by Nick Louth
‘I don’t know. You don’t notice these things to begin with.’
‘Describe the taxi.’
‘Well, black,’ Wyrecliffe harrumphed. ‘I think it had some print company advertising on the side.’
‘Get the plate?’
‘No, not all of it.’ He pushed across a note. ‘This is what I got. The third letter of the registration number could be N or M. The last number was a six or an eight.’
‘That’s not much to go on. And the driver?’
‘Middle aged-ish. Flat cap, square tinted glasses. Clean shaven.’
‘Did you get a glimpse of the passenger?’
‘No.’
‘So. Did this cab follow you all the way home?’
‘Not exactly. Once we saw it was still behind us two streets from home, I got the driver to go past my house and drop me at the end of Hazelbourne Close. I didn’t want them to see where I lived. There’s an alleyway there which leads through to another close and I can loop round from another direction.’
‘Smart thinking. Did you see the vehicle again?’
‘No. I had arranged with Tomasz that he drive away for a couple of minutes then park round the corner, and walk into Hazelbourne Close to see if the cab was still there.’
‘Good plan. Was it there?’
‘No.’
‘So I see from the notes that this has happened before, being followed?’
‘Yes. Well, possibly. In April, I was in a black cab after leaving a charity event at St Bride’s Church and the driver noticed a particular taxi had been behind us since Fleet Street. We turned into a side street and lost him.’
‘And that’s it?’ Hoek said, looking at Ferris.
She shrugged. ‘We can’t take any chances.’
‘I did say it was probably nothing,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Could be right.’ Hoek turned his pad over. ‘I don’t think we can be sure this isn’t a coincidence. A black cab isn’t the ideal choice for a tailing vehicle. It has anonymity to a degree, but once you get the plate you can trace the driver. Still, here’s my card. Call any time. And have a good think again about who might want to find out where you live.’
Ferris turned to Hoek. ‘Should we report it to the police?’
He put his head back and laughed. ‘Not unless you really do want to get him followed.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘Look. The cops won’t give a mouse fart about this tosh. But you can bet they’ll let their favourite newspaper reporters know. Once they’ve got their hook into you, they’ll never let go: secret lovers, divorces, estranged kids, deranged fans, they’ll try to be ready for the scoop when it breaks. So, no, don’t tell the cops.’
‘And what if it really is serious, like Jill’s was?’ she asked.
‘A public figure like him? Easy-peasy, for a professional. No Special Branch protection officers, known movements, often in public. Mr Wyrecliffe, if they want to kill you, they will.’
* * *
Beirut
January 1990
Wyrecliffe greeted the rumour that Taseena was dating an Associated Press photographer with bad grace. Craig Douglas was young, rugged and, like so many photographers, had that indefinable element of cool which women find irresistible. Whereas a correspondent can observe carnage from a distance, a photographer really has to get in close, to see the bodies, to scope out the damage. The flipside of the excitement was the danger. For every dead correspondent in a war zone, there were a half dozen dead photographers. Douglas, a native of Arizona, was famous for his leather jacket which sported seven bullet holes and for his car, a matt black Ford Mustang with an armoured driver compartment. He’d had the car shipped from the US at some expense, and filled it with the latest radio gizmos. It was said that he could monitor the walkie-talkies used by Druze, Amal and Phalangists, and even some Israeli military circuits. The AP bureau was abuzz with the fact that he and Taseena had been seen in one of East Beirut’s swankiest French restaurants.
The day after Wyrecliffe heard the news, Taseena unexpectedly arrived in the bureau. She wanted to use the IBM because her own computer wasn’t working. She had driven in from her father’s flat in Ashrafiyeh, the most exclusive district in Beirut, and needed to transmit a story to editors in Abu Dhabi by the 4pm deadline today. Wyrecliffe was working on a radio piece for From Our Own Correspondent on the gathering storm between Michel Aoun’s Maronite forces and the growing Syrian presence in the Bekaa Valley.
