Chapter Six
Ros and Chen were waiting for the lift when Ros heard her name being called and turned to see Lucas running towards them. She tossed the car keys to the young Chinese.
"Dark blue Volvo, GVC 267X. I'll be down in a sec."
"OK!" He disappeared into the lift. Ros turned towards Lucas.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. Nothing, I just wanted to say good luck."
Ros rolled her eyes. "I'm interviewing a government bureaucrat, Lucas. The main risk in that is death by drivel. And the only thing likely to be fired is a verbal broadside."
"Yeah, I know, but -" he stopped as two officers emerged from the lift, and waited until they were a safe distance away. "Just watch yourself, will you? Please?" He stroked a stray strand of hair from her face, and his fingers lingered on her skin. "For my sake if not for yours."
Ros sighed inwardly. She had made it clear to Lucas, more than once, that their feelings for each other – even if she still wasn't sure what they were – must not interfere with work. Adam had understood that instinctively, and it was a principle to which he and she had adhered strictly – including at that final meeting that, even now, Ros shied away from remembering. Lucas did his best, she'd give him that, but the common sense in his head was always at risk of losing out to the sentimentality in his heart. She didn't want to upset him; his compassion and his ability to empathise made people trust him, an enormous asset in this job. Lidiya Akayeva would never bare her soul to her, and Ros knew that she couldn't have charmed the publican's wife in Eton Wick, either. Hell, she herself had been seduced by Lucas's kindness and understanding, even as she despised herself for succumbing to them. But her tolerance didn't – couldn't – extend to his trying to wrap her in cotton wool while they were on duty. She wasn't about to spend the rest of her career providing him with redemption for Sarah Caulfield, Maya Lahan and any other woman in his life for whom he hadn't been able to play Sir Galahad in time – not even if he had saved her life the previous night.
"If Sir Roger throws a hissy fit, I'll duck," she said dryly. "All right?" The hurt in his eyes told her that her flippancy had missed its target. She snatched a quick look in both directions. The corridor was clear. "Lucas." She relented enough to give his hand a quick squeeze. "We agreed. Remember?"
He had the grace to look abashed. "Yeah. Sorry."
"I should think so." Ros stabbed at the lift button. "You watch out for Miss Maracas 2012." The doors hissed open. She hesitated. "I haven't eaten Indian for ages. That safe house reminded me. Come over tonight, we can get a takeaway."
She carried the smile her suggestion produced down into the cavernous gloom of the garage and joined Chen Liu in the car, wondering what route to take. At this time of day, getting to Kensington could be an Olympic marathon all by itself.
"Which way, Ros?" Chen asked, as she was pondering the question.
Ros turned onto the Embankment and glared at him. "Inspector Drummond," she snapped. "You do remember what they taught you about working under cover?"
Chen cringed. "Well, yes, but I thought – when we get there -"
"No!" Ros checked her watch. "The instant Ruth gave us those ID cards you became D.C. Tang and I D.I. Drummond. You think him, you breathe him, you are him. If Sir Roger Pemberton gets the slightest suspicion that we are not who we say we are, then the shit will hit the fan big time and I shall personally make sure you're standing right in front of it. Understood?" He nodded mutely. "Good." She changed lanes as they passed the bottom of Battersea Bridge and indicated a right turn. "When we get there, I'll ask you to take notes, so you'll need a notepad."
Chen smiled happily, and held up a bag. "I thought of that. I brought my iPad."
Ros swallowed down an intense desire to remove her hands from the steering wheel and fasten them around his throat.
"Not an iPad. A notepad," she said through clenched teeth. " Made of paper. Didn't your ancestors invent the bloody stuff? How many provincial detectives take statements on an iPad, D.C. Tang?" His face fell. "There's one in my bag." She turned away from the river and headed north for Brompton. "I'll do the talking. Your job is to take notes, and to watch him. Discreetly. Observation, not staring. Watch his reactions and note his movements, his eyes, his expression; any sign of nervousness, fear, or that he's lying." God, I wish Lucas was here. He would have done all of this automatically without needing to be instructed. This was like trying to walk a bloody tightrope with a toddler in tow. "Any questions?"
