‘You’re joking.’
‘I wish I was.’
Hart explains how the Eurotunnel plan was a deliberate misdirection and that she flew out on a private helicopter from Battersea. Right under everyone’s noses.
‘No one was there to stop her?’ Jake asks incredulously.
He has already had his passport checked once in London. His face too, ironically. According to the investigative website he was trawling earlier for information on Rob, the Paris Eurostar terminal is one of only three places in France where the government allows facial-recognition cameras. The other two are Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports.
‘Stay safe,’ Hart says. ‘And keep in touch. We’ve flagged up Varma’s death with Europol – they’re putting out an arrest warrant for Gilmour Martin.’
After signing off with Hart, Jake calls up the investigative website again. He will tell Bex about Dr Varma in a while. It’s not the sort of news anyone wants to be woken up to hear. Dr Varma’s murder will soon be on the news and he needs to alert the website to the connection between Dr Varma and Rob. But then he sees a small story about a super recogniser who has gone missing in France. According to the report, she was part of a secret surveillance unit in Paris that had been set up to target the gilets jaunes, the yellow-vest protestors who’d been bringing Paris to a standstill in their calls for economic justice.
The story is full of indignation that such a unit even existed – further proof that France, champion of civil liberties, is becoming a Big Brother state – but Jake is more interested in the missing woman. She doesn’t look like Kate, but she’s of similar age and was the unit’s star super recogniser. And someone thinks they might have seen her after she disappeared – in Brittany.
95
Kate
Kate touches the neckband again as Putin follows the coastal road around the bay. If she were there in different circumstances, she could appreciate the scenery more. Rob was right. Brittany and Cornwall are uncannily similar, like twins: the hidden sandy coves and rocky headlands, high hedgerows and Monterey pines, windfarms and gorse. It’s enough to make her cry. Rob has often raved about Brittany – Cornwall without the crowds – but she knows Jake would love it here too. And she has a terrible feeling that she’s never going to see him again.
There were no checks when they arrived at Brest Bretagne airport. No opportunities to put some distance between her and the neckband’s remote. They were waved through the VIP channel and Putin picked up a car from the car park. Rob must have passed through the airport many times. He never talked about it though, not until recently, when he suggested they visit Brittany together. And now she’s here, wondering if he is too.
As far as she can tell from the car’s satnav, they’ve since headed west from the airport, skirting around the north of Brest and through Saint-Renan and Ploumoguer to the coast. They’re now somewhere northwest of Illien, driving down an increasingly narrow lane to a headland.
‘Is this the house?’ she asks.
‘No questions,’ Putin says. ‘He will explain everything.’
Who will? Kate holds her breath as the car rounds what she assumes is the final bend. The countryside feels so familiar – glimpses of the sea through five-bar gates, the fresh salty air, the promise of holidays – but there’s nothing reassuring about it. And then the lane opens up and she struggles to take in what’s before her. They could be at Rob’s house in Cornwall. The property looks identical: the same modernist mix of glass and oak and concrete, cut into the hillside and overlooking the sea.
They pass through high open gates that close behind them and head down the gravel driveway. A man and a woman are waiting for them in front of the house. One looks like Rob. And the other… looks like her.
96
Silas
‘First it was Cornwall and now it’s central London,’ Detective Superintendent Ward says on the phone. Silas rolls his eyes at Strover. They are both standing on the pavement outside Dr Varma’s practice in Queen’s Square. ‘You seem to be making a habit of investigating murders committed outside Wiltshire.’
‘I think they’re related, sir,’ Silas says, watching as more scene of crime officers in white oversuits enter Dr Varma’s practice. The square has been sealed off to traffic and there are a number of police vehicles parked up, including a Major Incident mobile command van. He misses his time in the Met, envies their resources.
‘I don’t need to remind you that you are employed by Wiltshire Police, with a publicly funded remit to prevent crime in the county,’ Ward continues. ‘I’ve just had the Met’s SIO on the phone, wanting to know why the first person on the scene was a Keystone Cop from Stonehenge.’
‘Sir, Dr Varma worked for Rob,’ Silas says, mindful of what Ward said last time about Rob being a ‘very good friend’ to Swindon. ‘He was assessing the mental recovery of Kate, the former super recogniser, who is currently in a relationship with Rob. I think someone’s trying to frame Rob with this murder and possibly the murder in Cornwall, as well as the abduction of a number of super recognisers in the UK and Europe, including France.’
Jake has just rung him about an item on a French website, suggesting that a super recogniser has disappeared from a covert unit in Paris. Silas wasn’t even aware of the unit’s existence; he’d assumed that the use of super recognisers in France was not permitted under the country’s tougher regulatory framework.
‘All news to me, Silas,’ Ward says. ‘You really need to keep others in the loop, particularly your immediate boss. That’s how these things are meant to work. I thought we’d talked about you being more of a team player.’
‘A lot of the evidence has been circumstantial until now. And I know you don’t like—’
‘Do we have any idea who might be trying to frame Rob?’ Ward asks, interrupting him.
‘Our prime suspect is a man called Gilmour Martin, who happens to bear an uncanny physical likeness to Rob.’
‘His “doppelgänger”, you mean,’ Ward says.
‘He arrived in the UK on a fake passport six months ago,’ Silas continues, ignoring his boss’s cynical tone. ‘And we have reason to believe he’s been impersonating Rob as part of a long-held grudge to destroy him – and possibly Kate too. Kate left the country earlier today, we think under duress.’
‘Anyone see her go?’
Silas glances at Strover again. ‘Her ex-partner.’ He doesn’t want Ward to linger on the unreliability of his source. ‘Her best friend also saw her leave. Kate could be in real danger.’
‘Where is she now?’ Ward asks.
‘Brittany, where Rob has a number of business interests and another home. I’ve alerted Europol – they’ve issued a European arrest warrant alert for Gilmour Martin.’
‘So I gather.’ Ward pauses. ‘What do you want from me, Silas?’
‘Twenty-four hours. Strover and me.’
‘Twenty-four hours when modern slavery is allowed to tighten its pernicious grip on Swindon. You’re a pain in the arse, you know that.’