Suzrin House stands in Whitehall in London, the only non-governmental building left on that stretch of the Embankment. It looks out over the river towards the sixties concrete brutalism of the National Theatre complex like an ancient, grizzled gunslinger regarding an upstart cowboy just arrived in town. It is spectacularly ugly in a brooding, noxious sort of way.
Its main, dark brown rectangular tower-block slopes inward slightly and is set back from the Thames, separated from it by a huge glassed-in section several storeys tall whose roof rises from the Embankment side towards the main block. Enormous ornamental windows stare from the very top of the main tower. I used to wonder why the whole thing looked so familiar from a distance until I realised it was shaped like a giant old-fashioned cash register.
The place is part office, part apartment block. It was where Adrian George worked. I took the train from York to London the morning after Freddy died, calling AG en route and arranging lunch.
'I was sorry to hear about old Freddy Ferrindonald.'
'Yeah, it was a shame.'
'Do you have anything in particular in mind for lunchtime?'
'I thought Italian.'
'I meant agenda-wise.'
'Not particularly,' I lied.
We met in a fairly swish French place Adrian George favoured in Covent Garden. He wasn't big on Italian food. He wasn't big on drinking either, citing a heavy workload that afternoon. AG was shortish but trim and dark and handsome. I could remember him when his eyebrows met in the middle, but maybe he'd lost out on too many girls whose mothers had warned them about men with hirsute foreheads, because it looked as if now he shaved that centre line. We conversed pleasantly enough; company gossip, mostly. He was one of those people I got on best with through e-mail, just as Luce was somebody I found it better to talk to on the phone.
I only mentioned his reported sighting of Colin Walker, Hazleton's security chief, in London a month earlier, right at the end of our meal. He tried not to react, laughing it off as mistaken identity. He insisted on picking up the bill.
I said I'd go back to Suzrin House with him. The weather was cool, windy and dry and I thought we might walk along the Strand or the Embankment, but he wanted to take a taxi. He chattered. I already knew all I needed to.
Once we'd gone through Security in the lobby, we went our separate ways, he up to the exec floors, me to the basement to see an old friend.
'That one's a Bell-K connector.'
Allan Fleming was, as usual, a mess. He'd been in a wheelchair for twenty years since a climbing accident in his teens, and despite having a very nice wife called Monica, who was totally devoted to him and turned him out neatly every day, it usually only took him minutes after he arrived at work to look as if he'd spent the last month sleeping rough. Sometimes he accomplished this between the garage — where he parked his converted Mini — and his workshop.
Allan was Suzrin House's resident computer nerd. His workshop — somewhere deep under the main building and way below the surface of the Thames even at low water — was like a museum of computing, filled to its high ceilings with bewildering amounts of electronic hardware ancient and modern, but mostly ancient (which in computer terms, for the truly, seriously, antediluvian stuff, of course meant about the same age as him or me). We'd known each other since post-grad days, when we'd both been in that year's Security intake, before I'd come to my senses and left to be a proper exec, specialising in hi-tech.
Allan was in charge of computer and IT security, specifically here in Suzrin and the other outlying London offices, but in effect — along with a few other similarly gifted geek-wizards in the States — also anywhere the Business had modems and computers. He was our insurance against hackers: if he couldn't worm his way into your system, probably nobody else could either. I'd shown him the plugs and other bits and pieces that David Rennell had brought me from Silex.
'What's a Bell-K connector?' I asked, staring at his cardigan and wondering how he'd managed to get so many buttons done up through the wrong holes. I bet he hadn't left the house like that.
'It's a specialist phone-line connector,' he said, pulling absently at some of his curly brown hair and twisting it so that it stood out from his head like a tiny horizontal pigtail. 'A dedicated land line, probably; very high capacity, especially for the time. Better than ISDN. Made by Bell Laboratories, as you might expect, in the States. Still copper technology, however; your next step up would be your optical.'
'What was its "time"?'
'Oh, just a few years ago.'
'Sort of thing you might find in a chip-manufacturing plant?'
