Fourteen

Thus freedom now so seldom wakes,

The only throb she gives,

Is when some heart indignant breaks,

To show that still she lives.

THOMAS MOORE

There were two things parked in my street that I hadn't expected to see when I turned into it. One was my Kawasaki, bruised and bloodied, but otherwise in reasonable shape. The other was a bright red TVR.

Ronnie was asleep at the wheel, with a coat pulled up to her nose. I opened the passenger door and slid in beside her.

Her head came up and she squinted at me.

'Evening,' I said.

'Hello.' She blinked a few times and looked out at the street. 'God, what time is it? I'm freezing.'

'Quarter to one. Do you want to come in?'

She thought about it.

'That's very forward of you, Thomas.'

'Forward of me?' I said. 'Well, that depends, doesn't it?' I opened the door again.

'On what?'

'On whether you drove over here, or I rebuilt my street around your car.'

She thought a bit more.

'I'd kill for a cup of tea.'

We sat in the kitchen, not saying much, just sipping tea and smoking. Ronnie's mind was on other things, and at an amateurish guess I'd say that she'd been crying. Either that or she'd attempted a fancy rag-rolling effect with her mascara. I offered her some Scotch but she wasn't interested, so I helped myself to the last four drops in the bottle and tried to make them last. I was trying to concentrate on her, to put Lucas and Barnes and Murdah out of my mind, because she was upset and she was in the room. The others weren't.

'Thomas, can I ask you something?'

'Course.'

'Are you gay?'

I mean, really. First ball of the over. You're supposed to talk about films and plays, and favourite ski runs. All that kind of thing.

'No, Ronnie, I'm not gay,' I said. 'Are you?'

'No.'

She stared into her mug. But I'd used tea bags, so she wasn't going to find any answers there.

'What's happened to what's his name?' I said, lighting a cigarette.

'Philip. He's asleep. Or out somewhere. I don't really know. Don't much care, to be honest.'

'Now, Ronnie. I think you're just saying that.'

'No, really. I don't give a fuck about Philip.'

There's always something strangely thrilling about hearing a well-spoken woman swear.

'You've had a tiff,' I said.

'We've split up.'

'You've had a tiff, Ronnie.'

'Can I sleep with you tonight?' she said.

I blinked. And then, to make sure I hadn't just imagined it, I blinked again.

'You want to sleep with me?' I said.

'Yes.'

'You don't just mean sleep at the same time as me, you mean in the same bed?'

'Please.'

'Ronnie ...'

'I'll keep my clothes on if you like. Thomas, don't make me say please again. It's terribly bad for a woman's ego.'

'It's terribly good for a man's.'

'Oh shut up.' She hid her face in the mug. 'I've gone right off you now.'

'Ha,' I said. 'It worked.'

Eventually we got up and went into the bedroom.

She did keep her clothes on, as it happens. So did I, as it also happens. We lay down side by side on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, and when I judged the while to be long enough, I reached out a hand and took hold of one of hers. It was warm and dry and a very nice thing to touch.

'What are you thinking?'

To be honest, I can't remember which one of us said this first. We both said it about fifty times before dawn.

'Nothing.'

We both said that a lot as well.

Ronnie wasn't happy, that was the long and the short of it. I can't say that she poured out her life story to me. It came in odd chunks, with long gaps in between, like belonging to a discount book club, but by the time the lark came on to relieve the nightingale, I'd learned quite a bit.

She was a middle child, which would probably make a lot of people go 'ah, well there you are, you see,' but I am too, and it's never bothered me that much. Her father worked in the City, grinding the faces of the poor, and the two brothers either side of her looked like they were headed in the same direction. Her mother had developed a passion for deep-sea fishing when Ronnie was in her teens, and since then had spent six months of every year indulging it in distant oceans while her father took mistresses. Ronnie didn't say where.

'What are you thinking?' Her, this time.

'Nothing.' Me.

'Come on.'

'I don't know. Just... thinking.'

I stroked her hand a bit.

'About Sarah?'

I'd sort of known she was going to ask this. Even though I'd deliberately kept my second serves deep and not mentioned Philip again, so she wouldn't be able to come into the net.

