‘Not about the running,’ she said.
‘What, then?’
‘Cheltenham picked up some chatter last night,’ she said quietly, looking around.
‘About the marathon?’ Marchant kept his hand on her shoulder, face close to hers, stretching the other calf. Leila nodded. ‘Now you tell me.’
‘And you know I shouldn’t,’ she said, pushing him away. ‘Paul’s just called, heard I was taking part.’
‘Paul? What’s he monitoring these days? Runners’ World chatrooms?’
‘Come on, Daniel. You know I can’t.’
Marchant had been out of MI6 for two months now, suspended on his case officer’s full pay. Leila knew how angry he still felt about everything that had happened: his father’s death, the rumours that wouldn’t go away. She knew the toll it was taking on his health, too, the late, solitary vigils at the pub. Marchant’s youthful features were tiring around the eyes, a greyness starting to fleck his dirt-blond hair. He was only twenty-nine, but sometimes, in a certain light, Leila looked at him and thought she saw his father.
‘Remember not to go too fast at the beginning,’ she said, changing tack as they jogged over to join the crowded start. Leila still worked for MI6, although she often wondered why. The Service was slowly killing them both.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’ Marchant surveyed the sea of people around him, more carefully now. ‘Remind me why we’re doing this?’
‘Because you love running and because you love me.’ Leila brushed her lips against his cheek as a helicopter arced across the South London sky. ‘More than you should.’
She had never kissed him like that before. Earlier she had woken him very differently, pulling him up through the languid hours of dawn with a passion that had almost frightened him.
‘Shouldn’t we be saving our energy for the marathon?’ he had whispered afterwards, the rising sun filtering through the blinds of her Canary Wharf apartment. His eyes ached at the thought of all that daylight.
‘My mother always told me to live each day as if it was the last.’
‘My dad used to say something similar, only in Latin.’
She lay with her head on his chest, eyes open, stroking his stomach. A police siren faded somewhere near the Thames.
‘I’m so sorry about your father.’
‘Me too.’
Later he had found her in the kitchen, stirring a saucepan of porridge for them both as she looked out of the window towards the O2 Dome. There was an empty bottle of whisky on the granite-top island, next to a couple of stacked dishes from the previous night and the remains of a big bowl of pasta. He pedalled the chrome bin and quietly slid the bottle in, his eyes on Leila. She was wearing knickers and an old London Marathon T-shirt with a slogan on the back: ‘Never again…until the next time’. The whisky had been a mistake, he realised that now. The next time he would realise earlier. The pain behind his eyes was spreading.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up a single sheet of paper from the island.
She turned, and then looked back out of the window. ‘You’ve never really been religious, have you?’ she asked.
‘Hey, I was a Sufi once, in my year off in India.’
‘Who wasn’t?’
‘Is this a Bahá’í thing?’
‘It’s not a thing, it’s a prayer. My mother used to make me say it every morning, before I went to school.’
Leila wasn’t particularly religious either, but she had grown interested in her mother’s Bahá’í faith in recent months. Marchant’s own knowledge of it was patchy, based on an internal MI5 briefing that had crossed his desk about Dr David Kelly, the weapons inspector and Bahá’í member who had been found dead in a wood in Oxfordshire.
He looked at the sheet again, and read a passage of the prayer out aloud: ‘“Armed with the power of thy name, nothing can ever hurt me, and with thy love in my heart, all the world’s afflictions can in no wise alarm me.” Is it reassuring?’
‘She said it would protect us.’
Marchant thought he could do with a little protection now, as he looked up at the blur of helicopter blades above Blackheath. He suddenly felt claustrophobic, pressed down upon from above as well as from all sides. There was no room for personal space any more, normal rules of behaviour no longer applied. A runner next to him fumbled at his shorts with an empty plastic drinking bottle. Another hung his head, clearing one nostril, then the other. Somebody else yelled with joy (or was it fear?). The crowd responded, calling back like restless animals. They were all part of the larger herd now, surging forward as one towards the start line.
Marchant instinctively flexed his elbows as people pushed in, trampling on his old running shoes. For a few seconds he lost Leila, then he spotted her again, five yards ahead, turning back to look for him. Despite himself, he loved her more than ever in that fleeting moment, her beauty framed by a thousand strangers. He moved up alongside, squeezed her hand. She smiled back, but her look was far away. The call from Paul Myers had unsettled her.
Above them two helicopters now circled, the drone of their blades more menacing than ever. There was a new sound, too, top notes cutting through the background noise. Marchant couldn’t work out what it was at first, but then he realised. Runners everywhere were synchronising and calibrating, making final adjustments to their bleeping stopwatches and heart monitors. He glanced instinctively at the hands of his own silent watch. In the same instant, the starter’s klaxon hooted, oddly hesitant, an uncertain call to arms. The only thing Marchant could do was run.
It was fifty minutes into the marathon that Marchant first noticed him, tucked behind a small knot of runners twenty yards ahead. The man–Asian, mid-thirties, fragile frame, heavy glasses–was moving at a similar pace to them, but looked uncomfortable, stumbling on the cobbles as he rounded the bow of the Cutty Sark. He was sweating profusely, too, even for this heat; but it was the belt around his waist that had caught Marchant’s well-trained eye.
Leila’s talk of Cheltenham had put Marchant on edge, reawakening old skills. The world around him was suddenly full of threats again, of brush passes and dead drops, and the belt troubled him. It consisted of a number of pouches, each one containing an isotonic energy drink. The drinks were in soft, bulging cartons, silver with small orange screwcaps. He’d seen other runners loading up with drinks belts at the start, but none with so many pouches.
It was just a precaution on a hot day, Marchant told himself, lengthening his stride. Running had always come naturally to him, a benefit of being tall. He caught up with the group as they left Greenwich for Deptford, heading down Creek Road. The crowds were thinner here, but still noisy, heckling runners with the names they had written on their vests. ‘Where’s Grommit?’ someone shouted, as a fun-runner dressed as Wallace ran past. ‘Go Dan!’ two young women screamed. For a moment, Marchant thought they must be supporting someone else, but then he remembered Leila had insisted on writing ‘Dan’ on the front of his own running vest. He turned his head to take another look but they were already lost in the crowd, cheering on other strangers.
‘What are you doing?’ Leila called out from behind Marchant. ‘We were doing fine.’
‘Give me a minute,’ he said. The group of runners ahead of the man also bothered him. Two were heavily set, struggling in the heat and bearing all the unsubtle hallmarks–bulging vests, GI One haircuts–of the American Secret Service. The third man was lean and sinewy, a born runner. He looked familiar.
As Marchant drew near, he knew at once that something was not right. He could taste it in his mouth, like corked wine. His father had always taught him