Foretold by Thunder Read online

  Ellis rocked with laughter. “Man, that’s a good one. Did I ever tell you about the guy who used to ring me up claiming the local council had installed listening devices in his flat? He thought they were targeting him because he’d appealed a parking ticket.”

  Jake ignored him. “The worry is this guy claimed to be a professor at King’s College London – that’s a damn good university. And he thinks his phone’s tapped because he wants to discuss ancient history. Poor bloke.”

  “Hey, that might be a decent line for you,” said Ellis. “If this guy’s well-known and coming out with stuff like that? It could be a giggle. What number did he ring from?”

  Jake brought up the university’s website. “Well, the call came from King’s all right. And Britton exists.”

  There was a mugshot of the professor in the university’s directory of experts. He was balding with a strip of auburn hair, a weak chin and a complexion mottled with patches of raspberry. It was not an appealing face. The professor had a number of books and papers in print, although the credits dried up about three years before.

  Jake knew the feeling.

  “There you go then,” said Ellis. “That’s a good yarn – top historian is paranoid nutcase. You need to keep your eyes open, pal.”

  “I don’t know,” muttered Jake. “It’s just not me. Hounding some poor sod who’s lost his marbles? I’ll leave that for the red-tops.”

  Ellis shook his head. “You soft bastard. Well, don’t come moaning to me that you don’t bring in scoops anymore. You can’t make an omelette without …”

  He was cut off by the phone ringing.

  “Oh Christ,” said Jake. “It’s him.”

  “Let me handle it,” said Ellis, mischief on his face.

  But before he could answer Jake snatched up the receiver. “I’m sorry, Professor Britton, I’m afraid my mind’s made up.”

  “I’ll level with you, Mr Wolsey,” Britton interrupted. “I think I’m being followed. I need your help, I really need your help.”

  Jake shielded the mouthpiece from his colleague. “Can I make a suggestion – have you considered discussing this with your GP?”

  “You don’t understand,” shouted Britton. “You’re just like all the others. Why won’t anyone listen to me?”

  On the other side of London someone was listening to them.

  3

  As the last traces of Professor Britton were being brushed from the Embankment that evening, Jake found himself in The Dolphin, King’s Cross. The tremble in his fingers was gone and his pool cue glided over the fulcrum of thumb and forefinger. He blew a strand of hair from his brow and his brown eyes narrowed; the background fug of drinkers seemed to withdraw, belonging to a different place. Jake’s life had become fuzzy and confused, like a lens knocked out of focus – only here on the pool table did it make sense. He released the shot with the crack of a sniper rifle and the black was assassinated.

  They say skill at snooker is a sign of a misspent youth; reflecting on his adolescence, Jake could concur. He was clever but scatter-brained and only after muddling through university had he soared in ambition. That was before the booze had dragged him down again. Thirty-something, and he still hadn’t grasped the vicious circle that linked falling achievement with rising intake of units. Jake took a double swig from his pint, the level falling by a clear inch.

  “So what’s this job then?” Luke McDonagh was a freelancer with a lazy eye whose freckled head reminded Jake of some kind of bean. He was also one of the best diggers in the business.

  “An intriguing one, this,” said Jake, handing the researcher his article. “Winston Churchill discussing classics with the Secret Service at the height of the war. I just don’t know what to make of it.”

  “It’s an oddity all right,” said McDonagh. “What on earth’s gone on there?”

  “Lord knows. I’ve already whacked the Freedom of Information request in, but that’ll take weeks to come back.”

  “Waste of time,” said McDonagh. “If it’s related to national security they can bat it back without explanation. They don’t have to give you the information and they don’t have to tell you why.”

  Jake smiled gloomily and took another gulp of lager.

  “I’m thinking a forensic audit at the National Records Office in Kew,” said McDonagh. “Let’s find a linked document – cabinet minutes, other declassified files. Paperwork like this doesn’t exist in isolation.” He spun the black ball inside the triangle. “Do I get a bonus when it makes a front-page splash?”

