Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘For Mrs Kessler, is it, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have to ask you to wait another five minutes. The previous funeral’s running late.’

  Sam nodded. He could hear the organ sounds from within. He turned away. A few seconds later a hearse appeared round the bend in the drive followed by two black Daimlers. The attendant signalled the convoy to wait. Sam stepped to one side into a small garden concealed by a laurel hedge, hoping to avoid any direct contact with the husband he’d helped Chrissie to cheat on for so long.

  Within a couple of minutes the doors to the chapel had opened and a handful of elderly women supported by a pair of younger men emerged sombre-faced. Sam watched them progress into the courtyard behind the chapel where wreaths were laid out on the brick paving. Then the hearse drew up to the doors and Chrissie’s coffin was borne inside.

  Martin Kessler followed it closely. Six feet tall, straight-backed and dressed in a dark-blue suit and black tie, his spectacles seemed to have slid down his nose a little. His face was gaunt and tense. A man fighting to retain control. By his side, with her arm hooked through his, was an elegant, dark-haired woman in her late sixties, whose lips were puckered with barely controlled grief. Sam took her to be Chrissie’s widowed mother.

  He let them go in, then emerged from the side garden and followed, laying his flowers next to others in the chapel porch. About ten mourners had spread themselves through the front two rows of seats. Family, he thought. Nobody he recognised from the Firm. Sam slipped into an empty row at the back.

  A thin, middle-aged priest emerged from a vestry and shook hands with Kessler. It was obvious they had never met before. The service began, its pace brisk, as if the cleric were making up for the tardiness of the previous funeral. An electric organ belted out hymns at a tempo more suited to a wedding.

  Sam didn’t hear the words, his eyes boring into the back of Kessler’s head. He must know what that tattoo signified, he thought to himself. Must know why she’d had it done. Or perhaps he’d never seen it. Perhaps, as Chrissie had hinted, Kessler’s inhibitions were so deep that nakedness was an embarrassment to him.

  Sam glanced to his left. The pew on the other side of the aisle that had been empty when he entered was now occupied by a lone woman. Under a broad-brimmed black hat, her face was pert, but drawn, as if she were sucking in her cheeks. She sensed him staring at her and looked his way. Coal-dark eyes appraised him. Then her carmine lips parted in as much of a smile as seemed appropriate in the circumstances.

  Ten minutes later the meaningless ceremony drew to a close. As the coffin rolled mechanically through a curtained hatch on its way to the furnace, Sam felt a compelling need to be away from there. He stood up and slipped as noiselessly as he could through the swing doors.

  Once outside he began to walk briskly away. He needed to be alone.

  Jutting out his chin, he took a path towards the river and didn’t slow until he’d reached the small iron gateway onto the towpath. Autumn leaves had speckled the ground a yellow-red. He walked to the water’s edge and stopped. To his left rowers were carrying skiffs from a boathouse, taking advantage of the slack water at high tide. With his sailor’s eyes well used to squinting against the light, he watched a cormorant fly low and fast up river, while Canada geese honked noisily overhead.

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ A woman’s voice startled him. ‘Are you Sam by any chance?’

  He turned. It was the woman with the broad-brimmed hat. Her eye makeup had been blurred by her tears.

  ‘Yes. Have we met?’ he asked awkwardly.

  Her moist eyes bored into his.

  ‘No. I’m Clare. I don’t know if Chrissie ever mentioned . . .’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Shopping trips and visits to the gym. Endless alibis for her visits to his flat. ‘You live in Fulham.’

  The hollow-cheeked look was natural, he now realised. She was almost anorexic.

  ‘You’ve got a good memory,’ she replied.

  They each pulled a forced smile.

  ‘Grim, yes?’ she checked.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Martin looked shell-shocked, I thought.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sam felt uncomfortable talking about him. ‘Was that . . .?

  ‘Chrissie’s mum? Mmm. Must be hell to lose your only child, even one that didn’t keep in touch.’

  In the years he’d known Chrissie, she’d hardly ever mentioned family. It wasn’t a subject they’d talked about. He frowned, trying to remember what they had discussed other than the latest twist in Chrissie’s schizoid relationship with her husband. The periods they’d spent together were of necessity short and the logistics of adultery all too time-consuming.

