A Delicate Truth A Novel

5





On the slow train back to London, through the hours of half-sleep in his flat, and on the bus to work on the Monday morning, Toby Bell, not for the first time in his life, pondered his motives for putting his career and freedom at risk.

If his future had never looked rosier, which was what Human Resources were forever telling him, why go back to his past? Was this his old conscience he was dealing with – or a newly invented one? And you’re not settling some old score? Emily had asked him: and what was that supposed to mean? Did she imagine he was on some kind of vengeance kick against the Fergus Quinns and Jay Crispins of this world, two men of such glaring mediocrity in his eyes as to be not worth a second thought? Or was she externalizing some hidden motive of her own? Was it Emily who was settling an old score – against the entire race of men, her father included? There had been moments when she’d given him that impression, just as there had been others, admittedly short-lived, when she had seemed to come over to his side, whatever that side was.

Yet for all this fruitless soul-searching – perhaps even because of it – Toby’s performance on his first day at his new desk was exemplary. By eleven o’clock he had interviewed every member of his new staff, defined their areas of responsibility, cut potential overlap and streamlined consultation and control. By midday he was delivering a well-received mission statement to a meeting of managers. And by lunchtime he was sitting in his regional director’s office, munching a sandwich with her. It was not till his day’s work was well and truly done that, pleading an external appointment, he took a bus to Victoria station, and from there, at the height of the rush-hour bustle, telephoned his old friend Charlie Wilkins.


Every British Embassy should have its Charlie Wilkins, they used to say in Berlin, for how could they ever have managed without this genial, unflappable sixty-something English ex-copper with half a lifetime of diplomatic protection under his belt? A bollard jumped out at your car, did it, as you were leaving the Bastille Day bash at the French Embassy? Shame on it! An overzealous German policeman took it into his head to breathalyse you? The liberty! Charlie Wilkins will have a quiet word with his certain friends in the Bundespolizei and see what can be done.

But in Toby’s case the boot, unusually, was on the other foot because he was one of the few people in the world who had actually managed to do a favour for Charlie and his German wife, Beatrix. Their daughter, a budding cellist, had lacked the academic qualifications for an audition at a grand music college in London. The principal of the college turned out to be a bosom friend of Toby’s maternal aunt, herself a music teacher. Phone calls were hastily made, auditions arranged. No Christmas had gone by since but Toby, wherever he was stationed, had received a box of Beatrix’s home-made Zuckergebäck and a gilded card proudly reporting their brilliant daughter’s progress. And when Charlie and Beatrix retired gracefully to Brighton, the Zuckergebäck and the cards kept flowing, and Toby never failed to write his little note of thanks.


The Wilkins’s bungalow in Brighton was set back from its fellows and might have been transported from the Black Forest. Ranks of red-coated tulips lined the path to the Hansel and Gretel porch. Garden gnomes in Bavarian costume thrust out their buttoned chests, and cacti clawed at the enormous picture window. Beatrix had decked herself in her best finery. Over Baden wine and liver dumplings the three friends talked old times and celebrated the musical accomplishments of the Wilkins daughter. And after coffee and sweet liqueurs, Charlie and Toby retired to the den in the back garden.

‘It’s for a lady I know, Charlie,’ Toby explained, imagining for convenience’s sake that the lady was Emily.

Charlie Wilkins gave a contented smile. ‘I said to Beatrix: if it’s Toby, look for the lady.’

And this lady, Charlie – he explained, now blushing becomingly – was out shopping last Saturday and managed to go head to head with a parked van and do it serious damage, which was doubly unfortunate since she’s already got a whole bunch of points on her licence.

‘Witnesses?’ Charlie Wilkins enquired sympathetically.

‘She’s sure not. It was in an empty corner of the car park.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Charlie Wilkins commented, with a slight note of scepticism. ‘And no CCTV footage at all?’

‘Again not,’ said Toby, avoiding Charlie’s eye. ‘So far as we know, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ Charlie Wilkins echoed politely.

And since she’s a good girl at heart, Toby forged on, and since her conscience won’t let her sleep till she’s paid her dues – but no way can she afford to lose her licence for six months, Charlie – and since she at least had the nous to write down the van’s registration number, Toby was wondering – well, she was wondering whether there was any way – and delicately left the sentence for Charlie to finish for himself.

‘And has our lady friend any idea what this exclusive service might cost us?’ Charlie enquired, pulling on a pair of grandfatherly spectacles to scrutinize the piece of plain card Toby had passed him.

‘Whatever it costs, Charlie, I’m paying for it,’ Toby replied grandly, with renewed acknowledgements to Emily.

‘Well, in that case, if you will kindly join Beatrix for a nightcap, and bear with me for ten minutes,’ said Charlie, ‘the charge will be two hundred pounds to the widows and orphans fund of the Metropolitan Police, cash please, no receipt, and for old times’ sake, nothing for me.’

And ten minutes later, sure enough Charlie was handing back the card with a name and address written out in a policeman’s careful hand, and Toby was saying, Fantastic, Charlie, wonderful, she’ll be over the moon, and can we please stop at a cash machine on the way to the station?

But none of this quite removed the cloud of concern that had formed on Charlie Wilkins’s normally untroubled face, and it was still there when they stopped at a hole in the wall and Toby duly handed Charlie his two hundred pounds.

‘That gentleman you asked me to find out about just now,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t mean the car. I mean the gentleman who owns it. The Welsh gentleman, according to his address.’

‘What about him?’

‘My certain friend in the Met informs me that the said gentleman with the unpronounceable address has a rather large red ring round his name, in a metaphorical manner of speaking.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Any sight or sound of said gentleman, and the force concerned will take no action but report immediately to the very top. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me the reason for that large red ring at all, would you?’

‘Sorry, Charlie. I can’t.’

‘And that’s it, is it?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’

Parking in the station forecourt, Charlie turned off the engine but kept the doors locked.

‘Well, I too am afraid, son,’ he said severely. ‘For your sake. And your lady’s sake, if there is one. Because when I ask my certain friend in the Met for a favour like that, and loud bells start ringing in his ear, which in the case of your Welshman they did, he has his own official commitments to consider, doesn’t he? Which is what he was good enough to tell me by way of a warning. He can’t just push a button like that and run away, can he? He has to protect himself. So what I’m saying to you is, son: give her my love, if she exists, and take a lot of care because I have a bad feeling you’re going to need it, now that our old friend Giles, alas, is no longer with us.’

‘Not with us? You mean he’s dead?’ Toby exclaimed, ignoring in his concern the implication that Oakley was in some way his protector.

But Charlie was already chuckling away:

‘Dear me, no! I thought you knew. Worse. Our friend Giles Oakley is a banker. And you thought he was dead. Oh dear, oh dear, wait till I tell Beatrix. Trust our Giles to make timely use of the revolving door, I say.’ And lowering his voice to one of sympathy, ‘He’d got as high as they’d let him go, mind you. Reached his ceiling, hadn’t he? – as far as they were concerned. Nobody’s going to give him the top billet, not after what happened in Hamburg, are they? You’d never know when it was coming home to roost – well, would you?’

But Toby, reeling from so many blows at once, had no words. After only a week back in London and a full tour in Beirut, during which Oakley had vanished into mandarin thin air, Toby had been curious to know when and how his erstwhile patron would surface, if at all.

Well, now he had his answer. The lifelong foe of speculative bankers and their works, the man who had branded them drones, parasites, socially useless and a blight on any decent economy had taken the enemy’s shilling.

