‘And that’s Nancy, the woman who was murdered just before your son. How do you explain that, Marta?’
‘No… no, no.’
‘Could it be that Nancy-’
But Marta had lurched into movement, ripping the photographs into tiny pieces while she spat and cursed in Russian. She threw the scraps at him, screaming abuse, then turned and took hold of the ashtray at her side and hurled it too, with surprising force, straight at his head. He just had time to dodge and lift an arm, and he winced as the glass block hit his wrist. They were both on their feet now, Marta casting around for another weapon, when the maid burst in and ran to her. Abruptly the old woman’s manner changed, and she began sobbing and gasping. The maid gathered her in her arms and eased her back down into the chair.
‘You must go.’ The maid looked back over her shoulder accusingly at Brock. ‘She is not well.’
‘Do you need a doctor?’
‘No. I will take care of her. Please leave now.’
Brock hesitated, then nodded and turned to go. As he reached the door Marta hurled a parting curse at his back.
He waited for the lift, nursing his wrist. He was still jolted by the suddenness of her fury and its physical force. Now the silence in the deserted atrium made the whole episode seem surreal. The lift sighed to a halt at the ground floor and he stepped out, his heels squeaking on the polished marble floor. He took a few paces towards the front door, then stopped and looked around. In each of the flanking walls stood large doorways framed with classical pilasters and entablatures. He went over and opened a door to reveal a mirrored dining room in which a long table had been laid with porcelain and cutlery as if for an elaborate banquet. Another door opened into a huge sitting room whose walls were hung with contemporary art-Hockney, Freud, Hirst-and, bizarrely, hanging over the massive fireplace, a portrait of Mikhail Moszynski himself, dressed in the ruff and slashed doublet of a Tudor grandee, with a hedgehog at his feet.
On the far side of this room was another door, opening into a corridor. Brock was about to turn back when he heard the muffled whine of machinery from one of the closed doors up ahead. He went towards it and hesitated, his hand on the doorknob, listening. The whine became shriller for a while, then subsided again. It was a sound he’d heard before, but it took him a moment to remember it coming from Dot’s office-a paper shredder. He opened the door.
The woman turned from the machine and stared at him. There were tears running down her cheeks, and for a moment they stood staring at each other in surprise.
‘I’m sorry to startle you,’ Brock said, and showed her his police ID. ‘Are you all right?’
Embarrassed, she wiped her hand quickly across her face. ‘Oh, not really. I’ve just been sacked. It’s only to be expected really, but it was just so… abrupt. I’m sorry. I’m Ellen Fitzwilliam, Mr Moszynski’s secretary-former secretary.’
‘Tidying up?’ Brock asked.
‘Yes. I was sorting things out for Mr Kuzmin, who’s trying to make sense of it all for the solicitors, only he’s decided… Well, anyway, he’s just left, gone to speak to Mr Clarke, if you wanted him.’
‘I imagine it must all be very complicated.’
‘Oh yes. And Freddie-Mr Clarke-isn’t easy to pin down. Was there something I can help you with?’
‘I know you’ve been asked this before, but I’m just trying to tie up one or two details. I’m interested in Mr Moszynski’s state of mind in the days before he was killed. Were you working with him then?’
‘Not on the Sunday when he died, but I did come in to work on the Saturday morning, and all through the previous week. I can’t say I noticed anything terribly different about his manner. He seemed his usual self-brisk, businesslike.’
‘He went to the memorial service for the American woman here in the square on the Sunday morning. Was he upset by her death, do you remember?’
‘Ah, yes, he did seem to be bothered by that-I told your inspector. He certainly read all the news reports about Mrs Haynes’ death, and got me to keep cuttings.’
‘He seemed personally affected?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. He was certainly concerned about sending flowers for her memorial service.’
‘Was he?’
‘Yes, he got me to order them on the Saturday, to be delivered to the church. He was quite particular about them.’
‘In what way particular?’
‘About the type of flowers. I’ll have the details in the file. Do you want to see?’
‘Please.’
