The station boasted a car park and a space for taxis, currently vacant. Shirley sat under an awning while morning activity unfolded: citygoers were dropped off by tracksuited spouses, looking ever-so-harassed behind the wheels of their 4x4s; bolder types arrived on bikes which they locked to the nearby rack, or folded into complicated quadrilaterals. Some saddoes even turned up on foot. A taxi arrived, and disgorged a significant blonde. Shirley watched as she smiled and paid and tipped and smiled and left, then slipped into the back seat before the driver knew she was there.
“Miss your train?”
“Not even a bit,” she told him. “Do you just do mornings, or do you take the evening shift too?”
And because a suffering look was now unfolding across his wide country features, she snapped her fingers, propelling a ten pound note from its hiding place in her watch’s wristband; a trick she pulled on waiters, when they were worth the bother.
“Last week, for instance. Were you picking up in the evenings last week?”
“Boyfriend trouble, is it?” he asked.
“Do I look like boyfriends give me trouble?”
He reached a hand out and she dropped the note into it. Then he drove them away from the neat little station just as another taxi arrived to take his place, and gave Shirley Dander a quick tour of the village while she pumped him for info on local taxi services.
A large, very large, woman lumbered past: she didn’t look more than early twenties, but had amassed at least a stone for each year. She snagged Louisa’s attention. Gravitational pull, probably. “What must that be like?”
They were sitting on a stone plinth wrapped round a column, takeaway coffees in hand. Around them was a constant stream of people: heading into or out of Liverpool Street Station; disappearing round corners, or into shops and office blocks.
“Not just the effort of moving,” she went on. “The whole shebang. How’d you get a man when you’re shaped like that?”
“You know what they say,” Min said. “Anyone with one of those can always lay their hands on one of these.”
His head movement indicated the corresponding parts of their bodies he meant.
“I wouldn’t be too sure. I know some pretty lonely women.”
“Oh, well, if you’re gunna have standards …”
Of the people heading by, none showed interest in them. Somebody would, sooner or later: Spider Webb had set a meeting up.
“There’s two of them,” he’d said. “Kyril and Piotr, they’re called.”
“Are they Russian?” Min had asked.
“How will we know them?” Louisa said hurriedly.
“Oh, you’ll know them,” Webb said. “Pashkin doesn’t get here for another couple of weeks. You can talk through the itinerary with this pair. They’ve been told you’re from the Department of Energy, for what that’s worth. Let them know to keep their feet off the furniture, but don’t go putting collars on them. Never wise to stir up the gorillas.”
“Gorillas?” Min had asked.
“They’re on the big side,” Webb admitted. “They’re goons, what did you think? He’d have a pair of mini-mes?”
“How come they’re here already?” Louisa had wanted to know.
But Webb had no information. “He’s rich. Not Rolls Royce rich—moonshot rich. If he wants his cushions plumped up weeks in advance, that’s his privilege.”
“This will be them,” Louisa said.
Really? You think? Not stupid enough to say that out loud, Min stood, sucked his gut in and waited.
The pair reached them and the one who was Piotr said, “You’re with Mr. Webb, right?” His voice was low and unmistakably eastern European, but he spoke fluently. Introductions made, the pair sat. Louisa waved for more coffee from the nearby booth. It might have been pleasant; four people sitting down to business in a capital city, mid-morning; coffee on the way, and the possibility of sandwiches later. You couldn’t throw a stone from here without hitting someone on their way to such a meeting; but it would have been trickier, Min hoped, to target one where half those convened were carrying guns.
“Mr. Pashkin gets here week after next?” Louisa asked.
“He’s flying in,” Piotr agreed. “He’s in Moscow right now.”
Kyril, it seemed, didn’t talk much.
“Well, maybe we should run through some ground rules before he gets here. Just so we all know where we stand.”
Piotr gave her a serious look. “We’re professionals,” he said. “Your turf, sure. There’s no problem. You tell us the rules. We keep to them as best we can.”
After a brief moment in which he wondered whether he’d ever speak another language well enough to say
