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  More fool him, thought Slater.

  ‘But of course we shouldn’t endanger your career, should we?’

  ‘We’ll go,’ said Slater. ‘We’ll go to the party. With you as my lover. How’s that?’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said, touching his cheek. ‘As my lover, then, rather than as my bodyguard, would you go and find me something from the fridge? Fucking always makes me so hungry.’

  He took the tube home to change. The flat was as he had left it: neat and Spartan. The bed was made with the blankets stretched drum-tight across the mattress, as he had learnt as a seventeen-year-old squaddie.

  Andreas, he discovered, had taken his designer clothes out of their bags and squared them up on the bed in their tissue paper as if for a kit inspection. The silver and crocodile belt lay where his webbing belt had once lain; the Prada shoes stood where his Northern Ireland boots had once stood. The ex-NCO’s message was brutally clear: you’re still following the orders of your betters – the only difference is in the design of the uniform.

  ‘Well, bollocks to you, Andreas van Rijn,’ Slater said aloud, kicking off his desert boots. ‘I’m going to Madonna Ciccone’s party and you’re not.’

  He dressed carefully, combining the clothes precisely as Alexia had suggested.

  On the tube he stood. The seats were filthy.

  Grace seemed pleased with Slater’s new look. ‘That’s so much better,’ she told him. ‘You look like you belong.’

  The driver dropped them off in Glasshouse Street.

  Outside the club the police had erected a barrier to keep the paparazzi and inquisitive members of the public at bay; behind this at least a hundred bodies pressed and struggled. As Slater and Grace Litvinoff entered the club a ragged storm of flashbulbs burst about them.

  ‘They take pictures of everyone,’ shouted Grace, amused, as they hurried into the club’s foyer. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to make the front cover.’ She stood back from him. ‘Although, who knows? You look good enough!’

  Slater caught sight of himself in a mirror. Dressed as he was in the best part of two thousand pounds’ worth of clothes and accessories – slate greys, anthracite, midnight blue – he had to admit that he damn well did look good enough.

  Inside, the club was packed. ‘Madonna must have a lot of friends,’ he told Grace, steering her towards the bar, and she laughed. On the way they passed the actress Jennifer Ehle, who was deep in conversation with Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Both seemed to recognise Slater. It must be the clothes, he realised, when at least the tenth person had nodded or waved to him. They must assume that if I’m dressed like this I’m one of them. Either that or I have a double.

  At the bar they were swooped on by one of the zombies from the Tate.

  ‘It’s Grace and her carer!’ he crooned, running a finger down Slater’s lapel. ‘I must say, dear, you’ve done him out very nicely!’

  Grace laughed. ‘Zoltan, darling! How are you?’

  ‘What would you like to drink, Grace?’ Slater asked her pointedly, ignoring the zombie.

  ‘Oh . . . surprise me!’ she said absently, staring over his shoulder.

  Pushing irritably through the crowd, he encountered another familiar face. ‘Nice threads!’ said Salman Rushdie.

  ‘Thanks. How’s the football?’

  ‘I went to Brentford on Wednesday. They’ve just signed a new striker from Grasshopper Zurich.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘No, rubbish. You know Geri, don’t you? And this is Martine McCutcheon.’

  ‘Hey!’ said the former soap star. ‘Didn’t I see you in something last night?’

  ‘I was in the Roebuck last night.’

  ‘That must have been it. You were really good.’

  ‘I’m just going to the bar,’ said Slater. ‘Can I get anyone anything?’

  ‘Surprise me,’ said Martine McCutcheon.

  In the end he got four dry Martinis – two for himself – and a tray. When he eventually got back to where Grace had been, she had disappeared. He eventually spotted her at the centre of a group of men – he assumed they were men – in pinstriped suits and rubber bondage masks. She already seemed to have a drink. The conversation looked both hilarious and impenetrable. Taking a seat at a nearby table, he placed the three remaining Martinis in front of him. Thoughtfully, as the party swirled around him, he lifted the first. The music rose and fell. Flash-bulbs bloomed.

