Walking the Dog Ch. 01-04

I had arranged to meet Angela in a pub called the Lord Nelson, named for Norfolk’s most famous son. I was early and slipped into the warmth of the snug Saloon Bar, which was already starting to fill with lunchtime drinkers. Listening to the accents, it was obvious that few locals patronised the place at weekends. Most of the people were ‘second homers’, up from London, as I was. I ordered a pint of Adnam’s Best Bitter and found myself a table where I could watch the door and be easily seen when she came in.

She didn’t show. By One O’clock I decided I’d been stood up. It wasn’t a great surprise after all; we’d only just met. I’d invited myself to her studio, which must have looked pretty intrusive. Normally it’s one of those things you just put down to experience but for some reason, this time, I couldn’t let it go. It nagged at me. I finished my pint and headed off over to the studio. Shock stopped me in my tracks as I reached the front door.

The place was wide open. Even from the doorway, I could see at a glance it had been trashed. I rushed in, thinking the worst. There was no sign of Angela but the studio had been totally wrecked. The casts she had shown me that waited burnishing had been smashed. The floor was littered with shards of plaster; even the furnace had been toppled onto its side. My relief at not finding Angela in the middle of all this mess was replaced by a sense of panic. I called the police on my mobile and waited outside for them to arrive.

Had this been the middle of London, I don’t think they would have managed to raise any interest but this was rural Norfolk. Things like this don’t happen there. They were with me in less than ten minutes. There were two uniformed Bobbies and a plain-clothes man who quickly took charge. I explained about Angela’s no show at the Pub and what I’d done since. He looked narrowly suspicious but warmed a little when he took my details. There really wasn’t much I could tell them so I told them everything. Meeting her on the beach, my visit the previous afternoon, her anxiety when she realised how late it had got.

So much for driving home while it was light. It was around Six by the time I finished giving my statement at the Police Station in Cromer. The traffic was really heavy when I finally hit the outskirts of London so it was almost Ten O’clock when I got back home. Angela’s disappearance, they were now calling it that, made the main News. I got mentioned as the visitor who’d raised the alarm, not by name, thank God! There wasn’t anything else I could do so I had an early night. Not that it did me much good. Between the intrusions of Steph and Angela Sable, I hardly slept.

I staggered into Chambers on the Monday morning, bleary eyed and panting from the cold. My Chambers are in the Middle Temple and not that easy to find so I was quite surprised when Bernie, the clerk, told me that I had a visitor. Bernie was clearly put out. A clerk to Chambers controls access to his barristers, hands out the briefs and keeps the appointments diary. I shrugged when he started pumping me. “All very ‘secret squirrel’, Mr Booth.” I certainly hadn’t made any appointments and found myself hoping, for one brief and glorious moment, it was Steph. This lasted only as long as it took Bernie to say “I put the gentleman in the juniors’ office.” Bernie wanted to say more but I nodded my acknowledgement and went in to meet my mystery man.

He had the sort of face to which it is easy to take an instant dislike. He was about my age with smooth features and slightly over-long hair. The tailoring was definitely Saville Row and the hand he offered me as he rose to greet me had been expensively manicured. The Jermyn Street shirt and Hermes tie only confirmed my suspicions. He was either a property developer or a senior civil servant. He turned out to be the latter. He introduced himself as Edgar Smythe and I had the strange certainty that this was not his real name. When he claimed to be from the Foreign Office, I knew exactly what he was: a spook.

“Mr Booth, I understand that you reported the disappearance of Ms Angela Sable to the Norfolk Constabulary?”

I agreed that I had and started to explain but he cut across me.

“Let me tell you a story about Angela Sable, Mr Booth. It’s not her real name, of course.”

“I knew that. She told me that she took it from the French word for sand. Apparently her Estonian name means ‘sand’. She found the English word lacked something, so she used French. I’m not aware using an alias is yet a crime unless one sets out to deliberately deceive by so doing,” I said pointedly.

“Quite so, quite so. My story concerns Ms Sable’s father. It appears he was a Colonel in the Soviet armed forces; in the Spetsnaz to be precise, whom, as you may know…”

“…Are the Russian, or should I say used to be the Soviet, Special Forces.”

“You are well informed, Mr Booth,” he said, with just the trace of sarcasm in his voice. I gave him my most urbane smile and refused to rise. He continued.

