Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (36 page)

‘I don’t know how I’m going to face her,’ he said plaintively.

‘I don’t think you’ll find it’s much of a problem.’

Chapter 54

Normally Ivy Howson would have been at home by now. Thursdays were her late day working for Mr Blakey, but even then she was usually off by four, having done two loads of laundry, put them through the dryer (she’d told him twice now it was on its last legs), and ironed the sheets and pillow cases as well as the shirts she hadn’t got round to on Tuesday.

But today she was still in the neighbourhood a good three hours later, though in fairness it was not because of Mr Blakey. Before she’d gone to work for him, she’d worked for an American family who’d lived around the corner, in a trim little house that the American woman had insisted on calling ‘cute’. It was there that Mrs Howson had met Eloise the au pair, a nice New Zealand girl who’d looked up to Ivy like a second mum. And it was Eloise she’d gone to see today, still working as an au pair, in the same house funnily enough, though now it was for a Chinese couple called Tang or Tong or Ting – Mrs Howson didn’t know.

Though Eloise was working so close by, Ivy hadn’t seen her for yonks, so they’d had a lovely time over tea, catching up and chatting. Not that Eloise had that much to tell – the Tangs or whatever they were called were quiet people, with one young child, but they didn’t speak that much English, according to Eloise, so it was a bit boring for her. Yet Ivy Howson had more than filled the conversational gap, what with the goings on in the Blakey household since she’d last seen Eloise. How they’d laughed as she’d described this new blonde woman that Mr Blakey didn’t like to admit was his girlfriend. She wasn’t a patch on Mrs Blakey, who, poor thing, was said to be living in Acton now, all on her own. ‘It’s tough on a woman if she gets hitched up to a bastard,’ Mrs Howson had said. ‘You watch yourself, Eloise,’ she’d warned, more than once.

They’d had a lovely chat, though Ivy had got a bit of a shock when she looked at her watch and saw it was ten to seven. ‘Lordie,’ she exclaimed, thinking how cross Stanley would be, sitting waiting for his tea in the ground-floor flat in Streatham, where they’d lived for seventeen years. Lived ever since Maureen their daughter had moved out to shack up with the first of what even Mrs Howson, loyal mother though she was, would acknowledge had been a string of unsatisfactory partners. Stanley was retired now, and hadn’t found a lot to fill his time, so he didn’t like it that she still went out to do for Mr Blakey. He’d be furious when she got home a good three hours later than usual.

She put her coat on hurriedly, grabbed her bag and said a quick goodbye to Eloise, promising to come and see the girl again sometime soon. She was bustling down the street, retracing her steps past the mansion block where Mr Blakey lived, when she noticed the cars. They were parked within twenty yards of each other, three of them, all exactly the same, which was why she noticed them in the first place. They were black and as she walked past them she saw that inside each car two men were sitting. Mrs Howson stopped for a moment, simply because this seemed so odd. She found herself waiting, not quite sure what she was waiting for.

It didn’t take long to find out. A taxi came along fast from Marylebone High Street, its orange ‘for hire’ light going on even before it had stopped. The driver braked sharply and came to a halt across the road from Mr Blakey’s block. Mrs Howson tutted to herself disapprovingly as she recognised the woman who got out. It was that blonde woman Mr Blakey insisted on referring to as ‘Mrs Ball’, and whom Ivy Howson never addressed at all.

She watched as the woman paid the driver, then swung her expensive-looking bag over her shoulder and started to cross the road. She was smartly dressed in a belted raincoat that reached just below the knees, showing off her well-formed calves, encased today in shiny black tights. I’ll bet they’ll be at it before the clock strikes seven, thought Ivy, then chided herself for her crudeness. Still, there was something that invited it in the way this woman dressed, and walked – she was on the pavement now and heading for the mansion block’s outer door.

It was then that the most amazing thing happened, something Mrs Howson would never forget. From out of nowhere all the blokes in the cars had suddenly appeared – there on the pavement. It was like magic, she later said to Stanley, who couldn’t understand why she’d been so surprised by the sudden appearance of six fellows who just had to be coppers. You don’t understand, she’d complained. It was like a conjuring trick. One minute they weren’t there and the next they were, and I never noticed it happening.