'Hmm.' Allan turned the little connector over in his hands, then took off his unfashionably large-framed glasses and blew on each lens in turn, holding them up to the light and blinking. 'Not particularly. You wouldn't want it for telephony purposes, I'd have thought, and your standard Parallel, Serial and SCSI ports would handle most non-specialist applications.'
'I thought this was specialist.'
'Yes, as I said. But this is for specialist telephonic applications.'
'Such as?'
Allan replaced his glasses, asquint, on his nose. He rocked back in the chair and looked thoughtful. 'Actually, the place you'd most likely see something like this would be in the stock exchange, or a futures market, somewhere like that. They use high capacity dedicated land lines. So I understand.'
I sat back in the ancient peeling plywood and black tubing seat, an idea forming in my mind. I pulled the Polaroid of a desk out of my pocket. 'See this?'
Allan sat forward and peered. 'It's a desk,' he said helpfully.
I flipped the photograph round and looked at it myself. 'Well, my copy of Jane's Book of Fighting Desks is not to hand. But now you mention it…'
He took the photo from my hand and studied it. 'Yes. Lots of holes for cabling. And that extra level, that raised shelf. It does look a little like the sort of desk that might belong to a commodities trader, or someone of a similar nature, doesn't it?'
'Yes. Yes, it does, doesn't it?'
'Kate, I'm in a fucking meeting. What the hell is so important you have to get me called out of it?'
'I'm at your dentist's, Mike. Mr Adatai is quite rightly concerned. I need you to tell him to let me see your file.'
'You what? You pull rank on me for that?'
'Look, don't blame me; I thought you were supposed to be here in London. I didn't know you were going to go jetting off to Frankfurt.'
'Yes, to meet some very important — oh, for Christ's sake. What is all this about? Quickly, Kate, please, I need to get back in there.'
'It's very important I see your dental-records file, Michael. I'm going to hand you over to Mr Adatai now. Please authorise him to let me see it, then you can get back to your meeting.'
'Okay, okay; put him on.'
The standard human mouth contains thirty-two teeth. Mike Daniels must have had good, conscientious parents who got him to brush his teeth thoroughly after each meal and snack and in the evening before retiring, because he had had a full set — with just a couple of fillings in lower bicuspid molars — when he'd been drugged in a London club a month earlier, had about half of his teeth removed and then been left in his own bed in his flat in Chelsea.
I sat in Mr Adatai's warm and luxurious waiting room with a bunch of recent Vogues (well, this was Chelsea), National Geographics (of course) and Country Lifes (I thought of the dowager Queen in her giant bed in the old palace, and — sitting in that warmth — shivered).
I looked at the diagram of Mike Daniels' teeth. I took a note of those that had been taken and those that had been left. I closed the file, stared at a potted palm across the room and did some mental arithmetic.
In base ten, a ten-figure number. Two point one billion and some change. No need to use your fingers at all.
My mouth went dry.
From the start that morning I'd considered staying in London overnight, and had brought a few bits and pieces in a travelling bag, but in the end, after leaving Mr Adatai's — in fact, on the kerb while the taxi was pulling up — I decided to head back to Yorkshire. I rang Miss H to tell her I'd be staying at Blysecrag that night.
We had dinner on the train, my lap-top and I, looking through a load of files I'd downloaded about the Pejantan Island deal and the Shimani Aerospace Corporation. This was the deal that Mike Daniels had been flying out to Tokyo to sign when he'd been dentally assaulted — hence the anguished call to me that night in Glasgow.
Pejantan Island is a piece of guano-covered rock in the middle of the southern part of the South China Sea, between Borneo and Sumatra. It is, to put it politely, undistinguished, except for one thing: it is almost bang on the equator. Shift the place three kilometres south and the zero degrees line would go straight over it. It's less than an hour's flight from Singapore, just big enough for our purposes — or, rather, the purposes of the Shimani Aerospace Corporation, for we were merely investors — and it was uninhabited. The idea was to build a spaceport there.
