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  In fact there were two customers there. She served them. Weird, that was what it was, she thought again. Her unworldly, socially responsible mother and Jess, her ambitious, socially irresponsible friend – if she still was a friend – both agreed. And she still hadn’t told Dominic about her father – she was worried he’d jeer at her for being a rich girl slumming and assume that made him a bit of rough trade to be picked up, used and then dropped. Not that she was sure, really, what Dominic was to her. And he had never said what she was to him, except to warn her, mysteriously, not to get too close.

  A man came up to the bar. “Don’t worry, darling. It may never happen,” he told her.

  Next morning a letter arrived from Zoe Andriades inviting Fleur to stay with her, her husband and the Jethros over Christmas at their house in Barbados.

  Thirteen

  By God, William, if ever you get into one of those moods where you regret a misspent life, what you did, what you missed, where did it all go wrong and so forth, try walking into an out-of-season South Coast pub in the middle of the week. Look at the other punters – a couple of poor old guys nursing a pint – a group of small town boasters who probably went to school together, all in bad leisurewear. Spend an hour or two in a place like that and you’ll soon be convinced your own life’s been a blissful dream. There’s nothing here, William, nothing at all.

  Here’s some stuff taken from the press at around the time we’re thinking about:

  Washington Post, September 10th: IRANIAN BOMB NOT A POSSIBILITY.

  Daily Telegraph, December 15th: ISRAEL CLAIMS IRAN HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN PRODUCTION. Support is growing in Western official circles for the claims, believed to be based on spy satellite communications, that Iran is on the verge of producing some form of nuclear weaponry. At a press meeting on the Quai d’Orsay, Mr René Drouet, a senior Foreign Ministry official, warned that if Iran had produced or was on the verge of producing any form of nuclear capability the entire balance of power in the Middle East might be affected in the gravest possible way.

  Washington Post, December 15th: Though the White House has questioned the possibility that the Iranian leadership has control of nuclear warheads and medium to long-range rocket launchers, intelligence reports from neighbouring Lebanon, Israel and Jordan tend to support the claims, as does France, which has traditionally had good intelligence sources in the region.

  BBC World Service, December 16th: The British Foreign Office today refused to either confirm or deny the truth of stories emanating from the Middle East suggesting that the Iranian Government has a silo of nuclear warheads at a secret location. It is claimed with some authority that spy satellites reveal the existence at or near this site…

  Not funny, was it, William, when these reports started coming? Less so now, nearly a year later.

  But I’ll get back to my story. After the abortive attempt to track down the three alleged perpetrators of the supposed robbery at Gordon Mews, having sent in my bill and got paid, I forgot about it.

  Then last December, just my bloody luck, round came Gus Prothero. Prothero was a senior desk warrior from the Foreign Office whose chief responsibility, I’d heard, was recruitment. A man who’d never been in the field was, I feared, about to become my handler, spymaster, controller, whatever jargon you want to use.

  I said nothing when we sat down. I let him lead. He said, “I believe around four and a half years ago you were asked by the Home Office to make enquiries concerning the whereabouts of three people, two men and a woman.”

  “By Adrian Pugh,” I said firmly, naming names.

  “Yes,” he said dismissively, as if names didn’t matter.

  “Floyd, Carter and Whitcombe,” I recalled, still obstinately using them. “They were suspected of a burglary and the police had failed to find them. So did I, for that matter.”

  “They might be easier to find now,” he said. “They may have gone back to their old haunts.”

  Those old haunts again. I wasn’t sure about that – it had been five years. I said, “Possibly. Do you want to tell me what this is all about? This is domestic, isn’t it? How come you’re involved?”

  “It’s sensitive,” he said. “I can’t tell you very much. What we’d like you to do is make discreet enquiries in order to find out where these three are. That’s all.” He gave me a slightly humorous look. “The pay’s good. Why ask questions?”

  I pointed out to him that I needed to know in whose interest I was working.

