Killing for the Company (33 page)

‘I think you might find,’ Blumenthal said, ‘that some mistakes are more costly than others.’

The comment made Cohen snap. ‘The moment I realised she was a threat, I sent someone to take care of her. She killed him. It’s all in the file. I’ve heard nothing about her ever since. But I can tell you something for sure, Ehud.’

‘Then you better had.’

‘This . . .’ He tapped the picture that was still lying on his desk. ‘This doesn’t make sense. Maya Bloom was many things. Skilled. Dangerous. Unhinged. But she was loyal to Israel, Ehud. She was
always
loyal to Israel. Maya Bloom in league with Palestinian terrorists? I would sooner believe it of you yourself than of her. I can only assume she’s part of some crackpot plot to turn the West against the Palestinians.’

‘You’d better hope we find this woman, Ephraim, otherwise you might find yourself answering to less sympathetic members of the administration than myself.’ He stood up, brushed his lapels again and turned towards the exit. ‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said.

Blumenthal was just opening the door when Cohen spoke again.

‘Ehud,’ he said very quietly.

The politician turned. ‘What?’

‘You won’t find her, you know. I can absolutely promise you that you won’t find Maya Bloom. And if you do . . .’

He went silent.

‘What?’

Cohen remembered the brutalised body of the agent he’d sent to kill her. The guts spilled out all over the bed. The blood and the stink. The message she’d sent him, and which he had heeded. He wanted to say, ‘She’ll kill you,’ but he thought better of it.

‘
What?
’ Blumenthal demanded again.

Cohen shook his head and sighed deeply. ‘Nothing, Ehud,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’ And he watched with an expressionless face as the Rottweiler stormed out of the room, slamming the door noisily behind him.

TWENTY-ONE

Leaving Hereford had been far from straightforward. First there had been the meet and greet with the Royal Protection Squad at 07.00 hrs. Luke hardly heard anything the RPS boys said. He was just replaying last night’s conversation over and over again. Trying to make sense of it. Trying to work out what it meant.

I was with Chet Freeman the night he died . . . the night he was murdered.

Part of him thought the caller must have been a nutter, winding him up or playing some sick joke. But his phone was supplied by work. That meant it was encrypted. Impossible to trace and impossible to find the number if you didn’t know it already. Luke knew that he had to get out of camp and down to London.

They were scheduled to leave for Israel the following morning. Going AWOL wasn’t an option, so he approached O’Donoghue at midday and spun him a crock of shit about having a few personal loose ends to tie up before heading out on the op. The ops officer hadn’t been happy. ‘Fucking hell, Luke, we leave in twenty-four hours. It’s not the time for you to start sorting out your woman trouble.’ But he cut his man some slack and agreed to stand him down for a few hours. And so, by early afternoon, Luke had changed out of his camouflage gear and into a pair of jeans and an old hooded top that he normally wore for jogging in the winter. Today he selected it because the hood would disguise his face a little. Before long he was screaming down the M4 to London.

He hit the western outskirts at 14.45 hrs. As a London boy born and bred, it felt like coming home. But it was an uneasy homecoming. By 15.45 he was parking up just off Fleet Street. He was in good time for the RV and that suited him well. He didn’t know what this woman looked like; he didn’t know if this was some elaborate game; so he wanted to get eyes on the location early.

The light was just failing as he walked up Fleet Street with the illuminated dome of St Paul’s rising above him. Luke turned up the collar of his leather jacket against the cold, pulled up his hood and stood fifty metres from the steps, in the shadow of the maroon awning of an Indian restaurant. The smell of curry reminded him how hungry he was, but he put that to the back of his mind and surveyed the scene.

The entrance to the cathedral was lit up, and people were wandering in and out of the huge wooden doors, only just visible behind the temple-like column of the façade. Many of them were tourists – there was a large party of Japanese students with backpacks and cameras – but he saw too a good number of ordinary Londoners, suited and booted. Perhaps, he thought to himself, the events of a couple of days ago had made people more religious. Luke didn’t know. It was all bullshit to him. When you’re dead you’re dead. No pearly gates or swooning angels. Just a hole in the ground, if you’re lucky.

The minutes ticked away. Luke stayed in the shadows, watching the steps. Waiting. People came and went. Was the woman he was here to meet one of the crowd sitting on the steps? Impossible to tell.

He continued to watch. It grew cold. He ignored it.

‘You hungry, boss?’

He looked round sharply. An Indian man in a grey suit had appeared at the door of the curry restaurant. ‘I have very good food.’

Luke shook his head and went back to watching.

Time check: 16.57. Three minutes to RV.

Luke scanned the steps, directing his vision in concentric circles so he covered the whole area. Nobody stood out. He looked at his phone. No calls. He scanned the façade of the cathedral; he checked along its wings for anything suspicious; he searched for loiterers in the general vicinity.

Nothing. It looked like just another London evening.

16.59.

Something caught his eye.

Two people had emerged from the entrance of the cathedral. A woman and, holding on to her hand, a young child. Luke wouldn’t have given them a second glance, were the woman not looking around anxiously, as if she too was searching for someone. The child stood calmly by the woman’s side. He showed none of the woman’s anxiety, but then why should he? He was just a kid.

Luke stayed where he was. A nearby church bell rang the hour and the woman’s anxiety appeared to increase. He continued to check for anything suspicious: unmarked cars parked nearby; anyone else observing the steps.

Still nothing.

At 17.03 he stepped out from the shadows. He didn’t walk directly up to the steps, but followed a circular route and approached from the side. As he drew nearer to the entrance of the cathedral, the woman’s features became clearer. She was thin, with short red hair and bags under her eyes. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her face, but the same couldn’t be said of the child who held her hand. He was thin too, with serious eyes and dishevelled brown hair. But there
was
something familiar about him. So familiar, in fact, that just to look at him sent a prickle of recognition down Luke’s spine.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up. The woman was chewing on her lower lip. She glanced at her watch and muttered something to herself, then bent down and spoke to the child. And it was as she was speaking that she caught sight of Luke staring at her.

