Wimbledon, London
FOR A FULL FIVE MINUTES after the men had left her flat Angela Scott sat, stunned and motionless. Although none of her three uninvited Chinese visitors had laid a finger on her, she still felt defiled. Doubly defiled, in fact, because not only had they broken into her home with apparent ease, they had also broken into her digital history and that, right now, was by far her biggest worry. When had this happened? How far back did it go? That was something the investigators would be probing into at this very minute at Vauxhall Cross. She squeezed her eyes shut as she remembered a text conversation that she probably should not have had on that phone – her three tormentors would doubtless have spotted it. It was what the Russians would call kompromat – compromising material used to blackmail a victim.
She stood up abruptly, went to the fridge, took out a carton and poured some milk for Faustus into a shallow saucer. Then she grabbed her keys and walked out of her flat. It seemed almost pointless locking the door behind her now but she did so anyway. She knew where she had to go and who she had to talk to, and it wasn’t Vauxhall Cross. She didn’t feel she could face talking to anyone there, not right now, not when they would be judging her. No, she needed some neutral, impartial advice before she made her next move.
Angela walked briskly to Wimbledon station and hailed the first cab in the waiting rank. ‘Selkirk Road, please,’ she instructed the cabbie. ‘It’s just opposite Tooting Market. Hang on, I’ll find you the postcode.’
‘’S all right, love,’ he replied, already pulling out into the traffic. ‘I know where that is.’
The journey didn’t take long in the mid-afternoon traffic, just a seven-minute ride – across the River Wandle, past St George’s Hospital – and then they were pulling up in the quiet, mostly residential street with its solicitors’ office, minimarket and rows of modest terraced houses. She paid by cash, walked up to the house with the black cat in the window and pressed the bell. As she waited outside on the doorstep, Angela looked back down the street, checking to see if anyone had followed her. They hadn’t, but after what had just happened inside her flat she couldn’t be too careful. Then, from the other side of the front door, she could hear the familiar slow, heavy footsteps followed by a gruff ‘Who is it?’ Without waiting for an answer, the voice’s owner swung open the door.
Professor Charles Beck had been Angela’s tutor at Oxford when she was studying for her Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree. He had coached her to a first but Charles Beck had been so much more than simply a brilliant teacher to Angela. Over the years she had come to value his consistently wise counsel, advice that went well beyond the field of academia. She trusted his opinions – and Angela didn’t trust many people – such that when he eventually retired and moved to London to live close to his sister, she would often drop in on him. Her visits were often unannounced as he had a habit of ignoring the phone.
And here he stood now in the doorway, older, greyer than she remembered him from last time, but still sporting his trademark baggy green cardigan with those knobbly brown leather buttons, like polished conkers, and the pervasive smell of pipe tobacco that filled the hallway.
‘You’ll have to excuse the clutter,’ he said, as they squeezed past several piles of magazines tied up with string. She remembered them being in exactly the same place the last time she’d popped round, and smiled.
Once he’d made them a pot of tea, they sat in his living room, his cat curling its tail around Angela’s ankles and purring as she stroked its back.
‘Now, then,’ he said, leaning back in his armchair and pulling out a pouch of tobacco, some of which he started to tamp down in his pipe, ‘how can I be of assistance?’
She told him everything, even recounting the scene with the grim-faced men from Security Section back in her office, painful as that was. Professor Beck was one of only three people to whom Angela had revealed where she worked. Another was her late mother, and the last had been an early romance that had once looked like being serious but had quickly gone south after her posting to Damascus.
‘You know what I ought to be telling you, don’t you?’ There was a twinkle in his kind eyes that shone out from a face etched with spider veins and the signs of advancing age.
‘Which is?’
‘Walk out of here right this minute. Go straight back to Vauxhall Cross and tell them everything that’s just happened. Anything other than that will put you in breach of the law. You do see that, don’t you?’
‘I do … It’s just that …’
‘Just that what?’ He paused. ‘For God’s sake, Angela, you’re not seriously thinking of going to Hong Kong? To sell your soul to Chinese intelligence and betray everything you’ve worked for?’ He had put down his pipe now, unlit, and gripped his arthritic knees as he addressed her. ‘Because I know you well enough to tell that you couldn’t live with yourself if you did that. That is simply not you, Angela Scott.’
For a long moment they looked at each other, his eyebrow raised, before he broke the silence. ‘Oh, hang on, I get it. There’s more that you haven’t told me, isn’t there?’
Angela nodded.
‘Well, you didn’t come all this way just for me to give you half-arsed advice. Here …’ He reached over with the teapot. ‘Let me pour you a refill.’
‘It’s the kompromat,’ she said at last. ‘It’s the text exchanges they will have found on my phone.’
‘And?’
‘Well, they are – how can I put this? – rather more intimate than I’d have liked.’
‘I see.’ There was silence as the retired professor resumed the careful business of stacking his pipe with tobacco. ‘So, you’ve got a new chap. You haven’t told me about this.’
‘It’s not a chap.’
He paused for a moment before going back to his pipe with a wry smile. ‘Well, I’m happy for you,’ he commented, ‘but why is that a problem? This isn’t the 1970s, thank God.’
Angela squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds and passed a hand over her face. All her life, throughout her career, she had played by the rules. It seemed so grossly unfair that she now seemed to have fallen into this metaphorical bear trap.
‘It’s because of who she is,’ she finally replied, her eyes popping open as she looked straight at him.
‘And who might she be?’ he gently prompted.
‘I’d rather not give you the name, although I suppose it’s going to come out anyway if I don’t take up the Hong Kong offer. We’ve only been seeing each other for a few months.’
‘Well?’
Angela paused. Another silence. ‘All right. If you must know, it’s Sandra James, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson. She practically runs Number Ten. Beijing’s going to have a field day with this.’