Blind pursuit, p.15
Blind Pursuit, page 15
Something would have to give. She’d said yes to Callum and she’d meant it and was determined to see it through. She just didn’t know how, or when.
And, quite frankly, she had plenty of other things that she needed – hoped – to get through before she and Callum tied the knot.
Not least figuring out who had killed Naomi and why and catching up with the people who’d tried to have her killed too – possibly the same people.
And she’d make them all pay.
‘Dreaming of your wedding dress again?’ Denis said, startling her from her thoughts.
She turned to him but didn’t respond immediately. She was annoyed both because she hadn’t seen him arrive, too distracted – even though she was expecting him – and also because she actually was thinking about the wedding. Again. Plus, she hated the derogatory way that Denis always talked about it and Callum, as though he looked down on her future husband for his ‘normal’ life and saw Lea as lowering her standards to try to fit into that life.
Not that he’d said anything anywhere nearly as bluntly as that, but she just knew.
‘How was Turkey?’ she asked him.
He’d been in Istanbul the last two weeks on a new assignment that she knew little about. Nothing to do with the Iranians or what had happened in Toulouse or Cairo, he’d said. Everything on that front had gone quiet, both officially and unofficially. Lea hated that. And hated that even Denis seemed to have moved on despite what had happened to him.
‘I didn’t lose any more toes,’ he said, smiling, relaxed. ‘So that’s a plus.’
‘Maybe if you did even out your left and right at least so you wouldn’t be zigzagging all over like a drunkard.’
She delivered that deadpan, still a little angered by his initial comment. To start with he scowled, as though not impressed by the quip, but then laughed and she soon relaxed too.
‘I’m sensing you didn’t ask me to come here to talk about Turkey,’ he said. ‘Or my toes.’
‘And not my wedding either.’
‘Any news on when the big day’ll be?’ he asked.
‘What did I literally just say about that?’
‘The plans are going that well, huh?’
She said nothing. Hated how he seemed to take pleasure in her discomfort.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You know I’m happy for you really.’
Funny way of showing it.
‘And you know I do care for you,’ he added.
‘I know, Denis.’
‘When two people have been through the things we have together…’
‘I get it.’
Still, he let the comment sit there between them a few moments.
‘So, back to the point,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing it’s the other thing you wanted to talk about.’
‘The Iranians.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s like… everyone else has just forgotten about what happened. To you. To me.’
‘But that’s because it happened to you and me. Not them. MI6 isn’t about resolving personal grudges. To everyone else… what happened to us was just… how it goes. Or something like that. And we still have no evidence any of those parties is up to anything that the British government would care about—’
Lea tutted. ‘Naomi was killed.’
‘And I’m sure MI6’s actions have seen plenty of people we didn’t like killed. Yours and my own too.’
‘To help make the world a better, safer place.’
‘According to MI6 and our government?’
‘No, according to me. I do what I do because I know it helps. And… Denis, those people – Hadjam and the Iranians – I still think… they have to be doing something… bad.’ She huffed, annoyed at herself for her failure to properly explain it. ‘They must be, right? Otherwise, why the attacks on me and you at all?’
‘If we knew the why—’
‘Then MI6 would have given us, or the SAS or whoever the orders already to go and round them all up or take them all out.’
‘But we haven’t had that order—’
‘And that’s the fucking problem, Denis! Why haven’t we had the order? Nobody else cares, and I can’t stand it. I want to know what they were, still are, up to.’
The conversation paused. Denis held her eye, as though scouring her thoughts. She felt pretty sure he read them in that moment.
His gaze narrowed. ‘Have you already been looking into this? On your own?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘But you want to. And you want me to help?’
‘Yes. Because I think some of the answers I want are close to home.’
Quiet again. Staring at her again, reading her mind. Except this time, he didn’t offer anything back.
‘Hadjam’s daughter is married to Omar Yousefi,’ Lea said. ‘The MP.’
‘Who, as far as we’re aware, has zero connection to any proscribed group. Even when we were looking into these people, he wasn’t specifically a target.’
‘Which is bullshit! His father-in-law is one step away from Islamists and that’s a fact!’
‘So MI6 should be rounding up everyone who’s ever been connected to anyone who’s connected to a terrorist group?’
‘No. But… Well, yes! I mean, isn’t that the purpose of MI6? To at least make sure everyone who fits that scenario is vetted?’
Denis shrugged, his nonchalance only further irritating her. ‘Think we’d need a few more agents to get that job done any time in the next century or so.’
‘You want to be like that? Then piss off. I can figure this out myself.’
She went to turn away but he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back around. For a moment she thought he was about to…
No. He didn’t do anything as stupid as that.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not disagreeing with you. Not exactly. Just explaining why it is like it is.’
