Moskva (32 page)

‘I’m sure Mummy’s fine.’

‘She …’ Whatever Charlie was about to say died on his lips.

This had been a bad idea, Tom realized. A guilt and alcohol and shock bad idea. A being in the wrong city and alone late at night and the only person he could still say he truly loved being a small boy a quarter of the world away bad idea. He should have known it was stupid. Maybe he had. But he’d still asked for a line and picked up the phone when it rang. ‘Charlie, I’m sorry …’

‘What about? Why are you sorry?’

His son’s voice was so polite, so proper. Tom hardly recognized it.

Becca and all the things she hadn’t said weighed on him. All the things he should have known. All the things it was his
job to know. She’d been polite too. Polite and distant, unnaturally so. His hand shook so badly he had to lift the receiver away from his ear. He steadied himself to end the call.

‘I love you. That’s what I telephoned to say. All right? You look after yourself and I’ll see you soon. That’s a promise. All right?’

‘Daddy …’

‘I have to go now.’

Charlie began crying, really crying.

The telephone was taken from him and Charlie’s housemaster came back on the line. ‘This is Mr Marcher. Is there anything the school should know? We prefer to know if something has happened. So we can take proper care of the boys.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I just wanted to talk to my son.’

The man took a deep breath and bit back what he wanted to say, asking instead, ‘You’re sure there’s nothing we should know? Your son’s been unsettled recently. We really do prefer to know, you know.’

‘Nothing beyond his sister having killed herself, and his parents’ marriage being in meltdown, and being sent to a school he hates because living at home is …’
Fuck.
Tom knew he’d screwed up before the words were out of his mouth. ‘Worse,’ he finished.

‘I see. I think we’d better get Charlie back to bed.’

The telephone was put down almost gently and the line crackled and cleared, until only the sound of a familiar dialling tone accompanied the raggedness of Tom’s breathing and the hammering of his heart.

He should have known Caro would call. The school would telephone her and she would telephone him. It was as inevitable as tomorrow’s hangover. If he’d bothered to think things through, he’d have expected it. He just might not have expected it in the time it took him to find a
Times Atlas
, discover it didn’t have Three Sisters listed in the index and decide he needed coffee before anything else.

In the embassy’s upstairs kitchen, Tom took a cracked Royal wedding mug from the dish rack, tossed in a spoonful of someone’s Maxwell House and filled the mug from the communal kettle. Ripping the top off a UHT milk carton, he added two sugars and stirred thoroughly. The three digestives he stole from someone’s packet were an afterthought, as was the glass of water he drank before carrying his haul back to the library. He’d put the biscuits on a plate rather than in his pocket, so his hands were full when he pushed his way through the door to the sound of the telephone ringing. It kept ringing until he found somewhere to put his plate down.

‘Tom Fox,’ he said eventually.

It was the young woman on the desk. She had a call for him.

‘She’s very insistent that she speak to you.’

‘She?’ He was sounding drunk even to himself.

‘Yes, sir. She says she’s your wife.’

The woman dropped out of the call and Tom suddenly had silence and distance and the sound of expensive shoes shuffling and fury held tightly in check. A clock was ticking in the background and he knew instantly where Caro was. In the drawing room of their house, using the telephone on the Victorian card table. There was a comfortable chair nearby but he could tell that she was standing up.

‘Caro?’

‘How could you? How could you be that stupid? How could you be that cruel?’

‘What am I meant to have done?’

‘What am I meant to have done?’ Her mimicry was brutal. She did anger well, Caro. It was rare for her to show more than irritation, but when she did she meant it. Tom stopped halfway into the chair and stood instead. This was plainly going to be a standing kind of conversation.

‘You know perfectly well what you’ve done.’

‘Charlie?’

‘Yes, Charlie. What possessed you?’

‘You said I should call him more. You said I should make an effort.’

‘Don’t you dare make this about me. You called him. You had him dragged out of bed for no reason. He’s in floods, damn you. Matron’s put him in the sanatorium for the night and she’s going to keep an eye on him herself …’

You had to be really sick to be sent to the sanatorium. Mumps, measles, misery. The infectious diseases. The ones that could spread.

‘You’ve always been useless.’

‘Caro …’

‘Bloody useless.’ She was shouting so loud she could probably be heard next door, and the house was detached. ‘Fatherhood’s not that hard, Tom. Other men manage it. At
its most basic, all you have to do is provide and protect. No one’s asking you to do more. No one’s ever asked you to do more.’

They both knew Caro’s money did the providing.

His salary was good enough. But it was nothing like good enough for the house and schools and life that Caro had wanted for herself and her children. She’d probably have forgiven him if he’d made general. She’d have liked that. Her grandfather had been a general. ‘Are you listening to me?’

‘I drifted …’

‘You drifted?’

‘Caro, I wanted to talk to him.’

‘Why? Why did you want to talk to him on a week night, an hour after lights out? What was so important you called him from Moscow to make him cry? In God’s name, what did you actually say to him?’

‘I told him I loved him.’

For a moment there was silence.

‘You did what?’ Her voice was different, almost soft. She stopped shouting and he heard the chair creak as she sat down. He did the same.

‘Why?’ she asked finally.

Flipping open Beziki’s file, Tom looked at one of the photographs and shut it again. His heart was in his mouth and his chest was tight; his shoulder hurt like hell, but that wasn’t why he had to set his jaw to stop the tears falling. There were conversations you had when you got together, others you should have along the way, some you never manage. But apparently there were also conversations you had to have when things were ending.

