Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(35)

“What was it all about, anyway?”

Rudi picked up the black and white photo and looked at it. His life these days was rarely, if ever, conventional, but even by his standards this was unusual. “And here I was thinking that nothing could ever surprise me again.”





THEY DROVE TO Bury St Edmunds, where Rudi visited a copy shop and had the two photographs digitised. He put the originals in a rubbish bin at the bus station. Two days later he was back in Kraków – on his own documents – and Rupert had resumed his happy exploration of Europe.

There was no point bothering to scope out his flat or the restaurant. Passive surveillance devices, small enough to be all but invisible even without a mimetic coating, could be glued to buildings and just left to run almost for ever. If EUPol wanted to keep an eye on him close to home, they would, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

He did all the usual stuff with the photos. Facial recognition, pattern recognition, image searches. He quietly circulated the Versailles image through some boards and rooms frequented by Coureurs, looking for useful comments, but nothing turned up.

To his knowledge, only four people had ever used the Rokeby Venus contact string – himself, Seth, Rupert, and a Community intelligence officer named Molson. Process of elimination suggested that Molson, whom he had some time ago begun to suspect enjoyed his job far too much, had sent him the photograph. Why was anyone’s guess, but he had stopped expecting why in his life a long time ago. Was he supposed to go to France? Was a French person about to approach him? The problem with some people who worked in Intelligence, he had discovered down the years, was that they took it too f*cking seriously, bought into the whole le Carré thing of dead drops and honeytraps and one-time pads, whereas in reality it was just a case of continually winging it.

So that was the first part of the message. The second part, delivered mostly via body language and innuendo, was that EUPol knew who he was, what he did, and where they could find him, which was not, when all was said and done, much of a surprise. But they had known about his meet with Mr Pasquinel. Maybe Molson – or someone else – had told them about it. And that was a bit of a surprise, and also f*cking irritating.

And, of course, there was the third part of the message.

“I don’t know anyone called Smith,” Gwen said, one evening in the restaurant. “Well, I mean, I do. Everyone knows someone called Smith. But I don’t know any detectives called Smith.”

Rudi shrugged. “I presume Berg sang his little heart out about arranging separate meetings with us. It’s hardly a great stretch of the imagination to connect you and me.”

“But they can’t know we saw... whatever it was. Unless Fritz went to the police and told them.”

“No.” Actually, the thing which was bothering him was Berg’s insistence that his information involved Les Coureurs. Had that been true? Had it been a lure to get him to Luxembourg for some purpose which he had, without realising it, evaded? One of the problems with his life the way it was lived now was that there were too many scenarios to consider. If he took all of them into account he’d never do anything.

“Have you had any more ideas about what to do with me?” Gwen asked. She was living in Bonarka, in an old Coureur safe-flat, and she was beginning to get cabin fever. Max let her do shifts at the restaurant, waitressing, just for something to do, while Rudi tried to work out what was going on and how to help her.

He looked around the kitchen, feeling suddenly claustrophobic and at the same time rather invigorated. At least he wasn’t bored any more.

“Do you feel like taking a little trip?” he asked. “Nothing dangerous, just something to do.”

“Sure.” She had been in touch with a couple of people in England, just to let them know she was alive and well and... somewhere. She hadn’t contacted her employers; there had seemed no point, her professional life was over. “Where?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

Gwen checked her watch. “I’d better get back out there,” she said, heading for the door to the dining room. “Let me know, yes? Don’t leave it too long.”

After she’d gone, Rudi rubbed his eyes and considered what Mr Pasquinel had told him in Suffolk. Unless they were rather extraordinary, the Penningtons – if they had bombed the Line – hadn’t acted alone. There was a lot of resentment about the Line, here and there in Europe, but Rudi didn’t think anyone was quite that resentful. What was it? Business rivals? An insurance scam? A particularly spectacular and messy assassination?

He really didn’t want to jump the dapper little Frenchman out of the Line, for any number of reasons, but equally he didn’t want to see him arrested for espionage. He knew from personal experience that the Line’s security services favoured an iron fist in an iron glove sort of approach when they were annoyed.

“Well nobody’s said anything yet,” Mr Pasquinel told him a few days later in a crash call using encrypted SIMs. “I finished my holiday and just went back.”

“That was very brave,” Rudi said.

“I have nowhere else to go.” The encryption made it sound a little as if he was being voiced by Mel Blanc. “Who was that person outside the church?”

“So your feeling is that you’ll stay?”