by Mark Sennen
‘You’re back,’ she said.
‘The Western missing person case,’ Holm said. ‘Our crime, apparently.’
‘What?’ Cornish scowled. ‘Ben Western’s got nothing to do with animal rights.’
‘You look as surprised as your officer did.’
‘What the hell’s going on here, Stephen?’ Cornish was spitting angry. Holm hadn’t remembered her as having a temper, but perhaps that was what you needed to get on these days. Perhaps that was why he was stuck in a cupboard back at JTAC, pushing sixty, with nothing much to look forward to but a meagre pension and a cold empty flat.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps you’d better fill us in on who this Western fellow is.’
‘Was – he’s dead.’ Cornish jabbed a finger at Holm, the anger back. ‘And yet you don’t know who the hell he is?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Holm felt a tingle on the back of his right hand. He balled his fist to conceal his excitement. ‘Maybe you could start at the beginning?’
‘No, let’s start in here.’ Cornish lifted the flap on the forensic tent. ‘I hope all that paper-pushing analysis work for JTAC hasn’t weakened your stomach. Mind you, it’s not as bad as the Teddington girl.’
Holm ducked at the entrance and followed Cornish inside.
‘Shit.’ He turned away for a moment and swallowed. ‘What did you say about this being no worse than the Teddington girl?’
The man lay on his side, his face towards them. There was a large area of scorched heather surrounding the head and upper torso. The fire had consumed the hair, and the face was seared like a rasher of bacon left too long in the frying pan. The lips had burned back revealing white teeth and blackened bone, and the eye sockets were dark holes surrounded by carbonised flesh. Farther down, where the fire hadn’t reached, the clothing hung loose. As Holm looked closer he could see a rippling as something moved beneath the material. Maggots, Holm thought, eating the parts of the body that hadn’t been fried to a hard crust.
Outside, Javed had been trying to peer into the tent and the fact he’d disappeared a few seconds later suggested to Holm the boy had seen more than he wanted to. Lightweight.
‘Is this Ben Western?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘What does the expert from London think?’
‘Very funny.’ Holm shook his head but moved closer. He bent and examined the heather. He’d seen this before. ‘There was an accelerant. He fell into the flames and burned alive.’
‘Could be.’ Cornish pulled something from her pocket. A phone. She flicked her fingers across the screen. ‘Here. This was the scene before the CSIs started work.’
Holm peered down. A picture showed the man lying in the heather, only now, to the right of the body and clasped in one hand, was an empty bottle of Smirnoff vodka.
‘Great.’ Holm felt his earlier excitement fade. Had he been played by the person sending the tweets? Or perhaps there’d been an error, the wrong information sent. That never happened in spy novels but it wasn’t hard to imagine a mistake being made, especially if the person sending the message had been in a hurry or at risk of being discovered. ‘So Mr Western drowns his sorrows and wanders onto the heath, lights up a cigarette and accidentally sets fire to himself. How many of these types of losers do you get a year?’
‘Not as many as in London, I’m sure, but all is not quite what it seems, Mr Expert.’ Cornish reached out and pointed at the head of the corpse. ‘Look closely at the base of the skull. There’s an entry wound.’
‘He was shot?’
‘Seems likely. We’ll know after the post-mortem.’ Cornish stood beside Holm. She glanced at her watch. Pressure. Deadlines. Then the tension dissipated. ‘Look, sorry I snapped earlier. It’s good to see you again. Why don’t I buy us something over at the National Trust cafe? Your colleague too.’
‘He won’t be hungry.’ Holm gestured out through the flap of the tent. ‘About to relieve himself of his breakfast by the looks of it.’
‘You missed this.’ A few paces away, Javed straightened. He hadn’t been sick and didn’t appear ill. He pointed at a canister lying on the ground. ‘Down in the heather.’
‘What is it?’ Cornish said.
‘A cigarette lighter refill. I guess there’s your accelerant, not the vodka.’
Holm smiled. He was a little saddened Javed hadn’t spewed his guts up, but on the other hand showing Cornish JTAC employed more than just paper-pushing analysts was worth the disappointment.
