Secret Asset

by Stella Rimington

  “I think I’ve found out why he’s no longer living there. I had a Google Alert tied to his name, and I got a flash this morning. There’s an article in this morning’s Financial Times.”

  Peggy pushed a newspaper clipping towards Liz and kept talking while Liz scanned the piece. “Apparently Ravi Singh and an associate were being investigated by the OFT for insider share dealing. But that’s not all. The Serious Fraud Office has been called in, because they think Ravi and this other chap may have been involved in an identity-fraud scam using other people’s credit card numbers.”

  Liz pointed to the clipping. “It says here some of the victims are American, so the FBI is taking an interest. It’s possible they’ll want to extradite them.”

  It would be a lot worse for them over there. She handed the clipping back to Peggy. “This is terrible,” she declared. And silently she asked herself, What on earth am I going to say to Judith?

  It wasn’t simply that they were friends. Over the last decade, as both of them moved into their thirties, Judith had seemed to Liz the epitome of a woman who had it all—a successful career, a happy marriage, a much-loved child. Everyone knew that was a tough balancing act, yet Judith seemed to manage it with an elegant grace that Liz admired in spite of herself. She would normally find it hard to like such a paragon of virtue, but Judith did everything impeccably, never took anything for granted, and had an impish sense of humour.

  Liz had been to her house in Fulham for dinner several times over the years. They were happy occasions, low-key and relaxed. What always struck Liz was the calm efficiency with which Judith ran the household. Ravi had helped, but he worked long hours in the City, so most of the onus was on Judith. What a juggling act: finishing the dinner, getting her guests a drink and simultaneously comforting her daughter, Daisy, who kept getting out of bed to see the guests. And Judith was always so utterly unflappable. I can’t even get the laundry done, Liz thought, as she dialled Judith’s extension. A surprise visitor to Liz’s flat in Kentish Town would currently find two bed sheets stretched to dry on the dining room chairs along with three pairs of tights and an assortment of underwear—all thanks to Liz’s failure to fix a date with the repair man to mend her tumble dryer.

  Throughout the morning there was no reply from Judith’s extension, but at lunchtime Liz found her sitting alone at a table in the far corner of the Thames House cafeteria. Her expression made it clear that she did not want company. Liz joined her, sliding her tray along the table and sitting down opposite her.

  “I see you didn’t fancy the bolognese either,” said Liz lightly, pointing to their respective salads. Judith managed a wan smile. She looks terrible, thought Liz; Judith was usually the epitome of elegance. Unlike Liz, she never looked as though her clothes had spent the night on a chair. Though she dressed conservatively, she was a careful shopper with a keen eye for quality and style. Now she looked drab.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” said Liz.

  Judith raised a mild, uninterested eye. She had her hair tied back, which usually complimented her sharp, strong features. Today, despite a lot of makeup, it only highlighted her drawn face.

  “I haven’t said anything, because there hasn’t been a need to. But you know the vetting updates the Security Committee ordered?”

  “Yes,” said Judith. Liz thought she sounded slightly wary.

  “Well, I’ve had to do some of them. My turn to draw the short straw. It’s why I haven’t been around all the time, in case you noticed.”

  Judith didn’t say anything, but just waited for Liz to continue. “It’s meant to be largely a paper exercise and I don’t need to interview people…”

  “Unless,” said Judith impassively.

  “Unless,” said Liz, a little doggedly, wishing her friend would make this easier for them both, “there is some discrepancy. Something that needs explaining.”

  “And you want to know about Ravi?”

  Her voice was flat, toneless. It made Liz feel she was persecuting her friend, but she knew she had no choice. “Well it is in the papers. Is he still living with you?”

  “No, he left before Christmas.” And she never said a word, thought Liz. “I’m still living there,” said Judith a little defensively. She was poking her salad with her fork.

  “I know,” said Liz. “But we’re supposed to inform B Branch if our circumstances change. You know that, Judith,” she said, as gently as she could.

  For the first time Judith’s voice showed animation. “‘Circumstances change’?” she said sarcastically. “You can say that again. You say you’ve seen the papers. I mean, your talking to me isn’t a coincidence, now is it?”

