‘But why?’ asked Annette, as tears began to trickle from her eyes.
Thibault sensed that she must have had feelings for Seurat. He said, ‘I don’t know the details. Obviously something went badly wrong.’ He stared angrily at Milraud.
Annette was crying openly now. ‘But this is too dreadful.’
‘I know,’ said Thibault in a cold voice.
Milraud looked up. ‘How can that have happened? I never imagined anything like this.’
‘Oh no?’ said Thibault. ‘What did you think was going to happen when you met that Arab in the Luxembourg Gardens? What did you think would result from your meeting in Berlin? Did you think it was all just a harmless game?’
Milraud said, ‘Martin was my colleague for years. Whatever our later differences, he and I were once very close.’
Thibault looked at him incredulously. ‘You talk as if you were old pals who sadly no longer saw each other. We all know your story – they use you as a case history of betrayal in the Ethics lecture when we join the Service. So don’t try to whitewash your past; it just dirties the name of a man who was widely admired. One who died trying to prevent the harm you were encouraging.’
Milraud sat up. ‘You are blaming me for his death? I’ve told you everything I know.’
‘No doubt.’ Thibault shook his head in contempt. ‘What a pity you couldn’t have done it earlier.’
Ten minutes later Thibault sat gazing at the screen of his laptop but not seeing it. He could not have tolerated any more talking with either Milraud, but thankfully they had withdrawn to their bedroom. There was no one for him to phone: Isabelle would be busy for hours now, or she wouldn’t have asked a police officer to break the news.
Then his mobile phone bleeped and the screen lit up. It was a text message from Peggy in London:
Charlie has just unzipped message: expected party in Paris cancelled. Group delayed leaving Yemen, now going straight on to UK. Ramdani to make own way and join them there. Sorry so late in letting you know. Problem with decoding. Peggy.
He stared blankly at the screen now, trying to still a surge of nausea. Perhaps if there hadn’t been a decoding problem and the message had come through earlier, Martin Seurat would still be alive.
Chapter 49
Liz was lying on her bed in her Kentish Town flat, shoes off but still fully dressed. Isabelle had promised to let her know as soon as there was news of the group of jihadis, due to arrive at four o’clock at the flat in Paris. But she had heard nothing before she left work at seven and still nothing three hours later, by which time she had stretched out on her bed, with both her phones beside her. She was half asleep when her landline started ringing. She sat up and grabbed the handset.
‘Hello.’
‘Liz, it’s Peggy.’
‘Oh, Peggy. I thought you might be Isabelle. Have you heard anything from Paris?’
‘No. But it will have been a no-show. That’s probably why they haven’t rung. I’ve just heard from Charlie Simmons. There’s been a message in the cooking code. It was sent this morning but it’s taken him ages to decrypt because it was full of mistakes. He thinks whoever sent it didn’t properly understand the rules and it was badly encoded. Anyway he’s managed to get into it and apparently it says that they’re not going to Paris after all. They’re coming straight on to Britain. I’m just about to text Jacques Thibault. They must all have been wondering why no one turned up at the flat. They were probably hanging on, hoping they were just late.’
‘Yes, but I’m surprised they didn’t let us know that no one had appeared. I wonder what they’ve been doing. I’m going to ring Isabelle now to see what’s going on.’
‘OK. While you do that I’ll text Jacques. Then I think we need to warn A4 that Zara might be on the move soon. Because if his friends are on the way here, they may arrive tonight, and he’s the only angle we’ve got on them.’
‘Yes, and when I’ve spoken to Isabelle, or Martin if I can’t get her, I’ll warn the Manchester Counter-Terrorist Group that we may have some action for them soon. Our friends may well be heading for one of those warehouses.’
Liz put the phone down and was just about to pick it up again to ring Isabelle when her mobile suddenly came to life.
‘Liz, it’s Isabelle.’
‘Hello. We’ve been wondering where you were. I gather no one turned up. You’ve must have had a rather boring evening.’
There was a pause. Then Isabelle said, ‘Well, actually that’s not quite true.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘It’s true the people we expected didn’t show – but we were puzzled why and we decided to search the flat to see if there were any clues to what was going on, and our man didn’t seem to be there. But he was there – he was hiding in the next-door flat and, Liz, I’m so sorry…’ Her voice crumpled.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
She could hear Isabelle sucking her breath in, trying to pull herself together. Then she managed to say, ‘Martin, he was shot.’
‘Shot?’
‘Liz, I am so sorry. Martin is dead.’
Liz went ice-cold. She didn’t want to believe what she’d heard. She took a deep breath, trying to control herself, and said as calmly as she could, ‘What happened?’
While Isabelle explained, Liz tried to focus, to listen. But the words ran like noisy flowing water in the background while one brutal fact kept occupying the foreground – Martin was dead. Isabelle was explaining that when the jihadis hadn’t shown up, she and Martin had taken a gamble and gone in, hoping to find evidence of what was being plotted. Martin had been curious, Isabelle explained – and Liz thought, damn Martin, he was always curious.
And it was here Liz completely tuned out, not wanting to hear the details of the death of the man she loved. Isabelle was still talking as a thousand images flashed through Liz’s head: of her first meeting with Martin at the DGSE’s old-fashioned headquarters on the outskirts of Paris; of Martin down at Bowerbridge, her family home, and the way he had taken to the place – so quintessentially English, he’d said; and of how Martin had chuckled when he’d seen the childhood relics Liz still kept in her bedroom there – the rosettes from gymkhanas, the watercolours she had liked to paint as a girl, and the photograph taken by her father as she stood gap-toothed and beaming and no more than nine years old, holding perhaps the titchiest fish ever to be yanked (and that with some grownup help) from the waters of the river Nadder.
All this came at her in a concentrated rush, which made her smile momentarily – though each time she had a loving image of him the grim news of his death intervened, and her memories fell away like waves hitting an unexpected reef.
She became aware that Isabelle was no longer talking. Liz did her best to pull herself together. She said mechanically, ‘Thanks, Isabelle, for letting me know.’
‘Liz, did you hear what I said? I said I thought you would want to come over.’
‘Of course. Should I be arranging things?’
There was an awkward pause, and Liz suddenly realised that she had no real position in this. She hadn’t been Martin’s wife, not even legally his partner; officially, she had no real status in Martin’s life at all.
She asked Isabelle, ‘Have you told Mimi?’ Martin’s daughter.
‘Not yet.’
‘Or Claudette?’ Martin’s ex-wife, who lived in the Brittany countryside. It had not been a happy divorce – she had left Martin for an old boyfriend – but lately they had re-established speaking terms and could discuss their daughter civilly enough. Martin’s bitterness at his wife’s desertion had obviously been intense, but she remembered now how once as they were having coffee after dinner, he’d explained that since Liz had come into his life, his anger with his ex-wife had evaporated.