Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (14 page)

Then again – and this was what really worried Liz – he might have been caught going through his colleague’s files. But caught by whom? After all, he’d said the man was away from Geneva. Perhaps the secretary had found him rifling the filing cabinets, but would she really have turned her former lover in – since it was she who had alerted him in the first place to his colleague’s odd behaviour?

It was a mystery, and no clearer to Liz when the morning came. Russell White had arranged at short notice to play tennis with a friend (Terry Castle, his usual partner was on holiday), but when he rang Liz at 10.30 it was only to say there was no sign of Sorsky at the club. ‘I’ll go again tomorrow, just in case,’ he’d said. ‘Though it’s always been a weekday when we’ve met before. Did you want to stay and wait for that?’

Liz decided. ‘No. It doesn’t sound likely that he’ll show up on a Sunday. I think the best thing is for me to return to London. I’ll come back right away if you hear from him.’

Now, the cleaning finished to her satisfaction, Liz took a leisurely hot bath while Mozart played on Radio 3 in the sitting room. After she’d dressed she took an inventory of the refrigerator: one-week-old carton of milk, two eggs past their best-before date, a half-full bottle of Australian Chardonnay that she knew had been opened ten days ago, and a head of Iceberg lettuce, brown and wilted. Even by her standards this was grim, so she went to the corner shop on Highgate Road to stock up, and when she got back the message light on the phone was blinking. It was her mother, still up in town. Liz rang back straight away.

‘Hello, dear,’ said Susan. ‘So you got home at last.’

‘I’m so sorry about lunch, Mum. I thought you’d have gone back to Bowerbridge by now.’

‘Actually, I’m just about to leave. Edward’s staying up – he’s arranged to see Cathy and Teddy tomorrow in Brighton. I can’t say he’s looking forward to it – she was perfectly awful to him on the phone when he suggested it. But he’s worried about these French friends of hers. When Edward talked to little Teddy, he said one of them – he called him René – wasn’t very nice.’

‘To Teddy?’

‘No, to Cathy. Teddy said they were arguing.’

‘Oh, dear. Is Edward there now? Let me have a word with him.’

While her mother went to get Edward, Liz thought about this French visitor. Could they really be threatening Cathy, or had Teddy just imagined things?

‘Hello, Liz. Glad you’re back. Everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine with me. But I gather it’s not so fine with Cathy.’

‘No. I’m going down to see her tomorrow. I’m rather dreading it, to tell you the truth.’

‘Would you like some company?’

‘Do you mean you’d like to come? You must have better things to do on a Sunday, especially when you’ve been away.’ But his voice had lifted.

‘I don’t actually. I’d love to come, if you’d like me to?’

‘Well, if you’re absolutely sure, I certainly won’t say no.’

‘I’m absolutely sure,’ said Liz, hearing the relief in Edward’s voice.

She rang Martin next. There was no answer, so she left a brief message on his answering machine, letting him know she was back, then made herself a supper of pasta sprinkled with Parmesan, and went to bed. As she snuggled down in her large comfortable bed, she felt she could sleep for ever. She was halfway there when the phone rang on the bedside table.

‘Please say I didn’t wake you up.’ It was Martin.

She said, ‘Even if you had it’s nice to hear your voice. What have you been up to?’

‘I took Danielle to dinner. You know students; they seem to live on dry crusts and a lettuce leaf. So I took her to La Rouge Chemise.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Liz, with a groan. Martin had taken Liz there on her birthday – it had been a
grande bouffe
with six courses, none of them small.

‘Danielle says she won’t have to eat again for a week. But how did your trip go?’

‘It had some interesting developments,’ she said.

‘Well, you’d better come over and tell me about them.’

‘I will.’

‘You sound tired, Liz. I hope you’re going to take it easy tomorrow.’

‘Actually, I’m going with Edward to see his daughter in Brighton.’

‘Okay. I haven’t forgotten about that, by the way. I’ve put a call in and am waiting to hear.’

‘Thank you,’ said Liz, realising this meant he had rung Isobel Florian, his counterpart in the DCRI. She tried but failed to suppress a yawn.

‘I heard that,’ said Martin.

‘Sorry.’

He laughed gently. ‘You can’t fool me. Even if I’m not there to see if you can keep your eyes open. Those beautiful big eyes.’

‘Flatterer.’

‘I’m French, so what do you expect? But now it’s time you closed them.’

Chapter 22

In theory they had a choice of cars, but though Liz’s Audi saloon had served her well, she had to admit that in old age the car had slowed down: its engine coughed when she drove at more than 70 miles per hour, the brakes squeaked like mice if she applied them hard, and all in all the knacker’s yard beckoned. So when Edward arrived at her flat in a sparkling new Golf with leather seats, Liz climbed in without a backward glance at the Audi. When she remarked on the splendour of the new car, Edward laughed and said, ‘The one good thing about being as old as I am is that if you buy a sporty little car like this, no one can accuse you of having a mid-life crisis.’

Cathy Treglown lived a mile along the coast from Brighton Pier, in the ground-floor flat of a Victorian house that had seen better days. When she answered the door, Liz felt Cathy could use some refurbishment too. Edward had said she was only in her late twenties, but her skin was red and coarsened, her figure was shapeless and her eyes looked tired. All that, along with her unkempt hair and the stained T-shirt and ragged jeans she wore, made her look middle-aged.

She seemed resigned rather than happy to see her father, and though she was civil to Liz, she wasn’t friendly. Only the arrival of Teddy lightened the atmosphere. He rushed into the room, and jumped straight into Edward’s arms, shouting, ‘Grandpa! You’re here.’

The sitting room ran the length of the house and had been freshly painted.

‘What a lovely room,’ said Liz.

‘The landlord redecorated after the previous family moved out. It meant he could put the rent up,’ Cathy said sourly.

