And then the submarine vanished. Three distinct radar pings were registered in a line heading out of the Channel into the Atlantic just after 4 p.m. Then, west of the Scilly Isles, it disappeared for good.

‘It looks like you were right after all, they’ve just been toying with us,’ Knox said to White as they watched the uniforms and lab coats start to trickle out of the R&D department an hour later.

‘I know,’ White replied, his voice the same mix of frustration and resignation as Knox’s.

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

The next day, heavy clouds filled the sky over Soho. The grey was back, and it felt like it was going to consume Knox and the whole city.

He found a near-empty bag of coffee beans from the Algerian Stores on Old Compton Street in one of his kitchen cupboards. And, as he ground just enough to make himself a very small and very strong coffee, he briefly wondered about walking up to King’s Cross and taking a train back to Hertfordshire. At least at Rabley Heath it was normal for him to feel out of sync with his surroundings, watching the feral garden creep closer and closer to the big house that was his yet also wasn’t. But he decided it was too soon to beat a retreat, or tell Holland that between the two of them he was the one who should be put out to pasture.

Knox’s kitchen-cum-living room was less spartan than it had once been, though it was still fairly minimalist—a reflection of both Knox’s tastes and the amount of time he spent in London. There was a Mies van der Rohe sofa, which he had to continually tell himself was more comfortable than it really was, with two abstract Hilma af Klint paintings hung above it. A small Ercol teak table that he’d bought to replace a much larger marble one he’d rarely used stood next to his kitchen counter. And, beyond that, there was only a well-stocked drinks trolley and a Magnusson-Grossman lounge chair.

After an icy shower he put on a light shirt, dark trousers and checked blazer from Henry Poole. He might have felt disconnected from the city, but his native’s sixth sense told him the clouds hanging over London wouldn’t break on him.

As he steeled himself for the walk to Mayfair, at first he didn’t see the envelope that had been slipped under his door. Then he spotted it, lying tantalisingly on his hallway’s dark floorboards. It was too early for the post, which would have been left in his pigeonhole on the ground floor anyway, and he didn’t know any of his neighbours well enough for one of them to be leaving him morning notes. Someone was making a very direct approach.