‘I guess that’s why we had to drive all the way from London,’ Holm said. ‘I don’t know, Farakh, what would they do without us? Bloody country bumpkins.’
Cornish barked something out to one of the CSIs and directed him over to Javed. She shook her head.
‘Thanks.’ She nodded towards the sea. ‘Let’s get that coffee.’
Holm and Javed followed Cornish along a narrow path back to the car park. The little cafe was devoid of customers aside from a solitary police officer who was chatting to the woman behind the counter. When Cornish approached he nodded and made his excuses.
‘That’s what it’s like these days,’ Cornish said as they sat at a table. ‘The loneliness of command.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Holm said. He looked at Javed. ‘Although sometimes a little peace and quiet would be welcome.’
‘Believe me, there’s never any of that.’ Cornish stared out of the cafe window. The officer who’d left was talking to a colleague, and Holm had the sense Cornish wasn’t exactly happy with her role.
‘Ma’am?’ Javed cut into the awkward silence. ‘Who exactly was Ben Western?’
Cornish swung round. ‘He worked as the operations manager at SeaPak, a container shipping company. They’re based at Felixstowe and have a distribution centre there, as well as at Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Six months ago Western handed in his notice. Then, last week, he went missing. There was some evidence he might have been abducted, but it was sketchy. There was certainly no reason for him to run off and leave his wife and kids.’
‘It happens.’ Holm remembered walking into his living room to find his own wife straddling his next-door neighbour, his first thought – bizarrely – that he’d paid way over the odds for the deep-pile carpet the pair were fucking on. Perhaps he should have simply turned round and disappeared himself.
‘Yes, but alarm bells started to ring.’ Cornish paused. She took a sip of coffee, and when she spoke again the edge in her voice returned. Suspicion and a touch of aggression. ‘Now, before I tell you anything else, I want to know what exactly your interest is in Ben Western.’
‘Like I told you on the phone, animal rights.’ Holm bent to his own coffee, trying to disguise the lie. ‘Five are tracking a group out of Birmingham. We believe they may be planning something.’
‘Crap,’ Cornish said. ‘One, as far as I know Ben Western has nothing to do with animal rights, and two, since when did Stephen Holm concern himself with the antics of a few vegan loonies?’
‘Since last month.’ Holm didn’t have to put on an act now. He lowered his head. ‘Since the whole country went to a critical threat level on my advice. Since UK citizens died in Tunisia on my watch.’
Cornish looked abashed. She reached out a hand and touched Holm’s arm. ‘That was you?’
Holm nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Those were a crazy few hours, even out here in the sticks. We had to lock down the port of Felixstowe and then there was…’ Cornish let her words trail off and she turned her head once more. This time her gaze was directed up the coast to where a distant cluster of huge concrete buildings surrounded a brilliant white dome. Sizewell nuclear power station. ‘You’d tell me if your investigation had anything to do with that, wouldn’t you, Stephen? National security or not?’
Holm took another drink of coffee. Swallowed. He’d spotted the power station on the drive in, even pointed it out to Javed, but for some reason it hadn’t even crossed his mind it could be con
nected.
‘Of course I would,’ he said.
* * *
‘So,’ Javed said as they watched Cornish drive off in a patrol car. ‘What do you reckon?’
Holm wasn’t listening. He was still considering Cornish’s question about Sizewell. He’d refused to answer her probing directly, instead keeping up the animal rights charade, but if there’d been a real threat? Something which could have harmed her? National security or not, he pretty much knew he’d have told her the truth.
As it was, Cornish had let it lie. She’d given them some more information on Ben Western and SeaPak, but there wasn’t much to go on and nothing to suggest a link to Taher. Pity, Holm thought. It would have been nice to spend a bit of time with Cornish. But that was stupid. A fine woman like her had to be married by now. There’d be kids, home life, a world away from work. Then again Holm had once known the same and it hadn’t been enough. All of a sudden he was thinking of how old he felt, of how lucky Cornish’s husband must be, of how his own marriage had ended in failure and recriminations.