“The Colonel made a name for himself in the unpleasantness in Afghanistan. As you may also know, the Soviets used a lot of troops from the satellite states there. It was their way of managing the bad news and keeping the truth about their casualty rates from the Russian people.”

“As opposed to our own dear enlightened Government who just lie.”

“Ah, not a fan of New Labour, Mr Booth? I’d have thought that your profession would have taken them to your bosoms, seeing how very well you’re represented in the cabinet and elsewhere.”

I grunted. He was alluding to the fact that both the Prime Minister and his wife were once in Chambers not too far from my own. “You were telling me about Angela’s father, I believe.” He smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Yes indeed. The Colonel was a junior officer back in Afghanistan but a highly effective one. He gained promotion and a transfer to Spetsnaz. Our boy is, or rather was, a bit of a hard man. His only soft spot was for his two daughters, Angelika and Vika. We all know the wheels came off the Soviet Union in the early 90’s. It was a mad time, a touch of the Wild West about it.”

His eyes took on a distant look and I got the strong impression that he had been there when ‘the wheels came off,’ as he put it.

“To cut a long story short, the good Colonel turns out to have more than a passing resemblance to the Vicar of Bray. When the Reds were in the driving seat, he was a good communist; exit Gorbachev and our man is Yeltsin’s staunchest ally. I’m sure you get the picture?

“Rumours started to circulate in the late 90’s that a large amount of Russian Federation foreign exchange had gone missing, largely D-marks and sterling, which is odd because most of the ex-Soviet hoods went for US dollars in a big way. At this point the good Colonel drops out of sight. He re-emerged a couple of years later in Gothenburg. He lost a short but valiant fight against cancer in a Swedish sanatorium and officially turned up his little pointed toes two years ago. We thought at first that this was a ‘ruse de guerre’ but we checked and it seems kosher. However, there was no trace of the missing millions.

“At this point some particularly nasty gentlemen appeared from out of the woodwork searching for the Colonel’s Holy Grail. Attention focussed on Vika, at first. She had accompanied her dear Papa to Sweden. She turned up in a canal in Stockholm a few weeks back. Poor Vika. It appears she didn’t know anything after all.”

“How can you say?”

“The Knights of the Grail came after your Ladyfriend. Angelika seems to have been something of a black sheep. She split with the family at the beginning of the nineties and moved west, first to Barcelona, where she studied Art and then to Britain by way of Paris and Frankfurt. She settled in the UK at the beginning of ’93. About this time she changed her name and became Angela Sable, talented but struggling sculptor. With, and this is the bit that has everyone jumping, no visible means of support. A quick check on her bank records shows someone paid the rent and slipped her £500 a month from a Bank in Liechtenstein. We were wondering if that someone was you?”

I almost laughed; the idea was preposterous. Instead I gave him my best lawyer’s poker face.

“Mr Smythe, I told you and I told the Police, I met Ms Sable for the first time on Saturday, purely by chance. Prior to that, well, I knew of her. I bought three of her pieces through a Gallery in the Fulham Road. I can tell you no more. But you might tell me why Her Majesty’s Government are interested. I can see that it is a matter for the Police but where precisely do MI5 or 6 come in?”

He gave a tight smile and bowed to acknowledge my identification of him was close, if not entirely accurate.

“Let us just say that the Foreign Office was asked for assistance by the Russian Federation Foreign Ministry in tracing a large amount of stolen currency. Thus far we have been unable to render that assistance. The man who introduced himself to you yesterday as a Detective Constable in Norfolk CID was in fact our own Inspector Willis from Special Branch. He went to Norfolk to interview Ms Sable. I believe he had an appointment to see her at around 5:30 pm on Saturday. That might explain the agitation you so acutely observed.

“Unfortunately, when he arrived at her home, she was not there. However, there were no signs of the disturbance you discovered on Sunday lunchtime.”

It was clear to both of us that I could shed no further light on events in Norfolk. He didn’t waste time with small talk and left shortly afterwards. Bernie rushed in the moment Smythe left the building. “What did Michael the Mouth want with you then Mr Booth?” He spoke bitterly.

“Who, Bernie?”

“Michael-bloody-Cornell, that’s who. Or Mickey the Mouth to his mates in Special Branch.”

“I see, he told me his name was Edgar Smythe. You know him, I take it?”

