“Why not?” Robyn sneered. “This country’s more polarised now than it’s been since the civil war. You’d be surprised what people are prepared to excuse if you cover yourself in the flag and talk of the ‘great Brexit betrayal’.”
“I’m not sure they’re quite ready to excuse murder.”
Lucie slammed her folder to the desk and fixed her eyes intently on Robyn’s.
“You knew Whyte was a man with money who’d set up businesses, lose interest and hand them over to others to run while he has content to sit back and get richer. You and Butcher knew he was just a figurehead for the company, leaving the way clear for Butcher to negotiate whatever ‘perks’ he wanted in return for providing him a platform to launch chemical weapons at Yemen. I don’t know what your relationship with Butcher was, but I’ll find out; and whatever it was it was close enough for you to be fully aware of his ‘tastes’. Al-Khatani gave him the funds he needed to build his little pervert’s paradise and the people he needed to staff it – thugs hand picked from the yellow vests and who’d buy into his mantra that European women deserved what was coming to them, for having the brass neck to be here in the first place. That just left someone to source the women, someone who’d have access to not only the details of the people working in the brothels, but the people campaigning against them. Damn it Amber, you probably even campaigned alongside some of these women, no-one argued more passionately against the centres than you did; how the hell could you give these women up to a man like Butcher?”
The flesh of Robyn’s face had drained of colour, melding with her tamed hair and ivory blouse to present a figure of chilling and ghostly white, no longer the firebrand of her youth but instead the very image of the death she had visited upon others. The pretence was gone, as was the angered resentment, replaced instead with a condescending snarl and the visage of a woman who no longer cared about keeping up appearances.
“You misunderstood, Lucie,” she answered, coldly. “It wasn’t all women I wanted out of those brothels, only the British ones.”
The words chilled Lucie, though she had almost expected them, more frightening was the passionless nonchalance of their delivery, as though what she said should have been obvious, or even conventional, to all, and it turned Lucie’s stomach to hear them.
“I see,” the spy answered.
“Do you? You accuse me of hating foreigners, but I don’t, some of them have their uses.”
“Like the ones prepared to sell themselves in sex dens while you pocket the cash?”
“Better they do it than a British girl,” came the casual response. “Fruit will always need picking and backsides wiping in care homes. It’s only when they get above themselves, wanting to compete at the top, to tell proper people what to do, that the hate begins to burn.”
Lucie grimaced as Robyn spoke, the echo of Butcher’s words only too clear.
“So, knowing that Butcher shared your hatred, you pointed him towards people you thought fit the bill and he used social media to tighten the grip. The Red Mako would be delivered, Butcher would get his ‘perks’ and you could further cultivate the hostile environment; your own pockets full while the country fell off the Brexit cliff edge. And if anyone asked too many questions, there was Whyte as the perfect patsy.”
“Poor Jarvis,” Robyn mused, her eyes beginning to wander. “Lovely guy, just not much vision. If only…”
Her voice tailed off and she shook her head in an apparent lament which Lucie was disinclined to endure.
“You’re finished, Amber,” Lucie declared, her voice devoid of sympathy. “You’re having the Whip withdrawn as we speak and even if you manage to weasel your way out of charges, your Party will never take you back, not after this.”
Robyn’s face, through eerily ashen, began to twist into the arrogant sneer that had hissed soundbites and crafted insults in the House for years.
“There are other Parties,” she smirked, “and no-one is ever completely finished in politics anymore, not these days. Remember what Trump said? That he could stand in the middle of Time Square and shoot someone without damaging his rating? Well he was right. People will forgive you anything as long as you speak to their fears and give them someone to blame for them. All you need to do is find your constituency and you’re politically untouchable.”
She stood to leave, her beauty twisted by the hate within her soul.
“I’ll be the leader of a whole new movement, now,” she predicted with confidence. “Even if you get your way and they send me down, I’ll be a political prisoner to many who’ll flood the government with more protests and petitions than they’ll know what to do with.”
