John Carré - A Delicate Truth

But by then, Giles Oakley was talking to an empty room.

Lying on his bed in the darkness, the silver burner at his right hand, Toby listens to the night shouts from the street. Wait till she’s home. The sleeper leaves Paddington at 11.45. I’ve checked and it left on time. She hates taking taxis. She hates doing anything the poor can’t afford. So wait.

He presses green anyway.

‘How was Chatham House?’ she asked drowsily.

‘I didn’t go.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Called on an old friend. Had a chat.’

‘About anything in particular?’

‘Just this and that. How was your father?’

‘I handed him over to the attendant. Mum will scrape him off the train at the other end.’

A scuffle, quickly suppressed. A smothered murmur of ‘Get off!’

‘That bloody cat,’ she explained. ‘Every night she tries to get on my bed, and I shove her off. Who did you think it was?’

‘I didn’t dare wonder.’

‘Dad’s convinced you have designs on me. Is he right?’

‘Probably.’

Long silence.

‘What’s tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘Thursday.’

‘You’re meeting your man. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a clinic. It finishes around midday. Then a couple of house calls.’

‘Maybe the evening then,’ he said.

‘Maybe.’ Long silence. ‘Did something go wrong tonight?’

‘Just my friend. He thought I was gay.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘And you didn’t succumb out of politeness?’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’

Keep talking , he wanted to tell her. It doesn’t have to be your hopes and dreams. Any old thing will do. Just keep talking till I’ve got Giles out of my head.

7

He had woken badly, with feelings he needed to disown and others he needed urgently to revive. Despite Emily’s consoling words to him it was Oakley’s anguished face and supplicating voice that stayed with him when he woke.

I’m a whore.

I didn’t know.

I knew, and led him on.

I didn’t know, and should have done.

Everybody knew but me.

And most frequently: after Hamburg, how could I be such a bloody fool – telling myself every man’s entitled to his appetites, and after all nobody got hurt but Giles?

Concurrently, he had undertaken a damage assessment of the information Oakley had, or had not, revealed about the extent to which his extramural journeyings were compromised. If Charlie Wilkins, or his certain friend in the Met, was Oakley’s source, which he took pretty much for granted, then the trip to Wales and his meeting with Brigid were blown.

But the photographs weren’t blown. The path to Shorty wasn’t blown. Was his visit to Cornwall blown? Possibly, since the police, or versions of them, had trampled all over Kit’s club and were by now presumably aware that Emily had come to rescue him in the company of a friend of the family.

In which case, what ?

In which case, presenting himself to Shorty in the guise of a Welsh journalist and asking him to turn whistle-blower might not be the wisest course of action to pursue. It might in fact be an act of suicidal folly.

So why not abandon the whole thing, and pull the sheets over our heads, follow Oakley’s advice and pretend none of it ever happened?

Or in plain language, stop flailing yourself with unanswerable questions, and get down to Mill Hill for your date with Shorty, because one eyewitness who is prepared to stay alive and speak is all you’re ever going to need. Either Shorty will say yes, and we’ll do together what Kit and Jeb had planned to do, or Shorty will say no and scuttle off to tell Jay Crispin what a good boy he is, and the roof will fall in.

But whichever of these things happens, Toby will finally be taking the battle to the enemy.

Ring Sally, his assistant. Get her voicemail. Good. Affect a tone of suffering bravely borne:

‘Sally. Toby here. Bloody wisdom tooth acting up, I’m afraid. I’m booked in at the tooth fairy in an hour. So listen. They’ll have to count me out of this morning’s meeting. And maybe Gregory can stand in for me at the NATO bash. Apologies all round, okay? I’ll keep you posted. Sorry again.’

Next, the sartorial question: what does your enterprising provincial journalist wear on his visit to London? He settled for jeans, trainers and a light anorak, and – a neat touch in his opinion – a brace of ballpoints to go with the reporter’s notebook from his desk.

But reaching for his BlackBerry, he checked himself, remembering that it contained Jeb’s photographs that were also Shorty’s.

He decided he was better off without it.

The Golden Calf Café & Patisserie lay halfway along the high street, squeezed between a halal butcher and a kosher delicatessen. In its pink-lit windows, birthday cakes and wedding cakes jostled with meringues the size of ostrich eggs. A brass handrail divided the café from the shop. This much Toby saw from across the road before turning into a side street to complete his survey of parked cars, vans and the crowds of morning shoppers who packed the pavements.

Approaching the café a second time, now on the same side, Toby confirmed what he had observed on his first pass: that the café section at this hour was empty of customers. Selecting what the instructors called the bodyguard’s table – in a corner, facing the entrance – he ordered a cappuccino and waited.

In the shop section on the other side of the brass handrail, customers armed with plastic tongs were loading up their paper boxes with patisserie, sidling along the counter and paying their dues at the cash desk. But none qualified as Shorty Pike, six foot four – but Jeb come in from under him, buckled his knees for him, then broke his nose for him on the way down .

Eleven o’clock turned to ten past. He’s got cold feet, Toby decided. They reckon he’s a health risk, and he’s sitting in a van with his head blown off with the wrong hand.

A bald, heavy-set man with a pockmarked olive complexion and small round eyes was peering covetously through the window: first at the cakes and pastries, now at Toby, now at the cakes again. No blink-rate, weightlifter’s shoulders. Snappy dark suit, no tie. Now he’s walked away. Was he scouting? Or was he thinking he would treat himself to a cream bun, then changed his mind for his figure’s sake? Then Toby realized that Shorty was sitting beside him. And that Shorty must have been hovering all the time in the toilet at the back of the café, which was something Toby hadn’t thought of and should have done, but clearly Shorty had.

He seemed taller than his six foot four, probably because he was sitting upright, with both very large hands on the table in the half-curled position. He had oily black hair, close cropped at the back and sides, and high film-star cheekbones with a built-in grin. His dark complexion was so shiny it looked as though it had been scrubbed with a soapy nail-brush after shaving. There was a small dent at the centre of his nose, so perhaps Jeb had left his mark. He was wearing a sharply ironed blue denim shirt with buttoned-up regulation patch pockets, one for his cigarettes, the other for a protruding comb.

‘You’re Pete then, right?’ he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

‘And you’re Shorty. What can I get you, Shorty? Coffee? Tea?’

Shorty raised his eyebrows and looked slowly round the café. Toby wondered whether he was always this theatrical, or whether being tall and narcissistic made you behave like this.