The Oktober Projekt (13 page)

‘You think I’m here on C’s orders?’

Looking deep into her eyes, Nick wondered how much he could
trust anyone anymore. He grabbed a pebble and hurled it over the low wall. ‘Are
you?’

‘I thought you knew me better than that,’ she said, her head
slightly turned as she gazed out into the heart of the bay, resting her chin on
her arched knees as the hailstones stopped.

‘I did but now you’re just a good friend.’

Shrugging her shoulders, Jane drew away from him. ‘Don’t push
it, Nick.’

Sitting there with the sea grinding on the shale far below, he
realised that Angie threatening to divorce him was another hole punched into
the fabric of his life. When they told Nick his mother had died, committed
suicide, he blamed his father, hated the sea with a bitterness that lasted
months. He just didn’t understand that empty hunger in his stomach, the
unfairness of it all. It was as if someone had stolen the sun.
  

‘I think Paul’s had enough time,’ Nick decided, hauling Jane to
her feet.

When they returned to the cottage Rossan and his team were
applying the final touches, everything chemically cleaned, the body removed and
all signs of a fatal struggle wiped away. Rossan busily inspecting everything
three times, badgering Nick if he was going to be all right on his own. ‘He got
in through the kitchen window, smashed it I’m afraid, but we’ve boarded it,’ he
explained.

‘I’ll be fine, I’ve nowhere else to go,’ Nick confessed.
‘Angie’s thrown me out.’

‘Come stay with me, or I can leave a couple of the boys,’
offered Rossan as the team returned to their vans.

‘It’s not a problem,’ insisted Nick.

With a final check, Rossan wished him well. ‘See if you can
make him see sense,’ he urged Jane as he swept out.

‘Impossible,’ she said.

As Rossan’s car followed the vans up the track the gravel
crunching under their tyres, Nick went into the kitchen.

‘The coffee’s going to be a while,’ he shouted through to her,
clumsily spooning instant coffee into two mugs, his swollen fingers bruised and
tender.

‘No problem,’ Jane answered from the living room.

She stood by the window reliving the view. There were four sown
arable fields running away to the cliff edge. Beneath the cliff Horseley Cove,
Sharpers Head, Sharpers Cove and Dutch End, the remainder, the English Channel
and a stormy half-formed horizon took the eye towards France. Jane knew the
coastline and she knew the view; remembered from distant summers when the wispy
fields of barley curved their heads a field at a time, bending on the warm
drafts of feint breezes, days that she preferred not to dwell on. Pleasant
tranquil times in the walled garden crowded with monkshood, buddleia, dog-rose
and pellitory-of-the-wall, lying on a blanket covering the grass stubble.
They’d spent hours here during their first two Oxford summers, Jane counting
clouds, her head resting on Nick’s stomach as he summoned up the ghosts of dead
poets.

Picking up an embroidered scatter cushion she threw it on the
sofa, one more of Angie’s touches, a little bit of Putney transported down to
make her feel more bohemian.

‘You kept everything more or less the same,’ she said, coming
through into the kitchen, holding a chipped pirate figurine.

‘It’s how I like it.’ He touched a big black kettle with the
back of his hand, waiting for it to boil on a lazy Aga.

‘Bought this in Kingsbridge didn’t we?’ she said, turning the pirate
round in her hands.

‘We’d had too much to drink.’

‘We we’re happy,’ she said, catching a quick flash of pain on
Nick’s face.

‘You had a thing about buying things as tokens of your life
journey,’ he said, pouring boiling water into the mugs. ‘Each object makes the
journey into the future secure, always knowing that there’s something there to
stop us becoming strangers with the past, I think is how you explained it.’

Jane felt guilty that he remembered her philosophy so well. ‘I
still believe it.’ Glancing at the whisky bottle and mug on the sink, she
asked, ‘Don’t you?’ She came and touched his hand.

For all the tenderness intended it might have been the tip of a
knife, for Nick abruptly dragged his hand away covering his haste by adding
milk to the coffee.

‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ he said stiffly.

Unable to comfort him as she had done in the past she stood
back, consoling him with her strong eyes, deep and extremely green.

‘Then you never had any faith in me,’ she laughed. ‘That was
one of the reasons…’ she caught herself and shrugged.

