CHAPTER FIVE
It seemed to Herrick that life continued with bright, feverish simplicity. The Saturday papers learned that Norquist had been travelling in the Prime Minister’s car and concluded that the events of May 14 could only be read as an attempt on the Prime Minister’s life. No one seemed to take any notice of the reports in the International Herald Tribune that asked how the terrorists knew Norquist’s travel plans when his own secretary hadn’t been told. It also questioned the nature of the information that the British had been acting on. Was it a tip-off or the result of secret surveillance? The most important issue, said a columnist from the Herald Tribune, was how the Pakistani assassins mistook the President’s old ally for the British Prime Minister. The two men could not be more dissimilar, even in the reportedly wild conditions on the M4 that day.
After finishing the papers, Herrick did a couple of hours impatient shopping, which produced two new suits, a pair of blue jeans and a white shirt. She dumped the clothes without looking at them again at her house in West Kensington and returned to Heathrow, this time on an entirely unofficial basis. What had hardened in her mind was the absolute need to link the identity switch with the operation against Norquist. But the contrast between the care and timing of the switch and the haphazard nature of the hit, which had apparently only succeeded because of a stray police bullet, suggested that different minds were behind them – unless the disparity had been planned.
At Heathrow, she went to the viewing terrace and began asking the plane spotters tucked away in a shelter whether they had seen anyone acting unusually in the last week or so. They were unsurprised by the question because the police, for which she read Special Branch, had already been to talk to them and they had provided a description of a man in his late thirties. He had Mediterranean looks, was overweight by twenty or so pounds and spoke fluent English with an Arab accent. His knowledge of aircraft was good but he seemed a lot more interested in the carriers than their planes. Referring to their notes from May 14, one or two were able to place him in the context of planes arriving and leaving and claimed to remember him making a remark about two Russian planes. No one could remember seeing him after that day.
She took the description to the incident room at Hounslow police station, where she had arranged to meet a Chief Superintendent Lovett who was leading the investigation into the fire at the home of the washroom attendant. The policeman was cagey but eventually agreed that the washroom attendant Ahmad Ahktar had associated with a man who more or less fitted this description. He had made contact at the mosque in central London which Ahmad had attended when his work allowed him. They were treating the case as multiple murder because the injuries on Ahmad’s head and back could not have been sustained by the roof collapsing. There was another, more telling clue: the youngest child was found to have high levels of Tamazepam in her body. The remains of the other members of the family were being tested and there was some hope of retrieving enough tissue for analysis.
Herrick had all she needed. The Ahktar family had been murdered to stop Ahmad talking about the identity switch and it was possible that the man who had watched the planes come in was responsible for this. But the important fact was that her line of inquiry had already been followed by Special Branch. They had made the connection between the man on the viewing terrace and the fire in Heston. In other words, someone was acting on the memo and the medley of CCTV clips she had sent.
Late that afternoon, she called Dolph and arranged dinner in a room above a pub in Notting Hill. Dolph arrived late and for a time they talked about ‘the office’ in neutral terms and drank some cocktails of Dolph’s invention.
‘They’re holding their breath, Isis,’ he said, ‘waiting for something to happen – or not to happen. The whole bloody place’s on edge. You can feel it.’
Herrick murmured that she thought something was already happening, but that they were being kept out of it. Dolph didn’t pick up on this.
‘They’re constipated,’ he said, ‘bent double with it. They need a fucking good dump.’
Herrick grimaced. ‘You’re a barbarian.’
‘You can’t deny there’s something weird about it.’ He paused and looked across the room of mostly young diners. ‘Look at this lot,’ he said. ‘There’s not a person in this room who earns less than we do – and that’s including the waiters. What do we do it for?’
‘Vanity?’ she offered.
Dolph turned back. ‘That’s why I like you, Isis. You get it all. Do you think this weird mood in the office has anything to do with the Chief going?’
‘Might have.’
‘Oh come off it. Talk, for Christ’s sake. I want to know what you think.’
She smiled. ‘I am talking, but this isn’t the best place for it.’
Dolph eyed the waitress and then let his gaze fall on Herrick. ‘Okay, tell me about you. What happened to the man in your life – the academic?’
She shrugged. Daniel Brewer, outwardly a soft-hearted academic, had turned out to be an incipient drunk, a clever Cornish working-class boy prone to bouts of despair and unreason. ‘He found someone who listened better than I did. And he didn’t like our business – the vanishing act, the secrecy. He felt excluded.’
‘You told him what you did?’
‘No, but he guessed. That was part of the original attraction, I think.’
‘What about your father? Did he like him?’
‘Didn’t say.’
Dolph ordered some wine. ‘Did you know I went to your father’s lectures? My intake was the last to get the Munroe Herrick treatment. He was very impressive. Believe me, I’d never have survived all that crap in the Balkans if it hadn’t been for him.’
‘Yes – he had stopped by the time I was taken on.’
Dolph regarded her sympathetically with his handsome, dissolute face. As he was choosing the wine she had noticed his expression suddenly betray the very sharp intelligence which lay behind the facade of effortlessness. ‘I often think about you,’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s going on with you.’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing Dolph, just bloody work. I’m considering taking the Cairo job.’
‘You should have some fun.’
She revolved her eyes in an arc, knowing what was coming next. ‘Yes, I should,’ she said. ‘Which is why I’m going to take Cairo.’ She smiled a full stop.
He laid his hand on hers. ‘Look, this is embarrassing. But I’m really fond of you, Isis. Really, I mean, I think you’re the one.’
‘And I’m fond of you too. But I am not going to sleep with you.’ She let his hand remain for a while then gently removed it.
‘Pity,’ he said morosely. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded.
‘You’ll miss the pillow talk that keeps the girls coming back.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s hardly an inviting prospect, Dolph – the idea that I would be one in a bus queue of women listening to your ravings.’
‘God, you’re so fucking prim. Perhaps we should do it now – I mean the pillow talk.’
‘If you can do it discreetly.’
‘Loosen up, Isis. That’s the point of pillow talk.’ He drank a glass of wine and smiled at the restaurant. ‘Your friend, the man in the bookshop, was doing interesting things with his PC.’
Herrick set down her glass and looked at Dolph’s black eyes dancing. ‘Can you talk about this now?’
‘Of course. He has a novel line in screensavers. Actually it’s one screensaver – an aquarium with fish swimming across it. You know the kind of thing.’
She nodded.
‘Only, his aquarium is different, you see. It’s got a little timer in it that ticks away and then releases information.’
‘There was a message hidden in the image?’
‘Not quite. What happens is this. He logs on in the morning and automatically downloads the same
