‘I know they do,’ he said. ‘They’re confused—’
Torabi snatched the phone back, breaking the connection.
‘I see your wife is well trained,’ he said, passing the mobile to the chauffeur. ‘We’re not confused. Perhaps she’s like you and Mr de Paul. Perhaps your wife also works for MI6?’
‘You piece of shit.’ Kite twisted from side to side, pulling at his bonds, but they would not slacken any further. ‘You’re insane. Let her go.’
Even as he confronted Torabi, Kite was working through the implications of the exchange. Why was Torabi again bringing up Cosmo de Paul? Around the edges of the screen he had seen a section of carpet which matched the living-room floor of the Sussex cottage. Why hadn’t the Iranians moved her from the one place where she might be found? And why was Torabi risking a FaceTime call that could be swept by Cheltenham?’
‘We will let her go as soon as you cooperate.’
Kite shouted at him. ‘I have told you I will cooperate! She’s a pregnant woman, for Christ’s sake.’
He ached for his unborn child. Kamran stepped behind him and pulled down on his arms, the wire cutting into Kite’s wrists. He hissed in pain. His impotence in the face of these men was like the powerlessness he had felt as a child when his father had been drinking. Kite detested the loss of control, the impossibility of fighting back.
‘Lockie,’ said Torabi. ‘Can I call you that?’ He sat back in the sofa with a smug smile and indicated to Kamran that he should leave the room. ‘You can now see, in case you doubted it before, that I am a serious person who means to find out what I need to find out. Before this exchange with your wife, you may have believed that it was more important – more noble – to protect your employers than to save your own skin. The British can be sentimental like that. Maybe you put a low value on your own life. Who knows? But undoubtedly you value the life of Isobel and her unborn child. So perhaps their unfortunate situation will be enough to persuade you to stop wasting any more of my fucking time.’
23
‘Listen, Matt. You could have gone through your whole career without seeing something like that. We’re not dealing with normal people here. I’m sorry you were exposed to it. Not surprised you’re in a mess, not surprised at all. If it’s any consolation, Zoltan wasn’t a family man. No contact with his kids, no wife to leave behind as a widow, not many friends. The sort of person who would sell his soul to MOIS for a few grand and knowingly send a man to his death. I’m not saying he had it coming, but Zoltan Pavkov got in with the wrong crowd and paid the ultimate price.’
Tomkins and Vosse were sitting in the BMW somewhere in Whitechapel. Tomkins wasn’t sure where they had ended up or why Vosse had chosen this place to stop and debrief. He was barely listening to what the boss was saying. All he could think of was Zoltan’s jackknifed head, the bloodied neck slung back and opened up like intestines on a butcher’s slab. He kept picturing the frozen, terrified stare in Zoltan’s eyes, the horror of what had been done to him.
‘You need to concentrate on what I’m about to tell you, son,’ said Vosse. They were side by side in the car. Tomkins was in the passenger seat, staring ahead at a grey concrete wall. It occurred to him that the man who had murdered Pavkov must have been sitting in the same seat in the Punto, must have reached across with his knife to cut him from ear to ear. Or had he been behind him all that time, positioning himself so that the blood which had burst from Zoltan’s neck onto the wheel and dashboard didn’t spray all over him? No doubt that was the sort of thing they took into consideration before murdering a person in cold blood. ‘There’ll be questions from the team. We tell them the truth. Whatever anybody asks, we don’t hide anything. We tell them what went on tonight.’
‘What about everyone else?’ Tomkins asked. He dreaded the answer because he already knew what it would be. ‘What if the police come asking questions?’
Vosse tried to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Tomkins shrugged it off.
‘Look. This is the business we’re in. We operate in the shadows. Nobody is to see us, nobody is to know we were there.’
‘Operate in the shadows? What the fuck?’ Ordinarily Tomkins wouldn’t have lost his temper with Vosse, but this wasn’t an ordinary morning. ‘We’re not in a comic book. This isn’t the fucking Avengers. A man got murdered and I heard it all playing out on the mikes, every word. I heard the sound of a man dying. What happens when the police find the microphones in the car? What happens then?’
‘They wonder who put them there. They never get a plausible answer.’
‘What if one of the neighbours saw me running up the road? What if CCTV has the number plate of this car, the number plate of the Mondeo, pictures of you parked two hundred metres away, then running towards the scene of the crime?’
‘Unsolved murder, Matt. Unsolved crime. Happens all the time in every town and city in the world. There won’t be a trace on the vehicles. They’re Service cars. Understand? Police run the plates, they get sweet fuck all.’
‘And video? Someone with a phone?’
‘What are the chances?’ Vosse was sounding increasingly irritated by Tomkins’s questions. ‘It was two o’clock in the morning. You saw how dead the place was. You telling me some hedge fund master of the universe was sitting up in his silk pyjamas doing an Abraham Zapruder?’ Tomkins shook his head and frowned, not understanding the reference. ‘Fine. If the film comes out, we deal with it. If
