A Delicate Truth A Novel

enemy.
     
    *
     
    Ring Sally, his assistant. Get her voicemail. Good. Affect a tone of suffering bravely borne:
    ‘Sally. Toby here. Bloody wisdom tooth acting up, I’m afraid. I’m booked in at the tooth fairy in an hour. So listen. They’ll have to count me out of this morning’s meeting. And maybe Gregory can stand in for me at the NATO bash. Apologies all round, okay? I’ll keep you posted. Sorry again.’
    Next, the sartorial question: what does your enterprising provincial journalist wear on his visit to London? He settled for jeans, trainers and a light anorak, and – a neat touch in his opinion – a brace of ballpoints to go with the reporter’s notebook from his desk.
    But reaching for his BlackBerry, he checked himself, remembering that it contained Jeb’s photographs that were also Shorty’s.
    He decided he was better off without it.
     
    *
     
    The Golden Calf Café & Patisserie lay halfway along the high street, squeezed between a halal butcher and a kosher delicatessen. In its pink-lit windows, birthday cakes and wedding cakes jostled with meringues the size of ostrich eggs. A brass handrail divided the café from the shop. This much Toby saw from across the road before turning into a side street to complete his survey of parked cars, vans and the crowds of morning shoppers who packed the pavements.
    Approaching the café a second time, now on the same side, Toby confirmed what he had observed on his first pass: that the café section at this hour was empty of customers. Selecting what the instructors called the bodyguard’s table – in a corner, facing the entrance – he ordered a cappuccino and waited.
    In the shop section on the other side of the brass handrail, customers armed with plastic tongs were loading up their paper boxes with patisserie, sidling along the counter and paying their dues at the cash desk. But none qualified as Shorty Pike, six foot four – but Jeb come in from under him, buckled his knees for him, then broke his nose for him on the way down .
    Eleven o’clock turned to ten past. He’s got cold feet, Toby decided. They reckon he’s a health risk, and he’s sitting in a van with his head blown off with the wrong hand.
    A bald, heavy-set man with a pockmarked olive complexion and small round eyes was peering covetously through the window: first at the cakes and pastries, now at Toby, now at the cakes again. No blink-rate, weightlifter’s shoulders. Snappy dark suit, no tie. Now he’s walked away. Was he scouting? Or was he thinking he would treat himself to a cream bun, then changed his mind for his figure’s sake? Then Toby realized that Shorty was sitting beside him. And that Shorty must have been hovering all the time in the toilet at the back of the café, which was something Toby hadn’t thought of and should have done, but clearly Shorty had.
    He seemed taller than his six foot four, probably because he was sitting upright, with both very large hands on the table in the half-curled position. He had oily black hair, close cropped at the back and sides, and high film-star cheekbones with a built-in grin. His dark complexion was so shiny it looked as though it had been scrubbed with a soapy nail-brush after shaving. There was a small dent at the centre of his nose, so perhaps Jeb had left his mark. He was wearing a sharply ironed blue denim shirt with buttoned-up regulation patch pockets, one for his cigarettes, the other for a protruding comb.
    ‘You’re Pete then, right?’ he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
    ‘And you’re Shorty. What can I get you, Shorty? Coffee? Tea?’
    Shorty raised his eyebrows and looked slowly round the café. Toby wondered whether he was always this theatrical, or whether being tall and narcissistic made you behave like this.
    And wondering this, he caught another glimpse, or thought he did, of the same bald, heavy-set man who had debated with himself about buying a cream bun, hurrying past the shop window with an air of conspicuous unconcern.
    ‘Tell you what, Pete,’ said Shorty.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m not all that comfortable being here, frankly, if it’s all the same to you. I’d like it a bit more private, like. Far from the maddening crowd, as they say.’
    ‘Wherever you like, Shorty. It’s your call.’
    ‘And you’re not being clever, are you? Like, you haven’t got a photographer tucked round the corner, or similar?’
    ‘I’m clean as a whistle and all alone, Shorty. Just lead the way’ –