Present Danger

by Stella Rimington

  The woman stared at her. ‘As I said, Monsieur Milraud is not here.’

  ‘Don’t think I don’t believe you. The only question then is what I’ve got wrong, not did I get it wrong – since we have established that.’

  Judith saw the look of doubt in the woman’s eyes and wondered if she was overplaying her role.

  ‘Let me have a look at the diary, and perhaps I can see when your appointment might be.’ The woman went through a door marked ‘Private’ at the back of the shop, returning a moment later with a leather-bound desk diary. ‘Your name is?’

  ‘Crosby. Heather Farlow Crosby.’

  Judith watched as the woman consulted the pages of the diary. ‘I see nothing here,’ she said.

  ‘Oh how silly of me,’ said Judith, putting a hand to her cheek. ‘It wouldn’t be my name at all, would it? It would be my cousin Simon’s.’

  ‘Simon?’ the woman said, her expression suggesting she was having to work hard to keep her patience.

  ‘Willis. His mother was the Crosby, which is why my cousin and I have different surnames.’ And she continued prattling while the woman ran her finger up and down the page, until she stopped at one line. When she looked up at Judith now her face was wary. ‘A Mr Willis was here,’ she said slowly. ‘Yesterday in fact.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Judith with relief. ‘So at least I was close.’ Her smile went unreturned. ‘And was I right about the time?’

  ‘The time?’ The woman was watching her carefully.

  ‘Yes.’ Judith glanced at her watch, a slim antique with a silver strap that, like most of the rest of her attire, she had borrowed from a colleague. ‘Two o’clock?’

  The woman made a show of looking at the diary. She seemed suddenly nervous. ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘And could you tell me how long he was here? Did he make a purchase? I’m wondering if he went off to the country by himself. Do you remember when he left?’

  ‘They left …’ and the woman paused.

  Judith pounced. ‘They?’ There was nothing ditzy in her voice now. ‘Did he and Monsieur Milraud leave together then?’

  The woman said carefully, ‘No. Your cousin left, then Monsieur Milraud left shortly afterwards. He had his plane to catch.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘It must have been about two-forty-five that your cousin left. Monsieur Milraud left about three-fifteen to catch the plane.’

  ‘And my cousin left alone? You’re absolutely sure of that?’

  ‘Quite sure, madam,’ replied the woman tersely, dropping her mask of politeness.

  ‘You see it’s very important,’ said Judith levelly, returning the woman’s stare. There was little pretence left between them.

  ‘I can assure you that he was on his own when he left.’ The woman had regained her sangfroid and the shutters had come down with force. It was obvious that she knew more than she was letting on but Judith could see that she would get nothing else out of her now. ‘I’m afraid I cannot help you further.’ Judith was being ushered firmly towards the door.

  Outside on the pavement Judith found that her nervousness had been replaced with anger. It was obvious that something had happened to Dave and that this woman knew more about it than she was letting on. Now the woman also knew that someone was looking for Dave, and Judith doubted she believed for a moment that it was his cousin.

  35

  Liz stared out at the old barracks parade ground as the last flicker of sun gave way to the chill dusk of the February afternoon. Information was beginning to seep in but so far it was all negative. She still had no idea what had happened to Dave.

  No results yet from the various CCTV cameras in the car park and the area around Milraud’s shop, but at least she now knew, thanks to Judith’s thespian efforts at the premises, that Dave had actually been there. If the shop assistant was to be believed, he had left safely and on his own at two forty-five. But that might not be true. Judith thought that at the very least the woman was not telling all she knew, and in spite of what she had said, Milraud had certainly not taken the flight to Paris on which he had a reservation. Nor had he been found on any airline manifest leaving Ireland in the last forty-eight hours. It was still possible that he had taken a private plane from one of Ireland’s thirty-odd airports but nothing had been found to point to that, and if he had changed his plans, the question remained why had he done so. Preliminary checks with the ferry services in the North and in the Republic had come up with the same result: no sign of the man.