She took a pouch of invoices and orders marked May from a filing cabinet and flicked through it. ‘Here we are.’
Brock read the note. One hundred pounds worth of roses and camomile daisies. ‘Camomile daisies?’ Brock murmured.
‘Yes, he was particular about the daisies. It seemed an odd choice to me, but he explained that camomile is the national flower of Russia. Very thoughtful, don’t you think?’
‘Very.’ He looked through an open door on the far side of the room to what looked like a board room table, on which a couple of trays of sandwiches lay beneath plastic film, untouched. ‘Mr Kuzmin miss his lunch?’
‘Oh, yes. He and Mr Clarke were supposed to have a lunchtime meeting to discuss the financial matters, but Mr Clarke didn’t show up. He wasn’t answering his mobile phone, and when I tried to contact him at his office his secretary said that she hadn’t seen him today at all. In fact, she hadn’t seen him since he went out for a walk in Hyde Park yesterday lunchtime. But that’s not unusual for Mr Clarke. He gets bored and suddenly disappears without telling anyone, and then after a few days we get an email from Tokyo or Las Vegas or somewhere. Mr Moszynski used to put up with it with a smile-he said Mr Clarke was an eccentric genius. But Mr Kuzmin isn’t so tolerant. He started shouting down the phone at Mr Clarke’s secretary to see if his passport was still in his safe, and she checked and it had gone. Then Mr Kuzmin got in a rage and told me there was nothing for me to do here and I was fired.’
Brock shook his head in commiseration. ‘Bit fiery is he, Mr Kuzmin? How does he get on with Sir Nigel Hadden-Vane?’
‘Oh, pretty well. He tried to get hold of him, too, but the secretary at his parliamentary office said that he was in a committee meeting and would be tied up all afternoon.’
Brock said he would find his own way out, and left the secretary to her shredding. He returned along the corridor and came to what looked like one of the original house staircases. He decided to follow it down into the basement, where the security control room was located, and as he descended he was aware of a change in the air, becoming cooler and tinged with the slightly acrid smell of fresh cement and plaster. Sure enough, the lower floor looked as if it had been recently abandoned by builders, with a heap of sand and a cement mixer blocking the way. Ahead of him a doorway had been roughly knocked through a party wall into what had once been the basement of the next house, and as he stepped through Brock found himself in a dusty, dark room that looked as if it hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. He stopped, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, and then saw that the floor in front of him had been dug up, with the old stone slabs tilted up on end against the wall and the ground beneath excavated. He made out the dim line of an old earthenware sewer pipe. Planks had been laid across the earthworks to a doorway on the far side of the room, and he crossed and found himself in another cellar, the floor of which looked as if it had been similarly excavated and then filled in again. There was a closed door on the other side of this space, and when he tried the handle it opened into a carpeted corridor lit by fluorescent lights. A door to one side was open and he saw the equipment of the security monitoring unit inside. The room was deserted, a mug of coffee-Wayne Everett’s perhaps-still warm on the table. The whole building had the air of an abandoned palace, half high-tech redoubt, half ruined excavation. He watched the screen for a moment as it flicked automatically from one empty room to another, before he continued along the corridor to a stair that took h
im up to the entrance hallway again. He opened the front door and, with a sense of relief, stepped into the sunshine.
THIRTY-FOUR
B rock was early, and called in at a pub nearby to kill some time. The restaurant Kathy had suggested was an old favourite of theirs, a comfortable Italian place whose informality surely made it a good choice for a quiet friendly dinner. Yet Brock felt unsettled, as if Kathy were bringing an outsider into their relationship. No, that was absurd. He was glad for her, hoped this time it would work out. Lord knows, she had made some unfortunate, or unlucky, choices in the past. Was there a reason for that? he wondered. Something to do with her father’s suicide, perhaps? Or with being in the police?
His eyes went to a TV screen in the corner where a wide-eyed German tourist was describing a suicide he had witnessed on Westminster Bridge that afternoon, a man jumping into the river. Brock was thankful that someone else would be dealing with it. He checked his watch again, sighed, sank his whisky and said goodnight to the barman.
