Jigsaw by Campbell Armstrong Page B

his depth and he wants somebody with experience to run the show. Look at it this way, Frank. He can’t lose. If you make a success of it, he gets much glory. If you fudge it, he’s got himself a whipping-boy.’
    â€˜I’m not whipping-boy material. I bleed easily.’
    â€˜It’s politics,’ Foxie said.
    â€˜Fuck politics. I’ve never played politics. I don’t have the skills. I’m short on turpitude. I don’t do doublespeak. I prefer not to lie. I don’t have the qualifications for politics.’
    Pagan stared out of the window, brooding, silent, thinking of the explosion in the Underground. After a while he imagined he could hear the sound of people screaming in a dark tunnel. He shut the noise out of his head. Stand back. Keep your cool. If you allow it, you’ll become submerged, drawn down into that place where you suffocate. Sometimes you imagine too much.
    He turned to Foxie just as the car approached Hammersmith. ‘Have you heard anything about Martin Burr?’
    â€˜I understand he spends half his time down in Hampshire cultivating roses, and the other half at his Knightsbridge place,’ Foxie said. ‘Enjoying his retirement by all accounts.’
    â€˜The end of an era.’
    â€˜On with the new,’ Foxie said.
    â€˜New doesn’t necessarily mean better.’
    â€˜How does one quantify better?’
    â€˜ How does one quantify better? Who have you been reading recently, Foxie?’
    â€˜Thomas Aquinas. Does it show?’
    Pagan sighed and folded his arms. ‘Thomas Aquinas. Stick with spy novels.’
    â€˜They’re not the same since the Berlin Wall came down.’
    Pagan was swept by a moment of fatigue. ‘Nothing’s the same since the Wall came down.’
    Foxie stopped the Rover at a traffic light. There was something a little strange in Pagan’s mood, he wasn’t sure what. As an inveterate Pagan-watcher, he’d seen Frank in many phases. Arrogant. Brutal. Sympathetic. At times even soft-hearted. But now there was a difference about him, an alteration hard to define. He had a wearily defensive air. It was as if he’d come back from his enforced vacation disillusioned by the way he’d been cast aside in the first place, and now he felt vulnerable, bruised by the political shenanigans that had sent him into limbo. Maybe he was wary of his future. He had every right to be, Foxie thought.
    He was at Nimmo’s whim. And Nimmo’s whim was no place to be.
    The office was spartan, authoritarian. No family pictures; presumably George Nimmo didn’t have a family, or if he did he kept it tucked away in Berkshire or wherever he lived. No paintings on the walls. No pictures of Nimmo gabbing with the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. No diplomas. No framed thank-you letters from grateful charities. Alone, waiting for Nimmo to appear, Pagan reflected on the strange blankness of the room. You could deduce nothing about the inhabitant from this place. It was a long cold box, a deep-freeze. It contained a plain desk, bookshelves of law volumes, a black leather swivel-chair. An ascetic’s room, a dedicated civil servant’s room – where was the untidy array of papers, the stuffed in-tray, the general dishevelment that had characterized Martin Burr’s reign? He had a quiet surge of affection for Martin just then. Burr had been approachable, a friend. Burr had often put his neck on the guillotine for Pagan.
    This place unnerved Pagan even as he tried to remain aloof from the prospect of seeing George Nimmo. Their last encounter had been marked by Nimmo’s offhand hostility. We will try to find a place for you in the new scheme of things, Frank. I can’t promise it will be easy or quick. Blah blah blah. The boot was the boot, Pagan thought, no matter what you called it. The swift kick in the anus.
    Pagan drummed his fingers on the side of his chair and looked up at the