Ben shakes his head. “Nothing. She wasn’t alive long enough. I could tell that she wanted to say more, but by then it was too late.”
“Why don’t you let me take care of the phone? I can pass it on to the cyber experts down at GCHQ, somewhere well away from anyone who might be keen to get their hands on it.”
“You don’t know half of it,” Ben replies, dunking a piece of tuna sushi into the soya sauce and popping it into his mouth. He tells her about his adventures with the Russians that afternoon, leaving out some of the details but covering the basics.
“Bloody hell, Ben,” she says, her eyes wide with amazement. “You never mentioned that earlier. All the more reason for you to be shot of the damned thing.”
“I’ll think about it,” Ben says remembering Zamani’s words. Not even the British. “It’s a good offer. However I have to work out first whether I trust you.” He smiles at her and bites into a sliver of pickled ginger, toying with it in his mouth. “I did make a commitment to Leyla Zamani. These days, I try to keep my promises. Tell you what – do you fancy a drink? I could murder something stronger than green tea.”
“I’ve got a better idea. I only live around the corner. Come back to my place and we can open a bottle of wine?”
“Only if I won’t be intruding.”
“I wouldn’t have invited you if you were.”
18
Pimlico
The explosion rocked the neighbourhood, tearing a gaping hole through the walls and floor of flat 23. The woman was killed instantly, fragments of her body carried several metres by the blast. Numerous car alarms were set off up and down the length of Claverton Street. The burglar alarm in flat 33 above was wailing loudly and a slab of ceiling masonry had fallen on a man in flat 13 below. It had crushed his leg and trapped him inside the apartment; given the other noise, his screams could barely be heard. Dust and debris were everywhere.
The plan had been straightforward. Olga was to wait in Lewis’s apartment. Panich was to call in when Lewis was on his way up and then he, Panich, would follow behind. Lewis would open his front door and Olga was to finish him off with her silenced SIG Sauer P229. A double tap and Lewis would be dead. Another loose end taken care of. That at least had been the plan five minutes ago. When Panich and Olga had had their argument as to who should wait in the apartment and pull the trigger and who should wait outside and play lookout - an argument that Panich, in a moment of weakness, had lost. This had been the reason he had been waiting on the roadside, sitting astride the bike, looking out for when Lewis returned. He’d been passing the time smoking, inhaling a long, deep, lungful of nicotine-laden smoke at the very moment the bomb had exploded. Olga wouldn’t have stood a chance. It was a catastrophe. He, Panich, had felt completely helpless.
Tossing the cigarette aside angrily, he had started the bike and reluctantly had driven away. There hadn’t seemed much point in hanging around, however callous it was to leave a comrade’s dead body at such a time. Four good agents had been removed from the field in the space of a few hours, one now dead and three badly injured. If Panich hadn’t been so weak as to let Olga have her way, it would have been his body that they would have been sending home in a wooden casket, not hers. He was going to have to live with that.
One thing was now certain. Ben Lewis was going to pay dearly for this. He, Oleg Panich, would see to it personally. The price tag had just risen: nothing less than Lewis’s very protracted and agonisingly painful death was going to be appropriate.
19
Savile Row Police Station
The general consensus amongst police colleagues was that Saul Zeltinger was quirky, pedantic, and often irritatingly successful. This latter phrase was one that Zeltinger was particularly fond of. It was almost a badge of honour for the half-German, half-English detective. Actually, Detective Inspector, to be more precise, a level of precision that Saul also frequently felt the need to set the record straight on.
Zeltinger’s exactitude was part of a genetic transference from his father, a gifted young precious metal trader. Saul had been the only son of German Jewish parents both of whom miraculously had survived the war and lived in Antwerp. Zeltinger’s father had moved to London in the Sixties and had married a highly conventional young nurse – ‘a Nightingale, no less, trained at St Thomas’s hospital’, she had told him proudly during their very first dance together. When their daughter began stepping out with the young Jewish metal trader, it had caused quite a stir with Maggie’s equally conservative, Church of England, family based in suburban Surrey. Such parental over-reactions can cause rebellious streaks to emerge in their offspring. Maggie was no different. Her newfound willingness to disregard convention laid the foundations for their only son, Saul, born just eleven months and four days after that very first dance, to emerge into life. Saul was an interesting product of two rather different halves as Zeltinger himself might later have put it.
After an unblemished school career where he achieved high scores in most subjects, the young Saul Zeltinger went on to study mathematics at London University. He chose maths principally because he was fascinated by the neatness and elegance of well-constructed solutions to pure mathematical conundrums. Well on the way to academic distinction, Zeltinger then surprised everyone with the bombshell that he wanted to join the police force in order, as he put it, ‘to make a career out of solving crime.’