  “Ha ha, very funny.”

  McDonagh retrieved his cue, slapping the London Evening Standard on the table. Jake’s pint was halfway to his lips when he saw the front page.

  He let go of the glass.

  The pint plummeted downward before exploding on the carpet in a foamy starburst.

  McDonagh’s trousers were soaked. “What the hell?”

  “The paper,” Jake croaked. “It’s him.”

  The headline screamed: “Lightning horror on the Thames.”

  Alongside the professor’s photograph was an image of the strike itself, obtained from a nearby CCTV camera. The lightning bolt lanced to earth from the north-west, a jagged line of white in a sea of grey.

  McDonagh peered at the mugshot. “You knew that guy?”

  “Not really,” said Jake. “He’s some nutter – sorry – some bloke who rang me this morning. About this story, actually. He wanted to meet. But I gave him short shrift, I’m afraid. He wasn’t well in the head. And now he’s been struck by lightning, for Christ’s sake.”

  The article’s tone was grave, but as McDonagh read he struggled to keep the smile from his voice. “The professor had written several acclaimed papers on the ancient belief in interpreting the future through omens such as lightning bolts.”

  4

  Jenny Frobisher was four floors underneath MI6’s Vauxhall headquarters and consequently, she calculated, actually below the Thames. She was also fuming – getting pulled off a case halfway through was a bloody nuisance. She had been tracking the Nottingham cell for the last eighteen months, and along with her colleagues in MI5 she’d linked the plotters to Lahore, northern Pakistan. This was not Al Qaida ‘inspired’ terrorism; it was the real deal. During the investigation Jenny could count the number of dinner parties she’d attended on one hand. But she was not a woman who let socializing get in the way of her job, nor did she mind as her circle of friends dwindled with each let-down, usually by telephone from some windswept northern service station. Even the collapse of her engagement hadn’t distracted her. And now she’d been pulled from the case, the decision as abrupt as it was unexplained.

  Jenny wore a charcoal skirt cut below the knee paired with an anonymous jacket. From the latter she produced a mirror to check her make-up. The face that stared back would have been attractive were it not so severely arranged. She wore her blonde hair in a neat bob and her pale blue eyes shone with intelligence.

  There were two of them waiting to brief her: a silver-haired woman in early middle age and a man in his late thirties who looked flabby and slightly soft. Jenny had never laid eyes on either of them before. A copy of the Guardian lay on the man’s desk and she glanced at the headline of the page at which it was open:

  Britain’s military power waning, says thinktank.

  The man beckoned her to sit.

  “Jenny, I take it? Apologies for hauling you off your job. Realize it’s a pain in the arse.” For a large man his voice was high and he struck her as rather effeminate. “This is Evelyn Parr,” he said. The ladies exchanged nods. “And I’m Charlie. Charlie Waits.”

  Jenny had heard of him; only now did she see how wide of the mark her first appraisal was. The pupils observing her from behind tortoiseshell glasses were cold and his mouth was a small hard line. A knot of blood vessels had burst in the white of his left eye, an ugly sight. She needed to be more on her game to work for Charlie Waits.

  Waits was a mythica
l figure within The Firm. He had stopped two IRA plots in their tracks by the age of twenty-five, before moving on to counter-espionage. There he’d done battle with his Chinese and Saudi counterparts, and seen more than one ambassador hauled into Whitehall for a dressing-down. Finally, aged twenty-seven or so, he’d vanished from the coalface – ‘gone upstairs’, it was widely assumed.

  “Drink?” Waits’s smile was drowned in the pads of his jowls.

  Jenny glanced at her watch – it was 11.40 a.m. Was this some kind of test?

  “No, thanks.”

  “Evelyn?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Then I hope neither of you mind if I have a quick peg?”

  They assented and Waits produced a bottle of Glenfarclas eighteen-year-old single malt. Jenny watched him half-fill a tumbler with the straw-coloured medicine. What decade was this? But Waits’s fingers held the glass with the implacable grip of a glacier.

