Good question, I thought.
‘Does your sanctimonious humbug really ever intimidate people?’ Tina went on.
Spunky stuff.
The time had arrived, I reckoned, to make a pitch for a cease-fire.
‘This man may kill again, Tina,’ I said. ‘For all we know, he may already have been responsible for other unsolved murders; maybe even here, in the USA.’
‘Here? What reason have you for saying that?’
‘Because he’s American,’ I said, ‘as you’ll recall.’
‘He could have been Canadian,’ Tina balked.
‘Well, he isn’t,’ said Sarah, frostily.
‘Does he live in the UK?’ This question was asked equably.
‘At present he’s working there,’ I explained, deliberately minimal.
‘Where? In the north-east, in oil?’
‘No, in London,’ I said. ‘He’s a sort of civil servant.’
Tina’s working eye widened behind the shades, her brain in top gear. ‘He works for the US government?’
‘Loosely,’ I said, evasively.
‘Then he must be based at the embassy.’
‘That’s something I won’t be contradicting,’ I said, in a long-winded way of confirming.
‘Does he know you’re on to him?’
‘No.’
‘How about his colleagues, his superiors? I assume he does have people above him and he’s not the ambassador?’
‘No and yes,’ I said, answering the two questions in the order they were asked.
‘So what does he do at the embassy?’
I hesitated. Tina didn’t even know the truth about her partner working for the CIA. The last thing I wanted was to induce a conflict of interest. If Tina did agree to testify, at some stage she would have to embark on a soul-bearing and cleansing heart-to-heart with her partner. And if she announced she was giving evidence against a CIA agent, well, who knows what the ramifications and consequences might be. There was a danger that the conflicting loyalties of Tina’s partner could be severely tested, turning into an emotional tug-of-war. ‘I don’t think I should say any more about our man until we’re sure of your co-operation.’
Tina sank into reverie. Her toast and coffee were cold. She dismounted from her stool and poured away the dregs of her drink and binned her toast.
‘Thanks for spoiling my breakfast,’ she said, simultaneously checking the time with an electric clock on the wall.
‘I won’t say sorry because I’m not,’ I said. ‘I really thought you’d be heartened by the news, although, naturally, at first a little unsettled.’
Tina returned to the table desultorily and poured herself more coffee, mellowing.
‘Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, not even bothering with a toothbrush before rushing with you to the airport. The only downside would have been that the UK had already abolished the death penalty. But now … now I have so much to lose. My appetite for retribution has waned. I could end up back at square one. Alone. Everything lost. I’m not sure I have the strength to begin all over again.’
‘You’re forgetting, Tina, that you’re the innocent party, that you’re the survivor, that you’ll be the heroine bringing the bad guy to his well-deserved nemesis; the woman who finally unmasked the notorious “One-A-Month Man”.’
‘I need time.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘If I agree to co-operate, I’ll have to work out a way of bringing my partner into the loop sensitively.’
Now I simply nodded.
‘Give me forty-eight hours.’
In the circumstances, it would have been unwise for us to have pushed for a tighter deadline.
‘OK if we return same time in two days?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said, emphatically. ‘Give me a number and I’ll call you.’
As we departed, we shook hands cordially.
‘Well, what do you think?’ said Sarah, as we walked purposefully away from Tina’s house.
‘If we were canvassers for a candidate in an election, I’d mark her down as a floating voter,’ I said. ‘Right now she’s a pendulum, swinging to and fro.’
‘The very people who decide the outcome of every election,’ Sarah said.
A sobering observation. In one sense, the jury was already out on the case, long before we even had a trial.
13
As punctilious as a time-keeping obsessive, Tina called exactly forty-eight hours after we’d exited her home.
‘I’ve given this matter very careful thought.’
Sarah used the remote to kill a TV news presenter. It also seemed to me that she’d switched off her breathing and was holding her breath.
