Dead Line

TWENTY-FIVE

‘Remarkable,’ the consultant had said. You are very lucky, Miss Carlyle. You’re making a truly remarkable recovery.’

Liz wished she felt quite so remarkable now, as she sat drowsily in a deckchair in her mother’s garden at Bowerbridge on her fourth day out of hospital. She had wanted to go back to her flat, but Susan Carlyle wouldn’t hear of it. What Liz didn’t know was that Charles Wetherby had met Edward in London. The two men had liked each other immediately and Charles had been frank with Edward about his concern that Liz might still be at risk from whoever had attacked her. Edward had undertaken to keep a very close eye out for anything unusual around Bowerbridge and to contact Charles immediately if he had any anxieties. Now Susan sat knitting on a garden bench, watching Liz carefully, like a mother hen.

It was September now and the apples were swelling on the trees at the bottom of the lawn. The huge white flowers of a hydrangea paniculata were attracting heavy, slow-moving bees and the musky scent of an old-fashioned climbing rose was wafting down from a wall. Liz had been in the Whittington two weeks, though the first few days were not even a memory. Amazingly, she had not broken a single bone in her ‘accident’ – but she hadn’t escaped unscathed. Far from it: she’d had severe internal bleeding and, most ominously, a ruptured spleen. A quick-thinking paramedic had spotted that as she lay half-conscious in the ambulance. On arrival she had been whisked straight into emergency surgery. The consultant told her later that another ten minutes and she would not have made it.

So I shouldn’t complain, thought Liz, though even walking from the house to the garden still tired her. She’d realised for the first time that just because she was out of hospital, it didn’t mean she was well again.

In the first few days, between the lingering effects of the anaesthetic and the codeine-based painkillers, Liz had been entirely out of it. She’d sensed her mother’s presence, and in the background saw a man she dimly recognised as Edward Treglown. Once she could have sworn Charles had been sitting in the chair at the foot of her bed.

As she’d slowly come to, more visitors had arrived -Peggy Kinsolving, trying to act her usual positive, cheerful self, but more subdued than Liz had ever seen her. Flowers had arrived from Geoffrey Fane and, typically, a bottle of champagne from Bruno Mackay. Miles Brookhaven had sent flowers too, and Peggy said he’d rung twice to ask after Liz.

She had had ample time to think about what had happened to her. Her mind kept flashing back to the sight of the oncoming car as she’d turned around, but she could remember nothing after that. There was no doubt in her mind that she had been deliberately run down, but no one had come up with any clue as to who had done it, or why.

It would not have been easy to plan. Someone would have had to follow her to find out where she lived. How long had they been watching and waiting? She might easily have stayed that night in Harwich. Or taken her car to work instead of the Underground. Presumably they would have just come back another day. Liz fought back a shudder at the thought they might try again.

She couldn’t stop going over it all. It must be someone she’d encountered in the course of work. She reviewed what she’d been doing in the past few months, but nothing pointed to any explanation. Was it some kind of revenge attack? No doubt Neil Armitage, the scientist convicted of passing secrets to the Russians, in whose case she’d given evidence, nursed a massive grudge, but he was safely behind bars and in any case he didn’t know who she was.

Which left the Syrian Plot, as she was beginning to think of it, even though it had a dearth of suspects who might want Liz out of the way – only two, in fact: Chris Marcham and Sami Veshara; and possibly the Syrians.

Marcham had certainly been peculiar, and she had sensed there were secrets he didn’t want her to know. But not about Syria, which was her only real concern with the man. He seemed so chaotic (she thought of the mess in his house) that for him to engineer a carefully plotted murder seemed wildly improbable. He hadn’t got a motive and the means of doing it would be well beyond him.

That wasn’t true with Sami Veshara, whose respectable front as a food importer belied his involvement with an especially vicious trade. He’d be no stranger to violence, but unlike Marcham he wouldn’t have had the faintest idea Liz was investigating him. If he’d had someone watching out for the trawler, who had somehow witnessed its capture, and even spotted Liz, would Sami’s reaction really be to order a hit on her? Not within a few hours. It didn’t make sense. Especially since the minicab was already sitting on her street in Kentish Town when she got back from Essex.

What about the Syrians? How could they possibly know who she was and even if they did, why attack her?

Lying in hospital during her second week there, Liz had kept mulling all this over, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. When Charles came to see her in the second week, as she was just starting to feel human again, she’d tried raising it with him. But he had proved frustratingly elusive. ‘Let’s talk about that when you’re better,’ he’d said, over Liz’s protests that there was nothing wrong with her brain. Even Peggy couldn’t be drawn, and she’d avoided any serious talk about what was going on at Thames House in Liz’s absence.

She heard the front door bell and her mother sprang up, returning a moment later with Edward, who was carrying two bags of groceries. ‘I’ve brought you the papers.’ He waved copies of the Guardian and the Daily Mail.

‘Let me help you put things away,’ said Liz, standing up a little unsteadily.

‘You sit still,’ her mother commanded. ‘I’ll get you a nice cup of tea.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly all right,’ Liz snapped, knowing she wasn’t, but annoyed that people kept mollycoddling her. It was becoming intolerable.

