this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’
When she put out the light and pulled up the covers, Grace Browning lay there, strangely calm, staring up through the darkness, looking for him, the shadowy figure with the gun in his hand, but he seemed to have gone. She closed her eyes and slept.
It was four weeks later that Rupert Lang received a call from her in response to a message he had left on her answering phone a week earlier.
‘Sorry I haven’t called you before,’ she said. ‘But some friends had a problem at Cross Little Theatre in the Lake District. They had a week unexpectedly vacant. Someone let them down so I went up and did my one-woman show.’
‘That sounds interesting.’
‘No big deal. Shakespeare’s heroines – that sort of thing.’
‘Can we meet? Tom’s in town. I thought we could have dinner.’
‘That sounds fine. You could come here for drinks first. Six-thirty suit you?’
‘Smashing. We’ll look forward to it.’
At the Cheyne Walk house she opened the door to them herself. She wore a deceptively simple Armani trouser suit in black crepe and her black hair was tied at the back of the neck with a velvet bow.
Rupert Lang took her hands. ‘You look fabulous.’
‘That’s a bit over the top,’ she said.
‘Not at all.’ He kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Don’t you think she looks fabulous, Tom?’
Curry took her hand briefly. ‘Don’t mind Rupert. Extravagant in everything.’
They went through into a panelled drawing room. It was furnished in Victorian style – dark velvet drapes at the windows, a basket fire on the hearth, four paintings by Atkinson Grimshaw on the walls.
‘My goodness, they’re worth a bob or two,’ Curry said as he inspected them.
She took a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket and Rupert Lang moved in fast. ‘Allow me.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘my aunt loved Grimshaw, loved everything Victorian in fact. Lady Hunt, Martha Hunt. She raised me from the age of twelve when my parents were killed. This house was her pride and joy.’
Rupert Lang poured the champagne. ‘I remember her husband, Sir George Hunt. Merchant banker in the city. My father used to do business with him.’
‘He died before I arrived,’ she said, ‘and Martha only the other year.’
‘I’m truly sorry.’
She went and opened the French windows. A cold, February night outside, a slight drizzle, some fog and some barge traffic, their red and green lights clear in the murk as they passed down river.
‘I love the Thames at night.’
‘Heart of the city,’ Lang said. ‘Lovely to see you.’ He raised his glass. ‘Now, what shall we drink to?’
‘Why not January 30?’ she said. ‘I read about that in the Belfast Telegraph. I also noticed, just as you said, that some Protestant terrorist organizations also claimed credit.’ She moved to the fire and sat down in a wing-backed chair. ‘And those two thugs were IRA after all. There were details of their military funerals.’
Lang and Curry sat on the long sofa opposite her. ‘That’s right,’ Curry said. ‘Irish tricolour on the coffin, black beret and gloves neatly arranged.’
‘Weeping relatives, lots of women in black,’ Lang said. ‘Always looks good. Keeps the glorious cause going.’
‘And you don’t approve?’
‘Only one solution. The British Army should leave.’
‘But that would lead to civil war and total anarchy.’
‘Exactly, but this time we’d build from the ashes. A new state entirely,’ Curry said.
‘Run on the political lines he approves of,’ Lang told her. ‘Which is Marxist-Leninist to the core. I should warn you, Tom is the Communist equivalent of a Jesuit.’ He went and got the bottle of champagne and replenished their glasses.
‘I’ve looked you up,’ she told Curry, ‘mentioned you to one or two people. All I heard was that you were a brilliant academic who serves on all sorts of Government committees. Not a hint of this Marxist-Leninist thing.’
‘Well, thank God for that,’ Curry said.
She turned to Lang. ‘You were easier. I just asked my press agent to check the newspaper libraries. He confirmed what you’d told me, that you two were at Cambridge together. Afterwards, you served briefly in the Grenadier Guards and transferred to 1 Para. Rather a notorious outfit. Bloody Sunday and all that.’
‘So they tell me.’
‘You served again in Ireland before leaving the Army when your father died. Interesting. There was only one mention of your Military Cross and that was tucked away in a decoration list in The Times. No reason for the award given and you never mention it, not even in election speeches.’
‘Natural modesty.’ Lang smiled.
‘You never even told me,’ Curry said.
‘Secrets again, old sport, we all have them.’
‘I certainly do, I killed a man,’ Grace said.
‘Perhaps not. I was the one who made sure with both of them.’
‘I killed him,’ she insisted. ‘I know it and so do you.’
‘Has it been a problem coming to terms with it?’ Curry asked.
‘Not really. Looking back it seems to have been like a performance in a play or film and it merges into all my other performances.’ She shook her head. ‘Heaven knows what a psychiatrist would make of that, and anyway, those men were scum.’
‘Exactly,’ Lang said. ‘There was, as the courts put it, reasonable cause.’
‘A good point,’ she said. ‘I got all the press cuttings on January 30. There was Ali Hamid, an Arab terrorist, a KGB colonel called Ashimov, two IRA bombers some silly judge released, an American here in London reputed to be a CIA agent and now our two friends in Belfast. I’d say the one weak link would be the American.’
‘I see,’ Curry said. ‘You accept the killing of the KGB colonel, but the CIA man is a different proposition.’
‘I see the logic in what you’re saying. I suppose it’s a question of your point of view.’ She finished her champagne and put the glass down on a side table. ‘Of course it didn’t take the authorities long to work out that January 30 was the date of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry – and you were there, Mr Lang. Interesting coincidence.’
‘Rupert,’ he said. ‘Please. Yes, I
