THIRTY-SIX

VENICE

FRANK PAGAN AND KATHERINE CAIRNEY ARRIVED AT MARCO POLO Airport at four o’clock and walked through the terminal, where a large contingent of local police wandered vigilantly around. They were looking, Pagan knew, for the kinds of weirdos, fruitcakes, axe-grinders, fringe radicals and conspiracy theorists who tended to congregate where prominent politicians appeared – the sort of people cops tended to lock up for the night just as a precautionary measure.

At the dock they boarded a launch headed for the city. In Rome, where they’d been obliged to spend time in the terminal waiting for the connecting flight, the sky had been gloomily overcast; here, in Venice, the sunlight was unexpected, almost caustic. Pagan observed the other passengers aboard the launch – a pair of ruddy backpacking Finns who looked impossibly healthy; a loud Englishman, armed with high-powered binoculars, who spoke at his timorous wife as if language were more a barrage of missiles than a means of communication. By God, I remember coming here with Duffy, what a time we had of it in those days, got to know Venice like the back of my bloody hand.

Pagan stepped on to the deck. The girl came after him. Despite sun, there was no trace of warmth. He shivered, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and thought that this might have been romantic in other circumstances – the glories of Venice, an attractive girl at your side. But not now.

As the launch approached the Grand Canal, where sunlight picked at the threadbare fabric of the waterside palaces, he thought of Barron, tried to imagine his way inside a man about whom he knew practically nothing. He turned to look at the girl, who had found in her bag a pair of amber-tinted glasses that made her appear remote and sullen.

‘Is Barron likely to have protection?’ he asked without looking at her. ‘Guns. Bodyguards.’

She shrugged. ‘I guess that’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself, Pagan.’

He gripped her arm. ‘Try again.’

She smiled coldly at him, shaking her arm free. She was, he noticed, a little wary of him; her expression was that of somebody in unpredictable company. ‘I only ever visited him in Florida. I didn’t notice any gunmen hanging around. He had a cook and a maid. I don’t remember anything else. Maybe he’s got a whole goddam arsenal in Venice. How would I know?’

He gazed along the banks of the Grand Canal, seeing wind-tossed banners here and there. His Italian was almost non-existent, but he understood the sense of the proclamations. Gurenko was being officially welcomed to the city. More, he’d been given the freedom of Venice, whatever that honour meant. Venice Greets Gurenko.

Pagan’s uneasiness, which had dogged him on the flight from Marseille to Rome, and hounded him on the leg to Venice, persisted as he stared at the flapping banners under which pedestrians strolled innocently in sunlight. It was almost as if he could smell in the air the gathering scent of disaster the way you might sense thunder in the distance before you heard it. He pushed the sensation into the back of his mind, a useful cellar where bottled notions sometimes fermented over time. But now they kept bubbling instantly back at him: Gurenko, the photographs in the newspaper at Marseille Airport. If Carlotta was here, if she could blow up a London Underground train, what did another body matter?

If she was here …

They disembarked some yards from the Rialto, wandered along the bank. He had picked up a tourist map at the airport and was trying to study it, shielding it with his body from the wind. What he saw was a twisted network of streets and waterways. Unknown cities always dislocated him, even when they were laid out in a comprehensible way – but he couldn’t figure out the logic of Venice. He glanced down at the surface of the canal, where barges loaded with fruits and vegetables skimmed past, the mosquito-like buzz of vaporetti, the laboured motions of sandoli. Then he concentrated again on the map, running a fingertip over it.

‘I’ve found the street,’ he said finally. ‘We have to cross the Rialto and head for San Marco.’ The wind flapped at the map, blowing it awkwardly back against his face.

‘You’re in charge, Pagan. Lead the way.’

They walked a few yards, reached the Campo della Pescaria where the street ran with the blood and slime of gutted fish from the seafood market. The entrails of squid, squashed prawns, mullet bones, scraps of eel, discarded eyes – these were cast aside and pilfered by cats. He and the girl moved cautiously past unidentifiable pink organs, mounds of wrinkled fish skins, scales. Somebody was hosing these relics aside and the air was filled with the decayed scent of a long-dead ocean.

They crossed the Rialto, and entered a maze of streets and alleys, some of which opened quite unexpectedly into startling squares. Pagan had a sense of wandering through cramped tunnels that led to boxes. It was, he supposed, apt – this awareness of a maze, of going blindly, of not knowing if the direction he was following would turn out to be correct. He could be perfectly wrong: the picture taken of Carlotta and Barron was years old, after all. There might no longer be any relationship between the pair – but why then had Barron sent down the execution order? The murder of Pagan made no sense unless it was examined in the context of his being a menace, a threat to whatever Barron was involved in …

They came to San Marco, where nuns led a procession of school kids across the square and tourists snapped photographs of the basilica and the campanile. In the failing coppery light the piazza had an ephemeral quality. Pigeons floated and fluttered, people strolled under the darkening archways, artists sold their insipid water-colours.

