Secret Asset (10 page)

But the modesty and the sense of humour weren't really what struck Liz now. Underneath Tom's easygoing manner, she sensed a deep, lurking sadness that he had long ago decided to keep buried. He is carrying a wound, thought Liz, the way a war veteran might carry shrapnel deep inside. Somehow she doubted Tom often talked about his father—she felt flattered that he had with her.

Don't get carried away, she told herself, sensitive to the fact that she had no one intimate in her life just then. Still, she was a little intrigued by Tom Dartmouth, and wondered how long it would be before he offered to chauffeur her again. I hope it's soon, she decided, finishing her wine and deciding to get into bed early. Then she laughed as she had an image of herself, standing outside the fourth-floor lift, with her thumb up, hitchhiker style, but being very choosy about the driver.

21

T
hree days later, Rose Love, a junior member of Investigations, came to see Judith Spratt in the Operations Room. Judith liked the first-year recruit, and she tried to encourage her. For although Rose had a First from York University and was also a strikingly pretty young woman, she seemed very unsure of herself. Despite the considerable attention paid to her by male colleagues, she was reluctant to be assertive, even when she should. Now Rose spoke to Judith in little more than a whisper. “Sorry to bother you, but it's about the CCTV footage.”

“Yes,” said Judith loudly, unable to suppress her impatience. Doubtless there was another hitch—a disk wiped by a shop owner, or undated material supplied by the supermarket security men. She was about to tell Rose just to get on with things as best she could when she forced herself to be patient and hear the girl out.

“It's just I think that possibly—I'm not sure—we may have found something.”

For Rose this was virtually a declaration of certainty, which made Judith focus immediately. “Let me see,” she said, getting up from her seat.

         

Ten minutes later Judith called Tom Dartmouth to the room downstairs, and they were both looking at a monitor while Rose moved through the footage screen by screen. “There!” called Judith sharply, and the screen froze. It was not a very clear picture, but three figures were clearly discernible at the front of the shop by the till, where they were captured at a range of seven feet by the camera positioned high on the wall above the Lucozade clock. They were male, Asian—a mix of colour and dress combined to give that distinct impression—and seemed to be young. None of them looked at the camera, or for that matter at Irwin Patel, who was serving one of them. The time meter said 20:24.

“Sorry,” said Tom Dartmouth apologetically, “but you better talk me through it. I've never been any good at this—it all looks like ultrasound scans to me.”

“The man at the till. We think he may be a match with one of the Dutch photos.” Judith passed him a printout, which in contrast to the frozen video frame was high resolution and clear. The face that stared out from it was of a personable-looking youth of Asian appearance, half man and half boy, who was struggling to grow a moustache and had a slight overbite and a broad smile.

“They've identified him as Rashid Khan. He's nineteen years old and comes from Wolverhampton.”

“Okay,” said Tom, weighing this, “but where's the match?” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I don't mean to sound unPC, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you which of these three he's meant to be.”

“Look again,” said Judith. “The man at the till. See anything unusual about him?”

Tom peered closely at the screen. “He's not very tall, is he?”

Judith nodded. “Five foot one-and-a-half inches, to be precise. At least according to the passport application of Rashid Khan. But that's not all—look closely at the face.” Tom did so obediently. “Same moustache, or effort at one. Same slight prominence of the upper teeth.”

“Can't say I see that,” said Tom.

Rose Love suddenly spoke up. “It's very difficult,” she announced, then seemed about to lapse back into shyness until something prompted her and she went on. “If you watch this sort of thing several hours a day it all seems much clearer. Like the ultrasounds you mentioned—parents think they're clear as mud, but to an obstetrician they're picture-perfect.” And after this she blushed and went quiet, while Judith looked at her, pleasantly astonished by this intervention.

Tom held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “You're the experts. If you say it's a match then I have to accept that.”

“We
think
it's a match,” said Judith. “No guarantees.”

“Of course,” said Tom. “But assuming you're right, who the hell is Rashid Khan?”

“We've got no trace under that name,” said Judith. “I'm seeing Dave Armstrong right after you,” she added, since identifying a suspect might be her responsibility, but finding them was someone else's.

         

At first Irwin Patel thought the policeman was back in his shop to return the CCTV footage he had taken away the week before. But this time he was accompanied by a man in a grey parka jacket. “Could we have a word,” asked the policeman, “in the back of the shop?”

“Oscar,” called Irwin, and gestured for his son to man the till, then led the two men to the small storeroom which doubled as an office—or more accurately, the place where Irwin and his family took their breaks during open hours.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said Irwin politely but a little nervously.

The man in the parka spoke. “We found pictures on the footage you gave us of someone we are interested in.” He handed an eight-by-eleven still photo captured from the CCTV video footage to Irwin, who studied it carefully.

