Sami gulped. The situation was running out of his control. Who was this man and what did he want? ‘What sort of decision?’
‘You can take your chances with the British justice system, or you can talk with me. I’m not in a position to offer you anything, but I am not… without influence. If you help me, it will be taken into account and it could prove useful to you.’
There was something lulling about this voice. Sami felt as if he were trapped in a pressure cooker and had suddenly been shown the safety valve, but without knowing how to turn it on. What did this man want?
‘What would my talk with you consist of?’
Walshaw took his time replying, picking up a pencil and tapping it lightly on the table. At last he said, ‘We already knew a bit about your business interests, and after the seizure of The Dido we know a lot more. But that’s not what interests me.’ He added lightly, ‘Neither does your personal life, for that matter.
‘What does matter to me is where you’ve travelled in the Middle East in the last few years. What you’ve seen there, and who you have been talking to about it. In Lebanon, of course. But in other countries as well. In fact, why don’t we start with Syria?’
Sami stared at this man Walshaw, whose eyes were unyielding now. It was tempting to start talking straight away, to calm his nerves, but if he told this man everything, the next time he set foot in the Middle East his life wouldn’t be worth a Lebanese piastre. He hesitated.
Walshaw said, ‘If we’re going to be able to help you, Mr Veshara, then you need to start talking. Otherwise, I’ll tell the inspector that you’re ready for him.’
It would be a great gamble. He would effectively be putting his life in this Englishman’s hands. But if he didn’t, he knew he faced arrest, trial, a prison sentence. Prison. The prospect was too ghastly to bear. He could live with the disgrace; he knew his wife would stand by him; conceivably his businesses might even survive his absence. What he couldn’t contemplate was the physical fact of incarceration. It was his worst nightmare.
He exhaled noisily, then sat back in his chair. ‘I hope you are not in a hurry, Mr Walshaw. It is a long story I have to tell.’
As Charles Wetherby listened, making the occasional note, Sami Veshara told him how, five years or so ago, two Israelis had come to his office in London. They had threatened that if he didn’t help them, they would report his people-trafficking business to the British authorities. It was at a time when he was cultivating some government ministers through a charity he had founded, and he was hoping to be recommended for a peerage.
The men were from Mossad. They knew about his regular visits to Lebanon and his contacts there. They knew he travelled around the country buying figs and other produce. They wanted him to go to Lebanon whenever they asked him to, to travel to the south and, using some equipment they would give him, to send signals which they told him would help them locate the positions of Hezbollah rocket launchers.
He had done what they wanted. He had not seen them again in London, but had met them in Tel Aviv from time to time. He described two men, one built like a squashed bowling ball, the other lean.
But to Charles’s enquiries about his contacts with Syrians, Sami gave a flat denial. He had no contact with Syrian intelligence people or with Government officials and had to the best of his knowledge never met any. He had no particular hostility or friendship towards them, he said, and Charles could not shake his story.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Remarkable,’ the consultant had said. You are very lucky, Miss Carlyle. You’re making a truly remarkable recovery.’
Liz wished she felt quite so remarkable now, as she sat drowsily in a deckchair in her mother’s garden at Bowerbridge on her fourth day out of hospital. She had wanted to go back to her flat, but Susan Carlyle wouldn’t hear of it. What Liz didn’t know was that Charles Wetherby had met Edward in London. The two men had liked each other immediately and Charles had been frank with Edward about his concern that Liz might still be at risk from whoever had attacked her. Edward had undertaken to keep a very close eye out for anything unusual around Bowerbridge and to contact Charles immediately if he had any anxieties. Now Susan sat knitting on a garden bench, watching Liz carefully, like a mother hen.
