Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

  ‘Is Riley in?’

  The barman hooked his thumb towards the ceiling to indicate the upstairs room.

  Riley was in a booth near the fire, his city overcoat on over his suit despite the heat that the logs were throwing out. Knight waited until the youth who was talking to him went away before approaching the table.

  ‘Evening, Doug.’

  The journalist looked up from the notes he was scribbling; his big, florid face had the automatic smile that he switched on for everyone who might be bringing him a story.

  ‘Edmund.’ The smile vanished. ‘Long time no see.’ Knight set the Scotch in front of him. ‘I saw your bit today about Bill Clarke.’

  Riley’s face took on a guarded look. ‘Rotten business.’

  ‘Especially when you consider what really happened.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘You owe me, Doug. I’m collecting. I want to know some things. Like what the police found, who she was.’

  Riley looked anguished; the palm of his hand pressed the air above the table in a gesture of silence. ‘Whoa, Edmund, keep it down. If you knew the knives that are being held at throats over this –’

  ‘I won’t rock any of your boats. I just want to know where it happened, how, and the girl’s name. Then I’ll go away.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘My business.’

  ‘You’ve got contacts at the Yard. Talk to them.’

  ‘Okay.’ Knight stood up. ‘Take me off the list next time you want to check a source or a name.’

  Riley looked up at him for a time. ‘Wait here,’ he said, picked up his drink and went downstairs.

  When he returned twenty minutes later, he put a slip of paper on the table. ‘That’s the girl’s name and the address of the place. Christine Pangton. Nothing known on her. No suspicious connections or history that we’re aware of. There might be if we dug, but we’re not likely to. Looks like she was just a working girl. But good background, educated – good-quality hooker. Clarke could’ve run across her in any of a dozen places in town. The man’s name that I’ve given you was her minder. Lived on the premises with her – this place called Brook Cottage. He might also have been her lover.’

  ‘What about how it happened?’

  ‘Murder Squad report suggests that Clarke killed her. In flagrante. Strangled her. Her minder shot Clarke and his driver, who must have shot back before he died. Bang-bang, all dead. Juicy story, if we could run it.’

  ‘It’s sick.’

  ‘It’d sell papers.’

  ‘Why did Clarke strangle her?’

  ‘He didn’t mean to, I suppose. Pangton was strapped to the bed, face down. S and M. She was wearing a leather bodice with reins. The reins were tangled around her neck. She had long hair. Maybe Clarke didn’t notice the reins were still tight after he let go. Or maybe he got carried away. Hung on too long, got too rough. Who the hell knows how people do these things?’

  Knight put the slip of paper in a pocket. ‘Thanks, Doug. Sorry I had to get heavy.’

  ‘Sure you are,’ Riley replied.

  *

  The club was in one of the streets between Kensington Church Street and Holland Park. It was strictly members only but there were no membership cards. If Greaves didn’t know a face, its owner didn’t get in. That was all there was to it.

  He took a moment over Knight’s face. Then he gave his little, formal smile.

  ‘Mr Knight, isn’t it? We haven’t seen you for a long time, sir.’ He inclined his head slightly and stood aside for Knight to pass.

  The building was long and deep. Knight walked along the corridor on the ground floor, past the restaurants with their Roman statuary and where the waitresses wore linen togas, until he came to the rear lobby. As he stood waiting for the lift, he could hear and feel the beat of music from the basement.

  He rode up to the third floor, past the casinos, gymnasia and massage rooms, walked right to the front of the building again and knocked on the last door he came to. The woman who opened it had a drink in her hand.

  ‘God almighty – Knight! Where have you been hiding?’

  ‘Hello, Thea.’

  Thea was handsome rather than beautiful. Her aquiline nose was in keeping with the toga which, like her girls, she wore. She was twice the age of most of them but it didn’t show in her figure or her skin.

  Knight sat down and took the whisky she offered him.

  ‘Christine Pangton,’ he said. ‘Was she one of yours?’

