Gregory's Game (21 page)

‘No, he's organizing the press conference for later. It'll be on the midday news, Ian, so you need to be prepared for more interest for a while.'

‘There have at least been no phone calls. I thought the media would have – but of course, the phone calls are all intercepted, aren't they?'

Tess nodded.

‘I mean, I appreciate that, but what if the kidnappers call and you don't know who they are? What if they want to talk to me and they end up talking to a police officer? I mean …'

‘Ian, our people are trained for this. It will be all right. If anyone calls you'll get to talk to them, hear anything they have to say, I promise you.'

He sighed, then led her through to the living room she and Vin had sat in before. He'd tidied the place up after the break-in, Tess noted. Even cleaned the fingerprint powder. She wondered if every time he went into the kitchen he still saw that picture lying on the table. His wife's scared face staring up at him, the child clasped tight in her arms. She sat down on the sofa and withdrew her notebook.

‘Tell me what you know about Gustav Clay,' Tess said.

For a moment she thought Ian Marsh was going to deny knowing him. His face clouded with confusion and then annoyance. Then he seemed to make a decision. ‘I knew him,' he said. ‘I can't say I liked him much but he was useful, I suppose.'

‘Useful?'

‘In the work I was doing a few years ago. That's how I knew Nathan too. Clay knew everyone, could open doors I certainly couldn't. There was a conference on the future provision of international medical aid. Not the emergency care, the crisis management stuff that makes all the headlines; the conference in Damascus was all about vaccinations, preventive medicine in the developing world, that sort of thing. It's not, strictly speaking, my field, but I'd delivered a paper earlier in the year on the political instability in Sudan and the effects that was having on rural communities. I reprised my paper at the conference, alongside dozens of other speakers. Nathan acted as my interpreter and we'd all go out together to eat in the evenings.'

‘And this was, when?'

‘Oh, goodness. Eight, nine years ago. Nathan was still a student. He'd been working through the summer with one of the medical relief agencies. He wasn't fully qualified then, of course, but he knew enough to be useful.'

‘You mentioned he trained to become a doctor.'

‘Um, yes, he was training anyway. He never completed his internship.'

‘And you say Gustav Clay could open doors?'

‘He had the contacts. High level diplomats and ministers, that sort of thing. It's one thing reporting on what needs to be done for the people on the ground; it's quite another being able to navigate the political corridors and actually getting anything implemented. Then it really is a case of who you know and not what you know. Clay was good at that sort of thing.'

‘So,' Tess wondered, thinking of Gustav Clay's connection to the human rights lawyers Gilligan and Hayes. ‘Would you say Clay was a humanitarian then?'

She was unprepared for the burst of laughter from Ian Marsh. Once set off, he seemed unable to stop. Tess watched, horrified, as the man sought to regain control. He wiped his eyes on the back of his hands. ‘Excuse me,' he said. ‘Hysterical, really.'

She wasn't sure if he meant his behaviour or her question. ‘I'm not sure I understand.'

‘Clay was a bastard,' Ian Marsh said. ‘He was useful only in as much as it amused him to be, or because he could see an advantage in it. Clay liked his public face to be clean and well scrubbed, but he spent his whole life wallowing in shit.'

‘I'm still not sure I understand.'

‘Look,' Ian Marsh said and his tone was suddenly angry. ‘Do you have anything to tell me about my wife and child?'

‘Not yet. I'm sorry.'

‘That's all I'm interested in.'

‘Knowing the background—'

‘What background? I knew Clay and his people for a brief while almost a decade ago. After which I went into academia and there I've stayed. I met my wife five years ago; we married, we had a child. Clay did not figure in any of that, so there is no background.'

‘And yet you kept in touch with Nathan Crow,' Tess said.

‘Which was my mistake. I should have cut all ties. I should have exorcised the whole damned lot of them from my life, but I didn't. Too bad.'

‘And yet you seem to blame Nathan Crow in some way for your wife's abduction,' Tess reminded him.

