“Impressive, yes,” he said, and she had to change mental gear: he was talking about the Needle. “Capitalism at its most naked, rearing high above the city. You don’t need me to mention Freud, I’m sure.”
“Perhaps not this early in the evening,” she heard herself say.
“And yet it’s impossible to avoid. Where there is money, there is also sex. Please.” He gestured with his fork. “Eat.”
It was as if he’d prepared it himself, and she wondered if that were a symptom of wealth; that you assume yourself the source of all your company’s needs and pleasures.
She ate. It was a scallop, over which had been drizzled a nutty-looking sauce which tasted of too many things for her tongue to process. And yet that ache inside, which food could not pacify, rolled over on its back and quietened. Eat. Eat some more. It wasn’t wrong to be hungry after all.
He was saying, “And where there’s sex, trouble follows. I’ve been seeing posters everywhere, hearing news reports. This Stop the City rally. Are your masters at the Department of Energy worried about it?”
That joke could wear thin. “It’s not ideal timing. But our route avoids it.”
“I’m surprised your authorities allow it on a weekday.”
“I suppose the organisers felt there was little point in bringing the City to its knees at the weekend, when the City’s out of town.” Her bag buzzed. That was her phone receiving a text, but there was nobody she wanted to hear from. She ignored it, and speared another scallop.
He said, “And it won’t get out of hand?”
Similar demonstrations had seen burning cars and shattered windows. But the violence tended to be contained. “These things are strenuously policed. The timing’s a pain, but it’s just one of those things. We’ll work round it.”
Arkady Pashkin nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll trust you and your colleague to get me there and back safely.”
She smiled again. It felt more natural this time. Maybe because she was thinking that there was no chance Pashkin would be trusting her to do anything, once this evening was over.
Always supposing he was still alive.
For some reason River had expected it to be different, this side of the fence; lighter, perhaps; easier underfoot. But having followed Griff through not much of a gap in the spiky undergrowth, to a sheared-through section of the wire fence that peeled back, he found everything much the same, except that there was no defined track, and he was muddier.
“Where now?” he asked, breathing hard.
“The main complex’s two miles that way.” River couldn’t tell which direction Griff was pointing. “We pass some abandoned buildings first, half a mile or so. Ruined. Leave buildings untended, that’s gunna happen.”
“How often do you come here?”
“When I feel like it. It’s a good place for rabbiting.”
“How many other ways in are there?”
“That one’s easiest. Used to be another towards Upshott, where you could lift a post clean out of the ground and just walk in over the fence. But it was cemented back in place.”
They began to walk. The ground was slick, and inclined downwards; he slipped and would have hit the ground if Griff hadn’t steadied him. “Careful.” Then the clouds thinned, and a sliver of light gleamed from behind a gauzy curtain. River saw Griff’s face clearly for the first time since leaving the pub. He was grinning, showing teeth as grey as his pitted skin, his mottled scalp. He seemed to be reflecting that scrap of moon.
Darker shadows waited at the foot of the incline. River couldn’t make out whether they were trees or buildings, then understood they were both. There were four buildings, mostly roofless, and jutting out from their broken walls were long spectral branches, which caught a shiver of wind as he watched, and beckoned him onwards. Then the heavens shifted again, and the moonlight faded.
“So,” River said. “If someone just turned up looking for a way in, he’d not be likely to find it?”
Griff said, “Might, if he was smart or lucky. Or both.”
“You ever run across anyone in here?”
Griff made a snickering noise. “Scared?”
“I’m wondering how secure it is.”
“There’s patrols, and some places are wired. You want to avoid them.”
“Wired?”
“Tripwires. Lights and sirens. Mostly near the base, though.”
“Any round here?”
“You’ll know soon enough, won’t you? If you tread on one.”
That would be a laugh, thought River.
Holding an arm out for balance, he followed Griff towards the smashed-up buildings.
Pashkin said, “I ought to ask, you’re not married?”
“Only to the job.”
“And these, ah, messages you’re getting. They’re not from an irate lover?”
Louisa said, “I have no lover. Irate or otherwise.”
She’d received three further texts, but hadn’t read them.
