The Marylebone Drop Read online

  He left Liverpool Street, noting that the sky overhead was still a grey vault, and the air still bit back when you breathed it. There’d be more of this weather before there was less. He wasn’t entirely sure the English language would bear that construction, but it sounded right in his head, and there was no one around to correct him.

  John Bachelor sat for a while, drinking the wine, deciding he might as well eat. Solomon had been shopping; there were bags of food in the kitchen, still awaiting unpacking. Fresh bread, cheese; chocolately treats. Tins of sardines. There was no point letting it go to waste. And nothing he could do right now about reporting Solly’s death: his phone was still uncharged, and his charger was in his car. There was a department to ring in these circumstances, and a telephone in the flat, but Bachelor didn’t know the number by heart, couldn’t read it on his powerless phone, and tracking it down would mean talking to half a dozen suspicious civil servants. No, he’d sit a while before putting it all in motion: the necessary investigation, the endless reports, the winding down of Solomon’s afterlife—his Service pension, his flat.

  He went to take another look at the body. There were no signs of violence, and it was clear from the shopping that Solly had not been in the flat long when he died. Bachelor, not a doctor, reached the obvious conclusion: Solly had over-exerted himself doing an emergency shop, and this was the result. It was sad but it must have been quick, and among other things meant that Bachelor no longer felt obliged to indulge Solomon’s final whimsy. The drop, the pas de deux Solomon thought he’d seen in Fischer’s, had been nothing more than an ancient asset’s final glimpse down the twists of Spook Street. Even if Bachelor put it on file, there’d be no follow-up; it would be dismissed as an old man’s fantasy. Alec, if he’d run Kahlmann’s name through the databases yet, had done so as a favour to Bachelor; he wasn’t putting it through channels. So the drop could be quietly dropped, which meant that Solomon’s passing would cause no more a ruffle than a passing pigeon. All Bachelor needed to do was write up today’s one-sided visit, sign his name, and attend the funeral.

  A stray thought wafted past, and whispered in his ear.

  He dismissed it and made a cheese sandwich; ate looking down from Solomon’s window to the muffled street below. It was warm inside; heating was paid by direct debit, from a Service account, and as this had been set up in the days before austerity—when people were valued for what they had done, rather than dismissed out of hand for being no longer capable of doing it—it was a generous monthly sum, ensuring Solomon need never grow cold. Like everything else to do with Bachelor’s charges, the process was automatic and unquestioned. That was one thing about the Civil Service: once it decided to do something, it carried on doing it. It would march on, indestructible, and sooner or later would probably inherit the earth, though when it did, it wouldn’t do anything with it that it hadn’t already been doing for centuries.

  His sandwich eaten, Bachelor remained where he was, mulling options. As usual, there weren’t many available. But for now, at least—warm and comfortable—he was in no hurry to exercise choice; he’d just sit for a bit and watch the snow. In the other room lay Solomon Dortmund, but that was okay. The old man had learned patience in life, and there was no reason why this virtue should abandon him now.

  The snow lingered for days, hardening to ice on the pavements, the better to keep a grip, and though traffic reasserted itself eventually, it did so with a chastened air, reminded of its place in the great chain of being: the car was king of the road, but only while the weather allowed. Shops that had been closed opened up, and opportunist roadside vending vans moved on. In Regent’s Park, the hub had maintained its quiet buzz throughout the hiatus, but the surrounding offices were only just coming back to life, proving what Alec Wicinski and his colleagues had long known: that actual work continues untroubled, regardless of management’s presence. As for Alec himself, he hadn’t turned up that morning, causing troubled glances among the boys and girls of the hub. Unexplained absence was a cause of concern in their world.

  In her office, Lady Di was grilling Richard Pynne.

  “When did it come to light?”

  “During yesterday evening’s sweep.”

  “And there’d been no previous hint of . . . anything?”

  Pynne shook his head.

