There were two police patrol units, an unmarked Mondeo with four plain-clothes guys inside, and a police Range Rover. I watched as the occupants piled out and into the house. Within ten minutes or so, a plod appeared doing what plods do: spooling crime scene tape around the front of the building. My stomach clenched. How many bodies?
I leant back then straight back up as a black Land Rover with tinted windows hove into view. It prowled down the street, paused outside the crime scene area for enough time to be significant, and drove on. The number plate bore the prefix 248D, assigned to all Russian diplomatic vehicles. While I swallowed this indigestible piece of information, another less assuming Toyota Land Cruiser with two men inside pulled up on double yellow lines and parked twenty-five metres from the property. Both occupants watched silently, unashamedly, as though they did this every day of the week, as if they operated by a different set of laws to the ordinary citizen. Next, racing down the road, a navy-blue Lexus, one male driver, and one female passenger. I could almost smell the rubber from the tyres as the vehicle cut and swerved into a tight space and parked between two patrol cars. The driver shot out a split-second before the woman. He glanced up the road, jerking his head in the direction of the stationary Land Cruiser.
‘What the hell is Mossad doing here?’ he said to her.
‘Doing what they do best: watching.’
At this, I froze. I have no particularly fluency in languages bar the bare rub-along stuff that buys me a beer and gets me out of tricky situations, but I can lip-read. I’ve no idea how I do this. Put it down to a predominantly solitary and lonely childhood. Lip-reading aside, I guessed that the woman and her sidekick were British Intelligence. To see so many security services congregated in one place made me more than uneasy. I felt as if I had chipped ice in my blood. Had Wilding been involved in some kind of industrial espionage? Selling trade secrets, maybe? Didn’t really compute with what I’d been led to believe.
But then what I’d been told was a pack of lies.
Painfully I tried to force connections, but my mind was swamped with the boy, the dead woman, the damned Israelis whose attendance closely reminded me of someone who taught me everything I knew. Cold sweat nestled in the small of my back. Feelings, alien emotions, played no part in my life. They were a luxury I could not afford.
Think, for Chrissakes. Think clearly.
I’d learnt a long time ago that Mossad had a habit of showing up either at or in the aftermath of all major events. Most recently and to name a few: the death of Princess Diana, the murder of Robert Maxwell, the suicide or murder, depending on your point of view, of Dr David Kelly. Their presence here confirmed that there was more to Wilding than I’d taken the time and trouble to find out. Now I saw why the hit on the scientist had been a rush job: Wilding was a big fish.
I turned my attention back to the woman. Tall, around five eight, full-figured without being overweight, probably a dress size twelve. She had a pale complexion, with a shock of short copper-coloured hair, side parting so that a lock fell over the right side of her face, which was a perfect oval. The lips matched the full figure, voluptuous with a nipped in waist, and she had a neat nose, neat everything. I couldn’t yet tell the colour of her eyes but I guessed they were green. She moved with feline stealth, fluid, impressive for a woman of her build and stature. From the way she threw her head back at the Israelis and blew them a kiss, the way she strode ahead of her male colleague, the way he deferred, this was her gig.
I followed her path to the door, half-mesmerised, then she took me by surprise. She turned, looked up, eyes scanning. I chilled. It was as if she were looking not straight at me but into me. I stared back, aroused. Then she turned and was gone.
An hour and a half passed. Forensics came. A white van appeared. Two men got out and disappeared inside, re-emerging twenty minutes later with computer boxes. Two trips later they were packed and gone. The patrol cars left. An ambulance showed. The Israelis stayed, mute, unyielding. The driver smoked incessantly. I never saw the Russians again. Then my mobile vibrated for a second time in as many hours.
‘Yes, Wes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Out and about.’
‘Is that smart?’
I didn’t respond.
‘You still there?’ Wes’s voice, low and tense, scraped down the line.
‘Uh-huh.’ My deliberately Neanderthal response suggested that he’d overplayed his card and he knew it.
‘That’s great,’ he said, effusive now. ‘Can you meet? Charing Cross Hotel.’
‘When?’
‘Noon.’
‘Make it one. I’m taking an early lunch.’ I cut the call and switched off the phone. I don’t eat lunch. It makes me sleepy.
At half past ten the house opposite erupted into activity. Two men in plain-clothes came out first, closely followed by the woman’s sidekick. Next, the redhead, with the boy bunched up next to her. I let out a breath. He was alive. From this height and distance, armed with a Heckler and Koch military sniping rifle, I could ‘remove’ the problem at the click of a trigger. Not subtle, but effective. It gave me pause for thought. Would it even do the lad a favour? After the sudden death of his mother what would become his story later on? Would he turn to booze or drugs or sex to relieve his pain? Would he seek meaning in violence, as I had done? I wondered how he’d negotiate a path through a lifetime’s maze of hidden obstacles and mantraps and people out to get you. This was not my problem, I reminded myself. What did I care? Except now I realised that I cared more than was good for me, that even if I’d had the necessary kit I lacked the necessary ruthlessness.
Worrying.
A snarling phalanx of hangers-on, grim-faced, came out of the building last. Clear and easy in her movements, the woman directed the boy into the rear of the Lexus, climbed in next to him, but not before turning her back and issuing orders to the others who received their instructions as though ordered to eat dirt. I smiled in spite of everything. The woman running the show came across as direct, in cold control, authoritative and, yes, sexy. If anyone were going to hunt me down it would be her.
The main cavalcade drove away. The boy was out of immediate danger, whisked off by his minders no doubt to a safe house on some godforsaken housing estate where nobody asked questions. I almost envied him.
As for me, there was only one place to go, one man to see, the last person alive familiar with my real name and who could help me. I briefly wondered whether he’d think the time he’d devoted to my education in the Dark Arts wasted.
Even in winter and under a sullen sky, Chiswick, moneyed and classy, oozed vibrancy and colour, aspiration and style. Treading an unfamiliar path through a crush of dead leaves, my senses alert to every police siren, every copper on the street, I turned right and left until finally I found myself in a maze of streets and homes that in summer would be hidden from view. It was as quiet as a desert night. Row upon row of classy red brick houses with white railings and balconies lined the wide tree-lined avenue. Suburbia at its finest.
It didn’t take long to locate the house right at the end. Screened from the street by a hedge, detached, it was a building of entrances and exits, a metaphor for life and death. It never occurred to me that Reuben might have moved or even died. Reuben, somehow, seemed indestructible.
Murmuring good morning to a young pretty mother pushing a baby-buggy, I followed the line of the wall to the rear of the building. A heavy wrought iron gate divided the boundary between the property and the pavement. As I walked back round to the