The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [34]
After a minute of waiting, he drank the espresso, paid for it, and went outside. He had glimpsed the cathedral on his way into the café and now walked through the gates of a small park bisected by a tree-lined avenue, making his way towards the southern façade. Clumps of teenagers – French exchange students, anoraked Americans – were milling around outside, buffeted by an unruly wind. Gaddis was drawn into a short queue and paid five pounds to enter the cathedral. Whispers echoed off the vast vaulted ceiling as he walked between several rows of wooden chairs and took a seat on the right-hand side of the nave. He put his satchel on the ground, set his phone to mute, and looked around for Neame. There was an old, free-standing radiator next to his seat and he tapped his fingers against the scuffed iron as he waited. It was almost half-past eleven.
He had been seated for no more than a minute when he heard a noise behind him, the sound of a walking stick clicking briskly on stone. Gaddis turned to see an elderly man in a tweed suit moving towards him along the nave, his eyes catching a source of light as he looked up to greet him. The man was so close to Charlotte’s description of Thomas Neame as to remove all doubt about his identity. Gaddis began to stand, as a gesture of respect, but the old man made a brisk, sweeping movement with the base of the walking stick which had the effect of pushing him back into his seat.
Neame shuffled along the pew and settled beside Gaddis. He did so without apparent physical discomfort but was slightly breathless as he sat down. He did not offer to shake Gaddis’s hand, nor did he look him in the eye. Instead, he stared directly ahead, as if preparing to pray.
‘You’re not one of these Marxist academics, are you?’
Gaddis caught the ghost of a smile in Neame’s stately profile.
‘Born and bred,’ he replied.
‘What a pity.’ The old man moved a hand in front of his face, distracted by something in his field of vision. His back was stooped, the skin on his face and neck dark and loose, but he looked remarkably robust for a man of ninety-one. ‘Sorry about all the scurrying around,’ he said. The voice was imperially upper-class. ‘As you can probably understand, I need to be very careful who I’m seen to be talking to.’
‘Of course, Mr Neame.’
‘Call me Tom.’
Neame laid the walking stick across the three seats adjacent to his own. Gaddis looked at his hands. He was moving them constantly, as if squeezing a small exercise ball in the palm to strengthen the wrists. The near-transparent skin across his knuckles was as taut as parchment.
‘I don’t think I was followed here,’ Gaddis said. ‘Your colleague’s instructions were very clear.’
Neame frowned. ‘My what?’ He had not yet turned to face him.
‘Your friend from the bookshop. Your colleague, Lampard. The one wearing a Chelsea shirt.’
Neame generated a small but infinitely condescending silence before responding.
‘I see,’ he said. Now he turned, slowly, like a statue with a cricked neck, and Gaddis saw concern within the folds and lines of the old man’s face. It was as if he was worried that he had overestimated Gaddis’s intelligence. ‘My friend’s name is Peter,’ he said.
‘Is he a relative of yours? A grandson?’
Gaddis had no idea why he had asked the question; he wasn’t particularly interested in the answer.
‘He is not.’ Somebody, somewhere was dragging a steel trolley across a stone floor in the cathedral, the sound of the wheels squealing in the echo chamber of the nave. ‘You followed his instructions as requested.’
Gaddis couldn’t work out if Neame wanted an answer. He decided to change the subject.
‘As you can imagine, I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask.’
‘And I you,’ Neame replied. He turned to face the distant altar. There was already a tension between them, a fractiousness which Gaddis had not anticipated. He felt the gap in their