Close Call (30 page)

‘Hello. We’ve been wondering where you were. I gather no one turned up. You’ve must have had a rather boring evening.’

There was a pause. Then Isabelle said, ‘Well, actually that’s not quite true.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘It’s true the people we expected didn’t show – but we were puzzled why and we decided to search the flat to see if there were any clues to what was going on, and our man didn’t seem to be there. But he was there – he was hiding in the next-door flat and, Liz, I’m so sorry . . .’ Her voice crumpled.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

She could hear Isabelle sucking her breath in, trying to pull herself together. Then she managed to say, ‘Martin, he was shot.’

‘Shot?’

‘Liz, I am so sorry. Martin is dead.’

Liz went ice-cold. She didn’t want to believe what she’d heard. She took a deep breath, trying to control herself, and said as calmly as she could, ‘What happened?’

While Isabelle explained, Liz tried to focus, to listen. But the words ran like noisy flowing water in the background while one brutal fact kept occupying the foreground – Martin was dead. Isabelle was explaining that when the jihadis hadn’t shown up, she and Martin had taken a gamble and gone in, hoping to find evidence of what was being plotted. Martin had been curious, Isabelle explained – and Liz thought,
damn Martin, he was always curious
.

And it was here Liz completely tuned out, not wanting to hear the details of the death of the man she loved. Isabelle was still talking as a thousand images flashed through Liz’s head: of her first meeting with Martin at the DGSE’s old-fashioned headquarters on the outskirts of Paris; of Martin down at Bowerbridge, her family home, and the way he had taken to the place – so quintessentially English, he’d said; and of how Martin had chuckled when he’d seen the childhood relics Liz still kept in her bedroom there – the rosettes from gymkhanas, the watercolours she had liked to paint as a girl, and the photograph taken by her father as she stood gap-toothed and beaming and no more than nine years old, holding perhaps the titchiest fish ever to be yanked (and that with some grownup help) from the waters of the river Nadder.

All this came at her in a concentrated rush, which made her smile momentarily – though each time she had a loving image of him the grim news of his death intervened, and her memories fell away like waves hitting an unexpected reef.

She became aware that Isabelle was no longer talking. Liz did her best to pull herself together. She said mechanically, ‘Thanks, Isabelle, for letting me know.’

‘Liz, did you hear what I said? I said I thought you would want to come over.’

‘Of course. Should I be arranging things?’

There was an awkward pause, and Liz suddenly realised that she had no real position in this. She hadn’t been Martin’s wife, not even legally his partner; officially, she had no real status in Martin’s life at all.

She asked Isabelle, ‘Have you told Mimi?’ Martin’s daughter.

‘Not yet.’

‘Or Claudette?’ Martin’s ex-wife, who lived in the Brittany countryside. It had not been a happy divorce – she had left Martin for an old boyfriend – but lately they had re-established speaking terms and could discuss their daughter civilly enough. Martin’s bitterness at his wife’s desertion had obviously been intense, but she remembered now how once as they were having coffee after dinner, he’d explained that since Liz had come into his life, his anger with his ex-wife had evaporated.

‘No, I haven’t called her yet. Listen, Liz, give me half an hour and I will phone you back. But remember one thing. You were the most important person in Martin’s life.’

‘It’s kind of you to say that, Isabelle.’ She was doing her very best not to sob but her eyes filled with tears.

‘I’m not just saying it to be kind – he told me often enough.’

It was long after midnight when Isabelle called again. In the intervening time Liz had got up and made coffee, checked her diary for appointments the next day, rung Peggy and told her the news and that she’d be in Paris tomorrow, then asked her to tell DG about Martin. She went online and booked a ticket on the Eurostar, then put a few things in an overnight bag, just in case. Finally, having run out of diversions, she collapsed in an armchair in her sitting room. She sat still for several minutes, slowly composing herself. She didn’t actually want to think any more about Martin just now – it was too painful. But quite unbidden, the memory of their last meeting came back to her, and she thought of his words –
Because I love you very much, Miss Liz Carlyle.
And suddenly she started to cry, then cried and cried until she could cry no more.

