SKY NEWS REPORT: Piccadilly evacuated upon discovery of an unexploded WW2 bomb.
My phone had pinged with a news update on our way to the Platform. Protocol 324. Rolled out whenever we wanted an area cleared for reasons we didn’t want to explain. Robin had been whisked away in an ambulance straight to the Chelsea and Westminster. The Kensington Wing had already been briefed to give us constant updates as to his condition. His vitals were very weak but we were all hopeful.
Hattie was still at Heathrow. Peng and the delegation had gone straight from Christie’s to the airport to wait for their flight. He reported they were currently enjoying fine wine in Suite One of the Windsor Suite and that their plane, due to take off in two hours, had passed all the extensive additional security checks that he’d been able to order using his Security Services ID.
‘Any leads on Frederick?’ Jake leaned round from the driver’s seat to call back to Pixie and Geraint, whose fingers were flying across the keyboards of the computers built in to the back of the van.
‘Nothing,’ said Geraint. ‘He’s on CCTV leaving Christie’s and then appears entering Fortnum and Mason’s. No other sightings. He could’ve changed what he was wearing and merged into one of the crowds of people leaving. I’m looking further into his background, CV, known associates, for any clue as to what he could do next.’
‘I’ve got alerts out for him at all airports, train stations, even ferry crossings,’ added Pixie.
‘Problem,’ said Geraint. ‘He’s got a PPL.’ A private pilot’s licence meant Frederick could head to one of the small private airports; with less security and fewer people, he could hire a plane and be over the Channel pretty much unnoticed.
‘You need to widen the search. If he’s trying to get out to the BVIs to pick up his art shipment, he could use a light aircraft to get to any country in Europe and fly from there. You need to check passenger manifests on every incoming flight.’
We had to find him. I needed him secured. The memory of him seated next to Gigi still made me sick to my stomach.
Kenny, my commando on Gigi and Gillian watch, had confirmed everything was fine at Gillian’s flat – she’d taken Gigi back there for a sleepover as I’d said our heating was on the blink. A lame excuse for a mild October day. Gillian may have questioned it if she didn’t feel the cold so much she’d wear cashmere jumpers even in summer.
By the time we screeched past Leicester Square, Pixie had found a potential sighting of someone matching Frederick’s description at Elstree Aerodrome. We’d been promised the CCTV shots within the hour. As soon as we confirmed it was him we could track where he flew to from his flight plan.
‘I’ve got a ping on Hedge Fund Boy’s Ferrari number plate,’ Geraint shouted to us. ‘It’s now parked in front of Cipriani’s.’
Pixie was already on the phone. ‘Hello there, this is Mark Somersby’s PA.’ She seemed to have acquired a posh voice. ‘I need to get some urgent documents to him for signing. Pray tell, has he arrived with you yet?’ She paused. ‘Brill. Cheers. I mean . . . how wonderful. Thank you, sir.’ She looked up at us. ‘Mâitre d’ confirmed that Somersby and his guest are there.’
Jake screeched to a halt on Shaftesbury Avenue and turned back to Geraint and Pixie. ‘You two get back to the Platform. Keep on the leads for Frederick.’
*
We pulled up right behind Somersby’s Ferrari. It was illegally parked. His type would rather pay the parking fine than face the inconvenience of walking too far.
‘How do we play this?’ I asked Jake as we got out the van and walked up to the restaurant. ‘Local police? Scotland Yard?’ We each had wallets with an array of genuine IDs for any one of the law enforcement agencies.
‘You choose. I’m just looking forward to humiliating him by dragging him out in handcuffs. Here’s to hoping he knows plenty of people inside.’
‘Now, remember. Don’t get too enthusiastic with your interrogation. We need to get out of him who his partner is. Miss Jenna only knew he was a business associate. We need a name.’
‘And I’m going to really enjoy getting one.’
We walked in and flashed our police IDs to the mâitre d’, who was all too quick to point out Mark Somersby’s table and look both excited and terrified as to what was about to take place.
As we approached the table Somersby looked up. He was a slight man, with glasses and thinning hair. Did he know who we were? Was he going to run? He sat perfectly still, watching us get closer, his face slowly losing colour. His dinner companion had his back to us and clearly hadn’t noticed as he continued to talk animatedly with big hand gestures.
Jake went straight to Somersby and roughly pulled him to his feet. ‘Police. You’re coming with us, Mark Somersby.’ Jake raised his voice further to announce his name, before turning him round and clipping a pair of handcuffs onto him.
The restaurant quietened, apart from the clink and clank of cutlery hitting plates as everyone strained to hear what was going on.
Somersby’s companion turned around to face me, his eyes widening in recognition.
I looked over at Jake. ‘I hope you have another set of handcuffs.’
The man stood up. ‘Now, look here, you’ve got this all wrong.’
