They drifted away.
He had gone back to his apartment earlier, put on his other work suit and taken the damaged trousers to the dry cleaner’s. They would do what they could with the tear. The previous receipt they had issued him was in his wallet. The woman had been sympathetic about the trousers, and unconcerned about the ‘lost’ receipt. He had taken home his clean clothes.
The FrauBoss and her team had gone; the great clocks that showed the time in other countries had been dimmed. There was a night-duty boy, Boris, but only the crown of his head was visible above the partitions. The TV screen flickered but the sound was off, and he had little interest in how the Dow was performing.
Jago saw the face of the girl, the scar that would never heal, and the face of Marcantonio. He worked at his computer and the emails diminished.
What was he for? He didn’t know. When would he find the answer?
Soon, perhaps, because it would be difficult if he did not.
5
The team at the bank was paramount. It had an ethos, a code, a discipline. Jago turned his back on them. A guy at Broadgate, in a bar after dismissal for poor time-keeping, had yelled: ‘The best-kept secret in that bloody place? There’s life outside.’ The bank was supposed to be his life, his horizon, would answer all his needs in exchange for total loyalty. Now he opened the door to another world.
It was the door to his apartment. He was at the top of the building. Below him was a house of several storeys, unoccupied because the family were on sabbatical. He looked back. The bedroom light was off, but the bed was made, his clothing neatly stowed in drawers and the wardrobe. His accommodation was occupied but anonymous. In the kitchen, the shelves were clean, the crockery washed, the tea-towel folded and the cleaning stuff put away. In the living area, the television was unplugged, the chair cushions plumped and the parquet swept. He had made no life-changing decision about not coming back.
He hesitated. The staircase in front of him led downwards. Jago realised what now it would mean to him when he closed the door and took the first step in his descent. A pause . . . He could not justify indecision. He was supposed to have organised his mind during the night when he had lain on his back and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the alarm to go off. He had seen the slash of the pistol down the girl’s cheek, the pride with which she had shouldered aside the investigator in the hospital corridor. He had felt himself on the ground and the humiliation of looking up from the pavement at the amusement he had aroused in passers-by. He sensed again the pleasure of walking past the BMW, holding the key and applying pressure, the thrill of the hearing shouting behind him. It was about more than the girl’s face, and more than the investigator’s old-world indifference.
The key might have been enough, but was not. He didn’t do drugs, but assumed that the first time would be as mind-blowing as running a key down the side of a sixty-thousand-euro car.
He closed the door. It had been a ‘defining moment’ of the sort that the motivational speakers, beloved by the bank, preached. The FrauBoss, the blessed Wilhelmina, was big on motivation, as had been the man who had dragged him into Canary Wharf, giving him a chance. He started down the stairs. His bag was light. No bank uniform. Instead he had with him what he would have worn if he’d gone with Hannelore on a Sunday walk round the lakes at K?penick and the Langer See. Jeans and trainers, T-shirt, fleece and a light anorak.
He opened the front door, stepped out and looked right, then left on Stresemannstrasse. He wondered if, at the bank, anyone would say as an epitaph that he had been good at his work.