But a second possible interpretation was represented by Casey Nice, with her youth, and her bustling energy, and her accent, downstate Illinois via Yale and Langley, all shot through with the kind of ringing clarity that must have come from growing up in a farmhouse with more than one dog. She was a type, a product of the modern world, perhaps recognizable even in London. She was federal, no question. In which case the taunts about collateral damage might have been true, which was another way of saying pawns in the game, and no way was Charlie White ever going to call himself a pawn in a game, but even bishops and knights got sacrificed sometimes. Because the world’s governments were king, with all their three-letter agencies and their shadowy units, which had to be where the girl was from. What else could she be? She was part of some huge international operation, which for once wasn’t all about London and Charlie, which removed his guarantee of survival. A pawn was not a valuable chip.

Charlie White didn’t know what to think.

‘Check,’ Nice said. ‘Bennett should have replied by now.’

I switched my phone on again, and watched it hunt for its signal, and find it, and present me with everything I had missed in the interim, which was a single text message from Bennett. It said: WHERE ARE YOU MOST URGENT NEW INFORMATION REPEAT EXTREMELY URGENT NEW INFORMATION MUST DISCUSS IMMEDIATELY

No punctuation, no nothing.

FORTY-EIGHT

WE HAD TAKEN careful steps to avoid electronic surveillance, and now we were being asked to come right out and tell the British where we were. Casey Nice said, ‘I think we have to.’

I said nothing.

She said, ‘You’ve been bugging him for data. About the glass. And now he has it. You have to hear what he has to say. It could be important. In fact it must be important. Look at his language.’

‘Unless he’s faking. Maybe he’s pissed we fell off the map. He’s in charge. He’s supposed to know where we are. Maybe he’s taking it like a challenge.’

‘He’s a brother soldier. Look at what he wrote. Would he lie to you that bad?’

‘They didn’t rule the world by being nice.’

‘Your call,’ she said.

I put my finger on my phone’s off button, and I held it there, touching but not pressing, and then I changed my mind and handed the phone to Nice. Her thumbs were quicker. And smaller. I said, ‘Tell him to come alone.’

I wasn’t sure how long Bennett would have stuck around the giant four-way in the west of London, but probably he had twigged pretty early that things were not going to plan, so he might have already folded his tent and started for home. In which case he could be in Chigwell as fast as twenty minutes. Or as slow as forty, if in fact he had hung around until the bitter end. There was no way of knowing.

There was only one practical way to the bowling club, for a pedestrian, which was the yard-wide footpath. No doubt there were ancient easements and rights of way across neighbouring lots, for lawnmowers and heavy rollers and whatever else it took to keep grass that smooth, and if SWAT teams came they would use helicopters and land on the green itself, but if Bennett came alone he would walk.

Charlie White was still watching us. Still unsure. I spent most of the time looking out the windows, but without the night vision and the magnification there wasn’t much to see. Just dark space, vague trees, and the distant glow of Little Joey’s street, a quarter of a mile away. No detail. I could barely make out his house, big as it was. Nice sat on a lumpy canvas bag, with both hands in her jacket pockets, one of them no doubt curled around the butt of her Glock, and the other maybe curled around her pill bottle. I wanted to say I guess this ain’t the night to quit Zoloft, but I didn’t, because I figured she would prefer me to take it seriously. And maybe she wasn’t thinking about pills at all. In which case I certainly didn’t want to remind her. Maybe she was just keeping her hands warm. The air had gone cold. It had been a pleasant day, but the temperature had dropped after sunset.

After fifteen minutes I went out, and closed the smashed door behind me, and hiked across the grit to the clearing’s furthest corner, which gave me a sideways view of the line between the mouth of the alley and the bowling club HQ. Which was the best I could do. I didn’t want to be in the alley itself. I didn’t want to be on the street. I wanted an escape route, if necessary, and our best bet was through the gardens and over the lawns that surrounded us, not along the public highways and byways, which were full of dangers and perils.