‘I always carry a spare.’ Jake threw a pair at me across the table and I snapped them firmly onto Charles Wycombe’s wrists.
There were no such thing as coincidences in this industry and there was no doubt Wycombe was the third partner in Tenebris.
*
Charles Wycombe and Mark Somersby were officially the easiest subjects to get talking in all of Platform Eight’s long, bloody history.
Blindfolded and handcuffed and thrown into the back of our van, they remained completely silent the whole drive back to the Platform. Yet as soon as they were alone in separate interrogation rooms they each started talking before Jake and I had even sat down in our respective chairs. Frederick may have told them enough about Platform Eight to be rightly terrified by exactly what we were capable of.
Charles Wycombe blamed it all on his great big castle. It didn’t matter how much money he made at his hedge fund, it wasn’t enough to keep the place running. Breaking the law, betraying your country and getting our agents killed were clearly acceptable collateral when trying to keep the family seat.
Mark Somersby had no excuse other than Frederick had come to him and Charles with what looked like a genius business plan guaranteed to net them each tens of millions. He admitted he hadn’t troubled himself with all the details and that yes, it probably was ‘terribly out of order’, but when he saw the margins it was impossible to say no.
Jake escorted Mark to his St James’s office to retrieve his laptop, and with a push of a few buttons the Tenebris Network was taken offline for good and we were given access to their whole server of data. In our possession were the names of everyone who had registered as an Employee, and the bank details and contact details for each organisation who had registered as an Employer. It would take weeks to work through but our Security Services were going to be reaping the benefit of their databases for years.
Cameron arrived back from guarding Miss Jenna and relayed what she had learned from her. I tried to imagine Miss Jenna’s sing-song voice as she detailed just how deeply involved she’d been with such dark people. She had been due to start at the nursery Little Lambs, which Frederick had Florence down for. Due to Dugdale’s insistence that Frederick switch Florence to Yvonne’s so we could use the school run to communicate, they’d had to improvise – by running over a nursery school teacher. It meant a lengthy hospital stay for the unfortunate woman and a panicked Yvonne having to find a last-minute replacement in order to meet health and safety teacher-child ratios. A teacher with a missing qualification was a better option than closure.
Somersby, Wycombe and Miss Jenna were all very clear in pointing the finger at Frederick being the mastermind behind it all. He had killed his boss, Thatcher, when he started digging into Tenebris. And he had been the one to shoot Y. Y. – Peter Yan – really was a waiter at the Phoenix Palace restaurant. He had never worked for the Chinese Embassy. Frederick had just paid him to tell me information about Peng that the Chinese People’s Alliance had discovered from one of their sources. Yan was the disposable face of an inside man. Frederick killed him when he needed to make it look like he was the leak who had told Tenebris about the Dictaphone. He was just another pawn in the carefully constructed game Frederick had set up. I wondered if his plan was always to abandon Camilla and his kids. To leave them behind so he could enjoy his riches abroad without fear of capture.
I wanted to do more to find Frederick.
The sighting at Elstree Aerodrome wasn’t him. Having analysed the CCTV both at Elstree and at Avignon where the plane landed, it was clear it couldn’t have been him. There was a facial similarity but no one could fake being six inches shorter than their recorded height.
I tried voicing my concerns with Jake and Cameron. Cameron was going to stay on for a few weeks to help us work through all the data from the Tenebris server. We were in the meeting room, waiting for Hattie to arrive back from Heathrow. Peng and the delegation had taken off and were now safely en route to Beijing. Peng may still be at risk from the Chinese People’s Alliance, who had ordered the hit on her, but at least it would be harder for them to get her back in China. Peng’s safety was no longer part of our remit – that responsibility was, as it should be, back with her own country. I hoped they looked after her. Everything she had achieved was admirable and I believed her when she said she still had so much more to do.
‘Come on, Tyler. Cheer up,’ said Jake. ‘Today was a good day. Robin is still alive. Only just but he’s going to make it – I know he will. Peng is officially no longer our problem. We’ve just crushed a multi-million-pound underworld recruitment website, saved the Security Services, and two greedy, self-serving city boys are headed for the Box.’
‘Frederick is still out there.’
‘He’ll be out of the country by now. He’ll be lying low, thinking of a way to get to the BVIs and his stash of precious paintings.’
‘Jake’s right,’ said Cameron. ‘Frederick will know it’s crazy to hang round here with a pack of Rats on the hunt for him.’
The lockdown had officially ended. Platform Eight was now back up and running.
‘Wow. You and Jake agreeing. That’s new.’
‘Jake and I had sex.’
I looked over at Jake. ‘Really?’
He shrugged. ‘She seduced me. I was helpless.’
‘You’re really making yourself at home here, Cameron. Using my desk. Sleeping with my partner.’
