But Geoffrey Fane ignored the question and said, ‘Tell me how you met him?’
‘He saved me from some muggers when I was walking home from the theatre in Islington.’
‘Does he live in Islington?’
‘No. He has a flat in Moorgate. It belongs to his bank.’
‘Did it not strike you as strange that he came along at just the perfect moment to save you?’
Jasminder was silent. It had never occurred to her at the time that there was anything staged about her first encounter with Laurenz in the gardens – he had saved her, after all. But now she knew the whole thing for what it was – a completely fabricated set-up. She had been hoodwinked and made a complete fool of. Laurenz had never cared for her at all. He had used her ruthlessly, and in her initial gratitude for being rescued, she had let him into her life, and then into her heart. How stupid and gullible she had been.
Fane was continuing, ‘I’m very much afraid, Jasminder, that you have been completely and utterly duped. Laurenz Hansen is not a banker and he is not Norwegian. But I think you may already know this. I think that may be why you have been looking so stressed and worried recently.’
Jasminder was no longer thinking clearly. She did not know how to respond to this gently spoken but persistent man. But she was not yet ready to give up.
‘If he’s not a Norwegian banker, what is he?’ she demanded.
Fane’s mouth set in an expression of regret. ‘I think you’ve found out by now. He’s Russian and working for their intelligence service. ’
‘You’re joking?’ Jasminder was playing for time now. She didn’t know where this was going and Geoffrey Fane was in complete control.
‘I wish I were,’ said Fane, and there was a sadness in his voice that chilled Jasminder. Why wasn’t he being more hostile? ‘We’ve learned a fair amount about Mr Hansen, you see. I think we know pretty clearly what his task here is. You are ideally placed to help him carry it out.’
‘Is there any evidence for this?’
Fane shrugged. ‘Well, enough to deport Mr Hansen, that’s for certain. False passport, false papers, false job; those will do to send him packing. But as far as you’re concerned, it’s not so clear what he managed to accomplish.’ He was looking right at her again. ‘I was rather hoping you might be able to help on that score.’
‘I don’t see how. I am happy to admit I know Laurenz Hansen, and happy to admit that for a time we were… intimate. But not any longer. And never did I have any knowledge that he was anything other than what he claimed.’
‘But after your relationship stopped, you did continue to see him… We’ve been watching Mr Hansen for some time.’
‘Well, yes, I did see him occasionally after we broke up. I usually stay friends with my ex-boyfriends.’
‘Did Hansen take an interest in your work?’
‘Of course he did,’ Jasminder said. ‘There was a lot of publicity about my joining the Service – but no more than any boyfriend would. And he understood that what I did was highly confidential, and most of the time classified.’
‘I’d think all of the time would be the safest description. So he didn’t ask you for information? No documents or emails, that sort of thing?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Good,’ said Fane, and Jasminder started to relax a little. Then Fane added, ‘Still, we understand that he gave you a special phone.’
‘You have been spying on me!’
Fane drew himself up in his chair. ‘Jasminder, I’m trying to explain in the gentlest possible way that the man you are seeing is a foreign intelligence officer – one opposed to everything we stand for here, and whose aim is to undermine this country. I know your views about surveillance; I appreciate your steadfast defence of civil liberties; I yield to no one in my admiration for your ideals and principles. But this man Hansen has been trying to use you as his agent to damage the Service and undermine national security. I and my colleagues would be remiss – more than that, we would be criminally negligent – if we didn’t do everything in our power to stop him. With what you know of us and the Service, I am sure you understand that?’
Suddenly, the silence that followed this remark was shattered. The phone on the table rang. Fane stared at it briefly, as if he didn’t understand what it signified, then he picked it up. ‘Fane,’ he said sharply, and listened for several minutes while Jasminder thought through her situation.
She had been taken aback when Fane first spoke Laurenz’s name, but this was turning out better than she’d first expected. Fane seemed to be kind and understanding, and from what he was saying, had no evidence at all of Jasminder’s efforts to help Laurenz. If she could hide those from him, he might accept that whatever Laurenz Hansen was, Jasminder didn’t know about it and wasn’t directly involved in his plans.
Then Fane hung up and turned to face her. He looked even more regretful.
‘That was the police in Manchester. They’ve managed to locate and detain Laurenz Hansen in Altrincham. It seems he spent much of his time there, but under a different name – that of Vladimir Karpis.’
‘So he is Russian,’ Jasminder murmured.
‘Yes. Does his name or that location ring any bells for you?’ Fane’s manner now was still quiet and calm, but slightly less friendly than before.
‘No. Laurenz was often away, but he said he was abroad on business. And I never heard about anyone called Karpis.’
‘I see. I understand your mother now lives in India?’
‘That’s right.’ He must have been looking at her personnel file.
‘But you still have family in Leicester, I think? Your brothers. They’re in business together. Is that correct?’
She nodded, puzzled. ‘They own a small chain of grocery shops. Why do you ask?’
‘Because for some reason, Hansen or Karpis or whatever we want to call him had a webcam set up that was watching one of your brothers’ stores. We know because we can see the shop’s name on the screen — Kapoor & Sons.’