Zeltinger quickly built a reputation for being good at police work, in particular the way he was able to get his head around complex criminal cases that others found difficult to fathom. He seemed to have this flair for diving into the details and unearthing clues that others usually missed. He was at his most productive and most content working by himself, enjoying getting inside other people’s minds and seeing things from their perspective. Mostly liked, if often misunderstood, Zeltinger thought differently, behaved differently, and dressed differently. He even had his own distinctive, almost childish, brand of humour that most found trying, relying on puns and subtle uses of language to create witticisms. One area that no one could fault him on was a conviction he held that it was the duty of every police officer to help more junior staff to develop and grow. Saul seemed to delight in going out of his way to invest time with younger constables and sergeants to provide explanations for actions and decisions taken. He would encourage them to make mistakes without fear of a reprimand or dismissal. Perhaps that was what he had learned from being a parent. The fact that he had even become a husband let alone a father was the subject of occasional coffee break ridicule. To the doubtless surprise of many, Zeltinger had found the time and the inclination to persuade a pretty young nursery teacher called Hattie to be his ‘bride and joy’ as he had described her. What had come as a surprise to the pair of them was the arrival of twin boys several months later.
The bombing of Ben Lewis’s apartment changed everything as far as Saul Zeltinger was concerned. It was altogether too much of an improbability for the former Marine to have been on the periphery of two capital murders in one day without good reason. An alert had gone out within the last hour: Ben Lewis was wanted in connection with both crimes and to be detained on sight and brought in for questioning.
On the face of it, this was still Saul Zeltinger’s case. A shooting of a woman in a London square was fairly and squarely a police matter. Except that the shooting of a prominent Iranian journalist; the, as yet, unexplained but probable linkage between her and former Green Beret Ben Lewis; the shootings in Green Park involving Russian nationals, thought by the Security Services to be SVR agents acting illegally on British soil; and the devastation by bombing of a flat in Pimlico rented by Lewis – all these when taken together were anything but routine. There was also the question as to the identity of the person killed by the bomb in Pimlico. Forensic teams had been able to identify the victim as a white female Caucasian, but nothing further at this stage. Zeltinger had a hun
ch that she, too, might turn out to be Russian.
If all the aforementioned were connected, this case more logically belonged to MI5 than the police. Zeltinger would be loathed to give it up, however. Despite whatever positive spin the politicians put on the great cooperation and collaboration between various parts of the security and police apparatus, in practice no one liked giving up jurisdiction over a case, Zeltinger especially. He had already gone up the line to his Assistant Commissioner. They had both agreed that if the dead woman turned out to be a foreign national, more accurately a suspected Russian agent, then they would refer the matter to the Cabinet Office who would then decide jurisdictional control. For now, the case was still Zeltinger’s. In order to cover the bases, however, he had that evening been in touch with his counterpart at MI5, Jake Sullivan. The two had agreed to review progress in the morning.
A uniformed police constable assigned to support Saul over the night shift, a young Chinese girl called Meilin, knocked on his door bearing a fresh mug of tea. Saul liked working with Meilin. Although not long in the force, she was hard working and a quick learner, someone who was not afraid to take responsibility.
“You asked me to remind you about calling home, sir,” she said, placing the mug on his desk. The large desktop was full of neatly stacked piles of paper and cardboard folders, various pages having been tagged with sticky yellow place markers at their edges. In amongst all the paperwork were two family photos showing Zeltinger, his wife Hattie, and their twin boys. “It’s after eleven, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Zeltinger looked up and smiled wearily. “Is that the time? Thanks, I’ll call in a moment.”
Meilin also put a manila folder on his desk.
“What’s this?”
“Research on Leyla Zamani. That’s all the material I’ve managed to unearth so far. There’s more still to be done, you just need to tell me which areas you’d like further information.”
“Thanks. I’ll take a look in a moment. Are you working the night shift?”
Meilin nodded.
“Who’s looking after your daughter?”
“My mother, sir.”
Saul might have guessed. He sighed, wearily. It had been a long day already and the paperwork was beckoning. He suddenly thought of something.
“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a moment to think. I need someone to run down to the Edgware Europa Hotel where Leyla Zamani was meant to be staying. Could you go and check out her room, see if you can find anything? While you’re at it, inform the duty manager that this is now a police matter. They should not to allow anyone, housekeeping or otherwise, into the room until we’ve finished our enquiries.”
“Of course. It’ll be more fun than sitting at my desk all night doing paperwork, that’s for sure.”
“Tell me about it,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, picking up the phone to dial his wife.
Later, Zeltinger was pouring through the information that Meilin had uncovered. Leyla Zamani had been born in Teheran on the eleventh of July 1977, making her thirty-seven when she had died. Single and living in a top floor apartment located in the tenth arrondissement close to the Gare du Nord, she had worked in Paris for much of the last sixteen years. Her parents had died in Teheran when she was a baby and she had moved abroad from an early age to live with her aunt and uncle in Geneva. As a young teenager, she had gone to school in the UK, attending a private girls’ boarding school in Ascot. Later, she had studied journalism at the London University, graduating with an upper second-class degree in 1998.
