A Delicate Truth A Novel

chit-chat – who the big guns were these days, and whether Washington might finally come back to the Office, or be given to another outsider. But Kit very quickly lost patience and soon they were scurrying across the stable yard in pouring rain, Kit leading the way with a torch as they skirted piles of sand and granite setts. Then the sweet smell of hay as they passed empty horseboxes on their way to the old saddle room, with its brick walls, high, arched windows, and iron Victorian fireplace, ready laid.
    And on an old linen press that did duty as a sofa-table, a wad of A4 paper, a pack of best bitter beer and a bottle of J&B, unbroached – all set ready, Toby assumed, not in honour of himself, but of Jeb, the guest who hadn’t come.
    Kit had dropped into a crouch and was holding a match to the fire.
    ‘We’ve got a thing here called Bailey’s Fayre,’ he said into the fireplace, poking with his long forefinger at the flames. ‘It’s supposed to go back to God knows when. Load of balls.’ And after puffing vigorously at the kindling: ‘I’m about to break every bloody rule I ever believed in, in case you didn’t know.’
    ‘Well, that makes two of us, doesn’t it?’ Toby replied.
    And some kind of complicity was born.
     
    *
     
    Toby is a good listener, and for a couple of hours he has barely spoken except to offer the odd murmured word of sympathy.
    Kit has described his recruitment by Fergus Quinn, and hisbriefing by Elliot. He has flown to Gibraltar as Paul Anderson, paced his hated hotel room, huddled on the hillside with Jeb, Shorty, Andy and Don, and provided his own ear- and eyewitness account of Operation Wildlife and its supposedly glorious conclusion.
    He has described the Fayre: scrupulously monitoring himself as he goes along, catching himself out on this or that small point and correcting himself, then carrying on.
    He has described with determined dispassion, though it comes hard to him, the discovery of Jeb’s handwritten receipt, and its impact upon Suzanna, then himself. He has yanked open a drawer of his desk and with a brusque ‘take a look for yourself’, pressed on him the flimsy piece of lined paper.
    He has described with thinly disguised revulsion his meeting with Jay Crispin at the Connaught, and his reassuring phone call to Suzanna that in retrospect seems to cause him more pain than any other single episode.
    And now he is describing his encounter with Jeb at the club.
    ‘How the hell did he know you were staying there?’ Toby interrupted in subdued bewilderment, at which a kind of joy briefly suffused Kit’s harrowed features.
    ‘Bugger stalked me,’ he said proudly. ‘Don’t ask me how. All the way from here to London. Saw me board the train in Bodmin, rode on it himself. Stalked me to the Connaught, stalked me to my club. Stealth ,’ he added in marvel, as if stealth were a brand-new concept to him.
     
    *
     
    The club bedroom boasts a school bedstead, a washbasin with a towel no bigger than a pocket handkerchief and a two-bar electric fire that used to be coin-operated until an historic decision by the committee ruled that the cost of heating be included in the nightly charge. The shower is an up-ended coffin of whiteplastic crammed into a cupboard. Kit has successfully found the light switch but not yet closed the bedroom door behind him. Wordless, he watches Jeb get up from his chair, advance across the floor to him, pick the room key out of his hand, lock the door with it, drop it into the pocket of his smart blazer, and return to his seat beneath the open window.
    Jeb orders Kit to switch off the overhead light. Kit obeys. Now the only light source is the glow of London’s orange night sky through the window. Jeb asks Kit for his cellphone. Kit mutely hands it over. Unbothered by the half-darkness, Jeb removes the battery, then the SIM card as deftly as if he were stripping down a gun, and tosses the pieces on to the bed.
    ‘Take your jacket off, please, Paul. How drunk are you?’
    Kit manages ‘not very’. The Paul discomforts him but he takes his jacket off anyway.
    ‘Have a shower if you like, Paul. Just leave the door open.’
    Kit doesn’t like, but ducks his head into the washbasin and sluices water on to his face, then rubs his face and hair with the towel in an effort to rub himself sober, but he is becoming more sober by the second anyway. A mind under siege can do a lot of things at once, and Kit’s is doing most of them. He is making