A Few Words for the Dead (12 page)

Robie’s hands went to his face and he stared at her, unable to move even as others rushed forward.

I had to get him out of there. I ran over and grabbed his arm, pulling him away.

‘Lucas,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry but we need to go.’

He looked at me but I don’t think he really knew who I was as he hurried alongside me, too shocked to put up any resistance as I guided him through the drawing crowds and towards the exit of the park.

Ryska was tapping on the table with her fingernails again.

‘I’m making you uncomfortable?’ Shining asked.

‘She just jumped?’ Ryska asked. ‘For no reason?’

‘There was a reason,’ Shining said, ‘but it wasn’t her own.’

‘That makes no sense.’

‘I’m sure you realise by now that several people have been acting out of character, controlled somehow, driven to commit acts against both others and themselves. This was no different.’

‘But why?’

‘We’re getting to that.’

‘Well, can’t you get there quicker? This isn’t a bedtime story, I just need the facts.’

‘The facts will sink in all the better if I take this at my own pace and tell it in my own way. You want to hear it so, shush, and let me carry on.’

She tutted but nodded.

By the time we had reached the exit, Robie was back in control, looking over his shoulder.

‘We can’t just leave her.’

‘There’s nothing else we can do. I’m afraid she’s beyond help.’

‘There was no need…’ he said. ‘It didn’t have to…’ He looked at me then, focusing on me properly for the first time. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

‘When you dropped off the radar you sent Battle’s heart aflutter. Battle then sent everyone else’s hearts aflutter. Before you know it, I’m dragged out of my lovely, comfortable office and dumped into East Berlin. So, thank you for that.’

‘They think I’ve switched sides?’

‘They don’t really know what to think and, for that matter, neither do I. I’m hoping that you’re going to be able to help make things clearer.’

He tugged his arm out of mine. ‘Nothing’s clear.’

‘Well, if
you
think that then we’re really in trouble.’

He shook his head. ‘There’s no way I can explain. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ I told him. ‘You know that I’m no stranger to things that are hard to explain.’

He stopped walking, gazing towards the sound of traffic on the nearby autobahn. ‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ he said, ‘especially not now. Now it’s proven how far it’s willing to…’ He shook his head again. ‘No.’

He looked at me and there was a sad smile on his face. ‘Nice to see you, August,’ he said, then glanced over his shoulder. I looked also. There was nobody near us; even the ticket collector had left his booth to see what was going on at the Ferris wheel. My attention elsewhere, the punch in my stomach caught me completely off guard.

‘Sorry, August,’ Robie said, running off the road and into the trees.

I supported myself with one hand on the road, trying to draw a breath, his punch having badly winded me. Through streaming eyes, I saw him vanish into the foliage and I fought to relax, to let the muscles unclench so that I could breathe again. Slowly, I drew a breath and stumbled into the woods after him, my diaphragm cramping as I forced myself to move and still breathe. I was stumbling through the undergrowth, my breath coming in short, barely sufficient gasps, lightheaded from a lack of oxygen. Ahead I could hear Robie running, but there was no way I could match him. Falling forward, my knees sinking into wet leaves, I slowly regained control. Minutes passed, all the time, the sound of Robie’s movements growing fainter until I could no longer hear him. It was hopeless. I had lost him. If I’d known the area better then perhaps I could have tried to second-guess his direction. The only thing I could think was that he would try to work his way to the S-Bahn.

At a loss for an alternative, I returned to the train station and waited. It was soon clear that I was wasting my time. I’d lost him.

‘I could do with stretching my legs, if you don’t mind,’ said Shining, standing up.

‘Tough!’ said Ryska. ‘You can’t just leave it there.’

‘When you get to my age, my dear, your muscles are not content to be dumped on hard, wooden chairs for extended periods,’ he told her. ‘Unless you want me to start kicking the table and moaning about cramp, I suggest you let me move for a while. A pop to the loo wouldn’t go amiss either. Or something to eat.’ He looked at her. ‘You did stock up with some food didn’t you? I don’t imagine we can exactly call for a pizza.’