Now, this is high-horse territory for me — though I do know what I'm talking about, and it is my job — but space, and anything associated with getting into it, is going to be so fucking big, and soon, it's frightening. Space is already very big business indeed and it's going to get a lot bigger in the near future. The US through NASA, Europe through ESA, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese and various other minor players are all desperate to grab as much of the launch market as possible, and private enterprise is determined to catch up.
I've seen detailed plans of about a dozen different ways of getting into space — even leaving out the exotic far-future stuff like giant elevators, rail guns and giant lasers — using craft with helicopter-like rotors with rockets in the tips or — well, never mind; the point is not that, if we're lucky, one of them might just work, it's that all of them might work.
Whatever method you use, the best place to launch stuff into orbit is from the equator, or as close to it as you can get (which is why NASA chose southern Florida for its spaceport and the SU had to settle for the delights of Kazakhstan). The Earth, just through rotating, gives you a free energy boost to help lob your payload above the atmosphere, and that means you can lob more, or use less fuel, than you could if you launched from further up or down the curve towards the poles.
One space-launch concern — in which I am delighted to say we have some investment — is taking advantage of this by using two huge ships, a command-and-control vessel and the rocket-carrying ship itself to send payloads up from the oceans on the equator. The time before last that I was in Scotland I got to clamber over the launch ship while it was in dry dock in Greenock, on the Clyde. It was just techy heaven. These are real ships, built for an entirely pragmatic, unromantic, unsentimental, return-hungry consortium, but they are just such a fabulous, Thunderbirds-style idea I'd have been seriously tempted to recommend investing in them just for the sheer mad beauty of the project. Happily, it looks like a good business deal, too.
But you never know. The ships will only be able to handle stuff up to a certain size. To be on the safe side, we're also the major investor in the Shimani Aerospace Corporation's Pejantan Island project, which — if all goes according to plan — by 2004 will be sending state-of-the-art rockets roaring into space with their valuable satellite cargoes.
This was heavy engineering, cutting-edge technology and serious science. The budget was jaw-dropping. So were the returns if we'd all got our sums right, but the point was that the bigger the project and the bigger the budget the easier it is to hide things in both of them.
Like this little item here: a tracking station in Fenua Ua.
Now, why Fenua Ua? I looked up a map of the Pacific. Why not Nauru, or Kiribati, or even the fucking Galapagos?
Sipping my coffee somewhere around Grantham, I used the mobile and the lap-top's modem to do some more long-range Web searching. Eventually, as the train sped through the night, picking up speed after Doncaster, deep in some otherwise entirely ignorable PR nonsense (which just goes to show you never know where something useful will turn up), I found a little video clip of Kirita Shinizagi, chief executive officer of the Shimani Aerospace Corporation, visiting Fenua Ua earlier this year and inspecting the site for the new tracking station.
Next stop York, the guard's voice said over the speakers, while my head was somewhere between London, Tokyo, Fenua Ua and Pejantan Island.
I disconnected the mobile from the computer. The phone rang. Hazleton's number came up on the display. I hesitated two, three rings before answering.
'Hello?'
'Kathryn?'
'Mr Hazleton.'
'Kathryn, I was so sorry to hear about Freddy.'
'Thank you. Will you be able to make the funeral, Mr Hazleton?'
'Sadly, no. Kathryn, are you able to think straight? Or are you too distraught? If this is a bad time to talk about things, I can always wait.'
'I think I can still string two thoughts together, Mr Hazleton. What was it you wanted to talk about?'
'I wondered how you felt you'd got on in Thulahn. I was going to ask before, but of course we were rather overtaken by events when you realised that Freddy was in hospital. We never did finish that conversation.'
'No, we didn't. I recall that at the time I was about to ask you if you'd had any hand in suggesting to the Prince that he ask me to marry him.'
'You were? I don't understand, Kathryn. Why would I want to interfere in your private life?'
'That's all right, Mr Hazleton. I've had more time to think since then. The question no longer applies.'