“Do you remember serving this man?”

Irwin thought hard. He wanted to help, but the fact was that probably fifty per cent of his business was passing trade—one-off visitors to his shop he would never see again. “No,” he said at last.

“Or the men behind him?”

Irwin peered at the photograph for some time. The beat policeman said impatiently, “Can't you remember a group of three like this? It was probably last Monday, if that's any help.”

Irwin was tempted to remark that his Asian clientele all looked alike to him, but said instead, “If I had to guess, I would say I serve over fifty Asian men under the age of thirty every day. Some come in alone, some with a friend, and some”—he looked pointedly at the man he now thought of as PC Plod—“come with two friends. I do not recognise any of these men.”

The constable groaned, but the man in the parka seemed unperturbed. “How about this man?” he asked, handing another photograph to Irwin. It was the same photo Judith Spratt had extracted from the five hundred or so sent by her Dutch counterparts only days before.

Whether because of the clarity of this picture or its full-frontal pose, this time Irwin's face lit up. “I've seen this man!” he exclaimed. “Here in the shop.”

“Did you speak with him?”

Irwin shrugged. “I must have. He was a customer. But probably only to say thank you, or here's your change. Nothing more than that. I couldn't remember his voice,” he said, suddenly worried they were expecting that.

“That's all right. But do you by any chance remember what he bought?” asked the plain-clothes man.

“As a matter of fact I do,” said Irwin. “He bought rolling papers—you know, for cigarettes. I remember that because he was very short. Not much more than five feet tall,” he added, proud of his own five feet seven inches. “I remember wanting to tell him that smoking stunts your growth.”

And at this even the po-faced PC Plod laughed. He looked towards the man by his side. He wasn't sure if he was Special Branch or some higher kind of spook, but he wasn't a bad bloke—he'd said to call him Dave. And Dave was happy now.

22

M
iss Prideaux's remark that she was “awfully sorry to hear about Ravi” had been nagging at Liz ever since that day in Oxford. She counted Judith Spratt as her friend, but Judith had said nothing to her about any problem with her husband. Liz had always got on well with Ravi Singh, a handsome Westernised Sikh who was doing very well and earning a lot of money in a City investment bank. Their marriage always seemed so happy that Liz wondered if perhaps Ravi was ill.

Normally, Liz wouldn't have thought of prying into a colleague's matrimonial affairs, but Judith was on the list of suspects. When she had asked B Branch if Judith had recently mentioned anything about Ravi—any change of circumstances in her private life, as she was required to do—the answer came back that she had not. Liz's heart sank. She would have to say something herself.

She was already feeling low. The previous evening she'd phoned her mother, who had seen Dr. Barlow about her test results that afternoon.

The phone in Bowerbridge seemed to ring forever, and Liz was about to give up when her mother answered at last. “Hello, darling,” she said, “I was in the garden picking some delphiniums. They're wonderful this year. You should come down before they're over.”

How typical of her mother's priorities, thought Liz, with a daughter's mixed affection and annoyance. “What did Barlow say?”

Her mother paused, her normal reaction to her daughter's directness. “It's nothing too terrible, Liz.”

“Good,” she said, trying to sound cheerful rather than impatient. “Tell me what he said.”

“Well, it seems there might be a problem. He wants me to go into hospital for a surgical procedure.”

“What kind of surgical procedure, Mother?”

“They've found something growing and I guess they want to see what it is. A biopsy?” She said it hesitantly, as if pronouncing the Latin name for a species of rose.

Only my mother, thought Liz, can make a tumour sound like a horticultural phenomenon. “When is this?”

“Saturday week. It shouldn't take long.”

She'll be in overnight, thought Liz, and immediately said she would come down that Friday. Her mother's protestations did not last for long, and Liz could tell from her mother's voice that she was relieved, and also that she was scared.

Now, as she sat at her desk, suddenly she felt tears in her eyes. She had woken in the night thinking about Marzipan, the mole hunt which didn't seem to be getting anywhere, and the terrorists on the loose, and finally her mother's tests. Now, to top it all off, Liz knew she would have to talk to Judith, since Judith was on her list. And as luck would have it, she ran into her in the corridor later that morning, as Liz was on her way to check on Peggy's progress. Elegantly dressed as usual, in a fawn skirt and cream cashmere sweater, Judith seemed to be in a hurry. She didn't stop at first when Liz said hello.

“Have you got a second, Judith?” Liz called after her.

Her friend slowed down, though her body language spoke nothing but tension. “Sorry, Liz, I'm in a bit of a rush.”

“Okay,” said Liz, and was about to ask her when she would have time to talk when Dave Armstrong appeared from nowhere. He gave Liz a playful tap on the shoulder. “Did Peggy find you? She's seems all keyed up about something.”

