A Darker Place

Katya went to the sideboard, poured a vodka and passed it to Svetlana. ‘True – if it was his face.’

Svetlana looked at her. ‘Thank you, my dear. I presume you mean plastic surgery?’

‘Not as such, although it’s a long-term possibility. Making him a new person, totally different in every way, that’s how I would approach it. What is a postman or a policeman? A uniform is what we see and accept, not so much the individual. Take Alex. His persona is like a Hollywood costume actor’s – the hair, the beard, so extravagant. Svetlana has told me of his love as a boy for The Three Musketeers and Captain Blood,the swagger, the boldness inherent in such costume dramas. That is what he projects and what people see in him.’

‘So how would you change him? By cutting his hair?’ Monica said.

‘If you did that and removed the beard, I think you would be amazed.’

They all thought about it and Svetlana said, ‘He couldn’t live in the house, of course. But Kelly used to use the apartment over the garage as a study. They practised judo up there.’

‘Do you still use it?’ Roper asked.

It was Katya who answered. ‘Until three months ago, we had a young Pole named Marek living there, taking care of the garden. He had a sociology degree, but in Warsaw that only brought him two pounds an hour as a teacher. We let him live in the apartment, and as long as he saw to the garden, we never queried what else he did. He was with us for almost a year before he decided to go home again.’

‘There’s another possibility, too,’ Svetlana said. ‘I have a cottage way down by the Thames estuary beyond Dartford looking out towards Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey. Holly End the place is called, marshland, wildfowl, birds, shingle beaches. You can breathe there.’

‘It sounds nice. Could Alex hide himself there?’ Monica asked Katya.

‘It’s lonely and desolate enough. The problem is if it’s too lonely.’

‘We’ll take a look at it, too,’ Monica said. ‘We wouldn’t want Alex going stir-crazy, though.’

‘There’s an old Russian saying,’ Katya put in. ‘If you want to hide a pine tree, put it in a forest of pines.’

‘What’s your point?’ Roper asked.

‘I may be wrong, but I recall a story about an important letter that was the object of a heated search.’

‘I think I know the one you mean. The letter was in plain view all along, just another letter,’ Roper said. ‘And you think that might work for Kurbsky?’

‘Yes,’ Katya told him. ‘Let me give it some thought. But now, it’s time for lunch.’ She smiled at Monica. ‘If you’d mind helping me?’

‘Only if you call me Monica.’ They went out together and Svetlana reached and put a hand on Roper’s knee.

‘There is much more going on with Alex than it seems, I’m sure of it. I don’t know what it is, but I will find out, I promise you, my dear.’

‘So you and Katya will come on board, help us to find a solution?’

‘What else would I do? Alexander is my blood, and blood is everything. Now – I’m an old woman now and haven’t time to waste, so forgive my directness. When Monica was telling us the story, she mentioned General Ferguson and one of his closest associates, a Sean Dillon, who used to be with the IRA.’

‘Yes. When the General persuaded him, if you could call it that, to join the organization, he said it was because he needed someone who could be worse than the bad guys.’

‘I see. And it is this man whom Monica favours?’

‘You could put it that way.’

‘I look forward to meeting him. Kelly flirted with the IRA when he was a student in Dublin. He once said it brought out the romantic in him.’

‘There wasn’t anything in the least romantic about the IRA in Belfast in the years I was there,’ he told her.

‘But that is all over now, my dear, a long, long time ago.’

That evening, there was a council of war at Holland Park. Ferguson was there, Roper, Monica, Dillon, and Harry and Billy Salter.