‘He’s bribing people,’ Kiley said, ‘to look the other way.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Kiley looked across at Masters. Masters shrugged.
‘’Tis but the way of the world, my masters,’ Jenkins said.
‘Not Chandler again?’
‘A little earlier.’
They all looked round as Adina stepped through the door. She had changed into black jeans and a black roll-neck sweater, an unbuttoned beige topcoat round her shoulders. Some but not all of the make-up had been wiped from her face. She asked at the counter for a Coke with lemon and ice.
Kiley made the introductions while she lit a cigarette.
‘Alen,’ she said, ‘what happened to him?’
Masters showed her the photograph.
For a long moment, she closed her eyes.
‘You’re not really surprised,’ Masters said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You thought he might get into difficulties,’ Kiley said. ‘You gave him my card.’
‘Yes, I thought… Alen, he was someone important in my country, high up in trade union…’
‘We used to have those,’ Jenkins said, as much to himself as anyone.
‘… there was disagreement, he had to leave. Rights of workers, something. And here, I don’t know, I think it was the same. Already, he told me, the people he work for, they warn him, shut your mouth. Keep your mouth shut. I think he had made threat to go to authorities. The police.’
‘You think that’s why he was killed.’
‘Of course.’
Masters glanced at Jenkins, who gave a barely discernible nod. ‘We have a number of names,’ he said, ‘names and places. We’d like to run them past you and for you to tell us any that you recognise.’
Adina held smoke down in her lungs. What was she, Kiley wondered? All of twenty? Twenty-one? She’d paid to risk her life travelling to England not once, but twice. Paid dearly. And why? Because the strip clubs and massage parlours of London and Wolverhampton were better than the autoroutes in and out of Bucharest? As an official asylum seeker, she could claim thirty quid a week, ten in cash, the rest in vouchers. But she was not official. She did what she could.
She said, ‘Okay. If I can.’
‘Wait,’ Kiley said. ‘If she helps you, you have to help her. Make it possible for her to stay, officially.’
‘I don’t know if we can do that,’ Masters said.
‘Of course we fucking can,’ Jenkins said.
Adina lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the first and asked for another Coke.
Kiley caught the overground to Highbury and Islington. In an Upper Street window a face he recognised stared out from a dozen TVs; the same face was in close-up on the small Sony Kate kept at the foot of the bed.
‘Kramer seems to be getting a lot of exposure,’ Kiley said.
‘The wrong kind.’
Dogmatic, didactic, distinguished by a full beard and sweep of jet black hair, Martin Kramer was an investigative journalist with strong anti-capitalist, anti-American left-wing leanings and a surprisingly high profile. Kiley had always found him too self-righteous by half, even if, much of the time, what he said made some kind of sense.
Kate turned up the volume as the Newsnight cameras switched to Jeremy Paxman behind an impressive-looking desk. ‘… if it really is such a small and insignificant point, Mr Kramer, then why not answer my question and move on?’
She flicked the sound back down.
‘What was the question?’ Kiley asked.
‘Was he entertaining Helen Forester in his flat on the night she was attacked?’
‘And was he?’
‘He won’t say.’
‘Which means he was.’
‘Probably.’
Sitting, propped up against pillows, Kate was wearing the faded Silver Moon T-shirt she sometimes used as night-wear and nothing else. Kiley rested his hand above her knee.
‘They were at Cambridge together,’ Kate said. ‘Maybe they had a thing back then and maybe they didn’t.’
‘Twenty-five years ago,’ Kiley said. ‘More.’
Kate turned in a little against his hand. ‘Kramer’s been making this programme for Channel 4. Illegal workers, gangmasters, people trafficking. Pretty explosive by all accounts.’
‘Not the best of times for the wife of a Home Office minister to be sharing his bed.’
‘Needs must,’ Kate said. ‘From time to time.’
Helen Forester denied and denied and finally admitted that she had, indeed, had dinner with Martin Kramer on the night in question, had enjoyed possibly a glass of wine too many, and gone for a stroll to clear her head before returning home.
Kramer’s programme was moved to a prime-time slot, where it attracted close on seven million viewers, not bad for a polemical documentary on a minority channel. Standing amidst the potato fields of East Anglia, Kramer pontificated about the farming industry’s increasing dependence on illegal foreign labour, comparing it to the slave trade of earlier centuries, with gangmasters as the new overseers and Eastern Europeans the new Negroes; from the lobby of a hotel in Bays water he talked about the dependence of the hotel and catering trades on migrants from Somalia and South-East Asia; and at the port of Dover he made allegations of corruption and bribery running through Customs and Immigration and penetrating right up to the highest levels of the police.
‘That’s the thing about Kramer,’ Masters said, watching a video of the programme in Jenkins’ office high above the Thames. ‘He always has to go that little bit too far.’
Two days earlier, with the assistance of officers from the Cambridgeshire force, they had arrested two of Alen Markovic’s fellow field workers for his murder. The foreman, they claimed, had given them no choice: get rid of him or get sent back. They had clubbed him to death with a spade and a hoe.
In one of his last actions as a minister before being shuffled on to the back benches, Hugo Forester announced a further toughening of the laws governing entry into the country and the employment of those who have gained access without proper documentation. ‘The present system,’ he told the House, ‘in its efforts to provide refuge and succour to those in genuine need, is unfortunately still too open to exploitation by unscrupulous individuals and criminal gangs. But the House should be assured that the introduction of identity cards to be announced in the Queen’s speech will render it virtually impossible for the employment of illegal workers to continue.’
Coordinated raids by the police on safe houses and farms in Kings Lynn and Wisbech resulted in twenty-seven arrests. Two middle-ranking officers in the Immigration Service tendered their resignations and a detective chief inspector stationed at Folkestone retired from duty on medical grounds. A warrant was issued for Sali Mejdani’s arrest on twenty-seven separate charges of smuggling illegal immigrants into Britain. Mejdani, travelling under the name of Aldo Fusco, had flown from Heathrow to Amsterdam on the previous morning, and from there to Tirana where he seemed, temporarily, to have disappeared.
Adina was duly given a student visa and enrolled in a course in leisure and travel at the University of North London.
Hugo and Helen Forester announced a trial separation.
Kiley, feeling pleased with himself and for very little reason, volunteered to treat Kate to one hundred and thirty-eight minutes of Mystic River with supper afterwards at Cafe Pasta. Kate thought she could skip the movie.
When she arrived, Kiley was already seated at a side table, Irena bending slightly towards him, the pair in conversation.
‘Ordered the wine yet, Jack?’ Kate said, slipping off her coat and handing it to Irena. Irena blushed and backed away. ‘Oh, and bring us a bottle of the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, will you? Thanks very much.’
‘She was telling me about Adina,’ Kiley said.
‘How was the film?’ Kate asked.
‘Good. Pretty good.’
Irena brought the wine and asked Kate if she would like to taste it, which she did.
‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ Kate said as Irena walked away.