  Thea slid one hip onto the desk in front of his chair. The toga fell slightly open. She put a cigarette in a long holder and lit it.

  ‘Bill Clarke?’ she asked.

  He nodded. Lurid news travelled fast.

  ‘Chrissie used to be mine, yes. Nice girl. Only about nineteen or twenty. But she’d been on her own for about six months.’

  ‘Was it here that he first met her?’

  Thea nodded. ‘About nine or ten months ago. She had a boyfriend of sorts. I hear he was killed too.’

  ‘Was he her pimp?’

  ‘Minder rather than pimp. Chrissie didn’t need anyone to hustle for her. Word of mouth was enough. That’s why she was able to leave me, when she realised she could go it alone without having to pay my commission. I was sorry she went but I could understand. I’m even sorrier now.’

  ‘What tricks did she do?’

  ‘She could afford to be fussy, so she was. Mostly she kept it clean. Show business type – never worked with children or animals. Also no drugs, no rough stuff.’

  ‘S and M?’

  ‘She might stretch a point for a client she knew well. But she was a sensible girl.’

  ‘She’d have to be tied.’

  ‘There are ways, Knight. Symbolic bonds. Silk cords with slip knots, no chains. No real danger.’

  ‘That’s how she’d do it if she had to?’

  ‘Anyone with any sense would.’

  ‘Did you know her boyfriend – the minder?’

  ‘I met him briefly a few times.’

  ‘Violent?’

  ‘Can’t tell these days. He was a big lad but he seemed quiet enough.’

  Knight put down the half-drunk whisky. Thea slid her hip a little further onto the desk and swung around to stub out the cigarette. The toga parted, revealing the inside of one long thigh. She saw him looking.

  ‘All work and no play, Knight?’

  ‘Another time.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ she said automatically. She paused and became thoughtful. ‘Why are you asking these questions and not the police?’

  ‘Maybe they will.’

  ‘If they do, what should I tell them?’

  ‘Exactly what you’ve told me. Goodnight, Thea.’

  *

  Each student in the air training school at Kidlington had his own separate study-bedroom. Therefore no one had noticed Ibraham’s absence on the Saturday night. The fact that he wasn’t at breakfast on Sunday wasn’t noticed either. There were many students, of various nationalities; even among his own people Ibraham was a loner. When he failed to show up for flight instruction on Sunday afternoon his instructor asked if anyone knew why but the other students simply shrugged or shook their heads. The instructor was puzzled that Ibraham, a conscientious young man, hadn’t bothered to send an explanation via one of them. But it was only a puzzle, not a concern. He marked Ibraham absent and made a mental note to have a tactful word with him next time.

  On Sunday evening, by which time Ibraham had missed four of the day’s prayer sessions, one of his fellow countrymen decided to inform the student welfare officer. The officer called the chief instructor and together they checked around the other students and members of staff; that was when they established that it was twenty-four hours since anyone had last set eyes on Ibraham. Puzzle turned to worry. He was, after all, Libyan. His government paid well for the training he received at the school, and for the dozens of other young Libyan airmen who attended it each year. In these da
ys of tightening budgets, their business was very welcome.

  The school’s principal was phoned at home; he decided that it was time to call the Oxfordshire police. A panda car prowled Ibraham’s jogging route but found nothing.

  The principal phoned Ibraham’s embassy, the Libyan People’s Bureau, then still in St James’s Square, and was given the home number of a junior attaché. He called him and explained the situation. The attaché knew something more than the principal did: that Ibraham had low-level terrorist connections, that he was an occasional courier. His private and unspoken assumption was that Ibraham had gone on some job and simply been careless about leaving a cover story behind. So he listened politely to the principal’s worries, made reassuring noises, thanked the man for letting him know, expressed the view that it would probably turn out to be nothing more than a case of a young man up to the kind of thing that young men usually got up to, and made a mental note to tell Ibraham’s superiors that he was getting careless.

