The Frozen Circle

by Peter Watt

  Monique had spoken in glowing terms of Morgan McLean and Sarah suspected that she was possibly attracted to him. She hoped that she would not have to fall back on her contingency plan but Kildare’s body had been discovered twenty-four hours too soon and the local cop had forced her to act earlier than she had originally planned.

  Sarah stepped from the car and walked towards the battered screen door which opened to reveal the farmer. He stepped onto the small verandah and peered at his visitor.

  ‘It’s you, miss,’ he said, recognising Sarah. ‘Are you lost again?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Sarah beamed. ‘I was wondering if I could ask a huge favour. I need to call my hotel to tell them that I will be late for dinner.’

  The old man was still chewing the remnants of a sandwich and it was obvious from the expression on his face that he was not immune to the beauty of the young English woman walking towards him.

  ‘You can call the pub,’ he said, holding the door open for Sarah to pass. ‘Phone’s in the hallway.’

  Sarah stepped up onto the verandah and entered the house. The man was very neat for one living alone; the simple house was clean and orderly. A magazine lay open on the Formica table and a few dishes were stacked in the kitchen sink. Half a sandwich lay on a plate beside a mug of tea on the table top.

  The farmer followed her inside, gesturing to the telephone on a small table in a hallway leading from the kitchen. Old-style photos of a young woman and more modern framed photos of a young man wearing a slouch hat hung on the walls.

  ‘Is that you?’ Sarah asked, pointing to one.

  ‘My son,’ the old man said sadly. ‘He was killed in Vietnam a long time ago. His mother never got over the loss and died a year later. I did my service with the army in the Middle East and New Guinea during the last big one.’

  Sarah felt no empathy for the man’s pain, knowing that she had to remain aloof in order to carry out her mission. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she lied, glancing around the house to ensure that they were alone. ‘I will make the call and get out of your way.’

  ‘No problem, miss,’ he said. ‘I will leave you to your privacy.’ He shuffled from the hallway to return to the kitchen and his half-eaten sandwich.

  Sarah picked up the phone and listened to the dial tone. She began to speak as if having a conversation, leaning around the corner to see that the farmer had sat down at the table. His back was to her and he was sipping his tea. With a yank of the telephone cord, she cautiously crept up behind him. Twisting the tough cord around his neck she used all her strength to draw it tight.

  The farmer instinctively reached up to loosen the cord that was throttling him. He kicked away from the table, causing Sarah to fall to the floor with him. But she did not let her grip falter as the dying man thrashed about on the kitchen floor, attempting to free himself. Sarah rolled him onto his stomach and dropped her knee into his back, using her weight to pull harder on the cord. She held the grip as the old man’s struggle grew weaker and finally his throes ceased. Sarah felt the carotid artery to check for a pulse but did not find one.

  She rose stiffly. There would be no witnesses to her temporary hide-out and all that she needed to do now was drive the car into the big machinery shed she had observed near the house. It would not be seen from the air should the police mount an aerial search of the district. Not that they should, she mused, dragging the body of the dead farmer into his bedroom and laying him on his bed as if he had been sleeping. She realised that the cord had left a considerable bruise around the man’s neck but at first sight it would appear that he had possibly died of a heart attack while resting. The bruises would no doubt lead to an investigation but by the time all that happened she would long gone and on her way back to the UK. From what she had gathered on her first visit, the old farmer he did not receive many visitors and it would take some time for him to be missed.

  Killing was easy, Sarah thought. It had been so simple to lure the besotted Kildare out into the hills with a promise of a romantic picnic to watch the sun set. The man deserved to die, she rationalised. A good agent would never have allowed himself to be seduced in the first place. He would be no loss to MI6 and all going well the murder weapon would be found in Batkin’s possession after an anonymous tip-off to the police.

