I did not think I had heard a silence that ran so deep, burying itself in the very bones of the night.

He said, “I…”

And stopped.

Said, “It wasn’t…”

Stopped again.

Some words on the tip of his tongue. Justifications perhaps, excuses. Following orders. Justice. Retribution. Poor decisions, too little time, too much pressure. Past history–poor Nathan Coyle, he’s been hurt, he’s been traumatised by events gone by, don’t judge, not him, not for his actions freely taken.

The words rose to his lips and died before they could be expressed.

I watched them dissolve into him, burning as they burrowed deep into his flesh, until he looked away and said nothing at all.

I paced the room, turned on the TV.

Reports of…

… someone else’s problems.

Turned the TV off again.

Waited.

Then he said, I want to brush my teeth.

Bathroom’s right there. Knock yourself out.

He rose, painfully, testing the bandages across his arm and chest, feeling that they were good.

The bathroom door stood ajar, and from the bed I watched him move in and out of view against bright white light. When the tap had finished running, I eased back the bathroom door so that I might see him fully, and there he stood, hands pressed down on the edge of the sink, staring up into the mirror as if he too were only just seeing his face, he too was trying to solve the question of what shape it might become. I leaned against the door frame, a surgically skinned prostitute in a town where the rates were bad, the pimps difficult, the secrets of my trade hidden beneath new-washed cobbled streets. His eyes didn’t move to me, didn’t wander from the hypnotic weight of his own stare.

“If I say no?” he asked.

“Then I’ll leave. I’ll run to where my file on Aquarius will be. I’ll tear them apart from the inside out and leave you alone.”

“To die? Is that the threat?”

“I won’t hurt you. Aquarius, Galileo… your guess is as good as mine. But I won’t hurt you.”

He nodded once at his own reflection, then looked down into the depths of the sink, shoulders hunched, back bent, suddenly old before his time. “Do it,” he said. “Do it.”

I reached out, then hesitated, my fingers hovering above the bare skin of his back. “Do it!” he snarled, lips twisting, eyebrows knotted together and I pressed my fingers against his skin and, instinctive before his rage,

jumped.

I am Nathan Coyle. Here, the pounding of my heart. The heat in my eyes, the aching in my chest.

I am Nathan Coyle, standing hurt and breathless, a bewildered woman with an implausible name reeling in the doorway of the bathroom.

I am Nathan Coyle, looking up into the mirror at eyes that wanted to weep.

And for a moment, as I regard my reflection staring back at me, I wish to God that I were anyone else in the world.

Chapter 80

There are no planes from Lyon to New York.

Back on to the trains.

Passengers on a train are harder to track than cars.

The TGV, the push of acceleration, the roar of tunnels, the flat fields of northern France.

Back to Paris.

The passenger next to me, at a table of four, was an old man with an oversized newspaper.

I read the articles over his shoulder for a while, but his reading speed was slow, mine fast, and I was tired, and bored, and lonely, so I put one hand on his wrist and

jumped.

Coyle stirred by my side, saw the window, the countryside grey-green outside, heard the engine, smelt overpriced railway coffee and at last, his hand still on mine, saw me.

“We’re not there yet?”

“Not yet.”

“What is it?”

“I… wanted to say hello.”

“Why?”

“I thought you might… want to know how we were doing?” He stared at me, incredulous. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I… was just trying to be nice.”

I jumped back through the hot palm of his hand.

Back in Gare de Lyona, nd for a few seconds I left Coyle, who staggered, catching his weight against the side of a ticket machine.

“What is it now?”

“We’re low on money,” I replied, fumbling in my pockets for my wallet. “Here–take this.” I pulled all the notes save one from my wallet, held them out for Coyle.

He looked down with the contempt of a bishop for a fallen devil, then folded the money into his fist. “Who are you?” he asked as I put my far lighter wallet back into my pocket.

“Right now I’m a man who met a stranger and shook him by the hand. So shake my hand, Nathan Coyle, and let’s move on.”

Slowly he uncurled his fingers and shook me gently by the hand.

I rode the train to the airport, then the humming twin-carriaged shuttle to the terminal. A woman stood opposite me, her hair fair, her skin tanned, a green dress tied shut across her waist, her laugh as she chatted with a friend on the phone dazzling and bright. She was going to the car park, I decided, having returned from a sun-soaked holiday in some southern clime, and for her tomorrow held no dread of work or fear of jet lag, but rather a delight that having departed, she was now returning to her waiting family and friends, who would all cluster about to see her.

My fingers itched to brush her skin and have that laugh to call my own, as my mother, father–perhaps even some adoring siblings who as a child I squabbled with but are now all grown up and fraternally in love–crushed me to their sides and called me their little pumpkin, their dearest girl.

Then I looked round, and saw Nathan Coyle’s reflection staring back at me from the window panes, and the doors opened, and she was gone.

One ticket to New York, coming up.

And I was…

“Passport, please?”

Coyle blinked up at me, felt his hand upon my own, peeking through the little gap in the screen where weary travellers must place their passports upon attempting to leave this land. I smiled at him and said in cheerful, chatty French, “I’m going to look at your passport now, Mr Coyle,” and prised my fingers free from his.

It was the first time I’d been inside a passport control booth, having never before felt the need. An uncomfortable high stool, foolproof equipment that I was too foolish to fully comprehend, a holstered gun tucked beneath the counter.

“Give it a few moments,” I said, “then move on as if I’ve cleared you. I’ll be a couple of bodies behind.”

He nodded, and at my smile and cheery “Have a good flight!” shuffled like one half-asleep down through the line.

I scanned a few more passports, inspected a few more faces, just for the hell of it, wondering which might be criminal, which a smuggler. A bar code scanner beeped appreciatively when I waved a couple of passports at it, and up popped names and numbers on my screen which I made a show of studying while chubby tourists and harassed businessmen waited for me to clear them through. When one came along whose build seemed close enough to Coyle’s, his hair of the same colour and a similar cut, I smiled especially brightly, reached out for his passport and, as his fingers brushed mine,

my fingers brushed back.

Nine bodies later, as Coyle stepped up to the metal detectors at border control, laying his bag down on the X-ray conveyor, I said, “You carrying anything dodgy, sir?” His eyes flashed to mine, for “dodgy” was not a word commonly expected of customs officers. I smiled and added, “Strip-search, sir?”

“Do we have the time?”

“Oh, sir,” I chided, pushing his bag on to the conveyor belt, “don’t you know how much more exciting it is to be touched by another’s skin, instead of your own? But I can see you’re not in the mood, and I’ve got an ingrown toenail; you go straight on through.”