A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [94]
‘You not gettin’ changed there, Alec?’
This is said brazenly, and two men sitting nearest us on the bench glance over suspiciously. We must look like a couple of queers: rent boy and papa.
‘I was just wondering if I had a ten pee.’
‘I got one,’ he says, reaching into his trouser pocket on the clothes hook, withdrawing a fistful of loose change and handing me a shiny ten-pence piece. ‘That do ya?’
I thank him and clasp the coin in my hand. Then I wrap a towel around my waist before sliding on my Bermudas. In the meantime, Fortner shoulders his bag and walks next door to the locker rooms. He has thick, stubby legs dotted with freckles, and a faded pink scar running down the back of his right thigh. I hear the metal clatter of a locker opening, then the slide of his bag being stowed within.
‘Flashy shorts,’ he says as he comes back in, and the two men again look over at me. I drop my head, gathering my clothing into a tight round ball which I place in a locker next door. There’s nothing worth stealing, but it would be irritating to be robbed: I have a wallet with a picture of Kate inside and a decent pair of shoes that cost me seventy quid.
By the time I have returned to the changing-room Fortner has already showered off and entered the pool. There are two men dressed in suits preparing to leave, hair wet and faces flushed with exercise. I switch on the taps in an open shower cubicle and soap away the sweat and surface grime of an average London day, trying to clear my head for what is about to follow. I must remain alert to everything they say or imply: we have not spoken about JUSTIFY for seventy-two hours and there will be details that they will want to clarify.
My dive into the pool goes badly wrong. I haven’t been swimming in a long time and I land too flat on the surface of the water with a loud, clapping belly-flop: the hard slap of it against my stomach is painful and stinging. I swim briefly underwater, long enough for any embarrassment to subside, and surface in the centre of the pool. Fortner and Katharine are standing in the shallow end talking to one another, but they stop when they see me coming towards them.
Being tall, Katharine is only up to her waist in the water. She is wearing a blue bikini and her stomach looks flat and supple to the touch. I dare not look directly at her breasts in case Fortner notices. He looks absurd in the black bathing cap: it is wrapped so tightly around his head that all the blood has vanished from the upper part of his face, leaving his forehead looking white and ill. The goggles, too, are sucking down hard on his eyeballs, bulging out the surrounding skin.
‘Nice temperature, don’tcha think?’ he says.
‘Ideal.’
‘You been here before, Milius?’
‘Never. You picked a good spot for the meeting.’
‘That’s right,’ he tells me. ‘Everything we say gets lost in the clamour.’
‘Is that the idea?’
It’s a well-known technique.
‘That’s the idea.’
Fortner splashes water on to his face and says:
‘You wanna go about halfway down and talk there?’
I nod and he pushes off, leading the way with a gentle crawl. Katharine follows in the slipstream and I swim with her, still adjusting to the sting and warmth of the pool. We swim directly beside one another, both of us breast-stroking, and at one point our hands touch very briefly near the surface of the water. Katharine laughs instinctively as they slip apart, looking across at me with a smile. Her hair has glossed to jet black in the wet, thick as seaweed.
An elderly man passes us, swimming in the opposite direction. He moves with a painful