When her tears were utterly exhausted, she got up and went to the bathroom and washed her face. As she dried it the phone rang.

It was Isabelle again. ‘I have reached Mimi and ­Claudette, Liz.’

‘I hope they are all right.’ She had little sense of ­Claudette. Early on in their relationship it had been clear that Martin didn’t want to talk about his ex in any detail, something that Liz had always been grateful for, since it meant there were no shadows hanging over them.

‘Well, Claudette was shocked, of course. I don’t know if you ever met her.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘She likes to control things in her life, Liz, so the unexpected tends to throw her at first, then she reasserts control, if you understand.’

‘Yes,’ said Liz, but she wasn’t sure what Isabelle was getting at.

‘At first she decided there must be a funeral right away. I explained that couldn’t happen. Because of the circumstances there will have to be a post-mortem and there may be an inquiry, though it will be secret of course. Everything is being done to make sure there is no publicity – at present anyway – as we don’t want to alert Zara and his friends. And I told Claudette you should be consulted.’

‘Thank you,’ Liz said mechanically. She didn’t really feel able to cope with all this at present.

‘She didn’t like that – not because it was you, Liz; she has no axe to grind, but because she always wants to decide everything herself. But she did say she would be happy to have you attend the service.’

‘That’s big of her,’ said Liz. Then she took a deep breath and forced herself to focus. ‘I don’t think there’s much family, Isabelle. Martin’s parents are both dead and he was an only child. My real concern is what Mimi wants. It’s her wishes we should follow here.’

Liz had only met the girl once. Martin’s relations with his daughter had been strained after the divorce; living with her mother, Mimi had not surprisingly sided with her in what had been an angry parental split. But since coming to Paris to attend the Sorbonne, she had begun to see her father regularly, and relations had improved immeasurably. When Liz had met her, not in Martin’s flat but on the neutral ground of a café, conversation had been polite but strained at first.

Then Martin had excused himself to make a phone call and Liz had admired Mimi’s new pair of boots, and suddenly they had begun to talk freely about all sorts of things – clothes, films, and why they hated cigarette smoke and were glad Martin had given up, and whether Paris was rainier than London – and their conversation was so spontaneous and friendly that when Martin had come back from making his call, he felt (as he said affectionately to Liz later that evening) that he was almost surplus to requirements.

Now Isabelle said, ‘Actually, I have just come off the phone to Mimi – that’s why I am so late ringing you again. Her mother broke the news to her, and of course she is distraught. I’d given Claudette my number and Mimi must have got it from her. At first, she wanted all the details of her father’s death. To tell you the truth, I ducked that, Liz. I hope you think that was the right thing to do.’

‘Yes,’ said Liz, thinking that she didn’t know the details either. She hadn’t been listening when Isabelle was telling her what had happened. ‘She’ll learn all about it in due course,’ she said, thinking,
So will I
.

‘She wanted to make sure you’d been told, but she didn’t have your number. I think she was relieved to learn that I’d already been in touch. She said she hoped you would come over right away. She’ll take this very hard but I’m sure your presence here would be a great comfort.’

‘I will,’ said Liz. ‘I’ll be on the Eurostar that gets in at quarter past ten. But I don’t really know Mimi at all.’

‘I’ll send a car to meet you and take you to the flat. Right now you are the one link to her father. She said that the last time she saw Martin he told her he hoped to marry you. He told her everyone has a true love in their life but not everyone is lucky enough to find them. He said he was one of the lucky ones.’

Chapter 50

Peggy Kinsolving liked to wake early – one of the best things in life was having a job she was eager to get to. In her earlier incarnation as a librarian, there had been mornings when she could barely get out of bed, especially in the dark winter months, but ever since she’d joined MI5 there had never been any problem about getting up.

