Rip Tide

‘But wouldn’t the boys she met through the “twins” have been a bit young for her?’ asked Blakey. ‘Or was she a… what do they call it these days… a cougar?’

‘I’m surprised you know that expression, David.’ Katherine smiled at him. ‘Maria wasn’t anything like old enough.’

Liz nodded. ‘Anything else we should know about Maria?’

‘I don’t think so. She was very professional, and very good at her work.’ Katherine seemed to be backtracking. ‘I had the feeling everybody liked her.’ She paused and Liz could see from her expression that there was something she wasn’t saying.

This slant on Maria was rather different from the picture that had emerged from the thin file which the Athens Station had copied to Geoffrey Fane. That gave the impression of a serious professional young woman, soon to become thirty. Someone who was most unlikely to go clubbing – unless it was in the line of duty. But maybe the file was out of date. When Bruno Mackay had chosen Maria for this job, he didn’t seem to have bothered to update it. Most people had some sort of hidden self – why should Maria Galanos be any different? She might have had a whole web of emotional entanglements, one of which could have gone disastrously wrong. With the bare facts Liz had, it was impossible to tell.

She wanted to talk further about all this to Blakey, though not in front of Katherine. But the woman continued to sit there, as if expecting to be included in the rest of the conversation. Then Liz noticed Blakey give her a look and Katherine stood up. ‘I’d better get back to my office. Mitchell is supposed to be ringing me from Athens. Is there anything you’d like me to ask him?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Liz, and Katherine Ball left the office, closing the door firmly behind her.

After she’d left, Liz and Blakey sat in silence for a minute; Liz sensed he was uncomfortable. ‘I hope that was helpful,’ he said at last.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Has Katherine been working here long?’

‘Two years.’

‘And before that?’

‘Before that she’d had a bit of a hiatus.’ He gave a small smile. ‘She trained as a lawyer originally, and worked for a few years in one of the big City firms. Very good at it too, I gather. Then she married a businessman, quite a wealthy one; he had business interests in the Middle East and they lived out there in various places for over ten years. Then one day out of the blue the poor chap dropped dead – a heart attack. They didn’t have children, and Katherine didn’t want to stay out there on her own, so she came back to London and started looking for work. Someone suggested she come in for a chat, we hit it off, and I took her on as my deputy. Within six months she was irreplaceable.’

‘You’re obviously lucky to have her,’ said Liz.

They spoke for a few minutes more, and Blakey arranged for Liz to have copies of the CVs of the staff in both UCSO offices. As she left, she wondered again how much he had told Katherine Ball about the investigation. Had he told her of the suspicions about leaked information and why Maria had been taken on in the Athens office? Just how indiscreet was he?

Chapter 25

‘I hope you know the way,’ said Liz to Kanaan Shah as they emerged from Birmingham New Street station. ‘I’ve never been to this place.’

‘Yeah, I know it well. Our best bet is to get a bus.’

The MI5 office in Birmingham was a comparatively new development, set up after the invasion of Iraq had generated a burst of extremist activity in the area. Rather than send teams of people up from London, only to have to feed and water them and provide them with accommodation, it had been decided to open a regional office and post staff there or recruit them locally.

The bus stopped outside a rundown-looking Odeon cinema in an otherwise well-kept street in an inner suburb of the city. The building appeared to be undergoing restoration; its 1920s exterior was covered with scaffolding, and razor wire topped the two solid metal gates securing the site. Little more of the building could be seen through the security gates.

The entrance to the building itself was through a side door, which had obviously once been one of the exits from the cinema. Kanaan tapped a number into a pad on the wall beside the left-hand gate, and a small door clicked open. Liz followed Shah and they walked together into an extensive car park where a variety of cars and vans were parked.

In spite of its scruffy exterior, the inside of the building was clean and brightly painted. A number of small offices had been made out of what was once the entrance concourse of the cinema. Most of the doors were open but only a few of the rooms were occupied. As they walked past one door, a familiar, cheerful-sounding voice shouted out, ‘Hello, stranger.’

Liz stopped, took a few steps back and saw Dave Armstrong, her long-time colleague and friend, getting up from behind a desk. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked in surprise. ‘I hadn’t heard you’d left Northern Ireland.’