Authors: Henry Porter

Tags: #Fiction - Espionage

The Dying Light (9 page)

BOOK: The Dying Light

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She looked around the room. Mermagen couldn’t tell her anything, or wouldn’t. Through the glass of the Pineapple House she could see Darsh Darshan sitting on a garden bench. He was staring ahead with his arms clamped round his chest. Glenny’s bodyguards stood at a distance.

‘I’m surprised Darsh wasn’t arrested,’ she said.

‘The home secretary was very understanding: he put it down to grief. Darsh was always a rather overwrought character.’

‘Surely you didn’t know him at Oxford? It was just our crowd at New College that knew Darsh.’

‘Of course I did,’ he said.

‘What did you think of the things he said in church - all that stuff about murder?’

‘Well, you know Darsh was virtually in love with David.’

‘But what did he mean?’

His eyes moved to the home secretary. ‘He was blaming them for David’s fall and therefore his being in High Castle and therefore his being in Colombia when a bomb goes off and kills him instead of some bloody union leader or whatever - logic that is surely not worthy of the man who invented the Darshan Curve.’

‘What was David doing before he left government service, Oliver?’

‘He was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee; before that at COBRA - the Cabinet Office Briefing Room “A”, mostly to do with energy, I gather but I don’t fly at that altitude so I do not know the details of his jobs. He darted about giving a lot of people the benefit of his laser mind. You did know that he was thought likely to become cabinet secretary one day. All he needed on his CV was a big department to run. There was talk of the Ministry of Defence.’

‘Darsh said he was
mortified.
What did he mean by that? It’s an odd word to use - mortified.’

Mermagen pouted mystification and touched the handkerchief in his breast pocket. ‘Better ask him. By the way, how’s your mother?’

‘My mother!’ she said, astonished. ‘My mother’s fine, thank you: why do you ask?’

‘Still playing golf?’

‘Yes, between bridge and running the Faculty of Advocates In Edinburgh.’ She remembered her parents’ excruciating visit to Oxford, her disruptive father smirking in the wake of his rigid wife. Perversely the only student her mother had taken to was Mermagen, who had ingratiated himself by pretending an interest in women’s golf.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Kate said. ‘Did anyone have a reason to kill Eyam? It was raised - well, hinted at - during the inquest.’

‘Kill David? What on earth for? Really, you’ve been watching too much American television, Kate. What an absurd idea.’ His arm swung out towards a tray of canapes that was just about in range. ‘I must say, Ingrid’s done David proud with these caterers. Are you coming to the dinner tonight? No, of course not. How could anyone know you’d be here?’

Kate began to look for an escape. ‘Who’s giving the dinner?’

‘Ortelius. You know, Eden White, the head of Ortelius and much else besides.’

‘Eden White was a friend of David’s? I don’t believe it. The information systems creep? That Eden White?’

‘The same but be careful, my dear Kate. He’s a partner of mine, and he’s quite a power in the land - a friend of the prime minister’s. Hardwired into the government. Immensely influential.’

‘Jesus, what’s happened to this country? Eden White best friends with the prime minister.’

‘They were always friends. Same with Derek Glenny. They go way back. Pity you’re not coming to the dinner for David.’ He bent forward to allow his jacket to fall open and lifted a printed card from his inside pocket. He handed it to her. ‘Here are the names for the dinner. It’s quite a gathering.’

Under the heading
The Ortelius Dinner to Celebrate the life of David
Lucas Eyam
were twenty names of politicians, business leaders and permanent secretaries. ‘Is it Eyam’s life they’ve come all this way to celebrate,’ she said, running down the list, ‘or his death?’

‘Now that’s simply not fair, Kate,’ said Mermagen. ‘In fact I think it is rather silly and disruptive of you.’ His attention had switched to a group around Derek Glenny and before she could say anything more he had moved on, leaving her with the card. She looked to discard it somewhere but then slipped it into her jacket pocket.

The wake had become a party and all thought of David Eyam seemed to have left the Jubilee Rooms. She considered going up to her room but then noticed Hugh Russell take a drink and knock it back in one.

She went over to him. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come.’

‘I wasn’t, but I did just want to make sure that you were - eh - dropping in this afternoon.’ His upper lip was beaded with sweat and the top of his cheeks flushed.

‘Has something happened?’

‘No, no. Everything’s fine, but I want to get as much done as we can. I wasn’t sure that I’d made that clear.’

‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ He looked down to the ground for a few moments. ‘Mr Russell, please tell me what has happened.’

His gaze rose to hers. ‘These papers should be in your possession. I perhaps underestimated their value to you earlier, which is the reason I came over. I really feel that you should take them as soon as possible.’

‘You read them.’

‘No.’>

‘You glanced at them.’

He lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘No.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Just give them to me later. I’ll come in after this.’

‘But you will need somewhere secure for them. I feel certain about that.’

‘Fine. I’ll be there about five.’ She felt they had said all they needed, then something occurred to her. ‘Tell me, did anyone know that you were acting for David Eyam?’

‘Nobody, apart from my secretary of the time, and she has left to work in Birmingham. Certainly no one knew the substance of his business. It was confidential, and David wanted a very discreet relationship.’

‘How many times did he come to your office?’

He thought for a second. ‘Never, once he had purchased Dove Cottage. We met at a pub and did business over a bite. He always gave me lunch at the Bugle, a pub about twelve miles from here. It has a rather good restaurant, though no one uses it for lunch. I lent him a laptop so he could write out the instructions for the will, then printed it out.’

‘Didn’t he have his own computer?’

