Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Read online

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Kite, fearing what his friend had told them.

  Fariba exchanged a look with one of the men outside the car. He lowered the window and took a syringe from him, indicating to the man holding Kite that he should squeeze more tightly around his neck.

  ‘It will be best if you don’t kick out,’ he said, and immediately stabbed the needle through Kite’s suit trousers into the muscles of his right thigh.

  Kite winced, feeling the needle almost at the bone, but the strength of the man’s hold on him was so great that he could make no meaningful sound.

  ‘I had such an interesting series of conversations with Xavier,’ said Fariba. ‘He told me all about the summer of 1989. All about Luc Bonnard and a woman named Martha Raine. Cast your mind back to that time, Lachlan. I need your memory. When you wake up, I want you to tell me everything you can about Ali Eskandarian.’

  5

  ‘Just because he rents a Jag from Europcar doesn’t make him a terrorist. Doesn’t make him BOX 88 either.’

  Matt Tomkins and Cara Jannaway had jumped into a taxi outside South Kensington station and were trying to catch up with Dean in the Astra. Vosse was coordinating the pursuit from Acton.

  ‘Maybe we should discuss this later,’ Cara replied, nodding in the direction of the driver.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Tomkins, and checked his mobile for Dean and Swinburn’s positions.

  Cara addressed the driver.

  ‘Excuse me? Could you head to the Mandarin Oriental at the top of Knightsbridge?’

  ‘What’s that, luv?’

  The driver had one ear tuned to the traffic, the other to James O’Brien on LBC. He turned down the volume on the radio.

  ‘I said can we head towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel just before Hyde Park Corner?’

  ‘Sure thing. No problem.’

  ‘See?’ said Tomkins. ‘He’s not even listening to what we’re saying.’

  When the driver turned the volume back up, Cara indicated that it was secure to talk.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘His normal car could be in the garage. He might have rented the Jag to keep up appearances. Might be an operation they’re working together. Who knows?’

  ‘Who knows—’

  ‘But who’s the flash Arab? Looked like they’d never met before, then they go off together. BIRD sent a message to his wife saying he was heading to lunch with a friend of Xavier’s—’

  ‘I know that,’ said Tomkins petulantly. ‘I read the group chat. Could be he’s bullshitting his wife.’

  ‘Speaking of group chats …’

  Vosse had sent a message to the team with an update on the Jaguar. The vehicle had been rented for only two days by a woman named ‘Pegah Azizi’ using a French driving licence which Thames House was checking with Paris. The vehicle was due back by six o’clock that evening.

  ‘Azizi. What’s that?’ Tomkins asked. ‘Iranian?’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  Cara typed a reply: No sign of a woman in the Jag.

  They could both see that Vosse was replying.

  My thoughts exactly, he wrote. BIRD almost at Hyde Park Corner. Stay on him.

  Cara switched lists, returning to the location feeds for Dean and Swinburn. Vosse was the only one with a fix on Kite’s position.

  ‘We’re too far away,’ she said, knowing that coverage of Kite’s phone wouldn’t be enough to pinpoint his position if he went into a high-rise or basement.

  ‘Relax,’ Tomkins replied. ‘It’s lunchtime. They’re probably going for something to eat. We just wait outside whatever restaurant they choose, pick BIRD up on his way out.’

  Cara looked into her lap.

  ‘What if they’re not going to lunch?’

  Tomkins looked at her blankly. ‘Where are they going then?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno.’ She stared out at the stalled London traffic, windscreens blinking in the lunchtime sun. ‘I just have a weird feeling about this.’

  Tessa Swinburn’s moped became boxed in at a set of traffic lights near the Mandarin Oriental and she lost sight of the Jaguar as it pulled away towards Hyde Park Corner. Kieran Dean had managed to stay on Kite’s tail a little longer, but his luck ran out on Old Park Lane when a double-parked Uber blocked his way while waiting for a pickup outside the Playboy Casino. Sounding the horn on the Astra, Dean watched in frustration as Kite’s Jaguar made a right turn onto Cheshire Street, quickly disappearing from view. Less than a minute later, a Chinese man with a fat gut and an empty wallet wandered out of the casino and clambered into the cab. Moments later Swinburn was at last on Cheshire Street, passing a small, dimly lit underground car park. He assumed that the Jaguar had gone deeper into Mayfair and turned north in the direction of Shepherd Market. A lorry was unloading on a double yellow and Dean was again obliged to wait while the driver wheeled a trolley off the road. He then continued along the western edge of Shepherd Market, emerging within spitting distance of the Saudi embassy. There was no sign of BIRD in any direction.

