Chelsea Mansions Part 16

The two women hugged and brought each other up to date. Suzanne said that she'd been told it could take another week before they knew if Brock would pull through. 'They're contacting research teams in America and Switzerland that are working on new drugs which might help.'

She looked strained, her face tight with worry, and Kathy thought, with a little tug of regret, that there would have been no one to look like that for her if she'd caught it.

As if she'd read Kathy's mind, Suzanne reached for her hand and said, 'I'm just so relieved that you're in the clear, Kathy. They say you saw him most during the past week.'

Kathy described what had happened and his refusal to let her contact Suzanne.

'Stubborn as always.' Suzanne sighed.

'There's nothing that we could have done. Someone slipped up when they identified the carrier-they should have warned us then. But even so, it would have been too late for Brock.'

She regretted the choice of words, and began to add, 'I mean . . .' but Suzanne squeezed her hand and said, 'I know.'

They sat together in silence for a long while until Kathy, exhausted by the events of the day, began to nod off. Suzanne roused her gently and told her to go home.

SEVENTEEN.

The cool night air revived Kathy and as she went to her car she was suddenly possessed by a sense of energy and relief. Worrying about Brock had blocked out the thought of her own reprieve, but now its full force struck her. She was alive, out of danger, and suddenly very hungry. She hadn't touched the food that had been delivered to Queen Anne's Gate and now she felt an urgent need for a hot meal and company. There was a text message on her phone that she hadn't picked up, from John Greenslade, saying simply, need to talk. Her first instinct was to ignore it, but after a moment's reflection she keyed in his number.

'Kathy, hi, thanks for ringing back. I was worried about what you said, about a bug going around. Are you really okay?'

'Yes, John, I'm fine.'

'Great. And I've had some thoughts on the letter.'

She could hear music and laughter in the background, and imagined him at a conference function, having a good time. 'You at a party?' she asked.

''Fraid not,' he laughed. 'I'm in a pub. I'd invite you to join me, but it's a dump.'

'I suppose you've eaten?'

'I had something that claimed to be a Cornish pastie. They must have a special machine that turns pastry into bullet-proof cardboard.'

'Yes, they do. I haven't eaten all day. Can I buy you a gla.s.s of wine while you watch me eat? As a consultant, of course.'

'You're on. Where?'

'Are you in Chelsea?'

'Yes, in Brompton Road. There's a Mexican place just across the street, nothing fancy.'

She took a note of the address and rang off.

He was there when she arrived, waving to her from a corner table. There was a bottle of wine at his elbow, and he poured her a gla.s.s as she sat down. 'Cheers.'

'Cheers.' She took a deep breath and sat back. 'So how did your talk go today?'

'Fine, I think. Well, most of them stayed awake, I guess. Are you really all right? You look worn out. Hard day?'

'Oh, you know . . . Well, yes, it has been hard.'

'Want to talk about it? I have signed the Official Secrets Act.'

So she told him about Brock and the virus.

He looked horrified. 'I've heard of Marburg. It's really serious, isn't it?'

'Yes, but I've been cleared, so I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about. Brock never actually came into the hotel, did he?'

'But you're so lucky.'

'Yes, yes I am.'

'That's just terrible about Brock. I can't believe . . . he could actually die.'

He sounded so appalled, so concerned for someone he'd never even met, that Kathy thought he might just be being melodramatic, but when she looked at him she saw that he'd gone quite pale.

'All we can do is wait.'

'Yes. That's so awful for you. And his wife? Is he married?'

'He has a partner, but they don't live together. She's been away and knew nothing about him being ill until I phoned her today. She's with him at the hospital now.'

'What about kids?'

'No.' She took a deep breath. 'Well, come on, let's eat.'

She signalled to the waiter, who came and took their order.

When he'd gone, John said, 'You face this sort of thing every day, don't you? It makes my life seem absurdly sheltered. Sitting here like this, doing this job for you, I feel like a voyeur. If I can help, in any way . . .' He spread his hands helplessly.

