Ajit opened his great arms wide. “Look, Thomas, I couldn’t . . . I were just doing my job.”
“I know.” Thomas settled him. “I’d have done exactly the same.” Except they both knew that he wouldn’t have. “Look, Aj, we’re gonna push off — made enough friends for one visit. Will you see that my dad gets this photocopy — should help to smooth the waters.”
“What about saying goodbye to Geena?”
“Not this time, mate. Look, I can’t stop. We’ve got a bus to catch for York.”
And there it was. Somehow Jess and this poxy job had turned him into a Judas, betraying everyone for the greater good. Greater good — he was starting to sound like Karl.
He managed a proper buddies’ handshake and promised to ring Ajit later in the week. When he caught up with Miranda she was smiling.
“I deserved a Oscar, back there.”
He looked at her, incredulous.
“Ajit’ll get over it and I can always ring Geena and explain.”
“Come again?”
“Oh, didn’t I mention she gave me her phone number while you were our tea boy? She felt we ought to get to know each other, especially after all this time.”
His brain was spinning out of gear. “Then what . . .”
She cut across him. “Dad rang. The Irish blokes have agreed to see him about Karl. They’re flying in tonight.”
Chapter 24
The train journey was long and Thomas's brain was still buzzing. If he could just sort out Karl’s problem and get him to his mother before the inevitable . . .
Miranda didn’t have a lot to say. Then she spent so long getting the coffees, he began to wonder if she’d changed seats and hadn’t bothered to tell him.
“Long queue?” he tried to make it sound funny — the ha ha kind.
“Not exactly,” her face dropped an inch.
He went through a list in his head, just to check he wasn’t in the doghouse again. Nothing stuck so he waited it out.
“I’ve something to tell you and I’m not sure you’re gonna like it . . .”
“Let me guess — Jess snogged you as well?”
But Miranda wasn’t smiling. She took a long sip of coffee and sighed, watching him over the cup. He’d done the open comms course, so he knew that guarding the mouth when speaking was more than a little suss.
“Look, whatever it is, I’m fine with it. Honestly.”
“You won’t be.” She put her coffee cup down, but wasn’t finished toying with her face. “Remember the money, after the moors . . .”
She flinched at the mention of the subject. Of course he remembered: forty thousand pounds, extracted from Sir Peter Carroll as compensation for Miranda’s abduction and his complicity in the clean-up. Danger money, Karl called it. Miranda had been less generous: blood money.
“Well . . .” she took a huge gulp of air and let her hands fall away, “the two Micks like to play cards, so we’re using half of that as stake money.”
He didn’t know what to say. Half of him wanted to scream at her for what she was proposing; the other half was overwhelmed that she and her family would do all that for Karl. So he leaned across the table carefully, cupped her face and kissed her, long and hard.
She filled him in on the mobile call she’d had during her visit to the buffet car. Martin and Francis-Andrew would be arriving at Caliban’s at eight o’clock. The place would be shut for a private function. John Wright had gone to elaborate lengths to set the deal up with the help of an old family friend and former business associate.
“I don't think Mum and Dad have ever mentioned Jack Langton to you?”
He sat very still and stared at her, looking for clues. Jack Langton's name had never come up in over ten years. Miranda swallowed softly, blinking as she broke off eye contact.
“Jack's a person who can fix things — he's well-connected.” There was pride in her voice and he felt a pang of jealousy. Most importantly, she insisted, Karl needed to be there and at his servile best.
“No problem, I can pick him up and . . .”
Miranda made a face. “Yeah, that’s the thing. Mum and Dad think it’s best if you’re not there. It’s just, you know, they want to keep you out of that side of their life. Mum reckons it’s better for you too.”
He picked at the coffee cup lid and pulled a piece off the rim.
“I said you wouldn’t like it.”
Ten out of ten. It was stupid. He knew without question that they were protecting him, but even so. Everyone was taking a risk for Karl, and somehow he was excused, like a kid with a note.
“Well at least let me bug the place, in case anything goes wrong.”
