A Loyal Spy (39 page)

‘Come on!’

She glanced back. Alex was holding the dog by his collar and in his other hand there was a gun. He reached over the dog to point it at her. He was screaming.

She didn’t have any choice.

She ran across the living room and out into the passageway. Pressing her face to one of the windows, she saw a van disgorging men into the car park. Already doors were being slammed the length of the passage. She ran to the stairwell, leant over the railing and saw two men in hoodies, several floors below, advancing up the stairs. She took a deep breath and headed down towards them. On the next level down, she pushed through the fire door and ran down the passage. Halfway down she passed a small black girl with dandelion hair and the sharp, Semitic features she associated with the Horn of Africa, standing in the doorway of a flat. She stopped.

‘Help me,’ she said in Somali.

The girl stepped aside and gestured for her to come in. She found herself in a living room with a television playing Islam Channel. A woman in a black abaya but with her face uncovered looked up as she entered.

‘Help me,’ she said again.

The woman looked at the child and they reached some unspoken agreement. The girl took Miranda by the hand and led her down a corridor that was the mirror of the one in the apartment above. The girl opened the door to her room. There was a bed with a colourful bedspread covered in toys. The girl led her to a built-in cupboard and opened the door. At the bottom of the cupboard was a cubbyhole, created from cushions and pieces of embroidered cloth.

Miranda squeezed herself in, thankful for the years of yoga that had made her supple enough to fit into small spaces. The girl also squeezed in and pulled the door closed behind her. They sat in the darkness, with only their breath to give them away. The girl rested her head against Miranda’s shoulder.

Beech was dead. Monteith was dead. She was being framed for the death of Monteith and, who knows, maybe also for the death of Beech. She had lost Esme’s dog. Now it might not be enough to just run.

She walked as carefully, as full of composure, as she could manage, out of the tower block and past the swings. There was a man still standing by the van. He was smoking a cigarette and paid her no attention. She was wearing a full niqab, her face and body covered in shapeless black cloth; a shape only, invisible in plain sight.

She crossed the car park and turned the corner. Then she was running, bent almost double, through rain and darkness, away from the flats. She stripped off the robe, leapt down a slope and waded across a thundering brook, while blackened cloud-stacks raced across the sky and rain dashed against her in gusts. She stumbled onwards. Reaching the road, she flagged down a truck driver who gave her a lift into Glasgow.

9 September 2005

Within minutes of leaving Glasgow, most of the passengers were sleeping with their heads resting against the gently vibrating windows. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the soft hiss of the air conditioning. Miranda’s fellow passengers were entirely foreign: migrant workers, students and budget tourists. She slipped easily into their midst.

She was heading for London, but she carefully avoided a direct route. For the first leg she sat next to a Nigerian business student who tried to chat her up, and for the stretch from Newcastle to Birmingham next to a Slovak beautician who tutted over the stubs of her nails.

In the toilets at Digbeth coach station in Birmingham, she took a penknife to her hair, hacking at her thick curls and discarding them in the bowl. She had not worn her hair this short for twenty years, not since her days in the Lion’s Den. Afterwards she sat for an hour, waiting for her connection in the vast hangar-like garage. She ate a stale cheese savoury sandwich from the station kiosk and glanced intermittently at the phone box. She bit her lip, steeling herself.

She had to. She walked over to the phone booth, fed change into the slot and dialled the number. It was answered on the third ring.

‘It’s Miranda.’

‘Where are you?’ Flora demanded. ‘Why did you just disappear?’

‘What did the police say to you?’

‘That there had been a sighting of Beech near Dover.’

‘They’re lying or they’re being lied to, Flora.’

A bad pause.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is there somebody you can go to? A neighbour. A friend. Somewhere safe.’

‘What are you trying to tell me, for fuck’s sake?’

She told her. ‘Beech is dead. He’s in the rocks up on the hill. I’m sorry.’

She had no idea whether Flora was hearing her. She thought she heard a door slam and the sound of something crashing. ‘Flora?’

A further pause.

‘Flora?’

After a while she ended the call.

She called BBC Television Centre from a phone booth on the concourse of Victoria station as soon as she arrived in London, gave a name and was immediately put through to
Newsnight
.

