A Grave Waiting (19 page)

She was, apparently, amused by his outburst, but from the look in those black eyes when she said “devices,” giving Peter what he wanted was not part of her plan. At least, not without much further negotiation. Janice Melville turned her chair around and gave her full attention to the stage, now vacated by the piano player after a smattering of applause.

The man who came on stage did not look like a Gypsy. Long, lean, fair-skinned, and fair-haired, he looked to be in his twenties. He wore wraparound dark glasses, a black shirt and black jeans, and the guitar he carried was the
petite bouche
style of instrument favoured by jazz
manouche
guitarists. He was followed by another guitar player and a bass player, both of whom looked more likely to have sprung from one of the birthplaces of Gypsy jazz. Their set-up was blessedly brief, and they opened with a melody Moretti didn't recognize, the bass underlining the melody, the rhythm guitarist providing the familiar repetitive boom-chick
manouche
beat.

The blond was good, a gifted player, his style in this number closer to traditional Gypsy music than the jazz-influenced Parisian sound. When the unfamiliar piece was over, the group moved directly into one of the jazz
manouche
standards, “Les Yeux Noirs.” Black eyes. For a split second, the lead player looked toward their table, then back to his guitar.

Moretti turned to look at Janice Melville. Her own black eyes were closed, her face slightly upturned, as if she were sunning herself, her slim body pressed against the back of the chair. Not so much a devotee of the music as a devotee of the musician, was the thought that crossed Moretti's mind, as she suddenly shifted in her seat, one hand smoothing her skirt over her thigh. He turned to look at Peter Walker, and it was clear that the same thought had crossed Peter Walker's mind. Not so much crossed, as hit him like a ton of bricks between the eyes.

“La Gitane,” “Besame Mucho,” Django Reinhardt's beautiful “Nuages.” In spite of himself, Moretti surrendered to the moody, bluesy playing of the band, briefly putting to one side what had brought him to this unlikely place. That was the beauty of jazz for him, there was nothing he could do about Peter's angst anyway, and all he could hope for was that the antagonism she obviously still felt for her ex-lover did not rub off on him.

Applause, some whoops and bravos, and the band left the stage, the lead guitarist briefly acknowledging the audience on his own, his eyes moving again to their table. Janice Melville smiled.

“He's good, isn't he?”

Peter Walker's smile was warm and wide. “Actually, Ed can't stand Gypsy music. He says he grew out of his Django Reinhardt phase years ago.”

You bastard
, Moretti thought.
If you're sunk, then so am I, is that it?
He turned to Janice Melville. “You want to talk about this now? Otherwise, I'm off.”

“Good. Meet me here at ten o'clock tomorrow morning.” She took a pen and a slip of paper out of her tiny black satin purse, wrote something on it, and handed it to Moretti.

Her next remark was addressed to Peter Walker. “Piss off, Peter. I wanna be alone.”

Only she wouldn't be. This evening, set up by Peter, had given Janice Melville the perfect opportunity to settle an old score, and was a complete waste of time for Moretti's purposes. He could only hope that Falla was coming up with something, since it looked as if he was coming back with nothing.

“I'll piss off with pleasure, but first I'm pissing off to the gents.” Walker stood up. “Meet you at the door, Ed.”

As Moretti got up to leave, Janice Melville put a hand on his arm.

“Wait a bit. Give me your mobile number.”

Moretti did so, pulling out his notebook to write it down.

“No need for that. I'll remember it. And no need to tell Peter about this. In fact, don't, okay?”

“Okay.”

By the time Walker met Moretti at the door, Janice Melville was gone.

“Sweet fucking revenge, wasn't it. Public, with a witness, and another musician to boot.”

“You said she was bright, ruthless, and driven. Why are you surprised? I'm only surprised she said she'd give me information. Unless I'm walking into a set-up of some kind as an extension of the lady's payback scheme.”

“Doubt it. That's the icing on the cake for her, isn't it? You get what you came for, and I get to go home empty-handed.”

They were sitting in Walker's living room, drinking brandy. Above Walker's head Gillray's
Sad Sloppy Weather
seemed apt enough for the moment.

“Where are you meeting her tomorrow?”

Moretti took the slip of paper out of his pocket. The handwriting was unexpectedly florid, with looping, twisting, capitals. Nothing in the least reserved or austere about it, hardly a clean line anywhere.

