The wake conformed to the pattern in the church. The locals gathered in three defensive circles near the buffet table, juggling plates and glasses; the people from Eyam’s Oxford days staked out the middle of the room for a reunion, while the politicians, civil servants and business people claimed the Old Pineapple House, a conservatory built along the inside of a high garden wall, where they were being conspicuously hosted by Ingrid Eyam with veil raised and a sparkle in her eye.
Kate took a glass of wine from a tray of drinks and almost immediately became aware of someone clutching at her arm. She turned to find Diana Kidd with an ardent look in her eye. ‘We’re claiming you as ours,’ she said and wheeled round to the half dozen people. ‘This is the person who saved me from those dreadful police. Lord knows what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in. I’d probably have been charged with assault or something. These fine people are David’s closest friends in High Castle. Aren’t you?’ she said encouragingly.
‘Do you know the Indian gentleman?’ asked a large man with a stubble beard who looked uneasy in his suit and tie. Then he added, ‘Chris Mooney is the name. Mooney Photographic.’
‘Yes, from Oxford,’ she replied.
‘What he said chimed with me,’ he said. ‘It was as if he knew about our problems.’
‘Oh, what are they?’ Kate asked.
Mooney looked around the group. ‘There’s a campaign of harassment and intimidation against anyone who knew David.’
‘Really!’ said Mrs Kidd. ‘She doesn’t want to hear about that. And anyway we’ve got no proof.’
‘Why do you think you were stopped this morning?’
‘I parked in the wrong place. It was all my silly fault.’
‘How do you account for that van in the square?’ asked a strikingly pretty woman in her late twenties who introduced herself as Alice Scudamore.
‘Security for the minister and all those important people: we live in an age of terrorism and assassination, dear. Look at what happened to David.’
‘No, they were filming us,’ said Alice Scudamore. ‘They weren’t protecting anyone! The important people had gone. They were filming us, not from above but head on so they could get everyone’s face.’
‘Well, who’s to say?’ said Mrs Kidd with an apologetic smile to Kate. ‘We mustn’t bore her, must we? Hugh Russell says Miss Lockhart is a high-powered lawyer from New York. She doesn’t want to hear about our little gripes. Did you like the service? The readings were beautiful, weren’t they?’
‘And you saw the police drone,’ said Mooney aggressively.
‘No.’
‘You don’t notice them because they don’t make a sound. We see a lot of them in this town. It was over the square. This one was larger than usual. You know what the police use them for?’
‘Surveillance.’
‘More than that,’ said Mooney. ‘They mark targets with smart water – crowds and that sort of thing. It’s like being pissed on by a bat. The marker chemical stays on you for weeks. They were marking people in the square, as well as photographing them from the van.’
‘You say that’s proof?’ said Mrs Kidd.
A short man with wiry black hair and intense black eyes leaned into the group conspiratorially and raised a finger from the rim of the wine glass. ‘Evan Thomas is the name, Miss Lockhart. When are you going to get the message, Diana? We’re being persecuted because we knew David.’
‘Can that really be true?’ asked Kate evenly. ‘Haven’t the authorities got better things to do these days?’
‘Precisely. That’s I exactly what I say,’ said Diana Kidd.
The man straightened to her. ‘There’s too much evidence for it to be a coincidence. I mean, look at us. We’re ordinary people and we’re being hounded as though we were some kind of terror cell.’
A voice came from behind Kate and a hand was placed on her shoulder. ‘Well, the day is looking up – Kate Koh!’
She turned to see Oliver Mermagen, a contemporary from Oxford.
‘You were ignoring me?’ He leaned forward to kiss her on both cheeks.
‘I didn’t see you,’ she said. ‘And my name is Lockhart now, Oliver.’
‘Yes, of course: is the lucky man here?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘What a pity,’ he said and then looked at the group around her. ‘I wonder if I can borrow our Kate. I won’t keep her long.’
She was steered into the middle of the room. ‘I don’t remember you being very close to David,’ she said.
