‘Well, it’s amazing you remembered,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I ended up buying anything last year. Are you still in that world?’
‘Nah. It was a temp job. Didn’t fancy making it permanent. Didn’t do it for me.’
‘I see.’ In his peripheral vision, Kite could see Fariba waiting for their conversation to finish. ‘Look, I’m going to be rude and take off,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we can’t chat more, but I’ve got a meeting to go to.’
The woman looked crestfallen. ‘Oh. OK.’
‘Do you have a card?’
‘Me?’ she said. ‘Afraid not.’ Looking up hopefully, she added: ‘You?’
Kite was carrying a business card in his own name with an address, email and phone number which would flag as soon as anyone tried to use them. By sunset BOX 88 would know exactly who Emma was working for.
‘Lachlan,’ she said, holding the card in both hands. She pronounced the name in the correct way, making ‘Lach’ sound like ‘Lock’, and bowed slightly as she studied the text. ‘Well, at least I had the right person.’
‘You did,’ Kite replied with false enthusiasm. ‘I’m really sorry, but you’ve caught me at a bad time. Thanks for coming over. I wish I had your memory for faces.’
He walked back towards Fariba, trying to assess what was going on. If MI5 were investigating BOX 88, Xavier’s funeral would be a natural place to mount a surveillance operation against him and to make a pitch using a friendly young woman. Kite was bound to attend the service; they could set everything up in advance. But why the clumsy approach? It was possible that ‘Emma’ was private sector, working on behalf of a client who had taken an interest in him for reasons that were not yet clear.
‘Are you OK to go now?’ Fariba asked.
‘Sure.’
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of booking us a table at Theo Randall’s restaurant in the Intercontinental Hotel. You may know it. It’s discreet and the food is very good.’
‘I know it well.’ The Intercontinental was on the north-eastern side of Hyde Park Corner, close to a safe house on Hertford Street that BOX 88 had been renting for the past two years. ‘Took my wife there for her birthday,’ he said. ‘Shall we get a cab?’
‘I have a driver,’ Fariba replied with the nonchalance of the super-rich. ‘He’s waiting around the corner. I can meet you there if you want to walk? Otherwise he can take us whenever you’re ready.’
Matt Tomkins had seen the whole thing: Cara’s chat on the steps of the church; what looked like an exchange of business cards with the target; then BIRD walking off with his businessman friend towards a silver Jaguar XJ parked illegally on Egerton Place. There was a chauffeur at the wheel, working the hazard lights, but nobody had got close enough to take a picture of him. Tessa Swinburn had passed the number plate to Vosse, who was running it through the database at Thames House. Tessa had come on a moped with the intention of following the Jag while Kieran Dean tailed in the Astra.
‘What happened?’ Tomkins asked as Cara joined him outside South Kensington station. She had covered the short distance from the Oratory on foot and looked flushed with success in a way that irritated him.
‘I got his details,’ she said, producing Kite’s card from the pocket of her overcoat.
‘We already have his details,’ Tomkins replied tartly.
‘Not these ones.’ She made him look closer. ‘The mobile is different. And the email. Cheltenham attacks those, we might get somewhere.’
Tomkins was forced to concede that Cara had made a breakthrough. He experienced a surge of resentment, sharp as bile. It was not enough that he should be regarded by Vosse as the most capable member of the team; others, particularly Cara, had to fail.
‘So what are you going to do?’ he said. ‘Call him?’
‘Dunno,’ she replied. ‘Need to talk it over with Robert.’
‘Robert.’ Not ‘Mr Vosse’ or ‘the boss’. Tomkins wondered if they had a friendship outside of work. Maybe they went for drinks in the pub or tapas and talked about him behind his back. Maybe they were sleeping together. That kind of thing happened all the time at Thames House.
‘He’ll tell you to go for it,’ he said.
‘Might do. Might not.’
Tomkins’s phone started to ring. Speak of the devil. It was Vosse.
‘Cagney?’
‘Cagney’ was Tomkins’s codename. Cara was ‘Lacey’.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you see the driver of the Jag?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You with Lacey?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ask her if she got a look at him.’
Matt lowered the phone and asked Cara what she’d seen. A woman was screaming at her infant son outside a branch of Five Guys and it was difficult to make himself heard.
‘She didn’t see him,’ he told Vosse. ‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘What about the bloke who walked off with our man? You said he was from the Middle East?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Tomkins replied. ‘Lacey did.’
Cara scrunched up her face, trying to work out what the two men were discussing.
‘Fine. Lacey said it.’ Tomkins could hear the irritation in Vosse’s voice. ‘What did you think? Was he likely from that neck of the woods?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tomkins replied.
‘And it looked like they’d never met before but were getting along famously?’
That was an accurate characterisation of what Cara had told Tomkins, so he said: ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ and waited to find out why Vosse was sounding so agitated.
‘There’s just something that doesn’t ring true.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘This guy’s wearing a flash watch and walks around in thousand-pound shoes, right? According to Villanelle, there was a chauffeur in the driving seat of the Jaguar.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So explain this: why was the Jag rented from Europcar two days ago?’
4
The chauffeur was wearing a cheap black
