I shook my head. “Nah, once you’re hooked you’re hooked, mate. You’ll do twenty and at the end of that you’ll be too burned out to do anything else. Spend the rest of your days fishing or playing golf. Either that or become a promotion junkie and try to make your way up the greasy pole: Chief Superintendent, Assistant Chief Constable, Chief Constable, knighthood.”
“I’m not interested in promotion. I just want to do good for the community.”
“Doing good, eh? I used to think like that. First month I’m on the job old Dickie Bently takes me aside to explain what ‘emotional leverage’ is. Have you heard of that term, Lawson?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s where you arrest a family member for a minor outstanding warrant to get information on your real suspect. Dickie explained by showing. Arrested a widowed father with four kids for a bum check he’d passed three years earlier. The dad was climbing the walls. Youngest was two years old and in the house alone. Course, Dickie arrested him under the Prevention of Terrorism Act: no phone call, no lawyer. We broke the dad and he told us all about his brother-in-law who was fencing stolen goods for the Provos. Dickie schooled me pretty quick in the ways of getting things done. It’s not just ‘doing good’; sometimes it’s doing bad too for the greater good, Lawson. It’s a bastard of a job.”
“Yes, sir,” Lawson agreed glumly.
“And it’s not just—” I began, but at that moment Kate waltzed into the Eagle and Child bringing an autumnal breeze, golden leaves, and a slight hint of perfume. She was wearing a tartan skirt and a sweater. Her hair was tightly coiffured. She kissed me on the cheek and introduced herself as an old friend. Lawson bought it but Crabbie would have been more dubious.
I gave Lawson a tenner and told him to get another round in. Kate wanted a gin and tonic—easy on the tonic.
When he’d gone Kate patted me on the knee.
“This is a nice surprise,” she said affectionately.
“Surprise I don’t think.”
“He seems like a pleasant young man.”
“Lawson? He’s the one you should be trying to recruit. Pretty sharp and green enough to be malleable.”
“It’s lovely, isn’t it, Oxford? Such a small world too. Last time I was here I was behind Iris Murdoch at Tesco.”
“She doesn’t seem the Tesco type,” I said skeptically.
“So, what’s this case you’re working on?”
“As if you don’t know that too.”
She smiled coyly. “Well, I did poke around a little bit. I hope you’re not going to make waves over here, Sean.”
“Are there waves to make?”
“There are always waves to make.”
“Young Lawson thinks that the Thames Valley Police may be protecting an important member of the British establishment in the Anastasia Coleman case.”
“And you? What do you think?”
“As usual, Kate, I have an open mind.”
“Well, you’re the detectives, not me, but frankly it sounds preposterous. The tabloids were all over that case.”
Lawson returned with the drinks.
“Were your ears burning, sweetie? We were just talking about you,” Kate said.
“You were?” he said, coloring quickly.
“Sean tells me that you think that the Thames Valley Constabulary may be conspiring to keep the truth from the public in the tragic case of Anastasia Coleman.”
Lawson looked at me to see whether it was OK to say anything.
“Kate works in, uh, law enforcement; you can speak freely in front of her,” I assured him.
Lawson told her his theory about Count Habsburg and Michael Kelly being the fall guys, but the mysterious “third man” getting off scot-free. A third man who, as a member of the Round Table Club, was a future mover and shaker or the son of a current mover and shaker.
Kate smiled and took a generous sip of her G&T. “Nothing would shock me about the Thames Valley Constabulary, but how they would have pulled the wool over the eyes of the coroner in the Anastasia Coleman affair is beyond me. Sir Bradford Wells was in Colditz, so I doubt very much whether he would have been successfully intimidated by a few bobbies in the Oxford police.”
Was that the reason for our little rendezvous tonight? To warn us off officially? Or was she speaking obiter dicta? Simply giving her own opinion. She was a very difficult woman to read.
She smiled and finished her drink. “I’ll get the next one, lads.”
