sat. Boarding had been uneventful; the pen had gone into the little tray of loose change, with the rheumatism bracelet and his house keys, and had aroused no suspicion. He had noted the two at the security checks – didn’t need the insight of the Baker Street fellow. He reckoned the last-minute flyers were dumped in the same section of the aircraft, nearest the engines, the noise, the toilets and the smell.
The woman’s bag had the Planet Protection logo.
Benjie Arbuthnot did not know shyness and stared at her with frank interest. A rather pretty woman, might have been elegant or beautiful if she’d patronised a hair salon and a decent boutique. He had no complaint: rather liked the rawness of clothing, skin and eyes. He knew of Planet Protection. The organisation had figured briefly on that list of NGOs that was fed to embassies in the globe’s odder corners so that station officers could – under the usual cover of second secretary, trade – sidle up in a bar, buy large gins and lubricate a tongue if its owner had been upcountry or had met an elusive personality. Those NGOs were regarded as friendly, and were in receipt of central government funding. He doubted that another passenger in the cabin had heard of Planet Protection, and no chance that any would know what they did. It was the arms trade. He didn’t need to be Holmes, or require the prompting of Watson, to marry up Harvey Gillot and the woman, whose name was on a tag attached to the strap of the bag with the logo.
He assessed Megs Behan. A love of the cause and therefore no man with whom to share the tedium of fighting an unwinnable war. A woman with devotion and maternal love, but all channelled towards some dreary little bolt-hole in a building that should have been condemned and… Was Benjie Arbuthnot a cruel, warped old warrior? He wouldn’t have admitted to such charges. He would have said that the glory of the cause would dull and she would become a barren, lonely and boring old trout. She had good bones in her face, strong at the cheeks and the chin, and he liked the way she sat, upright. Good, too, that she wore no cosmetics and there was only a fine gold chain at her throat and studs in her ears – good studs, which told him they would have been a present, perhaps for her twenty-first, from a family of affluence.
So, Megs Behan had rejected the comfortable and conventional and had opted for the loneliness of the protest line, but her redeeming feature was – he identified – a feisty glint in the eyes. He enjoyed, always had, the company of women who ‘had balls, big ones’, and believed that might be true of this weapons-trade campaigner. Interesting that she knew Harvey Gillot, the condemned wretch, was heading for the corn-and-sunflower country inland from Vukovar, was on a bucket flight to be there as a witness, perhaps as a tricoteuse… He played the game, and had kept as good a piece as he possessed to the last. She had pale skin. Going through the security checks she had caught the eye of the man, and both had looked sharply away, but Megs Behan had blushed. They had not glanced at each other since, were in avoidance mode. He had much to reflect on.
The trolley went past, and he smiled at the cabin girl, took three small plastic beakers from her, and smiled again – old and sweet and not to be argued with. He poured from the hip flask he carried, a nip for each beaker.
Up from his seat, he passed one across the aisle, saw the shock and ducked his head as a form of greeting, then went forward three rows, and when the man looked up he was handed the second beaker. It was done and he was gone, back in his seat and had fastened his belt. Megs Behan and the man looked at him – was he a bore who couldn’t mind his own business? Someone they should know? An avuncular smile and he ignored them, downed his own drink – ten-year-old Talisker – and refilled.
The man? Another who travelled to be a spectator when Harvey Gillot confronted his past and perhaps was killed by it.
A policeman: he had shown his warrant card at the security check before boarding. He had a policeman’s haircut, a detective’s. Severe, but not the bald chicken’s-arse effect. Tidy, presentable in any company. A suit that was standard dress, grey and quiet, a decent shirt and tie. A serious face. It had looked up at him when he had put the beaker on the tray and now twisted to glance back up the aisle, but Benjie offered nothing and didn’t meet the eyes. Not a senior policeman – too young for that. A foot soldier. His judgement: over and above the appearance of seriousness, the policeman displayed a sort of solid determination, which in matters of life and of death was always valuable. Not a barrel of laughs. He remembered the first call, coming through on the phone consigned to his grandson, and a scared voice: There’s a contract out. The people who were buying the gear have raised the money. And he had answered, loud and comforting, Harvey, take care and good luck. He had ended with the sort of thing Deirdre said when he was off to London for a day and taking a guest to the Special Forces Club. The detective would be the right sort of age, with the right lack of seniority, to brief the man on what waited in a shadow, was behind him and always would be.
