The Invisible Code (8 page)

‘Blimey, that’ll sell a few copies.’ Sergeant Renfield grinned approvingly. ‘I wonder why they stuck a blurry box over the top of her thighs.’

‘According to the
Daily Mail
she didn’t have any knickers on,’ said Longbright. ‘She said she took them off before the dinner began because it was too hot in the room. It looks like a very tight dress. She probably didn’t want a VPL.’

‘Typical of a woman to think it was about fashion. Perhaps she was just feeling horny.’

‘She was attending a dinner to welcome heads of state at the Guildhall, not hitting on guys in a Nottingham nightclub, Jack. It says there that she threw a glass of brandy in some old bag’s face.’

‘That “old bag” is Lady Anastasia Lang,’ said John May, snatching up the paper as he entered on Tuesday morning. ‘“Sabira Kasavian was arrested for being drunk and disorderly last night, and was taken to Wood Street
Police Station.” The arresting officer told me that Oskar tried to get her off the hook, but they had no choice but to run her in. Ana Lang was ready to press charges.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Longbright, ‘it’s “Oskar” now? Since when did you switch to first-name terms?’

‘Since he hired us to investigate his wife,’ said May. Everyone in the common room turned to look at him. ‘What can I say? I know. He’s always been the enemy, and now he’s the client.’

‘After all the terrible things he’s done in the past, I’m amazed he would trust us with something so personal.’

‘Kasavian didn’t have anyone else he could turn to. He managed to get his wife released from Wood Street a short while later, but by that time the damage had been done.’

‘I wonder what upset her so much?’ Longbright asked. ‘It says here the Finnish Minister for Finance was forced to stop his speech.’

‘This is a big deal,’ said May. ‘Three months ago our Deputy PM made a speech in Finland that was halted by hecklers halfway through, so now everyone’s saying this was payback. But Sabira Kasavian says it wasn’t planned; she’d been insulted all evening and finally had enough of it.’

‘OK, she was drunk, but she must have known it would reflect badly on her husband. Kasavian’s in line for one of Europe’s top security posts, isn’t he?’

‘He may not be after this. Check the rest of the online press; see if there are any more details. I bet they’re having a field day. Then fix up an appointment with the wife this morning. If she refuses to meet with us, I’ll get Oskar to call her.’

‘He’s on the line right now,’ said their detective constable, Meera Mangeshkar, covering the phone. May took the call with a certain amount of trepidation.

‘I suppose you’ve seen the news this morning,’ said Kasavian.

‘I could hardly have missed it.’

‘My wife was carried from the Guildhall kicking and screaming last night.
The Guildhall
. She smashed a tray of glasses and threw a shoe at one of my colleagues’ wives, then swore at the arresting officer and tried to run off down the street.’ He sounded exhausted.

‘But you got the charges dropped.’

‘Yes, but I can’t keep her locked up at home. I’m not putting her under house arrest: I’m her husband, not her jailer. I don’t know what to do. In an ideal world I’d take her away for a holiday, but this border-control thing is taking up all my time. And I can’t send her home to Albania. Imagine how that would look just ahead of the talks.’

‘Then I suggest you concentrate on your work and allow us to take care of her,’ said May. ‘You know our methods are unorthodox, but you’ll simply have to trust us. We’re going to need a level of access that may cause problems for you.’

‘I’ve a stack of reports on your past activities from Leslie Faraday. I’m fully aware of the lines you cross to get results, Mr May. But in this case, I need you to do whatever you can for my wife. Go and see her, and I’ll get you any other access you need. I have half a dozen important social occasions this month, and Sabira is expected to accompany me to them. If she suddenly stops turning up, my opposite numbers will be quick to make capital of it. The trouble is, I no longer know what she’s likely to do.’

‘First we’ll look at your calendar and take her out of the more sensitive events.’

