“Hello.”
“Is that Gravesend?”
“Yes, Lizard, it is, as you well know. How is Mrs Lizard?”
“Very much the same. I did wonder if I myself might be coming down with something.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did. I wondered if you happened to know whether La Grippe was contagious.”
“It can be.”
“I thought so, too.”
“Did you read the file?”
“I did.”
“You have it with you?”
“Yes. I rather—”
And the line went dead.
Tom Rice knew of a very small number of reasons why that might happen. A cellular phone might drop a connection, but this wasn’t one. It was a government thing which could use cell, satellite, or, in an emergency, a high-power multi-frequency radio signal to a local relay. The call should not have dropped—unless Gravesend had got everything she needed from the discussion and hung up. For a moment, he felt a bit panicked. In the old century, certain enemies of the industrial powers had been unwise enough to accept gifts of such phones from men they knew less well than they thought, and had used them in some cases for days before the moment was deemed right and a single missile had dropped along the line of transmission and blown them out of their shoes. He pulled himself together. It did not seem likely that he was about to be exploded just off Shrewton High Street. Really not at all.
He considered throwing the phone away, but couldn’t think of anywhere to throw it which wouldn’t be dangerous to someone. He was still wondering whether the pond in the middle of the Shrewton Green roundabout would be isolated enough, and aware that, were he the target of such a strike, the entire internal discussion would already have ended in a loud bang which he would never have heard, when he saw the familiar shape of his driver coming around the corner, accompanied by a small man he did not recognise.
Mrs Mandel had been joined at the counter by Mrs Russet and Miss Adele, and from them proceeded such a stream of gossip that Edie was momentarily struck dumb. She was aware, in theory, that old women gossiped. She had not appreciated the degree of it. Perhaps these three were especially talented, but the depth and clarity of their knowledge of the love lives and peccadillos of those around them were formidable. Secrets Edie was relatively sure had been entrusted to parents in deepest confidence had been winkled out and were now traded as scurrilous currency. She turned her face to the window and watched the bilious civil servant wander into a sidestreet. The boy, she decided, was not an idiot after all. She had seen him working his way through the Barikad file, and been impressed by the rapid flicking back and forth, the concentration. She knew the process of analysis from within, and could recognise it. Whoever had given him the file had underestimated him. He was seeing through it. Good lad.
The door chimed, and a group of people who were gigantically out of place walked into the Copper Kettle. One was fat, with a jacket which advertised his allegiance to a particular camera company. The others were younger, a little subservient, and Edie recognised them as his crew. Finally, there was a girl—no, a woman heavily made-up, and with perfect hair—in a yellow overcoat. Her eyes danced around the room, saw the gossips, and saw, to Edie’s deep discomfort, Edie seeing the gossips. Their eyes met, and the woman smiled and walked over. Edie took a moment to admire her legs.
“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m Gina Day. I’m with the BBC.”
Edie smiled. “Hello, dear.” The second word nearly stuck in her throat. Grandmotherly, she told herself firmly. I am an old local trout. Yes.
“I wondered if you knew anything about this Caspian business. I’m down here from London. I think we’re ahead of the pack, but it’s going to get awfully noisy soon.”
“What Caspian business, dear? Old Donny? I heard he was killed by a falling urn.”
“Did you know him?”
Yes. He was a friend, a really good one, a million years ago.
“Oh no, dear. I keep myself to myself, mostly.”
“I’m afraid it was murder, you see. We had a call from a lady—she wouldn’t say who she was—but apparently he was sleeping with a local girl—someone quite young, not more than twenty—and her brother took against it.”
Donny? Shacked up with some doxy? Well, yes, actually. Entirely plausible. He would be one to retain his vigour, and he was, let’s be honest, mountainously rich, which can be awfully attractive to a girl. But something in that made Edie nervous. Journalist. Sex. Anonymous call.
“I understand he was a banker, our Donny,” she said to Gina Day.
“Yes, I believe so. Kept his head in the sub-prime thing, apparently. Tried to make people listen, but they wouldn’t, so he made his clients a lot of money. We had him on Newsnight a few weeks ago. He was very good.”
Through the window, Edie watched the sergeant—no, she was sure now that he’d be Navy—amble over to a parked car and joke with the man behind the wheel. The man got out and both of them walked in the direction of the bilious civil servant in his alley.
Barikad. Sex. Journalists. Bankers. Spies. Money.
And something else. Something about the way the second man moved, a familiar fluidity.
She didn’t know what was happening, not in the main. But she had a fair guess as to the shape of it, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt what was about to happen across the street. Alas, poor bilious… She should walk away. That was the done thing, when you didn’t know the stakes. Except that Donny wouldn’t have. Donny would have jumped in, because that was what Donny did. Donny was the sort of fellow who’d sail his open boat into the teeth of La Belle Dame for a girl he barely knew. And Donny was dead, which left Edie.
Bugger.
“Well, that’s a terrible shame, then, isn’t it?” she said brightly. “I mean, all those silly sods who lost the pension money—my pension money, you know!—and they’re all fine, and here’s a nice old gentleman dead, and he was one of the good ones. Very sad. But bless me, dear, I’m most dreadfully late, would you mind if I left you to it? Mrs Mandel will know all about him, I’m sure, she knows absolutely everything that happens in Shrewton and of course she makes wonderful Austrian cakes! You must ask her…” and with this last piece of sheer vindictiveness, Edie gathered up her umbrella and ran, actually ran, for the door.
“I’m sorry about this, Tommy,” the driver said, without a hint of regret. “I really am. You seem like a nice enough fella. Could I ask you to be gentlemanly about it, and it’ll be over quite quick.”
Tom Rice stared at him. “What will?”
“This,” the driver said, and the other man stepped lightly towards Rice, like a fox investigating a dustbin.
This, Rice realised, was his death. Not by missile, but by thug. And with a secret file in his hands which connected Caspian with some mad Russians. He revised his estimates. CIVIL SERVANT BEATEN TO DEATH IN ALLEYWAY was almost enough to make up for the lack of a girl. Two bodies looked ever so much more like a conspiracy than one. He wondered if something was happening to his bank accounts right about now, something which would tie him to Caspian, and thought it probably was.
Bank accounts. Donny Caspian had been the Legacy Board’s banker. The Legacy man had let Rice know that, had made a point of saying it aloud in that bloody meeting, in front of more than a few senior people. Caspian had lost them money. Them alone, of all his clients. Or, no. No, that was the point, Rice thought. He hadn’t.
Of course, he hadn’t.
No, Donny Caspian had done well for the Legacy Board. Had made them rich, probably a hundred-times richer. And they had reported a loss. Not for peculation or personal enrichment, Rice suspected, as two men bent on his extinction moved almost politely towards him, but for an even more important goal in a department’s life: immunity. Impunity. Independence. No budget cuts, no oversight committees, no hard questions at all. Not with an unacknowledged and untaxed fund sitting somewhere, in the hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of pounds. The Legacy Board would be able to do whatever it pleased, forever. So long as Donny Caspian didn’t object. So long as he would fudge the books.