They were bound together, on that flight, the three of them.
He loosed the belt again and leaned across to replace the earlier tot in her beaker, then went forward to do the same, and never spoke a word.
Then he dozed. He thought it would be a good show, and also that he was obligated to be there and to give the occasion his best effort. He was thankful that Deirdre had not forgotten the Pakistan pen. Above all, it would be a show not to be missed by a man playing the idiot.
Seemed to see a man’s back, sharp corners and dark shadows… and death had a smell that clung to his nose. Maybe he had wanted friendships, maybe his work had denied them to him.
She stood back. There were two police officers – an older woman and a youngster – and they had brought with them a maintenance man who had a mass of keys on a ring, screwdrivers in a box and a drill.
Prohibitively priced apartments, Melody thought, but the locks on the doors were crap. The man did it with the keys and didn’t need his tools.
It opened. There was a light on in the hall. Melody sensed stillness.
The woman with the baby said defiantly, as if she believed her word was challenged, ‘I always hear her when she goes out, but I didn’t yesterday. I only heard him when he left.’
The policewoman shrugged and went inside.
*
The floor at the Gold Group belonged to SCD11, Intelligence. Harry said, ‘Sometimes these things move fast and sometimes it’s tortoise speed. This one’s fast. A Caucasian female is found in a second-floor flat in a new block, Canada Wharf area. She’s been manually strangled – the cause of death is not yet confirmed, but it was obvious to the officers who attended. No sign of sexual assault or interference, fully clothed, no evidence of burglary, forcible entry. The indication would be that we’re dealing with a domestic. So far so good.’
He had his audience, hooked as if he used a barbed treble in a pike’s mouth.
‘We have a name because the complainant who reported her away from work was present at the location. The victim works at a department store in central London. A neighbour says she moved in thirteen months ago. The property is in the name of Robert Cairns.’
The interventions of Intelligence were rare in Gold Group meetings, and sometimes there was scepticism at his conclusions. Not in that session. He was heard in silence.
‘We’re at a basic and very early stage of an investigation. There were traces of oil on the victim’s hands. Also, there are similar marks, oil again, on the upholstery of a chair in the living room. We infer that she handled an object that had been hidden from view under the chair’s cushion. Not yet confirmed in laboratory conditions, of course, but the first response of an experienced forensics man is that the characteristics are of anti-corrosive silicone gun oil. We’re saying that there exists a probability that a handgun was in that chair, later ending up in the hands of a woman who was subsequently strangled. We’re getting there.’
All of them – Firearms, Surveillance, SCD7 and HMRC’s investigation unit – acknowledged the importance of intelligence-gathered material and knew that in its absence they were buffalo, blundering in the undergrowth.
‘It’s all coming in – I repeat myself, no apologies – very fast. It’s the pedigree of Robbie – Robert – Cairns that interests me. His father, Jerry Cairns, is an old “blagger” – you know what I mean, Ma’am? Of course. Armed robber – with an arm’s length of convictions. His grandfather, the first of the dynasty, was a villain – a thief – but is now too old for serious playing. Robbie has an elder brother with convictions for robbery, car theft, fencing. They’re a criminal family.’
On sheets of paper laid on the table or in personal notebooks, pencils, pens and ballpoints wrote Cairns. Harry saw recognition flicker on the face of the detective inspector, like memory stirred.
‘Things fall into place. They go into the big machines and stuff spews out. First, no one in that family works in a legitimate trade, or has since the Ark grounded. But the only one who has achieved a serious degree of wealth is Robbie, aged twenty-five. A chis says that Robbie Cairns will kill for a fee. The chis might be lying through his front,