  “No,” admitted Liz, “it’s not. Though I was going to need to talk to you in any case.”

  “How many other people are you vetting?”

  “A lot,” said Liz, happy to let Judith prevaricate provided they got back to the point eventually. “I’m doing Oxbridge people first. There were several up with you.” Judith didn’t reply, so Liz went on. “Were you friends with any of them?”

  “Like who?” she said.

  “Patrick Dobson was there.”

  “Was he?”

  One down, thought Liz. “Doesn’t matter. Michael Binding was at Oxford, too.”

  “As he never ceases telling me,” said Judith sourly. Liz knew she shared her own irritation with Binding’s condescending treatment of his female colleagues. “When he wants to show his intellectual superiority he always says”—and here Judith mimicked Binding’s bass tones—“‘When I was at Oxford…’ As if I hadn’t gone there myself, and as if it meant that much anyway. If you have to interview him, please do me a favour.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pretend you think his college was St. Hilda’s. It’s the only all-women’s college. He’ll be mortified.”

  Liz smiled at the thought of Binding’s sense of outrage. Then she asked, “What about Tom Dartmouth? He was there at the same time.”

  Judith nodded but didn’t say anything. Liz prompted her. “Did you know him then?”

  “No. Though I knew who he was.”

  “Why was that?”

  Judith gave a small conspiratorial grin. “Didn’t you know the names of the best-looking boys at college?”

  Liz laughed. “By heart,” she said, but came back to her question. “But you didn’t know him?”

  “No,” said Judith simply. “However much I may have wanted to. Not that I’d say I really know him now. He’s a bit of an enigma. Funnily enough, I saw his wife a few months ago.”

  “Aren’t they divorced?”

  “Yes.” She sighed, seemingly at the comparison with her own shattered ménage. “She’s Israeli, and absolutely stunning. Her father was an Air Force general in the Seven Day War.”

  “I thought she lived in Israel.”

  Judith shrugged. “Maybe she was visiting. I saw her in Harrods Food Hall, of all places. I waved but she didn’t wave back. She may not have recognised me. I only met her once or twice, and it was years ago.”

  Time to get back to the point, thought Liz. Slightly hesitantly she asked, “Have you spoken to Ravi?”

  Judith shook her head. “Not for weeks. We are communicating strictly through lawyers now. He hasn’t even come to see Daisy. It’s been incredibly hurtful, but after today’s news, I wonder whether he’s just been trying to spare us.”

  “So you’ve only just found out about his problems?” Liz had been half assuming it was precisely his “problems” that had led Judith to throw him out.

  “Yes,” said Judith. She looked at Liz, at first quizzically, then with outright disbelief. “You don’t think I had anything to do with them, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” She knew Judith too well to doubt her sincerity. “But I’m sure they’ll want to talk with you about it.”

  “Who, B Branch?”

  “Well, yes, but I was thinking more the Fraud Squad.”

  “Happily,” said Judi
th. “I’ll tell them everything I know. Which, in fact, is absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nothing…” She suddenly seemed on the verge of an hysterical outburst, so Liz reached over and put her hand on her forearm. “Steady,” she said calmly.

  Judith stopped speaking at once, nodding with her chin down. Liz was afraid Judith was going to cry. It was touch and go for a moment, then Judith pulled herself together. Putting her fork down and looking at Liz, she demanded, “What happens now? Do I get disciplined?”

  “It’s not up to me,” Liz said, very grateful that it wasn’t. “I can’t see it as a very big deal. After all, it’s not as if we couldn’t have got hold of you. With any luck, they’ll just put a note on your file.”

  “A reprimand,” said Judith.

  “I shouldn’t think so. More like a slap on the wrist.”

  Judith smiled faintly. “The thing is, Liz, I know how it looks. People will think either ‘Why didn’t she stand by her husband when he got in trouble?’ or ‘No wonder she threw him out—the man’s a crook.’”

  “Possibly,” said Liz, not sure what Judith was trying to say.

