‘A better friend would have protected him,’ he said.
‘Nobody can save anybody,’ she replied. ‘Xav was the only person who could protect Xav.’
‘Maybe so.’
The service was due to start. Jacqui indicated that she should take her seat and they said farewell. Kite moved towards the centre of the church as Jacqui joined her family in the front row. A few seats away from his own sat Richard Duff-Surtees, an old Alfordian of towering arrogance and sadism who had called Kite a ‘pleb’ and spat on him in his first week at the school. Eighteen months later, seven inches taller and almost three stone heavier, the fifteen-year-old Kite had knocked him out cold with a clean right hook on the rugby field and been threatened with expulsion for his efforts. Duff-Surtees caught his eye during ‘Abide with Me’ and looked quickly away. It was the only pleasing moment in an otherwise heartbreaking hour of tears and remembrance. The family had asked for a High Mass and much of the service, to Kite’s frustration, was conducted in Latin. An agnostic from a young age, he loathed the smoke and mirrors voodoo of Catholicism, felt that Xavier would have insisted on something much lighter and more celebratory. Why was it that the upper classes, when confronted by emotional turbulence of any kind, retreated behind ceremony and the stiff upper lip? Kite was all for strength of character, but he had no doubt that Rosamund Bonnard and her waxwork friends would have grieved more openly for a Jack Russell or Labrador than for the death of their own child.
Singing the final hymn – the inevitable ‘Jerusalem’ – he looked around the church and decided to skip the wake. Better to stick twenty pounds in the collection box and slip away rather than risk another Eastwood quote from Chris Towey or, worse, a face-off with Cosmo de Paul. To that end, Kite waited in his seat until the church was almost empty, then walked out through a door in the south-eastern corner, wondering where he could grab lunch in South Kensington before setting off for the gallery.
Matt Tomkins told Vosse that Cara had panicked. As the service drew to a close, Kite had remained in his seat. Obliged to stand up to allow the mourners in her row the opportunity to leave, Cara had bottled it and gone with them, fearing that Kite would turn and notice that she was hanging around. Finding herself caught in a tide of Sloane Rangers shunting out of the Oratory, Jannaway had consequently lost sight of the target and been buttonholed by Cosmo de Paul on the steps of the Oratory.
‘So where is she now?’ Vosse asked.
‘Still talking to the man she was with before. Said his name was Cosmo de Paul. Pinstripe suit. It’s obvious he’s chatting her up, sir. I told you she was too attractive for surveillance work.’
‘Don’t talk crap,’ said Vosse, who was sitting in the Acton safe flat. He had high hopes for Cara but was worried that Kite was going to slip away yet again. Three times they had followed BIRD in central London. Three times he had vanished without trace.
‘It’s not crap, sir. I just call it as I see it.’
Tomkins had been sitting at the patisserie watching the traffic go by when Cara texted, telling him to get to the Oratory as fast as possible to help in the search for Kite. He had requested the bill – an eye-watering £18.75 for two cappuccinos and a slice of chocolate cake – and strolled across Brompton Road as the mourners continued to pour out of the church. He knew from Cara’s texts that Kite was wearing a tailored grey suit and black wool tie, but so were at least fifty of the other middle-aged men standing in clumps outside the church.
‘Head to HTB,’ Vosse told him on the phone.
‘What’s that?’ said Tomkins. He knew the answer to his own question the instant that he asked it; for the past hour he had been staring across the street at two signs next door to the Oratory bearing the letters ‘HTB’. But it was too late.
‘Holy Trinity Brompton,’ Vosse replied impatiently. ‘Pay attention. Protestant church round the back of the Oratory. Brainwashed evangelical Christians claiming to be possessed by the Holy Spirit. Posters advertising the Alpha Course and a better life with Bear Grylls and Jesus. You can’t miss it.’
Vosse had obviously done his homework, walking the ground the night before. Tomkins looked for a side door into the Oratory but couldn’t spot one. There was no sign of Kite. Black cabs were pulling up outside the church all the time. BIRD could easily have ducked into one and driven off while Cara was looking the other way.
‘Hello?’
She was on the phone again.
‘Yes?’ Tomkins replied.
‘Any luck?’
He looked over and saw Cara standing beside de Paul. She might as well have been holding a placard above her head emblazoned with the words: Have YOU seen Lachlan Kite? Vosse would have a field day when he found out.
‘Not yet, no,’ Tomkins replied. ‘I’m not really dressed for a funeral. If I come any closer, I’ll stick out as much as you do.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Cara, looking up at the sky in dismay. ‘Just walk past or sit in a fucking bus stop. There are more people in Knightsbridge who look like you than there are people who look like me. Wait—’
Tomkins could tell by the note-change in her voice that she’d spotted Kite.
‘My days,’ she said. ‘I’ve got eyes on BIRD. He’s over by the wall.’
‘Another smoke?’ said the American, offering Kite a cigarette as the forecourt in front of the church slowly began to empty. The congregation was heading for a residential square to the west of the Oratory where drinks and snacks had been laid on in a