“Dad and Karl reckon they might check, if they’re as hard core as they’re made out to be.”
He nodded. He felt like a dog put in kennels while the family went off for the summer.
“Honestly, Thomas, it’ll be fine. They’ll play some cards, Sheryl will serve some drinks in a sexy number and—”
“So Sheryl’s going to be there as well.”
And then a terrible thought crossed his mind. That perhaps they all felt he simply wasn’t up to it. Worse, maybe they had a point. He didn’t speak again until Peterborough — spending his time doodling in a notepad and avoiding eye contact.
It never seemed to balance out, not really. Either work was fine and his private life was in ruins or it was the other way round. Or, like now, it had all gone to shit across the board. When did it all get this complicated? He became aware that he was dragging the same line back and forth across the page. When? The day he joined Sir Peter Carroll’s merry men and didn’t tell Miranda or her family? No, scratch that. It had all started to go sour the day he stumbled behind the façade of the Surveillance Support Unit and got involved in Karl’s counter-intelligence games. But the truth was that he loved it, sort of. Stopping the bad guys, like every schoolboy’s heroic fantasy. Except the bad guys were real. They deceived, they punished and they killed.
He looked at the page again. He'd drawn a stick-figure girl with a halo above her head. Amy, obviously — Major Eldridge’s Angel. He was no closer to finding out why she’d died. He tapped the page. When he got home he’d make sure to check the recordings from the bugs in the major’s office — both of them; the device that Michael Schaefer knew about and the other one on the second phone. At least he could put his isolation to good use. For some reason, that thought cheered him.
“Penny for ’em?” Miranda called across the table. “You just smiled.”
“Just planning my dinner for one for tonight.”
“When will you get it into your thick ’ead? Mum and Dad are only thinking of you. Karl’s bollocksed without the help of the Micks, and you’re well out of it.”
“Fine.” He tried not to sulk. “I think I’ll see Karl before tonight though, just for a quick chat.”
Miranda gave him her world-weary look, the one that usually meant surrender. “If you must. He’ll be at Mum and Dad’s — I s’pose you can come back with me, then Terry can run you home.”
Jesus. Why not give Karl a bloody door key and have done with it?
* * *
King’s Cross was hassle-free, once you accepted the milling crowds and that indefinable odour of too many people with too little hygiene. He half-expected Sam or Terry to be waiting at the barrier, ready to whisk Miranda away from him. The only thing that greeted him was a sense of familiarity. Yorkshire born, but taken in by London; and as foster mothers went, he had no complaints.
They settled down on the Tube He wondered again why the family chose to live just over the border in Essex if they were so proud of their East End roots. Just something else to chew over while avoiding the real issue. Karl and the Wrights were the only people he had any connection with in London. Not counting Christine Gerrard, who was not only an ex but also the boss, so she was doubly verboten. Tonight’s pow-wow felt like a party all your mates were attending that you weren’t invited to.
&n
bsp; As they waited together for a cab at Dagenham, he sat and read his book, just to piss her off. Petty victories, and all that.
By the looks of things, Karl had made himself pretty comfortable. He didn’t stir from his armchair when Thomas entered the room. Miranda wandered off and then, as if by magic, the rest of the Wright clan made themselves scarce until it was just Thomas and Karl.
“Listen, Tommo, I can’t thank you enough for this. I mean, if it wasn’t for you—”
No, this was too much. “I just spoke to John — he did the rest.”
“Well,” Karl’s face was rosy red now; “that’s not how I heard it. And I’ve no issue with having to scratch somebody else’s back in return.”
“Come again?” And then the fog started to clear. John helps Karl and Karl owes him, or someone.
Chapter 25
At seven o’clock Thomas was sat in his flat, staring at the phone. Neither Karl nor Miranda was likely to ring and say that the Irish fellers had arrived. No, but he wished they would. It wasn’t just jealousy, although that figured high in the list; he was also worried about Karl meeting his nemesis after so many years.
