A Colder War

33

Kell became aware that there was a problem at Centonove when he saw a large group of people gathered on the pavement in front of the restaurant. The lights were out on the terrace and the tables overlooking the bay unoccupied. He stopped outside a beach shack bar and lit a cigarette, watching the crowd from a distance of about a hundred metres.

At first, it looked as though the kitchen had suffered a power shortage or gas leak, but then Kell saw two uniformed Croatian police officers emerging from the building, one of them speaking quietly into a walkie-talkie. There was no sign of Sandor. Kell assumed that she was indoors, dealing with the consequences of whatever burglary or petty crime had been committed at the restaurant.

Then he saw the paramedics. Two of them. Kell stubbed out the cigarette and walked further along the path. He could see that perhaps as many as thirty people had gathered outside Centonove, mostly local residents in shorts and T-shirts as well as a smattering of tourists dressed more smartly for dinner. The younger of the two policemen was trying to move the crowd away from the entrance, trying to suppress an atmosphere of panic or scandal. His older colleague was still talking into the radio. Glancing towards the bay, Kell saw a police boat moored beneath the terrace and assumed that the officers had come over from Dubrovnik. Whatever was going on inside the building had required mainland assistance. Somebody was badly injured, or worse.

Kell felt a sudden breeze against his legs as two small boys ran past him on either side, one of them clutching a football. They were talking excitedly in German, alerted by the crowds and by the scent of a story.

Movement in the first-floor window. A third paramedic in a crisp white uniform was walking around Sandor’s apartment. Kell kept his eye on the window and was staggered to see Lacoste standing to one side of the room, his face clouded by shock.

Kell knew then that Cecilia Sandor was dead. He felt the same dropped-stitch shock in his gut that he recalled from Istanbul when Haydock had called with the news that Iannis Christidis had drowned. This time, however, the natural opportunist in Kell recognized that Sandor’s death was the break he had been waiting for. If she had been murdered, who had killed her? The same people that had constructed the legend of a mistress mourning her dead lover? The intelligence service that had run Sandor against H/Ankara? It did not occur to Kell that she had taken her own life. One suicide on the same operation was a curiosity. Two was too much of a coincidence.

He approached a young couple standing in front of him. The man had the unmistakable late Empire self-confidence of an English ex-public schoolboy. With her careful hair and pastel skirt, his wife was straight out of Fulham.

‘You’re English?’ Kell asked.

‘We are.’ The woman had a single pearl earring clipped to each lobe.

‘What’s happened here?’

The man, who was no older than thirty, a young husband with a young wife, nodded out towards the water.

‘The manager,’ he said. ‘We heard that she’s been found dead.’

‘Found by who?’

‘Cops,’ he replied, as though he had found himself in his own television show.

Right on cue, the older of the two Croatian police officers emerged from the restaurant and began asking the crowds to move away. The tourists went first, then the locals, gradually leaving the scene to the paramedics and a handful of restaurant staff, including the bald waiter whom Kell had seen so many times in the preceding forty-eight hours. It turned out that the young couple were also staying at the Lafodia and had booked a table at Centonove. Under instructions from the police, they walked further into town in search of an alternative restaurant, nodding a quiet farewell.

Kell, too, was ushered from the scene and returned to the beach shack, where he lit a second cigarette and ordered a lager while continuing to watch the restaurant. News of Cecilia’s death had spread to the bar. The manager was a young Croat with erratic hair who spoke good English and answered Kell’s seemingly innocuous questions with a lazy nonchalance, clearly assuming that he was just another bored tourist trawling for titbits of gossip.

‘Had you known her for a long time?’

‘No. She keeps private. Bought the place three, maybe four years ago.’

‘She wasn’t from the island?’

A shake of the head.

‘And it was suicide?’

‘Sure. Apparently pills. Then she cuts …’ The barman’s vocabulary failed him. He was holding a glass and began to slash at his forearms, dragging the rim down to the wrist. ‘Opens up the skin. The artery, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Kell had known a boy at school kill himself by the same method. ‘In water?’ he asked, assuming that a black ops team had rendered Sandor unconscious and then manoeuvred her body into a bath.