And why had Oakley done that, according to Charlie Wilkins?

Because the wise heads of Whitehall had decided he wasn’t bankable.

And why wasn’t Oakley bankable?

Lean your head back on the iron-hard cushions of the late train back to Victoria.

Close your eyes, say Hamburg, and tell yourself the story you swore you would never speak aloud.


Shortly after arriving at the Berlin Embassy, Toby happens to be on night duty when a call comes in from the superintendent of the Davidwache in Hamburg, the police station charged with monitoring the Reeperbahn’s sex industry. The superintendent asks to speak to the most senior person available. Toby replies that he himself is that person, which at 3 a.m. he is. Knowing that Oakley is in Hamburg addressing an august body of ship-owners, he is immediately wary. There had been talk of Toby tagging along for the experience, but Oakley had scotched it.

‘We have a drunk Englishman in our cells,’ the superintendent explains, determined to air his excellent English. ‘It is unfortunately necessary to arrest him for causing a serious disturbance at an extreme establishment. He also has many wounds,’ he adds. ‘On his torso, actually.’

Toby suggests the superintendent contact Consular Section in the morning. The superintendent replies that such a delay might not be in the best interests of the British Embassy. Toby asks why not.

‘This Englishman has no papers and no money. All are stolen. Also no clothes. The owner of the establishment tells us he was flagellated in the normal manner and regrettably became out of control. However, the prisoner is telling us he is an important official of your embassy, not your ambassador, maybe, but better.’

It takes Toby just three hours to reach the doorstep of the Davidwache, having driven at top speed down the autobahn through clouds of ground mist. Oakley is lolling half awake in the superintendent’s office wearing a police dressing gown. His hands, bloodied at the fingertips, are bandaged to the arms of his chair. His mouth is swollen in a crooked pout. If he recognizes Toby, he gives no sign of it. Toby gives none in return.

‘You know this man, Mr Bell?’ the superintendent enquires, in a heavily suggestive tone. ‘Maybe you decide you have never seen him before in your life, Mr Bell?’

‘This man is a complete stranger to me,’ Toby replies obediently.

‘He is an imposter, perhaps?’ the superintendent suggests, again too knowingly by half.

Toby concedes that the man may indeed be an imposter.

‘Then maybe you should take this imposter back to Berlin and interrogate him sharply?’

‘Thank you. I will.’

From the Reeperbahn, Toby drives Oakley, now in a police tracksuit, to a hospital on the other side of town. No broken bones but the body a mess of lacerations that could be whip marks. At a crowded superstore, he buys him a cheap suit, then calls Hermione to explain that her husband has had a minor car accident. Nothing grave, he says, Giles was sitting in the back of a limousine without his seat belt. On the return journey to Berlin, Oakley speaks not a word. Neither does Hermione, when she comes to unload him from Toby’s car.

And from Toby, also not a word, and none from Giles Oakley either, beyond the three hundred euros in an envelope that Toby found lying in his embassy mailbox in payment for the new suit.


‘And that’s the monument there, look!’ the driver called Gwyneth exclaimed, pointing her ample arm out of the window and slowing down to give Toby a better view. ‘Forty-five men, a thousand feet down, God help them.’

‘What caused it, Gwyneth?’

‘One falling stone, boy. One little spark was all it ever took. Brothers, fathers and sons. Think of the women, though.’

Toby did.

After another sleepless night, and in defiance of every principle he had held dear from the day he entered the Foreign Service, he had pleaded a raging toothache, taken a train to Cardiff and a taxi for the fifteen-mile journey to what Charlie Wilkins had called Jeb’s unpronounceable address. The valley was a graveyard of abandoned collieries. Pillars of blue-black rain rose above the green hills. The driver was a voluble woman in her fifties. Toby sat beside her in the front seat. The hills drew together and the road narrowed. They passed a football field and a school, and behind the school an overgrown aerodrome, a collapsed control tower and the skeleton of a hangar.

‘If you’d just put me down at the roundabout,’ Toby said.

‘Now I thought you said you was visiting a friend,’ Gwyneth replied accusingly.

‘So I am.’

‘Well, why don’t you want me to drop you at your friend’s house then?’

‘Because I want to surprise them, Gwyneth.’

‘Not many surprises left in this place, I can tell you, boy,’ she said, and handed him her card for when he wanted to go back.

The rain had eased to a fine drizzle. A red-haired boy of eight or so was riding a brand-new bicycle up and down the road, honking an antiquated brass horn that had been screwed to the handlebars. Black-and-white cattle grazed amid a forest of pylons. To his left ran a row of prefabricated houses with hooped green roofs and the same shed in each front garden. He guessed they were once the quarters of married servicemen. Number ten was the last of the row. A whitewashed flagpole stood in the front garden, but no flag flew from it. He unlatched the gate. The boy on the bicycle came skidding to a halt beside him. The front door was of stippled glass. No doorbell. Watched by the boy, he tapped on the glass. A woman’s shadow appeared. The door sprang open. Blonde, his own age, no make-up, curled fists, a set jaw and angry as all hell.

‘If you’re press, you can bugger off! I’ve had my fill of the lot of you!’

‘I’m not press.’

‘Then what the f*ck d’you want?’ – her voice not Welsh but old-fashioned fighting Irish.

‘Are you Mrs Owens, by any chance?’

‘What if I am?’

‘My name’s Bell. I wondered whether I could have a word with your husband, Jeb.’

Leaning his bicycle against the fence, the boy squeezed past him and stood at the woman’s side, one hand clasped possessively round her thigh.

‘And about what the f*ck are you wishing to have a word with my husband, Jeb?’

‘I’m actually here on behalf of a friend. Paul, his name is’ – watching for a reaction but seeing none – ‘Paul and Jeb had a date to meet last Wednesday. Jeb didn’t show up. Paul’s worried for him. Thinks he may have had an accident with his van or something. The cellphone number Jeb gave him doesn’t answer. I was coming up this way, so he asked me to see if I could track him down,’ he explained lightly, or as lightly as he could.

‘Last Wednesday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like a week ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘Six f*cking days?’

‘Yes.’

‘Appointment where?’

‘At his house.’

‘Where the f*ck’s his house, for Christ’s sake?’

‘In Cornwall. North Cornwall.’

Her face rigid, the boy’s also.

‘Why didn’t your friend come himself?’

‘Paul’s stuck at home. His wife’s sick. He can’t leave her,’ Toby replied, beginning to wonder how much of this he could do.

A big, ungainly, grey-haired man in a buttoned woollen jacket and spectacles was looming at her shoulder, peering at him.

‘What seems to be our problem, Brigid?’ he enquired in an earnest voice that Toby arbitrarily awarded to the far north.

‘The man wants Jeb. He’s got a friend called Paul had a date with Jeb in Cornwall last Wednesday. Wants to know why the f*ck Jeb didn’t show for it, if you can believe him.’

The man laid an avuncular hand on the boy’s red head.

‘Danny, I think you should pop across to Jenny’s for a play. And we mustn’t keep the gentleman standing on the doorstep, must we, Mr –?’

‘Toby.’

‘And I’m Harry. How d’you do, Toby?’