‘Haven’t lost your bite, have you? If you want to know, we became friends after Oxford. We used to have dinner quite often together in London. Of course I didn’t see him much when he moved down here to the sticks.’
‘If you saw David you must know about the illness he had last year; it was quite serious apparently.’
‘I heard nothing about that,’ said Mermagen.
He went on to tell her that he ran a PR and lobbying business, which seemed a plausible setting for Mermagen’s talents. At Oxford he was always panhandling the room for new connections. Eyam gave him the name ‘Promises’ because of his technique of promising someone what he thought they wanted, whether it was his to give or not. Little seemed to have touched Mermagen. His face had flattened and spread outwards and the eyes had become two feverish dots in an expanse of greyish white flesh. Eyam had always said Mermagen reminded him of a Dover sole.
‘You must at least know why David came here,’ she said.
His eyes glided across her face. ‘My word, you have been out of it. David fell from grace big time. Everyone knows that. Easy enough when you get to the very top.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know the details.’
‘You didn’t talk to him to find out what happened?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. What about you?’
‘I didn’t know anything was wrong. I’ve been in the States for nearly eight years, working at Calvert-Mayne in New York.’
Mermagen saluted the name with a nod. ‘So you weren’t in touch at all. You two used to be so close. I mean, I’d have put money on you eventually getting together, but then you went off and found someone else. Who’s this Lockhart?’
‘Charlie Lockhart: he was in the Foreign Office. He died nearly ten years ago.’
Mermagan did a good impression of recollection followed by regret. Charlie’s face flashed in front of her. They were playing tennis with another couple from the embassy. Charlie missed a shot at the net and without warning doubled up in agony. When he straightened, his expression had changed for ever. That pain would last until his death from liver cancer nine months later at his family home on the Black Isle in Scotland.
She looked around the room. Mermagen couldn’t tell her anything, or wouldn’t. Through the glass of the Pineapple House she could see Darsh Darshan sitting on a garden bench. He was staring ahead with his arms clamped round his chest. Glenny’s bodyguards stood at a distance.
‘I’m surprised Darsh wasn’t arrested,’ she said.
‘The home secretary was very understanding: he put it down to grief. Darsh was always a rather overwrought character.’
‘Surely you didn’t know him at Oxford? It was just our crowd at New College that knew Darsh.’
‘Of course I did,’ he said.
‘What did you think of the things he said in church – all that stuff about murder?’
‘Well, you know Darsh was virtually in love with David.’
‘But what did he mean?’
His eyes moved to the home secretary. ‘He was blaming them for David’s fall and therefore his being in High Castle and therefore his being in Colombia when a bomb goes off and kills him instead of some bloody union leader or whatever – logic that is surely not worthy of the man who invented the Darshan Curve.’
‘What was David doing before he left government service, Oliver?’
‘He was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee; before that at COBRA – the Cabinet Office Briefing Room “A”, mostly to do with energy, I gather but I don’t fly at that altitude so I do not know the details of his jobs. He darted about giving a lot of people the benefit of his laser mind. You did know that he was thought likely to become cabinet secretary one day. All he needed on his CV was a big department to run. There was talk of the Ministry of Defence.’
‘Darsh said he was mortified. What did he mean by that? It’s an odd word to use – mortified.’
Mermagen pouted mystification and touched the handkerchief in his breast pocket. ‘Better ask him. By the way, how’s your mother?’
‘My mother!’ she said, astonished. ‘My mother’s fine, thank you: why do you ask?’
‘Still playing golf?’
‘Yes, between bridge and running the Faculty of Advocates In Edinburgh.’ She remembered her parents’ excruciating visit to Oxford, her disruptive father smirking in the wake of his rigid wife. Perversely the only student her mother had taken to was Mermagen, who had ingratiated himself by pretending an interest in women’s golf.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Kate said. ‘Did anyone have a reason to kill Eyam? It was raised – well, hinted at – during the inquest.’
