A couple of weeks after the funeral, Silva’s father called her. It was the only contact she’d had with him aside from a package he’d sent her containing the keys to her mother’s place in Wiltshire and some documents relating to the will Silva had to sign and return.
‘You need to come and visit, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Asap. Think you can make it tomorrow?’
‘Today was my first shift back at work, Dad,’ Silva said. ‘What is it, are you ill?’
‘I’m fine, you’re the one who needs to be ill. Tomorrow. Tell them you’re mental again. That you might infect those letters. Get here before lunch. Shall we say eleven hundred hours, sharp?’
That evening she ran through the city. Followed the route she’d taken on her delivery round and pounded the same streets as she’d walked earlier. After the run she went to the seafront. A fleet of dinghies raced in the evening sun, and the ferry to Santander headed for the horizon. She returned to her boat and sat in the cockpit with a cup of cocoa. A swell caressed the hull and rocked her gently back and forth. Motion. Not staying still. It hadn’t struck her until then that the constant movement was why she’d ended up living on a boat. Back when she’d bought the little yacht the intention was simply for it to be a place to go to when on leave from the army. Her mother’s house was too small and her father’s… well, there was no way she could have stayed there for more than a day or two.
The boat had turned out to be a godsend, providing a bolthole to retreat to after she’d completed her prison sentence. It was berthed in a marina that hugged the west bank of the river Plym. A collection of decaying pontoons and equally decaying yachts sat opposite an industrial quay where aggregate rumbled along conveyors from ship to shore pretty much 24/7. Freddie, the security guard who lived on the marina site in a Portakabin, was pushing seventy, but assured her he was more than a match for men half his age. He had two Dobermanns to help him but their natures could be deduced from their names: Beauty and Cinders. More often than not the dogs could be found curled up at Freddie’s feet in the cabin, while he worked his way through an ArrowWords puzzle magazine, only occasionally glancing at the CCTV monitors. Still, the haphazard set-up suited Silva. Nobody came down the pontoon to chat to her; nobody, aside from Freddie, knew her name.
The last thing she wanted to do was visit her father. They weren’t close and never had been. He was all stiff upper lip and polish your boots until you could see your face. What was on the surface was what the world saw and what was inside you kept private. Somewhere deep down there might have been some sort of love and affection for her, but if there was she’d never seen any sign of it. Her mother had been the polar opposite, wearing her heart on her sleeve, baring her soul, always telling Silva how much she loved her.
Silva sighed to herself. She owed it to her mother to go and see what her father wanted. Hard as it was to imagine, at some point her parents had cared for each other and Silva was a direct result of their union.
The next morning she called in sick. Said her first day back had been too stressful and she needed a little while longer to recover. She took her motorbike and rode hard up-country towards London. Her father lived an hour west of the city in a big old house inherited from his own father. Silva remembered the place from childhood visits to her grandparents, but she’d never lived there. Several acres of garden surrounded the house, a winding drive curling past a lake to an expanse of gravel. She followed the drive and parked up alongside a black Range Rover with smoked-glass windows. She got off her bike, removed her leather jacket, her helmet and gloves, and stood by the Range Rover for a while. She wondered if her father had all of a sudden given up his miserliness and decided to splash out on the smart new vehicle. Silva shrugged and went to the house.
Mrs Collins, her dad’s long-suffering housekeeper, showed her in and through to the back where her father sat in a chair on the terrace. Next to him there was a glass-topped metal table on which stood a jug of cloudy lemonade and three glasses. The ice cubes in the jug had sharp edges and the surface of the jug was beginning to mist with condensation.
‘Rebecca,’ her father said as she walked over and bent to kiss him. He sat still while she did so and then brushed her away. ‘You’re late.’
Silva glanced at her watch. One minute past eleven. ‘One hundred and fifty miles and I’m sixty seconds late. I’d say that was pretty good.’
‘Pretty good, yes.’ Her father watched her as she sat down. ‘But not perfect.’
Silva wasn’t surprised by her father’s opprobrium. As a child she’d had to live up to his exacting standards, all too often failing to meet them. He’d treated her mother the same way until she’d grown tired of having the minutiae of her life controlled and micro-managed. When Silva was ten, her mother had upped and left, taking Silva with her. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Silva wondered if her father’s nature could have been altered by his experiences in the Gulf. PTSD affected people in different ways, and his desire to control everything might have been a response to the stress he’d faced in the deserts of southern Iraq. Then again, it might not.
‘You look fine,’ Silva said, trying not to rise to the bait. ‘I thought you might be poorly.’
‘I told you I wasn’t ill on the phone. Didn’t you believe me?’
‘There are times when people don’t like to admit something’s wrong with them.’