Curved ceiling, iron trusses holding it up. The linoleum floor glistening with polish. In a kitchen alcove, artificial flowers on a white tablecloth. And in the centre of the room facing a television set, a two-piece sofa and matching armchairs. Brigid sat on an arm. Toby stood opposite her while Harry pulled open the drawer of a sideboard and extracted a buff army-style folder. Holding it in both hands like a hymnal, he placed himself in front of Toby and drew a breath as if he were about to sing.

‘Now did you know Jeb personally at all, then, Toby?’ he suggested, by way of a precautionary introduction.

‘No. I didn’t. Why?’

‘So your friend Paul knew him but you didn’t, is that correct, Toby?’ – making doubly sure.

‘Just my friend,’ Toby confirmed.

‘So you never met Jeb at all. Not even to set eyes on, as we may say.’

‘No.’

‘Well, this will come as a shock to you, Toby, all the same, and no doubt a much bigger shock to your friend Paul, who is sadly unable to be with us today. But poor Jeb very tragically passed away by his own hand last Tuesday, and we’re still trying to come to terms with it, as you may suppose. Not to mention Danny, naturally, although sometimes you have to wonder whether children manage these things better than we adults do.’

‘It was splashed enough over the papers, for f*ck’s sake,’ Brigid said, speaking across Toby’s mumbled protestations of condolence. ‘Everyone in the f*cking world knows about it except him and his friend Paul.’

‘Well, only local papers now, Brigid,’ Harry corrected her, passing Toby the folder. ‘It’s not everyone reads the Argus, is it?’

‘And the f*cking Evening Standard.’

‘Yes, well, not everyone reads the Evening Standard either, do they? Not now it’s free. People like to appreciate what they buy, not what’s pressed on them for nothing. That’s only human nature.’

‘I really am deeply sorry,’ Toby managed to get in, opening the folder and staring at the cuttings.

‘Why? You didn’t bloody know him,’ Brigid said.

WARRIOR’S LAST BATTLE

Police are not looking for any other suspect in the death by shooting of ex-Special Forces David Jebediah (Jeb) Owens aged 34 who, in the words of the coroner, ‘fought a losing battle against post-traumatic stress disorder and its associated forms of clinical depression …’

SPECIAL FORCES HERO ENDS OWN LIFE

… served gallantly in Northern Ireland, where he met his future wife, Brigid, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Later served in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan …

‘Would you like to telephone your friend, Toby?’ said Harry hospitably. ‘There’s a conservatory at the back if you require the privacy, and we’ve a good signal, thanks to the radar station nearby, I shouldn’t wonder. We had the cremation for him yesterday, didn’t we, Brigid? Family only, no flowers. Your friend wouldn’t have been missed, tell him, so no cause to reproach himself.’

‘What else are you going to tell your friend, Mr Bell?’ Brigid demanded.

‘What I’ve read here. It’s awful news.’ He tried again: ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, Mrs Owens.’ And to Harry: ‘Thanks, but I think I’d rather break it to him personally.’

‘Quite understood, Toby. And respectful, if I may say so.’

‘Jeb blew his f*cking brains out, Mr Bell, if it’s of interest to your friend at all. In his van. They didn’t put that bit in the papers; they’re considerate. Some time last Tuesday evening, they think he did it, between six and ten o’clock. He was parked in the corner of a flat field near Glastonbury, Somerset, what they call the Levels. Six hundred yards from the nearest human habitation – they paced it. He used a 9mm Smith & Wesson, his weapon of choice, short barrel. I never knew he had a f*cking Smith & Wesson, and as a matter of fact he hated handguns, which is paradoxical, but there it was in his hand, they say, short barrel and all. “Can we trouble you for an official identification, Mrs Owens?” “No trouble at all, Officer. Any time. Lead me to him.” Just as well I’d been in the constabulary. Straight through the f*cking right temple. Small hole on the right side and not much of his face at all on the other. That’s exit wounds for you. He didn’t miss. He wouldn’t, not Jeb. He was always a lovely shot. Won prizes, Jeb did.’

‘Yes, well, reliving it doesn’t bring him back, does it, Brigid?’ said Harry. ‘I think Toby here deserves a cup of tea, don’t you, Toby? Coming all this way for his friend, that’s what I call loyalty. And a piece of Danny’s shortbread that you made with him, Brigid.’

‘They couldn’t wait to cremate him either. Suicides jump the queue, Mr Bell, in case you should ever have the problem.’ She had flopped from the arm into the chair, and was thrusting her pelvis at him in some kind of sexual contempt. ‘I had the pleasure of washing his f*cking van out, didn’t I? Soon as they’d had their way with it. “Here you are, Mrs Owens, it’s all yours now.” Nice polite people, mind you, in Somerset. Very courteous to a lady. Treated me like a colleague too. There was a couple from the Met there. Directing operations for their country brothers.’

‘Brigid didn’t phone me, not till dinner time, she wouldn’t,’ Harry explained. ‘I’d lessons back to back. She knew that, which was very considerate on your part, wasn’t it, Brigid? You can’t let fifty children run wild for two hours, can you?’

‘Lent me their f*cking hose too, which was nice. You’d think cleaning it out would be part of the service, wouldn’t you? But not with the austerity, not in Somerset. “Now are you quite sure you’ve done all your forensics?” I asked them, “because I don’t want to be the one to wash away the clues, now.” “We’ve all the clues we need, thank you, Mrs Owens, and here’s a scrubbing brush for you, in case you need it.”’

‘You’re just upsetting yourself, Brigid,’ Harry warned from the kitchen alcove, filling a kettle and putting out pieces of shortbread.

‘I’m not upsetting Mr Bell, though, am I? Look at him. He’s a model of composure. I’m a woman playing catch-up on my dead husband, who is a dead stranger to me, you see, Mr Bell. Until three years ago I knew Jeb very well indeed, and so did Danny. The man we knew three years ago would not have killed himself with a f*cking short-barrelled pistol, or a long-barrelled one for that matter. He’d never have left his son without a f*cking father or his wife without a husband. Danny was the world to him. Even after Jeb turned bloody mad, it was Danny, Danny. Shall I tell you something about suicide that isn’t generally known, Mr Bell?’

‘Toby doesn’t need this, Brigid. I’m sure he’s a well-informed young gentleman who’s familiar with the psychology and suchlike. Am I not right, Toby?’

‘It’s f*cking murder is what suicide is, Mr Bell. Never mind you murder yourself along with it. It’s other people you’re after killing. Three years ago I’d a great marriage going to the man of my dreams. I wasn’t bad myself, which he was good enough to comment on frequently. I’m a good f*ck and he loved me full on, or so he said. Gave me every reason to believe him. I still do. I believe him. I love him. Always did. But I don’t believe the bastard who shot himself to kill us, and I don’t love him either. I hate him. Because if he did that, he is a bastard, I don’t care what the f*cking cause was.’

If he did that? Was the if delivered with greater force than she intended? Or was this merely Toby’s imagination?

‘And come to think of it, I don’t know what it was drove him round the f*cking bend in the first place. I never did. He’d had a bad mission. There’d been some wrong killing. That was my full ration. After that, I could sing for it. Maybe you and your friend Paul know. Maybe Jeb trusted your friend Paul the way he wouldn’t trust me, his f*cking wife. Maybe the police know too. Maybe the whole f*cking street knows, and me and Danny and Harry here are the only odd ones out.’

‘Going over it won’t help, Brigid,’ Harry said, unwrapping a packet of paper napkins. ‘It won’t help you, it won’t help Danny. And I don’t expect it will help Toby here. Will it, Toby?’ – passing him a cup of tea with a piece of sugared shortbread on the saucer, and a paper napkin.

