In the dim light, he could make out the gross and sour-smelling form of a creature that might have slipped through the door in his dreams, but was actually Jackson Lamb. Since he was neither eating nor smoking he was presumably asleep. Bachelor gazed for some seconds before shaking himself free and slipping his feet inside his shoes. His mouth tasted like an abandoned nest, and his bones ached from sleeping in a chair.
Sophie, taking no chances, pointed at the door rather than spoke.
It was what, three in the morning? Bachelor had already been exiled twice tonight, sent walking the streets rather than hear ongoing discussions. On the other hand, this was Sophie inviting him. He risked a taste of his own breath in a cupped hand, and made a mental note to avert his head when speaking. She opened the door so quietly, she might have spent their captivity practising.
Outside was colder than he’d expected. Little clouds accompanied each breath; his own heavier, more pungent, than hers.
“We need to leave now.”
He’d been expecting this moment.
Lech’s instructions, back when his own first concern had been the per diems.
And Lech was his friend, who’d stuck by him through thin times, even though their association had cost the younger man dear. It would be the act of a rogue to betray his trust. So he averted his head to shield Sophie from his phosgene breath before replying, and to the neutral observer must have looked as if he were addressing the terracotta pots and their sleeping citizens when he whispered, “Okay.”
They left the mews in a quiet hustle. Neither looked back, so neither saw the shape at the window, watching; his bulk briefly illuminated, on and off, by the repeated clicking of a lighter which seemed reluctant to burst into flame.
“I always get hungry after a ruck.”
“Me too,” Whelan said.
She shot him a sideways glance.
“Or so it would appear,” he added.
He’d stopped the car and she’d climbed into the front, where the first thing she’d done was snap open the glovebox and peer inside. She was Shirley Dander, and had never, it transpired, been Sophie de Greer, nor even knew who de Greer was. “Does she live in Wimbledon?”
Whelan had always been good at keeping a file in his mind. “Yes.”
“Figures.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “All of what just happened, the violence, everything—it was my fault.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped to a conclusion.”
This, judging by her expression, was a feeble way of kicking off a riot.
I rescued you, he wanted to say. I jumped onto a moving vehicle. Remember that part? I was an action hero.
“Can we stop somewhere?”
“What, you mean . . . a bush or something?”
“Do I look like I want to eat a bush?”
“Oh. Right. No.”
“I meant like a service station.”
“I expect there’ll be one somewhere.”
“Could do with a crap too, to be honest, but mostly I need a burger or something.”
“. . . Yes. Fine.”
“Or chocolate. Minimum.”
There was little traffic about, but a light shone way behind them: a single headlight. Motorbike, he thought.
“Why were you there?” he asked abruptly. “In the San?”
Fields crawled past. In the hedgerows, tiny lifecycles churned their way through insect millennia.
At last Shirley said, “People keep dying.”
He didn’t know how to reply to that.
“I don’t mean in general, though that too. It’s just that, every time I get close to someone . . . they die.”
She was staring out of the window on her side, though he guessed she wasn’t seeing anything.
“So don’t get paired with me. Not a good idea.”
He said, “I’m sure that’s . . .” but he wasn’t, when it came down to it, sure of much, and whatever he was going to say threatened to dissolve in the space between them. He hauled it back. “I’m sure none of it’s your fault.”
“Keeps happening. So it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is.”
This with the air of one who has reached a conclusion, and accepted that no other was viable.
A few moments later, she added, “I suppose, sooner or later, I’ll be the one drawing the short straw.”
Whelan said, “There’s some kind of service station soon. An all-night garage. They might do sandwiches.”
Shirley nodded.
The fields grew wider apart as the road morphed into a dual carriageway. Not long after he’d spoken, they passed a sign promising a garage, toilets, food, not far ahead.