‘Hello?’ Javed said as Cornish’s car disappeared into the distance. ‘Come in, number twenty-nine, your time is up.’
‘Huh?’ Holm flipped back to real life.
‘I was asking about Ben Western and SeaPak.’ Javed’s gaze drifted seawards. On the horizon one tiny smudge after another lay strung out in a line. Cargo ships awaiting clearance into Felixstowe. ‘What the hell can the murder of Western have to do with Taher?’
Holm moved towards their car. A breeze blew in off the sea, cold and damp. He’d neglected to put his jacket on when they arrived and now he felt chilled. ‘I have no idea.’
* * *
The event started at six, and as they struggled through the rush-hour crowds, Silva felt ridiculously overdressed in her black cocktail dress. In his smart suit, Sean looked like an actor about to step onto the red carpet.
‘The reception is at the National Gallery,’ Sean said as they emerged from the tube at Charing Cross and walked across Trafalgar Square. ‘It’s a private function.’
They climbed the steps to the gallery and joined a small queue. A man was checking tickets and guiding people in past heavy security. Two guards were frisking every guest and leading them through a metal detector for good measure.
‘You can’t be too careful these days,’ Sean said.
They strolled along a corridor and into a wing with restricted access. Another pair of suits, well muscled, a flash of a shoulder holster under one man’s jacket.
‘Howya doin’, Sean?’ one of the men said in a heavy American accent. He shook his head. ‘Them Patriots not doing so well, right?’
‘You got me there, Frank,’ Sean said as they walked past. ‘Maybe next season.’
‘You didn’t tell me this was work.’ Silva understood now: she was eye candy for Sean at some embassy function. ‘And to be honest I wouldn’t have come if you had.’
‘There you go, then. But I promise the experience will be worth it. Come on.’ Sean took her arm and guided her across the room to where a rotund man was selecting nibbles from a table. He was eyeing a cocktail sausage with suspicion as they approached.
‘Sean.’ The man popped the sausage in his mouth and barely chewed before swallowing. Like the security detail he was American. He wore an expensive dark suit, but over his large frame the tailoring was wasted. Heavy jowls sagged with flesh and his neck was almost non-existent, while a bushy crop of curly brown hair added to the impression of size. ‘Hell, where are my manners? And in front of a beautiful woman too. Who’s your delightful partner, young man?’
‘Mr Deputy Ambassador,’ Sean said. ‘This is my friend Rebecca.’
‘Friend?’ The deputy ambassador shook his head and extended his hand. ‘Well, if you say so.’
‘Hello, Mr Ambassador,’ Rebecca said, feeling awkward.
‘It’s Greg. Greg Mavers. And I’m not the ambassador quite yet.’ Mavers gave a wink to Sean. ‘Now tell me, young lady, just what is it you do?’
‘She’s ex-military, sir,’ Sean said. ‘Served in Afghanistan.’
‘A privilege, Rebecca,’ Mavers said. ‘You know, the way things have turned out, the vets just don’t get the appreciation they deserve.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Silva said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Rebecca was hard done by, sir,’ Sean said. ‘Like a lot of soldiers were.’
‘Beats me why anyone joins the army in the first place. The problem is…’ Mavers shook his head and his voice trailed off as a smattering of applause echoed off the ceiling. ‘Damn. My apologies, I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my cue.’
He moved away through the crowd towards a small stage with a lectern. Silva craned her neck to see over the people in front of her. The crowd had surged forward like kids at a tweeny-pop gig, but she still couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. Then there was another round of applause as Mavers stepped up to the lectern.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ Mavers’s voice boomed out, the PA system totally redundant. ‘The new American Room is a fitting symbol of the pan-Atlantic relationship. A gallery filled with portraits of notable Americans right here on British soil. I wonder if Thomas Paine could have envisaged such a thing when he set sail two and a half centuries ago.’ Here Mavers paused for a burst of laughter. ‘Anyway, without further ado, I’m pleased to introduce the benefactor who made the new gallery possible.’ Mavers swung an arm out to one side where a tall brunette with striking features and iceberg-blue eyes stood waiting. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Karen Hope.’
