by Kate Vane
‘She wants you to think she knows more than she does. She’s trying to impress you.’
‘Really?’
He must have looked doubtful because Salma said, ‘You are still worth impressing,’ and it was the ‘still’ that led to the awkward pause between them.
As the silence boomed, he wondered whether to tell her that Ratman had no trouble thinking of Mark as a murderer. Before he could speak she said, ‘Maybe this Mark “outed” himself.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he wants to be punished?’
And with that she emptied her glass and was gone.
He always spoke English to the girls. That was what they’d agreed in Cairo. They wanted to raise bilingual children so Salma spoke to them in Arabic and Paolo in English. That was fine when they were in Egypt, because he spoke Arabic all day long, or even when he was at the World Service surrounded by Arabic-speaking colleagues, but now he felt excluded. Three native speakers in the next room and he was unable to join in with them. In moving to the English countryside, he had become the outsider.
Occasionally he spoke to them in Arabic anyway. Their research told them that young children became confused if you switched languages. Now they were old enough to distinguish between the two. They always answered in English, Maryam with a perplexed frown, Mai rolling her eyes.
It seemed it wasn’t just him. Mai must have woken. He could hear her speaking to her mother in English, while Salma answered in Arabic. He had heard Maryam do it too, copying her big sister. He sighed. Were they just getting older? Trying to be ‘normal’? Was there some backlash against them at school for being different? He felt a small sliver of resentment against Salma for bringing them here, when he knew it was really his anxiety for his daughters.
This wouldn’t have happened in London! Or Cairo.
44
Paolo was supposed to be in a tutorial. In fact, he was supposed to be the focus of the tutorial. He had written an essay contrasting French and Spanish colonialism in the Maghreb. He was quite proud of it. But here he was, having breakfast with Fiona in their living room, which almost made them a proper couple.
She had gone to the shop to buy samosas while he made tea. He thought it an odd choice but she said that if they were in India, they’d have spicy food for breakfast.
Isabel, strangely, was also up. She looked up from her book – Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse – and raised her eyebrows behind Fiona’s back. Fiona, oblivious, enlisted her help.
‘You were in India, weren’t you Isabel? What did people eat for breakfast?’
‘I was never up for breakfast,’ she said.
Paolo found some bread – Claire’s probably – and made toast with Marmite.
Claire came in, looking flushed and dishevelled, with a smudge of eyeliner round her eyes.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Paolo with mock severity.
Claire shrugged and smiled enigmatically.
‘Have you been shagging?’
She didn’t answer but headed into the kitchen. He knew he was right because she didn’t even say anything when confronted with the evidence of him stealing her bread.
‘Was it Mark?’ whispered Fiona to him.
‘Of course not,’ he laughed, but then he thought, could it have been? He tried to remember where she’d gone the night before. Hadn’t she been going round to Kev’s to study?
‘It was Kev’s housemate’s brother,’ Claire said, when she came back with her tea. ‘It’s nothing. He was only here for a night. He had a job interview here.’
‘Was he handsome?’ asked Isabel.
‘I don’t remember his face,’ said Claire airily, her eyes on Paolo and Fiona as she said it.
‘That’s love,’ said Fiona. ‘When you can’t remember what they look like.’
Paolo found that insanely annoying. ‘She can’t remember what he looks like because they just met and she was probably pissed!’
‘Not that pissed,’ said Claire.
‘What was the job?’ asked Fiona.
‘Does it matter?’ asked Paolo. ‘She’s not going to marry him.’
‘Probably not,’ said Claire. She yawned. ‘I’ve got a lecture. Or I might just go to bed. I need sleep!’
She swept out of the room. ‘That’s sweet,’ said Fiona, putting her head on his shoulder. He winced at her samosa-breath and then kissed her on the nose to make up for it. Isabel pursed her lips mockingly at him and returned to her book.
45
Sid Jenkins was getting some coverage in the tabloids again but there was a definite shift in tone. In the early days the emphasis had been on his heroism, his high rank in the police, his invaluable work behind the scenes in protecting high-profile figures.
There were photos of him with his new partner and child and one with Emma Jenkins as a young woman. They were both in uniform which had surprised him. The caption said Emma had joined the police when she left school but had later left to study Theology. He thought about what Tilda had said, that Emma looked as though nothing would shock her. There was even a picture of Sid from his Royal Protection Squad days, standing near a young Prince Harry.
Now there were references to his personal life. People who claimed he had been a bully at work. Stories of affairs. A suggestion that he had been abusive towards the mother of his new baby. Nothing specific, just hints. Friends of.
Of course there was nothing the British press liked better than to build someone up and knock them down again, but he wondered if there was something more. The investigation seemed to be stalled.
The forensic evidence from the site was apparently not helping because of the sheer number of people who used the garden. Many had criminal records or no fixed address and it was not easy to locate them and eliminate them as suspects. John Farrell and Bob Holden had still not come forward to alibi Mark, despite extensive ‘outreach’ to the ‘homeless community’.