  Sarah parked her car in the shed. She removed the slim laptop computer from the back seat and took it inside the house, plugging it into the phone socket. At the right moment she would log on and send an email. Then it was a matter of waiting for the email from Sam Briars. By now he should have been able to hack into the DNA laboratory records and find the DNA results for Monique Dawson. In the meantime she would make a cup of tea and after that clean any surfaces of her fingerprints. A quick vacuum of the house was also on the agenda to remove any trace of her ever being there. The contents of the vacuumbag would be disposed of elsewhere. Sarah Locksley was very thorough. Batkin and MI6 had trained her well in the murky world of subversive activities.

  When she clicked into her mail box sometime later it was still empty. Briars had not responded to her request for the DNA result on Monique Dawson, but she would go ahead with her deadly plan anyway.

  It had not taken long for the local TV station to hear about the body at Paddy’s Crossing and Morgan was not surprised to discover that they even had a brief background on the dead man. Their access to information was formidable.

  ‘Does it appear, Senior Constable Morgan,’ a pretty young local television interviewer asked, thrusting a microphone in his face on the steps of the police station, ‘that Mr Kildare met with foul play?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Morgan answered in police mode. ‘I cannot make any comment on the matter until the coroner has cleared us to do so.’

  ‘So it appears that the British tourist has been murdered,’ the girl replied smugly.

  ‘I did not say that and suggest that you get in contact with our public relations department,’ Morgan replied with a frown. He looked over the shoulder of the young man holding the camera to see Ken Barber and Mark Branson drive up. ‘If you don’t mind, I have work to do,’ Morgan said briskly, thereby concluding the uninvited interview.

  ‘It appears that Valley View has had a spate of deaths in the last few weeks,’ the interviewer said to Morgan as he brushed past her. ‘Isn’t that a bit unusual?’

  Morgan stopped and turned to her, knowing that she was attempting to sensationalise her story. ‘A traffic accident and a tourist’s body do not constitute anything unusual,’ he said. ‘Even little towns have their days.’

  ‘My sources inform me that the vehicle involved in the accident had been sabotaged,’ she countered. ‘That constitutes murder.’

  ‘As I said,’ Morgan replied. ‘talk to our PR people.’ He continued walking towards Ken Barber, who stood next to his vehicle eyeing the TV crew and smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Nice looking sheila,’ he said when Morgan approached. ‘Hope you didn’t tell her anything.’

  ‘Just the usual, talk to our PR people,’ Morgan said. ‘Somehow she knew about the sabotage of Monique Dawson’s car.’

  ‘It happens,’ Ken growled. ‘Some bloody member of the job leaks it to the media for a quid.’

  ‘How did you go with Olev?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘He’s got something to hide,’ Ken replied. ‘Might be Russian mafia and if so, what the hell is he doing in Dullsville? I’m just waiting for a check to come back on him. I’ve put the inquiry in the fast lane with our people in Sydney to chase up as much as they have on Comrade Olev.’

  ‘Ken,’ Mark said from inside the car. ‘Just got a call that you should contact this number in Sydney on a landline.’

  Ken Barber took the slip of paper from the trainee detective and glanced at the phone number. ‘I’ll use the phone in the station,’ he said.

  Ken sat down at Morgan’s desk and dialled the number. His conversation seemed to be a series of grunts and monosyllabic replies as he scribbled down the information he receive
d. He put the phone down and looked at Morgan.

  ‘That was our Interpol liaison lady,’ he said. ‘Their checks with the Russian cops have nothing on Petrov Olev because Petrov Olev has been dead for a couple of years now. So whoever Mark and I spoke to at the pub is someone else. I think it is time that Comrade Olev – or whoever he is – comes clean on who he really is.’

  Morgan experienced a sudden surge of concern. ‘I think that we should find the Russian as soon as possible,’ Morgan said.

  ‘We spoke to him in his room,’ Ken said. ‘Let’s hope he is still there.’