It was September now and the apples were swelling on the trees at the bottom of the lawn. The huge white flowers of a hydrangea paniculata were attracting heavy, slow-moving bees and the musky scent of an old-fashioned climbing rose was wafting down from a wall. Liz had been in the Whittington two weeks, though the first few days were not even a memory. Amazingly, she had not broken a single bone in her ‘accident’ - but she hadn’t escaped unscathed. Far from it: she’d had severe internal bleeding and, most ominously, a ruptured spleen. A quick-thinking paramedic had spotted that as she lay half-conscious in the ambulance. On arrival she had been whisked straight into emergency surgery. The consultant told her later that another ten minutes and she would not have made it.
So I shouldn’t complain, thought Liz, though even walking from the house to the garden still tired her. She’d realised for the first time that just because she was out of hospital, it didn’t mean she was well again.
In the first few days, between the lingering effects of the anaesthetic and the codeine-based painkillers, Liz had been entirely out of it. She’d sensed her mother’s presence, and in the background saw a man she dimly recognised as Edward Treglown. Once she could have sworn Charles had been sitting in the chair at the foot of her bed.
As she’d slowly come to, more visitors had arrived -Peggy Kinsolving, trying to act her usual positive, cheerful self, but more subdued than Liz had ever seen her. Flowers had arrived from Geoffrey Fane and, typically, a bottle of champagne from Bruno Mackay. Miles Brookhaven had sent flowers too, and Peggy said he’d rung twice to ask after Liz.
She had had ample time to think about what had happened to her. Her mind kept flashing back to the sight of the oncoming car as she’d turned around, but she could remember nothing after that. There was no doubt in her mind that she had been deliberately run down, but no one had come up with any clue as to who had done it, or why.
It would not have been easy to plan. Someone would have had to follow her to find out where she lived. How long had they been watching and waiting? She might easily have stayed that night in Harwich. Or taken her car to work instead of the Underground. Presumably they would have just come back another day. Liz fought back a shudder at the thought they might try again.
She couldn’t stop going over it all. It must be someone she’d encountered in the course of work. She reviewed what she’d been doing in the past few months, but nothing pointed to any explanation. Was it some kind of revenge attack? No doubt Neil Armitage, the scientist convicted of passing secrets to the Russians, in whose case she’d given evidence, nursed a massive grudge, but he was safely behind bars and in any case he didn’t know who she was.
Which left the Syrian Plot, as she was beginning to think of it, even though it had a dearth of suspects who might want Liz out of the way - only two, in fact: Chris Marcham and Sami Veshara; and possibly the Syrians.
Marcham had certainly been peculiar, and she had sensed there were secrets he didn’t want her to know. But not about Syria, which was her only real concern with the man. He seemed so chaotic (she thought of the mess in his house) that for him to engineer a carefully plotted murder seemed wildly improbable. He hadn’t got a motive and the means of doing it would be well beyond him.
That wasn’t true with Sami Veshara, whose respectable front as a food importer belied his involvement with an especially vicious trade. He’d be no stranger to violence, but unlike Marcham he wouldn’t have had the faintest idea Liz was investigating him. If he’d had someone watching out for the trawler, who had somehow witnessed its capture, and even spotted Liz, would Sami’s reaction really be to order a hit on her? Not within a few hours. It didn’t make sense. Especially since the minicab was already sitting on her street in Kentish Town
when she got back from Essex.
What about the Syrians? How could they possibly know who she was and even if they did, why attack her?
Lying in hospital during her second week there, Liz had kept mulling all this over, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. When Charles came to see her in the second week, as she was just starting to feel human again, she’d tried raising it with him. But he had proved frustratingly elusive. ‘Let’s talk about that when you’re better,’ he’d said, over Liz’s protests that there was nothing wrong with her brain. Even Peggy couldn’t be drawn, and she’d avoided any serious talk about what was going on at Thames House in Liz’s absence.
She heard the front door bell and her mother sprang up, returning a moment later with Edward, who was carrying two bags of groceries. ‘I’ve brought you the papers.’ He waved copies of the Guardian and the Daily Mail.
‘Let me help you put things away,’ said Liz, standing up a little unsteadily.
‘You sit still,’ her mother commanded. ‘I’ll get you a nice cup of tea.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly all right,’ Liz snapped, knowing she wasn’t, but annoyed that people kept mollycoddling her. It was becoming intolerable.
