He sat in the café across from Earl’s Court Station, watching the door uneasily. Usually he reported to his handler by phone several times a week, particularly when there had been a meeting of his protest group. But this morning he’d been summoned. Especially as it was the beginning of his one day off and he’d been planning to make the most it, perhaps take his wife for a drive in the country to enjoy the fine weather.
He’d come deliberately early. The place was a working man’s café, Formica tables, scuffed lino floor, the food ordered and served from the counter. But the café was clean and was known for its good food and generous portions. After a week of the vegetarian life in Paddington—he didn’t dare be seen eating meat by his new friends, who were vegetarian or vegan all—he’d ordered the full fry-up, bacon and sausages and, horror of vegetarian horrors, black pudding. Now he was on his second mug of industrial-strength tea, sitting where he could watch the door and the bustle of the street beyond.
So it was that he saw Red before Red saw him, and the unguarded expression on his handler’s face made the food he’d just eaten turn leaden in the pit of his stomach.
Spotting him as he came in the door, Red crossed the café briskly—he was always brisk, a man going places and in a hurry to get there—and stopped at his table. “Need a refill?” Red asked, nodding at the mug, but it was perfunctory.
“No thanks. I’d float.” He tapped his still-full second cup for emphasis, then watched as Red went to the counter and got himself a coffee. The man looked like a copper even in his casual clothes. His posture was ramrod straight, his clipped little ginger mustache something only a policeman or a soldier would sport, his summer polo shirt tucked too tightly into his pressed trousers, and his sports jacket just a bit too tailored.
Returning, Red made a pucker of distaste as he mopped up a few drops of a previous customer’s spilled tea with a flimsy paper napkin. As he sat, he glanced round the café. The place was emptying, entering the lull between breakfast and lunch. Red frowned, assessing him. “You look like shit.”
If that meant he no longer had the proper spit and polish, that was true enough. He’d learned to achieve a certain level of stubble, and had let his dark hair grow over his ears and his collar. He wore a denim shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and sturdy canvas work trousers. He was, after all, supposed to be a jobbing landscaper. “Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass with me,” said Red, obviously not appreciating his humor. With a frown, he leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Now, what sort of progress are you making?”
He blinked. “Progress? I’ve told you. We’ve some new leaflets and we’re joining in a march in south Lon—”
Red waved a hand dismissively. “You know very well that’s not what I mean.” The handler checked again for eavesdroppers. It made him look furtive. “What have you learned about the Lawrences? Have they got anything new?”
Ah. Light dawned. He should have known. It was only a few weeks ago he’d learned that one member of his group was meant to be his particular target. Twenty-seven-year-old Annette Whitely was an actress, just beginning to get better parts in film and on television. She was mixed race, her father West Indian black, her mother white. She’d grown up in Notting Hill and was fiercely devoted to stamping out racial discrimination. Horrified by the handling of the Lawrence case, she’d spoken out publicly several times. It was hoped by the Met that her minor celebrity would give her some access to the Lawrence family’s private investigation into their son’s death. “Not as yet,” he said carefully.
Red bristled. “This is taxpayers’ money you’re wasting, sonny, lounging around and eating your nut loaves and curries.”
He thought, not for the first time, that if the taxpayers had any idea where their money was going they would be horrified. “Sir.” He kept his tone reasonable. “You know these things take time.”
“Don’t patronize me, sonny,” Red hissed, and the color of his face made it clear the nickname had to do with more than his hair. “Things could go pear shaped and we are counting on you.”
There’d been another story in the Chronicle that week, further detailing the Met’s incompetence in the Lawrence case. “Sir,” he said even more quietly. Anyone who knew him well would have recognized his even voice as a sign of rising temper. “I can’t just make up things out of thin air.”
“Then I suggest you try harder. Or things might get very difficult for you.”
He stared at the little man across the table. “Are you threatening me, sir?”
Red gave a little smirk, not quite hidden by his mustache, and leaned back in his chair. “It would be a shame if your pretty wife found out you were shagging one of your unwashed protesters, now wouldn’t it?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never—”
“Only because you’re too much of a wimp to take advantage of what’s under your nose. A surprise, a big fellow like you.” Red shrugged. “But what does it matter whether you did or didn’t?” He pulled a snapshot from his pocket. “Do you think your wife would believe you if someone happened to show her this?” He slid the photo across the table.
He stared at it in disbelief. “You’ve got to be taking the piss.” The photo had been taken on the street, near the Tabernacle. The group had been tacking up handbills. Annette, working beside him, had been bumped by a passing pedestrian. He’d put out a hand to steady her and that had been all there was to it. But what he saw in the photo was his hand grasping her shoulder as she leaned into him, and her laughing happily as she looked up into his eyes. There was an intimacy to it that he hadn’t recognized at the time.
And what made it worse was the fact that Annette Whitely was absolutely, stunningly beautiful.
“What man wouldn’t fancy that?” Red asked, pocketing the photo again. “And what man’s wife wouldn’t believe he did?”
By the time Melody had walked across Putney Bridge and made her way to Lacy Road, she was warm and her red outfit felt wilted. The little sheds in the front of the Jolly Gardeners were already occupied—they were quickly staked out by smokers—but she was able to snag a table inside by the big front windows. The open casements let in the warm evening air along with a drift of cigarette smoke.
The pub was a detached building in a road of small terraced houses just off Putney High Street. Victorian or Edwardian, the place had been updated well, with bare floors and simple, mismatched furniture that set off the high ceilings and the lovely large windows. In winter, coal fires burned in the period fireplaces, but this was an evening for being, if not in the garden, as close to it as possible.