‘I decided that I had to be totally frank with my partner. We went out to dinner and I told her everything. Really everything. From Oxford, to LA, to Vegas, to LA, to New York. Once started, I spewed out the gut-wrenching lot. Not nice, but purging. Even therapeutic in a weird, self-flagellating way.’
I wondered about everything, which is infinite. Most people’s everything is qualified; a sanitized version of an episode in life; a chapter rather than a whole book.
‘We continued talking all night. We both cried. By yesterday morning, I was drained. But she was adamant. “You must do it,” she said. She pledged her support, whatever it took.’
Would Tina’s partner feel the same when she learned that Tina was testifying against a fellow CIA agent? But this was not the time to allow the cockroaches of doubt to feed on our feast.
I stuck up a thumb at Sarah, who performed a little celebratory tribal jig.
‘So, there you have it,’ Tina concluded. ‘I’m in. For richer or poorer. Till death do us part!’
‘I’m grateful,’ I replied, which, in the circumstances, seemed so inadequate.
‘I owe you an apology for the way I was the other morning. You knocked me off kilter. All kinds of thoughts ambushed me. My brain was turned into a tumble-drier. You had me in a spin. The experience was tantamount to having someone you believed was dead and buried thirty years ago turning up on your doorstep, like a ghost. A haunting.’
‘No apology needed,’ I said. ‘I’m sure, in your shoes, I’d have reacted similarly. Worse probably.’
Her voice was no longer faltering. ‘What now?’
‘Good question,’ I said.
Now she managed a facsimile of a titter. ‘You haven’t thought that far ahead, have you?’
‘I’ll have to take instructions,’ I said, rather like a solicitor who would have to consult his client.
‘Don’t forget I have a daughter. She must be kept out of this at all costs. I’ll have to make arrangements for her care well in advance of any overseas trip I have to make.’
‘I’ll get back to you; probably later today. When will you be home?’
‘By six.’
‘Call you after then,’ I said.
Suddenly we were on a roll.
I know that this must sound risible, but I swear I heard Sharkey’s heart beat like a drum-roll as I regaled him with the news.
After a few gulps, he spluttered, ‘Get her on a plane. Get her over here. Don’t give her time to change her mind. Keep your foot flat on the pedal. Thirty years in the wilderness! A case as cold as a maggot-eaten corpse! A medieval skeleton! Then this! It’s akin to waking someone from the dead. Long dead!’
Sharkey being lyrical, albeit with a chorus of clichés, was something new. No congratulations for us, though. No ‘Well done, you two! Great job!’ Any glory would soon be poached. Everything had been dumped on me, but if there was a successful denouement, then the back-seat drivers would be promoting their own navigational skills. The desk-strapped Sat Navs of investigative directing would be thieving all the plaudits. As for me and Sarah, we’d be treated by the hierarchy as nothing more than reliable jobbers. Warrior material, but not cut from the cloth of chiefs.
I tried to slow him down, highlighting Tina’s personal ci
rcumstances, but he wasn’t listening. The only wavelength he was tuned into was his own.
‘Dammit, man! That’s just a matter of minor finessing,’ he huffed. ‘Sort it. You hear me?’
‘I hear,’ I said, pissed off again.
‘Delicate diplomacy will be called for, involving the home secretary and maybe even the Foreign Office. Believe me, this is going to become a political circus.’
What he was really saying was that, as soon as we had Tina safely ensconced in the UK, the rest of the activity would be way above my salary-scale and I’d be sent packing, back to the Yard, much to Commander Pomfrey’s chagrin.
Three days later, we landed at Heathrow, where Sharkey was waiting to greet us as we emerged from Arrivals. Well, that’s not entirely true: he was there to ingratiate himself with Tina and to make her aware that he was the big chief who had choreographed everything and we were his mere factotums. Although I liked Sharkey, in many ways he was no different from the rest of the greasy-pole climbers. They were always on the make, always watching their backs, always with an agenda, always retaining plausible denial should anything go arse-up, and above all else, always ready to pass the buck.