  Vosse called as Dean was waiting at a set of lights outside the Curzon cinema.

  ‘Are you lot taking the piss?’ he shouted. ‘Villanelle’s in outer space, Cagney and Lacey went the wrong way on Piccadilly. What the fuck are you doing on Curzon Street? Get your arse back to the Playboy Casino. BIRD’s probably gone in there for a flutter with his pal from the Middle East.’

  Dean reached for his second phone, loaded Waze and typed in ‘Playboy Casino’ as the lights turned green and a car behind him leaned on its horn. The journey time was estimated at less than five minutes, but he would have to go back out onto Park Lane and loop round via Hyde Park Corner.

  ‘On my way,’ he said.

  Vosse had already hung up.

  Cara had wanted the driver to turn north at the Hard Rock Cafe, but Tomkins had insisted that she’d seen the wrong car. As far as he was concerned, BIRD was still heading east towards Piccadilly Circus.

  ‘Think about it,’ he told her. ‘They’ve got the Ritz up there, The Wolseley, White’s and Boodle’s. That’s where men like that go for lunch. Not Shepherd’s Market.’

  Cara thought he was talking shit but knew that she didn’t have the luxury of arguing with him: by the time Tomkins had realised his mistake, BIRD would be long gone. So, as the taxi waited in traffic, she thanked the driver, opened the door and stepped out onto the street.

  ‘Where the fuck are you going?’ Tomkins shouted.

  ‘She’s leaving you, mate,’ said the driver as Cara slammed the door. ‘Still want the West End, do we?’

  The cab pulled away. Tomkins was left alone in the back, watching Cara hurrying along Half Moon Street in her black boots and long winter coat. He tried calling her phone but she wouldn’t pick up. Instead he texted Vosse and told him what Cara had done, only to receive the reply: At least somebody is using their initiative.

  By then, the taxi was outside Fortnum & Mason, BIRD’s Jag was nowhere to be seen and Matt Tomkins was out of the hunt.

  Cara understood from the group message that Vosse wanted the team to look for Kite in the area surrounding the Playboy Casino. There was a Four Seasons Hotel across the street, a branch of Nobu outside the Hilton on Park Lane, Theo Randall’s restaurant at the Intercontinental as well as a number of private members clubs – the Royal Air Force, the Cavalry & Guards – in the area. All of them would need searching.

  Find BIRD, he had written. Find the car. Villanelle’s going to the Playboy. Divide up the rest. Let’s get control of this situation.

  Cara could not shake off the sense that something was wrong. She looked at Kite’s last known position on the corner of Old Park Lane and wondered why his phone had gone down. A basement? A signal black hole? Or something more sinister?

  She entered Cheshire Street from the east. A van emerged from a side road ahead of her, turned right and almost knocked her off her feet as it sped downhill in the direction from which she had come. Two men were in the front, both of Middle Easter
n origin, both wearing dark jackets and white shirts. The man in the passenger seat had a beard but no sideburns. Their appearance seemed at odds with the nature of their work; as the van turned left at the bottom of the street, she saw KIDSON ELECTRICAL SERVICES emblazoned on the side next to a London phone number and a website address. Memorising the number plate, she reached the corner and saw that the van had emerged not from a side street, as she had first thought, but from a small underground car park. There was an office block next door with a space outside for smokers. Two Chinese women in floor-length puffer jackets were vaping near the entrance. Cara spoke to the younger of the two women.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Did two guys go in there? Both in grey suits and black ties, forty-ish? One of them British, the other from the Middle East?’

  ‘Don’t know anything,’ the woman replied. It was obvious that she spoke only limited English.

  ‘Didn’t see anyone,’ her companion added. She had bad teeth and a mangled London accent. ‘Ask him.’