'Among other things. People, I mean.' I gave her hand a tiny squeeze. 'Let's face it, I hardly know the woman.'

'She likes you.'

I couldn't help laughing.

'That seems astronomically unlikely. The first time we met she thought I was trying to kill her father, and the last time, she spent most of the evening wanting to give me a white feather for cowardice in the face of the enemy.'

I thought it best to leave out the kissing thing, just for the moment.

'What enemy?' said Ronnie.

'It's a long story.'

'You've got a nice voice.'

I turned my head on the pillow and looked at her.

'Ronnie, in this country, when someone says something's a long story, it's a polite way of saying they're not going to tell it to you.'

I woke up. Which suggested the possibility that I'd fallen asleep, but I've no idea when that happened. All I could think was that the building was on fire.

I leapt out of bed and ran to the kitchen, and found Ronnie burning some bacon in a frying-pan. Smoke from the cooker frolicked about in the shafts of sunlight coming through the window, and Radio 4 burbled away somewhere nearby. She'd helped herself to my only clean shirt, which annoyed me a little because I'd been saving it for something special, like my grandson's twenty-first - but she looked good in it, so I let it pass.

'How d'you like your bacon?'

'Crispy,' I lied, looking over her shoulder. Not much else I could say.

'You can make some coffee if you like,' she said, and turned back to the frying-pan.

'Coffee. Right.' I started to unscrew a jar of instant stuff, but Ronnie tutted and nodded towards the sideboard where the shopping fairy had visited in the night and left all manner of good things.

I opened the fridge and saw someone else's life. Eggs, cheese, yoghurt, some steaks, milk, butter, two bottles of white wine. The sort of things I've never had in any fridge of mine in thirty-six years. I filled the kettle and switched it on.

'You'll have to let me pay you for all this,' I said.

'Oh, do grow up.' She tried cracking an egg one-handed on the edge of the pan and made a dog's breakfast of it. And I had no dog.

'Shouldn't you be at the gallery?' I asked, as I spooned Melford's Dark Roasted Breakfast Blend into a jug. This was all very strange.

'I rang. Told Terry my car was broken. Brakes had failed, and I didn't know how late I was going to be.'

I thought about this for a while.

'But if your brakes had failed, surely you ought to have got there early?'

She laughed and slid a plate of black, white and yellow stuff in front of me. It looked unspeakable and tasted delicious.

'Thank you, Thomas.'

We were walking through Hyde Park, going nowhere in particular, holding hands for a bit, then letting go as if holding hands wasn't one of life's big deals. The sun had come up to town for the day and London looked grand.

'Thank you for what?'

Ronnie looked down at the ground and kicked at something that probably wasn't there.

'For not trying to make love to me last night.'

'You're welcome.'

I really didn't know what she expected me to say, or even whether this was the beginning of a conversation or the end. 'Thank you for thanking me,' I added, which made it sound more like the end.

'Oh, shut up.'

'No, really,' I said. 'I appreciate it very much. I don't try and make love to millions of women every day, and never get a squeak out of most of them. It makes a nice change.'

We strolled on a bit. A pigeon flew towards us and then darted away at the last moment, as if he'd suddenly realised we weren't who he thought we were. A couple of horses trotted down Rotten Row, with tweed-jacketed men on their backs. Household Cavalry, probably. The horses looked quite intelligent.

'Do you have anybody, Thomas?' said Ronnie. 'At the moment?'

'You're talking about women, I would think.'

'That's the ticket. Are you sleeping with any?'

'By sleeping with, you mean ... ?'

'Answer the question immediately, or I'll call a policeman.' She was smiling. Because of me. I'd made her smile, and it was a nice feeling.

'No, Ronnie, I'm not sleeping with any women at the moment.'

'Men?'

'Or any men. Or any animals. Or any types of coniferous tree.'

'Why not, if you don't mind me asking? And even if you do.'

I sighed. I didn't really know the answer to this myself, but saying that wasn't going to get me off the hook. I started talking without any clear idea of what was going to come out.

