Charles Cumming - The hidden man

‘Tom, leave it,’ Mark said again, and this time his tone was more forthright. Duchev had turned away, but was surely processing every word.

‘Fine,’ Macklin replied. ‘Fine. I’m only telling you the truth. Way I see it, Benny boy, man like you wants to give himself a treat from time to time. I saw you when I came in here, Raquel giving you the once over. You were loving it, mate, loving it. Wasn’t he, sweetheart?’ Raquel smiled obligingly. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing. I had a Thai bird last night, fucking unbelievable. Nipples like indoor fireworks. You don’t know what you’re missing.’

Ben lit a cigarette. At that moment he would rather have been anywhere else in the world but listening to Macklin talking about his sex life.

‘Philippe’s been there, haven’t you, mate?’ D’Erlanger, who had been quiet for some time, looked awkwardly at the table. ‘Don’t be shy, Hercule, don’t be shy. Down the Caymans, wasn’t it? You and Timmy Lander went retail. He told me all about it.’

Neither Ben nor his brother could prevent the looks of shock that sprang on to their faces.

‘Timothy Lander?’ Mark said quickly.

‘That’s right.’ Macklin’s hand was scraping up Raquel’s back. ‘Night on the tiles, wasn’t it, Poirot?’

‘Do I know him?’ Mark asked. ‘From Libra?’

‘Tim?’ Macklin frowned. ‘Don’t think so, mate. Top bloke, though. Old friend of mine from college; runs a diving school out there.’

‘You sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure. Philippe was going out a while back and I asked Tim to — how shall I put this delicately? — show him a good time.’ Macklin appeared to be affected by a memory, pleasure briefly leaving his face. ‘Matter of fact, I tried to hookyour old man up with him, Keeno, when he was planning a holiday out there. Told me he wanted to do some diving out in the Caymans, so I gave him Tim’s number. That was just before the, er, accident, you know. Sorry about that. Here, have another drink.’

‘Timothy Lander is a fucking diving instructor.’

‘I knew that.’

‘You knew that?’

Taploe secured his seatbelt and managed to look suitably contrite. He said, ‘We found out shortly after our last meeting. Paul had a call from the Cayman Islands which confirmed it.’

‘From the Cayman Islands? Not from SIS?’

‘Why would SIS be involved?’

Mark was sitting opposite Taploe on the leather backseat of an MI5 cab. He frowned and said, ‘Because you said their Station out there was looking into it.’ For the first time, he had begun to doubt Randall’s integrity. He wished Quinn were in the car, somebody whose word he could count on. With Paul Quinn, he knew where he stood. ‘Or was that just a lie designed to make me feel better? Maybe you knew all along that Lander was a red herring. I mean, how hard is it to trace somebody when you have their fucking phone number on my dad’s records?’

‘I never lied to you about Timothy Lander.’ Taploe’s nose seemed to twitch, as if he had suffered for Citibank, but nothing under Timothy. It was only by chance that his name came up.’

Mark shookhis head and looked out of the window.

‘Now I need to know more about last night,’ Taploe said. ‘The club. Everything you can recall.’

Ian, who was driving, switched lanes abruptly on Marylebone Road and shot the cab up on to the Westway.

‘I told you most of it on the phone.’

‘Well then, let’s start with Tamarov. Why do you thinkhe brought up the subject of your father?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’ Mark was tired and fractious. He had left the club at three in the morning and been debriefed by Taploe for thirty minutes on the telephone before grabbing just two or three hours of sleep.

‘Well, can you hazard a guess?’

‘To clear his conscience?’ Mark suggested. ‘To take me off the scent?’ Taploe appeared to agree with this assessment and nodded discreetly. ‘Or,’ Mark added, ‘because he was actually telling the truth. Because Duchev and Kukushkin really did have nothing to do with what happened to my father. Because the shooting was just a run-of-the-mill murder that is never going to be solved.’

He wondered whether to tell Randall about Bone’s letter. The more he thought about it, the crazier it seemed just to dismiss the theory about Kostov. What if Jock was lying, as Ben suspected? But then maybe his controller already knew about Mischa. He had recruited him using Kukushkin as a lever, the treachery of Macklin and Roth, yet there was no specific evidence linking any of those figures to the murder. Maybe Five and Six were in it together. Mark stared at the floor of the cab and did not know whom to trust.

‘We will solve it,’ Taploe was saying. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

‘Time,’ Mark muttered. ‘Time.’

‘Now you said that Tamarov was upset with Macklin for being drunk?’

‘That’s right.’ Mark was still staring at the floor.

‘How drunk was he, as a matter of fact?’

‘Very.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

Mark lifted his head with bored indifference.

‘You want a urine sample?’

Ian grinned in the rear-view mirror.

‘Well, what about d’Erlanger?’ Taploe asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

‘Not booze. Cocaine.’

‘I see. And at the bar you said Tamarov openly admitted to you that he was Viktor Kukushkin’s lawyer. Is that correct?’

‘That is correct.’

‘Now why did he do that, do you think?’

But Mark had had enough.

‘Fucking hell. How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t have answers to these questions. If you don’t know what’s going on, then pull me out. If you think Kukushkin is already on to me, I’m not exactly keen to stick around.’

‘Nobody is suggesting for a moment that Kukushkin is on to you. Do you have reason to suggest that that might be the case?’

Shaking his head, Mark stared at passing cars.

‘Look, I am trying to piece things together,’ Taploe told him. ‘I am trying to help you, trying to run this operation. All I want to know is what your instincts tell you. I wasn’t there last night. I need to see things through your eyes.’

Ian pulled away sharply at a green light and, for the third or fourth time in the journey, Mark was jolted backin his seat. A motorcycle courier buzzed past his window, weaving down the blindside of a singledecker bus.

‘My instinct tells me everything is fine,’ he said. ‘Like I told you, the best thing you can do is get to Duchev. He’s on the way out. Retiring. You threaten to confiscate this land he’s bought in Spain, that’s a big lever. Juris has dreams of growing oranges and lemons on the plains of Andalucia. He talked about it for a quarter of an hour. You tell him he’s got more chance of growing cress at Wormwood Scrubs, that’s going to make an impact, believe me.’

Taploe seemed impressed by the idea. He pinched a tuft of his moustache, as if removing an imaginary speck of food, and steadied his balance on a loop of plastic tacked above the door.

‘That is something I’ve been thinking over since we talked this morning,’ he said. ‘But it needn’t concern you. If I pitch Duchev, that won’t affect your ongoing relationship with Tamarov. That is the vital element here. Now, your brother. Why do you think Tamarov was so friendly towards him?’

Wary of questions about Ben, Mark again answered aggressively.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why he was friendly to Ben. To get him onside? To test him? Isn’t it possible they just liked one another?’ He was conscious that Ben had conceived the plan for Duchev and wanted to protect him. ‘I mean, maybe you guys are looking for conspiracy where no fucking conspiracy exists. You think Timothy Lander is a corrupt investment banker in the Cayman Islands and he turns out to be Jacques Cousteau.’