The Invisible Code (10 page)

Longbright dreamed of a clothing allowance, although that would have been a slippery slope. She would have soon lavished it on impractical corsetry and 1950s sheath gowns.

The next thing she noticed was how closely Sabira stayed by her husband’s side. In the few photographs that showed her seated with other people at government dinners, she appeared to be mutely listening. Her attitude was demure, as if she had been advised not to speak by her husband.

Around the end of the last week of May there was a noticeable change in the pictures. Sabira was rarely photographed without a drink in her hand, and appeared introspective, sullen, even startled. In the few Facebook
shots she had put up from public events she looked flushed and nervous.
Perhaps her drinking just got out of control
, thought Longbright.
It happens
.

She spotted something else: a uniformity of style in the official press pictures. Checking the provenance of the images, she found that the same news agency had taken them, which probably meant that Sabira had been targeted by one specific photographer. She called the agency but it was shut for the night, so she checked PhotoNet’s list of clients and found
Hard News
at the top of the supply list. She rang the editor, Janet Ramsey, on her mobile.

‘Janice, you’d better have a damned good reason for calling me on my private number,’ Janet warned. The unscrupulous editor was well known to the staff of the PCU.

‘Do you have someone at PhotoNet permanently assigned to cover Sabira Kasavian?’

Janet sounded as if she was in a crowded cocktail bar. ‘I wouldn’t say he’s permanently assigned. We have a special-interest list of public figures and their partners, as I’m sure you’re well aware.’

‘I guess you’ve been waiting for her to screw up.’

‘Of course. We all want a good story, darling. And she has, hasn’t she? I assume that’s why you’re calling me.’

‘Who took the shot of her being carried out of the Guildhall last night?’

‘You’d have to take that up with PhotoNet.’

‘Obstruction, Janet. You know how that goes.’

‘OK, it’s no secret. His name is Jeff Waters. He likes taking shots of her. She’s a very photogenic girl. She brightens a page on a slow news day.’

‘Do you or Mr Waters get any instruction on the taking of photographs? I mean, from the Home Office. Her husband’s—’

‘—in the security department, I know. There are guidelines. The smudgers aren’t usually allowed inside the ministerial venues, and if they are, they have to stay
within specifically defined spaces. It’s implicit that we don’t take shots if they’re tipsy, but negotiable. There are other protocols which you’d have to speak to the HO about.’

‘How did you get away with last night’s shot?’

‘You’re slipping, Janice. Take a careful look at the sequence. She’s off the front step of the building. That’s pavement under her shoes. Technically public space. She’d been cautioned by the police, which made her fair game. Permissible material.’

Longbright rang off. Sabira Kasavian must have noticed that she was being targeted by the same photographer every time she appeared in public. Perhaps that was part of the reason why she thought there was a conspiracy against her.

The detective sergeant pushed back from her desk and rubbed her eyes. It didn’t seem like much of a case. But there was something else in Sabira’s photographs – a certain look in her eyes, a certain angle of the head. Unable to put her finger on it, she closed down her screen for the night and decided to head home.

Jack Renfield stuck his head around the door. Although the room was cold, he was sweating. ‘I’ve been whacking the punchbag upstairs. Didn’t realize you were still here. I wouldn’t get too close to me if I were you. D’you fancy a quick beer?’

‘Not tonight, Jack,’ said Longbright.

‘You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to jump on you or anything. At least, not without a shower. Joke.’

‘No, I’m really not up for it.’

‘A drink is just a drink, y’know. You look like you’re going out later in that clobber anyway.’

Longbright toned down her look for work, but there was still a touch of the nightclub hostess about her. She had long ago decided that she would die in high heels. ‘I’m just in a bit of a weird mood tonight.’

‘Gonna start thinking you’re avoiding me soon.’

‘I’ll take you up on the offer, I promise.’ She knew how much Jack liked her, and was slowly getting used to his rough-and-ready manner, but while she thought of him as a tree or a fence-post, something strong you could lean on or shelter under, he seemed a bit too rooted to the soil. She still dreamed of achieving something beyond her work on murder investigations. ‘What do you think about Kasavian’s wife?’ she asked.

Renfield shrugged. ‘She’s rich and bored and feeling neglected. Give it a few years, she’ll start studying horoscopes and supporting cat charities; it’s what they all do.’

‘Thank you for your rich insight into the female psyche.’

‘I mean it; she’s going against the grain to try and assert some power, to tell him she’s still got free will and that he can’t take her for granted.’

‘John and Arthur say she thinks she’s being sort of – hunted.’

‘Maybe someone has decided that she’s a security risk and is keeping an eye on her movements.’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘See you in the morning, beautiful. Did I tell you that you look beautiful?’

‘Jack, bugger off.’

As he headed out, Longbright turned back to her computer and reopened the photo file, to try to understand what she might have missed.

10

THE INVISIBLE CODE

SABIRA KASAVIAN HATED
Fortnum & Mason.

The department store’s pastel shades, its veiled windows, the airless, hushed old-world atmosphere that was meant to be charming felt merely repressive to her. She imagined wandering around its food hall with her mother, who would marvel at the jars of apricots in brandy, the tins of caviar and miniature hat-boxes of champagne truffles that cost as much as her family’s weekly food bill. It seemed to be a store for people who disliked the simple pleasures of eating.

