‘Hm.’ Brock nodded in agreement, then said, ‘Have you come across a company called Paddington Security Services?’
Penney frowned at the sudden change of direction. ‘Should I have?’
‘Were they involved in the project that Freyja was working on?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
‘Why not?’
Kathy watched the way Penney shrugged and half turned towards the view through the glass wall. The atmosphere in the room seemed to have changed in some indefinable way, as if a familiar background sound had suddenly fallen silent.
‘It was a turnkey job, in which we were part of a consortium of specialist consultants—subcontractors, if you like—commissioned to resolve individual features of the project. We weren’t necessarily aware of the other members of the consortium.’
‘Who commissioned you?’
Penney gave a tight little smile, regretful but firm. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t divulge that. We sign strict confidentiality agreements with our clients and consultants, to protect both them and us. As I just explained, there’s a war going on, and the enemy thrives by discovering the connections between the people working against them. Then they target the weakest link and so penetrate the whole network. Confidentiality is an essential part of our defences. But why are you interested in Paddington Security Services?’
‘Freyja’s sister Gudrun was working for them at the time she died.’
‘Ah, I see, and you wondered if there was a connection. Sorry I can’t help.’
Dr Chandramouli, who’d been listening to this with a puzzled frown, chipped in, ‘Oh, come on, Philip. You can at least confirm that you’ve never heard of them, surely.’
Penney turned to him and Kathy saw that the friendly, rather unworldly geek had changed into something else, a man who didn’t like having his decisions questioned.
‘Not even that, Chinmay. Sorry, that’s the world I have to live in.’ He reached into his pocket suddenly and pulled out a phone, consulted the screen and said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to bring this to a close.’ He extended a hand to Brock. ‘I wish you the best of luck, Chief Inspector.’
Dr Chandramouli looked troubled as they made their way back out to the car. As they buckled up he said, ‘I really must apologise, David. I don’t know what to say. Philip has always seemed to me to be a very obliging chap. But that was extremely rude, bundling us out like that, simply refusing to help.’
But Brock seemed unfazed. ‘Not at all, Chinmay,’ he said. ‘I thought Dr Penney was quite helpful, under the circumstances.’
‘Really? Well . . . You may not thank me for the next arrangement I made for you. When Andy Harris heard you were coming up he practically twisted my arm off to get you to have a beer with him. I’m sorry, but if you’d rather not I’ll give him a ring and say you can’t make it.’
Brock gave a sigh, then said, ‘No, that’s fine.’
‘Oh good. When I told him we were coming here he suggested the Plough in Fen Ditton, not far away.’
They drove out to the dual carriageway at the end of Milton Road and followed it south across the River Cam into open farmland, where they turned off onto a country road that took them into the village of Fen Ditton, where Chandramouli drove to the car park of the Plough. Andy Harris was waiting for them in the bar, greeting them effusively, Brock looking wary, Kathy thought. They took their drinks to a table at a window looking down a sweep of lawn towards the river and Harris immediately plunged into reminiscences of student misadventures.
Thinking that her presence might add to Brock’s obvious lack of enthusiasm, Kathy started a conversation with Chandramouli, and asked him whether the Kite girls’ unusual names were Swedish like their mother’s.
‘Old Norse, I think,’ he said. ‘Typical Desmond to name them after Valkyries or something. He has a rather one-track mind.’
Outside, pale autumnal sunlight glinted on the surface of the river, ruffled by a cold wind. A rowing eight suddenly flashed across their view, the oarsmen straining, faces red with effort. Chandramouli started talking about the races, the Bumps, that were held on this stretch.
