thumbs. He turned his head sideways, like a swimmer, and looked at us, in a way that was neither hostile nor interested. After a long minute we realized the stare was all the greeting we were going to get, so I hung back and Casey Nice stepped up, and she said, ‘Do you mind if I browse?’
Which focused all the guy’s attention on her, because of the singular pronoun. I, not we. Clearly I was not a potential browser. I was nobody. Her driver, maybe. The guy behind the counter said nothing, but he nodded, a single upward jerk of his head, which because of his position came out sideways, which seemed appropriate in the low-ceilinged space, and partly encouraging, as if to say, have at it, but also partly discouraging, as if to say, but what you see is all we got.
I stood where I was, and Nice moved around, peering down, occasionally laying a fingertip on the glass, as if to isolate something for closer consideration, and then moving on, as yet unsatisfied. She went left to right, and then all the way back again, right to left, before straightening up and saying, ‘I don’t see the kind of thing I’m looking for.’
The guy in the sweater didn’t answer.
She said, ‘My friend in Chicago told me this is where she came.’
The guy in the sweater said, ‘For what?’
He wasn’t English. That was for sure. He wasn’t French or Dutch or German. Or Russian or Ukrainian or Polish. Serbian was entirely plausible.
Casey Nice said, ‘My friend had concerns about her personal safety. You know, in a foreign city for the first time. Without the precautions she would be legally entitled to take at home.’
The guy in the sweater said, ‘Are you from America?’
‘Yes, from Chicago.’
‘This is not a gymnasium, lady. We don’t teach self-defence here.’
‘My friend said you have certain items for sale.’
‘You want a gold watch? Take two or three. Use them to bargain for your life.’
‘My friend didn’t buy a watch.’
‘What did she buy?’
Nice put her hand out, low down, away from her side, slightly behind her. She clicked her fingers. My cue, I supposed. The driver. Or the help. Or the bagman. I stepped forward and took out the dead guy’s cash roll, and held it lightly between thumb and index finger, and I tapped it end-on against the glass counter, and I held it there, upright, a fat greasy cylinder as big as a whisky glass, sour and dense with paper money. The guy took a good long look at it, and then he glanced at me, and then he turned back to Casey Nice.
He said, ‘Who is he?’
‘My bodyguard,’ she said. ‘But he couldn’t get his gun through the X-ray machine.’
‘There are laws here.’
‘There are laws everywhere. But the same thing gets past them all.’
The guy looked back at the money.
He said, ‘Go wait in the minicab office. Next door. Someone will drive you.’
‘Drive me where?’
‘We don’t keep those items here. Too many police. They search us all the time. There are laws.’
‘Where do you keep them?’
The guy didn’t answer. He took out his phone and dialled. He said a short sentence in a low tone and a fast foreign language. Not French or Dutch or German. Or Russian or Ukrainian or Polish. Serbian was still top of the list. The guy clicked off his call and shooed us away and said, ‘Go. They will drive you.’
THIRTY-ONE
WE WENT, AND they drove us. In the minicab office there was a guy already on his way around the counter as we stepped inside. He was a version of the guy in the pawn shop next door, a little younger, a little straighter, a little heavier, but just as dark and unshaven. A cousin, possibly, or just a guy from the same little village in the old country. He showed us to a Skoda sedan at the kerb. A taxi. We got in the back, he got in the front. Behind the wheel. He started it up, and hit the gas, and we took off, and we heard the click of the locks, as we passed a certain pre-set speed.
There was no point asking where we were going. No way would we get an answer. A silent driver was all part of the theatre. Not that it mattered, anyway. We knew generically, if not specifically. We were heading north, clearly. We didn’t need the exact name of the next-but-one overrun manor that lay in that direction, as