by Alan Judd
Jeremy had venison, Charles shepherd’s pie. For a while they talked of the plentiful tedium and few pleasures of constituency work, of how immigration lawyers were getting round the system, how important it was to keep in with the party whips, how Jeremy couldn’t bear people whose only interest was to climb the greasy pole rather than create a better and more equal society, how gratified he was to be on the Intelligence Services Committee and how he would never want to be foreign secretary anyway.
‘Dreadful job, being a minister. At everybody’s beck and call the whole time, never a moment to yourself, one headache after another, almost as bad as being prime minister. I wouldn’t thank you for it, I really wouldn’t. Would you?’
‘They seem to enjoy it. Rarely give it up unless they have to. Perhaps they think they’re there to do something.’
‘Of course, you’re a mate of George Greene, aren’t you? Handy, having the foreign secretary in your pocket when you want to be chief.’
‘His idea, not mine.’ Given Jeremy’s resentment at not having got the job, it seemed once again best to occupy no-man’s-land. ‘But I doubt I’d have been offered it if we hadn’t known each other.’
‘Jobs for the boys, eh? Nothing changes.’
Charles let him have that one, as it was demonstrably true, and Jeremy, contented, dropped the subject.
‘How’s Sarah?’ Jeremy asked.
‘Well, thanks. Busier than she’d like to be at the moment, with the house move and all that, but okay.’ Busier partly thanks to your secretary who does favours for the Russian intelligence service and doubtless finds a home for copies of all your ISC papers, he would have added. But there would be time for that later; Michael Dunton would be pleased to throw a scrap to his diminishing counter-espionage section, who were constantly being plundered for counter-terrorism work. ‘And Wendy?’ he asked.
‘She’s fine.’ Jeremy took a swig of his beer. ‘In fact, I’m thinking we might get divorced.’ He emptied his glass. ‘Well, you know what it’s like, one thing and another. Except that you don’t, of course, you’ve only been married five minutes. The life went out of our marriage years ago and now that the children are off our hands, more or less, there’s not much point carrying on for the sake of it. May as well live our own lives.’
‘Sorry to hear that. Does each of you have an own life?’
‘Well, there’s the rub, there’s the rub.’ He nodded. ‘Thing is, I – er – Katya, my secretary – don’t think you’ve met her but Sarah has, she’s doing some work for her. Anyway, Katya and I thought we might get together – not marry, we can’t, she’s still married to a vegetable in America. Very rich vegetable, she’s got power of attorney, so that’s all right.’ He grinned. ‘She’s buying a house here now. Sarah knows about it.’
‘Does Wendy?’
‘Thing is, what I was going to say is, Katya’s half Russian – well, Russian but with a US passport – and what I wanted to ask – what I want to know is – whether if she and I, you know, got together – if that would compromise my position on the ISC and possibly any future advancement in government, if you see what I mean. No reason why it should, of course – Cold War’s long gone and all that – and under the last government and the NIA it certainly wouldn’t have. But things seem to have changed since I left the NIA, what with the reinstatement of the three separate services and now George Greene and his ilk in high office, and I wondered if you’ve got any feel for what attitudes are likely to be. I mean, given that you know George better than I do, I wondered if you’d be able to put out feelers—’
‘Questions for the boys, eh?’ Charles softened it with a smile. ‘But really, I’ve no idea, I haven’t enquired about current attitudes.’ Literal, but limited, truth was preferable to honesty. It ought to be a problem and certainly would be once Katya’s allegiances were known. But he couldn’t tell Jeremy that yet. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t do anything in a hurry, don’t commit yourself. Take time to test the water a bit. How did you come across her and how long’s it been going on?’
Jeremy gave a rambling account of how allegations arising from a misunderstanding with a previous secretary had resulted in a series of temps who proved very temporary and how finally an advert on the parliamentary website – most people’s first resort but his last because he preferred to work through people he knew – had produced Katya’s application as an American graduate student and researcher who wanted some practical, hands-on experience of the British political system. They had become close, they understood each other, it had been a revelation. Jeremy spoke as a man obsessed, from which it was easy to guess that she manipulated him with ease. ‘It’s not just a physical thing, you see, it’s intellectual. She has the finest mind I’ve ever met.’
Charles’s own mind was focused less on Katya’s intellectual pre-eminence than on Jeremy’s iPad. It had rested unattended on the table throughout dinner until, while Jeremy described the unsatisfactory secretary who was responsible for the allegations and misunderstandings, it came to life with a message. Jeremy raised his eyebrows at it and said, ‘Ah – Toast thinks he has me in check. I’ll let him wait till I get home before showing him his error.’ He grinned. ‘His fatal error so far as this game is concerned.’
‘Who is Toast?’
‘One of my chess opponents, the most regular and the best. Toast is his game name. A good player but not quite as good as he thinks. I’ll let him stew, then finish him off later.’
‘The game is live now?’
‘Resumed just before I came out this evening. He’s taken a couple of hours over that move.’
