Authors: Stella Rimington
‘They are a nuisance,’ said Peggy, shivering slightly. It was a raw day outside, and in her anxiety to look authentic she had not put enough clothes on. The weather had been hovering between autumn and winter for several days, but today for the first time you could sense the months of real cold ahead.
‘You look like you’re freezing, dearie. Come into the kitchen and have a cuppa and warm yourself.’
Peggy didn’t even pretend to protest, foreseeing a golden opportunity to gossip about the neighbours. As the kettle warmed on the gas hob, she looked around the room, which had family photographs all along the top of a sideboard. ‘Your children?’ she offered.
‘All five of them. Grown up now,’ the woman added sadly, ‘and my poor Leonard gone ten years now. Still, mustn’t grumble.’
‘Have you been in this house a long time then?’
Mrs Donovan gave a little laugh. ‘Each one of my children was born and raised here. It will be forty years come October.’
‘Gosh,’ said Peggy appreciatively. ‘I suppose the neighbourhood’s changed a bit since then.’
The woman gave Peggy a sideways look. ‘Not for the worse,’ she said firmly.
‘Not at all,’ said Peggy. ‘I can see that. It looks a fine street to me.’
The woman relaxed. ‘It’s just that so many left when the Asians came. Not me, mind; I wasn’t going anywhere. I always said, there’s good and bad – white, black, and all the in-betweens. Why should I up sticks if people treat me right? Who cares what colour they are?’
‘Who indeed?’ said Peggy, taken aback by the old woman’s almost aggressive tolerance and the implication that she – Peggy – might not agree.
The old lady went to the stove and poured boiling water from the kettle into two waiting mugs. ‘Milk?’ she asked and Peggy nodded. When she brought the mugs over she pushed the sugar bowl along the kitchen table, and Peggy shook her head and pushed it back.
They sipped in quiet contentment for a moment. Then Peggy said casually, ‘You’ve got good neighbours then?’
‘The best,’ Mrs Donovan declared. ‘The Desais live on that side,’ she said, and proceeded to talk about the Hindu family next door. Peggy nodded as the old woman took her through three generations of Desai family tree, little realising that her listener was entirely uninterested in them, and was only waiting for her to talk about her neighbours on the other side.
Peggy’s cup had been refilled by the time she felt able to ask about the other neighbouring family. ‘Mrs Atiyah,’ Mrs Donovan said, and her face seemed to light up. ‘Isn’t it a lovely name?’
‘Very pretty. What kind of name is it?’
‘The family was from Yemen, luv. What we used to call Aden before they went and got themselves independent. Though then there was a lot of trouble, and that’s when the Atiyahs moved here.’
This time Peggy paid close attention while Mrs Donovan went through the generations of Atiyahs. Mr Atiyah senior had passed away several years before, leaving Mrs A solitary in the house, though she had two daughters (and five grandchildren) living nearby, and almost every day one of them paid a visit on their mother. ‘She’s seventy-two next March, not that she looks a day over seventy if you ask me yourself.’
‘It’s nice she’s got daughters to look after her,’ said Peggy, resisting the temptation to finish her tea, since she couldn’t be sure she would be offered another refill. ‘Though I suppose she would have liked a son as well.’
‘Oh she’s got a son, all right. He’s the youngest child and the apple of her eye. And Mrs A spoils him rotten. You’d think he was still a schoolboy from the way he lets his mum take care of him – I’ve seen him lug his laundry home for her to do, and him living all the way down in London.’
‘He’s got no family then?’
Mrs Donovan shook her head. ‘No, he’s still a student. If you ask me, it’s all very well everyone going to university these days, but sometimes they carry it on too long. Mika is twenty-six if he’s a day. By that age my Leonard had been working for ten years, yet this lad’s still at his books.’ She shook her head uncomprehendingly. ‘My nephew Arnold—’ she started to say, but Peggy cut in quickly to impede the diversion. ‘Do you reckon his mum minds? I mean, his being a student and all?’
