The Invisible Code (12 page)

‘I did not “accuse” her, I merely stated what everyone already knew. It’s the Australian photographer who always takes her pictures.’

‘We know about him.’

Ana Lang was surprised. ‘How?’

‘He has an exclusive deal with a magazine called
Hard News
, Mrs Lang. He’s assigned to follow Mrs Kasavian to social events. Do you have evidence that they’re having an affair?’

‘You only have to look at the way he photographs her.’

‘So no actual proof.’

May heard the front door open and shut. A broad-bodied man in his late forties came in and set down his briefcase. With his slicked grey hair and pinstriped blue suit, he had the appearance of a stockbroker or an auction-house expert. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked. ‘What on earth’s that on your face?’

‘They’re detectives,’ Edgar Lang’s wife explained. ‘I was attacked today, but of course I couldn’t get hold of you.’

‘You should have pulled me out of my meeting. Why are they here?’

Bryant resented being discussed as if he was invisible. ‘We needed to ask your wife a few questions,’ he said.

‘Not without a lawyer present,’ warned Lang. ‘I think you’d better leave now. I’m a very good friend of the Commissioner, and he’ll have something to say about this.’

‘No, it was better to make you leave right then,’ said May as they walked along the footpath that ran beside the river. Ahead of them, a pair of swans swooped down to the water and folded their wings, looking like funfair love boats. ‘I could see you were about to open your mouth. It seems Mr Lang’s first concern was the impropriety of our presence and not his wife’s health. You realize this is impossible, don’t you? They’ve built a wall around themselves. How are we supposed to find out anything? Anyway, how can you help a woman who behaves so irrationally? It’s as if Sabira deliberately set out to wreck her life. Why would she risk throwing her marriage away by stealing classified documents?’

‘Oh, they weren’t classified,’ said Bryant cheerily. ‘There’s nothing in the paperwork of any value whatsoever.’

‘What are you talking about? Why is the Home Office holding her if she’s not suspected of spying?’

‘Well, they don’t yet know that there’s nothing of value in the papers.’

‘But you do.’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you care to explain how you know?’

‘I made a few inquiries.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I wanted Mrs Lang to think they were important for now. If we admitted they weren’t, she wouldn’t have talked to us at all. We need to find out what happened to Sabira six weeks ago.’ He patted his partner’s broad back. ‘Don’t worry: I’ll fill you in as we go along. But we have to act fast. I think something very bad is about to happen.’

‘If you’re trying to convince me that you’re clairvoyant, it won’t work,’ said May. ‘I’ve shared an office with you for most of my adult life. I know how you think.’

‘Well, I wish you’d tell me,’ said Bryant. ‘I have absolutely no idea how my brain operates.’

‘I think it’s a sort of intelligent threshing machine. It chews up bits of information and spits them back out in a different order. They should pickle it when you die.’

‘I’d quite like to end up in a glass jar in the Wellcome Institute.’

‘Yes, I thought you would.’ With a despairing sigh, May led his partner back to Barnes Bridge Station.

At the unit, Longbright had summoned all members of staff to the common room. Raymond Land sulked in his office for a few minutes, upset that he hadn’t been in charge of calling the meeting, but then, worried that nobody would miss him, he reluctantly attended.

‘I just had a call from the Home Office,’ said Longbright. ‘There was nothing sensitive in the paperwork. It was just a folder of Edgar Lang’s taxi receipts and dinner expenses. Sabira says she doesn’t know how the file got into her bag. She’s agreed to be placed in a private clinic. Based on her past history her doctor feels she’s at risk, and is admitting her tonight.’

‘Can we get our mitts on her medical records?’ asked Renfield.

‘No, they’re off limits.’

‘I wonder if this is for her health or because she’s become a major embarrassment,’ said May. ‘Which clinic?’

Longbright checked her notes. ‘Somewhere in Hampstead. It’s called the Cedar Tree Centre, just off Fitzjohn’s Avenue. She’s not allowed any visitors tonight.’

‘She’s at risk, but not from herself,’ said Bryant. ‘Bring her smudger in. I want to meet him.’

Jeff Waters arrived in the doorway of Bryant and May’s office a little over an hour later. The handsome Australian was in his late thirties, unshaven and long-haired, still slung with cameras. He plucked at his lapel and grinned. ‘I don’t need the photographers’ jacket now that we’re fully digital, but I can’t bring myself to give it up. I’m on my way to work.’

‘I suppose you keep late hours,’ said Bryant.

‘It’s mostly night assignments, and when I’ve not got a schedule I make sure I’m outside the Ivy by eleven p.m. Then I do the rounds of the clubs to see if anything’s going on.’

‘How do you know who’s going to be there?’

‘There’s a network of tip-offs. We bung some of the maître d’s.’

‘You’ve got some misdemeanours on your record, I see.’

‘Small stuff. In this job it happens.’

‘Grab a seat, Jeff,’ said May. ‘We need to know just how well you know Sabira Kasavian.’

‘Janet Ramsey appointed me to tag her. I cover about fifteen women for PhotoNet. Sabira photographs like a dream. You get to know your clients pretty quickly.’

‘Do they want to know you?’

‘Most of them act like they don’t care about having their photos taken, but they love it. I can always tell the ones who want to get their faces in the press. They find excuses to slow down when they walk past us, stop and talk to their partners, turn and laugh about nothing. If a woman adjusts her dress as she passes you, you know
she wants her shots done. But they never want to speak to you. I’m careful, I only have one chance to get the right shot, so with some of them I stick to “Over here, love, turn to your left” – that sort of thing. Sabira Kasavian isn’t like that. She’s always happy to be photographed. She loves the camera; the camera loves her.’