‘Whatever.’ She shrugged him off.
‘So you’re focusing on the MP? But what’s the play? What is he up to? How is he connected to what happened to us?’
‘I don’t know! But that’s what I’m going to find out. I will find out.’
Denis sighed and looked around them, as though more concerned now of the potential for eyes on them, eavesdroppers.
‘You really want to not only go ahead with an unsanctioned move, but you want to make that move against a sitting UK Member of Parliament, on UK soil?’
When he said it like that, it did sound a bit risky. Ill thought-out.
‘I’m not suggesting we go and snatch him, interrogate him. Light touch. Level two.’
Denis said nothing.
‘I’m going to do it with or without you,’ she said. ‘But I thought, given your personal involvement in this, you’d want to help.’
‘Lea, even if it wasn’t personal for me, you know I’ll help you.’
She smiled, relief more than anything.
‘Just let me know when,’ he said.
She tried not to laugh.
‘Shit. What?’
‘Are you busy… tonight?’ she asked.
He was obviously trying his hardest to stay looking serious at the question. Failed after about three seconds before he laughed too.
‘Looks like I am now,’ he said.
Despite a spate of scandals over the misuse of ancillary benefits, and sometimes dodgy taxation too, it remained entirely usual for a UK MP to have a second home in London, either rented or owned, and largely paid for through the public purse, regardless of where in the country their constituency lay. Omar Yousefi held the constituency of East Riding in Yorkshire, although he certainly wasn’t a native of that area. He’d been born to a relatively wealthy Iranian immigrant family in London – his father was a doctor – and had grown up there, gone to university in the city too. After that he’d worked in an investment bank for several years before starting his own investment company with a colleague. A company in which he still held a minority stake, despite selling a controlling interest to a larger competitor several years previously. A deal about which the details were never made public, but it was routinely considered that Yousefi and his partner had each taken away eight figures. And not low eight figures, either.
After that Yousefi had turned to politics, originally campaigning for the left wing – or occasionally centrist – Labour Party, and had found favour for his liberal stances on immigration, particularly in and around London’s East End where he’d been born, and where the immigrant community, especially from the Middle East, continued to grow.
Despite that initial platform, before long he’d switched allegiances to the more right-wing Conservative Party and had changed his stances on numerous more liberal views around immigration, the welfare state, taxation. Quite why that change had taken place, Lea didn’t know, but within a short time Yousefi had risen through the Conservatives with his clean-cut image and impeccable dress sense and his obvious charm and well-spoken manner. His rags to riches story (even if it wasn’t really a ‘rags’ start to life, despite what the right-wing press tried to conjure) only added further appeal both within the party and to its base.
To swing voters too, apparently, as he’d pulled off something of a coup by winning the seat of Kensington for the Conservatives, one of very few London boroughs to vote right-wing in the election two cycles ago. His rising prominence had seen him earmarked for a future cabinet position, and so he’d been switched to the far more safe seat of East Riding for the next election, where it seemed almost impossible that the residents of the area wouldn’t simply vote along usual party lines, even if Yousefi was clearly an outsider to the area – and not just because of his heritage.
Still, despite his growing importance, he hadn’t lasted long in the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer for that government, though it was generally believed to be down to party in-fighting rather than his own personal performance. Regardless, his party lost the last election, even if he held his seat comfortably, though having not been selected for the shadow cabinet, he once again found himself on the backbenches.
But he remained a prominent force in his party, with some even suggesting he was a potential future leader.
Prior to his name coming up because of their interest in Hadjam, Lea hadn’t really paid much attention to Yousefi’s life or career. Politically speaking, she held no strong views on him. Personally speaking, she was massively suspicious, not just of his links to Hadjam but… about pretty much everything.
Even the simple fact that he’d been shipped up to Yorkshire, some 200 miles from the capital. Just the fact that he couldn’t possibly lose that seat made the whole thing seem so bogus. And just look at where he lived here…
‘If this is his second home, what the hell is his first?’ Denis said, looking out of the car window.
The grey-brick Georgian townhouse in Knightsbridge sat on a short street of other near-identical townhouses, each probably worth ten million or more. Knightsbridge wasn’t that far from Westminster, so she guessed it was plausible this place was a good location for carrying out his duties in the capital, but still…
‘Maybe it isn’t his second home,’ Lea said. ‘Maybe he counts it as his third. He’s got a place out in Berkshire too. A few acres there for his wife’s horses. I’m not sure about up in Yorkshire. I’ve not checked exactly where he lives there.’
‘Oh, I’ve no doubt it’s just a tiny flat above a shop or something.’
‘Yeah. I imagine you’re not even close to right.’
Denis scowled. ‘A man of the people, eh?’