  At the far end of the room, he discovered some time later, was an inner sanctum. A VIP area. He’d been roaming the floor for a while now, having overlaid the Martinis with a pint of something gassy and Japanese at the bar, and although he hadn’t smoked for several years a Cohiba cigar seemed to have found its way between his teeth.

  The object of his quest was Grace and, if possible, Madonna – in some curious way the two women seemed to have become one in his mind. The VIP area was guarded by a tall, suave-looking black man in a dinner jacket, and some distance beyond the velvet rope Slater thought that he saw Grace. Was that Madonna she was talking to? It could have been.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Special invitations only.’

  ‘That’s my girlfriend in there,’ said Slater. ‘I have a special invitation.’

  ‘What name was that, sir?’

  ‘Um . . . Litvinoff.’

  The man consulted a clipboard.

  ‘I only have a Mrs Litvinoff down here.’

  ‘I’m with Mrs Litvinoff.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. If I don’t have your individual name down here I can’t let you in. I’m sorry, sir.’

  Slater shook his head. ‘Give us a fucking break, man. Go and ask her.’

  At that moment a wild-eyed girl of about sixteen in a see-through top pressed past him. Tears and mascara streaked her face. ‘I have to speak to Madonna!’ she moaned. ‘Please! I have to.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ said the bouncer firmly, intercepting her dash for the inner sanctum with a broad forearm. ‘Special invitations only.’

  Beyond the weeping girl and the velvet rope, Grace suddenly seemed to be swallowed up in a melee of shining hair and glittering clothes. At Slater’s side the girl, sobbing now – was attempting to claw the bouncer’s eyes out. Catching her wrists, the guard attempted to subdue her, and seeing his chance Slater barged past him into the tented enclosure.

  This area – much darker than the rest of the club – was done up like a scene from the Arabian Nights. Mirrored and tasselled cushions lined the carpeted floor on which guests lounged like pashas – talking, flirting and smoking. Pale shafts of coloured light pierced the air from Algerian lamps. Accepting a glass of green absinthe from a passing waiter, Slater toured the cushions, peering at faces as he passed.

  No Grace.

  And for that matter, no Madonna. He exchanged his empty absinthe glass for a full one.

  And then he understood. He wasn’t there yet. At the end of the tent, a series of overlapping hangings concealed a further entrance. Within this inner sanctum was an inner inner sanctum. A VVIP lounge.

  Glass in hand, Slater moved towards it.

  A second security guard – possibly the older, larger brother of the first – seemed to materialise before him. ‘Hi there!’ he said, as if genuinely pleased to see Slater. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Can I go in?’

  The guard smiled. ‘I know your face, man,’ he said. ‘I know your face of old!’

  From beyond the wall of drapery came the sound of female laughter.

  ‘You like that crazy ol’ green witch?’ asked the guard, indicating Slater’s absinthe.

  Slater shrugged. The ground lurched beneath his feet. ‘Can I go in?’ he repeated.

  The guard narrowed his eyes. ‘You wanna go in there?’

  ‘Yeah . . . no.’ He shook his head. Another mistake. ‘I just want to know if Grace is in there.’

  ‘Grace is a universal attribute, man, but I can check for you if you want. Wait here.’

  Behind the hangings,
Slater heard the conversation trail to silence. A moment later Grace appeared.

  ‘Neil,’ she said vaguely. ‘What is it? What do you want?’

  ‘I lost you,’ said Slater, and then couldn’t think of anything further to say. Her face seemed to swim before his eyes.

  ‘Take the key,’ she said. ‘Wait for me at the flat, OK?’

  He walked back.

  In the flat he put on some music and took a bath. Re-dressed himself.

  Grace Litvinoff pressed the doorbell at about one o’clock. In her voice, as she identified herself, Slater sensed an excitement, an anticipation. His negative feelings about the evening began to fall away. He thought of her body, felt himself hardening.

  She was standing at the door with two men. One was a very tall, very fair young man in a transparent T-shirt, who Slater thought was probably a model, and the second was the larger of the two black security guards. Both regarded him with amused anticipation.

