by Mick Herron
‘Her parents are dead.’
‘And you? Are you the Good Samaritan, Ms Tucker?’
‘I don’t think you get Good Samaritans any more.’
‘This is true. We’re too afraid of malpractice suits. How did the little girl come to vanish?’
This, too, she found phony; the way he jumped from one subject to another, placing his questions where they were least expected. Perhaps, in addition to his wonderful degree, he’d spent a few years watching Columbo. But she told him anyway about the hospital and the long-haired stranger in the car park. When she finished he nodded as if it were all too familiar a tale. ‘You realize,’ he said, ‘there’s no reason to think anything untoward has happened?’
‘The woman in the hospital,’ Sarah said. ‘She didn’t know where the child had gone. She was furious.’
‘She works in the NHS,’ Silvermann said. ‘She could have been furious for any number of reasons.’
‘What about the man in the car park?’
‘A family friend. A concerned family friend. My first guess would be grandparents. The grandparents have taken the child.’
‘There are no grandparents,’ Sarah said, with a certainty belying her complete ignorance on the matter.
He shrugged. ‘Then I’d be forced to move on to my second guess.’
‘Which is?’
He shrugged again. ‘Strange things happen. The little girl is no longer an ordinary little girl, you know? She is part of a story. A miracle girl, a child who survived an explosion. So, possibly a newspaper has taken her up. This happens, you know. Sort of a corporate takeover. They remove her to a private facility, where they’ll pay for her treatment and photograph her at leisure.’
‘That can’t be legal. She’s four years old!’
‘Many things become legal when you can afford them, Ms Tucker. We live in a culture of expediency.’
‘I wasn’t expecting a lecture in civics.’
‘I talk too much. People . . . have said so. All I’m trying to point out is, if you hire me to find Dinah for you, I will in all likelihood discover her safe and well. But this will cost you quite a lot of money.’
‘How much?’
‘One hundred and fifty pounds a day.’
She nodded, as if she’d been expecting that, but felt the sum like a slap in the face.
‘Or any part thereof,’ he added.
‘And what do I get for that?’ Sarah asked.
‘My undivided attention.’
‘The advert said hi-tech.’
‘We’ve got a computer.’
‘We?’
‘Zoë – Ms Boehm is a partner.’
‘She doesn’t get her name on the door.’
He looked away. ‘There was a mistake. The painter misheard his instructions.’
Sarah nodded again, for something to do. Her mind was ticking off sums of money: current account, savings. The joint account was obviously out. ‘How long a job do you think it would be?’
‘You know the adage? If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’
‘I can afford it.’
‘Believe me, Ms Tucker, I’m not in the business of turning work away. But nor do I wish to take advantage.’ He hesitated. ‘Sometimes people bring me problems they know can be solved. It’s a way of dealing with the ones they can’t do anything about.’
Sort of doe-eyed and helpless. ‘Have you a couch I can lie on?’
‘I don’t mean to be intrusive. But all I can do, if I find the girl, is tell you where she is. I can’t deliver her to you. I can’t bring her mother back, either.’
‘If I thought you could raise the dead, Mr Silvermann, I’d have found your rates very reasonable.’
‘Perhaps there are cheaper ways of solving your problem, Ms Tucker. Perhaps there are cheaper problems you could find to solve.’
‘I don’t want analysis, Mr Silvermann. I want to find Dinah Singleton.’
‘Of course you do.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a form. ‘This is a standard contract. I’ll need one day’s pay as a retainer. If I don’t find the child within two days, we can discuss the matter further.’
Sarah filled in dotted lines: name, address. Her current unemployment. ‘For a partner in the firm,’ she said, ‘Ms Boehm didn’t sound too keen on your line of business.’
‘She thinks we should alter course,’ he said. ‘Head hunting. She likes the sound of head hunting.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘I am a confirmed vegetarian, Ms Tucker. Also, I like being a detective.’