In the cramped office the backs of their chairs were almost touching. The phone rang, Wyrecliffe answered. A journalist from a magazine serving the Druze community, a man called Ishmael that Wyrecliffe had cultivated for some time, gave him a tip. Hezbollah fighters were expecting Syrian forces to move beyond the Bekaa Valley in support of them soon. If true, that would ratchet up the violence across the whole south. Israel might get involved again. Ishmael was going to meet some Hezbollah officials in a restaurant in the south of Beirut tonight. The district was deep into dodgy territory, but would Wyrecliffe like to join them? He thanked him and said he’d call back. Jim Moore was out filming in West Beirut, but was due back by three. It was Moore’s turn to cover the evening monitoring, so it was possible for Wyrecliffe to be away. Still, it was probably another case of wild bragging by Hezbollah. They’d been predicting Syrian help for months. And he would need an interpreter. He turned and looked at Taseena, working away on the IBM. Yes, of course, perfect.
* * *
London
August 2009
Imogen Wyrecliffe had a firm set of practices when leaving home. She checked the window locks, set the radio so that someone would appear to be in, and punched in the burglar alarm code, the month and year of her marriage to Chris. Leafy suburb though Dulwich may be, rough old Peckham was just around the corner. Since being burgled six years ago, she’d always been nervous. She never went to Peckham, never shopped there, or did more than drive quickly through the exhausted, grey streets. A Cambridge rowing blue in her youth, now at fifty-two she exercised little and had little physical or indeed mental self-confidence. That she put down to a bruising and failed marriage. Now she was in this large house by herself, with Michaela away at York University and Philip at boarding school, she nurtured a fear. This anxiety, no more than a flutter in her stomach, was always that Peckham might come to her.
She emerged from the house. It was a warm day, and she reminded herself to water the window boxes later. She emerged from the garden gate, car keys in hand. Her BMW 4x4, passenger side wing mirror gaffer-taped on and recent scratches in its silver paintwork, was forty metres down the street to her left. But she felt something drawing her gaze in the other direction.
To her right, someone in a voluminous green hooded parka was leaning against a neighbour’s wall, ten metres away, smoking. God, it must be roasting in there. The way the untipped cigarette was being held, high and horizontal from the fingertips, looked oddly feminine, like a nurse might examine a thermometer. The expensive, well-cut black leather gloves added to the impression. But this was no woman. Height and proportion, large hands, long legs in well-pressed white trousers and the large loafer-type shoes were masculine. His face was hidden by the fur-edged hood. He failed to even glance in her direction, though this would be the natural thing to do. All this, assessed in an instant, made her more nervous. This person wasn’t from Peckham, she was sure of that. He was a stranger in the full sense of the word. An alien, as the Americans would say, radiating some kind of discomfort with his surroundings. Quite how one can rationalise such an impression she wasn’t sure.
At one level that should be reassuring. Imogen had learned not to challenge the local youths who hung around the street corner. Intimidation wasn’t just a hint of violence, that was oversimplistic. It was the sullenness, the otherness and aggressive language that were the common currency of these youngsters, male or female. If anything the girls were mouthier than the boys. She remembered being shocked when in
November 2007, with her elderly mother in tow, she had challenged a twelve-year-old girl who had barged into them both, and was called an ‘effing whore’ for her trouble. Right outside Waitrose, for goodness’ sake.
Now, she found, it was always easier to avoid the challenge. Wait until later to pick up the rubbish tossed in the garden, clean the small amounts of graffiti that emblazoned the gate or – on one sick-making occasion – remove the prodigiously used condom that someone had lodged in the laurel hedge.
Something about this man seemed different, less cocky, more uncertain than the type of youngster commonly seen outside. He was observing Imogen, obliquely and somewhat nervously from within that hood. Emboldened, Imogen took a couple of steps towards him. ‘Can I help you?’ she said.
The hood wagged twice in the negative, and turned away. He stood and started to walk briskly away. Imogen watched him go, and felt some rising sense of foreboding. Something about the way he avoided her, something about his hasty departure made her feel that this man knew who she was. No random street encounter, no idling moment. He was here with a purpose. It was either something to do with her. Or something to do with Chris.
