‘You need to concentrate on what I’m about to tell you, son,’ said Vosse. They were side by side in the car. Tomkins was in the passenger seat, staring ahead at a grey concrete wall. It occurred to him that the man who had murdered Pavkov must have been sitting in the same seat in the Punto, must have reached across with his knife to cut him from ear to ear. Or had he been behind him all that time, positioning himself so that the blood which had burst from Zoltan’s neck onto the wheel and dashboard didn’t spray all over him? No doubt that was the sort of thing they took into consideration before murdering a person in cold blood. ‘There’ll be questions from the team. We tell them the truth. Whatever anybody asks, we don’t hide anything. We tell them what went on tonight.’
‘What about everyone else?’ Tomkins asked. He dreaded the answer because he already knew what it would be. ‘What if the police come asking questions?’
Vosse tried to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Tomkins shrugged it off.
‘Look. This is the business we’re in. We operate in the shadows. Nobody is to see us, nobody is to know we were there.’
‘Operate in the shadows? What the fuck?’ Ordinarily Tomkins wouldn’t have lost his temper with Vosse, but this wasn’t an ordinary morning. ‘We’re not in a comic book. This isn’t the fucking Avengers. A man got murdered and I heard it all playing out on the mikes, every word. I heard the sound of a man dying. What happens when the police find the microphones in the car? What happens then?’
‘They wonder who put them there. They never get a plausible answer.’
‘What if one of the neighbours saw me running up the road? What if CCTV has the number plate of this car, the number plate of the Mondeo, pictures of you parked two hundred metres away, then running towards the scene of the crime?’
‘Unsolved murder, Matt. Unsolved crime. Happens all the time in every town and city in the world. There won’t be a trace on the vehicles. They’re Service cars. Understand? Police run the plates, they get sweet fuck all.’
‘And video? Someone with a phone?’
‘What are the chances?’ Vosse was sounding increasingly irritated by Tomkins’s questions. ‘It was two o’clock in the morning. You saw how dead the place was. You telling me some hedge fund master of the universe was sitting up in his silk pyjamas doing an Abraham Zapruder?’ Tomkins shook his head and frowned, not understanding the reference. ‘Fine. If the film comes out, we deal with it. If your face or mine, by some miracle of coincidence and modern technology, appears on Twitter or the Six O’Clock News, we turn ourselves in, most likely on the instructions of the DG. Even if that happens, we’ll be protected.’
Tomkins asked what he was supposed to say if he was pulled in for questioning.
‘The DG’s away. Soon as she gets back next week, I’ll tell her what’s happened. She’s the only one apart from the people on our team who knows about BOX 88. I’ll tell her that BIRD went missing, that the Iranians were cleaning house. Believe me, she won’t want this getting out. If the Met come asking questions, she’ll shut them down. There are precedents, many of them.’
Tomkins was momentarily reassured that Vosse already had it all worked out, was capable of processing ideas and making rational decisions outside of normal procedure, normal morality. Yet he couldn’t help thinking about Zoltan’s death, the fear of being collared as a witness to murder who had failed to come forward. He knew that MI5 officers were part of a special breed, that the usual rules didn’t apply, but it felt unethical not to go to the police and tell them everything they needed to know.
‘Am I making myself clear?’ Vosse asked. ‘Am I getting through to you?’
Tomkins nodded. He wasn’t sure what the question referred to. He said: ‘Sure.’
‘Go home, Matt. Get a few hours’ sleep. Take a couple of days off. Don’t talk to anyone about what happened. Don’t google the incident, don’t have a crisis of conscience and drive to your nearest police station. The last thing we need is integrity encroaching on all this—’
‘All right!’ Tomkins snapped. He felt that he was going to cry. It astonished him how badly he had reacted to what had happened. ‘I promise I’ll go home. I’ll lie low. I won’t talk to anyone. I won’t do anything.’ He knew that he sounded petulant and noticed a look of irritation flash across Vosse’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he added desperately. ‘I’m just tired. I’m in shock. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me.’