  “You’ll have a certain amount of protection from us,” he told me. I was not reassured. “In any case,” he said, looking regretful but enjoying himself, “I’m afraid you haven’t much choice. You see” – he paused before dropping his bombshell – “we’re being put under some degree of pressure to reinvestigate what’s been described to me as the Irish Farm episode. I can only persuade those who are eager to see the matter thoroughly investigated not to proceed by pointing out you’re a valuable person engaged in an ongoing project for us. You understand, I’m sure. A new administration keen to see a certain kind of justice done.” He looked at me kindly with my balls in his hand. “I must tell you there’s strong feeling there ought to be a new examination about what happened in Sligo. Which could lead to a trial. Yours.”

  “Who are they?” I asked him.

  He looked at me hard. “I’m not at liberty to say. But you should take this seriously. I advise you to go and find Floyd et al. It’s not a difficult task.”

  I was fed up and furious. But life is full of compromises. As the Frenchman said, if you swallow a toad every morning you can feel fairly certain nothing more unpleasant is going to happen to you during the course of the day. I told him, “You know perfectly well that the mere possibility of an enquiry which might be publicised, and even more a trial, would have serious commercial consequences for me. So, if you can help to avoid this, I’ll take on your job and do it. But I still need more detail. In this kind of secret operation ignorance is dangerous. If I and my operatives are kept in the dark we can make mistakes, because none of us has the experience to make a proper appraisal.”

  This was face-saving as much as anything else. He had me over a barrel. I had to take on his shitty job. Pride demanded I make him feel at least a little bit uncomfortable. At the same time what I said was true. “I need to know why, having given up looking for three petty criminals nearly five years ago, you suddenly need to find them. The victim of the robbery must have got over the loss of his snuff-boxes by now.”

  “It seems some papers, sensitive commercial material, went astray at the same time,” Gus Prothero told me. “When nothing happened it was thought the material had just been thrown away. Unfortunately, it now looks as if that was not the case.”

  “It was never fully proved the people I was looking for were the guilty parties,” I told him. “Are you sure you won’t be wasting time while I root out three suspects who turn out to be innocent after all?”

  “We have reason to believe they are the people we want,” Prothero said smoothly.

  The rat I’d been smelling all along began, for no reason I could have explained, to swell and take on the dimensions of a computer-enhanced, Technicolor monster rodent. But as I’ve said, I had no choice. He could tell me any fairy story he liked about missing documents; the fact was, he’d threatened me and I had to do what he asked.

  I went to try and find the buggers. It wasn’t hard. They must have decided at some point during the previous five years that no one was looking for them any more. Whitcombe was drawing unemployment benefit and had an address in London – Cray Hill, the characterless semi-suburb of London where her mum lived. The other two had been on benefit but signed off. Hoppo did thirty-six hours’ surveillance of the flat in Cray Hill which was on Vanessa Whitcombe’s DSS claim form and confirmed all three – Whitcombe, Carter and Floyd – coming and going. He said they looked much like the three characters in the photofits based on Hamilton’s description when the robbery took place. It could
n’t have been easier.

  I rang my pal Prothero and told him my news. I said, “Why didn’t you do this yourselves?”

  He didn’t answer, but told me he wanted pictures of the guilty parties, just to make sure, I suppose, that when they sent the coppers round to arrest them they didn’t do what they’ve done in the past – batter the wrong door down, go in mob-handed, put the baby in handcuffs and frighten the old granny into a heart attack, all while being videoed by a neighbour opposite. Scandal, huge damages and meanwhile the people they’ve gone to arrest have taken the hint and cleared off.

  Wrong again, Sam Hope. Looking back, I’m amazed by how often I went wrong in this affair, ignored the little clues which should have told me something was wrong. Sometimes your judgement’s off, like having ’flu in the brain. Because it’s so wrong, you haven’t the judgement to work out how wrong it is.

  Through stupidity, vanity, hubris or just the fact that, as I later began to suspect, I’d lost my edge – whatever it was I didn’t ask the right questions. Just sent Hoppo back to Cray Hill to take some snaps discreetly.

