A Time to Lie

by Simon Berthon

  ‘Did he ever tell you he was suffering from anxiety issues after the car crash? It seems the pills he was given and alcohol didn’t mix too well. It appears to have caused the issue with drink that you noticed.’

  ‘No,’ she said, taken aback. ‘Never.’ She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I wish he had. Is he happy for us to discuss this?’

  ‘Totally. As he told you, he truly wants to know all the ups and downs. We’ll see later what should go in the biography.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  ‘There’s no question of it.’ She relaxed. ‘Perhaps this is my curiosity,’ continued Quine with a smile, ‘but if there hadn’t been this issue, do you think something more might have come of your relationship?’

  She laughed. ‘Well, if I’d known he was going to be Prime Minister…’

  ‘But you found someone else.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Did her body slacken just a millimetre? And the smile fade? Perhaps she was aware of it. ‘And that’s been good,’ she continued. She waved her arms around the room. ‘And this is where I’ve ended up.’ A brief silence fell as they sipped coffee and admired their surroundings.

  ‘So, going back to those first Friday nights,’ resumed Quine, calculating that any submerged ice had been sufficiently broken, ‘Robbie remembers one evening when there was a group of you – it might have included Michael Miller, Mikey they called him…’

  She frowned. ‘He didn’t used to hang around. He was too desperate to get away with whatever poor girl he was about to let down.’ His calculation had been right – no further mentioning of Mikey.

  ‘And Robbie sort of remembers a Hungarian girl, she might have been called Andrea—’

  ‘Good heavens, I was thinking about her just the other day.’ She paused. ‘In the way you do sometimes. Do you ever have that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Quine lied.

  ‘She was only here a few weeks if that, waitressing and cleaning. Sweet little thing.’ She grinned. ‘Sylph-like. That made me envious.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. One Monday morning, she just didn’t turn up. Disappeared.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Just like that.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’ asked Quine lightly.

  ‘I think it may have been one of the Friday evenings.’ She straightened, screwing up her eyes. ‘As I said, I would have gone home, probably left her with Robbie and a couple of others. Maybe his friend, Jed, he used to come sometimes.’

  ‘Jed Fowkes?’

  ‘That’s right. I never really knew him. He was Robbie’s other flatmate, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. You do have a good memory.’

  ‘Amazing how it comes back, isn’t it?’

  ‘But then you heard nothing more from Andrea.’

  ‘No, I was a little upset. I’d tried to be a friend to her. But that was not unusual, not with the temps, particularly the foreign ones. They’d come and go all the time. Change jobs. Fly home, never to return.’

  ‘You don’t happen to remember her full name, do you?’

  ‘Why?’ She looked puzzled. ‘Do you want to track her down?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Quine, trying not to arouse too much curiosity. ‘This is the job Robbie’s asked me to do. Any meeting can bring a connection, and then an anecdote, and then an enjoyable paragraph about misspent youth. The sort of thing that might even make it readable.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ She drained her coffee, jumped up. ‘Follow me,’ she said, setting off along the corridor and down four flights of back stairs, arriving at a semi-basement office with a single window.

  ‘Welcome to Coulthard’s private bank archive,’ she said. ‘No other bank has anything like it. We used to have a full-time archivist, now she only does a day a week. It comes under me so I can come and go as I please.’

  She took a key from the drawer of a bare desk, opened an internal door and hit a couple of switches to reveal a long room, illuminated by rows of strip lights.

  ‘Three hundred years of history,’ she said with pride. ‘It’s held a record of every individual who’s ever worked at Coulthard’s in whatever capacity. I say “held” because under data legislation, we have to try to find them and obtain their written permission. Most don’t mind.’

  She paused, then gave Quine a withering look. ‘Because of those laws, I’m not allowed to tell you that Mikey Miller was one who did mind and insisted on his file being destroyed.’

  Quine wondered if Mikey had once tried it on and not taken no for an answer.

  ‘Where we’ve been unable to contact people,’ she continued, ‘I made the decision to keep their file. I checked with our lawyer and he reckoned no one’s ever going to contest that.’