'I see. I confess I wasn't entirely sure I'd heard you right when you told me that at the time. However, I've spoken to Suvinder since, and yes, he was, and is, very serious about it. I understand you turned him down. That's very sad. Of course it's entirely your decision and you must do as you see fit, but the Prince did sound very dejected.'
'He's a better man than I thought he was at first, Mr Hazleton. I've come to like him. But I don't love him.'
'Ah, well. There we are, then. This has, as you can imagine, all become rather more complicated because of that development. Are you still thinking of the proposition Jebbet and Tommy put to you?'
'Yes.'
'Good. The amount of power invested in whoever takes up the post there would be very considerable. You might have decided not to become Queen of Thulahn, Kathryn, but you could still be something like the President. What do you think? Have you had any thoughts? Or would it now be too awkward with Suvinder there?'
'Oh, I've had thoughts, Mr Hazleton.'
'You're being very cryptic, Kathryn. Is there somebody there with you? Can't you talk?'
'There's nobody here. I can talk. I'm still thinking very seriously about taking up the post in Thulahn.'
'But you haven't come to a decision yet.'
'Not yet.'
'You couldn't give us a balance-of-probabilities assessment, even? Which way you're leaning, as it were?'
'There are very strong reasons for going, and very strong ones for staying where I am. It's too delicately balanced, so, no, I'm afraid I can't. But once I've made my decision, I'll stick with it.'
'And when do you think that will be, Kathryn?'
'I think another few days should do the trick.'
'Well, we shall just have to be patient, shan't we, Kathryn?'
'Yes. Sorry about that.'
'Of course, there is the other matter, isn't there? I don't want to have to push you on that, too, but it has been a couple of weeks now…'
'You mean that B-movie you provided me with?'
'Yes. I was wondering if you'd come to any decision on that, too.'
'Yes. I have.'
Stephen. We need to talk. Call when you can. Voice or this.
Uncle Freddy had a Viking's funeral. His coffin was placed in an old motorboat, one of those polished wooden things with two tandem separate seating compartments and a stern deck that slopes in a curve all the way down to the water. It had been filled with various flammable stuff and moored out in the centre of the lake where we'd fished a few weeks earlier. A crowd of us — a big crowd, too, given that Freddy hadn't had many relatives — looked on.
One of his drinking cronies from the pub in Blysecrag village was an archer; he had one of those elaborate modern bows that looks much more complicated than any gun, with balancing weights sticking out apparently at random and all sorts of other bits and pieces. He loaded up an arrow with a big, bulging head made of bound rags soaked in petrol, another drinking chum lit it, and then he shot it out towards the motorboat. The arrow made a noise I will never forget as it curved up through the clear, cool air. Uncle Freddy's pal was obviously very good or he'd done this before, because that one shot was all he needed. The arrow slammed dramatically into the woodwork, the flames caught and spread and the boat was soon ablaze from end to end.
I stood watching it burn, thinking that there were probably all sorts of terribly British and very sensible rules and regulations about the proper disposal of bodies that were being flouted here. Well, fuck them if they can't take a joke. Freddy: the man who put the fun in funeral.
Uncle F left me a small landscape painting I'd once admired. Not by anybody famous, and not valuable, just nice, and something to remember him by. What do you give the girl who has everything? Your undivided attention, of course. So, having not bequeathed me the entire house and estate of Blysecrag, Freddy did the next best thing and left me something I would be able to pack in a bag and take away with me.
The Charm Monsters — the Business' Conjurations and Interludans division — had been kept at bay by the terms of Uncle Freddy's will. I think Miss Heggies was grateful for that, though there wasn't much she could do about the presence of Maeve Watkins. Still, they seemed to get along politely enough, Miss H serving Mrs W tea in the drawing room with a civility that was one notch up from frosty, and Mrs W seeming slightly embarrassed and modestly grateful.
The company was represented by Madame Tchassot, the other Level One apart from Hazleton who'd been at the weekend party at Blysecrag three weeks earlier. I asked to have a word with her alone. We sat in Blysecrag's toweringly impressive library; she settled her small elegant frame into a seat, carefully smoothing her black skirt under her bony legs.