  He hadn’t been at the Park lately, frozen lines having made his commute near-impossible, but he’d bravely struggled into town to meet Snow White the evening before last. He’d worried when he got her call, an emergency-only code, and had spent the expensive cab ride picturing any manner of calamity. In his imagination, she was being hauled into a cellar by disgruntled BND operatives. So to find her fine—perky, even—was more than a relief; it was cause for celebration.

  “I’m sorry, Richard. I got a case of the frights. But I’m okay now.”

  “It happens.” Their hug went on longer than he’d expected. “Joes in the field, you’re allowed to get the frights. That’s what I’m here for. To make them go away again.”

  Instead of coffee and a chocolate, they’d snuggled down in a bar off Wardour Street, and at her suggestion he’d ordered tequila slammers. Just the thing to chase the jitters away. And a legitimate expense, almost certainly.

  Inevitably, things had become hazy towards the end. She’d asked, he remembered, about what he’d said the previous day; those mysterious questions concerning Peter Kahlmann, and he’d explained, fuzzily, that he couldn’t go into details; that a flag had been raised because someone on the hub had run a search on Kahlmann, and no, he couldn’t tell her who. Clashified information. She’d laughed: You sound like James Bond. On Her Majeshty’s Shecret Shervish. He’d laughed too: I preferred Roger Moore. It had been a crazy evening. Crazy. But he was almost certain he’d not mentioned Alec Wicinski by name. Which would have meant nothing to Hannah anyway.

  So yesterday he’d stayed off work using snow as an excuse, but the truth was he’d got home so loaded, he’d barely been able to crawl out of bed in the morning. His first few hours had been spent cradled over the toilet. Touch of flu, he’d phoned in: yeah yeah yeah. And then, come evening, when he was just about upright again, the results of the weekly remote sweep of the boys’ and girls’ laptops came in.

  Which is when the problem with Wicinski came to light.

  Pynne said, “The laptop’s been in Alec’s sole possession. The download took place outside office hours, but that’s neither here nor . . . Thing is, he’s claiming not to know anything about it, but he would, wouldn’t he? And if anyone else gained access to his machine, that in itself’s a disciplinary offence. These things are beyond classified. That’s the first thing they tell you when you’re given one.”

  This hadn’t prevented their being left in cabs or on trains, but that wasn’t the issue right now.

  Di Taverner said, “And the download’s illegal?”

  “Child porn,” said Pynne. “It’s . . . they’re saying it’s pretty disgusting.”

  “Yes, the clue’s in the name.” She glanced towards the hub, and half a dozen faces turned quickly away. Sighing, she reached for the switch that frosted her glass wall. “Could it have been planted remotely?”

  “IT says yes, technically, but it would require serious, state of the art intervention. Another Service might have the wherewithal to hack into one of our laptops and dump that stuff there from a distance, but it’s not something a kid’s done in his bedroom. And that being so, why would they? Why would another Service want to frame Wicinski?”

  “What’s he working on?”

  “Nothing to put anyone’s back up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Pynne was sure, or at least, he was sure that was the answer he wanted to give. Coincidences happened, everyone knew that. Had he mentioned Alec’s name to Snow White? He was pretty certain not. Besides, Alec was on his team, his name cropped up all the time. Alec this and Alec
that. That was the nature of being a manager: your team was always on your radar.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Dogs.”

  Through the frosted wall came the dim suggestion of movement. That would also be the Dogs, here to ransack Lech Wicinski’s workstation and dismantle his hardware. His locker would have been turned out by now too. Either more evidence of his moral corruption would be found, or he’d be shown to have buried it completely—this slip-up aside, that is.

  “I can believe he gets off on that stuff,” she said. “Everyone has a dark side. What I don’t understand is why he’d download it onto our laptop.”

  Pynne didn’t know either. But he said, “If you get away with something for long enough, you start to think you’re too clever to be caught.”

  “So he’s been doing it for a while?”

  There were any number of pitfalls here, chief among them that he’d be called to account for not having rumbled Wicinski’s predilections earlier. “There’ve been no indications of aberrant behaviour. He’s always passed the psych tests. But . . .”