It was too late to save his marriage. Even if he’d wanted to, and he wasn’t sure he did, he was pretty sure Caro didn’t.
He’d lost the war, probably before they’d even fought the first battle. But some truces were better than others.

‘Tom … Are you still there?’

‘Still here,’ he said.

‘Talk to me.’

‘I never told Becca I loved her. Not once.’

‘She knew.’

‘I never said it, Caro. I never said “I love you”.’

‘I’m not sure parents do. Not like that. Children know though.’

Did they? Tom wasn’t so sure.

‘But it wasn’t enough,’ he said. ‘Was it?’

The air chilled and before she could snap back, he said, ‘I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about me. I should have said it and it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want Charlie … In case anything happens … I don’t want Charlie …’

‘What do you mean, if anything happens?’

‘It’s messy. At this end. It’s really messy. I’ve got myself into something.’

‘Into what?’

‘That’s the point. I don’t know.’

‘I thought you were just writing a paper. Isn’t that what you do for the MOD? Research things and write papers? Recognize patterns before others can see them. That’s why you’re over there, isn’t it?’

‘My job sometimes gets more complicated.’

There was silence at the other end, not cross or irritated, just watchful. He wondered about all the things she wasn’t saying.

‘Those long research trips …’

‘Weren’t always to the places I said they were.’

‘Tom.’ Caro sighed.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What’s different this time?’

‘The Soviets have borrowed me to help with something.’

‘I didn’t know that was even possible.’

‘Things are changing.’

Maybe too fast. Certainly faster than some people on both sides like.

Beziki had talked too much about Stalingrad for it to be simply the alcohol. Stalingrad had been playing on Beziki’s mind. So had Berlin. The man had been about to kill himself. Tom didn’t doubt that this was what he’d interrupted by hammering on the window of the restaurant. On the verge of suicide, surely you thought about the things that had brought you there? Stalingrad … and Berlin.

The link was there and it mattered.

Tom twisted the bezel of the signet ring Caro had bought him when they married round to the side. A reminder to ask her for a favour if the time seemed right. He’d been wondering who could help him with an answer. It was obvious.

Caro’s father.

The old bastard knew everyone.

Although Tom couldn’t imagine why her father would help him.

‘Tom … Are you still there?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Look, an English girl’s gone missing in Moscow. They’re keeping this out of the papers but it makes sense for both sides to talk.’

‘That’s where you come in?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

Caro’s voice was wary. ‘You think she’s dead?’

‘I hope not. But I’m scared she might be.’

‘This is about Becca, isn’t it?’

‘That’s how it started,’ he agreed. ‘Now, if she is still alive, I just want to stop this one dying. There was a girl yesterday
morning, a different girl. They shaved her head and left her naked and frozen in a park. I was at her autopsy.’

‘Jesus. How old?’

‘About Becca’s age.’

‘Tom …’

‘I know, I know. I should step back.’

‘You’re not ready for this.’ Her voice softened. ‘It’s been hard for all of us. I should have realized it’s been hard for you too.’

‘A man I really liked killed himself tonight.’

‘Dear God … Are you allowed to talk about it?’

‘Best not. You’re in the drawing room.’

‘How do you know?’ She sounded surprised, not suspicious.

‘The Georgian carriage clock. I can hear it ticking.’

‘It is distinctive, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah … Can you do me a favour?’

‘What?’ She went from relaxed to on edge.

‘Look, your father’s on the Intelligence Committee. Ask him if there’s anything I should know about Edward Masterton’s time in Berlin. He was there after the war in the sector we inherited. Can he check what the lord chancellor has on file to do with those days. Your father won’t want to do it. Largely because it’s for me, and I don’t blame him. But say it matters … Well, it may.’

‘Tom. Berlin was forty years ago.’

‘I know it’s …’ Another set of tumblers fell into place and Tom sucked his teeth.
Christ, he could be such a fool.
‘Oh fuck,’ he said.

‘Tom!’

‘Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just … Of course it is.’

‘What’s Berlin got to do with this girl?’

‘Everything. Nothing. I’m not sure any more. But I know
there’s a forty-year block on releasing some intelligence documents.’

‘1945 to 1985. They’ll be released already.’

‘Caro, it’s forty years, plus one for safety. Otherwise, release December in January and it’s still only thirty-nine …’

Tom might not be making sense to her, but he was making sense to himself, which made a change. What did Sir Edward have on one of the Soviets? More to the point, what did that man have on him?

‘Can you mention the forty years to your father too?’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah …’ Tom hesitated.

‘Say it.’

‘We’re over. Aren’t we?’

‘I could be cruel,’ she said. ‘I could say we’ve been over for years. But I don’t think I want to. Not now. I would have said that before we talked. Now I’m not sure it’s even true. But yes, I think we’re done.’

‘Thought so. Look, I’m sorry for calling Charlie. You’d better be the one to tell him we’re divorcing. I probably shouldn’t call the school for a while. And I’ll sign the papers. You get them ready and I’ll sign them. All right?’

‘Send me the name of your solicitor.’

‘One solicitor is fine. I’ll sign whatever you put in front of me.’

‘Tom, come on …’

‘I don’t want the house. I’m not interested in your money.’

‘I know,’ she said with a sigh. ‘That’s always been one of the problems. You’re sure about us only having one solicitor?’

‘Of course. I trust you.’

‘You bastard.’ Her voice was amused. ‘Now I can’t possibly shaft you.’

‘There’s always that.’

They muttered their way through kind goodbyes, kinder than their goodbyes had been for years. Both sad. Both of them knowing, Tom imagined, that the putting down of the receiver ended one stage of their lives and began another more thoroughly than signing papers ever could.