Jasminder didn’t say anything, but waited tensely. Fane went on, ‘Curious, don’t you think? But there was something else. Film of a little girl coming out of school – they focused the camera shot right on her. Would she be the daughter of one of your brothers?’
Jasminder froze and blanked out Fane’s voice, no longer concerned about herself; Ali was all she was worried about. He pressed her: ‘I said, is she your niece?’ Jasminder nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Everything was over now. They would work it all out and know what she’d done – been trying to do.
Fane leaned forward and spoke very gently now, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Jasminder, we don’t know each other very well, but everything about you tells me that you would never willingly try to damage the Service or the country. If you had decided that your conscience wouldn’t let you keep working here, then you would have done the honourable thing and resigned. You would never have worked for a hostile country, I’m absolutely positive. Unless,’ and now he leaned back in his seat again, ‘it was under duress. Unless… you’d been threatened. Or worse – your little niece had been.’
Jasminder was looking at Fane now, and he held her gaze. For all his supposed arrogance, his legendary ruthlessness, all she could see was sympathy in his eyes, and an expression on his face that told her that he understood. Then she started to cry.
Fane waited patiently while she crumpled a tissue and began to wipe her eyes. ‘Take your time,’ he said gently. ‘We have all the time in the world. And your niece is safe now, and so are you. We’ve got Laurenz. So when you’re ready, why don’t you tell me what really happened?’
And when she’d finished wiping her eyes, Jasminder began to speak. It seemed almost involuntary; she felt she was operating on autopilot. But her overwhelming feeling was one of enormous relief.
She said hesitantly, ‘It all started that night when I was attacked on my way home…’
53
Sarah Gordon was
leaning on the balcony railing, looking out over the Thames as the sun set. The sky was a glorious pinkish-red and the colour was tinting the buildings in Tower Hamlets across the river, making them look a lot more beautiful than they were in full daylight. To her right the windows in the towers of Tower Bridge were glowing as though pink lights were switched on inside. She was sipping a last glass of champagne while behind her the caterers were clearing up the remains of a drinks party.
She loved her riverside apartment with its wonderful view. As a senior executive and part-owner of a property development company, she’d been able to buy it off plan before the other flats were marketed. The building was an old brick warehouse with beamed ceilings and huge windows; she knew as soon as her company acquired it that it was going to be stunning. Once she’d bought her part, she’d made very sure that the conversion was done beautifully, with no expense spared.
There was always something to look at from her balcony whatever the time of day. The river was surprisingly busy, though there were not many ships nowadays of a size to need the roadway on the bridge to be raised to let them through. But when it happened, she found it very exciting to watch the great arms lift themselves up into the air as they had been doing ever since the bridge was built at the end of the nineteenth century.
She drained her glass and sighed with contentment. It had been a good party. Clients and prospective clients loved coming to the apartment and the view was the great draw, especially for the foreigners. She decided to ring the restaurant in the basement and get them to send up some supper. Her busy life didn’t allow much time for shopping and cooking. Though she had a splendidly equipped kitchen and a dining table that seated twelve, most of her entertaining was done by caterers. She went inside to phone the restaurant and say goodnight to the caterers and when she came out on to the balcony again the colour had faded from the sky. Instead of glowing pink, all the buildings were returning to a dull flat grey. The traffic had died down a bit on Tower Bridge although it was never really quiet, even in the middle of the night. There were not so many pedestrians as there had been earlier. Maybe there was something good on TV – perhaps a football match – and everyone had hurried home to watch it. Sarah didn’t have time to watch TV, though she had several large shiny sets in the apartment – and she had no interest in sport.
It was beginning to grow chilly now and she was just thinking of going inside to get a shawl when she noticed a woman lingering on the suspension part of the bridge, just before the tower on the near side. She was slim and rather smartly dressed in a short bright blue jacket over what seemed to be a blue or grey dress – it was difficult to see precisely from this distance, in the fading light. The woman looked as though she might have come straight from her office. She had bobbed dark hair, which obscured the side of her face as she gazed over the railing into the water below. There was something odd about the way she was standing, looking down at the incoming tide that was flowing fast now under the bridge. That stretch of water was quite shallow at low tide but the river was filling up fast and the mud bank had long since disappeared. While Sarah watched, the woman walked on slowly, almost dreamily, as though unaware of her surroundings or of anyone else – she almost collided with a man in a dark suit, walking at a fast march, looking straight ahead, on his way somewhere.
There was a trance-like quality about the woman’s movements. She stopped from time to time to stare out upstream, then she’d walk on a few paces only to turn around and retrace her steps.
Sarah was beginning to feel very uneasy about the way the woman was behaving, wandering up and down while everyone else on the bridge was hurrying past, so she went inside to get the binoculars her business partner had given her when she moved into the apartment At the same time, not knowing quite why, she picked up her phone which was lying on a table.
