Brand New Friend Read online

  He thought of the leaflet they used to give out outside McDonald’s. Ironically it had since come to light that much of it was written by Bob Lambert, the exposed undercover police officer.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘thirty years on nothing has changed.’

  He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He told Salma about Mark, about Sid Jenkins and about what Tilda had found out from Emma Jenkins. He didn’t tell her about the fire. Not yet.

  Salma was most interested in the Sid angle. ‘They were up to something together. This Mark and Sid.’

  ‘I tend to think so, but I don’t have any evidence.’

  Salma refilled their glasses. ‘You want to help this man who lied to you and betrayed you.’

  ‘I want to find the truth.’

  ‘So, if you find evidence against him you will hand it over to the police.’

  ‘If it will do any good.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was a police spy. He lied to us, and they lied to us. The police’s interests aren’t necessarily truth and justice here.’

  ‘These are different times, different people.’

  Were they? He thought of the topsy-turvy nature of this. How many times had Salma dropped everything in Egypt to go to a friend who’d been arrested. To stand vigil at the police station, in the hope that her former BBC role would mean the police would show some restraint. That the very worst – the cigarette burns, the whipping, the so-called virginity test, would not happen to them. In Cairo, it had been taken as read that you never trust the police.

  Salma was not naïve, but somehow she turned it on its head here. She believed that the British police were the good guys. So did he, most of the time, for most of the people. That was what made it hard. You never knew if you were one of the exceptions.

  ‘Why do you trust this man?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I just want to know.’

  ‘He still has a hold on you. After all these years.’

  ‘I’d hardly call it a hold.’

  ‘This man is charismatic, you are all young, he manipulates you...’

  ‘In a way he was the opposite of charismatic.’ How to explain Mark? He wasn’t good-looking or inspiring. He didn’t hold the room when he spoke at meetings. He was quiet and thoughtful but when he did speak it was always with conviction and authority. When he spoke, people leaned in to listen. And he was there when you needed him. Was all that just part of the cover?

  ‘It was a long time ago that you knew this man. If you ever did. Why did he drag you up to Leeds, then disappear? I thought he wanted your help?’

  ‘I presume he didn’t know he was going to be implicated in a murder.’

  Salma didn’t answer. Her sceptical expression said it all.

  21

  Paolo breathed in the smell of happiness: stale beer, fags and flooded toilets. He stomped on the sticky dancefloor to ‘Add it Up’ by Violent Femmes. There was a woman nearby in thigh-length boots and fishnets. Crimped bobbed hair, like Siouxsie Sioux. He’d seen her here before. Was she looking at him?

  He had left Claire and Kev sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, because the seats and benches that ran round the octagonal dancefloor were all taken. Kev was Claire’s friend from her English course. They spent hours talking and listening to music. Sometimes they even read each other poetry, snuggled up close on the sofa like two kittens. What was the point of getting up close with someone if you weren’t going to have sex?

  Claire had apparently had a profound but ultimately doomed relationship over the summer and Kev couldn’t decide whether he was gay, because he was working class (or something).

  Siouxsie Sioux was talking to some guy. Paolo was tired of dancing and went to sit next to Claire on the floor.

  ‘Where’s Kev? he asked.

  ‘He left. He said it was too loud.’

  ‘It’s a club,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t say I said it was too loud,’ she said. ‘Why are you arguing with me?’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  Claire sighed. ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘Because the pubs are shut?’

  ‘Don’t you think that student life is pointless and superficial? Middle-class brats getting drunk and talking ironically about their favourite kids’ programmes and never meeting any real people. I thought it was going to be about ideas and experience.’

  Claire’s yearning for ‘real people’ was such that she was now volunteering at a homeless day centre, and at a class teaching English to Asian women, and writing letters to political prisoners in Chile. One day she had got a letter back from a prisoner’s family which had left her tearful and distressed.

  ‘There’s so much bad stuff happening out there and we’re not doing anything to make a difference.’

  ‘You can care and still have fun,’ he said, adopting a tone of seriousness and sincerity. ‘Making yourself unhappy won’t help those other people.’

  Claire looked doubtful. He was wasting his breath. Arguing with Claire was pointless, she just became more entrenched. Better to change the subject.