‘That’s a very good sign,’ Edward interjected, coming out of the kitchen. ‘A cranky patient is usually a recovering patient.’
For a moment Liz felt furious - who was he to intervene? But there was such a twinkle in Edward’s eye that she couldn’t stay cross, and she found herself laughing, for the first time since the accident.
‘That’s better still,’ said Edward, and this time all three of them laughed. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said to Susan, and while he busied himself in the kitchen Liz looked at the newspapers.
Edward emerged holding a tray, with two mugs and a tumbler. ‘Susan,’ he said, handing her one of the mugs.
He handed the tumbler to Liz. ‘Very medicinal,’ he said. ‘Your mother says you prefer vodka, but I hope a hot toddy will do.’
She took a careful sip. Just what she needed. ‘Anything in the papers?’ Edward enquired, sitting down on the sofa next to Liz.
‘Just the usual. I see the Man in the Box has been identified.’
‘Who’s that?’ asked Susan.
Liz laughed. ‘Someone they found dead in a church, Mother. In a box, as I say.’ She glanced at the paper, interested that the police had finally decided to release the victim’s name. ‘He’s called Ledingham. I don’t suppose you knew him,’ she said with a smile.
Her mother smiled back. ‘I’m sure I didn’t.’
Liz looked at Edward, but he wasn’t smiling. ‘Did you say Ledingham? Is it by any chance Alexander Ledingham?’
Liz was slightly nonplussed. She looked at the article again. ‘That’s right.’
‘Could I?’ asked Edward, and reached out for the paper. He read the article quickly, then gave a small sigh. Liz said, ‘I’m awfully sorry for joking. Did you know him?’
Edward shook his head. ‘I met a man with that name several times.’ He reached for his drink and took a sip. ‘Oddly enough, it was in Kosovo. One of my duties was to liaise with the Serbian Orthodox in the area. They’d had an awfully rough time - the Albanian Muslims had burnt down many of the churches, and the clergy had really got it in the neck. Mind you, it was all dwarfed by Serbian atrocities, but it was unpleasant nonetheless.
‘One day I was told a journalist wanted to see me about it. His name was Marcham and he was out there for a newspaper.’ Liz tried not to react, and kept her eyes fixed on Edward. He went on, ‘I met him, and he seemed an intelligent chap, a bit eccentric perhaps - he seemed more interested in what had happened to the churches than to any people.
‘After that, I seemed to run into Marcham all the time. It was a bit like when you’re reading a book that mentions something obscure, like fishing in Iceland, and after that “fishing in Iceland” seems to crop up in everything you read.
‘Marcham often had a much younger chap with him -a sort of sidekick, if you will. At one point, Marcham introduced me. He said, “This is Alex Ledingham,” and I remember wondering if the fellow was his partner.’
‘You mean journalist partner?’
Edward shook his head with a smile. ‘No. We weren’t that narrow-minded in the army, Liz. I mean partner as in lover.’
‘And was he?’
‘Who knows? It’s quite likely, because he wasn’t a journalist and it was a jolly dangerous time to be out there without any reason. What I most remember is that Ledingham shared Marcham’s interest in churches. He said he was making a survey of the Serbian Orthodox churches - which ones had been destroyed, which had been damaged.’
‘Wasn’t that a bit risky? You’d have to admire him, though.’
Edward took a swallow of tea and Susan said, ‘You’re rather keen on churches yourself, Edward.’
He acknowledged this with a nod. ‘That’s true. Though I’m not a fanatic and I certainly wouldn’t take the risks Ledingham took to visit them. With him it seemed much more than an intellectual interest.’
‘Perhaps he was very pious,’ suggested Liz.
‘It seemed more like fervour than piety, if you ask me. It’s not as if he were Serbian Orthodox - he made a point of telling me he was Anglican. Yet I saw him once after he’d visited a church in Musutiste, and he seemed incredibly excited. Almost possessed. There was something almost…’
‘Sexual?’
