The Glory Boys

'You're a pig, Jimmy. A mean, miserable pig. All bloody dressed yourself, and not calling me. Jones'll be off his rocker when I drift in at this time.' She wriggled her long legs into the trousers she had used the day before. Jimmy didn't like her keeping spare clothes at the flat, so what she arrived in the previous night she went out with the next morning.

'Won't do him any harm. Let him sweat a bit,' Jimmy said.

She said nothing else, fiercely concentrating on her dressing and then the attack on her face in front of the mirror. Hunched over it, eyes intent on the reflection as she worked the pencils and brushes around her eyes. The lipstick she put on with a bravado that ensured disaster.

There was a low oath, in a pitch she seldom used, as she tidied the indulgence with a flick of the Kleenex tissue that had remained overnight on the dressing table.

'Are you coming down to the speech tonight?' Jimmy asked as they stood on the pavement beside her Maxi car.

'Only if I'm needed. I don't want to be there just to rubberneck. I don't know whether Jones is going.'

'I'd like you to come, might want the car there. If I've one from the department I'm saddled with the damned thing. If you come, slot in behind the convoy and when we've dumped the little bugger back in his bed we can shove off somewhere. I can call you later on.'

'There can't be much chance of Jones going. He may want to be at the Yard, or by his phone, but it's not like him just to be there if there's no purpose to it. There's enough of the thickies, you included, lined up for the evening without him shoving in and getting in the way.'

'Whether he comes or not I'd like you to be there with the car.'

She unlocked the driving door and sat far back into the seat. As she fastened the safety belt across her chest she said quietly and with a suspicion of mockery, 'Want me to see the hero boy in action? Roy of the Rovers defies Amazing Odds. Triumph of Virtue. Good wins through.

That it?'

When it came to needling Jimmy she was the great expert.

'Bugger off to your boring office,' he shouted. 'I'll call you, and I want you there. If you want a bloody meal on the house, that is.'

The car was away and lost in the traffic, leaving Jimmy searching the street for a black cab. They were not easy to find in the final throes of the capital's rush-hour, and he paced impatiently for a full fifteen minutes before he could hail one and then sprint a weaving path between the oncoming cars to the other side of the road where the driver waited for him.

When they were on the move Jimmy sagged deep into the seat, half-aware of the scurrying masses going about their business beyond the Perspex. This was the ideal guerrilla country, the perfect territory on which to wage the sharp and cruel form of warfare that the enemy had perfected. Thousands of faces were swept past his vision from the window, their preoccupation with their own affairs total, their knowledge of the threat minuscule. The perfect, unnoticing hiding ground, where anonymity remains a virtue. In this huge, ant-like society what hope could there ever be of selecting out just two who were different from the rest by the virtue of the fact that they had declared hostilities? Where to find them – where to start to look?

There can only be one killing ground. The one right beside David Sokarev. Not ten yards from him, or even five, but right up against his shoulder. Jimmy felt no sense of fear at the prospect of physical injury. What screwed up his guts was the possibility of failure. It always dogged him, that horror. That he would end up the ultimate loser.

He could picture the little man with the blood and the surprise in his face, and the look of betrayal that would dominate his eyes. That would be the awfulness for Jimmy.

The unmentionable and unspeakable disaster, if he lost Sokarev.

By the time he reached the hotel where he would spend the rest of the day before leaving for the Senate House, the very image of failure and the chance of it that had crossed his mind had rendered him irritable and tensed.

From where he crouched inside the small car Famy saw McCoy appear round the corner from the street and walk warily towards their hiding place. Twice he looked behind, to satisfy himself he was not under surveillance. He jogged the last ten yards to the car.

Under his arm was a brown paper bag, and he reached inside his pocket on the left of his trousers when he reached the window through which Famy stared at him.

McCoy took in the numbed astonishment in the other's face, and the sad, emotion-drained look in his mouth.

'I've got the keys. No problem, an old fool in a garage up the road, spilled him a yarn and had them straight away. Got the whole bunch and said I'd return them later.

Piece of cake. I've got the gloves we need for the window, too, motorcycle sort with protection half-way up the arm.

Made of leather and bloody expensive. Hope your mob are good on expenses.'