The Hidden Man

3

Ian Boyle stood in the vast, air-conditioned barn of Terminal One Arrivals, waiting for the plane. He was cold and tired and wished he was on his way home. Arsenal were playing Champions League at Highbury against a team of third-rate Austrians: there’d be goals and a hatful of chances, one of those easy nights in Europe when you can just sit back and watch the visitors unravel. He’d wanted to have a shower before kick-off, to cook up a curry and sink a couple of pints down the pub. Now it would be a race to get home after the rush-hour M4 trudge, and no time to chat to his daughter or deal with the piles of post.

Two young boys – five and eight, Ian guessed – swarmed past him and ducked into a branch of Sunglass Hut, shrieking with energy and excitement. A woman with a voice not dissimilar to his ex-wife’s made a prerecorded security announcement on the public address system, pointless and unheard in the din of the hall. Ian wondered if there were other spooks near by, angels from fifty services waiting for their man in the stark white light of Heathrow. His own people, working other assignments, would most probably have holed up in Immigration, getting a kick out of the two-way mirrors at Passport Control. But Ian had spent four years working Customs and Excise and was anxious to avoid spending time with old colleagues; a lot of them had grown smug and set in their ways, drunk on the secret power of strip search and eviction. He’d go through only when the plane had touched down, not a moment before, and watch Keen as he came into the hall. It was just that he couldn’t stand the looks they gave him, those fat grins over weak cups of tea, the suggestion of pity in their trained, expressionless eyes. When Ian had left for the Service in 1993, he could tell that a lot of his colleagues were pleased. They thought it was a step down; Ian was just about the only one who felt he was moving up.

Finding a seat opposite a branch of Body Shop, he looked up and checked the flickering arrivals screen for perhaps the ninth or tenth time. The BA flight from Moscow was still delayed by an hour and a half – no extension, thank Christ, but still another twenty-five minutes out of London. Fucking Moscow air-traffic control. Every time they put him on Libra it was the same old story: ice on the runway at Sheremetjevo and the locals too pissed to fix it. He rang Graham outside in the car, told him the bad news, and settled back in his chair with a collapsing sigh. A family of Africans in some kind of traditional dress walked past him weeping, two of them pressing handkerchiefs to their eyes as they pushed trolleys piled six feet high with luggage and bags. Ian couldn’t tell if they were happy or sad. He lit a cigarette and opened the Standard.

4

Christopher Keen had taken the call personally in his private office. It was a routine enquiry, of the sort he handled every day, from a businessman calling himself Bob Randall with ‘a minor difficulty in the former Soviet Union’.

‘I’ve been informed,’ Randall explained, ‘that Russia is your area of expertise.’

Keen did not ask who had recommended him for the job. That was simply the way the business worked: by reputation, by word of mouth. Neither did he enquire about the nature of the problem. That was simply common sense when speaking on an open line. Instead, he said, ‘Yes. I worked in the Eastern Bloc for many years.’

‘Good.’ Randall’s voice was nasal and bureaucratically flat. He suggested a meeting in forty-eight hours at a location on the Shepherd’s Bush Road.

‘It’s a Café Rouge, in the French-style. On the corner of Batoum Gardens.’ Randall spelt out ‘Batoum’ very slowly, saying ‘B for Bertie’ and ‘A for Apple’ in a way that tested Keen’s patience. ‘There are tables there which can’t be seen from the street. We’re not likely to be spotted. Would that be suitable for you, or do you have a specific procedure that you like to follow?’

Keen made a note of the date in his desk diary and smiled: first-time buyers were often like this, jumpy and prone to melodrama, wanting codewords and gadgets and chalk marks on walls.

‘There is no specific procedure,’ he said. ‘I can find the café.’

‘Good. But how will I recognize you?’

As he asked the question, Bob Randall was sitting in Thames House staring at a JPEG of Keen taken in western Afghanistan in 1983, but it was necessary cover.

‘I’m tall,’ Keen said, switching the phone to his other ear. ‘I’ll be wearing a dark blue suit, most probably. My experience is that in circumstances such as these two people who have never met before very quickly come to recognize one another. Call it one of the riddles of the trade.’

