Authors: Alan Judd
‘I don’t. Judging by the books and magazines in the office upstairs, he maintained his scientific interests. Three expensive-looking computers, too. He used to be keen on
chess.’ He did not add that one computer was still on and that he had touched it to see what was on screen, finding a chess game. Possibly with his brother. They could discover that for
themselves.
‘Spent some time up there, did you?’ asked the man.
‘Enough to make sure there were no assassins behind the curtains. Blinds, actually, in that room.’ He paused as they scribbled. Their mingled interest and resentment were palpable.
‘No photographs, though. No indications of family.’ He couldn’t remember how many children had resulted from Viktor’s marriage and liaisons. Plainly, he hadn’t wanted
to advertise them in his new life. ‘But it’s clear he continued to enjoy classical music, particularly choral. Also flora and fauna, especially birds. Apart from those, the few
paintings are copies of landscapes and seascapes. No portraits. Smoked cigarettes and cigars, as you can see.’ He nodded at the ashtrays on the table and mantelpiece. ‘A bit of a loner,
perhaps, but not a hermit.’
The inspector stopped taking notes. ‘Kind of you to give us your impressions, Mr Thoroughgood, but we have to judge by the evidence.’
He smiled, which he could see irritated her. ‘My inferences – which is what I call them – are evidence-based. But you’re right: I shouldn’t romanticise or
incorporate what I knew of him from years ago. You must draw your own conclusions.’
Her pale blue eyes were flat, lacking depth or expression. ‘We will need to speak to you again. We’ll want a more formal statement. We might also need to speak to your wife, who you
say is at the cottage you’re renting.’
‘Who is at the cottage we’re renting.’
‘We’d also like to walk you round the house so you can show us where you went, if we can fix that with the forensics team.’
‘Just to eliminate you from our inquiries,’ added the man, with an attempt at menace.
It took time to fix. Charles stood in the doorway and was reprimanded by a man in white overalls when he put a foot into the hall. There were more police and vehicles now, including a senior
uniformed officer who stared disapprovingly at him while listening to the inspector. Eventually the officer nodded, more white overalls were unloaded from the van and the younger detective brought
some over to Charles.
‘We can tour the house if we all wear these. Trouble is, we’ll have to wait till they’ve finished with the first few steps of the stairs. Covered in bits.’
‘There are other stairs off the kitchen.’
‘Two lots of stairs?’
‘Servants’ stairs.’
They put on their thin but voluminous white suits in silence. Charles led them around the tangle of lights and wires in the hall. Three more white suits were kneeling over the corpse, concealing
all but Viktor’s splayed legs and hands. He remembered those hands from long ago, deftly disarming the booby-trapped Russian arms cache by the Suffolk coast. Viktor’s slippers were
leather-soled, probably Church’s. Neither the young student he had first known nor, later, the young KGB officer, had such tastes. Viktor must have changed as he had prospered, firstly under
communism, then under the cronyism that replaced it. But not everything about him had changed, judging by what Michael Dunton had said. His appetite for women was what had first brought him and
Charles into professional association, when Viktor’s rule-breaking made him a target for recruitment. His appetite had lasted, apparently. Neither had any conception of where that first dance
would lead; certainly not to this.
Charles showed them how far he went into each room, indicating anything he might have touched, including the computer. ‘No sign of theft. No hasty searching or ransacking.’
‘We don’t know nothing’s missing,’ said the inspector.
‘True, but if anything is missing the murderer must have known exactly where to find it. He didn’t need to search.’
The younger one made a note, the inspector said nothing. Only in the study room did their expressions betray interest. ‘Jesus,’ said the man, gazing at the bank of screens and
computers.
A smaller room opening off was panelled with oak and furnished with bookshelves, a leather-topped desk and a wooden swivel chair, in contrast to the high-tech study.
‘Lot of computer analysis for us here,’ said the man, after glancing without interest at the scientific journals and well-worn leather address book on the desk.
Charles pointed at the address book. ‘Worth looking at that, isn’t it?’ It might include Viktor’s Office contact number, unless he kept that on his phone. That would lead
them to the truth about him, if they weren’t briefed first.