She headed to the door and pulled it open, turning back to Lucie who stared at her with undisguised pity.
“You think you’ve won, Lucie, but you haven’t. You’ve just made me a martyr.”
The door closed and Amber Robyn’s footsteps receded down the corridor, Lucie closing her eyes and settling her emotions for a moment before turning back to the desk, upon which the empty glasses still lay.
“No-one can be a martyr, Amber,” Lucie sadly intoned as she reached for a handkerchief and carefully lifted Robyn’s glass, placing it inside a large, plastic sandwich bag and fastening it shut, “if they don’t live long enough for anyone to know what they were really dying for.”
THIRTY
The day, which had begun brightly enough, retreated into a dark and miserable bleakness as Lucie approached Coffee Posse, her regular haunt in which she had shared many a word with the man she now dreaded to meet.
He had been out of the hospital for a week before she called him, and even as she approached the door now, she couldn’t explain why. For that moment, locked together in the storeroom, the promise they had made to each other, whether driven by fear or a desire simply to raise two fingers to cruel fate, had seemed the most perfect vision of a future she could have wished for. But it was a vision she had said goodbye to when she thought him dead, and even though her elation at his survival had reached every sinew of her body, and as much as she wanted to reach out and claim it back, the dream remained in the distance, like some cherished childhood memory; her love for it real but no longer present.
He deserved an explanation, Lucie knew, she owed him that much at least; a reason why she would break the promise that had meant so much, and she had come here to the scene of early flirtations and garnered trust to ensure he got it, however painful it might be.
She pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside to a room recovering from the early morning rush and enjoying the temporary relief of its own near emptiness.
Ismail was there at their usual table, staring out into the street, though his stare was more absent than she had grown used to, as though not all of him had made the trip back from the brink of death; his face was hollow and bruised and his mug was gripped in a gently trembling hand. On the table before him lay a damp and crumpled broadsheet, emblazoned with Amber Robyn’s photograph, beneath the headline: ‘DEFENCE SCANDAL CLAIMS 3RD MP AS NET TIGHTENS’. Lucie felt no temptation to celebrate Robyn’s death, announced to the world as a suicide, despite the pain she had caused. Instead she silently lamented the further loss of life and the perversions of justice that the ‘national interest’ too often demanded.
“Hi,” she said.
He shifted his gaze to her, his mouth twitching as though trying to form a smile that refused to wholly arrive.
“Lucie,” he answered, his voice softer than she remembered. “I got you a coffee.”
He gestured to a still steaming cup opposite him, Lucie taking it as an invitation to sit and sliding into her seat and placing her phone on the table.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“It was my turn.”
It was Lucie’s smile that now struggled to form, and the pair sat across from each other in a silence as uncomfortable as any she had known. It was Ismail though who eventually broke the quiet.
“Great
news,” he began in a voice which suggested it was anything but. “My suspension’s been lifted, the disciplinary dropped and guess what? I’ve been short-listed for Detective Chief Inspector.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know already.”
He spoke the words coldly, his eyes falling away from hers and towards the contents of his mug. A spasm of guilt gripped Lucie’s stomach at the words. She had known. It was not only she who had asked Lake to follow through with his arrangements, she had also suggested the promotion, she had thought as a reward for his exploits; but now began to wonder if it was instead to salve her conscience. Though she searched desperately for the right words to say to him, she found her mind empty of them, as though her brain had been plundered, leaving her with only banalities with which to answer.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” she whispered.
Ismail shifted himself up in his seat, wincing as he did so, the effects of his not yet healed injuries all too apparent.
“Do you want to know something?” he began, his voice fragile but stronger than before. “When they dragged us out of that damn shithole we were in and pointed a gun at me, I was all for just giving up, walking into the light and getting myself a luxury suite in heaven, but two things wouldn’t let me. One of them was the thought of going back to the cops and forgetting this shit ever happened. I fought so, so hard to get my position; the cops didn’t want me and my family sure as hell didn’t want me to join up. I have a brother who hasn’t spoken to me in twenty-two years… I mean, I’ve tried, I’ve done my best, but he just slams the door in my face, he won’t even pick up the phone. He says I’m a traitor.”
