Counterfeit!

by Elizabeth Ducie

  He made her promise never to keep anything from him in the future—but it was a promise she immediately broke. He was already questioning her judgement in not reporting back as soon as her kidnap was over, and she didn’t want to risk his further disapproval. So she didn’t tell him about Charlie’s trip to Africa. She didn’t tell him about Sara Matsebula’s presence in Lusaka. And she didn’t tell him about their suspicions that Banda had been funded from Europe and probably from the UK.

  Since then, the sisters had debated long and hard about their next step. Deep down, Suzanne still wasn’t convinced Francine was involved in the counterfeiting but her sister was less certain; and they both agreed it was a ‘line of enquiry’, as Charlie kept calling it, that needed to be eliminated. They had finally agreed Suzanne should visit Francine and challenge her directly.

  Suzanne had decided to arrive unannounced, hoping to catch the politician unawares. There was a risk, of course, that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see her, but it was worth taking if it allowed her to catch Francine on the hop, before she had a chance to destroy any evidence or get her story straight. Suzanne had seen her tackled in the House on difficult questions more than once, and knew she was able to think on her feet. She didn’t want her to have that opportunity today if she really was hiding something.

  The office door opened and Francine stepped out of her office, an apparent smile of welcome on her face.

  ‘Suzanne, what a pleasant surprise,’ she said, ‘come on in.’ As Suzanne passed her, Francine spoke to her PA. ‘I think we’ll bring elevenses forward a few minutes, Marjorie. Can we have it now, please? Suzanne, do you still drink Earl Grey with lemon?’

  Taken aback that her old school friend—she’d only slightly exaggerated their friendship to talk her way past the PA—had remembered a detail like that, Suzanne could only nod her thanks.

  The two women chatted about inconsequential things until the tea was delivered. Then Suzanne looked at her watch.

  ‘I know you haven’t got long, Francine, but there’s something I need to ask you—and I didn’t want to do it by phone.’

  ‘Well, that sounds intriguing,’ Francine said with a laugh, ‘and don’t worry about Miss Snooty-Pants out there. Despite what she thinks, I still decide how I spend my time. Now, what can I do for you?’ Suzanne swallowed.

  ‘I wanted to ask how well you know Nico Mladov.’ Francine sat up very straight and her cup rattled against the teaspoon as she dropped it back onto the saucer. She stared out of the window briefly and when she turned back to Suzanne, her cheeks were very red.

  ‘You know, I really envied you when we were at school!’

  ‘Me? Why, for goodness sake?’

  ‘You had it all! You were bright—’

  ‘Not as bright as you—I seem to remember you beating me in virtually every exam we did.’

  ‘But do you know how hard I had to work to do that? I studied late into the night, every night, desperate to get a better score than you.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Suzanne again.

  ‘Well, not only were you bright, you had friends, you were always the life and soul of every gathering—and you had Charlie too.’

  ‘But you had friends as well, Francine.’

  ‘Huh, only those kids who thought they could get something out of the poor little rich girl. That’s the only thing I had more of than you—money. And it didn’t get me anywhere, now did it?’ Suzanne looked around the office, with its rich oak panelling, book-lined walls and a display of photos of Francine with leading politicians and other dignitaries from around the world.

  ‘Well,’ she said dryly, ‘you don’t seem to have done so badly for yourself.’

  ‘But this is so transient,’ was the bitter reply, ‘and half the time, I don’t feel I’m doing any good at all. We spend so long trying to get into Parliament—and then most of our time trying to stay here—that I’m not sure what the point is anymore.’

  Suzanne realised with a jolt that the skilled politician at the other side of the desk was controlling the meeting pretty well. She’d asked a question, but Francine had neatly side-stepped it—and it still hadn’t been answered.

  ‘Nico Mladov,’ she asked once again. ‘Francine, I need to know if you know him or have had any dealings with him?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’ The professional politician was back again. ‘I have no idea who he is or why you think I should have heard of him.’

