GRAVE MATTER

TWENTY-ONE

The most extraordinary faculty our minds possess is the ability to break apart and compartmentalise. It's how we juggle multiple demands and how we cope with pain and trauma. After my wife died, I saw a string of therapists and grief counsellors and psychologists. One of them suggested I take my memories, lock them in a chest using heavy chains and padlocks, and drop the trunk into the deepest part of the ocean, beneath millions of tons of water.

I tried it for a while, but it didn't work. The memories are still with me. They are like wolves hunting me through the forest. I have hacked a clearing from the undergrowth and built a fire to keep them at bay, but I have to keep collecting wood, or the fire will burn down, and the wolves will creep closer.

The newspaper arrives, and the headlines were full of the explosion—the cause given as a gas leak leading to journalist Mariella Novotny's untimely death. Other victims include a retired gay couple, a thirty-seven-year-old married accountant, and her three daughters aged nine, five three: and a music teacher with her twelve-year-old cocker spaniel. The accountant's husband was a plumber for the local council and was on-call, attending a leak at a café near Smithfield.

I couldn't help feeling responsible, but as Blanche told me when she called round in the morning, wondering where I'd sneaked off too, I cannot be held accountable for someone booby-trapping a dead body.

Detective Chief Inspector Sandra Burton keeps me waiting before taking my statement. But, her attitude has changed since last night. She has looked up Mariella Novotny and her newspaper article, and the interest sparks in her eyes like a gas ring igniting. Burton is the sort of detective who goes through an entire career with her head up her arse, not understanding peoples motivation or making any headline arrests. But now, she can sense an opportunity.

Burton hands me a typed statement. I have to sign each page and initial any changes. I look at my words. I have lied about why I was at the house and what happened before the explosion. Does my signature make it worse?

Taking back the statement, she straightens the pages and punches the stapler. "Very f*****g professional," she sneers. "You know it never stops, the lying. Once you start, it keeps getting worse."

"Yes, well, you'd know," I say as I leave.

Blanche is still waiting for me in the foyer, looking very businesslike in a dark polo-neck, black trousers and imitation-snakeskin shoes with pointed toes and kitten heels.

Her eyes survey me up and down, and I feel myself blushing at the thought that she is the first woman to see me naked since my late wife died.

"How is the eye?"

"A bit sore."

"What have you done with the patch?"

"In my pocket."

"Why did you take it off?"

"I didn't want Burton to think I was hiding behind it."

Blanche smiles as we step on a black rubber square and the doors open automatically.

"Can we go and have something to eat?" I say.

"Yes," Blanche nods, "Where do you want to go?"

"I think there is a café nearby."

We walked along Whetstone High Road, a found café with a smudged blackboard menu and enough grease in the air to keep Blanche's hair in place for a year. It's a café from a bygone age, with red-and-white plastic gingham table clothes on top of wobbly tables, paper napkins and a waitress with tattoos everywhere and more piercings than I care to mention.

Blanche orders tea and toast, and I chose the all-day breakfast, and after we had finished, do either of us say anything.

"Now, what are we going to do?" Blanche says, dabbing her lips with a paper napkin.

"Whoever is carrying out the assassinations is operating in plain sight," I say, "I haven't got to be George Smiley to work that one out."

"Who?" she looks at me, puzzled.

"George Smiley," I repeat, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?"

Blanche shakes her head, "Nope, sorry. Never heard of it."

"Philistine," I tease.

"Do you think it's one person?" Blanche asks, pretending to ignore me.

"It has to be," I say, "a hit squad is harder to conceal after the Salisbury Poisonings and Alexander Litvinenko's murder with radioactive polonium 210; the security services are more diligent despite budget cuts than they were before."

"Yes, that makes sense," Blanche agreed.

"And apart from Mariella Novotny, what have the other victims have in common?"

Blanche sat there for a moment with a blank look on her face. Eventually, she shrugged her shoulders.

"They're all men," I tell her.

"And?"

"And what do men like more than anything else?"

"Football?"

I rolled my eyes. "Women!"

Blanche looked at me in an old-fashioned way.

"Don't tell me you think this is all about women?"

"No, I don't think this is all about women. I think this is all about one woman."

Blanche's expression had now moved to one of disbelief.

"One woman?" She asks. "Have you gone mad?"

"No, it all makes perfect sense," I say, "as I said earlier, if it were a hit squad, then it would be easier to track them down. But one person gets lost amongst the crowds, can mingle better."

"You think this is all down to one woman?" She asks again.

"It's a theory," I say.

"It's a stupid one," she responds. "Stupid and ridiculous."

"Is it?" I persist, trying not to show that her disbelief slightly wounds me. "I want to look into the backgrounds of Casca Ashakova and Katrin Cajthamlova."

"Why?"

"There is something those two haven't told me."

"What?"

"I don't know; I just feel it."

We're interrupted by the sound of Blanche's mobile phone ringing.

"It's Brooks," she says, looking up at me.

"You're better to answer it," I suggested.

"Hello?"

I can about make out the Inspector's voice but not what he is saying. Blanche listens intently before speaking.

"We'll be on our way," she says finally.

A pause.

"Yes, he is still with me."

She finishes the call and then looks earnestly at me.

"We've got another victim of the magic circle," she said, with a hint of sarcasm.

"Who is it this time?" I ask.

"Igor Asimovsky," she replies, "a Russian diplomat.