We were driven to Oxford, a uniformed sergeant at the wheel, in a plush limo that came from the chief constable’s executive fleet. In the two days of hectic preparations, Tina’s partner had arranged for her married sister to care for Christine, Tina’s daughter, in Brooklyn. We’d been invited to Tina’s home for dinner, so that we could meet her partner, Laura Farrow, who was amazing. She talked endlessly, with passion, about her work, seemingly unaware that we knew every word was a lie. She was so immersed in her cover that she was able to discuss in enthusiastic detail the minutiae of her fabricated occupation.
Laura was much smaller and shorter than Tina; quite diminutive really. Her brunette hair was styled in a schoolboy cut and a severe fringe. She wore blood-red lipstick which made a vivid contrast with her fair, almost Goth, complexion. She had good skin and an oval, youthful face that knocked off several years from her real age. Quite easily she could have been mistaken for a thirty-five-year-old, instead of in her mid-forties. Her hair was colour-coded with her eyes and her dazzling teeth illuminated her face, lighting up her entire personality, in fact. All the time I was secretly looking for a sign of the muscle that I imagined would be essential for her dark-arts trade, but there was none visible. Her femininity seemed much more embedded than merely skin-deep. She obviously cared about her persona and was immaculately groomed. Even her jeans had been ironed and her lengthy, tapered fingernails were varnished to complement her lips. Through the eyes of a man, she had a body that stirred the libido. Even the fact that she was a lesbian did nothing to dilute my testosterone.
The evening had been both convivial and enlightening; a lesson in how convincingly a spook could live a lie, believing it to such an extent that it was far more real to Laura than any conventional virtual reality.
Sharkey had booked Tina into the Holiday Inn on the northern periphery of Oxford. Unbridled as ever, he hoped to elicit a statement from her the moment we reached his city, but Tina was bushed and couldn’t resist any longer the pull of gravity to the bed. For Tina this was coming home for the first time since she’d fled, hoping to shed all the warts and scars that had disfigured her reputation after her unscheduled encounter with the ‘One-A-Month Man’, sending her life into a nosedive.
Neither I nor Sarah appreciated the enormity of this homecoming for Tina. Not once so far had she asked about her parents. I doubted that she even knew her father had committed suicide. Perhaps she was too scared of the answers to ask the questions. I couldn’t believe that she didn’t care, not deep down, not in her core, however much she’d craved for a blank canvas on which to start redrawing her life so long ago.
On that drive from Heathrow to Oxford, even though so obviously mentally exhausted, she didn’t once shut her eyes; it was as if she was seeing England for the first time. Small fields. Neat hedgerows. Country lanes. Quaint pubs. Thatched cottages. All vehicles driving on the left-hand side of the road. There was a schoolgirl’s awe to her kaleidoscope of expressions, changing with the regularity of traffic lights. Self-induced amnesia may have been an integral part of her past survival kit.
As we neared the hotel, there was a signpost displaying the mileage to Bedford, Tina’s home town, but, if she saw it, no visible impact was reflected on her tired, gaunt face or in her one working eye.
Certain basic arrangements had been put in place before our arrival. A uniformed sentinel would be on guard outside Tina’s bedroom throughout every night and Tina was never to be left alone during the day. Sharkey had planned for her to be chaperoned by one of his own female detective constables, believing that Sarah and I were now redundant, but Tina would have none of it.
‘I’m here because of these two,’ Tina told Sharkey, alluding to me and Sarah. ‘I trust them. If they go, I go – back to New York.’
Sharkey, sensibly, caved in without protest. ‘If that’s the way you want it, that’s fine by me. I hadn’t realized the three of you had become such bosom pals, so inseparable.’
His little dig didn’t make even the tiniest of dents in Tina’s resolve.
So we stayed on the case. We were provided with a room next to Tina’s and now Sharkey made no moral judgment because, by sharing, we were saving his force money. When it came to money or morality, no contest.