“You’re not a traitor.” The words stumbled almost silently through Lucie’s lips and were met by a harsh laugh from the police officer.
“It sure felt like I was. It felt like that for years and I couldn’t handle it. It cost me my marriage. But then when I got into CID, when I made sergeant, then inspector, it actually felt like I was doing some good, that I was helping people, and more than that, I’d got there by myself, through my own work. And now I don’t even have that, because the promotion I’ve worked for is down to a man I hate and a woman I love, who thinks she can make up for breaking a promise by pulling a few strings.”
Lucie looked down at the table, unwilling to react to chastisement she felt she deserved.
“What was the second thing?” she finally asked, only to be met with Ismail’s hurting eyes.
“You know,” he said.
She looked down again to her untouched coffee.
“When we were in that room together,” he continued, “you and me, we made a deal.”
“Asif, we were just trying to stay alive, it didn’t mean anything…”
“It meant something to me!”
Lucie swallowed the words she wanted to say and looked back up at him.
“It’s not that I don’t want to do those things with you, I do,” she insisted in earnest. “It’s just one more job…”
“Don’t,” Ismail sighed, putting up his hands and turning his head away. “Just don’t. If I wanted to hear an addict’s excuses, I’d go down the cells and talk to the crack heads.”
“No, I mean it. I still don’t know the connection between Robyn and Butcher and Lake’s picked up a new lead on a child abuse ring we’ve been hunting. I screwed up on the last lead we had, I just need to finish this up…”
“I said don’t!”
His chest refused to support the rise in his voice, and Ismail sat back, trying fruitlessly to stifle the cough his recovering body forced upon him. Lucie reached her hand out to his only for him to withdraw it before their skin could touch.
“You don’t see it, do you? For God’s sake, Lucie, you’re not stupid! Wake up and see that Lake’s got you by the short and curlies; there’ll always be another job for you, another reason why you shouldn’t walk away. That’s why you have to walk away now, before you become like them.”
She toyed with the handle of her mug, understanding only too well the veracity of his words but unable to yield to their logic.
“I can’t,” she finally said, Ismail turning his face away hiding from her the tear on his cheek and fighting to keep control of his breathing. He pushed his mug away and made to stand up, Lucie reaching out again, desperate to feel some warmth or sensitivity from him again, though unable to offer the words that would make it happen.
“I’m an idiot,” Ismail spat, “you’re already like them.”
“I’m not!”
“No? Look how easily you took the gun from me that night in the car, how steady your aim was.”
“I’m not going to use a gun again,” she protested.
“No,” Ismail conceded, with sadness in his face. “You’ll just find some other way to make the kill.”
Lucie was taken aback by the bluntness of his words, and she knew that her objections lacked any substance. In the silence, her phone began to ring, rattling against the table, the pair looking accusingly at it until it vibrated to a stop.
“I’m not like them,” she quietly repeated.
“Then prove it!”
Ismail checked himself as the server behind the counter looked pointedly at them, his voice having raised with each syllable.
“Prove it,” he said again, softly but with undiminished intensity. “Walk out of here with me now. Forget your phone, let it ring. Forget Algers, forget Lake, forget all the bastards waiting in dark corners and walk away with me.”
“Kasper’s a good man, he…”
“And Lake isn’t,” he interrupted. “You, Lucie, you are a good person. But if you stay with this lot any longer then I don’t know how long you’ll be able to say that.”
“Do you have any idea what he’ll do to you if I came away with you?” Lucie sorrowfully quizzed. “He nearly took away your career once, he’ll do it again, and worse…”
“Then I’ll stack shelves at ASDA!”