'What is it that concerns you, Kathryn?' She looked around, then pulled a small container like a powder compact from her handbag. 'Oh. Do you think it is permitted to smoke in here?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't mind if I do?' Her accent was confusing, half-way between French and German.
'No, I don't.'
She offered me a cigarette, which I refused. She lit up. The little container was a closable ashtray; she placed it on the table at her side. 'I understand you might be moving to Thulahn,' she said, tapping the end of the Dunhill gently against the edge of the little ashtray, though the ash wasn't ready to come off yet.
I watched this, trying to judge how much to say, trying to think back to what I knew of Madame Tchassot. How close was she to Hazleton? The fact that she was supposed to have a thing going with Adrian Poudenhaut didn't mean much by itself. If it did mean anything beyond the purely personal, it might even mean that Hazleton was using Poudenhaut to keep an eye on her. Though it might mean something else, too.
'Possibly.'
She blinked behind her small glasses. 'The rumour I have heard is that Prince Suvinder has proposed to you.' She smiled. 'That is very interesting.'
'Yes, it is, isn't it? I wondered at one stage if that had somehow been set up.'
'Set up? How do you mean?'
'I mean that somebody, or some people, at the highest level of the Business, decided that having an agreement with the Prince, legal or otherwise, wasn't good enough to guarantee that Thulahn was really ours, and that having one of our own high-level execs married to the ruler would be a far more satisfactory way of cementing the relationship between us and Thulahn.'
'Ah, yes, I see. But it would be something of a long shot, yes?'
'Not that long, perhaps. The people concerned already knew that the Prince was…keen on me. And I was sounded out, first by Mr Dessous and then by Mr Cholongai. I misinterpreted, at the time: I thought they were really trying to find out how suited I would be to becoming a sort of ambassador to Thulahn, which is the pretext that was used to get me to go there. I thought they were worried that I was insufficiently committed, not so much to the company as to the idea of personal monetary success and, I suppose, laissez-faire capitalism itself. What they were really worried about, I think, is that I was too committed to those things.'
She blinked. 'Can one be?'
'I think so, if you are hoping that the person concerned might find something in a poor, underdeveloped Third World country that she can't find in her very comfortable existence in one of the richest parts of the richest state in the richest country in the world.'
'I have heard that Thulahn is enchanting,' Madame Tchassot said, persuading some ash to drop from her cigarette. 'I have never been there.' She looked over her glasses at me. 'Would you recommend a visit?'
'In a personal or a business capacity?'
She looked surprised. 'I think one may only savour enchantment in a personal capacity, no?'
'Of course. Madame Tchassot, may I ask if what I'm talking about here is all new to you, or did you already know of anything like this before?'
'But, Kathryn, if all that you are speculating about had been spoken about at my level, you would be asking me now to reveal what the Board has discussed. You must know that I cannot do that.' She smiled, and put one hand to her tightly gathered hair. 'However, there are less formal occasions when such subjects arise between Board members, and in that context I can tell you that there was some talk of you being just the right person to represent us in Thulahn, and the point was made that the Prince's high regard for you would be to the good in this respect. I do not think that any of us thought for one moment he would make you a proposal of marriage. For my part, and I mean no disrespect, I would have imagined that he would want to marry, or would be obliged to marry, someone of a certain social class.'
'That's what I thought. Apparently not.'
'Hmm. That is also interesting.' She looked thoughtful. 'Have you made a decision yet, Kathryn?'
'I told the Prince no.'
'Oh. The rumour I heard was that you were undecided. Well, that might be unfortunate, or fortunate. Would you still consider the post in Thulahn?'
'I am still considering it.'
'Good. I hope you did not turn the Prince down only because you thought that we had manoeuvred you into the position of being asked.'
'No. I turned him down because I don't love him.'
She seemed to think about this. 'We are so lucky, aren't we,' she said, 'to be able to marry for love?'
