‘Would love one,’ he replied, wondering if the American had been targeted against him. ‘I never got your name.’
‘John,’ he said. ‘And you?’
‘Lachlan.’
Alcoholics Anonymous was decent cover for a phoney relationship with Xavier: most people wouldn’t pry into a stranger’s struggles with addiction, nor would anyone at the funeral know very much about Xavier’s experiences in the programme. Kite decided to probe a little deeper.
‘What did you make of Xav?’ he asked. ‘When he was down, could you bring him out of it? Did you ever have any success talking to him about his depression?’
It was a trick question. Xavier had been wild and unpredictable, but had consistently hidden his gloom from even his closest friends. Kite had never known him to complain, to cry on a shoulder, to lament the path his life had taken nor to despair over his addictions. He was, in his own particular way, every bit as stoic and uncomplaining as his mother. Outward displays of failure or self-pity were not in the gene pool.
‘Funny,’ John replied without hesitation. ‘I never knew him to be like that. Even in meetings he was always upbeat, always trying to find a way to make people laugh, to think more deeply when it came to their own situations.’ John appeared to have passed the test. ‘A lot of us were pretty down a lot of the time, present company included. Xav didn’t go in for that stuff. That’s why I can’t believe he did what they say he did. Had to be an accident, sex game or something.’
Xavier had been found in the bathroom of a Paris Airbnb, hanged by the neck. Unless somebody had staged the killing, it was suicide, pure and simple.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Kite replied.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, man.’ John put his hand on Kite’s shoulder, his long, thick beard and the bright sunlight on his back momentarily giving him the look of an Old Testament prophet.
‘Yours too,’ Kite replied. ‘The world was a better place for having Xavier in it. We’re going to miss him.’
‘Lachlan?’
Kite turned. A striking man of Middle Eastern appearance had approached him from the western edge of the enclosure. He was wearing a dark grey lounge suit with a black tie and a crisp white shirt. A navy blue handkerchief protruded from the breast pocket of his jacket. Kite did not recognise him.
‘Yes?’
‘Excuse me.’ The man acknowledged the American, tipping his head apologetically. An expensive-looking watch caught the sun on his left wrist. ‘I don’t think you will remember me. I was at Alford, several years after you. My name is Jahan Fariba.’
Kite immediately recognised the name. Xavier had spoken about Fariba on one of the last occasions they had met. He was a businessman, British-born, his parents having fled Iran shortly after the revolution. Xavier had done business with him in a context Kite could not recall. He remembered that his friend had spoken fondly of him, on both a professional as well as personal basis.
‘Jahan. Yes. Xav talked about you. How did you recognise me?’
‘I’ll leave you guys to talk,’ John interjected, shaking Kite’s hand and moving off. Kite thanked him for the cigarettes. Fariba tipped his head respectfully at the American’s departure.
‘Jacqui told me who you were,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the church. ‘She pointed you out. I wanted to introduce myself.’
‘I’m glad you did.’
Fariba was in his late thirties. Fit and tanned, he resembled a recently retired professional athlete who still worked out twice a day, eschewed alcohol and went to bed at sunset six nights a week. It was late February and rare to see someone looking so vibrantly healthy.
‘Xav spoke of you, too. He was always going on about his old friend Lachlan.’
‘He was?’
Kite never liked hearing that. Xavier had known too much about his life in the secret world. The wrong word to the wrong person was an existential threat to his cover. He preferred to be anonymous: at worst the enigma at the back of the room; at best unnoticed and forgotten.
‘Yes. He was a great admirer of yours. I always wanted to meet you. I thought this would be a good opportunity. Are you going to the drinks now?’
Fariba’s accent was located somewhere between Tehran and Harvard Business School: an Americanised English characteristic of the international jet-set. He gestured towards the square.
‘Sadly not,’ Kite replied, indicating that he was short of time.
‘Me neither. I don’t feel like it. I didn’t know many of Xavier’s friends. What’s happened is awful. Just a terrible day.’
‘It really is.’ Beneath the slick, executive exterior Kite glimpsed a softness in Fariba. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘This is what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Fariba lowered his voice to a confessional whisper which was almost drowned out by the noise of a passing bus. ‘I was with him less than two weeks ago, in Paris, the night before he died.’
Cara had worked up a possible pitch with Vosse. The drug addict friend from South Africa was too risky to play on Kite, who had known Xavier well and would quickly smell a rat. Instead she would play the art card. They knew from the MI6 whistle-blower that Kite had an interest in collecting paintings. He’d been seen at the Frieze fair back in October and had exchanged emails with several dealers. Cara had briefly studied Fine Art at university before switching to Politics and knew how to talk shit about painters and paintings. She could say she’d had a temp job at one of the galleries exhibiting at Frieze and had recognised Kite as a prospective buyer. That would be enough to start a conversation, perhaps even to lead to an exchange of numbers. Vosse had joked that he wanted Cara to get to know Kite so well that he would ask her to be the au