One of the chaps had approached Mrs Ball just as she was about to enter the building, and she’d smiled – Ivy could still remember the flirtatious curve to the woman’s lips. At the same time another bloke had moved in from the other side, taking her by the arm. It was then that alarm had replaced polite curiosity on the woman’s face. By now the taxi had left and the street was deserted – thinking back, Ivy Howson realised that she’d been the only witness.

But witness to what? The men had taken the Ball woman to one of the black cars, and you could see she wasn’t given any choice – she was going with them like it or not. But she hadn’t screamed; she hadn’t even looked around. She couldn’t have been abducted because she didn’t struggle. If she was being nicked, the odd thing was that she didn’t seem to mind. What Ivy remembered most of all was the way Mrs Ball had got into the back seat of the car with a smile on her face.

Chapter 55

Paddington Green police station was a grim place, even grimmer than Liz had expected. A colleague had once described to her his interrogation of a suspect there and had said that it made Wormwood Scrubs look like a five-star hotel. Now, as she was escorted down two flights of stairs and along a narrow corridor, flanked by cells, Liz understood what he meant. Forbidding though the Santé prison in Paris was, at least it had a history, both fictional and real. Carlos the Jackal and Noriega rubbed shoulders in its corridors with characters from the novels of Alexandre Dumas and Georges Simenon. Here, in Paddington Green, there was no gloss of history, and the brutal concrete walls seemed to match the squalid violence of the modern-day terrorists whom it had been built to accommodate. It was, thought Liz, a truly awful place.

The police officer escorting her opened a steel door and stood back to let her enter the room, then followed her inside. A single light bulb illuminated a bare table and chairs, cement floor the colour of day-old porridge, and blank walls. Liz was expecting to find that the prisoner she’d come to see would introduce a note of elegance to these stark surroundings. She remembered the stylish even glamorous woman she had met in David Blakey’s office at the beginning of this whole business, and how she had admired, not to say envied, the understated linen dress the other woman had been wearing and her gold jewellery.

So she was startled by the appearance of the person sitting at the table. It was difficult to believe it was the same one. Katherine Ball was wearing a plain cotton caftan and long, wide trousers over flat pumps. At first sight Liz wondered if this was some sort of prison uniform, but Katherine Ball had not been charged and was entitled to wear her own clothes, so these must be her choice. Her face was bare of make-up and her hair, which Liz remembered as fashionably tinted blonde, was completely covered by an unflattering scarf. Only her bright blue eyes were unaltered and they seemed to burn as they stared at Liz.

‘Mrs Ball,’ said Liz, taking a seat across from her. ‘We met in David Blakey’s office some time ago. My name is Jane Forrester.’

Katherine Ball arched an eyebrow. ‘I remember you well. You work with that man who was a colleague of David’s when he was in MI6 . . . what’s his name? Tall, dark and not entirely handsome. Fane – that was it. So you’re a spook too.’

‘I’m with the Home Office.’

‘Oh, I see, we’re talking in euphemisms. What you mean is that you’re MI5, not MI6. Isn’t that what you’re trying to say, Miss . . .
Forrester.
Now, tell me, what are you here for?’

‘ I was wondering – ’

‘Don’t wonder,’ said Katherine Ball fiercely, her eyes suddenly ablaze. ‘There’s nothing to speculate about, nothing ambiguous in any of this. Believe me: if you want to know about me, I’ll tell you. Frankly, I’m delighted you’re here; nothing will please me more than to say what I have to say to a representative of Western Intelligence.’

‘What is it you’d like to say?’

But Katherine did not need to be asked. Liz’s presence seemed to have breached the dam behind which she had been concealing her true personality and feelings.

‘You in Western Intelligence – you once had something worth defending and an enemy worth fighting. For all the shortcomings of life in the West, Communism was worse, much worse . . . corrupt, oppressive of its people, twisted. Getting rid of them was a just cause.’ She paused for breath and went on, ‘But when the Wall fell, so did your
raison d’être
. You didn’t have a role any more. Just what exactly were you fighting after that, and what were you defending? I mean, what does democracy consist of when a hedge fund trader makes three billion dollars trading off the back of some poor black people in Detroit who’ve taken out a mortgage?

