‘I’m sure we’ll make up time, Mrs Goldmann. Won’t be a problem.’ It was a soft lie, not an important one. The traffic would be building on the streets between the house in Knightsbridge and the school in Kensington that specialized in providing an education to ‘international’ children from families of great wealth. For Jonathan Carrick, every waking moment of his life was governed by deceit, and each time he spoke, he had to consider whether he risked exposing it. He grinned. ‘No, they’ll be there for Assembly — I promise, Mrs Goldmann.’
The housekeeper emerged from the door at the back of the hall, the route to the kitchen, holding two plastic lunchboxes containing fruit and sandwiches. It was more of the ritual of the morning departure. The children would take the boxes with them to school, would eat the lunch the school provided, and the boxes would come back in the afternoon, unopened. The sandwiches and fruit would be eaten in the kitchen by Carrick, or Rawlings, who had been his entry point to the family, by Grigori or Viktor.
She called again. ‘Please, loved ones, hurry.’
Selma and Peter cascaded down the stairs. The girl was nine and the boy was six. Cheerful and happy, noisy and loved. The children greeted him: ‘Good morning, Mr Carrick … Hi, Johnny …’ It was not right that he should show familiarity in front of their mother, so he assumed a frown of mock-severity, muttered about the time and gazed at his watch. His reaction won shrieks of laughter from the girl and giggles from the boy.
He had the car keys in his hand and stood by the heavy door. Now Grigori had slouched out of the kitchen area, skirted the children, their mother and the housekeeper and come to stand beside Carrick. Their eyes met, a formality of communication. He had little time for the Russian bodyguard, and the bodyguard scarcely hid his dislike for this intruder into the household. Grigori nodded sharply to him. They did not have to discuss the procedures. After three months they were well rehearsed. Carrick’s fingertips hit the keypad, unlocked the door, closing down the alarm, then opened it. It was well oiled but heavy, having a steel plate covering its back.
Grigori clattered down the steps, his eyes raking the street, each car and van. Then he waved, a small, economical gesture. Carrick came next, going awkwardly on the steps. The limp was accentuated. The big Mercedes was parked across the pavement. Carrick went to it, flashed the key, slid into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine, then leaned back and opened the rear near-side door. Now the children spilled after him and dived in. As their belts clicked, as the door was slammed shut, he pulled away from the kerb.
He looked back a last time. Mrs Goldmann, Esther, was at the top of the steps and waving, then blowing kisses. If it had interested Carrick, he would have said that she was a good-looking woman, with something slightly feral about her thinness. The way her collarbones and cheekbones protruded from the skin was attractive, as was the blonde hair that the morning sunlight caught. She was dressed quietly, blouse, skirt, a knotted scarf at her throat … He thought her as dangerous to his safety as any other adult in the household.
Each morning he drove the children of Josef and Esther Goldmann to the international school. And each afternoon he brought them home. Between the trips to and from the school, he sometimes escorted Mrs Goldmann to an exhibition of furniture or art, to a reception for a charity she supported, to a lunch appointment. After school, sometimes, he took her to a cocktail party, to the theatre or a concert. He would have described her as discreetly prominent in the community of newly rich Russian citizens making their home in the British capital, would also have said she was intelligent and sharp-witted, much more to her husband than a social decoration. He could not have said how much longer he would continue working for the family, maybe weeks but not months. He drove carefully, not fast.
The truth was that high expectations had not been fulfilled; he was inside the family’s home, but outside the kernel of the family’s existence. He did not know where Josef Goldmann, or Viktor, or indeed Simon Rawlings were that morning. Behind him, the kids were quiet, stamping their small, pudgy fingers on the controls of their GameBoys. Josef Goldmann, Viktor and Simon Rawlings had left the house before Carrick had arrived for the start of his day. It was not that he could be criticized for not knowing where they had gone, but there would be disappointment that an operation involving resources and expenditure was proving much less than fruitful.
Often he looked in the rear-view mirror. He did not know whether a tail was on him, if back-up was close. His employment was to prevent the kidnapping of the kids — they were a worthwhile target, had to be, with a father worth more than a hundred million in sterling. The Mercedes sat low on its tyres because of the armour plating on the doors and the reinforced glass, and he carried an extendable baton with an aerosol can of pepper spray in his suit jacket … He was so damned alone, but that was the nature of his work.
Near to the school, he joined a queue of top-of-the-range people-carriers, sports utilities and saloons with privacy windows. He did not let the kids out and on to the pavement short of the school gate, but edged forward till he was level with it and within sight of the school’s own security staff. He was not a child-minder, a chauffeur or a door-opener. Jonathan Carrick, Johnny to all who knew him half well, was a serving police officer, Level One Undercover, a bright star in the firmament of a small and secretive corner of the Metropolitan Police Service that carried the title of Serious Crime Directorate 10. And the high-value target that was Josef Goldmann still eluded him.
He braked and loosed the lock on the rear door, near side. ‘OK, guys. Have a good day.’
‘And you, Johnny … You have a good day, too, Johnny.’
He grimaced. ‘And do your work. You work hard.’
One droll answer. ‘Of course, Johnny, what else?’ And one query: ‘Will you be picking us up, Johnny?’
‘Yes, lucky me.’ He gave an exaggerated wink, and they were gone. As ever, the little beggars didn’t bother to close the door behind them, so he had to lean back and do it himself. It would be him who picked them up because he wasn’t yet deep enough into the family. To have been deep, to have made the operation worthwhile, he would have been driving Josef Goldmann and Viktor to whatever destination was given him, as Simon Rawlings had that morning.
It was regular, not sophisticated but simple.
It was a procedure that was used twice a month during the spring, summer and autumn.
Sitting in the back, on the leather seat of his 8-series Audi, Josef Goldmann waited for Viktor’s return. In front of him, head back and eyes closed, was his driver, Simon Rawlings. He liked the man. Rawlings drove well, never initiated conversation, and seemed to see little. There was a litheness to his movement that came from his pedigree history: Rawlings — why Goldmann had chosen him — was a one-time sergeant in the British Parachute Regiment. It had been Goldmann’s opinion, when he emigrated from Moscow to London, that he must have his own men for close protection but British men for the driving. His mind that morning was clouded. Other matters dominated his mind and had for the last two months — since Viktor’s return from Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod oblast. He could have refused what had been offered to him, perhaps should have, but had not. Every day of the last week he had checked the Internet for a weather forecast in the region of that oblast, with particular reference to the air temperature. What he had learned yesterday and the previous day had warned him to expect the call, and a mobile phone in Viktor’s pocket was dedicated solely to receiving it. It was beyond anything that Josef Goldmann had attempted before, and there had been many nights in those two months that he had lain awake on his back, beside Esther while she slept, and his mind had churned with the enormity of it. The business that brought him regularly to the port of Harwich was predictable enough to allow him to be distracted.