vowel sounds at the very end, and none at all on the consonants along the way: If I ’ad known zen what I know now .

I know now , like drumbeats. Portentous, and a little sinister, like tympani strikes at the start of a gloomy symphony. Shostakovich, maybe.

I know now .

I knew twenty minutes into the visit.

WHEN WE GOT close I started to recognize some of what we had seen from the minicab, the second one, the one properly pre-booked on the telephone. I had seen some of the streets before, suburban but compressed, a little busier and narrower and faster than they really wanted to be. I remembered some of the stores, even. Carpets, cell phones, chickens, cheeseburgers, kebabs. And then the sudden green space, and the fine old house, and the crazy wall, still shouldering London aside after all these years.

The same squat tough guy was on duty at the gate, with his Kevlar vest and his sub-machine gun. Bennett nodded to him, and the guy took a step towards the gate, but his gaze fell on me, and he came back and said, ‘You’re the gentleman with the guidebook. Sixpence to see the grounds. Welcome back, sir.’ Then he set off again and opened up. No radio check, no paperwork. No badge. Just a nod and a wink. The guy was in combat gear, basically, but it was blue, and it had Metropolitan Police on it here and there, embroidered on tapes and silk-screened on Kevlar, subdued order, with black thread and black ink, plus monochrome versions of their helmet shields, like corporate branding, so I had no doubt the guy was a cop, but equally I had no doubt Bennett wasn’t, yet Bennett was nodding and winking and the guy was hopping right to it.

It’s all pretty fluid at the moment .

We drove the length of the driveway, and parked on the gravel near the door, where there was another armed policeman on duty. The house jutted in and out in places, where afterthought additions and extensions had been tacked on, but it was basically rectangular, much wider than it was deep. Not that it would be cramped from front to back. Far from it. I was sure it would be plenty spacious. But the proportions were dominated by the long, scattershot facade. No question about that. The place looked like four shoeboxes laid end to end. Maybe oak trunks long enough for front-to-back rafters were hard to find in Queen Elizabeth’s time. Her dad had just built the Royal Navy. Lots of oak ships. Whole forests had been cut down.

We got out of the car, and Bennett nodded to the second cop, who nodded back, and then Bennett hustled us inside, impatiently, like he was embarrassed to be seen with us in public. Or maybe he was worried about rifle sights. Maybe he didn’t want to stand next to me in the open. He had survived Paris, and he didn’t want to get nailed in London.

The door was most of a tree, nearly five hundred years old, banded with iron and studded with nail heads as big as golf balls. Inside I saw dark panelling, almost black with age, waxed and gleaming, a worn flagstone floor, and a huge limestone fireplace. There were oak settles and tapestry chairs, and electric bulbs in iron candelabra. There were oil portraits of solemn-faced men in Tudor costumes. Bennett took a right-hand corridor, and we followed him, ultimately into a room that had been modernized with white paint and an acoustic ceiling. Beyond it was another room, similar, but smaller, with a large door in its end wall.