The Invisible Code (9 page)

‘Did Oskar tell you that?’ For the first time the pair saw a flicker of fear in her eyes.

‘He says he saw a change in your behaviour from that time.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Some things are personal.’

‘Then we can’t help you,’ said Bryant, putting down his cup. ‘Ta for the biscuits.’ He made to get up, but couldn’t get out of the armchair.

‘No, wait, please. Ask me something else.’

‘All right. How do you get on with your husband’s colleagues?’

‘Which ones? The people in his department?’

‘Yes, Edgar Lang, Stuart Almon and Charles Hereward,’ said May. He saw Bryant mouthing ‘
Who?
’ at him. ‘They’re all in Mr Kasavian’s division, and they’re also his business partners. That’s correct, Sabira, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, they own a company together. Oskar is very careful about declaring his interests. He places great value on honesty.’

‘Pegasus Holdings provides intelligence to the scientific community,’ May told his partner. ‘They check for security leaks and make sure data doesn’t get passed to the wrong parties. It’s part-funded by British and American homeland security interests.’

‘There’s no conflict with the ministry?’ Bryant asked.

‘It’s the kind of public–private initiative this government loves. There are guidelines governing the running of such companies. The Home Office isn’t allowed to outsource to Pegasus without holding an open tender.’

‘Stuart Almon fell out with Oskar and is now just doing the books,’ said Sabira. ‘They are colleagues but not friends.’

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ said Bryant. ‘You must meet these people socially. It was Edgar Lang’s wife you threw the drink over, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t care for Edgar or his wife. I find them insufferable. Charlie seems less pompous. I don’t think he went to Eton. Stuart is simply invisible. I’ve met him dozens of times but can’t even remember what he looks like.’

‘And their wives?’

‘They don’t like me, of course. They spent their lives being groomed to marry powerful men, and along I come and steal their husbands’ boss. I hate them all. But it doesn’t matter what I think. I suppose they are all very clever men, and their wives – well, they do what such wives are trained to do.’

‘Why did you cover up the mirror?’ asked Bryant.

‘There are bad things here.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Devils. In my country we call them devils. I don’t know what you call them.’

‘You mean spirits?’

‘They can be in many forms. They can be the ghosts of the dead, or people who are not what they say they are.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘They take different shapes,’ Sabira warned. ‘Some of them are Oskar’s friends. Some of them can walk through the walls.’

‘Walk through walls?’

‘Yes, in places where they should not be.’

May felt a growing sense of frustration. Each time he thought they were getting somewhere, Sabira’s answers became abstract.

‘Let’s see if we can cut through some of the mystery,’ said Bryant impatiently. ‘You covered the mirrors because you didn’t want to see these spirits? Or you didn’t want them to see you?’

‘That spirit waits for me in the dark. He glares over my shoulder. He will kill me if he can.’

Bryant clambered to his feet and walked over to the
mirror. With a flourish, he whipped away the bolt of black cloth. Sabira gasped and turned her face aside. To May, it seemed like a piece of terrible overacting.

Bryant stepped back and examined the mirror’s surface. ‘See? There’s nothing.’

‘He’s not there now.’

‘Your husband says you talk to strangers in churches.’

‘Certainly. Why not? I feel safe there. When I was a little girl, if I ever felt sad or frightened I would go to the mosque and the feeling would go away.’

‘So why do you go to churches?’

‘What, you think because I was once a practising Muslim I cannot enter a church? It is a sanctuary to me, nothing more. A mosque is where my thoughts can be heard, but a church will do almost as well.’ She laughed. ‘I’m glad my parents can’t hear me say that.’

‘But your husband also says you believe there is some kind of … satanic club—’

‘You have met Oskar’s colleagues. They all belong to clubs, Boodle’s, the Devonshire, White’s, but sometimes there are clubs inside of clubs and this – this’ – she stamped her palms together – ‘is where they plan their evil.’

‘But you don’t honestly mean they’re
satanic
?’

‘Well – perhaps this is the wrong word.’

‘Do you have many friends of your own age?’ asked May, changing tack. ‘Anyone in whom you can confide, have a good honest conversation?’

‘Only in Albania. No English. My husband does not approve of my Albanian friends because they are low class.’

‘You’re not wearing any jewellery,’ said Bryant, cutting in. ‘Do you normally?’

The question took Sabira by surprise. ‘Sometimes, for formal occasions only. But not like the other women. You hang baubles from a straggly tree to distract from the meanness of its branches.’

Bryant laughed but May could see they were not going to get any further. ‘I think that’s all we have to ask you today,’ he said, rising. ‘I hope we’ll meet again.’

‘I hope so too,’ said Sabira, smiling warmly. ‘My head is feeling much better now.’

‘Well, I thought she was delightful,’ said May as they headed back across the square. The sky had clouded over and a strand of grey shadow was massing above the church. ‘But highly strung. All the paranoid stuff, it’s just in her mind. She feels cut off from her friends, she hates the circles she’s forced to mix in, and when she picks a fight I imagine her husband refuses to take her side.’

‘I think it’s something more than that,’ murmured Bryant. ‘Come over here. Children don’t use this square. Hardly anyone cuts across it because the back gate is kept locked, and they certainly don’t deviate from the path if they do. Take a good look at the grass.’

He wandered over to a patch of green within the boundary of the church and poked at it with his walking stick. Then he looked back at the Kasavians’ second-floor apartment.

