The flowers that had lain on Wallinger’s coffin had been set out at one end of the barn. Kell was standing outside, smoking a cigarette, when he saw Wallinger’s children — his son, Andrew, and his daughter, Rachel — bending over the floral tributes, reading the cards, and sharing a selection of the written messages with one another. Andrew was the younger of the two, now twenty-eight, reportedly earning a living in Moscow as a banker. Kell had not seen Rachel for more than fifteen years, and had been struck by her dignity and grace as she supported her mother at the graveside. Andrew had wept desperately for the father he had lost as Josephine stared into the black grave, frozen in what Kell assumed was a medicated grief. Yet Rachel had maintained an eerie stillness, as if in possession of a secret that guaranteed her peace of mind.
He was grinding out the cigarette, half-listening to a local farmer telling a long-winded anecdote about wind farms, when he saw Rachel bend down and pick up a card attached to a small bunch of flowers on the far side of the barn. She was alone, several metres from Andrew, but Kell had a clear view of her face. He saw Rachel’s dark eyes harden as she read the card, then a flush of anger scald her cheeks.
What she did next astonished him. Leaning down, with a brisk flick of her wrist she skidded the flowers low and hard towards the edge of the barn, where they hit the whitewashed wall with a soundless thud. Rachel then placed the card in her coat pocket and returned to Andrew’s side. No words were exchanged. It was as though she did not want to involve her brother in what she had just seen. Moments later Rachel turned and walked back towards the trestle tables, where she was intercepted by a middle-aged woman wearing a black hat. As far as Kell could tell, nobody else had witnessed what had happened.
The barn had become hot and, after a few minutes, Rachel removed her coat, folding it over the back of a chair. She was continually in conversation with guests who wished to convey their condolences. At one point she burst into laughter and the men in the room, as one, seemed to turn and look at her. Rachel had an in-house reputation for beauty and brains; Kell recalled a couple of male colleagues constructing Christmas party innuendoes about her. Yet she was not as he had imagined she would be; there was something about the dignity of her behaviour, the decisiveness with which she had dispatched the flowers, a sense in which she was fully in control of her emotions and of the environment in which she had found herself, that intrigued Kell.
In time, she had made her way to the far side of the barn. She was at least fifty feet from the coat. Kell, carrying a plate of sandwiches and cake towards the chair, took off his own coat and folded it alongside Rachel’s. At the same time, he reached into her outside pocket and removed the card.
He glanced across the barn. Rachel had not seen him. She was still deep in conversation, her back to the chair. Kell walked quickly outside, crossed the drive and went into the Wallingers’ house. Several people were milling about in the hall, guests looking for bathrooms, staff ferrying food and drink from the kitchen to the barn. Kell avoided them and walked upstairs.
The bathroom door was locked. He needed to find a room where he would not be disturbed. Glimpsing posters of Pearl Jam and Kevin Pietersen in a room further along the corridor, Kell found himself in Andrew’s bedroom. There were framed photographs from his time at Eton above a wooden desk, as well as various caps and sporting mementoes. Kell closed the door behind him. He took the card from his jacket pocket and opened it up.
The inscription was in an Eastern European language that Kell assumed to be Hungarian. The note had been handwritten on a small white card with a blue flower printed in the top right-hand corner.
Szerelmem. Szívem darabokban, mert nem tudok Veled lenni soha már. Olyan fájó a csend amióta elmentél, hogy még hallom a lélegzeted, amikor álmodban néztelek.
Had Rachel been able to understand it? Kell put the card on the bed and took out his iPhone. He photographed the message, left the bedroom and returned to the barn.
With Rachel nowhere to be seen, Kell removed his overcoat from the chair and, by simple sleight of hand, replaced the card in her coat pocket. It had been in his possession for no more than five minutes. When he turned around, he saw that she was coming back into the barn and walking towards her mother. Kell went outside for a cigarette.
Amelia was standing on her own in front of the house, like someone at the end of a party waiting for a cab.
‘What have you been up to?’ she asked.
At first, Kell thought that she had spotted him lifting the card. Then he realized, from Amelia’s expression, that the question was merely a general enquiry about his life.
‘You mean recently? In London?’
‘Yes, recently.’
‘You want an honest answer to that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Fuck all.’
Amelia did not react to the bluntness of the response. Ordinarily she would have smiled or conjured a look of mock disapproval. But her mood was serious, as though she had finally arrived at a solution to a problem that had been troubling her for some time.
‘So you’re not busy for the next few weeks?’
Kell felt a jolt of optimism, his luck about to change. Just ask the question, he thought. Just get me back in the game. He looked out across a valley sketched with dry-stone walls and distant sheep, thinking of the long afternoons he had spent brushing up his Arabic at SOAS, the solo holidays in Lisbon and Beirut, the course he had taken at City Lit in twentieth-century Irish poetry. Filling up the time.
‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she said. ‘Should have mentioned it earlier, but it didn’t seem right before the funeral.’ Kell heard the gravel-crunch of someone approaching them across the drive. He hoped the offer would come before they were cut off, mid-conversation. He didn’t want Amelia changing her mind.
‘What kind of job?’
‘Would you go out to Chios for me? To Turkey? Find out what Paul was up to before he died?’
‘You don’t know what he was up to?’
Amelia shrugged. ‘Not all of it. On a personal level. One never does.’ Kell looked down at the damp ground and conceded the point with a shrug. He had dedicated most of his working life to the task of puncturing privacy, yet what did a person ultimately know about the thoughts and motives of the people who were closest to them? ‘Paul had no operational reason to be in Chios,’ Amelia continued. ‘Josephine thinks he was there on business, Station didn’t know he was going.’
Kell assumed that Amelia suspected what was obvious, given Wallinger’s reputation and track record: that he had been on the island with a woman and that he had been careful to cover his tracks.
‘I’ll tell Ankara you’re coming. Red carpet, access all areas. Istanbul ditto. They’ll open up all the relevant files.’
It was like getting a clean bill of health after a medical scare. Kell had been waiting for such a moment for months.
‘I could do that,’ he said.
‘You’re on full pay, yes? We put you on that after France?’ The question was plainly rhetorical. ‘You’ll have a driver, whatever else you need. I’ll make arrangements for you to have a cover identity while you’re there, should you need it.’