‘He said it was unreliable and kept on losing material.’

‘That doesn’t sound like him.’

‘At any rate that was the arrangement.’

‘And was that the same for the bigger document?’

‘No, he gave that to me in an envelope and told me to put it in a safe.’

‘Was that at the same time?’

‘No - much later, in November maybe even December.’

‘So there was nothing to connect you with him?’

‘I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’

‘Then you’ve got little to worry about. Nobody knows about the will. Nobody has troubled you about these documents. Nobody has shown the slightest interest in your professional dealings with David Eyam. If you’ve read something by accident, well, that’s between you and me. I’m a lawyer: I understand how it goes. Look, I’ll come to your office now if that helps.’

He gave her a stressed look. ‘No, no. That’s the point - I won’t be there. I forgot that I have something on until about five thirty - a meeting outside the office. Come after that.’

‘That’s fine. I want to see one or two people here.’

Russell departed and she threaded her way to the Pineapple House in search of Darsh. But he had left his spot in the garden and was nowhere in sight. She was making her way back towards a group of people from Oxford days she hadn’t seen for twenty years when she turned slap into the path of Kilmartin.

‘Again!’ he said with a little ironic smile.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Mr Kilmartin, isn’t it? The inquest.’

‘But we’ve met before.’

‘Really? I’m sorry I don’t . . .’

‘That’s the trouble with our trade - our former trade, I should say. To be successful you must be forgettable. Southsea - about a dozen years ago, maybe a touch more, Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course. I was one of the course lecturers, though I wouldn’t expect you to remember. I never enjoyed doing them much, which showed, I expect.’

‘Emile!’

‘Yes, the name made me sound like some leftover from the Free French - it really is my middle name. My mother was French.’ He put his hand out. ‘Peter Emile Kilmartin.’

‘Targeting, recruiting and running agents - was that it?’

‘No, communications in the field, though God knows why. I was always rather bad at that.’

‘Yes, of course I remember you.’

‘And you were from Jakarta, recruited there by McBride, and you did quite a bit of work before you actually came back to the office for indoctrination. Very unusual. And they really wanted you to stay. A big future for you but then . . .’

‘My husband died and I took another direction. He was in the Foreign Office.’

‘But you enjoyed the work?’

She nodded. ‘Christ, yes. It was such a bloody relief to find something to do. An embassy wife is like being a geisha without the money.’

There was a silence, which he didn’t seem to mind. He looked around the room, she into the garden.

‘Were you trying to find someone?’ he asked at length.

‘Yes, Darsh - the Indian. I wanted to see he was OK. I guess everyone thought he was completely mad.’

‘He seemed fine when I talked to him.’

‘You know him?’

‘Yes, David introduced us and he helped me with a rather arcane mathematics problem for a paper I was writing.’ He paused and looked round. ‘Anyway, it’s been a good turnout.’

‘It’s not a village fete,’ she said.

Kilmartin did not miss the quiet vehemence. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. A stupid thing to say.’

‘You know, someone said exactly the same thing at my father’s funeral. I suppose there was nothing else to say. He killed himself, you know, and that leaves the average emotionally retarded Brit rather stuck for things to chat about at a funeral.’

‘You talk as if you no longer think of yourself as belonging here.’ He examined her through his large, round, steel-rimmed glasses. His blue and white spotted tie was a couple of centimetres adrift from the top button and his dark-blue suit was made of a heavy serviceable material, which had become shiny at certain points but was in no danger of wearing out: the all-purpose suit tailored - or rather built - for a lifetime. He would probably be buried in that suit wearing that same expression of tight-lipped craftiness.

‘I’ve been away a long time and I came back expecting things to be the same, but having spent nearly a week in this godforsaken backwater, I’m beginning to wonder if I made the right choice. Maybe it’s this town, but everyone seems so on edge - suspicious. People seem to be so out of sorts.’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, I’m being a bit of a bore, aren’t I? The funeral made me angry. It all seemed so bloodless and damned English. I wondered how many people there actually liked David Eyam.’

‘Oh, quite a few I should think. He was an exceptional person.’

She nodded. ‘You were carrying seed catalogues at the inquest - that must have put me off the scent, though I did feel there was something familiar about you.’

‘Yes, I was. For the first time I have a good-sized garden to play with, plus a very good view, plus a good library and the time to think and . . . well . . . exist.’

‘You also had some kind of academic journal -
Middle Eastern
Archaeology
or something?’

‘Spot on. You were noted by the office for your exceptional powers of observation and recall,’ he said. ‘But David wasn’t nearly so good.’

‘Eyam? Eyam wasn’t on the New Intake Course.’

‘We had a look at him the year before you, but then we decided he was not cut out for the life of an intelligence branch officer abroad, whereas you were a natural. They were very sorry to lose you.’

‘Eyam in SIS.’ She began shaking her head. ‘No, that can’t be true.’

‘He lasted no more than a matter of months and found the whole thing richly comic. Far too intelligent for the work.’

‘What’s that make us?’ she said quickly, still smarting from the news that Eyam had never told her he’d been recruited. Through the whole of their exchange his lips had barely moved, but now Kilmartin’s mouth spread into a sardonic smile and his eyes shone. ‘I think you know that I meant he was too cerebral.’ He took a sip of water from a tumbler.

‘I’ll settle for that,’ she said. ‘Was that time your only contact with him?’

‘No - we worked together on some issues, mostly to do with Central Asia: oil and gas, water, that sort of thing.’

‘At Downing Street?’

BOOK: The Dying Light

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