'Because sex causes more unhappiness than it gives pleasure,' I said. 'Because men and women want different things, and one of them always ends up being disappointed. Because I don't get asked much, and I hate asking. Because I'm not very good at it. Because I'm used to being on my own. Because I can't think of any more reasons.' I paused for breath.

'All right,' said Ronnie. She turned and started walking backwards so she could get a good view of my face. 'Which of those is the real one?'

'B,' I said, after a bit of thought. 'We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women,' and I thought I'd better pick my words a little more carefully when describing a gender I didn't belong to, 'want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that's what they want. That's the goal. Men don't have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals.'

'Bollocks,' said Ronnie.

'That, of course, is the other main difference.'

'Do you honestly think I would want to have a relationship with you?'

Tricky. Straight bat, head over the ball.

'I don't know Ronnie. I wouldn't presume to guess what you want out of life.'

'Oh, other bollocks. Get a grip, Thomas.'

'On you?'

Ronnie stopped. And then grinned.

That's more like it.'

We found a phone box and Ronnie called the gallery. She told them that she was feeling overwrought with the strain of dealing with her broken car, and that she needed to lie down for the rest of the afternoon. Then we got into the car and drove to Claridges for lunch.

I knew that eventually I was going to have to tell Ronnie something of what had happened, and something of what I thought was going to happen. It would probably involve a little lying, for my sake as well as hers, and it would also involve talking about Sarah. Which is why I put it off for as long as I could.

I liked Ronnie a lot. Maybe if she'd been the damsel in distress, held in the black castle on the black mountain, I would have fallen in love with her. But she wasn't. She was sitting opposite me, chattering away, ordering a rocket salad with her Dover sole, while a string quartet in Austrian national costume plucked and fiddled some Mozart in the lobby behind us.

I looked carefully round the room to see where my followers might be, knowing that there could be more than one team by now. There were no obvious candidates nearby, unless the CIA had taken to recruiting seventy-year-old widows with what looked like a couple of bags of self-raising flour tipped over their faces.

In any case, I was less concerned about being followed than about being heard. We'd chosen Claridges at random, so there'd been no chance to install any listening equipment. I had my back to the rest of the room, so any hand-held directional microphones wouldn't be getting much. I poured us each a large glass of perfectly drinkable Pouilly-Fuisse that Ronnie had chosen, and started to talk.

I began by telling her that Sarah's father was dead, and that I'd seen him die. I wanted to get the worst of it over with quickly, to drop her down a hole and then pull her up slowly, giving her natural pluck a bit of time to get to work. I also didn't want her to think that I was scared, because that wouldn't have helped either of us.

She took it well. Better than she took the Dover sole, which lay on her plate untouched, with a mournful 'did I say something wrong?' look in its eye, until a waiter swept it away.

By the time I'd finished, the string quartet had ditched Mozart in favour of the theme from Superman, and the wine bottle was upside down in its bucket. Ronnie stared at the tablecloth and frowned. I knew she wanted to go and ring somebody, or hit something, or shout out in the street that the world was a terrible place and how could everyone go on eating and shopping and laughing as if it wasn't. I knew that because that's exactly what I'd wanted to do ever since I'd seen Alexander Woolf blown across a room by an idiot with a gun. Eventually she spoke, and her voice was shaking with anger.

'So, you're going to do this, are you? You're going to do what they tell you?'

I looked at her and gave a small shrug.

'Yes, Ronnie, that's what I'm going to do. I don't want to do it, but I think the alternatives are slightly worse.'

'Do you call that a reason?'

'Yes I do. It's the reason most people do most things. If I don't go along with them, they will probably kill Sarah. They've killed her father already, so it's not as if they're crossing any big bridges from now on.'

'But people are going to die.' There were tears in her eyes, and if the wine waiter hadn't come and tried to flog us another bottle of the Pouilly at that moment, I probably would have hugged her. Instead I took her hand across the table.

'People are going to die anyway,' I said, and hated myself for sounding like Barnes's nasty little speech. 'If I don't do it, they'll find someone else, or some other way. The result will be the same, but Sarah will be dead. That's what they're like.'

She looked down at the table again, and I could see that she knew I was right. But she was checking everything all the same, like someone about to leave home for a long time. Gas off, TV disconnected, fridge defrosted.