Fish-and-chips was keeping warm in the oven and the peas were simmering on the hob. A nature programme he’d recorded was lined up, ready to go. And part of his brain was still doing conjuring tricks. He went to the drawer and pulled out copies of the letters Karl had found hidden in Jess’s flat — the letters from Major Eldridge. He took them with him into the kitchen, and carried them back through with the food.
He remembered how, after the big break-up with Miranda, he’d re-read all her letters relentlessly. Even now, he still had them filed away in a box, in chronological order. As well as every Christmas and birthday card she’d ever sent him. Jess seemed that type as well, meticulous, in her way. Except Karl had only found two letters. Surely the good major would have had more to say? He stared at the pages — there must be something useful in them.
After settling to his food, he unpaused David Attenborough and let him go play in the trees with a capuchin monkey. Thomas smiled; his immediate thought was cappuccino — the joys of word association. Then, as he went in deep on the vinegar-soaked chips and started coughing, he had a thought. Major Eldridge had signed his letters Cupid: ‘C’ for both Charles and Cecil, and for Cupid. There was a sense and rhythm to it.
He put his cutlery down for a moment, just as two monkeys got busy with the loving — not so good when you’re eating. He dug out another page from the drawer, the sheet where he’d splurged out his conclusions about Amy and Jess. A is for Amy and Angel; there in black and white. He paused the TV and stared out beyond it, as his dinner cooled. If Amy had been the one having the affair, as they'd surmised, a few things made sense — Jess’s indifference to Amy’s memory, the major’s indifference to Jess and his insistence on having the letters back. Plus, no envelope because Jess just didn’t have it. Maybe she’d lifted the two letters from Amy’s locker and they were the only ones there.
So far, so what? Nothing concrete, short of proving Jess to be a fantasist, especially after what Schaefer said about her and Oxford. The room temperature seemed to lower a couple of notches at his next piece of speculation. Supposing Amy’s death hadn’t been an accident at all? He whistled a breath. Jesus, what if he and Miranda had been protecting a murderer? Or an attention-seeking saboteur who’d gone too far?
He grabbed the phone. Outside of the high stakes card game, he did have one other contact in London — Petrov, half-brother of Yorgi, the deceased assassin. The only person he could think to entrust Jess to, before he and Miranda hightailed it to Yorkshire, was Petrov, because Petrov owed him big-time.
Petrov picked up first ring. He sounded a little guarded, even after Thomas identified himself.
“It is always good to hear your voice, Tomas. But your friend, I think she is not so good.”
He felt his shoulders tense. “I hope Jess isn’t causing you any problems.”
Petrov drew a breath. “She had an argument on her mobile — shouting very bad things — threatening someone. Then I get a telephone call from an angry man.”
He put a hand to his forehead; he could guess the rest. “Do you know who he was?” A part of him was already planning out a route and wondering whether to go prepared.
“He didn’t give his name, but when he arrived here . . .”
Arrived there?
“Your friend, Jess, seemed very pleased to see him. I asked her not to go and she said that she is not a prisoner and I am not her keeper. So this, this Cecil, he collect her and her things, and I don’t expect to see her again.”
“I’m sorry, Petrov. I didn’t mean to cause you and your family any trouble.”
“You are a good man, Tomas, but your work is not good. Do not bring it into my life again.” Which sounded rich, coming from a man who had once needed his help so badly.
Thomas ended the conversation, then sent a text to Miranda — Jess missing again. Get Karl to ring me asap — and went to his laptop. Clever Karl, fitting a tracker in the heel of Jess’s shoe before Amy’s memorial service. As long as she had her case nearby — and according to Petrov, everything went with her — he could trace her.
He logged on to an anonymising server and keyed in the appropriate URL. Then he entered the twelve-character reference for the bug and waited while the map loaded. Karl’s bug was a high spec device, emitting a GPS pulse about every minute. Better, he could call up any time once the bug was fitted. The first place Jess had stopped after leaving Petrov’s house was her own flat — with Major Eldridge doing the driving no doubt.