In the centre of the vast square he paused, glanced at the girl, saw dying sunlight strike the lenses of her glasses. A curious breathlessness affected him, as if everything conspired in this place to induce a contrary sense of peacefulness. He imagined drawing the girl toward him and kissing her on the forehead and plunging into the warm welcome of amnesia. How convenient it would be, he thought, to forget the reason he’d come to this city, to set aside the girl’s treachery, and take her to a little pensione with a high cracked ceiling and peeling cornices and a big brass bed that creaked to the act of love.

A wind came up, sloughing across the square, blowing papers and breadcrumbs and discarded tourist leaflets – and the banality of these objects snapped him out of his reverie. He listened to the flap of flags and the crackle of bunting and his frame of mind was replaced by an unfocused sense of urgency.

He thought of Gurenko again. If he were assassinated – what would the consequences be? For starters, chaos. Chaos. The fragile Russia whose factions Gurenko barely managed to hold together would come instantly unglued, and voracious vultures would bicker over the corpse, hardliners as well as reformers, the old strife between change and familiar sterile stability – even civil war.

Pagan, sensing the origins of a headache, a throbbing pain behind his eyes, zigzagging lines coursing across his perceptions, heard Streik’s voice again. Peace is bad for business. Bad for business – if your business happened to be weapons of death.

And that was William J. Caan’s line of work. It was the basis of his fortune.

He thought he had it just then, the fine connections, the loose pieces that formed the picture. You created a line that led from Caan and The Undertakers to Carlotta, and in the centre of that line you placed the middleman, Tobias Barron, who had commissioned Carlotta to kill Bryce Harcourt, who perhaps didn’t like what he was involved in, who was scared like Streik, and maybe ready to blow the whistle … He thought he had it, but it was elusive even yet, because if there was no association between Carlotta and Barron there was nothing.

He walked under the archway, kept moving, the girl at his side. He consulted the map. ‘We turn left here,’ he said, and they entered a street of pizzerias, trattorias, grocery shops in whose windows hung hams and sausages; Pagan had a stab of hunger. He couldn’t recall when he’d last eaten. The sun was beginning to abdicate the sky and the city was fringed by growing darkness.

‘We need to find the Calle della Manola,’ he said. The wind seized his coat and he shivered as he entered a square, a mysterious space, shadows lingering round its perimeter where plaster flaked from terracotta walls.

They crossed a short bridge, and then came to another square, the Campo Sant’ Angelo, where a drunk singing to himself lurched out of nowhere into Pagan’s path. Pagan, his nerves strident, reached back for his gun, but the drunk swayed away from him, and staggered into an alley.

‘We’re almost there,’ he said. He stopped, examined the map to be certain, then headed across the square toward a sombre, narrow passageway which the sun didn’t penetrate.

‘This is it. The Calle dei Avocati,’ he said. And paused, because suddenly whatever small assurance he’d had seemed momentarily to desert him. It was as if he were caught up in one of those weird dreams in which you were completely alone in a place of strangely angled buildings, where streets were crooked and led nowhere, and misshapen faces gazed at you from dim windows, and you experienced the kind of choking panic that forced you awake.

They entered the passageway.

Lamps had come on suddenly. Their light accentuated the delicacy of the girl’s features. She was hesitant now and he wondered how he’d react if she stubbornly refused to do what he’d asked of her when she reached the threshold of Barron’s house – but he didn’t want to consider that possibility. Huddled against the renewed force of wind, they searched for the number, which turned out to be a dark four-storeyed building adjoining structures of a similar kind. The door was of solid blackened wood; the upper panel had been carved in the form of two ferocious lion heads so realistic they looked as if they were in a feeding frenzy. He thought of Audrey Roczak’s studio in Lyon – his life seemed to have become a sequence of implacable doors, rooms from which he was excluded, secret places.

‘Ring the bell. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t try to warn him in any way. Don’t even think about it.’ He took his gun from the holster and held it, half-hidden, in the folds of his coat.

The girl looked at him, didn’t move.

‘Ring the bell,’ he said again.

She stared at the ground, shifted her feet.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, impatient. He reached past her, stuck his thumb on the doorbell, heard it ring deep inside the house. Then he stepped a couple of feet away.

