‘Shit.’

The man shoved Pete off him, groaned and rolled unsteadily to his knees. ‘You nearly killed me!’

Pete lay on his back, winded, staring up at Tom Patrick.

Tom grimaced and held his ribs where Pete’s elbow had dug in. He got slowly to his feet. ‘Jesus! Aren’t you supposed to be retiring?’ He sucked in his breath and doubled over with his hands on his knees.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Pete squeezed out.

Still breathless, Tom slowly held up the bolt. ‘I don’t know,’ he said frankly, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the window they’d just come through. ‘I think I’m saving her life.’

The two men stared at each other in the darkness. Then the light went on in Gloria Munro’s room.

Tom turned and ran.

36

ONLY PETE LABELLO knew he had Lemon’s bolt. That was good: the fewer people who knew about it, the fewer people were in danger. So Tom felt a little guilty when he called Halo as soon as he landed at LAX, met him at the same coffee shop as before, and told him someone had tried to steal it.

Halo listened, then reduced it to its constituent parts like the organizer he was.

‘The Pride of Maine disc is gone. The South African disc is gone and the Oklahoma crash …?’

‘Too early to tell. But if they’d got the bolt we couldn’t have linked Oklahoma to either of the other two incidents. No pattern without the paperwork or the physical evidence.’

‘Could it be the bolt that’s fake?’

‘It’s not logical,’ said Tom. ‘Why take the same risks to fake a six-dollar bolt when you can fake a three-grand disc? And stealing the South African jet’s paperwork clinches it for me.’

Halo nodded slowly.

‘Don’t tell anyone else about the bolt,’ Tom warned.

‘Why not?’ said Halo. ‘It’s evidence. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

Tom had to tell him about Lenny Munro, which made Halo go all quiet and stare into the ridiculously frothy coffee Tom had bought for him while he’d waited for him to make his way up from his evening shift in Hangar Thirteen.

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ agreed Halo.

‘Not even Vee.’

‘Are you shitting me? Specially not Vee.’

‘From now on, we shouldn’t have contact unless it’s an emergency,’ said Tom, almost cringing at the melodrama.

But Halo didn’t laugh at him, just nodded silently.

They sat and sipped their coffee. Halo got a little moustache but this time Tom didn’t find it even vaguely amusing. Instead he just tapped his own lip and Halo wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

‘So,’ Halo said eventually, ‘I guess it was Three Days of the Condor after all.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Makes me wonder what happened to Niño.’

‘Yeah,’ said Tom. It made him wonder what had happened to a lot of people.

*

‘Where have you been?’ Ness’s voice was half angry, half relieved.

Tom remembered a time when he’d been eight and had missed the school bus and, for some now-forgotten reason, decided to walk the five miles home just for the hell of it. When he’d got there, after dark, his mother had said the same words in the same way, then slapped him hard in the face, before holding him so tightly he’d thought he’d never breathe again. He didn’t know which was more scary: her anger or her love.

‘Away,’ he said.

She hesitated, then apparently let it go. ‘Can you play?’

‘I just walked in.’

It was true. He’d picked up the ringing phone before he’d even put his bag down. But she didn’t offer an alternative.

‘When?’

‘Three hours. At the Honolulu.’

He sighed. Paying rent on this place was a joke – he might as well take a lease on a black vinyl chair at LAX with a weekend place up at Mount Poker Table. ‘I’ll see you in the lot.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and hung up.

Tom let out a long breath. Ness had turned to quicksand under him. He didn’t know how deep it was – he didn’t know if there was anything to grab onto to keep from being sucked down. He didn’t even know if sinking into her would be good or bad. He thought of the last time they’d been together, when they’d made love and she’d cried, and tried to recapture the tenderness he’d felt for her then, but it eluded him. All he could feel now was an uneasy wariness, which reflected back at him from her.

He hadn’t asked what had happened when he’d been unable to play the last time – hadn’t even called her to tell her – but she was still alive and talking and apparently in the same line of work, so he assumed it was nothing too bad.

He wanted to see her, though.

He wanted to see her face when he told her about Lenny Munro.

*

He’d forgotten to call Lucia back before leaving Oklahoma. It wasn’t his fault: so much had happened.

He called her now.

‘Lucia? It’s Tom.’ He could hear her breathing.

Then she quietly hung up.

37