Jigsaw Page 6

  ‘Isn’t MI5 in on this?’ Pagan asked. ‘I thought counter-terrorism fell into their domain.’

  ‘They’re sniffing around, of course. But as you just pointed out, there has been no terrorist claim. Consequently, no terrorist organization is as yet officially responsible. So our friends see it for the moment as, yo, more or less a police matter. We may have interference. They are not uninterested, naturally. They have an eye on the situation.’ Nimmo got up and walked to the bookshelves and gazed at the volumes. He plucked at his fleshy lower lip. Pagan thought there was an element of the fallen angel about Nimmo. He’d made commitments to a variety of devils.

  ‘I have never subscribed to the idea that counter-terrorist activity should be the exclusive domain of intelligence, Frank. And it isn’t just MI5. You have a plethora of groups with their finger in the terrorist pie. The Defence Intelligence Staff. Army Intelligence Corps. Joint Intelligence Committee. The list goes on. I have always advocated that a single unit should be responsible for that area. Namely, Special Branch. We are just as well equipped as anyone else to handle everything. I have always said so. Mine has been, alas, a solitary voice in the clamour of Whitehall.’

  Ah. A light dawned on Pagan, a penny dropped. He understood now. Nimmo perceived this disaster as an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, a chance to show those who made major decisions along Whitehall that the police could cope as well as anyone, thank you. Nimmo saw this tragedy as a canvas on which he might, yo, inscribe his own florid signature. George Nimmo. Look at me! I exist! Why am I not surprised? Pagan wondered. The callous heart of the base human need for self-aggrandizement. The sorry desire for approbation, no matter what. He suspected Nimmo had been beaten up at school, bullied in the yard. Kids had a way of sniffing out a misfit in their midst. Now he was determined to show the boneheads of Whitehall that he’d been a visionary all along. It was political buccaneering.

  ‘You will be answerable to me, of course. Any and all information you get comes to me. You make no significant decisions without consultation. Is that clear, Frank?’

  It was ruthlessly clear. Nimmo wanted to get in before one of the intelligence agencies decided it was their business after all. He wanted his own foothold, his own encampment. And if the intelligence boys desired a piece of the action, Nimmo’s investigation – conducted by Pagan, the old maestro – would be so deeply entrenched that they couldn’t interfere without raising grave questions of jurisdiction. Sweet, if you liked that kind of brute, sneaky ambition.

  ‘And if this was a terrorist act? What then? Do the intelligence people take it over?’ Pagan asked.

  ‘Leave that to me, Frank. I rather think I’m more equipped to deal with the intricacies of the situation. Intelligence has to be handled in a certain way. And if you’ll forgive me saying so, you are not the diplomatic type.’ Nimmo laughed, as if the idea of Pagan understanding the fragile balance of power between Special Branch and the intelligence agencies were too far-fetched for credibility. Pagan could never grasp what was discussed around green baize tables in locked rooms. He was the wrong sort of chap for that stratified area where matters of policy were determined. Good man in the field, of course, but hadn’t gone to the right schools.

  The laugh grated on Pagan. He said, ‘One thing. I want Foxworth with me.’

  ‘Take him. Call on anybody you like. Within reason.’

  ‘And I want my old office back.’

  ‘Why? I can have you accommodated here, Frank. Anyhow, your old stamping-grounds are being used for storage, I believe.’

  Pagan was persistent. ‘Golden Square.’

  Nimmo, even if he looked mildly irritated, put up no objection. ‘Golden Square it is.’

  ‘I’ll get started immediately.’

  Nimmo wandered back to his desk. He sat in the swivel-chair. Pagan was quiet a moment before he asked, ‘Is there any updated information about the kind of explosive device we’re dealing with?’

  ‘Not yet. But the explosives people have found promising signs. Don’t ask me what promising means. I’m told we can expect the full picture soon.’ Nimmo stood up, looked at his wristwatch. ‘John Downey, Frank. Talk to him. He can bring you up to date. He’s been at the scene since the beginning. He established an operations centre down there. On the spot, as it were.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Pagan said. He stepped out of the office and walked along the corridor. He pressed a button for the elevator. He considered John Downey. Downey down in the mines. Downey had always been an enemy, always hostile.