The man who opened the door was not Tobias Barron. He was pallid, slightly stooped, dressed in a black suit. He didn’t see Pagan at once, only the girl.

‘Signorina Cairney?’ he asked.

The girl nodded. There was no enthusiasm in the gesture. Tense, Pagan anticipated an erratic act on her part, a warning shout, perhaps a surreptitious sign of caution. But she simply stepped into the doorway.

‘Come, you are expected,’ and the man opened the door a little wider—

—which was the moment Pagan chose to make his appearance, moving forward swiftly, gun out, barrel held directly to the side of the man’s head.

‘Back up,’ Pagan said. ‘Back up, keep your hands at your sides. You understand me?’

The man looked at the girl uncomprehendingly. ‘Who is this?’

Pagan stepped inside, kicked the door shut. He was aware of a large flagstoned vestibule where a chandelier of Venetian glass threw a glittering confection of lights.

‘Who is this?’ the man asked again.

The girl said nothing. Her expression was despondent.

‘Where’s Barron?’ Pagan asked. He stared into the sallow features of the man, the dark-brown eyes that registered confusion and alarm.

The man stepped away, disconcerted. Pagan was conscious of a stone staircase beyond the reaches of the light from the chandelier.

‘I asked you a question,’ Pagan said, and reached out, prodding the barrel of his gun into the man’s forehead. Pagan’s imagination sprinted – perhaps an alarm system was set into the flagstones and needed only the pressure of a foot to activate it, perhaps there was a form of hidden signal which, once given, would bring down all kinds of grief in the form of armed men swarming from the upper floors.

‘Don’t make me ask again,’ Pagan said, and pressured the man’s brow with the gun. The girl, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, was gazing towards the stone staircase, her attention drawn there by a movement in the upper shadows.

A figure appeared in the gloaming. The man in the dark suit turned his face toward the stairs and flicked both hands in a gesture of uncertainty. The figure on the staircase moved, stepped down into the reaches of the light from the chandelier. He continued to descend and halfway down paused, one hand on the banister-rail, the other tucked in a pocket of his jacket.

Pagan regarded the tanned features, puzzled by the way celebrity seemed to create a nimbus around those who had achieved it. It had something to do with the surprise of recognition, the photograph becoming flesh, substance behind image.

‘Katherine,’ he said. ‘And Frank Pagan. Surprise surprise.’ He looked at the girl, smiled, inclined his head a little. The voice was deep, a salesman’s voice in a way, the kind that might persuade you into signing elaborate life-insurance policies you didn’t need. ‘You disappoint me, dear girl.’

Katherine Cairney said nothing. Barron seemed disinclined to descend further, enjoying his lofty viewpoint.

‘I’m glad we can dispense with introductions,’ Pagan said.

Barron smiled. ‘I’ve been following your recent career with interest, Pagan. But you know that by this time,’ and he nodded toward Katherine Cairney, to whom he addressed his next remark. ‘I think I asked too much of you, didn’t I? You weren’t quite ready, I’m afraid. Your brother’s blood doesn’t seem to flow in your veins, Katherine.’

At the mention of her brother, the girl stepped toward the foot of the stairs and looked up. ‘You told me Pagan shot Patrick. He denies it.’

‘And you believe him?’ Barron asked. ‘You prefer his story over mine?’

‘I don’t know what the hell to believe.’

‘I’m hurt,’ said Barron. But there was no conviction in his voice. Somehow Pagan couldn’t imagine Barron being pained; the impression he gave was of a man whose life is controlled, whose emotions are sealed, carefully balanced.

The girl said, ‘If you’ve lied to me, Tobias …’ She didn’t finish her sentence. There was an odd tone in her voice, in part hope, in part the dread of disappointment.

‘Let me point out that you’re the one that has lied to me,’ he said. ‘You claimed Pagan was dead. And here he is in the flesh. Right before my eyes. Let’s not argue about lies, Katherine.’

‘Tell her, Barron,’ Pagan said. ‘Tell her the truth. And when you’ve done that, tell her about the bomb in the train, tell her about Carlotta. Tell her about your deep commitment to the Cause. Explain how you used her for your own purposes.’

Barron looked at Pagan and was quiet for a moment. Then, as if Pagan had never spoken, he said, ‘I don’t have the inclination to discuss Patrick Cairney. Does it really matter who killed him? I don’t think so. The dead don’t give a damn,’ and he turned over his bronzed hands, examining them as if for flaws. ‘Besides, you can never reconstruct history.’

‘But you can revise it,’ Pagan said.

‘Of course. You can build a multitude of interpretations around any past event.’