  He raised an interrogative eyebrow at Grace, who smiled. ‘This is Simon,’ she said, indicating the blond man, ‘and this is Oke. I thought the four of us might . . . have some rather naughty fun.’ She narrowed her eyes at him kittenishly ‘Why don’t you start by fixing us all a drink?’

  Slater stared at her. The alcohol roared at his ears. ‘Are you serious?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, darling!’ she said woozily. ‘That’s just the point. Unlike you I’m never serious.’ She ran the heel of one hand slowly over the security guard’s tightly-bound crotch and with the other squeezed Simon the male model’s buttock. ‘Haven’t you heard the song: “Girls just wanna have fun . . .”’

  ‘Chill out, man,’ Simon grinned at Slater, rippling his gym-toned pectorals as he felt in the pockets of his impossibly tight trousers. ‘I’ve got some fantastic coke somewhere.’

  Slater ignored him. ‘You get rid of this pair of clowns right now or I’m walking, OK?’

  ‘Fine!’ she said, folding her arms. ‘Walk. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? You’re just the hired help. How dare you criticise my friends?’

  ‘Fuck your friends!’ shouted Slater.

  ‘That’s exactly what I intend to do. So why don’t you run off home and leave the grown-ups in peace? And send the driver home while you’re at it. Simon and Oke will be staying the night.’

  Slater considered beating both men up, dropping the stone Buddha from the mantelpiece through the glass table-top and then pissing on the carpet, but in the end he simply walked out.

  The driver was waiting in the Lexus, listening to the radio and smoking. From the expression on his face, Slater could tell that he had guessed what had happened up in the flat.

  ‘Highbury, is it mate?’ he asked sympathetically.

  ‘Thanks.’

  The motion of the car made Slater feel nauseous. The journey seemed to go on for ever. When he finally climbed out in Mafeking Terrace, the driver wound down the electric window.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, mate, you’re not the first – nor likely to be the last. She’s a bit of a greedy girl is our Gracie.’

  Slater, swaying, stared at him in silence.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me you thought it was the real thing, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Slater, looking down at his Prada shoes. ‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

  As the car vanished into the night he spread his legs, the better to avoid splashing himself, and threw up into the gutter.

  SIX

  The next morning Josephine rang Slater from the Minerva office. Grace Litvinoff, she told him, had decided to leave town for a few days and would not be requiring his services after all. He would be paid a cancellation fee for the lost day’s work.

  Slater had been expecting the call. Bagging and wrapping his unworn designer clothes, he returned them to the bemused sales assistants who had supplied them. There had been a mistake, he explained to them, and Mrs Litvinoff should be recredited for the goods. The clothes that he had worn the night before he took to the local Oxfam shop, who were delighted to accept them.

  On the Monday he kept the appointment with Lark. For two hours, once again, he went over every detail of the events at Bolingbroke’s School with the Treasury Solicitor. A smooth-jowled, pinstriped figure whom Slater estimated to be in his late forties sat in on the interview. He remained silent throughout.

  This time, although the same ground was covered, Lark seemed a little more concerned by Slater’s account than he has been in the police cell. As Slater described breaking off the chair-leg and setting off down the school drive in pursuit of the kidnappers, he frowned, touched his gold propelling pencil to his lips, and shook his head. As Slater recounted how he drew his knife and stabbed the first Arab, Lark steepled his fingers and rocked back and forth in his chair, expressionless, before leaning forward and making copious notes.

  Finally Lark indicated that he had all the answers he required, and the man in the pin striped suit left the room. At no point in the interview had he acknowledged Slater.

  ‘You were informed of the possibility of a court of inquiry?’ Lark asked Slater when the other man had gone.

  ‘Of the possibility, yeah,’ answered Slater. ‘Why, has it become a probability?’

  ‘Not as yet,’ Lark replied levelly. ‘So far we’ve kept the lid on. I’d encourage you, though, to do everything that you can to prevent things going any further.’

  ‘And how can I do that?’ Slater asked frustratedly.