The wives of the Home Office officials met in the Fountain Restaurant every third Wednesday to boast about their holidays and luncheons and to complain about their husbands. Lately attendance seemed to have become compulsory, if only to ensure that no one was talking about you behind your back. They would have preferred to meet in the more expensive fourth-floor St James’s Restaurant, but its bloated sofas and armchairs squatted around the tables like sumo wrestlers, and prevented the ladies from being seated closely together.

There were eight wives today, presided over by the
impermeable Anastasia Lang. Everyone had turned up to see if further sparks would fly. Sabira had decided to attend because she needed to show that she was unrepentant about her behaviour on Monday night. The first few minutes were made all the more awkward by the wives’ determination to act as if everything was normal between them all.

There was no air-kissing and no cocktails; they were not footballers’ wives. Instead they went straight to the table and ordered the lightest and most complex starters, less salads than fragile ecosystems of exotic greenery. The wine list was considered with the gravity a juror might reserve for convicting a rapist.

‘That is, if you’re drinking wine?’ Ana asked her foe pointedly as the other wives fell silent.

‘I’ll have a glass of anything red and full-blooded, a large one,’ said Sabira, fixing the group with an open I-dare-you-to-argue smile.

Lunch progressed through the usual roster of subjects, dinners and weekend trips, charity work and the difficulties of finding reliable nannies and gardeners, but inevitably it arrived, as it always did, at husbands.

With little to contribute, Sabira listened and drank. She heard the chatter of birds on a fence: creatures noted more for their colourful plumage than their songs. If Sabira had known that she would be required to give up her voice, she might not have been persuaded to move to England and get married.

‘I don’t mind that he comes to bed with his laptop,’ one of the women said, ‘but he puts it between us. He might as well stick an electrified fence down the middle of the duvet. I get the message; he’s working. He doesn’t need to point it up.’

‘Perhaps you should consider having an affair, darling,’ said Cathy Almon, already bored by the conversation.

‘That’s easy for you to say. Your husband is an accountant.
He’s not required to think about anything but totting up numbers.’

‘Actually he heads up the Home Office’s Workforce Management Data System, and has a number of very important functions within the ministry,’ Mrs Almon recited.

‘Aren’t there websites that arrange affairs for you?’ asked the woman opposite her.

‘God, you couldn’t leave a data trail. It would have to be the butcher’s boy or someone like that.’

‘Someone uncouth and inarticulate.’ They all laughed.

Ana Lang turned to Sabira. ‘But, of course, we should ask you, shouldn’t we? I hear you already have someone uncouth waiting in the wings, don’t you?’ Her smile was as venomous as ever.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Sabira replied, sipping her wine.

‘Oh come on, darling, your little secret is safe with us,’ said Emma Hereward, looking around the table. ‘Spill the beans.’

‘There is only my husband.’

‘It’s perfectly understandable. You’re
au mieux de votre forme
. You must have at least fift— ten years on the rest of us. You’re among friends here. You can tell all.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I would never dream of being unfaithful. I was raised a Muslim.’

‘We know all about the Muslims, sweetie, they’re the worst. Half of them operate double standards. I don’t know why you insist on pretending that you’re more virginal than anyone else. We all heard you weren’t wearing any underwear at the Guildhall dinner.’

‘We know who he is,’ said Ana. ‘We’ve all seen him.’

‘Have I?’ asked Cathy, confused.

‘Yes, darling, outside the Spanish Embassy – dark-haired, rather dishy.’

‘You mean … He’s just a photographer,’ said Sabira, colouring.

‘Yes, but we’ve all seen the way he looks at you.’

‘He means nothing to me.’

‘So you are seeing him!’ Ana was triumphant.

‘No, of course not!’

‘It’s funny how you always seem to be wearing more make-up when he’s around.’

‘If I wore as much make-up as you I’d suffocate,’ Sabira replied, draining her wine. She had yet to master the subtle art of English sarcasm. The joke fell flat.

‘You’re supposed to sip that,’ said Ana, pointing to the glass. ‘It’s a Montrachet, not potato vodka.’

Sabira meant to slap her face, but in the process Ana’s earring came loose somehow and gashed her left cheek. Ana yelped as she saw the smear of blood on her fingers. As the others came to her aid, Sabira realized that none of them would take her side. Dipping her napkin in her water glass, she tried to help but Ana slapped her hand aside. ‘Get away from me,’ she hissed. ‘Go back to the pig farm where you were raised.’

‘If I’d been raised like a pig I’d still have better manners than any of you,’ she said, rising sharply. Her chair went back and the shoulder bag she had draped over it fell to the floor, spilling papers.

Ana looked down, clutching at her face. ‘What the hell are you doing with my husband’s private correspondence?’ she said.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

‘She’s done it again,’ said Meera Mangeshkar, running into the office. ‘And this time it’s on Sky News.’ She reached over and opened a fresh screen on Longbright’s computer. ‘She attacked the same woman over lunch. Two security guards just took her away.’

‘That looks like Fortnum and Mason,’ said Longbright. ‘I made a shoplifting arrest there once.’ As she watched, a red banner rolled across the footage: ‘Home Office official’s wife in restaurant brawl’. ‘They’ll have taken her to West End Central in Savile Row.’

‘No,’ said Mangeshkar. ‘I called them. She’s been driven to the Home Office. This is serious.’

‘One of us needs to be there as an independent observer,’ said Longbright. ‘You’d better tell John.’