‘I come out the f*cking constabulary for Jeb, once we knew Danny was on his way. Lost my seniority pay and the promotion that was round the corner. We were both off the slag heap, what with Jeb’s dad a useless layabout and no mother, and me never knowing who my dad was, and my mother not bloody knowing neither. But we was going to be straight, decent people if it killed us. Got myself a course in Physical Education, all so’s we could make a home for Danny.’

‘And she’s the best PE teacher the school’s ever had, or likely to, aren’t you, Brigid?’ Harry said. ‘All our children love her, and Danny’s proud of her you wouldn’t believe. We all are.’

‘What do you teach?’ Toby asked Harry.

‘Arithmetic, all the way up to A level, when I’ve got the pupils, don’t I, Brigid?’ – handing her a cup of tea as well.

‘So is your friend Mr Paul down in Cornwall some kind of f*cking psychiatrist Jeb was hooked on, or what?’ Brigid demanded.

‘No. Not a psychiatrist, I’m afraid.’

‘And you’re not a gentleman of the press? You’re quite sure of that?’

‘I’m sure I’m not press.’

‘So if you don’t mind me being inquisitive, Mr Bell: if you’re not press and your pal Paul’s not a shrink, what the f*ck are you?’

‘Now Brigid,’ said Harry.

‘I’m here purely privately,’ said Toby.

‘Then what the hell are you purely publicly, may I ask?’

‘Publicly, I’m a member of the Foreign Office.’

But instead of the explosion he was expecting, all he got was a sustained critical examination.

‘And your friend Paul? Would he be from the Foreign Office too at all?’ – not releasing him from her gaze, which was wide and green-eyed.

‘Paul’s retired.’

‘And would Paul be somebody Jeb knew, like, three years back?’

‘Yes. He would.’

‘Professionally then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And would that have been what their summit conference was going to be about, Jeb and Paul’s, if Jeb hadn’t blown his head off the day before? Something in the professional line, for example, from three years back?’

‘Yes. It would,’ Toby replied steadily. ‘That was the connection between them. They didn’t know each other well, but they were on the way to becoming friends.’

Her eyes had still not left his face, and they didn’t now:

‘Harry. I’m worried about Danny. Would you kindly go over to Jenny’s a minute and make sure he hasn’t fallen off his f*cking bike. He’s only had it a day.’


Toby and Brigid were alone, and some kind of guarded understanding was forming between them as each waited for the other to speak.

‘So should I be calling up the Foreign Office in London to check you out, then?’ Brigid asked in a noticeably less strident voice. ‘Confirming that Mr Bell is who he says he is?’

‘I don’t think Jeb would have liked you to do that.’

‘And your friend Paul? What about him? Would he like it?’

‘No.’

‘And you wouldn’t either?’

‘I’d lose my job.’

‘This conversation they were proposing to have. Would it have been about a certain Operation Wildlife at all?’

‘Why? Did Jeb tell you about it?’

‘About the operation? You’re joking. White-hot tongs wouldn’t have dragged it out of him. It stank, but it was duty.’

‘Stank how?’

‘Jeb didn’t like mercs, never did. In it for the ride and the money, they are. Think they’re heroes when they’re f*cking psychos. “I fight for my country, Brigid. Not for the f*cking multinationals with their offshore bank accounts.” Except he didn’t say f*cking, if I’m honest. Jeb was Chapel. Didn’t swear and couldn’t drink above a couple of sips. God knows what I am. F*cking Prot, I’m told. I’d have to be, wouldn’t I, for the f*cking Royal Ulster Constabulary?’

‘And it was the presence of mercenaries that he didn’t like about Wildlife? He said that of this particular operation?’

‘Just generally. Just mercs. Get them off his back, he hated the buggers. “It’s another merc job, Brigid. Makes you wonder sometimes who starts the wars these days.”’

‘Did he have other reservations about the operation?’

‘It sucked but what the hell?’

‘And afterwards? When he came back from the operation?’

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she seemed to become a different woman – inward, and appalled:

‘He was a ghost. Washed out. Couldn’t hold a knife and fork. Kept showing me the letter from his beloved regiment: thank you and goodnight and remember you’re bound for life by the Official Secrets Act. I thought he’d seen it all. I thought we both had. Northern Ireland. Blood and bone all over the street, the kneecappings, bombings, necklace killings. Holy God.’

She took a couple of deep breaths, collected herself and went on:

‘Till he gets the one-too-many. The one they all talk about. The one that’s got his name on and won’t let him go. The one-too-many bomb in the marketplace. The lorryload of kids on their way to school that gets blown to kingdom come. Or maybe it’s only a dead dog in a ditch, or he’s cut his little finger and it’s bleeding. Whatever it was, it was the straw that broke his back for him. He’d no defences. Couldn’t look at what he loved best in the world without hating us for not being covered in blood.’

Again she stopped, her eyes this time opening wide in outrage at whatever she was seeing, and Toby wasn’t:

‘He f*cking haunted us!’ she blurted, then clapped her hand to her lips in reproach. ‘Christmas, we’d set the bloody table for him. Danny, me, Harry. We’d sit there gawping at his empty place. Danny’s birthday, the same. Presents on the doorstep in the middle of the f*cking night. What the hell have we got that he’s going to catch if he comes in? F*cking leprosy? It’s his own house, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t we love him enough?’

‘I’m sure you did,’ Toby said.

‘How the f*ck would you know?’ she demanded, and sat dead still with her fingers jammed between her teeth while she stared at something in her memory.

‘And the leathercraft?’ Toby asked. ‘Where did Jeb get his leathercraft skills from?’

‘His f*cking father, who d’you think? A bespoke shoemaker, he was, when he wasn’t drinking himself into oblivion. But that didn’t stop Jeb loving him rotten, and laying out his f*cking tools in the shed there like the Holy Grail when the bugger died. Then one night the shed’s empty and the tools is all gone and Jeb with them. Same as now.’

She turned and stared at him, waiting for him to speak. Cautiously, he did:

‘Jeb told Paul he had a piece of evidence. About Wildlife. He was going to bring it to their meeting in Cornwall. Paul didn’t know what it was. I wondered if you did.’

She spread her palms and peered into them as if reading her own fortune, then sprang up, marched to the front door and pulled it open:

‘Harry! Mr Bell wishes to pay his respects so’s he can tell his friend Paul. And Danny, you stay over with Jenny till I call you, hear me?’ And to Toby: ‘Come back after without Harry.’


The rain had returned. On Harry’s insistence Toby borrowed a raincoat and noticed that it was too small for him. The garden behind the house was narrow but long. Wet washing hung from a line. A man-gate led to a patch of wasteland. They passed a couple of wartime pillboxes covered in graffiti.

‘I tell my pupils they’re reminders of what their grandparents fought for,’ Harry called over his shoulder.

They had reached a dilapidated barn. The doors were padlocked. Harry had the key.

‘We don’t let Danny know it’s here, not at the moment,’ said Harry earnestly. ‘So I’ll trouble you to bear that in mind on your return to the house. We plan to offer it on eBay once the hue and cry’s died down. You don’t want people put off by the association, do you?’ – giving the doors a shove and releasing a squadron of jubilant small birds. ‘Mind you, he did a good conversion, did Jeb, I’ll give him that. Slightly obsessive, in my private opinion. Not for Brigid’s ear, naturally.’