“Looks like a private address,” he said, handing it to Walker.

“Near the river. Chelsea. Not hers. Could be a safe house, or an ex safe house more likely. Unless it's the pseudo-Django's pad.”

“Unlikely. I doubt she tells him much. Retired she may be, but old habits die hard in her business, as I don't have to tell you.”

As Walker gave the paper back he said, “Watch your back, Ed. You don't know whose toes you may be treading on with this investigation.”

Opposite Moretti on the wall, a portly gentleman was losing his footing.
Very Slippy Weather
indeed.

Just before going to bed, Moretti called Falla's mobile. There was no reply.

Not surprising. It was late, and any emergency call would be made to her home phone number. As he thought of Falla's sitting room in the little flat on the Esplanade, Moretti felt a twinge of — what? Nostalgia? Surely not. Anxiety? About what? Resisting the train of thought that might lead to enlightenment, Moretti got out his
London A to Z
and checked the address on Janice Melville's piece of paper with its convoluted script. As he did so, his mobile rang.

“Moretti.”

It was Janice Melville, as though his thoughts had summoned her. “You alone?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow, leave as though you were going to the ten o'clock appointment. It could be a long day, so if you can manage to bring a change of clothing or at least a toothbrush without attracting attention, do so. Go to Kensington High Street Tube station, and wait outside the entrance. Someone will meet you there.”

Before Moretti could say anything in reply, she rang off.

Day Six

O
utside
the window of Peter Walker's living room the sun shone on the young spring leaves of the plane trees. Bird sang and, in the street below, a young man was walking a string of dogs of various breeds and comically variegated sizes. They fanned out across the pavement like a flotilla, scattering pedestrians in their wake, none of whom seemed unduly put out, smiling at them and their escort as they passed. It was that kind of morning.

Peter's head emerged from behind the newspaper he was reading as much to avoid conversation, Moretti felt, as anything else.

“I heard your mobile last night, didn't I? Anything new?”

“Not much, so my sergeant says. At least no one has got themselves killed in my absence. Yet.”

“Right. You taking a taxi to Chelsea?”

“I'll try for one on the High Street. Failing that, the Tube, so I'll leave in good time.”

Walker put the paper down and removed his spectacles. His unshaven face in the bright morning sunlight looked a decade older than the smiling, boyish visage of the day before. Returning from the bathroom after his phone call, Moretti had heard the sound of the heavy glass stopper of the whisky decanter being removed. From the look of Peter's face, it had been lifted a few more times in the night.

“Call this sour grapes if you will, Ed, but you realize that this is more likely to be about getting information from you rather than the other way round.”

“I don't trust ex-MI5 operators to come bearing gifts, if that's what you mean. But I do hope to do some trading. And call this sour grapes if you will, Peter, but have you ever really believed I'd get anything from them? This was all about rekindling old flames.”

“Not entirely, so let me vent a little, you cynical bastard.” Walker got up and poured himself another cup of coffee from the pot on the table. “This was about killing two birds with one stone — lousy metaphor in the circumstances, but it'll do. I spent much of my time on that pleasant speck in the Atlantic deciding what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and getting in touch with Janice Melville always came out on top of my list. Then you came over and asked for my help. It seemed like a gift from the gods. Ex-MI5 operators may not often bear gifts but, just occasionally, the gods do.”

“Not often in my pantheon. I hope yours are kinder. Sometimes it's better not to stir up old fires.”

“I'd agree with you, but this one's already stirred.” Walker raised his coffee cup in Moretti's direction. “Here's hoping one of us gets what he wants.”

“That was a cheap shot, saying what you did about my tastes in jazz.”

“Very childish of me. I was surprised at myself. Hell hath no fury like a retired copper scorned. Brought out the vengeful ten-year-old in me, and I had no idea he was still in there.”

“I should be off.”

“Good luck. I mean it, believe it or not.”

Back in the bedroom, Moretti put a change of underwear, shaving tackle, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and his mobile charger into his briefcase. It didn't bulge too much, because he really had very little in it. His case notes, and a series of numbers taken from Baby Mothball's computer.

He was a bit early for his rendezvous with whoever, but he didn't have to wait long, jostling the motley crowd of Tube-takers in their two-piece suits, their gaudy florals, their ubiquitous jeans, their hairstyles ranging from chrome domes to dreadlocks to multicoloured, multi-gelled creations, stunning as tropical birds. Moretti stood for a moment, wondering at which side of the entrance to the underground he should position himself. A baby passing in a stroller clutched at his trouser leg and he started, pulling away from the contact. He was more on edge than he realized.