They moved through to the living room deliberately standing
apart, the heat from the log stove thoughtfully lit by one of Rossan’s team lay
trapped under the low ceiling burning their faces. The window had steamed up so
Nick dusted it with his lower arm, taking in the view; the long bead of golden
light on the horizon, the dark wind stunned trees in the garden framed against
the sea and bands of swirling sleet.

From the fields he heard a tractor churn through the sleet,
course and strong cutting through the molten air. Behind him Jane was
reminiscing to show how much she still cared, reminding Nick of this, of that;
Nick not really paying attention letting her run on, as he knew she would. ‘I’m
sorry about you and Angie,’ she finally admitted.

On how much she meant it Nick wisely refused an urge to press
her, instead, he turned his attention to the window staring through the arms of
sleet to the indistinct forms of ships slyly creeping by.

In one graceful curve she had risen from the sofa and gone to
the kitchen. ‘So what’s this about a Latvian lead?’ she called above the
running water.

Listening while she washed her cup the pipes hammering under
the pressure, he thought again of the little accountant’s fear.

‘Wynn had a Latvian source and it’s just a way of making sure
that I get through the door,’ he told her, using the same story he’d fed
Rossan.

‘Well when you find out what she was working on, let me know,
we really need an answer,’ she said, returning from the kitchen.

‘Has Parfrey been grilled why the collection flopped?’

She brushed a cobweb from the windowpane at a rush, using the
back of her hand. ‘I’ve spoken to Ruth and she’s just as puzzled as the rest of
us,’ she said.

‘She would be.’

‘You haven’t many friends left, Nick,’ she reminded him
angrily. ‘Why not let me help you,’ she urged facing him, her troubled face a
mask with tiny hairline cracks starting to form. ‘After what happened down
here, Roly, Teddy and C are going to believe that Lubov offered you an insight
into his material. If he gave you anything, Nick, the actual product or the
means to get to it, then for God’s sake, share it.’

Withdrawn into his own dark world he refused to hear her
petition, muttering something he could not catch she stormed off into the
kitchen.

‘I don’t want anymore death,’ he said softly, as though it was
an idea he had given much thought.

‘You don’t have the right to make those decisions,’ she said,
coming back, staring at him. ‘Look, it’s time I got going anyway,’ she
announced, gathering up her bag and jacket.

‘I appreciate the visit,’ he said as he walked her to the door.

‘Anytime you need to talk, to share, you know I’ll be waiting,’
she smiled, kissing him gently on his swollen cheek. Nick watched as she
started the car, reversed it and set off up the track. He waved but Jane never
waved back.

After Jane had gone Nick poured a generous measure of Laphroaig
into his mug, turned off all the lights, absently staring out at the sea. He
fell asleep dreaming of reconciliation with Angie and awoke shivering and
freezing as a car bumped down the track before dawn. He heard the engine’s
piercing notes before its headlights shattered the gloom, that mysterious murky
light that always lingers on land bordering the sea, the car’s bright beams
forcing hard shadows against the living room wall.

Through the window he glimpsed the shape of a Service car
coming to a halt. Opening the cottage door Nick waited for the driver to
approach, a thin small man Nick knew as Ray who occasionally acted as a
personal driver to the top floor.

‘Sorry to bother you sir, but Mr. Blackmore asks if you could
accompany me back to London.’

‘What’s happened?’ demanded Nick, thinking of Angie.

‘Afraid I’m not privy to that, sir, but I know I haven’t to take
no for an answer and you’ve to ride with me. My colleague Peter,’ he pointed to
his passenger, ‘will drive your vehicle back for you, sir.’

In the car Ray demonstrated all his skills as a professional
courteous chauffeur, checking with Nick if the temperature was comfortable
enough, if he minded Radio 2 played low, though Nick not really caring, only
objected to the radio.

‘You’ve no idea what’s going on?’ Nick tried again as Ray
steered a true course through the village.

‘Not a clue, sir, but it sounds like something major, because
there’s a call gone out for all the senior people.’

‘Right.’

‘Wouldn’t happen to know where Miss Stratton might be
contacted, would you sir? No one can find her.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen her,’ Nick told him, sitting back.

