Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré Page B

press, Gail, but Irina said it was a car smash . Now is that all she said? Did she say, for instance, where the smash had happened?’
    ‘Outside Moscow somewhere. Vague. She blamed the roads. The roads had too many holes in them. Everyone drove in the middle of the road to avoid the holes, so naturally the cars hit each other.’
    ‘Was there any talk of hospitalization? Or did Mummy and Daddy die instantly? Was that the story?’
    ‘Dead on impact. “A great big lorry came rushing down the middle of the road and killed them dead.”’
    ‘Any other casualties at all, apart from the two parents?’
    ‘I wasn’t being awfully good at the follow-up questions, I’m afraid’ – feeling herself start to waver.
    ‘But was there a driver, for instance? If the driver was killed too, that would be part of the story, surely?’
    Yvonne has reckoned without Perry:
    ‘Neither Katya nor Irina made any reference to a driver, dead or alive, direct or indirect, Yvonne,’ he says, in the slow, corrective tone he reserves for lazy students and predatory bodyguards. ‘There was no discussion of other casualties, hospitals, or what particular car anyone was driving.’ His voice is mounting. ‘Or whether there was third-party insurance cover, or –’
    ‘Cut,’ says Luke.
    *
    Gail had gone upstairs again, this time unescorted. Perry had stayed where he was, head caged in the fingers of one hand, the other tapping restively at the table. Gail returned and sat down. Perry appeared not to notice.
    ‘So, Perry,’ said Luke, all brisk and businesslike.
    ‘So what?’
    ‘Cricket.’
    ‘That wasn’t till next day.’
    ‘We’re aware of that. It’s in your document.’
    ‘Then why not read it?’
    ‘I think we’ve been through that, haven’t we?’
    All right, it was next day, same time, same beach, different part, Perry grudgingly conceded. The same black-windowed people carrier pulled up in the NO PARKING bay, and out poured not just Elspeth, the two girls and Natasha, but the boys.
    All the same, on the word ‘cricket’ Perry had begun to brighten: ‘Looking like a couple of teenaged colts who’d been locked up in the stable for too long and were finally being allowed a gallop,’ he said with sudden relish as the memory took him over.
    For today’s visit to the beach, he and Gail had picked themselves a spot as far from the house called Three Chimneys as it was possible toget. They weren’t hiding from Dima and company but they’d had a rocky night of it and woken late with splitting headaches, after making the elementary mistake of drinking their complimentary rum.
    ‘And of course there was no escape from them,’ Gail cut in, deciding it was her turn again. ‘Not anywhere on the whole beach. Well was there, Perry? Not on the whole island , when we started to think about it. Why were the Dimas so bloody interested in us? I mean, who were they? What did they want? And why us ? Every time we turned a corner, there they were. We were getting to feel that. From our cabin, they were straight across the bay, peering at us. Or we imagined they were, which was just as bad. And on the beach, they didn’t even need binoculars. All they had to do was lean over the garden wall and gawp. Which no doubt they did a fair amount of, because it was only minutes after we’d pitched camp that the people carrier with black windows drove up.’
    The same baby-faced bodyguard, said Perry, taking back the story. Not in the bar this time, but under a shade tree on the high ground. No Uncle Vanya from Perm with his tam-o’-shanter and family-sized revolver, but a gangly string-bean understudy who must have been some kind of fitness freak, because instead of shinning up the lookout he pranced up and down the beach timing himself and stopping each end for a bit of t’ai chi:
    ‘Bubble-haired chap,’ Perry said, his grin slowly stretching to its full width. ‘Kinetic. Well, manic was more like it. Couldn’t sit or stand still