‘Of course,’ Randall replied. ‘Of course. And when shall we say? Perhaps six o’clock?’

‘Fine,’ Keen said. He was already hanging up. ‘Six o’clock.’

Two days later, the businessman calling himself Bob Randall arrived at the café on Shepherd’s Bush Road half an hour early and picked out a secluded table, his back facing the busy street. At 17.55, he took a call from Ian Boyle, informing him in a jumble of code and double-speak that the BA flight from Moscow had eventually landed some ninety-five minutes late. The subject had used a public telephone box – not a mobile – after clearing Passport Control, and was now picking up his luggage in the hall. The call had been made to a west London number that was already being traced.

‘Understood,’ he told him. ‘And was there any sign of Duchev?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well keep on it, please. And brief Paul Quinn. I’m going to be walking the dog for the next two hours. Contact me again at eight.’

And at that moment he saw Christopher Keen coming into the café, indeed wearing a dark blue suit, a striking man possessed of a languid self-confidence. Demonstrably public school, he thought, and felt the old prejudice kick in like a habit. The photograph at Thames House had not done justice to Keen’s well-preserved good looks, nor to his travelled, evidently disdainful manner. The two men made eye contact and Randall gave a thin smile, his moustache lifting slightly to reveal stained yellow teeth.

Keen sensed immediately that there was something unconvincing about his prospective client. The suit was off the peg, and the shirt, bought as white but now greyed by repeated launderings, looked cheap and untailored. This was not a businessman, with ‘minor difficulties in the former Soviet Union’, far less someone who could afford to employ the services of Divisar Corporate Intelligence.

‘Mr Randall,’ he said, with a handshake that deliberately crushed his knuckles. Keen looked quickly at the ground and registered his shoes. Grey – possibly fake – patent leather, tasselled and scuffed. Further evidence. ‘How can I help?’

‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’ Randall was trying to release his hand. ‘Let me start by getting you a drink.’

‘That would be very kind, thank you.’

‘Did you find the café OK?’

‘Easily.’

Keen placed a black Psion Organiser and a mobile telephone on the table in front of him and sat down. Freeing the trapped vents of his suit jacket, he looked out of the window and tried to ascertain if he was being watched. It was an instinct, no more than that, but something was out of place. A crowd of office workers had gathered at a table on the other side of the window and an elderly man with a limp was walking into the café alone. The traffic heading north towards Shepherd’s Bush Green had been slowed by a van double-parked outside a mini-supermarket. Its rear doors were flung open and two young Asian men were unloading boxes from the back.

‘It’s part of a chain, I believe,’ Randall said.

‘What’s that?’

‘The café. Part of a chain.’

‘I know.’

A waitress came and took their order for two beers. Keen wondered if he would have to stay long.

‘So, I very much appreciate your meeting me at such short notice.’ The businessman had a laboured, slightly self-satisfied way of strangling words, an accent located somewhere near Bracknell. ‘Had you far to come?’

‘Not at all. I had a meeting in Chelsea. Caught a fast black.’

Randall’s eyes dropped out of character, as if Keen had made a racist remark. ‘Excuse me?’

‘A fast black,’ he explained. ‘A taxi.’

‘Oh.’ In the uneasy silence that followed, the waitress returned and poured lager into his glass.

‘So, how long have you worked in your particular field?’

‘About seven or eight years.’

‘And in Russia before that?’

‘Among other places, yes.’ Keen thanked the waitress with a patrician smile and picked up his glass. ‘I take it you’ve been there?’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘And yet you told me on the telephone that you have a problem in the former Soviet Union. Tell me, Mr Randall, what is it that you think I can do for you?’

Leaning back in his seat, Randall nodded and swallowed a mouthful of lager. He blinked repeatedly and a small amount of foam evaporated into his moustache. After a momentary pause he said, ‘Forgive me. It was necessary to employ a little subterfuge to prevent your employers becoming suspicious. My name is not Bob Randall, as perhaps you may have guessed. It is Stephen Taploe. I work across the river from your former Friends.’

