Stella Rimington - Rip Tide

Blakey was listening intently.

‘Then the scene shifts to Athens. I don’t think the woman seeing Mo Miandad is Claude Rameau.’

‘You don’t?’ It was impossible to tell if Blakey’s surprise was genuine.

‘No. I think it’s the same woman who was seen at the North London mosque. Which disqualifies Rameau.’

‘So who is it then?’ But Blakey’s question seemed rhetorical. The expression on his face had changed from scepticism to curiosity to alarm – he was clearly starting to draw his own conclusions. And not enjoying them.

‘I’m pretty sure you have as good an idea as I do.’

‘What do you mean?’ Blakey looked shaken.

‘Katherine Ball.’ Liz let the words hang between them.

‘You think…’ Blakey started to say, his voice rising, and then the possibility that she might be right seemed to stop him short.

‘I know that she has visited a North London mosque. I know that she’s addressed recruits there. And I know that she’s been your lover for some time.’

Blakey wanted to speak: his lips moved; a croaking sound came out of his mouth but there were no words. He was staring at Liz without really seeing her. Suddenly he dropped his head into his hands. Liz thought for a moment that he was going to burst into tears, but when he lifted his head again his eyes were dry, and he seemed to have pulled himself together. He said quietly, ‘What a fool I’ve been.’

‘How much does she know?’

‘Katherine? What about?’ Then, seeing Liz’s cold gaze, he said, ‘She knows the lot.’

‘That won’t do. You need to be more specific.’

Blakey threw his hands up in the air, almost in despair. ‘She knew I asked Geoffrey for help, and she knew when you came to see me.’

So the MI6 and MI5 operations had been blown from the beginning. Liz sighed, and Blakey seemed to sense her disgust. He protested, ‘I don’t see what use that would be to Islamic militants in Birmingham.’

Liz shrugged. ‘I wasn’t thinking of Birmingham; I was thinking of Athens. Did she know about that?’

Blakey flushed. ‘You mean, the girl?’

‘I do. Let’s give her a name,’ Liz said icily. ‘Maria Galanos.’

Blakey wouldn’t look at her, which gave Liz her answer. At last he said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, ‘Oh, God.’ He was rubbing his hands together now, as if trying to wash everything away. ‘But Katherine couldn’t have killed her,’ he said, almost hopefully. ‘She wasn’t in Greece when Maria was murdered. She was here.’

‘Enter Mo Miandad,’ said Liz.

Blakey’s hands stopped moving, and he stared at them as if they had been stained again by her words. Then he spoke without looking at Liz, averting his face, as if it would somehow make the horror less. ‘You have to believe me, I had no idea. She never gave the slightest indication of sympathising with Islam – I’d have bet you anything that she’d never set foot in a mosque in her life. Her husband was Middle Eastern, but from everything she ever said he was thoroughly Westernised – educated in the States, enlightened, liberal. And the information she got from me – well, I’ll be honest, it was me telling her; I wasn’t being pumped.’

Pillow talk, thought Liz bitterly, which had cost Maria Galanos her life. Blakey seemed to sense this, for he continued, ‘I have no excuse, I understand that. I’m just trying to explain things. Even now that I know, I find it hard to believe. If she was trying to entrap me, she did a miraculous job of disguising it. I made all the running,’ he said emphatically.

Yes, thought Liz. An attractive intelligent blonde woman who works in the same office didn’t have to do a lot to catch the interest of a known womaniser whose wife had left him. The smallest signs would do – the chance arrival at the lift when her target was leaving for the day, perhaps turning down the first invitation for a drink but making it clear a second offer would receive a different reception; a few sympathetic words about his personal troubles, a suggestion that she knew ‘how it was’ since she was lonely too. She’d played him very cleverly, you had to give the woman that – even now Blakey was thinking he had seduced her, that he had made all the running.

Blakey was waiting anxiously for her to say more. ‘When are you due to see Katherine next?’ she asked.

‘This evening. She’s at a meeting away from the office today; a get-together of other similar charities – it happens twice a year. She said she’d come round to my flat at seven or so. I can give you the address.’

‘We’ve got that already,’ said Liz. It was somehow worse having Blakey trying to be helpful.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to face her,’ he said plaintively.

‘I don’t think you’ll find it’s much of a problem.’

Normally Ivy Howson would have been at home by now. Thursdays were her late day working for Mr Blakey, but even then she was usually off by four, having done two loads of laundry, put them through the dryer (she’d told him twice now it was on its last legs), and ironed the sheets and pillow cases as well as the shirts she hadn’t got round to on Tuesday.

But today she was still in the neighbourhood a good three hours later, though in fairness it was not because of Mr Blakey. Before she’d gone to work for him, she’d worked for an American family who’d lived around the corner, in a trim little house that the American woman had insisted on calling ‘cute’. It was there that Mrs Howson had met Eloise the au pair, a nice New Zealand girl who’d looked up to Ivy like a second mum. And it was Eloise she’d gone to see today, still working as an au pair, in the same house funnily enough, though now it was for a Chinese couple called Tang or Tong or Ting – Mrs Howson didn’t know.

Though Eloise was working so close by, Ivy hadn’t seen her for yonks, so they’d had a lovely time over tea, catching up and chatting. Not that Eloise had that much to tell – the Tangs or whatever they were called were quiet people, with one young child, but they didn’t speak that much English, according to Eloise, so it was a bit boring for her. Yet Ivy Howson had more than filled the conversational gap, what with the goings on in the Blakey household since she’d last seen Eloise. How they’d laughed as she’d described this new blonde woman that Mr Blakey didn’t like to admit was his girlfriend. She wasn’t a patch on Mrs Blakey, who, poor thing, was said to be living in Acton now, all on her own. ‘It’s tough on a woman if she gets hitched up to a bastard,’ Mrs Howson had said. ‘You watch yourself, Eloise,’ she’d warned, more than once.

They’d had a lovely chat, though Ivy had got a bit of a shock when she looked at her watch and saw it was ten to seven. ‘Lordie,’ she exclaimed, thinking how cross Stanley would be, sitting waiting for his tea in the ground-floor flat in Streatham, where they’d lived for seventeen years. Lived ever since Maureen their daughter had moved out to shack up with the first of what even Mrs Howson, loyal mother though she was, would acknowledge had been a string of unsatisfactory partners. Stanley was retired now, and hadn’t found a lot to fill his time, so he didn’t like it that she still went out to do for Mr Blakey. He’d be furious when she got home a good three hours later than usual.

She put her coat on hurriedly, grabbed her bag and said a quick goodbye to Eloise, promising to come and see the girl again sometime soon. She was bustling down the street, retracing her steps past the mansion block where Mr Blakey lived, when she noticed the cars. They were parked within twenty yards of each other, three of them, all exactly the same, which was why she noticed them in the first place. They were black and as she walked past them she saw that inside each car two men were sitting. Mrs Howson stopped for a moment, simply because this seemed so odd. She found herself waiting, not quite sure what she was waiting for.