  Hoppo came back with the pictures a day later. They showed two of the characters we were looking for – Dominic Floyd and Joe Carter – but not the third. The pictures had been taken in a cemetery and the third, the girl, was the reason they were there. She was being buried.

  Because of what later happened, those pictures are burned on my brain. There were a dozen in all. Three showed Floyd standing beside a woman, presumably the bereaved mother, at the graveside. In another three Carter stood under a tree with a girl, looking in the direction of the ceremony. Then three general snaps showing those present and the last three pictured a conversation near the cemetery gates between Floyd, Carter and a tallish young woman, very pretty, with long dark hair. In close-up Carter’s face was twisted, like a junkie needing a fix. Floyd in close-up looked serious and sad. He also looked like a film star, but rougher.

  I dispatched the photographs to Prothero.

  The next time he rang I was away in Central Africa talking to a government about giving them some help against their rebels and training some of their men in my methods. By the time I got back Prothero had already rung four times. One conversation, a small job picked up from one dating back five years, and suddenly he’s making nuisance calls. What did he want now? I began to wonder again why he wasn’t using his own men. I got a sinking feeling.

  I called him up and said, “Prothero, I’ve done what you asked. I can’t do any more. I’m booked right up.” This was true, as it happened, but not the whole reason.

  The next day a Mr James Robinson called and asked for an appointment. He would not discuss his business over the phone. This phobia being not unusual in my potential clients, I invited him to visit me in my office and we made an appointment for midday next day.

  He was a meek-looking guy, balding, with very sharp eyes behind his gold-rimmed specs. He had the air of a man who takes a trip to a factory, looks round the firm’s books, closes it down, tells 300 people they’re out of a job and then goes home to be bullied by his wife. He suggested we go for lunch.

  In the outer office he said to me, “You have some photographs which an associate of yours, Mr Prothero, commissioned. Would you be good enough to bring them along with you?”

  I was about to tell him I didn’t want to be part of that business any more when he added, “This could be worth your while, Mr Hope,” in an expressionless way that nevertheless made me think he knew the true meaning of those words. A mixture of greed and sheer curiosity made me turn to Veronica and ask her to get the pictures out of the safe.

  She put them in an envelope and we went to a restaurant off Bond Street. It had been planned. Robinson had booked a table.

  Once we’d ordered I asked, “So, Mr Robinson, how do you think I can help you? Though I have to say at once, I’ve already told Mr Prothero I don’t want anything more to do with all this. I found the people he was looking for to tidy up the loose ends of a job I ended unsatisfactorily some years ago. I’m unsure now who the subjects are or why they’re wanted and because of that I really don’t want to be involved any further.”

  He put down his soup spoon and asked calmly. “How do you deal with people who have damaging information about you, Mr Hope?”

  My hackles started rising, but I kept myself under control. I said, “I’m not quite sure what you mean.” Though I thought I did, all too well. I’ve been asked to kill people before, obviously, kill them, whack them, assassinate them, eliminate them, silence them. It’s a big vocabulary for an act as old as time. I always refuse. We’ve all got our standards, William.

  “We’re talking about one hundred thousand pounds,” he told me, confirming what I knew his request to be.

  “Each?” I asked him.

  “No,” he told me. “That would be the total figure.”

  It was still a great deal, for what he wanted.

  “Payment in any form you choose,” he added obligingly.

  “No,” I told him. “That isn’t what I do.” But because of the sum involved and because at least Robinson seemed to have a clear objective and wasn’t a slimy double-dealer like Prothero, whose left hand would never know what his right hand was doing, I offered, “I could give you a name if you like.” My trusty right-hand man, Goolies Cunningham, would find me the right person, I knew.

  But Robinson shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “You’ve been involved from the first. I’ve been told of your excellent reputation, and I gather your loyalty is assured.” He’d been told HMG had the drop on me. Proving whoever he was he had friends in high places, who wanted to help him out with whatever problem Floyd and Carter represented. Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. The mist thickened.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. And I was, at turning down one hundred big ones. “But apart from not doing that kind of work, I never work blind. It’s too dangerous for me and for anyone else I might have helping out.”

