‘Tell me what’s wrong while I put the kettle on,’ said Liz, going into the kitchen.
Judith sighed, and her shoulders slumped. ‘I can’t reach Dave.’
‘Since when?’ Liz put tea bags in two mugs and poured out the boiling water. What she really needed was a strong drink, but tea might be better to calm Judith down.
‘Since this afternoon. Yesterday, while you were in Paris, he had a meeting with Milraud. He went to his shop.’
‘Really?’ Liz looked at Judith sharply. She had assumed Dave would wait for her to come back and report what she’d found out before taking any action. ‘I hope he had good back-up.’
Judith shook her head. ‘No, he said he didn’t need it. But that was okay; I mean to say, he just met Milraud in his shop and then came back. He was pretending to be a collector of some sort of gun. He’d researched it all on the internet. He was fine – but absolutely certain Milraud was dodgy.’
‘He is dodgy. I found out a lot about him in Paris. I was going to tell Dave all about it and make sure he had plenty of cover before he met the man. Milraud is ex-DGSE and a gun runner. Dave’s lucky he didn’t see straight through him.’
‘That’s just it, Liz. I think he probably did. But Dave insisted on seeing him again. He was planning to proposition him. He said Milraud was going back to France later today and he couldn’t afford to miss his chance.’
‘Oh God. What happened? And where is he now? Surely he had police back up, A4…?’
She saw at once from Judith’s face that he hadn’t. ‘Couldn’t you stop him, Judith? That was crazy.’
‘I know. He wouldn’t listen to me. I’m not his boss,’ she added.
‘No, but Binding is. Why didn’t you bring Michael in on this?’
‘I tried. But he was tied up at Stormont. He’d left word with his secretary that he wasn’t to be disturbed. By the time he was free, Dave had gone to his meet. I even tried reaching you over in London, but no one knew where you were.’
Of course Liz’s mobile had been switched off in the US Embassy and in Thames House and at the restaurant, and she had never switched it on again.
Judith said quietly, ‘I’m sorry.’
Liz sighed. ‘It’s not your fault, Judith. I just don’t understand what’s got into Dave. It was bad enough him seeing Milraud the first time without waiting to hear what I’d learned, but then to go back again? And without back-up.’ She shook her head in exasperation. What had Dave been thinking of? He could be impetuous, but this went beyond that; this was mad.
‘He wasn’t thinking clearly. He was upset.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s Lucy, I think. He rang her last night and she told him she was having doubts. She wasn’t sure she fancied being an MI5 officer’s wife. She said she wanted to think about their relationship and cool things down for a bit. He told me all this yesterday morning.’
‘So his girlfriend has a wobble and he throws all caution out the window? That doesn’t sound like Dave.’
‘I think it was more than a wobble. He seemed to think she was telling him it was all over.’
‘You mean that’s it for them?’ She looked at Judith with surprise. When Judith nodded, Liz said, ‘I thought they were engaged to be married.’
‘They practically were.’
‘So Lucy broke it off?’
Judith nodded again and Liz groaned. She said, ‘I know Dave – he wouldn’t have said much, just plunged himself into work.’ She thought for a second. ‘Did he say he was coming back to the office after meeting Milraud?’
‘Yes, he did. And I made him promise to ring me if for any reason he got delayed. I got that much out of him.’
‘And you’ve tried ringing him?’
‘Only about a hundred times,’ Judith said. ‘On his mobile, at his flat and I’ve got everyone alerted at the office to let me know if he shows up anywhere.’
‘I’m going to phone Binding,’ said Liz, putting down her mug. Now she was worried too.
Over the phone at Michael Binding’s house, Liz could hear the clink of cutlery and glasses and the sound of conversation – he must be having a dinner party. He seemed reluctant to leave his guests and speak in private – Liz had to shout to make herself heard. ‘Yes, he’s missing,’ she found herself saying for the third time. ‘I’m going to alert the police.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Binding said. She heard him talking in the background, then after a pause his voice came again more clearly and she heard a phone being put down. He must have moved into his study.
‘Okay. Now tell me exactly what’s happened.’
She gave him a quick summary of what she’d learned in Paris about Milraud, explaining that Dave had gone to see him for a second time, with the intention of propositioning him and without any back up. ‘Milraud would have seen Dave coming a mile off. He’s a trained intelligence officer. And now Dave’s disappeared. We’ve got to do something, Michael. We can’t just leave it.’
‘Why wasn’t A4 brought in on this meeting? Didn’t you insist on that before you swanned off to France?’ he said irritably, making it sound as if she’d been on holiday.
‘We can deal with that later. Right now I want to find out where Dave is, and make sure he’s okay.’
‘Have you any reason to think this Milraud character would do Dave any harm, even if he did see him coming? He’s not a terrorist, is he, or a murderer? Stop panicking, Liz. I expect you’re just tired. Have a strong drink and go to bed. You may not have heard, but Dave’s had a bit of a setback in his private life and he’s probably just gone off to lick his wounds. Leave it now. And you do not have my authority to bring in the police. He’ll turn up tomorrow right as rain, you mark my words.’
And before Liz could say any more, he rang off, leaving her angry and more worried than ever.
Later, back in her own flat, she toyed with the idea of ringing Martin Seurat in Paris to ask his advice. But it seemed so over the top to bring in the French, late at night, when her own boss had forbidden her to contact the police in Northern Ireland, that in the end she did nothing. But she was awake all night reproaching herself that she hadn’t sent an immediate message from Paris or even from London, reporting what she had learned about Milraud and Piggott. Dave might not have walked into danger if she had.
30
Through the cloth bag over his head Dave couldn’t see a thing. But he knew where he was, and that scared him.
During the drive from Milraud’s shop, as he lay in the boot of the car, with his hands tied, he had concentrated hard on the sounds of the vehicle on the road. The journey took about an hour by his reckoning, first on fast roads, then for about twenty minutes on smaller ones, where the car stopped and started at junctions or traffic lights. Then they’d turned onto a rougher surface – some sort of track.
They could have been anywhere in the countryside of Northern Ireland. But then, just before the car stopped and he was bundled out, he heard a sound that he recognised – a noise he’d heard before when he was with Liz Carlyle. It was the squeak and bang of an electronic gate, the gate on the National Trust estate.
So he must be in Piggott’s house in County Down – the house of the man who, as Brown Fox had told him, wanted to kill an MI5 officer. Until then Dave had thought he was either the victim of a kidnapping, or of a mistake. Now he realised he could be about to die.
He’d been lifted out of the boot of the car, put on his two feet and led into a house, bumping his shoulder against what felt like a door frame. Then he’d been walked down a flight of stairs and deposited unceremoniously on a hard chair. He’d been sitting there for a minute or two, not sure who was around him, trying to get his bearings and cope with the fear that was growing with each second he waited.