  “But if it wasn’t possible to disguise the urge, we’d all know who the paedophiles were,” she finished. “Jesus, Richard.”

  It crossed his mind to offer comfort, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

  She said, “He’ll have to go on suspension. While the Dogs do whatever they need to do.”

  Pynne said, “It’s a criminal offence. Shouldn’t we pass it to the Met?”

  “And enjoy another season of spook-bashing? I don’t think so. Things are bad enough without gifting the tabloids their headlines. No, we’ll handle this in-house. If he’s got any sense, he’ll come clean without letting the whole thing drag on too long.” She defrosted the window. “And then it’ll be just how we like it. Everything out in the open.”

  He could rarely tell, with Lady Di, where the irony stopped.

  She shifted gear. “How’s Snow White coming along?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Her transfer’s come through. She starts in the Brexit office Monday.”

  “And it’s all going smoothly? The two of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. It’s not an easy business, running an agent. Even on friendly soil. If this continues to go well, we’ll think about expanding your brief. But I’ll need to be sure you’re up to it.”

  “Thank you.” He stood to go, but paused at the door. “What’ll happen to him? Alec?”

  “If he turns out guilty?”

  He nodded.

  She said, “Well, we can’t sack him. Not without inviting attendant publicity. But he can’t stay here, obviously. Not that he’d want to, now his secret’s out in the open.” She reached for her laptop, tapped in her password. “Just as well we’ve somewhere we can put him.”

  “Oh,” said Pynne.

  “Yes,” said Diana Taverner. “Man’s got a nasty kink. Slough House should be right up his street.”

  And the snow stays where it is, and the weather doesn’t turn, and the streets remain cold, and the days are dark from dawn to dusk. In different parts of London, different people feel different things. Alec Wicinski is mostly numb, dumbfounded by the speed with which his life has spiralled into hell, while Martin Kreutzmer has the sense of having narrowly avoided disaster, and can now see a clear path ahead, leading steadily upwards. Hannah has started in her new role, where it is apparent she will have access to information useful to the folk back home; together, the pair look set to enjoy many a triumph. And it’s a pleasure to hoodwink another Service, especially when that Service thinks it’s hoodwinking you. Contemplating the last few days, Martin gives silent thanks to the BND’s sneaker team, who can walk through the Park’s firewalls, and leave packages in laptops the way couriers leave parcels in dustbins—without notice, and undetected—but if he spares a thought for the poor bastard on the receiving end, it’s a brief one. Martin has been playing this game a long time, and knows that, like those of politicians, all spies’ lives end in failure. The best among them fade away with no one having suspected their true calling; for others, the end comes sooner, and that is all. It is part of the game. He lights a rare cigar and wonders what his next move will be. There’s no hurry. The game lasts forever.

  As for John Bachelor, he spends a lot of time at Solomon’s window, looking down on what once were Solomon’s streets. Solomon himself has been taken away, of course. An ambulance removed the body; a police officer came and took notes. Bachelor faked nothing, just described what had happened: he’d arrived to check on the old man, and the old man didn’t come to the door. There was a spare key taped under the mat . . . His cover held up. There is an actual company, existing on paper, by which he is employed to visit the elderly and infirm, ensuring their needs are catered for, their lives secure and intact; the sort of service once provided free by society, before the 1980s happened. There’ll be a funeral next week. He’s called the numbers in Solomon’s address book, kept by the phone. He’s booked a room in a pub, and will put money behind the bar.

  But he hasn’t informed the Park. That stray thought that wafted past him, the same hour he found Solomon’s body, returned, and returned again, and somehow clarified into intention. He has not informed Regent’s Park that Solomon Dortmund is dead. So Solomon’s pension will continue to be paid, and Solomon’s flat will continue to be warm. It will only be for a short while, he tells himself; just until he has found his feet again, and it’s not precisely corruption—is it?—more administrative streamlining. He’s a free-floating irregular, poorly paid and unsupervised; if he chooses to keep his reports free of burdensome detail, that is up to him. It’s not like anyone else is keeping an eye on his milk round. And he will do his job better, be more alert to his charges’ needs, if he isn’t worrying about his own life circumstances; if he has somewhere to lay his head at night.