‘Kill David? What on earth for? Really, you’ve been watching too much American television, Kate. What an absurd idea.’ His arm swung out towards a tray of canapés that was just about in range. ‘I must say, Ingrid’s done David proud with these caterers. Are you coming to the dinner tonight? No, of course not. How could anyone know you’d be here?’
Kate began to look for an escape. ‘Who’s giving the dinner?’
‘Ortelius. You know, Eden White, the head of Ortelius and much else besides.’
‘Eden White was a friend of David’s? I don’t believe it. The information systems creep? That Eden White?’
‘The same but be careful, my dear Kate. He’s a partner of mine, and he’s quite a power in the land – a friend of the prime minister’s. Hardwired into the government. Immensely influential.’
‘Jesus, what’s happened to this country? Eden White best friends with the prime minister.’
‘They were always friends. Same with Derek Glenny. They go way back. Pity you’re not coming to the dinner for David.’ He bent forward to allow his jacket to fall open and lifted a printed card from his inside pocket. He handed it to her. ‘Here are the names for the dinner. It’s quite a gathering.’
Under the heading The Ortelius Dinner to Celebrate the life of David Lucas Eyam were twenty names of politicians, business leaders and permanent secretaries. ‘Is it Eyam’s life they’ve come all this way to celebrate,’ she said, running down the list, ‘or his death?’
‘Now that’s simply not fair, Kate,’ said Mermagen. ‘In fact I think it is rather silly and disruptive of you.’ His attention had switched to a group around Derek Glenny and before she could say anything more he had moved on, leaving her with the card. She looked to discard it somewhere but then slipped it into her jacket pocket.
The wake had become a party and all thought of David Eyam seemed to have left the Jubilee Rooms. She considered going up to her room but then noticed Hugh Russell take a drink and knock it back in one.
She went over to him. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come.’
‘I wasn’t, but I did just want to make sure that you were – eh – dropping in this afternoon.’ His upper lip was beaded with sweat and the top of his cheeks flushed.
‘Has something happened?’
‘No, no. Everything’s fine, but I want to get as much done as we can. I wasn’t sure that I’d made that clear.’
‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ He looked down to the ground for a few moments. ‘Mr Russell, please tell me what has happened.’
His gaze rose to hers. ‘These papers should be in your possession. I perhaps underestimated their value to you earlier, which is the reason I came over. I really feel that you should take them as soon as possible.’
‘You read them.’
‘No.’
‘You glanced at them.’
He lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘No.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Just give them to me later. I’ll come in after this.’
‘But you will need somewhere secure for them. I feel certain about that.’
‘Fine. I’ll be there about five.’ She felt they had said all they needed, then something occurred to her. ‘Tell me, did anyone know that you were acting for David Eyam?’
‘Nobody, apart from my secretary of the time, and she has left to work in Birmingham. Certainly no one knew the substance of his business. It was confidential, and David wanted a very discreet relationship.’
‘How many times did he come to your office?’
He thought for a second. ‘Never, once he had purchased Dove Cottage. We met at a pub and did business over a bite. He always gave me lunch at the Bugle, a pub about twelve miles from here. It has a rather good restaurant, though no one uses it for lunch. I lent him a laptop so he could write out the instructions for the will, then printed it out.’
‘Didn’t he have his own computer?’
‘He said it was unreliable and kept on losing material.’
‘That doesn’t sound like him.’
‘At any rate that was the arrangement.’
‘And was that the same for the bigger document?’
‘No, he gave that to me in an envelope and told me to put it in a safe.’
‘Was that at the same time?’
‘No – much later, in November maybe even December.’
‘So there was nothing to connect you with him?’
‘I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’
‘Then you’ve got little to worry about. Nobody knows about the will. Nobody has troubled you about these documents. Nobody has shown the slightest interest in your professional dealings with David Eyam. If you’ve read something by accident, well, that’s between you and me. I’m a lawyer: I understand how it goes. Look, I’ll come to your office now if that helps.’
He gave her a stressed look. ‘No, no. That’s the point – I won’t be there. I forgot that I have something on until about five thirty – a meeting outside the office. Come after that.’