  ‘What about Mazokapharm?’

  ‘No. Should I have?’

  ‘No, not necessarily—but we think you have.’

  ‘Well, I come across all sorts of companies in this job. And there are loads of little outfits in Africa. Why do you think I’ve come across this one in particular?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Francine,’ Suzanne said, acutely aware she was on dodgy ground since her information had come from Charlie’s illegal hacking activities. ‘But I’ve seen evidence to suggest you’ve been in contact with them very recently and that what they’re involved in is illegal.’

  ‘If there’s evidence, then you’d better show it to me.’ Francine paused and looked closely at her. ‘You can’t, can you? The information’s not kosher.’ She sat back with a smile on her face. ‘So, I think this meeting is at an end.’

  Suzanne sighed, picked up her bag and walked to the door. As she reached out to turn the handle a thought struck her.

  ‘A little outfit in Africa?’

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Francine. She was still sitting at her desk, leafing through papers, but her hands stilled at Suzanne’s words.

  ‘You said “a little outfit in Africa”. But I didn’t mention Africa—and I certainly didn’t say what size the company is. How did you know, Francine?’

  ‘Well, let me see,’ Francine said, ‘seeing as you’re working on a major project to try to cut out counterfeit drugs in the Dark Continent, I would think that was an obvious guess. And seeing as it’s not a company I’ve heard of, it’s a safe bet that it’s a small one. Also it’s a figure of speech.’ Francine resumed her perusal of the papers. ‘Oh—and Mazoka is a Zambian name, from the Shona language. Very common in Southern Africa, but not well-known elsewhere. I did do a degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, you know.’ She looked up and gave Suzanne a dazzling smile, although her eyes signalled a different message. ‘So glad you could drop in. We must do it again sometime. Goodbye, Suzanne.’

  ‘Francine.’ Suzanne nodded and headed out of the office. ‘Well done, Ms Jones,’ she hissed to herself as she waited for the elevator at the end of the plushly carpeted corridor. Despite Francine’s flustered initial reaction, they weren’t really any closer to knowing whether their suspicions were justified or whether it was just a coincidence in the name. And, far from catching Francine Matheson unawares and surprising a confession out of her, if she was tied up with Banda, Suzanne had succeeded in alerting her to their suspicions without getting her to admit anything.

  Reluctant to return to the office and the pile of messages waiting for her to deal with, or to the flat and face Charlie, Suzanne turned right when she exited Portcullis House and strolled around the corner into Whitehall. They didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with the investigations and every day they delayed meant more children at risk of death through fake drugs. Banda had been dismantled in Zambia, but Suzanne was under no illusions that this was any more than a small step towards stopping the whole dirty business. She desperately needed a breakthrough. Something that would allow her a step forward. She wandered aimlessly, turning right into Northumberland Place, and found herself a few minutes later back on the Embankment. She crossed the road under the railway bridge, where trains rattled continuously into Charing Cross or south-eastwards towards Kent.

  In front of her was the tall dark mass of Cleopatra’s Needle. She stared at the dirty, scarred lump of rock that must once, according to legend, have been gazed on by the great Egyptian queen herself. What would you have done, Cleo? she mused. If
you thought one of your politicians might be a dangerous criminal, but you had no real proof and no-one believed you. What would you do? But she knew the answer to that. An adder in the bed, a drop of poison in a goblet of wine—and it would all have been over. The queen would mourn at the funeral, light the pyre herself—a great honour for an important man or woman—and then the affairs of state would move on. Suzanne grinned to herself as she toyed momentarily with the idea of surreptitiously wiping out a member of Her Majesty’s government, and then shook her head. This wasn’t ancient Egypt; the only place where that sort of thing happened these days was in a James Bond movie—and James Bond didn’t exist, much as they’d like him to on occasion.