He went to the Royal Opera House last night with the Italian Ambassador Anna Maria Castello.

They had an official meeting planned for today concerning an investigation into corrupt activities by the Russian secret services in Italy."

"How did he die?"

"Asimovsky complained of extreme thirst and reportedly downed three l****s of water just before keeling over back at his hotel. Detective Chief Inspector Sandra Burton suspects that someone poisoned Asimovsky."

"Let's go then."

I paid for the breakfast and then walked back to where Blanche had parked her car before we headed off to Asimovsky's hotel in the Hertfordshire countryside.

No signs point out the hotel, either in the nearest village or at the gates flanked by sandstone pillars. Instead, a loose gravel driveway curves through fields and crosses a single-lane stone bridge. Friesians dot the pasture and scarcely stir as we pass.

Finally, we stop in front of a large hotel in the shadow of Hatfield House.

Burton greeted us and held up a hand as Blanche slowed her car down to a stop.

"Sorry, you two," she said genuinely, "but I'm afraid they have taken Asimovsky's body already."

"What?" I ask, perturbed. "Who by?"

"Representatives of the Russian Embassy," she replies.

"Can they do that?" Blanche asks, anger in her voice.

Burton nodded. "They showed me all the relevant documentation. There is nothing I can do, I'm afraid."

"Were you at least able to obtain a possible cause of death before the Russian security services whisked him away?"

"According to the statement staff at the hotel, he returned from a night at the opera, went to the bar, suffering from pangs of extreme thirst. He asked for water and ended up drinking over three l****s, according to the barman. Then, as he turned to leave the bar, he collapsed and suffered a heart attack."

"Thirst is consistent with poisoning by radioactive thallium," I told the DCI, "the same substance at first believed to have killed former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko."

DCI Burton went very pale. "Jesus bloody Christ!"

"Have you spoken to the Italian Ambassador, Anna Maria Castello?"

"Not yet?"

"Do you mind if we do, first?"

"Be my guest," Burton said resignedly, "I feel like I'm in over my head, already."

"Start getting some people into check for radioactive contamination."

We drove back to London. The Italian Embassy is located in Mayfair, though there is also an entrance at the back on Grosvenor Square. The house was built about 1728 as part of the development of Grosvenor Square by the Grosvenor family. However, it was not until ten years later that the lease was purchased. The first notable owner was the Earl of Malton, whose heirs leased the property until 1931. However, the Grosvenor estate required the house rebuilt in 1865.

In 1931, Italy was granted a lease for 200 years by Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, for £35,000 and £350 per annum. Lord Gerald Wellesley commissioned the conversion of the interior into suitable accommodation for an embassy. Italy also maintains several other buildings in the capital: a Consular Section at Farringdon, a Cultural Section at Belgravia, a Defence Section at Hobart Place, a Financial Section at the Royal Exchange, and a Trade Commission at Waterloo Place.

Glamorous, charming, divine - all these words are used to describe the Italian Ambassador. While even the most beautiful people will lose the race against time, she stays a rare exception: time has no power over her. They call her the Italian goddess, who can leave any man stunned with a single glance.

We were led to the top floor, down a passage to the Ambassador's office situated at the rear of the building.

After polite greetings, we sat on a sofa. The room was oppressively hot and cramped, with a pair of velvet curtains were drawn across the window. The bookshelves are full of literature – British as well as Italian and volumes of philosophy. On the coffee table that separated us, a jug of water and some small glasses.

"We are extremely grateful to you, Ambassador, for agreeing to see us at such short notice."

"It is my pleasure." Her voice, low and heavily accented.

I cleared my throat.

"We understand that you were due to meet the Russian diplomat, Igor Asimovsky, this morning?"

"Yes, that is correct."

I looked at her dark, hypnotic, indigo eyes, momentarily transfixed.

"May we ask you what the meeting was about?"

"Igor Asimovsky, chairman of the International Maritime Organization's Maritime Safety Committee," she replied, "and a good friend for many years. We are heading an investigation into the illegal dumping at sea of radioactive material. I am well known in the maritime industry for my efforts to pinpoint the location of nuclear materials and waste."

"Do you think this is why the FSB poisoned Igor Asimovsky?"

"Poisoned?" The Ambassador looked genuinely shocked. "I was told by the Russian Embassy he died of a heart attack."

"We believe his sudden unquenchable thirst is consistent with poisoning by radioactive thallium," Blanche said with authority.

"I was with him nearly all evening," she confessed, "I can't see how anyone could have given him radioactive thallium."

"Where did you go before the opera?" I asked.

"We met with his Russian/Italian translator at the Best Western Hotel in Soho," she replies. "."

"Is that where she is staying?"

"No, she lives in North London."

"Do you know where?"

"Muswell Hill."

"Did you do a full security check on her?"

"Of course."

"And she was cleared?"

"Of course."

"Do you know her name?"

"Victoria Usheava."

"And you must have her full address."

"Of course."

"May we have it, please?"

She took a business card out of the top drawer. She checked her desk diary before writing down the address on the back of the card before handing it to me. Her hand lingered in mine, longer than necessary and comfortable.

"You can call me anytime," she said, her eyes sparkling.

"Thank you," I say, blushing slightly

Blanche clears her throat, reminding us she was still in the room.

"Can you describe Miss Usheava to us?"

The questions shook the Ambassador out of her reverie. "Yes, I think so. Had to be nearly six feet tall, with jet-black hair, sharp-angled features, and blue eyes."