* * *
Beirut
January 1990
It was raining hard and fully dark at 7pm when Wyrecliffe drove his ancient Renault 5 carefully through the four official and two unofficial checkpoints that were needed to reach the Hezbollah strongholds of Dahieh. All but the last were relatively routine. Wyrecliffe’s BBC credentials and Taseena’s Saudi passport and Lebanese identity card were enough to satisfy militia men who would prefer to be drinking mud-thick coffee in the warmth of a bar rather than standing out by the concrete barriers, getting soaked in one of Beirut’s frequent winter squalls. Only at one checkpoint, right at Dahieh’s entry were they forced to leave the car. A bearded Hezbollah official in fatigues and cap, watched mesmerised as Taseena emerged in her knee-length black leather skirt, white blouse and tight-fitting zip-up jacket. He led them into a bakery and offered them tea while a minion photocopied their documents on an ancient Xerox behind the bar. The restaurant they were due to meet at was hard to find, and Taseena’s questioning of the militiamen brought a complex set of directions.
In the end, they found the place. It was right opposite the new Hezbollah TV station, Al-Manar, whose towering steel superstructure, paid for by Iran and dripping with satellite dishes, was a grandiose come-get-me to the Israeli Air Force.
Inside a low-ceiling basement restaurant, Ishmael was already sitting with two small bespectacled men, both chain-smoking. A noisy generator rattled away somewhere behind the kitchen and lent wafts of diesel to the fug. For the next hour Wyrecliffe was largely sidelined from a heated conversation in Arabic, of which only the smallest part was translated for him either by Taseena or Ishmael. Though he could pick up the drift, the subtleties eluded him, especially the rapid fire interchanges in the guttural vernacular of South Beirut. There was plenty of tea and undrinkably thick coffee, plus a thick pall of cigarette smoke. When the food finally came, pitta breads, tabouleh and greasy lamb, Wyrecliffe didn’t feel much like eating.
‘They’re claiming that the Syrian First Armoured Division will come from Bekaa Valley tomorrow or next week,’ Taseena said. ‘I don’t believe it, and actually I don’t think they do.’
Wyrecliffe looked at his notes, which included plenty of unfinished sentences with question marks, though Taseena’s Arabic notes looked copious. The two Hezbollah men weren’t senior military types, they were probably apparatchiks, trying to sow fear and uncertainty into other Lebanese communities by using the press. They hadn’t provided any evidence for their supposition, and Syria for sure wouldn’t be letting them in on their military plans. Wyrecliffe knew that the assignment had never stacked up on journalistic grounds, it was just an opportunity to spend time with Taseena. However, she’d been fairly cool to him on the journey down, which he supposed would make sense if she was now dating Craig bloody Douglas. He was already feeling sorry for himself, and a little queasy from the smoke and diesel, so asked to be pointed towards the toilet. It was out the back, behind the generator. Wyrecliffe felt his way along a dirty, partially lit corridor and past a large rusted refrigerator under which a crowd of cockroaches scurried. A steel fire door was straight ahead, but he thought he could hear the sound of gurgling water echoing to his right beyond another metal door. A padlock hung on a chain from the wall, but the door wasn’t closed. He pushed it, pressed the light switch and went in. As the strip light kicked in he realised he wasn’t in a bathroom at all, though there was water seeping down the wall from a broken pipe. It was a storage room, whose windows had been whitewashed, and it contained a dozen carefully stacked wooden crates. Wyrecliffe recognised the red script that had been stencilled on them as Farsi. He couldn’t read it, but clearly whatever was in these crates had come from Iran. Checking behind him, he walked in and tried the lid of the nearest crate. It wasn’t on properly. Someone had already opened it, undoubtedly to check the contents just as he was doing. Inside were dozens of shiny new RPG rocket launchers, still with blue-tinged protective plastic coating around sight and trigger assemblies. The next crate had also been opened. Inside was a secure metal cabinet, with taped seals and warnings in Farsi, and on it an instruction book in French. He opened it. The diagrams made it obvious that this case contained a wire-guided anti-tank missile, plus launcher, battery and guidance system. From the warranty stamp, it had all made by Aerospatiale in France just last year. Suddenly nervous, he pocketed the instruction booklet, lowered the lid and retraced his steps. He eventually found the toilet through the fire door. It was the dank and revolting squat hole that he had expected. He used it, flushed it with the bucket and dipper provided, and made his way laboriously back into the restaurant.