‘Sure, Matt. Sure. We all have to go through it some time.’
‘What about Cara?’ he asked.
‘I’ll call a meeting,’ Vosse replied. ‘You don’t need to be there.’
Tomkins could sense that he was being sidelined, but he lacked the energy and the desire to fight for his place at the table.
‘What will happen next?’ he asked.
‘Leave that to me. Don’t worry about it, son. Just take the rest of the week off, get your head straight. Call me in a day or two. OK?’
Cara woke up to a message telling her to get to the Acton safe house as soon as possible. When she arrived, she found Tess and Kieran nursing Starbuck’s lattes, Vosse looking like he hadn’t slept and no sign whatsoever of Matt.
Vosse explained what had happened. Kieran turned the air blue, Tess almost spat out her coffee and Cara suggested that one of them go back to Zoltan’s flat and try to find the burner phone he had used to contact the Iranians. Vosse was impressed that she had thought of this but he’d already been to the flat and discovered that somebody had got there ahead of him, removing both the laptop and any trace of the phone. Cara poured herself a glass of water and listened as Vosse stressed the need for absolute secrecy until he had the chance to tell the DG. Amid the general chaos, Kieran was instructed to watch the car park in case the Iranians came back for the CCTV, Tessa was told to go to the Brighton hospital where Isobel Kite was due on shift and Cara was given the address for Kite’s cottage in Sussex. Both were to try to approach Isobel and find out what she knew.
‘If she’s in a state, chances are she’s hit the panic button and BOX 88 personnel will be on the scene,’ he told them. ‘There might be activity at the house or near the hospital. Get me photos if you can. I want faces of these people. If we can’t follow Kite any more, we can follow one of them.’
An hour later Cara was on the train to Lewes looking at an old-fashioned Ordnance Survey map of the hills surrounding Kite’s cottage, working out which route to take and preparing what she might say if Isobel was at home and answered the door. There was a man in his early twenties on the train sitting across the aisle from her who did that thing that boys on trains always did, which was to stare at her repeatedly, then to shyly look away whenever Cara looked up and tried to make eye contact. They never found the courage to smile, far less to come over and make conversation, and always got off the train without a nod or a gesture of farewell.
She was surprised that she didn’t feel more shocked about what had happened to Pavkov. In a way, Zoltan had been her agent. He would likely still be alive if Cara hadn’t worked out the scheme he was running with the Iranians. As a result of her interference, a man was dead: he’d made contact with the people who had kidnapped Kite and they had cut his throat. It was brutal and shocking. Why, then, did she feel so little? Was it delayed shock? She was more concerned about Matt, who had apparently been all over the place after seeing Zoltan’s body. Poor bloke. He lived at such a pitch, kept himself coiled so tight and anxious, he was bound to unravel when things got nasty. Cara knew that she was made of sterner stuff. If she was the type of woman who was going to mourn for a corrupt Serb who’d sold out Lachlan Kite for three grand, she was in the wrong job.
The train was on time. Cara caught a cab from Lewes station and was soon gliding through the English countryside, passing signs for Brighton and Glyndebourne and Firle, the gentle, well-tended hills of the South Downs dotted with sheep and compressed by a low grey sky. She kept thinking of The Holiday, the romcom with J
ude Law and Cameron Diaz, wondering if it had been filmed in Sussex. She paid the driver at Jevington and set out on the short walk towards Kite’s house, dressed in sturdy hiking boots and a dark weatherproof jacket so that she looked like a common-or-garden rambler. She had a long lens camera in her backpack as well as books about trees and birdwatching in case anybody got suspicious and stopped to ask what she was doing. On a training exercise in Wales, she had role-played the part of a camping enthusiast, sleeping rough, pitching a tent, eating food cooked on a gas stove. This job was a breeze by comparison: she got to stroll around in the fresh air in some of the prettiest countryside in England. It was like taking a day off.
