A Delicate Truth A Novel - By John Le Carre Page 0,97

the latest crisis in Libya. His lower back was in near-terminal spasm, for which he had to thank Emily’s sofa, and he was keeping himself going on a diet of Nurofen, the remains of a bottle of sparkling water, and disjointed memories of their last couple of hours together in her flat.

At first, having supplied him with pillow and eiderdown, she had withdrawn to her bedroom. But quite soon she was back, dressed as before, and he was more awake and even less comfortable than he had been when she left him.

Seating herself out of striking distance, she invited him to describe his journey to Wales in greater detail. All too willingly, he obliged. She needed the grim details, and he provided them: the travelled blood that couldn’t possibly have travelled there and turned out to be red lead, or didn’t; Harry’s concern to get the highest price for Jeb’s van; Brigid’s unsparing adjectival use of ‘fucking’ and her cryptic account of Jeb’s last joyful phone call to her following his encounter with Kit at the club, urging her to dump Harry and prepare for his return.

Emily listened patiently, mostly with her large brown eyes, which in the half-light of early morning had acquired a disconcerting immobility.

He then told her about Jeb’s fight with Shorty over the photographs, and how Jeb had afterwards hidden them, and how Brigid had discovered them, and how she had let Toby copy them into his BlackBerry.

On her insistence, he showed them to her, and watched her face freeze the way it had frozen in the hospital.

‘Why do you think Brigid trusted you?’ she asked, to which he could only reply that Brigid was desperate and had presumably come to the conclusion that he was trustworthy, but this didn’t seem to satisfy her.

Next she needed to know how he had wangled Jeb’s name and address out of the authorities, to which Toby, while not identifying Charlie by name, beyond saying that he and his wife were old friends, explained that he had once done a favour for their musical daughter.

‘And apparently she really is a very promising cellist,’ he added inconsequentially.

Emily’s next question therefore struck him as totally unreasonable:

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘God, no! That’s bloody outrageous!’ he said, genuinely shocked. ‘What the hell made you think that?’

‘My mother says you’ve had masses of women. She checked you out with her Foreign Office wives.’

‘Your mother?’ Toby protested indignantly. ‘Well, what do the wives say about you, for Christ’s sake?’

At which they both laughed, if awkwardly, and the moment passed. And after that, all Emily wanted to know was who had murdered Jeb, assuming he was murdered, which in turn led Toby into a rather inarticulate condemnation of the Deep State, and thence into a denunciation of the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.

And as he concluded this cumbersome monologue, he heard six striking, and was by now sitting on the sofa and no longer lying on it, which allowed Emily to sit primly beside him with the burners on the table in front of them.

Her next question has a schoolmistressy ring:

‘So what do you hope to get out of Shorty when you meet him?’ she demands, and waits while he thinks of an answer, which is the more difficult since he hasn’t got one; and anyway he hasn’t told her, for fear of alarming her, that he will be meeting Shorty in the first instance under the slender guise of a journalist, before declaring himself in his true colours.

‘I’ll just have to see which way he jumps,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘If Shorty’s as cut up about Jeb’s death as he says he is, maybe he’ll be willing to step into Jeb’s shoes and testify for us.’

‘And if he isn’t willing?’

‘Well, I suppose we just shake hands and part.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Shorty, from what you’ve told me,’ she replies severely.

And at this point, a drought overcomes their conversation, during which Emily lowers her eyes and lays her fingertips together beneath her chin in contemplation, and he supposes she is preparing herself for the phone call she is about to make to her father, by way of Mrs Marlow.

And when she reaches out her hand, he assumes that it’s to pick up the black burner. But instead, it’s his own hand she picks up, and holds gravely in both of hers as if she’s taking his pulse,