An awkward silence followed which Edward finally broke. ‘I’ll go and make some coffee. Come on, Teddy. You can show me where things are.’

When he had left the room, Cathy said nothing so to break the silence Liz asked, ‘Did you like living in France?’

‘I stayed ten years so I must have.’

‘But you’ve come back now.’

Cathy shrugged. ‘I’m starting to think it might have been a mistake. Anyway, let’s not talk about me. Edward says you live in London. What do you do there?’

‘I’m a civil servant,’ Liz said, expecting the usual glazed look of disinterest.

But Cathy said, ‘Doing what exactly?’

‘I work in Human Resources.’ This was usually enough to stop further questions.

‘Do you mind working for the government?’

‘No. In my more idealistic moments, I like to think I’m working for the people.’

‘As if.’ Cathy seemed about to launch into a lengthy tirade about Liz’s employer, when Edward appeared with a tray. As he passed round the mugs he said, ‘Teddy’s gone out into the garden with his football.’

‘You spoil him, Dad,’ said Cathy. ‘That bike you gave him must have cost a fortune.’ But though the words were ungracious, for the first time her voice softened, and it was suddenly obvious to Liz how much she loved her little boy.

Edward said, ‘It’s the least I can do. The whole point of grandparents is spoiling their grandchildren.’ He smiled. ‘It’s the parents who have to do the hard bit – the grandparents can shower the children with presents and love, then you lot have to make them eat their supper and go to bed at the right time.’

‘At least you admit I’ve got the sharp end,’ said Cathy, her sour mood returning. There was a gracelessness about her which seemed almost artificial – as if she were deliberately suppressing a nicer character behind the sulky façade.

Fearing how his daughter must seem to Liz, Edward was looking embarrassed. He said with a forced cheerfulness, ‘So, any news on the house?’

‘It’s on hold. I told you that, Dad.’

He nodded. ‘Well, just tell me if I can help in any way.’ He smiled, and Liz found herself feeling immensely sorry for him. The strong, confident man she knew was faltering here, walking on eggshells because he was all too aware that his daughter held all the cards – one argument too many and she’d be back in France, at the mercy of her anarchist friends, and taking Teddy with her.

Liz, thinking it would be best to leave them alone for a bit, said, ‘I’m going to join Teddy in the garden – I rather fancy a game of football. Is that OK?’

‘Be my guest,’ Cathy replied.

Liz went into the hall and, on the way to the garden, stopped in the loo. Stuck to the inside of the door was a large poster of Che Guevara, the classic one with fist clenched and a vivid red beret perched jauntily on the side of his head. Was it a joke? Surely no one of Cathy’s age in their right mind could still think of the man as a hero. But below the poster was a framed quotation from Ibsen:

The State is the curse of the individual … The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action … and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.

As Liz came out and turned towards the door to the garden, she saw a large appointments diary on the hall table beside the telephone. It seemed oddly out of place in this ramshackle flat – a symbol of the middle-class life Cathy had so vehemently rejected.

Liz looked at the diary’s open pages, which covered the rest of the month. There were a few entries: a doctor’s appointment for Teddy the following week, a parents’ day, a dentist’s appointment the week after, and most interestingly a brief entry for the previous week:
René L.& Antoine 2.30.

Was this the René who’d been round to the flat before – the man Teddy said had been nasty? Probably. But who was Antoine? René’s enforcer? Liz hoped not, but she made a mental note to ring Martin as soon as she got home.

Chapter 23

‘Good morning, Elizabeth,’ said a familiar voice on the phone. ‘You’re an early bird today.’

Liz closed her eyes and suppressed a groan. Geoffrey Fane was the last person she wanted to hear from just now. It was only half-past seven and she’d come in early to catch up with all the paperwork that had accumulated while she’d been in Switzerland. How on earth did Fane know she was in her office? It was creepy.

She looked longingly at the cup of coffee and the croissant she’d bought as she left the Underground, and hoped she could get rid of him quickly. ‘They say the early bird catches the worm, Geoffrey. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. The Swiss say a charter plane from Moscow landed in Geneva on Saturday, return flight. It took off two hours later with one passenger – on a stretcher, apparently unconscious. The Russians claimed he was ill. But the Swiss are pretty sure it was Alexander Sorsky.’

‘Oh, God. No wonder he didn’t turn up at the café. He was perfectly OK when I saw him on Thursday.’

‘I’m sure he was. I’m afraid that somehow the Russians must have got on to him.’

Liz thought about her last meeting with Sorsky and her unease about what he was proposing to do. Could he have been spotted going through his colleague’s files? It didn’t seem likely – he’d been very confident there was no chance of his being caught. Even if he had been, he should have been able to come up with some reasonable explanation. But there was one other way he could have been rumbled. ‘Was there any surveillance on my last meeting with him in the park?’

‘Why do you ask?’ Fane said slowly.

He was hedging; he always hated direct questions. ‘I want to know if there was surveillance while I was waiting for Sorsky in the park on Thursday. Russell White promised me there wouldn’t be.’

‘Well, if he gave you his word, then there wasn’t. Not from us.’

‘That’s easy to say, but he told me the very first time I met Petrov that there wouldn’t be any surveillance and there was. So how do I know he was telling the truth this time?’

‘You don’t, Elizabeth. But you have
my
word for it.’

As if that meant anything, she thought. ‘Could it have been someone else then? I don’t mean the Russians – if they had been watching Sorsky, they would never have allowed him to come to the meeting on Thursday.’

Fane sighed. ‘It was the Swiss. Their DG, a man called Bech – competent fellow normally – admitted as much to White. They were there all right, though he said they are certain no one else was watching. Meaning, the Russians weren’t following Sorsky – they must have found out some other way.’