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Peter is wallowing in a bottle of scotch when the knock comes, braced against the silence of a home leeched of warmth. He regrets answering the door as soon as he sees Ricki, inelegant and unkempt in his awful camel coat.
“You knew all along, I suppose,” Ricki says. “Tarr’s a good boy, he’ll understand in the end.” There’s a bitter twist to his soft, pretty mouth.
“She was doomed the moment she met you,” says Peter, standing aside to let him in. “You and your bloody holiday romances.”
Ricki falls in love too easily. It makes him useful. It makes him easy to use.
“Will you remember me now that you’re back at the top, Mr Guillam?” he calls over his shoulder, heading unerringly for the unattended whisky. “It’s lonely out in the cold.”
He swigs straight from the bottle, a veneer of provocation. The kitchen’s harsh lighting emphasizes the red, abraded skin around his eyes.
“You did the right thing,” Peter says. “Eventually.” It’s a difficult concession to make, even now.
“You always think the worst of me,” says Ricki. He looks suddenly, shockingly vulnerable, a little boy lost, and Peter sways forward to kiss him before he can think better of it.
Ricki drops the bottle and melts into him with a hushed, smothered sound. They stumble through broken glass until Ricki is crushed against the pantry’s sliding door. Peter’s tongue finds the gap of a missing tooth, gum still ragged.
“Did I do that?” he asks.
“Knocked it clean out of my head, Mr Guillam,” Ricki says. His quicksilver smile could be censure or approval. His grey eyes are flat.
Peter remembers the blood smearing his mouth, the way he didn’t fight back. The thought sends a peculiar hot flush through him, makes the next kiss rougher than he’d intended. Ricki yields now as he’d yielded then.
So sweet, this killer. This unpredictable rogue. Peter steps back, the heat of the moment draining.
“I’ll talk to Smiley tomorrow,” he says. “See what’s in store for you.” He averts his gaze from Ricki’s swollen lips, the disaster of his hair, the strain at the zipper of his ugly beige corduroys.
“Mr Guillam,” Ricki murmurs, shoulders shifting as though he might reach out. Peter touches a fingertip to the furrow of growing belligerence between his brows, traces the long sweep of his nose. His hand is shaking, he notes vaguely.
“Go home, Ricki,” he says. “You don’t want this. Neither do I.”
Ricki huffs out an explosive breath, not quite a laugh.
“And you call yourself British intelligence,” he says.