Cantor’s apartment looked like a movie set: the furniture matched; the bookshelves were colour-coded; artworks occupied shelves, and the kitchen area featured a marble countertop big enough to skate on. But mostly there was the view. London was huge, and from here you could see all of it: its towers and bridges, its ups and downs, its pains and its profits. You could see London’s edges from here. You could see where London ended.
And in a movie, Reece thought, this would be the lair of a villain who might be able to arrange just that.
And now Cantor was clicking his fingers, retrieving a memory. ‘But I know you. I do know you. You were hassling Bud.’
This was true. Bud Feathernet was the Channel Go news anchor, whom Reece had tracked via Twitter to a restaurant, and badgered in a booth; he’d told him about Andrey, how Andy had been murdered on the orders of Russia’s president. If that wasn’t a headline, what was? But there was a chasm Reece was unable to throw his story across. Andy had been the kind of journalist who ended up dead. Feathernet was the kind who’d end up hosting a chat show. And on the evening in question, he was the kind who’d had Reece thrown out of a restaurant.
‘He mentioned it at morning briefing. Some freak kicking off while he was trying to have dinner. Not the way to win friends and influence people.’
‘He wouldn’t listen.’
‘Course he wouldn’t. Look, if your boyfriend hadn’t been Russian, we might have had a story. And if he’d been your girlfriend. But frankly, my viewers wouldn’t give a shit. You’re an American, you’re gay, you’re a dwarf. Put it on YouTube.’ Cantor was on his feet, playing the height advantage for all it was worth. ‘Now, you told Claude you have a message from Diana Taverner.’
‘I think his name was Clifton.’
‘Yeah, because that’s what’s important, that we get the names of the staff right. That was a lie to get you in, I see that. And the only reason I haven’t kicked you back downstairs is, I want to know how you knew which name to drop. So talk.’
Reece said, ‘I’m not from Taverner. But I do have a message.’
He was getting into this. He’d spent weeks hammering on doors that wouldn’t open, telling his story to people who wouldn’t listen. The most attention he’d had was from Jackson Lamb, and even he hadn’t cared.
‘He’s not going to be frightened of me,’ Reece had said.
‘No,’ Lamb agreed. ‘I mean, he might worry about tripping over you. But you’re hardly gunna have him quivering in his socks.’
‘So what am I supposed to be doing?’
‘Softening him up,’ Lamb had said.
‘What message?’ Cantor asked.
Reece said, ‘You had your man steal information from Regent’s Park. About a particular department of the Service. And you passed that information to Russian intelligence.’
‘Russian intelligence? Get out of here.’
‘Well, you probably pretended you didn’t know that’s who they were. But you certainly knew, when you handed the information over, where it would end up.’
‘Just supposing you weren’t talking nonsense. How do you know any of this?’
‘Oh, I hear stuff other people miss. You might have noticed, I keep my ears close to the ground.’
This with an internal middle-finger salute to Jackson Lamb.
Cantor had picked up an empty coffee mug and seemed to be weighing it in his hands. ‘Is this some weird kind of blackmail threat? Because Taverner isn’t going to make waves. I’m in the inner circle. You know how that works?’
Reece thought: stick to the script. Tell him what Lamb wants him to hear, and get out. It doesn’t matter whether he believes you. You’re simply sowing the seed.
He said, ‘Taverner ordered the Kazan hit.’
Cantor looked startled, but not so much he dropped the cup. ‘I know. I was at the after-party.’
‘This made people in Moscow very mad.’
‘Good.’
‘And now they’re using the information you gave them to take their revenge. They’ve been murdering the people in the file you passed on.’ Reece leaned on each word equally: ‘British Secret Service agents.’
Cantor had gone pale. ‘I don’t think so. I’d know about it if that was happening.’
‘Only if Taverner wanted you to know. And this is not something the Park wants in the headlines. But that doesn’t mean they won’t act on it.’
‘What does that mean – “act on it”?’
‘Join the dots. You’re responsible for the murders of several Park employees. You think the inner circle’s small enough they’ll let you get away with that?’
‘This is bullshit.’
‘Which bits? The part about you having your man steal that file? Or the bit where you handed it on to your Russian contacts?’
‘Okay. Time for you to go now.’
But Reece had one last shot to fire. ‘You know what’s funny?’
‘All of it,’ said Cantor. ‘It’s one long fantasy.’