  ‘She loved you, you know,’ Clare told him out of the blue. She took a handkerchief from her shiny black handbag and blew her nose.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Oh yes. But you know that.’ There was an accusing tone to her voice, which Sam didn’t understand. Suddenly she took off her hat and shook her hair free. It was cut short to the nape of the neck and shone like a raven’s feathers. ‘I hate hats. Chrissie would’ve screamed to see me in one.’

  Sam smiled politely and turned his gaze back to the river. The scullers were setting off upstream. From a boathouse on the opposite bank an eight was taking to the water. An outboard-powered dinghy scudded in impatient circles like a snarling dog. A coach at the tiller snapped at the rowers through a megaphone.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ he asked, without thinking. Common sense told him it was bad security talking to this woman, but he felt a compulsion to do so, a need to open the lid on any part of Chrissie’s life he didn’t know about. ‘I could do with one.’

  ‘Yes. Brilliant.’ She looked round as if expecting a bar waiter within hailing distance.

  ‘Down there,’ pointed Sam to their right. ‘Beyond the road bridge. There’s a pub.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But just a minute. I think I’d better fix my face. Could you . . .?’ She handed him her hat then took out a compact from her bag and checked her mascara in the mirror, dabbing with a tissue at the streaks. ‘That’ll have to do. Short of plastic surgery . . .’

  She took the hat back and they began to walk. Sam loosened his tie, then removed it, folding it carefully and putting it into his jacket pocket. He wondered whether Chrissie had confided in this woman about their work.

  ‘You knew Chrissie a long time?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. From boarding school onwards,’ she replied proprietorially. ‘Best friends for twenty years.’ She bit her lip as tears threatened again. ‘Can’t believe it,’ she choked, putting a hand to her mouth. ‘Can’t believe she’s really dead and that, that performance we’ve just been through was it.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  They walked in silence under the wide Portland stone road bridge that carried one of the main trunk roads out of central London.

  ‘You’ve been friends since school then,’ he prompted.

  ‘Yes. There’ve been gaps of course. She went to university, I didn’t. Nearly lost touch then. But when she graduated and settled in London working for the Foreign Office, we resumed where we’d left off.’

  ‘And you? What were you doing by then?’

  ‘Human Resources for a big retailer. What they used to call personnel. But she and I, we never talked about our jobs. Chrissie insisted on it. She said all the stuff she dealt with was highly confidential and she couldn’t, so it was best we didn’t discuss my work either. I wondered once if she was bullshitting me – you know, covering up the fact that in reality she was just some lowly clerk.’

  They stepped from the path onto a narrow roadway lined with expensively renovated Victorian villas protected from the high tide by walls and steps.

  ‘But I should have known better,’ Clare continued meaningfully.

  They stepped to one side to allow a milk-float to hum past.

  ‘Chrissie had always been ambitious. A natural high-flyer. Unlike me. She was always fast stre
am. So were the men she dated – most of them. Not you, of course.’ She stopped and grabbed his arm. ‘God, that sounded awful. Didn’t mean it like that. Will you forgive me?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he bristled, suspecting she had meant it cuttingly. There was a bitchiness in the way she spoke.

  ‘The point I was meaning to make was that she hankered after men like that, but at the same time was rather intimidated by them. And often she found them boring and self-centred. That’s why she liked you so much. For your directness. Your down-to-earthness.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Directness was a quality this woman also seemed blessed with.

  ‘Well, of course, she needed ordinary people around her sometimes. People like you and me. So she could feel comfortable. So she could be her true self.’ The last sentence was spoken with feeling.

  They’d reached the pub. Wooden tables and benches crowded a terrace that overlooked the river, but the first spots of rain were splatting noisily around them, so they went inside. He stood at the bar ordering drinks while Clare bagged an isolated table by the window. Sam had a feeling he was being ambushed. That the woman had some purpose in talking to him.