  The Oxfordshire police did three things. They quizzed Ibraham’s fellow students on his routines and people he associated with or had been seen to meet; not that that got them far. They searched his room and personal effects for clues of any kind. And they logged his disappearance on the central computer at Scotland Yard. Libyans were among the several political or otherwise suspect groups whose movements were monitored in this way. Ultimately the information would reach the files of Martin Kellaway’s political branch at Curzon Street.

  But Ibraham Abukhder would be only one man among dozens that were being sought that weekend. By the time his name and background would be seen to stand out, it would be through events that would themselves make obsolete any further need to search for him.

  26

  Hampshire

  The house at Stratfield Saye was discreet in every way. The country lane in which it stood was just under a mile long and contained about ten other properties. There were a couple of small cottages, a farm, a kennels, and three or four other large houses. These had pleasant names like April Meadow and were the sort of country homes favoured by corporate executives and barristers.

  The house in which the Kunaevs were being looked after was bordered by woodland that helped to screen it from the road. There were no observable security measures other than a burglar alarm box on the front wall, which was a standard feature of all the big houses in the road: but there were no guards on the gate, no steel fencing, no dogs in the grounds. Such things would have drawn attention, ruling out the anonymity that was considered essential to good security.

  The couple who ran the house and who were thought by the neighbours to be its owners were a military-looking gentleman in his fifties, who was ‘something in the Home Office’, and his disabled wife. Her disablement was taken as the reason for the resident housestaff and the occasional comings and goings of people assumed to be doctors or physiotherapists.

  This was as far as neighbourhood curiosity went. It was the kind of backwater where people valued their privacy and had little time or inclination to know about each other’s affairs. There were no coffee mornings, no cocktail parties at Christmas, no summer barbeques; and definitely no questions asked.

  ‘It’s Monday,’ Anna said as she knotted her son’s shoelaces. ‘You’re supposed to be on days this week, Viktor. They’ll discover you’re gone this morning.’

  Viktor shook his head. ‘They’ll have noticed the log book at Porchester Gardens already and seen we didn’t come home on Saturday. They know already.’

  They looked at each other in silence.

  ‘Breakfast is at eight,’ he said, not wanting the tension to build up. ‘That gives us time for a walk in the gardens first.’

  Anna zipped Andrei into one of the jumpsuits that the housekeeper had given her. Changes of clothing had been found for all of them; most of the garments were second-hand but at least they allowed what the family had arrived in to be laundered.

  No one interfered with them as they found their way out to the gardens, but Viktor saw Anna glance over her shoulder when they got to the swings. A security man was watching them from the kitchen window. He was leaning forward with his elbows on the sill; a cup of coffee was by his elbow and cigarette smoke curled up from an ashtray beside it.

  ‘Did you want to talk?’ Anna asked. ‘Is that what this is about?’

  Viktor nodded and lifted Andrei into the safest-looking swing.

  ‘I knew it.’ She looked upset. ‘You think they’re listening when we’re in our room.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible, even probable. I’d expect them to.’

  She pushed her hands down inside the pockets of her anorak. ‘When you say things like that, we might as well be back in Porchester Gardens with that washing machine.’

  Viktor started pushing Andrei back and forth. The boy giggled with pleasure.

  ‘Look,’ Anna said, and nodded at the house. The security man was now strolling up and down the rear patio. He poured the dregs of his coffee onto the lawn and stared down the garden at them. Viktor turned from the swing to watch him; then he watched Anna.

  ‘Forget Porchester Gardens,’ she corrected herself. ‘It’s as if we never left Moscow.’

  ‘No.’ Viktor came from the swing and drew one of her hands from the anorak. ‘That man’s on our side. And that’s not how I remember Moscow. Protection was one of the things I asked for.’ He kissed her fingertips. ‘You’re upset because it hasn’t been as easy as we thought. Yet you can’t blame these people for that – they have to be careful.’

  ‘That man Knight – he bullied you.’

  Viktor nodded. ‘Of course. I might have been a trap.’

  ‘He said your files are worthless. After everything you went through.’