  He entered the lift. The door slid shut. As he rode to the ground floor he felt curiously light-headed. He experienced a moment of displacement, as if everything around him were unreal.

  ‘How did it go?’ Foxie asked.

  ‘Take me underground, Foxie,’ he said. ‘Take me to the pit.’

  SIX

  BURGUNDY

  FOR WEEKS NOW JACOB STREIK HAD BEEN DRIVING WITH AN AUTOMATIC pistol in the glove compartment of his rented Saab. His big plump hands lay on the steering wheel like two plucked squabs. The French countryside drifting past was misty, stricken by wintry indifference. Streik, whose belly overhung the waist of his trousers with such prominence he might have been theatrically padded, was sweating. The heater blew out a relentless gust of hot air and no matter what dial Streik turned he couldn’t reduce the flow.

  He looked in his rear-view mirror. The road behind was empty. The symmetry of poplar trees had been eroded by foggy air. Streik had the radio turned on and was absently listening to a news bulletin. His French was very poor but he understood that some kind of explosion had happened in London.

  London made him think of Bryce Harcourt. How was Bryce coping with this unholy situation in which they’d managed to find themselves? Bryce had a kind of Ivy League detachment, a nonchalance which only old money and old schools could impart. Lucky Harcourt, Streik thought, born into privilege. Harcourt Senior had made his fortune growing oranges and pulping them for juice. Oranges, Christ’s sake. How could you make a goddam fortune out of things with pips?

  Streik didn’t resent Bryce his upbringing. In his own way he was very fond of the guy, even if they came from different worlds. Streik had been born in the Bronx, abandoned by his vagabond father, brought up – if that was the expression to describe a childhood of broken-down playgrounds and decrepit tenements – by his mother, a grim little woman who had a major chill factor in her voice. Jesus, what would she think of him now? He could practically hear her say, I knew you’d amount to nothing, Jake. Just like your father. Whine, whine.

  The voice on the radio mentioned something about a number of casualties. Streik had never understood French numerals. Consequently the tally passed over his head. He pulled the Saab to the side of the road and fumbled beneath his seat for a bottle of wine he’d placed there a few hours ago, a cheap red he’d bought in one of the insignificant villages he’d spent the past few weeks driving through. A guy couldn’t go on like this. Running, always running. It wrecked the system, frazzled the nerve-endings. Maybe he should have stayed cool the way Harcourt had advised, maybe he should have remained in the States or the UK. Bryce had said: There’s no need to go into hiding yet. It probably isn’t the way you think it is, Jake. But Streik wasn’t buying that. Harcourt was courting disaster by hanging round London and going through the regular everyday motions of a life. He was too attached to his world, the Court of St James, the parties, the whole social bit, the ladies. Especially the ladies. That was Bryce for you, Mister Cool. Thinking himself safe.

  Streik knew otherwise. He’d been followed in Manhattan. He’d been hound-dogged in London. The guys watching him always had the same look of feigned indifference. But they weren’t fooling him. He’d been around too long.

  He released the cork, raised the bottle to his mouth, drank. He was hung over, but that was a constant these days. He liked to take the brassy edge off reality. In his opinion reality was overrated.

  He stepped out of the car.
He moved in his usual cumbersome way. He stared into the mist, listened for the sound of traffic. He might have been standing in the heart of a void. No birds were singing. Winter had sucked life out of the landscape. He peered into the trees. Where will you spend the night, fat man? he wondered. Another half-assed pension? Another greasy little room above some pâtisserie?

  He looked this way and that. Visibility was about thirty yards. He finished the wine in one dazzling gulp and tossed the bottle into the trees. He didn’t hear it fall. They want me dead, he thought. Bryce and me. They want us iced and buried. It was a numbing consideration. Killers in the mist.

  He realized he was halfway buzzed again. When he moved towards the trees to urinate, his centre of gravity was off. He listed to one side as he undid the buttons of his cavernous grey trousers. He relieved himself then went back to the car.