  It occurs to him that he never heard back from Alec Wicinski, but that’s a detail that has ceased to matter, and it won’t bother him long.

  And meanwhile the streetlights come on, and the view from the window thickens and slows. He remains where he is for a while, fascinated by the world he is no longer locked out in. There are no guarantees, he knows; his stratagem could be discovered at any time, and then he’ll be for the high jump. Right now, though, John Bachelor is warm, he is fed; there is wine in Solomon’s larder. In a minute, he’ll go pour himself a glass. But for now he’ll sit and watch the quiet snow.

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  london rules

  The killers arrived in a sand-coloured jeep, and made short work of the village.

  There were five of them and they wore mismatched military gear, two opting for black and the others for piebald variations. Neckerchiefs covered the lower half of their faces, sunglasses the upper, and their feet were encased in heavy boots, as if they’d crossed the surrounding hills the hard way. From their belts hung sundry items of battleground kit. As the first emerged from the vehicle he tossed a water bottle onto the seat behind him, an action replicated in miniature in his aviator lenses.

  It was approaching noon, and the sun was as white as the locals had known it. Somewhere nearby, water tumbled over stones. The last time trouble had called here, it had come bearing swords.

  Out of the car, by the side of the road, the men stretched and spat. They didn’t talk. They seemed in no hurry, but at the same time were focused on what they were doing. This was part of the operation: arrive, limber up, regain flexibility. They had driven a long way in the heat. No sense starting before they were in tune with their limbs and could trust their reflexes. It didn’t matter that they were attracting attention, because nobody watching could alter what was to happen. Forewarned would not mean forearmed. All the villagers had were sticks.

  One of these—an ancient thing bearing many of the characteristics of its parent tree, being knobb
led and imprecise, sturdy and reliable—was leaned on by an elderly man whose weathered looks declared him farming stock. But somewhere in his history, perhaps, lurked a memory of war, for of all those watching the visitors perform their callisthenics he alone seemed to understand their intent, and into his eyes, already a little tearful from the sunshine, came both fear and a kind of resignation, as if he had always known that this, or something like it, would rear up and swallow him. Not far away, two women broke off from conversation. One held a cloth bag. The other’s hands moved slowly towards her mouth. A barefoot boy wandered through a doorway into sunlight, his features crumpling in the glare.

  In the near distance a chain rattled as a dog tested its limits. Inside a makeshift coop, its mesh and wooden struts a patchwork of recycled materials, a chicken squatted to lay an egg no one would ever collect.

  From the back of their jeep the men fetched weapons, sleek and black and awful.

  The last ordinary noise was the one the old man made when he dropped his stick. As he did so his lips moved, but no sound emerged.

  And then it began.

  From afar, it might have been fireworks. In the surrounding hills birds took to the air in a frightened rattle, while in the village itself cats and dogs leaped for cover. Some bullets went wild, sprayed in indiscriminate loops and skirls, as if in imitation of a local dance; the chicken coop was blasted to splinters, and scars were chipped into stones that had stood unblemished for centuries. But others found their mark. The old man followed his stick to the ground, and the two women were hurled in opposite directions, thrown apart by nodules of lead that weighed less than their fingers. The barefoot boy tried to run. In the hillsides were tunnels carved into rock, and given time he might have found his way there, waited in the darkness until the killers had gone, but this possibility was blasted out of existence by a bullet that caught him in the neck, sending him cartwheeling down the short slope to the river, which was little more than a trickle today. The villagers caught in the open were scattering now, running into the fields, seeking shelter behind walls and in ditches; even those who hadn’t seen what was happening had caught the fear, for catastrophe is its own herald, trumpeting its arrival to early birds and stragglers alike. It has a certain smell, a certain pitch. It sends mothers shrieking for their young, the old looking for God.