A Foreign Country

Kell could see how much she wanted to prolong her return to the spotlight and knew that she might still prove useful to him.

‘Call the Gillespie. Tell them you’ve just landed and need a room. Go to the hotel, but wait outside and make sure you speak to me before you check in.’

Knight looked nonplussed.

‘Is that OK?’ Kell asked him pointedly. If Kell was being paid a thousand a day, chances were that the Knights were on at least half that. In final analysis, they were obliged to do whatever he told them. ‘I’ll need to gain access to the hotel’s computer system. I want all the details from Amelia’s room, arrival and departure times, Internet use and so on. In order to do that, I’ll have to distract whoever works the night shift, get them away from the desk for five or ten minutes. You could be very useful in that context – ordering room service, complaining about a broken tap, pulling an emergency cord in the bathroom. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ Knight replied.

‘Do you have a suitcase or something that will pass for an overnight bag?’

Barbara thought for a moment and said: ‘I think so, yes.’

‘Give me half an hour to check in and then make your way to the hotel.’ He was aware of how quickly he was improvising ideas, old tricks coming back to him all the time; it was as though his brain had been sitting in aspic for eight months. ‘It goes without saying that if you see me in the lobby, we don’t know each other.’

Knight produced a blustery laugh. ‘Of course, Tom.’

‘And keep your phone on.’ Kell climbed into the Citroën. ‘Chances are I’ll need to call you within the hour.’

7

The Citroën sat-nav knew how to negotiate the Nice one-way system and had led Kell to Boulevard Dubouchage within twenty minutes. The Hotel Gillespie was exactly the sort of place that Amelia favoured: modest in size but classy; comfortable but not ostentatious. George Truscott would have booked himself a suite at the Negresco and charged the lot to the British taxpayer.

There was an underground car park three blocks away. Kell looked for a secure place to stow his passport and the contents of his wallet and found a narrow wall cavity in a cracked breeze block about two metres above ground. Marquand had sent ahead full documentation for Stephen Uniacke, including credit cards, a passport, a driving licence, and the general paraphernalia of day-to-day life in England: supermarket loyalty cards; membership of Kew Gardens; breakdown cover for the RAC. There were even faded wallet photographs of Uniacke’s phantom wife and phantom children. Kell discarded the envelope and took a lift up to street level. Uniacke – supposedly a marketing consultant with offices in Reading – had been one of three aliases that Kell had regularly employed during his twenty-two-year career in British Intelligence. Assuming the identity one more time felt as natural to him – indeed, in many ways, as comforting – as putting on an old coat.

The Gillespie was set back from the street by a short, semi-circular access road that allowed vehicles to pull up outside the entrance, depositing passengers and baggage. Kell walked through a pair of automatic doors and climbed a flight of steps into an intimate midnight lobby dotted with black-and-white photographs of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and other musical legends of yesteryear. He had a deep and incurable aversion to jazz but a fondness for sober, low-lit lobbies with rugs on old wooden floors, decent oil paintings and residents’ bars that tinkled with ice and conversation. A young man in a dark jacket with acne and cropped blond hair was organizing a large bowl of potpourri on the reception desk. The night porter. He greeted Kell with an effortful smile and Kell saw that he looked tired to the point of exhaustion.

‘May I help you, sir?’

Kell put his bag on the ground and explained, in French, that he had reserved a room under the name ‘Uniacke’. He was asked for his identification and a credit card, and obliged to fill in a brief registration form. There was a computer terminal at the desk on which the porter called up Uniacke’s details. The keyboard was below the counter, out of sight, so that it was not possible for Kell to follow the keystrokes of any log-in password.

‘I’ve stayed here before,’ he said, scoping the small office at the back of the reception area where a second computer terminal was visible. There was a can of Coke adjacent to the screen and a large paperback book open on the desk. Kell had been looking for evidence of a CCTV system in the lobby but had not yet seen one. ‘Do you have a record of that on your system?’

It was a prepared question to which he already knew the answer. Nevertheless, when the porter responded, he would have the opportunity to lean over the desk and to look directly at the reservation system in feigned astonishment.

‘Let me have a look, sir,’ the porter duly replied. A downy fur covered his pale, washed-out skin, a zit primed to burst on the chin. ‘No, I don’t think we have a record of that here …’

‘You don’t?’ Kell ramped up his surprise and touched the side of the screen, tilting it towards him so that he could identify the booking software operated by the hotel. It was ‘Opera’, the most widely used reservations system in Europe and one with which Kell was reasonably familiar. Uniacke’s details were laid out on a guest folio that itemized his impending expenses in a series of boxes marked ‘Food’, ‘Accommodation’, ‘Drinks’ and ‘Telephone’. As long as the porter left himself logged in, accessing Amelia’s information would be straightforward. Kell knew that she had been staying in Room 218 and that the tabs on Opera would take him to her personal details in two or three clicks of a mouse.

