19
Kite had finished tidying the last of the three rooms and was walking back towards the rear staircase when the American in Churchill popped his head out of the door and said:
‘Hey. Seeing as you’re here, could you help me with something? I got a problem with my TV, Lachlan.’
‘Of course,’ Kite replied.
The American held the door open so that Kite could enter the room then closed it behind him with a gentle click. Kite had a flash memory of ‘Jumpy’ Jones-Lewis entering his bedroom at Alford without knocking, hoping for a snatched glimpse of thigh or stomach, but didn’t get a creepy vibe from Strawson, who seemed harmless and hearty. Besides, there was a framed photograph of a woman Kite assumed to be his wife balanced on the bedside table next to a Good News Bible and a hardback copy of The Satanic Verses. Kite had never seen one before and wanted to pick it up.
‘Have you just arrived, sir?’ he asked, because his mother had long ago taught him that it was important to make small talk with guests.
‘Just got in yesterday,’ Strawson replied. ‘Flew into Prestwick.’
‘And you’re on your own?’
The bed had only been disturbed on one side. Kite had also clocked the absence of women’s clothing in the room. Sometimes his love of detection, his fascination with the minutiae of strangers’ lives, got the better of him.
‘That’s right. My wife is back in London. We live over here actually.’
Kite had work to do in the bar and didn’t want to get caught in a lengthy conversation, so he said, ‘Ah, right’, and asked what was wrong with the television.
‘Can’t seem to find any channels,’ Strawson replied. ‘Doesn’t help that I can’t find my glasses anyplace.’
Within three minutes Kite had worked out the problem: not only had somebody scrambled the tuning on the television, they had also removed the aerial from its socket in the wall. He fixed both, spotted Strawson’s glasses behind a vase of flowers on the windowsill, and asked if the American needed help with anything else.
‘Just something in the bathroom,’ he replied, indicating that there was a problem with one of the taps.
Kite followed Strawson into the bathroom, noticing a stray £20 note under the bed. He bent down to pick it up.
‘Don’t lose this,’ he said, setting it on the bed.
There was more money in the bathroom, a roll of notes in a clip on the shelf beside the window. Kite could have used the cash to pay back Xavier but would never have countenanced stealing from a guest. He didn’t trust some of the other staff in the hotel to be so honourable and told Strawson about the hotel safe.
‘So is it true?’ the American asked, having pocketed the money.
‘Is what true, sir?’
‘That the great man stayed here?’
They were standing in front of the large, free-standing bath in which Sir Winston had allegedly immersed himself in 1943.
‘As far as I know,’ Kite replied. He had never been sure if Churchill’s visit to Killantringan was bona fide, or if it had been invented by his father as a PR stunt to drum up custom. ‘Further up the coast there’s Culzean Castle,’ he said, ‘where your President Eisenhower stayed several times.’
‘Is that right?’ Strawson replied.
Yanks always loved hearing that.
Strawson indicated that the hot tap on the bath was stuck. Kite released it easily and also moved a coffee cup which was at risk of falling into the sink and smashing. To his consternation he saw that a side table had been dragged into the bathroom with a free-standing lamp balanced on top of it. If the lamp fell into the water while Strawson was taking a bath, he would find himself travelling back to Prestwick airport in a coffin.
‘Sir, can I suggest that you don’t leave that lamp there?’ He explained the danger of electrocution if the socket came into contact with the bathwater, trying not to sound too condescending. The American cursed his stupidity, thanked Kite for his ‘presence of mind’ and showed him to the door.
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ Kite asked. He could feel his mother growing impatient downstairs.
‘Not for the moment, thank you,’ Strawson replied. ‘This has been very instructive.’
20
All the way to Spindrift Avenue, Matt Tomkins had felt a serene sense of achievement and inner peace. Zoltan’s satnav had saved the day, every road, every turn and instruction dictated to his AirPods courtesy of the microphones in the Fiat Punto.
Turn left onto Upper Bank Street
As a pleasing coincidence, Tomkins’s route had taken him past a bar in Mile End where, almost a year earlier, he had attended a birthday party with some old school friends. The men had been competing about what car they drove, where they went on holiday, how much money they were making in start-ups or the City. They’d asked Tomkins what he was doing, and he’d given them his usual civil service cover, working at the Ministry of Defence, downsizing regiments, the usual lies and bullshit. There had been sneers from the men about his salary, a woman he liked asking how he could work for ‘Tory scum’ that started wars and armed the Saudis. He had wanted to tell her he was MI5, but had to stick to his cover, arguing that Saudi Arabia was a vital regional ally and that the situation in Yemen wasn’t just a simple case of right and wrong. She had laughed at him contemptuously and walked off, high on coke and moral rectitude, leaving Tomkins to wonder if life in the Security Service was all it was cracked up to be. He had only applied to MI5 for the challenge, to see if he could make it past the selection board. He had never intended to make intelligence work his career. But MI5 had seen something in him – he’d never known precisely what – which had made Tomkins feel valued and admired. For