  He spread a map on the passenger seat. He stayed clear of the major highways and big towns. The idea was to keep losing himself in villages and hamlets, creating a pattern impossible to follow. A nomad in a Saab. It was one kind of future. Better a Saab than a coffin.

  He ran a fingertip over the map. He had an old associate called Audrey Roczak in Lyon, but he wondered if old associates were reliable these days. They could have been forewarned. The whole world was uncertain. Audrey, though – there had always been a nice rapport with her. She’d always been kind to him. She had the knack of ignoring his gross appearance. She’d been warm and comforting and they might have amounted to something together, given a chance.

  He started the car, steered down a twisting minor road that wasn’t on his map. Before noon he found himself in a one-street hamlet. Post office, butcher’s, a solitary café whose pavement tables were deserted. Parasols, folded for the dead season, resembled strange spooky birds with collapsed wings. Streik, raging with thirst, parked the car in an isolated lane behind the post office and made sure it was securely locked. In the boot he had a quantity of important documents rolled up and stuffed inside the sleeves of dirty shirts or crumpled in socks that needed to be laundered. These papers contained details of every transaction that had been made. A few times he’d been tempted to burn them, but he had the vague notion they might one day be useful as bargaining chips. It cut both ways. They could save his life or end it.

  He stuck the pistol in the inside pocket of his baggy jacket, and went into the café. He could sit in the window and watch the street. He’d be in a position to notice anything strange, foreign cars, people who looked like tourists asking questions. Only they wouldn’t be tourists, would they? No sir. Not at this godforsaken time of year.

  The café was a room of smoke-stained wood panelling and gaslights that had been converted to electricity. The ceiling was so black as to suggest limitless space overhead. The patron looked at Jacob Streik with a certain Gallic surliness. They don’t get many strangers here, Streik thought. He felt he was being dissected by the Frenchman, a small guy with a small bald head that reminded Streik of a pearl onion. And what did the Frenchman see? Streik wondered. An obese half-smashed American in a grubby grey suit, a bum who wheezed as he heaved his body into the room. He would notice the puffy cheeks, the eyes that were slitted and red, the way the white face seemed to sit on the shoulders with no neck to intervene. Blubber on the hoof. Well, Streik was used to that. He didn’t suffer the burden of vanity. Take me as you find me, buddy.

  ‘Vino,’ Streik said. He passed a hand over his thinning hair.

  ‘Rouge ou blanc?’

  ‘Red,’ said Streik. He used his English defiantly. Why try to pass himself off as something he wasn’t? His French was so poor that whenever he tried it he was treated with offhand contempt. Everybody could tell he was American, so why hide it?

  A bottle and a glass were set down on the counter. Streik took them to a table at the window. He was the only customer. He drank two glasses quickly, folded his hands together, looked out at the street. Snatches of conversation came from a back room. Streik heard the words poisson and mal. A squabble in the kitchen. The French took their chow too seriously. When a soufflé collapsed they acted like it was Armageddon.

  The café had begun to smell of garlic suddenly. He realized he was hungry but he’d never been one to believe there was a relationship between wine and food. Wine you drank, food you ate. He belched quietly and looked out the window. These small French towns were always comatose. He poured a third glass, lit a cigarette, and thought: Fuck reality. A stooped woman came out of the butcher’s shop carrying a white package streaked with blood. Probably ox-head or horse-tongue, Streik thought. The French choked down anything.

  He had the thought way at the back of his head that he ought to stay a little in touch with sobriety, but how was he supposed to deal with stress and fear without assistance? They had a contract out on him, for Christ’s sake. Somewhere in the world executioners were hunting him. And when you lived with that fact you were bound to get wigged-out now and then. He had a sudden image of Montgomery Rhodes, the features that might have been chiselled out of clay by an evil sculptor, the sinister dark shades Rhodes always wore. Rhodes really scared him shitless. He was a horror story.

