by Ian Rankin
‘What else have we got, sir?’
‘Not much. Not yet. But the assassin did leave some clues behind.’
‘What sort of clues?’
‘Things required to do the job. The handcuffs for a start, six pairs. You don’t just place an order for six pairs of handcuffs without someone raising an eyebrow. Then there was some ...’
‘Sticky-backed plastic,’ offered Doyle helpfully. ‘That’s what they used to call it on Blue Peter.’
‘Probably bought locally. There’s a murder team busy at the scene. They’ll do what they can, ask around, check the various shops ...’
‘You don’t sound too hopeful, sir.’
‘I’ll admit, John, I’m not. This was a pro, albeit one with a warped sense of humour. She won’t have left many real clues, though Christ knows how many red herrings we’ll find. And even if we trace the stuff back to a shop, what will we get? A general description of a female. She can change her looks in minutes: wig, hair-dye, make-up, new clothes...’
Shape-changer, thought Greenleaf. What did you call them? Proteus? Now that he thought of it, why weren’t there more women con artists around? So easy for them to chop and change disguises: high heels and low heels, padding round the waist or in the bra, hair-dye... yes, a complete identity change in minutes. Trilling was right.
‘But at least now, sir,’ he offered, ‘we know we are dealing with a woman, and we know she did land in the country. At least now we’ve got two facts where before we only had guesses.’
‘True,’ agreed Commander Trilling.
‘But at the same time,’ added Doyle, ‘she’s finished her job before we’ve even had half a chance. She could already be back out of the country.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Greenleaf said quietly. Doyle and Trilling looked at him, seeking further explanation. He obliged. ‘You don’t hire an outside contractor for a single hit like this. And nobody’s going to blow up two boats just because they’re on a job to bump off a solitary banker. It has to be bigger, don’t you think?’
‘You’ve got a point,’ said Trilling.
‘I’ve trained him well, sir,’ added Doyle. ‘Yes, doesn’t make much sense, does it? Unless the whole thing is one huge red herring, keeping us busy up in Jockland while Witch is busy elsewhere.’
‘Could be,’ said Greenleaf. ‘But there’s something else in one of those reports, the ones Mrs Parry sent over. Something said by that man Elder. He points out that Witch often kills for money in order to finance another operation. What is it he says?’ Greenleaf threw his head back, quoting from memory. ‘To finance her “pursuit of a pure terrorism, untainted by monetary, political or propaganda gain”.’ He shrugged self-effacingly. ‘Something like that.’
‘As I say, sir,’ Doyle said to Trilling with a wink, ‘I’ve trained him well.’ And turning to Greenleaf: ‘You’re doing fine, John. Just remember who it was taught you everything you know.’
‘How can I forget?’ said Greenleaf.
The final edition of the day’s Evening Standard ran with the story, as did other evening papers throughout the country. In Edinburgh and Glasgow, copies of those cities’ evening offerings were snapped up. Radio news expanded on their previous day’s coverage of the murder. Nor did television show much restraint as more details were leaked. Diversions had to be set up either end of the lane, to stop the curious blocking the road outside Khan’s house. In the field across from the house, a sky-platform, the sort used by firemen tackling fires and by council workers changing the lightbulbs in street-lamps, stood parked beneath a telegraph pole. The platform had been elevated to the height of the top of the pole, so that two CID men (afraid of heights and gripping on to the safety bar) could be shown by a British Telecom engineer just how the alarm wires from Khan’s house had been severed. Prior to this, forensic scientists had taken the juddering trip to the top of the pole, dusting the junction box and photographing sections of the wooden pole itself, picking out the holes made by climbing-spikes and the chafing of the wood made by some sort of harness. The engineer was clear in his own mind.