Ian Marsh's gaze fixed on her face. His eyes, blank and cold, made Tess want to shiver. She suddenly wished that Vinod was there with her. His sensible, practical presence would have been a secure touchstone; instead, she felt suddenly adrift and just a little afraid.

‘Go and find them,' Ian Marsh said. ‘Find Kat and Desiree. That's your job, that's what you are meant to be doing, not sitting in my house, asking stupid questions, making stupid allegations.'

‘Professor Marsh. Ian. I'm not making allegations and I am doing all I can to find your family. We all are. But we have to follow every lead that presents—'

‘I'd like you to leave now,' he said. ‘I want you to go.'

Tess got to her feet and headed for the door. She was seriously unnerved by the sudden coldness in his tone. She glanced back from the front door. Ian Marsh was standing in the middle of the living room, just watching her. All trace of the affable, disorganized professor she and Vinod had first met seemed to have melted away; a core of something harder had been left behind.

‘O
nce the Cold War thawed,' Gregory said, ‘there were a great many people suddenly without pay or occupation and a great many weapons suddenly available and suddenly very cheap. Through the nineties a good proportion of both surfaced in the Balkans, or in Africa, or found themselves nice little earners fighting for whatever faction was hiring, smuggling people, drugs, arms, anything else that could be fitted into a box. The cream were hired by other intelligence agencies.

‘Others faded away into the background. Someone once estimated that if you added up all the casual informants, all those on the payroll part-time, all those officially employed, the Stasi had one informant for about every seven people in the general population. Most just got themselves lost in the background because that's where they'd been all along.'

‘And this Mason?'

‘Went freelance. Some would say went rogue. He killed a number of his old colleagues, murdered a fair few what you'd term innocent civilians too. Rico Steadmann found a place for his expertise in his already extensive organization. Rico's father was slowly handing over control but by the time the old man died, Mason already had his feet well and truly under the table. Rico, who'd looked to this man for guidance, shall we say, soon began to realize that he was about to become surplus to requirements. So he ordered the hit and I took the contract.'

Nathan frowned, his mouth quirking with amusement. ‘Back then, weren't you an official employee of HM government?'

‘I might have been.'

‘You were moonlighting?'

‘I did it on my own time. My extra-curricular activities never got in the way of the day job. Truth was, Nathan, he had it coming. I'd have got around to it some time, even without the extra incentive. The man was ripe for extermination.'

Gregory's mouth had set in a harsh line, all humour gone. Nathan thought about asking further, then decided against. Friendship should only trespass so far.

‘So,' he said. ‘Our next move.'

‘Is to get some grub and then do our research. Steadmann's one of the old brigade. He knows us, knows our methods, and besides, we might not want to object to his killing of Anthony Palmer or whoever the man really was, so what's the point in upsetting people we don't have to? All we want is to get Kat Marsh and Daisy back. The rest is not our problem or our concern.'

Nathan nodded. ‘You ever think that Annie might be right?' he said. ‘That we should just buy a farm or something and settle down. Shed the complications?'

‘Didn't Ian Marsh try that?' Gregory said. ‘Fat lot of good it's done him.'

T
he press conference at Friday lunchtime had led to a flurry of calls, but generated no new leads. A few people claimed to have recognized Nathan Crow and spotted him at the end of their road, but there had been nothing that seemed worth the follow-up that would be required to check out the sightings. Most of the calls had related to drivers who'd spotted the car in the ditch. Of those, only one seemed really significant: local police, driving the route, had estimated that Kat would have reached that spot around nine-fifteen and the driver, from a nearby farm, told them that the nine-thirty news had just come on when he passed the car. He had stopped, checked for casualties and then driven on.

‘So we know she was taken before then,' Branch had told his team on the Friday evening. ‘And if the locals are right, she'd have reached that point about a quarter of an hour before. So we've got another bit of the timeline.'

Much good it's going to do us, Tess thought. It's confirmation of something we thought, not additional information.