‘We’ll bag everything up,’ said the inspector. ‘Examine everything.’ They went back to the study, staring at the screens and keyboards.
Charles unzipped the front of his suit. They looked at him as if he were about to pull a gun. ‘Just ringing my wife again.’ There was still a pleasing novelty about the phrase. He
dangled the phone between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Letting her know how things are going, how long I’m likely to be, find out when we’re due out for dinner. Okay?’ Sarah
already knew what had happened because he’d rung her immediately after ringing the police.
‘We may need to examine that phone,’ the inspector said when he’d finished. ‘And your car before you go.’
He proffered the phone. ‘Take it.’
‘Just give us the number for the time being.’
‘Not much of a call history. It’s my work phone. I haven’t had it long.’
‘What is your work?’
‘I’m the head of the secret service. Chief of MI6.’
She stared. ‘Perhaps you’d like to show us which other rooms you went in, sir.’
When they had finished the tour, his white suit was bagged and numbered and they followed him out to Sarah’s car. He held out the keys. ‘D’you want to search it?’
‘Just open up, sir, if you don’t mind.’
‘Sawn-off shotguns in the boot?’
This time the inspector almost smiled but her assistant cocked his head on one side. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, sir, what makes you think it was a sawn-off shotgun that did
it?’
Obliteration of face, disintegration of head, wide-open throat and ravaged shoulders suggest a close-range blast of lead or metal rather than bullets, he could have said. No pistol would do that
sort of damage, nor an AK47 unless held and squirted like a hose for some time. A full-length shotgun would have produced a more concentrated blast.
‘I watch too many films.’
They conducted a cursory search of the Golf and spent rather more time examining its tyres. ‘Nearside front’s a bit worn,’ said the man.
‘Thank you. I’ll tell her.’
There was further delay while they moved the police vehicles blocking him in. The inspector repeated that they would want to talk to him again, adding, ‘I must ask you not to discuss this
incident with anyone else including your wife who we might want to interview later.’
‘Of course not,’ he lied.
He waved goodbye to the young constable in charge of the blue-and-white tape and drove back through Bodiam, past the castle and over the restored steam-train line to Tenterden. He drove slowly
through the clear evening with a fading blue sky and high white puffy clouds. The car park by the castle was emptying, except for a couple of families lingering by the moat. He was trying to recall
Auden’s poem about Icarus plunging earthwards while a ship sails by, someone opens a window, someone else eats. Whatever happens, the lives of others go on. But without Viktor now. How could
they have got to him? Someone must have access to Office systems, or access to someone who did. And the only people with an interest in killing Viktor were surely his former employers. They would
have done it if they could – Putin had enacted a law during his first presidency legitimising the assassination of any who had offended the state – but they didn’t know Viktor was
here. They couldn’t, surely. Nor did anyone else in MI6 now, apart from him. Only the members of COFE had access to that address, and perhaps one or two who worked for them. Meanwhile,
Viktor, like Icarus, was falling and falling inside Charles’s head, while the lives of others went on.
T
hey were late for the Wheelers’ dinner. Sarah’s car was low on fuel and there wasn’t time to fill up. Charles wasn’t sure
there’d be enough fuel to get back to the hotel and to a filling station in the morning. He had suggested they refill before leaving London but she hadn’t stopped. She sensed he was
suppressing criticism, which was almost as irritating as if he had kept on about it. Neither felt like going to a dinner party, each sensed they were unreasonable, neither wanted to say anything
about it. They walked up the path to the Old Court House in silence.
‘Not carrying, are you?’ Jeremy Wheeler asked in a whisper, keeping Charles in the hall while Wendy showed Sarah in.
Charles hadn’t heard the old euphemism for years. Before he could reply, Jeremy slapped him on the shoulder and grinned.
‘Just wondered whether your new status involved self-protection in these hazardous times. Didn’t really think you were likely to be armed. How’s it going? Feet under the desk
yet?’
‘One of them. Enjoying your new status?’
