So: a few days ago there’d been some drug-related killings in Pembrokeshire, which was in Wales—bodies in a burned-out barn, a dead woman in a wood. But the speed with which the story had evaporated made Martin suspect Spook Street activity; either an undercover frolic gone enthusiastically wrong, or something deeper. Wales wasn’t uncivilised, if you took a charitable view, but the dangerous edge of things was always closer than it looked. Martin had worked undercover, and like anyone who’d done time wearing the opposition’s coat he still woke sweating some nights, undone by the fear that he’d betrayed himself in some tiny way. You could be in your own home, your own bed, but there were bandit eyes on you always, and they never blinked, never looked away. After a while, you forgot that other people didn’t know this.
He shook his head to clear these thoughts, and was back in Fischer’s, on the foothills of Marylebone High Street, the Mail a rolled-up truncheon next to him; his lunch freshly delivered to the table.
“Some things few people get to witness, and most of them wish they hadn’t. Like jazz dancing. Or the pope’s sex face.”
A large man in a dirty overcoat had appeared out of nowhere.
“Or Martin Kreutzmer eating a salad.”
He dropped heavily into the seat opposite Martin, and fixed him with a malevolent glare.
Martin navigated a forkful of greenery into his mouth, and didn’t speak until he was ready. “Jackson Lamb,” he said at last. “It’s been a long time. Though not quite long enough.”
The waiter arrived. “Can I—”
“No.”
“We’re fine,” said Martin. “Thank you.” The waiter left, and he said, “There’s something different about you. Wait—I know. You got fat and old.”
“And you had a stroke.”
Martin nodded pleasantly, like a man doing ‘relaxed’ in charades. Only three people knew he’d had a stroke, or that was what he’d thought two seconds ago. It had been a minor thing, a slight tug on the curtain, but enough for a glimpse, if not of what lay beyond, at least of the fact that there was a beyond, and it wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe that’s why he’d been taking such relish in running Hannah Weiss. But it was also the reason he’d slowed down taking some of life’s corners.
“Which’ll be why you joined the salad-tossers.”
“It’s not a strict diet,” said Martin, who’d been known to order the schnitzel. “But I’m watching my cholesterol.”
“I can’t imagine what that’s like,” Lamb said. “Losing control of your bodily functions.”
He farted, presumably to demonstrate total dominance over his own.
An elderly couple two tables away stared in horror.
Martin Kreutzmer laid knife and fork aside. “Is this what passes for covert activities these days? No wonder they put you out to grass.”
“Is that what they did to me? I’ve been wondering.”
He reached across and plucked a crouton from Martin’s plate, examined it in what might have been curiosity, then put it back.
“Because it still feels like the Wild West some days. Especially when a bandit’s been branding my cattle.”
Martin used his fork to manoeuvre the crouton Lamb had been fondling, and the greenery it nestled among, to the side of his plate.
He hadn’t laid eyes on Lamb since Berlin, early ’90s, where Lamb had enjoyed all sorts of reputations, each of them circling one fixed point: you didn’t fuck with his joes. Years had gone by, a lot of water pissed into from different bridges, but Lamb had the look of a man whose fixed points stayed where he’d put them. And Martin, yes, had branded one of Lamb’s cattle. The fact that he’d done it to keep his own joe safe would melt no ice. Nor did he have to be aware of Lamb’s reputation to see the violence currently churning below his surface. “Current mood,” as the kids said: “fuck off and die.”
He said, “I always thought you’d end up running the Park. If they didn’t stick your head on a pike, that is.”
“They’re still sharpening the blade. And you’re changing the subject.”
“I haven’t crossed your borders, old man. Wherever those borders happen to be.” He speared a ribbon of cucumber with his fork. “I’m out of the game. Maybe you hadn’t heard.”
“You? Retired?” Lamb reached for another crouton, and this time put it in his mouth. “I’ve read more convincing lies on the side of a bus.”
“Maybe not entirely retired. But a mentoring capacity, you know?”
“‘Mentoring’? I have no fucking clue what that means.”
“No, well, there’d be little point in you trying to pass your skills on, Jackson. For a start, nobody’s sure what they are. And for another, they don’t mesh with current values, do they?”
Lamb spat the crouton into his hand. “For somebody who reckons they’re out of the game, you sound a lot like someone keeping score. Here, do you want this back? I’ve hardly touched it.”
Martin indicated a napkin, neatly folded beside an unused place setting. Lamb placed the soggy crouton on top of it.
“All things considered,” he said, “I’d sooner have a stroke.”