  ‘I’m sure ways will suggest themselves in due course, Mr Slater,’ said Lark quietly. He rose to his feet. The interview was over.

  They were playing with him, thought Slater bitterly. They were pissing him around, winding him up, rattling his cage. Well, they could fuck themselves. If he was prosecuted he’d bring down the whole house of cards, tell the court that the Regiment had taught him to shoot to kill and that he could no longer control his reactions. He’d play the post-traumatic stress card, force them to question him about Operation Greenfly. That’d set set the cat among the pigeons and no mistake.

  Basically, he told himself now, he wanted to steer well clear of any involvement with the security services. They could bring him nothing but grief. He had to prove to himself that he could live a self-sufficient life.

  For all his anger, however, and for all his determination not to bow to the system, at heart Slater was afraid. He was no David Shayler: he wasn’t good with words and he didn’t have the whistleblower mentality – at heart the habit of loyalty was just too deeply ingrained. If push came to shove and there was a court of inquiry, he was pretty sure he’d end up being the fall-guy. They’d plead national security and bang him up somewhere he couldn’t be seen or heard, and that would be it. He just had to try and put the whole business from his mind and hope against hope that push never did come to shove.

  That afternoon he visited a DIY warehouse in Walthamstow. He bought paint, decorating materials, cleaning equipment and kitchen goods. That afternoon he started work on the flat. By the end of the weekend he had the place how he wanted it – comfortable but anonymous.

  Over the two months that followed Slater accepted every bodyguarding job that he was offered. He was polite, he was biddable, and he was obedient. He kept his distance from his clients emotionally, but provided a discreet and professional service. He was involved in only two confrontations — both with paparazzo photographers. In each case the photographer handed over the film and backed off.

  He started a desultory affair with a woman who lived on the floor beneath him. He met her when he knocked on her door one Saturday morning to apologise for the noise he was about to make with an electric floor-sander that he had hired. That evening they went out for a meal at a Turkish restaurant in Highbury Grove. Her name, she told him, was Lauren Vail, and she was a nurse attached to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. She loved the work but the money was terrible, and she’d been considering going private – maybe in one of the Gulf States.

 
He told her in his turn that he worked in the security industry, that the work was dull but regular, and that he was saving up to buy a small business. What sort of small business this would be, he hadn’t yet decided.

  After the meal, in the course of which she drank two glasses of white wine and he drank a bottle and a half, they returned to Mafeking Terrace. She showed him round her flat – a tour lasting less than a minute – and left him asleep in her bed the next morning.

  He took to staying with her two or three times a week. They got on well, but it soon became clear to Slater that she wanted more than a drinking companion and occasional sex-partner.

  One evening she came back from work to tell him that she had signed on with an agency providing nursing personnel to hospitals in Oman and Abu Dhabi. As she spoke to him she scanned his face for any sign that this news saddened him, waited hopefully for him to ask her to stay.

  He said nothing. Remained expressionless.

  ‘It’s not going to happen between us, is it Neil?’ she said regretfully.

  ‘We have more than a lot of people have,’ he told her, turning to the window. ‘We’ve never treated each other badly.’

  ‘That’s not enough, though, is it? I can’t get anywhere near you, really. Not the real you. I probably won’t ever know what . . .’

  ‘What?’

  She took a deep breath. There was nothing to lose now. ‘What’s “Greenfly”, Neil?’

  His face blanked, turned to stone. ‘Where did you hear that word?’

  ‘You talk in your sleep, Neil. Especially . . .’

  ‘Especially?’

  ‘Especially on the bad nights. Neil, you sit up in bed and shout. I had to tell Ray and Dave next door it was the TV – some late-night cop show.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m not trying to force my way into your life, I promise you, I’m just trying to help. Can’t you . . . can’t you let me do that?’

  He smiled at her. Placed his arm round her shoulder. ‘Forget it, Lauren. It’s nothing. Nothing I can talk about, anyway.’

  She shook off his arm. ‘I’m not a child, Neil. I know you’re . . .’