We finished the next round and Kate led us outside. The light rain had stopped and the street was full of people. That feeling again. That this was the normal world. A world without bombs and terrorists and suspicious packages. All these young people out having a good time. Carefree. Happy. No undercurrent. No tension. No sectarian cold war. It felt weird.
“Do we need a taxi?” I asked, spotting a black cab.
“No, no. We’ll walk.”
We hoofed it up the Banbury Road to a place called Andre’s.
It was quite exclusive, and Lawson and I felt underdressed in our sports jackets and shirts. No one actually offered to give us a tie, but we were the only men in the place without them.
Kate seemed to be well-known to Patrice, the elderly maître d’. She spoke to him in French, a tongue both Lawson and I knew well enough to understand our introduction as “her two gallant, handsome comrades in arms.”
An aperitif was produced along with three menus. Kate did the ordering, and extravagant dish followed extravagant dish. The wine flowed freely too.
The waiters, who, as a species, customarily looked on me with neutrality or even veiled hostility, were positively nice.
“It’s a fine old place, isn’t it? I saw Benjamin Britten in here once when I was a girl. And my father told me that this is where Epstein took The Beatles after their audition with Decca. Stopped off on the way back from Liverpool,” Kate said, winking at me.
“Look at you with the music references to get on my good side,” I said to her appreciatively.
“Really, The Beatles? Here?” Lawson said, impressed.
“I have a bootleg of that Decca session. Couple of good Leiber and Stoller and Goffin and King numbers. You have a theory about The Beatles, don’t you, Lawson?”
“Young Lawson seems to have theories about a lot of things,” Kate murmured.
“Well, it’s not so much a theory as an observation,” he said.
“Go on.”
“The NME had this piece about them being archetypes. You know? The funny one, the smart one, and so on, but it seems to me that people start off liking Paul, the nice, pretty one, but then as they mature they move on to the John stage—the thinker, the troublemaker; finally, as they get older, it’s the George stage, the quest for spiritual meaning.”
“There’s no Ringo stage?” Kate asked.
“Maybe if they slip into dementia.” Lawson said unkindly.
Booze. Good food. Convo. And by eleven o’clock we were the only customers left.
Lawson was hammered and I was swimming against the tide. Kate seemed unaffected. She paid with a check and complimented the staff on their discreet service. “C’est une grande habileté que de savoir cacher son habileté,” she said.
The waiter bowed.
“Come on, Sean, let’s get your young friend home first.”
With some difficulty we got Lawson back to the B&B. I expected trouble from Mrs. Brown or her son, but neither of them was anywhere to be found. The cats were on guard.
We carried Lawson to his room. I took his shoes off and put him in the recovery position.
He was groaning now.
Not surprising, really, since we had consumed nearly five bottles of wine between us.
“If you’re gonna hurl try and make it to the bathroom, but if you really can’t make it I’ve put a wastepaper basket next to your bed,” I explained.
“Blurgh,” he said.
We left him. “I’ll see you out,” I said.
Back
downstairs through the feline minefield.
“My car’s parked on Norham Gardens just round the corner. Walk with me.”
“All right.”
The cool night air was clearing my head now. Kate had taken off her shoes and was walking in her bare feet. She was happy, relaxed. She produced a little camera from a bag and asked a student to take a photograph of us to “commemorate the occasion.”
I fake-smiled, she smiled for real, the shutter clicked, the moment was saved.
“This way,” Kate said, and led me down a beautiful tree-lined street.
“You seem to know Oxford quite well. I suppose you went here for university?”
“I didn’t go to this or to any other university.”
“So how did you get into MI5?”
“I was recruited into the Security Service through a friend of my father’s.”
“They scooped you right up, like Lawson, after your A-levels?”
“I didn’t do A-levels either, thank God. They sound like bloody awful things.”
“Didn’t you go to school at all?”
