GRAVE MATTER

EIGHTEEN

If, for a contented mind, time is peace, then for a fevered one, it is the opposite. The nearly three hours or so it took us to return to London were close to torture. The more I thought about Paris, the more I wondered what was wrong.

We cross-referenced everything Katrin Cajthamlova had told us and what she said to the press and social media. She never told the same story twice. The inconsistencies were acute, but they were there.

But why?

Was she scared?

Or was she playing us?

Once we had arrived at St. Pancras, Blanche, we intended to catch the Northern Line train from Kings Cross to Woodside Park and continue with our work over a Chinese Takeaway, but only as we walked from one mainline station to the other did I realise that we had a tail.

I thought I had sensed it on the Eurostar, but it took me some time to be sure.

We stopped at a paper shop, bought a paper without actually looking at it, tucked it under my arm, and emerged again, walking into a street market in the pedestrian section without looking back. Each stall mostly sold food, and we drifted them, picking up some of the vegetables and fruit to test their quality and bending closer to smell some of the cheese on the trestle at the end.

We quickened our pace, heading towards Kings Cross, but it took me until I was on the other side of the station to be sure I was right. We had come up the escalator to the small shopping mall on the first floor and now doubled back. I immediately saw the young man wearing a Barcelona football shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket.

We walked across the station concourse, then swung quickly right onto Euston Road. As we passed the Rocket Takeaway, I saw the girl in the green-and-white maxi dress and white pumps.

We didn't break our stride, stopping at a Pret-a-Manger, ordering a latte and an americano, taking them to a vacant seat inside by the window while I looked up and down the street to see if I could make out any more of our watchers.

I wasn't in any doubt who they were or what they were doing, but I wanted a few moments to think about it.

I handed Blanche the newspaper while I toyed with the idea that the men and women following us might be Russian but dismissed that almost immediately. They might be good at murder, but it was not conceivable unless they had learned to mix in with the British public convincingly.

It was when Blanche started reading the newspaper, and I saw the front pages did I realise what might be going on:

TWO BRITISH LAWYERS DIE SUDDENLY

Beneath the headlines were the two names. Names I recognized by the list given to me by Inspector Brooks.

I reached across the table and touched Blanche's hand.

"May I?"

She looked at me rather oddly and then realized something was wrong.

"Of course," she said, handing me the newspaper.

The first part of the article read like this:

Paul Eden died tragically yesterday when his private helicopter nose-dived into a field on the approach to Norwich airport, killing him and the pilot, Michael Falco, in a ball of flames. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch ruled the crash has all the hallmarks of a tragic accident as the helicopter came down in poor weather.

The strapping, round-cheeked British solicitor began his career working in solicitors firms. Still, ten years ago, Mr Eden set up his own business, Eden&Co, which specialized in commercial and property transactions. He also managed the funds of Russian oligarchs before setting up a holding company by Oleg Luzhny, Russia's richest man, and it held billions of pounds of shares in a Siberian oil company. Mr Luzhny was arrested last year in what appeared to be a political move against a man who had opposed the Russian President. The co-founder of the oil company, Dmitry Zhivoglyadov, is another name on the list of suspected Russian assassinations; he died of an apparent heart attack earlier this year. Through Dmitry Zhivoglyadov, Mr Eden worked with Igor Akinfeev, another oligarch and critic of the Russian President. Mr Akinfeev's suicide is now looking suspicious. Former business entrepreneur Robbie Chase hired Mr Eden before the inception of a secret building project in Moscow to route billions of pounds from Russia to Britain for Igor Akinfeev and Alexi Zelenyy. Without getting, it caught up in UK anti-money-laundering checks, he had been successful moving the money into a Trust-Fund and earning himself commissions of $18 million with which he bought a huge Gothic castle on an island off the Scottish coast. The journey began at 6.59 pm yesterday, at Battersea Heliport, London. Bound for Norfolk, conditions were reasonable, and Mr Eden expected a short flight. But just as the helicopter approached Norwich airport, something went wrong and sent the aircraft plunging at high speed into a field. Both pilot and passenger died instantly. Fellow pilot and friend Michael Coleman insisted this was not an accident to the police and our reporter. "With that sort of helicopter," Mr. Coleman explained, "you don't have a crash so near the ground when you're going to land in a straight line."