The young Chinese shook his head, and Ros had the uncomfortable impression that even if he'd had a bucketful, his fear of her reaction would probably prevent him from asking them. Done it again, Myers. Lucas could have done this better, too. All the junior officers enjoyed working with him – almost as much as they dreaded being sent on an operation with her. Most of them knew her reputation and admired her work in the field; few of them wanted to do it with her. No bloody wonder. She wasn't going to get the best out of Chen by frightening him to death.
She made an effort. "Good. You got the best marks in your intake. You'll be fine." The words sounded awkward, but Chen's face brightened visibly. With some difficulty Ros found a semi-legal parking spot, and they headed for the gracious Victorian red brick building in Collingham Gardens where Sir Roger Pemberton lived. Ros briskly announced herself to the strongly accented voice that squawked out of the intercom, and led the way up a wide spiral staircase to the second floor.
"Wow." Chen sounded impressed as he looked around him. "You ever been in a place like this before, Guv?"
Yes. My family – my ex-family - used to live in one. "Only on official business, Constable." The maid who had answered the intercom was waiting in the open doorway in full black and white regalia. Ros showed Alice Drummond's police ID, introduced D.C. Tang and followed her into the flat, where the maid relieved them of their coats and showed them into Sir Roger Pemberton's study. The man examined their credentials, scrutinised them both and then enquired: "You won't object if I confirm your visit with the Chief Constable?"
"Of course not." Ros smiled pleasantly, hoping that Ruth's briefing to the CC in Berkshire had included a full physical description of his 'officers'. She used the wait to examine both the room and Roger Pemberton. The former was familiar - too familiar. It was neat, conservatively furnished, and filled with books; she could have been back in her father's own study, and the similarity made her throat tighten. There were four different photographs of Alex Pemberton, one with his parents at what looked like his graduation, one taken somewhere in a high mountain range, and two at regattas, one with a group of other rowers, the other with his father.
She smiled at the man as he hung up the phone.
"You have a lovely home, Sir Roger."
His face was stony. "And a well-protected one. Unlike my son's, it appears. Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me exactly what happened there yesterday?"
The intimidating arrogance rang a few bells, too. Ros's normal reaction to it would have been a snapped, sarcastic put-down. Alice Drummond nodded understandingly. "Of course, sir. And then we'd like to ask a few questions, if you wouldn't mind?"
His expression made it crystal-clear that he most emphatically did, but he sat down, and lit a cigarette as Ros smoothly regurgitated exactly the version that Ruth and Khalida that agreed upon – the one neatly pruned of all the information that only MI-5's 'burglars' could have known.
"A stunning display of incompetence," he said scathingly. "I assume you've spoken to this … poacher?"
"He's been interviewed, sir." Ros looked apologetic. "I'm afraid he couldn't help us much. Naturally enough, his main concern was to get away from there." She made a first gentle probe. "Obviously we're very eager to speak to your son, but we haven't been able to reach him; his mobile isn't responding, and there was no sign of him at the cottage. We assumed he might be away?"
Pemberton drew hard on his cigarette and exhaled a literal smokescreen. Ros waited for the verbal one.
"I haven't heard from Alex since the end of the Olympics, Inspector. He doesn't make a daily report to me on his whereabouts."
"No, of course not." She smiled understandingly. "But you are in regular touch with him?" When Pemberton favoured her with nothing more than a disdainful look, she prodded: "I suppose I'm asking if it's unusual for you not to speak to him for a week or so."
"Is it 'unusual' for any father not to speak to an offspring in his thirties for a week or so, Inspector?"
No. Some of them keep it up for five years or more. Ros watched him. "So you wouldn't have any idea how we could get in touch with him at the moment?"
Pemberton shook his head with apparent indifference. "Try his team-mates." A note of scorn crept into his voice. "Or his Facebook page. His Twitter account. Isn't that how people communicate – if that's what you call it – these days?"
Ros produced another slight smile. "We'll do that, of course. Has he a girlfriend, do you know? Might he be with her?" Pemberton's eyes narrowed. "In the course of our local enquiries a name cropped up … Dominique? No surname, I'm afraid."
The reply was contemptuous. "I'm not au fait with the intimate details of my son's private life, Inspector. I imagine the tabloids could give you more, although I fail to see why you need them. I thought you were investigating a burglary, not my son."