‘Saira speaking.’

‘Hello. It’s me, Miranda.’

Silence. Saira was mystified. ‘Miranda?’

‘From Sarajevo …’

‘Ah, that Miranda.’ There was a pause. ‘The cold-hearted Miranda.’

‘I’m in London.’

‘The prodigal returns …’

‘Are you all right?’ Miranda asked.

‘I’m just tired,’ Saira told her. ‘I’ve been working flat out since the 7/7 bombings. How much trouble are you in?’

‘Plenty.’

‘So nothing’s changed, then.’

‘Nothing’s changed,’ Miranda acknowledged.

They arranged to meet in a couple of hours at the Frontline Club in Paddington. Miranda hung up and stepped out on to the pavement. She paused for a moment, feeling oddly confused and guilty all of a sudden. Guilty because she had walked out on Saira several years before without so much as leaving a note and confused because hearing her voice down a phone line had revived a very specific physical memory of lying naked, more or less sated, in a hotel room in Sarajevo.

She walked slowly north towards Hyde Park. She kept looking down, but there was no dog at her heels.

Saira poured her a large glass of wine and then filled her own glass to the brim. They were sitting on the red leather sofas in the club room at the Frontline.

Saira was sitting with her legs curled under her on the sofa, wearing jeans, dark suede shoes and an open-necked white silk shirt that was so crumpled it seemed likely that she had been wearing it for days. She was tall, and her cheekbones were high and handsome. It was easy for Miranda to remember why she had found her so attractive.

They had met in Sarajevo, during the siege, when mortars and shells could fall anywhere and at any time. It was a period when you ran into people. You drank together in mobs. You drank so much and then by accident ended up in bed with someone; with men, and very occasionally with women. It just happened that way. Saira was working as a producer for BBC World Service and Miranda was following a rumour of her husband Bakr. It was Saira who had taught her the
Sarajevo walk
: relaxed when protected by the cover of buildings or barricades, brisk and alert when crossing streets, and breaking into a sudden sprint when crossing open ground, cobbled squares or crossroads exposed to sniper’s rifles. They had met in the warren of lanes around the old Turkish Bascarsija market. You couldn’t miss Saira, she was as tall as Miranda, head and shoulders taller than most other woman, with skin the colour of a cinnamon stick. They were the same waist and shoe size. The similarities didn’t end there. Saira’s father, like Miranda’s, had been an opponent of the Siad Barre regime and had had to flee Somalia. Both their families had been forced into the peripatetic existence of political exiles – constantly on the move as the regime concluded deals with countries to prevent its opponents from settling. Saira’s family had lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya before finally settling in Cardiff, Wales.

For a while Saira and Miranda were lovers and had shared a room at the Holiday Inn. There had been a couple of chance encounters since then, in Peshawar and Grozny.

‘So what brings you here?’ Saira asked.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ Miranda replied.

‘You’re not still …?’

‘No. Someone else.’

Saira studied her warily. ‘Did you find Omar?’

Miranda bit her lip. She really didn’t want to burst into tears. ‘Omar died in 1991. He was dead all the time that I was looking for him.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Saira said.

Miranda took a deep breath. ‘I found out just over two years ago.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘What can you say?’

‘What have you been doing?’ Saira asked.

Walking, she thought, walking on the moor, and drinking vodka and fucking Jonah. I got up every morning and saluted the sun, even when it was overcast, in the hope that one day it might scorch me off the face of the earth. ‘I’ve been living on an island in Scotland,’ she said. ‘I met someone.’

‘You always had someone,’ Saira observed with a sigh.

It was true. She had never left a man without abandoning him for someone else.

‘He’s gone missing,’ Miranda said.

‘Missing as in disappeared?’ Saira asked, sceptically.

Miranda nodded.

‘That’s what happens to your men.’

‘He was in Peshawar and then Amman,’ Miranda told her. ‘After that, nothing.’

‘Who is he?’ Saira asked.

‘He’s a spook. Military intelligence. A retired agent.’ She paused and stared at her wine glass. ‘At least, I thought he was retired.’ She leant forward. ‘I need you to arrange a meeting for me with someone at the House of Lords.’

