Tullivant had allowed Emma ten minutes, then told Ulyana he was going out with some friends for a drink. She was happy enough, with her chocolate and her television programmes, especially now that the kids were in bed. Tullivant had taken the car and headed north into the city, towards the pub across the river from Thames House.
It had taken some fairly simple work on Tullivant’s part to ensure that both Emma’s phones — her usual one, and the one she used to communicate with Cromer, which she assumed Tullivant didn’t know about — transmitted a copy of all text messages, both received and sent, to Tullivant’s own handset. The dates, times and locations of the lovers’ trysts were all noted.
When, yesterday, Cromer had summoned her to meet him at the Tate Modern, Tullivant had been intrigued. They could hardly engage in a quick bout of passion in such a public place, surely? So he’d accompanied Ulyana and the children part of the way to the park, had told them he’d catch up with them after he’d diverted to one or two shops, and had tracked Emma to the Tate. There, he’d seen her huddled with Cromer, and dropping an object into his hand.
That was when he knew she’d found one or other of the bugs which Cromer had been planting on her. And that was when Tullivant realised events were moving into a new phase.
Tonight, he expected Cromer to come clean to Emma. To tell her that her faithful, doting husband was the target of a surveillance campaign by the Security Service. And that could prove fatal, not just for Tullivant himself but for the entire operation. So he needed to make a move on Cromer tonight, and silence him.
By twenty past nine, Tullivant had seen neither Cromer nor Emma enter the pub. Cromer might have arrived there much earlier; but it was unlike Emma to be as late as this.
Tullivant took out his phone and brought up the screen which showed him a tracking beacon for Emma’s own phone. He didn’t use it much, though he did usually check that she’d arrived at her meetings with Cromer at the appointed locations.
The gently pulsing orange dot of the beacon appeared after a few seconds, just as Tullivant was beginning to assume that it wasn’t going to show up, which would mean Emma was still underground on the train and therefore not giving off a detectable signal. But instead of identifying the location of her phone as a few hundred yards away from Tullivant, the beacon’s signal was coming from somewhere four miles away, in Fulham.
Tullivant rose and began striding in the direction of his car. So Cromer had anticipated that Tullivant might close in tonight, and had taken the precaution of intercepting Emma on the tube and diverting her from her planned destination. It was clever, Tullivant had to admit. Far cleverer than Cromer’s cack-handed attempts at audio surveillance had proven, with his hastily planted bugs.
But Cromer might not know that Tullivant had a GPS lock on his wife’s phone.
As Tullivant walked, he studied the beacon on the screen. It was moving, though it was impossible to tell whether the phone it was coming from, and by extension Emma, was in a vehicle or on foot. Tullivant had to assume it was a car.
He reached his Mazda and started the engine, propping the phone in a holder on the dashboard so that he could watch the progress of the beacon on the screen. It was going to be tricky, negotiating inner London’s notoriously convoluted streets in pursuit of a moving target.
As he drove, Tullivant centred himself, controlling his breathing, focusing on the remaining goals. They presented themselves in his mind with sharp, brittle clarity.
The first was to dispose of Cromer. That would be relatively easy.
The second was to neutralise Emma. This one would be harder to achieve, for all sorts of reasons.
The third of his goals was to terminate John Purkiss.
Tullivant had been told yesterday: Purkiss is no longer part of the game. You don’t have to concern yourself with him now. But they had seriously underestimated Purkiss. All of them had, Tullivant included. The fools out there in the desert at Scipio Rand had failed to deal with him; and now he was back, and a significant threat as long as he remained alive, even if he appeared to be pursuing the wrong lead.
Yes; terminating Purkiss was going to be the most difficult task of all.
Fifty-two
The floor of the cellar tilted, the walls looming in, curving.
James was simultaneously nearby and distant, his voice seeming to echo thinly in another room. Emma didn’t look at him, couldn’t, as if to do so would be to bring into final, unbearable focus the reality she was trying to comprehend only indirectly.
‘The car bomb on Saturday, in Lewisham,’ James said softly. ‘That was Brian.’
The words punched her one after the other, the absurdity of them not softening the blows.
Emma felt a tiny flicker of hope within her. She raised her head, still not looking into James’s face, and said: ‘He couldn’t have done that. He was coaching sport that morning. He left home early.’
Into the silence that followed, a terrible understanding dropped and spread like ink in a pool of water.
Brian had said he was coaching sport. But how did she know?
One by one, the realisations came crowding in, too many for her to deal with. The weekend trips on rugby or cricket tours. The late evenings at away matches. The staff meetings, at what now seemed excessively early hours in the morning.
Could they all have been lies? All of them? Was it possible?
Emma knew Brian’s teaching job was genuine; she’d met colleagues of his, had accompanied him to the occasional work do. But she’d never questioned his out-of-hour and weekend commitments, because she’d been too absorbed in her own life, in her work and her affair with James, to take any interest.
My children’s father is a murderer.
The though convulsed her stomach. She turned her head to one side as James rose from his chair opposite in alarm. Emma hadn’t eaten since lunch, ten hours earlier, but what came up was enough to spatter her hand and the rough stone floor.
James was at her side, his hands on her shoulders. She closed her eyes, cringing from his touch, the sour sting of the bile in her nose and mouth humiliating her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured close to her ear. ‘I’ll get some water.’
Before Emma could protest, could insist that she be allowed to find a bathroom in the house and clean herself up, James had disappeared up the cellar stairs. She heard the door at the top clothes, and the unmistakable metal sound of a bolt being slid home.
Through her shock and despair, Emma was aware of the anger returning.
So, he was keeping her a prisoner here.
There wasn’t much Emma could do except wait, so she turned the chair with her back to the evidence of her retching and hunched over.
It occurred to her that she had her phone on her. James hadn’t confiscated that. But whom could she call? Brian? Hardly. The police? James probably had influence over them.
Emma realised she’d never been so alone in her life.
A thought struck her. The children. Jack and Niamh. She had to get them to safety.
The glass of her watch had been cracked when James had tackled her in the street, but the mechanism seemed to be working fine. It was a quarter past ten. Ulyana would be home with the kids. Brian would still be out in the pub with his friends.
Except he probably wasn’t out socialising, of course. He was somewhere secret, doing God knew what.
Emma had her fingertips on the phone in her pocket when James came down the steps, carrying a steaming bucket by the handle in on hand, a mop and cloths in the other, together with a half-litre bottle of mineral water.