‘That’s a very good sign,’ Edward interjected, coming out of the kitchen. ‘A cranky patient is usually a recovering patient.’

For a moment Liz felt furious – who was he to intervene? But there was such a twinkle in Edward’s eye that she couldn’t stay cross, and she found herself laughing, for the first time since the accident.

‘That’s better still,’ said Edward, and this time all three of them laughed. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said to Susan, and while he busied himself in the kitchen Liz looked at the newspapers.

Edward emerged holding a tray, with two mugs and a tumbler. ‘Susan,’ he said, handing her one of the mugs.

He handed the tumbler to Liz. ‘Very medicinal,’ he said. ‘Your mother says you prefer vodka, but I hope a hot toddy will do.’

She took a careful sip. Just what she needed. ‘Anything in the papers?’ Edward enquired, sitting down on the sofa next to Liz.

‘Just the usual. I see the Man in the Box has been identified.’

‘Who’s that?’ asked Susan.

Liz laughed. ‘Someone they found dead in a church, Mother. In a box, as I say.’ She glanced at the paper, interested that the police had finally decided to release the victim’s name. ‘He’s called Ledingham. I don’t suppose you knew him,’ she said with a smile.

Her mother smiled back. ‘I’m sure I didn’t.’

Liz looked at Edward, but he wasn’t smiling. ‘Did you say Ledingham? Is it by any chance Alexander Ledingham?’

Liz was slightly nonplussed. She looked at the article again. ‘That’s right.’

‘Could I?’ asked Edward, and reached out for the paper. He read the article quickly, then gave a small sigh. Liz said, ‘I’m awfully sorry for joking. Did you know him?’

Edward shook his head. ‘I met a man with that name several times.’ He reached for his drink and took a sip. ‘Oddly enough, it was in Kosovo. One of my duties was to liaise with the Serbian Orthodox in the area. They’d had an awfully rough time – the Albanian Muslims had burnt down many of the churches, and the clergy had really got it in the neck. Mind you, it was all dwarfed by Serbian atrocities, but it was unpleasant nonetheless.

‘One day I was told a journalist wanted to see me about it. His name was Marcham and he was out there for a newspaper.’ Liz tried not to react, and kept her eyes fixed on Edward. He went on, ‘I met him, and he seemed an intelligent chap, a bit eccentric perhaps – he seemed more interested in what had happened to the churches than to any people.

‘After that, I seemed to run into Marcham all the time. It was a bit like when you’re reading a book that mentions something obscure, like fishing in Iceland, and after that “fishing in Iceland” seems to crop up in everything you read.

‘Marcham often had a much younger chap with him -a sort of sidekick, if you will. At one point, Marcham introduced me. He said, “This is Alex Ledingham,” and I remember wondering if the fellow was his partner.’

‘You mean journalist partner?’

Edward shook his head with a smile. ‘No. We weren’t that narrow-minded in the army, Liz. I mean partner as in lover.’

‘And was he?’

‘Who knows? It’s quite likely, because he wasn’t a journalist and it was a jolly dangerous time to be out there without any reason. What I most remember is that Ledingham shared Marcham’s interest in churches. He said he was making a survey of the Serbian Orthodox churches – which ones had been destroyed, which had been damaged.’

‘Wasn’t that a bit risky? You’d have to admire him, though.’

Edward took a swallow of tea and Susan said, ‘You’re rather keen on churches yourself, Edward.’

He acknowledged this with a nod. ‘That’s true. Though I’m not a fanatic and I certainly wouldn’t take the risks Ledingham took to visit them. With him it seemed much more than an intellectual interest.’

‘Perhaps he was very pious,’ suggested Liz.

‘It seemed more like fervour than piety, if you ask me. It’s not as if he were Serbian Orthodox – he made a point of telling me he was Anglican. Yet I saw him once after he’d visited a church in Musutiste, and he seemed incredibly excited. Almost possessed. There was something almost…’

‘Sexual?’

He nodded with a smile. ‘Yes. Now that you say that, it did seem sexual.’

‘Did you ever see him again after Kosovo?’

‘No. And for that matter, I never saw Marcham again, either.’

‘They both sound perfectly creepy to me,’ said Susan Carlyle. She got up, holding her empty mug. ‘I’m just going to make some supper.’

But Liz’s mind was somewhere else.

She rang Peggy Kinsolving early the next morning, and told her what she’d learned about the connection between Ledingham and Chris Marcham.

‘What a coincidence,’ said Peggy.

‘I know. Let’s go with it, shall we? I want you to get onto the Met. Speak with the officers investigating Ledingham’s death, and tell them about Marcham’s relationship with him.’

‘I’ll do it right away. They’ll want to speak to Marcham, won’t they? Shouldn’t I go along, too?’

‘No. I’m going to go. I’ve already met Marcham; I want to see what he has to say.’

‘But Liz, you can’t-’

‘Yes I can, and that’s final.’ Then, softening, Liz added, ‘Let me know when they want to see him.’

And as she rang off, Liz felt a small surge of adrenalin. Thank God, she thought, exhilarated. I can always convalesce later.