Secret Asset

48

Liz was surprised to learn that Tom lived in Fulham. She had thought that his flat was in North London, near her own place in Kentish Town. He hadn’t actually said as much, that evening when he dropped her off, but he’d certainly led her to believe that she wasn’t taking him out of his way.

Liz walked the two or three streets from the Underground station to Tom’s address, in a quiet, leafy backwater of uniform, red brick, semi-detached Edwardian houses, mostly divided into flats.

As she approached the front door, two A2 officers emerged as if by magic from a van parked further down the street. Liz recognised the tall broad figure of Bernie, an affable ex-Army sergeant she had worked with before. With him was Dom, his quieter sidekick, a short, wiry man, fit from running marathons. Dom’s expertise was locks—he had a vast collection in Thames House. He loved them; he studied them; he brooded over them, like an enthusiast with his stamp collection.

But Dom’s skills were not needed at first as the front door to the house was open and a cleaning lady, who had been mopping the tiled floor in the hall, was just leaving. She took no notice as they walked straight past her and up the stairs to the first floor where Tom lived. Bernie rapped sharply on the front door. They were confident from A4, outside watching the flat, that Tom wasn’t there, but no one wanted any surprises.

They waited a full minute, then Dom set to work. He picked the first lock in fifteen seconds, then struggled with the Chubb in the top corner of the door. “Bugger’s had it specially adapted,” he said. It took another three minutes before Dom grunted, pushed, and the door opened.

Liz hadn’t known what to expect, and her first impression was of overpowering neatness, an almost Germanic cleanliness. That and the light, which streamed through the front windows of the living room, highlighting the wooden floors, which had been waxed and polished to a sheen. The walls were white, reinforcing the sense of space, and the furniture was modern and looked new: Danish-style chairs and a long pristine white sofa. On the walls hung a few large bland prints in cold metal frames.

“Nice place,” said Bernie approvingly. “Has he got money of his own?”

Liz shrugged. Presumably Tom’s stepfather had left him something in his will. These were comfortable rather than lavish quarters, but it was an expensive part of town. It was hard to see how Tom could live here on his MI5 salary, especially as presumably he gave something to Margarita.

She followed Bernie and Dom into the other rooms: an alcove kitchen and dining area, two bedrooms in the back. Tom slept in the larger one; the spare bedroom was clearly used as a study—there was a small desk in the corner and a filing cabinet.

Bernie asked, “Do you reckon he was always this tidy, or did he clean up before he did a bunk?”

Liz ran a finger under the desk top and, raising it into the air, found no dust. “I think it’s always like this.”

“It’ll take about an hour,” said Bernie. He and Dom left Liz in the sitting room while they went to work, looking for hiding places: from the simple (lifting the cistern cover of the loo) to the complicated—checking the floorboards, and tapping the partition walls and the ceilings for hidden cavities. This was a preliminary search. Later, if necessary, the whole place would be taken to pieces.

Liz focused on what was visible, hoping it would tell her something new about the man she didn’t already know. Not that that’s a lot, she told herself. The flat had about as much personality as a hotel suite.

She went first to inspect Tom’s bedroom. There were a couple of suits and some jackets hanging from a rail in the cupboard. A chest of drawers held boxer shorts and socks, and a dozen crisp, cotton shirts, neatly folded, that had been washed and pressed by a commercial service.

So he dresses well, thought Liz. I already knew that. She looked at the tall oak bookcase set against one wall. Were books the key to a man’s mind or his heart? It seemed hard to tell. The reading was a mix of light fiction and heavier stuff—history and politics. Tom obviously liked thrillers, with a soft spot for the works of Frederick Forsyth. It seemed fitting, thought Liz, that Tom the lone wolf should own a copy of The Day of the Jackal.

The non-fiction books included three dull-looking tomes on the future of the EU. There were almost two shelves on terrorism, and several recent volumes on Al Qaeda. So what? thought Liz. I’ve got some of these myself. I’ve also got a copy of Mein Kampf, but that doesn’t make me a Nazi sympathiser. These were the tools of his trade.

She noted that there were very few books about Ireland. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, and a battered Shell Guide to Ireland. Nothing political; no accounts of the recent history of the IRA.

And then she saw it. Tucked into the end of one shelf, a thin blue volume: Parnell and the English Establishment. She didn’t need to open it to know the author’s name. Liam O’Phelan, Queen’s University Belfast.

Liz was growing frustrated by the absence, throughout the flat, of anything personal—correspondence, mementoes, photographs. There wasn’t even a rug or vase to indicate Tom had just spent four years in Pakistan. Like his office, his flat was overpoweringly impersonal. Deliberately, thought Liz. It seemed likely that Tom had performed his own version of the sweep Bernie and Dom were conducting, scouring the flat and removing anything that might flesh out the bare bones of his past, anything that might indicate what sort of man he was—and what he was planning to do. Though he had forgotten O’Phelan’s book.

In the study, Liz was surprised to find the filing cabinet unlocked, but less so when she browsed through what it held—bills in the top drawer, neatly filed by utility and credit card. The second drawer held tax statements, and a protracted correspondence with the Inland Revenue about Tom’s marriage-allowance claim in the year he was divorced. Bank statements filled the third drawer, and the bottom one was empty.

As she took out the pile of credit card statements, she noticed that the top one was very recent. It all seemed straightforward until she came to the last entry on the page, the Lucky Pheasant Hotel, Salisbury: £212.83. Looking at it in surprise, she realised its date was the weekend of her mother’s biopsy—the weekend Tom had called at Bowerbridge. So he had dinner in Salisbury after all, she thought, remembering his invitation. But £212.83—for dinner? He must have entertained a large party. No. Much more likely, he’d stayed there.

So much for those friends with the farm off the Blandford road, thought Liz. No wonder Tom had been so vague about the location—the farm probably didn’t exist, any more than his friends did. Tom had been staying all along in the Lucky Pheasant. Why? What was he doing there?

Seeing me, thought Liz. Popping by, popping in, then after a long candlelit supper in the restaurant of the Lucky Pheasant, popping the “How about it?” question. What was she meant to have done? Fall into his arms, and then the feather pillows of his four-poster bed?

That must have been the plan, thought Liz, designed to put her off the path she’d been investigating. He had hoped she would be easily distracted by a new passion for him; that must have been his thinking. The arrogant bastard, thought Liz. Thank God I said no. Now I better go and talk to the woman who didn’t.