‘So, you’ve known my mother for a while.’

He stared back at her. ‘Long enough.’

‘I, uh, I appreciate you taking the time to see us.’

‘I had to be here anyway. It wasn’t a problem.’

‘Yes, uh. How’s it going? I mean, can you talk about it?’

A shrug. ‘It isn’t, strictly speaking, confidential, at this end anyway. I need some data to back up a case we’re putting together. Gjerlow has it, he says.’

‘Is it a British thing?’

‘This time around, no. French.’ A marginal curiosity surfaced on his face. ‘You live there, then?’

‘Where, Britain? Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

She bit her lip. Kirsti arrived with coffee cups and saved them both from the rapidly foundering conversation.

‘So,’ she said brightly. ‘Where are we up to?’

‘We haven’t started yet,’ said Vasvik.

Kirsti frowned. ‘Are you okay, Truls?’

‘Not really.’ He met her gaze. ‘Jannicke died.’

‘Jannicke Onarheim? Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Truls.’ Kirsti reached out and put her hand on Vasvik’s arm. ‘What happened?’

He smiled bleakly. ‘How do ombudsmen die, Kirsti? She was murdered. I only got the call this morning.’

‘Was she working?’

Vasvik nodded, staring into the plastic-topped table. ‘Some American shoe manufactury up near Hanoi. The usual stuff, reported human rights abuse, no local police cooperation.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘They found her car run off the road an hour out of town, nowhere near where she should have been. Looks like someone took her for a ride. Raped. Shot. Single cap, back of the head.’

He glanced up at Carla, who had flinched on the word raped.

‘Yeah. It’s probably good you hear this. Jannicke is the third this year. The Canadians have lost twice that number. UN ombudsmen earn their money, and often enough we don’t get to spend it. From what Kirsti says, your man might not suit the work.’

The implied slight to Chris, as always, fired her up.

‘Well, I doubt you’d last long in Conflict Investment.’

The other two looked at her with chilly Norwegian disapproval.

‘Perhaps not,’ said Vasvik finally. ‘It was not my intention to insult you or your man. But you should know what you are trying to get him into. Less than fifty years ago, this was still a comfortable, localised, office-based little profession. That’s changed. Now, at this level, it can get you killed. There is no recognition of the work we do - at best we are seen as fussy bureaucrats, at worst as the enemies of capitalism and the bedfellows of terrorists. Our UN mandate is a bad joke. Only a handful of governments will act on our findings. The rest cave in to corporate pressure. Some, like the United States and so, of course, Britain, simply refuse point blank to support the process. They are not even signatories to the agreement. They block us at every turn. They query our budgets, they demand a transparency that exposes our field agents, they offer legal and financial asylum to those offenders we do manage to indict. We shelve two out of every three cases for lack of viability and,’ he jerked his chin, perhaps out to wherever Jannicke Onarheim’s body now lay, ‘we bury our dead to the jeers of the popular media.’

More silence. Across the cafe, someone worked the coffee machine.

‘Do you hate your job?’ asked Carla quietly.

A thin smile. ‘Not as much as I hate the people I chase.’

‘Chris, my husband, hates his job. So much that it’s killing him.’

‘Then why doesn’t he just quit?’ There was scant sympathy in the ombudsman’s voice.

‘That’s so fucking easy for you to say.’

Kirsti shot her a warning glance. ‘Truls, Chris was born and brought up in the London cordoned zones. You’ve seen that, you know what it’s like. And you know what happens to the ones who manage to claw their way out. First-generation syndrome. If quitting means going back to the zones, he probably would rather die. He’d certainly rather kill. And in the end, we know how closely those two can be intertwined.’

Another smile, somewhat less thin. ‘Yes. First-generation syndrome. I remember that particular lecture quite well, for some reason.’

Kirsti joined him in the smile. She flexed her body beneath her sweater in a fashion that made her daughter blush.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realised it was that memorable.’

It was as if something heavy had dropped from Vasvik’s shoulders. He sat up a little in the moulded plastic chair, turned back to Carla.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I don’t deny it. Someone like your husband could be useful to us. The information he has alone would probably be enough to build a couple of dozen cases. And, yes, a background in Conflict Investment would go a long way to making a good ombudsman. But I can’t promise you, him, a job. For one thing, we’d need an extraction team to get him away from Shorn. But, yes, if he really wants out, I can ask around. I can set some wheels in motion.’

It was what she wanted to hear, but somehow it didn’t fill her with the feeling she’d expected. Something about Vasvik’s clamped anger, the news of sudden death or maybe the bleak landscape outside, something was not right.

And later, when they got up to go and Kirsti and Truls embraced with genuine affection, she turned away so that she would not have to watch.

Chapter Twenty-One

Monday was soft summer rain and a nagging pain behind the eyes. He drove in with a vague sense of exposure all the way, and when he parked and alarmed the car, tiny twitches of the same discomfort sent him scanning the corners of the car deck for watchers.

This early, there was nobody about.

There were phone messages on the datadown - Liz Linshaw, drawling, ironic and inviting, Joaquin Lopez from the NAME. He shelved Liz and told the datadown to dial up Lopez’s mobile. The Americas agent had called four times in the last two hours and he sounded close to panic. He grabbed the phone at the third ring, voice tight and shaky.

‘Si, digame.’

‘It’s Faulkner. Jesus, Joaquin, what the fuck’s the matter with you?’

‘Escuchame.’ There was the sound of movement. Chris got the impression Lopez was in a hotel room, getting up from the bed, moving. The agent’s voice firmed up as he crossed into English. ‘Listen, Chris, I think I’m in trouble. I got down here last night, been making some enquiries about Diaz and now I got a clutch of Echevarria’s political police all over me like putas on payday. They’re in the bar across the street, downstairs in the lounge. I think a couple of them have taken a room on this floor, I don’t—‘

‘Joaquin, calm down. I understand the situation.’

‘No, you don’t fucking understand my situation, man. This is the NAME. These guys will cut my fucking cojones off if they get the chance. They bundle me into a car, and that’s it, I’m fucking history, man—‘

‘Joaquin, will you just shut up and listen!’ Chris went direct from the command snap to enabled conciliatory without allowing the other man a response. Textbook stuff. ‘I know you’re scared. I understand why. Now, let’s do something about it. What do these guys look like?’

‘Look like?’ A panicky snort. ‘They look like fucking political police, what do you want me to say? Ray Bans, bellies and fucking moustaches. Get the picture?’

Chris did get the picture. He’d seen these cut-rate bad guys in operation on his own trip to the Monitored Economy with Hammett McColl. He knew the gut-sliding sense of menace they could generate simply by appearing on the scene.

‘No, Joaquin, I meant. Did you get pictures? Have you got your shades set down there?’

‘Yeah, I brought them.’ A pause. ‘I didn’t use them yet.’

‘Right.’

‘I freaked. I’m sorry, Chris, I fucked up. I didn’t think.’

‘Well, think now, Joaquin. Get a grip. You can fuck up on your own time, right now you’re on the Shorn clock. I’m not paying you to get your arse killed.’ Chris glanced at his watch. ‘What time is it there? One a.m.?’