Eventually she started breathing slower, and she said, ‘I’m sorry,’ all muffled against my coat.
I said, ‘Don’t be.’
‘I killed a man.’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘You saved yourself. And me. Think about it like that.’
‘He was still a human being.’
‘Not really,’ I said again. ‘My grandfather once told me a story. He lived in Paris, where he made wooden legs for a living, but he was on vacation in the south of France, sitting on a hillside near a vineyard, eating a picnic, and he had his pocket knife out, to lever open a walnut, and he saw a snake coming towards him, real fast, and he stabbed it with the pocket knife, dead on through the centre of its head, and pinned it to the ground, about six inches from his ankle. That’s the same as you did. The guy was a snake. Or worse than a snake. A snake doesn’t know it’s a snake. It can’t help itself. But that guy knew what he was choosing. Just like the other guy, yesterday, who wasn’t helping old ladies across the street, or volunteering in the library, or raising funds for Africa.’
She rubbed her head against my arm. Nodding agreement, maybe. Or not, perhaps. Maybe just wiping her eyes. She said, ‘Doesn’t make me feel better.’
‘Shoemaker told me you knew what you signed up for.’
‘I did, in theory. Actually doing it feels different.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
‘Are you going to tell me it gets easier?’
I didn’t answer. I said, ‘Save the pills. You don’t need them. And even if you do, save them anyway. This is only the beginning. It’s going to get harder later.’
‘That’s hardly reassuring.’
‘You have nothing to worry about. You’re doing well. We’re both doing well. We’re going to win.’
She didn’t answer that. She hung on for a moment longer, and then she eased away from me, and we both retreated to our own spaces, and we sat up straight. She huffed and sniffed and wiped her face with her leather sleeve. She said, ‘Can we go back to the hotel? I want to take a shower.’
I said, ‘We’ll find a new hotel.’
‘Why?’
‘Rule one, change locations every day.’
‘My new toothbrush is still there.’
‘Rule two, keep your toothbrush in your pocket at all times.’
‘I’ll have to buy another.’
‘Maybe I’ll get a new one too.’
‘And I want to buy clothes.’
‘We can do that.’
‘I don’t have a bag any more.’
‘No big deal. I’ve never had a bag. All part of the experience. You change in the store.’
‘No, I mean, how do we carry the boxes of ammunition?’
‘In our other pockets.’
‘Won’t fit.’
She was right. I tried. The box stuck half in, half out. And my pocket was bigger than hers to begin with. I said, ‘But this is London. Who’s going to recognize it for what it is?’
She said, ‘One person in a thousand, maybe. But what happens if that one person is a cop, like at Wallace Court, with a bulletproof vest and a sub-machine gun? We can’t be seen walking around town with boxes full of live ammunition.’
I nodded. I said, ‘OK, we’ll get a temporary bag.’ I looked all around, in front, behind, both sides of the street. ‘Although I don’t see any bag stores here.’
She pointed half-left. ‘There’s a convenience store on the corner. Like a miniature supermarket. One of their chains, I think. Go buy something. Gum, or candy.’
‘Their bags are thin plastic. I’ve seen them. You put the Coke in one last night. It was practically transparent. As bad as our pockets.’
‘They have big sturdy bags too.’
‘They won’t give me a big sturdy bag for gum or candy.’
‘They won’t give you any kind of bag. You have to buy them here. Which means you can choose whatever kind you want.’
‘You have to buy the stuff and the bag it goes in?’
‘I read about it in a magazine.’
‘What kind of country is this?’
‘Environmental. You’re supposed to buy a durable bag and use it over and over again.’
I said nothing, but I got out of the car and walked up to the corner. The store was a bare-bones version of a big supermarket. Daily necessities, lunch items, six-packs, and soft drinks. And bags, just like Nice had predicted. There was a whole bunch of them near the checkout lanes. I picked one out. It was brown. It looked about as environmental as you could get. Like it had been woven out of recycled hemp fibres by one-eyed virgins in Guatemala. It had the supermarket’s name screen printed on it, faintly, probably with all kinds of vegetable dye. Carrots, mainly, I thought. Like the writing would all disappear in a shower of rain. But as a bag it was OK. It had rope handles, and it opened out into a boxy shape.
I didn’t really want gum or candy, so I asked the woman at the register whether I could buy the bag on its own. She didn’t answer directly. She just looked at me like I was a moron and slid the bag’s tag across her scanner, with an electronic pop, and she said, ‘Two pounds.’
Which I figured was OK. It would have been fifty bucks in a West Coast boutique. The Romford Boys paid for it, and I put their change in my back pocket, and I walked back to the parked Skoda.
It wasn’t there.
THIRTY-SIX
I PUT MY hand on the Glock in my pocket, and the back part of my brain told the front part, seventeen in the magazine plus one in the chamber minus two fired in the Serbian garage equals sixteen rounds available, and it pulled me back against a real estate broker’s window, to cut 360 degrees of vulnerability to 180, but mostly it screamed at me: Dominique Kohl.
I took a breath and looked left and right. There was no traffic cop to be seen. Which would have been logical. Nice would have taken off in a heartbeat if she had spotted one. Digital information in a camera system could be erased at the touch of a button, but Nice’s face and the Skoda’s plate in the same human memory at the same time couldn’t be managed so easily. Grander schemes had unravelled for less. But there was no cop on the block. There was no uniformed individual sauntering along, with notebook in hand.
And there were no members of the public staring open-mouthed at the empty length of blacktop, either, as if after some big commotion. And Nice wouldn’t have gone down easy, not for the Romford Boys, not for the Serbians, not for anyone. She had doors that locked and a loaded gun in her pocket. Sixteen rounds available, the same as me. The street was far from quiet, but it was humming with nothing more than normal city activity. No big incident had taken place. That seemed clear.
I slid along the broker’s window and stepped back into a doorway, for ninety degrees of exposure, like I had only a baseball diamond ahead of me. Traffic on the street was one-way, from my right to my left. There was a steady flow. Small hatchback cars, black taxis, an occasional larger sedan, delivery vans. No drivers peering left and right, no shotgun passengers searching faces. No one looking for me. I stepped out a pace and checked the corners. No one waiting there.
She knows what she signed up for. And she’s tougher than she looks.
She was captured, mutilated, and killed. I should have gone myself.
I’m going to hang way back. It’s not going to happen again.