  “But don’t you see?” and for the first time there was passion in Judith’s voice. “I didn’t throw him out. He left me.” Liz tried not to show her own surprise, as Judith collected her cutlery and laid it neatly on her plate, then folded her napkin. It was as if she were trying to control her emotions by paying attention to the most pedestrian detail. “Look, Liz, I’m married to someone who doesn’t love me any more. And today I’ve discovered he’s a crook. But do you know the most terrible thing about it all?”

  Her voice faltered and this time Liz thought she really would break down. She felt helpless watching her friend’s distress. But again Judith seemed to catch hold of herself. “It’s that I’d have him back tomorrow, crook or not. Isn’t that pathetic?”

  40

  He was going to have to get rid of the car, and part of him wanted to get rid of Rashid as well. Stupid! Bashir had thought furiously, as they had driven out of Wokingham and west along the M4. The road had been almost deserted that late at night, lit by a crescent moon that hung like a brooch from a cloudless sky. Rashid had been stupid beyond belief. Though from the way he had sat slumped half asleep in the passenger seat, he was completely oblivious to the trouble he had caused. In the back Khaled also slept.

  The temptation to remove Rashid passed—he was needed after all. But Bashir’s anger remained. It was not helped by the need to keep a low profile, and stay inside all day. They were living in a small house on the outskirts of Didcot, part of a new estate of starter homes that skirted a golf course. Like all its neighbours their house enjoyed a close-up view of the nearby power station and its reviled cooling towers.

  Yet for all the grimness of its surroundings, the house had the bonus of a garage, in which Bashir had put the Golf, swapping places with the white builder’s van, which he had parked on the street.

  But the car was going to have to go. They needed to work on the van and they’d have to do that in the garage, safely out of sight.

  Bashir stuck closely to Rashid in the following days, since he did not trust him enough now to allow even the shortest solitary walk. But staying inside all day was intensely monotonous for all three of them. There was nothing for them to do. Meals and prayers and the Koran—that was their life.

  Bashir had a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of the area and spent one afternoon scrutinising it for remote tracks in the unpopulated countryside lying west of them. Then one evening he went out while it was still light, since he was worried he would not be able to find a suitable place in darkness. He gave Rashid and Khaled strict instructions not to leave the house on any account, though it was only Rashid he was concerned about. The landline was disconnected, and he had destroyed Rashid’s incriminating mobile phone before they left Wokingham. As long as he didn’t go anywhere, even Rashid should be unable to get into further trouble.

  He was surprised how quickly the urban sprawl of Didcot gave way to farmland, and drove past field after field of orchards until he turned off the main Wantage road and moved south towards the Downs, pulling over on the small roads from time to time to consult his map. He drove through a village of brick and beam cottages, where a solitary man emerged from the churchyard with a terrier on a lead. Bashir felt conspicuous, and tried to reassure himself—he told himself there were plenty of Asians in Oxfordshire.

  He turned onto a road of potholed asphalt that climbed in a series of sharp zig-zags to the top of the Downs. The Ridgeway crossed here, and he could see hikers in shorts and thick boots walking west towards Bath. The road split, the paved fork continuing south, crossing up and down across the humps of the hills. To the right a sandy track, half overgrown, meandered into a small wood. It was clearly never used.

  Bashir drove down it cautiously, hearing the grass brushing the van’s bottom, and gorse bushes scratching its side. At the first small clearing, he pulled over and parked under an enormous beech tree.

  He got out, locked the van, and began to walk further along the track. On either side, holm oaks towered above him, blocking out the sunlight and casting spooky shadows. Bashir could see that the track remained just accessible enough by car. After two hundred yards he came to a curve in the road, and almost immediately to a small clearing with a shallow pond where the track ended. The water looked mucky, algae-filled. No one would want to swim there.

  Mentally Bashir marked a spot next to the pond where he would put the Golf. It should be days, possibly weeks before it was discovered, he thought, and in the state it was going to be in, it wouldn’t tell anyone much. In any case, very soon it wouldn’t matter even if it did. All he needed now was a full can of petrol.