  The main interest had come from analysis of the photographs taken by the camera on the gate of the National Trust property in County Down. There had been an unusual amount of movement in and out since the previous afternoon. Timed at three-forty-four, the red Vauxhall Vectra had gone in, with the dark-faced thug and the man identified as Malone in the front seat. There seemed to be no one in the back, though the camera could not see the back seat clearly. At four Piggott had gone in driving his Audi, with an unidentifiable back-seat passenger. At five-thirty the Audi had gone out again, driven by the Spaniard, and had returned at seven-thirty, again driven by the Spaniard. Nothing more had happened until seven-thirty the following morning when the Audi had been driven out by Malone, possibly with a back-seat passenger who might or might not have been Piggott.

  At the offices of Fraternal Holdings in Belfast, where A4 had been on watch since eight a.m., very little had happened. At nine a.m. the female receptionist had let herself into the offices with a key. She was now sitting in the reception area, clearly visible to Arthur Haverford and Jerry Rayman in their observation post across the street. She was painting her nails.

  Two policemen had been to Piggott’s house on the National Trust estate during the morning. The old housekeeper who had answered the door said that her employer had left the previous day and had not told her where he was going or when he would be back. The police officers had been told to do no more than enquire for Piggott and if he was there to ask him some question about an imaginary rave on the National Trust land. So they’d accepted what the housekeeper said and, after walking round the surrounding land and seeing nothing to arouse their suspicions, they had left.

  As Liz was turning all this over in her mind, Michael Binding appeared in her office doorway, eyebrows raised in a questioning look. Liz shook her head. ‘Nothing firm yet,’ she said flatly. ‘Still waiting for the CCTV.’

  ‘I wish they’d get a move on,’ he said, coming into the room and fiddling with his tie. He didn’t sit down. ‘I promised DG a progress report this evening. All I’ve got is a lack of progress report. It won’t do.’

  Liz didn’t reply. It wasn’t quite true. The threads of an investigation were beginning to emerge. The problem now was making sense of them and deciding what to do about it, without precipitating a situation that might put Dave in more danger than he was already in – that was if he were not dead already, something she did not wish to contemplate.

  Binding wasn’t finished. ‘You were supposed to be in charge here, Liz. You go away for two days and your people end up all over the place. God knows what’s happened to Dave, or why he felt he could just go charging off on his own.’

  ‘He certainly didn’t have my permission to do that.’

  ‘So you say,’ Binding replied infuriatingly. ‘That Judith Spratt didn’t tell me what was going on is something that I’ll want to pursue.’

  When Liz started to protest at the unfairness of this, Binding waved a dismissive hand. ‘Later. There’ll be plenty of time for post-mortems. Right now we need to do something. I want to talk to the police and put out an all-persons alert.’

  ‘For Dave? Or for Milraud?’

  He looked momentarily flustered. ‘For Dave, of course.’

  Liz turned away. What was he proposing to say? Have You Seen This Man? He’s an MI5 Officer and We Can’t Find Him. This was ludicrous. She decided to ignore it and said, ‘I’ve been thinking over the leads we have.’

  ‘None
that I can see.’

  ‘That’s not entirely true. Remember, our informant Brown Fox said Seamus Piggott wants to kill policemen and an MI5 officer. Jimmy Fergus got shot three days ago and now Dave’s disappeared. We know he went to Milraud’s shop and we’re pretty sure from what Brown Fox told Dave that Milraud is working in some way with Piggott, probably supplying him with arms. It might all be coincidence, but that’s what we’ve got to go on right now. If we can link the attack on Fergus to Piggott, that will let us grab Piggott, assuming we can find him, and that should lead us to Milraud. And with luck to Dave.’

  He looked at her as he considered what she said. ‘It’s a tenuous chain you’re building there.’ But he said this quietly, always a good sign with him.