‘This is the area of the street she sees reflected in the mirror. That’s why she keeps it covered. Look.’ He directed his stick at a lamp-post on the path. ‘She sees a man standing under the lamplight at night, watching her.’

He bent and examined the flattened area. ‘It rained on Saturday night. Someone stood here on the wet grass.’ There were several cigarette butts tightly grouped in among the crushed blades. ‘I think he stood here and watched her. And she’s terrified of him.’

9

PERMISSIBLE MATERIAL

ALMA SORROWBRIDGE DRAGGED
the last of the cardboard cartons inside the front door and kicked it shut with her slippered foot. When the removal men refused to pack up Bryant’s chemistry experiments and transport them, citing health-and-safety regulations, her church group had kindly undertaken the task.

Now everything from his reeking Petri dishes to his mummified squirrels and the stuffed bear inside which Kensington Police had once discovered the body of a gassed dwarf had been shifted into the new flat’s spare room, in an almost perfect replica of Bryant’s old study.

Alma picked up a book and checked its spine:
Intestinal Funguses Volume 3
. None of Mr Bryant’s books seemed to have been arranged alphabetically, but were grouped by themes and the vagaries of his mind. She set the tome between
A User’s Guide to Norwegian Sewing Machines
and
The Complete Compendium of Lice
and hoped it would eventually find its place. After setting his green leather armchair behind his stained old desk and arranging what he referred to as his ‘consulting chair’ before
it, she satisfied herself that everything was in its rightful place, gave the shelves a final flick of her duster and sat down to await her lodger’s arrival. Bryant had been sleeping in his office, and had yet to see his new home.

The move to number 17, Albion House, Harrison Street, Bloomsbury, had been delayed because the council painters had decorated the wrong flat, but as she checked each of the rooms she saw much that was to her liking. The windows were large and let in plenty of light. The oven had already been put to good use and the kitchen was filled with the smell of freshly baked bread. Best of all, her bedroom was at the far end of the corridor away from Mr Bryant, so she wouldn’t be disturbed by his appalling snoring.

The impatient knock at the door suggested that he had already mislaid his keys. ‘You never told me we were on the third floor,’ he complained before she had even managed to open the door wide.

‘There’s a lift. Why didn’t you take it?’

‘It smells of wee.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, I just bleached it.’

‘Aha, then it
did
smell of wee.’

‘Of course not, I just knew you would make a fuss.’

‘I really didn’t realize we’d be all the way up here.’ Bryant sniffed and peered about himself in vague disapproval. ‘There are lots of bicycles chained to the railings downstairs, and there’s an Indian man in a string vest watering some kind of vegetable patch. He offered me a turnip.’ He unwound his moulting green scarf and took a tentative step inside. ‘Hm. Nice paintwork. Did you do that?’

‘No, the council sent someone round.’

‘What, they paid for it?’

‘Yes, they pay for maintenance and upkeep.’

‘That’s a good wheeze. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this years ago. And you say the rent’s very low?’

‘You’re classed as an essential worker, Mr Bryant, although I can’t imagine why.’

‘Where’s my study?’

Alma pushed open the study door with a little pride, although pride was technically regarded as a sin by her church. ‘Here we are,’ she said, stepping out of his way.

Bryant walked around his desk, shifting books and ornaments by an inch here, an inch there. ‘Where’s my Tibetan skull?’

‘Exactly where it always is,’ said Alma. ‘In your office at work.’

‘And my Mexican Day of the Dead puppets?’

‘You gave them to Mr May’s sister’s children the last time you went down to see them. She confiscated them from her boys after one of them cut himself on a crucifix and came up in boils.’

‘Just testing. My books are out of order.’

‘Well, that will give you something to do when you’re home, won’t it?’

‘And where’s my marijuana plant?’

‘This is a council block. You can’t keep it here any more, the police have dogs.’

‘I am the police, you silly woman.’

‘I sent it to your office. Honestly, I thought you’d be pleased. It took half a dozen of us to move all your stuff in and lay it out correctly. There’s a nice southerly light.’

Bryant sniffed. ‘I suppose it’ll have to do.’

‘It’ll have to do,’ Alma repeated. She was a large, cheerful woman predisposed to a kind smile, but right now the smile was fading to a scowl. ‘
It’ll have to do?
You ungrateful, miserable old man! You didn’t help me in any way. I had to attend the court hearings and deal with the compulsory purchase order of our old place, then search for accommodation and apply for the flat and deal with the council, a job I wouldn’t wish on a dog, then move everything by myself and reinstall it here without a single
thing broken, missing or out of place, and all you had to do was walk out of your old home and into this one with nothing more than the clothes on your back. I still have relatives in Antigua; I could have left you and gone home to live somewhere happy and sunny, but I stayed here. If I wasn’t a good Christian I’d smack you around the head until your ears rang.’

‘All right, you’ve made your point,’ Bryant mumbled. ‘It’s very nice. What’s for tea?’

‘There’s ginger cake and banana bread laid out in the kitchen, and a spiced chicken salad later.’ She stood with her hands on her hips and resisted the temptation to give him a whack on the ear as he passed.

Longbright was staying late at the unit, transferring John May’s interview notes. Downloading all the images she could find of Sabira Kasavian, including those in her social-networking profiles, she reassembled them by date and location.
She has a hell of a clothing allowance
, thought Longbright.
Skinny women can wear anything
. There were hardly two photographs where she was in the same outfit.