When he stepped into the restaurant he saw them straight away at his favourite table, with their heads together, laughing over something on the young man’s mobile phone. Then they looked up and saw him coming, and both got to their feet, eyes bright and expectant. Brock shook the man’s hand and tried to make an initial assessment. Firm grip, intelligent eyes, slightly wary. Fair enough. Not too smooth like that lawyer Martin Connell, probably not gay like Leon Desai, and apparently not Special Branch like Tom Reeves. So far so good. But what the hell had he been doing coming to see him, out cold in the hospital?
‘Looked like you were enjoying a good joke,’ Brock said.
‘Oh, yes.’ Kathy laughed. ‘John took a picture of the two guys who ran this B and B we stayed at in Boston. They were fantastic cooks.’
Brock watched them as they recited some of the dishes they’d had. There was no doubt about it, the lad was smitten, casting surreptitious glances at Kathy. He wished that Suzanne were there to help him get through the evening and afterwards carry out a considered post-mortem. She was expecting a full report on the phone when he got home.
They talked about Boston, ordered food, discussed the Henry Moore exhibition, ate, and several times he thought he noticed Kathy signalling to John with a questioning look or a raised eyebrow, and wondered what was coming. The young man was polite and deferential, but Brock had the feeling he was holding something back. Feeling a little more relaxed, he asked him about his work at McGill, and John became more animated and amusing, talking about his colleagues. Brock felt rather envious of the life he described, grappling with intellectual puzzles of-to Brock’s mind-utter uselessness.
‘So you’re a kind of detective too,’ he said.
John seemed to flush with pleasure at that. ‘Yes, in a way. Maybe it runs in the blood.’
Again that look from Kathy, and John bowed his head and took a deep breath, and Brock saw that he was about to say something that they’d already discussed. He had the feeling that this was the point of their meal together, and he felt a sudden irritation at the subterfuge, and a reluctance to share whatever confession they were about to make.
So he said quickly, ‘Well, I can’t say I’ve solved our puzzle, but I did make a little progress.’ He noticed a shadow of disappointment pass across Kathy’s face as he took out Morris’s envelope. ‘Originally there was a note accompanying the picture of Chelsea Mansions. Its message was imprinted onto the back of the photograph.’
He showed them Morris’s ESDA image.
‘Miles.’ John frowned as he read the signature. ‘That was the name of Toby Beaumont’s son, who was killed in the first Gulf War.’ He told them the story. ‘But he certainly wouldn’t have been around in 1956.’
‘Perhaps Toby named him after his own father,’ Kathy suggested. ‘He was living in that house in the background of the picture.’
‘That’s possible,’ Brock said. ‘I had hopes that Toby might have taken the picture, but perhaps it was his father. Do we know anything about him?’
Kathy shook her head. John was examining the photograph.
‘I showed a copy of that to Moszynski’s mother this afternoon,’ Brock said. ‘She got very upset-tore the picture to pieces and attacked me. Nearly crowned me. She denied that it’s Gennady.’
John was nodding, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. ‘That’s interesting. It could tie in with an idea I had. After Kathy left Boston I had to wait to get a seat on a return flight, so I went back to the Widener Library and did a bit more digging. I thought I’d try to find out more of what Gennady Moszynski’s movements might have been in the UK during that 1956 visit, and I drew up a timeline of what happened.’
With a slight show of embarrassment, like an overenthusiastic student trying to please his teacher, Brock thought, John drew a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and spread it out on the table.
‘The official party arrived in the UK on a Soviet cruiser, the Ordzhonikidze, at Portsmouth on the eighteenth of April, and stayed for ten days, during which they had meetings and functions in London, as well as visiting Birmingham, Oxford and Edinburgh. This is what I’ve been able to make of their movements. But there was one thing that didn’t go according to plan. Two days after the Russians left for home, MI6 announced that one of their operatives, a naval frogman, had disappeared near Portsmouth on the nineteenth of April, while testing some secret equipment. But the Russians then claimed that their sailors had seen a British frogman near the Ordzhonikidze on that day, and rumours began to circulate that the Russians had abducted or killed him. He was never found. His name was Commander-’
‘Buster Crabb,’ Brock cut in, shaking his head. He felt disappointed. Was that what this dinner was all about, so that Kathy’s new boyfriend could show off some crackpot conspiracy theory he’d come up with?