  ‘I know it is. But we’ve got to start somewhere. I want to step up the investigation now. I want to put telephone intercepts on Milraud’s shop and we need to identify that woman who works there and get her communications intercepted too. Also all the communications to and from the Fraternity offices need to be on check, and I’m wondering if we shouldn’t ask the police to go back to Piggott’s place and go in. As you said before, Michael, time is of the essence.’

  Binding sat down heavily. There was a pause. Eventually, ‘You’re right,’ he conceded. ‘We need to work on the assumption that Dave has been taken by someone. We should waste no more time. We’d better get that investigative team over.’

  ‘No. We do need reinforcement but not an investigative team. I still think that would cause delay and confusion. What I want is to get Peggy Kinsolving from counter espionage over here. If there is anything to find out to connect all this, she’ll do it.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what you want and if you can persuade Charles Wetherby to release her, then go ahead.’

  So Liz now had two phone calls to make and she realised that she was looking forward to one much more than the other. And she realised with some surprise that her preference was not in the order she would have expected.

  First she rang Charles Wetherby in London.

  ‘Hello, Liz. I’m glad you rang. How are you all over there? We’re very concerned about Dave. Is there any news? Is there anything I can do to help?’

  On any other occasion Liz would have taken the opportunity to tell Charles everything that had happened and ask for his advice. But now something was stopping her. She seemed no longer to feel the old closeness to him, the unspoken understanding that they had had in the past. She didn’t want to prolong the conversation, so she just asked if she could borrow Peggy Kinsolving to help with the case. When Charles readily agreed, she rang off.

  Why had she done that? It seemed that rather than getting closer, as she had expected they would after Joanne’s death, they had got further apart. She knew what it was, though she didn’t want to dwell on it. It wasn’t just that they were separated by the Irish Sea. It was the thought of Alison, his neighbour, and in particular their ‘friendship’ as her mother had tactfully called it.

  But that wasn’t all. She had cut short the conversation with Charles because she wanted to get on with her next call. This was the one she was looking forward to.

  ‘Ah, Liz, how nice to hear from you.’ The warm Parisian tones were what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Martin, I need your help. Or at least your advice. I’m trying to find our friend Milraud, but he seems to have disappeared.’ She explained how they could find no trace of the arms dealer having left Northern Ireland.

  ‘That is a little puzzling, but perhaps he took another way back – a private plane even. Or he’s taken a holiday somewhere in Ireland. Is this urgent?’

  ‘It is, I’m afraid. One of my colleagues has disappeared. He had an appointment with Milraud at his shop here but he hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday.’ She heard his small exclamation of surprise, and she went on, ‘I know, it hasn’t been very long. But our man isn’t one to take off like this. Our observations had confirmed our suspicions about your old colleague. He was here to do business with Seamus Piggott, the American I told you about.’

  ‘I remember. And Milraud’s disappearance is connected in some way, no?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, relieved that Seurat understood. ‘We have a source who claims that Piggott wants to kill a policeman and an MI5 officer.’

  ‘Could that not be dramatic on your informant’s part? You know they always want to have something to sell.’

  ‘Not in this case, I think. From what I’ve learned about Piggott’s background, he’s looking for revenge for something that happened in the past. And just before I came to Paris, a senior policeman was shot outside his own house – he survived, but they were definitely trying to kill him.’

  ‘Liz, if it’s any consolation, Milraud is not a murderer. Remember, I know the man well. It’s not that I view him through – how do you say it? Rosy spectacles?’

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Liz with a laugh.

  ‘It’s rather that I know he’s too ambitious to risk spending the rest of his life rotting in prison. For Milraud, his business, legitimate or not, would always come before revenge. In that sense, he’s too professional to kill your man.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. The problem is, we can’t find Piggott either. And he may not have Milraud’s scruples.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to locate Milraud.’

  Seurat paused. ‘Hmm. As you know, we have our own interest in Milraud, though we’ve never had enough evidence to devote much time to him. We haven’t asked our colleagues in the DCRI to place him under any kind of surveillance. What I can do is speak with Isabelle in DCRI – you met her, yes?’

