The Ghost

prime minister—everything—I did out of conviction, because I believed it was right.”
    I mumbled a reply. I was in a state of shock.
    “Emmett claims you showed him some photographs. Is that true? May I see?”
    My hands shook slightly as I removed them from the envelope and pushed them across the table toward him. He flicked through the first four very quickly, paused over the fifth—the one that showed him and Emmett onstage—then went back to the beginning and started looking at them again, lingering over each image.
    He said, without raising his eyes from the pictures, “Where did you get them?”
    “McAra ordered them up from the archive. I found them in his room.”
    Over the intercom, the copilot asked us to fasten our seat belts.
    “Odd,” murmured Lang. “Odd the way we’ve all changed so much and yet also stayed exactly the same. Mike never mentioned anything to me about photographs. Oh, that bloody archive!” He squinted closely at one of the riverbank pictures. It was the girls, I noticed, rather than himself or Emmett, who seemed to fascinate him the most. “I remember her,” he said, tapping the picture. “And her. She wrote to me once, when I was prime minister. Ruth was not pleased. Oh, God,” he said, and passed his hand across his face. “Ruth.” For a moment, I thought he was about to break down, but when he looked at me his eyes were dry. “What happens next? Is there a procedure in your line of work to deal with this sort of situation?”
    Patterns of light were very clear in the window now. I could see the headlamps of a car on a road.
    “The client always has the last word about what goes in a book,” I said. “Always. But, obviously, in this case, given what happened—”
    On the tape, my voice trails away, and then there is a loud clunk, as Lang leans forward and grabs my forearm.
    “If you mean what happened to Mike, then let me tell you I was absolutely appalled by that.” His gaze was fixed unwaveringly on me; he was putting everything he had left within him into the task of convincing me, and I’ll freely confess, despite everything I’d discovered, he succeeded: to this day, I’m sure he was telling the truth. “If you believe nothing else, you must please believe that his death had nothing to do with me, and I shall carry that image of Mike in the morgue until my own dying day. I’m sure it was an accident. But okay, let’s say, for the sake of argument, it wasn’t.” He tightened his grip on my arm. “What was he thinking of, driving up to Boston to confront Emmett? He’d been around politics long enough to know that you don’t do something like that, not when the stakes are this high. You know, in a way, he did kill himself. It was a suicidal act.”
    “That’s what worries me,” I said.
    “You can’t seriously think,” said Lang, “that the same thing could happen to you?”
    “It has crossed my mind.”
    “You need have no fears on that score. I can guarantee it.” I guess my disbelief must have been obvious. “Oh, come on, man!” he said urgently. Again, the fingers clenched on my flesh. “There are four policemen traveling on this plane with us right now! What kind of people do you think we are?”
    “Well, that’s just it,” I said. “What kind of people are you?”
    We were coming in low over the treetops. The lights of the Gulfstream gleamed across dark waves of foliage.
    I tried to pull my arm away. “Excuse me,” I said.
    Lang reluctantly let go of me and I fastened my seat belt. He did the same. He glanced out of the window at the terminal, then back at me, appalled, as we dipped gracefully onto the runway.
    “My God, you’ve already told someone, haven’t you?”
    I could feel myself turning scarlet. “No,” I said.
    “You have.”
    “I haven’t.” On the tape I sound as feeble as a child caught red-handed.
    He leaned forward again. “Who have you told?”
    Looking out at the dark forest beyond the perimeter of the airport, where anything could be lurking, it seemed like the only insurance policy I had.
    “Richard Rycart,” I said.
    That must have been a devastating blow to him. He must have known then that it was the end of everything. In my mind’s eye I see him still, like one those once grand but now condemned apartment blocks, moments after the demolition charges have been exploded: for a few seconds, the façade remains bizarrely intact, before slowly beginning to slide. That was Lang. He gave me a