‘You’ve heard of him?’ John said.
‘It’s an old chestnut in this country, John, one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Cold War. There have been dozens of different explanations-Crabb had his throat cut by a Russian frogman, or was kidnapped and taken back to Russia, or defected, or even was murdered by MI6. Every couple of years someone comes up with a new idea. It’s a waste of time.’
John looked deflated. ‘I just thought, what if Gennady Moszynski was mixed up in that business and Nancy’s mother had known about it and told Nancy? Wouldn’t the Moszynskis want to shut her up? I mean, the Brits might not be so friendly if the word got out…’
‘Then why kill Mikhail Moszynski? No, John, forget it. There’s something much more personal behind this. Look at that photograph again, at the features of Nancy and Gennady. You were right about Nancy’s birth date, Kathy. I asked the lab to compare the DNA samples taken from the bodies of Nancy and Mikhail. They were close relatives, brother and sister, with the same father-Gennady. That’s the family secret that everybody’s been trying to hide.’
‘Yes,’ Kathy said, ‘but…’ She stopped as Brock’s phone began to ring.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, and flicked it open and listened. When the call was over he looked across at Kathy and said, ‘They’ve pulled Hadden-Vane’s body from the river. Apparently he jumped from Westminster Bridge earlier this evening. Sharpe wants me at headquarters. Sorry, but I’m going to have to leave you.’
After Brock had gone they were silent for several long minutes. Finally John said, ‘Well, I sure blew that, didn’t I?’
‘I could see how difficult it was for you.’
He shook his head in frustration. ‘I just couldn’t find the words to tell him. All the time I felt like an idiot intruder, an amateur sleuth trying to impress real cops.’
‘It wasn’t like that, John. He was a bit distant, but it was the first time you two have met and he’s probably still feeling rough. He’s usually warmer than that. You’ll see.’
‘No. That bit about the frogman… Hell, he must think I’m a complete fool. And he’s right. I should never have come to London, never have got m
yself into this situation.’
‘It was a good idea about Crabb. He shouldn’t have dismissed it the way he did.’
‘He didn’t just dismiss the idea, Kathy. He dismissed me. There’s no way we’re going to repeat this evening.’
She reached across for his hand, which was clenched tight into a fist. ‘Come on, things will seem better in the morning. Let’s have another glass of wine.’
‘No. Look, I need to be alone for while, to get my head around this. I’m sorry, Kathy, this is really difficult for me. I think I’ll walk for a while, back to the hotel.’
She withdrew her hand. ‘All right, if you’re sure.’
‘I just didn’t realise this would be so difficult.’
He reached for his wallet and she said, ‘No, my turn. I owe you for that great meal in Boston.’
‘Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?’
She watched sadly as he walked away, turning at the door to give her a look of resignation, then disappearing into the night. It felt like a final parting, and she had to resist the impulse to go after him.
Commander Sharpe was alone in his office on the sixth floor. He was watching something on a TV screen when Brock walked in, and clicked the remote in his hand to switch it off.
‘Come in, Brock.’ Sharpe passed him a plastic sleeve containing a handwritten note, which read, Dear Nigel, Take a look at this. westminsterwhistleblower. com has a copy. Freddie
‘This was in Hadden-Vale’s mail today, inside a padded pouch that’s currently with forensics. He opened it in his parliamentary office at around five this afternoon, and soon after walked out of the building to the middle of Westminster Bridge, where he jumped into the river. There were a number of witnesses.
‘Presumably there was something else in the envelope, our guess is a DVD or flash drive with a recording of an interview with Moszynski’s accountant, Freddie Clarke, which has since been released on the westminsterwhistleblower. com website.’ He nodded at the TV. ‘You’d better take a look.’
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