Silva clutched at Sean, her legs almost buckling with the shock. Hope climbed the steps to the lectern and the room erupted in cheers and whoops. Silva felt Sean’s hand take hers in a tight grip. If he noticed her reaction he appeared to think it was from excitement.
‘Amazing, huh?’ he said. ‘I told you we’d be witnessing history. This is something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’ Hope waved the audience quiet, but in the manner of an experienced politician she continued to milk the applause, not speaking until the clapping had faded to almost nothing. ‘I’m honoured to be here today…’
The speech descended into a fuzz of noise. The woman’s lips moved, mouthing words that made no sound. Sean stood next to Silva, staring in admiration. Nearly everyone was as beguiled as he was, but by the end of the speech, Silva felt physically sick. She excused herself, pushed through the throng and went to find a bathroom.
She sat in the cubicle for a few minutes and then emerged and splashed water on her face. She went back to the gallery to find Sean hovering near the entrance.
‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘Come on.’
He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the crowded room. There was an inevitability to what happened next, as if some unseen force was pulling her forward. Bodies parted and then Silva was face to face with Karen Hope.
‘Sean Connor.’ Mavers stood alongside Hope. Blustery, sweaty and, all of a sudden, quite obnoxious. ‘Sean’s a rising star in the Agency. One to watch. And Rebecca…’ Mavers turned. ‘Sorry, I didn’t get your last name?’
Silva couldn’t speak. Her mouth opened but there was nothing but a gasp of air.
‘Da Silva,’ Sean said. ‘Rebecca da Silva.’
There was a momentary flash of something in Hope’s eyes. A twitch from a muscle in her neck. ‘That name sounds familiar. Do I know you?’
‘Rebecca’s mother was killed in the recent attack in Tunisia,’ Sean said. ‘The Islamists were targeting a women’s charity if you remember?’
‘The journalist.’ Hope wore a mask of pure innocence and compassion. She reached out and grasped Silva’s hands with both of hers. ‘How awful. I’m so sorry for your loss, Rebecca. The world deserves to be a better place so we don’t have to endure this type of tragedy.’
Silva muttered something and it was all she could do to restrain herself
from wrenching her hands free. She tried to speak, but still nothing coherent came out. Hope gave a little nod towards Sean. Do something, it said. An executive order. Comfort on command.
Then Hope released Silva’s hands and was wheeled away by Mavers to press more worthy flesh.
‘Jeez, Becca, are you OK?’ Sean had his arm round her. ‘Do you want something to drink?’
‘Air,’ Silva said. ‘I need air. I need to get out of this fucking place.’
An elderly man close by gave Silva a glance. Bad form, swearing, the look said. Especially from a lady.
Silva stumbled away, shrugging off Sean’s attempts to come with her. She passed through security and ran outside. She walked across Trafalgar Square to one of the fountains and sat on the edge. She clenched her fists. Hope had known. What Sean and Mavers had taken for being well briefed was in fact evidence of her guilt. Silva had seen the fleeting look of horror cross Hope’s face. The realisation this was the daughter of her nemesis. What else had she realised? Did she have an inkling that Silva knew the whole story?
The air was warm and the stone wall she sat on radiated the heat of the day but despite this she shivered. After a few minutes she walked back up the road to the gallery. She slipped inside and made for the toilets. Along the corridor a couple of guests waited by the cloakroom desk while an attendant retrieved their belongings. To one side there was an anteroom, and a sheet of paper with the words Green Room printed in bold type had been stuck to the door. A raised voice floated out. Instead of going into the toilets, Silva moved towards the door. She hung near the entrance and casually peered through the crack. Greg Mavers stood over near one wall, his bulbous face white, his eyes wide and staring. A disembodied finger jabbed at his face. Silva shifted her position, but she already knew who the finger belonged to because she could hear the near screech from Karen Hope echo round the room.
‘An apology isn’t enough, Greg. Not nearly fucking enough.’