This morning, however, she was fast asleep when her alarm rang at 6.30. After Liz’s phone call telling her the dreadful news from Paris she had just sat in a chair for half an hour, everything spinning in her head. She hadn’t been able to make up her mind whether she should ring DG straightaway or wait until morning. Should she ring ­Geoffrey Fane? She seemed to be immobilised, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of her.

Then suddenly she had pulled herself together. What would Liz do in my shoes? she’d thought. Well, she wouldn’t be sitting here like this. Peggy had long ago observed that the worse the situation, the more calmly Liz behaved, and she had drawn strength from Liz’s cool ­efficiency. Well now, she said to herself, I must do the same. So she’d grabbed the phone, dialled DG’s PA and passed on the news. ‘He’ll want to know now,’ was the advice, so Peggy had rung him. DG had asked for an update on the operation and had told her that she must be the main ­liaison with Manchester Police until Liz was able to take over again. She’d then rung the Duty Officer at Vauxhall Cross and given him the barest account of what had happened to pass on to Geoffrey Fane. She had decided to leave informing Andy Bokus until morning. Having done all that, she began to feel better about herself and got into bed. But it was past two o’clock and her mind was racing. She was thinking what she must do in the morning; how awful Liz must be feeling; whatever could have happened in Paris – and so it went on until she fell asleep at about five o’clock, only to be woken an hour and a half later.

When she got to Thames House, Peggy found that word had already spread about Martin Seurat’s death. A few colleagues asked her what had happened, but she didn’t know any more than they did. As more people arrived for work, they were also greeted with the news. Soon an almost palpable gloom settled over the open-plan office where Peggy had her desk. Liz was a very popular colleague, much admired by the younger officers. It was widely known that her partner was a DGSE officer whom she’d met when she was posted to Northern Ireland, and that an operation there had ended violently in the South of France. Some people knew that Martin Seurat had saved the life of Dave Armstrong, one of their colleagues, who had been kidnapped. So Seurat was something of a hero in the Counter-Terrorist branch, even though not many people had met him.

When everyone had arrived for work Peggy told them all that Martin had been killed in Paris in the course of the operation they were working on; that Liz had gone to Paris and would be getting a full briefing but at present she could not tell them exactly what had happened. DG had asked her, she explained, to stand in for Liz until she was back. She was going to move into Liz’s office for the time being and she’d asked for her calls to be put through to Liz’s extension. If anything relevant came through to any of them they were to come in and tell her immediately. She might well be going up to Manchester very soon. Then she went into Liz’s office, closed the door and set about trying to get to grips with what was going on.

An hour later she felt like a salesman who’d made the rounds but come back with an empty order book. She had begun by calling Charlie Simmons at GCHQ. He’d had the news of Seurat’s death by now, and sounded very subdued. There had been no further email traffic to or from Zara since the email had come in announcing that the meeting in Paris had been cancelled. He explained again that the reason why it had taken so long to unzip that message was that it seemed to have been sent by someone who was not familiar with the code. ‘This may mean that those who usually send the messages are not there,’ he said.

‘That makes sense,’ said Peggy. ‘Presumably the messages are usually sent by the people who are on their way here. But they must be communicating somehow or how are they going to meet up with Zara?’

‘However they are doing it, we’re not onto it. Perhaps they made all the arrangements in advance and don’t need to communicate.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Peggy, but she was sceptical. The silence seemed ominous.

Next she checked in with A4 and was told that Zara was acting like a model student, attending lectures, working in the library. ‘Completely normal,’ said the Duty Controller. Too normal, thought Peggy, sceptical again.

Finally she checked with her contact at the Border Agency. He was in constant contact with their counterparts on the Continent and no vehicle of the description she had given him had been reported crossing the Channel or the North Sea. Peggy asked, ‘What if the vehicle were coming in a roundabout way?’