  “We’re asking you to work on a rather special brief,” he said, sliding a file across the table. “There’s a journalist we want you to monitor.”

  Jenny waited for him to continue, but Waits set down his drink and brought the tips of his fingers together. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “What’s the background? What’s the case?”

  “For now that’s unimportant,” said Waits. “I daresay if you stay on this beat you will, necessarily, learn more. We shall deal with the implications of that as and when they arise. It may be this journalist’s nothing to worry about, in which case the problem goes away. So for now, be a sport and tell us what he’s up to.”

  Parr spoke for the first time. “We want to know what stories he’s working on, who he’s talking to, that sort of thing.”

  “But we do want to know – everything.” Waits ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, the handiwork of an expensive gentlemen’s barber in Pimlico. “Leave out nothing whatsoever, no matter how daft it may seem.”

  Jenny pursed her lips as she digested the brief. “Fine. What’s the level of intrusion?”

  Waits waved a hand. “My dear, you can do whatever you like.” The offhandedness in his voice was that of an elderly thespian. “You’ll have a healthy war-chest. If you need more funds, just ask.”

  “So what’s the journalist’s specialism? Security?”

  “Actually, he’s a ‘historical correspondent’.”

  Her brain whirred. “Some sort of declassified file issue then?”

  Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. “Perceptive, isn’t she?”

  “With respect, it could hardly have been anything else,” she said. “Apart from declassified files it’s a fluffy newsbeat, I should think. Can you tell me more about the journalist?”

  Now Parr took over. “Jake Wolsey. Age thirty-three. Made the broadsheets eight years ago and before that with the local press. Our contact on the paper says he was a real high flyer when he arrived. The editor of the day took a shine to him – reckoned he had the ‘gift of the journalistic eye’, whatever that means. He lacks organization and ruthlessness, but rose on the back of being able to spot a story from nothing. Seeing things other people miss.”

  “A rather dangerous characteristic,” observed Waits, a gleam in his eye.

  “But he’s been going backwards,” said Parr. “Our man there reckons he’s a drinker – in the last few years he’s more or less stopped delivering the goods. That’s why they shunted him to his current position.”

  “Personal life?” Jenny asked. “Foibles?”

  “No relationships to speak of,” said Parr. “Our contact thinks possibly gay. He used to go surfing in Cornwall a lot, but that seems to have petered out. An only child. His parents are still together – they live in Bath. The father’s a retired actuary and his mother was a headmistress.”

  “Deputy headmistress,” corrected Waits. “Now, I know I don’t need to tell you this, but you’re working on as high a grade of secrecy as MI6’s lawyers have had the wit to enshrine in the English language. So do be discreet.”

  “Of course.”

  Waits’s eyes darted from her, as though he were about to impart something distasteful. “By the way, this brief doesn’t go to Reader Number One.”

  Jenny was shocked. Reader Number One was The Queen; every state secret crossed her desk.

  “We’re attaching three other watchers vetted to a similar grade,” said Waits. “They’ll be under your wing. You’re in charge.”

  Jenny nodded, a touch of pink showing in her cheeks. “I’m really honoured, sir.”

  “Not sir,” he scolded. “Charlie.” He pronounced his own name delicately.

  “Thanks, Charlie.”

  “One last thing.” The spymaster’s face was sympathetic. “I understand your mother isn’t well?”

  Jenny flinched – Mum had got her preliminary diagnosis only yesterday. How did they know these things?

  “This job has the potential to become very – how shall I put it – involving,” Waits said. “And before you sign on the dotted line, as it were, I just want to make sure you’re ready to commit, regardless of any … emotional difficulties that might lie around the corner.”

  The man was blandly enquiring whether she’d break stride in the event of her own mother’s death. His detachment was staggering and very impressive. But Jenny wasn’t able to keep the waver from her voice when she said, “The work comes first, Charlie, that goes without saying.”