  She wandered in and out of sliding shelves holding rows of metal boxes. ‘Some used to be in wooden boxes, even cardboard. I had them all transferred.’

  ‘What about digital storage?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘that’s not for the Coulthard’s archive. Not yet anyway. It’s bad enough the business has gone digital. Now the exact year we’re talking is what? 1991?’

  ‘Most likely,’ he replied, ‘though it could also be part of 1992.’

  ‘Right, let’s begin at the beginning. Won’t take long. A year’s box or boxes refers only to those entering that year. However big their file builds, it stays in that one year.’ Near the end of a row, she stopped and started rifling through a box. ‘Andrea’s folder will be thin, just a single sheet or two.’

  Triumphantly she withdrew a card file. ‘Eureka!’

  The file identifier was simply the name ‘Takacs, Andrea’. Pinned on the inside was a black and white, passport-sized photograph. Quine swallowed, allowing Roisin the space to enjoy her discovery. The image was faded but it showed a pretty thin-faced young woman.

  ‘Yes, that’s Andrea.’ She lingered, staring at the picture. ‘I wonder what happened to her.’

  Inside were two cards. One gave start and end of employment dates, the second a line showing three weekly wage payments.

  Moving alongside Roisin, Quine tried to scrutinize the two cards, searching for an address. All he could immediately make out, handwritten in capitals on the first card, was ‘BUDAPEST, HUNGARY’.

  ‘There’s a word written before Budapest,’ he said.

  She brought it closer. ‘It’s hard to read, almost illegible.’ She handed it to Quine.

  ‘Do you have a magnifying glass?’ he asked.

  Her forehead creased. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I’m incurably inquisitive,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘In that case…’ her voice tailed off. She turned and walked back towards the office, he followed with the file. She searched a couple of drawers and pulled out a small case, opening it to reveal a round glass. She handed it to him.

  He stared through it for at least half a minute before giving up.

  ‘Give it to me, that word could be my writing,’ she said. ‘My first job was junior secretary in Personnel – as we used to call it. We added extra information as and when we obtained it.’ She concentrated for a moment. ‘Hmm, I could have done better. Looks to me it begins with something like P, u, s, z…’

  Quine had a final look for himself. She could certainly be right about the capital P and lower-case z. He handed the file back to her. Was this the end of the trail?

  ‘So are you going to fly off to Hungary to find the Prime Minister’s girl who disappeared?’ she asked, eyes sparkling.

  Quine almost shuddered at the way she had put it. He forced a smile. ‘I’m afraid the budget won’t extend to that. Not even for the long-lost redhead. What a shame! A Prime Minister’s love that fate cut short. I can hear myself writing it.’

  ‘Hold on, Joe, he only met her once. As far as I know.’

  ‘Sorry, getting carried away.’

  ‘And I thought it was me he fancied,’ she said with mock offence.

  ‘I was a journalist, Roisin. Never
let the facts get in the way of a good story.’

  She replaced the file and they returned to the office. He did not want to appear to make too much of the discovery by leaving curtly and they chatted for a while.

  Then, suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘going back to Andrea, maybe it was her Robbie had a soft spot for. I remember him asking more than once when he took me out those couple of times if I knew what had happened to her.’ She paused. ‘It was almost as if he was anxious about it.’

  ‘Or sad that she’d gone?’ added Quine.

  ‘Who knows?’ Leaving the question hanging, she looked at her watch.

  Quine took the hint and rose. They walked companionably down the stairs to the reception hall.

  ‘No,’ said Quine, taking his coat from the commissionaire, ‘I reckon it was you he had the crush on.’ He grinned. ‘I think you’d have been a very good first lady of Number 10.’

  She returned the grin. ‘I dare say I might have.’

  Sandford flicked a surreptitious glance at his watch: 11.44 a.m. Forty-four minutes into Cabinet Economic Committee, sixteen minutes to go. At times like this, it was not just the aloneness, but the sheer tedium; the sitting, apparently watching intently, his mind utterly elsewhere. He glanced at his new Chancellor, wisely nodding at every utterance. He wondered how many of them she understood.