'Well, actually it does help talking about it to someone on the outside, someone not personally affected.' She hesitated, then added, 'Maybe you should tell me something about yourself, apart from the fact that you're a university lecturer who does jobs for the Montreal police.'

'What, like a dating site, you mean?' He put on a sugary voice. 'I'm twenty-eight, single, an only child, and just adore cross-country skiing, cla.s.sical opera and French food.'

She smiled. 'Good enough.'

'What about you?'

'Me? Oh, I'm single and an only child too, but I've never skied, don't much care for cla.s.sical opera and prefer Indian.'

'Sounds like we're in trouble. But I like Indian too, and I'm sure we could work on the opera and skis.'

'Anyway, this is a business meeting, remember? You said you had something to discuss.'

'Yes, right. I had a good talk on the phone with Moszynski's secretary. She knew all the letters I mentioned to her except the last one, to The Times, which she hadn't seen until you showed it to her. The others she typed herself, either from dictation or from handwritten versions that Moszynski gave her. She's been working for him for eight years, since soon after he came to London. She got the job because she's fluent in both Russian and English and she said he always took great care with the wording of his letters, as if they might end up as evidence in a court of law-that's what he told her. At first his English was a bit rough, and she would suggest a lot of changes, but he was a good learner and gradually she came to make fewer and fewer corrections, especially for a formal doc.u.ment, like a business letter or one to the newspapers. She said she was surprised at the political content of The Times letter, but he had been quite preoccupied that Friday it was sent, because of the death of the American lady next door, so maybe that was the explanation. Maybe he thought the Russian government was somehow involved.'

He paused and looked at Kathy carefully. 'That's what the secretary was suggesting to me. Does it make sense, do you think?'

'Possibly. You could take that into account.'

'Yes. Well, I did that, and I've come to a preliminary opinion I thought I might share with you.'

'You haven't had long.'

'No, and I'll need more time to set out a thorough argument, but I'm fairly positive. I don't think that letter to The Times was written by Moszynski.'

'Really?' Kathy was surprised. She'd gone down this road in order to cover herself, in case the letter's authenticity was questioned later in court, but she'd never seriously doubted it. 'Why do you think that?'

'There are several small departures from colloquial English usage-a couple of missing definite articles, like here . . .' He took a copy of the letter from his pocket and showed her: '. . . elements of Russian secret police, rather than the Russian secret police. The biggest departure I would say is towards the end, here: Let me give good advice to your readers. It sounds like a Russian gangster, doesn't it?'

'But he was a Russian gangster, John. Or at least a Russian businessman. And I've heard his Russian son-in-law use the same phrase.'

'Okay, but he was very careful to avoid such mistakes in his other letters. They were correct to the point of being stilted. When I pointed it out to his secretary she said she didn't think he would have put it like that, though he might have said it in conversation. Judging from the other letters, especially the most recent ones, I would say that it was written by someone who knew how he spoke, and wanted to impersonate his speech in the letter.'

Kathy reread the letter, frowning over the points he'd made. They seemed pretty insubstantial to support such a major conclusion. Also, it occurred to her that he was rather young to be held up as an expert in a field like this. How would he stand up to interrogation by Brock, let alone a barrister?

'Maybe he was just in a hurry,' she said, 'or upset, as his secretary said. Is there any way we can be more definite about this?'

He shrugged. 'Get more samples of recent letters of his. Or get a second opinion.'

'It's just that, as you said before, the implications are pretty serious. If you're right, it suggests that there was a plot by Moszynski's killers to implicate the Russian authorities.'

She stopped talking as the waiter approached with their food.

They didn't discuss the letters further, as if they both wanted to avoid a subject that might lead to disagreement between them. Instead, he told her horror stories of Canadian winters and tales about the city where he lived and which he loved. He was good company, and Kathy was glad to have her mind taken off Brock's illness for a little while. John didn't forget though, and at one point, as they were considering the dessert menu, he suddenly asked her if she'd let him know if there was any change. 'I just feel,' he said, 'that I'd like to shake the great detective's hand, if I get the chance, having come all this way.' It seemed an odd way of putting it.