Five

A Lonely Place to Die

Highgate Wood, November

Bumping
down the rutted disused railway trackbed in the Service car, Nick
grunted as each pothole delivered a decisive jab to his lower spine. Glancing
ahead, he winced as the pain reached a crescendo before fading.
 

‘This is as far I can go, sir,’ said Ray, nudging the car up
onto a dull grass mound, stopping a hundred yards short of a metal latticework
bridge illuminated by the flashes from crime scene photographers.

‘It’s fine, I’ll walk.’

‘Shall I wait for you, sir?’

‘No, I’ll manage, thanks,’ said Nick, sliding out.

Drawn up at the head of the bridge he saw that the circus had
really come to town. Area cars, traffic cars, unmarked Fords and Vauxhalls were
parked at awkward angles surrounding the bridge like lifeboats around a listing
ship. A far away headache threatened more pain and Nick lit a cigarette before
committing himself to another place of death, a moment of contemplation and
assessment, enjoy. Had Hawick some perverse wish to pin something else at
Nick’s door? he wondered, marching forward. Coming up behind him the steady
drone of a vehicle negotiating its way; moving to one side Nick made way for a
private ambulance that had to wait at the perimeter police tape for admission.
Three police constables in their absurd high-visibility jackets wound back a
length of tape, letting the ambulance through. As Nick was halted by one of the
constables a series of camera flashes bounced out from under the bridge, and
with his name and ID checked against an official list, Nick was logged as
entering the crime scene. Deviating from the old trackbed he climbed a grass
embankment. Steeper than Nick originally thought, he had to prevent himself
slipping with his hands as he sought a vantage point on higher ground. When he
stepped onto a concrete wall forming a buttress into the bridge, his palms were
smeared with mud and his cords were grubby around the hems.
 

From up here he could make out senior uniformed police
officers, CID and Special Branch detectives, officers from the Security Service
and SIS, hurrying backwards and forwards, holding snatched discussions in
random groups then floating away. In their own small select huddle, Hawick,
Rossan and Blackmore attended by a tactical commander; their attention on what
seemed to be a very slight figure suspended from the bridge, and Nick knew at
once that Angie was safe.

Skidding back down the embankment Nick walked over and stood at
Rossan’s side.

‘Who is it?’ Nick asked.

‘Jo Lister, one of Parfrey’s,’ Rossan said.

Acknowledging Nick’s arrival with a scowl, Blackmore looked
skywards and yelled at a senior police officer to get those news helicopters
grounded and keep the soddin’ cameras away. ‘And bring me the head of the
lunatic who briefed the ruddy press,’ he added for good measure.

In the inky gloom the body moved gently in the cold air,
forwards and back, a black pendulum keeping its own beat; swinging rhythmically
under and out from the railway bridge.

‘Is it being treated as suspicious?’ Nick asked.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Any witnesses?’

‘A courting couple, God help us. Said they saw a van, a beat up
thing, something you get at second-hand auctions, partial name of a company
down its side. Two or three males and a female were apparently lurking around
it. We’re working on it,’ disclosed Rossan with a dog weary sigh.

 
‘What time did she
die?’

‘God knows.’

‘So why she’s still up there?’

‘Health and safety,’ snarled Rossan. ‘Bloody police, they’re
trying to locate some contraption that will allow them to get her safely down.’

Hawick in a complete lather, turned from the bridge and
irritably ordered Rossan that they must have a complete news blackout for
reasons of national security.

‘A D-A Notice, Paul, as fast as you can,’ he said.

Giving Nick a weary shrug, Rossan moved off punching in a
number on his phone.
 

‘Where’s our G.I. Jane?’ yelled Blackmore and Rossan flung up
his arms, saying he’d put a call out for her. ‘Nicholas… you finally made it,’
called Blackmore, zeroing in on Nick.

‘Thought I was unwanted, an outcast,’ Nick said.

‘This, Nicholas, is getting out of hand,’ said Blackmore
blithely, ignoring Nick’s point.

‘Can’t somebody stop that thing rotating like that,’ pleaded
Hawick, distracted by Lister’s body moving in the wind, before being taken off
to a discrete distance for an impromptu conference by the tactical commander.

‘It’s a bit late to start worrying about things getting out of
hand,’ Nick suggested, his mood quickly souring.