  The guy with Siouxsie Sioux had his hand on her thigh. Paolo felt a wave of melancholy, a desperate desire for closeness. He put his head tentatively on Claire’s shoulder and she didn’t shrug or fidget. He felt a wave of warmth towards her.

  ‘I think I’m in love with Isabel,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said, and stroked his hand with kindly condescension.

  ‘You didn’t know!’

  ‘Okay, I didn’t. I didn’t know that you think you’re in love with Isabel.’

  Dismissing him like it was a childish crush.

  ‘And who are you in love with?’ he asked.

  ‘No one,’ she sighed.

  ‘You’re in love with unhappiness,’ he said. Now she did push him away. ‘You’re the living embodiment of a Smiths song.’

  He swigged at Kev’s abandoned pint. At least he assumed it was Kev’s, because Claire was drinking bottled beer and he had no idea where he’d put his own. It could have been anyone’s with anything in it. Then, suddenly, brutally, the lights went on. They were thrown back into real life. He had told Claire his secret. He was exposed.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ said Claire, as she pulled on her old-man’s overcoat and he pulled on his. Of course she wouldn’t. He knew Claire was reliable and trustworthy, almost a paragon of conscientiousness. Until she got drunk when she told everyone everything. What wouldn’t she share with Isabel at such moments?

  22

  Paolo was woken early next morning when his phone rang. He picked up without looking at it.

  ‘I’ve got something on your friend.’

  In his fuddled state it took him a moment to realise it was Freddie. He tried to speak but all he managed was a grunt which Freddie seemed to interpret as ‘Mark’.

  ‘Not Mark. Sid Jenkins. Who I’m sure you’ve been familiar with rather longer than I have.’ Paolo, still in the fug of sleep, could only grunt again in response, but perhaps Freddie heard apology because he continued, ‘He was in a bit of trouble with the law.’

  ‘Huh?’ That was, at least, verbal.

  ‘Seems he was moonlighting as a small-time conman. Persuading lonely widows to part with their cash.’

  Paolo sat up, ready now to articulate a full sentence. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Police had a complaint from a woman he met at the funeral of a mutual acquaintance. He persuaded her to part with ten grand, supposedly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was reported to Essex Police by a woman who said he had money off her. Befriended her and then spun a line about needing the money for a sick relative in Spain. They went to the police who, being as he was one of their own, decided to have a quiet word with him. He paid the money back and the woman agreed to drop the case.’

  ‘And you know this how?’

  ‘One of my ghostwriting clients is a retired assistant chief cons
table who plays golf with someone high up in the Essex force. Though why I should share anything with you, I don’t know.’

  He said it without rancour. Selective sharing was all in the game to an old hand like Freddie.

  ‘So where does the undercover bit come in?’

  ‘He wasn’t using his real name. But he used his old undercover name from back in the day and it came up on their system.’

  ‘Bit daft, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe not. He’d still have had the right ID if he didn’t return it. Or maybe it was just easier than having to invent a whole new cover. Anyway, I’ve phoned the woman and told her I’m a journalist, interested in scams. She agreed to speak to me on condition of anonymity.’

  ‘Why don’t I do it?’ said Paolo. ‘Given that I’m almost local.’

  ‘I was thinking I might venture south of Watford myself. Set up a few meetings, enjoy the big city. And the scam story isn’t something a foreign correspondent would want to cover, is it?’

  ‘It’s yours,’ said Paolo. He owed him one for not sharing the Sid news, as Freddie had made abundantly clear. Besides, he felt sorry for him, transcribing tedious recollections and shaping them into memoirs. At least Freddie was still daring to dream. Of a proper investigative story. ‘Bent ex-copper scams lonely pensioners’. One he might be able to sell to the Daily Mail.

  Paolo would have liked to go alone. Two men turning up might feel a little overwhelming. But it was Freddie’s tip-off, which he hadn’t been obliged to share.

  ‘Okay. You happy to set it up?’

  ‘Already done. I’m on the train now. I said I’d be there by eleven.’

  ‘Today? You know I’ve got a day job, don’t you?’