May prided himself on his understanding of women, but he felt uncomfortable knowing that if he failed to get to the cause of Sabira Kasavian’s problem, her husband would have good reason to come down hard on the unit. Her behaviour could derail his career and wreck
a European-wide initiative. The Americans would be watching, and would step in fast.

He swung into the office he shared with Bryant. ‘Get your hat and scarf on, Arthur,’ May instructed. ‘Kasavian’s granted us clearance. Let’s catch his wife by surprise and find out what she’s up to.’

‘They have a house in Henley, but his London apartment is in Smith Square,’ said May, opening the badly rusted door of Victor, Bryant’s leprous yellow Mini. ‘I’ll drive.’

‘You’ll need this,’ said Bryant, handing him an apostle spoon.

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

‘Stick it down the side of the gear stick. It seems to hold it in place.’

May gave up trying to move the seat back, and set off into the traffic, heading towards the river. There was something wrong with Victor’s gears. ‘I’m surprised this thing passed its MOT,’ he said as the car leapfrogged across the Euston Road.

‘It passed under certain conditions,’ replied Bryant vaguely. ‘I think one of them was that I must never drive it anywhere.’

‘Then it’s an illegal vehicle.’

‘No – I’m not driving, am I?’

Smith Square, just south of the Palace of Westminster, was dominated by the immense white frontage of St John’s, a baroque church now used as a concert hall. Surrounding it were the offices of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Local Government Association and the headquarters of the European Parliament. Sandwiched between these grandly appointed workspaces were a number of elegant flats.

‘I wouldn’t want to live here,’ sniffed Bryant, pulling his scarf tighter as he gazed up at the grand buildings.

‘Why not?’ asked May.

‘The noise.’

‘There isn’t any.’

‘Not now, but whenever there’s a government crisis the BBC sends its outside-broadcast vans over here, and they’re so full of electronic equipment that the technicians have to leave their air-conditioning units running all night, and they keep everyone awake.’

‘You’re a mine of useless information, do you know that? Come on.’ May trotted up the stairs and rang the doorbell.

A porter admitted them into a hallway chequered with black and white diamond tiles. ‘Janice texted me to say that she’d cleared the way, but leave the talking to me for once, OK?’ May instructed.

The second-floor front door opened to reveal a slender, delicate-boned young woman with large, expressive eyes, her blonde hair knotted in a graceful chignon. She was wearing a black and silver T-shirt that read ‘Wild Girl’, very tight jeans and high heels. For a moment, Bryant assumed it was the maid. Then he remembered the photograph.

She studied the detectives in puzzlement. ‘I’m sorry, I was expecting you to be more, well, Scotland Yard, you know? At home we used to have an old English television programme with a detective, always doing crossword puzzles and breaking secret codes.’

‘Ah, you were expecting someone in a gabardine mackintosh with a pencil moustache and a pipe,’ said Bryant. ‘Possibly wearing a bowler hat. Actually, I’m very good at breaking codes and I do have a pipe.’

‘No,’ said Sabira, ‘I just meant he was younger.’ Her blue eyes widened and her hand rose to her mouth. To their surprise, she started giggling. ‘Oh God, I’ve done it again,’ she said, horrified and amused in equal measure. ‘Lately I seem to have offended every English person I’ve
spoken to.’ She ushered them into a narrow painting-filled hall that led to the drawing room.

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Bryant, revealing a crescent of bleached false teeth. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea?’

‘Of course – the tea, always the tea!’ Settling the detectives, she ran to the kitchen, her heels clicking on the oak floor, and called back over her shoulder: ‘Do either of you know a cure for a hangover? I feel terrible this morning.’ She sounded unrepentant.

Bryant had already found an armchair. He pointed back at the wall mirror behind him; a bolt of black velvet material had been thrown over the glass. ‘She’s behaving very oddly,’ he whispered. ‘You’d better go and see to her.’

May raised his hand. ‘Leave this to me.’

He joined Sabira in the kitchen. ‘Mrs Kasavian—’ he began.

‘Oh, call me Sabira, I can’t bear being so formal.’