“Know him? ‘Course I bloody know him. He’s a fixer for SIS.”

SIS, more commonly, if erroneously, known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence branch of the British Secret Service. They aren’t supposed to have any domestic interests and the history of British Spydom is littered with cock-ups caused by interdepartmental rivalries. ‘Mickey the Mouth’ was obviously a liaison officer between the two branches and Special Branch, which is actually part of the Metropolitan Police. It didn’t surprise me that Bernie should know him. He had joined our Chambers from another that specialised in some of the high profile criminal cases, including those involving terrorism.

I told Bernie the full story. He listened in silence. Finally he said, “Sounds like Russian Mafia to me, Mr Booth. Best you stay out of it.” I assured him that was precisely what I intended to do but a small voice in side contradicted me even as I spoke.

Chapter Three

The rest of that week passed normally. I had a slightly uncomfortable interview with the head of Chambers. He’d found about my uninvited visitor and wanted to register his concern but was unsure quite what it was that should concern him. I was taciturn rather than truculent – we never have seen eye to eye. So it came to Friday and I was having a quiet glass of wine in El Vino’s on Fleet Street. The old wine bar was once the haunt of the ‘fourth estate’ but since the newspapers had all relocated to Docklands; the legal profession now claimed it as their own.

I was chatting to couple of ‘silks’ – Queen’s Counsels – when Joachim called me from behind the bar. “Telephone for Mr Booth!” He pronounced it ‘Boot’ but I’d heard his mangling of my name often enough to know he meant me.

“Hello, Martin Booth speaking.”

“Mr Booth, thank Gawd I’ve caught you.”

“Bernie! What’s the panic?”

“There’s a young lady to see you Mr Booth, here in Chambers!”

“Do we have a name, Bernie or have you been unusually coy?”

“She won’t give no name, Mr Booth, just says it’s very urgent.”

“Let me see, Five foot Eight and Blonde?”

“No, Mr Booth, about Five Six and dark with very blue eyes.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I dashed back to the Temple. It had to be Angela Sable. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. In the end I managed to be both at the same time. She was sitting in the cubbyhole that passes for a waiting room in our Chambers. She rose as I came in and stared at me intently, as if it were me that was out of place.

“Angela, this a turn-up. What are you doing here and what happened last Sunday?”

“Hello, Mr Booth.”

“It’s Martin, remember?”

“Ah yes. Martin. I have no one else to turn to. I need help, Martin. I’m sorry but you are the only person I could think of.”

“OK. Let’s get out of here and go somewhere we can talk in private.”

She looked hurriedly about her and I indicated Bernie with a flick of my eyes. She gave the briefest nod of understanding and followed me out. I cudgelled my brain to think of somewhere we go where we could talk without being overheard. It was early Friday evening and the pubs and bars in that part of London were full of people celebrating the weekend. In the end I gave up and hailed a Black Cab. We went to my place.

I have a small Mews house just off Queensgate. I bought it for a song years ago, unconverted and run down. It had been a bit of a money pit in the beginning and my Bank Manager had not looked favourably on a Pupil Barrister taking on such a pile of debt. Fat lot he knew! Modernised and tarted up, it’s now worth around a million. It’s no palace, three rooms, kitchen and bath, as the Estate Agents would say, but Freehold houses in SW7 are as rare as hen’s back teeth, especially ones with integral garages. Apart from anything else, it’s quiet. No traffic, no pubs, no shops. It suits me very well. I looked at it as being a good part of my pension. When I call it a day, London won’t see my arse for dust. I’ll settle in the country somewhere, the Cotswolds, maybe.

I showed Angela into the sitting room and asked what she wanted to drink. She shrugged. Well, if she couldn’t be bothered, I’d decide. I opened a bottle of Chateau Lestage, a very respectable little Haut Medoc. Once she got the drink in her hand, she couldn’t stop talking. It was like a dam bursting. The whole story of the last week came flooding out of her.

After I had left on the Saturday, two men arrived at her studio. She had been expecting them. They had contacted her earlier in the week, claiming to have to have been colleagues of her father. She had been suspicious, but not overly so. She had left Estonia years before and was not really aware of what her father had been doing latterly. She knew he had been in the Soviet Army, of course, but he had never spoken much about it and had been away a lot, when she was growing up. They hadn’t been particularly close and rarely wrote to each other. She didn’t know if these colleagues were from his Red Army days or more recent times. She only thought to ask after they had hung up.