As Cara was emerging from a copse of beech trees a couple of miles from Jevington, it began to rain. She pulled up her hood, continuing along a straight, uneven path strewn with leaves and shards of flint. She saw that the cottage was nestled in a forested bowl with sloping hills on all sides; perhaps Kite had chosen it so that he could see who was approaching from every point on the compass. The most direct route to the front door lay across a fallow field running down to a stream at the northern edge of the property. Cara did not want to be exposed in the open field so instead walked in a slow corkscrew loop towards the narrow road on the far side of the house.
After five minutes she stopped and took out the camera. In the shelter of a large oak tree, Cara trained the lens on the cottage, pulling focus from a distance of four hundred metres. The curtains were closed on the ground floor. Blinds were also down and curtains closed in the upstairs rooms. The property had been photographed only once, by Vosse and Tessa. Cara knew from those images that Kite and Isobel did not keep the curtains closed during the day. It was possible the house was locked up and Kite’s wife had gone to London to look for him.
Cara had bought a cheese sandwich at the station in Lewes and now took it out. It was dry and tasteless but she was grateful to have had something to eat. The rain showed no sign of easing up as she put the camera back in the rucksack and made her way down to the road. She tried to text Vosse to give him an update but there was no signal in the valley. Ordinarily Kite and Isobel were able to send and receive messages at the house on 4G; maybe the network was down. Vosse had asked her to try to make contact with Isobel, so she walked towards the cottage with the intention of seeing if she was home.
There was a vehicle parked in the drive. A car fizzed past on the short stretch of road running in front of the cottage, spraying Cara with droplets of puddled rainwater. She rang the doorbell. No response. The blinds and curtains were also closed on this side of the house. She waited for almost a minute then rang the bell a second time. A bird was singing in the trees on the far side of the cottage. There were no other sounds. The sky was grey and lifeless. It was obvious that nobody was inside.
As she was turning away, Cara thought that she heard a noise inside the cottage, but concluded that it was just her ears playing tricks on her. She waited a few more seconds longer then went back to the road. Still no signal on her mobile. She decided to walk back to Jevington and to call a cab from a phone box.
Four hundred metres from the cottage, she heard the sound of an approaching car and stepped up onto a grass verge to allow it to pass. To Cara’s surprise she saw that it was the same vehicle – a burgundy Skoda Octavia – which had driven past her only moments earlier. The vehicle slowed as it came towards her. There was a middle-aged black woman at the wheel, a male passenger in the back seat. Perhaps it was an Uber and the driver was lost. She stopped beside Cara, but it was the man in the back seat who wound down the window.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. He was good-looking and had an American accent. ‘Are you Miss Jannaway?’
Cara was astonished. Had something happened in London? Had Vosse sent a car for her?
‘I am,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
The American opened the back door. Cara leaned down and saw that the driver was pointing a gun at her.
‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Move.’
24
Michael Strawson checked out of Killantringan Lodge early on the morning of Monday, 27 March 1989. He caught a flight from Prestwick to London, couriered his letter to Billy Peele and went back to work at The Cathedral.
Kite spent the rest of the Easter holidays hidden away in his bedroom revising for A levels. Mornings and afternoons were the best times for this: Cheryl and Wilma could cope with any guests who turned up for lunch or tea and Kite was only required to leave his desk if a delivery van turned up and needed unloading. The evenings were different. Cheryl wanted Kite to work in the hotel and he would often not get to bed until after midnight. Waking early each morning, he would make his way through Mansfield Park or a booklet on the Tudor monarchs, distractedly thinking of Des tracking leopards in the Serengeti or Xavier skiing powder in the Swiss Alps, a glass of glühwein in one hand, a chalet girl in the other. Not for the first time, Kite began to feel trapped in the wrong kind of life.
After almost three weeks of this he told his mother that he needed a break and caught the train back to Euston. |He checked in to ‘Hotel Bonnard’, his nickname for the house in Onslow Square, and spent three days partying with Xavier, getting drunk at The Fridge and buying more Ecstasy in Mud Club. Kite could find no trace of Alison Hackford in either venue and decided to turn up unannounced at her flat on the final night of the holidays. When a man answered the door, Kite pretended to be a Jehovah’s Witness and scarpered.
