She got out of the car, lit her cheroot, and set off along the pavement, pausing by the terrorists to say something that made them laugh and exchanging high fives with them before she moved on.
Sixsmith watched her vanish behind the graffti'd wall of a walkway, tracking her progress for a little while by the spoor of tobacco smoke which hung almost without motion in the lifeless air. She'd be OK, he guessed. She was worth more to these people alive than dead. This was her chosen world. People like Porphyry and the other members of the Royal Hoo were the enemy, which was why she knew so much about them, presumably.
Not that Butcher was the only one able to identify the enemy.
The terrorists had begun a slow drift toward the Morris.
He gave them a friendly wave and accelerated away toward the visible haven of Rasselas.
5
Tiger
That night, with Beryl working, nothing but repeats on the box, and his cat Whitey plunged deep into whatever the summer equivalent of hibernation was, Joe decided to wander round to the Luton City Supporters' Club bar in search of social solace.
To start with it seemed a good decision. He arrived just in time to get in on the end of a round that most democratic of club chairmen, Sir Monty Wright, was buying to celebrate the close-season signing of a sixteen-year-old Croatian wunderkind. Word was that Man U and Chelsea had both been sniffing around, but while they hesitated, Sir Monty, who hadn't got where he was by hesitating, had dipped his hand into his apparently bottomless purse and said to the manager, "Go get him."
Joe bore his pint of Guinness to a seat next to his friend, Merv Golightly, self-styled prince of Luton cabbies but known because of his exuberant driving style as the man who put the X in taxi.