‘It was another telephone engineer,’ he told the murder squad detectives. ‘Had to be. He had all the gear, and he knew just what he was doing.’ The detectives didn’t bother telling him that he’d even got the sex wrong. They were keen to get back to Dundee, back to their watering holes where ears would be keen to hear the details. They pitied their poor colleagues who’d been sent to track down Fablon and garden twine, leaving no general store or garden centre unturned. But at least garden centres were sited on terra firma, and not forty feet up in the air ...
In London, Joyce Parry sat in a railway station buffet, drinking tea and deep in thought. During her many telephone conversations that day and the evening before, no one had uttered much by way of condolence regarding Khan. He was a loss, but only as a merchantable item, not as a human being. His information had been useful, of course, but it could be gained in other ways. GCHQ already provided a lot of data - Khan’s snippets had often served only to confirm or consolidate what was already known. Intelligence services in other countries, for example, passed on information about the bank’s operations abroad. Joyce Parry hoped the bank would not find itself in trouble because of Khan. One bad apple shouldn’t be allowed to ... She’d already had to divert the attention of the Serious Fraud Office. If the drug barons and crime cartels moved their money out of the bank ... well, then the security services would have to start all over again, locating the new bank, shifting spheres of operation so that the new bank was part of the orbit. Time-consuming, expensive, and prone to losses. No, Joyce Parry hoped things would stay as they were. She hoped upon hope.
And she drank her tea, though ‘tea’ was not the most suitable description for the liquid in front of her. On the menu the drink was described as fresh-leaf tea. Well, it had been fresh once upon a time, she supposed, in some other country.
After her hectic morning - so many people who needed to be notified of Khan’s demise and of the manner of his dying - she’d found time in her office for a moment’s reflection... again, curiously enough, over a cup of tea. She’d reflected, then she’d made yet another call.
To Dominic Elder.
‘Dominic, it’s Joyce.’
‘Ah, Joyce, I was beginning to wonder... Can I assume something has happened?’
‘A killing.’
‘Someone important?’
‘No.’
‘Someone murdered to order?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought that’s how it would be. She’s just earned the money she needs for her own future hit.’
‘What makes you so sure it was Witch?’
‘You wouldn’t have phoned otherwise.’
She’d smiled at that. So simple. ‘Of course,’ she’d said. ‘Well, it was a woman. We don’t have a description.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if you did,’ he said calmly.
‘No.’
‘So what now?’
‘Special Branch are checking—’
‘Yes, fine, but what now?’ The voice not so calm any more. ‘The police can check till Doomsday. They’ll find only as much as she wants them to.’
‘You don’t think Witch’s job is finished?’
‘Joyce, I don’t think it’s even begun...’
The door of the buffet opened, interrupting her reverie. He was carrying a suitcase which he placed on the floor beside her booth before sliding on to the seat opposite her.
‘Hello, Joyce. I was expecting more of a welcome.’
‘Your train’s early. I was going to wait for you on the platform.’
He smiled. ‘I was being ironic.’
‘Oh.’ She looked down at her hands. They lay palms down on the table-top, either side of her cup. Then she slid one of them across the table towards him and lightly touched his fingers. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Dominic.’
‘Nice to be here. How’s the tea?’
She laugh
ed. ‘Terrible.’
‘Thought as much. What about a drink?’
‘A drink?’
‘It’s what people do in pubs.’
‘A drink.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Yes, all right.’
‘You can even treat me to dinner if you like.’
She almost winced. ‘Sorry, Dominic, previous engagement.’
‘Oh.’
‘Official business. I can’t worm out of it this late on.’
‘No problem. I shall dine alone in the teeming city. Is Delpuy’s still open?’
‘Delpuy’s? God, I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t been there in - well, since well, not for ages.’
‘I’ll give it a try. Did you find me a room?’
‘Yes. Quite central, quite reasonable. I can drop you off if you like.’
‘Is there time for that drink?’
‘Just about.’
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ He slid back out of the booth. She pushed the tea aside and stood up too. For a moment they were inches apart, facing one another. He leaned towards her and pecked her on the cheek before picking up his case. ‘After you,’ he said.