  When they stepped out onto the verandah, Morgan glanced at his watch. It was almost 3.30 in the afternoon and the sky was now black with clouds. A gentle breeze played with the air, evaporating the sweat on Morgan’s brow. Lightning flashed in the west and the green tinge to the clouds warned of hailstones. The rumble of thunder rolling around the hills reminded Morgan of his nights in the Iraqi desert with his section of SAS soldiers. For Ken, it was a reminder of the B52 strikes on distant Vietcong targets.

  Morgan followed the detective’s vehicle in his own and they were almost at the hotel when Branson thrust his arm out of the driver’s side car window and waved him to a stop. Morgan leaped from his vehicle. Ken was holding his mobile phone to his ear. He leaned out the car window to speak. ‘We just got a call from the radio room,’ he said. ‘They received an email from an anonymous sender to say that Olev aka Petrov Batkin is planning to kill Monique Dawson tonight, and that he is responsible for the killing of the Pom. It says that when we find this Batkin we will also find a .32 pistol in his possession that can be matched to the bullet in Kildare. It looks like our hunch was right.’

  ‘We will need backup. This character is most probably a former Russian special forces soldier,’ Morgan suggested.

  Ken Barber shook his head.

  ‘Olev, Batkin or whoever he is does not suspect that we know about his involvement in the killing of Kildare,’ he said. ‘I will just approach him in a manner that suggests I am on a routine inquiry. Between the three of us we should be able to handle him. Besides, it will take time to organise backup from Hume City and he might do a runner in the meantime. I’d hate to lose our one and only suspect.’

  Morgan understood the rationale but also remembered that the man they were about to approach was potentially very dangerous. But the need to take him out before he could execute any plan to kill Monique over-rode Morgan’s caution.

  ‘Okay, we do it,’ Morgan replied. ‘But I think that we should have a contingency plan.’

  Ken Barber smiled. As a former soldier he understood what Morgan was saying.

  ‘How about we do it this way,’ he said and laid out a plan to arrest their prime suspect.

  The three agreed on the suggested course of action and Morgan returned to his vehicle. But as he did he felt a nagging uncertainty about the anonymous emailer. Who was that person and what reason did they have to inform on the Russian? Something did not feel right, he thought as he slid behind the wheel of his vehicle to follow the detectives to the hotel where Batkin was residing.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Paris, France

  October 1919

  The vibrancy was almost tangible even though for Joshua Paris was not an alien city. He had spent leave here after being wounded on the Western Front. Then it had been a place of morbid memories despite the gaiety it had attempted to present to the world. Now, it was truly a place where life oozed from every shop, café and broad avenue. Gone from the boulevards were the endless streams of uniformed soldiers with haunted eyes and the bloody bandages of men returning from the front. Instead, the city continued to rejoice in its rescue from German invasion with the appearance of foreigners flooding the streets in search of a good time.

  At great risk, Jan Novak had flown Joshua and Maria into a former military airstrip in Belgium where he was paid off for his duties. But he was generous and used some of the money he had made from them to celebrate in a café in a little village outside Brussels. He had explained that he could not fly them any further south as the French military were still somewhat nervous about seeing a Gotha bomber in their air space.

  With back-slapping and a bear-like hug he bid them goodbye when they stepped aboard a train travelling south to France. It was with some sadness that they parted as the bond of facing common dangers had become strong between Joshua and the former Polish officer.

  When they had reached Paris Joshua explained to Maria that he had once known a French woman by the name of Francine Dubois in the city during the war. She had billeted him when he was recovering from his wounds. When she saw the French woman Maria realised that she need not have felt any jealousy towards her as she was old enough to be Joshua’s grandmother and was very maternal towards him when they met again.

  Her modest terraced house was located on the Left Bank and when she took in Joshua and Maria she had one other boarder. He was a slim young man from French Indo China who had sometimes worked as a waiter in Parisian restaurants before the Great War, but was now tied up in politics, she explained, waving her hand as if to dismiss the idea. She said that their fellow boarder was known as Nguyen Ai Quoc – Nguyen the patriot, he called himself. Leading them to their room she further explained that the young man had even attempted to present the American president, Woodrow Wilson with a document seeking freedom for the Indo Chinese people who had been under the thumb of French colonialism at the Versailles conference. ‘A stupid idea,’ Madame Dubois said. ‘Foreigners are incapable of governing themselves. I have even told him so.’