‘Perhaps it’s under my wife’s name,’ he said, moving his hand back behind the counter. A guest emerged from the bar, nodded at the porter and walked out of the lobby towards a bank of lifts. Kell took a few steps backwards, peered into the bar, and spotted a young couple drinking cognacs at a table in the far corner. A wide-hipped barmaid was picking peanuts off the carpet. The room was otherwise deserted. ‘Never mind,’ he said, turning back to the desk. ‘Could I arrange a wake-up call for the morning? Seven o’clock?’

It was a small detail, but would give the porter the useful impression that Monsieur Uniacke intended to go to sleep as soon as he reached his room.

‘Of course, sir.’

Kell was allocated a room on the third floor and walked up the stairs in order to familiarize himself with the layout of the hotel. On the first-floor landing he saw something that gave him an idea: a cupboard, the door ajar, in which a chambermaid had left a Hoover and various cleaning products. He continued along a short passage, entered his room using his card key, and immediately began to unpack. En route to Heathrow, Marquand had given him a laptop. Kell placed an encrypted 3G modem in a USB port and accessed the SIS server through three password-protected firewalls. There were two miniatures of Johnnie Walker in the mini-bar and he drank them, fifty-fifty with Evian, while he checked his email. Marquand had sent a message with an update on Amelia’s disappearance:

Trust you have arrived safely. No sign of our friend. Peripherals still inactive.

‘Peripherals’ was a reference to Amelia’s credit cards and mobile phone.

Funerals at crematoria in the Paris 14th on applicable days. Look for surnames: Chamson, Lilar, de Vilmorin, Tardieu, Radiguet, Malot, Bourget. Investigating further. Should have specifics within 24.

Crematoria. Trust Marquand to be fastidious with the Latin. Kell sprayed some aftershave under his shirt, switched the SIMs on his mobile so that he could check any private messages from London, and wolfed a tube of Pringles from the mini-bar. He then replaced the Uniacke SIM and dialled the Knights’ number. Barbara picked up. It sounded as though her husband was doing the driving.

‘Mr Kell?’

‘Where are you, Barbara?’

‘We’re just parking around the corner from the hotel. We were a little delayed in traffic.’

‘Did you get the room?’

‘Yes. We rang from the airport.’

‘Who made the call?’

‘I did.’

‘And did you say it was for two people?’

Barbara hesitated before replying, as though she suspected Kell was laying a trap for her. ‘Not specifically, but I think he understood that I was with my husband.’

Kell took the risk. ‘Change of plan,’ he said. ‘I want you to check in alone. I need you to leave Bill on the outside.’

‘I see.’ There was an awkward pause as Barbara absorbed the instruction.

‘I’m going to create a diversion at two o’clock that will require the night porter to go upstairs and fetch a Hoover.’

The line cut out briefly and Barbara said: ‘A what?’

‘A Hoover. A vacuum cleaner. Listen carefully. What I’m going to tell you is important. The Hoover is in a cupboard on the first-floor landing. You’ll be waiting there at two. When the porter comes up, tell him that you’re lost and can’t find your room. Get him to show you where it is. Don’t let him come back to reception. If he insists on doing so, make a fuss. Feign illness, start crying, do whatever you have to do. When you get to the door of your room, ask him to come inside and explain how to work the television. Keep him busy, that’s the main thing. I may need ten minutes if the log-in is down. Ask him questions. You’re a lonely old lady with jet lag. Is that OK? Do you think you can manage that?’

‘It sounds very straightforward,’ Barbara replied, and Kell detected a note of terseness in her voice. He was aware that he was being brusque, and that to describe her as an ‘old lady’ was not, in retrospect, particularly constructive.

‘When you check in, play up the eccentric side of your personality,’ he continued, trying to restore some rapport. ‘Get your papers in a muddle. Ask how to use the card key for your room. Flirt a little bit. The night porter is a young guy, probably speaks English. Try that first before you opt for French. OK?’

It sounded as though Barbara was writing things down. ‘Of course, Tom.’

Kell explained that he would call back at 1.45 a.m. to confirm the plan. In the meantime, she was to check the hotel for any signs of a security guard, maid or member of the kitchen staff who might have remained on the premises. If she saw anybody, she was to alert him immediately.

‘What room are you in?’ Barbara asked him.

‘Three two two. And tell Bill to keep his eye on the entrance. Anybody tries to come in from the street between one fifty-five and two-fifteen, he needs to stall them.’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘Make sure he understands. The last thing I’ll need when I’m sitting in the office is a guest walking through the lobby.’