Keen folded his arms and muttered, ‘You don’t say,’ as Taploe pushed his tongue into the side of his cheek, his feet moving involuntarily under the table. ‘And you think that I can help you with something …’

‘Well, it’s a good deal more complicated than that,’ he said. ‘To come straight to the point, Mr Keen, this has become something of a family matter.’

5

‘It’s possible, Jenny, that one day you’ll walk into a public art gallery and look at nothing at all. A total absence. Something with no texture, no shape, no solidity. No materials will have been used up in its construction, not even light or sound. Just a room full of nothing. That will be the exhibit, the gimmick, the thing you’re encouraged to look at and talk about over cranberry juice at Soho House. Emptiness. Actually, the opposite of art.’

Jenny was glad that Ben wasn’t talking about his father any more. She preferred it when his mood was less anxious and abrasive. It was another side to him, more relaxed and quick-witted; she wondered if it was even flirtatious. But Ben looked like the faithful type: he was only thirty-two, after all, and there were pictures of his wife all over the studio walls, nudes and portraits of a quality that had persuaded her to sit for him in the first place.

‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked, and began gathering up her clothes. Ben was cleaning his brushes at the sink, wrapping the bristles in a rubber band and covering any exposed paint with small wraps of cling film.

‘Since we got engaged,’ he said. ‘About three years.’

‘It’s such a great house.’ Jenny’s stomach flattened out as she stretched into a thick woollen polo neck, her head disappearing in the struggle to find sleeves.

‘Alice’s father bought it cheap in the late seventies. Thought it would make a good investment.’

The head popped out, like somebody breaking free of a straitjacket.

‘Well he thought right,’ she said, shaking out her hair. ‘And it’s useful for you to be able to work from home.’

‘It is,’ Ben said. ‘It is. It’s a great space. I’m very lucky.’

‘A lot of artists have to rent studios.’

‘I know that.’

She was oblivious to it, but talking about the house always made Ben feel edgy. Three storeys of prime Notting Hill real estate and not a brick of it his. When Carolyn, his mother, had died seven years before, she had left her two sons a few hundred pounds and a small flat in Clapham that they rented out to unreliable tenants. Alice’s father, by contrast, was wealthy: on top of her basic salary as a journalist she had access to a substantial trust, and the house was bought in her name.

‘So what are you cooking for your brother?’

Ben was glad of the change of subject. Turning round, he said: ‘Something Thai, maybe a green curry.’

‘Oh. Bit of a dab hand in the kitchen, are we?’

‘Well, not bad. I find it relaxing after a day in the studio. And Alice can’t boil an egg. So it’s either that or we eat out every night.’

‘What about Mark? What about your brother? Can he cook?’

Ben laughed, as if she had asked a stupid question.

‘Mark doesn’t know one end of a kitchen from the other. Anyway, he’s always out at night, with clients or away at the club. Spends a lot of his time travelling overseas. He doesn’t get much chance to be at home.’

‘Really?’ Jenny was putting on her shoes. ‘What time’s he due back?’

She’s interested, he thought. They always are. They see photos of Mark in the hall and they want a chance to meet him.

‘I’m not sure. He just called on the phone from Heathrow.’

‘Right.’

From her reaction, it was clear that Jenny would not have time to stay. Picking up her bag, she soon made for the stairs and it remained only to pay her. Ben had thirty pounds in his wallet, six five-pound notes, which he pressed into her hand. They were walking towards the front door when he heard the scratch of a key in the lock. The door opened and Alice walked in, talking rapidly into her mobile phone. She did a double-take when she saw Ben standing at the foot of the staircase beside a tall, slightly flushed pretty girl and he raised his eyebrows as a way of saying ‘hello’. Jenny took a step back inside.