The tarpaulin was fastened to the ground with tent pegs. Toby looked on while Harry went from peg to peg, easing the cleat, then lifting the loop off the peg till one side of the tarpaulin hung loose; then sweeping the whole tarpaulin clear to reveal a green van, and the scrawled inscription, gold on green, JEB’S LEATHERCRAFT in capitals, and beneath it in smaller letters Buy From Van.

Ignoring Harry’s extended arm, Toby mounted the tailgate. Wood panelling, some panels removed, others dangling open. A flap table, raised and scrubbed, one wooden chair, no cushion. A rope hammock taken down and neatly rolled. Bare, scrubbed shelves, craftsman-fitted. A smell of stale blood not quite overcome by the stink of Dettol.

‘What happened to his reindeer hides?’ Toby asked.

‘Well now, they were best burned, weren’t they?’ Harry explained brightly. ‘There wasn’t that much could be saved, frankly, Toby, given the extent of the mess the poor man made of himself. No alcohol involved to help him on his way, which they say is unusual. But that’s Jeb for you. Not a man to let his hair down. Never was.’

‘And no farewell note?’ Toby asked.

‘Just the gun in his hand and eight bullets left in the magazine, which makes you wonder what he thought he would do with the others after he’d shot himself, I suppose,’ Harry replied in the same informative tone. ‘Same as him using his wrong hand. Why? you ask yourself. Well, of course there’s no answer to that. There never will be. He was left-handed was Jeb. But he shot himself with his right, which could be described as an aberration. But Jeb was a shooter by trade, they tell me. Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? If Jeb had put his mind to it, he could have shot himself with his own foot, could Jeb, according to what I’m told by Brigid. Plus the fact that when you reach that point you’re not accessible to rational argument, as we all know. Which is what the police said, very rightly, in my opinion, me not being an expert by a long chalk.’

Toby had found a pockmark as wide as a tennis ball but not so deep halfway up the wood cladding and midway down one side, and was tracing its outline with his finger.

‘Yes, well now,’ Harry explained, ‘a bullet like that has to go somewhere, which is common sense, though you wouldn’t believe it watching some of the films they make these days. It can’t just vanish into thin air, can it, not a bullet? So, what I say is, fill the hole with your Polyfilla, rub it down, paint it over, and with any luck it won’t notice.’

‘And his tools? For his leathercraft?’

‘Yes, well that’s an embarrassment to all concerned, his father’s tools are, Toby, same as his ship’s stove, which was worth a bob or two of anybody’s money. First on the spot was the fire brigade, I’m not sure why, but clearly somebody summoned them. Then along come the police, then the ambulance. So you don’t know whose light fingers were to blame, do you? Not the police, I’m sure. I’ve great respect for our guardians of the law, more than what Brigid’s got, to be frank, her having been one. Still, that’s Ireland for you, I suppose.’

Toby supposed it was.

‘He never grudged me, mind. Not that he had the right. You can’t expect a woman like Brigid to do without, can you? I’m good to her, which couldn’t always be said for Jeb, not if we’re honest.’

Together they closed the tailgate, then together hauled the tarpaulin back over the van and together tightened the guy ropes.

‘I think Brigid wanted another quick word with me,’ Toby said. And for a lame explanation: ‘Something to do with Paul that she felt was private.’

‘Well, she’s a free soul, is Brigid, same as all of us,’ Harry said heartily, patting Toby’s arm in comradeship. ‘Just don’t listen too hard to her views on the police is my advice. There’s always got to be somebody to blame in a case like this, it’s human nature. Good to see you, Toby, and very thoughtful of you to come. And you don’t mind my saying this, do you? I know it’s cheeky. Only, should you happen, just by chance, but you never know, to bump into somebody who’s looking for a well-maintained utility vehicle converted to a high standard – well, they know where to come, don’t they?’


Brigid was curled into a corner of the sofa, clutching her knees.

‘See anything?’ she asked.

‘Was I meant to?’

‘The blood was never logical. There was splashes all over the rear bumper. They said it was travelled blood. “How the hell did it travel?” I asked them. “Through the f*cking window and round the bloody back?” “You’re overwrought, Mrs Owens. Leave the investigating to us and have a nice cup of tea.” Then another fellow comes over to me, plain clothes from the Met, posh-spoken. “Just to put your mind at ease, Mrs Owens, that was never your husband’s blood on the bumper. It’s red lead. He must have been doing a repair job.” They did the house over too, didn’t they?’

‘I’m sorry? Which house?’

‘This f*cking house. Where you’re sitting now, looking at me, where d’you think? Every bloody drawer and cubbyhole. Even Danny’s toy cupboard. Searched from top to f*cking bottom by people who knew their business. Jeb’s papers from the drawer there. Whatever he’d left behind. Took out and put back, in the right order except not quite. Our clothes the same. Harry thinks I’m paranoid. Seeing conspiracies under the bed, I am. F*ck that, Mr Bell. I’ve turned over more houses than Harry’s had bloody breakfasts. It takes one to know one.’

‘When did they do this?’

‘F*cking yesterday. When d’you think? While we was out cremating Jeb, when else? We’re not talking f*cking amateurs. Don’t you want to know what they were looking for?’

Reaching under the sofa, she drew out a flat brown envelope, unsealed, and pushed it at him.

Two A4 photographs, matt finish. No borders. Black and white. Poor resolution. Night shots, much enhanced.

A format to remind Toby of all the fuzzy images he’d ever seen of suspects covertly photographed from across the street: except that these two suspects were dead and lying on a rock, and one of them was a woman in a shredded Arab dress and the other a much-shot child with one leg half off, and the men standing around them were bulked out in combat gear and holding semi-automatics.

In the first photograph, an unidentifiable standing man, also in combat gear, points his gun at the woman as if about to finish her off.

In the second, a different man, again in combat gear, kneels on one knee, his weapon beside him, and holds his hands to his face.

‘From under where the ship’s stove was, before the buggers stole it,’ Brigid was explaining contemptuously, in answer to a question Toby hadn’t asked. ‘Jeb had fixed a slab of asbestos there. The stove was gone. But the asbestos was still there. The police thought they’d searched the van before they gave it me to clean. But I knew Jeb. They didn’t. And Jeb knew concealment. Those photos had to be in there somewhere, not that he ever showed them to me. He wouldn’t. “I’ve got the proof,” he’d say. “It’s there in black and white except that nobody wants to believe it.” “Proof of what, for f*ck’s sake?” I’d say. “Photographs taken at the scene of the crime.” But ask him what the crime was and all you’d get was a dead man’s face.’

‘Who was the photographer?’ Toby asked.

‘Shorty. His mate. The only one he had left after his mission. The only one as stuck by him after the others had the fear of God put into them. Don, Andy, Shorty – they was all good buddies until Wildlife. Never after. Only Shorty, till him and Jeb had their fight and broke it off.’

‘What was the fight about?’

‘The same bloody pictures you’re holding in your hand. Jeb was still home then. Sick but managing, like. Then Shorty came to have a word with him, and they had this God-awful fight. Six foot four Shorty is. But Jeb come in from under him, buckled his knees for him, then broke his nose for him on the way down. Textbook it was, and Jeb half his size. You had to admire it.’

‘What did he want to talk to Jeb about?’

‘Give him back those pictures, that was first. Shorty had been all for showing them around the ministries till then. Even giving them to the press. Then changed his mind.’