She couldn’t resist it. ‘Sometimes solving other people’s problems is a way of avoiding dealing with your own.’
‘Touché, Ms Tucker. I take all major credit cards,’ he said.
She was still smiling about that at the bottom of the stairs.
The two men churning up the pavement had stopped again: exhausted by their fifteen-minute stint, they were leaning against a wall, smoking. As she stepped from the doorway into the sunshine, she felt vulnerable under their scrutiny. Private detective translated to extramarital sex. They were wondering whether she was sinned against or sinning, she thought; scarlet woman or vindictive wife. Maybe their philosophies were wider than this, but the way they stared didn’t hold much hope of that.
Her immediate problem, though, was what to do next. Overheating in a woollen jacket, she couldn’t face the trip home yet, so stopped in the pub next door and sat in the courtyard with a half of bitter, worrying about what she’d done. One hundred and fifty pounds was a lot to spend on a whim; especially with another hundred and fifty following it. Mark had never complained about her expenditure, but she’d never hired a private detective before either. Nor had she told him she was going to. She wasn’t wholly sure why.
It was not that she didn’t love him. Odd that this had to be stated, even to herself. But he had changed during their marriage, and if he’d hardly been happy-go-lucky at the outset, she sometimes had difficulty recognizing the man he’d become. Targeted, he called it: jargon he’d have choked on five years back was his major mode of expression these days. He worked for a City firm, a merchant bank so professionally discreet nobody had ever heard of it. And being targeted, she’d recently decided, translated to job-obsessed; not wholly fair perhaps, but all the self-help books in the world couldn’t convince her that making lists of career goals was an endearing character trait. On the other hand, he’d always had a tendency to catalogue his record collection. This should have been a clue.
She drank some beer, and tried to balance the equation. What about her own goals? A career came into it, certainly; that was part of her problem. BHS, Gerard Inchon had called it: patronizing sod. But it didn’t help to know her talents, whatever they amounted to, were lying dormant; it disturbed the equilibrium of their marriage, allowing Mark to think that he’d found his role and that hers was obvious: she should have a child. She’d long suspected, anyway, that he’d thought her job a hobby. When you worked for The Bank With No Name, earning less than your age in thousands was a joke. And he who dies with the most toys wins. Out there in the marketplace it was a man’s world, and they never let you forget it.
Meanwhile, there was Dinah Singleton: a child who shouldn’t have meant anything to her, but was rapidly becoming a symbol. The number of people who’d told her to stop looking for Dinah was mounting up. If she wanted to believe she set her own agenda, keeping searching was the only way to go.
Draining her glass, carrying it back in, Sarah knew she’d reached her decisions. She’d pay Joe Silvermann’s bill herself; she’d do bar work if she had to.
And maybe she would have a child, but not yet. In her own damn time.
After she’d found the one she was looking for now.
V
Roughly sixty miles east of where Sarah was finishing her drink, on the fourth (and top) floor of a 1920s office block, the rest of which housed an overflow from the Ministry for Urban Development, a man sto
od looking down through an office window at the traffic snarled below: a belching snake of hot metal, strangely silent at this remove. He was a tall man with patrician features, and a full head of steel grey hair he wore swept back, to emphasize its weight. His suit was grey too, though more discreetly so, and the frame it covered lean and healthy-looking. His hands were long and his fingers thin; his nails clipped neatly just that morning. He appeared to be in his late fifties, though in fact had recently entered his eighth decade. Of this, too, he was proud, and while publicly ascribing his physical fortune to good genes, remained secretly convinced that strength of character held the key.
It was just a shame this was so rare.
The office he occupied was sparsely furnished. A metal desk, lower-orders-issue; an ungainly shredder he referred to as The Dalek. A calendar on the wall seemed to think it was 1994. There were two chairs, which matched neither each other nor the desk, and a few oddments – desk lamp, hat stand, mirror – which looked as if they’d found their way here from different collections. Indeed, the office as a whole felt made up of leftover spaces, like a priesthole or a butler’s mezzanine. As if its existence were being tactfully passed over, and the business conducted between its walls allowed to remain a secret.