‘That’s fine. I want to see one or two people here.’
Russell departed and she threaded her way to the Pineapple House in search of Darsh. But he had left his spot in the garden and was nowhere in sight. She was making her way back towards a group of people from Oxford days she hadn’t seen for twenty years when she turned slap into the path of Kilmartin.
‘Again!’ he said with a little ironic smile.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Mr Kilmartin, isn’t it? The inquest.’
‘But we’ve met before.’
‘Really? I’m sorry I don’t . . .’
‘That’s the trouble with our trade – our former trade, I should say. To be successful you must be forgettable. Southsea – about a dozen years ago, maybe a touch more, Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course. I was one of the course lecturers, though I wouldn’t expect you to remember. I never enjoyed doing them much, which showed, I expect.’
‘Emile!’
‘Yes, the name made me sound like some leftover from the Free French – it really is my middle name. My mother was French.’ He put his hand out. ‘Peter Emile Kilmartin.’
‘Targeting, recruiting and running agents – was that it?’
‘No, communications in the field, though God knows why. I was always rather bad at that.’
‘Yes, of course I remember you.’
‘And you were from Jakarta, recruited there by McBride, and you did quite a bit of work before you actually came back to the office for indoctrination. Very unusual. And they really wanted you to stay. A big future for you but then . . .’
‘My husband died and I took another direction. He was in the Foreign Office.’
‘But you enjoyed the work?’
She nodded. ‘Christ, yes. It was such a bloody relief to find something to do. An embassy wife is like being a geisha without the money.’
There was a silence, which he didn’t seem to mind. He looked around the room, she into the garden.
‘Were you trying to find someone?’ he asked at length.
‘Yes, Darsh – the Indian. I wanted to see he was OK. I guess everyone thought he was completely mad.’
‘He seemed fine when I talked to him.’
‘You know him?’
‘Yes, David introduced us and he helped me with a rather arcane mathematics problem for a paper I was writing.’ He paused and looked round. ‘Anyway, it’s been a good turnout.’
‘It’s not a village fete,’ she said.
Kilmartin did not miss the quiet vehemence. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. A stupid thing to say.’
‘You know, someone said exactly the same thing at my father’s funeral. I suppose there was nothing else to say. He killed himself, you know, and that leaves the average emotionally retarded Brit rather stuck for things to chat about at a funeral.’
‘You talk as if you no longer think of yourself as belonging here.’ He examined her through his large, round, steel-rimmed glasses. His blue and white spotted tie was a couple of centimetres adrift from the top button and his dark-blue suit was made of a heavy serviceable material, which had become shiny at certain points but was in no danger of wearing out: the all-purpose suit tailored – or rather built – for a lifetime. He would probably be buried in that suit wearing that same expression of tight-lipped craftiness.
‘I’ve been away a long time and I came back expecting things to be the same, but having spent nearly a week in this godforsaken backwater, I’m beginning to wonder if I made the right choice. Maybe it’s this town, but everyone seems so on edge – suspicious. People seem to be so out of sorts.’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, I’m being a bit of a bore, aren’t I? The funeral made me angry. It all seemed so bloodless and damned English. I wondered how many people there actually liked David Eyam.’
‘Oh, quite a few I should think. He was an exceptional person.’
She nodded. ‘You were carrying seed catalogues at the inquest – that must have put me off the scent, though I did feel there was something familiar about you.’
‘Yes, I was. For the first time I have a good-sized garden to play with, plus a very good view, plus a good library and the time to think and . . . well . . . exist.’
‘You also had some kind of academic journal – Middle Eastern Archaeology or something?’
‘Spot on. You were noted by the office for your exceptional powers of observation and recall,’ he said. ‘But David wasn’t nearly so good.’
‘Eyam? Eyam wasn’t on the New Intake Course.’
‘We had a look at him the year before you, but then we decided he was not cut out for the life of an intelligence branch officer abroad, whereas you were a natural. They were very sorry to lose you.’
‘Eyam in SIS.’ She began shaking her head. ‘No, that can’t be true.’
