Seconds later she was fast asleep.
TWENTY-THREE
‘We need to step things up.’ Sergei Gorelkin was annoyed, but holding his mood in check. Getting pissy with Votrukhin and Serkhov would serve no immediate purpose other than to make him feel better. He could save that for later. Right now they had to find the Jardine woman and silence her before she got to the press with anything she knew.
He had called them in early to the office in Mayfair. He dispensed with the sweep for bugs; he didn’t have time. Neither did he allow them any breakfast, a distraction from the main topic. He had, however, arranged strong coffee, to ensure they were wide awake and listening.
‘How?’ Votrukhin queried. ‘We don’t have enough feet on the ground, we can’t use the embassy and we’re not allowed near any of the residents.’ These last were deep cover agents unknown to the embassy, but supported at arm’s length in their legends and daily activities. Deeper still and even more remote were the gold standard of spies, the sleepers, although, as some wags in Moscow had been heard to claim, since the fall of communism not even Moscow knew who they were anymore.
‘We hit the streets.’ Gorelkin reached down and picked up a cardboard box from the floor. It was twice the size of a shoe box. He tore off the lid and tipped the box up, spilling out some of the contents, which skidded across the table in a fan.
They were a mix of two shots. Half were photos taken inside a plain corridor, the flare of overhead lights reflecting off a shiny tiled floor. The subject was a woman walking beneath the camera. The format was clearly from CCTV footage, the best few frames frozen for all time. The others were file shots, face-on and serious, like passport shots, but larger and better quality, provided by Paulton, although he hadn’t disclosed where he had got them.
Clare Jardine.
Votrukhin and Serkhov picked up samples and scanned them quickly, committing the images to memory. They hadn’t seen the CCTV stills before, but had handed over the hard drive for Gorelkin to process the moment they got back from the hospital. The images weren’t perfect, but good enough. They showed a young woman in her thirties, possibly older, gaunt in the face and pallid, walking with one hand clasped across her middle, the other holding a metal crutch. She wore dark trousers and a jacket over a white top, and if she was aware of the camera above her head, seemed unconcerned.
‘She’s on the street,’ Gorelkin told them, ‘most likely in central London. As the Englishman told us, she has no family and nowhere to go. She’ll have joined the rabble. So that’s where we look for her, using the people she mixes with.’ He tapped one of the photos. ‘And that crutch is going to make her stand out.’
Votrukhin fanned his face with one of the photos and nodded. ‘I get it. Use the rabble to find her. But which ones?’
‘All of them. But concentrate on illegals from the east; them we can talk to.’ Illegals had more to lose, and far more to gain by earning any kind of reward. And those from the east had a much stronger network of their own kind to use and mobilise. In addition, if Votrukhin and Serkhov had to lean on anyone, the last thing an illegal would do was complain to the police for fear of compromising their position.
‘What about the Englishman?’ Votrukhin asked. ‘Did he come good?’
‘Yes, he did.’ Gorelkin opened out a map of London. It had a series of coloured dots on it. The furthest south was a short distance from King’s College. There were six more, all in a line leading towards central London, all black. The last black dot was at Waterloo Station.
‘These black dots represent firm sightings of Jardine,’ Gorelkin explained. ‘They end at Waterloo Station, but there’s an imperfect shot of a figure across the river near Charing Cross Station which could be her.’
‘The blue ones,’ said Serkhov, ‘are they possibles only?’
‘Yes. Either the image was poor or it was too far to tell for certain. There would have been others bearing a similarity to Jardine, of course, but the blue ones are in line with where she might have gone, so we don’t discount those.’
He placed one hand on the paper, forming a curve with his thumb and forefinger. The curve embraced the area of Battersea in the south right up to Waterloo Station and the Embankment in the north, including where the river bent eastwards towards the area of Southwark and London Bridge. ‘Start here by the river and work your way across to the north and west. She is in that area somewhere. Maybe north of the river by now, maybe not. Use those you can trust to spread the photos.’
‘What does Paulton think?’ Votrukhin ventured a question. ‘He’s the expert. Does he have an opinion he’d like to share with us?’
‘Only that Victoria is probably a good area for anyone to hide. Lots of tourists, lots of movement, cheap hotels and faces nobody remembers.’
‘It’s still a hell of an area.’ Votrukhin picked up the map and folded it, nodding at Serkhov to bring the box of photos. He might not like what they had to do, but refusing Gorelkin’s orders was not an option.
Gorelkin smiled and checked his watch. ‘You’re correct, lieutenant; it’s a big area. It’s now eight o’clock. Do it right and you should have this part of London covered by nightfall.’ He stood up, straightening his jacket. ‘Find her, deal with her. . and you might just be forgiven for letting her go in the first place.’
Harry and Rik had had the same idea, although they were working with a better head and shoulders shot of Clare, from JPEGs supplied by Ballatyne. They were at least three years old but clearer than any CCTV shot. They also had the advantage of being less likely to arouse suspicion among those they approached that she had been filmed by a security camera, and was therefore on the run from the authorities.
Harry had abandoned any idea of checking the neighbourhood where Clare had once lived, on the simple grounds that she wasn’t the nostalgic sort and wouldn’t bother returning there.
They reached Victoria Station and began to ask around, having decided to split up and work their way south towards the river. It was dog work, requiring them to go into the darkest corners they could find, but necessary if they wanted to reach the most obvious people — the ones Clare might have met in the past few days. They approached street hostels, rough sleeper communities, figures huddled in sleeping bags and beneath layers of cardboard; they checked doorways and empty premises, squats and renovation sites, spoke to traffic wardens and sweepers, rail workers and cafe owners. The response became numbingly similar, mostly in the negative. But equally depressing were the possible sightings too vague or too long ago to follow up easily, from individuals trying to help, yet offering a tantalising hint that Clare was out there somewhere.
By midday, they had exhausted their supply of photos, and were forced to take Rik’s memory stick into a printer to get more produced.
‘She might have moved further out,’ Rik suggested, as they sat and drank coffee, waiting for the photos. ‘Or north of here. There are plenty of squats beyond Park Lane, fancy big places waiting to be renovated.’
Harry knew he was right. But they couldn’t afford to spread the search too thin. They were already overstretched as it was. Clare could be anywhere in the city, he knew that; but it was simply his instinct that placed her somewhere within reach.
He took out his mobile and composed a text. This one wasn’t for Ballatyne.
We can help you. Ring me. He paused, wondering what he could use as an identifier. To Clare, on the run and hurting, this text could easily be a trap to lure her out of hiding. Then he had it. He added, Pink Compact. So not your colour. He dialled the number of Fortiani’s mobile and pressed Send.