The two men arrived, introduced themselves as representatives of the Russian Federation Ministry of Culture and started talking vaguely about offering her an exhibition. She grew nervous when it became obvious that neither had the slightest idea about her work. One of them mentioned ‘your paintings.’ Then they started to talk about her father. What a Grand Fellow he had been; how he must have been proud of his artist daughter. They were about as subtle as a charging Rhino. They kept asking her if her father had given her anything for safekeeping, just until his ‘comrades’ could reclaim it. She said she had nothing – had never had anything – of her father’s.

They clumped about some more and left with vague promises of being in touch. Once they had gone, she called the Russian Embassy. They confirmed her suspicions that there were no Ministry of Culture representatives currently in the UK and that the Cultural Attaché was presently in Edinburgh with the Ballet. Angela said that she had lived long enough under Russian occupation to know that all of this meant trouble. She was scared, she said. She thought of coming to see me but didn’t feel she could involve someone she’d only just met. She worried late into the evening and decided it was high time to get out of there, to go to ground, so to speak.

She packed up her few valuable belongings into her old Ford Escort and left at around midnight. She knew some Estonian friends in Leicester and had arrived there in the early morning. She slept in the car until it was light and then went to call on her friends. They had seen the story on the TV News. They claimed to be worried for her. What had happened? She told them her story, foolishly, she now said, as they became very interested in what it might be the men were after. They pumped her about her father. She became paranoid, jumping at shadows, perhaps, but she had to leave.

On Tuesday she had made her farewells, unable to escape the feeling that they were desperate for her to stay but didn’t know how to compel her to do so, without giving some kind of game away. She had fled, aimlessly. She stayed that night and the next in a Bed-and Breakfast in Shropshire. Then, she reasoned, if people were truly after her, they would have her car registration and description. She sold the car for £500 to a dealer in Oswestry and caught a train to Birmingham. She stayed in Birmingham one night and resolved to find me. She had gone to the City Library and found me in a Legal Directory. She was afraid to telephone so she decided to come to Chambers. She’d waited in Temple Court until the area quietened down and had slipped into our Chambers just as Bernie was about to lock up.

She had a little money but not enough to live for long in London. Throughout her story she was calm, rational and held me with those ice eyes. Magic sat at her feet with his head on her lap, fixing her with his adoring gaze that he gives anyone who sits still long enough. Trotsky, being Trotsky, ignored us both. There was silence when she finished. My brain was whirling. There was something rotten about all this but I couldn’t think what it was for the life of me. I’m a boring bloody Tax Barrister, for Christ’s sake! I’m no James Bond. I liked Angela, admired her immensely as a sculptor, but that didn’t seem enough to have me cast as the ‘Knight in Shining Armour.’ I suppose I must have just sat there with a stupid expression on my face for a full five minutes. She didn’t say another word, just fixed me with her Nordic gaze. Eventually, I had to say something.

“You can stay here tonight, at least. I need time to think.”

“Of course. It is most kind of you, Martin.”

“Not at all, not at all. I, umm, I’m a bit stumped, to tell you the truth.”

“Stumped?”

“Oh, puzzled. I mean, do you know anything about this ‘thing’ of your father’s that you’re supposed to have?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I haven’t seen him in over ten years and we have not been close friends.”

I told her about my conversation with ‘Mickey the Mouth.’ Unless she was a superb actress, the shock on her face was genuine. She hadn’t known about her sister, Vika’s death. I asked her about her appointment with the man from Special Branch. She was genuinely surprised. The only appointment she had was with the two Russians; she knew nothing of any British policemen. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would have said. I was now completely flummoxed. My instinct was to get straight on the phone to our friend Mickey and tell all. Something held me back, though. For whatever reason, the whole situation was starting to make my flesh crawl.

Angela hadn’t eaten anything all day so I suggested dinner. There are a number of little Bistros in the area immediately around Queensgate. She shook her head emphatically. She didn’t want to go out – she wouldn’t feel at ease. So we agreed to stay in and I nipped down to the nearest Waitrose in Gloucester Road and picked us up some steaks and a pre-packed salad. Fifteen minutes later we were tucking in and another bottle of Lestage was called for. She began to relax a bit as the wine went down and for the first time since Steph left, I found myself enjoying company over dinner.