‘Why?’

‘They’d bought him. The defence contractors had. Given him a job for life, provided he keeps his stupid mouth shut.’

‘Do the defence contractors have a name?’

‘There’s a fellow Crispin. Started up this great new company with American money. Red-hot professionals. The shape of tomorrow, according to Shorty. The army could go f*ck itself.’

‘And according to Jeb?’

‘Not professional at all. Carpetbaggers, he called them, and told Shorty he was another. Shorty wanted him to join up with them, if you can believe it. They’d tried to sign Jeb as soon as the mission was over. To shut him up. Now they’d sent Shorty to try again. Brought Jeb a f*cking letter of agreement all typed up for him. All he had to do was sign it, give back the photos and join the company and the sky was the limit. I could have told Shorty to spare himself the journey and a broken nose, but he wouldn’t have f*cking listened. Actually, I hate the bloody man. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women. Had his hands all over me whenever Jeb wasn’t looking. Plus he wrote me a smarmy letter of condolence, enough to vomit.’

From the drawer that had held the press cuttings she produced a handwritten letter and shoved it at him.

Dear Brigid,

I’m real Sorry to hear bad News regarding Jeb, same as I’m sorry it ended so Bad between us. Jeb was the Best of the Best, he always will be, never mind old squabbles, he’ll always be in my Memory as I know he will in yours. Plus Brigid, if you’re short of Cash in any way, call this mobile number attached and I will remit without fail. Plus Brigid, I will trouble you kindly to remit forthwith two Pics on loan which are Personal property of self. SAE attached.

As ever in Grief, Jeb’s old Comrade, trust me,

Shorty.

Shouts of argument from outside the front door: Danny having a screaming fit, Harry vainly reasoning. Brigid makes to grab back the photographs.

‘Can’t I keep them?’

‘Can you f*ck!’

‘Can I copy them?’

‘All right. Go on. Copy them,’ she replies, again without a moment’s hesitation.

Beirut Man lays the full-plate photographs flat on the dining table and, ignoring the advice he gave to Emily only a couple of days ago, copies the photographs into his BlackBerry. Handing them back, he peers over Brigid’s shoulder at Shorty’s letter, then copies his cellphone number into his notebook.

‘What’s Shorty’s other name?’ he asks, while the din outside rises in a crescendo.

‘Pike.’

He writes down Pike too, for safety’s sake.

‘He called me the day before,’ she says.

‘Pike did?’

‘Danny, shut the f*ck up, for Christ’s sake! Jeb did, who d’you think? Tuesday, nine o’clock in the morning. Harry and Danny had just gone off on a school outing. I pick up the phone, it’s Jeb, like I never heard him these last three years. “I’ve found my witness, Brigid, the best you could ever think of. Him and me are going to set the record straight once and for all. Get rid of Harry, and as soon as I’m done we’ll start over again: you, me and Danny, same as old times.” That’s how depressed he was a few hours before he shot his f*cking head off, Mr Bell.’


If a decade of diplomatic life had taught Toby one thing, it was to treat every crisis as normal and soluble. On the taxi ride back to Cardiff his mind might be a cauldron of unsorted fears for Kit, Suzanna and Emily; it might be in mourning for Jeb, and wrestling with the timing and method of his murder, and the complicity of the police in its cover-up, but outwardly he was the same chatty passenger and Gwyneth was the same chatty driver. Only on reaching Cardiff did he go about his dispositions exactly as if he’d spent the journey preparing them, which in truth he had.

Was he under scrutiny? Not yet, but Charlie Wilkins’s warning words were not lost on him. At Paddington, he had bought his railway ticket with cash. He had paid Gwyneth cash and asked her to drop him off and pick him up at the roundabout. He had kept to himself the identity of the person he was visiting, although he knew it was a lost cause. More than likely, at least one of Brigid’s neighbours had a watching brief to tip off the police, in which case a description of his personal appearance would have been reported, although, with any luck, police incompetence would ensure that word would take its time to travel.

Needing more cash than he’d reckoned on, he had no option but to draw some from a machine, thus advertising his presence in Cardiff. Some risks you just have to take. From an electronics shop a stone’s throw from the station he bought a new hard drive for his desktop and two second-hand cellphones, one black, one silver, with pay-as-you-go SIM cards and guaranteed fully charged batteries. In the world of downmarket electronics, he had been taught on his security courses, such cellphones were known as ‘burners’ because of the tendency of their owners to dispose of them after a few hours.

In a café favoured by Cardiff’s unemployed he bought a cup of coffee and a piece of slab cake and took them to a corner table. Satisfied that the background sound suited his purpose, he touched Shorty’s number into the silver burner and pressed green. This was Matti’s world, not his. But he had been at the edge of it, and he was not a stranger to dissembling.

The number rang and rang and he was reconciled to getting the messaging service when an aggressive male voice barked at him:

‘Pike here. I’m at work. What d’you want?’

‘Shorty?’

‘All right, Shorty. Who is this?’

Toby’s own voice, but without its Foreign Office polish:

‘Shorty, this is Pete from the South Wales Argus. Hi. Look, the paper’s putting together a spread on Jeb Owens, who sadly killed himself last week, as you probably know. Death of our unsung hero stuff. We understand you were quite a mate of his, that right? I mean, like, best mate? His winger, kind of thing. You must be pretty cut up.’

‘How’d you get this number?’

‘Ah well, we have our methods, don’t we? Look, what we’re wondering is – what my editor’s wondering – can we do an interview, like what a fine soldier Jeb was, Jeb as his best mate knew him, kind of thing, a full-page splash? Shorty? You still there?’

‘What’s your other name?’

‘Andrews.’

‘This supposed to be off the record or on?’

‘Well, we’d like it on the record, naturally. And face to face. We can do deep background, but that’s always a pity. Obviously, if there are issues of confidentiality, we’d respect them.’

Another protracted silence, with Shorty’s hand over the mouthpiece of his phone:

‘Thursday any good?’

Thursday? The conscientious foreign servant mentally checks his appointments diary. Ten a.m., departmental meeting. Twelve thirty p.m., inter-services liaison officers’ working lunch at Londonderry House.

‘Thursday’s fine,’ he replied defiantly. ‘Where’ve you got in mind? No chance of you coming up to Wales at all, I suppose?’

‘London. Golden Calf Café, Mill Hill. Eleven a.m. Do you?’

‘How do I recognize you?’

‘I’m a midget, aren’t I? Two foot six in my boots. And come alone, no photography. How old are you?’

‘Thirty-one,’ he replied too quickly, and wished he hadn’t.


On the return train journey to Paddington, again using the silver burner, Toby sent his first text message to Emily: need consultation asap please advise on this number as old number no longer operative, Bailey.

Standing in the corridor, he rang her surgery as a back-up and got the out-of-hours answering service:

‘Message for Dr Probyn, please. Dr Probyn, this is your patient Bailey asking for an appointment tonight. Please call me back on this number, as my old number no longer works. Thank you.’

For an hour after that it seemed to him that he thought of nothing but Emily: which was to say that he thought of everything from Giles Oakley’s defection and back again, but wherever he went, Emily went too.

Her reply to his text, barren though it was, lifted his spirits beyond anything he could have imagined:

I’m on shift till midnight. Ask for urgent-care centre or triage unit.

No signature. Not even an E.