‘You don’t own him. He can do what he wants.’
‘Of course he can do what he wants. I’m allowed to have an opinion on it, though. Are you going to do it again?’
Cameron pondered. ‘I think I will. He’s good.’
‘He’s not that good.’ I wrinkled my nose.
Jake got up. ‘I’m right here. You’re both talking about me and I’m right here.’
‘It wouldn’t interfere with my work,’ she added.
‘Of course.’
‘I’m still here. Do you not think I get an opinion in this? I might not want to have sex with you again, Cameron.’
Cameron and I looked at each other and both laughed. ‘Come on, Jake, who are you kidding?’
‘Fucking great. You guys are friends now? I liked it better when you hated each other.’ He stalked out of the room.
‘You did a good job, Lex.’ Cameron looked at me with what seemed like a half-smile.
I shook my head. ‘I should’ve caught it earlier.’
‘Perhaps. But let’s face it, we could all beat ourselves up about every job we do, but we need to take a win when it’s a win. Maybe the kid hasn’t ruined your career after all.’
All this niceness from Cameron was disconcerting. This wasn’t us.
‘You do look like shit, though.’
And we were back.
*
The Platform was buzzing again. Back to how it should be. Rats and technicians scuttling through the corridors. The occasional flicker of the lights, the sizzle of bacon in the canteen, the slam of punch bags being pounded. We were open for business again. Another enemy defeated. We lived to fight another day and take down another target.
I came out the meeting room to find Mrs Moulage waiting for me, resplendent in a fitted tweed coat with fur collar. A flower-shaped diamond brooch glinted on the lapel. She was holding a red box.
‘Siew-Yong asked me to give this to you. A token of her thanks for keeping her safe.’
Mrs Moulage handed the box to me and I lifted the lid. A beautifully carved jade rat nestled inside. I touched the cold stone.
‘It’s very kind of her. But really it was a team effort.’
‘Don’t do that.’ Her tone sharpened. ‘Take the credit. When you’ve done well you shout about it. No one else will. Take it from this old Rat; things haven’t changed that much since my glory days.’
I tilted my head. ‘What was it like back then?’
‘Darling, it was wonderful.’ Mrs Moulage beamed. ‘I can forget now all the rubbish I had to put up with. And just think about the fun I had. The day they realised I wasn’t just decoration. But an equal. An agent. A Rat. It felt like coming home. To a place where I belonged. Where I could shine.’
‘Being the very first woman, the only woman’ – I shook my head – ‘I can only imagine how tough it was.’
‘To do a job like this takes a certain type of person. Even the most Neanderthal of men eventually realise what sex, colour, religion you are is irrelevant. It may have taken a little time but soon enough I was just one of the team, one of the pack. After every successful mission, we’d let loose down here. Good music and hard liquor. We all smoked, we all drank, we all didn’t think about tomorrow. The world was just as frightening then as it is now.’ Mrs Moulage cast a glance down over my jeans and T-shirt. ‘Except everyone was better dressed.’
‘Did you not always feel you had more to prove? More to lose?’
‘Back then none of us could afford to make any mistakes. My old chief, before every mission, he’d say, “DD, you get one shot. Make it count.” ’ She shrugged. ‘And I did. I always did. I had a near perfect success rate. Just like you.’
She held up her hand before I could speak.
‘Yes, of course I’ve followed your career. I’ve felt proud watching each of you girls come through.’
I smiled. ‘And I’m proud to be here. It’s not easy but I can’t imagine doing anything else.’
‘Quite right. What we do is too important. This is our life.’ She touched my shoulder. ‘We get one shot. And we make it count.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Moulage.’
‘Goodbye, my dear.’
I watched her walk down the corridor. The nods she got from everyone she passed. The Dior Dame, the Rat Queen.
*
It was nearing 1 a.m. by the time I finally got home. After we’d debriefed Hattie on everything we’d learned, we focused on chasing down any leads we could find with Frederick’s location. There had been another potential sighting at a small airport in Yorkshire. If he was trying to leave the country undetected, travelling north before trying to hire a plane was a clever move.
The house was quiet. I wished Gigi was home and not staying with Gillian so I could go check on her. There was no better antidote to a long, stressful day at work than tucking her in and watching her sleep.
I dropped my bag on the floor and hung up my coat. I checked my phone: a goodnight from Will, safely in Chicago, and an update from Kenny, confirming all was quiet at Gillian’s flat. I wondered how long I was going to need him for. How long it would take for me to believe that Frederick was really gone.
I needed a drink to unwind. A drink to shut my mind down so I could drift off to sleep. One glass of red wine and I could retreat to bed and hopefully a good night’s sleep.
I walked into the kitchen and stared at the item on the middle of the kitchen table.
A small figurine of Snow White.
It was missing its head.