Brock said he would find his own way out, and left the secretary to her shredding. He returned along the corridor and came to what looked like one of the original house staircases. He decided to follow it down into the basement, where the security control room was located, and as he descended he was aware of a change in the air, becoming cooler and tinged with the slightly acrid smell of fresh cement and plaster. Sure enough, the lower floor looked as if it had been recently abandoned by builders, with a heap of sand and a cement mixer blocking the way. Ahead of him a doorway had been roughly knocked through a party wall into what had once been the basement of the next house, and as he stepped through Brock found himself in a dusty, dark room that looked as if it hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. He stopped, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, and then saw that the floor in front of him had been dug up, with the old stone slabs tilted up on end against the wall and the ground beneath excavated. He made out the dim line of an old earthenware sewer pipe. Planks had been laid across the earthworks to a doorway on the far side of the room, and he crossed and found himself in another cellar, the floor of which looked as if it had been similarly excavated and then filled in again. There was a closed door on the other side of this space, and when he tried the handle it opened into a carpeted corridor lit by fluorescent lights. A door to one side was open and he saw the equipment of the security monitoring unit inside. The room was deserted, a mug of coffee-Wayne Everett’s perhaps-still warm on the table. The whole building had the air of an abandoned palace, half high-tech redoubt, half ruined excavation. He watched the screen for a moment as it flicked automatically from one empty room to another, before he continued along the corridor to a stair that took him up to the entrance hallway again. He opened the front door and, with a sense of relief, stepped into the sunshine.
THIRTY-FOUR
B rock was early, and called in at a pub nearby to kill some time. The restaurant Kathy had suggested was an old favourite of theirs, a comfortable Italian place whose informality surely made it a good choice for a quiet friendly dinner. Yet Brock felt unsettled, as if Kathy were bringing an outsider into their relationship. No, that was absurd. He was glad for her, hoped this time it would work out. Lord knows, she had made some unfortunate, or unlucky, choices in the past. Was there a reason for that? he wondered. Something to do with her father’s suicide, perhaps? Or with being in the police?
His eyes went to a TV screen in the corner where a wide-eyed German tourist was describing a suicide he had witnessed on Westminster Bridge that afternoon, a man jumping into the river. Brock was thankful that someone else would be dealing with it. He checked his watch again, sighed, sank his whisky and said goodnight to the barman.
When he stepped into the restaurant he saw them straight away at his favourite table, with their heads together, laughing over something on the young man’s mobile phone. Then they looked up and saw him coming, and both got to their feet, eyes bright and expectant. Brock shook the man’s hand and tried to make an initial assessment. Firm grip, intelligent eyes, slightly wary. Fair enough. Not too smooth like that lawyer Martin Connell, probably not gay like Leon Desai, and apparently not Special Branch like Tom Reeves. So far so good. But what the hell had he been doing coming to see him, out cold in the hospital?
‘Looked like you were enjoying a good joke,’ Brock said.
‘Oh, yes.’ Kathy laughed. ‘John took a picture of the two guys who ran this B and B we stayed at in Boston. They were fantastic cooks.’
Brock watched them as they recited some of the dishes they’d had. There was no doubt about it, the lad was smitten, casting surreptitious glances at Kathy. He wished that Suzanne were there to help him get through the evening and afterwards carry out a considered post-mortem. She was expecting a full report on the phone when he got home.
They talked about Boston, ordered food, discussed the Henry Moore exhibition, ate, and several times he thought he noticed Kathy signalling to John with a questioning look or a raised eyebrow, and wondered what was coming. The young man was polite and deferential, but Brock had the feeling he was holding something back. Feeling a little more relaxed, he asked him about his work at McGill, and John became more animated and amusing, talking about his colleagues. Brock felt rather envious of the life he described, grappling with intellectual puzzles of- to Brock’s mind-utter uselessness.
‘So you’re a kind of detective too,’ he said.
John seemed to flush with pleasure at that. ‘Yes, in a way. Maybe it runs in the blood.’
Again that look from Kathy, and John bowed his head and took a deep breath, and Brock saw that he was about to say something that they’d already discussed. He had the feeling that this was the point of their meal together, and he felt a sudden irritation at the subterfuge, and a reluctance to share whatever confession they were about to make.
So he said quickly, ‘Well, I can’t say I’ve solved our puzzle, but I did make a little progress.’ He noticed a shadow of disappointment pass across Kathy’s face as he took out Morris’s envelope. ‘Originally there was a note accompanying the picture of Chelsea Mansions. Its message was imprinted onto the back of the photograph.’
He showed them Morris’s ESDA image.
‘Miles.’ John frowned as he read the signature. ‘That was the name of Toby Beaumont’s son, who was killed in the first Gulf War.’ He told them the story. ‘But he certainly wouldn’t have been around in 1956.’
‘Perhaps Toby named him after his own father,’ Kathy suggested. ‘He was living in that house in the background of the picture.’
‘That’s possible,’ Brock said. ‘I had hopes that Toby might have taken the picture, but perhaps it was his father. Do we know anything about him?’
Kathy shook her head. John was examining the photograph.
‘I showed a copy of that to Moszynski’s mother this afternoon,’ Brock said. ‘She got very upset-tore the picture to pieces and attacked me. Nearly crowned me. She denied that it’s Gennady.’
John was nodding, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. ‘That’s interesting. It could tie in with an idea I had. After Kathy left Boston I had to wait to get a seat on a return flight, so I went back to the Widener Library and did a bit more digging. I thought I’d try to find out more of what Gennady Moszynski’s movements might have been in the UK during that 1956 visit, and I drew up a timeline of what happened.’
With a slight show of embarrassment, like an overenthusiastic student trying to please his teacher, Brock thought, John drew a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and spread it out on the table.
‘The official party arrived in the UK on a Soviet cruiser, the Ordzhonikidze, at Portsmouth on the eighteenth of April, and stayed for ten days, during which they had meetings and functions in London, as well as visiting Birmingham, Oxford and Edinburgh. This is what I’ve been able to make of their movements. But there was one thing that didn’t go according to plan. Two days after the Russians left for home, MI6 announced that one of their operatives, a naval frogman, had disappeared near Portsmouth on the nineteenth of April, while testing some secret equipment. But the Russians then claimed that their sailors had seen a British frogman near the Ordzhonikidze on that day, and rumours began to circulate that the Russians had abducted or killed him. He was never found. His name was Commander-’
‘Buster Crabb,’ Brock cut in, shaking his head. He felt disappointed. Was that what this dinner was all about, so that Kathy’s new boyfriend could show off some crackpot conspiracy theory he’d come up with?
‘You’ve heard of him?’ John said.
‘It’s an old chestnut in this country, John, one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Cold War. There have been dozens of different explanations-Crabb had his throat cut by a Russian frogman, or was kidnapped and taken back to Russia, or defected, or even was murdered by MI6. Every couple of years someone comes up with a new idea. It’s a waste of time.’
John looked deflated. ‘I just thought, what if Gennady Moszynski was mixed up in that business and Nancy’s mother had known about it and told Nancy? Wouldn’t the Moszynskis want to shut her up? I mean, the Brits might not be so friendly if the word got out…’
‘Then why kill Mikhail Moszynski? No, John, forget it. There’s something much more personal behind this. Look at that photograph again, at the features of Nancy and Gennady. You were right about Nancy’s birth date, Kathy. I asked the lab to compare the DNA samples taken from the bodies of Nancy and Mikhail. They were close relatives, brother and sister, with the same father-Gennady. That’s the family secret that everybody’s been trying to
