Personal(100)

We passed the pub, which we both remembered, and we did our best to follow the turns we had taken on foot, the huge car more at home there than in Romford, until we came to the board fence, with the yard-wide gap before the next fence began. Nice pulled over and stopped, and I made Charlie White take his seat belt off, and I made him squirm around with his back to me, and I taped his wrists, and his elbows, and his mouth, around and around, and then I leaned over and opened his door, and pushed him out, and followed after him, and hauled him into the mouth of the alley.

Nice drove on a hundred yards and parked equidistant from five opulent houses, compared to any one of which a gap in a fence a hundred yards away was invisible. She jogged back, fast, a little up on her toes, not relaxed at all, and she bundled into the alley after us, and then squeezed past us and led the way. I kept old Charlie moving behind her, with the old guy huffing and puffing, whether from indignation or lack of condition I couldn’t tell, but either way he was proving himself an honest man when he said there was nothing wrong with his nose.

We made it into the grit clearing, Nice first, glancing left and right, then Charlie, stumbling, his best pants flapping, and then me, checking our backs, checking left, checking right, checking the wooden hut ahead, with Bowling Club over the door. Nice ducked down and moved the stone and stood up again and said, ‘There’s no key.’

Charlie White stood there, breathing hard.

I said nothing.

She said, ‘Yes, I’m sure it’s the right stone.’

I said, ‘Did they change the lock back?’

‘Why would they?’

I didn’t answer. A shed made of wood, built way back before I was born. Take it up with whichever carpenter died fifty years ago, Bennett had said. A good craftsman, probably, but working with poor postwar materials, plus sixty or so summers and sixty or so winters, which meant the shed would be strong, but not very strong. I took three long strides and smashed my heel through the lock and caught the door on the bounce.

The binoculars were gone.

The kitchen stools were gone, and the tripod stands were gone. The clear lane in front of the windows was completely empty.

Casey Nice said, ‘Is this one of the weird things you told me would happen?’

I said, ‘No, I think it’s even weirder than that. But like the man said, we get what we get.’

I pushed Charlie White all the way in, and I made him sit in a corner, leaning on a bag of bowling club stuff. I switched on my phone, and I entered Bennett’s number, which I remembered from his text the day before, and I sent him a message.

It said: We have Charlie White.

Then I pictured computers whirring in the county of Gloucestershire, and I switched my phone off again, immediately.

Nice said, ‘Will it work?’

I said, ‘I have no idea. But I’m sure something will happen.’

Charlie White was watching us. His eyes would always take second place to his nose, in terms of distinguishing features, but they were handsome enough, and mobile, sliding back and forth between us, or perhaps between two different interpretations of his predicament. The first might be represented by me, some kind of a big American thug far from home and punching above his weight, stupid enough to go for a big score, which meant I was guaranteed to be dead, and he was guaranteed to be alive. It was just a matter of time. There would be a little discomfort along the way, but the final outcome was not in doubt. He was far too valuable a chip to be wasted. And a little discomfort was nothing to a Romford Boy. They had come up from worse.

But a second possible interpretation was represented by Casey Nice, with her youth, and her bustling energy, and her accent, downstate Illinois via Yale and Langley, all shot through with the kind of ringing clarity that must have come from growing up in a farmhouse with more than one dog. She was a type, a product of the modern world, perhaps recognizable even in London. She was federal, no question. In which case the taunts about collateral damage might have been true, which was another way of saying pawns in the game, and no way was Charlie White ever going to call himself a pawn in a game, but even bishops and knights got sacrificed sometimes. Because the world’s governments were king, with all their three-letter agencies and their shadowy units, which had to be where the girl was from. What else could she be? She was part of some huge international operation, which for once wasn’t all about London and Charlie, which removed his guarantee of survival. A pawn was not a valuable chip.

Charlie White didn’t know what to think.

‘Check,’ Nice said. ‘Bennett should have replied by now.’

I switched my phone on again, and watched it hunt for its signal, and find it, and present me with everything I had missed in the interim, which was a single text message from Bennett. It said: WHERE ARE YOU MOST URGENT NEW INFORMATION REPEAT EXTREMELY URGENT NEW INFORMATION MUST DISCUSS IMMEDIATELY