  Out of nowhere a young man with a backpack materialized. Tall and blond with a fierce beard, your basic Viking, he eclipsed the grey light in the doorway when he stepped inside the café. Streik was at once as alert as he could be. Assassins came in different guises. They didn’t all look like thugs. They didn’t all carry violin cases. This hiker in the long black coat could be on the level, you never knew. Streik put his hand in the pocket containing the pistol and watched the young man go to the bar. In fluent French he asked for a beer and a packet of Disque Bleu. He exchanged a few words with the patron then he sat down at a table facing Streik, who looked into the blue eyes briefly before turning his head away.

  ‘Français?’ the young man asked.

  Streik said, ‘You talking to me?’

  The young man smiled. ‘Ah. American.’

  Streik drank his wine, said nothing.

  ‘Allow me to practise my English,’ said the young man.

  ‘You think I look like some goddam language instructor?’ Streik said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Skip it.’ Gruffness had always come quite naturally to Streik. He was a true believer in defensive rudeness. If you were obese, you developed an abrasive shell.

  He turned away. His perceptions were askew. The window of the butcher shop was occupied by a lamb carcass and for a second Streik thought he saw it shimmer. Slow down on the rouge, he told himself.

  ‘I am learning English for seven years,’ said the young man in a stiff way that suggested arduous hours with English textbooks. ‘I am from Hamburg. Do you know it?’

  Streik struck a match. He glanced at the young German who was grinning benignly.

  ‘I am a student in Holland. At Utrecht. I decided to take a little time to myself and hitch-hike across Europe. The university is good. But I think there are other kinds of education, however. Perhaps I will go to Morocco. Have you been there?’

  Jesus Christ, Streik thought. ‘Listen. No offence. I’m sitting here enjoying this, this vinegar, and I ain’t in the mood for talking.’

  The German looked gloomy. ‘Everywhere I go, I find friendship.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s terrific.’

  ‘People are kind, in general.’

  Streik thought there was a missionary quality to this kid. Maybe he was some sort of roving ambassador of German goodwill, a human travel poster. He looked at the backpack parked on the floor against the kid’s chair. It was stitched with badges collected around Europe. Tallinn. St Petersburg. Copenhagen. The boy got around.

  Streik watched him light a Disque Bleu, the scent of which was offensive to him. Why the fuck had he chosen France as a place to hide, when he didn’t like the food or the smokes or the language? Maybe he thought they wouldn’t be looking for him here anyhow. They’d think he was still in America because it was bigger, th
ere were more places to hide.

  The young German, clearly imperturbable, said, ‘Are you here on business, may I ask?’

  Streik picked up his glass. ‘I keep to myself, kid. I don’t exactly ooze the milk of human kindness.’

  The German looked puzzled. ‘Milk?’

  Streik said, ‘I’m a sociopath.’

  The kid stubbed out his cigarette. Jacob Streik seemed to represent some form of challenge for him, a conversational hurdle. ‘Ah. You have been drinking more than a little. I understand.’

  ‘You understand nothing,’ said Streik.

  ‘No, I have been many times drunk myself. I understand.’

  ‘OK. So you understand. Leave it at that. You’re overflowing with understanding. Fine. Great.’ Streik stared at the kid and wondered if those blue eyes concealed a murderous intent. They might. How could you be sure? He needed something more fortifying, something with more bite than this rotgut.

  He went to the bar, ordered a cognac, carried it back to his table. He was well down the road now. He was on his way. Soon he could become garrulous, even sentimental. When you had too much to drink you couldn’t predict the outcome. Morosity or good cheer – it was too close to call. He looked at the kid and heard himself say, ‘Listen. I got my worries.’

  ‘We all have our worries,’ said the German. ‘Tomorrow is always another day, yes?’ The young man smiled at Jacob Streik and then, as if encouraged by the American’s sudden slight softening of manner, moved closer to Streik’s table.

  ‘A philosopher,’ Streik remarked. ‘Heavy.’

  ‘I think a great deal.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘What occupies your thoughts?’

  ‘Death,’ Streik said. He heard the word coming out of his mouth, a sound ferried on a fissure of stale air, and he couldn’t believe he’d embarked on a conversation with a stranger. But it happened, and it had happened before, and sometimes he was powerless to stop it. Drink was a slipstream and you were carried along on it and you had times when it made you babble. Haywire.