‘He lasted no more than a matter of months and found the whole thing richly comic. Far too intelligent for the work.’
‘What’s that make us?’ she said quickly, still smarting from the news that Eyam had never told her he’d been recruited. Through the whole of their exchange his lips had barely moved, but now Kilmartin’s mouth spread into a sardonic smile and his eyes shone. ‘I think you know that I meant he was too cerebral.’ He took a sip of water from a tumbler.
‘I’ll settle for that,’ she said. ‘Was that time your only contact with him?’
‘No – we worked together on some issues, mostly to do with Central Asia: oil and gas, water, that sort of thing.’
‘At Downing Street?’
He nodded. ‘But we were friendly in other arenas.’
‘So you know what happened – why he lost his job?’
‘I know very little. I’ve spent the better part of the last five years either looking after my late wife or abroad pursuing the national interest, or so I was persuaded. No, I have no idea what happened, but I’d like to find out. You were a good friend; you must know a lot more than I.’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘What did you make of the inquest?’
‘I’d like to have heard a lot more about the bomb and who planted it. For a lawyer, it is a surprising process to watch – no real scrutiny of the evidence, no cross-examination of the witnesses, no jury.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, clearly there are grounds for suspicion that David was the target of that bomb.’
‘Would it be insensitive to say that you saw less than you wished of David?’
‘Would it be insensitive of me to say that you’re getting off the subject? Like you, I was abroad and we did lose touch. But it doesn’t seem to have mattered because I was close enough to be his main heir.’ She regretted this, but it would become public soon enough.
His face had lost its humour. ‘Maybe we should meet.’
‘And talk about what?’
‘You’ll know. Contact me at St Antony’s College in Oxford. There is a secretary at the Middle East School who takes messages for me. You don’t have to be explicit – simply suggest a time and place and give your maiden name. I seem to remember it’s Koh.’ He was in deadly earnest. ‘We will need to speak. I promise you that.’
‘Is all this intrigue really necessary?’
‘You’re not in the cosy world of an American law firm – there have been changes here that are about much more than mood and morale.’
‘American law firms aren’t cosy,’ she said. ‘But I agree; there’s certainly more surveillance than I thought possible in a free country.’
‘Of you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then we must talk. We don’t want a repetition of the Soeprapto business.’
‘Not only do you avoid talking about the one thing that wasn’t explored in the inquest but you make it plain that you’ve been reading my office file – only a very few people knew about the Soeprapto.’
‘I knew about the whole case. A classic example of an intelligence officer picking up a scrap of information at a social gathering – at a ladies’ tea party, I think, an accountant’s wife or some such. Soeprapto’s was unmasked, the bank collapsed but not before you ensured British interests were protected; no money was lost.’
‘A long time ago,’ she said.
‘But there was a postscript, wasn’t there? Which is why I’m digging this up. Soeprapto put out a contract on you from jail, which was taken up by a member of a Chinese gang, who came looking for you in London.’
‘Yeah, just after my husband Charlie’s funeral.’
One evening she had noticed the young Chinese get off at her stop on the Underground and a day or two later saw him hanging about Queen’s Gate near her flat. She changed her routine and established she was being followed, then informed the police. The assassin was arrested in the lobby of her building with a gun. It was clear she would remain at risk in London and after nine months of being comforted by Eyam, she left SIS and accepted an offer from Sam Calvert, Ricky’s father, to join the family law firm in New York. She never told MI6 that she’d tipped off Ricky Calvert about Soeprapto’s banking fraud.
‘You’ve lost a lot of men in your life,’ he said quietly.
‘Yep, but I can’t see why anyone would be interested in David now.’
‘You’re wrong. David’s legacy is bound to excite some interest. They will want to know whether it contains anything that’s a threat to national security. Shall we say early next week?’ He raised his eyebrows interrogatively then glanced at his watch. ‘Good. Now I must be getting along. I’ve got a train to catch.’
He made straight for the door with an unambiguous intention to leave – no goodbyes, no nods to people he’d talked to. And then he was gone.