When she came out again the woman was still there but she had stopped wandering up and down and was standing just beside one of the towers. As Sarah watched she put one foot on the bottom of the railing and slowly began to climb up it. Just as Sarah hit the first button on her phone, the woman reached the top of the railing and jumped and all that Sarah could see of her was her head bobbing in the water as she was swept away fast upstream by the tide. While Sarah was shouting at the operator, the head disappeared from her view and she could see no more of the woman.
On the bridge where she had climbed over, a small crowd was gathering and a man with a phone pressed to his ear was gesticulating and pointing down into the water. Sarah turned away feeling sick just as the doorbell rang. ‘Restaurant service!’ shouted a voice. She opened the door and said to the waiter, ‘A woman’s just jumped into the river!’
‘Oh, dear, madam,’ he replied calmly. ‘It does happen from time to time. It’s always very sad. Shall I set the table and pour a glass of wine?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Sarah automatically as through the open window came the sound of police sirens.
54
‘What I don’t understand is how you knew they were in the pool house.’ Miles Brookhaven was sitting across the desk from Liz in her small office. It was Saturday morning and he was looking more than usually relaxed in a linen jacket and open-necked shirt, though rather like Geoffrey Fane he somehow never lost his well-pressed appearance. Liz had got back from Manchester late the previous night. After the tensions and excitements of the day she’d spent at Patricov’s house and grounds, she found Miles’s easy manner rather soothing.
She said now, ‘It wasn’t exactly rocket science, more of a lucky guess, really. Everybody was convinced that Laurenz Hansen – Karpis, I should call him, although I don’t suppose that’s his real name any more than Hansen is – had somehow left the estate, especially after they’d searched the house and couldn’t find him. But I didn’t see how he could have got away that easily. I thought he must still be there somewhere. There are plenty of outbuildings, so while Bruno and the security chief checked the perimeter, I started looking in a few other places. The garage, the coach house. And then I came to the swimming-pool block.’
‘What happened when you got there?’
‘I suppose I was a bit stupid because I barged straight in. Karpis was there, along with Patricov’s wife – in a little room where all the equipment for the pool is stored. But they also had all sorts of wiring and computers and phones in there.
‘Patricov’s wife didn’t know who I was when I appeared; she just looked at me in surprise. But Karpis could tell right away that I wasn’t some stray person who’d wandered in. I don’t know if he knew that the place was being raided, or whether he’d been holed up there when we’d all come to the house. But whatever he thought, he wasn’t going to take any risks, so he pulled a gun on me.
‘I’m still a bit confused about the order of what happened after that. But I know that Karpis told me to sit on a bench and that shortly after that Kevin Burgess, a security guard, turned up. God knows why, but he did. At that point, I remember that Mrs P and Hansen started yelling at each other in Russian. She was trying to wipe the computers, to get rid of the evidence. You see, they’d been watching Jasminder’s family in Leicester, to blackmail her into working for them.’
Liz sighed and looked out of the window. Summer had taken over from spring, but the river was unseasonably grey and choppy. ‘Poor girl. It’s tragic that she didn’t trust any of us enough to tell us what was going on. You’d think she might have told Peggy – she’d got quite friendly with her. But she didn’t. I suppose she still felt like a bit of an outsider. Anyway she’s told Geoffrey Fane everything now, and I assume she’ll have to leave the Service. I expect Six will let her make some excuse to explain why she’s going after such a short time; it’s sure to be rather embarrassing for C. It was his idea to appoint her.’
Miles nodded. ‘It’s a shame that she didn’t confide in Peggy. I hope Jasminder will be OK. I expect the media will be sniffing around trying to root out the full story.’
‘I’m sure Geoffrey
and C will work out some line to take, but Jasminder will need a lot of support. She mustn’t be left on her own to cope with it. I’m going to suggest to Geoffrey that Peggy takes on a support role.’
‘Good idea. But go on with the story. What happened when the security guard arrived?’
‘That’s when things started taking off. The laptops weren’t responding; they seemed to have frozen up. I think Pearson, the local Chief Constable, had ordered all external communications from the house and grounds to be cut off before the raid started. Mrs Patricov was getting hysterical, and Karpis must have decided to destroy the actual computers since they couldn’t delete their programs. He broke the fire panel to get out the axe and smash the machines, and it was then the alarm went off.
‘That brought Bruno and the Chief Security man running, thank God. But before that, Kevin had jumped on Hansen and I’d grabbed Mrs P. That’s how Kevin got shot. Apparently he’s OK – or will be. He’ll stay in hospital for a bit. Anyway we got the computers, and all their webcam shots are safely on DVD now.’
‘So Patricov’s wife was in on it with Hansen. Does that mean Patricov himself was part of it, too?’
Liz shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but it seems unlikely. There’ll be a lot of enquiries to be made – with the Swiss in particular, since that’s where Patricov lived before he came to England. He married Mrs P in Geneva just a couple of years ago.’
‘Do you think he knew she was working for the FSB?’
‘We may never know. Both Hansen and Mrs P are in the hands of Greater Manchester Police. Bruno and I are going to question them once they’re moved to London, but I don’t suppose they’ll talk. And I should think it’s pretty unlikely that Patricov will ever come back to Altrincham. One thing’s certain – he won’t be buying Manchester United now.’
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