Making to unlock her car-boot, she dropped her keys and had to bend to pick them up. Elder was asking her a question, but she didn’t catch it.
‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘I said, who’s my contact at Special Branch?’
‘Contacts. There are two of them, Doyle and... Greenleaf, I think the other one’s called.’ She thought again of the tea, fresh-leaf. A bit like green-leaf... She unlocked the boot and opened it. Elder heaved in his case.
‘I’ve heard of Doyle. He’s pretty good, isn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t know. They both work for Trilling.’ She slammed shut the boot.
‘Bill Trilling? Jesus, is he still around?’
‘Very much so. I should warn you, he’s not best pleased with us just at the minute. I’ll tell you about it en route.’ She unlocked the car and eased herself into the driver’s seat, fumbling in her bag for her glasses. As they fastened their seatbelts, their hands touched. She started as though from a static shock. She couldn’t help it. She’d thought she could handle this with her usual... well, whatever it was. But it was turning stupid. Meantime, Elder had asked another question.
‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘Trouble with your ears, Joyce? That’s twice I’ve had to repeat myself. I said, how’s young Barclay getting on?’
‘I don’t know. Okay, I suppose.’ She started the car. The sooner she’d delivered him to his hotel room, the better.
Better for all concerned.
‘You sent him, didn’t you?’ He framed it as a question, but really it was a statement.
‘Yes,’ she said, reversing the car out of its parking space. ‘I sent him.’
‘Good.’
‘Let’s get one thing straight from the start, Dominic. You’re here in a consultative capacity. I don’t want you going rogue, and I don’t want you...’
‘Manipulating others to serve my needs? Dumping them afterwards?’ He was quoting from memory; she’d given him this speech before. ‘You’re pre-judging me, Joyce.’
‘On past experience.’ She felt more confident now, more like herself. She knew that given free rein Dominic would have the whole department looking for ghosts. He’d tried it before. ‘Why the interest in Barclay?’
‘Am I interested?’
‘You wanted him sent to France. That smacks of the old Dominic Elder.’
‘Maybe he reminds me of someone.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m not sure. Tell me about our friend Khan.’
Elder listened as she spoke, his eyes on the world outside the car. A tedious evening might lie ahead, and he had grown to loathe London, yet he felt quite calm, quite satisfied for the moment. He rubbed against the back of the seat. When Joyce had finished talking he was thoughtful for a moment.
‘The model interests me,’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘Witch must have had inside information. She knew where Khan was going to be, and she seems to have known he’d have company. It can’t have been the bodyguard, she damned near killed him. We should be asking questions about the model.’
‘Okay. Anything else?’
‘Just the obvious question really.’
‘And what’s that?’
He turned to her. ‘Where exactly did they find Khan’s tongue?’
Calais was grim. Bloody French. They waited, seemingly with infinite patience, while he tried in his stumbling French to ask his questions, then it turned out half of them spoke English anyway. They would stare at him and explain slowly and carefully that an English policeman had already asked them these questions before. One of them had even had the gall to ask, at the end of a particularly fraught session, if Barclay wasn’t going to ask him about the financial affairs of the sunken boat’s skipper. ‘The other policeman,’ explained the Frenchman, ‘he thought this was a very important question to ask.’
‘Yes,’ said Barclay through gritted teeth, ‘I was just getting round to it.’
‘Ah,’ said the Frenchman, sitting back, hands resting easily on thighs. There could be no doubt in anyone’s mind: this young man was a tyro, sent here for some mysterious reason but certainly not to gain any new information. There was no new information. Monsieur Doyle, the boisterous drinks-buying Englishman, had covered the ground before. Barclay didn’t feel like a tyro. He felt like a remould tyre - all the miles had been covered before he’d appeared on the scene. He was driving an old circuit, a loop. No one could understand why. Not even Barclay.