At Paddington it was gone eight when he alighted but by then he had a new wish list of operational supplies: a roll of packaging tape, wrapping paper, half a dozen A5 padded envelopes and a box of Kleenex tissues. The newsagent in the station concourse was closed, but in Praed Street he was able to buy everything he needed, and add a reinforced carrier bag, a handful of top-up vouchers for the burners and a plastic model of a London Beefeater to his collection.

The Beefeater himself was surplus to requirements. What Toby needed was the cardboard box he came in.


His flat in Islington was on the first floor of a row of joined eighteenth-century houses that were identical save for the colour of their front doors, the condition of their window frames and the quality of their curtains. The night was dry and unseasonably warm. Taking the opposing pavement to his house, Toby first strolled past it, keeping a casual eye out for the classic telltale signs: the parked car with occupants, the bystanders on street corners chatting into cellphones, the men in overalls kneeling insincerely at junction boxes. As usual, his street contained all of these and more.

Crossing to his own side, he let himself into the house and, having climbed the stairs and unlocked his front door as silently as he knew how, stood still in the hall. Surprised to find the heating on, he remembered it was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays Lula, the Portuguese cleaning woman, came from three till five, so perhaps she had been feeling the cold.

All the same, Brigid’s calm announcement that her house had been professionally searched from top to bottom was still with him, and it was only natural that a sense of irregularity lingered in him as he went from room to room, sniffing the air for alien smells, poking at things, trying to remember how he’d left them and failing, pulling open cupboards and drawers to no effect. On his security training courses he had been told that professional searchers filmed their own progress in order to make sure they put everything back where they found it, and he imagined them doing that in his flat.

But it wasn’t until he went to reclaim the back-up memory stick which, three years ago, he had pasted behind the framed photograph of his maternal grandparents on their wedding day, that he felt a real frisson. The picture was hanging where it had always hung: in a bit of dead corridor between the hall and the lavatory. Every time he had thought of moving it over the years, he had failed to come up with a darker or less conspicuous spot and in the end left it where it was.

And the memory stick was still there now, secured beneath layers of industrial masking tape: no outward sign that it had been tampered with. The trouble was, the picture-glass had been dusted, and by Lula’s standards this was an all-time first. Not only its glass, but its frame. And not only its frame, if you please, but the top of the frame, which was situated well above the height of diminutive Lula’s natural reach.

Had she stood on a chair? Lula? Had she, against all previous form, been seized by an urge to spring-clean? He was in the act of calling her – only to break out in derisive laughter at his own paranoia. Had he really forgotten that Lula had taken herself off on holiday at short notice, to be temporarily replaced by her infinitely more efficient and Junoesque friend Tina, all of five foot ten tall?

Still smiling to himself, he did what he’d set his mind on doing before it went chasing after wild geese. He removed the masking tape and took the memory stick to the living room.


His desktop computer was a source of worry to him. He knew – had had it religiously dinned into him – that no computer ever was a safe hiding place. However deep you may think you’ve buried your secret treasure, today’s analyst with time on his side will dig it up. On the other hand, replacing the old hard drive with the new one that he had bought in Cardiff also had its risks: such as how to explain the presence of a brand-new drive with nothing on it? But any explanation, however implausible, was going to sound a lot better than the three-year-old voices of Fergus Quinn, Jeb Owens and Kit Probyn, as recorded days or even hours before the disastrous launch of Operation Wildlife.

First retrieve the secret recording from the depths of the desktop. Toby did. Then make two more copies of it on separate memory sticks. He did that too. Next, remove hard disk. Essential equipment for the operation: one fine screwdriver, rudimentary technical understanding and neat fingers. Under pressure, Toby possessed them all. Now for the disposal of the hard disk. For this he needed the Beefeater’s box and the Kleenex tissues for padding. For an addressee, he selected his beloved Aunt Ruby, a solicitor who practised in Derbyshire under her married name, and not therefore by his calculation toxic. A short covering note – Ruby would expect no more – urged her to guard the enclosed with her life, explanations to follow.

Seal box, inscribe to Ruby.

Next, for that rainy day he prayed would never dawn, address two of the padded envelopes to himself, poste restante, to the central post offices of Liverpool and Edinburgh respectively. Flash-forward to visions of Toby Bell on the run, arriving panting at the counter of Edinburgh main post office with the forces of darkness hot on his heels.

There remained the third, the original, the unconsigned memory stick. On his security courses there had always been a game of hide-and-seek:

So, ladies and gentlemen, you have this highly secret and compromising document in your hands and the secret police are at your door. You have precisely ninety seconds from now before they will begin ransacking your apartment.

Discount the places you first thought of: so NOT behind the cistern, NOT under the loose floorboard, NOT in the chandelier, the ice compartment of the fridge or the first-aid box, and absolutely NOT, thank you, dangling outside the kitchen window on a piece of string. So where? Answer: the most obvious place you can think of, among its most obvious companions. In the bottom drawer of the chest currently containing his unsorted junk from Beirut resided CDs, family snaps, letters from old girlfriends and – yes, even a handful of memory sticks with handwritten labels round their plastic cases. One caught his attention: UNI GRADUATION PARTY, BRISTOL. Removing the label, he wrapped it round the third memory stick and tossed it into the drawer with the rest of the junk.

He then took Kit’s letter to the kitchen sink and set fire to it, broke the ash and washed it down the plughole. For good measure he did the same with the duplicate contract for his hire car from Bodmin Parkway railway station.

Satisfied with progress so far, he showered, changed into fresh clothes, put the two burners in his pocket, packed the envelopes and parcel into the carrier bag and, observing the Security Department’s well-worn injunction never to accept the first cab on offer, hailed not the second cab but the third, and gave the driver the address of a mini-market in Swiss Cottage which he happened to know operated a late-night post-office counter.

And in Swiss Cottage, breaking the chain yet again, he took a second cab to Euston station and a third to the East End of London.


The hospital rose out of the darkness like the hulk of a warship, windows ablaze, bridges and stairways cleared for action. The upper forecourt was given over to a car park and a steel sculpture of interlocking swans. At ground level, ambulances unloaded casualties in red blankets on to trolleys while health workers in scrubs took a cigarette break. Aware that video cameras stared at him from every rooftop and lamp post, Toby cast himself as an outpatient and walked with an air of self-concern.

Following the stretcher trolleys, he entered a glistening hallway that served as some kind of collecting point. On one bench sat a group of veiled women; on another three very old men in skullcaps, bowed over their beads. Close by stood a minyan of Hasidic men in communal prayer.

A desk offered Patient Advice & Liaison, but it was unmanned. A signpost directed him to Human Resources, Workforce Planning, Sexual Health and Children’s Day-stay, but none to where he needed to go. A notice screamed: STOP! ARE YOU HERE FOR A&E? But if you were, there was nobody to tell you what to do next. Selecting the brightest, widest corridor, he walked boldly past curtained cubicles until he came to an elderly black man seated at a desk in front of a computer.

‘I’m looking for Dr Probyn,’ he said. And when the grizzled head didn’t lift: ‘Probably in the Urgent Care unit. Could be triage. She’s on till midnight.’

The old man’s face was slashed with tribal marks.

‘We don’t give out no names, son,’ he said, after studying Toby for a while. ‘Triage, that’s turn left and two doors down. Urgent Care, you gotta go back to the lobby, take the Emergency corridor.’ And seeing Toby produce his cellphone, ‘No good callin’, son. Mobiles just don’t work in here. Outside’s another story.’