“I did the baccalaureate. In Switzerland.”
“Oh, you’re from money, then?” I said, trying to be ironic.
“Ah, here’s my car. Hop in. We’ll go for a spin.”
The car was an ancient TR7. She skidded out of the parking spot and gassed it up the Banbury Road at 50 mph.
“Let’s put our seat belts on, eh? When the inevitable crash comes I don’t want to be the only survivor. The cops hate it when the man survives and the woman dies.”
“I’m not sure this thing has a seat belt.”
“Where are we going anyway?”
“Home.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”
“Don’t worry. Daddy won’t be there. He hates England in November.”
“Is it nearby? I’m supposed to be making an early start tomorrow. It’ll make a bad impression if I show up late and hung over.”
“It’s nearby.”
We drove out of Oxford along the Woodstock Road and then along the A4095 past Blenheim. This was really the middle of nowhere: no street lamps, just two narrow lanes of country road with tall hedgerows and catseyes down the middle of the tarmac.
“What are you doing over here, Kate?” I asked.
“I told you. I’m running a little conference at Chicksands.”
“About Northern Ireland?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Things are very finely balanced at the moment.”
“Things are totally chaotic at the moment.”
“Not really. On the surface, perhaps. But underneath . . .”
“Underneath, what exactly?”
“Movement. But it’s fragile, delicate. We have to be cautious. We can’t go blundering around stirring things up, can we?”
I looked at her. Was that another hint about me and this case?
We turned right down a single-lane road called Gun Street.
“Gun Street?” I asked.
“Used to be an old arsenal. Daddy’s family owned it, fast friends with the Dukes of Marlborough, dontcha know.”
“Nice.”
“Not really. The Churchills, with one exception, have always been crashing bores.”
Daddy’s house turned out to be a fairly large pile in the country.
It wasn’t exactly Brideshead, but it wasn’t a cottage in the Cotswolds either: an eclectic, almost eccentric Victorian mansion with Indian red sandstone bricks, large Gothic windows, and a ridiculous mansard roof. There was a formal garden, a bit of woodland, and a classical folly that you could just make out in the moonlight.
“Hideous, ain’t it?” Kate said.
“Well—”
“Daddy’s great-uncle built it. A pastiche of something certainly, but we never could figure out what exactly.”
“Your father’s great-uncle?”
“Great-great-uncle Max. He made a lot of money in India. Please don’t ask how.”
“How?”
“Sean, whenever someone says don’t ask how their antecedents made their money in the colonies, it’s always either opium or slavery . . . Come on, this way.”
We walked over a freshly tarred driveway and pushed the doorbell.
“Jesus, don’t you have a key? We’ll wake everyone up.”
“There is no everyone. I told you, Daddy’s in Italy.”
She rang the doorbell again. A light went on in one of the downstairs rooms and a plump, elderly, dark-haired woman in a housecoat opened the door.
“Kate!” the woman said, and she and Kate embraced.
“Bea, this is my friend, Sean. Sean, this is my dearest friend in all the world, Bea!”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“I’ll put the kettle on and turn out your room, Miss Kate,” Bea said.
“Don’t put yourself to any trouble,” Kate insisted.
“Are you hungry at all?” Bea asked.
“Not remotely. We’ve stuffed ourselves like pigs.”
“Lovely.”
“This way, Sean,” Kate said, and led me through a chilly, portrait-lined hall into a large but rather squalid kitchen. Dishes swam in a sink of brown water, bread and cheese crumbs littered an enormous oak table. Black pans hung from hooks on the sooty brickwork. I sat down on a chair that had been worn smooth and comfortable over the generations while Bea and Kate busied themselves making a pot of tea.
“I’ll take it from here, Bea,” Kate said when the boiling water finally made it into the teapot.
“I’ll sort out your room,” Bea said, and then added in a lower cadence, “or should that be rooms?”
“Room,” Kate said firmly.
