Walking the Dog Read online

  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.

  I made her up the spare bed in my study and we parted for the night feeling quite mellow. She said the dogs made her feel safe. I didn’t disabuse her that they would both be utterly useless if anyone tried to break in. Trotsky would ignore any intruder and Magic would try to lick them death. I don’t keep them for their machismo!

  I lay awake a long while trying to make sense of everything I had seen and heard. Item: Angela’s studio had been thoroughly trashed. Item: The police and presumably, the Security Services, were taking it very seriously. The opposition, whoever they were, were also playing hardball. They had apparently got to Angela’s friends in Leicester. I had just decided to go straight to Michael Cornell, aka Mickey the Mouth, when sleep finally claimed me.

  Everything looked much better the next morning. It was one of those delightful, crisp winter mornings when the sun shone and the light had the diffused golden quality of a Turner painting. I was up early and Angela soon joined me in the kitchen where the dogs were bouncing vertically in their excitement at the prospect of the morning walk. We strolled up Queensgate and crossed the road into the Park. We wandered eastwards behind the giant wedding cake that is the Albert Memorial. There was hardly anyone about at that hour and we walked in companionable silence, like two old friends just out walking the dog. Angela threw a ball for Magic to practice his retrieving and Trotsky sniffed and pissed his way along a little in front of me. I was starting to feel that the whole thing could be cleared up very quickly. All we had to do was go and see Cornell, explain that Angela knew nothing, hadn’t seen her family in years. He could report that back to the Russians and the heat would move off in some other direction. Sometimes you just know it’s wishful thinking, even as you’re doing it.

  A sudden thought struck me.

  “Angela,” I said, ”Cornell also said something about money. He said someone is paying your rent from a bank in Liechtenstein. I think he thinks it was your father.”

  She shrugged. “He’s wrong. It is an old German Lady who chose to be my patron. Her name is Helga Meyer. I have her address in Frankfurt so he can check.”

  I felt a sense of relief. The only mystery now remaining was why she did not know about the interview with Special Branch. We walked on around the gardens, cut up to Hyde Park and watched as Magic threw himself enthusiastically into the Serpentine for his morning swim. There were a few more people around now and I found myself growing more and more uneasy. I suggested we should head back home and was mightily relieved when we got indoors. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get me.

  I made coffee and we sat down in the lounge. It was time for a plan of action. I had barely begun to organise my scattered thoughts when the phone rang.

  “Mr Booth? It’s Bernie”

  “Bernie! To what do I owe the honour of a call on a Saturday morning?”

  “It’s Mickey the Mouth, Mr Booth. I was having a couple of jars with some old mates from Kings Bench Walk and I happened to mention he’d been sneaking about Chambers. Well it seems our Mickey is no longer persona grata with our friends in Vauxhall.” (He meant the Security and Intelligence Service.)

  “The bastard got the elbow, Mr Booth, and is now a freelance. The word is that he’s mixing in some dodgy company these days. I thought you ought to know, like, seeing as it was you he was sniffing around.”

  I thanked Bernie for the information but didn’t know what to make of it. Only one thing was clear. We needed help. Someone was far too interested in Angela’s whereabouts for it to be healthy. For whatever reason, it now appeared that I was well and truly involved. You didn’t need to be a genius to figure out that Michael Cornell, and whomever he was now working for, could find me easily enough. I’ve never made a secret of my address and my number is the phone book. If they realised that Angela had made contact with me, it wouldn’t be too long before we had a visit. I decided it was time to send for reinforcements.

  I immediately thought of the O’Farrell twins. Liam and Niall O’Farrell were old school friends and typical of the sort of ‘muscular Christians’ turned out by Ampleforth. I will never know why we became friends. They were robust, athletic boys and I was much more the academic type. For some reason, they ‘adopted’ me and I had good cause to be grateful for their friendship many times during my school days. Without them, I would have been bullied unmercifully.

  They had joined the army after leaving school and attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. From there they had joined the Parachute Regiment and served with distinction during the Gulf War. They left the army in 1999 and had set up a Security Consultancy. I had loaned them the capital to get started and made a few introductions. They quickly gained a reputation for efficiency and discretion and had repaid my loan within two years. If anyone could help me sor
t out this mess, it was the O’Farrells. Within an hour of my phone call, they were on my doorstep.