Lucie’s eyes were everywhere except Ismail’s, at once desiring and afraid of accepting his own outstretched palm. He was someone with whom at last she could be herself, with whom her so often raging mind was calm… The fingers of her right hand began to move across the table, inching towards Ismail’s as though he were dragging her painfully from the quicksand of her life.
The renewed buzz and rattle of the phone against the counter was enough to pause Lucie’s hand before her fingertips brushed his. Their eyes locked in mute resignation, Lucie could feel the tears he no longer hid matched in her own eyes as her hand drifted downwards and closed tightly around the device.
“Yes?” she replied to the sound of Lake’s greeting, praying that her voice would not break until she could stumble through whatever instructions he had.
Ismail withdrew his hand, and slid from the chair, blinking away the water in his eyes as he walked to the door and headed onto the rain-soaked road. Lucie turned and watched him through the window as he walked, her hand pressed to the glass and her heart aching for him to turn and offer her even a regretful glance. None came.
“Of course,” Lucie Musilova, the Overlapper, heard herself answer. “I’m all yours.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Unbelievably, this is my fourth book and any notions I entertained that writing them would become easier with experience were, I now realise, as foolish as they were naïve. I am indebted to many for their love, help and support as I scribed furiously (and often feverishly) away on Lucie’s latest mission. In particular I would like to thank the administrators of Crime Fiction Addicts, for allowing me to post a question in their Christmas competition, and Karen Small, who won it with her splendid suggestion of ‘Jarvis Whyte’ as a character name. The British Czech and Slovak Association, Ed Peacock in particular, must also be thanked for their greatly appreciated support.
My thanks as well to Professor Tanja Bueltmann, for agreeing to cameo within these pages. Her work, and that of others such as the sple
ndid Axel Antoni, and all at The 3 Million, is a true inspiration in these dark and worrying times, and while my thanking them is hardly adequate recompense, it is at least sincerely meant.
I thank Miroslava for her love and support, and my family and friends who continue to mystifyingly put up with me. Thanks also to the Good Lord for seeing me through it. Tim and Georgia I thank for simply being themselves (though if you could just let me have a little peace and quiet now and then, that would great).
I am grateful as ever to Matthew and Urbane Publications for their continuing faith in my stories, and to my fellow writers out there who know who they are and whose support means so much. Thank you.
And finally, thanks to you for picking this book up and reading it; I hope it doesn’t disappoint.
James Silvester’s debut novel and sequel, Escape to Perdition and The Prague Ultimatum, embraced his love both of central Europe and the espionage genre and was met with widespread acclaim. This was followed by the first book in the Lucie Musilova thriller series, Blood, White and Blue, reflecting topical events in the UK and Europe.
James has also written for The Prague Times and his work has been featured by Doctor Who Worldwide and travel site An Englishman in Slovakia.
James lives in Manchester.
Have you read James Silvester’s earlier thrillers? They are available now from Amazon and all good bookshops.
Prague 2015. Herbert Biely, aged hero of the Prague Spring, stands on the brink of an historic victory, poised to reunite the Czech and Slovak Republics twenty-six years after the Velvet Revolution. The imminent Czech elections are the final stage in realising his dream of reunification, but other parties have their own agendas and plans for the fate of the region.
A shadowy collective, masked as an innocuous European Union Institute, will do anything to preserve the status quo. The mission of Institute operative Peter Lowes is to prevent reunification by the most drastic of measures. Yet Peter is not all that he seems. A deeply troubled man, desperate to escape the past, his resentment towards himself, his assignment and his superiors deepens as he questions not just the cause, but his growing feelings for the beautiful and captivating mission target. As alliances shift and the election countdown begins, Prague becomes the focal point for intrigue on an international scale. The body count rises, options fade, and Peter’s path to redemption is clouded in a maelstrom of love, deception and murder. Can he confront his past to save the future? This is a high-quality page turning thriller and perfect for fans of John le Carré.
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