‘So you became stooges of the Americans. Dancing to their tune. Fighting a war on terrorism – “those who are not with us are against us”. Anyone who thinks differently from them is a threat and has to be destroyed. And the rest of the world is supposed to admire this, and stick out their bowl for the thin gruel the likes of UCSO graciously bestow on them.’

‘So you chose an alternative solution.’ Liz kept her voice cool. There was no need to needle this woman to get her to talk.

‘I’d have thought that was obvious. There is only one positive ideology in the world today, don’t you think?’

Liz ignored the question and replied, ‘I’m curious to know how you found this cause. I know your husband was Middle Eastern, but my understanding is that he was Westernised.’

‘You know nothing about my husband.’

‘I’m told he was a businessman in Beirut.’

‘He was. But the 9/11 pilots were living quietly in America while learning to fly planes. You should know about cover stories, Miss Forrester. It’s your job – playing a role. But others can do it too. My husband played a role. He lived and breathed it and I’ve been doing it ever since he died.’

‘But why? What was he trying to achieve?’

‘He was half-Iranian, and always said he wished he’d been a hundred per cent Iranian. If he hadn’t died so suddenly, we wouldn’t be sitting here, Miss Forrester. I’d be in Beirut, helping him organise resistance to Zionist incursions. My husband made a lot of money and he used a good deal of it to underwrite Hamas.’

‘I’m sorry your husband died. He had a heart attack, didn’t he?’

‘Is that what your research department told you?’ She was growing angry now. ‘Tell them to have another look. My husband was murdered – he dropped dead in a Damascus souk. A coronary, they tried to say, but he had the heart of a lion. Mossad killed him – who else?’

Maybe God did, thought Liz. Or Nature, depending on one’s theological views. ‘Is that when you took up his cause?’

Ball looked at her scornfully. ‘I was already on his side. Who wouldn’t be? Have you seen the camps in Gaza, Miss Forrester? Have you asked your Jewish friends why they’re letting people die there? Why they continue to take other people’s land? Have you ever discussed with your American bosses what their “policies” are doing to people all over the world, or why their impact is never reported in the
Jew York Times
?

‘When he died I went to Iran to live with his family. I studied and converted to the true faith, Islam.’ She stopped talking for a moment and closed her eyes. Then suddenly she opened them again. Glaring at Liz, she half-rose from her chair. ‘I don’t believe you have any faith at all. You disgust me, you know; you have the nerve to oppose us without having any beliefs of your own. Even our worst enemies, the Jews, believe in God.’

‘Sit down,’ Liz said sharply, and the woman slowly did. ‘So you studied in an Islamic school. What else did they teach you beside the faith? Did they teach you to wage war on the West?’

‘They taught me to teach.’

‘I’ve heard about your teaching,’ said Liz. ‘In a mosque in London. I gather you were inspirational.’

For the first time Katherine Ball hesitated.

‘Inspirational,’ Liz repeated.

‘Whoever told you that is flattering me.’

‘Ah, flattery,’ said Liz thoughtfully. Then, suddenly, ‘Was it by flattery that you attracted David Blakey?’

Katherine Ball’s face twisted in distaste. ‘It’s one thing playing a role; it’s quite another pretending you’re enjoying it. I found that side of things revolting.’

‘Was that true of Mo Miandad as well?’

‘What do you know about him?’

‘You two slipped up. You were seen at a hotel in Athens. You were supposed to be flying in the following day, but we checked with the airlines and you landed a day early. In time for a rendezvous with Mo.’

‘Not that kind of rendezvous,’ she snapped. ‘What an ass your friend Berger made of himself. He hangs around, thinking he’s a detective in a Raymond Chandler novel – then ends up locked in a broom cupboard. As for Mo, he may have been wild once upon a time, and he was happy for people to think he was still a corrupt philanderer – it was the perfect cover story. But he’s a true Muslim,’ she declared defiantly.