'And what about you?' she said, after a while. 'If that's what they're like, what's going to happen to you? They're going to kill you, aren't they? Whether you help them or not, they're going to end up killing you.'

'They're probably going to have a go, Ronnie. I can't lie about that.'

'What can you lie about?' she said quickly, but I don't think she meant it the way it sounded.

'People have tried to kill me before, Ronnie,' I said, 'and they haven't managed it. I know you think I'm a slob who can't even do his own shopping, but I can look after myself in other ways.' I paused to see if she'd smile. 'If nothing else, I'll find some posh bint with a sports car to take care of me.'

She looked up, and nearly smiled.

'You've got one of those already,' she said, and took out her purse.

It had started raining while we'd been inside, and Ronnie had left the roof down on the TVR, so we had to pelt through Mayfair as fast as we could for the sake of her Connolly-hide seats.

I was scrabbling with the catches on the car's hood, trying to work out how I was going to fill the six-inch gap between the frame and the windscreen, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I kept myself as loose as possible.

'And who the fuck might you be?' said a voice.

I straightened up slowly and looked round. He was about my height, and not far off my age, but he was considerably richer. His shirt was from Jermyn Street, his suit was from Savile Row, and his voice was from one of our more expensive public schools. Ronnie popped her head up from the boot where she'd been folding away the tonneau cover.

'Philip,' she said, which was pretty much what I'd expected her to say.

'Who the fuck is this?' said Philip, still looking at me.

'How do you do, Philip?'

I tried to be nice. Really I did.

'Fuck off,' said Philip. He turned to Ronnie. 'Is this the shit who's been drinking my vodka?'

A knot of tourists in bright anoraks stopped and smiled at the three of us, hoping that we were all good friends really. I hoped we were too, but sometimes hope isn't enough.

'Philip, please don't be boring.' Ronnie slammed the boot and came round to the side of the car. The dynamics shifted a little, and I tried to squirt myself out of the group and away. The last thing I felt like was getting involved in someone else's pre-marital row, but Philip wouldn't have it.

'The fuck do you think you're going?' he said, raising his chin a little higher.

'Away,' I said.

'Philip, come on.'

'You little shit. Who the hell do you think you are?' He put his right hand out and took hold of my lapel. He held it tight, but not so tight that he was committed to fighting me. Which was a relief. I looked down at his hand and then at Ronnie. I wanted to give her the chance to call this off.

'Philip, please, don't be stupid,' she said.

Which, obviously, was about as wrong a thing as she could have chosen to say. When a man's reversing himself flat out into a corner, the very last thing to make him slow down is a woman telling him he's being stupid. If it had been me, I'd have said I was sorry, or stroked his brow, or smiled, or done anything I could think of to dissipate the flow of hormones.

'I asked you a question,' said Philip. 'Who do you think you are? Drinking at my bar, cocking your leg in my house?'

'Please let go of me,' I said. 'You're creasing my jacket.' Reasonable, you see. Not facing him down, calling him out, squaring him up, or anything else involving odd prepositions. Just straightforward concern about my jacket. Man to man.

'I couldn't give a fuck about your jacket, you little tosser.'

Well, there you are. Every possible diplomatic channel having been tried and found wanting, I opted for violence.

I pushed towards him first, and he resisted, which is what people always do. Then I dropped back with his push, straightening his arm, and turned away so that he had to flip his wrist over to keep hold of the lapel. I put one hand on top of his, to make him keep the grip, and with my other forearm I leaned gently downwards on his elbow. If you're interested, this happens to be an Aikido technique called Nikkyo, and it causes a quite stupendous amount of pain with almost no effort.

His knees buckled and his face went white as he dropped down to the pavement, trying desperately to take the pressure off the wrist joint. I let him go before his knees touched the ground, because I reckoned that the more face I left him with, the less reason he'd have to try anything else. I also didn't want to have Ronnie kneeling over him saying there, there, who's a brave soldier? for the rest of the afternoon.

'Sorry,' I said, and smiled uncertainly, as if I didn't quite know what had happened either. 'Are you all right?'