This was probably as distracted as I was ever going to get her. 'Do you know anything about the Silex thing, Madame Tchassot?'
She frowned. 'No. What is the Silex thing?'
'I'm not sure. I thought perhaps you could tell me.'
'I'm afraid I cannot.'
'Then I may have to ask Mr Hazleton.'
'Ah. Mr Hazleton. Do you think he knows about it?'
'He may. Silex is a chip-manufacturing plant in Scotland. There seemed to be something odd about it. I was looking into it.' I paused. 'I think Adrian Poudenhaut was, too. I wondered if he'd said anything to you.'
'Why would he do that, Kathryn?' Now there was a reaction. She coloured faintly. My bet was that Madame Tchassot was either an extraordinarily gifted actress, or she'd been telling the truth so far.
'I hear rumours too, Madame Tchassot,' I said. I gave a small, nervous-looking smile and lowered my eyes. 'I'm sorry if I've embarrassed you.'
'Adrian and I are close, Kathryn. But we do not discuss business…how should I say?… gratuitously.'
'Of course.' I smiled in what I hoped was a friendly way. 'I was hoping to have a word with Adrian about the matter. But please don't say anything to him. I'll go through Mr Hazleton.'
We talked a little more after that. Madame Tchassot smoked a few more cigarettes.
'Telman?'
'Mr Dessous. Hello.'
'How the hell are you, Telman? What can I do for you? And why did this call have to be scrambled? Yeah, and why aren't you calling me Jeb like I told you?'
'I'm fine, Jeb. You?'
'Mad as hell.'
'I'm sorry to hear that. What's happened?'
'Damn Feds took away my Scuds, that's what.'
'Oh dear. Do you mean Scud missiles?'
'Of course. What the hell else would I mean? Thought I'd hidden them too good. Those fornicating interfering scumbags must have been tipped off. Informer in the ranks, Telman. Least you're not on the list of suspects. I never did tell you where they were hid, did I?'
'Not that I can recall. Where were they?'
'Inside a couple of grain silos. My idea. Grain silos, missile silos. Clever, huh? Thought that would be the last place anybody'd look if they ever did come snooping around.'
'Didn't they do that in a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode?'
'What?'
'I'm sure there was a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode where the bad guys hid missiles in grain silos. Long time ago, of course.'
'Damn! You mean it wasn't an original idea? Hell's teeth, Telman. No wonder they guessed. Never watched the programme myself. Serves me right for not being more into popular culture, I guess. One of those FBI bozos must have seen the same episode as you, Telman. Maybe we haven't got a turncoat here, after all.'
'Maybe not.'
'So, Telman, what's up?'
'Freddy Ferrindonald, Jeb.'
'Oh, yeah. Sorry to hear about that. You there for the funeral?'
'Yes, it's just finished.'
'So, Telman. Thulahn. Hazleton says you told the Prince to go to hell. That true?'
'No, Jeb. I just refused his offer of marriage.'
'Same thing to a guy, Telman. You going to tell me old Suvinder don't feel like he's been kicked in the teeth?'
'I hope he doesn't feel that. We parted on what I thought were very good terms.'
'Telman, any guy with a nickel's worth of brain cells thinks long and hard before asking a girl to marry him, and if he isn't only asking because he's got her pregnant and he feels he ought to ask then he gets nervous as hell worrying about what she's going to say. This guy's a prince: not only has he got his own future to think of, he's got the future of his whole damn country to think about too. Plus, the way the people round him see it, and probably him too, is he's doing you a big favour and making a huge sacrifice even thinking about asking you, because you're not some princess or lady or something. You're a Level Three exec. You're probably a lot better off than the Prince but that doesn't seem to be what matters to these people. It's breeding. Pile of horse manure if you ask me, but that's the way it is and the fact remains that even if we bumped you up to Level Two you'd still be just some kid out of a project in Scotland.'
'Schemes. We call them schemes in Scotland, Jeb. But I take the point. However, I think I let Suvinder down as gently as possible and I hope we'll still be friends.'