Later, installed at last in the cottage with the Office camp-bed – a clumsy apparatus marked ‘War Department’, complete with the government arrow – Charles went through his phone. There were numerous messages from Elaine, some of which he could deal with, others which he put off by saying he would discuss tomorrow. There were also two from DI Steggles and one each from Tim Corke and Michael Dunton. He had hoped for news of Beowulf to give Sarah but there was nothing. He still found it hard to believe it was as serious as it had the potential to be; if something had gone badly wrong it would surely be evident by now. He rang Sarah but there was no answer on her mobile or the house phone. He rang her office and got the night-guard who said she had gone home early evening, then returned and gone again. He left a long and sympathetic message on her mobile, made tea, put his radio on the floor by the camp-bed so that the Today programme would be within reach, and prepared to read for an hour before sleep. He kept the phone beside him in case she rang.
15
Sarah’s experience of women considering divorce was that they damned it up for a long time then poured it out in an emotional Niagara of resentment, regret, anger and – quite often – self-recrimination. But Wendy Wheeler was as cool and precise as the smartly tailored suit she wore.
‘I want to divorce Jeremy because I can’t bear to live with him any more. The mere sight of him makes me sick with distaste and contempt. It doesn’t help that I also think he’s mad.’
The crypt was busy with the pre-concert crowd. They sat at a small table crammed up against a pillar, each with a glass of Sauvignon. Wendy’s dark fringe was neatly trimmed and her cheeks, with their prominent bones, were almost wrinkle-free. Sarah would have assumed a face-lift but her complexion had none of the unsmiling frigidity that usually gave the game away. ‘Why mad?’
‘He doesn’t see the world as other people do. He lives in a world of his own – I know we all do to an extent but his doesn’t so much overlap with other people’s as collide with them. I don’t think he understands other people at all. Nor himself. Something happens and it sparks off fantasies. He never judges by what he sees or hears at all, only by what he already thinks or wants.’
She didn’t want a messy divorce, just a quiet and complete separation that left her and the boys adequately provided for. She didn’t want to sabotage his career or milk him of every penny. The boys were at uni
versity now, one in his first and the other his third year. They would be ‘all right’ about it.
‘But will Jeremy be all right about it? It’s bound to be messy if he isn’t.’
‘He could be. I just never know which way he’s going to bounce. It could suit him quite well if he’s sensible about it. On the other hand, we all know what hurt pride can do.’
‘Is there anyone else involved?’
‘Not directly.’ She smiled. ‘There was but he’s dead.’
Sarah waited.
‘Dr Klein, Viktor Klein. The man everyone was talking about the other night.’ Her lips were still formed in a smile.
‘Does Jeremy know?’
‘No, not properly. But he’s come to suspect.’ She looked around. ‘I wish one could smoke in these places.’
‘We could go outside.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘So why—’ Sarah hesitated. She wasn’t going to take on the case, didn’t need to know the ins and outs of it all and had a couple of good names to recommend to Wendy. But she was puzzled and Charles would be interested. ‘So why – if you don’t mind my asking – why didn’t you get divorced while Dr Klein was alive? Why now, when he’s dead?’
‘You never met Viktor, did you? He was a lover, not a husband. He’d been married, of course, but he could never have stayed married. It would be a nightmare to be his wife. He’d lose interest the moment the knot was tied and you’d be forever looking over your shoulder at every woman he met. It was all I could do to – to keep him, as it was.’
‘But why bother now he’s dead? Divorce is costly, you’ll both be the poorer for it for evermore. Couldn’t you just rub along, leading separate lives? Wouldn’t Jeremy accept that?’
‘Would he notice?’ She shrugged. ‘We could, yes, of course we could, like many people. In some ways it would suit him, he could spend more time with his floozie, that Russian tart who works for him.’
‘Katya? He’s having an affair with Katya?’
‘I don’t know whether it’s an affair or quite what it is and frankly I don’t much care. He’s certainly having an obsession. She’s got him so twisted round her little finger she doesn’t have to jump into bed with him. Unless she wants to, of course, which is hard to imagine. No, but I think he might have killed Viktor, you see, that’s the thing. And I can’t bring myself to stay with him as long as I think that.’
Sarah put down her glass. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘I just do. I look at him sometimes, I look at the back of his head and his fat neck and I can tell, I can just tell. He’s hiding something. I do see things sometimes, not all the time but sometimes I can tell things about people. I’m a bit psychic.’
‘So you’ve no actual evidence? He hasn’t got a gun hidden away or anything like that?’
‘No evidence and he doesn’t have a gun but I know, I just know. Just as I knew he was becoming suspicious from the way he kept mentioning Viktor and started wanting to know where I was every afternoon. Then I found he’d been checking my car mileage. Now he’s suddenly much more cheerful. That’s why I can’t bear the idea of spending the rest of my life with him.’
‘You haven’t thought of going to the police with your suspicions?’
‘Oh no, I don’t want to get him into trouble. Anyway, there’s no evidence, is there?’ Her eyes widened.
Sarah stared back, unsure of which of the Wheelers was madder.
‘There’s also this.’ Wendy took a folded paper from her handbag.
