A Sentimental Traitor (33 page)

She cooked. She was stubborn like that, and Scottish, and seemed to be making most of the domestic decisions. They sat at her kitchen table, quietly chewing.

‘So where the hell does the European Union come into this, Harry?’

‘If it hadn’t signed the contracts for the gas, the pipeline wouldn’t be getting built.’

‘Have I put enough ketchup in the pasta sauce?’

‘More than enough, Jem.’

‘And what has any of this to do with the plane crash?’

He shook his head.

‘More pasta?’ she asked tentatively.

‘No, no thanks.’

She scraped the remnants of the dinner into the bin, then turned. ‘I would stay out of this, Harry, but I can’t. All those kids who died, and their families. They wouldn’t want
me to do that, would they?’

‘Better sleep on it.’

‘Yes.’

She closed the door of the dishwasher very gently. ‘There’s another problem.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The sofa. No way it’s big enough for two.’

The man followed Felix down the Bayswater Road, and beyond, into the growing gloom of the summer’s night. Felix was hurrying, then glanced at his watch and slowed; no point in getting
there too soon. After they had passed beyond the bright lights and turbulence of Queensway, Felix’s pursuer crossed to the other side of the road, lest he appear too obvious. They continued
like that for more than half an hour, until it was gone ten, dark. Then Felix disappeared up the pathway beside Holland Park. The man followed.

Felix stopped halfway down the track, leaning against the railings, consulting his watch repeatedly, a little nervous; he was a few minutes early despite his efforts to slow. The man loitered
further down the path, not attracting attention; there were several other men, singly, in twos, doing much the same.

Felix stirred. Another man was approaching from the other direction. They embraced, talked briefly, then disappeared into the darkness of the trees, but never completely out of the
pursuer’s sight. They were there but briefly, a few minutes, before they emerged and soon the other man was disappearing back along the track the way he had come. Felix, meanwhile, lit a
cigarette, perhaps looking for another encounter.

He was lighting another cigarette when he looked up through the swirl of smoke to find a face staring at him.

‘Hello, Mr Anderson. I’m Jimmy Sopwith-Dane. Remember me?’

She woke up to find him staring at her, his nose less than an inch from hers, and a sheet wound round her ankle. The bed was a glorious mess.

‘Your timing’s rubbish, Jem. Taking up with me again when I’m just about to be locked away and fed on bromide.’

‘On the other hand, Jones, your own timing is getting much better.’ She kissed him. ‘Thank you.’

She fell asleep once more. He made his own breakfast. Cereal. Toast. And Marmite.

‘That’s it, Jem!’ he cried out, staring at his plate.

‘What is?’ she called sleepily from the bedroom.

‘Don’t you see? For the pipeline to be given the go-ahead by Brussels it would have to pass all sorts of quality controls. It’s what they do with everything nowadays. Even
bloody Marmite.’

‘No! No, you’re wrong, Harry.’ She emerged from the bedroom shaking the new day into her head, stumbling over to her file. She began ransacking it, casting sheets to one side
before grabbing a press cutting and holding it high. ‘Babylon got an exemption.’ She thrust the sheet at him. ‘There’s a provision, an exception, where such matters can be
put to one side by—’

‘“The overriding security considerations of the Union or its member parts”,’ Harry chimed in, reading aloud. ‘And guess when? The Environment Commissioner announced
it. Just after Christmas.’

‘It still doesn’t make any sense, Harry.’

‘Oh, but it does! Security exemptions. It all leads back to—’

It was her turn to interrupt. ‘EATA.’

She came and sat beside him. ‘Even so, what could that possibly have to do with Speedbird? Why was I attacked simply for asking questions?’

‘There has to be a connection,’ he insisted.

‘But I’ve gone through the files over and over again, all the notes I made. Everything I got from the relatives. I can’t find a thing.’

‘So if it’s not what you got from them, Jem, it must be something you didn’t get from them.’

‘Like what?’

‘Did you ask any of them about a bloody pipeline?’

Felix was not a physically courageous man. He talked before he died, and the drawn-out moments of interrogation left their marks.

