A Colder War

23

Kell walked several metres away from the bar, down the quiet street.

‘Dead how?’

‘His body was spotted in the water by a local fisherman. They found his clothes, his wallet, on a beach near his home. Alcohol in his bloodstream off the charts.’

‘Drowned, then.’

‘Looks that way. Looks like suicide.’

Kell’s instinct told him that Christidis had been killed on the orders of Jim Chater. Chater knew that Kell had got to him. He knew that Christidis had secrets to spill. The engineer who had worked on Wallinger’s plane — had most probably tampered with it — needed to be taken out of the equation.

‘He leave a note?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

Kell could hear the indistinct thump of the Bar Bleu music receding into the distance. A taxi drove past him, braked, then accelerated away when Kell turned his back to the road.

‘Where are you?’

‘At the Embassy. I have a couple of good sources on Chios. One of them heard about Christidis on the island grapevine. Called me about half an hour ago.’

‘You need to fly—’

Haydock was ahead of him. ‘Already booked. I’m leaving Athens in about six hours. I’ll get over there, ask around, find out the whole story. Can I call you at lunchtime?’

‘Do that, yes. Get as much information about his state of mind as possible. Ask around the other airport engineers. Get into his house, his phones, get a drink with his friends. You’ll need money.’ Kell knew that he was preaching to the converted. Adam was SIS-trained to the eyeballs and would have done all of these things as a matter of course. But Kell was thorough and, in some sense that he could not precisely articulate or understand, keen to pass on tips and expertise to a junior officer, to a younger version of himself. ‘If there’s a suicide note, the police will have it. Other people will want to see it. You need to get there first. Get to the note before they do.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Adam sounded slightly daunted. ‘Who else is going to want to see it? You mean journalists?’

‘I’m not worried about journalists. You can pay them. I’m worried about Cousins. Tread carefully around the Yanks.’

Kell was distracted by something in his peripheral vision, someone coming down the street. He looked up and saw Rachel walking towards him, smoking a cigarette. He gestured towards her — an apologetic smile with a raised hand — and wished Haydock luck with his trip.

‘There’s something else, Tom.’

‘What?’

Rachel was now beside him, lovely in the pale cream light of the street. He gestured again, this time at the phone, as though the person calling him was wasting his time.

‘Fragments of CCTV came back from the restaurant.’

‘Fragments.’

‘The man sitting with Mr Wallinger. He has a beard.’

Kell looked at Rachel. He did not want to mention her father by name. He angled the phone closer to his mouth so that he would not be overheard.

‘We knew that, didn’t we?’

‘We did. The images are very poor. Indistinct.’

‘Has London seen them? Worked the pixels or whatever it is those guys do?’

Again Kell wondered if the bearded man in the Chios footage, sitting at the outdoor table with Wallinger, would turn out to be Jim Chater. Rachel had taken out her own phone and was checking the screen for messages.

‘There’s not much. London can’t get anything out of it,’ Adam said. ‘Only this.’

‘What?’

‘The table seems to be set for three.’

‘They’re sure about that?’ Rachel looked up from her phone. Listening to everything.

‘Three sets of knives, forks, napkins. Three wine glasses. A jacket on the back of a chair, Wallinger and the beard in the other two.’

‘Could have been beard’s jacket.’

‘It’s pink,’ Adam replied briskly.

‘Well, you never know. Nice weather. The Mediterranean. Certain men feel confident wearing pastels.’

Kell bounced his eyebrows at Rachel. Two more minutes. She indicated that there was no rush. Smiling at him as she did so, her lips reddened by lipstick. Kell felt the hum of the wine at dinner, the caipirinha, the inch and a half of vodka he had shot before leaving the hotel. Rachel’s calves, raised on the wedge heels, were tanned and sinuous, the belt of her black dress corset-tight around her waist. She was not slim or willowy like so many of the girls in the bar. She had curves, an hour-glass in jet black.

‘Anything else on the table?’

Adam seemed to appreciate his attention to detail.

‘Yes. Glad you mentioned that. I might have forgotten.’

A Porsche with diplomatic plates growled past, a bespoke-suited Mastroianni at the wheel, an impossibly beautiful girl beside him. Italian Embassy, Kell thought, and saw Rachel tracking the car with her eyes.

‘Forgotten what?’ he asked.

‘There’s a digital camera on the table in front of the jacket. Between the knife and fork. Silver, pocket-sized. Might belong to whoever was sitting there.’

‘But we have no idea who that was? There are no other angles on the CCTV? Security cameras on the dock? Another bar or shop, further along the promenade?’

‘I’m still looking.’

Sandor. Was Cecilia the owner of the pink jacket? But why would Paul have dealt his mistress into a meeting with Chater? Kell knew that he had to go to Croatia, to speak to her. To find out who else had been at the table with Wallinger. Let Amelia cope with the molehunt for now; she was the only one with the power to control what did and did not make its way to the Cousins.

‘Good luck,’ he told Adam, then pocketed the phone and crossed the street to talk to Rachel.