The Night Manager

"We're not paid to be spectators, Jonathan. Dicky Roper was flogging some very high-tech toys to the Thief of Baghdad, including a kilo of weapons-grade uranium, which had fallen off the back of a Russian lorry. Freddie Hamid was laying on a fleet of relief trucks to smuggle the stuff through Jordan. What were we supposed to do? File and forget?" Burr was gratified to see Jonathan's face set in the kind of rebellious obedience that reminded him of himself. "There's a dozen ways the story could have leaked without anybody pointing the finger at your Sophie. If she'd not shot her mouth off at Freddie she'd be sitting pretty to this day."

"She wasn't my Sophie," Jonathan put in too fast.

Burr affected not to hear. "Question is, how do we nail our chum? I've a couple of ideas on that subject if you're interested."

He gave a warm smile. "That's right. You've spotted it, I can see. I'm common Yorkshire. And our chum Mr. Richard Onslow Roper, he's quality. Well, that's his tough luck!"

Jonathan laughed dutifully, and Burr was grateful to find himself on dry land the other side of Sophie's murder. "Come on, Jonathan, I'll buy you lunch. You won't mind us, Reggie? Only we're strapped for time, see. You've been a good scout. I'll pass the word."

In his haste, Burr failed to notice his cigarette burning in Quayle's ashtray. Jonathan stubbed it out, sorry to be saying goodbye. Quayle was a bluff, twitchy soul, with a habit of beating his mouth with a handkerchief that he whipped, Services style, from his sleeve; or of suddenly offering you biscuits from a tax-free tartan tin. In the weeks of waiting, Jonathan had come to rely on their quaint, inarticulate sessions.

And so, he realised as he left, had Reggie Quayle.

"Thanks, Reggie," he said. "Thanks for everything."

"My dear chap! Pleasure all mine! Travel well, sir. Keep your arse to the sunset!"

"Thanks. You too."

"Got transport okay? Wheels? Whistle you up a barouche? All fixed? Jolly good. Wrap up warm, now. See you in Philippi."

"You always thank people for doing their job, do you?" Burr asked as they stepped onto the pavement. "I suppose you learn to, in your trade."

"Oh, I think I like to be polite," Jonathan replied. "If that's what you mean."

* * *

As always for an operational encounter, Burr's field manners had been meticulous. He had chosen his restaurant in advance; he had inspected it the night before: an out-of-town lakeside trattoria, unlikely to attract the Meister set. He had chosen his corner table and for ten cautious Yorkshire francs to the head waiter reserved it in one of his work names, Benton. But he was taking no chances.

"If we bump into someone you know and I don't, Jonathan, which as you are no doubt aware is Sod's Law in this game, don't explain me. If you're driven to it, I'm your old barrack-mate from Shorncliffe and switch to the weather," he said, thus incidentally demonstrating that he had done his homework on Jonathan's early life. "Doing any climbing these days?"

"A bit."

"Where?"

"Bernese Oberland mainly."

"Anything spectacular?"

"Quite a decent Wetterhorn during the cold spell if you like ice. Why? Do you climb?"

If Burr recognised the mischief in Jonathan's question, he chose to ignore it. "Me? I'm the fellow who takes the lift to the second floor. How about your sailing?" Burr glanced at the window, where the grey lake smouldered like a bog.

"It's all pretty much kiddie stuff round here," said Jonathan. "Thun's not bad. Cold, though."

"And painting? Watercolours, wasn't it? Still dabble, do you?"

"Not often."

"But now and then. What's your tennis like?"

"Middling."

"I'm serious."

"Well, good club standard, I suppose."

"I thought you won some competition in Cairo."

Jonathan gave a modest blush. "Oh, that was just some exiles' knockabout."

"Let's do the hard work first, shall we?" Burr suggested. He meant: let's choose our food so that we can talk in peace.

"You're a bit of a cook yourself, aren't you?" he enquired as they hid their faces in the overlarge menus. "A man of parts. I admire that. There's not a lot of Renaissance blokes about these days. Too many specialists."

Jonathan turned the page from meat to fish to dessert, thinking not of food but of Sophie. He was standing before Mark Ogilvey in his grand ministerial house in Cairo's green suburbs, surrounded by fake eighteenth-century furniture assembled by the Ministry of Works, and Roberts prints assembled by Ogilvey's wife. He was wearing his dinner jacket, and in his mind it was still coated with Sophie's blood. He was shouting, but when he heard his voice it sounded like a sonar echo.

He was cursing Ogilvey to hell and back, and sweat was running down the undersides of his wrists. Ogilvey was wearing his dressing gown, a mousy brown thing with a drum major's frayed gold frogging on the sleeves. Mrs. Ogilvey was making tea so that she could listen.

"Watch your language, do you mind, old boy?" said Ogilvey, pointing at the chandelier to remind him of the risk of microphones.