‘That’s not the point,’ Alice was saying. Her voice was raised to a pitch just below outright aggression. ‘I told her she’d have a chance to read through the piece. To check it. That was a promise I made.’ Jenny found herself standing awkwardly between them, like an actor waiting to go onstage. ‘So if you go ahead and print it, her whole family, who I’ve known since I was six fucking years old, are going to go …’

Ben smiled uneasily and felt the dread of the phone call’s aftermath, another work crisis the dutiful husband would have to resolve. ‘Thanks, then,’ Jenny whispered to him, moving towards the door. ‘Same time tomorrow?’

‘Same time,’ he said.

‘About midday?’

‘Midday.’

‘Your wife’s lovely,’ she mouthed, standing below him on the threshold. ‘Really pretty.’

Ben merely nodded and watched as Jenny turned towards Ladbroke Grove. Only when she was out of sight did he close the door.

‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying, Andy.’ Alice had kicked off her shoes and was now stretched out on the sofa. A great part of her lived for arguments of this kind, for the adrenalin surge of conflict. ‘If the article appears as it is …’ She pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘Fuck, I got cut off.’

‘What happened?’

Ben came over and sat beside her. Her cheek as he kissed it was cold and smelled of moisturizer and cigarettes.

‘You remember that piece I wrote about my friend from school, the girl who was arrested for drug smuggling?’ Alice was redialling Andy’s number as she spoke. Ben vaguely remembered the story. ‘It was supposed to be a feature but the news desk got hold of it. Now they’ve gone and made the girl out to be some kind of wild child who should have known better, exactly what I promised Jane we wouldn’t do.’ She stared at the read-out on her mobile phone. ‘Great. And now Andy’s switched his phone off.’

‘Her name is Jane?’ The observation was a non sequitur, but Alice didn’t seem to notice.

‘She came to me because she knew the press would be on to her sooner or later. She thought she could trust me to tell her side of the story. I’m the only journalist her family knows.’

‘And now it’s been taken out of your hands?’

He was trying to appear interested, trying to say the right things, but he knew that Alice was most probably lying to him. She would have leaked the story to the news desk in the hope of winning their approval. Alice was ambitious to move from features into news; the more scoops she could push their way, the better would be her chances of promotion.

‘That’s right. Which explains why Andy isn’t returning my calls.’

‘And how did Andy get hold of the story?’

Her answer here would prove interesting. Would she confess to showing the interview to a news reporter, or claim that it was taken from her desk? Each time there was a crisis of this kind, Alice inevitably found someone else to blame.

‘I just mentioned it to a colleague over lunch,’ she said, as if this small detail did not in itself imply a breach of trust. ‘Next thing I know, the news editor is demanding that I hand over the interview so that he can farm it for quotes.’

Ben noticed that she had stopped trying to reach Andy’s mobile phone.

‘So why didn’t you just refuse?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him you’d made a deal with the girl?’

‘It doesn’t work like that.’

Of course it doesn’t. ‘Why not?’ he said.

‘Look, if you’re just going to be difficult about this we might as well –’

‘Why am I being difficult? I’m just trying to find out –’

‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’

The inevitable change of subject.

‘Did I what?’

‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’

‘Alice, I’m not your fucking PA. I’ve been busy in the studio all day. If I have time, I’ll get it tomorrow.’

‘Great.’ And she was on her feet, sighing. ‘Too busy doing what? To walk five hundred metres to the main road?’

‘No. Too busy working.’

‘Working?’

‘Is that where we’re going with this?’ Ben pointed towards the attic. ‘Painting isn’t work? There’s no such thing as a busy day when you’re an artist?’

Alice took off her earrings and put them on a table.

‘Was that her?’ she asked, trying a different tack. ‘The one at the bottom of the stairs?’

‘Jenny? Yes, when you came in. Of course it was.’

‘And is she nice?’

‘Nice?’

‘Do you get on with her?’

A pause.

‘We get on fine, yes. She just lies down and I start painting. It’s not really about “getting on”.’

‘What is it about then?’

‘So you’re now picking a fight with me about a model?’

Alice turned her back on him.

‘It’s just that I thought you were painting older people nowadays. Isn’t that the idea for the new show?’

‘No. Why would you think that? It’s just nudes. Age doesn’t come into it.’

