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  She’d lingered in Moscow for weeks after as Galkin’s guest. On one blizzardy night they’d become lovers in her hotel room, an accidental business provoked by tedium and Crimean brandy. For her it was meaningless, a diversion, like filing your nails. Galkin, though, had taken it all with enormous gravity, wooed her with flowers and bad poems. Within days she was bored by him. He was easily demolished – a curt word, a change in her mood, these things plunged him into despair. He drank more, dabbled in the illegal currency markets, and became an easy target for his rivals inside the KGB. Welcome to Siberia, comrade.

  She said, ‘I resent the fact you gave my London address to a stranger, Galkin.’

  ‘He’s no stranger, dear lady, an old friend—’

  ‘He’s not my old friend, that’s the point. I don’t give a shit if he’s your soul mate, Galkin. I don’t appreciate you sending him. I like the anonymity of that house. I also get a kick out of coming and going in London without certain people knowing.’

  ‘By certain people, you mean Frank Pagan,’ he said. He smiled in a sly way. ‘How apt. He hunts for you, while all the time you are on his own doorstep. You play with flame. He’s become a fixation.’

  She said nothing. She walked round the room, conscious of the way he watched her. She remembered Pagan’s apartment, and thought how the memory of his dead wife must still vibrate inside him. Invading his life, swapping the photograph and altering the original, these small acts of desecration had been designed to undermine Pagan, to remind him he was vulnerable, to make him understand she had his number, she knew his heart.

  ‘You are back in the newspapers in England, I see. An impressive manhunt.’

  ‘A waste of time.’

  ‘And Frank Pagan? What is written in the stars for him?’

  ‘I don’t believe in the stars, Galkin.’

  ‘This fascination of yours with Pagan …’ Galkin let the sentence drift unfinished.

  Fascination. ‘I want to kill him,’ she said. ‘It’s no great mystery.’

  ‘Ah, but we both know it’s far more complicated than that. You want to kill Pagan, yes. But first, there is other business. You want also to corrupt him.’

  ‘Corrupt him? God, you have some quaint expressions. Exactly how am I meant to corrupt him?’

  ‘You demoralize him. You weaken him. And then, only then, you kill him.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘You have seen the light of corruptibility in him, and this pleases you, but where is the pleasure in killing him until he has tasted degradation for himself? There is a deep cruelty in you, dear lady, and that is what keeps this business with Pagan alive. You do not enjoy the idea he might somehow manage in the end to elude you. He might contrive to emerge victorious. And so you weave your sticky little strands around him. You draw him in, a little at a time …’

  ‘You make me sound like a fucking spider,’ she said.

  He reached for his wine and said, ‘Let me go one tiny step further. This is what I see. You want to make love with him because in that act you will have dragged him into the last submission. Sex before death. Passion before murder. Orgasm and annihilation. Intimacy and destruction.’

  ‘Orgasm and annihilation. Intimacy and destruction. If you mean I want to kill him on my own terms, you’re perfectly right. I want him to see himself for what he really is.’

  ‘And what exactly is that?’

  ‘Somebody who likes to think he’s straight as they come. Who doesn’t want to acknowledge his own … longings, because they don’t fit conveniently into his ideal of himself. He lives a lie and he won’t admit it.’

  ‘Do you desire him?’

  ‘Desire doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘But you will take him to bed, if you can, and you will murder him there.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Pagan as lover. How had Galkin phrased it? The light of corruptibility. She’d seen that in Pagan a long time ago. She’d smelled it on him, the musk of a longing he didn’t like to acknowledge. But it was there, and Pagan still carried it around inside himself like a tiny stunted bloom. She remembered the way she’d pressed the gun into his face and how hard he’d worked at remaining calm. She’d wanted to pull the trigger there and then in his apartment, to send a solitary bullet through his skull – but she’d drawn back from it, because that kind of death was easy, too easy.