  41

  It was the Young Farmers Dinner Dance, but Charlie Hancock was not so young any more. He was too old for dancing. He’d spent the greater part of the evening, after the meal, drinking pints with the other older farmers at the village hall bar. He’d had the one obligatory bop with his wife, Gemma, then let her dance with her girlfriends, while he discussed the impact of the dry winter on the corn crop with his pals. She now sat half asleep in the passenger seat.

  By one o’clock they were both ready to leave, and though he was pretty sure he shouldn’t really be driving—even the weakest bitter added up after a while—he took the wheel since Gemma’s eyes weren’t so good in the dark. He’d stuck to the back roads, through the tucked-in village of East Ginge, and the feudal holdings of the Lockinge estate, then relaxed as he climbed up into the Downs, since here at this hour he was unlikely to encounter anyone at all, much less a panda car with a policeman keen to breathalyse a farmer with a bellyful of brew.

  He felt a bit sick and he needed to pee quite badly, so though he knew he was less than ten minutes from their farmhouse, he pulled over at the crest of Causewell Hill, where the dead-end track down to Simter’s Pond started. Gemma stirred only slightly when he clambered out, breathing in the cool air and looking up to admire Orion in the clear sky as he went about his business. He saw the deep marks of fresh tyres on the track, and would have thought nothing of it—it had become a bit of a lover’s lane, this remote stint of a road—had he not breathed in through his nose and caught the strongest whiff of smoke. He sniffed again, more carefully, and the smell was stronger. Something was burning.

  Charlie couldn’t leave it, no way. This was no time to be stubble burning—not in June, and not in the middle of the night—and fire was a farmer’s nightmare. He wasn’t sure whose land he was on, since Simter had sold it recently to an outsider, but he assumed they’d want to know if a field were burning, or, worse, far worse, a shed or outbuilding had somehow caught fire.

  He got back into the car and started down the lane. Gemma, jogged awake by the rough track, asked him what he was doing, but before he could answer they had turned the corner and before them, just in front of Simter’s Pond, they saw a car on fire. It must have been burning for some time, for only
its shell remained. The flames had subsided, though they still lapped now in short, erratic breaths in the cool night air, casting a light caramel glow across the surface of the pond.

  He stopped then, and got out to check if anyone was in the vehicle—but the heat was still so intense that he couldn’t get close enough to make sure.

  “Joyriders,” he said to Gemma as he got back into the driver’s seat. “Bloody kids.”

  “Hadn’t you better ring the police?” she asked drowsily.

  He sighed. Part of him was wary of ringing after a night out. There were so many horror stories of even good Samaritans getting done—like that manager of a golf club who, rung by the police after the place had been broken into, drove over at three in the morning because they asked him to, and then got breathalysed and arrested.

  But Charlie knew the right thing to do. After all, what if there were bodies in the car? And, of course, whoever owned this land would want to know that someone had dumped and burned a car, stolen in Wantage or Swindon most likely, in the middle of their lane.

  He used Gemma’s mobile phone to dial 999, gave his name and said what he had seen. When they asked what make of car it was, he told them to hang on a minute, went and looked, then said he thought it was a Golf—a black Golf, though that might just be the effect of the fire. T-reg, he added, since the plates had not yet been burned away.

  And fortunately, after taking his name and address, the dispatcher said he could go home himself, which he did, driving extra carefully. Charlie and Gemma were almost asleep by the time the patrol car made its way to Simter’s Pond. Unusually for what seemed just another joyriding wreck, a fire engine was sent from Wantage, after an alert duty officer learned that it was a T-reg Golf that had been dumped.

  42

  Though Liam O’Phelan had been scornful of his ex-pupil, Liz had never thought Michael Binding was a fool. It was his manner she objected to, not his brain. “Patronising” and “unfriendly” were the words which usually came to mind, though this morning as Binding sat angrily across the conference table, she thought “hostile” was more apt. She was grateful for Peggy Kinsolving’s presence, though she couldn’t blame her assistant for keeping her head down and concentrating on her notes.