Free Jigsaw by Campbell Armstrong

him. He can bring you up to date. He’s been at the scene since the beginning. He established an operations centre down there. On the spot, as it were.’
    â€˜I’ll be in touch,’ Pagan said. He stepped out of the office and walked along the corridor. He pressed a button for the elevator. He considered John Downey. Downey down in the mines. Downey had always been an enemy, always hostile.
    He entered the lift. The door slid shut. As he rode to the ground floor he felt curiously light-headed. He experienced a moment of displacement, as if everything around him were unreal.
    â€˜How did it go?’ Foxie asked.
    â€˜Take me underground, Foxie,’ he said. ‘Take me to the pit.’

SIX
    BURGUNDY
    F OR WEEKS NOW J ACOB S TREIK HAD BEEN DRIVING WITH AN AUTOMATIC pistol in the glove compartment of his rented Saab. His big plump hands lay on the steering wheel like two plucked squabs. The French countryside drifting past was misty, stricken by wintry indifference. Streik, whose belly overhung the waist of his trousers with such prominence he might have been theatrically padded, was sweating. The heater blew out a relentless gust of hot air and no matter what dial Streik turned he couldn’t reduce the flow.
    He looked in his rear-view mirror. The road behind was empty. The symmetry of poplar trees had been eroded by foggy air. Streik had the radio turned on and was absently listening to a news bulletin. His French was very poor but he understood that some kind of explosion had happened in London.
    London made him think of Bryce Harcourt. How was Bryce coping with this unholy situation in which they’d managed to find themselves? Bryce had a kind of Ivy League detachment, a nonchalance which only old money and old schools could impart. Lucky Harcourt, Streik thought, born into privilege. Harcourt Senior had made his fortune growing oranges and pulping them for juice. Oranges, Christ’s sake. How could you make a goddam fortune out of things with pips?
    Streik didn’t resent Bryce his upbringing. In his own way he was very fond of the guy, even if they came from different worlds. Streik had been born in the Bronx, abandoned by his vagabond father, brought up – if that was the expression to describe a childhood of broken-down playgrounds and decrepit tenements – by his mother, a grim little woman who had a major chill factor in her voice. Jesus, what would she think of him now? He could practically hear her say, I knew you’d amount to nothing, Jake. Just like your father . Whine, whine.
    The voice on the radio mentioned something about a number of casualties. Streik had never understood French numerals. Consequently the tally passed over his head. He pulled the Saab to the side of the road and fumbled beneath his seat for a bottle of wine he’d placed there a few hours ago, a cheap red he’d bought in one of the insignificant villages he’d spent the past few weeks driving through. A guy couldn’t go on like this. Running, always running. It wrecked the system, frazzled the nerve-endings. Maybe he should have stayed cool the way Harcourt had advised, maybe he should have remained in the States or the UK. Bryce had said: There’s no need to go into hiding yet. It probably isn’t the way you think it is, Jake . But Streik wasn’t buying that. Harcourt was courting disaster by hanging round London and going through the regular everyday motions of a life. He was too attached to his world, the Court of St James, the parties, the whole social bit, the ladies. Especially the ladies. That was Bryce for you, Mister Cool. Thinking himself safe.
    Streik knew otherwise. He’d been followed in Manhattan. He’d been hound-dogged in London. The guys watching him always had the same look of feigned indifference. But they weren’t fooling him. He’d been around too long.
    He released the cork, raised the bottle to his mouth, drank. He was hung