  His mind kept returning to the ugly scene of the night before. He told himself it was Carol’s fault, she had no right to root around his private correspondence. He wasn’t levelling with her because he couldn’t. She should accept that and trust him, not suspect him. But he shouldn’t have reacted the way he did. Jed’s story was turning him into a person he did not recognize or like. The argument even made him begin to wonder if he was someone with the capacity for violence.

  Truth remained the only solution. Quine’s email insisted they meet face to face after his meeting with Roisin Osborne. Like it or not, he must go through with it and allow Quine to get as far down the trail as he could – whether it ended up destroying him or not. That night he sent an email from Salisbury Square.

  PAUL REYNOLDS

  To: jonathan1234moore@gmail.com

  Re: meet

  Hi Jonathan

  Sorry about the short notice. 7.30am, Archbishop’s Park, main gate. Jogging gear. We’ll do a couple of circuits. Forecast good.

  Cheers

  Paul

  Quine read it twice, murmured, ‘Thanks, Robbie,’ and set the alarm for 6.15 a.m.

  42

  Quine rolled out of bed at the alarm’s first repeat. He crept unsteadily to the bathroom, filled the basin with cold water, buried his face in it for a few seconds, then harshly brushed his teeth. The cab was booked for 7 a.m.; plenty of time to get to Lambeth. As for jogging clothes and trainers – those had all gone up in flames along with Beatrice. It was another reminder that he was losing condition all too quickly. He dressed in what he had: jacket, trousers and brown moccasins.

  The cab dropped him at 7.25 a.m. as the main gate to the park was opening. He saw Sandford approaching with a jogger on each side – protection officers, he assumed – and an escort car creeping along the road behind. As the party reached the gate, Sandford slowed down and inspected him.

  ‘Did I catch you unprepared?’ he said.

  ‘You might have to slow down. No Saturday lie-ins for the Prime Minister then.’

  ‘Got to keep fit.’ Sandford slapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll walk to the nature garden.’

  They found a bench surrounded by rhododendron bushes. The jogging escort took up positions nearby. ‘You said it was urgent,’ said Sandford quietly. ‘Ten minutes, OK?’

  Quine first summarized the tracking of Jed and his movements on the eve of Morland-Cross’s suicide.

  ‘You think the two men he allowed in killed him?’ asked Sandford.

  ‘We’ve no evidence. But yes. They disappear inside the Treasury, then no further sign of them.’

  ‘They’d need to have been passed out.’

  Quine calculated. ‘Then Fowkes’s movements that evening need to be looked at. There might be something on CCTV.’

  ‘I can’t go there. Not yet,’ said Sandford. He saw Quine’s frustration. ‘I’ve an update too.’ Sandford gave a full account of how he had played Fowkes and Morland-Cross off against each other.

  Quine would never have suspected him of such low cunning. ‘So that explains Jed’s fury.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Sandford. ‘If I’d known this was going to be the consequence—’

  ‘Been and gone now,’ said Quine more roughly than he meant.

  ‘I’ve done what you said, Joe. Jed should now be thinking he’s controlling me. Not a position I like much.’

  ‘I understand. Now we have to see where it leads. We’ve been keeping an eye on him.’ Quine described Fowkes’s visit to IPRM in Mayfair and the ensuing car chase. ‘That means the MI5 operative may be compromised. It also means MI5 is now more officially involved, like it or not. They take against their people being tailed. Robbie, you’ve got to bring the security services fully onboard. It’s impossible otherwise. Tracking Jed has to be a professional operation.’

  Sandford sighed, then caught the eye of an escort. This was going to take longer than he had bargained for. He held up the outspread palms of both hands to indicate ten.

  ‘I can’t tell them everything.’

  ‘No. But there’s enough on Fowkes after yesterday to justify full-scale surveillance. Whether Fowkes’s contacts include Deschevaux, or are just Grainger and Schmidt, we don’t know.’