‘Parfrey’s been informed,’ snapped Rossan walking by, banging
in a new set of numbers on his phone.
 

After being briefed by the tactical commander, Hawick returned.
‘Too early to tell if it’s suicide or not,’ he explained, as though this was a
crime in itself.

‘This had better not blow up in our faces,’ Blackmore fumed, as
Hawick shouted at one of his own officers to find Stratton, and make it quick.
‘Because relations between Downing Street and us are fragile to say the least.’

‘When have they ever been anything other,’ lamented Hawick.

‘Now we’ll have the bloody Yanks thinking twice about blowing
their noses in front of us,’ complained Blackmore. ‘So what do you deduct from
all this, Mr. Sherlock, bloody Torr?’ demanded Blackmore, pointing at the body.
‘Suicide or foul play?’

‘It’s too much of a coincidence,’ Nick suggested.

‘Course it bloody is,’ Blackmore agreed. ‘What do we concur
then? This slip of a girl was a suspect apple planted into our barrel by the
Ruskies? Or did she know something she shouldn’t?’

‘She knew something,’ proposed Nick, as another camera flash illuminated
the rusty girders under the bridge.

‘And what would that be?’
Blackmore demanded incredulously.

‘It’s a bit late to ask her,’ retorted Nick.

Hawick warned him not to be facetious and concentrate on what
was going on.

‘As far as I was aware, nothing is going on,’ answered
Nick.
 

‘Just as nothing went on at your cottage,’ Blackmore reminded
him.

‘We do get to hear things,’ Hawick informed him. ‘And whether
your attacker was Spetsnaz will be something else to be determined at the
inquiry. You know how C is particularly paranoid that the past should not
intrude into the present,’ declared Hawick.
 

‘Well he would, wouldn’t he,’ quipped Blackmore, ‘One of the
reasons that he was appointed wasn’t it?’

Hawick on the back foot couldn’t compete with Blackmore’s
onslaught, throwing up his arms up in despair.

Reappearing through a scrum of police, Rossan was grimmer than
Nick could ever remember seeing him. ‘We’ve just had confirmation that our dear
departed friend,’ he said nodding to Lister’s body, ‘had requested an interview
with our internal security people tomorrow morning.’

‘That is all we need,’ groaned Hawick.

‘What? Another examination of the Service by the PM and his
cat,’ snorted Blackmore. ‘This girl a Moscow agent? And they topped her to save
a bigger fish? Ruddy far fetched, if you ask me. It’ll be boy trouble, or girl
trouble, it usually is, and I’ve directed Special Branch to make enquiries into
her love life,’ he added quite pleased with himself.

‘Or Moscow trouble,’ offered Nick.
 

‘This a confirmed lead from your Latvian source, is it?’
Blackmore asked in a low aside, a sharp smile on his lips. ‘Little bird told us
all about it.’

‘We cannot and must not start making wild connections between
the events in Moscow, Hamburg and here,’ Hawick asserted.

‘I didn’t,’ said Nick, as the private ambulance passed through
carrying Jo Lister’s body away.

‘God almighty,’ said Blackmore, turning serious, urgent.

Heading towards them Sir Martin Bailrigg, Chief of the Service,
escorted by an Assistant Commissioner who was providing a private tour of the
scene.

‘Thank you,’ Bailrigg said joining them, dismissing his guide.

Standing in front of Nick, Hawick and Blackmore he took them
all in, one at a time. A tall thin figure, his hair combed back but tugged out
of place by the wind. He wore a waxed Barbour jacket, his hands jammed into the
pockets and he gave the impression of a head gamekeeper briefing his beaters.

‘Disaster, after unmitigated disaster,’ he told them, his
shoulders slouched. ‘I have just come from Downing Street and I anticipate…and
the Prime Minister anticipates…from here on in, that this will be handled with
discretion,’ Bailrigg declared.

‘That would be a first,’ Nick said under his breath, though it
wasn’t low enough because Blackmore whipped round in his direction.
               

‘As for
your
future,’
Bailrigg sniped, turning on Nick, ‘there can be no other decision other than
continued suspension,’ he stated curtly. ‘And, gentlemen, we need to be
prepared for a cold shoulder from all our friends,’ he warned, taking a few
steps away from Nick his broadside not over, ‘because I can see that there are
going to be more questions about our standing in the days ahead.’ With his
authority bestowed on them, he straightened his hair before stomping off.

