Merriman's overpolished Rover car bucked through the front gate and up the little ramp to his garage. It had Jake Merriman at the wheel, and no one else aboard, no Other at all, not of either sex. He drove into the garage, he dowsed the headlights of his car. There followed one of those pauses that I associate with single people of a certain age, while he stayed sitting in the driver's seat and by the interior light fidgeted with things I couldn't see.
"Just don't be alarmed, Jake," I said.
I had opened his door for him and was holding the gun a few inches from his head.
"I won't be," he said.
"Switch the interior light to full time. Give me the car key. Put your hands on the steering wheel. Don't take your hands off the steering wheel. How do the garage doors close?"
He held up a magic box.
"Close them," I said.
The doors closed.
I sat behind him. Holding the gun to the nape of his neck, I put my left forearm across his throat and gently drew his head to me until we were cheek-to-cheek.
"Munslow tells me you've been looking for Emma," I said.
"Then he's a bloody little fool."
"Where is she?"
"Nowhere. We're looking for Pettifer too, in case you haven't noticed. We haven't found him either. We'll be looking for you as well after tonight."
"Jake, I will
"I don't need convincing. I'll collaborate. I'm a coward."
"Do you know what I did yesterday, Jake? I wrote a frank letter to the chief constable of Somerset, copy to the Guardian newspaper. I described how a few of us in the Office had decided to rip off the Russian Embassy with a little help from Checheyev. I took the liberty of mentioning your name."
"Then you're a stupid little sod."
"Not as a ringleader but as someone who could be counted on to turn a blind eye at the right moments. A passive conspirator like Zorin. The letters will be posted at nine tomorrow morning unless I say the magic word. I shan't say the word unless you tell me what you know about Emma."
"I've told you everything we know about Emma. I've given you a bloody file on Emma. She's a tart. What more do you want to know?"
The sweat was rolling off him in great drops. There was sweat on the barrel of the .38.
"I want an update. And please don't call her a tart, Jake.
Call her the nice lady or something. Just not tart."
"She was in Paris. Phoning from a public box in the Gare du Nord. You trained her well."
Larry did, I thought. "When?"
"October."
"We're in October now. When in October?"
"Mid. The twelfth. What on earth do you think you're up to? Relent. Make a confession. Come home."
"How do you know it was the twelfth?"
"The Americans picked her up on a random sweep.”
“The
"Computerland, darling. We gave them a sample of her voiceprint. They backtracked through their intercepts. Out popped your precious Emma, speaking with a phony Scottish accent."
"Who was she calling?"
"Philip somebody."
I didn't remember a Philip. "What did she say?"
"She was well, she was in Stockholm. That was a lie. She was in Paris. She wished all the boys and girls to know that she was happy and was proposing to make a new beginning. With thirty-seven million quid to play with, one imagines she very well might."
"Did you listen to her yourself?"
"You don't think I'd leave her to some spotty CIA college boy, do you?"
"Give me her words."
" 'I'm going back to where I came from. I'm making a new start.' To which our Philip says, 'Right, right,' which is what the lower classes say these days. Right, right, and cheers instead of thank you. She's waiting for you, you'll be pleased to hear. She's totally devoted to you. I was proud of you."
"Her words," I said.
" 'I'll wait for him for as long as it takes,' spoken with the most
With the gun in my hand and the briefcase flying out behind me, I pelted to my car. I drove south till I came to the outskirts of Bournemouth, where I checked into a bungalow motel with crematorium music in the corridors and mauve night-lights marking the fire exists. I'm coming for you, I told her. Hang on. For pity's sake, hang on.
She is dead of cold, except that she is shivering. It's as if I have rescued her from a freezing sea. Her clammy skin sticks as she clutches me. Her face is pressed so hard against mine that I am unable to resist.
"Tim, Tim, wake up."
She has rushed into my room, naked. She has yanked back my duvet and wound her freezing body round me, whispering,—rim, Tim," when all she means is "Larry, Larry." She is shaking and writhing uselessly against me, but I'm not her lover, just the body she hangs on to while she nearly drowns, the nearest she can get to Larry.
"You love him too," she says. "You must."
She slinks back to her room.