  ‘Where are we on Jed’s fantasy?’ Sandford did not hide his anxiety.

  Quine knew he was bound to ask and, even up until this moment, had been unsure how to answer. He chose his words carefully. ‘I’ve not yet been able to find anything that disproves it. Which in no way means it’s not an invention.’

  ‘Just do the facts, Joe.’

  ‘OK. Since we last talked, I’ve met Mikey Miller and Roisin Osborne. Mikey says there might well have been a Friday evening group at the pub as Fowkes described. He later went elsewhere with a girl. Roisin Osborne also recalls an evening beginning as Fowkes says and that she left when it became a bit “hectic” as she put it. Finally, Coulthard’s private bank archive records that a Hungarian girl called Andrea Takacs worked there in 1991. After just a few weeks – three in fact – she didn’t return to work on the Monday morning and left no contact address. She’s never been seen again.’

  Quine tried not to look too piercingly at Sandford. But even a glance told him the man sitting beside him was near breaking point.

  He closed his eyes for several seconds. ‘I see.’

  ‘I did ask Mikey Miller about whether there had been any instance of group sex in the way you described. He said it happened once when he wasn’t there. It was organized by a friend of his who claimed the girl was a willing part of it. He was extremely angry with him. The friend said you had no part in it and ended up comforting the girl.’

  ‘That’s something, isn’t it,’ said Sandford. ‘Prime Minister not part of gang-bang. God, what have we come to.’

  ‘Remember there’s no proof whatsoever of Jed’s Andrea Takacs accusation,’ continued Quine. ‘Or that the skeleton has anything to do with her. The next step has to be Budapest. I’ve a freelance on standby there—’

  ‘Is that wise?’ interrupted Sandford.

  ‘His need to know will be extremely restricted. It’s the obvious avenue to explore.’ Quine saw his reluctance – or was it plain fear? ‘Robbie, you and I are the only people with this information. It remains speculative. Without Fowkes’s story – a man whose recent actions vastly reduce his credibility – there’s no need for anyone else to know. If the remains do turn out to be Andrea Takacs, there is still no evidence of you playing any part in what happened to her.’

  ‘Except Jed’s story.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Sandford al
lowed himself a few seconds to consider. ‘OK. Go to Hungary if your freelance finds anything. After that, let’s see. My God, I wish I could remember that night.’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘Or is it better that I don’t?’

  43

  Gazing up from the tarmac three mornings later at the massive curved roof of Budapest airport’s Skycourt, Quine thought how much must have changed since Andrea Takacs, hardly out of her teens, had embarked on her adventure to London nearly three decades before. Her own country had barely emerged from the iron grip of the Soviet bloc; a two-and-a-half-hour flight would have transported her to a throbbing hub of western capitalism with all its excesses. He felt a wave of sympathy for her.

  He had asked a former colleague, the foreign editor at The Post, if he could point to a reliable freelance in Budapest with good research skills. The colleague knew Quine well enough not to ask for details and recommended a stringer, Pete Kovacs, who filed for The Post when a story either in Hungary itself or the neighbouring countries needed a body on the ground. At Quine’s instruction, Kovacs held up a board at arrivals saying simply ‘I’m Pete’. Even though IPRM did not appear to operate in Hungary, he had not forgotten Isla’s warning.

  He approached the fair-haired, smiling young man holding up the sign and stretched out his hand.

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘Sure, that’s me.’ He sounded Californian.

  ‘Great. Call me Joe.’

  Kovacs looked at his watch. ‘One thirty, only ten minutes behind. You can relax.’ Kovacs had assured him that afternoon was the right time to make the move and he could do it as a day trip, as long as the target showed. Two and a half hours in the air, allow for an hour’s delay, a one-hour time change, twenty minutes through the airport and a one-hour drive. ‘Welcome to Hungary,’ said Kovacs, ‘even if you’ll only see how flat most of it is.’

  Leaving the short-term car park, Quine cast the occasional surreptitious glance over his shoulder. They headed east, carving through the northern stretches of the great Hungarian plain. ‘Cowboy country,’ said Kovacs.