Kite’s French was good enough to understand the colloquialism: ‘My house is your house.’ At this stage, his only plans for the future involved passing his A levels and getting a summer job to make a bit of money before going to Edinburgh University in the autumn to read Russian and French. He said he would take the train down to Cannes sometime in July, reached for an almost-empty carton of orange juice lying on the floor beside him and finished it off.
‘Cool,’ Xavier replied. ‘Stay for as long as you like.’
It was as simple as that. An invitation which would change the course of Lachlan Kite’s life, accepted unthinkingly on a cold afternoon in February.
Without realising it, Xavier Bonnard had set his friend on the path to BOX 88.
13
Cara Jannaway opened her front door just in time to catch the start of Channel 4 News. She poured herself a glass of white wine and had drunk almost half of it before Krishnan Guru-Murthy had finished reading out the headlines.
She lived alone in a one-bedroom flat west of Hackney Marshes. Vosse had given her the night off as a gesture of appreciation for her work earlier in the afternoon. Cara’s colleagues, Kieran Dean and Tessa Swinburn, had been tasked with following Zoltan Pavkov home; Matt was due to relieve them at eleven o’clock. Cara didn’t envy him the night shift. It had been a long, eventful day and she was looking forward to running a bath, ordering a Deliveroo Thai and watching at least two episodes of Succession – three, if it wasn’t getting too late and she felt like bingeing a third of the season. Before that, however, she had one more job to do. Vosse wanted her to call the number on the card Kite had given her at the funeral, ‘just to see if there’s any possibility someone picks up’. Vosse had suggested it was a way for ‘Emma’, her gallerist legend, to stay in character. If and when Kite got out of whatever situation he was in, he would hear the voicemail and perhaps respond to Emma’s call. Cara had her doubts about the strategy, thinking it was an unnecessary risk, but Vosse had pulled rank.
She dialled the number. It rang out: seven, eight, nine times. Then:
‘This is the Vodafone voicemail service for – Lachlan Kite.’
Kite had recorded his own name onto the automated message. It was startling to hear his voice, as if the events of the afternoon had never taken place and he was still at large, a free man giving MI5 the slip. Cara had rehearsed what she was going to say, trying to combine a tone of professionalism with a friendly rapport.
‘Er, hi Lachlan. It’s Emma from the Brompton Oratory. We met outside the funeral this morning and you kindly gave me your card. I was the woman who used to work at Karoo during Frieze. It was really nice to bump into you again. I’ll try you another time.’
Cara hung up and took a long gulp of wine. She was struck by the thought that nobody would ever hear her message, that she might never see Lachlan Kite again. She went into the bathroom and switched on the hot tap, pouring a glug of bath oil into a stream of steaming water. The room quickly began to smell of lavender. Cara took out her mobile and tapped the Deliveroo app, repeating her regular order with a local Thai restaurant for stir-fried chicken and basil with a side of jasmine rice. The Tinder icon alongside showed thirty-four notifications. She opened it up and clicked through the profiles of the nine boys with whom she had recently matched, then spent the next fifteen minutes replying to their messages, playing it cool with short, gnomic answers and deleting anyone who called her ‘babe’ or ‘darling’. Five minutes later her food had arrived. Cara tipped the driver, wolfed the stir-fry, sat in the bath reading a book for half an hour – and fell asleep in front of the television before she had even managed to locate the first episode of Succession.
Cara Jannaway’s voicemail was recorded and filed on a server at BOX 88 headquarters and an alert sent to Kite’s desk. In keeping with Service protocols, the number she had used to make the call was automatically investigated by a software programme known as INTIMATE KUBRICK and a report dispatched internally to B6, the Section within BOX 88 with responsibility for overseeing and maintaining agent cover. The report contained all open source information linked to Cara Jannaway’s mobile number, including her home address, date of birth, banking and tax statements, education and employment history, medical records and a list of recent travel destinations. Hyperlinks within the report offered B6 access to her email, Instagram and Facebook accounts as well as to the list of apps downloaded to her iTunes account (which included Tinder). These could be investigated upon request.
It was Cara’s position at MI5 that triggered a warning within INTIMATE KUBRICK so that the report was flagged for ‘Immediate Attention’.
Officer with the Security Service (UK). Ministry of Defence cover (joined October 2018)
Line Manager: Robert Vosse
Lachlan Kite’s colleagues at ‘The Cathedral’ – the colloquial name for BOX 88 headquarters in London – now knew that their boss was under investigation by MI5.
Kieran Dean and Tessa Swinburn had followed Zoltan home from the Mayfair car park. It was arguably the easiest follow that either of them had ever been on, so oblivious was the target to any possibility that he might have picked up a tail.
Vosse had a fix on the Pavkov mobile but there was always a danger that the Serb might dump it on the Tube and try to throw them off. He had shown no obvious signs of intelligence – far less of training in anti-surveillance – but he might have watched the odd thriller or documentary on Channel 5 and learned a thing or two about being followed.
But no.
