He put his arm around her waist. “I feel like a schoolboy at the theater,” he said. “With a date who can’t stand whiskey.”

“Your hair’s longer,” she said, touching it.

“Grows out in hospital. Quite a few procedures. Yet to murder a physiotherapist, but then I’ve not had my last chance.” He took the glass from her, sniffed at it. “Deep shit, your Heidi said. Harsh woman. Tell me: how deep?”

“I don’t know. I was in a truck tonight, in the City, leaving a meeting with Bigend, and a car cut us off. Our driver went into a passage, sort of alley, and I think we were meant to, because another car drove in at the other end, and drove right up to us. That driver had a balaclava, pulled down. We were trapped between the two cars.”

“What happened?”

“Aldous, our driver, pushed the car in front back out into the street, then crushed the front corner of it. It’s an armored truck, a Toyota, like a tank.”

“Hilux,” he said. “Jankel-armored?”

“How did you know?”

“It’s a specialty of theirs. Whose is it?”

“Bigend’s.”

“Thought you wanted shut of him.”

“I did. Do, actually. But he came back, a few days ago, and I agreed to a job. But it’s all gone sideways.”

“Pear-shaped. But how exactly?”

“His IT man and security expert’s defected. He has big plans for military contracting. In the United States.”

“The IT man?”

“Bigend. He wants to design clothing. For the military. Says it’s recession-proof.”

He looked at her. “It is that,” he said. “Do you know who was after your truck?”

“Someone Bigend pissed off. Another contractor. I heard the name earlier tonight but can’t remember it. An American arms dealer, I think.”

“Who told you that?”

“Milgrim. Someone who works for Bigend. Or is a hobby of his, more like it.”

“Crepuscular in here,” he said, looking around.

She got up, carefully, and went to the control. Turned up the halogens.

“Someone’s been to a lot of boot sales,” he said. “Regular Museum of Mankind in here.”

“A club,” she said. “Inchmale joined. It’s all like this.”

He looked up at the whale ribs. “Portobello Road on acid.”

She saw that the right leg of his black trousers had been split neatly up the inner seam, from hem to crotch, and reclosed with small black safety pins. “Why is your leg pinned up?”

“Going goth. Difficult to find just the right black ones. Change the dressings myself, this way. Have the kit for it in back of my invalid chair.” He smiled. “Sutures are already starting to itch.” Then he frowned. “Not pretty, though. Best leave that.” He sniffed at the whiskey again, took a tiny sip. Sighed. “That’s your deep shit, then?”

“There was a tracker bug in this,” she said, picking up the Blue Ant figurine from the nightstand. “It may have been there since Vancouver, or it may have been put in later.” She opened a drawer and produced the bug, in its baggie. “Bigend? Sleight?”

“Who’s that?”

“Bigend’s IT specialist. The recent defector. Ajay left it out, when Heidi put this back together for me. Said there were more options, leaving it out.”

“A.J.?”

“Ah-jay. Heidi’s favorite sparring partner, at her new gym, in Hackney. He’s a fan of yours. Total fanboy.”

“That would be a change,” he said, “wouldn’t it?” Then he patted the embroidered velour beside him. “Come back and sit here. Make an old man happy.”

Heidi said there was no cellular connection on the London subway, so Milgrim hadn’t bothered trying the dongle. The trip to Marble Arch had been a quick one, Milgrim seated and Heidi standing, ceaselessly eyeing the other passengers for signs of incipient Foleyism.

Heidi still had her jacket inside out. As she’d swayed in front of him, on the balls of her feet, he’d been able to look up, the jacket repeatedly swinging open, and identify what he’d earlier taken for a brooch as having been three darts, the kind they played a game with here, in pubs. He’d sometimes, on hotel television, glimpsed hypnotically tedious competitions that made golf seem like a contact sport. But now he understood what she’d done. There were two left. Not good. He supposed he should be grateful for her having done it, under the circumstances, but still, ungood. Though he noted that he didn’t find her frightening, however little he’d want to get on her bad side.

There was a KFC adjacent the Marble Arch exit, he saw as they emerged, but it was closed. It smelled horrible, and this struck him with some full and unexpected force of nostalgia and desire. Homesickness, he thought, another feeling he’d tamped down beneath the benzos, in whatever unventilated chamber of the self, however abstract the notion of home might be.

But then Fiona pipped her bike’s horn, twice, at the curb, gesturing to them. He walked over as she flipped her visor up, the particular angle at which the line of her cheekbone intersected the yellow helmet-edge striking him in some nameless but welcome way. “Coming with me,” she said, offering him the black helmet. Raising her chin slightly to make eye contact with Heidi, who’d come up beside Milgrim. “I’ll send a car for you.”

“Fuck it,” said Heidi, “I’m walking. Where’s Hollis?”

“At Cabinet. I’m taking Milgrim.”

“You do that,” said Heidi, taking the black helmet and placing it on Milgrim’s head. The hairspray was still there. She gave the helmet a sharp rap with her knuckles, in parting. Milgrim threw his leg over the seat behind Fiona and put his arms around her, conscious of girl within the armor. Blinking at the newness of that. Turned the helmet to see Heidi, dimly, through the miserable visor, marching away.

›››

“Faggot above a load,” said Bigend, seated behind a very basic white Ikea desk. It had a broken corner and was stacked with books of fabric samples.

“Excuse me?” Milgrim was perched on a ridiculous violet stool, deeply and cheaply cushioned.

“Archaic expression,” said Bigend. “Faggots, properly speaking, being pieces of firewood. When one had a faggot above a load, one was about to drop one. It meant that something was excessive, too busy.”

“Foley,” said Milgrim. “In the car in front of us.”

“I gathered as much.”

“Where’s Aldous?”

“Being questioned by various species of police. He’s good at that.”

“Will he be arrested?”

“Unlikely. But when Fiona debriefed you, in Paris, you told her that you’d gone to Galeries Lafayette. That Foley had followed you there, as you’d guessed he would, and that you’d slipped the Neo, having determined that Sleight was using it to allow Foley to track you, into, I believe she said, a pram.”

“Not a pram,” said Milgrim, “exactly. More modern.”

“Was there a reason for choosing that one particular pram?”

“The woman, the mother, was Russian. I’d been eavesdropping.”

“What sort of a woman did you take her to be?”

“The wife of an oligarch, would-be oligarch…”

“Or gangster?”

Milgrim nodded.

“Accompanied by at least one bodyguard, I would imagine?”

Milgrim nodded.

Bigend stared at him. “Naughty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t as though I don’t want you to become more proactive,” said Bigend, “but now that I understand what you did, I see that you’ve been irresponsible. Impulsive.”

“You’re impulsive,” said Milgrim, surprising himself.

“I’m supposed to be impulsive. You’re supposed to be relatively circumspect.” He frowned. “Or, rather, not that you’re supposed to be, particularly, but that I expect it of you, on the basis of experience. Why did you do it?”

“I was tired of Sleight. I’ve never liked him very much.”