“Mr. Moretti.”

The man who addressed him looked like the perfect waiter. His voice was bland, even toned, his expression slightly ingratiating, with a glimmer of a smile, the slight bow of his back suggesting obsequiousness. Gord Collenette would have hired him on the spot. When he tried to remember his escort's face afterward, Moretti would have trouble remembering a single feature.

“Yes.”

“This way, sir.”

Moretti followed the man around to a small cul-de-sac quite close to the underground entrance. In an area marked N
o
P
arking
stood a black BMW with diplomatic licence plates. The man unlocked the car as they approached and held open the passenger door at the back.

“I'll sit in the front.”

“Very well. Do you want your briefcase with you, sir?”

“Yes.”

As his escort shut the front passenger door, Moretti saw it had no interior handle, and felt the tension in his body twist tighter. When the driver got in he asked, “Are you afraid I'll get away from you?” He indicated the door.

The man laughed. “Not you, sir. Others, yes.”

The driver backed out of the narrow alleyway with some speed and with considerable skill, and Moretti remained silent as he did so. Once out in the High Street he asked, “Why the diplomatic plates? Is that what I'm supposed to be?”

Again, the light, deprecatory laugh. “If you wish, Detective Inspector. The plates make it easier to park in the city without producing identification. That's it, really.”

“I see. Am I allowed to ask where I am going?”

“Sussex. It should be a pleasant drive in this weather.”

The BMW slowly made its way through the southern outskirts of the city, its diplomatic plates giving it no advantage in the dense traffic, its driver silent as he negotiated what clearly was a route he knew well.

Somewhere beyond Croydon, as continuous city began to break into pockets of built-up areas interspersed with countryside, Moretti spoke. “Where in Sussex? Or is that classified information?”

His escort smiled. “The Weald, sir. Between the North and South Downs. There'd be little point in not saying if you know this part of England well. Do you?”

“Not well.” Actually, he didn't know it at all.

“Nice area, if you like unspoiled countryside. Not that parts of it will remain that way much longer. Do you like gardens, sir?”

“Of course. Who doesn't?”

“Then you're in for a treat. The rhododendrons will be in bloom. And the azaleas. A bit early for some of the roses.”

Surprised by the horticultural bent of the conversation, Moretti lapsed into silence. If this was some concrete bunker concealed in the depths of the Sussex countryside, it promised to be an unusually herbaceous one.

Beyond the tinted windows of the car, the landscape now rolled by with little interruption from urban sprawl. Small villages appeared and disappeared, and the road became narrower, twisting, enclosed by hedgerows. It was the countryside of the travelogue, the England imagined by overseas visitors that still existed between the beautiful cities and the industrial cities, much of it threatened by encroachment and development.

“Here we are.”

The driver took a mobile out of his pocket and spoke, briefly.

“Five minutes.”

The car turned off the narrow road into what seemed at first to be an even narrower lane that quickly widened into a solidly tarmacked surface, still enclosed by high hedgerows. So the appearance of the house ahead of them was sudden, as was the large sign just before the heavy, wrought-iron gates: C
adogan
H
all
H
otel
.

“A hotel?” Was this another wild goose chase?

“Of a sort. Mostly used for conferences, that sort of thing. You won't find it in the tourist guides, and we have — special arrangements here.”

“What do you do with the casual stranger who might wander in?”

“Fully booked, one says, and then recommends a couple of local establishments. Quite simple.”

The rhododendrons were indeed spectacularly in bloom along the driveway, their glorious reds, purples, and pinks diverting the eye from the tiny cameras that looked down from among their towering foliage. Beyond a stretch of mauve azaleas and a wide border of multicoloured perennials Cadogan Hall appeared, like something out of a Merchant Ivory film, a splendidly gabled, many-turreted, profusely ivy-covered manor house.

“Some concrete bunker.”

“Isn't it. Hiding in plain sight is often better — well, somewhat plain sight, I'll concede. If you don't mind waiting, sir, while I check in.”

The driver brought the BMW to a halt in front of the main entrance, got out, and went up the steps to the door which, unusually for a hotel on a mild early summer's day, was closed. He disappeared inside, apparently without knocking or ringing a bell, and was back almost immediately.