In the triage waiting room, thirty people sat staring at the same blank wall. A stern white woman in a green overall with an electronic key round her neck was studying a clipboard.

‘I’ve been informed that Dr Probyn needs to see me.’

‘Urgent Care,’ she replied to her clipboard.

Under strips of sad white lighting, more rows of patients stared at a closed door marked ASSESSMENT. Toby tore off a ticket and sat with them. A lighted box gave the number of the patient being assessed. Some took five minutes, others barely one. Suddenly he was next, and Emily, with her brown hair bundled into a ponytail and no make-up, was looking at him from behind a table.

She’s a doctor, he had been telling himself consolingly since early afternoon. Hardened to it. Does death every day.

‘Jeb committed suicide the day before he was due at your parents’ house,’ he begins without preamble. ‘He shot himself through the head with a handgun.’ And when she says nothing: ‘Where can we talk?’

Her expression doesn’t change but it freezes. Her clasped hands rise to her face until the knuckles of her thumbs are jammed against her teeth. Only after recovering herself does she speak:

‘In that case I got him all wrong, didn’t I?’ she says. ‘I thought he was a threat to my father. He wasn’t. He was a threat to himself.’

But Toby’s thinking: I got you all wrong, too.

‘Does anyone have any idea why he killed himself?’ she enquires, hunting for detachment and not finding it.

‘There was no note, no last phone call,’ Toby replies, hunting for his own. ‘And nobody he confided in, so far as his wife knows.’

‘He was married then. Poor woman’ – the self-possessed doctor at last.

‘A widow and a small son. For the last three years he couldn’t live with them and couldn’t live without them. According to her.’

‘And no suicide note, you say?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Nobody blamed? Not the cruel world? Not anyone? Just shot himself. Like that?’

‘It seems so.’

‘And he did it just before he was due to sit down with my father and prepare to blow the whistle on whatever they had both got up to?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Which is hardly logical.’

‘No.’

‘Does my father know yet?’

‘Not from me.’

‘Will you wait for me outside, please?’

She presses a button on her desk for the next patient.


As they walked, they kept consciously apart, like two people who have quarrelled and are waiting to make up. When she needed to speak, she did so angrily:

‘Is his death national news? In the press, on TV, and so on?’

‘Only the local paper and the Evening Standard, as far as I know.’

‘But it could go wider at any moment?’

‘I assume so.’

‘Kit takes The Times.’ And as an abrupt afterthought: ‘And Mum listens to the radio.’

A gateway that should have been locked but wasn’t led across a scruffy patch of public park. A group of kids with dogs sat under a tree smoking marijuana. On a traffic island stood a long, single-storey complex. A sign said HEALTH CENTRE. Emily needed to walk the length of it, checking for broken windows while Toby trailed after her.

‘The kids think we keep drugs here,’ she said. ‘We tell them we don’t, but they won’t believe us.’

They had entered the brick lowlands of Victorian London. Under a starry, unobstructed sky ran rows of cottages in pairs, each with its oversized chimney pot, each with a front garden split down the middle. She opened a front gate. An outside staircase led up to a first-floor porch. She climbed. He followed her. By the porch light he saw an ugly grey cat with one forepaw missing rubbing itself against her foot. She unlocked the door and the cat shot past her. She stepped in after it, then waited for him.

‘Food in the fridge if you’re hungry,’ she said, disappearing into what he took to be her bedroom. And as the door closed: ‘The bloody cat thinks I’m a vet.’


She is sitting, head in hands, staring at the uneaten food on the table before her. The living room is sparse to the point of self-denial: minimal kitchen one end, a couple of old pine chairs, a lumpy sofa and the pine table that is also her workspace. A few medical books, a stack of African magazines. And on the wall, a photograph of Kit in full diplomatic rig presenting his letter of credentials to an abundant female Caribbean head of state while Suzanna in a big white hat looks on.

‘Did you take that?’ he asked.

‘God, no. There was a court photographer.’

From the refrigerator he has rustled up a piece of Dutch cheese, a few tomatoes, and from the freezer sliced bread which he has toasted. And three quarters of a bottle of stale Rioja which with her permission he has poured into two green tumblers. She has put on a shapeless housecoat and flat slippers, but kept her hair bundled. The housecoat is buttoned to her ankles. He’s surprised by how tall she is despite the flat shoes. And how stately her walk is. And how her gestures appear at first glance gauche, when actually, when you think about them, they’re elegant.

‘And that woman doctor who isn’t one?’ she asks. ‘Calling Kit to say Jeb’s alive when he isn’t? That wouldn’t impress the police?’

‘Not in their present mood. No.’

‘Is Kit at risk of suicide too?’

‘Absolutely not,’ he retorts firmly, having asked himself the same question ever since leaving Brigid’s house.

‘Why not?’

‘Because as long as he believes the fake doctor’s story he doesn’t present any threat. That was the purpose of the phoney doctor’s call. So for God’s sake let them think they’ve achieved it, they, whoever they are.’

‘But Kit doesn’t believe it.’

This is old ground, but he goes over it nonetheless, for her sake:

‘And has said so very loudly, mercifully only to his nearest and dearest, and me. But he pretended to believe it on the phone, and he must keep pretending now. It’s only about buying time. Keeping his head down for a few days.’

‘Until what?’

‘I’m putting together a case,’ Toby says, more boldly than he feels. ‘I’ve got bits of the puzzle, I need more. Jeb’s widow has photographs that may be useful. I’ve taken copies. She also gave me the name of someone who may be able to help. I’ve arranged to see him. Someone who was part of the original problem.’

‘Are you part of the original problem?’

‘No. Just a guilty bystander.’

‘And when you’ve put your case together, what will you be then?’

‘Out of a job, most likely,’ he says, and in an effort at light relief reaches out for the cat, which has been sitting all this while at her feet, but it ignores him.

‘What time does your father get up in the morning?’ he asks.

‘Kit does early. Mum lies in.’

‘Early being what?’

‘Sixish.’

‘And the Marlows, how about them?’

‘Oh, they’re up at crack of dawn. Jack milks for Farmer Phillips.’

‘And how far from the Manor is the Marlows’ house?’

‘No distance. It’s the old Manor cottage. Why?’

‘I think Kit should be told about Jeb’s death as soon as possible.’

‘Before he gets it from anyone else and blows a gasket?’

‘If you put it like that.’

‘I do.’

‘The problem is, we can’t use the landline to the Manor. Or his cellphone. And certainly not email. That’s very much Kit’s opinion too. He made a point of it when he wrote to me.’

He paused, expecting her to speak, but her gaze remained on him, challenging him to go on.

‘So I’m suggesting you call Mrs Marlow first thing in the morning and ask her to pop over to the Manor and bring Kit to the phone in the cottage. That’s assuming you’d like to break the news to him yourself rather than have me do it.’

‘What lie do I tell her?’

‘There’s a fault on the Manor line. You can’t get through direct. No panic, but there’s something special you need to talk to Kit about. I thought you could use one of these. They’re safer.’

She picks up the black burner and, like someone who’s never seen a cellphone before, turns it speculatively in her long fingers.

‘If it makes it any easier, I can hang around,’ he says, careful to indicate the meagre sofa.

She looks at him, looks at her watch: 2 a.m. She fetches an eiderdown and a pillow from her bedroom.

‘Now you’ll be too cold,’ he objects.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she replies.