  ‘Besides,’ Suzanne said to herself, ‘even if she is involved, I don’t believe Francine is a major player. I suspect she’s little more than an incidental. Taking her out won’t help to bring down the rest of the network—and that’s what we need to do.’ But at the back of her mind, there was a tiny voice asking, what if she was wrong? What if Francine Matheson was a much bigger fish than they all realised?

  When her phone buzzed, she didn’t know whether to be surprised, relieved or frightened to see she had received an email from the very person she’d been thinking about. There were just three words: ‘daffodil bed, four’. Suzanne glanced at her watch. It was a quarter to three. She crossed back over the road and turned into a tiny café on the corner of Northumberland Avenue. She ordered Earl Grey with lemon and then sat, absentmindedly stirring the tea while her thoughts churned.

  So Francine had remembered other things from school, as well as her tea-drinking habits. One of their games was to invent journeys around London, picking up clues as they went along. They weren’t real journeys. They rarely got a chance to travel to London from their grammar school outside Exeter; and when they did, they were always chaperoned, never alone. But they had a large map of the capital, carefully drawn and illustrated as part of an old A Level project, years before. The map had ended up in the lower sixth common room and had formed a basic part of ‘London Loiters’. Each term, one of the girls would design a journey, with codes, puzzles and red herrings, which all the others would try to solve. The winner took on the puzzle setting for the next term.

  When Francine and Suzanne were in the lower sixth, Suzanne had won the game in the autumn term; narrowly beating Francine who was just one clue behind her at the final stage. Over the Christmas break, she and Charlie had spent every spare minute inventing fiendish clues to keep their schoolmates guessing. It had proved to be one of the most difficult—and the most popular—of the routes during their time at the school. At one point in the journey, the traveller had to visit the grave of a long dead poet, the opening of whose famous work was the only line of poetry most people could quote. So the question Suzanne had to ask herself was, why would Francine want to meet her at Wordsworth’s Memorial in Westminster Abbey—and why was she being so mysterious?

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ she said aloud, then drained her tea and left the bistro.

  She arrived at Westminster Abbey with twenty minutes to spare. She wanted to be there before Francine, observe her arrival, check she wasn’t being followed—and then decide whether she would talk to her or not.

  Although why I should be worried about talking to a government official in daylight, in the middle of London, I have no idea, she thought. But she did know really. Since her ordeal in Africa, she was very wary about meeting anyone, anywhere. She had lost her trust in most people—and it was going to take some time for it to come back. She’d even had to steel herself to make the trip to visit Francine that morning.

  Suzanne took up her position in a tiny side chapel near the resting place of four Tudor monarchs. On this late summer’s afternoon, there were a lot of people around and she wondered, once again, about Francine’s choice of meeting place. She watched in amusement as a party of schoolchildren, led by a harassed-sounding young teacher, stopped to look at the great man’s tomb.

  ‘What did William Wordsworth write?’ the teacher asked. Several of the youngsters, who must have been about seven, put their hands up. One jumped up and down in her anxiety to be noticed, bumping into her neighbour, a tough looking little boy, who gave her a shove. ‘Yes, Jenny?’ said the teacher, pointing to the little girl who had stopped jumping up and down to push the boy back, but now turned to the front, her fight forgotten.

  ‘Daffodils, sir, he wrote a poem about daffodils.’

  ‘Well, he mentioned daffodils in the poem, certainly, although it’s not the only thing in there, is it?’ was the reply.

  ‘But it’s the only thing we all remember, isn’t it, Suzanne?’ said a quiet voice just behind her. Suzanne jumped. She’d been so intent on watching for Francine in the main body of the abbey, she’d forgotten to check in the recesses, like the chapel she was in. But if she had checked, she didn’t think she would have recognised the woman next to her as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary she’d visited a couple of hours before. She was wearing an old black jogging suit with well-used trainers. Her hair was stuffed into an NYC baseball cap and she was wearing a pair of cheap plastic-framed sunglasses. She took Suzanne by the arm and led her towards the entrance to the crypt. ‘Come on, there will be fewer prying eyes down here.’