On the second day of Tina’s stay in Oxford, we drove her mid-morning to the city-centre police station, where we took a statement from her, amounting to a tome, which we later had sworn as an affidavit. We lunched at a desk on a selection of sandwiches, bottled water and copious coffee. We didn’t finish until gone five, by which time Tina’s eyelids were already drooping again.
‘Thank God that’s over!’ said Tina, yawning.
I refrained from replying, ‘This isn’t even the beginning,’ which would have been the daunting truth.
As soon as I was with Sharkey, behind the soundproof glass of his sanctuary, he said, ‘OK, now we’re in business. First thing in the morning, I’m off to London to talk with people at the Yard and Home Office to formulate tactics. We’ve got to get this right. When you get a big fish on the end of a line, you can so easily lose it by trying to reel it in too fast. Slowly does it! Don’t let that woman out of your sight.’
He was dazzled by images of a commendation, promotion, and even a knighthood. Nothing was more seductive than the come-hither temptress promising glory and adulation.
During dinner at the hotel, Sarah popped the question, as a statement, that had been lurking in my head for so long.
‘Being in Oxford again, Tina, must bring back so many memories for you.’
Tina averted her eye, which had moistened. Suddenly her appetite evaporated. The tips of her fingers trembled and a string of sweat-pearls appeared strung across her forehead.
‘Not many good memories,’ she said, dismally, after an expanded deliberation. And then, ‘How much do you know of my history? I don’t mean just about my Oxford days. My life has been divided into segments and in each of them I’ve been a different person.’ Wistfully, she continued, ‘Before I came here, to university, I was so carefree, so happy, so emotionally immature, so genuinely innocent.’
‘Weren’t you ever happy here?’ said Sarah, feeding Tina’s melancholic self-analysis.
‘Oh, yes. I was having a ball. Until … until that night. Then I grew up in just a few seconds. The halcyon days were over. Instead, I discovered what the real world was like; the barbaric world of men.’
Now her eye was a reptilian mirror of the viperous poison that she harboured for my gender. Earlier she’d told Sharkey how much she trusted us, packaging me with Sarah, yet I represented the enemy, the target of her long-festering hostility. There was confliction here, but that was to be expected considering all the turbulence she’d been buffeted by since her path became a collision course with the ‘One-A-Month’ killer. Incons
istency was her right.
‘I’ve talked at length with your mother,’ I said, catching her off-guard.
Instantly her face belonged to someone on the wrong end of an unfair blow below the belt.
‘My mum?’ she stammered, like an adult orphan being reminded that she once had a biological mother and had not come out of a test-tube. ‘So she’s still alive?’ There was something truly caring and womb-orientated about this question.
‘I’d say that she’s been sustained all these years by the hope, however forlorn, of one day being reunited with you.’
Tina was hit hard and it hurt. ‘I was so unbelievably messed up,’ she said, trying to explain the inexplicable, her tone apologetic and self-recriminating.
‘I’m sure your parents would have understood,’ said Sarah, sympathetically.
‘I don’t see how they would because I didn’t understand myself. I needed to escape from everything by which I was identified. If I could have shed my skin, I would have done so gladly. I was literally cutting myself loose from all the labels of my life.’
‘Didn’t you ever have the urge to pick up the phone and call home, if only to say, “Don’t worry, I’m OK”?’ said Sarah, a shade critically.
‘A million times, but the longer I put it off, the harder it became. I kept leaving it until it was too late; the gap was too wide to bridge, or so I thought. My father actually tracked me down on one occasion; did you know that?’
‘We do,’ I said.
‘What could I say to them after that? Can you imagine the embarrassment? You’ve seen the sort of home I grew up in. You’ve seen my parents: church-going, God-fearing, middle-class, stereotype bourgeoisie.’
‘I didn’t have the opportunity to meet your father,’ I said, sparsely, giving Tina a cue.
‘He must have retired some years ago.’
‘I’m afraid he threw himself in front of an express train, shortly after his abortive encounter in London with you,’ I said, bluntly, turning the screw.
The One a Month Man Page 14