Two days elapsed. It had been a fortnight since McCallen’s path had crossed mine. I called her a dozen times and left five messages. Simone didn’t get in touch and I resisted contacting her. Googling Miss Fabron told me little I didn’t already know. She’d set up Bagatelle ten years ago, held parties all over the world and was viewed as a successful businesswoman and something of an icon for ‘Generation Zero’, whatever the hell that meant. Personally, I thought she’d benefit from cooling her pretty little Gallic heels. I was never one for apologies.
The morning of the third day dawned grey and cold. Varying my route, I walked to one of three gyms I used, pumped iron for an hour, showered and returned home and called McCallen again. This time it didn’t connect at all. McCallen was a games player through and through, it came with the job description, but she wanted something from me and her silence didn’t feel right. A big believer in timing and calculating the odds, what was the chance that someone had knocked off Phipps, threatened McCallen, taken a pot shot at me, and each event was separate and unconnected? Revenge, where I come from, is normally plotted before funerals, but however unlikely, it seemed that Billy Squeeze, dead as he was, held the key.
Billy’s monstrous bid for power had kicked up a storm of death and destruction and, in its wake, had threatened the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Not for one second did I regret halting his ambitions and removing him from the planet.
I made a list of everyone I’d talked to in my quest to hunt him down. Three names topped the bill: China Hayes, Daragh Dwyer and Faustino Testa. I hadn’t spoken to them since and I was wary of contacting them now. Before I knew it they would be clamouring for my services and all my good intentions would go to rat shit. Based on the strong likelihood that if any had met the same fate as Phipps it would be reported, I quickly trawled the internet. Five minutes later and, as far as I could tell, the trio were in the clear. So far, so nothing, then my eye caught a news item and my blood vaporised.
‘Inger McCallen, a senior civil servant based in Cheltenham, has not been seen since leaving her apartment in Montpellier on 28 January. Colleagues first raised the alarm when she failed to report for work three days ago.’
Spies, often referred to as civil servants among other things, only went missing when their luck ran out, when betrayed, or both. The fact that her disappearance had been so swiftly reported indicated that McCallen was in deep shit and that MI5 were desperate. Either she was dead or she’d been abducted.
I remained calm and thought it through. Abduction was a stretch. I’d often been asked to carry them out and I’d always refused. Fraught with risk, kidnapping posed tremendous difficulties. Not only did you have to pull it off, you had to prevent the hostage or target from making an escape. Messy. Unsubtle. Cruel. In my time, I’d known of people abducted for no other reason than to put pressure on others to change witness statements or to cough up obscene amounts of money. In these instances, the victim often escaped mistreatment. Then there were other stories, tales of blowtorches and knives, electric cables and drugs. Sometimes, if information remained the objective, the abductor would play protector, offering kindness with one hand as his torturer in chief dished up unspeakable pain with the other. Most victims did not survive.
An intelligence officer of McCallen’s calibre on home ground would be almost impossible to abduct. If, by some slim chance, she were, her training would kick in. She’d play dumb, the innocent, resort to tears, act confused, offer a legend that could be checked and checked again, pull out every toy in the spy’s toy box until, lie by lie, her story was broken and her exposure complete. Every professional recognised the inevitability of how these events played out; all break, including the courageous. It was simply a matter of how long they could hold out. Sometimes the cavalry arrived. Most often, not.
The alternative scenario seemed more likely.
And if she were dead …
Breath lurched in my lungs. Sweat exploded across my brow. Sadness swept through me that I believed would never go away. Next up, rage.
Scarily close to dropping off my four-hundred-and-three-day wagon, I knew that if she were dead, I’d kill who was responsible.
The truth was, whatever had befallen McCallen, it wouldn’t be long before the security services were chasing down leads, looking at those she’d last hung out with and banging on my door. Without McCallen to offer an explanation, I’d be first in line for the role of prime suspect.
It seemed, to me, that Billy’s ghost had unfinished business.