There atmosphere had improved in his absence, with the two Hezbollah officials laughing uproariously at something. Taseena’s giggling had clearly disarmed them. ‘I just told them my joke about the Israeli cabinet minister, the pig and the aubergine. I don’t think they’d heard it before.’
‘Time to go. I think you can tell me in the car,’ he said. The joke was neither as funny nor as dirty as he’d expected, but anything that poked fun at the Israelis was bound to go down well in Hezbollah-land. Let’s face it, he thought, they haven’t got much to laugh about. Being Israel’s number one target, an accolade bestowed since the eclipse of the PLO, didn’t make for relaxation. Taseena seemed far more animated on the way home, so Wyrecliffe risked the question that was preying on his mind.
‘I hear that you’ve met Craig Douglas.’
‘Oh yes!’ she turned to him. ‘He’s so funny, I really like him.’ She placed her hand briefly on Wyrecliffe’s leg. ‘Had you heard how he got all those bullet holes in his jacket?’
Wyrecliffe sighed. ‘Of course.’
Taseena ignored him. ‘He was in El Salvador when the death squads came into town. He’d hung the jacket over a lampshade in the house he was staying in…’
‘Yes, I know…’ he said.
‘Which they took to be a person at the window and opened fire. He meanwhile was sleeping in the bath!’
‘Yes, we’ve all heard it,’ Wyrecliffe said, turning sharply on to a main road without braking.
Taseena laughed as she gripped the dashboard. ‘You’re jealous aren’t you?’
‘Of a bathtub? Not at all. I’ve never wanted to sleep with him.’
Taseena chuckled, an infectious peal. When it subsided she said: ‘I have.’
‘I have what? I have wanted to, or I have slept?’ Wyrecliffe tried to keep the note of sarcasm out of his voice. It was hard enough to keep his balance with this slippery but intoxicating creature, without hearing about her own sexual desires.
‘I have slept…in a bath tub!’ She giggled again, delighted to match the English in a play on words. Wyrecliffe thought: I’ve never met such a little prick-teaser. She’s got me on a bloody string. And she knows it.
; ‘You’re really not a typical Saudi woman, are you?’
‘Would you prefer if I covered my hair? Or perhaps wore a veil in your company?’ She put her hands up across her face, and looked at him between her fingers.
‘Not at all.’
‘Would you prefer if I was quiet and deferential, particularly as you are a man, and the boss?’
‘I’m quite used to assertive women, believe me.’
Wyrecliffe’s watch, set one minute fast, beeped the hour. He clicked the car radio into the nine o’clock Maronite news in French, a thrice daily precaution, even when he wasn’t on bureau duty. A checkpoint shooting, four dead, six injured on the Green Line which divided the two sides of the city. Shootings in a refugee camp in Tyre, casualties unknown. A grenade attack on the Moroccan embassy. Six bodies found at a roadside in Sidon. All in all a quiet night. Nothing anywhere near enough for a BBC story. Quickly tuning to the Arabic Druze channel, Taseena confirmed that the shooting was at one of the checkpoint she would have to cross to get home.
‘So how about a drink?’ she said. ‘Give the checkpoints time to calm down.’
‘Good idea,’ Wyrecliffe said, though he had his doubts. In two hours, who knows what would happen. Late night checkpoint encounters were notoriously unpredictable. It was a key time for gun running, hostage smuggling and other nefarious activities, but above all it was dangerous at night because the militia were more suspicious, and sometimes drunk or high too.
At her suggestion they headed for Kuf, a small bar near the Green Line. They drove as near as they could, and double-parked Beirut style, in front of the concrete-filled oil drums which stopped cars entering Elias Abou Chabkeh, a road named after a poet. Since 1984, when a large car bomb had killed 128 people, the whole street had been pedestrianised.
Kuf had Moroccan-style lanterns outside, a friendly balding barman who Taseena seemed to know, and a long dark-tiled bar. They took stools at the bar, crammed in amongst a dozen businessmen. He ordered coffee and a brandy, and went off to find the phone to check in with Moore. On his return he saw she had ordered a premium and very strong Syrian Araq, which arrived with an engraved glass ibrik full of iced water. The barman slipped them side dishes of cashews and pitta with tomato and garlic sauce. Taseena took a sip of the neat aniseed liquor before combining it with the water in a milky concoction, and drinking half of it down in one.