It was only back in the familiar surroundings of her flat—the plastic bottle of Fairy Liquid by the sink, the vacuum in the hall cupboard, the log McNuggets in the basket by the fireplace—that Olivia realized exactly how extraordinary the events of the last few days had been. Incredibly, it was less than two weeks since she had left London. The milk she had left in the fridge had gone off, but the butter was absolutely fine.
All the things that Olivia loved to escape to hotel rooms to avoid were here: an answering machine with thirty-one messages, the mail piling up in the hallway, the cupboard in the hall, which was full of things she hadn’t got round to throwing away. It was freezing cold; the boiler had gone out, and she had to faff around pressing the ignition button over and over again, remembering as she did so how Morton C. had pulled the starter cord on the boat on the way to Bell Key, until the thing suddenly ignited and made her jump. She stood in the kitchen with a can of Heinz baked beans in her hand: all the clues and theories, wild imaginings and suspicions of the last two weeks whirling round her head like clothes in a washing machine. MI6 have made a mistake letting me go, she thought. They should be using me.
She looked out of the small arched kitchen window onto the familiar scene: the flat opposite with a piece of fabric instead of a curtain, and the floor beneath, where the man wandered around naked. In the street, she saw a man open the passenger door of a blue Ford Mondeo and get in beside the driver. The two of them looked up at her window, then, seeing her, looked quickly away. They didn’t drive off. Amateurs, she thought, giving them a little wave, wondering who had made the bad employment decision: Feramo or MI6. She lit the fire, took a loaf of bread out of the freezer, made beans on toast and fell asleep in front of EastEnders.
Olivia didn’t wake until noon the next day. The first thing she did was check the kitchen window. The men in the Ford Mondeo were still there. She was just wondering where they’d gone to pee in the night and hoping it wasn’t on her doorstep when the phone rang.
“Olivia? It’s Sally Hawkins. I’m so relieved that you’re back safely.” This was odd. Sally, Olivia realized, had no way of knowing she was back unless either the security services or Feramo had tipped her off. “How are you? How did the Honduras story go?”
“Well, er, I think maybe we need to talk about it,” said Olivia, frowning, trying to work out what was going on. “I only got back last night.”
“Pierre Feramo telephoned me. I think he spoke to you. He’s offered us a trip to the Red Sea to do another leg of the diving-off-the-beaten-track story. We’re very keen to set it up. I just wanted to make sure that you’d be happy to make the trip, you know, so we can . . .”
This was too weird. Sally Hawkins sounded scared.
“Sure,” Olivia said casually. “It sounds pretty exciting, and the diving’s supposed to be great. I might need a couple of days to turn myself around, but I’m definitely up for it.”
“Good, good.” There was a pause. “Er, just one more thing, Olivia.” She sounded strangely wooden, like a terrible actress reading lines. “There’s a chap I’d like you to meet, someone who’s written for us a few times in the past. He’s an expert on all things Arabian. Very interesting man. Must be in his eighties by now. He happens to be in London today. It might be a good idea if you could meet for tea and get a few, er, travel tips.”
“Sure,” said Olivia, pulling a “She’s mad!” face in the mirror.
“Excellent. Brooks’s on St. James’s. Do you know it? Just round the corner from the Ritz.”
“I’ll find it.”
“Three-thirty. Professor Widgett.”
“Oh yes. I read his book on the Arab sensibility when I was in LA. Some of it, anyway.”
“Excellent, Olivia. Well, welcome back. And give me a ring tomorrow afternoon.”
Olivia put down the phone and reached for her bedside drawer. She was going to need another hatpin.
There were two different men watching her door now, from a brown Honda Civic parked across the road.
She raised a hand to them, turned on her new MI6-issue computer and Googled Professor Widgett: Arabist.