His violent murder, the police concluded, had been committed by one or more men of considerable strength. The injuries on the face and the deliberately and separately broken fingers attested to
that. The body had been dumped in the undergrowth just inside the park, with no attempt to conceal it, suggesting panic, so probably not premeditated. A queer bashing gone too far, that was the
initial and lasting assumption. And probably two men because queer bashers didn’t usually work on their own but in pairs, or even gangs, feeding off each other’s intolerance. It might
have been a mugging for the wallet was missing, but that didn’t seem to explain the seemingly gratuitous infliction of pain. The police began scouring local CCTV footage. The path by Holland
Park would be exceptionally quiet for many evenings to come.

Sloppy hadn’t intended to be cruel, least of all to kill. He wanted little more than a few answers, and his life back, but he wasn’t in a particularly good state to understand the
whimperings that poured from the other man, particularly after the bridge on his front teeth broke away and blood from a split cheek began frothing through the gap. Sloppy himself was in
excruciating pain, in some faraway place, had been for a long time, too long, and what with the drugs and alcohol that were dulling his senses, he simply went too far. He hadn’t thought
breaking a couple of fingers would kill him. He hadn’t known about Felix’s weak heart.

Sloppy appeared in the Cheshire Cheese almost as soon as it had opened the following morning. Change of clothes, unshaven, no sleep, confused, not knowing what to do, grappling
to understand what he had done, wanting to be someone else. He ordered his drink, scrabbled for money in his pocket. As it appeared, in the palm of his hand, he remembered that it was
Felix’s.

The barman was seeing to Sloppy’s order, waiting for the optic to refill, remarking how terrible his customer looked and wondering whether he should call time on him, throw him out before
the first glass. More than simply a problem drinker; a man at war with alcohol, and losing. So why wait until that time came? Do the pub a favour, do this poor drunken idiot a favour, too. The
barman didn’t enjoy taking money from fools.

But when he turned, he discovered that his dilemma had resolved itself. The man had vanished. And scattered on the bar, at the place where he had been sitting, lay a fistful of crumpled,
abandoned notes.

Much later that day and in a different part of London, Suzie, the barman from the Montreal, found himself outside his local police station. He was agitated, deeply distressed,
didn’t want to be there. He took a step in one direction, then in the other, hoping for some god of fortune to make up his mind for him. In his overheated hand he held a desperately crumpled
copy of the
Evening Standard
, to which he kept referring, but the headline hadn’t changed. It still screamed at him. Earlier, and uncertain what to do, he had gone home and dressed in
his best formal suit, even polished his shoes with the buckles, anything to delay doing what he knew he must. As he’d told a friend at the pub, he had never blown a police constable’s
whistle without regretting it, but eventually he had taken his courage in his hands and walked here. And it was while he was twisting and turning on the steps leading to the station that the gods
came to his aid and caused him almost to trip over a constable in his summer shirtsleeves.

The constable eyed this apparition up, then down, curious, both amused and a little suspicious of this moisturized young male with plucked eyebrows and glittering studs in his ears. ‘Can I
be of assistance, sir?’

In normal circumstances Suzie would be the first to pick up on any unintended entendre and exploit it, but the circumstance had dulled his wit. ‘It’s this, constable,’ he
cried, opening up his copy of the newspaper to reveal the headline – ‘Murder in the Park’. It was accompanied by an inadequate image of Felix, dragged from the archives of an
antiques trade magazine. ‘I think I know him,’ Suzie babbled breathlessly, jabbing his finger at the photo. ‘And I think I know who did it.’

A pounding at his door. Insistent. Flashing lights from three patrol cars. His value seemed to be increasing, to the police force at least. Harry knew he was in desperate
trouble, he didn’t have any idea why, but he knew it was the sort van Buren couldn’t fix. That’s when he knew he couldn’t answer the door, because he would end up wallowing
at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and with the odds already stacked against him, she was never going to let him out. He saw one of the policemen advancing with a sledgehammer; they were going to
smash their way in. He was trapped – until he remembered the burglary, the rear window that had been left open, the way to the fire escape and the roofs beyond. He could hear the doorjamb
splintering as he forced his way through.