Connections (34 page)

I went round next day and beat Roddie up in his barracks. My report said the farmer had offered armed resistance and the woman had gone to his aid. There was a brief, tolerant army investigation of the event at the MoD. It went off quietly – no one wanted a big inquest on the matter.

That was the Irish Farm affair. Nothing to boast about.

Brave Roderick Hope had probably got himself in some bother over drugs or debts which could get him the sack from his regiment – buttons and epaulettes stripped off; sword broken over a senior officer's knee; the long walk, head bowed, away from the regiment which had been mother and father to him. He'd offered to testify in return for the police dropping charges or getting his gambling debts paid, or whatever it was. Whatever tale he told, and it wouldn't be true, the threat was jail for yours truly and the others involved. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas – that's what they say, isn't it?

I got back to the office in a rotten mood. You kid yourself
you're in charge of your life when all the time you're just another cog in a machine bigger and more complicated than you realised. It makes you feel ill. Which I couldn't afford to be at that point. But there were still choices. Do the job – kill Carter and Floyd – take the money and go on as before but always under threat, or do the job, take the money, then pack it all in and go somewhere with the quarter of a million and my other hidden money. Be happy and rich for a long time. Just not doing it wasn't an option. I couldn't let Roddie put me and my men in jail.

The phone rang. It was Pugh. He said, “I'm not going to say anything about that disgraceful scene in my office, Sam.
”

“
I'm glad you said that,” I told him. “I'd rather forget about it myself.
”

“
Good. Now, the point is, I've had some calls. You have to do what you've been asked, Sam, and quickly. My advice is to get it over. I've a guarantee that in that case the other stuff will all be forgotten about. That's a promise.
”

Was that a promise carved in stone or jelly? I wondered. “OK,” I told him defeatedly. “OK. Don't worry. I'll call you when it's over.
”

Veronica came in with some tea. She gave me a rueful look and went out again. I drank it slowly. I'd told Pugh I was ready to do the deed and it wouldn't be long before the word went to Prothero. Then they'd put somebody on to me to make sure I did the right thing. If it looked as though I wouldn't, they'd arrest me on brother Roddie's evidence. So I didn't have too long. What time I had I'd need to use to gain knowledge – which, as we're told, is power.

They thought I was cornered, William, but my motto is, whenever anybody thinks they've given you a choice of two options, think about discovering a third. There usually is one, if you look hard enough, and oh, how it pisses them off when you find it.

I was going to talk to the guys I was supposed to kill, to find out why I was supposed to kill them. I wasn't sure if I was going to tell them I was going to kill them. I wasn't even sure if I would
kill them in the end. But I wouldn't do anything until I'd spoken to them.

So, like a gunfighter of old, at about seven that evening, I shouldered open the door of the Findhorn Star and looked around me.

Dominic was waiting for Fleur in the Indian restaurant in Cray Hill at seven o'clock. The restaurant had flock wallpaper and sixteen tables, all empty. As Fleur came in someone on the staff started a tape of Indian music.

Dominic was dressed in the suit he had worn to Vanessa's funeral and was wearing a tie. She noticed, not for the first time, what a knockout he was and thought she'd say so. “Dominic,” she said, “you've got film-star good looks.”

He was pleased. “You should know, being in the trade.”

“Have you ever thought …?” she asked.

“Do me a favour,” he told her. “It's hard enough for me to hold down a regular job. I keep wondering why.”

“It must be the money.”

“You can always get money. No, I'm getting too old for the streets, that's why. One day, when I've cracked how to live straight, I may take you up on your offer to make me an international film star.”

The waiter came up, they made their choices and ordered. “How's Ben?” Dominic asked, a glint in his eye.

“I don't know. He's not been at the flat all day.”

“What would you call him?” he asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said. “At one time you were carrying a big torch for him. Him going nearly destroyed you. Now he's back. So what would you call him? Your friend, lover – what?”

