22
At Shannon airport they had set up a trestle table even before the check-in desks so that they could search all your luggage. And it was nothing to do with terrorism or hijacking: the searchers even looked at the soles of Maxim's shoes. But the slippers were in the Lough, along with the stolen raincoat and the flick-knife. He would miss that.
Standing beside the table there were two professionally hard-eyed men, and a third who was elderly and had a plump ugly face and a sad expression. One of the plain-clothes men stepped forward. "Excuse me, but would you mind showing me some identification? It's just security."
Don't be too co-operative. Maxim frowned, looked puzzled, and said: "Yes. All right." He gave them his driving licence.
"Would you have anything else?"
"Why?"
"Just security." He was thin, with a long sour face.
Maxim shrugged. "Here, take the bloody lot." There was nothing in his wallet to let him down: no ID card or calling cards or Mo D pass. He could even have brought his passport, since like most officers he had put his occupation as 'Government official', but the pattern of visas in it would be a giveaway to anybody who knew those places where the sun still hadn't set on the British Army.
The older man was staring at him with a sorrowful anger.
"You'll have been staying here how long, sorr?" the second detective asked in a soft apologetic voice. He was larger, a comfortable man in a short tweed coat.
"Just a couple of nights?"
"Was it a business trip, sorr?"
"Not really. I was looking at a property a friend and I were thinking of buying into. Up in the Silvermine Mountains. What's this about?"
"Did you ever hear of the name Jackaman?" the first one asked.
"I don't think so." You bloody fooclass="underline" if they ask what you do, you'll have to say you work in Whitehall. Of course you know the name Jackaman. "Yes. There was a civil servant. He committed suicide. Is that the one?"
"Sort of. You didn't know Mrs Jackaman?"
"Didn't know either of them."
"So it's just a coincidence, you being here?" They were playing it sweet and sour: the first one asking the tough tactless questions, the second being gentle and sympathetic. Damn the flight for being so empty that they had time for that charade. Maxim would have liked a queue of impatient passengers behind him. He'd even have bought them their tickets.
"What the hell do you mean by coincidence?"
The old man burst out: "My sister was burnt to death last night!"
That was where he'd seen the fat piggy face before.
"I'm very sorry. But… do you mean she was murdered?"
"There are some unexplained aspects, as you might say, sorr," the second policeman said quickly.
"Well, I'm sorry. But I don't go around burning people."
Only houseboats.
He was wearing his 'civil servant' blue suit, striped shirt and a tie that would have looked dull on an undertaker. Of course, if that was the way arsonists and murderers were dressing this season… Then, thank God, there were a couple of more roughly dressed characters getting their luggage searched behind him.
The first detective gave an impatient snort. "Can I have the address of the house you were looking at?" He played his part well, unless he was just anti-English anyway.
Maxim gave them Rafford's address and phone number. They already had his own address, from the driving licence.
"Will you be buying it?"
"It needs more work than we'd realised. We'll see."
"Thank you for your help, sorr."
Maxim said to the old man: "I hope they…" The old man ignored him, and Maxim walked past.
Jonathan St. John Rafford would be climbing the wall if they mentioned booby-trapped cars and burned-out houseboats. Maxim decided to ring him, but not hastily. The police wouldn't have time to check for a while.
The flight was delayed. He drank a cup of coffee, then walked around the windowless, timeless hangar of a departure lounge that was far too big for the number of passengers at that time of year. The duty-free display was a supermarket in itself, and he was startled by the prices until he realised they were in dollars. Then he was only half-startled. But he ought to get something for Chris and his parents… why did you feel compelled to buy something in an airport? Pilots obviously didn't.
"Did you hear about the terrible fire?" a slightly accented voice said.
Maxim turned slowly. "What fire?"
"Two of them, in fact." On the far side-of a rack of candles shaped like Guinness bottles and flowers and apples, there was a square coarse-grained face with rather unfinished features.
The face smiled. "There was a fire in a car and then there was a fire in a boat. You should have heard it on the radio."
"Did anybody get hurt?"
"In the car, somebody was killed."
"Did anybody get hurt?" Maxim repeated.
The face smiled again. The hair above it was dark and neat, brushed straight back from a high forehead with a slight widow's peak. There were heavy bags under the dark eyes, permanent ones, not just from a late night.
"Nobody got hurt very badly," the face said.
"I'm glad to hear that."
"So you had no trouble with the search? There was no mud on your shoes, and no smell of paraffin on your clothes? And your coat is so very clean. You are very careful. I think-I think you are Major Maxim of Downing Street."
"I didn't catch your name."
"Suppose I told the searchers who you are."
"Then I would tell them to look at your left leg."
The loudspeaker announced a flight to Paris, and the face turned away, still smiling, and saying: "Perhaps we'll meet again…"
Now Maxim could see the square body, wearing a dark brown suit that was well cut but not by anybody in Britain. The walk was absolutely upright, with no hint of a limp. If he was working alone, he must have bandaged the leg himself: nobody would dare take such an obvious stab wound to a doctor. He might be full of pain-killers, of course, or well trained to pain. Or most likely, both.
Maxim picked up a candle moulded as a pineapple. He was rather afraid his mother would like that. But first he had to ring Rafford.
23
The room was neon lit and deliberately featureless, without any decoration or pictures to remind you of anything. Just the shelves of big leather-bound albums and an oak lectern like the ones where you spread out a newspaper in the public library.
Maxim sat on a hard chair and turned the album's pages quickly. Each right-hand one had a dozen or so photographs, about the size of a patience card, slotted into it. He wouldn't easily have believed there were that many ugly people in the world. 145 He went right through the book, then turned back to a page in the middle. "That's him, if anybody is."
It wasn't a normal mug shot, not the usual full-face of a convicted man, but a snatched picture that the victim wasn't supposed to know about. Maxim wondered if this one really hadn't known.
The Branch man leaned over his shoulder and lifted the photograph out to see what was written on the back. Without a word, he handed it to Agnes.
"I admire your taste," she said. "He goes around as Lajos Komocsin, Hungarian businessman. He must be at least part Hungarian or he wouldn't get away with it, but the current theory is that he's a Major Azarov from the KGB. Not known to be assigned anywhere."
"Whoever he is, he's a professional. As well trained as I am, and younger."
"But just as modest with it, I've no doubt." She passed the photograph back to the Branch inspector. "And now he's got a distinguishing scar on the outside front of his left thigh, is that right?"
"Around there."
"So if he ever comes at us with his trousers down, we can shoot without asking questions."