Stella Rimington - At Risk

“What hasn’t Geoffrey Fane been telling you? He’s the one who picked up on this guy after German liaison flashed us about the driving licence. Are you really telling me you don’t know anything about this man? You’re Mr. Pakistan, after all.”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Who is he?”

She told him the little she knew.

“So ultimately all we’ve got is a name and a face,” said Mackay. “Nothing else. No known contacts, no-”

“Nothing else that I know about, no.”

“Damn!” He sank down to the bed, which was covered with a faded green candlewick bedspread. “Damn!”

“At least we know what he looks like,” said Liz, looking at the slight, sharp-featured figure. “Quite handsome, I’d say. I wonder what’s going on between him and the girl?”

“I wonder,” said Mackay drily. “The police are getting posters out, I assume.”

“I guess so. It’s a start.”

He nodded. “There can’t be too many people looking like that in East Anglia.”

“I’m not so sure. He’s very pale-skinned. Shave him, give him a fashionable haircut, dress him in jeans and a down-filled jacket, and he could walk unnoticed down any high street in Britain. My instinct is still to cherchez la femme. If we can identify her, and put her life under the microscope, I reckon we can find the pair of them. Did you get any inspiration-anything at all-from that Eurostar passenger list?”

“Only a confirmation of life’s unfairness.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Can you imagine the start in life it would give you to have a name like Adrienne Fantoni-Brizeart or Jean D’Alvéydre?” asked Mackay. “Every introduction would be a declaration of love.”

“Were those two names on the list?” asked Liz. Something, some urgent thread of an idea…

“As far as I can remember, yes?”

“Just say it again,” said Liz flatly. “Say those names again.”

“Well, there was a woman called Adrienne Fantoni-Brizeart, I think, and a man called Jean D’Alvéydre, or something very like it. Why?”

“I don’t know. Something…” She squeezed her eyes shut. Damn. “No. Lost it.”

“I know that feeling,” Bruno said sympathetically. “Best to file and forget. The memory’ll throw it up when it’s ready.”

She nodded. “I know you went to Lakenheath today; did you go to either of the others, Mildenhall or Marwell?”

“No. I’d hoped to take in Mildenhall but the station commander was away. I’m due there tomorrow morning. Want to come?”

“No, I think I’ll stay here. Sooner or later someone’s going to spot that hire car. Whitten’s had people looking for it all over the-”

There was a muted bleep, and she snatched the phone from her belt without checking the caller. “Jude?”

“No, it’s not Jude, whoever she is, or he is, it’s me. Mark. Listen, you know I said I was going to talk to Shauna? Well, I have. I’ve…”

She no longer heard him. She couldn’t afford to listen, couldn’t afford to let go the thought that had just that second, completely unbidden…

“Mark, I’m in a meeting, OK? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Liz, please, I…”

Ignoring his protests, she rang off.

Mackay grinned. “Who was that?”

But Liz was already standing. “Wait here,” she said. “I want to look at that list on the laptop. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Leaving Mackay’s room, she crossed the corridor to Temeraire. Switching on her laptop, and tapping in her password, she called up her incoming e-mail list. It took her less than a minute to find what she wanted.

“You were right,” she told Mackay, back in Victory. “There is a Jean D’Alvéydre.”

“Er, OK.”

She consulted a handwritten list. “And a Jean Boissevin, and a Jean Béhar, and a Jean Fauvet and a Jean D’Aubigny and a Jean Soustelle.”

“Right.”

“And I bet you anything you like that one of them isn’t a Jean, rhyming with con, but a Jean, rhyming with teen. ”

Mackay frowned. “Who’s been put with the French men because she’s got a French-sounding surname, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“My God,” he murmured. “You could be right. You could be damn well right. ” He took the list of names from her. “That one would be my guess.”

“I agree,” said Liz. “That was my choice too.”

She reached briskly for her bag. “Wait here. Give me five minutes.”

If the phone box on the sea front had been unprepossessing in the day, it was worse at night. It was ice cold, the cement floor was covered with cigarette ends and the receiver stank of the last user’s beery breath.

“Jude…” Liz began.

“I’m afraid the answer’s no so far,” said Judith Spratt. “About sixty per cent of the French names are in, and they’re all negative.”

“Jean D’Aubigny,” said Liz quietly. “Second page, with the French men.”

There was a pause. “Oh my Lord. Yes. I see what you mean. That could easily be an old English name. I’ll-”

“Call me back,” said Liz.

She and Mackay had time to finish the wine and drink a cup of coffee each. When Judith Spratt finally called back, Liz knew from her tone that she’d been right. In the phone box her back ended up pressed hard against Mackay’s chest but she couldn’t have cared less.

“Jean D’Aubigny, twenty-four,” said Spratt. “Nationality, British, current address, deuxième étage à gauche, 17 Passage de l’Ouled NaÏl, Corentin-Cariou, Paris. Registered as a fee-paying student at the Dauphine department of the Sorbonne, reading Urdu literature. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” said Liz, twisting round to nod at Mackay, who gave her a wide grin and a clenched fist salute. Got you, she thought. Got you!

“Parents are separated and live in Newcastle under Lyme; neither was expecting Jean for Christmas as she had told them she was staying in Paris with friends from the university. We’ve just finished speaking to her tutor at Dauphine, a Dr. Hussein. He told us that he has not seen Jean since the end of the term before last and assumed that she had withdrawn from the course.”

“Can the parents get us pictures?”

“We’re on to all that, and we’ll e-mail them to you as soon as we get anything. Apparently Jean hasn’t lived with either of her parents for several years now, but we’ve got a couple of people on their way up there anyway. We’re also going to suggest that the French take a quiet look at the flat in Corentin-Cariou.”

“We’re going to need everything,” said Liz. “Friends, contacts, people she was at school with… Her whole life.”

“I know that,” said Judith. “And we’ll get it. Just keep checking your e-mail. Are you going to go on staying up there in Norfolk?”

“I am. She’s in this area somewhere, I’m sure of it.”

“Talk later, then.”

Liz cut the connection, and hesitated, finger poised over the dial. Steve Goss first, she decided, and then Whitten. Yes!

What people saw in the Strand bungalows, mused Elsie Hogan, was more than she could fathom. They were poky, they were cold, you had to drive all the way to Dersthorpe if you wanted so much as a box of tea bags, and there wasn’t a telly or a phone in any of them! Still, Diane Munday had to know what she was doing. She wouldn’t hang on to them if they weren’t turning her a profit.

Elsie “did” for the Mundays on the days that she wasn’t “doing” for the Lakebys. She wasn’t particularly fond of Diane Munday, who was rather liable to run an accusing finger along a dusty skirting board, and to argue the point when it came to totting up the hours. But cash was cash, and she couldn’t survive on what the Lakebys paid her alone. If Cherisse fell pregnant… Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.