“Just around here, sir, where someone will meet you.”

They drove around the side of the manor and pulled up at a flight of steps leading to a French window that was open. A man stood there, arms folded across his chest, waiting. As the driver opened the car door on Moretti's side, he came down the steps holding out his hand.

“Detective Inspector Moretti, welcome, you made good time. I'm Derek Lang. Come in.”

No Jan Melville, unless she was somewhere inside. Moretti turned around to thank his escort, but he was already in the car and driving off around the back of the house.

Moretti followed Derek Lang up the steps and into a large room set up for the sort of conferences and meetings his driver had said was the principal purpose of the building. A long mahogany table stretched the length of the room, with about twenty upholstered chairs around it. At one end there was a laptop and some papers, coffee, and sandwiches. Lang made his way toward them and pulled out a chair.

Unlike the horticulturally minded driver, Lang's body language did not suggest that Moretti was his superior. Ruddy-faced, with a thin slick of grey hair cut close to his skull, he looked to be in his early fifties, with a slight corpulence beneath his navy suit that suggested a desk job rather than a career in the field.

“Would you like something to eat first, or would you prefer to go to your room? After a two-hour journey, probably the latter.”

“My room?”

“Didn't Jan tell you? You'll be staying here tonight. She'll take you back tomorrow.”

Jan to Derek Lang, so definitely not a minion.

“My room then.”

Lang took a card out of his pocket and handed it to Moretti. “This'll lock and unlock the door.”

His room turned out to be what was apparently part of the same suite, beyond a door that led directly off the conference room itself. It was no different from any high-quality hotel room, with windows that didn't open, and a spy hole in the door that probably worked both ways, Moretti suspected. When he returned to the meeting room, Derek Lang was sitting eating a sandwich.

“Coffee? Help yourself. I hope you like prawn sandwiches.” He watched Moretti pour himself a cup of coffee, then said, “Let's get down to business. Jan has filled me in, so there's no need to go through all that again. I understand you may have something for us.”

“I have something, but whether it's of use or not —”

“We'll determine that. So let me fill you in on what we think we know about your case.” The way in which Lang was going through the sandwiches, picking them up delicately and then demolishing them in one gulp suggested that his embonpoint was likely to increase exponentially over the passing years. “As you may know, we have an outfit, GCHQ, that listens in on all kinds of electronic communication — what the Americans call chatter. Emails, phone taps, faxes, whatever. Over the past few months there have been recurring messages from the same group of sources that initially interested us, because we suspect some of the participants have terrorist links. As the information came together, it became evident that this particular scheme was not to do with terrorism, but with something entirely different. A possible coup d'état somewhere on the continent of Africa. A wide choice of possibilities, of course, and the chatterers are extremely careful about stating precisely where. And they don't need to, because they all know where they're talking about. Then, suddenly, the exchanges stopped, and since there has not been a coup d'état on the African continent, we assume one of three possibilities: that the planning is completed — unlikely from what we were picking up — or that the conspirators have reason to suspect their messages are being intercepted, and have found another way to communicate with each other.”

“Or that the plan has been aborted.” Moretti poured himself another cup of coffee and took another sandwich. “Good prawns.”

“Aren't they? Exactly, that's what we assumed, until we heard about the arrival of Masterson on Guernsey. Such an unlikely concatenation of circumstances, and one always takes note of unlikely concatenations.”

“So Masterson was one of the chatterers.”

“From time to time. Mostly he was talked about, so we hadn't tapped into his computer. We should have done, because his name has come up in connection with others we are more interested in.”

“The financing of terrorist organizations would be right up his alley. He also has expertise and connections in armaments, some of them perfectly legit.”

“Yes. He'd be useful because of his being apparently above board in that area.”

Moretti thought back to his conversation with Ludo Ross. The world is crisscrossed with a vast, intertwined chain connecting drugs, gun-running, you name it, he had said. All grist to the mill of a man like
Bébé Boule à Mite
.

“Now, Detective Inspector, I understand you have some numbers for us.”

Lang polished off the last of the sandwiches and wiped his hands carefully on one of the white linen napkins provided. “Pity they didn't give us anything sweet. I always like a taste of something sweet, don't you? Now, Detective Inspector, I have some names for you, and I understand you have some numbers for us. post office box numbers from Masterson's computer, I gather.”