He waited. Of all the sounds in the wood, all the damp rustlings and furtive scratchings, none paused, to allow him to focus on their absence. Everything continued as it had been. But then, he would expect no different. These were not amateurs.
“But if you know it’s a trap,” the boy said, “shouldn’t you avoid it?”
“No. You want them to think you’re oblivious to their presence. And then, first time they blink—
He blinked—
The trees grumbled rustily. Someone whistled in imitation of a bird, and someone whistled back. The O.B. waited, but that was it for the time being. Carefully, eyes alert for snares among the leaves, he headed towards the village.
“Think he’s an issue or a fuck-up?”
“Who are we talking about now?”
“Mr. Air Piano.”
Marcus pretended to consider the matter. Sometimes it was easiest to go with Shirley’s flow. When Lamb wasn’t around she grew restless, as if his absence required celebration; and since Shirley’s definition of celebration was wide, anything that didn’t involve controlled substances was, on the whole, to be encouraged.
“You want to offer a little context?” he asked.
“Well, you and me, we’re issues. You’ve got your gambling addiction—”
“It’s not an addiction—”
“—and me, apparently I’m ‘irritable.’”
“You broke a dude’s nose, Shirl.”
“He was asking for it.
“He was asking for a couple of quid.”
“Same thing.”
“For Children in Need.”
“He was dressed as a fucking rabbit. I assumed he was dangerous.”
“That’s probably the only reason you’re not in prison,” Marcus conceded.
“Yeah, well. They wouldn’t have got me at all if it wasn’t for those pesky kids.”
Who had caught it on camera, and stuck it on YouTube. The whole dressed-as-a-rabbit thing was mitigation, of course, and the arresting officer had been charity-mugged herself three times that morning, and in the end the assault charges had been sidestepped on condition Shirley sign up for AFM.
Anger Fucking Management. Twice a week, in Shoreditch.
(“Don’t set off any new trends,” Marcus warned her when he found out. “I took an idiot round Shoreditch once. That’s how hipsters started.”)
“And I’m assuming River and Louisa are fuck-ups,” he said now.
“Well,
“Catherine was an issue. Min was a fuck-up.”
“And Ho’s a dickhead, but you always get outliers. So what’s Jasper Konrad, that’s what I want to know. And what is it with the air piano?” She mimicked his action, trilling up and down a non-existent instrument. “Who’s he think he is, Elton John?”
“You want to know what he’s hearing in his head, go ask him. But don’t blame me if the voices tell him to carve you up.”
“Yeah, ’cause he looks like he could be dangerous. Probably takes two of him to scramble an egg.” She stopped pretending to play the piano. “Tell you what, though,” she said. “If I was River, I’d be worried.”
“How so?”
“Youngish white guy, fucked up and seething. We’ve already got one of those. It’s like River’s being replaced.”
Marcus said, “You have a weird way of looking at things.”
“You wait and see. Then tell me I’m wrong.”
She started banging at her keyboard again, her actual one, and Marcus couldn’t tell if she was working out aggression, or writing an email.
Suppressing a sigh, he returned to work.
When he emerged from the footpath a car was heading down the lane, and it slowed at the sight of him, seemed about to halt, then sped up. He resolutely did not turn to watch it—they wanted him to react. Best keep his powder dry. And he was not quite defenceless, as they would discover to their cost.
No, he would make straight for the shop; in/out, back to camp. It might not be a simple exfiltration—the woman behind the counter was a chatty one; you could barely prise yourself loose with a crowbar—but lately, it occurred to him, she had been chatting less, listening more; coaxing out details it might have been wiser to preserve. He’d been explaining to her how history was never a closed book. Look at Russia: complete basket case. That hadn’t been the plan, but that was the thing about history: push it down in one place, it springs up in another, like ill-laid lino.
He’d said, “And there’s always a price to pay. You make decisions, and people die, and that’s what you live with, day and night, ever after. But I wouldn’t have done things any differently.”
She’d said, “David, you worked at the Ministry of Transport. I’m sure people were inconvenienced, but I don’t suppose many of them died.”
Of course he had. The Ministry of Transport was his cover story; the alibi that papered over forty-something years of working life. So in the village, that’s what he’d been: a pen-pusher with a brief for trains or roads or airports—you couldn’t expect him to remember. It was hard enough keeping track of what he’d actually done, without recalling everything he’d merely pretended to do.
