It was the second telephone call from Maybole which persuaded Strawson that Kite was possessed of huge potential. With Rita role-playing a lone Nigerian woman on the Stranraer train, and three local assets hired to scare her, Kite had displayed calmness and courage in defusing a possibly dangerous and violent situation.
‘He was scared,’ she told Strawson, ‘but he didn’t back down. He could have stayed in the next carriage and ignored what was happening. He didn’t do that. I like him. He’s a brave boy.’
Bravery only gets you so far in this business, Strawson reflected, sitting in his room at Killantringan. If politeness or sentimentality had provoked Kite’s reaction, then he likely wasn’t the right fit for BOX 88. Nor was Strawson interested in a gung-ho, crusading macho man. If France was going to work, he needed Kite to be calm and level-headed; to be possessed of a sense of right and wrong, yes, but also to be able to stand down without losing face whenever the odds were stacked against him. He was impressed that Kite had come to the aid of a seemingly defenceless black woman sitting alone on a train, but wondered what might have happened had three genuine Scottish racists, armed with acid or knives, responded differently to Kite’s approach.
There was a knock at the door. Strawson called out ‘Just a moment, please’ and went to open it. To his great surprise, Lachlan Kite was standing in front of him.
‘I beg your pardon, sir. I just wondered if you needed your bed turning down?’
Strawson could read a lot into a face and quickly assessed the young man about whom he had heard and read so much.
‘Ah! You must be young Lachlan,’ he said, struck by the fact that Kite looked older than the photographs Strawson had seen. He looked tired, but alert and physically fit. Perhaps that partly explained why he had been able to seduce a woman almost ten years his senior the night before.
‘Your mother has told me so much about you,’ he said. ‘You were expected last night, is that right?’
‘Er, that’s right, sir. I was held up in London.’
You sure were, thought Strawson, and wondered if the lines around Kite’s eyes, the erratically shaved five o’clock shadow, were a consequence of taking drugs at Mud Club or an indication that Kite was developing his father’s fondness for the bottle. If either was the case, BOX 88 would have nothing to do with him.
‘Party?’ he asked, wondering what sort of answer Kite would give.
‘Yes. A friend of mine’s eighteenth.’
Kite’s manner was efficient and polite, to the point of obsequiousness, which Strawson assumed was either a by-product of his education – Alford College prided itself on churning out charming, Establishment-ready smooth-talkers – or merely a role Kite played whenever he found himself addressing guests at the hotel. There was something hidden in his expression, a sadness at the back of the eyes.
‘Not to be missed, then, huh?’
Kite didn’t appear to feel ashamed or remorseful about whatever it was he had done the night before. A different sort of adolescent might have lied or tried to boast about it. Strawson shook his hand. Eye contact, a friendly smile, a decent grip: all the things that Alford taught its fee-paying boys, but welcome nonetheless. Strawson had the sense of a young man of strong character possessed of what people liked to call ‘an old soul’. He instinctively liked him.
‘My first time staying at Killantringan,’ he said. ‘Love what your mother has created here. Very good to meet the son and heir to all this. My name’s Strawson. Michael Strawson. You can call me Mike.’
‘Lachlan,’ said Kite. ‘Or Lockie. Whatever you prefer.’
Kite was not to know it, but with the Stranraer train behind him, and no slip-ups under surveillance, he had passed the first phase of the BOX 88 assessment. Now Strawson needed to test his basic observational skills and, more importantly, his honesty. Was Lachlan Kite tuned in to his surroundings or – in common with most teens of his age – zoned out in an off-world adolescent orbit, daydreaming of girls and drink and parties? Was he the kind of young man who would lie and steal if he thought he could get away with it; or was there an internal code of honour, a basic sense of right and wrong?
Preparing the room was simple enough. He told Kite that he did not need his bed to be turned down and sent him on his way. Strawson then closed the door, scrambled the tuning on his television, pulled the aerial cable out of the wall and left a £20 note visible under the bed.
Next, he put his glasses behind a vase of flowers on the windowsill, dragged a side table into the bathroom and set a lamp on top of it, making sure to plug in the extension lead at the wall. He left a half-finished cup of black coffee balanced precariously on the sink and a money clip containing exactly two hundred pounds in low denomination notes on a nearby shelf. If Kite later came back to the room when Strawson wasn’t there to pocket a couple of twenties, he would know that Billy Peele’s boy was nothing but a common thief, abandon any possibility of recruiting Kite for France, play a round of golf at Turnberry and