“Very good,” Bea replied, and scuttled off upstairs.
The tea was ridiculously strong, and although the biscuits came from a tin marked Fortnum and Mason, they were soggy and tasteless.
“Have you got any milk?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” Kate said without looking.
“Sugar?”
“Somewhere, I’m sure. Come on, drink up.”
I put some of the foul brew to my lips and pretended to drink.
A little bell rang next to the fireplace.
“All right, let’s go up,” Kate said.
I put down the teacup and followed her up a dimly lit staircase to the second floor. It was freezing up here and damp. Draughty windows, bare bulbs, more gloomy portraits in the shadows.
“How do you like the old place? I’m hardly ever here now that I’ve relocated to Rathlin Island. Not as cozy, but it has its own charms, don’t you think?”
“Well—”
“I always feel that it’s a bit like something from an M. R. James story. And there is a ghost too. Bea’s seen her. And Willis, who used to do the garden, said she was a right shocker . . . Ah, this is my room.”
We went into a large bedroom with a high ceiling painted with blue stars and walls painted a deep, pillar-box red. There were ancient rugs on the floor, a small library filled with books, a beautiful old dressing table, a gorgeous secretary-style writing desk, and a walk-in clothes cupboard. An ancient, comfortable-looking, four-poster bed dominated the rear of the room.
“Bathroom’s along the landing. Bea will have turned the bulb on so you can see the light under the door.”
“I think I’ll make use of . . .”
“I’ll go after you. If you see her, the ghost is called Margaret.”
I went along the spooky corridor, had a slash in the flush toilet, came back.
“See her?” Kate asked.
“No.”
“That’s good. Wait here. I’ll be back in a sec . . . you can take your clothes off if you like.”
“Are we sleeping in the same—”
But she was gone.
I took my kit off and got under the covers.
Kate came back and started taking her own clothes off.
“Good. Now listen to me, Sean. This
is highly unprofessional, I hope you realize that. I’m not encouraging this sort of behavior at all. We’re not cowboys. We have an HR department and rules just like everyone else,” she said.
“I understand.”
“Good. Kiss me, then.”
“All right.”
We made love in the cold bed.
It was hurried and desperate and good.
It was something we had both wanted for a long time, and she had realized this before I had.
She opened an antique cigarette case and fished out a couple of ancient Gauloises. The traditional short, wide, unfiltered Gauloises made with dark tobaccos from Syria and Turkey.
“I’m so glad we’ve got that out of the way, aren’t you?” she said.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like—”
“You speak Irish, don’t you, Sean?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been trying to learn but I have no aptitude for languages. Give me a quick burst.”
“Tá gile na dtonn, is uaigneas an domhain i ngleic, says Louis de Paor.”
“Meaning?”
“The brightness of the sea and the loneliness of the world grappling in my father’s green eyes.”
“Hmmm. The lingo may come in useful when you come to work for us.”
“If I come to work for you.”
She smiled and kissed me and lay in my arms. We finished our ciggies and lay in the big bed and fell asleep to a strange, far-off sound.
The icy leak of the future into the present.
The thud, thud, thud, thud of Chinook helicopter blades . . .
14: EVEN THE WASPS CANNOT FIND MY EYES
See me running. Running through the woods of the high bog. See me in the snow. In the Woodburn Forest, a dog barking, the body of a hanged girl swaying in the wind. Those rolled-back-in-head eyes. Those blue lips.
The smell of piss and shit. Dog barking. Silent cops. Stuff of nightmares.
Stuff of night—
“Wake up, Sean, it’s a quarter to seven.”
“What?”
“Come on! Breakfast is on the table.”
“Where am I?”
“Daddy’s house. Near Blenheim.”
“Yeah. Jesus.”
The dream was an old case. A girl who was murdered by an MI5 agent, a man who I went all the way to Italy to kill. That’s the sort of person I’d be dealing with if I took her job.
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