“I'm just on my way to see her. Hang on a sec,” she added and turned back to Judith. But she'd moved away, striding down the corridor at speed. Damn, thought Liz, thinking of her own reluctance to beard her friend. She clearly doesn't want to talk to me, either. Damn!

         

She found Peggy in the conference room. “Dave said you wanted me?”

“We've cracked it,” Peggy announced excitedly.

“Sorry?” said Liz.

“Technical Ted. He's come through at last. Look.” She pushed over a small stack of laser printouts.

Liz sat down and leafed through the first pages, mystified by what seemed an unvariegated mass of listings and announcements from some bulletin. “What am I looking at?”

“Sorry,” said Peggy. “Turn the next page. I've circled the relevant bit.”

As Liz did so, Peggy explained. “It's the talk Liam O'Phelan was giving in Oxford.”

“From Boston to Belfast: Britain's Dirty War in Northern Ireland and Abroad.” Dr. L. O'Phelan, St. Antony's College, 7:30 p.m.

Liz's pulse was racing, but not because Peggy Kinsolving's excitement was contagious. Her younger colleague, Liz sensed, was keyed up because Technical Ted had managed to decipher the disk—which had assumed such significance just because its contents had remained a mystery. That was so often the problem with the investigative process, thought Liz: the more difficult a secret was to uncover, the greater its importance became.

But she sensed that there was something here worth following up. O'Phelan's topic suggested an interest in contemporary Irish political affairs which his high-flown historical chatter about Charles Stewart Parnell did not. It also indicated a strongly Republican and anti-British position. He might have changed his views or at least moderated them in the years between his talk at Oxford and the present day, but Liz doubted that he had mellowed very much.

“Well done,” Liz said to Peggy, and she meant it, for now, she decided, she would need to speak to O'Phelan again and probe this interest in the “dirty war.” But it would have to wait. First she'd see what Jimmy Fergus unearthed about the sly, intelligent don at Queen's. And there were some other bigger fish to fry before that. With the exception of Tom Dartmouth, she realised, she had yet to speak directly with any of the suspects on the list.

23

F
or the second time in a month Dave Armstrong found himself in Wolverhampton. It should have been a two-hour drive—at least the way Dave drove—but the congestion at the M6/M42 junction made it closer to three before Dave found himself sitting with a local Special Branch officer in McDonald's. The night before, Dave, who liked to think of himself as fairly fit, had watched a TV documentary about the effects of a McDonald's diet, and now he watched fascinated as the officer tucked into a Big Mac, large fries and a chocolate shake. Dave stuck to black coffee, so hot it burned his tongue on the first sip.

The Special Branch man suppressed a belch, then said, “We're still not entirely clear how you want to handle this. I've got armed officers at the ready, but you said something about ‘softly softly' on the phone.”

“Do we know who's in the house?”

“Not precisely. It's a family residence. People named Khan. Respectable couple—the man is a sales rep for a restaurant supply business. His wife works part-time in a laundry. Three kids—all teenagers. Two boys and a girl. Your guy's the eldest but hasn't—as far as we know—left home yet.”

Dave had already planned his approach. He certainly had no intention of risking his life or the life of any officer entering the house of Rashid Khan. He was also well aware how much ill will a heavy-handed approach might cause. If Rashid's family were in the house, it seemed unlikely that a police presence would provoke an armed response, at least not immediately, or that Rashid would blow himself up as soon as he realised it was the police at the door, but he didn't intend to risk it.

“I wouldn't call it softly, but I'd like to start with just a knock on the door. I want concealed backup that's armed and ready and expecting trouble, but they're not to do anything until they see what the initial response is.”

“And who's going to be the man at the door?”

“I am,” said Dave.

         

He rang the bell and waited. Unarmed, he could not help but think of how helpless he would be if someone answered the door with a gun. He was surprised when a girl, still in her teens and in school uniform, opened the door.

“Yes?” she ventured timidly. It was teatime, and Dave wondered who else would be in the house.

“I'm from the Benefits Office,” said Dave, “and I wanted a word with Rashid Khan. It's just a routine check about his claim. Is he in?”

Her astonishment seemed genuine to Dave. “No, but why? Is he in trouble?”

“Is your mother or father at home?”

Ten minutes later Rashid's father's bewilderment was growing. “Are you sure it is our son you are looking for?” he asked yet again.

“I'm afraid so,” said Dave patiently.

“It doesn't make sense. It cannot be the son I raised. He shared everything with us.”

“Everything?” asked Dave, who had learned nothing from either parent that would explain their son's disaffection—they thought Rashid had been in Holland for work experience before he went to university.

“Everything,” repeated the father defiantly.

“Then why don't you know where he is now?”