‘Ah, at bloody last,’ Blackmore roared as Jane appeared, ‘glad
you could make it to the party.’

‘I didn’t feel too well,’ she explained, not looking at Nick.

‘One of Parfrey’s,’ Blackmore told her, leading Jane away.

Hawick left flapping, embarrassed by C’s unexpected visit,
quickly attempted to rebuild his self-esteem and standing. ‘You still have many
answers to provide,’ he insisted, turning on Nick.

‘I’ve nothing to hide,’ retorted Nick.

‘We shall see,’ Hawick said, fully wound up. ‘No official
contact with anyone and I expect you to be at Aspley first thing in the
morning.’

Not answering, Nick walked away thinking how it was such an
awful and lonely place to die.

• • •

Vyacheslav Cheboksary avoided
publicity. A billionaire who’d made his fortune from the Russian gas and oil
industry, he assiduously refused interviews, appeared rarely at public
functions and regarded London as the preferred home for his family. His Cadogan
Place house covering five floors peered imperiously over private gardens, and
seemed to Nick that morning to resemble more of an embassy than a family home.
He held his briefcase tight in his right hand on his measured approach to the
house, going over what Mike Stanhill, a Special Branch Detective Chief
Inspector had told him over the telephone. ‘Galina Myla entered a year ago as
an INF 17. That’s overseas domestic worker status to you and me, employed as a
nanny. She entered when the family brought their entire Moscow household with
them. She went walkabout six months ago and nobody’s clapped eyes on her
since.’ So how did
she
know the little
accountant? wondered Nick.

Security cameras tracked him along the pavement, tilting to
follow him up the steps to the front door. A door so shiny Nick could see his
reflection quite clearly, a door opened by a former butler to the royal
family.
 
Scrutinising Nick’s UK
Border Agency ID with measured disdain, he pointed him down the basement steps
to a door marked ‘Domestic Office and Visitors’.

Before Nick had even given half of his false name into an intercom,
a woman in her thirties snapped open a frosted glass panelled black door.
Dressed in a smart business suit, she gathered her hair into a bunch and
expertly applied a plain band to form a high ponytail in one movement.

‘It is Sunday,’ she began, her English good but not enough to
mask her native Russian accent. ‘And uninvited callers never, never use the
main door of the house,’ she continued, ripping into Nick.

‘I’m from the UK Border Agency,’ he replied, offering an
official measured smile from an overworked officer who is routinely abused,
offering also his false ID for inspection. ‘I’d like to ask some questions
regarding Galina Myla. You are?’

‘Katya Malova, the
household manager,’ she announced waspishly, thrusting back the ID.

‘Well, Ms. Malova, I’m afraid that investigations into breaches
of visa regulations cannot be confined between Monday to Friday.’

‘You should have rung to make an appointment,’ she countered,
not prepared to admit Nick.

‘Some visits have to be made unannounced,’ Nick said dryly,
‘that way we find individuals haven’t prepared themselves.’

‘To lie, to be dishonest?’ Malova snapped.

‘Sometimes,’ Nick retorted sternly, ‘people do employ all
manner of strategies to remain in this country beyond the limit of their visas
and work permits.’ He lifted his leather briefcase and clutched it to his chest
as he tried to find something it contained. ‘Do you mind if we continue our
interview inside?’

Malova seemed to mind a great deal and Nick thought his visit
was about to collapse, but Malova’s sharp blue eyes scanned him and sensing no
threat she stepped aside and invited Nick into her office.

Taking a seat behind her desk, she pointed Nick to a two-seat
sofa in a corner between filing cabinets. Opening a jotter, uncapping a
fountain pen she signalled she was ready for business.

‘I’m investigating Galina Myla,’ Nick started, opening his
briefcase taking out a folder he’d bulked out with random, unrelated documents.
‘According to our records,’ Nick admitted, as though he had many records to
read, ‘Galina Myla proved to be an entirely reliable employee during her
initial employment in London.’

‘Mr. Thompson,’ she said with a world-weary sigh. ‘I have been
over this girl’s disappearance already, five times. I believed I had carried
out my duty and notified the authorities in the first place.’