  ‘Large Gordon’s,’ he murmured, placing the ice-filled glass and a tonic bottle in front of her on the varnished mahogany table. ‘You don’t smoke, do you?’ he checked, moving a brimming ashtray to another table. She shook her head. He sat down and took a deep draught of his pint.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ she said, emptying half of the tonic into the glass. Then she raised it. ‘To Chrissie,’ she whispered. ‘Happy memories.’

  They sat without speaking for at least a minute, staring through the window as a squat Port of London Authority vessel scooped up driftwood and plastic bottles from the soupy brown water of the Thames.

  ‘What will you remember best about her, Sam?’

  Clare’s eyes showed a sisterly determination, as if wanting to discover if he’d really cared for Chrissie, rather than just taking advantage of her.

  ‘The enigma,’ Sam answered without a second thought. ‘The mystery of what made her tick. Because I have to confess I never really worked her out.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Clare smiled smugly. ‘A woman’s mystery. The cheese in the mousetrap.’ She sounded cynical.

  ‘Are you married?’ he checked, suspecting a divorce.

  She shook her head. ‘Not my scene. But tell me about the enigma of Chrissie. What was it exactly that you didn’t understand about her?’

  A formal interview question. The woman was beginning to annoy him.

  ‘Well, for starters,’ he said, uncomfortable about where this was leading, ‘how could she go on for the best part of five years deceiving her husband?’

  Clare pooh-poohed his question. ‘The French do it all the time. And anyway, your part in the deception wasn’t exactly honourable, was it? Didn’t you feel just the teensiest bit of guilt?’

  ‘Frequently,’ he admitted defensively. ‘But you know how it is; it felt right. And I told myself that one day she would leave him and—’

  ‘And you two would live happily ever after like the Flopsy Bunnies,’ she mocked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe, yes.’ He felt himself reddening.

  She shook her head. ‘She would never have married you. Never. You know why? You were too self-sufficient. You didn’t need her in your life, you see. Apart from . . . for physical reasons.’

  Her words shocked him. What did she know about his needs? What had Chrissie known . . .

  A babble erupted around the bar. He looked towards the noise, glad of a distraction and a chance to let his anger subside. A rugby crowd in pullovers and scarves were priming themselves for Twickenham or the Old Deer Park.

  Suddenly he felt her touch his hand.

  ‘Sorry. Wasn’t trying to be mean just then.’ She pulled her hand back quickly. ‘Wasn’t getting at you.’

  ‘Forget it.’ He looked away again, determining to end the conversation quickly and leave.

  ‘Shall I solve the enigma for you?’ she asked, her elegant, tapered nose raised condescendingly.

  ‘I have the feeling you’re going to, whatever I say,’ he told her brittlely.

  ‘It’s not hard really, Sam. You see, there wasn’t really much mystery about Chrissie. She was the way she was because she wanted too much. That’s all. Simple as that. The poor girl simply never learned when enough was enough.’

  She pushed her slim fingers through the ends of her shiny black hair, letting the strands slip through them. Her dark eyes watched for his reaction.

  ‘Too simple,’ he retorted, folding his arms.

  ‘Too simple for you, you mean. Because you want it to be more complicated than that. You want the mystery. Because without it, you’d have lost interest in her.’

  He took a deep gulp of his beer in preparation to leave.

  Clare crossed her arms as if hugging herself and teased at the lobe of one ear. Her nail gloss matched her lips.

  ‘I’m so glad to have met you,’ she preened. ‘You’re just as Chrissie described.’

  ‘Really?’ he snarled.

  ‘She’d got you to a tee. She knew instinctively that divorcing Martin and moving in with you would be a disaster.’

  Sam wanted to strangle her. He’d had quite enough of this woman telling him what was right and wrong with his relationship with Chrissie.

  ‘The other thing she knew,’ she added, determinedly twisting the knife, ‘was that on your own, you would never be enough for her.’

  ‘Look, I think you really have said quite enough,’ Sam snapped.

  ‘But listen,’ she rejoined bitterly, ‘that one wasn’t personal to just you, Sam. It applied to all of us. None of us was enough for her. Don’t you see? Not Martin, not you, not me . . .’

  Sam narrowed his eyes. There was innuendo here. For some reason he still didn’t understand, the woman was going for his throat.