‘You can also build lies,’ Pagan said.

‘Pagan killed Patrick Cairney. Pagan didn’t kill Patrick Cairney.’ Barron looked back at the girl. ‘Take your pick, my dear. In the end, what difference does it make?’

‘It makes a difference to me,’ she said. She placed a foot on the first step, as if it were her intention to climb and confront Barron, and Pagan was agreeably surprised by her determination. She wasn’t going to be pushed aside easily. Barron’s equivocations, his elliptical remarks, energized her.

‘I want it in black and white,’ she said. ‘It’s not just Patrick. What about these other accusations?’

‘Pagan’s in the business of accusations, my dear. That’s what he does for a living.’

‘You’re not answering me, Tobias.’

Barron smiled. Perfect white teeth. ‘How long have you known me, Katherine? Years? And how long have you known Pagan? A few days?’

He was persuasive, Pagan thought. The voice was confident, the manner comforting.

‘Your late father was one of my dearest friends, Katherine. On more than one occasion he asked me to keep an eye on you if anything should ever happen to him. And I did. I looked after you. I cared for you. Do you deny that?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t deny it.’

‘But you still have doubts.’

‘Yes, I have doubts. Because you’re still not answering me, Tobias. You’re evading my questions.’

Barron descended a step, stopped. He raised a hand, palm outward. He looked weary for a moment, and sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. ‘This kind of conversation is tedious to me,’ he said. ‘If you prefer to listen to your policeman friend, Katherine, that’s your decision.’

‘She simply wants some straight answers,’ Pagan said. ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult for you, should it?’

The girl’s hands were clenched tightly at her sides. ‘This stuff about Carlotta – do you deny that? Do you deny you know her? Tell me, for Christ’s sake. Do that much, at least.’

Barron was silent. He looked down at her as if he wanted to confide in her some irrefutable truth, some ponderous bit of advice: You see, my dear, it’s a grubby old world we live in, and sometimes we have to do grubby things, and nothing is ever really the way it seems. Don’t be too disappointed in people. He said, ‘I meet all kinds of people, Katherine. I travel the world, I shake hands, I give little speeches. All kinds of people drift past me.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is that a yes?’

Barron didn’t reply.

‘You’re playing goddam games with me, Tobias.’

‘I don’t play games,’ he said.

‘Do you know this Carlotta? Did you have something to do with the bombing of the Underground? Did you? Answer me.’

Barron appeared to consider these questions. ‘You sound just like your friend Pagan, dear. He must have rubbed off on you. Pity.’

‘Just give me some fucking answers.’ The girl’s expression was stressed, her voice hard in a way Pagan had never heard before.

Barron came down another step, glanced at Pagan. ‘Do you need to point your gun like that? I don’t keep weapons in this house, so your gun is a little superfluous.’

‘I think I’ll hold on to it anyway.’ Pagan studied Barron a moment. The man’s features, when you saw them in the sprays of light emitted by the chandelier, seemed to sag a little. The impression of smooth youthfulness was fractured. He might have been a small-time actor awaiting the ministrations of a make-up artist. Handsome, certainly, but tired, worn down, in need of a brush stroke, a touch of paint. He projected an air of weariness despite the way he tried to disperse it with a manner of confidence.

Pagan asked, ‘Where is she?’

‘Good question.’

‘Give me a good answer,’ Pagan said. He looked at Katherine Cairney. She was confused, like somebody presented with a message written in impenetrable code. Sweet Uncle Tobias, feet of clay, the clatter of idols falling to the ground: he wondered if that was what she was thinking. He felt sorry for her – but the feeling was remote, at one remove from himself.

‘It’s a tough question, Pagan. She’s unpredictable. She isn’t like anyone else.’ He looked at the girl as he spoke, not at Pagan. It was as if he felt some abrupt need to explain Carlotta to her.

‘Unpredictable wouldn’t be my first choice,’ Pagan said. ‘Try murderous. Try callous. Try abominable. She’s a walking horror story. You should know, Barron. You call the shots, don’t you? You finance her. You meet the bills. And Carlotta is one of your expenses.’

‘That’s a simplistic deduction, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ Barron answered. ‘Carlotta does what she wants, Pagan. That’s how she’s built. She does exactly as she pleases.’

Barron stroked his words in such a way when he referred to Carlotta that the music of affection in his voice was unmistakable. A new dimension opened up for Pagan all at once: the concept of a close relationship between Barron and Carlotta. He couldn’t imagine it somehow. He reached for it, but couldn’t grasp it. If Barron was fond of Carlotta and if fondness implied knowledge of her – what did that say about Barron’s own state of mind? But then he remembered her face and manner, the bewitching way she cast spells without effort, her forceful sexuality, and he wondered if Barron had been enchanted the way Pagan himself had been years ago. Why not?