  A security guard with a goatee beard and acne scars was coming through the door. Cara asked him the same question and received the same answer. No, he hadn’t seen two men in grey suits and black ties. Perhaps they were around the corner in the casino? She gave him a brisk nod of thanks and turned her attention back to the car park. A sign on the wall said ‘FULL’, but the barrier was up and Cara could see movement inside a security hut at the base of the ramp. Her phone pulsed in her hand as she walked towards the hut, momentarily losing her footing on an uneven section of pavement. At the same time, a short, defeated-looking man in a brown woollen hat emerged from the hut. He was in his late fifties and wore a blue quilted jacket, torn at the shoulder, and scuffed black shoes. Like the security guard, he had a rough complexion but was very pale. Cara saw the stubborn, exhausted features of a man who had spent most of his life being pushed around.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  An Eastern European accent. Cara guessed from his features that he was from the former Yugoslavia. She reached the bottom of the ramp so that they were face to face. The car park was small with a low, breeze-block ceiling and space inside for no more than two dozen vehicles. A section of torn plastic pipe had been left along one wall next to a black mini-skip with ‘Commercial Waste’ written on it.

  ‘Have two men been in here? Both wearing grey suits and black …’

  There was no point in continuing. She had seen the Jaguar. Parked towards the rear of the car park beneath a faded poster of couples sitting around a roulette table in a packed casino. The man seemed to sense what she had seen and took a defensive step backwards.

  ‘That car,’ she said, pointing at it. ‘Where’s the owner?’

  He shook his head. ‘What is this? Can I help you?’

  ‘Yeah. You can. That Jag.’ Cara continued to point at the car. ‘How long’s it been here?’

  ‘What do you want, please?’ he asked, and Cara saw that he was afraid.

  ‘I told you. The Jaguar.’

  ‘You have car here? What is your name, please?’

  On her second day at Thames House, an instructor had told Cara’s intake that MI5 officers had the power to arrest members of the public and would be given identification cards made up by the Met so that they could pass for police officers. She had never had cause to take out her ID, but did so now, watching the attendant’s already pallid features pale still further as he realised what was happening.

  ‘Let’s do this the other way round,’ she said. ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  ‘Zoltan,’ he replied.

  Cara suppressed a smile. It sounded like something he had made up on the spot, the sort of name you would give a robot dog in a Marvel movie.

  ‘And you’re the security guard here?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘You’ve been here for the last hour?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘So you saw that Jaguar coming in here less than ten minutes ago?’

  The attendant shook his head. ‘I was having cigarette.’

  ‘Cigarette? Where?’

  Zoltan pointed up the ramp onto Cheshire Street.

  ‘So you didn’t check the Jaguar in?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You didn’t see the driver? You didn’t give him a ticket when he entered?’

  ‘No, miss. Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not yet, there isn’t.’ Cara could see that he was anxious. ‘I’m just asking some questions.’

  She walked towards the Jaguar, looking around for CCTV. There was a dusty, fixed position camera on the far wall, a dome lens in the ceiling closer to the hut. Standing in an empty parking space beside the Jaguar, Cara cupped her hand against the driver’s window and looked inside. Nothing had been left on the seats.

  ‘So you didn’t see them?’

  ‘Excuse me, miss?’

  ‘You didn’t see who got out of this car? Three men, ten minutes ago.’

  ‘No. Like I tell you, I was having cup of coffee.’

  ‘Oh, it’s coffee now?’ said Cara. ‘A minute ago it was a cigarette. You should make your mind up, Zoltan.’

  He took off the woollen hat and quickly flattened down his hair as if it would help him to organise his thoughts more carefully.

  ‘Cigarette with coffee. Both. On my break.’

  Cara walked back towards the hut. A sign bolted to the wall said: ‘Petroleum Spirit. Highly Flammable. Switch Off Engine’. As she passed Zoltan, she said: ‘So who was minding the car park while you were away?’ and watched his eyes slip at the question.

  ‘Sorry, miss?’

  ‘I said who was minding the shop?’

  ‘Nobody. They just came in.’

  Guilt was coming off him like the smell of old oil and rats’ piss in the car park. It annoyed Cara that Zoltan was so bad at lying, that he couldn’t even summon the energy to deceive her with a basic degree of competence.