  ‘Of course.’ Mme Florian, the woman in jeans whom she and Bruno had visited in the office near the Eiffel Tower.

  ‘I would ask her as a matter of urgency to discover if Milraud has returned to Toulon. If not, I will also ask her to try and find out if someone there knows where he is.’

  ‘That would be very helpful, Martin.’

  ‘It may not help very much at all. But it’s at least a start.’

  36

  ‘That’s Dave!’ Judith exclaimed. They were huddled around a monitor in Michael Binding’s office. It was ten in the evening and a pile of pizzas lay in their boxes untouched on a table in the corner.

  Dave was easily recognised from his familiar loping stride as he strolled along the shopping centre’s main walkway. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. The time on the screen was one-forty-eight, so there were twelve minutes to go before, according to the shop woman, he had arrived at Milraud’s establishment. The features were fuzzy and the clothes unfamiliar – Liz didn’t think she’d ever seen Dave in a blazer – but there was no mistaking his walk. It was unexpectedly upsetting to see him there, striding confidently along to … to what?

  The tape was a composite of all the relevant segments located by A4, after a careful search through God only knew how many hundreds of hours of CCTV film. As Dave disappeared from view along the long row of shop fronts, he suddenly reappeared crossing a concrete courtyard full of shoppers. The time on the screen was one-fifty-five. The figure walked quickly across the small square, then reappeared on a broad street lined by what looked like light-coloured brick office buildings. It was less busy here, and Dave was easy to pick out, until he turned left at a corner and disappeared from the screen.

  ‘That’s Milraud’s street,’ said Judith. ‘Look, it wasn’t quite two o’clock when Dave went down it. That confirms what the woman in the shop said. But none of these cameras show him returning. We’ve checked others that cover the opposite end of Milraud’s street, and there’s no sign of him on those either. So where did he go?’

  Binding was unusually quiet. He had changed his clothes at some point during the day, and was now back in his quasi-military garb – elbow-patched khaki sweater, corduroys in the curious shade of pink, and desert boots. />
  Liz asked, ‘Do we know how he travelled there?’

  Binding gave her a caustic look. ‘On foot, obviously. What do you think we’ve just been watching?’

  She looked at Judith, who raised an eyebrow. Binding’s mood had darkened; his earlier anxiety was giving way to anger. Liz said calmly, ‘I meant, how did he get to the shopping centre? Public transport?’

  Judith shook her head. ‘We’re pretty sure he drove. His car’s not at his flat.’

  ‘What’s your point, Liz?’ asked Binding.

  ‘If he drove, he must have parked somewhere. If we find the car, we’ll know he didn’t come back.’

  Binding’s silence seemed assent. Liz said, ‘So, since we first see him at the shopping centre, I suggest we check the car park there.’

  And twenty minutes later Maureen Hayes and Mike Callaghan located the car, a Peugeot 305 from the car pool, which Dave had been driving for the past two weeks. It was on the upper level of the shopping centre car park, at one end, behind a pillar.

  They approached it cautiously, and Callaghan lay down on the hard concrete and peered underneath with a mirror and a torch. When he stood up, dusting his hands, and gave Maureen the nod, she opened the passenger door with the reserve key.

  The inside was empty, except for a street map of Belfast lying on the driver’s seat, and a half-drunk bottle of water.

  By the time they phoned back with news of their discovery the meeting in Binding’s office had broken up and Liz was sitting alone in her own office. She asked for the car to be brought back to the A4 garage. As she put down the phone she reflected that it was now overwhelmingly clear that Dave hadn’t gone AWOL, not that she had ever believed he had. It was always extremely unlikely that an upset in his personal life would have sent his professional conduct off the rails. Something bad had happened to Dave, and she was trying not to assume the worst.

  Ten minutes later she and Judith reconvened with Michael Binding in his office. It was almost midnight now, and Binding stifled a yawn as Liz reported on A4’s discovery. Outside the wind had picked up, and the curtains at the office windows were moving slightly in the draught.