Pagan shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, Barron. I think she does what you want. That’s the way I see it. Take Bryce Harcourt. You and your friends – and I’m guessing William Caan belongs in that category – want him out of the way because he’s getting pretty damn nervous about all this cash going around, so you commission Carlotta. She goes about it with a vengeance, which is the biggest understatement of my life. Afterwards, because she hasn’t quite had her quota of kicks, because a hundred people on a train isn’t quite enough to satisfy her rapacious appetite for destruction, she slices up some poor hooker—’

‘What hooker?’ Barron asked.

‘You didn’t know that? You weren’t informed? Let me edify you. She killed a prostitute in Mayfair and left a personal calling card behind addressed to me. You must know enough about her to realize she thinks it’s fun to slice somebody up with a pair of scissors. It’s a lark. Even then, she wants some extra spice, so why not leave a message written in blood behind – it makes the joke funnier still.’

Barron was silent for a time. You couldn’t read anything in his expression. He was skilled at concealing himself, a knack for camouflage. Even the vague weariness that created an aura around him might have been designed for effect.

Pagan said, ‘Where is she?’

Barron moved down a couple of steps, saying nothing.

‘She’s here in Venice with you. She’s here with you because this is where the action is. Right?’

Barron looked at his wrist-watch. ‘Action, Pagan?’

‘Gurenko. An assassination. Stop me if I err,’ he said. Finally giving voice to this notion imbued it with a sharp credibility for him. Gurenko. Marked for death. Peace is bad for business. There was an equation somewhere. There was a design even if its strands were still twisted.

Barron looked distant, as if he were elsewhere, thinking thoughts that had nothing to do with whatever Pagan said. Then his mood appeared to alter, his face shadowed over, and Pagan had the notion that somehow the news about the vicious death of the hooker had touched him. But he rejected this idea. If Barron had commissioned Carlotta to destroy the Underground train, what was the blood of one young girl in Mayfair to him? Maybe Barron was one of those people who had a way of separating atrocities, placing them in different boxes, some labelled Necessary, others stored under the rubric Needless. Or maybe he was immune to death, as cold-hearted as Carlotta herself.

Barron had arrived at the bottom step, then moved a few yards across the flagstones, pausing some feet from Pagan. ‘Assassination. A wild surmise, Pagan. Not what you’d expect from a trained cop. Or are you a hunch-player? Is that what you are?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Hunches,’ Barron said with a trace of scorn. ‘You need something more solid than that. But you don’t have anything, do you, Pagan? You don’t have evidence. You have nothing to connect me with Carlotta. You have nothing to substantiate this ludicrous notion about political assassination. You say Carlotta killed this whore in London. OK. Fine. But you don’t have Carlotta, Pagan, do you? You know what you are? You’re a lunger. Life’s one headlong rush for you, isn’t it? You jump into deep waters and you don’t know the first thing about the currents. You don’t even know how to swim. You’re way out of your depth. You’re drowning. Look how easy you drowned in our pretty little friend here …’ He swept a hand toward the girl. ‘A drowning man, Pagan. What you need is a straw. And a straw is what you don’t have.’

Pagan gestured with the gun, a small motion of menace.

‘Really, Pagan, I wish you’d put that damn thing away,’ Barron said, and looked once more at his watch. ‘If you honestly believe in this bug-eyed assassination theory of yours, why don’t you pop down to the local cops and speak your mind? Tell them what you suspect. Let them have a look at this patchwork quilt of your suspicion. You’ll find them at Parrocchia di San Zaccaria, if that’s any help to you. I’m sure they’ll listen. Better still, find Gurenko and have a quiet word with him, if you can get within an inch of the man. And even if you do, you better have a damn good story before you open your mouth.’ Barron once again looked at his watch. ‘I understand that he’s scheduled to look at some paintings shortly.’

Pagan understood he was being goaded, pushed. He tried to dredge up something he might throw back in Barron’s face, a piece of evidence, anything to defuse the man. But he had nothing to use, nothing convincing, certainly nothing that would alarm Barron. He could toss all kinds of darts – the names of Streik, Caan, The Undertakers – but none had force enough to pierce Barron. Even his earlier mention of Caan hadn’t caused Barron to blink.

Barron looked at his watch. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a few things to attend to,’ and he moved toward the girl, raising his hand, stroking the side of her face. She pulled back from him, as if scalded. ‘You make me sad, Katherine,’ he said.