As he was talking, Kathy saw Dr Harris pointing towards the river and made out the words canal boat. She turned to hear what he was saying and he said, ‘Yes, Kathy, I was just telling David why I thought it would be appropriate for us to meet here. After your visit, Desmond was telling me that you’d got mixed up, saying that Gudrun was living on a canal boat, and it reminded me of the last time I saw Freyja, not long before her accident. It was here. Someone at the hospital was retiring, and a group of us came out here for a farewell lunch, and I was sitting like this at the window when I saw Freyja walking down across the grass towards the river, where there was an old houseboat drawn up at the bank. There was a man with her, and I assume they must have been having a drink in the other bar. They were talking intently, and when they reached the boat he got on board and waved goodbye to her. She turned and came back up to the pub, but I didn’t see her again.’
Kathy said, ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’
‘No, that didn’t register, I’m afraid, but I remember the boat, one of those old-fashioned canal boats with a name painted on the side. I do remember that—Venerable Bede it was called. Rather splendid, I thought.’
Kathy stared at him. ‘Are you sure it was Freyja, not Gudrun, that you saw?’
‘Oh, definitely Freyja. No doubt about that.’
He turned back to Brock, talking about boats and the river, but Kathy was thinking of her encounter with Ned Tisdell on the towpath of the Regent’s Canal. Then Brock’s phone started to ring.
He had begun to warm to Andy Harris. The years had rubbed the awkward corners off the young man he had known, who had been too ambitious, too competitive, to be a comfortable companion. Now he had found his balance and seemed absurdly glad to meet up with Brock again. Then Brock’s phone rang, and his heart sank when he checked the number and heard Commander Lynch’s voice.
‘Brock? Where are you?’
‘Cambridge, sir.’
‘I need you. Where’s Kolla?’
‘She’s . . . here too.’
‘What? Are you two having a dirty weekend?’
‘Sadly, no, sir.’
‘Don’t fucking sir me. What are you doing in Cambridge?’
‘Having a weekend off.’
‘Not any more. Get yourselves back here. There’s work to be done.’
Brock rang off with a frown and Andy Harris said, ‘Problems?’
‘Yes.’ Brock looked at Kathy. ‘Seems we’re needed urgently in London.’ He turned to Chandramouli. ‘I’m sorry, Chinmay. It looks as if we won’t be able to stay for dinner after all.’
‘That is a shame. Will you have time for a sandwich with Desmond Kite before you leave?’
‘Yes, I’d like to see him. But I’ll have to send my apologies to Professor Bronikowski.’
‘Of course.’
Desmond Kite was certainly brighter, Kathy thought. The shambling hermit had been transformed into a tragic hero from one of his own sagas, a figure of great but frail gravitas. He received them in his college room in Great Court, focusing his attention on Brock, whose hand he shook with a bony claw.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ he said, his voice deep, sounding as if he might be welcoming a fellow knight to the halls of Valhalla.
‘I’m sorry for the reason that brings us here,’ Brock said, and Kite gave a sombre nod of his head in acknowledgement.
‘If the immense resources of the Metropolitan Police can be brought to bear upon the deaths of my children, then I am sure justice will prevail.’
Oh dear, Kathy thought, Andrew Harris was right, he’s living in another world.
Kite was showing Brock a framed photograph of two girls, his daughters at school age.
‘Gudrun had a tendency to be bullied at school,’ he said loftily, ‘but Freyja always protected her. It was already apparent that Freyja
was extremely bright. A born mathematician.’ He pronounced each of the syllables of ‘math-e-mat-i-cian’ distinctly, as if it was a word from an exotic foreign language.
‘Gudrun too,’ Brock prompted.
‘Well . . . computers. She was competent, apparently.’
Kathy and Chandramouli stayed silent in the background as the two older men sat facing each other and Brock asked Kite to tell him more about Freyja. And when he eventually ran out of superlatives, Brock asked him what she had told him about her work at Penney Solutions.
‘Oh, it was far too esoteric for an old history man like me to comprehend. She tried to explain it to me, how two particles of light, remote from one another, could nevertheless be connected in some mysterious way, so that if you did something to one, you did it also to the other.’ He gave a dry bark of a laugh. ‘And they say that my Nordic sagas are fanciful!’
Then Kite leaned forward to Brock and fixed him with a mischievous smile. ‘She called it Huginn and Muninn.’
