Amsterdam

A quarter of an hour later she took another peep, this time from the sitting room window, two floors up. She felt just as she liked to be before a difficult day at the children’s hospital: calm, alert, impatient to begin the work. No guests the night before, no wine at supper, an hour with the notes, seven hours’ unbroken sleep. She would let nothing break this mood, so she stared down at the group—there were nine of them now—with controlled fascination. The man had collapsed his extendable pole and rested it against the railings. One of the others was bringing a tray of coffees from the takeaway shop on Horseferry Road. What could they ever hope to get that they didn’t already have? And so early in the morning. What sort of satisfaction could they have from this kind of work? And why was it they looked so alike, these door-steppers, as though drawn from one tiny gene puddle of humanity? Large-faced, jowly, pushy men in leather jackets who spoke with the same accent, an odd blend of fake Cockney and fake posh, which they delivered with the same pleading, belligerent whine. ’Ere, this way please, Mrs. Garmony! Rose!

Fully dressed now and ready to leave, she carried his tea and the morning papers into the darkened bedroom. She hesitated at the foot of the bed. Lately his days had been so vile, she was reluctant to wake him into another one. He had driven from Wiltshire last night, then stayed up late sipping scotch, she knew, in front of a video of Bergman’s The Magic Flute. Then he had pulled out all Molly Lane’s letters, the ones that stupidly indulged his grotesque cravings. Thank God that episode was over, thank God the woman was dead.

The letters were still spread out over the carpet and he would need to put them away before the cleaning lady came. Only the top of his head was visible on the pillow-fifty-two, and his hair still black. She ruffled it gently. Sometimes, on the rounds, a nurse might wake a child for her this way, and Rose was always touched by those seconds of confusion in some small boy’s eyes as he grasped that he was not at home and that the touch was not his mother’s.

“Darling,” she whispered.

His voice was muffled by the winter duvet. “Are they out there?”

“Nine of them.”

“Fuck.”

“I’ve got to run. I’ll phone you. Take this.”

He pushed the bedclothes clear of his face and sat up. “Of course. The little girl. Candy. Good luck.”

They kissed lightly on the lips as she put the cup in his hands. She laid her hand on his cheek and reminded him of the letters on the floor. Then she stepped away quietly and went downstairs to phone her secretary at the hospital. In the hall she put on a thick woolen overcoat, checked herself in the mirror, and was about to pick up her case, keys, and scarf when she changed her mind and went back up. She found him as she guessed she would, on his back, arms outspread, dozing, the tea cooling by a pile of departmental memos. There hadn’t been time in the past week, with the crisis, and the photos to be published tomorrow, Friday, there simply hadn’t been a moment when she’d been able or wanted to discuss her cases with him, and though she knew it was an old politician’s skill, remembering the names, she was touched that he’d made the effort. She tapped his hand and whispered.

“Julian.”

“Oh God,” he said without opening his eyes. “First meeting’s at half eight. Got to walk past the snakes.”

She spoke in the voice she used to calm desperate parents: slow, light, airy rather than grave. “It’s going to be fine, perfectly fine.”

He smiled at her, completely unconvinced. She leaned over and spoke into his ear. “Trust me.”

Downstairs, she checked herself in the mirror once more. She buttoned her coat fully and arranged the scarf to half conceal her face. She picked up her case and let herself out of the flat. Down in the entrance hall she paused by the front door with her hand on the lock, preparing herself to open it and make a dash for her car.

“Oi! Rosy! This way! Looking sad now, please, Mrs. Garmony.”

2

About the same time, three miles to the west, Vernon Halliday was waking from, then tumbling back into, dreams of ru

At last he woke fully into the calm of morning sounds-birdsong, the distant radio in the kitchen, the soft closing of a cupboard door. He pushed the covers away and lay on his back naked, feeling the centrally heated air drying the clamminess on his chest. His dreams were simply a kaleidoscopic fracturing of his week, fair comment on its pace and emotional demands but omitting—with the unthinking partisan bias of the unconscious—the game plan, the rationale whose evolving logic had in fact kept him sane. Publication day was tomorrow, Friday, with one picture held over to Monday to keep the story alive. And the story seethed with life, it had kicking legs and was ru

Despite the dissenting voices, a broad consensus was emerging that the Judge was a decent, fighting paper, and that the government had been in power too long and was financially, morally, and sexually corrupt, and that Julian Garmony was typical of it and was a despicable person whose head was urgently needed on a plate. In a week, sales were up by a hundred thousand, and the editor was finding he was arguing into silence from his senior editors rather than protests; secretly they all wanted him to go ahead, as long as their principled dissent was minuted. Vernon was wi