  If you met one O’Farrell, you’d be impressed. Meeting two can be intimidating. They were, of course, exceedingly fit and, apart from the odd tinge of grey in their black curls, looked ten years younger than their thirty-seven years. They stood a couple of inches under six feet and seemed to be almost as wide. Liam sported a spectacular broken nose but otherwise they were utterly identical. In another life they could have been absolute thugs but God had given them a different nature and they were possessed of sunny dispositions that seemed to shine out from their lively green eyes. I have never known them but they seemed to be always on the point of breaking into a smile. It was something of a shock, then, to see them so grim-faced when they arrived.

  I had outlined the problem to Niall on the telephone and he had briefed Liam. Their first words were “You’re being watched, old son.”

  Chapter Four

  I had never seen Liam and Niall in action before. They walked into the house and took over. Half an hour later we were being hustled out of the door and into Niall’s Range Rover. We had been instructed to pack a bag with spare clothes and were to be taken a ‘safe house.’ Niall gave his best impersonation of Michael Schumacher to shake off any tail and an hour or two later we were speeding down country lanes to the west of London. Trotsky and Magic in the back were not happy as the car made its split-arse turns through the winding roads. After a while we arrived at the house, a small picturesque cottage just outside that Berkshire village made famous for its concentration of racing stables. I should have guessed. The O’Farrells had that Irish passion for horse racing.

  The place belonged to a well known Trainer and friend of the twins.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” said Liam. “We’re only here for the night. You can bet the opposition will soon know you called us and they can make the connection to this place pretty quickly. Niall is sorting something else out.”

  Angela appeared to have gone into a state of shock, shaken, no doubt, by the speed of events. I just reverted to my childhood and let the twins take over – it had been like that in school – and they were the experts.

  We sat around the dining room table and worried once more at the puzzle. Angela sat quietly and would only nod or reply ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when called upon to confirm some detail or other. Niall prepared some unidentifiable gloop in the microwave and we ate supper in silence. Niall produced a bottle of Bushmills and we sipped the whiskey as we carried on trying to find a solution. I was still in favour of going to the police but Niall and Liam were adamant. Until we knew just who was involved, that was not an option. It seemed clear that the mysterious plain-clothes man from Norfolk was in on the affair, unless, of course, that was just disinformation by Mickey-the-Mouth. The only thing that Angela could not, or would not, accept was that her father had stolen a large amount of money.

  “It is not possible! He was a soldier not a banker. How would he gain access to foreign currency reserves?”

  I had to admit it had us all perplexed. Liam and Niall agreed with Angela. As ex-soldiers, they had some feeling of solidarity with another soldier, even if he was a Colonel of Spetsnaz.

  “She has a point,” said Liam and Niall concurred.

  “I don’t see how he would have had the access or the contacts. It’s been pretty hard to move money through the European Banking system since 1994. The anti Money Laundering rules are pretty tight now. You’d have to good contacts in the banking system or organised crime. It’s possible, I suppose, but I think it would need a team of people, not just one rogue soldier.”

  When I thought about it, I had to agree. I have a number of contacts with the financial world as a result of my profession. There are plenty of scams out there but they are usually the work of organised groups. One maverick acting alone would have little chance of pulling off such a major operation. But if we discarded the foreign exchange story, what were we left with? We packed it in at around Eleven. We weren’t getting anywhere and Angela was obviously drained by the sequence of events over the last week.

  There were two bedrooms in the cottage. One of the twins would keep watch while the others slept. Angela looked at me and said, “I stay with you” in a low voice. No one commented so we settled down in the larger bedroom. It had two single beds and I threw my bag on the one nearest the window. Angela disappeared into the bathroom with her bag. I heard the shower running so wandered back into the lounge. A half-hearted moon, shining through the light clouds, provided the only light and Liam was sitting in an easy chair drawn up to one side of the uncurtained window, where he could see without being seen. “Niall’s getting his head down,” he said, without turning his head, his concentration fixed outside. “Problems?” I asked. “Nah, “ he said, “precautions.” I left him to it. He had the dogs for company and I was way out of my depth.

  I heard the shower turn off and the bathroom door open and then close. I took a quick shower myself and headed back to the bedroom with a towel around my waist. Angela was tucked up in one bed with just her head peeking out of the covers. I turned out the light and, dropping the towel, slipped into my bed. Angela stirred slightly.

