After that, he began on Alison’s report over a sandwich and tea. As usual she’d gone down the rabbit hole, far deeper than the EA Unit, but Alison Matchell had a good track record of catching rabbits. She’d picked up activity on three more online boards, highlighting a claim that White would sort out Khan, and soon. All hearsay, but Alison had linked the commentator to foreknowledge of a handful of violent attacks in the past.
Alison had proceeded to analyse these previous incidents. Then she extrapolated her conclusions. Billy White wasn’t just an ambitious right-winger. She believed he had a handler, though who this was or why they’d want to use Billy this way, she couldn’t say. Recent incidents had been written off as steam by the unit—faecal matter had been posted to Khan’s new workplace at UCL, and someone had lobbed a brick through a window at her previous address. Alison read it differently.
Alison was simultaneously an excellent and a terrible analyst. Terrible because analysts were rigorously trained out of relying on gut feeling, which opened the door to unexamined prejudice and guesswork. Excellent because her guesswork was extremely good—as was her analysis. She had something of a sixth sense that Julian had come to rely on, and he appreciated that she was never anything but honest about the fact that she ended up pulling on some very tenuous threads.
On the other hand, Operation Glassknife, as he called it, had a budget. Unless he was certain White was going to be a problem, he’d been instructed to leave it to the police. Julian stared at Alison’s report, rereading paragraphs at random, juggling priorities and outcomes. The thing about James Bond, when you got down to it, was that he had carte blanche to go and do stuff. And M didn’t ride him about budgetary overspend.
Julian tapped a number into his phone.
“DI Royce speaking.”
“Kier, it’s me.” Julian waited to see what kind of a mood the man was in.
“Oh shit, what now?” Still with Royce’s faint aftertaste of Caernarfon, despite the fact the man had been based at the Met for twelve years.
“Nothing, nothing, just calling to catch up,” Julian said, devoid of sincerity. “How’s the wife? Kids?”
“Still not speaking to me,” Royce said flatly. “Dog’s still dead, too, before you ask. What do you want, Jules?”
“Got any lads sitting on their hands near Primrose Hill?”
In the staticky quiet he could almost hear the man thinking that through. “Not so’s you’d notice, not right now. All quiet on the northern front, isn’t it though? And I know you’ve not called to tell me otherwise because we have channels for that, Jules.”
“We absolutely have,” Julian agreed. “And I will absolutely bring all the relevant paperwork to the next Joint Service meeting and put in the request for your assistance. I’ll table it as soon as I get off the phone, in fact. And I am absolutely not suggesting that if you had a few spare lads from the On Call Investigations Unit, they might find the street food second to none over that way. That would obviously be completely outside my brief…”
Royce had been counter-terrorism duty officer on two past operations on Julian’s watch. The two of them had been like cats and dogs at the start, but had each ended up in a position to make the other look good. Favours were owed both ways, the kind that never quite went away.
“How much of this are you pulling out of your arse, mate?” Royce asked at last.
“Possibly all of it. In which case I will owe you twice over, and I will come to apologize in person.”
Another thoughtful pause, as of a man who had to balance his own budgets and account to his own chiefs.
“Plenty of cultural flashpoints over thataways,” Royce mused. “Be good for a few of the new lads to get a feel for the area.”
Julian felt a knot of tension he hadn’t quite acknowledged uncurl. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Well, knowing you, we’d all prefer if it was nothing,” Royce agreed. “Long may it remain so, say I.”
After Julian got off the phone, he discovered that no less a personage than Dr. Kay Amal Khan herself had emailed him direct, demanding to meet with him. This wasn’t the first time either, as Khan had long since lost any tolerance for the slow mill of regular channels. Sabreur sighed. Today was clearly going to be all about Khan. She simply preferred to deal with people she’d met before, but Julian composed a message for someone else to find out what she wanted. The old guard in the office, the ones who didn’t like what Khan represented any more than Billy White, would snicker about her having her eye on him. They’d doubtless use it to undermine Julian’s position and dignity, all those old boys who felt he shouldn’t have been jumped up to his current post. For a moment he considered ignoring Khan’s email entirely, toeing the office line to avoid the looks and whispers. Then he hated himself for it. And it was only a short stop from there to joining in and making his own life easier. It was depressing how he could scratch the surface and find just a little bit of Billy White staring at him in the mirror.
He forwarded Khan’s email. At this stage, and without a confirmed threat, it wasn’t protocol for him to meet with Khan. After that, it was time to ferry John from school to his badminton club.
That evening, and despite the glower from Josie, he took the Tube across London to Shepherd’s Bush. He wanted to relax and talk, and home wasn’t a place where either tended to happen these days.
Alison lived in a decent-sized flat which she’d retreated to after her divorce, paid for by a combination of salary, settlement and inheritance. Because her concerns about personal security went above and beyond the call of professionalism, he called ahead, letting the phone ring four times before ringing off then redialling.
“Matchbox,” he said.
“Spiker.” Her voice came to him distantly amused, as always. After they’d first met, she’d gone a year before realizing she’d misheard his surname.
The rattle of bolt and chain after she’d checked him out on the cameras was a familiar ritual. Despite the fact that there was nothing sexual between them, Julian felt a stab of guilt as the door opened, right on the heels of the rush of well-being he always got from being here.
Alison Matchell, then: middling height and a few years his senior. The taut boniness of the woman he’d first known was now filling out, as though she’d been under the pressure of some dense and punishing atmosphere throughout her failing marriage. Her blonde hair was bobbed, framing a thin face dominated by antique spectacles with mother-of-pearl-inlaid frames.
“You look brutal,” she told him, by which she probably meant just frowny. “Am I making up a bed on the sofa?”
“What? No!” And another stab of guilt, because this was exactly where he’d go if things ever got to that with Josie. Alison would have the sofa ready in an instant, a safe house long prepared for emergencies.
She gave him a measuring glance and hoicked a bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge. “Does that mean no signed copy of Beguine, then?”
“I… didn’t ask. Next time, sorry.” Because, of all things, Alison was an avid reader of Josie’s books, which had not had the expected result of endearing her to Josie.
“Tell her it’s her best one. Very racy. I approve.” It was not common knowledge at work that Julian’s wife made a decent living writing erotica, another Sword of Damocles over his poor, abused dignity.