‘So you still hire a girl purely on the basis of looks?’

Ben stood up from the sofa and decided to get away. He would go back upstairs to the studio, put on a record and wait until Alice had calmed down.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’ve had a bad day at work. Somebody fucked you over. Try not to take it out on everyone else.’ Alice stubbed out her cigarette and said nothing. ‘Why don’t we start again later? Mark’s arriving in less than an hour. Have a bath and chill out.’

‘Don’t tell me to “chill out”. Just give me a straight answer to my question.’

Ben had to stop and turn.

‘To what question?’

And Alice reacted as if he were deliberately concealing something.

‘Fine,’ she said, and pointedly looked at her watch. ‘What time does the dry cleaner close?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘Well, I’m just wondering what I’m going to wear to this party tomorrow night, now that you haven’t picked up my dress.’

‘So go and get it. You’re a big girl.’

‘Well, I don’t have much choice, do I?’

And Ben was halfway upstairs, heading back to the studio, when he heard the front door slam behind him.

6

Stephen Taploe called the waitress over with an impatient wave of his hand and asked for the bill. It had become necessary to conduct the rest of the conversation outside the café, because there were now three men standing idly behind Keen’s chair, sucking on bottles of Mexican lager. The bill came to a little under nine pounds and Taploe put the receipt carefully in his wallet. He was very exact when it came to filing for expenses.

The two men crossed the road and turned towards Brook Green, a steady head-on wind blowing dried leaves and litter along the pavement. Choosing his moment with care, Taploe said, ‘What do you know about a man called Sebastian Roth?’

The question took Keen by surprise. His first thought was that someone inside Divisar had breached client confidentiality.

‘Why don’t you tell me what you know about a man called Sebastian Roth and I’ll see if I can be of any assistance?’ he said. ‘Sort of fill in the blanks.’

Taploe had anticipated that Keen would be evasive; it bought him time.

‘I know what any person can read in the papers. Roth is thirty-six years old, an entrepreneur, very well connected with the present Labour government, the only son of a Tory peer. He went to Eton, where he was neither particularly successful nor popular and dropped out of Oxford after less than a year. After a stint in the City, he opened the original Libra nightclub about six months before Ministry of Sound and at least a year before Cream first took off in Liverpool. Those three are still the nightclubs of choice for the younger generation, though it’s mostly compact discs now, isn’t it? That’s how they make their money.’ Keen remained silent. ‘Judging from the photographs in certain magazines – Tatler, Harpers & Queen and so on – Roth looks to have a new girlfriend on his arm every week, although we think he’s something of a loner. Very little contact with his family, no relationship at all with either of his two siblings. Libra is his passion, extending the brand, controlling the business. Roth spends a lot of time overseas, collects art, and has recently finished conversion on a house in Pimlico valued at over two million pounds. I also happen to know that one of his representatives came to your company some months ago asking for assistance.’

Keen slowed his pace.

‘You know that I can’t discuss that,’ he said.

‘Then allow me discuss it for you.’ It was all going very well for Stephen Taploe, the one-upmanship, the gradual trap. He flattened down his moustache and coughed lightly. ‘Roth has a lawyer friend, an individual by the name of Thomas Macklin. Helped him build the Libra empire, the Paris and New York sites, the merchandising arm in particular. I believe you’ve made his acquaintance?’

‘Go on.’ The hard soles of Keen’s brogues clipped on the pavement as they turned left into Sterndale Road.

‘In the past four months, Macklin has made eight separate trips to Russia. On three of these journeys he took internal flights from St Petersburg to Moscow, where he remained for several days.’

‘May I ask why he was being followed?’

To encourage a greater openness in Keen, Taploe opted to be as candid as the situation would allow.

‘He wasn’t being followed, exactly. At least, not at first. But on Macklin’s third visit to the Russian capital he was observed by local law enforcement officials talking to a known member of the Kukushkin crime syndicate under observation in a separate case. Nothing unusual there, you might think, but the meetings then occurred again, on trips four, five and six. Each time with the same man, albeit in a different location.’