Out of the corner of her eye, Ros saw Chen glancing towards her, and smoothly changed her tack. Pemberton was being deliberately obstructive. He clearly wasn't going to divulge anything, or admit that he was concerned about Alex's lack of communication, and she dared not arouse his suspicions that she knew about his describing him as 'missing' to his political masters.
"We are, sir. In any burglary our first move is to contact the householder and see if they have any idea why they might have been the target. "
"Alex's cottage is full of trophies, for a start," Pemberton said, contemptuously.
"Yes, it looks as if one or two of them have been stolen," Ros said calmly. "His desk had been rifled, too, and we think a laptop has been taken. Perhaps other personal items as well."
That produced the first visible reaction other than contempt; just for a fraction of a second, alarm flashed across Sir Roger Pemberton's face.
"And that's all you know? No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing?"
"Forensics teams are still working at the crime scene," Ros answered. "So far it looks like a standard break-in, sir … or it would do, were it not for the burglars being armed, and clearly ready to use their weapons."
Sir Roger Pemberton snorted. "You surely can't be as naïve as you sound, Inspector. Thanks to incompetent policing, our newspapers are full of gun crime every day."
"Yes, sir." Ros felt it was time to hit back. "In Brixton or Birmingham, perhaps. But not in Eton Wick. I'm afraid that suggests that there may be more to this than a simple burglary - possibly an attempt to kidnap your son, possibly an attempt on his life. We do urgently need to locate Alexander, not only to interview him, but to be assured that he's safe and unharmed. " She smiled tightly as she let that sink in, then circled back to her starting point. "Do you have any idea at all where he might be – whether he perhaps intended to go away for some R&R perhaps, after the Olympics, travel, visit friends, anything of that kind?"
Sir Roger Pemberton crushed out his cigarette and got to his feet. Chen Liu made to get up too, but Ros remained resolutely seated. We'll finish this interview when I'm good and ready.
"I have already told you, Inspector Drummond, that I do not know my son's current whereabouts, and I seriously object to your insinuation that I am withholding information from you." Pemberton's mobile buzzed and skittered a few inches across his desk. He glanced at the screen, snapped the phone off, then reached behind him and took his overcoat from a carved oak stand. Ros didn't move.
"I'm sorry to cause offence, sir. But your son is a very well-known and recognisable face at the moment, which makes this a rather worrying situation. We'd like to clear it up as soon as possible."
Pemberton glared. "Then I suggest, Inspector Drummond, that you get back to Berkshire and do something useful to that end. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."
Ros held his challenging look just long enough to see him begin to look not angry, as his attitude suggested he should have done, but uncomfortable. "Of course." She nodded to Chen, and the two of them rose. Chen dropped his notebook, apologised, and stooped to pick it up. As he straightened, he smiled at Pemberton and gestured towards the photograph of Alex in the mountains.
"The Andes," he said. "Lovely. Been there myself."
Pemberton tutted in disdain. "Then they clearly didn't make much of an impression on you, Constable. Those are the – not the Andes."
"Oh." Chen sounded crestfallen. He peered closer. "I could have sworn - "
"Constable Tang!" As he looked round, Ros flicked her hand imperiously towards the door and followed him. "I do apologise, Sir Roger." She held out a small card with her name and telephone number written on it. "If you should hear from Alexander or manage to reach him, I'd be grateful if you could call us immediately. And the Chief Constable has asked me to assure you that we will keep you informed about the progress of the investigation."
"If there is any." Pemberton took the card and dropped it carelessly into the tray of pens and pencils on his desk. He pulled on his overcoat, picked up a briefcase, and led the way out of the room. "Good afternoon, Inspector. Victoria will show you out."
Ros extended her hand, and pointedly avoided thanking him for his assistance – if you could call it that. Under cover or not, she was only ready to take deference so far. They waited while Pemberton snapped orders to the maid, and then retrieved their coats as he walked rapidly out and down the stairs, not even bothering to glance back to assure himself that they'd left. Ros pulled her raincoat back on, watching him hurry down the spiral staircase. He was almost running. Either he had a really important meeting, or something had spooked him very badly. Growing up in Jocelyn Myers's household, Ros considered herself something of an expert in the behaviour of powerful men, and she was sure that Pemberton's display of scornful arrogance hid a fear he wasn't about to share with her. You're hiding something.