She stared back and slowly stood up to her full height again. Her expression was questioning. Luke hurried up the steps, but he didn’t head straight for her. Instead he bypassed the pair of them and passed through the main doors of the cathedral.

He’d never been inside before. Last time Luke had been in a church was to say goodbye to a member of A Squadron who’d had his bollocks blown off during a raid on a Taliban facility in the badlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They’d repatriated those bits of his body they could find, but the guys who’d shouldered his coffin said afterwards that it felt empty. Whatever. The family had something to plant, that was the main thing.

He quickly took in his surroundings: the narrow aisle with its chequerboard floor and row upon row of wooden pews, the massive dome, the highly decorated altar and imposing organ, the huge arches along either side of the aisle leading to the unseen wings of the cathedral – very pretty, Luke supposed, but he wasn’t here to marvel at the fucking architecture. At the far end of the cathedral, just in front of the altar, a large choir of maybe a hundred people was rehearsing – a fifty-fifty mixture of schoolboys in blue and grey uniform and men and women of retirement age. Their conductor, clearly unhappy with something, was shouting at them, and his voice echoed meaninglessly around the huge space. Weird, what some people got themselves worked up about. Aside from the choir, there were probably another hundred people in here that he could see, some of them sitting on the pews with their heads bowed, others wandering aimlessly, looking at the architecture, or just talking.

The conductor’s shouting stopped and, almost imperceptibly, the choir started singing. It was quiet, but the voices sounded like they came from every corner of the cathedral.

‘Monteverdi,’ a voice said from behind him.

Luke spun round. A young priest with neatly brushed but thinning blond hair, black robes and a dog collar was standing no more than a metre from him. ‘The
Vespers
,’ he said with a serene smile. ‘So powerful . . . Are you here for contemplation?’

Luke looked over the priest’s shoulder towards the main doors. No sign of his date.

‘Something like that.’

The man inclined his head. ‘Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for . . .’

Me too, Luke thought. He moved away, walking ten metres to the right, into the shadow of the first side arch. From here he could keep an eye on the entrance and he didn’t have to wait long before he saw her walking into the cathedral. She was clutching the boy’s left hand with both of hers and her eyes darted around. When the priest who had approached Luke walked up and spoke to her, she was visibly distressed and scurried towards the aisle without saying a word, pulling the kid along with her. She looked fucking terrified, Luke thought, as the woman walked past the arch where he was standing. Fine by him. He didn’t like these cloak and dagger games and if she felt uncomfortable, that made two of them.

He left the shadows of the arch and moved quickly down the aisle. Within seconds he was a metre behind the woman and the boy, but they were quite unaware of his presence.

Luke kept his voice low. ‘Walk.’

The woman looked round nervously. He pointed down the aisle towards the altar. ‘That way.’

She swallowed hard and, the little boy still clutching her hand, did as she was told. Luke walked just behind her. Less than a metre. Close enough that they could talk as they went.

‘First things first. What’s your name?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ the woman said quietly. He could only just hear her over the choir. The
Vespers
, whatever the fuck they were, were getting louder.

‘Well, here’s the problem, honey. I’m not a patient man. Fuck around with me any more and I might just decide to stick your arm behind your back and march you down to the nearest Old Bill. I’ll let
you
explain what you’re doing with a dead man’s phone. Could be an interesting conversation.’

‘Oh, God . . .’ the woman murmured. She pulled the little boy closer towards her.

‘So let’s try again. What’s your name?’

A pause. And then, with resignation: ‘Suze . . . Suze McArthur. And this is Harry.’ She stopped and turned round to look at Luke again. They were standing underneath the dome now, and the acoustics had changed. The choir sounded more ethereal, as though a hundred voices were floating around in the air, searching for someone to listen to them.

‘Chet’s boy,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Luke blinked.

‘
What?
’

He looked down at the kid. Harry stared up at him. He didn’t look scared, not like Suze, and Luke felt the recognition again. He knew she wasn’t lying.

‘I’m scared someone might find us,’ said Suze. ‘I don’t feel safe.’

‘What are you talking about? Who else knows we’re here?’

Suze looked back towards the entrance of the cathedral, and her right hand instinctively gripped the boy’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell . . .’

‘Either you’ve told someone or you haven’t.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

Jesus, this woman oozed paranoia. But whatever was going through her head, she clearly believed it. Luke looked around. Up ahead, to the right of the altar, through one of the ornate arches and at the end of the right-hand wing of the church, there was a small, separate altar with three rows of shorter pews in front of it. ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘If anyone’s watching us, we’ll see them.’

‘And what then?’

Luke gave her a flat stare. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

Together, the three of them hurried between the front of the main pews and the choir, towards the smaller altar. The light was a little lower here, the smell of incense stronger. A cast-iron barrier stopped the public from approaching the altar, which was about two metres wide and on which sat a plain bronze cross, about half a metre high. Behind this little altar was a painting: some Bible scene, all stormy skies and men in robes. The altar cloth was inlaid with gold thread and there were three pews facing it for the faithful to pray in. They were all empty. Luke stood with his back to the altar. To his right there was a clear path to the area under the dome and the choir. Straight ahead he could see back along the side length of the church. It was gloomy, but his eyesight was sharp. A few tourists were milling about, perhaps twenty metres away, but they paid this nervous trio no attention. Between them and the tourists was the top of a stairwell, next to which was a sign with an arrow pointing downwards and the words ‘to the crypt’ in big black letters. But the stairwell was cordoned off with a piece of thick rope.