Liz had half an hour before she needed to leave to catch the train for Birmingham. She closed her office door and started to type a note for the file about her conversation with Amir Khan. She hadn’t completed more than a few words when the door opened a crack and a familiar face peered in. Her heart sank.
‘Good afternoon, Elizabeth,’ said Geoffrey Fane. She was convinced he used her full name just to annoy her.
‘Geoffrey,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’
‘Just passing through. Had to see Charles on a minor matter, and my secretary said you’d rung.’
At the mention of Charles Wetherby, Liz’s eyes narrowed. She suspected Fane had brought his name up on purpose. She saw very little of Charles these days, and Fane, who prided himself on knowing everyone’s business, would be aware of that.
Fane himself was divorced and never seemed to have any close female companion. Peggy was convinced that he was keen on Liz and had been jealous when her relationship with Charles Wetherby had grown close. Now that it no longer was, perhaps he fancied his chances.
Liz’s professional dealings with Fane had always been edgy, but they’d hit rock bottom a few years ago at the time of an investigation into a Russian illegal in Britain. That case had ended badly, with an unnecessary death – tragic by any measure. Fane had been deeply shaken, and for a time it seemed to Liz that he’d been humanised by his role in the débâcle. But in the last year he had gone back to his former ways: arrogant, patronising and manipulative.
Now he said, ‘So how are things across the Channel?’
‘Where precisely?’
‘In Paris, of course,’ Fane said cheerfully. ‘I gather you’re there quite often these days. Our mutual friend Bruno Mackay says he’s run across you several times.’
Liz face was expressionless as she looked at him How dare you? she was thinking. Standing here in my office, in your beautifully cut suit, with your arrogant expression, poking around in my private life. But all she said was, ‘Yes, my work does take me to Paris from time to time. As you know I’m our main liaison with the French services on counter-terrorism.’
‘I know there’s one French service you are very involved with,’ he replied, and she could see he was struggling to keep a smile off his face.
‘I wouldn’t believe everything Bruno Mackay tells you.’ Mackay was number two at MI6’s station in Paris, and an old sparring partner of Liz’s. Clever, self-confident (over-confident Liz would have said), charming if he wished to be, yet often simply arrogant, Bruno had always enjoyed teasing her. So he knew about Martin Seurat, she thought crossly. She was perfectly happy for people to know she was seeing Martin, but she disliked the thought of being gossiped about, especially by Bruno Mackay and Fane.
‘Sadly I’m going to have to find a new source of information from Paris.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Liz. She had seen Bruno at the embassy only last month.
‘We’re posting Bruno.’ And before Liz could ask where, Fane leaned over her desk and said teasingly, ‘Will you be my source of Paris social news then, Elizabeth?’
She gave a thin-lipped smile and shook her head, hoping he’d had his fun and would now get to the point. She said, ‘I have a train to catch – and before you ask, no, it’s not to Paris.’
‘What I was wondering,’ said Fane, sitting down in her visitor’s chair, ‘was how it went with this Amir Khan character. I heard that the French had asked for your help. Did you get anything out of him?’
‘I was just writing up my report when you came in. Khan hasn’t opened up at all to the French and he wasn’t much more forthcoming with me. I was going to come and tell you about it.’
‘He wouldn’t talk at all?’
‘Silence wasn’t the problem.’ She told him about Khan’s long-winded monologue, and how he’d obviously decided to try and bury her in words. ‘We’ve learned he went to Pakistan eight months ago and didn’t come back. I tried to get him to say how he’d got to Somalia, but he just fed me a cock-and-bull story. He even claimed the pirates had taken him prisoner. ‘
‘That’s disappointing,’ said Fane, with a note of mild reproof.
‘I thought so too,’ admitted Liz cheerfully. ‘But then he slipped up.’ She waited while Fane looked at her with undisguised curiosity. ‘I asked him who had given him his orders in Pakistan, and before he thought, he said that it hadn’t been in Pakistan.’
‘Ah-ha,’ said Fane approvingly.
Liz felt as if she’d been awarded a gold star by the headmaster. ‘Frankly, he’s pretty green. I think his defiance is a big act and underneath he’s scared stiff. Though if he’s scared of us, I think he’s even more scared of whoever got to him in the first place.’
‘Well, he’s got that right. We might keep him in prison but we’re not going to kill him.’
‘He claimed the French Navy chaps roughed him up.’
‘They probably did,’ said Fane dismissively. ‘The Marine Nationale can be a little over-zealous. But if he didn’t get his instructions in Pakistan, where did he get them? Here?’
‘Possibly. Or in some other country he went to after Pakistan. That’s why I rang you when I got back; I thought you might be able to help.’
The trace of a smile touched Fane’s lips. Liz knew he was pleased. He liked nothing better than to be asked for help, particularly by her. At heart he was an old-fashioned chauvinist, instinctively assuming superiority over all women. There were still a few of that breed left in Liz’s own service. She thought particularly of Michael Binding, most recently her boss in Northern Ireland. He could not take any advice from a woman, but expected only to issue orders and receive slavish agreement; if that wasn’t forthcoming, he got angry and shouted.
But Geoffrey Fane was a much more complex character. Fane positively enjoyed disputes, though he was always sure he was right. He liked to watch Liz getting angry when he did something to annoy her. She knew that and therefore tried always to keep her temper. But it was difficult to do when she found him out, as had often happened, in some outrageous piece of double-dealing or concealment. He would show enough grace to apologise, though she always felt that even then he was secretly enjoying his own cleverness.
Fane leaned back in his chair and crossed one flannelled leg over the other. ‘Do you know anything about the ship the pirates tried to hijack?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Liz immediately felt cross with herself, since she hadn’t pursued that angle of the investigation at all. She made a mental note to ask Peggy to look into it. ‘I know the ship is called the Aristides.’
‘That’s right,’ said Fane approvingly. Again, she felt as if she were being patted on the head. ‘It was leased by a charity called UCSO. Quite coincidentally, I had a call from the charity’s director, a chap named Blakey. Used to be one of us – Head of Station in Hong Kong for a good while. He’s based here in London, though UCSO also have an office in Athens.’
Liz’s antennae were vibrating now. ‘Did he say anything about the hijack attempt?’
‘He mentioned it,’ said Fane airily. Something in the tone of his voice struck her as suspicious. She knew he was holding something back. Then he said, ‘Tell you what: let me have another word with him. It could be that the hijack attempt and the fact the ship was an UCSO one are connected. If they are, we’ll need to liaise closely.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘You’ll enjoy that, Elizabeth. We work well together.’