  When she opened the door to their room they could see that it was clean and neat with an attic view over the city which sprawled to the river. Joshua paid Madame Dubois a month’s rent in advance in English currency. She stared at the notes in her hand with some displeasure but accepted them knowing that she could get a good return on their conversion to French currency.

  ‘We are truly free,’ Maria said, gazing out the window over the roof tops of the houses on the other side of the street.

  ‘Not in Europe,’ Joshua cautioned. ‘The British are not going to take rejection from the Germans very well and I have no doubt that Major Locksley is not about to give up on searching for us. I have seen what he can be like and know that he will continue his mission until he is satisfied.’

  Maria turned to Joshua with a worried look and he regretted that he had alarmed her. He walked over to the window and took her in his arms. ‘Maria, I love you more than any woman I have ever known before,’ he said. ‘So long as I am alive, I will fight to keep you safe.’

  ‘I have known a life I could not even explain to you,’ Maria said. ‘For the first seventeen years of my life I could never have imagined that it would end, but from the time I was a prisoner of the Bolsheviks, I was forced to realise that it was gone forever. Then you came into my life – a man from a different world. I know that I would not be alive today if you had not appeared in that cabin in Russia. Since then we have shared so much pain and suffering together. You held me that night when I was hurting and yet knew that it was the comfort of your arms that I needed most. You did not attempt to exploit my vulnerability on that night. Joshua, I love you also with all my heart and soul and I have carried a terrible secret I must share with you now. When I tell you I doubt that you will wish to be with me anymore but my love for you compels me to share my secret.’

  Joshua could hardly believe what he was hearing. Tears welled in his eyes and he held Maria against his chest so that she could not see his feelings erupt in the unmanly act of crying. No more words were needed for the moment. That he could hold her and know that she loved him as he did her was enough. Nothing that she confessed to him mattered as much as the woman in his arms.

  London

  October 1919

  Sitting at his desk in the Secret Intelligence Service office, Mansfield Cumming pored over the reports in front of him. Hundreds of thousands of men were returning to the workfo
rce after their service in the Great War – tough, battle-hardened veterans whose expectations of a better world and meaningful employment were not being met. Instead, unemployment, lack of social services and a government that appeared hardly grateful for their years of service in the defence of democracy comprised the reality they were faced with instead. Disgruntled, the former soldiers and their families listened to the socialist agitators, springing from the despair like mushrooms on the factory floors, in the mines and market places all over the British Isles and the threat of a revolution not unlike that which had recently occurred in Russia hung in the British air.

  The British royal family’s existence was increasingly under threat from the growing social discontent. How would it appear to the working classes if the King was seen to be supporting the daughter of the late Russian Czar in her claim to the throne, when Lenin and Trotsky were garnering sympathy from the disfranchised of the British Isles? The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service could not take that chance and the silencing of Princess Maria had become of vital national security.

  ‘Major Locksley is here, sir,’ the chief’s secretary announced after knocking.

  ‘Send him in,’ Cumming directed.

  Major Locksley stepped inside the office. He was wearing a long coat over civilian clothing and carrying a leather satchel case. Cumming gestured for him to take a seat.

  ‘She slipped through your fingers,’ Cumming said.

  ‘The bloody Huns blatantly defied us,’ Locksley growled. ‘That colonial Larkin is in cahoots with her. In my opinion, sir, we should take action against the Freikorps as a lesson to them.’

  ‘That would not be wise, considering the circumstances in Europe at the moment,’ Cumming replied. ‘They are a bastion against the Bolsheviks taking over Germany and we cannot allow a Germany under a Bolshevik government. Good God, France would be next and then we would be facing an aggressive system bent on tearing down everything that we hold sacred in England. No, we will maintain our covert links with the Freikorps and for now ignore this sleight against us.’