For a moment the old lady looked confused, as if her nephew Arnold was being discussed, then she realised Peggy was talking about the Atiyah boy and she shook her head decisively. ‘No, his mum thinks the sun shines out of that boy’s eyes. Even when it’s grey and overcast outside.’ She gave a little chuckle.
‘They say Middle Eastern lads are very dutiful sons.’
The woman gave a little harrumph, and Peggy realised she didn’t like her neighbour’s son much. She said nothing but waited patiently, and sure enough there was more to come. ‘Like I say, the boy’s been spoilt. Why, last year he said he wanted to go back to his homeland – he meant Yemen – and his mum coughed up the air fare. What was the point, I ask you? He’s born and bred British just like you and me, so why start pretending you’re not? Never go backwards, that’s my motto.’
‘Maybe he wanted to explore his roots. Like that programme on the TV.’
‘I can’t see him sobbing over his great-grandmother like what’s-his-name did. He’s a hard little bugger, our Mika.’
‘Did he like it in Yemen?’
Mrs Donovan shrugged. ‘I didn’t think it was my business to ask. Mrs A knows I don’t approve of the boy – he’s not polite, at least not to the likes of an old lady like me.’
‘Really?’ said Peggy, trying to sound indignant.
‘Not since he went to the Middle East. He hardly says hello when he sees me.’
‘Are they a very religious family?’
Mrs Donovan paused, as if she had never thought about this before, and said reflectively, ‘The old man was, but not Mrs A. Since he died I don’t think she goes to the mosque much. And when one of her daughters married an English bloke, she didn’t bat an eye.’
‘And Mika?’
She shrugged, and looked at the mugs on the table. Peggy realised she was in danger of outstaying her welcome; the old lady liked to talk, but on her own terms, and that didn’t seem to include answering too many of a stranger’s questions. Peggy got up from her chair. ‘Golly, what you’ve said has been so interesting I could stay and listen all day. But duty calls, and I have to get back to work. Thanks so much for the tea, Mrs Donovan.’
‘Call me Maggie, dear.’
‘Right, Maggie. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘Have I?’ asked Maggie, and her face was suddenly cheerful again. ‘That’s kind of you to say, luv, though I don’t see how.’
‘I’ll just leave you this,’ said Peggy, putting a small printed leaflet on the kitchen table. ‘It explains about the Electoral Registration process and it’s got my phone number on it in case there’s anything you want to inquire about.’
‘Thanks, luv,’ said Mrs Donovan, picking up the leaflet and putting it on the sideboard beside the photographs.
Martin Seurat looked moodily out of the window of his office in the headquarters of the DGSE, France’s external intelligence service. He occupied a small room in a corner of one of the white stone buildings just off the Boulevard Mortier on the outskirts of Paris. Outside, the gravelled courtyard had darkened to the colour of slate from the rain that had come down in a short heavy burst earlier that morning. The sky had stayed overcast, with no hint of sun, and now the wind was picking up. It all seemed like a plot by winter to hurry things along, thought Seurat, who every year wanted to hibernate at this season and wake up only when the clocks changed in spring.
He couldn’t quite understand why he was feeling so low. After all, he had achieved his ambition of capturing his old colleague Antoine Milraud, the man who had betrayed his friendship and his trust. Why wasn’t he feeling elated?
He supposed the trouble was that he did not yet have the pleasure of seeing the man in court, answering for his crimes. That pleasure had to wait until the operation in Britain was concluded. But he wasn’t directing that operation; he was having to leave that to Liz Carlyle, since it was happening on her turf. So at present he had only a minor role to play, keeping Annette sweet and monitoring the arrangements at the safe house in Montreuil.
He could hear the noise of workmen moving furniture around across the passage. He’d left his door open, and occasionally he saw one of the workmen passing by, carrying a chair or a cupboard. A colleague had returned from a posting in Taiwan and was moving into the vacant office. Funnily enough, that very room across the passage used to be Antoine Milraud’s office. Seurat had spent many an hour there, talking with his old friend and colleague, sometimes cracking open a bottle of Bordeaux if they had stayed working late enough to deserve a glass or two, talking quietly until the phone would ring and – Seurat could hear her voice from the other side of the room – Annette would demand to know when Antoine was coming home and did he really expect his dinner to be waiting when he did?