‘I have something that might sort out your head. But I’ll need—’

‘Just dig around in the cupboards for anything you want. I have a tiny man with a road-drill behind my eyes.’ She was racing around in the tiny space, boiling water, spilling milk, rattling cups, nearly dropping them.

May found what he needed. Filling a tumbler with milk, he added a dash of Worcester sauce, chilli sauce and black pepper, and cracked an egg into the mixture. ‘You must drink it straight down without breaking the yolk,’ he explained. ‘The egg contains cysteine, which helps fight the free radicals in your liver.’

Sabira gave the tumbler a mischievous sidelong glance, and then grabbed it and downed it in one, slamming the empty glass into the sink. ‘
Gëzuar!
’ she shouted. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, flicked a loose blond curl away from her eyelashes and grinned. ‘That was truly – disgusting.’ She laughed again.

Bryant had settled so deeply into the armchair that he looked as if he came with the room. ‘You were a long time,’ he complained, helping himself to biscuits.

‘We were getting rid of an annoying little man,’ said Sabira, dropping on to the sofa opposite. ‘I suppose you’re here to tell me off.’

‘I think it goes beyond that,’ said May. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that you’re married to a very high-powered official, and he has many enemies. They watch and wait for incidents like last night’s, and use them against your husband’s department.’

‘Oh, the woman was rude, the speeches were long and boring, and I got drunk. In my country such a thing is not important. We laugh because there is so much pain in our lives. Sometimes there is nothing else to do but laugh – you understand this?’

‘But your situation is very different now. Your husband is a very important man.’

‘I know! Everyone keeps telling me about the important man! Don’t you think I know that I have shamed him? Of course I know! But there are things you don’t know.’ She stabbed a painted nail at both of them in turn.

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us,’ said Bryant.

‘How do I know I can trust you?’

‘I’m too old for games,’ said Bryant. ‘If you can’t trust a man of my advanced years, who can you trust?’

‘That is a fair point,’ Sabira conceded. ‘I’ll try to answer your questions.’

‘Was this the first time such an incident has occurred?’

‘In public, yes. I’ve been upset for a while now.’

‘What about? Why are you so upset?’

Sabira leaned forward with her head in her hands, trying to compose her thoughts. ‘This is the fine English society I heard so much about. When I married Oskar, I knew things would not go easily for me, but I did not think I would be shut out so completely. Right from the
start, I would walk into a room and feel it go cold. The women are the worst. At least the men fancy me. The women look at my clothes, my face and go –
poof
!’ She flicked up her nose, imitating their disdain. ‘They ask who are my people, where do they live, what do they own and I tell them with complete honesty. I say I was born Sabira Borkowski, and I grew up with the smell of a smelting plant in my nostrils. Oskar always said I would have to be less honest, but it’s not in my nature. About a year ago I came to the … understanding? Is that the word? … that this was how it would always be from now on. I would be a social outcast.’ She looked from one of her guests to the other, anxious to make them understand. ‘I thought my marriage would open the doors, not slam them in my face. They think I’m stupid, common, a gold-digger, a whore. I was largely self-educated, but I am a clever woman. Since coming here I have studied English literature and art history as well as the history of London. I am better than these dried-up snobs, but perhaps not as confident.’

‘Why not?’ asked May, ‘You seem to know your own mind.’

‘I’ll never be accepted by the people closest to my husband, and I really don’t care. The old ones with their inherited furniture, their horses and boat races and seasons at Glyndebourne – boring, boring. Who cares? They talk about breeding, they trace their history back through the centuries but it’s really just about who owns the most. Many of these people are Oskar’s colleagues. It’s as if they all belong to some big private club that no one else is allowed to enter. I smile and keep my mouth shut. I dress nicely and behave well and I outsmile every last one of them.’

‘You didn’t last night.’

‘No, a demon came out of the brandy bottle.’ She laughed again.

‘But something else happened, didn’t it? Tell me what occurred six weeks ago.’