‘Goddam you, Barron. You lied to me,’ she shouted.

‘So you keep saying.’

‘You said Pagan was a danger to the Cause, he had to be killed—’

‘You dear little thing,’ he said. ‘There are so many causes these days. How can you tell them apart? No matter the rhetoric they use, they all want the same thing in the end. Control. The power to instil fear. There’s no difference between any of them. They come and they go and I give each one equal credence because by and large they don’t really understand what they’re fighting for. They dress their activities up in fine rhetoric, but they’re all gangsters when you get to the bottom line.’

‘I don’t believe you’re saying this, Barron. You and my father—’

‘I had enormous respect for the Senator. I admired him greatly. I admired the things he stood for.’

‘Even if you didn’t believe in them?’

‘What I believe never entered into it. You’re too young to understand that the most powerful motivating force in the world isn’t political belief, it isn’t spirituality, it isn’t the desire for global peace: it’s sheer expediency. One day you might grasp that. One day.’

‘And it was expediency that prevented you from mentioning Carlotta, and this assassination—’

‘Christ. What assassination? That’s a figment of Pagan’s brain.’ He sighed, reached for her again. She pushed his hand aside with a forceful gesture.

‘Katherine. Katherine. My precious little Katie.’ His voice was almost a whisper. Pagan had a flash of the girl as a child strolling across a sunlit croquet lawn with Uncle Tobias. Hand in hand, moving under a willow tree, the pungent drift of barbecue smoke: halcyon times. Dross now, and grey skies.

‘Stay away from me,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Sad, sad, sad,’ Barron said.

Pagan levelled the gun at Barron; overhead, the chandelier appeared inordinately bright, a shower of gold coins. ‘You still haven’t told me where to find her,’ he said.

‘I frankly don’t know,’ Barron said, and moved toward the staircase. He climbed a few steps. Pagan raised the gun, fired it upward. The bullet crackled in the bulbs of the chandelier and glistering fragments of glass showered the air. A cloud of plaster floated down amidst the shards.

‘That was an old piece,’ Barron said without any obvious feeling. ‘I’m sorry you did that.’

Pagan was assaulted by the need to fire the gun again and again into anything – the antique chairs, the remains of the chandelier that swung wildly above him, the paintings on the walls.

‘Eighteenth century,’ Barron remarked. ‘Very difficult to replace.’ He shook his head, turned, and continued to climb.

Out of nowhere, she materialized above Barron, her arms folded across her breasts. She was hardly visible in the poor light. Barron became aware of her and stopped halfway up the stairs. He said, ‘I asked you stay where you were. I asked you.’

She moved a few steps toward him, confronting him. Her voice was quiet, but Pagan, even from his distance, could hear a tremor of anger behind her words. ‘You’re letting him walk? You’re letting him stroll out of here? And that girl? You’re letting them leave?’

Barron answered her in a subdued way. ‘What can he do? What can he possibly do? Nobody is ever going to listen to him. He doesn’t worry me. What would you suggest? Another killing? Another murder? Will you leave another message behind?’

Her face, which Pagan realized time had barely touched, turned towards the few remaining bulbs of the chandelier. She looked directly down at Pagan, remembering him clearly, the interrogation room, the hotel, the easy way she’d stirred him. Pagan stood very still. Her surprising appearance had frozen him. She might have taken shape out of the shadows, a good conjuring trick, an illusion that for a moment left you incredulous.

‘He doesn’t worry you,’ she said to Barron, mocking him. She was still staring down at Pagan, who imagined her inside the Underground station, placing the explosive on the Tube, vanishing in the rush-hour crowds, doing her scissors number on the sad girl in Mayfair. She was all illusion. She was created by mirrors and vanished in drifts of coloured smoke.

‘He doesn’t worry you,’ she said again to Barron, her voice rising a tone. ‘You’re above all that. Is that it? You’re still untouchable. You still don’t see jeopardy. You’re out of tune, Barron. Pagan and this girl, this bimbo, walk out of here – and then what? He just forgets his whole conversation with you? You think he’s going to stop at this point? Investigation over. Dead ends. He strolls away empty handed. Is that what you think?’

Barron shrugged her words aside. ‘He’s got nothing. He can prove nothing. He can do nothing.’ He held one arm up, showing her his watch. ‘Tick tick tick. Listen. Tempus fugit.’

‘Barron, Barron,’ she said, and her voice now was softer. ‘You still live in that dream-world of yours, don’t you? After everything that’s happened, you’re still locked inside your own little tower where you think nobody can touch you. You fool. You poor sad fool. You haven’t learned a goddam thing.’

