A Foreign Country

60

Less than two hundred metres away, secluded behind a screen of chestnut trees, Kevin Vigors saw CUCKOO running towards the house and immediately radioed through to Kell.

‘Serious problem,’ he said. ‘CUCKOO is coming back.’

‘What? Why?’

‘No idea. But get out of there. You’ve probably got less than a minute before he reaches the house.’

‘Can you stall him?’

‘He’ll smell a rat. Just get out of the bedroom.’

Kell was standing in the sitting room. He went into the kitchen, opened the bin, pulled out the contents and handed them to Barbara.

‘Get outside,’ he said, grabbing a pile of papers from the kitchen table, as well as Elsa and Harold’s shoes and a recipe book from the shelf above the Aga. He stuffed them into the bin liner until it was full. ‘Walk down the lane towards the Shand house. There are black dustbins between the two houses. CUCKOO is coming back. You’ll have to stall him or we won’t have time to clear out. Get him to help you with the bin.’

Barbara nodded but said nothing. She went to the door, walked up the stone steps towards the lane and headed slowly downhill in the direction of the Shand house. At the same time, Kell grabbed the vacuum cleaner from the sitting room and ran upstairs, holding it in his arms like an outsized child.

‘Get the fuck out of there right now,’ he called to Elsa and Harold, plugging the Hoover into a socket in the corridor. ‘Grab everything. We are going into Amelia’s room.’ He was scooping up one of the kitbags in the corridor. He heard Harold say: ‘Jesus fucking Christ’ and watched as he picked up the encoder and took it past him, down the passage. Harold then came back into CUCKOO’s bedroom and threw the rest of his hardware into a second bag that he slung over his shoulder and removed to the master bedroom.

Kell heard three clicks on the radio. CUCKOO was at the gate. In twenty seconds he would be opposite the Shand front door, in forty, at the back door of Amelia’s house.

Elsa, repeatedly whispering ‘Shit, shit’ in Italian, had shut down the DGSE laptop and was putting it back in the leather carrying case.

‘Hurry,’ Kell hissed at her, coiling loose cables into the third bag. He unplugged her computer from the mains and ushered her out of the room, bundling the bag into her arms. He left the Hoover in the corridor to make it look as though Barbara had been cleaning upstairs. ‘Go, go,’ he said.

CUCKOO’s bedroom was now empty. Kell checked the carpet. There was a small piece of yellow plastic beside the chest of drawers that he picked up and put in his pocket. There seemed to be a strong odour of work and sweat, but he could not decide whether the smell of Elsa’s perfume was in the room or in his memory. He opened the window, on the basis that Barbara could have done so, and ensured that the team had left no trace of themselves in the bathroom.

Two clicks on the radio. CUCKOO was passing the Shand house.

Kell looked out of the bathroom window and saw him coming. He turned, walked into the corridor, reached the landing, went into Amelia’s bedroom and closed the door.

It was only then that he realized they had not replaced the SIM in CUCKOO’s jeans.