  Galkin said, ‘So you leave a trail for Pagan to follow. He chases you. You may even give him the satisfaction of catching you. At which point …’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps you even feel some distorted form of affection for him. Who knows?’

  ‘Affection? I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s only theory, dear lady. Only theory.’

  ‘Wild theory, Galkin.’ Distorted affection. ‘I need to shower,’ she said. ‘Journeys make me feel grubby.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ He pointed to a door on the other side of the room. ‘You’ll find a towel in there. And soap. Shampoo.’

  She stepped inside the bathroom, a rectangle of cracked ceramic tile and peeling lime-green paint. She locked the door then turned on the water in the shower. She listened to its drumming sound briefly but she didn’t undress, didn’t get in. She could hear Galkin moving on the other side of the door. She regretted the old weakness in herself that had prompted her to tell Galkin about the house in London which she rented under the name of Kristen Hawkins, Kristen Hawkins who never spoke to a soul, never encouraged banter with neighbours. Why had she ever mentioned it to him? Perhaps in a moment of intoxicated intimacy before she’d wearied of him, but more likely to boast, a little arrogantly, of her ability to come and go in London as she pleased without Special Branch knowing. And with a lover’s keen eye for detail he’d stashed it in the back of his mind. She’d given away something she should have kept to herself.

  She stepped up onto the rim of the bidet and pushed open the window, then she lowered herself into the alley behind the house. She walked quickly. She reached the end of the lane, turned, found herself back in the street where she’d parked her car. She went toward the house, passed under the canopy, entered. She moved without sound. She had a dancer’s affinity with grace and silence.

  Galkin stood outside the bathroom door, his back to her. In his right hand he held an old-fashioned revolver. His body was tensed, his head inclined toward the bathroom. He was listening to the shower running, waiting for her to emerge.

  Don’t look round, Galkin. Don’t turn your face.

  She reached carefully for the wine bottle on the table and she stepped forward and raised her arm upward, which was the moment Galkin must have been alerted by something, a whisper of air, the intuition of a presence. He swung round, his mouth open in surprise, and lifted an arm across his face for protection; but the bottle was already coming down, a full dark green solid arc. It struck his forehead, glass upon bone, and he staggered back against the bathroom door.

  She hit him a second time, cracking the bottle against his ribs, and he gasped. Blood ran from his forehead into his eyes. Blinded, he raised the hand that held the gun, but she slammed the bottle hard into his knuckles and the gun jumped out of his hand and clattered across the floor. He slipped to his knees, a palm pressed against the serious gash on his brow. She thought he looked like a pale pig bleeding. She picked up the gun and held it against the side of his skull.

  He gazed up at her, blinking through the stream of blood. He wheezed. His hands were covered with blood. It coursed down his face and neck, created wayward little rivers on his hairless chest.

  ‘You were going to shoot me,’ she said.

  He shook his head, protested. ‘I intended only to protect myself, no more than that. I imagined you had come here to kill me. To silence me. Because I sent Pasco to you.’

  ‘Get up,’ she said. ‘Get up on your feet.’

  He rose slowly, groaning. She prodded him with the gun. The barrel sank into his belly. She forced him back against the wall.

  ‘Dear lady,’ he said. ‘I
swear. I had no intention of shooting you.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  He clapped a hand to the wound on his forehead. ‘You have it wrong, all wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Galkin.’

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked at the smears of blood across his hands. ‘You came here, I was scared, I admit it, I needed to take precautions. I said to myself as soon as you appeared, Galkin, she wants you dead, you know too much about her, all kinds of thoughts were swarming through my head. But believe me, I had no intention of harming you or betraying you.’

  His slack lips hung open. Blood ran over his eyelids. The whites of his eyes were pink, discoloured.