She tied the belt of her raincoat impatiently into a knot and turned to Chen, only to find him wittering away in what she presumed was Chinese to the little Asian maid. Ruth could probably have identified the dialect, and given her a quick lesson in its grammatical structure too, but it reminded Ros of the noise her cassette tapes used to make when her old machine chewed them up. The maid's twittering was punctuated with high-pitched giggles that stopped abruptly when she looked daggers at them.
"Constable Tang, so sorry to interrupt your conversation - " she inclined her head towards the stairs.
"Coming, Guv." Chen didn't look abashed by her sarcasm, as she'd expected. "Just a quick chin-wag. Give me a sec?" He had deliberately exaggerated his Scouse accent, which the maid was unlikely to understand, and his eyes were gleaming in a way Ros recognised. Adam had said that her eyes turned greener and glowed like a cat's in the dark when she was what he described as 'on the scent'.
"Downstairs in three minutes or I'm leaving without you," she snapped. Once outside, she phoned Harry and swiftly reported the essence of their interview with Sir Roger Pemberton. Harry grunted, but before she could go into details of her feelings about it, he said tersely: "When you get here, Ros. Quick as you can. We've got some news, and I need to brief everyone. Have you heard from Lucas?"
Ros frowned – should I have done? - and checked her messages. "No, why?"
"Don't know. He's off comms; not answering his mobile." Harry sounded strained, and Ros tensed. The last time Lucas had developed a habit of going off comms, it had been the prelude to Boliviagate. Since then he had been so punctilious about observing every dot and comma of ops protocol that doing so again now suggested that something might have gone seriously wrong. With a teenage gymnast? "We'll keep trying. Get back here, Ros."
She flicked the phone off just as Chen emerged from the building and trotted down the street to join her. They got into the car and Ros pulled away. "Well?"
Chen polished his glasses on his sweater – a ritual that often preceded a bright idea, or the revelation of important information.
"That photo," he said eagerly. "The one he said wasn't the Andes."
"The one you dropped your notebook accidentally on purpose to have a good look at." Ros smiled. She too had noted Pemberton's sudden change of phrase. He had told them where it wasn't, but had quickly prevented himself telling them where it was.
"Yeah. It's the Khyber Pass," Chen said triumphantly. "My cousin went there; took a photo not fifty feet from where Pemberton's standing."
Ros didn't ask if he was sure; his voice rang with certainty. "Well done." She added thoughtfully, "He didn't seem too worried about his son for a man who cancelled a crucial political briefing because he'd 'disappeared', did he?"
The young Chinese nodded emphatically. "I think he's lying, Guv – I mean, Ros." She couldn't help laughing. "But I'm not sure what about. Either the indifference is a front, or he was lying in the first place when he said Alex had disappeared."
Ros looked at him with surprise and respect. The latter was something she hadn't considered, but now he mentioned it, it was perfectly feasible.
"Why do you think he might do that?" she asked.
Chen frowned in thought. "Maybe trying to distract attention from something he knows Alex is involved in. Or … or maybe covering up for something he's up to. His 'worry' about Alex's 'disappearance' could explain inconsistencies in his own behaviour?"
Ros nodded slowly. She had been right about Chen Liu; he had intelligence, and he wasn't afraid to use his imagination. Again, what he suggested was quite plausible.
"He certainly believes in attack being the best form of defence," she said dryly. "And he seemed more worried about the computer than Alex, to me."
Chen nodded. "I noticed that, too. There must be something on it that he knows about. Wonder if Callum's found anything?"
"Harry said he's got news." As she said it, Ros remembered his comments about Lucas and glanced at her phone. Still no messages. "We'll soon find out." The sooner, the better. She turned onto the embankment, swung into the outside lane and put her foot down.
oOoOoOo
Harry hadn't been joking about news, she thought as the meeting progressed. The most substantial – and the most worrying - came from Callum Reed, who announced huffily that Alex Pemberton's computer had security on it more appropriate to Fort Knox than Eton Wick. He was still trying to get into some of his files; those that were more accessible were suspiciously anodyne. At any other time the obvious dent in Callum's professional ego would have made Ros smile; not now. Pemberton shouldn't even know of the existence of such programmes, never mind be using them. Benazir Ibrahim (one of Khalida's operational aliases) had received a phone call from a recently-visited asset in South London, urgently requesting a meet. She would see him the following day, taking with her some of the identikit photos of Asif Iqbal Mahmood that Callum's nagging had finally extracted from the specialists. In the meantime, she and Ruth were monitoring the movements and communications of the top five suspects on the Watchlist and their contacts.
