He came up the steps to the terrace with a smile on his face. He dropped the fishing gear, removed the floppy hat, and made a small bow. The hat was adorned with a number of colourful feathers. Fishing flies.
‘Matthew Fairchild,’ he said, pulling a business card from a pocket and pressing it into her hand. ‘I am so pleased to meet you, Ms da Silva.’
‘You can call her Rebecca or Becky,’ her father said. ‘Plain Difficult once you’ve known her a while.’ He reached for the jug and began to pour the lemonade. ‘Any luck out there?’
‘Oh yes, a nice brace.’ Fairchild sat on a spare chair and bent and lifted the flap on the fishing creel. Two large rainbow trout lay inside. ‘Do you fish, Rebecca?’
‘No,’ Silva said.
‘You should learn. There’s a certain satisfaction to it. Choosing the correct fly, finding the lie, executing the perfect cast. You have to be patient though. Cast and cast again until the fish bites. Then you have him. Or her.’ Fairchild winked. ‘Once the fish is hooked all you have to do is reel the beauty in.’
Silva looked at Fairchild. Wondered if he was the sort of older guy who would make a play for a woman less than half his age. If that was his game he could forget it.
‘Who exactly are you, Mr Fairchild?’ Silva said. ‘More importantly, why has my father asked me here to meet you?’
‘She’s bright, Kenneth,’ Fairchild said, almost as if Silva wasn’t there. He closed the flap on the creel. ‘Very bright.’
‘No comment,’ Silva’s father said. ‘But don’t forget she was a minute late.’
‘It was a two-and-a-half-hour journey. A minute is less than one per cent. Such a small margin of error. We can overlook that, I’m sure.’
‘Who are “we”?’ Silva said.
‘Something has come up.’ Her father hunched forward and tapped his nose. Lowered his voice again. ‘Regarding your mother.’
‘Mum?’ Silva turned to Fairchild and back to her father. ‘Is this to do with the probate?’
‘Not exactly,’ Fairchild said. ‘I have a proposal for you, Rebecca.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ her father said. ‘This is work.’
‘If it’s a job offer, you can forget it. I’ve got a job.’
‘Not a real job. You’re a postman, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m not a postman, actually.’ Silva’s patience was wearing thin. Visiting had been a bad idea. ‘Although you’d probably be quite happy if I was. You’d have an heir then, wouldn’t you? A proper heir. A male heir.’
‘Should I leave you two for a while?’ Fairchild shifted in his seat. He bent to pick up the fishing rod. ‘You sound as if you need a few minutes to discuss things. Family matters. I quite understand, after all it’s been a distressing time for both of you.’
‘Nonsense.’ Silva’s father dismissed Fairchild’s suggestion. ‘Take her out on the boat, Matthew. Drop the mud weight overboard and don’t come back until it’s sorted.’
‘Rebecca?’ Fairchild shrugged. ‘Shall we try that? Just so you can hear me out?’
Silva looked from Fairchild to her father and back again. Sighed.
‘Whatever,’ she said.
After taking his enforced break, Holm returned to work to find his new role meant a shift to a different office. The place was a tiny box room under a staircase. A couple of computers sat on what appeared to be desks from a school classroom, and a brown filing cabinet stood sandwiched between them. The two office chairs had seen better days and the single telephone was so ancient it looked like it was made of Bakelite and had come from the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. There was, Holm noted with some dismay, no window.
He went over to the filing cabinet and pulled open one of the drawers. It was empty aside from a solitary typed index card that bore a reference to the IRA and Bobby Sands. Holm left the card where it was and slid the drawer shut. The events mentioned were from before his time in MI5, before his spell in Special Branch. He’d been a mere PC on the beat back when the Northern Ireland conflict had been at its height, but there was something appropriate about the card being in the drawer, him being in this room. Time had moved on and what was once relevant became nothing more than rubbish. Or, in these days of heightened concern for the environment, was slipped into the recycling bin. That was it, Holm thought. He was a product that had come to the end of its useful life and Huxtable had decided to send him off to the shredder to be pulped.
He moved across to one of the chairs and sat. To be fair to Huxtable, at least she hadn’t pushed him out the door. He’d been given a chance to make amends, to work out the final couple of years he had left, to earn the right to leave without a cloud hanging over him. Holm adjusted the position of one of the computer monitors, and as he did so he thought about his new role. Basically she’d given him free rein, with the only instruction being to stay well clear of current operations. That meant he was to focus on areas other than Islamist extremism. Taher was strictly off-limits.
Which left what? Huxtable said she wanted weekly updates, but Holm knew he only had to fill a few sheets of paper with bullet points and wave them under her nose. The whole exercise was something of a charade, just a way to employ him until he could get his full pension, perhaps a means of keeping him sweet so he didn’t make trouble. Yes, that had to be the truth of it. When you knew where the bodies were buried everybody was either your