  ‘They probably are. How do I know the British don’t already know the information they contain? That doesn’t mean Knight has done anything wrong.’

  ‘He practically told you to go back. “We don’t want you here.” He practically said that.’

  ‘Of course. No one wants a defector. We’re a nuisance, we need to be protected, we’re expensive. That’s all right if it’s someone important. But who is Viktor Kunaev?’

  ‘Money. Always money.’ She pulled her hand away and thrust it back into the anorak. ‘And when you talk about not being important, you sound like him, like Knight.’

  Viktor sighed. ‘That’s because I understand his rules. They’d be mine too if the situation was reversed. This is why I wanted to talk to you. It’s a difficult time, Anna. You must keep being strong.’

  ‘How long do I have to be strong for? Months, years?’

  ‘Days, Anna. They’re starting to accept we’re genuine and not a trap. They believe what I told them about the Spetznaz operation.’

  Andrei was slowing down and had started calling for more pushes.

  ‘Tonight,’ Viktor said, ‘I’ll tell them about the avoska. I’ll begin this morning, in fact. That’s when I’ll tell them my conditions.’

  ‘Conditions. Everything’s so cat-and-mouse.’

  ‘That’s the world I live in.’

  ‘If Knight doesn’t trust you, do you trust him?’

  ‘No.’ He stared down the garden, suddenly looking very grave. ‘That’s also the world I live in. That’s why I set conditions. We had to go to Knight because I had no other name. But I don’t trust him or any of them – I can’t. Not yet anyway.’

  He shook the mood aside and lowered himself into the swing beside Andrei’s, grinning at him as the boy flew past. He crooked his fingers and made grabbing motions until the child was almost crying with laughter. Behind him Anna poked with a toe at a fungus clinging to a tree root.

  ‘This cat-and-mouse world of yours,’ she said after a while, ‘where no one trusts anyone else. I thought it was like that because Yasyenevo was in charge.’

  ‘Some of it,’ he said over his shoulder, still playing with Andiei. ‘But some of it is because, well – because that’s how my work
is.’

  She left the tree and came over to stand behind him. At the head of the garden the security man was lighting another cigarette. Anna laid her hands on Viktor’s shoulders as she watched him.

  ‘It’s a sad world, Viktor Genrikhovich,’ she said to the back of his head. ‘This world that people like you and that man Knight have made. I’m not sure how much I like it. London or Moscow – what’s the difference?’

  Viktor turned around in the swing to stare up at her. She looked disheartened. But before he could say anything the figure of the security man caught his eye. He was waving and pointing at his watch.

  Anna saw too.

  ‘Breakfast,’ she sighed. ‘Our new little tsar says so.’ She lifted Andrei down from the swing and set off up the garden, leaving Viktor to follow.

  *

  An hour and a half later, Sumner thrashed his old Citroën along the unclassified roads that riddled the Hampshire countryside. He roared through tiny villages that lay like forgotten worlds in the remains of the morning mist. Old women in bread shops and postmen on unsteady bicycles turned their heads to stare after him.

  He joined the motorway at Junction 5, headed for London, and let the needle climb to ninety before he was satisfied. If a patrol car flagged him down, he decided, it would be their hard luck, not his.

  He dug the cassette out from his briefcase where it lay on the front passenger seat, put it into the car’s player and rewound it. He let it play from the beginning until it was cued to the passage he wanted. His finger was on the eject button when he decided that he wanted to hear the passage again for himself, and he pressed play instead. He heard it through, then cued the cassette again and took it out. As he stowed it back in the briefcase he shook his head in amazement. This sort of thing was meant to have ended years ago. But it was like indigestion: it kept rumbling on when you thought there was no more left.

  The strange thing was, he should have been shocked and dismayed or something equally worthy, and nothing else. But in his heart there was a small, secret nub of elation. The sort of feeling an anthropologist might have on finding evidence that a supposedly extinct species had survived after all; especially if he’d always felt that times had been more exciting when it was around.