31
Baku

At work on Tuesday afternoon, three days before Cohen is due back from Baku, I get a call from Katharine. I am unprepared for the conversation and struggle to summon up the necessary zip. My mind is so slack that I speak only briefly in abrupt phrases that tail off, going nowhere. Katharine, who is evidently cheery and content, picks up on this and after a couple of minutes asks:

‘You OK?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘I dunno. You sound kinda odd. Sad.’

I almost believe she cares.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

We talk about the election (everyone is talking about the election). Katharine says that if she had British citizenship she would vote for Blair, because he has the requisite ‘dynamism’ that’s lacking in Mr Top Lip. Fortner, on the other hand, feels sympathetic to Major, seeing him as an essentially decent man laid low by the vanities of his grudge-filled colleagues. But he would put a tick in the box marked Ashdown ‘because of the military background’. We both laugh at this.

‘By the way,’ she says, shifting ground suddenly. ‘That gift you gave us, the CD. It’s great. Terrific. Just exactly what we were hoping for.’

I absorb this, the first piece of good news in days.

‘I’m glad,’ I say, but nothing else.

‘It took a long time for you to find it but it was worth the wait.’

There’s the sound of a tap running in the room where she is talking. She must be using the phone in the kitchen. Fridge magnets, a wooden rack of wines. My concentration wanders and I can think of nothing to say.

‘So maybe we’ll see you before too long, huh?’

‘That would be nice.’

I cannot lift myself out of this sapped funk: the intensity I need for JUSTIFY has somehow vanished. I cannot even lie with my voice on a phone.

‘You sure you’re OK, Alec?’

‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘Maybe you should take a vacation. They work you too hard.’

This is when I see Tanya coming out of Murray’s office, her eyes flooded with tears. I think at first that she has been fired, but this is sadness for another person; it isn’t the grief of self-pity. Her cheeks, the stretch of her face, has flushed to raw pink, like someone with a bad cold. She has a handkerchief balled tightly in her right hand which she is pressing weakly against her nose. I am the only other person in the office.

‘Alec?’

‘Sorry, Kathy. Look can I ring you back?’

‘Sure. Get some rest, will ya?’

‘I will.’

I replace the receiver slowly, without saying goodbye. Tanya is slumped now at her desk and I start walking over to console her. Murray appears in the doorway, arms propped on both sides at head height.

‘Can I have a word?’

He does not wait for me to answer, turning back in the direction of his office on the opposite side of the corridor.

‘You all right?’ I say to Tanya.

‘You’d better go in,’ she says.

‘Shut the door, will you?’

Murray is standing in the bright spring light of his window, which overlooks a merchant bank and a small block of flats. He has his back to me, staring out over the City. He is very still. A man who has found a calm within himself so that he may deliver bad news.

I close the door. Someone walks past outside and I hear a woman’s voice, in concerned tones, asking Tanya a question.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

‘It’s about Harry.’

Murray turns and I find that my head lolls downwards, shamed into staring at the carpet.

‘He’s been badly injured in a fight in Baku. A robbery. Three, they think, maybe four local boys attacked him. Knives. He’s in bad shape.’

We’ll take care of him.

‘He’s alive?’

‘Intensive care.’

We will see to it that Harry Cohen no longer poses a threat to the operation.

‘Where?’

‘He’s in a hospital in Geneva.’

‘What’s the extent of his injuries?’

‘Three broken ribs. Internal bleeding. Broken arm, hairline fracture to the skull. They don’t think there’s been damage to the brain but it’s too early to say. He’s not been conscious.’

‘Does his girlfriend know?’

‘Already in Switzerland. Mum and dad as well.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

At this Murray appears to shiver.

‘What are you sorry for?’ he says, like a clue to something he has doubted about me. ‘What does it have to do with you?’

‘It’s just a figure of speech.’

Nodding. ‘A figure of speech.’

He turns back to the window.

‘He’s not going to die.’

The way I say this makes it sound like a statement of fact, not a question.

‘No. Chances are.’

‘That’s good, at least. I’d better see if Tanya’s OK.’

‘Yeah. Take her out for a coffee or something.’

‘Sure.’

I leave Murray’s office, closing the door behind me. Tanya, still seated at her desk, is being comforted by one of the girls from personnel who is sitting on her haunches, her arm half around Tanya’s back. They both look up, as if expecting me to speak, and I say, ‘It’s unbelievable,’ but the words may come out too softly to be heard. Neither of them replies. I cross the room, take my coat off the rack, pick up my briefcase and walk to the door.

‘I need some air,’ I tell them. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

Tanya gives a desperate short nod of assent, her eyes still blotched with tears, and I make my way to the lifts.

I can see them close in, the dull glint of a muddied blade, the suddenness of it. They are upon him so quickly. A kick burying into his kidneys, bleeding. The complete lack of any sound. Just the thud of a boot, a punch landing awkwardly across his shoulders, another following instantly, smashing bone. He feels warm suddenly with the blood in his clothes but the pain in his ribs is wrenching. He cannot any longer see. There is a taste of vomit growing in the throat.

The stark truth of cause and effect appears now with a clarity that I have never before allowed myself to acknowledge. There is no longer anything theoretical about what I have been doing: my actions have had a direct and appalling consequence. The guilt is overpowering. I have a lurching need to talk to somebody, to confess and to explain. And there is only Saul.

In a telephone box a block away from the office I dial his number, but it just rings and rings. No one home. I try the mobile, but he has left it on message. He could be out of town on a shoot, or screening his calls. I do not know where Saul is.

‘It’s Alec. Please, if you get this, can you ring me? At home. I’m going home. It’s urgent. I need… I really need someone to talk to about something.’

A woman has appeared outside the booth, waiting to use the phone. I hang up and a coin falls with a clatter behind the small metal flap. I retrieve the ten-pence piece from the slot. The woman comes around to my left, but she does not look directly through the glass. She just wants to let me know that she’s there. Where is Saul?

Then, like a temptation, I feed the coin back into the telephone and dial her number from memory.

She answers after just a half-ring. There’s even a little performance in the cadence of her ‘hello’. A need to be liked.

It takes me a beat to respond.

‘Kate. It’s Alec.’