‘Should’ve done it years ago. So refreshing to be able to do something for people instead of messing around playing spy games. Something grown-up at last. Glad I’ve left all
that behind.’ Jeremy’s gift for gratuitous offence had not lessened with the years. Nor was it inhibited by any recollection of how hard he had striven to stay in the Office. He had put
himself forward as chief before becoming a casualty of the reorganisation, failed, then resigned to stand for a safe seat in a by-election. ‘Not sure the way government’s going is to my
taste. Never was one for compromise, as you know. Main task for now is to stop them cutting more than they have already. Unless of course I’m invited onto the ministerial ladder. Getting on
the ISC to keep you lot in order is a start. Could happen, could well happen.’ He nodded as if agreeing with something Charles had said. ‘Frank Heathfield had political ambitions, too,
did you know that? Somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan, of course. Never got a seat, so never got to the first rung. Too late now. You’d heard, had you?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Dead, found dead, at his home in Hampshire. Heart attack, I suppose. Not surprised. Did well to last as long as he did. Heavy smoker, of course.’
Charles remembered that Jeremy was always uncomfortable about death until he found a way to blame the victim. ‘How did you hear?’
‘One of the perks of being on the ISC. Plenty to read. You’d know too if you’d checked your office computer recently.’ He patted Charles’s shoulder again.
‘Come and be introduced.’
Being late, they felt obliged to be effusive. They were introduced to a couple who turned out not to be a couple, the headmistress of a local private school and the widowed chairman of
Jeremy’s constituency party. Charles took to the headmistress, who had a round, good-natured face and seemed anxious to put people at their ease by taking an interest in anything that
interested them. The constituency chairman, a short square man, began telling Sarah about his achievements as a county councillor. The others, who were a couple, comprised a tall man with a paunch
who turned out to be the senior partner of the estate agency dealing with Jeremy’s cottage, and his wife, a thin and anxious-looking woman who seemed content to say nothing. Wendy Wheeler
appeared between intervals in the kitchen, managing a couple of sentences each time before disappearing without waiting for the answer. She had darkened her hair since Charles had last met her and
this, with bright red lipstick and her taut, tanned face, made her look slightly overdone. But she was attractive and every time he met her he had to remind himself that there was no reason why
Jeremy should not have an attractive wife.
Through long habit of not talking about what he did, he found himself asking the headmistress about the charitable status of private schools. His thoughts, though, were on Frank Heathfield.
Frank had been on his mind because of the connection with Peter Tew and his interrogation. He had always liked him for his cheerful and unpretentious practicality. There was little of Genghis Khan
about him, despite what Jeremy said. Matthew Abrahams had died over a year ago, and now Frank. That left Charles as the sole survivor of the Tew investigation, apart from Peter himself. Even
Viktor, whose information had provoked it, was gone. Charles was becoming history.
He felt he ought to rescue Sarah but the headmistress was asking about their new house. He could guess from the angle of Sarah’s head the feigned attentiveness that overlaid her
exasperation and boredom as she endured the monologue. He caught a phrase about the old rate support grant compared with the iniquities of the new system. It was the other couple, Rodney and
Elspeth, who came to the rescue by describing to Jeremy and – intermittently – Wendy the adventures of their journey.
‘We would have come along the lane through Bodiam but it was closed by the police so we had to go all the way back and come down the A229 where there was an accident which held us up for
ages. Police everywhere tonight.’
Everyone agreed that everyone drove too fast on the A229. It crossed the county border and the constituency chairman described the difficulty he had had in negotiating a speed limit on part of
it. Charles said nothing about why the lane to Bodiam might be closed. Police would now be ‘combing’ – as the press would inevitably put it – the area for clues. They
wouldn’t find anything, if the killing was what he thought.
‘Maybe it’s because of the body they’ve found,’ said Elspeth, her small tinkling voice cutting across the chairman in a rush of words as if released under pressure.
Jeremy’s eyebrows arched. ‘A body in Bodiam?’
‘Yes, at the house at the Sandhurst end of the lane. You can’t really see it from the road, the old rectory I think it was, at least it looked like it on the South East news.’
Wide-eyed, she darted looks at everyone as if fearing attack.