And Peggy enjoyed her work. She was never happier than when she was following a paper trail, supporting Liz as she made her investigations. Peggy had started her working life as a librarian and loved the cataloguing, classification and retrieval of facts. That was her métier. She could sniff out information and make sense of what others saw as a meaningless jumble of unrelated facts.
Every three months or so, she was reminded of her original employers when she had lunch with her one remaining link to Vauxhall Cross, Millie Warmington. After Peggy’s secondment to MI5 and subsequent decision to join for good, the two women had kept in touch. They had been young trainees together and had got along from the start. Millie had a sweet nature and was a loyal friend. But she was also one of life’s complainers; Peggy privately called her ‘Millie the Moaner’. Today Peggy could have done without their long-standing lunch date, because she was busy trying to find out more about the Aristides and her crew while also investigating Amir Khan’s past in Birmingham. There was the further drawback that Millie liked to take her time over lunch. However simple the meal – they usually met in an Italian pasta place on the South Bank – she always managed to spin it out for at least an hour. Peggy’s efforts to move things along were never successful.
Today proved no exception. At first, they chatted for a while about their social lives. Millie had no steady boyfriend but seemed genuinely pleased that Peggy’s Tim, a lecturer in English, was still very much in the picture. Then the conversation moved on to work and their respective jobs. Peggy was always fairly discreet since she knew that Millie was a bit of a gossip. She also knew that her boss, Liz Carlyle, was the object of much interest on the other side of the river, and that plenty of MI6 officers would love to know more about her – both what she was working on and, in particular, her private life. Peggy was fiercely loyal to Liz and so diverted Millie’s probing remarks by asking her about her own work.
This gave Millie just the opening she wanted and there followed the usual litany of complaint, especially about her boss. When they had joined up, both Peggy and Millie had worked under Henry Boswell, an old-fashioned but thoroughly decent man. Then Millie had switched departments and now worked for a female tyrant she called The Dragon. After ten minutes ranting about The Dragon’s latest misdemeanours, Millie had barely hit her stride, but by then Peggy had tuned out, her thoughts turning to the work she needed to do that afternoon.
It was only when they finally left the restaurant and walked towards Vauxhall Bridge for Millie to go back to Vauxhall Cross and Peggy to cross the river to Thames House, that something her friend was saying caused Peggy to tune in again. Afterwards, she was very glad that she had.
‘Good lunch?’ asked Liz. She was in her office, the remains of a salad from the canteen in a take-out container on her desk.
‘I saw my friend from Six.’
‘“Moaning Millie?”’ asked Liz with a laugh. Peggy had described her friend’s habitual complaining often enough
‘The same,’ said Peggy. ‘And still moaning. But she did tell me one thing I thought you’d want to know. Bruno Mackay’s been moved from Paris.’
‘Fane mentioned it but he didn’t say where.’
‘Athens. He’s been made Head of Station there.’
‘Golly. Good for old Bruno,’ said Liz, which seemed a generous thing for her to say. Peggy knew there was no love lost there.
‘Yes, but he’s come a bit of a cropper, I’m afraid. One of his agents has been killed. Murdered actually – she was strangled.’
Liz’s face showed her astonishment. ‘How dreadful. What happened?’
‘They’re not sure. She was found dead in her flat.’
‘Do they know who did it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Was it connected with work?’
Peggy shrugged. ‘I don’t think they know that either. She was a long-standing asset of Six, doing some undercover investigation for the Athens Station. I gather Bruno selected her himself.’ Which made it even worse for him, thought Peggy. Hard though it was – because he was so insufferable – you nonetheless had to feel sorry for Bruno Mackay. One month in his new job and an agent dead.
Liz seemed to share her feelings. She asked, almost as an afterthought, ‘What was the undercover investigation?’
Peggy looked expressionlessly at her as she said, ‘Working in some charity, I believe.’
‘Not UCSO?’
Peggy nodded.
Liz was shaking her head angrily. ‘They say a leopard doesn’t change its spots… but I thought, just for a moment, Geoffrey Fane might have changed his and gone straight. I see I was wrong.’
Chapter 22
Liz was sitting at her desk, still fuming that Geoffrey Fane had put an agent into UCSO without telling her, when the phone rang. It was Fane’s secretary.
‘Hello, Liz. You wanted to see Geoffrey. He’s suggesting lunch. Can you do tomorrow?’
Liz groaned to herself. She’d originally wanted a short meeting in his office, so they could bring each other up to date. Now she wanted to make a formal complaint about his duplicity. She certainly didn’t want to sit exchanging pleasantries in a public place. But, in typical Fane fashion, he had forestalled her.
She sighed. ‘OK. Where does he want to meet?’
‘The Athenaeum. Twelve-thirty.’
‘The Athenaeum? I thought his club was the Travellers.’
‘It is. But he’s just joined the Athenaeum as well and he’s doing most of his lunching there at present.’
‘How grand,’ said Liz sardonically. Fane’s secretary laughed and rang off.
The following morning Liz dressed with more care than usual for a working day, since she wasn’t going to be outfaced by Geoffrey Fane with his two smart clubs. The idea was to look charming and demure.
There had been a time, several years ago, when Liz had been afflicted by wardrobe chaos. In those days, not long after she’d acquired her first flat in the basement, she’d found it impossible to keep both her domestic life and her busy working life in order. On a morning like this she might well have found all suitable garments either stuck in a non-functioning washing machine or waiting in a pile to go to the cleaner’s.
But, along with her rather larger apartment, she had inherited a helpful lady, who not only cleaned the flat but also took her clothes to the cleaner’s and managed the washing machine. So today when she opened her wardrobe she actually had a choice. It was a lovely sunny day and after a moment’s thought she selected a pretty silk skirt, a pink linen jacket and a pair of kitten-heeled shoes that she’d bought for a friend’s wedding.
That should do, she decided, hoping to lull Geoffrey Fane, so that when she revealed that she knew about the agent he’d put into UCSO without telling her, he’d be caught completely off guard. She was looking forward to seeing his face then.
Not even the prospect of Fane could dampen Liz’s spirits this morning. Martin was coming to London for the long Bank Holiday weekend. He had an early-afternoon meeting, coincidentally with MI6, but they planned to meet up later in a Pimlico wine bar near the headquarters of both Services. Then home to Liz’s flat. If the weather stayed fine on Saturday, they might drive down to Wiltshire where Liz’s mother still lived in the gatehouse of the former estate where Liz’s father had been estate manager and where Liz had grown up.
By mid-morning the sky was overcast but the cloud looked unthreatening. Liz decided to walk to the Athenaeum. The deckchairs in St James’s Park were occupied by optimistic lunch-hour sunbathers, waiting for the cloud to clear. She crossed the Mall and climbed the long flight of stairs, her light skirt fluttering in the sharp breeze that had sprung up, and emerged on to Waterloo Place, where the Athenaeum Club stood four-square and confident, a pristine white stucco Georgian building with classical columns and a blue and white frieze set high up along its façade.