She said goodnight to him outside on the street and got a taxi to the tube station for the ride home to her flat in Finchley.

EIGHTEEN.

The laboratories were swamped, unable to cope with the flood of tests that were demanded. The offices at Queen Anne's Gate, the Moszynski mansion in Chelsea and the Tottenham police station remained sealed as quarantine sites, while Kathy felt herself in limbo, suspended between the normality of the past from which she was excluded, and a future that she dreaded entering. Each day she visited the hospital without learning anything new about Brock's condition. And each day she phoned the crew at Queen Anne's Gate and sensed a growing listlessness in their voices, despite Bren's attempts to sound positive. She based herself in a temporary office a few blocks away in the headquarters building of New Scotland Yard, where she took what comfort she could from the routines of paperwork and fulfilling telephone orders from the isolated team for treats-DVDs, pastries, chocolate, an electric wok, grapes, deodorant, Pringles. She imagined them finally emerging, pale and overweight, into the light.

She decided to check the reference in the MI5 file to Freddie Clarke having been investigated by the Fraud Squad, something that wasn't on the police PNC record. After making a few calls she got through to the inspector, now in Economic and Specialist Crime, who had been involved.

'It was during the investigation into the collapse of APGT in 2003, remember?' he said.

'Vaguely. Remind me.'

'Big group of construction and materials companies that went bust, very suddenly, after racking up large loans. There was a suspicion of fraud and we investigated. I remember Clarke, very young bloke, working for a group of financiers who'd been involved in raising the loans. It took us a while to realise that he wasn't the office boy-he was the brains behind the consortium. Very difficult lad to pin down. Said next to nothing in interview and kept b.u.g.g.e.r-all accessible records. That's what brought us up against a brick wall in the end-no records of the crucial transactions that we thought may have been dodgy. The rumour was it was all locked up inside Clarke's head. He was the consortium's private Enigma machine. We couldn't crack it.'

Kathy also paid Vadim Kuzmin a visit.

It was Friday afternoon, a light rain falling, and she had confirmed by phone that he was at home in Esher. When she got there he jerked the front door open with a violence that made her hesitate. He held her eyes for a moment with an icy glare, then waved his hand. 'Come.'

As soon as she was seated he began to interrogate her. What was this quarantine business? When she began to explain, he slammed his open palm hard on the arm of his chair and cut her off.

'No, no, no. This is just a ploy, to prevent my access to Mikhail's office and papers. This is an outrage, a hostile act.'

Kathy waited until he'd finished, then spoke quietly. 'Mr Kuzmin, my whole police team is in quarantine. My boss is in an isolation ward and may die. This is a very serious emergency, nothing to do with your father-in-law's papers.'

He curled his lip. 'Then why are you free to come and go, Detective, eh?'

'I was the first to be tested, along with DCI Brock. We got the results back quickly, he was positive, me negative. But now the labs are overwhelmed. It will probably be another day or two before they can complete their tests. We just have to be patient.'

His eyes narrowed and he regarded her as if she were a suspect who was more cunning than he'd first thought. 'Marburg, eh?'

'Yes.'

'I know this Marburg. We weaponised it in 1990.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Soviet Ministry of Defence. I think you knew that.'

'No, I didn't.'

'Well, your security services do. Is that what this is about? You want this to look like the work of the FSB?'

'Sir, last Thursday week DCI Brock came in contact with a migrant from Uganda who was infected and is now also in hospital isolation. There's been no suggestion of FSB involvement to my knowledge.'

'Really? Well there soon will be. Do you read the papers? First Litvinenko, now Moszynski, that's what they're all saying.'

'Well, that's not really surprising, is it, in the light of Mr Moszynski's letter to The Times?'

'If it's genuine.'

'Do you have any evidence that it isn't?'

His eyes slid away, and for the first time he seemed unsure. 'No.'

'We've been told that he was upset the day he sent it, because of the murder of the American woman from the hotel next door.'

'Of course he was upset. We all get upset when crime comes close to home.'

'Is that all it was?'