Play With Fire

by William Shaw

  ‘Believe me, most of our lot who went to nice universities aren’t exactly trustworthy.’

  ‘Lyagushin didn’t turn up at Julie Teenager’s flat at his usual time on Friday. Why? Presumably because he knew she was dead already, because nothing had been reported in the papers. I tried to contact you. You didn’t answer.’

  ‘Because you’re not playing our game. You can’t touch Lyagushin. He’s too valuable to us.’

  ‘It’s not a fucking game,’ said Breen.

  ‘I apologise. It’s a figure of speech. However, as I said, my priorities are different from yours.’

  ‘I believe he may have killed two women and seriously assaulted two more. My girlfriend was attacked last night. I think it’s the same man.’

  Sand looked surprised. ‘I think you’re jumping to the wrong conclusions.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Look. Whatever terrible things he may – or may not – have done, we need him to operate freely. It’s a golden opportunity for us.’

  The desk in front of him was immaculately tidy. A small box of carefully sharpened pencils, a telephone and a clean blotter were the only things on it. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘We are constantly reviewing our options. We’re not monsters. If circumstances change and I’m able to share more information, obviously I will be happy to.’

  ‘How generous.’

  ‘I don’t like sarcasm, Sergeant. I understand your frustration, but I’m unable to do anything. And no reputable paper is going to print the story.’

  ‘That’s why I spoke to a disreputable one. Times are changing, Mr Sand.’

  ‘You’re being naive, Sergeant Breen. We have our eye on it. We don’t like to restrict the freedom of the press, obviously, but that particular publication may not last.’

  ‘You can’t just shut papers like that. People won’t stand for it.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll need to, frankly. I doubt the courts will tolerate it much longer.’

  Sand sat, stiff-backed and awkward. ‘One thing I will share. I’m sorry to hear about the assault on your… woman friend. It’s a terrible thing. I’m sure you’re under a lot of pressure. I hope your Superintendent will understand how an event like that will have clouded your judgement. I rather doubt it, however. But if you think Lyagushin was involved in the assault on Miss Tozer last night, you are mistaken. We were watching him. He was at home, yesterday evening.’

  Breen blinked. ‘But you would say that, obviously.’

  ‘I’m not that cynical. It wasn’t Lyagushin who assaulted your girlfriend.’

  ‘Why should I believe you? You’d say anything to protect your precious spy.’

  ‘I’m not the monster you think I am, Sergeant Breen. I promise you. Lyagushin was nowhere near your flat.’ He stood and picked up an umbrella from the corner, where he’d left it propped up. It was a good one. Robust and hand-made, with a solid stick and a bark handle. Not one of those cheap new American models. Breen wouldn’t have been at all surprised if there had been a blade hidden in it.

  ‘If you’re working on the assumption that all four assaults were carried out by the same person, he’s not your man,’ said Sand. ‘Goodbye, Sergeant. I wish you well.’

  Breen was stunned. ‘It’s not Lyagushin?’

  ‘No.’

  Sand held out his hand to shake. Breen didn’t take it. Sand shrugged, then pushed past Breen and out of the door. Breen listened to his footsteps descending the old staircase.

  He sat for a minute, then leaped up and ran after him down the stairs, passing a startled-looking Superintendent McPhail who was coming the other way. ‘Sand,’ he shouted.

  ‘Breen. What in God’s name…?’ exclaimed McPhail.

  Breen ignored him. By the front desk he hadn’t caught up with the MI6 man. He looked out onto the street, to the left and the right.

  A man in a pale suit was about twenty yards away, walking west. Breen ran. ‘Sand,’ he shouted.

  Sand stopped, looked around. ‘What now?’ he said, irritated.

  ‘I want to make a deal with you.’

  ‘What kind of deal?’

  ‘I have information I think you’d want. If I tell you, will you let me in on what’s really going on?’

  ‘We don’t work like that, Sergeant.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Breen and turned away.

  ‘Wait. What kind of information?’

  A passing woman laden with shopping bags paused to light a cigarette. Breen waited till she’d gone and said, ‘Lyagushin’s on to you.’