Thomas closed his eyes and tried to think through the logic. Jess already had her passport and bank cards, and clearly she hadn’t stayed at the flat, so what was she there for, for almost ten minutes? Major Eldridge’s letters perhaps — why else would he be helping her? Yeah, but in exchange for what — safe passage? How could the major protect Jess from Michael Schaefer and Engamel?
Well, maybe he could ask them himself if he shifted his arse. He printed the map for the last known coordinates and went to his darkroom. Unlocking the door, he reached below the shelf, through the cloth curtain and behind the chemical bottles. The tiny strongbox felt cold to the touch. He carefully lifted it out and produced the key. The small Makarov pistol gleamed under the red light, like a warning.
He was almost out the door when his mobile rang — it was Miranda.
“Is everything okay?” She was whispering. “I can’t talk long — I’m in the loo.”
“Never mind me,” he recovered. “What about your end of things?”
“We’re down about ten grand, but it looks like being a long night. I’ll make sure Karl rings as soon as he can.” There was the sound of a toilet flushing and then the line cut out.
* * *
Thomas talked to himself as he drove, offering up possibilities and explanations then dismissing them without charge. Was Jess in any danger? Maybe, but it was the major who really needed protecting — from her.
He zeroed in on Euston, negotiating a succession of temporary traffic lights and diversions to skirt around some roadworks trenches. As the engine shuddered to a stop, he pondered his next move. There were three options on the table. He could just try the last location and hope they hadn’t moved since he’d left the flat; he could ring up Ann Crossley at home, and give her the log-in details; or, because he still had the number he’d filched from the mobile that he’d given Jess, he could ring Major Eldridge’s personal mobile. In the end, he decided to go for all three.
Ann Crossley — as he had expected — had put her work phone on divert. She was professional, but coy, when he gave her the standard ‘I hope I wasn’t disturbing your evening?’ Nope, Ann didn’t seem to do casual, even after hours.
“How can I help you, Thomas?”
He cut to the chase, told her what he wanted to know and recited the details. It didn’t surprise him that her laptop was switched on and by her side.
Within a minute, she told him what he needed to know. Jess — or at least, her shoes — were in a large hotel, not far from the pub he had tracked them to before leaving home.
* * *
He entered the lobby, smiled at the row of understimulated receptionists and made himself comfy on a sofa, as if waiting for someone. In the bar area, a mixture of tourists and low-budget execs were glued to a footie match on a big screen TV. Lucky sods; he envied them, even though he didn’t much like pubs, or football, or drinking.
Short of going up to the desk and demanding the room number, he’d have to ring the major’s mobile. He waited another couple of minutes, trying to put together a meaningful sentence in his head. Then he was ready.
“Cecil Eldridge?” the major didn’t sound too sure of himself.
“It’s Thomas Bladen. I think we need to have a chat — and Jess too.”
There was a pregnant pause then the major took in a rush of air. “I owe you an explanation; I’ve removed Jess from the safe house where you installed her.”
Thomas waited, piling on the pressure through the gift of silence.
“Where can I meet you, Thomas?”
“I’m downstairs, in the lobby.”
Another pause, while the major presumably tried to figure out his next move.
“I’ve come alone,” Thomas threw him a lifeline. “I just want to talk; with you, first, and then the three of us. After that I’m out of here and you can do what you like.”
The line went muffled then became as clear as a bell. “I’ll be down in five minutes — stay put.”
He watched the clocks inch round, over several time zones at once. Of course, he could have been barking up the wrong tree entirely. Maybe the two of them upstairs were a couple after all, and the major was searching for his trousers. Nah, it didn’t scan right, whichever way he looked at it. More likely, what they were doing up there was getting their stories straight.
A minute past meltdown, when Thomas was considering taking his pistol on a house call, the lift door pinged open. Major Eldridge looked a little sheepish, but not flustered enough to have been on manoeuvres with Jess. He blushed when Thomas met his eyes, then stiffened as he walked over, like a man facing the firing squad.
Line of Sight Page 16