Anonymous Sources (13 page)

Perhaps the happiest years were his stint in Istanbul. Having persuaded the then foreign editor that Turkey was a key listening post for the Arab world, he befriended the local CIA station chief. Together the two men spent their evenings on the spy's balcony. Hours slipped by as they smoked, topped up each other's whisky, and watched oil tankers motoring up the Bosporus Strait. The station chief claimed to have radar that could track covert Soviet subs gliding down from the Black Sea. He claimed the Agency could intercept and listen to every word the Russians said. Hyde never quite knew whether to believe his friend on this count. But he did pick up all kinds of gossip about the Russian mob, narcotics trafficking, and other areas the CIA had deemed of interest.

One of Hyde's early editors had once warned him that the glory days of a newsroom were always ten years before you got there. Alas, he had now reached an age where he believed it. He had no idea how the young journalists who worked for him could stand the demands that were placed on them. Web build-outs. Podcasts. Live blogs and reader Q&A's. Always another news
platform
hungry for you to file. Worst of all, editors who insisted your phone remain always on, always with you, the better to reach you around the clock. He supposed this was true across all industries, in this era of efficiencies and multitasking. Yet it pained him that reporters could no longer disappear for weeks on a boondoggle like his legendary Chianti quest.

And yet, they kept coming. Take Alexandra James. Smart girl. She could have gone to law school like nearly every other Ivy League grad of her generation. Or off to earn a fortune on Wall Street. Six years she'd worked in his newsroom, and he was still trying to figure her out. She was clearly driven. Clearly talented. But she was also young and
inexperienced. And there was the thing with her child. It had left her . . . somehow . . . damaged. As if something critical in her had broken and was still deciding whether to heal.

Hyde sipped the last of his champagne and wondered what Alex would come up with on the Thomas Carlyle story. She was testing him. One of Hyde's vanities was a conviction that he knew exactly how much leash to give his reporters, and when it was time to rein them in. Five decades of journalism had also led him to believe that the world was crazy, and most people were nuts. He had an inside joke with his wife:
everyone outside our bed is insane
. People did crazy things all the time. That was good for journalists. It meant if you dug deep enough, for long enough, there was always a story.

He hoped Alex James was the type of reporter who would find it.

He also hoped she would remember to bring him back a Burberry coat.

    

    

MONDAY, JUNE 28

B
y 9:02 a.m. I was both ravenous and ready to throttle Petronella Black.

I had walked through the front door of the Groucho half an hour before, right on time. No, there was no table booked for Miss Black, the girl at the reception desk told me. Yes, they knew Miss Black, and if I was her guest, I was welcome to wait for her in the brasserie. Just turn right at the main bar and keep heading toward the back of the club.

I took a table in the corner and practically inhaled a cup of tea. I looked around. I'd never been inside the Groucho before. It's a private club for media types: screenwriters, journalists, actors. Also It girls,
which I guess was the category Petronella loosely slotted into. The London newspapers are always reporting rock-star sightings at the Groucho; Mick Jagger has been known to turn up, and Bono was spotted dancing on the bar at Stella McCartney's last birthday party. A few years back an incident involving a member of parliament, two television starlets, and a Ziploc Baggie of cocaine in the ladies' room made headlines.

But on a Monday morning the Groucho was disappointingly subdued. Most of the other tables were occupied by men in gray suits, reading the
Financial Times
. I drummed my fingers on the table and waited. And waited.

I had just lifted my hand to order scrambled eggs and a croissant—I was past caring whether Petronella showed—when she appeared in the doorway. She was luminous. All legs and big blue eyes and that pale-gold hair sheeting down her back. I watched as just about every man in the room stopped eating and pretended not to stare. Would it be exciting or bothersome to possess that kind of beauty?

She pretended not to notice, or maybe she was so used to men's staring that she really didn't. She crossed the room and plopped into the chair across from me. A waiter rushed over to spread her napkin across her lap and pour her coffee. She was wearing a white, zippered catsuit with an Hermès scarf knotted around her waist. Just the thing, obviously, for a seven-hour transatlantic flight to your boyfriend's funeral. I glanced down. Strappy gold Jimmy Choos with four-inch heels. They were great shoes, I had to hand it to her.

“Did you find the place all right? I was worried you'd gotten lost,” I said acidly.

She ignored me. She didn't apologize for being late, didn't even say hello. She took her time stirring milk into her coffee and then looked up. “I don't know if this is important or means anything or not. But yesterday before I left Cambridge, I went to Thom's room. I hadn't been there since—since what happened—and I kind of wanted to say good-bye, you know?”

I nodded.

“And I also wondered if there was anything of mine there that perhaps I should collect. I mean, he had packed up to move home and everything, but just in case. Everything between us ended rather abruptly, as you know.”

I nodded again.

“I still have the key Thom gave me, so I could let myself in.” She fished around in her handbag for a moment and pulled out an ordinary-looking brass key. “I mean, the point is, the door was locked.” She looked at me significantly. “And I went in, and everything looked all right. Quite neat and tidy, actually, nothing like when Thom lived there. And I was just looking around in the drawers and things when I heard a noise. From the second bedroom—the one Thom used mostly for stowing his skis and luggage and things. And then the door opened—I nearly fainted—and out walks Nadeem. He nearly frightened me to death.”