Well, maybe that wasn’t exactly true. At first, despite his puzzlement, he’d felt pleased. He was being trusted on a foreign mission, trusted with expenses and with back-up. He was going ‘into the field’. He couldn’t help feeling that Dominic Elder was somewhere at the back of it. Then he saw what it was, saw what was behind the whole thing.
He was being punished.
Joyce Parry was punishing him for having gone behind her back to Special Branch in the first place. He had blotted his copybook. And his punishment? He would follow in the footsteps of a Special Branch officer, unable to find fresh or missed information, expendable.
Yes, there was no doubt about it. This was the penance expected of him. So he kept his teeth gritted as he went about his business.
‘But the other policeman, Monsieur Doyle, he already ask this!’
‘Yes, but if you could just tell me again what it was that made you...’
All day. A long and exhausting day. And not a single grain of evidence or even supposition to show for it. There wasn’t much to the centre of Calais. It had taken him an hour to explore what there was. There wasn’t much to the centre, but the place stretched along the coast, a maze of docks and landing bays, quaysides, jetties and chaotic buildings, either smelling of fish or of engine oil.
That’s why it had taken him so long to track down the people he wanted to question: the boatmen, the port authorities, people who’d been around and about that evening when the boat carrying Witch had chugged out to sea. It was no wonder the men he spoke to weren’t enthusiastic, when he himself showed about as much enthusiasm as a netted cod. In short, he’d completed a poor day’s work, and still with a number of people on his list, not yet found. He’d try to wrap it up tomorrow morning. Before lunchtime. The sooner the better.
It was six now. He’d been warned that the French did not eat dinner before eight o’clock. Time for a shower and a change of clothes back at his hotel. Really, he should head back out to the docks after dinner: there were a couple of names on his list who worked only after dark and whose home addresses no one seemed willing to divulge.
‘Sur le bleu,’ one man had told him, tapping finger against nose. On the blue: the French equivalent of the black economy. These men would work for cash, no questions asked or taxes paid. Maybe they had daytime jobs. But they were on the sidelines. Doyle
had spoken with them and learnt nothing. How could men working ‘sur le bleu’ afford to see anything or hear anything? They didn’t exist officially. They were non-persons at the docks. All of this Doyle had put in his report, a report Barclay had read. It was a thorough report, certainly as good as the one Barclay himself would write. But it was also a bit pleased with itself, a bit smug: I’ve covered everything, it seemed to suggest, what did you expect me to find?
Barclay’s hotel lay in a dark, narrow street near the bus terminus. There was a small piece of waste ground nearby which served as a car park (at each car owner’s risk). Barclay had taken out European insurance before crossing the Channel, and he half-hoped someone would steal his creaky Fiesta with its malfunctioning gearbox. To this end, he gathered together his opera tapes and carried them in a plastic bag. He didn’t mind losing the car, but he didn’t want his tapes stolen too...
His hotel was in fact the two floors over a bar, but with a separate smoked-glass door taking residents up the steep staircase to the rooms. He’d been given a key to this door and told that meals were served in the bar. Between the smoked-glass door and the stairs there was another door of solid wood, leading into the bar. He paused, having pressed the time-controlled light-switch, illuminating the staircase with its grey vinyl wallpaper. He could nip into the bar for a drink: a cognac or a pastis. He could, but he wouldn’t. He could hear locals in there, shouting the odds about something, their voices echoing. Two or three of them, the bar empty apart from them. He started to climb the stairs, and was halfway up when the lights went off.
He wasn’t in complete darkness. A little light came from the downstairs door. But not much. There was another light-switch on the landing, just beside the huge potted plant and the framed painting of some anthropomorphic dogs playing pool. He climbed slowly, hand brushing against the horrible wallpaper with bristly vertical stripes, more like carpeting than anything else. The sort of carpeting that gave you an electric shock if you wore the wrong kind of shoes. Just along the wall a little ... light-switch somewhere around here ... ah, yes, just...
