‘I never lied to you about Timothy Lander.’ Taploe’s nose seemed to twitch, as if he had suffered for Citibank, but nothing under Timothy. It was only by chance that his name came up.’
Mark shookhis head and looked out of the window.
‘Now I need to know more about last night,’ Taploe said. ‘The club. Everything you can recall.’
Ian, who was driving, switched lanes abruptly on Marylebone Road and shot the cab up on to the Westway.
‘I told you most of it on the phone.’
‘Well then, let’s start with Tamarov. Why do you thinkhe brought up the subject of your father?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’ Mark was tired and fractious. He had left the club at three in the morning and been debriefed by Taploe for thirty minutes on the telephone before grabbing just two or three hours of sleep.
‘Well, can you hazard a guess?’
‘To clear his conscience?’ Mark suggested. ‘To take me off the scent?’ Taploe appeared to agree with this assessment and nodded discreetly. ‘Or,’ Mark added, ‘because he was actually telling the truth. Because Duchev and Kukushkin really did have nothing to do with what happened to my father. Because the shooting was just a run-of-the-mill murder that is never going to be solved.’
He wondered whether to tell Randall about Bone’s letter. The more he thought about it, the crazier it seemed just to dismiss the theory about Kostov. What if Jock was lying, as Ben suspected? But then maybe his controller already knew about Mischa. He had recruited him using Kukushkin as a lever, the treachery of Macklin and Roth, yet there was no specific evidence linking any of those figures to the murder. Maybe Five and Six were in it together. Mark stared at the floor of the cab and did not know whom to trust.
‘We will solve it,’ Taploe was saying. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’
‘Time,’ Mark muttered. ‘Time.’
‘Now you said that Tamarov was upset with Macklin for being drunk?’
‘That’s right.’ Mark was still staring at the floor.
‘How drunk was he, as a matter of fact?’
‘Very.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
Mark lifted his head with bored indifference.
‘You want a urine sample?’
Ian grinned in the rear-view mirror.
‘Well, what about d’Erlanger?’ Taploe asked, ignoring the sarcasm.
‘Not booze. Cocaine.’
‘I see. And at the bar you said Tamarov openly admitted to you that he was Viktor Kukushkin’s lawyer. Is that correct?’
‘That is correct.’
‘Now why did he do that, do you think?’
But Mark had had enough.
‘Fucking hell. How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t have answers to these questions. If you don’t know what’s going on, then pull me out. If you think Kukushkin is already on to me, I’m not exactly keen to stick around.’
‘Nobody is suggesting for a moment that Kukushkin is on to you. Do you have reason to suggest that that might be the case?’
Shaking his head, Mark stared at passing cars.
‘Look, I am trying to piece things together,’ Taploe told him. ‘I am trying to help you, trying to run this operation. All I want to know is what your instincts tell you. I wasn’t there last night. I need to see things through your eyes.’
Ian pulled away sharply at a green light and, for the third or fourth time in the journey, Mark was jolted backin his seat. A motorcycle courier buzzed past his window, weaving down the blindside of a singledecker bus.
‘My instinct tells me everything is fine,’ he said. ‘Like I told you, the best thing you can do is get to Duchev. He’s on the way out. Retiring. You threaten to confiscate this land he’s bought in Spain, that’s a big lever. Juris has dreams of growing oranges and lemons on the plains of Andalucia. He talked about it for a quarter of an hour. You tell him he’s got more chance of growing cress at Wormwood Scrubs, that’s going to make an impact, believe me.’
Taploe seemed impressed by the idea. He pinched a tuft of his moustache, as if removing an imaginary speck of food, and steadied his balance on a loop of plastic tacked above the door.
‘That is something I’ve been thinking over since we talked this morning,’ he said. ‘But it needn’t concern you. If I pitch Duchev, that won’t affect your ongoing relationship with Tamarov. That is the vital element here. Now, your brother. Why do you think Tamarov was so friendly towards him?’
Wary of questions about Ben, Mark again answered aggressively.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why he was friendly to Ben. To get him onside? To test him? Isn’t it possible they just liked one another?’ He was conscious that Ben had conceived the plan for Duchev and wanted to protect him. ‘I mean, maybe you guys are looking for conspiracy where no fucking conspiracy exists. You think Timothy Lander is a corrupt investment banker in the Cayman Islands and he turns out to be Jacques Cousteau.’
Expecting Ian to laugh at this, Mark looked into the front seat, but he saw that Boyle’s eyes were concentrated on the road.
‘What about what happened in the toilets?’ Taploe asked. ‘You were talking in there with your brother when Tamarov came in. How did he react at that point?’
Mark stayed backin his seat and bluffed it out.
‘Like he’d just bumped into a couple of guys who were talking in the gents. Like any normal bloke in a club who needs to go for a piss. Ben and I are brothers. Can’t brothers talkin public without somebody getting suspicious?’
‘You tell me.’
Ian overtook an articulated lorry at speed and Mark slammed down his passenger window. The air in the cab had been fuggy and stale and his throat felt swollen with lack of sleep. When the wind funnelled across the seats it dampened Taploe’s eyes.
‘That too much for you?’ he asked.
‘Leave it,’ Taploe replied.
The cab slowed.
‘You asked about Ben and Vladimir,’ Mark said.
‘OK, I’ll tell you. Vlad told me his father died when he was seventeen. So maybe he feels sorry for Ben. Maybe he feels sorry for me. Maybe there’s some empathy there.’
‘Excuse me, boss, but that tallies with our diligence.’ Ian was shouting above the noise of the road. ‘Tamarov’s old man was killed in a car accident outside Moscow. March 1982, if I recall correctly.’ Taploe fidgeted in his seat, barely acknowledging the intrusion.
‘Well, if that’s the case, that’s certainly something you could use to your advantage in forging a relationship with him.’ Ian appeared to nod in agreement. ‘But you are not, I repeat not to involve your brother in any Security Service operation ever again. That was foolish and unnecessary.’
Mark should have backed down, but the combination of his already dark mood and a sense of loyalty to Ben got the better of him.
‘My brother did all right,’ he said.
‘That’s not what I was told.’
Ian brought the taxi off the Westway and turned towards Shepherd’s Bush. A man wearing a tan overcoat tried to hail the cab by waving a furled-up newspaper frantically above his head. Mark saw him swear loudly as they sped past.
‘What were you told?’ he asked.
‘We had Watchers in the club. Two young men. They went in immediately before Ben and sat down at the next door table.’
‘The guys in chinos? The two blokes in polo necks?’
‘The very same.’ It was a small moment of triumph and Taploe enjoyed Mark’s discomfort. ‘They said your brother looked nervous all evening. Now how would you explain that?’
Mark was caught in a lie.
‘Well, that’s just their assessment,’ he said. ‘They have to write something, don’t they, to justify their jobs.’
Taploe cast him a withering look and glanced at his watch.
‘Is he conscious?’ he asked, still staring at his wrist.
‘What does that mean?’
Ian answered from the front seat.
‘It means does your brother know about Blindside? Have you told him that you workfor us?’