As far as Meilin had been able to discover, Zamani had died childless and with few, if any, relations alive. Here, however, Meilin had excelled. She had contacted the organisers of the nuclear symposium and obtained from them a copy of Zamani’s application to attend the conference. Against the question ‘Next of Kin and contact details’, she had written the name ‘Shafiq Hamidi’, including a phone number alongside the name that began with the numbers ‘+98’. Zeltinger quickly checked: +98 was the direct dial country access code for Iran.
20
Nr Paddington
Melanie Allen’s place that was ‘around the corner’ is, by Lewis’s standards, out of his league. It looks and feels well beyond his pay grade. Situated on Westbourne Terrace to the west of Paddington station, this is a smart neighbourhood. Not somewhere he might ordinarily have expected someone on a civil service salary to be able to afford.
“It was actually my parents’,” Mel tells him as she switches on the hall light and closes the front door. “When they passed away, I was the lucky beneficiary. Do you like it?”
“It feels rather too grown up for me,” Lewis says with feeling. The main living room is elegantly furnished: colour-matched sofas chairs and curtains; a huge gilt mirror over a faux fireplace; and nice pictures on the walls. “How many floors are there?”
“Two, this one and the floor above. Want to see the kitchen?” He watches her knife-pleated skirt swirl seductively as she turns on her heels, beckoning him to follow. “Come on, the wine’s this way.”
The kitchen is vast, almost two rooms combined, enough space for people to sit and eat at a rectangular table at one end whilst the cooking was done at the other.
“This is bigger than my whole flat,” Lewis says a little enviously. “And I’m only renting.”
“Never mind that. There’s a wine fridge in the corner over there,” she says pointing. “Find us a nice bottle of red and I’ll dig out something for us to eat.”
All the wines appear to be nice to his untrained eye and so he chooses a bottle of Rioja with fancy gold wire twisted around the outside. Now all he needs is a corkscrew. He finds one in a drawer nearby.
“This one all right?” he asks, showing her the bottle.
“Perfect. I love Rioja. Let’s sit over here,” she says pointing to a sofa in the corner. “It’ll be more comfortable than around the table. Glasses are in the cabinet behind you.”
She draws the curtains, turns down the lights and sits down on the sofa. Quickly she kicks off her shoes, curling her legs up under her whilst Lewis sits beside her and pours two glasses of wine. There are cashew nuts in a bowl on the table in front of them.
“To Leyla,” he says. They both chink glasses solemnly, taking their first sips in silence.
“So, how did you get into the Foreign Office?” The wine is beginning to work its way into their system. Both are beginning to relax.
“My father was an ambassador,” she says. “He and my mother spent much of my teenage years in Moscow. In point of fact, that’s how I met Leyla. We were at boarding school here in the UK. While our respective parents or in her case her aunt and uncle were gallivanting around the world.”
“Did they enjoy Moscow, your parents? You must have visited a few times, I guess.”
“Hugely, and yes, I went nearly every holidays. I learnt to speak Russian. It’s useful, almost essential in fact, to have a second language in the Foreign Office.”
“I can imagine. More wine?” He fills both glasses and she shuffles closer, leaning back against him a little. It is cosy and not at all unpleasant.
“We became closest of friends at school, Leyla and me,” she volunteers after a short silence. “Leyla came with me to Moscow a couple of times. Sadly, as we got older, we saw less and less of each other. It was inevitable.” She takes a large swig of wine from her glass. “I think I might even be executor to her will. I’ll need to check. I shall miss her enormously.”
“Was she a good journalist?”
“I guess. Pretty tenacious was my uninformed view. She was never one to let go of a story that she felt warranted further investigation.”
“You mentioned earlier that the two of you had met only recently. When Leyla mentioned the story she was about to publish. What else did she say?”
Mel gives Lewis a blank look. “I thought I explained all that earlier,” a hint of irritation creeping into her tone.
“In part, yes. But there has to be more to it. What was in the teaser you referred to, for example?”
“Explicit stuff implicating certain foreign governments of acts that fly in the face of international treaties. The dossier will be explosive, certainly destined to be classified if it ever sees the light of day. It’s why you should give me that phone of hers, Ben. Let me look after it. I can see that it gets to the right people. It’s what Leyla would have wanted, after all.”
“I have yet to be convinced that it is, actually – what she would have wanted. The jury’s still out. I’m not yet ready to hand it over to anyone, I’m sorry. I need to know a whole lot more about her and why she might have been in trouble first. Was she married, for instance, does she have any other family alive, that sort of thing?”
“Married? No. Like me, never found anyone good enough. Single to the end, poor love. I don’t want to be like that.”
“You don’t have to be married to enjoy life, though,” Ben says, almost without thinking.
“I guess not,” she says looking up at him. She holds her wine glass out. “More wine please.” Ben has hardly touched his second glass but gladly refills hers.
“As to her immediate family, both parents are dead and there are no other siblings alive.” She takes a mouthful of wine and holds it in her mouth as if deep in thought, before swallowing. “Tell me about this phone she gave you.”
“What’s to tell?”
“Well, what are you meant to do with it? Who are you meant to give it to?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said truthfully. “I’ll work it out. Eventually. That is, if I can find a way to unlock her phone.”
The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1) Page 6