'Hooey, frankly, Telman.'
'You don't think that's possible?'
'I doubt it. You've wounded the man's pride. And if and when the Prince does get hitched and you're around, no self-respecting wife's going to let him stay buddies with you.'
'Well, I may not be there, anyway. I'm still thinking about whether to take the post in Thulahn or not.'
'So I hear. Well, don't take for ever, okay? We ain't got that long. So. What you going to do now?'
'I'm going to ask you if you know what happens to Fenua Ua once we complete the deal with Thulahn.'
'Jesus wept, Telman. You be careful what you're saying, will you? This call might be encrypted or whatever you call it but —'
'What happens, Jeb?'
'What do you mean what happens? Nothing happens. That bunch of food-coupon-grabbing good-for-nothing welfare dumbasses get whatever they can from the US, the French and the Brits before the dung hits the fan, we get the hell out and they go back to incest and alcoholism. Why the hell are you so concerned about them all of a sudden? Jesus, Telman, you haven't gone soft on us just because you saw a few sherpas and their cute little kids, have you? You might get to be our representative to Thulahn, Telman, you ain't our ambassador to the fucking UN. Goddamnit, Telman! Now you've got me swearing! What the hell's wrong with you!'
'Jeb? Mr Dessous?'
'What?'
'I suspect we're getting Couffabled.'
There was a near silence at the other end of the line. Listening carefully through the odd lilt of white noise the scrambling circuit added to the connection, I could just hear Dessous breathing. I hadn't even been sure that he would recognise the name of the French exec who'd cheated the Business out of what it saw as rightly its own, over a century ago. Obviously he did. He cleared his throat. 'You serious, Telman?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Okay. So, how significant is the operation?'
'It's at your level, Jeb.'
Another pause. 'The hell it is, huh?'
'I thought maybe you were in on it, but now I don't think you are.'
'Uh-huh.'
'But I don't know enough yet. And I can't start accusing anybody. I just wanted someone to know.'
'I see. Well. You be careful what you're getting into there, Telman.'
'I'm trying to be.'
In the evening, after the funeral and after all the rest of the mourners had left, Miss Heggies and I sat up round the fire in the little living room just off the main kitchen, drinking whisky and reminiscing.
Madame Tchassot had been chauffeured back to Leeds-Bradford and her Lear jet, the locals had retreated to the pub where Uncle F had put a couple of grand behind the bar for them to have a proper wake to mourn his passing, and Mrs Watkins had returned to her Leeds hotel. Freddy's few relations, all distant, had made themselves so, despite having been invited to stay. I got the impression Miss H was relieved they hadn't accepted. I hoped I wasn't spoiling things by being the only one to stay, and — after a couple of drams — I said as much.
'Oh, you're no trouble, Ms Telman.' (I'd suggested we might try first names, but Miss H had seemed almost girlishly embarrassed, and shaken her head.) 'It's always been a pleasure to have you here.'
'Even the time I got stuck in the dumb-waiter?'
'Ah, well, you weren't the first, or the last.'
This had happened the second time I'd been brought to Blysecrag by Mrs Telman, when I'd been ten. The first time I'd been so stunned and awestruck by the place I'd barely dared to sit down. When I'd visited a second time I'd been a lot more blasé, and had decided to explore. The dumb-waiter I'd elected to do some of my exploring in had got stuck and it took several strong men a couple of hours to rescue me. Uncle Freddy had thought it was all quite a hoot and had sent down supplies of cakes and lemonade (to my intense embarrassment, he'd also hollered down that I was just to shout out if I needed a chamber-pot lowered to me, too).
'Has anyone ever explored every single nook and cranny of this place?'
'Mr Ferrindonald did, when he first bought it,' Miss Heggies said. 'And I think I have. Though I'm not sure you can ever be certain.'
'You never get lost?'
'Not for years. Sometimes I have to think where I am, mind.' Miss Heggies sipped at her whisky. 'Mr Ferrindonald used to tell me he knew of secret passages that he wasn't telling me about, but I think he was just teasing me. He always said he'd leave the map in his will, but, well…'
'I'm going to miss Freddy,' I said.