When Brock asked him what that meant, he spelled out the words and said imperiously, ‘I’m sure that’s not beyond your powers of research,’ as if Brock were a student who needed a little goading.
Eventually they finished their conversation and left Kite to his books. Chandramouli drove them to the station. ‘You must come back when you have more time to revisit old haunts,’ the mathematician said, and it seemed to Kathy that Brock seemed regretful now at leaving the city.
When they were on the train Kathy got out her iPad and connected to the internet. After ten minutes, during which Brock stared out of the window, lost in thought, Kathy looked up and said, ‘Right. Norse mythology 101. The god Odin had two ravens, called Huginn and Muninn, who sat one on each shoulder. Every morning they would leave Odin and fly all over Midgard, returning at dusk to whisper in his ears all that they had seen and heard, and in this way Odin kept himself marvellously informed of all that was going on in the world.’
‘Surveillance? Spies?’ Brock said. ‘Spy technology?’
‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it? Cryptology, code-breaking, that’s what Freyja was into. And Gudrun had a print of a raven hanging on the wall of her boat.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t a crow?’
‘No, it was definitely a raven, because inscribed at the bottom was the word Nevermore, which is the refrain . . .’
‘. . . from the poem “The Raven”,’ Brock said. ‘All right, what else?’
‘Norse mythology 102. Freyja was the name of one of the major goddesses, and was associated with love, beauty, fertility and gold. Gudrun, on the other hand, was human, and made the mistake of marrying King Atli, who murdered the whole of her family. In revenge, Gudrun killed her two sons by Atli and served them up to him at a feast, then told him what she had done before setting fire to his hall and killing him and all his court. Kind of makes you wonder what Desmond Kite thought of his two girls, doesn’t it?’
‘And what they must have thought of him—Gudrun especially. Find anything else?’
‘Yes. Your friend Andy remembered that the canal boat that Freyja went down to at the Plough was called the Venerable Bede. I know that boat—it’s currently moored next to Gudrun’s on the Regent’s Canal. Its owner is Ned Tisdell, and when I went back there last Saturday I found Tisdell coming out of her boat carrying a book and that raven print, which he said belonged to him. I’ve just looked him up on the PNC. Four years ago he was released from Belmarsh Prison after serving three years for assault on an employee at a pharmaceutical research laboratory in Essex. According to a summary of the case, several staff disturbed a group of intruders who were attempting to release test animals, and in the subsequent melee a laboratory technician was stabbed by Tisdell. In mitigation, his defence disclosed a history of mental instability and failure to take prescribed medication.’
Brock said, ‘So we need to investigate Tisdell, and Paddington Security Services, and we need a proper forensic examination of Gudrun’s boat.’
‘The local police have already turned me down on that. It is still their case.’
‘Then it’s time we made it ours. I’ll see to it.’
Kathy had another thought. She got back on to the PNC and typed in Anne Downey’s name. She had a nagging feeling that the name should have meant something to her, and the database provided the answer—Aaron Downey, her son, aged three, had been abducted during a visit to the local supermarket with his grandmother. Within four days the perpetrator, a known paedophile, had been located and the little boy rescued, but not before he had suffered serious abuse from which he later died. Kathy read through the details, feeling sick, trying to work out what difference this information made. She thought of those four narrow-boats moored alongside each other, the Stapletons, Downey, Tisdell and Gudrun Kite, all with a dark shadow in their past, something to hide or escape from.
13
The train drew in to King’s Cross and they caught a taxi to New Scotland Yard, where they were directed to the basement.
At first Kathy thought they must have been sent to the wrong room. It was deserted, but there were the signs everywhere of recent activity—overflowing waste bins, lists and diagrams scrawled on whiteboards, coffee cups, notepads, the remains of sandwich lunches, the smells of sweat and coffee. In the middle of all this debris was a wall display of maps, aerial photographs, the plans of a house, and photographs of both the house and a woman, about Kathy’s age.