He nodded with a smile. ‘Yes. Now that you say that, it did seem sexual.’
‘Did you ever see him again after Kosovo?’
‘No. And for that matter, I never saw Marcham again, either.’
‘They both sound perfectly creepy to me,’ said Susan Carlyle. She got up, holding her empty mug. ‘I’m just going to make some supper.’
But Liz’s mind was somewhere else.
She rang Peggy Kinsolving early the next morning, and told her what she’d learned about the connection between Ledingham and Chris Marcham.
‘What a coincidence,’ said Peggy.
‘I know. Let’s go with it, shall we? I want you to get onto the Met. Speak with the officers investigating Ledingham’s death, and tell them about Marcham’s relationship with him.’
‘I’ll do it right away. They’ll want to speak to Marcham, won’t they? Shouldn’t I go along, too?’
‘No. I’m going to go. I’ve already met Marcham; I want to see what he has to say.’
‘But Liz, you can’t—’
‘Yes I can, and that’s final.’ Then, softening, Liz added, ‘Let me know when they want to see him.’
And as she rang off, Liz felt a small surge of adrenalin. Thank God, she thought, exhilarated. I can always convalesce later.
TWENTY-SIX
Whatever its ups and downs - and recently there had been plenty of downs - Geoffrey Fane made it a rule not to let his personal life intrude into his professional affairs. But this morning he was finding it difficult.
A letter had come from Adele, his ex-wife, now living in Paris. It had opened cordially enough, but on the second page she had dropped the bombshell:
I have been thinking about the farm in Dorset. Frankly, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Philippe and I are unlikely to go there very often in future, if at all. We’ve been looking for our own place in Brittany and in the circumstances it doesn’t make much sense for me to retain my interest in the farm. Before doing anything, I would of course want to offer you the chance to acquire it - at a fair market price of course!
The farm had been in Fane’s family for generations. Since the war, the actual farming of its six-hundred acres had been leased out to a neighbour, but the house - a large stone building at one end of a valley five miles from the market town of Blandford - had been used by generations of Fanes at Christmas and Easter, almost every half-term, and throughout the summer months.
Not for much longer, thought Fane, since he couldn’t see any way he could afford to buy Adele out. If
there had been one consolation in the financial disaster of his divorce, it had been Adele’s willingness not to force the place’s sale. But now that’s just what she was doing.
He didn’t understand why it bothered him so much. He hardly ever went there any more, and the prospect of retiring there in a decade’s time or so had always been more imagined than likely. His son Michael loved the place when he was young - even spoke touchingly, if unrealistically, as a teenager about trying to make a go of farming it. But that wouldn’t happen now, and with the news that Adele no longer had any interest, Fane had no one to share it with.
Perhaps that was the problem. If he’d built another life, even had another family, then he might have felt some urgency about protecting his legacy. Instead he just felt a depressing lassitude. He was engaged with his work again, felt his old confidence had largely returned. But outside it there was a void that work didn’t fill.
Who could fill it?
There was no shortage of candidates: he’d tried some of them. Adele had half a dozen friends in London whose marriages had also split up. But none of them appealed to Fane; they were too like Adele, interested mainly in clothes, restaurants, the latest holiday in Verbier or Provence. He knew too that his appeal to them was based entirely on his supposed status and (he had to laugh, thinking of what the divorce had cost him) the money they thought he had.
No, he knew now that he wanted a companion he could talk to, one with a head on her shoulders, one he could share his work with - something he’d never been able to do with Adele, who’d resented the constant moves round the world, the secrecy and above all the fact that as an MI6 officer he was most unlikely to become an ambassador, so she could never be ‘Her Excellency’. All those problems disappeared if one’s partner had the same kind of job. But he was too senior now, too experienced, to find solace in some junior denizen of Vauxhall Cross, and the eligible women nearer his own rank and age were either thin on the ground or, inevitable in MI6, stationed abroad.
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