Bryant watched the photographer’s hands. He was glib, fast, hard as nails, but there was something else. He was smoothly moving the conversation on, trying to control it.

‘So the two of you never get to talk?’

‘No, not at all, you can’t when you’ve been railed into a ten-by-eight with a dozen other paps, security all around, and you’ve got maybe ten seconds for each target. Overstep your mark and you risk being blacklisted.’

‘Have you ever spoken to Mrs Kasavian privately?’

‘No, not so much as a single word. I’m sure she’d be fine with it if I did, though. She seems honest and friendly, a bit more fun, not like the others.’

‘But you do form some kind of relationship with your subject?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You fancy her – she appeals to you.’

‘No, nothing like that.’ Waters laughed. ‘We’re not in the same class, are we? Christ, I used to push a vegetable barrow in Melbourne. I mean, I know her background but even so … there might as well be bullet-proof glass between us. It’s all over this city, the glass.’

‘Is she always with her husband?’

‘No. One evening outside a conference centre in Canary Wharf he had to take the driver and it took fifteen minutes to find her another car. She was standing there with a friend – they were speaking to each other in Albanian. Not many people speak it, so I guess she’s glad when she finds someone who does.’

‘Do you know any Albanian?’

‘I know a little of every language. In this job you have to. I got talking to the friend while they waited. Sabira was standing off to one side, a bit aloof. Then I realized she was shy. It was raining hard, so I lent the pair of them my umbrella. The friend told me how much Sabira hated going to the embassy dinners. She said she’d rather go and eat pizza in a café.’ He smiled, but it faded with the memory. ‘I thought Sabira was very – nice.’ Both of the detectives could see that it wasn’t what he had been about to say.

‘Do you remember the name of the friend?’ Bryant asked.

‘I would have written it down. You always do; it’s a habit.’ He pulled out a BlackBerry and thumbed through his notes. ‘Edona. I guessed the spelling. Didn’t get the last name – probably too many consonants for me to handle. I took a picture of her for fun. I wasn’t going to use the shot.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Nothing much, we were just filling in the time.’ He suddenly rose to his feet. ‘Is that it? Can I go now?’

‘One last thing,’ said May. ‘When was this?’

Waters checked his BlackBerry again. ‘I made the note in early June. So, nearly a month ago.’

‘Mr Waters,’ said Bryant sharply, ‘did you really not talk to Sabira Kasavian? The woman your camera loved so much?’

‘I told you, no.’ He did not catch Bryant’s eye. As he left, he passed Detective Constable Fraternity DuCaine in the passageway. DuCaine looked back as he entered.

‘Who was that?’

‘A photographer who knows Sabira,’ said May. ‘Why?’

‘So that’s Waters. I’ve seen him around. He’s always outside West End clubs, chatting up women. A real eye for the ladies. Did you find a connection?’

May went to the window and watched Waters crossing
the street. ‘No,’ he said, puzzled. ‘According to him, he stood next to her for fifteen minutes and they never exchanged a single word. He’s stretching the truth, but I have no idea why.’

12

THE ENGLISH HEART

HAMPSTEAD HAD ALWAYS
prided itself on being a cut above other London areas. The homes of Byron, Dickens, Keats and Florence Nightingale had now been usurped by financiers who had turned the village into one of the most expensive places in the world. Its street names were printed in elegant reverse text, white lettering out of black tiles, its avenues were sumptuously leafy, its houses gabled and slightly suburban, set back from the sight of vulgar vehicles. It had lakes and the largest open heathland in London, and looked down on everyone else from a windswept peak where the city temperatures cooled, and on a summer day like this you could almost believe you were deep in countryside until you saw the high-street prices.

May wondered aloud who lived there, and Bryant was delighted to enlighten him; in 1951, he explained, the Church Commissioners, who owned most of Hampstead, were advised by their estate agent to sell everything off as prices were about to plunge. They sold, prices soared, and Hampstead Man, the pipe-smoking chap who wrote books that didn’t sell and supported nuclear disarmament,
moved down the hill to shabbier postcodes, leaving Hampstead to rapacious property developers. Even the politicians moved to cheaper areas.

The Cedar Tree Clinic was founded in a house formerly owned by an English composer who had chosen the spot for its tranquillity. In 1937 it was bought by a wealthy American benefactress who came to paint and stayed to heal. The clinic’s gardens sloped to manicured woodlands and had provided a sheltered spot for officers recuperating from a devastating war. Now the main house was used by burned-out musicians and detoxing media executives, but the east wing was for more troubled souls, those with recurring addictions and nervous disorders.

‘Put that out,’ John May instructed. ‘The last thing they want is the smell of tobacco drifting over their lawns.’

‘Lightweights.’ Bryant knocked out his pipe, unscrewed the stem and without checking for embers dropped the bowl into his jacket pocket. He stamped his feet on the porch steps. ‘Bloody English summer, my feet are frozen.’

‘You should try wearing thicker socks.’

‘I shouldn’t have to. I’ve already got the linings from my carpet slippers tucked inside my boots. It’s not like this on the continent. Everyone’s in flip-flops and Bermuda shorts. They smile at each other and eat vegetables that still have earth on them. They’re happy. If I lived over there I’d have retired by now. I’d be living a life of luxury and deceit. Instead I’m stuck here with a pension that wouldn’t buy a beach hut. They have sunlight. What do we have? Sublight. D’you know, I accidentally caught sight of myself when I shaved this morning. I looked like a very old apple. Slightly green with a wrinkled skin, probably full of worms. I need a suntan.’