Stella Rimington - Breaking Cover

It was beginning to grow chilly now and she was just thinking of going inside to get a shawl when she noticed a woman lingering on the suspension part of the bridge, just before the tower on the near side. She was slim and rather smartly dressed in a short bright blue jacket over what seemed to be a blue or grey dress – it was difficult to see precisely from this distance, in the fading light. The woman looked as though she might have come straight from her office. She had bobbed dark hair, which obscured the side of her face as she gazed over the railing into the water below. There was something odd about the way she was standing, looking down at the incoming tide that was flowing fast now under the bridge. That stretch of water was quite shallow at low tide but the river was filling up fast and the mud bank had long since disappeared. While Sarah watched, the woman walked on slowly, almost dreamily, as though unaware of her surroundings or of anyone else – she almost collided with a man in a dark suit, walking at a fast march, looking straight ahead, on his way somewhere.

There was a trance-like quality about the woman’s movements. She stopped from time to time to stare out upstream, then she’d walk on a few paces only to turn around and retrace her steps.

Sarah was beginning to feel very uneasy about the way the woman was behaving, wandering up and down while everyone else on the bridge was hurrying past, so she went inside to get the binoculars her business partner had given her when she moved into the apartment At the same time, not knowing quite why, she picked up her phone which was lying on a table.

When she came out again the woman was still there but she had stopped wandering up and down and was standing just beside one of the towers. As Sarah watched she put one foot on the bottom of the railing and slowly began to climb up it. Just as Sarah hit the first button on her phone, the woman reached the top of the railing and jumped and all that Sarah could see of her was her head bobbing in the water as she was swept away fast upstream by the tide. While Sarah was shouting at the operator, the head disappeared from her view and she could see no more of the woman.

On the bridge where she had climbed over, a small crowd was gathering and a man with a phone pressed to his ear was gesticulating and pointing down into the water. Sarah turned away feeling sick just as the doorbell rang. ‘Restaurant service!’ shouted a voice. She opened the door and said to the waiter, ‘A woman’s just jumped into the river!’

‘Oh, dear, madam,’ he replied calmly. ‘It does happen from time to time. It’s always very sad. Shall I set the table and pour a glass of wine?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Sarah automatically as through the open window came the sound of police sirens.

‘What I don’t understand is how you knew they were in the pool house.’ Miles Brookhaven was sitting across the desk from Liz in her small office. It was Saturday morning and he was looking more than usually relaxed in a linen jacket and open-necked shirt, though rather like Geoffrey Fane he somehow never lost his well-pressed appearance. Liz had got back from Manchester late the previous night. After the tensions and excitements of the day she’d spent at Patricov’s house and grounds, she found Miles’s easy manner rather soothing.

She said now, ‘It wasn’t exactly rocket science, more of a lucky guess, really. Everybody was convinced that Laurenz Hansen – Karpis, I should call him, although I don’t suppose that’s his real name any more than Hansen is – had somehow left the estate, especially after they’d searched the house and couldn’t find him. But I didn’t see how he could have got away that easily. I thought he must still be there somewhere. There are plenty of outbuildings, so while Bruno and the security chief checked the perimeter, I started looking in a few other places. The garage, the coach house. And then I came to the swimming-pool block.’

‘What happened when you got there?’

‘I suppose I was a bit stupid because I barged straight in. Karpis was there, along with Patricov’s wife – in a little room where all the equipment for the pool is stored. But they also had all sorts of wiring and computers and phones in there.

‘Patricov’s wife didn’t know who I was when I appeared; she just looked at me in surprise. But Karpis could tell right away that I wasn’t some stray person who’d wandered in. I don’t know if he knew that the place was being raided, or whether he’d been holed up there when we’d all come to the house. But whatever he thought, he wasn’t going to take any risks, so he pulled a gun on me.

‘I’m still a bit confused about the order of what happened after that. But I know that Karpis told me to sit on a bench and that shortly after that Kevin Burgess, a security guard, turned up. God knows why, but he did. At that point, I remember that Mrs P and Hansen started yelling at each other in Russian. She was trying to wipe the computers, to get rid of the evidence. You see, they’d been watching Jasminder’s family in Leicester, to blackmail her into working for them.’

Liz sighed and looked out of the window. Summer had taken over from spring, but the river was unseasonably grey and choppy. ‘Poor girl. It’s tragic that she didn’t trust any of us enough to tell us what was going on. You’d think she might have told Peggy – she’d got quite friendly with her. But she didn’t. I suppose she still felt like a bit of an outsider. Anyway she’s told Geoffrey Fane everything now, and I assume she’ll have to leave the Service. I expect Six will let her make some excuse to explain why she’s going after such a short time; it’s sure to be rather embarrassing for C. It was his idea to appoint her.’

Miles nodded. ‘It’s a shame that she didn’t confide in Peggy. I hope Jasminder will be OK. I expect the media will be sniffing around trying to root out the full story.’

‘I’m sure Geoffrey and C will work out some line to take, but Jasminder will need a lot of support. She mustn’t be left on her own to cope with it. I’m going to suggest to Geoffrey that Peggy takes on a support role.’

‘Good idea. But go on with the story. What happened when the security guard arrived?’

‘That’s when things started taking off. The laptops weren’t responding; they seemed to have frozen up. I think Pearson, the local Chief Constable, had ordered all external communications from the house and grounds to be cut off before the raid started. Mrs Patricov was getting hysterical, and Karpis must have decided to destroy the actual computers since they couldn’t delete their programs. He broke the fire panel to get out the axe and smash the machines, and it was then the alarm went off.

‘That brought Bruno and the Chief Security man running, thank God. But before that, Kevin had jumped on Hansen and I’d grabbed Mrs P. That’s how Kevin got shot. Apparently he’s OK – or will be. He’ll stay in hospital for a bit. Anyway we got the computers, and all their webcam shots are safely on DVD now.’

‘So Patricov’s wife was in on it with Hansen. Does that mean Patricov himself was part of it, too?’

Liz shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but it seems unlikely. There’ll be a lot of enquiries to be made – with the Swiss in particular, since that’s where Patricov lived before he came to England. He married Mrs P in Geneva just a couple of years ago.’

‘Do you think he knew she was working for the FSB?’

‘We may never know. Both Hansen and Mrs P are in the hands of Greater Manchester Police. Bruno and I are going to question them once they’re moved to London, but I don’t suppose they’ll talk. And I should think it’s pretty unlikely that Patricov will ever come back to Altrincham. One thing’s certain – he won’t be buying Manchester United now.’