  Sand’s eyes narrowed. ‘He can’t be.’

  ‘But he is.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Talk to me and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘You can’t just keep stuff like that back, Sergeant. If you know something, it’s your duty to share it with us.’

  Breen folded his arms across his chest. ‘Really?’

  Sand hesitated, looking around him, then seemed to make up his mind. ‘Let’s catch the tube,’ he said.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular. But I enjoy the underground at this time of day. It’s quiet, but not so quiet that anyone can overhear your conversation.’

  At Baker Street, they descended to the Bakerloo line and waited on the empty westbound platform. Sand sat on an empty bench beneath a poster for a John Wayne film.

  ‘So. You think he knows we’re on to him? How?’

  Breen brushed crumbs off the bench and sat down next to him. ‘You first. That’s the deal.’

  Sand seemed to be considering. ‘I haven’t been able to trust you so far. Why should I now?’

  ‘If you’d trusted me in the first place, I wouldn’t be trying to tell OZ magazine about Lyagushin.’

  Sand nodded. ‘Do you know about Gerald Brooke?’ Sand said eventually.

  ‘The prisoner? I read about him in the newspaper.’

  Sand pulled out a pipe; it was one of those plain ones, a churchwarden, sensible and straight-stemmed. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Sentenced to a labour camp. Silly idiot took some anti-Soviet leaflets to Russia. Propaganda printed by the last of the White Russians. Nostalgia, as much as anything. Totally useless, tactically.’

  From down the tunnel came the rumble of a distant tube train.

  ‘What about the Portland spy ring?’ Sand asked.

  ‘Of course.’ It had been the early Sixties. Breen had still been working at Stoke Newington police station.

  ‘Peter and Helen Kroger?’ said Sand.

  ‘The couple from Ruislip.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  The train arrived. ‘The Russians are good to their spies,’ said Sand, getting in. ‘They like to have them back so they can celebrate them as heroes of the revolution. They want Peter and Helen Kroger back. They want to swap them. Unfortunately they don’t really have much to swap them for. Except for Gerald Brooke. Through diplomatic channels, we’ve been in negotiation with them for months.’

  He packed the pipe from a small pouch, pushing the tobacco down into the bowl with his thumb.

  ‘Of course, we advised the government that it was not a symmetrical exchange. Brooke is a nobody. The Krogers were part of the most sophisticated network of illegal residents we’ve ever picked up in this country. We would be seen as weak if it goes ahead.’

  At Marylebone the doors opened and closed with no one getting into their carriage.

  ‘Unfortunately the PM is very keen.’ The PM. Dropped into the conversation as if to suggest how close he was to the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. ‘Parliament has been dead against the deal. The Tories have been having a field day. But here, the Soviets have proved useful. I don’t know if you read the Sunday Times?’

  ‘When I have time.’

  ‘It turns out your man, Ronald Russell, has been slipping stories into the paper suggesting that Gerald Brooke is not just a naive lecturer caught up in this process, but he’s actually a high-powered British spy.’
/>   ‘Yes. I think I read something like that.’

  ‘Pretending that Gerald Brooke is really a significant pawn in the game makes it easier for Wilson. He doesn’t lose face in the exchange.’

  ‘And the articles are written by Ronald Russell?’

  ‘Exactly. From what you told us, useful information as it happens, it’s become clear that Lena Bobienski was what the Soviets call a swallow. A honey trapper. Her job was to go out and find men she could compromise. We’re fairly sure she was a spy being run by the Polish secret service, the UB.’

  ‘What’s this to do with Lyagushin?’

  At Edgware Road a woman in a short skirt and yellow sweater got on, her hair wet. It must have started raining.

  ‘Well, I suppose he is important. We would never have known about Lena Bobienski if it hadn’t been for Lyagushin. It was him who led us to her. Presumably before he realised he was being followed by us. I assume he was dipping his fingers into the honey jar. He is not a pleasant man.’

  ‘He was there for sex?’