‘Not me.’ Her father paused and then knocked the table with his right fist. ‘You got the keys and the documents I forwarded from the solicitor?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll go there on your way back to Plymouth? Check the house is OK?’
‘Sure,’ Silva agreed without much enthusiasm. She changed the subject and gestured at the three glasses on the table. ‘Are we expecting a guest? Or are you going ask your servant to join us?’
‘Don’t wind me up, Rebecca. Mrs Collins isn’t my servant.’
‘Lover?’
‘Stop it.’
‘Well, this is nice.’ Silva leaned back in her chair. Below the terrace a large area of lawn led down to the lake. There was a boathouse at one end and a small island in the centre. ‘Just think, I could have been delivering the mail to the good people of Plymouth instead of sitting here getting bored.’
‘When were you last up?’
‘Must be a year ago. You’ve repaired the boathouse, I see.’
‘Repaired the boathouse, dredged and restocked the lake. A lot’s been done in the house too. You’ll see later.’
‘Later?’
‘You’re staying over.’
‘I am?’ Silva turned to look at the house. ‘You’ve hardly been in touch in the past few years and now you want to play happy families? I don’t think so.’
‘This isn’t about me, this is about you.’
‘I’m fine. I’m OK with where I live, OK with my job. I know you don’t think being a postie is any kind of living, but it’s risk free.’
‘You were never one to be scared. You got a commendation for bravery on your first tour.’
‘I’m not talking about what’s out there.’ Silva swept her arm and turned back to her father. She tapped her forehead. ‘I’m talking about what’s up here.’
‘It was an accident. They tend to happen in war. Nobody was to blame.’
‘Funny how you didn’t come to my defence at the time. “No comment” was all they could get out of you.’
‘I couldn’t be seen to question the chain of command, but now I’m retired from the Ministry I can speak the truth. You weren’t at fault.’
‘What is this, “kiss and make up” time? Has Mum’s death brought about a new sense of your own mortality? All of a sudden you feel responsible for your little baby?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Her father lowered his shoulders and shook his head.
Silva turned back to the lake. A rowing boat slipped into view from behind the island. A man sat in the boat, pulling slowly for a small jetty next to the boathouse. The boat slid across the lake and came alongside the jetty and the man climbed out. He was a similar age to her father, perhaps mid-sixties, with short grey hair. He wore a light-coloured suit at least one size too big. A floppy green hat which had seen better days sat on his head. He bent and lifted a fishing rod and a creel from the boat and walked across the lawn towards them.
He came up the steps to the terrace with a smile on his face. He dropped the fishing gear, removed the floppy hat, and made a small bow. The hat was adorned with a number of colourful feathers. Fishing flies.
‘Matthew Fairchild,’ he said, pulling a business card from a pocket and pressing it into her hand. ‘I am so pleased to meet you, Ms da Silva.’
‘You can call her Rebecca or Becky,’ her father said. ‘Plain Difficult once you’ve known her a while.’ He reached for the jug and began to pour the lemonade. ‘Any luck out there?’
‘Oh yes, a nice brace.’ Fairchild sat on a spare chair and bent and lifted the flap on the fishing creel. Two large rainbow trout lay inside. ‘Do you fish, Rebecca?’
‘No,’ Silva said.
‘You should learn. There’s a certain satisfaction to it. Choosing the correct fly, finding the lie, executing the perfect cast. You have to be patient though. Cast and cast again until the fish bites. Then you have him. Or her.’ Fairchild winked. ‘Once the fish is hooked all you have to do is reel the beauty in.’
Silva looked at Fairchild. Wondered if he was the sort of older guy who would make a play for a woman less than half his age. If that was his game he could forget it.
‘Who exactly are you, Mr Fairchild?’ Silva said. ‘More importantly, why has my father asked me here to meet you?’
‘She’s bright, Kenneth,’ Fairchild said, almost as if Silva wasn’t there. He closed the flap on the creel. ‘Very bright.’
‘No comment,’ Silva’s father said. ‘But don’t forget she was a minute late.’
‘It was a two-and-a-half-hour journey. A minute is less than one per cent. Such a small margin of error. We can overlook that, I’m sure.’
‘Who are “we”?’ Silva said.
‘Something has come up.’ Her father hunched forward and tapped his nose. Lowered his voice again. ‘Regarding your mother.’
‘Mum?’ Silva turned to Fairchild and back to her father. ‘Is this to do with the probate?’
‘Not exactly,’ Fairchild said. ‘I have a proposal for you, Rebecca.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ her father said. ‘This is work.’
‘If it’s a job offer, you can forget it. I’ve got a job.’
‘Not a real job. You’re a postman, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m not a postman, actually.’ Silva’s patience was wearing thin. Visiting had been a bad idea. ‘Although you’d probably be quite happy if I was. You’d have an heir then, wouldn’t you? A proper heir. A male heir.’