If the police failed to catch the killer of a hero, then that would play badly. If, however, he was a flawed man who might even have provoked his own death, people’s outrage would burn out much quicker. Could a police source be stoking this?
The good news was that there were no further stories about his own links to Mark and Sid.
He wondered what Freddie was doing. He hadn’t been in touch since Paolo last called him. Maybe he really was more interested in the scam story. He called his number anyway (no point in trying messaging apps with Freddie, even email was borderline) and left a message, but he wasn’t hopeful of getting a call back.
Then Freddie called back.
Freddie was excited. He clearly had something to tell but there was some blokish banter to be gone through before he came to the point.
‘I’ve spoken to my source.’ Said with great self-importance. He was back in the gang. Or liked to think he was. ‘Police have got the name of the agency Sid was working for. Very low profile, hush-hush, don’t call them, all that.’
‘Where did they get it? His computer?’
He laughed. ‘He didn’t have one. Apparently he was rubbish at IT and he had to submit all his claims online via a secure portal. A bit like the ones we use for anonymous stories. His daughter, the vicar, did it for him. He sent her all his receipts by post and she uploaded the details. Used her own laptop. She told the police all about it, showed them what she’d done. There was some back and forth about whether they could get a warrant to search the laptop, but she had diocesan records on it and she’s not a suspect after all, and she agreed to show them what she had.’
Paolo was hardly listening. Emma Jenkins? He thought of Tilda coming back from seeing her in South Yorkshire, laughing at the idea of a transcript of her interview, stalling on sending him the sound file. Tilda had got the information and hadn’t wanted to share it with him.
‘What about clients?’
‘The agency, Fargold, is based in Switzerland. They are stalling, ever so politely. Citing client confidentiality. Implying they will tell, so t
he police don’t start formal proceedings, but then not actually giving them anything. They’d be better going in heavy in my view. But the daughter has come to the rescue again. The expenses claims were submitted against cost codes, the client names weren’t used. But there were claims for journeys to various locations in Essex, to Leeds and to Threapton.’
The Essex claims were clearly relating to Beryl Coe and her friends. As for the others, it was theoretically possible that it was a coincidence that Sid was visiting both Leeds and the small village in North Yorkshire that was about to host a fracking test site, but Paolo didn’t think so.
‘And the police, are they briefing against Sid?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Freddie, suddenly evasive. Paolo didn’t push it. He took the agency’s name and the few details Freddie had and they chatted some more. He had underestimated Freddie, thinking he was out of the game. He’d got his information from the police, and now he was doing their bidding, feeding titbits to the media.
Was Mark’s renewed interest in activism due to Sid’s influence? Paolo wasn’t exactly surprised but what he didn’t know was why. Why do people normally betray others? A personal agenda, fear of their own imprisonment or money worries were the three that came to mind, but he couldn’t see that any of those applied to Mark. He wasn’t interested in money and he seemed sincere in his views (though how could he know what Mark really thought?). And it seemed hard to think that Sid would have wanted Mark’s past exposed because that would also have revealed his own role.
He did a news search on Threapton and fracking. Richard Revell, the man-boy from the local BBC news team, came up halfway down the first page. He clicked on the story, curious to see what he had been working on. He wouldn’t have thought this was his kind of story. He’d have expected something more along the lines of ‘Local hero scores goal in totally pointless sporting fixture’ or ‘Dog with a face like a potato’.
And then he saw it.
He read the article a second time, make sure he hadn’t over-interpreted, seen what he wanted to see.
Strange to think it was Richard who had brought him this key piece of information. Of course, it was pure luck on his part. He didn’t know what he was doing, any more than a dog who digs up a bone in the woods know that it’s uncovered evidence of a heinous crime.
Richard had written a colour piece on the fracking site for the local BBC News website. He had been given a site visit which he reported with puppyish enthusiasm, failing to ask a single probing question. Their PR people must have been high-fiving in their preferred champagne bar.
Richard’s open-faced diligence had one positive though. He had dutifully listed the names of the people he spoke to and the companies they worked for. He spoke to an engineer called Louise Sharma from ZKI Engineering. It was a subsidiary of ZKI International Holdings, which Wikipedia told him had extensive international interests in oil, gas, coal and asbestos mining. ZKI. Dudley’s company.
46
It was the next day before Paolo called Tilda. Why? He needed time to think. He needed to calm down. He needed to focus on the radio broadcast ahead.
He was furious.
Hadn’t he helped her? Okay, his motives hadn’t been entirely pure, he’d been using her to investigate Mark at arm’s length, but he’d given her a strong lead. He had also inadvertently made himself the story at Threapton which had helped her get some good commissions. Shouldn’t she have given back?
‘You okay to talk?’ he asked. He was standing outside, which was as near to privacy as he could get.
‘Yes,’ she said, but she sounded distracted.
‘I haven’t got the sound file yet. The one of your interview with Emma Jenkins.’
‘Oh, I thought I’d sent it,’ she said. She almost sounded convincing. ‘I’ll do it later.’