Annette was not so chirpy now, living with a guard in the small flat the Service kept in the Fifth Arrondissement, while her husband twiddled his thumbs in the Montreuil bungalow not far away from this office. Seurat had talked to Liz that morning and heard her account of her debriefing of Milraud in London. Both had agreed that he was still holding something back, and only superficially cooperating. Whatever it was the man was not saying was bound to be important, or why keep it secret? Maybe it was something that reflected badly on him. But why would he bother, considering the mess he was already in? Liz thought it most likely to concern Lester Jackson’s role in the whole affair, and Martin did not disagree.
The problem was there didn’t seem any obvious way to prise more information out of Milraud. He’d already been threatened with the prosecution of Annette, and had folded accordingly. They could always threaten him again, but to what end? Putting Annette in prison wasn’t going to tell them anything more about Lester Jackson or the young Arab whom Seurat still thought of as Zara. And in any case, after a while repeated threats failed to frighten, as if the ferocious dog barking from inside a house turned out, when the front door was opened, to be a chihuahua.
‘Monsieur?’
The voice was gentle but Seurat was startled none the less. Looking up, he found a young man in the doorway. At first he thought he must be one of the moving men, but no, this fellow had longish hair and wore a cotton jacket and chinos. He looked like a student rather than a workman.
‘What is it?’
‘Forgive me, Monsieur. I am Jacques Thibault. I have been helping out with Antoine Milraud.’
Seurat stared at Thibault; he seemed very young to be guarding his ex-colleague. Then he remembered. ‘Ah, of course. You are the computer genius.’
Thibault gave a modest shrug. ‘You are too kind.’
‘How goes it? Anything more to report?’
‘In fact, yes. As you know, I have control of Monsieur Milraud’s laptop and I read all his emails. That includes the recent communiqué asking him to come to London. He claims he wiped all the earlier emails on security grounds. What he doesn’t realise is that I have been working hard to find them nonetheless.’
Seurat saw the importance of this immediately. ‘And have you?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Only up to a point. I am sure you are familiar with reverse engineering.’
‘I think so. You go backwards to reconstruct a trail. It’s especially useful to see how something began, isn’t it?’
‘In a sense.’ Thibault had lost his air of diffidence and had come into the office, sitting down when Seurat pointed to the empty leather chair across from his desk. ‘But I would argue that it is most valuable when something has been destroyed rather than built.’
‘Really?’ said Seurat, trying to be patient.
Thibault nodded vigorously. ‘Suppose you are confronted with a brick house and want to see how it came to that state: through reverse engineering you gradually work your way back until the walls have come down and the first foundations are about to be poured – the bricks for the walls may not even have been delivered. Now that is a beautiful process in its own way, but it doesn’t tell you much if what you want to learn about is the finished house.’
Seurat nodded politely at this elaborate metaphor, but privately he wondered what point Thibault was trying to make. If Thibault sensed his doubts he gave no sign of it, and continued: ‘Think about it this way – what if this finished brick house is destroyed? Accidentally or on purpose, it doesn’t matter. Either way all the information you want is lost, irretrievably. Unless’ – and he started to smile – ‘you could reverse-engineer the act of destruction, slowly work your way back from the present position of crumbled walls and masonry dust to the house in its former glory.’
‘You can do this with Milraud’s emails?’
‘Yes.’ Thibault was sure of his ground, his voice entirely confident. ‘Not the whole house at first, more like one of its rooms. But in time I am certain it can all be reconstructed.’
‘Do we know anything yet?’
‘We do, but I don’t know how much of it is of value. The first exchange occurred when Milraud was in South America. I am not quite sure where.’
Caracas, thought Seurat, and motioned for Thibault to continue. He said, ‘I can be more precise about the sender of the email, however. His message came from Yemen. Not far outside the city of Sana’a.’