  “Wonderful.” Waits drained the last of his whisky and offered her a clammy handshake. “We’ll be in touch.”

  As the lift sent Jenny purring up to ground level, one refrain looped through her mind. What have I let myself in for?

  *

  “So what do you think?” asked Parr once she’d departed. “The right choice? Or a little too curious?”

  “Oh, definitely the right choice,” replied Waits. “One does need a smattering of curiosity in this line of work. And have you seen her psychometric results? Her scores for loyalty and discretion are both off the scale.”

  “In any case, she’s nothing we can’t handle,” said Parr with a private smile.

  “Well, quite,” said Waits. “Now, where shall we lunch?”

  5

  It was a quiet day for deaths, and the obituaries editor was happy to reserve Jake a few column inches if nobody important “popped their clogs”. He felt guilty for not meeting Britton, who was survived by a wife; perhaps a write-up of his achievements would offer her some comfort. And visiting the university would be a good excuse to get out of the office. Jake needed the fresh air – he and McDonagh had made quite a night of it in the end.

  The Embankment was teeming with barristers heading for the Square Mile. Jake pictured period houses in Islington, a glass of red wine with supper, the cork back in the bottle – their clarity of mind seemed effortless. A post-box interrupted his thoughts. Jake had seen it in yesterday’s Standard, and with a shiver he realized he was standing at the exact spot where Britton had lost his life. There was no chalk outline, no scorch-marks on the pavement; commuters hurried past as if the tragedy had never been. A Second World War sloop was moored at the riverside, the HQS Wellington. These days it was used for private functions, and a cook in chequered trousers was having a smoke on deck.

  The reporter produced a notepad and trotted up the gangplank. “Did you see what happened yesterday?”

  The cook smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, English no good.”

  Jake mimed a thunderbolt from above, flinging both hands towards the riverbank and making a plosive noise with his lips. “Lightning! Did you see?”

  Enlightenment transformed the man’s face. “Ah! Yes! Yes! But I no see. My manager, he see.”

  The ship’s steward arrived, a south London gent with a silver barnet and a face like a toffee apple. “How can I help you sir?”

  “I gather you saw the lightning strike?”

  The steward nodded. “Awful business. I was checking this character” – he gla
nced at the chef – “had washed the deck, when I heard a load of tourists coming down the Embankment. The bloke who died was in the middle of the group, so I was staring right at him when it happened.”

  The steward was lost in the recollection, eyes milky. Jake used the hiatus to catch up on his quotes in shorthand.

  “It looked as if he was rushing to make the Royal Mail collection,” the steward continued. “He posts his letter, glances up and then he’s hit by lightning, just like that. It was like a bomb going off – never known anything like it. I saw green for hours. Well of course, all the tourists were screaming and running to help the poor gentleman, but I could see it was useless. Half his head was missing, blown clean away.”

  Jake winced, but he kept writing.

  “And that was it, really. The police came, ambulance, the works. We all knew he was dead of course – but I guess they have to do their box-ticking.”

  “Right, thanks for that. And is there anything you’d like to add? Anything I’ve missed out?”

  It was the best bit of advice Jake got at journalism school: at the end of every interview, do not fail to ask the ‘final question’. There might be something extraordinary the interviewee wants to get off their chest, the difference between a throwaway story and a front-page splash. But they’re too nervous, or the right moment hasn’t arrived.

  The steward frowned. “Well … there was something that struck me as a bit rum. When the emergency services are cleaning up the mess and so on a Royal Mail van turns up. The postman ducks under the police tape and empties the post-box, merry as could be. The coppers had a quick word, but then they let just him get on with it. It was about midday by then – normal collection times are 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. I guess the morning postie was running late and wouldn’t allow death itself to get in his way. It seemed a bit disrespectful, like. You may be interested, you may not. But it might make a line or two?”

  6

  The dean of classics spoke about the debt the university owed Britton, his contribution to the discipline, yada yada yada. There was no anecdote, no sense of the man, and the don detected Jake’s unease.