‘How about now?’ he asked.
She didn’t respond. He tried doing that spinning-out-the-silence thing which people always claim is effective, but all he could hear was her even breathing. She didn’t sound like she was about to crack, in fact he suspected she might be scrolling through her Twitter feed.
He wasn’t going to get angry. A shouty man in the street, even one who appeared to be on the phone, was not a good look.
Perhaps he could catch her off-balance. ‘Do you think Mark might have unmasked himself?’
‘What?’
‘I’m just considering it. As a theory. He obviously had all the relevant information and he knows you.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps he thought he’d be safer in the open.’
The silence suggested she was considering it. Or perhaps she was checking her Mentions.
‘Safe from who?’ He didn’t answer. She tried again. ‘Why now?’
‘I’m guessing you already know. Courtesy of Emma Jenkins.’
‘Yes,’ she said. He could hear the caution in that one drawn-out word.
‘You said you could talk.’
‘I’m on the train.’
On the train, was that still a thing? ‘Okay. Are you thinking you can run this story because –’
‘You don’t need to tell me. I don’t have enough. Their lawyers would be all over me. I could get the story out anonymously, but what’s the point in that?’
‘I thought it was all about the cause.’
‘I’ve got to eat,’ she said.
He sighed. He’d made this call thinking he would berate her for her betrayal, and now he felt sorry for her. He knew what it was like to have a great story but not be able to get it past a lawyer or an editor. But she was right not to publish and be damned.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘I just wish you’d trusted me. I –’
‘I mean, we’re just going into a –’
‘Tunnel. I get it.’
47
Paolo was working at home in his study when he heard an unfamiliar bleeping. He looked around the room for the source. He realised eventually it was Mark’s burner, which he had left on a shelf, no longer wishing to carry it, but not quite ready to throw it away.
‘So you want to talk?’ he said.
A pause, then Mark said, ‘Yes – but be careful.’
Paolo tried to imagine the hypothetical listeners but all he saw were black-and-white figures from war films, listening in at exchanges with lots of wires and those Morse-code tappy things.
Who would it be? A bored police officer, wearing a headset as he farted and gobbled down a pasty, tepid and chewy from the microwave, exhausted at the end of a fourteen-hour shift? Or a bright, keen graduate newly recruited to MI5, given the grunt work before she could move onto a more complex task. It felt so unlikely, but he knew it happened. Even Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the House of Lords, had learned she’d been put on a surveillance database of ‘domestic extremists’.
‘They’ve found one of our fleeces with Sid’s blood on it,’ said Mark.
Paolo remembered how carefully Mark had explained about the shared fleeces at the garden, how they were likely to have many people’s DNA on them, almost as if he had anticipated this moment.
‘You think it will have your DNA on it?’
‘The fleece that I kept for myself, that hung on the back of the door, it was gone.’
‘So it could be the same one. Whoever killed Sid could have been wearing your jacket.’
‘They’ve invited me to be interviewed under caution. I have declined.’
‘Why?’
‘My solicitor says I should go “no comment”.’ Paolo remembered how before demos that advice was always passed around, along with the phone number of a sympathetic Legal Aid solicitor. ‘There’s no point in a voluntary interview if I don’t say anything, so they’d either have to arrest me or terminate the interview.’
‘You’re waiting to see if they arrest you.’
‘They haven’t so far.’
They were both quiet then. Paolo wondered why Mark had called. Was he going to confess? D
id he want his advice? Did he just need to talk?
‘Why did you choose us, Mark?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We weren’t criminals. Well, apart from Ratman, and he was off his box most of the time.’
‘We were targeting more serious offenders. That was why I was seconded from the Met. We had good intelligence but they were careful. I found it hard to get close to them.’
‘Were they in the city animal rights group?’
He didn’t answer directly. ‘I thought Claire and Ratman might be a way in but Sid thought it was taking too long. We needed something to show for the investment they’d made in sending me here. We were going after the wrong people because we’d failed to reach the right ones. It was wrong.’
‘And you’re not doing wrong any more?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mark, after a pause.
‘I know who you’ve been working for.’
Mark sighed, a big exhalation of breath that Paolo could almost feel in his ear. ‘I didn’t think you’d work it out this quick.’
Was that a compliment or an insult? And why did it matter? ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘We should talk, but we need to do it face to face.’
‘You’re coming to London?’ Paolo asked, although sarcasm was wasted on Mark.
‘And Claire should be there too.’
He sighed, torn between unwillingness to be manipulated and the desire to know. Flipped to his calendar on his laptop. ‘I’ll be in Salford the day after tomorrow, I guess I can come over later.’
‘Better make it after school.’
‘Of course, I wouldn’t want to disrupt Claire’s busy schedule.’
‘I’ll text you.’
48
It started as an ordinary night.
Paolo and Claire getting drunk in the living room, listening to Leonard Cohen. Claire was drinking Merrydown cider because it was cheap, and getting argumentative.