  28: ENGLAND; MAR 2005

  As they walked down the steps to the dim interior, Suzanne’s heart began to thud and her breath caught in her throat. She’d not been in any enclosed spaces like this since the hut in Zambia, and she wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Supposing Francine was going to kidnap her; supposing she was going to kill her? Oh, for goodness sake, pull yourself together, she thought, she’s an old friend—well, an old schoolmate anyway. And we’re in the middle of one of the best known and busiest buildings in London. And yet, whispered the little voice in the back of her head, she’s gone out of her way to hide who she is and she’s taking you into a deserted part of the building. Suzanne decided to listen to both voices at once, so followed Francine down into the crypt, but stopped when she got to the bottom of the steps, with one hand on the rope banister, ready to run back up to the main body of the church if she got suspicious of the other woman’s actions or words.

  Francine walked a little way into the crypt then turned to look at Suzanne. She took off her baseball cap and shook out her blonde bob, making her instantly more recognisable—although the clothing was still disconcerting.

  ‘I’m sorry for this little charade,’ Francine began, ‘but I couldn’t afford to let them know I was talking to you—or anyone for that matter.’

  ‘So you do know who they are?’

  ‘Well, yes, I know Nico Mladov and I am aware of Mazokapharm, but I’m not sure how they are connected—and I have no idea why you might be interested in them.’

  ‘I think you’d better tell me what you do know; start from the beginning.’

  ‘Well, it all began after I got elected. You remember what it was like in 1997? Everyone was making a fuss of the new intake of women; and there were all sorts of opportunities flying around for a short while. Well, I managed to talk my way onto an overseas mission to Africa. We visited several different countries—even spent time in Seychelles and Mauritius. So many friends were envious, offered to carry my bags, come and keep me company. They all thought the life of a politician was really glamorous. If only they knew the half of it.’

  ‘Yes, I guess no-one works as hard as you guys in Westminster.’ Suzanne tried to keep the sarcasm from her voice, but Francine’s wry smile told her she’d not succeeded.

  ‘Our main reason for being there was a conference on International Aid in Lusaka. And that’s where I met him.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘I know it wasn’t a smart move, Suzanne; I worked very hard for my constituents when I was on the back benches. And now I do everything I can to ease the plight of the people in the countries we’re helping. I genuinely care. But it gets lonely sometimes—and what with all the stress of t
he election campaign, Gerry and I had been going through a bad patch back home.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘His name was Ernest. He was beautiful. Tall and slim; pale coffee-coloured skin and the most wonderful voice I’ve ever heard. He told me he was from Ndola—had come to Lusaka especially for the conference. He was funny, kind and very polite. We sat together during most of the sessions and afterwards, chatted for hours. We even talked about taking a drive to the Cheetah Park if we had any spare time. I’d not had much time for sightseeing—and I’d always wanted to get close to some of the big cats.’

  Unbidden, a scene came back to Suzanne of a distraught Francine kneeling in the mud, cradling a bloody body to her, after the headmistress’s cat had been run over. Francine went on, staring at the ground and fiddling with the cuff of her sweatshirt, her voice getting quieter.

  ‘He was a perfect gentleman; throughout the five days of the conference. And not once did he try anything on, although I sensed he really liked me. And I really liked him too. And a small part of me wondered why he didn’t want to take our friendship further. The part of me that was still a dumpy, unloved schoolgirl.

  ‘Anyway, on the last evening, there was a knock on my bedroom door and there he was. Well, my guard was down and I was happy to see him. It was one of the craziest and most impulsive things I’d ever done.’ Francine stopped and Suzanne realised with a shock that the cool politician was crying. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them angrily away with the back of her hand. Suzanne moved forward to comfort the other woman, but she shook her head and held a hand up to keep her away. ‘Afterwards, we agreed it would have to be a one-off. When I awoke the next morning, he was gone. I never saw him again. And I never did get to see the cheetahs.