There was a knock at the door, and after a moment or two, a new man entered. His name was Howard. A lot younger than the room’s original occupant, he hid it well: sparse hair, stressed features – he looked as if he’d unexpectedly been made leader of the Conservative Party, and hadn’t yet found a way of passing the buck. And now was made to stand and wait while the man who’d summoned him – the man for whom Howard worked, or to whom he reported, though Howard had never discovered his name – stood looking out of the window: working up, no doubt, some piece of crap Howard would have to pretend he enjoyed. Or deserved. One or the other.
Howard often thought of his boss as C. Not because it was traditional in their field, but because it stood for a very short word that seemed to fit.
When C spoke at last, it was to say, ‘Made a right bollocks of this one, haven’t you, Howard?’
Howard didn’t answer.
‘I don’t remember you receiving permission to start a war.’
‘The Department was given carte blanche, sir.’
‘That’s very pretty, Howard. French, isn’t it? And it implies pretty wide parameters, I’ll grant you, but not wide enough to cover barely controlled explosions in densely populated suburban areas. Who did you have running this one? Wile E Coyote?’
‘Crane, sir.’
‘Oh God. That’s almost as bad.’
Though he hadn’t asked which Crane, and everybody knew there were two.
C sighed. It was a theatrical sigh: sounded rehearsed. He waved a hand at a chair, so Howard sat, though C remained standing. But he turned from the window at last. Looked down at Howard like a disappointed headmaster. ‘And Crane thought a bomb would do the trick? I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t go after him in a tank.’
‘It came out looking like an accident, sir. And there was the problem of the body, too. Crane thought taking him out solo would have caused more problems than it solved. I mean, the target was already dead, sir. Technically.’
‘But his wife wasn’t. Crane happy with that on his conscience, is he?’
Crane hasn’t got a conscience, thought Howard.
‘What about the locals? They’ve been pacified?’
‘It was a gas leak. We’re all square on that one.’
‘No hungry journos looking for their name in bright lights?’
‘It was a gas leak, sir,’ Howard repeated. ‘The story will hold.’
‘I’m delighted you’re confident. What about the child? Crane hasn’t had her shot or anything, has he?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘She had fucking better be fine, Howard. Dead babies sell newspapers. Dead babies blown up in cack-handed covert operations run by psychopathic idiots get entire documentaries dedicated to their short, wasted lives. Now which of the blasted Crane brothers masterminded this bollocks, and what’s he planning on doing for an encore?’
‘Axel, sir.’
‘Axel shouldn’t be let out on his own. He’s a danger to the public. As I’m sure the public will all too readily agree after this fiasco. What’s his next move? A small nuclear device in a crowded shopping centre?’
‘Downey’s still running loose.’
‘And what are the bets on his suspicions having been aroused, Howard? You think he’ll write it off to a faulty gas main? Luck of the draw? Or might he be a little bit jumpy?’
‘Crane says –’
‘Axel?’
‘Amos. He’s holding the reins on this.’
‘So the bomb was his idea?’
‘Axel’s. It was a field decision, sir. He was given carte blanche –’
C waved his hand so Howard shut up. Axel Crane, Amos Crane: they were each as bad as the other. This time round, Amos Crane was home in the bunker, calling the shots; Axel – who was generally agreed to be a mad bugger – was out in the open, ignoring them. And civilians were being smeared across the landscape.
The older man said, ‘Jesus wept. The lunatics are running the asylum. What does he say then, Amos Crane?’
‘That it doesn’t matter what Downey thinks or knows. Or thinks he knows. If we’ve got the child, he’ll come looking for her.’
‘This is what passes for a strategy?’
‘He’s gamed it every which way. There’s a lot of things Downey might do, but not if we’ve got the child. He’ll put her first. Until he’s found her, he won’t even think about going –’
Oh, fuck.