“I don't know,” Fleur admitted. “To be honest, I don't think he likes me much, and it's mutual. It's sad really, after all there was. I suppose I think he's back and I've got to give it a chance.
He's in a mess at the moment. I don't like to ask too much of him till he gets sorted out.”

She was worried about Dominic's response, but all he said was, “Fair enough.”

Some food arrived and he said, “Have a poppadom.”

“How was your day?” she asked.

“The pressure's on,” he told her. “Plus Joe skived off at three because Melanie had to turn up at the athletics track to try for selection for the area team. She's a nice runner. So Joe went along to support her and we had to cover for him all afternoon. I'm not a happy worker, though. I mean, does the world really need another skyscraper in the City of London? I'd rather be working on houses for people to live in.”

“You're a crazy idealist.”

He smiled at her. “I know. It's part of my charm. Listen – if Ben takes a hike, do you want to be my girl?”

There had been no prelude to this question and Fleur was dumbfounded. “What does that mean, exactly?” she hedged.

“Is this University Challenge?” he asked, offended. “It's a simple question. We could get a house, or a flat, or something.”

“I don't know. I'll have to think,” she said.

“Don't be too long,” he said, “or I might withdraw my offer.”

Fleur said the first thing that came into her head. “You'd have me washing your socks.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You're Irish,” she told him.

“It's true my uncle hinted he was going to leave me the farm, having no children of his own. That gives me an idea. I'll plant you down in fifteen acres of bog, throw away my auntie's washing machine and set you doing the laundry in a big tub in the yard. The kitchen floor's a bugger to scrub, as well. A spoilt English beauty like yourself'd be dead in a year.”

“So you'll be a man with land of your own?” Fleur asked.

“If he doesn't leave it to somebody else. I told him I didn't want it.”

“That's a pity,” she said.

“What would I do with an Irish farm in the middle of nowhere? They'd be living on potatoes without the subsidies.”

“You could turn it into a guest house,” she said.

“I see it all now, Fleur. First a man offers a woman his heart, suggests maybe they could get a little flat together. Next, she's got him running a hotel and making something of himself. You're your father's daughter, and no mistake.”

“Don't say that,” Fleur told him.

As the food arrived he said, “I wish I hadn't.”

She opened her bag and pulled out the big envelope containing the photographs Jess had given her. In one, the Russian, Tallinn, stood outside a large building. The foreground was a wide street. The light was obscure, a dark winter's day. He was wearing a long coat and a fur hat from which his white hair spilled. Full face to the camera, his eyes were turned alertly to one side. Though plainly at rest, something in his stance indicated he was ready to move at any moment. In the second photograph Tallinn was sitting outside a café with another man. The light in this picture was bright. Behind him was a pillar and some old masonry. He wore an open-necked shirt and dark glasses. Tallinn was looking, appraisingly, at his dark, moustached companion, a man in a white suit.

Dominic studied the first photograph and said, “Yes.”

“That's him?”

He glanced at the second picture and nodded. “He's distinctive. You wouldn't mistake him for another tall guy with cold eyes and an air of being ready to do the business. The second fellow in the other picture looks nasty too.”

“You're sure about this?” Fleur asked.

“I've told you – he was standing mauling Vanessa by a street lamp in a lit doorway. And that scene wasn't the kind of thing you forget, let me tell you. Show the pictures to Joe, but he won't say anything different. Who is he, anyway?”

“The Germans apparently wanted him extradited from Britain for plutonium smuggling. They caught one of his couriers. They think he deals in drugs and weapons, too.”

“Russian mafia, then,” Dominic said.

“Whatever that really means.”

“And this guy had some kind of a relationship with your father?”

“If it
was
my father. But why would they know each other?”

“As the poet Yeats so beautifully put it, ‘Follow the money',” he said.

Six men in suits came in and started arguing loudly about what to have. When the waiter came up they began to ask him deliberately confusing questions. “Oh, this is great,” Dominic declared. “This was meant to be a romantic evening. First you turn down my offer of honest love, then it's down to your father and the plutonium smuggling, and as if that wasn't enough here's the cutting edge of Cray Hill's business community playing silly buggers.”