  ‘She wanted it all, Sam. And all at the same time. The financial and social security of a husband, but her lovers too.’

  Lovers. The plural was like a knife. He didn’t believe her. He simply didn’t believe what she was implying.

  ‘Designer clothes,’ Clare enumerated, tapping fingers against the palm of her hand, ‘always the top hairstylists, that brand-new BMW coupé . . .’

  Sam frowned. He knew nothing about the car.

  ‘And some of her jewellery was exquisite. She said there’d been some inheritances. And of course her husband earns a bob or two. Rather more than you, I should imagine. A mandarin in the Treasury, isn’t he?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He’d had enough of her bitchiness. ‘You sound as jealous as hell, Clare.’

  ‘No way was I jealous of Chrissie,’ she retorted, her face colouring. ‘I didn’t want what she had. No, Sam dear. You’ve not understood. But then it’s blindingly obvious you never have understood about Chrissie.’

  He tensed, ready to stand up and leave.

  ‘Not jealous of Chrissie, Sam.’ Clare leaned forward, entwining her hands. ‘Jealous of you.’ She let the words sink in. ‘And of Martin of course. Because you two men were each getting a share of something that I wanted for me alone.’

  Sam felt the blood drain from his face. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Clare’s eyes were triumphant. She gave a little laugh. ‘I’m telling you Chrissie was bisexual, dummy.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘It’s true, my dear,’ she answered matter-of-factly. ‘Chrissie and I had sex together at school when we were both seventeen. A crush that I never grew out of. She didn’t either really, but as I said before, no one thing was ever enough for her. For some inexplicable reason she acquired the taste for men’s bodies as well as women’s.’ Sam gaped. This simply could not be true.

  ‘She had a busy schedule did Chrissie, managing her . . . her little stable of partners.’

  Sam was dumbstruck. He would have known, surely. Some sign. Some hint. Some coldness. Bu
t there’d been none. No indication to suggest their sex wasn’t as satisfying for her as it was for him.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ His eyes were like lasers. ‘Why does it matter so much to you that I know?’

  For a long time she didn’t answer, letting her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Because,’ she whispered finally. ‘Because I wanted you to feel what I have felt for God knows how long. To feel the pain of knowing that you are not enough for someone. And that you never ever will be.’

  Sam pushed back the chair and stood up. He couldn’t breathe. He felt the dark, soul-crushing confines of the cell in Baghdad again. He turned away, the panelled walls of the pub, the hunting prints, the brass lamps all now a blur.

  Legs moving for the door, he reached the fresh air and sucked it in. The ground shook as Concorde flew overhead on its way into Heathrow. Brakes squealed and a car stopped inches from his knees. He’d stumbled straight into the road.

  ‘Piss artist!’ yelled the driver.

  Sam reached the river path and turned right. The track dipped onto a boat-launching ramp, slippery with mud and strewn with tree branches and litter left by the tide. Beyond it, the path would take him back to Barnes. He marched ahead, oblivious of the filth spattering his shoes and dark trousers. All that mattered to him was to get away from there. From the satanic woman who’d poisoned his mind, and from the furnace that would soon be turning Chrissie’s remains to vapour.

  26

  a.m.

  Kiev, Ukraine

  BLOCK 16 OF the Krystal residential complex in the sprawling Leningrads’kyi district of the Ukrainian capital was identical to the fifteen others that lined the broad highway leading westwards out of the city. Sixteen floors of dilapidated two-and three-roomed flats with walls so thin that residents learned intimate details of their neighbours’ lives without the need to hold their breath.

  Oksana Ivanovna Koslova stepped out onto the paved area between the blocks, glad to be free of the disinfectant smell that clung to the stairwell and lifts in the tower that had been her home for fifteen years. She had a broad, open face, and dark hair that was almost black. Small gold hoops hung from her ear lobes. Lines at the sides of her lipsticked mouth and around her surprisingly blue eyes belonged to a woman older than her thirty-eight years. Since her husband’s lingering death some five years earlier she’d lived alone here with her daughter Luba, a troublesome fifteen-year-old who took a far stronger interest in pop icons than homework.