  ‘Here’s the way I see it, Galkin. One day you wake up, you’re running real low on the cash front, you don’t know where your next bottle of vin ordinaire is coming from, so you make a long-distance phone call. Maybe you speak to Special Branch. Maybe you ask for Pagan—’

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘Maybe you think – hey, I know how I can raise some bread. I have information on a fugitive, I know she has a house in London.’

  ‘You’re wrong, oh very wrong—’

  ‘I don’t think so, Galkin.’

  He looked at her imploringly. ‘I would not betray you. There are no circumstances in which treachery would enter my mind—’

  ‘Bullshit, Galkin. How much did Pasco pay you?’

  ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, I swear.’

  She prodded him again with the gun, which vanished in the soft depths of his flesh. ‘How fucking much did you get, Galkin?’

  ‘Dear lady,’ he said, and his voice was subdued. ‘If you must know the truth, and I see I have no other option, I received a certain consideration from a man called James Mallory.’

  ‘And who is James Mallory?’

  ‘I don’t know his precise affiliations—’

  ‘Don’t fucking lie to me!’ She struck him then. She brought up the gun and rapped it against his mouth and his lip split and he moaned. The terror of other people fascinated her, the way they shrank from violence, the way they diminished. She liked seeing the rawness of fear, the nakedness. She watched him cower and raise a hand to his lip.

  ‘Who the hell is Mallory, Galkin?’

  Galkin tried to speak. His lip was already swelling. When he spoke he mumbled. ‘Mallory asked me to send Pasco to you. It’s all I know. He gave me money, I contacted you because I thought you’d be interested …’

  ‘Why did Mallory come to you in the first place?’

  ‘He knew Pasco would seek out my help. Pasco had nowhere else to turn. He and I struck up a friendship in Siberia—’

  ‘This is pure crap, Galkin. You never met Pasco in Russia. I don’t believe you and Pasco have ever met. Whenever he talks about you it’s like he’s quoting lines out of some textbook he’s memorized. This is some kind of fucking set-up and I’m supposed to walk straight into it, yeah?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that—’

  She struck him again across the mouth. There was a certain feverish pleasure in hurting him. An electricity. He’d ceased to be human. He was pulp, broken flesh. He raised a hand feebly in an attempt to deflect the blow, but he couldn’t. His head jerked back. His eyes were opaque, impenetrable items of costume jewellery. He was coming apart.

  ‘Tell me the god-damn truth, Galkin. Who is Mallory?’

  ‘OK. The truth. He’s CIA,’ he said in a broken little whisper.

  ‘He’s CIA. And he comes to you, he pays you to send Pasco to me, he lays a little background on Pasco, just enough for me to believe that Pasco knew you in Russia. Why, Galkin? What’s the agenda here?’

  ‘Pasco wants revenge. And Mallory needs that revenge much as a carpenter needs a saw. But Pasco’s an amateur and Mallory needs a professional, and so he links Pasco up with you. Because he knows you can do the job.’

  ‘So I’m supposed to be working for the CIA,’ she said.

  ‘For or against,’ Galkin said.

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘There’s only ever one explanation, dear lady. Power.’

  ‘Mallory wants some serious damage done to the Agency, and Pasco’s just a convenient moron, right? Pasco happens to have a long list of grievances and Mallory would like to see these grievances avenged – why?’

  Galkin blinked blood from his eyelids. ‘I told you. Power. It’s always about power. The CIA plays games with itself. One faction wants the power that another faction has, and so there’s friction, and friction turns to fire, and fire consumes.’

  ‘And after I’ve performed my professional duties, what then? What’s supposed to happen then?’

  Galkin shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  She took a step back from him. ‘It’s an easy guess. They grab me. Is that it? I’m their trophy. They can accomplish what Special Branch can’t. What the Feds can’t. Big triumph. Is that it? Oh, I like it, I like it, Galkin.’

  Galkin quivered. He didn’t speak.