  ‘They just came in,’ she repeated. ‘Who? The men in the Jaguar?’

  ‘Yes. That is right. The men in the Jaguar.’

  ‘They didn’t need a ticket?’

  ‘No. They come here all the time. That’s their space.’

  The guard pointed at the Jaguar. It was the first meaningful attempt he had made to deceive her, but the remark sealed his fate.

  ‘So this is a branch of Europcar, is it?’ Cara asked.

  Zoltan looked bewildered.

  ‘What, please?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Without bothering to seek his permission, she walked into the security hut. Zoltan followed her. A digital radio was tuned to a station playing ‘Tiny Dancer’. Zoltan turned it down as a Serbian-speaking disc jockey began speaking over the end of the track.

  ‘Are those CCTV cameras in operation?’ Cara asked.

  ‘Not working.’

  ‘Is that legal?’

  Zoltan shrugged.

  ‘Mind if I see for myself?’

  He didn’t have the courage to demand a warrant or to try to buy time by calling his boss. He managed to say only: ‘OK, sure’ before indicating the bank of television screens above his filthy, cluttered desk. Within minutes Zoltan had showed her how the security system worked, comprehensively contradicting his earlier claim that the CCTV in the car park was broken. The footage was blurred and indistinct, but as she moved through it, Cara was able to see images of every car and human being that had been on the ramp between midday and half-past twelve.

  ‘Where’s the rest of it?’ she asked when the footage suddenly cut off.

  ‘No more,’ he replied. ‘I go on coffee break, cameras they stopped working.’

  ‘Because you switched them off?’

  Zoltan smiled broadly and shook his head in apparent amusement as he said: ‘No! Of course not.’

  ‘No?’ She watched him put the woollen hat back on his head. ‘You sure about that, Zoltan?’

  ‘One hundred percentage, yes. I am sure.’

  Cara’s pati
ence was now running low. She fixed the guard with the look her father described as ‘Medusa on crack’ and waited for him to come clean. He was standing next to an old kettle and a newly opened box of Yorkshire teabags, rocking very slightly backwards and forwards as he ducked in and out of eye contact.

  ‘Zoltan?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Who switched off the cameras?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Cara leaned towards the bank of screens and fast-forwarded from the point at which the images had blacked out. Sure enough, new footage appeared shortly after twelve fifty. Zoltan made a noise in the back of his throat as Cara clicked through several still images of the white van marked ‘Kidson Electrical Services’ as it moved up the ramp. There was no sign of Kite, nor of the two men from the Jaguar.

  ‘Seemed to be working ten minutes ago,’ she said and waited for what she hoped would be a suitably earnest and detailed apology. When it wasn’t immediately forthcoming she said: ‘How much did they pay you?’

  At that point Zoltan broke. He collapsed onto a squeaking office chair with some of the foam leaking out of it. He put his head in his hands. The wheels on the chair kept dragging back and forth on a torn section of the Daily Express as he shuffled and begged and moaned. He started speaking in Serbian, doubtless cursing his wretched luck and his shabby, half-baked lies. It was probable that his whole life had been a series of failures, each following relentlessly on the heels of the last, leading to this final humiliation.

  ‘What’s that, love?’ Cara asked. ‘You want to tell me something?’

  ‘I cannot,’ he said eventually. ‘I promised.’

  ‘Promised who?’

  ‘The man.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The man who paid me.’ Zoltan looked up with pleading eyes. ‘He said if I tell anyone what he did, he kill me.’

  Cara called Vosse and told him everything. While she waited for him to make the journey from Acton to Mayfair, she instructed Zoltan to close the car park then took a more detailed look at the CCTV. The white van had been parked in the space beside the Jaguar where she had stood and looked through the driver’s window. A bollard had been placed beside it to reserve a slot which the Jaguar had later occupied. Cara knew that Kite had most likely been transferred into the back of the van which had driven past her on Cheshire Street. She passed the vehicle details by text to Vosse, wondering why Kite had so readily agreed to get into the Jaguar in the first place. Was it a deliberate switch? Had he been trying to throw off MI5 surveillance in a patch of dead ground? Surely not. If BOX 88 was all it was cracked up to be, they wouldn’t employ a man as Olympically stupid as Zoltan to clean up after them.