  “Martin?”

  “Uh huh”

  “I just wanted to say I am grateful. This has been very frightening for me but with you I feel safe.”

  “I feel safer with the twins around.”

  “They are dangerous men, your friends. They remind me of the young men who used to come to see my father when I was child. They always smiled but I knew they were deadly”

  “Well, Liam and Niall are my oldest friends and they are very definitely on our side. In fact, they are the only ones I know for sure that are.”

  “I know, but they still make me a little afraid. Or, I should say rather that it is because we need men like them that makes me afraid.”

  “I understand.”

  “Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I really feel I would like to have your arms around me this night. Would you mind very much if we pushed these beds together?”

  I did the honourable thing and obliged her. She snuggled up to me and laid her head on my shoulder. I found myself wishing I’d taken the time to put on a pair of shorts after my shower. She was wearing a T-shirt that had ridden up around her waist and the feel of her soft skin against my side and thigh was highly arousing. Her arm was across my chest and she clung to me like a crucifix. I knew from the first that I was attracted to her. OK, she didn’t have Steph’s blatant animal sexuality but I found her a lot less threatening because of it.

  I lay still and tried to relax. She hugged me with an intensity that Steph never managed. After a while I felt some of the tension go out of her and her breathing became deep and regular. Unfortunately I was wide-awake, with a beautiful woman asleep on my chest and a raging erection. What was almost as bad was that my left arm was going to sleep and developing pins-and-needles. I eased my self away, trying not to wake her. She stirred briefly and rolled back towards me, flinging her arm over me and her naked thigh across mine. I could feel the tickling sensation of her pubic hair against my leg. My erection seemed to double in size. I felt ghastly, like I was the worst sort of prick imaginable. She wanted a bit of comfort and I wanted… It was hours before I finally fell asleep.

  My dreams were dark and troubled and my rest was fitful. Each time I awoke, she was still there, crushing herself against me. Her warm, womanly smell seemed to fill the soft night. The last time I woke up, just before dawn, my resistance collapsed completely. Before I knew what I was doing, I buried my face in her hair and breathed the scent of her. I think I groaned aloud. She made a small sound of contentment and snuggled in closer.

  “Martin? Are you awake?” I was stunned by the sound of her voice. I flirted with the idea of feigning sleep for a second or two before answering. “Yes, Angela, I’m awake.” She nuzzled my neck.

  “I knew you were a good m
an, Martin, that day we met on the beach. Now you have held me all night and not slept I think, to protect me.”

  ‘If only you knew,’ I thought, ‘if only you knew.’ My unruly cock was stirring again and I tried desperately to think about something else. She ran her finger over the stubble on my jaw.

  “Not so much the English gentleman now, I think. More like an Estonian peasant,” she said and giggled, a rough, throaty sound that seemed to connect all my sexual synapses together at once. Her hand suddenly brushed my burgeoning erection and we gasped in stereo. I expected her to leap back like a scalded cat but instead she gave another throaty growl and made a grab for it. I think I bounced off the ceiling.

  “Ah, poor Martin! I think I have been unfair.”

  I tried to stammer a denial but she silenced me with a kiss. It was gentle and sweet and reached down into the depths of my soul. I don’t know if it was the tiredness or what, but I felt light-headed. She wriggled against me deliciously. My arms seem to go around her and draw her to me of their own volition. At the same time my brain was trying to scream a denial; No, don’t do it! Something more primitive was telling my brain to go fuck itself. The primitive side won, hands down.

  I could just say we made love and let it go at that but it was much, much more. Angela swung herself above me and pulled her T-shirt over her head slowly, teasingly. She was wearing nothing but a wicked grin as she straddled my chest. Her breasts were larger than I had expected and I was mesmerised by them. They were slightly pendulous until she arched her back like a cat and then her big, brown nipples pointed upwards. My hands moved to them of their own accord and I cupped the tender weight of her in my hands. She made that sexy, throaty, growling sound again as I touched her. I had the overwhelming urge to suckle and, as I lifted my lips towards her, she pulled me on to her, feeding her breast to me and making soothing noises as I licked and sucked on her nipple. I felt a sensation akin to worship as she swelled in my mouth and I flicked her lightly with my tongue.