Barron turned his face in Pagan’s direction and Pagan could see it in the man’s expression: He doesn’t have the stomach for this. He doesn’t want this game to go on. He wants out. He had a sense of wills locked in conflict, Barron’s pitted against Carlotta’s, and he understood there could only be one winner. He wondered about the complexity of their world, how hard they might have warred. If there was affection between them, if there was love, it was a kind he couldn’t begin to understand: the raw meat of emotions tossed into an arena where Carlotta and Barron fought over the scraps and entrails like animals.

He put his foot on the first step, the gun pointed upwards. He was aware of Katherine Cairney standing nearby. He was conscious of her anger, her pale face. He went up another step.

‘Carlotta,’ he said, and he jerked the gun. Tick tick tick: Barron’s words drummed in his head. A clock was running down.

Carlotta stared at him a moment. She looked hard, determined. She had the kind of eyes you couldn’t stare into for long because they were unflinching. She seemed never to blink, another aspect of the whole chimera that was Carlotta. And then she changed again, smiling at him, the features suddenly soft. But he knew her deceptive abilities, the way her surfaces mutated.

‘Is this the bit where you arrest me, Pagan?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Do you have time for these legal niceties?’ she asked. ‘Do you have time?’

He looked up into her smile. She moved so quickly, so unexpectedly, his eye couldn’t follow her. He heard her say Catch me, Pagan, and then she laughed, a curious clipped sound, and shoved Barron in the centre of his chest and – surprised, mouth open – he lost his balance, tumbling backward and rolling over and over, arms upraised, skull striking stone. He collided with Pagan as he fell. Pagan stepped aside and Barron, calling out Carlotta’s name, continued to tumble until he came to a stop at the foot of the staircase.

Carlotta had already disappeared. He could hear her footsteps on another flight of stairs and the sound of her voice coming through the darkness at him. Catch me, Pagan. Catch me. A message in blood on a lampshade, a voice rolling through a big house. He scrambled upwards, hearing her just ahead of him on a third flight of stairs. He needed light, he was running blind, his only sense of direction the sound of the woman racing upwards. A dull bloom fell from streetlamps through windows here and there. He kept going, climbing, hearing the sound of doors slam shut, one after another, as if she were trying to confuse him, trick him into thinking she’d vanished inside one of the many rooms of the house. He was beyond thought, out of reason’s range, he was motion, nothing more, he was trapped inside Carlotta’s game of hide-and-seek and had no way of knowing quite what the rules were, whether she was intentionally leading him to some place where she’d corner him – or if she was simply using up his time. Breathing hard, he kept going, kept chasing, he had no choice other than to find her because that was what everything came down to in the end, the capture of Carlotta. He approached yet another set of stairs. Christ, this had to be the uppermost floor of the building, there were surely no more stairs after this unless you believed the structure had infinite levels, a trick place designed to cheat the senses. Another door slammed above him, then another, then another.

Carlotta was here and everywhere, and her voice floated around him as he reached the place where, finally, the stairs ended.

She stood in silhouette in the open doorway of a lit room. She was very still. He couldn’t see if she was armed, and had the thought that maybe on her ascent through the house she’d picked up a gun from somewhere: he didn’t trust Barron’s statement that there were no arms in the place. He stepped towards her. He spoke her name in a hoarse, tired whisper.

‘This is what I call a merry dance,’ she said.

‘It’s over,’ Pagan said.

She shook her head. ‘It’s not over, Pagan,’ and she stepped back inside the room, kicking the door shut even as he lunged forward at it. He charged into the room beyond, seeing her rush towards glass doors. Suddenly she stopped and turned to him.

Her arms hung at her sides in an aspect of surrender, a gesture that made him instantly wary. It was damned hard to connect this woman with her murderous history, that was the trouble Pagan had had years ago, and the trouble he was having now. She looked at him with an expression of such translucent innocence he was forced to remind himself of what she’d gone.

‘Come quietly,’ he said. He was back inside the interrogation room, he was watching her slender legs, hypnotized by her eyes, drawn down into the sight of her graceful fingers, remembering how she’d behaved in the hotel room ten years ago, the way his blood had rushed.

‘And if I don’t? Do you shoot me?’

Pagan didn’t reply.

She said, ‘I don’t think so. Most people are weak, Pagan. Like Barron. Like yourself. You have fronts you assume. Barron likes power because he finds it an elevating drug. Plug him into the power source and he feels strong, complete. That’s his front. You like law and order, because you can’t cope with chaos. That’s your front. I knew that about you years ago, and you haven’t changed. But I surprised you back then, didn’t I, Pagan? I gave you something to ponder. I showed you a dark side of yourself and you didn’t like what you saw.’