Mr. Eden's friend and fellow lawyer Freddie Cumber died the day before from a sudden heart attack, aged forty-six. Cumber was involved in the Devonta Agreement — a controversial financial deal involving Russian oligarch Igor Akinfeev, Georgian Alexi Zelenyy and Robbie Chase, culminating in a legal battle with the Russian owner of a London football club. His death meant he was "one of several key witnesses who did not live long enough to testify about the transaction". MI5 have suspicions the FSB assassinated both Eden and Cumber. Classified files on both men link their deaths to Russia. However, the Cumber case is where little or nothing information is publicly available. They were both close friends of Robbie Chase, who committed suicide at his North London apartment ten days ago. However, his ex-wife Amber believes either the Russian Mafia or the FSB murdered her ex-husband. Moscow has categorically denied these accusations.

I put the paper down and looked across at Blanche.

"Justin, what's wrong?"

For a moment, I said nothing. Then, I looked out of the café window and was sure.

I had seen the clean-shaven man with faded jeans, olive T-shirt and fawn trainers while we waited in line to board the Eurostar in Paris. The woman wearing dark glasses, a mustard sundress and what looked like an expensive handbag had been buying a newspaper from the same shop just in front of us.

"Nothing. We need to go."

"I haven't finished my coffee."

"We need to go now, Blanche. Don't make a fuss. Don't argue. Don't look surprised or shocked. Just get up normally from your seat, and then we'll leave."

She looked at me, dumbfounded. "What's going on?" She asks.

I gave her a broad smile, swinging my back to the window so that there was no chance the watchers could read my lips. "Do as I say, Blanche, and please don't ask any more questions."

We thanked the owner for the coffee and left the café nonchalantly wandering back in the direction of Kings Cross. We walked along the street, weaving our way across the road, gazing unhurriedly into the shop windows, holding hands, looking to the outside world a couple.

I was a little surprised at how easily Blanche let my hand slip into hers, but it made it look all the more natural. Next, we went into a store selling the most expensive stationary we'd ever seen and spent a few minutes trying out various fountain pens at the counter.

When we emerged again, we didn't look back and were careful to move with the same relaxed gait and rhythm.

And now I spotted a third shadow. I'd seen the young woman with a nose piercing and Crocs by the ticket office in Kings Cross. Or was I imagining things?

"What is it?" Blanche whispered again. "What's spooked you?"

I pretended to check my watch, a manoeuvre indistinguishable from actually checking my watch. Commuters washed around us like water round a rock, their irritation evident in the clicking of tongues and expulsions of breath.

To our left were sandwich outlets and coffee bars, a pub, and a pie stall. To our right, a long train for Cambridge lingered.

At intervals along with the platform, travellers negotiated suitcases through its doors, where pigeons noisily fly between the rafters overhead. Then, a tannoy issued instructions, and the crowd on the concourse behind us swelled as individuals broke away.

Tourists crowded the concourse, their luggage suggesting they were circling the carriages. We skirted them without taking our eyes off the watchers, reaching the escalators where the crowd sucks into the underground.

The corridor widened at the bottom of the escalators. A broader space waited, with queues at ticket machines against walls, nearly all of the ticket windows had their blinds were drawn down, the columns of people absorbing into the mass heading home.

Two heavily armed transport police stood by a ticket barrier, ignored our watchers but studied us. Don't approach, I warned silently. Don't come anywhere near us, as I wanted to know what this trio wished to do. It is the small details on which situations like these can escalate.

We descended the escalator and headed for platform seven, and when I looked up at the status board, the next train would arrive in two minutes, and it was for High Barnet via Bank. Below that High Barnet via Bank five minutes.

Two minutes?

They would seem like the longest two minutes of our lives. The man in the olive T-shirt was the first to appear, then the woman wearing the dark glasses and mustard sundress and finally the young woman with the pierced nose: all using different access points, all looking for us.

Blanche glanced up at me in desperation. "What are we going to do?"

"Stay calm," I say.

Platform seven, filled with a rush of air, accompanied by the sound of electricity rattling through the track in front of us. The sound volume escalated as the red train, with HIGH BARNET VIA BANK, emblazoned in bright yellow lettering on the front carriage, clattered into view, its brakes squealing as it slowly came to a halt.

"MIND THE GAP! MIND THE GAP!" Announced an electronic voice over the tannoy.

I precisely knew the dwell time of every line on the London Underground. Blanche and I stepped on, and we stood as near to the door as we could. I held her arm counting, and when I reached thirty, we stepped off the train as the doors closed.

Our three watchers were all on the train, eyes wide, mouths open, illuminated by the lights of the carriage, as the train pulled out of Northern Line platform seven, Kings Cross.

"Now, what are we going to do?"

"Firstly, we are going to find out where this reporter got her information from." I tapped the photograph of the female journalist beside the story of the two dead lawyers. "And then we'll go home a different route."