on the Tube system. It didn’t matter that the terrorist attacks were the work of a very small minority of Islamic fundamentalists, every brown face was treated as a potential threat.
Merkulov returned with a mug of tea and two chocolate muffins. He put the tea in front of Salih, then sat down heavily and held out the plate.
‘I always worry about eating with former KGB people,’ Salih said. ‘I feel I should be checking everything with a Geiger counter.’
Merkulov scowled. ‘Just because a Russian dissident gets radiation poisoning, everyone blames us,’ he said. He took a bite from a muffin and continued to speak with his mouth full. ‘Do you really think that if Putin wanted someone dead, he couldn’t arrange to have it look like an accident? There are experts who can make any death look like an accident. Look at what happened to Princess Diana.’ Muffin crumbs splattered across the table and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Salih grinned. ‘You’re not taking credit for what happened to Diana, are you?’
‘Of course it wasn’t the KGB, we had no reason to harm her. But the British Establishment, now that’s a different matter.’
Salih slid a folded piece of paper across the table. ‘I need someone to track this mobile phone for me. Can you do that?’
‘It belongs to the American or to the woman?’
‘The woman,’ said Salih. ‘She might be in Northern Ireland.’
‘Do you know which phone company she’s with? Vodaphone, T-Mobile? Orange?’
‘All I have is the number,’ said Salih. ‘I need to know where she is.’
‘That’s easy,’ said the Russian. ‘Do you know what make of phone she has?’ Salih shook his head.
‘Some of the new models have GPS capability, which means we can pin her down to a few metres in real time. If not, we’ll know which transmitter she’s near. In the city that could be a hundred feet or so.’
‘And would you be able to get a list of calls, incoming and outgoing?’
The Russian pulled a face. ‘All things are possible, my friend. For a price.’
‘And get me the locations of the numbers?’
‘The landlines, of course. It is harder to get the locations of mobiles.’
Salih took a brown envelope from inside his jacket and slid it across the table. ‘Ten thousand pounds on account,’ he said.
Merkulov picked up the envelope. ‘It will take me a day or two at most.’
‘I want to know by tonight,’ said Salih. ‘I will pay whatever it takes.’
‘This is why I’d never feed you a radioactive soda,’ said Merkulov, tapping the envelope on Salih’s shoulder. ‘You are too valuable a customer.’
Shepherd checked that no one was on the pavement, then used his keys to open Elaine’s front door. He was carrying the pole he’d found in his garden shed. He closed the door behind him and tapped the four-digit code into the keypad on the burglar-alarm console.
On his last surreptitious visit to Elaine’s house he’d searched the ground floor. He still had to do the bedrooms but he decided that the attic was a better bet. He used the pole to open the hatch and pull down the folding stairs, then went up and switched on the light. The layout was a mirror image of his own attic, with the water tank in the far corner, next to the dividing wall with his own property. Half a dozen cardboard boxes had been stacked against the tank, and there was a wooden cabin trunk with a combination lock. Shepherd had a quick look through the boxes but they contained junk – old lamps, toys, ornaments, several children’s annuals and some schoolbooks, scuffed handbags and winter coats.
Shepherd reclosed the cardboard boxes and knelt beside the trunk and examined the combination lock. A three-digit number would open it, which meant there were a thousand possible combinations. Assuming it would take two seconds to try each number, he could do all thousand in two thousand seconds, which was just over half an hour. He had time but . . . He closed his eyes and went to the file Button had shown him, mentally flicking through the numbers that meant something to Elaine. He tried her birthdate, month and day, then day and month. No joy. He tried her husband’s birthday. Her wedding anniversary wouldn’t work because it fell on 3 May, which meant two digits. Would she have used the date her husband had been killed – 28 August? He tried eight-two-eight and two-eight-eight but neither worked. Her son, maybe. Little Timmy. He tried his birthday, month followed by year, then year followed by month. The lock clicked open.
Inside the trunk he found three photograph albums, two with a green fake leather binding, the third bound in white leather. He took out the first and flicked through it. There were photographs of Elaine as a baby, as a child and as a young woman. She had been a pretty toddler with long, curly red hair.
The second album contained pictures of her with her husband, mostly holiday snaps. Several had been taken on beaches, and in every image they were holding each other. They had clearly been a close couple. Half-way through the album she was pregnant, then she and her husband were holding a baby. Shepherd felt dirty as he rooted through Elaine’s memories. He had no right to be handling her possessions, prying into her personal life.
The third album, the white one, was filled with wedding pictures. The first was familiar – he had seen it on the bookcase in the sitting room. The second was a group photograph of everyone at the wedding, more than a hundred people. John Maplethorpe was standing next to Robbie Carter.
In the middle of the album he found a photograph of Carter with five men and, again, Maplethorpe was standing next to him. He must have been best man, Shepherd thought, and the others were ushers. There were pictures of Elaine with her parents, Carter with his parents, Elaine with the bridesmaids, the couple inside the church and in the churchyard. Shepherd had a similar album of his own wedding. Like Elaine, he kept it in the attic. He couldn’t throw it away, but neither could he bear to open it.
Under the third album he found five framed photographs. Two had been taken at the wedding – in one Robbie was holding her under a cherry tree in full blossom, and in the other he and Maplethorpe were both planting a kiss on her cheek. The other three were of Timmy as a baby in his mother’s arms, as a toddler, grinning at the camera, and in his school uniform.
Underneath the photographs lay a small bubble-wrapped package, which Shepherd opened carefully. Inside he found a stainless-steel Omega watch and a gold wedding band on a thin gold chain. They had obviously belonged to her husband and for some time at least she had worn the ring round her neck. Shepherd felt like a grave robber. Elaine had loved her man with all her heart, and he knew he had no right to root through her possessions. He kept Sue’s jewellery in a box in his wardrobe, next to his gun and ammunition, and knew how he’d feel if a stranger ever touched it. He rewrapped the watch and the ring, then put them on top of the framed photographs.
He turned back to the trunk and took out several newspapers, all from 1996, with Robbie Carter’s photograph on the front pages. Underneath them were two hardback journals with the RUC crest on the front. Shepherd flicked through them – lists of dates and times, people Carter had met and places he’d been to. In notes of meetings with informers he had used codewords in place of names. He scanned a few entries but they were innocuous.
A red wool scarf came next, but when Shepherd picked it up his eyes widened. A box of ammunition lay beneath it, .357 rounds made by an American company, PMC. He opened it. Inside, there were spaces for fifty bullets. Shepherd quickly counted those that remained. Twenty-six. Two dozen were missing. He took one out and slipped it into his pocket.
The doorbell buzzed and Shepherd froze. Instinctively he switched off the light even though there was no chance of it being seen from the outside. His heart pounded, even though he knew there was nothing to worry about. Elaine would hardly be ringing her own doorbell.
He replaced the contents of the trunk, taking care to put them in the position he’d found them. He relocked it and went down the ladder, pushed it back into place and closed the trapdoor. Then he crept into the bedroom. A dark saloon car was driving away from the house.
He hurried downstairs, reset the burglar alarm, went outside and locked the front door. He hadn’t found a gun but the ammunition was worrying. Why would Elaine keep it if she didn’t have a gun? There was something else too. The Omega watch had been ticking. It was a self-winding model, which meant that after a day or two in the trunk it would have stopped. It had been rewound or even worn in the past couple of days.
Hassan Salih thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat. A cold wind blew down the Thames, rippling the muddy brown waters. On the south side of the river the giant London Eye turned slowly, giving the tourists in its capsules the best view of the city. The sky was cloudless, as blue as it was above Salih’s native