‘I can get a peer’s number in no time. You can give them a call and make an appointment. It’s not difficult. Who do you want to speak to?’

‘Norma Said.’

Saira sat up slightly and her eyes narrowed. ‘Baroness Said sits on the Intelligence and Security Committee.’

Miranda gripped her knee. ‘I need you to go to Parliament and speak to her. Tell her that I am a friend of her son.’

Miranda had raised her interest now. ‘Norma Said’s son is a spook?’

‘Yes. And he’s in trouble.’

‘Why can’t
you
go to Parliament?’

‘I can’t.’

Saira frowned. ‘Why not?’

‘There are people looking for me.’

Saira rolled her eyes and leant closer. ‘Don’t tell me the police are looking for you?’

‘I need your help.’

Saira gave her a resigned look. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

They walked down Praed Street towards the Edgware Road. Saira’s two-bedroom flat was on a corner opposite the tube station.

‘I was here on the seventh of July, on the day of the bombings. It was supposed to have been a day off. I got up late. I stood outside the tube station all day and all night with a cameraman,’ Saira said, walking briskly down the street, ‘the same station that I’ve been using for years. Some people were asking why Muslims would bomb a tube station in the heart of the largest Arab Muslim community in London. But it was bloody obvious, it was because the Edgware Road is
takfir
, it’s a symbol of everything the bombers despised. They targeted it because it proves that Islam as a religion and Muslims as a community can thrive here in the West. Come on.’

They climbed several steep flights of steps to Saira’s flat. She paused with the key in the lock. ‘I share with a journalist from
World Affairs
. Luckily for you, he’s overseas at the moment, so you can have his room.’

‘Thank you.’

She sat on the sofa and unlaced her boots while Saira made her tea.

‘Parliament is in recess so Baroness Said is unlikely to be at Westminster,’ Saira called to her from the kitchen. ‘I think she lives in Sussex. I’ll ask some questions at work tomorrow. I’ll speak to her office. I’ll see if I can find out what her schedule is. Perhaps we can get her alone for a few minutes.’

Saira returned and handed her the cup. ‘You look exhausted,’ she said.

‘I’m OK,’ Miranda told her.

‘I really need an explanation.’

Miranda told her everything in detail. About Jonah’s depart­ure. About the policemen Mulvey and Coyle. About Mark Mikulski and Richard Winthrop IV. About the Department. About Nor’s confession. About Alex Ross. About Beech’s murder. About the ginger-haired man. About the bomb factory. About the death of Monteith. About her fingerprints on the murder weapon. She spread the items from her pocket across the carpet: a postcard from Peshawar, a print-out of the Sheerness tidal gauge, the diagram of an unnamed ship with a set of coordinates, and Inspector Coyle and Mark Mikulski’s business cards.

As soon as she started, Saira lit a cigarette. It took five cigar­ettes for Miranda to finish. Once she had finished they sat in silence for a while.

‘You really do have a capacity for getting yourself in trouble,’ Saira said, eventually.

‘I need your help.’

‘I’ll make some enquiries in the morning. Check elements of the story. But I warn you, if I get anywhere with this I’m going to have to go to my editor. He’ll want you to give an interview. I don’t need to tell him that you’re here or how I know you, but I’ll have to give him something.’

‘I understand.’

‘You knew that when you called me.’

Miranda nodded. ‘I did.’

‘Is that what you want, to go public?’

‘I’m being set up. I’m going to try to speak to Norma Said but I don’t know whether she can help me. I don’t trust the police. You’re the only friend I have. What else can I do?’

‘You did the right thing,’ Saira assured her. ‘Come on, I’ll show you your room.’

There was a freshly made double bed and beside it a pile of dog-eared reference books, a pair of Levi’s slung over a chair and a guitar propped against a wall.

Miranda sat on the bed.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Saira said, pausing in the doorway with her fingers resting on the frame. ‘It’s been too long.’

10 September 2005

Miranda woke suddenly. Momentarily she was panic-stricken. Something was terribly wrong. And then she realised that for the first time in ages she had not been woken by the dog’s paws prodding her through the blanket.