Miss Heggies nodded. 'He could be a rascal sometimes, but he was a good employer. And a friend to me.' She looked sad.
'Were you glad he never married?'
She looked sharply at me. 'Glad, Ms Telman?'
'I'm sorry. I hope you don't mind me asking. I just always felt that this was almost as much your house as his, and if he'd brought a wife here, well, you'd have had to share the place with her too.'
'I hope I'd have got on as well with her as I did with him,' Miss Heggies said, only a little defensively. 'I suppose it would have depended on the wife, but I would have done my best.'
'What if Uncle Freddy had married Mrs Watkins? Could you have got on with her?'
She looked away. 'I think so.'
'She seemed pleasant enough, I thought.'
'Yes. Pleasant enough.'
'Do you think she loved him?'
Miss Heggies drew herself up in her chair and smoothed her hair with one hand. 'I really wouldn't be able to say, Ms Telman.'
'I hope she did, don't you? It would be good to know that someone loved him. Everyone should have that.'
She was silent for a while. 'I think many of us did, in our various ways.'
'Did you, Miss Heggies?'
She sniffed, and looked into her whisky glass. 'I had a lot of affection for the old rogue. Whether you'd call it love, I don't know.' She looked me in the eye. 'We were never…linked, Ms Telman.' She looked at the ceiling and around the walls. 'Except by this place.'
'I see.'
'Any road, in the end it isn't my house, Ms Telman. Never was. I am a servant; he could have dismissed me at any time. I don't mean that he ever threatened me with that, or ever reminded me of it, just that it's always at the back of your mind.'
'Well, that can't happen now.'
She nodded. 'It was very good of Mr Ferrindonald to leave me the flat and to provide for me.'
'Will you stay here once it's handed over to the National Trust?'
She looked mildly shocked. 'Of course.'
'I imagine they might want to employ you. Actually, I think they'd be foolish not to. Would you work for them?'
'I might.' She nodded. 'It would depend. If I was wanted, I'd be happy to.'
'I suspect Uncle Freddy would have liked that.'
'Do you?'
'Definitely.'
She looked round again, took a deep breath and said, 'This has been my love, Ms Telman, this place. I've been in service here one way or another for nearly fifty years, since I left school, for your uncle, his business, the army and the Cowle family. I've never thought to marry, never wanted to. Blysecrag's been all I've ever needed.' She lifted her head up. 'There are those here and in the village who think I've missed out on life, but I don't think I have, not at all. There's plenty of others to fall in love and have lots of children. I've given my life to this house, and I haven't regretted it…well, not for more than an hour or two at a time, and then not often.' She gave a small, flickering, vulnerable smile. 'We all have our blues, don't we? But I wouldn't have changed anything, if I could have.' She laughed lightly and swirled her whisky as she looked at it. 'Goodness me, listen to me. I'll be dancing on the tables next.'
I raised my glass. 'To Blysecrag,' I said.
And so we drank a toast to the place, and maybe to places in general.
'Suvinder? Hi. How are you?'
'Oh, Kathryn. I'm sorry. I did not mean to call you. I must have pressed the wrong button. Umm. Are you well? You sound sleepy.'
'That's okay. I'm fine. You all right?'
'I am well, but I had better go or you will be upset with me. Say you forgive me for calling you so late.'
'I forgive you.'
'I bid you good night, Kathryn.'
'Good night, sweet prince.'
'Oh, Kathryn!'
'That's a quotation, Suvinder.'
'I know! But you said it to me! I shall sleep well. Good night, dearest Kathryn.'
I rang Adrian Poudenhaut the following morning. He was in Italy, picking up his new Ferrari from the factory in Modena; he'd be driving it back to the UK over the next couple of days. I told him I wanted to meet up with him and he sounded surprised, so I reckoned Madame Tchassot hadn't said anything to him. We arranged to rendezvous in Switzerland the following day.