‘Mr Shining, do I have to remind you that you’re here at our insistence? You break when I tell you you can break, you eat when food is offered.’

‘Oh, do give it a rest. I’ve told you already, I’m only too happy to talk but my tolerance for bullying is perilously thin. Should you ever be in my situation – and let us hope you never are – I’m sure your attitude would be much the same. At this point you have no evidence to accuse me of anything, you’re just shoving me around in that manner that we as a service do so well. I, on the other hand, refuse to be shoved, and, unless you plan on beating me up, you’ll just have to live with the fact. Toilet through here?’

He walked up to Jennings who, after a moment, stepped aside. ‘Third door on the left,’ Jennings said, turning back to Ryska as Shining passed. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘The man’s got a point.’

Shining relieved himself, realising that this was the first time since arrival that he’d actually been able to drop his guard and take a moment to think about what was happening to him. He’d made enemies in his career, but for the most part they were simply people who looked down their noses at the work he did. Not even Sir Robin was so spiteful as to try and close the department by branding him a traitor, surely? The call had come from him but the order certainly hadn’t.

Try as he might, Shining also couldn’t get his head around why this was happening to him now. What had turned an ancient case into a weapon to attack him with? There had been questions about his part in the mission at the time but, as always, most of them had surrounded his reliability or veracity. Nobody had ever suggested that his involvement with Lucas Robie might be evidence that he was untrustworthy. Now, thirty years later, someone had sanctioned the time and effort to drag him out here and cross-examine him as if it were of vital importance.

These days he wasn’t even close to secrets his government considered sensitive, and he was no threat to anyone. Which left only one possibility: this was a personal attack using the only thing someone could find as a viable ammunition against him.

But who? A friend of Fratfield’s perhaps? Refusing to believe that the man had been a criminal?

He flushed the toilet and stared through the frosted glass window at the darkening sky outside. He’s been here for hours, lost in his own reminiscences. He’d have to watch that, it was all too easy to go wandering in his own memories but someone was after him in the here and now.

Not that he had a better plan at the moment than playing for time. The longer he strung this process out for, the longer he allowed his opponent to show their hand. The longer also, for someone to come to his aid. Not that there were many options for that – after all Toby and Tamar had problems of their own to contend with. Shining had been alone for so many years and it was amazing how quickly he’d come to rely on Toby since he’d been allocated to Section 37. Now, when he really needed him, he wasn’t even in the same country.

April had left the office in the frustrated hands of the security officer, who was still trying – but thus far failing – to crack open its secrets. She didn’t like doing so but was practical enough to think of the bigger picture. There were more important things at stake here than keeping an eye on August’s files and his collection of
Pan Book of Horror
paperbacks.

She took up residence in the pizza restaurant across the road from the office, and began to make calls.

‘All-you-can-eat buffet?’ a singularly bored waiter asked her, staring out of the glass and into a world that didn’t involve corporate uniforms and upselling meetings.

‘Whatever,’ April replied, working her way through the wallet she’d stolen from the security officer.

‘Great,’ the waiter replied, rewarding her with an empty plate that clanged on the table like a mournful dinner gong. ‘Help yourself to the salad bar and drinks refills. Have a great lunch.’ The words were there, even if the emotion behind them was not.

April all but ignored him until she noticed that the wallet had a hundred quid in it, at which point she ran to the buffet bar, filling her plate while keeping a watch on the office door through the window. It was hardly the first time she’d helped strip a man of his clothes before letting him buy her lunch.

Within five minutes she was splattering her cheeks with Caesar salad dressing from an unreliable garlic bread stick and poking at crisp salad onions with a cautious fingernail.

She was also thinking very hard about what she should do next.

She tried to decide who she could trust to look into the security officer’s background. The answer was infuriatingly slow in coming. It was hard to trust anyone that worked in their business. She would certainly never class herself as trustworthy. She’d just have to take the risk. Propping up his driver’s licence on a glass shaker of chilli flakes, she rang an old friend in MI6 personnel.

‘Valerie, you craggy old slut, how’s tricks?’