‘Of course he is. Just depends on which people you mean.’
‘And you’re sure he’s not here?’ Denis asked.
‘I’m sure. He’s in Yorkshire. A gala of some sort.’
‘And his wife?’
‘With him.’
‘Kids?’
‘He only has one daughter and she’s at university. Cambridge, obviously.’
‘Why’s that obvious?’
Lea sighed. ‘Just seems like what you’d imagine for a man who lives like he does.’
‘Servants?’ Denis asked.
Lea laughed. Denis didn’t.
‘I was being serious,’ he added.
‘Yeah, I know. But no, he has no live-in servants. I’ve kept a close eye on this place for a couple of weeks now. There’s a gardener to tend to the walled garden at the back, but he doesn’t go through the house, has a key to get around the side. And there’s a cleaner, once a week on Wednesday. But that’s it.’
Denis sighed and looked out at the house again.
‘And you figured a way in already?’
‘Of course.’
He turned back to her and she held his eye, enjoying his impatience, his obvious curiosity as he awaited an answer.
‘And?’ he eventually said, and Lea chuckled as she reached into her pocket and withdrew the key.
‘Front door, obviously.’
They both got out of the car, gave a quick glance along the quiet street. Not much going on around here at 9 p.m. on a weeknight. Yousefi’s townhouse wasn’t quite fully in darkness, with a couple of lights visible beyond the windows on the ground and second floor, but Lea was sure it was only a basic security measure.
They headed up the steps to the front door, side by side.
‘And you got that how?’ he asked.
‘Newly cut. His wife goes to a gym around the corner from here. I followed her in there a few times, got a good idea of the layout, what she does, where she puts her things, how long she spends there. The last time I broke into her locker – they’re pretty basic – and I took her key and caught an Uber to the nearest locksmith and got my own copy cut. Had hers back in her bag before she’d finished her shower.’
They reached the door. Lea looked over at Denis.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Just… you. I admire your… balls.’
‘Not the best word, really?’
He rolled his eyes in response. Lea pushed the key into the lock, turned, opened the door.
A blip sounded out from the entry alarm.
‘I hope you’re about to tell me you know how to disable that?’
She smiled and followed the sound to the control panel on the inside wall. She input the six-digit code and the lights on the panel flashed green and the noise stopped.
Denis closed the door behind him.
‘And the story for that?’ he asked. Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Have you already been here?’
‘No, actually. First time. But I’ve spent a bit of time following the cleaner too. I swiped her phone when she was eating lunch with a friend a few days ago, unlocked it using an old trick you taught me.’
‘The iPhone one? You mean the one where you—?’
‘That one, yeah. And, lucky for me, she had a message from a couple of years ago from Yousefi’s wife with the code right there. I think sometimes people get just a little bit too complacent with these things.’
‘Yeah. That, or they just don’t expect MI6 agents to be swiping their phones while they’re eating lunch, to search for access codes their employers gave them in good faith.’
‘You know what? You’re probably right. But they really should.’
Denis smiled. ‘Let’s get to it.’
Which didn’t take them too long. In the modern world, so many people had become reliant on mobile data. Even if the opulent home had an office, there weren’t exactly reams of paperwork – confidential, scandalous or otherwise. And even electronic data was becoming more and more mobile. Laptop, tablet, phone rather than desktop.
‘Maybe we need to come back when he’s actually here,’ Denis said as Lea closed the last of the desk drawers and sighed, disappointed yet again.
‘Yeah. I think maybe you’re right. Although…’
Her eyes wandered around the room as she thought. Her gaze came to rest on a painting along the wall opposite the desk.
‘You like it?’ Denis asked.
‘No idea what it is.’
‘Probably something way more expensive than you or I could ever afford.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
She moved over to the painting and carefully lifted it off the hook.
‘Old school,’ Denis said as they both stared at the door to the safe.
‘Safe behind a painting?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s an electronic lock though, so not that old school.’
‘No. But all the easier to get into it.’
‘Yep.’
‘Want me to do the honours?’ Denis asked with a smile.
‘Go for it.’
It took him less than two minutes. Lea knew several common ways to break a standard electronic safe – the type used routinely in hotels and in people’s homes. Some had override codes, some had a manual key entry behind a removable panel, while with others the control panel could be hacked into.
Which was exactly the case with Yousefi’s safe. Like many such safes, there was a battery backup system should the unit lose power. That battery enclosure needed to be accessible for obvious reasons. But that access also gave easy access to the entire electronic system. Back door entry to manually override the system, if you knew how.
Denis pulled open the door and then turned to Lea.
‘Happy?’
She stared inside. Quite a few items in there, from watches to bundles of cash, brown envelopes with papers. A couple of DVDs, flash drives. An old mobile phone.