  ‘Galkin, Galkin,’ she said. ‘You’re a treacherous little piece of shit. Give me your hand.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  He stretched out one trembling bloodstained hand. She wrapped her fingers around it. Then she acted so swiftly he had no time to resist, no chance to see what she was doing. She plunged his hand into the blades of the fan. Screeching, they slashed the tips of his fingers. Blood and flesh flew from the blades, spraying the air, staining the streamers of flapping paper. He pulled his hand away and, groaning, went down on his knees. The useless hand, fingers sliced and broken, hung at his side. He rolled over on his back, his eyes shut in pain, his mouth opening and closing as if far inside him were a scream he couldn’t release.

  She pushed the gun against the side of his head and pulled the trigger: jammed. Nothing happened. She pulled it again. Again it jammed. Galkin was crawling away from her, heading blindly for the doorway. God help me, he was saying. God help me. He left in his movement a scarlet trail of his own blood. She blocked his passage to the door and pressed the gun into his scalp, but the revolver was useless, the stiff trigger wouldn’t move. She struck him with the butt of the weapon, bringing it down into his skull, and he slumped, still saying God help me even as she battered him a second time, a third time, with the dysfunctional gun.

  He kept moving, kept trying to crawl around her, his eyes shut, his face turned toward the doorway like the snout of some blind grovelling animal. She hit him on the back of the neck and still he crawled, drawing from Christ knows what source the energy to propel himself laboriously across the floor. She reached for the fan, jerked it out of the wall and, straddling him, wrapped the electric cord around his neck, drawing it as tight as she could. He struggled, bucked, then collapsed under her as she yanked the flex harder round his fleshy neck. She snapped his face back, saw his open eyes fill first with panic and then, inevitably, with despair. Breathing hard, she held the cord tight for as long as it took.

  He was a long time dying. He kicked now and then, but with decreasing strength each time. Once, he tried to get his fingers under the electric cord, but the effort was feeble. He slumped forward on his face and she stepped away from him. There was the stench in the air of his urine.

  She walked inside the bathroom and peeled off her stained clothes, which she dumped in the bath-tub. She looked through the open door at Galkin, to whose neck the cord of the fan was attached. She washed her face and hands and arms. She cleaned under her fingernails. She looked at her face in the mirror. She felt very calm, very controlled, as if she’d somehow stepped out of her own body and was observing herself from the corner of the room. It was the calm of sheer indifference she felt, and indifference was just another form of liberty. She was free; and nobody could catch her unless she wanted to be caught.

  She looked at her watch. She had to hurry back to Bordeaux: she had a plane to catch.

  17

  LONDON

  George Nimmo wanted The Matter, as he
called it, kept quiet. It would do no good to splash all over the newspapers the fact that Martin Burr had been shot to death by the woman. One had to think, yo, how it would reflect on the police that the former Commissioner of Scotland Yard had been murdered in his own home by the very person who was the object of an ongoing manhunt. The information was to be kept strictly in-house. The phrase to be used when it came to Martin Burr was that old standby, that reliable chestnut: murdered by a person or persons unknown.

  It was, Pagan knew, a whitewash job, a miserable cover-up. Well, he had his own version of a cover-up under way. He’d informed Nimmo how the killing had occurred – but he’d kept back one significant detail: the name the woman had mentioned just before she’d shot Martin Burr.

  Richard Pasco.

  He’d never heard it before. She’d left it deliberately hanging in the air, a tease, a come-on: it was a lock she’d given him to open, if only he could figure out the appropriate combination. He’d confided this information to Foxworth. Now, as he walked with Foxworth toward Golden Square in twilight, passing under streetlamps that glowed faintly, Pagan was struck by a delayed sorrow. He’d worked hard at suppressing the graphic memory of the scene in Burr’s flat, but it was impossible to keep the images in abeyance for long. In the hours that had passed since the slaying, he’d floated through events – the interview with detectives from Special Branch, the prolonged meeting with Nimmo: he’d barricaded himself from the reality. But you couldn’t keep doing that.