They went out onto the road. Cara was surprised by what she found. Kite’s wife was not shaking. She was not in tears. The American soldier was with her, but he was not supporting her on his arm nor calling for immediate medical assistance. Isobel looked tired, unquestionably, but there were otherwise no outward signs that she had been affected by the nightmare she had just endured. Her face was unmarked, and she was moving normally. If Cara hadn’t known differently, she might have assumed that Kite’s wife had gone for an evening stroll along the lane and was making her way back from the shops after buying a pint of milk.
‘Isobel,’ said Rita quietly. They embraced. CARPENTER looked at Cara and dropped his eyes, as if they were witness to a private moment that did not concern them. Cara could see that they knew one another well.
‘Thank you, Rita.’ Isobel wiped her mouth with her sleeve as she stood back. ‘How long have you been out here? God almighty, that was horrible.’
Cara could see that she was in shock, but at the same time capable of functioning normally. She was beautiful in a healthy, big-boned, Scandinavian way, what her mother would have called a ‘handsome woman’.
‘This is Cara,’ said Rita. ‘She’s been helping us.’
‘Did they hurt you?’ Cara asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Isobel replied, smiling warmly.
‘And the baby?’ Rita asked.
Isobel tapped her belly and said: ‘He’s fine. Where’s Lockie? What’s happening? Is he all right?’
Rita didn’t dress it up, didn’t say that everything was going to be all right and that Isobel had nothing to worry about. She told her the truth.
‘We think he’s being held by a group of rogue Iranian intelligence officers somewhere in Canary Wharf. They wanted to scare him, so they took you. You’re free now. What do you need? Can we get you to a doctor?’
In normal circumstances, Cara reflected, the area would have been sealed off and the road swarming in cops and ambulances. But these were not normal circumstances. BOX 88 had barely made any sound, no song and dance, had raided the house and got the job done.
‘I’m just tired,’ Isobel insisted. ‘We need to help Lockie.’
‘That’s what we’re trying to do,’ Rita told her. ‘We’re hoping the men in the house can lead us to him.’
48
The injury to José and the very public flare-up between Eskandarian and Abbas changed the atmosphere of the afternoon and brought the Bonnard lunch party to a premature end. Jacques left within ten minutes, Paul and Annette following soon afterwards.
‘Is it true José is Ali’s son?’ Kite asked Luc. They were standing at the entrance to the terrace, within range of the Walkman.
Xavier’s father cast a venomous admonishing glance at his son, as if he had breached a confidence by telling Kite. ‘That’s a private matter.’
Kite, duly reprimanded, picked up the Walkman and his copy of The Songlines and went upstairs to his room. He was carrying a packet of cigarettes in his back pocket. He took the tape out of the Walkman and put it in a drawer where it lay among several other blank cassettes and various Gameboy cartridges. In the morning he would take it to Peele, along with the rolls of film. He opened the shutters and laid a red T-shirt on the windowsill. Kite then grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and locked himself in the bathroom. He noticed that Abbas’s door was closed and assumed that he was sulking after the dressing-down from Eskandarian. He did not give him another thought.
He sat on the toilet seat, tore the piece of paper in half and wrote the note using a Biro, balancing the Chatwin on his knee as a surface to lean on. Peele had taught him how to make his handwriting so small that it was almost illegible.
AE has son (9). José. Mother is ’79 fiancée: Bita Zamora.
Lives in Sarrià, with politician husband. Daughter Ada (3).
Other guests: Jacques (banker, Paris, c55). Serious, intellectual. Friend of LB.
Paul Mouret (film industry, Paris, c35).
PM didn’t know AE or Jacques before today. Knows LB well. Not RB.
Wife Annette Mouret, also c35. 2 kids. Have photos.
Document in AE office mentions Forman/Foreman + Berberian. Have photos.
Kite wrote on both sides then folded the note twice so that it was the same size as a large postage stamp. He picked up the cigarettes and inserted the note behind the paper lining at the back of the packet. To the untrained eye, it would be impossible to tell that the packet had been tampered with. He threw the other half of the notepaper into the toilet, flushed it and went back to his room. Abbas’s door was now open. There was no sign of him. Kite had been concentrating so hard on writing and concealing the note that he had not heard him leave.
He carried the Chatwin downstairs, passed Luc and Rosamund in the sitting room and walked outside with a lighter, the Biro and the packet of cigarettes in his back pocket. He could hear Xavier and Jacqui messing around in the pool. Kite’s swimming trunks were on the table near the entrance to the terrace. He went back inside, picked them up, then walked through the garden in the direction of the pool. He was in a state of vivid concentration, akin to the feeling of batting against a moving ball, completely focussed and yet at the same time oddly free. Kite was drawing on his training but hardly aware of doing so.
Halfway to the pool, he turned sharply left and took the path towards the orchard at the northern end of the garden. Kite could still hear Xavier shouting and splashing around in the pool but had seen nobody else since leaving the house. He reached the wall which formed a boundary between the Bonnard villa and the access road, took out a cigarette and turned to face the house. There was nobody in sight. The wall was six feet high. It