‘Yeah.’

Whoever had wanted her dead had also wanted to create an impression of distress. A gunshot wound or poisoning would have left too many questions unanswered.

‘What about her boyfriend?’

‘Luka?’ The barman’s response was instant and confirmed that Sandor had been seeing Luka and Paul at the same time. The barman put the glass down. ‘I think he’s from Dubrovnik.’

Four teenagers had entered the shack, three of them smoking rolled-up cigarettes. The barman turned to serve them. Kell walked out on to the path and took another look at Centonove. The shutters on the kitchen window had now been closed and the younger policeman appeared to be standing guard outside the restaurant. Kell waited until the barman had poured out four drinks for the teenagers, then went back to his stool.

‘Seems much quieter now,’ he said, ordering a second drink. He paid and left the change for the barman, keeping him in the conversation.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Just a policeman standing guard outside. Poor guy.’

‘Who? The police?’

‘No, the boyfriend. What did you say his name was? Luka?’

‘Correct.’ The barman opened up a dishwasher packed with glasses and ducked under a cloud of steam. ‘He’s always in here. Maybe not so much any more, huh?’

‘No,’ Kell agreed, trying to sound sympathetic. ‘Did they run the restaurant together?’

‘No. Luka works in the city. Owns a record company. Reggae and hip-hop. You like that shit?’

‘Bob Marley, maybe Jimmy Cliff,’ Kell replied, knowing now that he could easily run Lacoste to ground. How many independent Croatian record labels were run by men named ‘Luka’?

‘Yeah, Marley man.’

And so it went on. By nine fifteen, Kell had established that Cecilia Sandor was an outsider, viewed with suspicion by many on the island; that she was often away from Lopud for extended periods; that she was considered to be wealthy; that Luka had left his wife and eight-year-old daughter to be with her, but had confessed one drunken night in the bar that Cecilia had turned down a proposal of marriage. Satisfied that he had garnered more than enough information, Kell shook the barman’s hand just before half-past nine and set out along the bay, passing Centonove in the hope of talking to the grieving Luka outside. But it was not to be. He exchanged a few words with the policeman, who spoke only rudimentary English (enough to confirm that the proprietor of the restaurant had ‘died sudden’) and was then moved on. Kell asked him if Luka was ‘OK’, to which he received a curt nod of the head. There was perhaps a small possibility that Sandor’s boyfriend would be arrested on suspicion of murder or, more likely, would soon accompany Cecilia’s body across the strait to Dubrovnik. Either way, Kell would advise Amelia to send Adam Haydock, or his equivalent from SIS Station in Zagreb, to obtain the full police and medical reports into the incident. His own work on the island was surely done.

It was only when he was in the passage outside his room, no more than ten minutes later, that he remembered the camera seen by Haydock on the CCTV in Chios. A silver digital camera, probably belonging to Cecilia, which might contain images of the bearded man at the outdoor restaurant. How could Kell have allowed himself to forget such a thing? True, given that Cecilia was a former intelligence officer, it was highly unlikely that she would have kept any compromising photographs in the camera’s memory. Nevertheless, Kell had a responsibility — to Amelia, if nobody else — to get into Sandor’s apartment and to try to obtain the camera.

He knew why he was reluctant to act. It was obvious. Things are very quiet and dull here without you. He wanted to be on a plane, in a cab, at the yali.

Kell stood in the passage outside his room. There was no realistic chance of getting into Sandor’s apartment that night, or even for the next few days. Let Haydock, let Elsa, let Zagreb deal with the camera.

Kell reached into his pocket for the keycard to his room, opened the door, switched on the lights and took two miniatures of Famous Grouse from the minibar. Within fifteen minutes he had filed a CX on Sandor’s death and sent it via encrypted telegram to London. He then opened up his private email account and wrote back to Rachel.

Leaving Berlin first thing tomorrow, back mid-afternoon. Cancel whatever plans you’ve made. Have dinner with me. x