I perched on a cold metal bench beneath a red slate awning and let the coffee cool, untouched, by my side. A wet yellow sun was beginning to push up from the horizon, tiny and angry against a drained grey sky. It seemed a morning into which no colour could creep, try as it might. Low mist clung to the grass at the edge of the tarmac. Fat lorries grumbled away from the petrol pumps, engines roaring up to speed as they slipped on to the motorway.

I finished my sandwich and turned the mobile phone back on.

It took a while, settled down, showed a text message: Do you like what you see?

And then another, sent a few minutes later, its sender unable to resist: This one’s for you.

Smiley face.

A many-chinned driver, his padded red jacket flapping around his belly, passed me by. I asked him for the time, and as he made to answer caught his wrist, jumped, took the mobile phone from the proffered, unresisting hand, dropped it into my pocket, jumped back.

Less than five seconds.

Three, at a pinch.

I still felt my host’s dizziness from my last departure.

Six thirty a.m., the driver told me when he stopped swaying. Better get moving before the traffic thickens.

In the gents’ toilet I slipped into a cubicle, rolled up my sleeve, found a vein and pushed ten millilitres of sedative into my veins. This done, I stepped out, walked up to a man at the urinal and, speech already slurring, said, “Hit me.”

He half-turned, so I grabbed him and

switched

trousers still around my knees, I hit him as hard as I could.

I was a big man, and what I lacked in regular exercise, I made up for with mass. Besides, the other guy was sedated.

He really didn’t stand a chance.

Dawn in a French service station.

I look for a car.

Not a lorry–too many people have vested interests in lorries making it to their final destination. Night staff coming off shift are ideal, but it takes switches through

truck driver, breath stinking of mints, to

policeman, back heavy, an ache all down my left side, to

cleaning lady

ah, the cleaning lady. Blue apron, dyed black hair, pale skin, thin arms, she’s finished mopping the floor, and as I pause and check her pockets I find that I am the owner of a wallet with forty euros in, I have no pictures of family or loved ones, my mobile is off, ancient and unloved, and I am–blessed be–carrying a set of car keys.

I leave my mop against the wall, and collect my coffee and sandwiches from the bench on my way out.

Chapter 75

Coyle said, “Who the hell are you?”

“I am Irena Skarbek,” I replied primly. “I am a cleaning lady.”

“I can see you’re a cleaning lady–the question is why you’re a cleaning lady.”

“Can’t use this van, could be tracked. Dumped the phone in a lorry driver’s pocket, hope he’s going a long way at questionable speed.”

“Aquarius will guess you ditched the phone.”

I levered him up “A live signal is a live signal and should be followed no matter what. Even if it only buys us a few extra hours, I’m happy. Now, what kind of car do you think a woman like me drives?”

I drove a second-hand Renault that clunked and thumped its way on cracked suspension down the motorway. A plastic crucifix bounced irritatingly from the driver’s mirror. A whole family of furry cats nodded their approval out of the back windscreen. The upholstery smelt of cigarette smoke, the gear stick was a little too stiff. On the tiny back seat my bags of medical equipment and bloody blankets lay, tumbled between collections of old CDs and battered maps.

Coyle sat in the passenger seat, head back, legs stretched, and watched my irritation grow. At last he said, “Shall I…?” gesturing at the crucifix.

“If you wouldn’t mind.” He tucked it into the glove compartment, then hesitated, staring inside. “Anything interesting?” I asked.

“What? No. Not really. I… don’t usually steal other people’s cars.”

“I do. All the time. Do I have a driving licence in there?”

“Does it matter if you don’t?”

“I like to find all the paperwork. Makes it easier if you’re going to stick around.”

“Are you going to stick around?”

I shifted in my seat, testing the weight of my arms, heaviness of my back. “The body’s tired,” I admitted, “but so am I, so that’s not really relevant. I haven’t noticed any major muscular or skeletal problems; I’m not wearing a medical bracelet or carrying any sort of inhaler or EpiPen.”

“EpiPen?”

“Bees, nuts, lactose, yeast, wheat, prawns–the list of things that can kill you is not to be underestimated. Check the glove compartment.”

“I don’t see anything like that.”

“In that case, I imagine I’m sticking around. Sandwich?”

“I think,” he said, slow and careful as I gestured at the still-steaming croque monsieur, “I might puke.”

“No sandwich?”

“You haven’t been shot much, have you?”

“I’ve been shot a lot. Far more than you, judging by your scars. I simply didn’t hang around for the medical after effects.”

“Piss to your sandwich,” he explained.

We drove in silence.

Then, “Why Irena?”

“She had a car.”

“Is that it?”

“She was coming off shift. After a night shift most people go straight to bed. That’s eight or nine hours in which no one should be expecting contact from her. I can do a lot in eight hours.”

“That’s it? That’s the extent of your… discrimination?”

“If you’re asking whether I would rather be a glamorous mid-twenty-something with perky breasts, a healthy bank account and pain-free teeth–yes. But they don’t tend to hang around in service stations off the A75.”

Coyle seemed too tired to manage his usual contempt.

I turned on the radio, flicked through a few stations, settled on unobtrusive jazz. The traffic coming from the north had headlights on, though the sun was getting high. Black clouds were striped with lines of rain. Roadside billboards advertised garden centres, fresh milk, the new season’s clothes, crude political views and second-hand Fiats.

“Why are you helping me?”

Coyle’s voice was heavy. His head rolled, eyes staring without seeing at the oncoming traffic. I turned the windscreen wipers up as the first of the rain began to thicken against the glass, slowed for the rising sheets of mist from the rear wheels of the cars ahead.

“Sentiment?” I suggested, and he hacked a coughing disdain. “You could help me.”

“I could kill you.”

“Not right now.”

“I… have killed you. Killed your host. You talked about… retribution before.”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“What’s changed?”

“I don’t kill the foot soldiers. Not unless I have to. Also…”

“Also?”

“I spent a lot of time wearing your face. It would be disquieting to break it now.”

“You told the man… the nurse, back by the stream.”

“Samir?”

“Him. You told him that, given the circumstances in which he found himself, he had to weigh up the risks of his actions and decide whether to stay, whether to run. Why aren’t you running?”

“Because I don’t think you’re as primed to shoot me as you once were.”

“You stole my body.”

“I gave it back.”

“Left me handcuffed to a radiator.”

“And told the police where to find you before you could starve to death. Really, if a pair of silver scales were to weigh up the justice of our causes, you’d find that my motivation to do you harm greatly exceeds any valid reason you could ever have to kill me. You murdered Josephine, would have killed more just to kill me. You gunned down Janus without a second thought, kidnapped me in the middle of dinner, and when I go to great lengths to keep you alive after your own side shoot you, all I get is rampant hostility and criticism. But if that doesn’t satisfy you then here it is: Aquarius lied to you. They faked the Galileo file. They sent you across the world to gun down me and mine, but the one monster who really deserves his fate they left untouched. And when you get a little nervous on the subject, they try and kill you too. So to hell with the why and wherefore of our little arrangement. It’s what you need. It’s how you stay alive. And there’s the end of it.”