‘Should I leave you two for a while?’ Fairchild shifted in his seat. He bent to pick up the fishing rod. ‘You sound as if you need a few minutes to discuss things. Family matters. I quite understand, after all it’s been a distressing time for both of you.’
‘Nonsense.’ Silva’s father dismissed Fairchild’s suggestion. ‘Take her out on the boat, Matthew. Drop the mud weight overboard and don’t come back until it’s sorted.’
‘Rebecca?’ Fairchild shrugged. ‘Shall we try that? Just so you can hear me out?’
Silva looked from Fairchild to her father and back again. Sighed.
‘Whatever,’ she said.
After taking his enforced break, Holm returned to work to find his new role meant a shift to a different office. The place was a tiny box room under a staircase. A couple of computers sat on what appeared to be desks from a school classroom, and a brown filing cabinet stood sandwiched between them. The two office chairs had seen better days and the single telephone was so ancient it looked like it was made of Bakelite and had come from the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. There was, Holm noted with some dismay, no window.
He went over to the filing cabinet and pulled open one of the drawers. It was empty aside from a solitary typed index card that bore a reference to the IRA and Bobby Sands. Holm left the card where it was and slid the drawer shut. The events mentioned were from before his time in MI5, before his spell in Special Branch. He’d been a mere PC on the beat back when the Northern Ireland conflict had been at its height, but there was something appropriate about the card being in the drawer, him being in this room. Time had moved on and what was once relevant became nothing more than rubbish. Or, in these days of heightened concern for the environment, was slipped into the recycling bin. That was it, Holm thought. He was a product that had come to the end of its useful life and Huxtable had decided to send him off to the shredder to be pulped.
He moved across to one of the chairs and sat. To be fair to Huxtable, at least she hadn’t pushed him out the door. He’d been given a chance to make amends, to work out the final couple of years he had left, to earn the right to leave without a cloud hanging over him. Holm adjusted the position of one of the computer monitors, and as he did so he thought about his new role. Basically she’d given him free rein, with the only instruction being to stay well clear of current operations. That meant he was to focus on areas other than Islamist extremism. Taher was strictly off-limits.
Which left what? Huxtable said she wanted weekly updates, but Holm knew he only had to fill a few sheets of paper with bullet points and wave them under her nose. The whole exercise was something of a charade, just a way to employ him until he could get his full pension, perhaps a means of keeping him sweet so he didn’t make trouble. Yes, that had to be the truth of it. When you knew where the bodies were buried everybody was either your very best friend or your most hated sworn enemy. He’d worked for the intelligence services for long enough to realise nothing was ever quite as it seemed, but what Huxtable’s ulterior motive might be didn’t really concern him.
He was contemplating the fact there were two desks, two chairs and two computers when there was a rap on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Farakh Javed breezed in.
‘Morning, boss.’ Javed held a sheet of A4 paper in his right hand, in his left a cardboard tray with two coffees in disposable cups. He put the tray down on one of the desks and passed the piece of paper to Holm. ‘A privilege to be involved.’
‘You’re not…?’ Holm’s mouth dropped open as Javed slipped into the spare chair and gave it an experimental swing back and forth. Any thought Holm had entertained about being able to sit in his office doing nothing except listen to a jazz CD or read a book had gone out the window. The non-existent window.
‘This isn’t funny though,’ Javed said, gesturing at the piece of paper. ‘It was stuck to the door. If I was the sensitive type I’d be taking it to my line manager and calling it harassment.’
Holm glanced down at the text written in felt tip: The Top Top Top Secret Department. Somebody’s idea of a joke at his expense. Holm looked back at Javed. Another joke. This time, though, it could only have been played by Huxtable. He suppressed a groan.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Javed lifted the lid of his coffee and slurped. He turned his head as if he was only just noticing the spartan conditions. ‘What the heck did poor Farakh do to deserve this?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I guess I was guilty by association. Still, I seem to be the only one, huh?’
‘There’s isn’t room for anyone else.’
‘Right.’ Javed took another slurp and then put the cup down, pulled out a pair of nail clippers and began to trim his nails. Holm could see he was going to have to set some ground rules. Javed smiled across at him. It was a smile that would have made the fairest maiden swoon into his arms. A trick played by Mother Nature because those fair maidens didn’t stand a chance with the boy. ‘So, what’s the story? The only thing Spiderwoman told me was this was a special unit and we’d be operating with a wide brief. Sounds like a whole lot of fun, yes?’
‘Fun?’ Holm spat out the word. Farakh wasn’t to blame, but Holm had the beginnings of a headache brought on by the lack of natural light and decent ventilation. ‘Are you fucking joking?’