By inclination, Stephanie was organized and tidy. Stephanie Schneider, however, was by her own admission a ‘domestic slut’, which had the intended benefit of discouraging Mark from spending time at her flat. As the portal connecting her two worlds, it was the one place where she felt uneasy with him. Consequently they spent all their time at his flat. Occasionally this was an issue he attempted to address by suggesting she move into Queen’s Gate Mews.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to live with you, Mark. It’s just that I don’t want to give up my own place.’
‘But we don’t spend any time over there. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It doesn’t make financial sense. But it makes a different kind of sense. Besides, what about all my stuff? You’ve hardly got enough space for your stuff.’
‘We could convert the garage downstairs.’
‘It’s full.’
‘Only of old climbing gear. I could put that into storage. Or sell it. Or throw it out. Then you could have an office. Or we could sell both flats and get somewhere bigger.’
Which was exactly what one half of her wanted. But the other half wouldn’t permit it. Not yet. Conversations like this offered Stephanie glimpses of a possible post-Petra world, and she’d found them far more seductive than she’d ever imagined.
The evening made way for night. They drank wine and watched a DVD, content not to speak. Later, a little drunk, they made love. Afterwards, damp with perspiration, Mark found the cut on the top of her head.
‘Is it sore?’
‘A little.’
He ran a finger over her bruised ribs, and along parallel grazes over her right shoulder. ‘Do you want to tell me?’
‘We went off the road. Coming back from the Fergana Valley.’
It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. ‘Anyone else hurt?’
‘The driver cut his head quite badly. I had to drive the rest of the way. I think he must have fallen asleep. It was about three in the morning.’
As slick as glycerine. Even now Petra could still surprise Stephanie. She watched Mark get up. He had a climber’s physique. There was no bulk to his strength; his power lay in sinews and suppleness. Naked, he disappeared into the kitchen. He walked as he climbed, moving like liquid, his feet sometimes seeming barely to touch the ground. A smaller man, Komarov’s physique had been equally lean but his had been fashioned by the years lost to the brutal prisons of the Russian Far East.
After Komarov there had been other men before Mark, but no relationships. She’d used them to scour herself. It wasn’t making love, it was barely sex. It was just fucking, as emotionally charged as an hour on a treadmill: aerobic, sweaty, occasionally sore, with only a dull muscular ache for a memory. Mark was supposed to have been the same, the next anonymous man in the queue. When she realized she was falling for him she’d actually resented him for the way he made her feel. She’d never wanted a relationship to replace Komarov. She’d wanted him to be her last.
She could have stopped it, she told herself. But she hadn’t. Lately she’d come to believe that was because she couldn’t.
Mark returned from the kitchen. He was carrying a small box wrapped in silver paper. He handed it to her.
She said, ‘I didn’t get you anything. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.’
Inside, there was an antique watch with a chain. She picked it up. Gold, to judge by the weight. There was a crack across the glass.
Mark said, ‘It doesn’t work. And never will.’
Stephanie wasn’t sure how to react. ‘It’s lovely, though.’
‘The hands are frozen. That is the only time it will ever tell.’
Eight minutes past six. As it had been the first time they kissed.
One year to the day.
Frontier News shared a building on Charlotte Street with KKZ, a graphic design agency. KKZ’s offices were graphite and glass, central air-conditioning and espresso machines. Employees worked at the latest Apple Mac flat screens on ergonomically designed chairs from Norway. Frontier News’s office was an attic with three fans, a leaking roof and second-hand furniture bought at a government auction from a bankrupt insurance company.
Gavin Taylor was on the phone, bare feet on the desk, his tilting chair at a precarious angle. He waved Stephanie into the office. Open-plan was how he described it. In other words, he couldn’t afford partitions.
Taylor’s assistant, Melanie, was at her desk, talking to a broad-shouldered red-headed man as she examined a chipped fuchsia fingernail. A lit Lambert & Butler was going in a green glass ashtray stolen from a pub. The heat hadn’t prevented her from applying her customary mask of make-up. ‘Hiya, Steph.’
The man turned around and Stephanie recognized him. David Craig, a Frontier News regular, for whom no assignment was too hazardous.
‘Haven’t seen you for a while. Been away?’
‘Uzbekistan.’
Craig raised an eyebrow. ‘And how is the brother Karimov these days?’
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Uzbekistan had been a de facto dictatorship under the rule of Islam Karimov, a man who once claimed that he would personally rip off the heads of two hundred people to protect his country’s freedom and stability.
‘It’s business as usual in Tashkent.’
‘And outside Tashkent?’
She faked innocence. ‘How would I know?’
‘All room service at the Holiday Inn, was it?’
Taylor finished his call and wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Give her a break. At least she comes back with the goods.’ Turning to Stephanie, he said, ‘Last time out, David came back empty-handed from Pakistan. Made it across the border with nothing more than the clothes he was standing in.’
Stephanie knew the bitterness in Taylor’s voice was genuine. Craig was a reckless glory-hunter, a minor public-school product whose lacklustre army career had left him lusting for some kind of heroic validation. In Taylor’s view, the actions of adrenaline junkies like Craig demeaned the lives of men like Andrew Duggdale and James Hunter, co-founders of Frontier News. There were photographs of each dead man on the far wall.
Taylor stepped into a pair of worn docksiders and took her to lunch at an Italian bistro on Charlotte Street. By the time they were inside, sweat had stuck moist patches of his frayed cornflower blue shirt to his shoulders and belly. They settled into a gloomy corner at the rear, beneath a noisy fan. Taylor struggled to light a cigarette, then ordered a bottle of Valpolicella.
‘How’s business?’
He shrugged. ‘The ponces downstairs don’t want us sharing a communal entrance any more. They even offered to pay for one of our own.’
‘That sounds okay.’
‘Bloody pony-tails and polo-necks.’
‘Let me guess. Articulate to the last, you invited them to reconsider.’
He grinned, smoke leaking from his teeth. As far as Stephanie knew, Gavin Taylor was the only person outside Magenta House who knew what she was. Overweight, profane, a heavy drinker it was hard to see what Alexander saw in Taylor. The only thing they had in common was a taste for Rothmans cigarettes. Taylor’s past was in the military and Stephanie had always assumed that Alexander’s was too but she didn’t know that for certain.
‘I’ll put your Uzbekistan stuff out to tender. We might get a nibble. If not,