That's something positive, at least. Ros reported their interview with Pemberton senior. Harry's face wrinkled in concern as he listened, but he gave an approving nod to Chen when Ros emphasised how well he had played his part.
"Good lad." He drummed his fingers restlessly on the file in front of him. " Timorous Towers notwithstanding, we need to dig deeper. I'm not convinced Sir Roger isn't into smoke and mirrors more than oil and gas."
"Harry?" It was Chen Liu. Ros made to stop him and then checked herself. Instead, she listened as Chen told Harry how he had chatted up Sir Roger Pemberton's maid and reckoned he could draw her out a bit further; she didn't like her employer much, and he thought she might spill some interesting beans to a sympathetic ear.
Harry glanced at Ros, who nodded. "OK. In character, and be careful; I don't want Sir Roger making complaints to the Berkshire force about their officer's immorality."
Chen smiled. "No problem. Strictly chow mein and cha, Harry."
Harry nodded abruptly. "Ruth?"
"As Khalida said, we're monitoring the watchlists, and extrapolating from incidents we've had in the past, I've got flags posted for the kind of terminology that sometimes means an alert." The analyst shook her head. "Nothing yet."
Good, Ros thought. If there weren't any. If the other side had changed their terminology, their modus operandi or the foot-soldiers they were intending to use, then very, very bad.
"One more thing," Ruth added, as Harry was about to move on. "Those letters you and Lucas found in Pemberton's cottage, Ros."
Ros shrugged. "Go on."
"They're all love letters. Quite … passionate ones, actually." Ruth coloured slightly as Harry's eyebrows shot up. "All to or from 'Dom', and written over the last two years or so."
Bloody Dominique again. "Any addresses?" Ros asked, although she was certain she knew what the answer would be. "Or a surname?"
"No," Ruth answered. Ros swore. "But posted from all over."
"Get hold of the Berkshire police," Harry ordered. "Last time I spoke to the CC their forensic teams weren't quite finished inside the cottage. They must be by now. If they haven't done it already, get them to check any fingerprints they've found against the data bases – all of them, criminal, anti-terrorist, DNA, the lot, and to look for that name. We have to find the bloody woman and talk to her." He glanced at the clock, and then to the empty chair that Lucas would normally have occupied. "Right, there's one more thing. Berkshire did have some information." He spoke directly to Ros. "They found a couple of the bullets. Two of yours. The other was from a Makarov 9 millimetre."
The silence hung thick in the air like ozone before a storm. Finally, Khalida ventured: "But Harry … the Russians' main small arms export was the Kalashnikov. They didn't sell the Makarov outside the USSR."
Harry Pearce nodded grimly. He spoke to her, but his eyes remained on Ros. "Precisely."
Ros closed her eyes for a second. She was beginning to feel like a fly trying to extricate itself from the web of a spider that was particularly talented at weaving.
"All right." She re-opened her eyes as Harry spoke again. "Callum, get back to that laptop. You'll be on overtime until you crack it. Use anyone you need to help. Ruth, get on the trail of this bloody girlfriend, and keep monitoring. Khalida too, and Khalida, if you have any other sources you can use, put them on alert. Chen, I suggest you get friendly with Sir Roger's daily pronto, but you do it very carefully and you stay in touch with Ros at all times. Get down to it, all of you. Ros," as chairs scraped back. "A word, please. I - " He stopped, and Ros followed his gaze as Lucas burst from the pods and sprinted towards Harry's office, scattering startled officers who dived out of his path. Harry rapped on the conference room window, and Lucas skidded to a halt, and abruptly changed direction.
"Where the hell have you been? And why have you been off comms?" Harry erupted. Everyone else froze. Lucas, who was panting and, Ros noticed uneasily, white-faced and sweating to boot, steadied himself on the back of a chair and tried to catch his breath.
"Harry, we - " he gratefully took a cup of water from Khalida and gulped it down. "News – Akayeva. We – we've got a - a very … serious problem."
Harry Pearce gave him a long stare, then waved the others back to their seats. He gestured Lucas to the seat he had vacated and closed the doors.
"Explain."
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