‘You’re right. I didn’t like it,’ he said.

‘But it’s part of you, Pagan. It’s a part you choose to ignore because that way you’re not inconvenienced by unwanted urges. You can sail along undaunted by your own demons. You just deny their existence. Dead simple. Frank Pagan, cop, upholder of the law, good citizen, boy scout. But there’s something else murmuring in a corner of Pagan’s heart. Something he doesn’t want to face. Relax, Frank. We all have our little monsters. The trick is to recognize them. When you’ve done that, living with them is easy. Every now and then you just turn them loose and let them do what they have to.’

‘You turned them loose in London all right,’ he said.

‘I gave them a field day, Pagan. I gave them what they wanted – their freedom. You should try it some time.’ She moved nearer to him and he was conscious of her scent, the way her silk dress clung to her body, the boldness in her eyes. ‘You’ve never forgotten our meeting, have you? It’s stuck with you. And every so often it surfaces and you wonder, you wonder what’s inside you, if you’re capable of betrayals, and lies, and infidelities, and your whole little world tilts just slightly. You wanted to fuck me that day.’

‘Yes …’ Funny: the admission didn’t embarrass him.

‘You wanted it so goddam bad I could smell it on you.’

‘It was long ago—’

‘But not so very far away, Pagan.’ She stared at the gun. ‘I left the message as a reminder. I wanted you to remember that I’d done a number on you ten years ago, and that I could still do it. I had you climbing a very uncomfortable tree back then. And I have you climbing one now.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Things change.’

‘Not the underlying things, Pagan. They don’t change. There’s still the same dark corner in you. You keep it hidden. But it’s there. And I’ve got news for you: it’s never going to go away.’

The same dark corner, he thought. He wondered if she was partly right. She came closer still to him. She reached out, caught his lapel, rubbed the material between thumb and forefinger. She looked at the gun and said, ‘You’d rather fuck me than shoot me, Pagan.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Pagan said.

She smiled and it was dazzling. ‘I know you, Pagan. You don’t like to admit that, but I know you. And the reason I know you is because we’re opposites. You think of rules. I don’t. You worry about things making sense. I don’t. What you see as endings are only beginnings. It’s all a matter of perspective. Yours is very different from mine.’ She stepped back from him, raised one hand, studied her fingernails, which were glossy and pink. ‘The very things you’d find precious, I see as worthless. Love is a joke. Kindness is always self-serving. Human life has all the value of a counterfeit coin. You see a train packed with people. I see only one face. You see an eminent politician, and I see a man who means nothing in the general course of things.’

An eminent politician. ‘It’s another device, isn’t it? Like the one in the Underground.’

‘You’re the detective. You figure it out.’

‘When is it due to go off?’ he asked.

‘When is what due?’

‘Don’t screw with me, Carlotta. When is it due to go off?’ he asked again.

She was playing for time, stalling him. She moved back from the table and turned towards the glass door. He couldn’t see her face now. He had the feeling she was about to do something, produce a weapon from somewhere and wheel round with it in her hand, more trickery. But all she did was to point across the room to a door and say, ‘Unlock that and guess what you’ll find. The soul of Tobias Barron.’

Pagan gazed in the direction she’d indicated and in that second when his attention was diverted, she struck the glass doors with her body, burst her way through them with a force he couldn’t have imagined, and he went after her even as glass sprinkled the air around his face, he pursued her out to a small balcony and saw her leap the handrail and jump into the darkness of the canal below, avoiding his outstretched arms. He heard the splash as she struck water. He went to the rail and looked down, but the canal was black and although a few foaming circles of white water broke the surface, he could see no sign of the woman. He called out her name a couple of times, imagined he heard an incomprehensible response from a place beneath him, thought he saw a movement along the narrow ledge that bordered the canal – a cat, that was all, a white cat slinking through the night for prey.

He turned back into the room. Katherine Cairney was standing in the doorway, watching him. He was beset by the urge to move quickly.

‘I have to go—’ And he brushed past her, hurrying down the stairs, down and down, back to the first flight where Barron lay on the flagstones at the bottom, his face turned to one side. His cheek-bone had splintered flesh. His lips had been cut by his teeth, which were no longer perfect. Across his forehead was a series of blue-red indentations where his skull had struck the cutting edge of stone. Blood flowed from his ears.

The servant in the black suit hovered without purpose.

‘He’s dead,’ the man said.

Pagan made no response. He moved toward the front door and was gone.