‘Looks like you, doesn’t she, Kolla?’
They turned at the sound of Commander Lynch’s voice from the doorway. He came in, a hamburger in one hand, coffee in the other, kicking the door shut behind him. ‘Recognise her?’
Kathy shook her head, but Brock said, ‘It’s Jack Bragg’s wife, isn’t it?’
‘Patsy Bragg, correct. And that’s her house, Oakdene, on the edge of Knoll Park outside Sevenoaks.’ He took a big bite of the burger and continued talking as he chewed. ‘Very comfortable, very private. Jack must have thought about it a lot over the past six years, living in his shithole in the Philippines, thinking of his lovely wife in their stockbroker mansion, screwing his former lackey Sergei Romanov in his four-poster bed.
‘Yesterday we tracked Ashur Najjar to the grounds of Oakdene, where he appears to have taken up residence in one of the oak trees in the garden, from which he can observe the house and front drive.’ Lynch pointed to a red cross that had been marked on one of the aerial photographs. ‘We’ve got a police car parked outside the front door, but Patsy hasn’t been there for three weeks; she’s staying at a secure address until we catch Jack. But now we think it’s time for her to go home.’ He took another bite. ‘Well, not her exactly. Someone who looks like her.’
Brock looked at him sharply. ‘If you’re thinking of DI Kolla, I’d say she’s suffered enough at Jack Bragg’s hands. He nearly blew her to kingdom come. It’s someone else’s turn to play the tethered goat.’
Lynch grinned. ‘Very gallant, Brock. What does DI Kolla have to say?’
Kathy looked from one to the other, then said, ‘Maybe you could tell me what you have in mind, sir.’
‘Sensible answer. After dark, Mrs Bragg’s substitute will arrive at Oakdene in a taxi. She’ll pay off the cab, and approach the front door. The officer in the police car will go to her and they will stand talking under the light on the front porch, so that Najjar can clearly identify her. Then she will open the door and go inside, while the officer returns to his car. Najjar will then phone Jack, who will make his way to Sevenoaks and attempt to get to the house, where we will catch him.’
‘You make it sound simple,’ Brock objected. ‘Where’s Jack now?’
‘We don’t know, but he’s not at Oakdene. We’ve been scanning the area with infrared cameras, and Najjar is the only human being in the vicinity of the house.’
‘Is Najjar armed?’
‘Very probably, but he won’t take a potshot at Mrs Bragg at the front door, because he’ll need to check with Jack f
irst, and Jack will want to do this job himself.’
‘What if there’s a bomb in the house, like at Fantasyland?’
‘There isn’t. We’ve done a thorough sweep.’ Lynch was obviously getting irritated by Brock’s questions. He turned to Kathy. ‘We’ve spent the last eight hours planning this in every detail. We’ll infiltrate an armed officer in through the back door of the house, which Najjar can’t observe. In the suitcase you’ll be carrying when you arrive, you’ll have a weapon, body protection and communications. But it will never come to a personal threat to you. The perimeter of the grounds will be secured by an impenetrable cordon of armed officers, a ring of steel. Jack will never get near you. When you get inside the house you’ll go upstairs, draw the curtains and put on the bedroom light, then return downstairs and wait there, in darkness, so there’s no chance anyone can take a shot at you. You leave the rest to us. This is the best chance we’ll ever get to nail Jack Bragg. Will you do it?’
Kathy hesitated. ‘I’d need to see Patsy Bragg, study the way she walks.’
‘Sure. We’ve got her here, waiting to meet you. She’s brought clothes for you, and we’ve got a make-up artist ready.’
Brock said, ‘You’re planning on doing this tonight?’
‘Sooner the better. Kathy’s perfect for this. What do you say? Are you up for it?’
Kathy nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘Good. We’ll get you briefed.’
He turned away to pick up a phone and deliver a stream of orders to someone. While he was talking, Brock spoke to Kathy. ‘I don’t like this one bit.’
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