“Who's Nadeem?”

She frowned. “Nadeem is—I think he's Indian or Pakistani or something. Nadeem Siddiqui. He works with me at Cavendish. Or not really with me. He's guest-lecturing for a term, or something like that. But he's tied somehow to Cavendish. Quite an odd chap, really. Though I did try to be nice to him.”

“And what's Cavendish?”

“Cavendish Laboratory. It's the physics department, basically. My department. I told you I do research there with high-energy particle accelerators.”

I didn't bother to hide my smile. Petronella was starting to remind me of a Bond-girl villain. A blond bombshell in a white catsuit with an advanced degree in some incomprehensible branch of physics. You couldn't make this stuff up.

“No, you hadn't mentioned that,” I said. “But anyway, why was this Nadeem person in Thom's room?”

“Well, that's just it. He was quite strange about it. He'd been at
the party, you see. The party on Thom's last night. I'm the one who'd invited him. He was in the common room at the lab the other day when a few of us were talking about it, so I invited him along. I didn't actually expect him to come, of course, but never mind. He did. It turns out he and Thom already knew each other. They'd met at a lunch or something, I don't know. Anyway. I think he left before we ordered the takeaway.”

“But what's that got to do—”

She raised her hand to shush me. “I'm getting to it. So when I saw him yesterday, he said he'd lost something. He thought he might have left it at the party. So he'd come back to look, but he couldn't find it. But, Alex, here's the thing.”

“Yes?”

“The room—the second bedroom, where he was looking. I can't think why he would ever have been in that room at the party. Thom used it as a storage room, you see? And when I looked past him—past Nadeem—it was a total state. Like a bomb had gone off. The mattress thrown off the bed to the floor, the shelves pulled out from the walls. It looked . . . ransacked. Even Thom wouldn't have left it like that. And as I said, the rest of the suite looked as if it had been cleaned.”

“Right.” I remembered Thom's bedder saying she had straightened up.

“So I asked Nadeem what he'd lost and could I help him look. He said it was nothing important, and he closed the bedroom door behind him, and that was that. He walked me out and we said good-bye. And it wasn't until last night as I was driving down to London that the other thing occurred to me. Which is, how did he get in? I told you I had to use my key. The door was locked. So how did he get in? And what was he doing in there, with the main door all locked up behind him?”

“I don't know.” I thought for a moment. Pressed my finger onto my bread plate to collect the last few croissant crumbs. “What do you think he was looking for?”

“Oh, I've no idea. I'm sure none of this has anything to do with anything. It didn't seem worth bothering the porters with it. But it does seem—quite strange, doesn't it? It felt like I should tell . . . someone. So I thought of you.”

I took out my notebook and scribbled down the name—Nadeem Siddiqui—and the details of the room as Petronella had described them. “I have to say I don't know if there's anything sinister about it or not. And I'm not actually going back to Cambridge. I'm flying to Boston myself today, to write the story about the funeral. But if I've got a few minutes before my flight, perhaps I'll try to track him down and ask a few questions. Lord knows I don't have any other leads at the moment.” I slapped my notebook shut.

Petronella nodded, lifted her arms over her head, and stretched. The catsuit stretched with her. It was quite a sight. “I'm sure it'll turn out to be nothing. You'll let me know if you find anything out? Now, if you'll excuse me, I do need to run to get to Heathrow on time.” She picked her phone up off the table. “I've just got to ring Lucien quickly.”

I blushed at the name. Lucien Sly might well still be asleep in my bed at the hotel back in Cambridge. I'd managed to sneak out without waking him.

I stood up. “I'll be in touch. See you at the funeral, maybe. Have a safe flight. Oh, and give his lordship a kiss for me.”

Petronella looked up, startled.

I walked out.

I TURNED LEFT OUT OF
the Groucho and then left again onto Old Compton Street. Sex shops, wine shops, pubs. I wheeled my Samsonite behind me. I was looking for a café or a hotel lobby or even a park bench where I could make a phone call or two.

I wasn't sure what to make of my meeting with Petronella. I couldn't think of how this slightly strange lab colleague of hers could possibly be connected to Thomas Carlyle's falling out of the Eliot House bell tower. Still, it did seem odd that he'd been caught rummaging around Thom's room. Thom's
locked
room. There would probably be an innocent explanation. But it seemed worth calling and asking Nadeem Siddiqui what it was.

Finally I found a café. I ordered yet another pot of tea and called Galloni's desk at the police station. No answer. I left a voice mail explaining that someone might have broken into Thom's rooms at Emmanuel, and that Thom's girlfriend had seen him, and that she was landing in Boston later today if they wanted to send somebody over to talk to her. I don't usually consider it my business to pass tips along to law enforcement. But Galloni was proving a useful source, and it never hurts to return the favor once in a while.

Next I fired off an e-mail to renew my interview request for Thom's parents. Lowell Carlyle's secretary at the White House had been polite, but discouraging. No chance until after the funeral, if ever, she'd said. Still, it couldn't hurt to keep trying.

Then I looked up the number for Cavendish Laboratory. A receptionist answered on the second ring. I got passed around and hung up on a few times until eventually a woman with a heavy German accent told me Nadeem Siddiqui no longer worked there.