  ‘Possibly. As far as we know, she wasn’t GRU or KGB. She was being handled by the Poles, I’m pretty sure. But presumably the UB were working with the Soviets on this one. We’ve had information from a source in Warsaw that a swallow existed in London for months, but we had no bloody idea at all who she was until Lyagushin conveniently exposed her. He has been very useful like that. We think he was acting as her handler.’

  ‘You knew Lena Bobienski was a Soviet agent all along?’

  ‘A Polish agent. Yes.’

  ‘But her father fought against the Soviets. They killed him. And her mother.’

  ‘Not her mother, we believe. Nor, it seems, her brother.’

  ‘Oh God, yes. She has a brother.’

  ‘Lena was lucky. She stayed behind here in England. We think her brother would have been forced to Siberia with his mother and father. We don’t know much about it. But we discovered letters from him in the flat.’

  ‘Under the floorboard? You said you hadn’t found anything important.’

  ‘We took the decision that it wouldn’t have been any use to you. Besides, we are not inclined to trust the Metropolitan Police with sensitive material. With some justification, as it turns out,’ he added, drily. ‘We’d been hoping to find cyphers but that’s produced nothing of value. In his letters he says he is being held in Mokotów prison in Warsaw. The UB have him locked up there, poor bastard. According to these letters, he’d spent all his life either in the Soviet gulags or the UB dungeons. The Polish secret service seems to have been blackmailing her. If she supplied them with information, her brother says they’ll set him free and give him a visa to leave the country.’

  ‘God. How awful.’

  ‘She was doing all this to try and get him released. Yet she was probably too young when they were separated to even know what he looked like.’

  ‘There was a photograph.’

  ‘Yes. But he was just a small boy.’ With a bang, one of the ventilation windows slammed open, and the carriage was full of warm air. Sand stood and closed it, smiling at the pretty woman with the wet hair. ‘It’s a thought, isn’t it? Imagine having to live the life she did just on the off-chance she might be saving her brother. What a powerful thing that is, the need to have a family.’ He looked at Breen’s reflection in the train’s window.

  ‘Do you think Lyagushin killed her because he knew she had been exposed? If his cover was blown, hers was too?’

  ‘It’s possible. It would be a little cruel, after the way they’ve treated her. But I don’t see it. They look after their own. And even if he could have given us the slip on Sunday, which he didn’t, why would he have tried to kill your girlfriend? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I would have liked to have asked him that. But it seems I won’t be given the opportunity. You would be happy to let her killers get off free if it served your purpose.’

  ‘I hope we’re not that bad.’

  ‘So, if I understand you, the whole honey trap was simply to get Ronald Russell to print some misinformation about Gerald Brooke, so that they could make it look like Brooke was more valuable than he was? Lena Bobienski had to blackmail him to make up articles saying that Gerald Brooke was a genuine spy?’

  ‘It’s what it looks like from where we stand. They were making it easier for Wilson to do the deal. A curious type of cooperation. You provided us with the Ronald Russell connection, for which we’re grateful. It was good work. That allowed us to figure it out.’

  ‘Why haven’t you arrested Russell, then? I thought you lot were in the business of spy-catching?’

  The train stopped in a dark tunnel. The lights flickered. Then the carriage jolted forward again.

  ‘So did I,’ he said. There was a touch of darkness in his voice.

  ‘Certain operational reasons?’

  The tube train burst into daylight and fresh rain spattered the windows. ‘Yes. The Prime Minister wants this exchange to go ahead. He’s under public pressure to get Brooke back.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It turns out it’s not just the Soviets who gain from portraying Brooke as more than he was. So we do nothing about Ronald Russell. To arrest him would upset that apple cart.’

  ‘So he gets away with being a Soviet stooge.’

  ‘To be fair, it’s hardly worth arresting him now Miss Bobienski is dead. And, if we did, they would rumble that we’re on to him too. But we’ll keep an eye on Russell.’

  ‘It all just seems so pointless,’ said Breen.

  ‘That’s your judgement. We take a different opinion.’ He turned to Breen. ‘Right. Your turn. You think Lyagushin knows we know what he is?’