Philip wrung his hand and shot me a pretty hateful look, but we both knew he wasn't going to do anything about it. Even though he couldn't be certain that I'd hurt him deliberately.

Ronnie moved in between us and gently put her hand on Philip's chest.

'Philip, you've got this very badly wrong.'

'Have I really?'

'Yes, you have really. This is business.'

'Fuck it is. You're sleeping with him. I'm not an idiot.'

That last remark ought to have had any decent prosecution counsel leaping to their feet, but Ronnie just turned to me and half-closed an eye.

'This is Arthur Collins,' she said, and waited for Philip to frown. Which he eventually did. 'He painted that triptych we saw in Bath, do you remember? You said you liked it.'

Philip looked at Ronnie, then at me, then back to Ronnie again. The world turned a little more while we waited for him to chew it over. Part of him was embarrassed at the possibility that he'd made a mistake, but a much bigger part was relieved that he now had the chance to seize on a respectable reason for not trying to hit me - there I was, don'cha know, ready to lay the blighter out, had him begging for mercy, and he turned out to be a wrong number. Different party altogether. Laughs all round. Philip, you're a scream.

The one with the sheep?' he said, straightening his tie and shooting his cuffs in a well-practised movement. I looked at Ronnie, but she wasn't about to help me with this one.

'Angels, actually,' I said. 'But a lot of people see them as sheep.'

That seemed to satisfy him as an answer, and a grin spread across his face.

'God, I am so sorry. What can you think of me? I thought . .. well, it doesn't really matter, does it? There's a chap ... oh, never mind.'

There was more in this vein, but I just spread my hands wide to show that I quite understood and that I made the same mistake myself three or four times a day.

'Will you excuse us, Mr Collins?' said Philip, as he took hold of Ronnie's elbow.

'Course,' I said. Philip and I were the best of pals now.

They moved a few feet away and I realised it had been at least five minutes since I'd smoked a cigarette, so I decided to put that right. The bright anoraks were still hovering anxiously further down the pavement and I waved to them to show that yes, London's a crazy place but they ought to go ahead and have a nice day all the same.

Philip was trying to make it up to Ronnie, that was obvious - but it looked as if he was playing the 'I forgive you card', instead of the much stronger 'please forgive me' one, which I've always found wins more tricks in the end. Ronnie's mouth was twisted into a half-accepting, half-bored shape, and she glanced at me every now and then to show how tiring all this was.

I smiled back at her, just as Philip reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of paper. Long and thin. An airline ticket. A come away with me for the weekend and we'll have wheelbarrowsful of sex and champagne ticket. He handed it to Ronnie and kissed her on the forehead, which was another mistake, waved at Arthur Collins the distinguished West Country painter, and set off down the street.

Ronnie watched him go and then sauntered over to where I was standing.

'Angels,' she said.

'Arthur Collins,' I said.

She looked down at the ticket and sighed. 'He thinks we should have another go. Our relationship is too precious, etc.'

I went ah, and we stared at the pavement for a while.

'So he's taking you to Paris, is he? On the corny side, I'd have said, if it was any of my business.'

'Prague,' said Ronnie, and a bell rang somewhere in my head. She opened the ticket. 'Prague's the new Venice, according to Philip.'

'Prague,' I said, and nodded. 'They tell me it's in Czechoslovakia at this time of year.'

'The Czech Republic, actually. Philip was very precise about that. Slovakia's gone to the dogs and isn't half as beautiful. He's booked a hotel near the town square.'

She looked down again at the open ticket and I heard the breath stop in her throat. I followed her gaze, but there didn't seem to be any tarantulas crawling up her sleeve.

'Something wrong?'

'CED,' she said, snapping the ticket shut.

I frowned.

'What about him?' I couldn't see what she was getting at, even though the bell was still ringing. 'D'you know who he is?'

'He's OK, isn't he?' said Ronnie. 'According to Sarah's diary, CED is OK, right?'

'Right.'

'Right.' She handed me the ticket. 'Look at the carrier.'

I looked.

Maybe I should have known it already. Maybe everybody knew it except Ronnie and me. But, according to Sunline Travel's printed itinerary for Ms R. Crichton, the national airline of the new Czech Republic goes by the letters CEDOK.