It was a will, the sort downloaded from the Internet, not drawn up by a solicitor. Dated almost a year ago, it was signed by Viktor Klein and witnessed by Jean Goodsell. He had bequeathed all his worldly goods to Wendy Wheeler.
‘That’s his housekeeper, Mrs Goodsell. There’s another copy with his solicitors here in London, but I don’t know who they are.’
‘And Jeremy knows nothing of this?’
‘Of course not.’ She took the will and clipped her handbag shut. ‘Nor shall he until after the divorce.’
‘You should talk to the police.’
They parted after the crowd left for the concert in the church upstairs, Sarah checking her phone as she walked round the corner to their house. There was no message from Charles – a bit early, perhaps, he might still be giving his statement to the police – but there was, exasperatingly, one from Katya Chester. With her usual breathless urgency and faux intimacy, she said that Mr Mayakovsky wished to have further discussion and would call on her at her office as he was in the area that evening. Swearing under her breath and irritated with herself for letting Katya have her mobile number, Sarah called her back but there was no answer. Then she rang the office porter who said yes, a gentleman had called in, hadn’t left a name, said he would call back later.
She really didn’t want to return to the office and it really wasn’t acceptable for clients, even would-be blackmailers, to call without appointments. But Charles wanted her to play him along and this was a good opportunity to talk to him without her secretary or anyone else being aware, even though she wouldn’t be able to record it. Maybe she could get him to say enough for her not to have to see him again. Then she could feel her debt was paid, the debt Charles assured her she didn’t have. And while she waited there were the London Bridge development lease amendments to be getting on with in the office. She hesitated over whether to take a taxi but decided on her car. Having it with her might make her feel more in control.
The office porter nodded towards the waiting area. ‘He’s over there, round the corner,’ he said with lowered voice. ‘On his mobile. Shall I call him over?’
‘No, thanks, I’ll go up to my office and ring you when I’m ready for him. Make it look as if I’ve been here a while but was too busy to see him.’
She used the stairs as they were out of sight of the waiting area, switched everything on in her office – gratifyingly it all worked – and settled herself. She felt better about dealing with him when she was in charge of the environment; certainly better than being imprisoned in the back of his Rolls-Royce.
He was still studying his phone when he was shown in and barely had the grace to glance up for long enough to shake hands. They both sat. He resumed his study of the phone. Perhaps he intended to record her, though he wasn’t being very secretive about it. She said nothing. Eventually he noticed her silence and looked up. She stared at his phone, still saying nothing. After a few seconds he put it in his pocket.
‘Thank you, Mr Mayakovsky. Now that we have each other’s undivided attention, perhaps you’d like to tell me what I can do for you?’
‘You can give me answer, please.’
Despite her promise to Charles it was an effort to suppress the answer she wanted to give. It was important, she reminded herself, it would help Charles, it was in the national interest that she should play along just this once, to find out what they wanted to know. But it was hard not to respond to his morose truculence.
‘Perhaps you could remind me of the question.’
‘Have you told your husband about our conversation?’
‘No.’
‘So – you will cooperate?’
‘That depends on what you ask. Also, on your giving your word that nothing of what you know of my previous husband will be published or made known.’
She doubted that pleasure was part of Mr Mayakovsky’s facial repertoire but the intensified stoniness of his gaze – if that was possible – may have indicated satisfaction. ‘You have my word and the word of Moscow.’ He took out a gold pen and small black notebook. ‘Now, please, what can you tell me?’
That was easy. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Perhaps you’d better tell me what you’d like me to ask my husband about?’
He stared as if the question came as a surprise, then took out his phone and studied it again. It struck her that he might be one of those comically incompetent men whose menace would evaporate the moment she saw him like that. Perhaps he was simply
not very good at his job. Charles had been rather dismissive of him. But then Charles hadn’t met him.
He looked up from his phone. ‘Mr Peter Tew, this man. We want to find this man.’
‘I told you before, I don’t know him. I don’t know where he is.’
‘You must ask your husband. He can discover him.’
‘I’ll try.’ She made a needless note, thinking it might impress him. ‘But why do you want to know? Why are you so interested in him? Is he still in MI6?”
‘Please.’ He held up his hand. ‘In Moscow they are suspicious of people who ask questions.’
‘All right.’ She put down her pen. ‘Tell me what else you would like to know.’
‘Moscow will tell me and I will tell Katya and she will tell you when you talk with her about houses.’
‘That’s a good idea, it’s always nice to talk to Katya. And very useful for you to have her working for you. She doesn’t attract suspicion.’
‘But sometimes you see me.’
‘Even better.’
‘She will ring you.’
‘Yes. She does that quite often, anyway.’
‘When she ring you it might also be message from me.’
‘I understand.’
‘But also I wish to buy houses. I have money for many houses. I am rich man. Really.’
‘I understand that too.’
After consulting his phone again, he put away his pen and notebook and stood, holding out his hand. ‘I am pleased we work together, Mrs Thoroughgood.’
‘So am I.’
‘It is pleasure for me.’ His smile – the first she had seen – was almost, quite unexpectedly, charming.