  ‘You had a man parked in Jermyn Street on Saturday night.’

  Sand frowned. ‘We may have done. I don’t have all the operational details.’

  ‘Tramp. That’s the nightclub he was in – supposedly at least – the night Lena Bobienski was killed.’

  ‘Like I said earlier, you’re better than I thought. I am sorry I underestimated you.’

  ‘He was there again last Saturday. Your men were watching him. They changed shifts some time before eleven.’

  ‘They would have done that, yes.’

  ‘I was with Lyagushin that night. It was clear when he came out of the club he knew exactly where your man was.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I saw him carefully checking he was there before he stepped out.’

  Sand turned and looked directly at Breen. ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Exactly. All this time you were watching him…’

  ‘He knew.’

  ‘Anything you know is what he wants you to know.’

  Sand nodded slowly. ‘If what you say is true, we’ve been outplayed, it seems.’

  ‘So if there’s nothing to be gained, we could pull him in for questioning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? If he knew where your men were all the time, he probably also knew how to evade them. Think about it. He might have even been making your men his alibis. What if he wasn’t in his house on Saturday evening, when Helen was attacked? What if he just let your men think he was?’

  Sand looked less certain of himself than Breen had ever seen him. ‘That’s an absurd hypothesis. You’re crediting him with being much too clever.’

  ‘How do you know? He’s useless to you now. Why don’t we treat him like the murder suspect that he is? If he’s not a suspect, he’s a witness. We still have a double murderer to find.’

  ‘That’s out of the question. This is a sensitive time. If you start pulling in Soviet Embassy staff the whole deal might be off.’

  ‘All I want to do is catch a murderer. You can’t get anything from him.’

  ‘Far from it. In fact, you’ve just given us another interesting piece of information. Before, we thought he didn’t know we knew he was a Soviet agent. Now we do. As I told you before, the power in the network is in discovering precisel
y how much other people know, or think they know. Besides, we can’t simply arrest him. Not right now. Maybe in a few weeks.’

  Rain streaked the glass.

  ‘It’s a very cynical world you operate in,’ said Breen.

  ‘I don’t see it as cynical at all,’ said Sand. ‘The opposite, in fact. Much like you, our job is to keep people safe. And in doing so, we keep all that world away from people, so they can continue their lives as normally and peacefully as they can.’

  ‘Our jobs are not the same at all,’ said Breen.

  ‘Suit yourself. We both have our principles. Can you make it back to your office from here?’ said Sand. The doors opened at Queen’s Park. Sand stood clutching his umbrella and held out his other hand to shake.

  He ran from Baker Street tube, but still the rain dripped inside his collar; it travelled down his leg into his shoes and soaked the underside of his cotton socks.

  By the time he reached the office his pale summer suit was dark with water.

  ‘Miss Rasper?’ said Creamer. ‘Is there a towel for Sergeant Breen? He’s soaking wet. And a cup of something hot, perhaps?’

  Miss Rasper stood. ‘Very sorry to hear your news, Sergeant Breen. Is Miss Tozer OK?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘A word in private?’ said Creamer.

  ‘I’m praying for them,’ said Mint, and he blushed, while other detectives looked away, embarrassed.

  Breen walked, socks squelching in his shoes.

  ‘So anyway,’ said Creamer. ‘Obviously you’ll be taking some time off.’

  ‘Who will be looking after the case?’

  ‘Miss Bobienski? That is what I wanted to discuss.’

  Rasper arrived with a small hand towel, handing it to Breen with a sympathetic smile, then backing out of the room.

  ‘Discuss?’ Breen rubbed the towel over his hair and down his neck.

  ‘McPhail tells me the case will be taken over by C1 from now on. Given what has happened to Miss Tozer, I suggest you take a few days to be with her.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Compassionate leave.’

  ‘I thought that was just for bereavement.’

  ‘I’m using my discretion, Paddy. Believe me, it’s either that or a suspension. Besides, the case is not ours any longer. It’s just come down from above. Look, Paddy, I’m not aware of the reasoning behind this. You may have more insight into the situation. I simply have my orders.’