Going what?’ C asked politely.
‘Public.’
‘Public. Fine.’ C pulled his chair out and sat down. ‘Read the papers this morning, Howard?’
‘Glanced at them, sir. Been a bit busy.’
‘Anything grab your attention especially? Any minor events worth musing over? Like an impending fucking war, for instance?’
‘Sir.’
‘Fasten your mind on this, Howard. The country is prepared to take up arms to prevent Downey from going public. That isn’t an option. If you’re expecting your career to last longer than your hair did, don’t even think about mentioning the possibility. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. What are you doing with the child?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Well, work faster. Is Axel staying out in the open?’
‘For the time being.’
‘Good. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and he’ll be hit by a truck. After he’s sorted out Downey.’ C stood up again. ‘Are you still here?’
Howard crawled to the door.
‘And, Howard? Remind Crane he’s not running a private war out there. If he can’t keep his brother on a leash, maybe it’s time you found him a job he can manage. Like checking ID at the car pool. Tell him that, will you?’
Howard closed the door behind him without a sound, then ran a finger round his shirt collar. The finger came away wet.
Waiting for the lift he swore fluently, obscenely and without repeating himself for just over a minute, not a single emotion showing on his face. There was a price to be paid for this, though at that moment Howard couldn’t recall if it were cancer or heart disease. One of those. You couldn’t bottle such fluency up and not have it go rotten. On the ground floor he smiled politely at the woman on Reception, who thought him something in forensic accounting, and walked out into groggy sunshine still harbouring violence in his heart. Made a right bollocks of this one, haven’t you? Yes, sure, fine. From an office high above the mess, it all looked pretty easy. Down at street level, you worked with what you had. And if that included the Crane brothers, you thanked Christ they were on your side, and let them get on with it.
He would walk back across the park, he decided. If he could just cross the road in one piece, he’d walk across the park.
Howard hated being in this position, of having to defend the indefensible. The first he’d known of Crane’s explosion, it was already over. And putting the fix in after the event was like making jelly in a sieve, so maybe that bastard with the view should come down here and see what real life looked like. A lot of traffic, all trying to go different places at once. All of it meeting in the middle, so what you got was smoke and noise.
At the corner, the green man told Howard it was safe to cross. Howard trusted green men about as much as he did any other kind, but crossed anyway. In the park it was a little cooler, a little calmer: there was a whisper of wind tasting less like exhaust fumes and more like something born of nature. Howard walked between flowerbeds Londoners had used as litter bins, past litter bins in which Londoners had been sick, and wondered again what to do about the girl.
It shouldn’t have happened this way. Even Amos Crane – wolfishly protective of his younger sibling – admitted that, in a field situation, he’d not have chosen Axel’s method. It hadn’t allowed for total control. It demanded too much of a fix. But Amos believed in fate, too, and in the girl’s survival saw something that went beyond tabloid whimsy: he saw the makings of a game plan. The girl, as he put it, was still on the board. It was up to them to use her with care.
But Howard, without being sentimental about it, wasn’t sure this was a good idea. The trouble with infants was, you couldn’t be sure people would forget about them. Everyone could lose an adult or two, and assume their life just took a different direction: they’d moved or got in with a new crowd – people were always prepared to write their own backstory to explain away a casual friend’s disappearance. But with an infant, you didn’t assume they’d made their own choices, changed their own lifestyle. With infants, the most unlikely types might get it in their heads to come looking.
The fix seemed solid: the police, the local press. The inquest should ring down the curtain. Nobody liked it much, but in the name of national security, a lot of shit got swallowed. Still, things needed checking. That was the trouble with cowboys like Axel, thought Howard: they pulled off whatever wacky stunt felt good at the time, and muggins here was left to make sure nobody got curious after the event. It could be a problem if anyone other than Michael Downey took the bait. Especially with Axel Crane running wild, morally certain the fastest solution to most problems was a shallow grave.