‘Presuming you mean Ms DeMarco, I can put you through. Might I ask who’s calling?’

God save us from switchboards, April thought, forking some pepperoni into her mouth. ‘April Shining. Another craggy old slut, in case you were wondering.’

‘I’ll see if she’s available.’

April watched a group of kids in the street jumping up and down in front of Oman’s shop window. They were offering all sorts of exciting hand gestures to accompany their opinion of his wares. After a moment she was treated to the sight of Oman’s naked buttocks being pressed against the glass to form a white, hairy square. The kids laughed and ran away. April was pleased to see someone else shared her taste for frank expression in this modern world.

‘April?’

‘Hello, dear. I do hope I haven’t made whoever answered the phone cry. I may have been a tad salty in my language.’

‘I wondered why they were looking at me as if I’d just set fire to the stationery cupboard. Thanks for that.’

‘Always a pleasure. Now listen, my darling, I have to make this quick as I’m running out of credit,’ the most well-worn lie of the digital age, she supposed, ‘can you look into the file of a chap called Hamish Bernstein?’

‘Are you at a Glaswegian bar mitzvah?’

‘I’m in charge of the canapés. One has to fill one’s retirement somehow. I don’t need any saucy details, just an idea of which department he answers to.’

There was the clattering of a keyboard on the other line that rather undercut Valerie’s feigned reluctance. ‘I can’t just dish out that sort of thing to anyone who calls, you know.’

‘I’m not anyone, sweetie, I’m me, you know I won’t go blabbing. Anyway, it’s not like I’m asking for his credit card number.’ I already have that, after all, she thought, fishing it out of the wallet.

‘He’s uniform,’ by which Valerie meant military, ‘currently seconded to Bertie’s lot over at Section 12. Seen action in lots of our more tasty foreign fields.’

‘Haven’t we all,’ April replied. ‘Thank you, dear, it’s much appreciated.’

‘I don’t suppose you intend to tell me why the interest?’

‘Just wondering where to return his underwear. These boys will litter up the flat so.’ April hung up and rewarded herself with a mouthful of pizza and a fizzy drink with too many flavours, none of them real.

‘Bertie’ was Albert Fisher, a particularly unpopular man, mainly due to the fact that, having hopped from one desk to another over his career at Six, his main duty these days was to investigate security risks within British Intelligence itself. Gone were the cold war days when such things were a day-to-day concern, but his small section still monitored other officers for corruption or ‘acting against home interests’. What on earth did he want with August? Her brother was an incorrigible pain in many a Whitehall arse but he’d certainly never been accused of disloyal activities.

April was positively livid as she hoovered up some jalapeno peppers.

Next to her she noticed a table full of young mothers busily stuffing napkin-wrapped pizza slices into carrier bags. Between them, they looked they’d helped themselves to half of the buffet. That’s tea for the kids sorted, April thought, and why not? She folded a couple of slices into her own handbag for a mid-afternoon snack.

Having stocked up, the table rose as one and dashed out of the door. The bored waiter appeared next to April, watching them go.

‘They didn’t pay,’ he said. The fact seemed to sicken him, but not quite enough to give chase. He seemed a bystander to his own job. April felt rather sorry for him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement on the street outside. Bernstein was leaving the office.

‘How much did this table of joy cost?’ she asked.

‘I’ll get your bill,’ he said, making no move to do so, still watching the retreating diners who had left without paying.

‘Sorry, no time, I really have to dash.’ She fished a twenty pound note out of Bernstein’s wallet. ‘That do?’

‘Too much,’ he said. ‘The buffet’s only—’

‘Then shove it in your pocket and pretend I did a runner too,’ she suggested, pushing the note into his hand and dashing out of the door.

Bernstein was a little way up the street, heading in the direction of either the buses or the tube. She could only hope it would be the latter – surreptitiously tailing someone on a bus was all but impossible unless you could disguise yourself as used chewing gum.

As they both reached the top of the road, she was relieved to see Bernstein ignore the row of bus stops and make for the pedestrian crossing and the tube station beyond.