The next day he was back in his house at Alford, a schoolboy of eighteen pulling on his tailcoat for the final time. As the term progressed, Kite played cricket for the second XI, saw plenty of Billy Peele, spent a long weekend packing up his belongings at Killantringan and sat nine A-level papers in the space of three weeks. By the middle of June, his five-year encounter with Alford College was over.
As if he had been waiting for the whistle to sound on his pupil’s final exam, Peele left a note in Kite’s pigeonhole congratulating him on finishing his A levels and inviting him to a celebratory dinner at Colenso’s, an upmarket Italian restaurant in Windsor. Kite was surprised to discover that no other boy had been invited; perhaps Peele intended to organise a series of farewell meals of which Kite’s was the first. He duly obtained permission to attend the dinner, put on a sports jacket and a pair of jeans and walked the short distance down Alford High Street into Windsor.
He had passed Colenso’s many times in five years but had never eaten there. A pretty, glass-fronted building with views over the Thames, the restaurant was typically frequented by day trippers and elderly couples taking their Alford grandsons out for lunch. A lone oarsman was piloting a single skull towards Queen’s Eyot, a family of swans moving lazily in his slipstream. Kite had been told to arrive at seven but was five minutes late. Unable to spot Peele at any of the tables, he checked the reservation with a waitress and was surprised to be told that Peele had booked a private room for four guests. Removing his jacket, Kite followed the waitress up a short flight of stairs and was shown to the door of a small dining room overlooked by Windsor Castle.
‘Just in here, sir,’ she said.
Sitting on the far side of a circular wooden table covered in a white cloth and a vase of flowers, was Billy Peele. Beside him, to Kite’s astonishment, was the young black woman he had helped on the Stranraer train. Next to her, slimmer and clean-shaven and rising to his feet as Kite walked in, was Michael Strawson.
‘Lachlan,’ he said, dropping a napkin onto the table. ‘Congratulations on completing your exams. May I formally introduce you to my associate, Rita Ayinde. I believe you two know one another from Scotland. Billy and I are old friends. I hope this isn’t too much of a surprise. We’ve invited you here today because we wanted to talk to you about something.’
25
‘It was so much easier with your friend,’ said Torabi, taking the gun from his waistband and laying it on top of the pile of boxes. The weight caused the boxes to topple slightly and they came to rest against the wall. ‘X
avier was an addict. He was weak. He wanted to talk, he wanted to tell the truth about what happened. All I had to do was take him to lunch, buy him a bottle of wine, some coke. Next thing you know, he’s back at my apartment opening up like a canary.’
‘It’s singing,’ said Kite.
‘What’s that, buddy?’
‘It’s “singing” like a canary. Not “opening up”.’
‘You think I give a shit?’
Kite felt the wire around his wrists. He looked at the gun resting on top of the boxes, no more than six feet away. Since the call with Isobel he had been struggling to fight a mood of fatalism which had settled on him.
‘He obviously didn’t tell you what you needed to know or I wouldn’t be here.’ Xavier was dead. Kite had nothing left with which to mourn him. The only thing of importance now was saving Isobel. He had to get off the ship. He was convinced that he had been followed by MI5 and that a full-scale manhunt was underway. Torabi’s decision to keep him on the boat suggested that he was not aware of the threat. Either that or he was certain that Kite’s location could never be discovered.
‘It’s not a great look for a guy of forty-eight, is it?’ the Iranian continued. ‘To be addicted to cocaine, to alcohol, to a life of what you can only describe as self-indulgence. To be incapable of saying no to yourself. To have so little control of your own mind, your own appetites. A man should have conquered his demons by the time he is middle-aged. He should have come to terms with himself.’
‘I didn’t realise you were such a philosopher.’
Kamram was standing behind Kite, occasionally applying pressure to his forearms so that the wire dug deeper into his wrists.
‘My wife is pregnant.’
‘I know! When is the child due, Lockie?’
Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Page 19