‘Did you know that Edward Elgar was married at the Brompton Oratory?’ Fariba asked.
‘I didn’t.’
‘Also the racing driver James Hunt. And Alfred Hitchcock.’
‘Wikipedia?’ Kite asked.
Fariba laughed. ‘Yes! How did you know?’
Kite assumed the question was rhetorical and sat back in his seat, wondering where the surveillance was coming from. It had been a feature of his long career that minor setbacks never troubled him very much; if anything, they got his blood moving a little quicker. But a tailing Astra and a clumsy approach from a charming, if inexperienced woman at the funeral still required attention. If the heat was coming from MI5, Kite needed to tread carefully; if he was being looked at by amateurs in the private sector, he would put a surveillance team of BOX 88 ‘Falcons’ onto them that afternoon and find out who was paying their bills.
‘Do you have a favourite Hitchcock film, Lachlan?’ Fariba asked.
Kite wasn’t much of a movie buff but said Vertigo because it was the first title that came to mind. He thought of James Stewart falling from the top of a high building and pondered the change in Fariba’s mood. On the steps of the church he had been polite to the point of deference; now, spread out in the back seat of his executive limo, he had relaxed into the role of international plutocrat, making empty chit-chat as his valeted Jag slipped through the Knightsbridge traffic.
‘One of my favourites too,’ he said. ‘I’m glad we agree.’
Kite checked his mobile. He had sent a message on WhatsApp to Isobel but she had not yet seen it. He sent another – Very sad service. Heading off for lunch with a friend of Xavier’s. See you tonight. Love you – and put the phone back in his jacket. One of the mourners was crossing the road opposite Harrods. Kite recognised him as Rupert Howell, a sports jock nicknamed ‘Lazenby’ at Alford on account of his saturnine good looks and jaw-dropping success with women. His hairline had since receded at such a rate that, from a distance, he looked like the elderly John Profumo.
‘Something else I learned from Wikipedia,’ said Fariba.
‘What was that?’ Kite asked, turning to face him. He looked briefly in the rear-view mirror but could no longer see the Astra.
‘During the Cold War, the KGB used to leave dead drops in the entrance to the Brompton Oratory.’
Kite knew the story but played dumb. He wondered why a man like Fariba would use the term ‘dead drop’ without going to the trouble of explaining it.
‘Really? I had no idea the Oratory was such an interesting place.’
‘Neither did I. Neither did I.’
The mood wasn’t right. Was it nerves or something more sinister? Perhaps Fariba was anxious about their imminent chat over lunch.
‘Where are you from?’ Kite asked the driver.
‘He doesn’t speak English,’ Fariba replied quickly.
The chauffeur responded in a language Kite identified as Farsi, using a word – ‘jakesh’ – which had been a favourite of an Iranian colleague who had done some work for BOX 88. It struck him as odd that a chauffeur would employ such a word – which translated roughly as ‘pimp’ – in a conversation with his boss and wondered at the context.
‘Where’s he from?’ he asked.
‘Isfahan,’ Fariba replied.
‘Just arrived?’
‘No. He has lived in London for many years.’
Was it Kite’s imagination, or did Fariba’s answers seem strained? To work for BOX 88 was to live in a more or less permanent state of low-level paranoia; Kite had grown used to it in the way that a diabetic becomes accustomed to injecting himself with insulin four times a day. He was wary of Fariba just as he had been wary of the woman in the long black overcoat. Something was wrong.
The Jaguar passed through a canyon of construction work on the western approach to Hyde Park Corner. To the north, repairs were continuing to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, gutted by fire and now rising again over Knightsbridge; to the south, the narrow facade of a nineteenth-century apartment block had been preserved behind thick steel scaffolding. The building behind it had been torn down. In its place, a steel-and-glass tower, doubtless financed by Chinese, Russian or Gulf money, was gradually being craned into the sky.
‘What house were you in at Alford?’ Kite asked.
‘ACDP,’ Fariba replied.
Housemasters at Alford were known by their initials, not surnames. Kite remembered ACDP and the location of the house, tucked away towards the back of the school close to a wooded area where boys would go to smoke Silk Cuts and look at copies of Penthouse and Razzle.
‘Where was that? Close to my house?’
Fariba hesitated. ‘Which one were you in?’ he asked. ‘Remind me.’
‘Lionel Jones-Lewis.’
‘The maths teacher?’
‘Yes. The maths teacher.’
It was an odd, but not inaccurate way of describing Jones-Lewis – more commonly remembered by old Alfordians as ‘Jumpy’ – a bachelor housemaster who had somehow managed to avoid being fired despite three decades of predatory behaviour towards the boys in his care.
‘Look at the arch. So beautiful at this time of year.’
The Jaguar was circling Hyde Park Corner. The Wellington Arch at the centre of the vast roundabout looked no more or less impressive than it usually did.
‘Yes, it is very beautiful.’ Kite knew that Fariba was trying to change the subject, so he pressed his point. ‘We were almost side by side. LJL was down by the music schools, next to ACDP. We probably passed one another in the street every
