of his late uncle had not given a moment’s thought to him since 1992. ‘Yes, of course. What would you like to know?’
Gaddis told him what he knew of Crane’s career in the Diplomatic Service, sticking firmly to the template of The Times obituary and avoiding any mention of Cambridge, SIS or the NKVD. To draw him out further, he flattered Crane by telling him that his late uncle had played a vital, yet unheralded role in the winning of the Cold War.
‘Really? Is that so? Yes, well I suppose Eddie was quite a character.’
Gaddis now began to wish that he had been sitting somewhere more comfortable, because Crane embarked on a series of rambling, near-nonsensical anecdotes about his uncle’s ‘mysterious life’. It transpired that the two men had met ‘only a handful of times’ and that Charles had been ‘stunned, absolutely stunned’ to be the main beneficiary of his Will.
‘He never married, of course,’ he said, the spectre of a black sheep hovering over the good name of the Crane family. ‘ Entrenous, I think he was batting for the other side. Dormant, perhaps, but certainly a feature of his youth, if you know what I’m driving at.’
Gaddis found himself saying that, yes, he knew exactly what Charles Crane was driving at.
‘Retired rather late. No children to look after, you see. Not like the rest of us. Nothing to occupy his time except the Foreign Office.’
It was clear that Crane did not even know that his uncle had worked for SIS. As far as he was concerned, he had just been a middle-ranking diplomat with ‘one or two postings overseas’.
‘Does the name Audrey Slight mean anything to you?’
‘Afraid not, Mr Gaddis.’
‘She was one of the two witnesses on your uncle’s Will.’
The name finally rang a bell. ‘Oh, Audrey. She was Eddie’s housekeeper for yonks.’ Crane sounded like a contestant on a game show who discovers the answer to a question fractionally late. ‘I think she died a few years ago. Getting on a bit. Thomas Neame was my main point of contact for the estate.’
‘You didn’t speak to Richard Kenner?’
‘Who?’
‘The other witness.’
‘No. But if memory serves, Kenner was also Foreign Office. A colleague of Eddie’s. Might be worth looking him up.’
Most probably another wild-goose chase. Kenner would almost certainly be dead, or erased from the official records to protect ATTILA’s anonymity. Gaddis asked Crane about his dealings with Neame but learned nothing that he did not already know; simply that the old man was ‘highly intelligent’, ‘irascible’ and ‘occasionally bloody rude’.
‘So you met him?’
‘Only once. Lawyer’s office in London. I spoke to him on the telephone a number of times as we ironed out the flat in Bloomsbury, the house here in Athens. The estate was rather substantial.’
This, at least, was new information, although Gaddis was still desperately short of facts about Crane’s post- war career. Then it occurred to him that he did not have a photograph of Crane and took a chance that a nephew might at least have an old family Polaroid lying around in an attic.
‘I was wondering,’ he said. ‘Would you have a picture of your uncle? Anything at all? I’ve had trouble tracking one down. When a man dies without children, with no siblings or close relatives, there are very few people who keep hold of such things.’
Crane was immediately sympathetic to Gaddis’s predicament. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I can dig one up for you from somewhere. There’s bound to be one lurking around. I’ll get on to it.’
‘That would be very kind.’
Gaddis gave an address at UCL to which Crane could send the photograph and then hung up. As he did so, he wondered if he should have invited himself out to Greece. If Crane was living in his late uncle’s property, there might be files or boxes lurking in a basement which could be of use to the ATTILA investigation. Instead, he put the mobile back in his pocket, walked to the ground-floor cafe and ordered a cup of tea.
Chapter 22
Gaddis bumped into Josephine Warner in the car park. She was unlocking a black Volkswagen hatchback and putting a Waitrose carrier bag on the back seat. She might not have seen him if Gaddis hadn’t waved and shouted ‘Hi!’ across a line of parked cars. He was halfway through a cigarette, having abandoned yet another attempt to quit, and stubbed it out on the ground.
‘Hello. Doctor Gaddis, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ he said. He came towards her, looking at his watch. ‘You already going home?’
He privately hoped that she was. Peter still wasn’t answering his phone and he had given up on going to Winchester. He was at a loose end, feeling restless, and might invite her out to lunch.
‘Not home,’ she said. ‘Just popping to Richmond to pick up a colleague. I’m the new kid on the block, so they’ve got me running errands.’
She looked at him, a quiet appraisal, and Gaddis was certain that he detected the faintest trace of an invitation in her eyes. Then he thought of Holly and wondered why the hell he was succumbing to a car park flirtation with an archivist from Kew. No good was ever going to come of it.
‘Thanks again for the Will,’ he said, taking a step back.
‘Was it useful?’ Instinctively, she had moved forwards, following him. A wind kicked up, sharp and autumnal. Warner held loose strands of hair away from her face as she said: ‘I read your Bulgakov biography. Are you writing a new book?’
This took him by surprise. She had appeared indifferent earlier in the morning, showing no indication that she even knew who he was. ‘You did? Why? Were you stuck for something to read on the Trans-Siberian? Killing time in prison?’
She smiled and said that she had loved the book and Gaddis felt the awful, shallow thrill of a woman’s flattery. If he was honest with himself, within moments of seeing her at the reception desk he had wanted to pursue her, just as he and Natasha had pursued other lovers during their marriage. Why had they done it? Their behaviour had fractured the relationship irreparably. And yet he would happily go through the very same process again with this woman whom he did not know, jeopardizing something promising with Holly. Perhaps the distraction of an affair would take his mind off Crane and Neame. In which case — walk away. The book was far more important. But he found that he wanted to keep talking to her, to see where the conversation led them.
‘A boyfriend put me on to The Master and Margarita at Oxford,’ she said, stepping beyond the Volkswagen so that they were now no more than a metre apart. ‘In fact I think he plagiarized most of your book for his dissertation.’
‘There’s a good Russian department at Oxford,’ Gaddis said, noting the cool, gliding reference to a past lover. ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’
‘I just started. Part-time. Finished my PhD in June.’
‘And you couldn’t stand being away from archives and librarians?’
‘Something like that.’
What followed, in the next few minutes, was an exchange as commonplace as it was predictable. Gaddis said that he was heading back to Shepherd’s Bush and Josephine Warner, seizing on this, happened to mention that she lived ‘just around the corner’ in Chiswick. Gaddis then found a way of suggesting that they should get together for a drink one night and Warner enthusiastically agreed, supplying another inviting gaze as she offered her mobile number in exchange for his. It was a first dance, a step on the road to the possibility of seduction, with both parties playing their roles to practised perfection.
Gaddis gave it forty-eight hours before telephoning to arrange to meet for a drink. Josephine sounded pleased to hear from him and encouraged the idea of meeting up for dinner. He suggested a restaurant in Brackenbury Village and, three nights later, they were ensconced at a candlelit table, working their way through a bottle of Givry. He was surprised by the candour of their conversation, almost from its first moments.
