‘Sounds like a classic fucked-up posh boy.’
‘He was definitely that.’
‘Too much money. Too little love.’
‘Exactly.’
‘That school,’ she said, sounding exasperated. ‘One part Hogwarts, one part Colditz. What did that writer in the Guardian call it? “A gateway drug for the Bullingdon.” Why do the Brits send their kids to these places?’
‘I’ve been asking myself that question for thirty years.’
‘No way Rambo’s going there. No way, José.’ Kite met her eyes. Though her father was American, Isobel had been born and raised in Sweden, where only diplomatic brats and royalty went to boarding schools. She said: ‘I can come with you today if it’s going to be difficult.’
He touched the side of her face. ‘You’re kind. There’s no need. You have work.’
‘When will you be home?’
The funeral was at eleven. Kite was due at a gallery in Mayfair at four where his usual dealer had a Riopelle he wanted him to look at. If the Eastbourne train was on time, he would be home to make dinner.
‘Eight?’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t be any later than that. If I run into problems, I’ll call you.’
3
Robert Vosse had given instructions that the Kite cottage wasn’t to be touched.
‘No car or van or drone or pushbike is to come within half a mile of the place. Get too close on foot surveillance and Kite will smell a rat. Follow his car for more than a couple of miles and we might as well put stickers on the headlights saying MI5 Is Following You. If Lachlan Kite is even half as experienced and thorough as we’ve been led to believe, he’ll sniff out a microphone or a camera in less time than it took Matt to make my cup of tea this morning.’
Vosse was addressing the troops at the Acton safe flat. It was a Tuesday afternoon. They had spent the day poring over the various reports the team had assembled on the Bonnard family and Martha Raine.
‘Kite’s hardly likely to blab about BOX 88 within earshot of his pregnant wife,’ said Vosse with a nod of agreement from Matt Tomkins. ‘He’s a thirty-year veteran of the intelligence world, hard-wired for secrecy and discretion. Man like that gets wind we’ve rigged his love nest for sight and sound, he’ll do a Lucan. Let him go for his jogs unmolested. Let him have his lunches at the Dog and Duck. The funeral’s all we need. Cara’s going to pop him in her pocket, aren’t you, love?’
* * *
It wasn’t quite how things worked out.
Just to be on the safe side, on the day of the funeral Vosse positioned a two-man team outside Lewes station in a plain-clothes Vauxhall Astra. Officer Kieran Dean followed Kite onto the London service while Tessa Swinburn drove ahead and boarded the same train twenty minutes later at Hayward’s Heath. Dean disembarked and picked up the Astra as Swinburn settled in a carriage adjacent to Kite and tracked him to Victoria station. After buying a pain au chocolat and a double espresso at Caffè Nero under the watchful eye of Matt Tomkins, BIRD was observed boarding a District line train to South Kensington. By eleven o’clock, Lachlan Kite was standing outside the Brompton Oratory surrounded by the great and the good of the European elite on a cold February morning blessed by clear blue skies. Wearing Nina Ricci sunglasses and a long black overcoat (both sourced on expenses from TK Maxx), Cara Jannaway approached the mourners from a starting position outside Harrods. Watching her grudgingly from a patisserie across the road, Matt Tomkins told Vosse by phone that Cara certainly looked the part, but was ‘too tall, and too striking, for effective surveillance work’.
‘You think?’
Vosse had finely tuned antennae both for the toadying of ambitious junior officers and for any carefully worded slights against colleagues. He liked Cara, always had, and didn’t want to hear a bad word against her, especially when she wasn’t around to defend herself. Vosse had known from day one that Matt Tomkins was a triple-dyed shit of outsized ego, possessed of boundless tenacity and cunning. Such characteristics were always an asset to any team, but he hoped that Tomkins would be smart enough to learn when to talk and when to keep his mouth shut.
‘I just think she’s standing out a bit too much,’ he said. ‘Needs to talk to somebody, sir. Needs to blend in.’
‘She’ll be all right,’ said Vosse, and hung up.
* * *
Kite had given up smoking on his fortieth birthday and nowadays lit up only when he needed to for cover. Standing amid the Bonnard mourners on the steps of the Brompton Oratory, he caught the smell of a cigarette on the morning air and walked towards its source.
‘You couldn’t spare one of those, could you?’
The man holding the cigarette was at least six foot six and heavily bearded. Kite did not recognise him, though he had spotted several of Xavier’s friends and former colleagues in the crowd.
‘Sure.’ The accent was American, the cigarettes a brand Kite didn’t know. The packet was mercifully clear of gruesome images of babies on ventilators, of lungs and throats decimated by cancer. Kite took a long, deep drag.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Needed that.’
‘Me too. Bad day. You knew Xav a long time?’
‘From thirteen. We were at school together.’
‘What’s that, the famous place? Alford? Students go around in tailcoats, like they’re dressed for a wedding the whole time?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Fifty-six prime ministers and counting? Every prince and king of England since 1066?’
‘Pretty sure Prince Charles went to Gordonstoun, and hated it, but otherwise you’re right.’
The American suppressed a broad grin, as though it would be tasteless to be seen enjoying himself on the steps of a funeral.
‘How about you?’ Kite asked. ‘How did you know Xavier?’
‘AA,’ the American replied, and tested Kite’s reaction with his eyes. ‘Did time together in Arizona. Dried out in South Africa. Attended meetings in London, New York, Paris.