It was a functional sort of room, with a bed, a big armchair, and a desk and office swivel chair. It smelled of antiseptic. Miss Girling waited for the boy to come in, then closed the door behind him. She settled Thomma in the armchair and sat down at right angles to him in the swivel chair. He really was a small lad, she thought; he looked lost in the armchair – his feet barely reached the floor.
‘Now, Thomma,’ she said, her tone sympathetic, ‘please tell me what’s the matter.’
‘Nothing is wrong, miss,’ said the boy shyly, not looking at her.
‘Well, something must be wrong to make a big boy like you cry.’ She waited but Thomma said nothing. ‘Has someone been unkind?’ she asked.
He didn’t reply to this either.
‘Is one of your teachers cross with you?’ Again, he said nothing. In slight desperation, she thought of asking him if the school food was the problem, when she realised there was a much more obvious reason for his upset. ‘You must be missing your parents,’ she said firmly.
The boy reacted at last. ‘They drowned in the ocean, on our way to Europe. I miss them.’ He sounded wobbly.
‘What country were you coming from?’
‘Syria.’ His voice sounded resigned, as if accustomed to telling this sad story.
‘I see. And is that the reason you were crying?’
The boy hesitated. Miss Girling was becoming anxious in case anyone came in. She felt sure it wouldn’t be good for Thomma or for her to be discovered there. But she told herself to be patient. Sure enough, he said confidingly, ‘I am a Christian, Miss.’
‘I see. Well, so am I,’ said Miss Girling, wondering what this had to do with anything. She attended services in the village church most Sundays, despite an aversion to the modern Church of England’s insistence on shaking hands with fellow congregants and the playing of folk songs on a guitar once a month.
But the boy was pleased, beaming at Miss Girling. Then he frowned, and said, ‘The other boys are none of them Christian.’
Miss Girling sniffed. ‘That shouldn’t matter. I always say religion is a private matter.’
‘They make fun of me when I say my prayers at bedtime. They shout out while I pray.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ said Miss Girling, slightly shocked. She would have to have a word with Mr Sarnat, she told herself, before reminding herself that her priority was collecting information.
‘And they will not let me go to church.’
‘Really? Did they say why?’ Perhaps transport was a problem, she thought.
‘Mr Sarnat said I should be focused on my studies, even on Sundays.’
‘You are all meant to work on Sundays, then?’
For the first time, Thomma raised his head and looked directly at her. ‘Not really. It is our only free day and every other day we either have classes or lots of homework to do. Sunday is the day when we can sleep late, then the rest of the day is ours to do as we like. The others play football. I would like to play,’ he added with a sheepish smile, ‘but they say I’m not good enough.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said consolingly. ‘But then you’d rather go to church, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he said simply, and Miss Girling could see he meant it. An idea was forming in her head.
‘There may be a way to get you there. To church, I mean,’ she said.
Thomma looked at her brightly. ‘Really?’ he said hopefully.
Miss Girling was thinking. She didn’t have a car, of course, but there were buses. A bus went past the end of the lane that led to the school. It was the bus she took every day and it passed near both the farm where the boy was sleeping and the church. She could come and collect him on Sundays and take him with her to church. Then when he got used to it, he would be able to manage on his own. She would just need to find out if the bus ran on Sundays, though she was pretty sure it did, and then work out which bus they would need to catch to get to church in time for the service.
She looked at the boy, almost pathetically innocent in his wish to go to church. She said, ‘I may be able to take you with me to church, if you like.’ Thomma beamed again. She went on, ‘I could come and pick you up from the bus stop by the farm and bring you back but I’ll have to find out the times of the bus. Do you have a phone so I can contact you?’
The boy shook his head. ‘They took them away when we arrived.’
She wanted to ask why, but instead she said, ‘Is there any phone you can use?’
The boy nodded. ‘Yes. In the village near the farm, there is a phone box. We’re not allowed to use it but some of the boys do after we leave school in the evening. I know how to use it because I went with one of the boys to ring his auntie – she lives in France. But he couldn’t phone her because he didn’t have money. They don’t let us have money, though a few boys have got some hidden.’
‘Here,’ said Miss Girling, opening her bag and thrusting some coins into the boy’s hand. ‘This will be enough. Ring me if you don’t hear from me before then. Though I will try and leave you a note here at the school with the time to meet me at the bus stop.’
As she spoke, she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance coming along the corridor. Panicking a little now, though she wasn’t sure why, she grabbed a pad off the nurse’s desk and tore off the top blank sheet, then scrabbling in her bag she fished out a pencil and wrote down her home telephone number. ‘I’ve put my number down here.’
She started to put the pencil back when she saw the card the policewoman had given her, tucked in the pocket next to her purse. She took it out and wrote its number down as well on the slip of paper. ‘And if for some reason you can’t reach me and you need some help, ring this number. I’ll write their name down, too.’
36
Liz had been left feeling very puzzled after her meeting with Mischa. But more than that, she was worried. Whichever way she looked at what the Russian had said, she couldn’t avoid the conviction that Bruno was at risk. Unless the Americans were simultaneously cultivating Boris in Moscow, Mischa’s warning must refer to Bruno.
Liz didn’t know any details of what moves Bruno was making in Moscow – how close he was to Boris or whether he was near to recruiting him – but it seemed pretty clear to her that Bruno was in danger and Geoffrey Fane needed to know as soon as possible. So when Sally Mortimer collected her to take her to the airport, she’d asked her to contact Geoffrey Fane and arrange a meeting with him first thing the following day. Sally had picked up on Liz’s concern but was reassured to be told that it had nothing to do with the arrangements in Germany but was about something going on in Moscow. She certainly wouldn’t have been reassured, reflected Liz, if she had known it was about the safety of her one-time boyfriend Bruno Mackay.
The next morning at nine o’clock Liz was in Geoffrey Fane’s office in Vauxhall Cross, drinking coffee and sitting on one of the button-back leather chairs that Fane had somehow ‘acquired’ at the time of a Foreign Office refurbishment. She looked across at Fane, sitting opposite her in a similar chair; in the clear light coming in through the tall windows she could see that he looked surprisingly scruffy.
Fane was a man who prided himself on his appearance. Liz knew him well; she had worked closely with him for years and had made something of a study of him. He was a man of well-cut three-piece suits, crisp shirt cuffs showing at the wrist and striped, old-school regimental and club ties. His customary stance at meetings was to lean back languidly in his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his perfectly polished brogues on show.
Now something was different. The clothes were the same but the posture was wrong and the suit, rather than enhancing his lean figure, seemed to be hanging off him. It was as though he had shrunk. Liz was concerned. In her own way she was fond of Fane, though her feelings were different from his for her. She would be sad if anything were to happen to him.