But what they were both actually thinking about was Vanessa, who had been brutalised by the man whose photographs lay on the table between them. Though Fleur picked the pictures up and put them back in her bag the atmosphere of that old, unpaid-for crime remained.

For a moment after, they stared at each other, half acknowledging this. “It's in the past now,” Dominic said. “It's over. Let's forget it.”

“Can we?” she asked.

“I don't know. Let's eat up and try to enjoy it and get back to your place. I'll just look in at the pub on the way, though. I've got to try to find Joe and tell him we have to go to the suppliers for something tomorrow. His mobile phone's flat and if I can't catch him in the pub I'll have to go over to Melanie's. Her mum lets him sleep there on the couch and, do you know, he's happier scrunched up in her front room than in his own little bed back at the flat.”

They walked down to the Findhorn where Joe and Melanie were sitting at a table holding hands.

Melanie had been selected for the area athletics team. She said, “My mum's not best pleased. I'm doing Biology and English A levels in the summer.”

“We've got to go soon,” Joe said. “We've got to be up at six to train.”

“Must be love,” said Dominic searching his pockets. “Joe – we've got to be in Park Royal by eight to pick some stuff up. Be at the van around seven thirty. I'm just checking I've got the address of the suppliers.”

Fleur also rummaged. From her handbag she produced the envelope containing the pictures of Tallinn. “When I told Jess about Vanessa getting attacked, she thought from his description it could have been this Russian they're looking for. Her husband's a journalist. She gave me these pictures.”

Joe looked at the pictures. His expression became angry and unhappy. “That's him,” he said. “That's definitely him.”

A tall man with pale brown hair and amber eyes had been getting a drink at the bar. He materialised behind Dominic and Fleur, looked down at the photographs lying on the table and said to Joe, “Excuse me. I wonder if I could have a word with you and your friend?”

I'd been in the Findhorn Star an hour before Joe Carter turned up with his girlfriend. I was getting twitchy because time was running out. My employers, the Funny Buggers, might not have known about the pub but they did have the address of the flats opposite, where Floyd and Carter lived.

When Joe came in I recognised him instantly from the cemetery photographs, but I didn't go up to him. I didn't want him thinking I was a plain-clothes man or other snoop and running off to warn the other guy. I didn't have much time, but I had enough to wait. For a while. I sat there while he chatted and held hands with his girl, wondering what the fuck he could have done to get big forces so pissed off with him they were ready to kill him. It had begun with the alleged burglary of the mews house. Had he and Floyd taken something compromising, something in the nature of the secret report Prothero had, untruthfully, once claimed had been removed? That might account for the combination of commercial and government interests Carter seemed to have lined up against him. But there are tried and true ways of silencing people with damaging information and none of them seemed to have been employed in all the years this affair had been running. In any case, Carter just didn't look the sort to start playing around with secret material. He looked ready to buy and sell stuff which had fallen off the back of a lorry, bypass his gas and electric meters, deal drugs in a small way or jump on somebody in an alley. But perhaps the other one – I didn't at that point know which was Floyd and which Carter – was the brains behind the organisation. I went on waiting.

In came Floyd, as he proved to be, with the girl, Fleur
Jethro. There was something between them, that was plain, which cheered me up because it explained the connection. Nothing complicated. Just the old Adam and Eve.

A look at Floyd didn't reveal any obvious signs of villainy. Nothing, really, except what a handsome devil he was. He and the girl might not have come out of the same drawer but together they made a pretty pair. They sat down at the same table as the other two with the air of people in no great hurry – nothing on TV, work tomorrow, not a lot of money for a big night out. Joe and his girl, a nice little thing with a lot of grit, I was thinking, sat with their backs to the pub window, the other two opposite them. Then Dominic began to go through his jacket, trying to find something and the girl, Fleur, joined in, searching her handbag for something else. She brought out a big brown envelope and started to open it, pulling out some big glossy pictures.