  He looked at me carefully but plainly was not tempted to confide in me. “Well,” he said. “I’d better check the photographs you’ve brought.”

  I hadn’t come up to scratch. He was a busy man and lunch was over. I refused coffee politely. He signalled for the bill. It arrived as I handed over the envelope. He put cash on the plate, didn’t want his real name, from his credit card, in the hands of the waiter. Then he opened the envelope.

  He looked at the first few, then came across the picture of Carter and the girl. His face didn’t move. It just stiffened and he asked quickly, “Have you a name for this young woman?”

  He was interested – he’d been surprised. But I didn’t let on I’d noticed. “No – I’m afraid not,” I said. “She wasn’t part of the job.”

  “I should like to find out more about her,” he told me. “Will you do it?”

  “No, Mr Robinson,” I said. “I won’t.” I had visions of stalking this unfortunate girl round a council estate and killing her in the dark behind the graffitied community centre, not even knowing why. Somebody else would do it for a thousand. Less. Not me.

  Robinson went on looking at the pictures, concentrating on those showing the girl. The more he looked the less he understood, I could see that. And the more worried he got.

  When the waiter returned with the change he took some of it, pushed the notes into his pocket and said abruptly, “I’m afraid I have an appointment. I must hurry off. Thank you for your time, Mr Hope.” And he walked away through the tables and into the street.

  I ordered myself a brandy and pondered. This Robinson was not normally easily rattled, I suspected. After all, he’d asked me, good as, to knock off two people for a large sum of money without turning a hair. He’d taken my refusal with equal calm. But the girl’s picture had worried him and I wondered why.

  Who was Robinson? It looked as if he had to take the pictures back to some principal. So who was he? Robinson’s associate, boss, whoever he was, could have been part of the story f
rom the start, could have instigated the original search for the burglarious three. And since that time I’d gone from looking for three dossers to being asked to murder the remaining two.

  On the way out I waved my wallet at the woman behind the front desk who was answering the phone and taking bookings. I told her my companion had left his wallet behind. As his phone number was in my office I wondered if she by any chance had his number handy, since I wanted to ring him directly to assure him it was safe.

  She was too canny to hand over any information and called the number herself. The phone was at the wrong angle for me to be able to see exactly which number she rang but I got the gist. She spoke low into the phone and asked me what my friend’s name was. I told her. She spoke the name into the phone then said to me, “They have no one there called Robinson.”

  I sighed. “Temps again. I’ll messenger it over to him this afternoon.”

  Back in the office I got Veronica to ring a few permutations on the number I thought the woman in the restaurant had dialled. No joy – she came up with an import-export business, a tobacconist, the NatWest Bank’s savings department and the rectory of a church. All in the City of London.

  It seemed pointless to pursue it any further, partly because anyone challenged with knowing a Robinson would probably deny him, since secrecy seemed to be Robinson’s thing. But Veronica’s work on the phone did prove to me that there was every chance the mysterious Robinson hailed from the City, that square mile running along the north side of the Thames from Temple Bar to Middlesex Street which, with its banks, insurance companies, the Stock Exchange and so on brings in a quarter of our national income. That’s right – a consideration, eh, William? A quarter of our money in Britain is made from money. Not that you don’t know that.

  Before we left for Christmas I did get Veronica to do one last job for me. After some sleuthing on my part, she popped into some places in Cray Hill and got chatting. And in one pub the girl behind the bar said, “Fleur – she won’t be back till after Christmas.” So Veronica said, “Oh – what a pity. I’ve got a card for her. Can you tell me her address – I’ll pop it through the door.” But then the landlord came up and told Veronica if she’d hand the card over he’d see she got it. So Veronica did, and slipped away. And what I had was a name, a place, and a date for the return, of the girl who’d been at the funeral with Floyd and Carter – the girl whose face had worried Robinson so much.