‘The farmer who drove by,' Vinod asked. ‘Was he usually about at around that sort of time?'

‘Apparently, yes, so he was either very lucky, or whoever ambushed Kat Marsh knew his habits and knew what window they'd got.'

‘But no one could know what time she was going to leave her uncle's house.' This from Jaz.

‘I think we have to assume someone was watching. I think they also must have known the route she'd choose, which implies they knew a great deal about Katherine Marsh. I think we've also got to assume that there were various fall-back plans, just in case she broke with her own habits or decided to leave at a busier time of the morning. I also think that if the driver of that car had been in the way, whoever took Katherine and her child would have simply seen them as collateral damage.'

Jaz nodded. She was looking at her notes and Tess wondered if she'd found anything new. She was still stinging from Marsh's dismissal of her and still a little shaky too. The man had unnerved her.

‘Could the family be involved?' she asked. ‘Professor Marsh, the uncle. Is there anything …?'

‘Nothing as yet. But we're obviously not ruling it out.' Branch looked keenly at Tess. ‘Any particular reason for raising this now? You saw Marsh earlier today, didn't you? Anything to report?'

‘I asked him about Gustav Clay and he says that he knew the man but had no contact with him for years.' She shrugged. ‘I don't know; he seemed a bit off today. Angry, frustrated.'

‘He's waiting for news. I'd be surprised if he wasn't.'

Tess nodded and made no further comment even though Branch paused, waiting for her to elaborate. ‘I spoke to Alec Friedman too. He wasn't helpful.'

‘You want to bring him in?'

Tess was surprised. ‘For formal questioning? Any particular reason why I should?'

‘Only that something's evidently pissed you off. I'm assuming it's either Alec Friedman or Professor Marsh or both. If it would make you feel better, haul them both in.'

There was general laughter and even Tess joined in, feeling herself relax for the first time since she had been to see the Professor.

‘They're both holding back,' she said as the laughter subsided. ‘I'm just not sure why.'

T
he weekend passed with frustrating slowness and by Monday morning, with no new information and no contact from anyone, Tess was determined she was going to have another crack at finding out. Alec, she decided, might well hold the key to some of this and her first impulse was to go and harass him on the Monday morning. Reason and a busy schedule put that on hold. She'd wait until she finished for the day, spring a visit on him that evening, sit on his bloody sofa and refuse to go until she got some answers – though knowing Alec and Naomi, she thought ruefully, they'd be just as likely to ignore her and bugger off to bed as they would be accommodating.

She spent an hour fielding calls from Kat Marsh's relatives, from the press, wanting updates post press conference, then helped man the general phone lines for a while, reassuring members of the public that kidnapping wasn't usually something that went viral; thanking those who just felt they had to call to send good wishes to Katherine Marsh's family, and note down the few new sightings that had come in about Nathan Crow. Most seemed to be the ‘certain I saw him on the telly, at the end of our road, in the pub on Saturday night' routine that were rarely worth the time it took to write them down, but all had to be checked out, just in case.

At midday Tess willingly surrendered her place on the phones. She understood why DCI Branch insisted they all take a turn with the routine stuff; it kept everyone grounded, everyone involved and gave staff who might otherwise suffer from banality overload a break, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

On Monday afternoon, Naomi went to do her usual stint at the advice centre. She was busy, as usual, and not entirely surprised when the centre manager put his head around the door and asked if she could squeeze another client in before she went.

‘I know you're meant to be going, but …'

‘No, it's OK; give Alec a call for me will you? Tell him I'll be a bit late.'

She heard voices out in the hallway and then the door open and close once more.

‘Hello, Naomi,' a familiar voice said.

‘Gregory? What the hell are you doing here?'

‘Seemed like the easiest way of getting to see you at short notice. I didn't want to come back to the flat.'

‘So you're my extra appointment instead.' She wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or pleased, but that was often her response to Gregory. ‘I'll give you twenty minutes. That's it.'