  Beryl Coe lived in a bungalow facing the sea, the kind of place that would have been desirable before it became a flood risk. Her manner was brisk but friendly as she let them in.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said, but as if she were amused rather than annoyed. ‘I was going to have coffee ready but I can make it now.’

  Paolo was about to ask for tea but Freddie cut him off and said they’d love coffee. Paolo could hear beans grinding and then the water bubbling. He browsed the bookshelves which lined one wall.

  ‘My friend and I went on one of those “Be your own barista” courses at a place in Clerkenwell,’ she said, as she brought in the coffee and a plate of amaretti biscuits.

  ‘You read German?’ he asked.

  ‘They were my husband’s. His parents were German Jewish refugees. He changed his name from Cohen when he was young. I think he regretted it later.’

  Freddie nodded sympathetically as he munched on a biscuit, already grasping a second in his hand as if he were an orphan in a workhouse who might be deprived of it at any moment. No doubt he was employing his acute powers of observation behind that façade of slob.

  ‘So, tell me why you’re really here,’ said Mrs Coe.

  Freddie began to bluster but she cut him off and looked at Paolo. ‘We used to listen to your reports on Gaza. My husband always thought you were very fair.’ She didn’t share her own opinion. ‘They don’t send someone like you to do a routine scam story.’ She turned to Freddie. ‘And I’m sure you’re an important person too, even if I don’t recognise you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Paolo. ‘Have you been following events round the murder of a man called Sid Jenkins?’

  ‘Up in Leeds? Well yes but –’ She frowned and then realisation seemed to hit. ‘Are you saying that’s the same man who called himself Sid Mitchell?’

  ‘We believe so,’ said Freddie.

  Paolo liked Mrs Coe and felt he should be honest with her. ‘I’m not actually here on behalf of the BBC,’ said Paolo. ‘I’m a friend of Mark Benson, the former undercover officer –’

  ‘Yes, I read about him as well.’

  ‘Obviously it’s for the police to investigate Sid’s murder, but we’re interested in the background to the case.’

  She reflected for a moment, then said, ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Can we start with how you met Sid?’

  ‘At a funeral. A dear friend of ours called Harold.’

  ‘And Sid was a friend of Harold’s too?’

  ‘I suppose we all assumed he was. He spoke to quite a few people.’

  ‘So how did you come to be friends with him?’

  ‘He started coming to the group.’

  ‘Group?’

  ‘Harold died of mesothelioma. As did Janet’s husband and mine. We are – were – all members of an organisation that campaigns for people who’ve been exposed and their families. We also have links with organisations worldwide that campaign against the production and export of chrysotile asbestos.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was still being used,’ said Freddie.

  ‘It’s still being produced in Russia, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan and India and being exported, especially to Asia. Canada has been promising to ban it for years but hasn’t. They say they’ll do it by the end of this year. We’ll see.’

  Freddie munched reflectively on his third, or possibly fourth, biscuit.

  ‘My husband was very active on that side of it. He said he wasn’t doing it for us because we were okay, we didn’t really need the compensation, and how could you compensate anyway for the loss of life? But there are others who have nothing, who are still being exposed today.’

  ‘And was Sid active in your group? Did you get the impression he was gathering information?’

  Mrs Coe looked at him shrewdly. ‘I can see why you’d ask that, given what we know now, but I didn’t really. He turned up to meetings but didn’t show a great deal of curiosity about the workings of the group. He seemed to view it more as social support. Which is fine, a lot of people come for that reason. He took a particular interest in the female members. There are more of us than men, because it’s mostly the men who were exposed, through their work. Then he started asking me about my husband and enquiring about grant funding for his brother’s wife.’

  ‘What was the story there?’

  ‘Sid told me that his brother and his wife had retired to the Costa Blanca but that things hadn’t worked out well for them. She’d shown the early stages of dementia just as he developed mesothelioma. He said she was in a home now, and his brother had since died. He said she needed help to pay for her care because his brother’s compensation hadn’t arrived before his death. One of our members is a former lawyer and she offered to look into it for him but he kept putting her off. It didn’t sound quite right, but at the time I just thought he didn’t understand the system. You tend to take people on trust, don’t you?’ She turned to Paolo. ‘I expect it was the same with you and your friend.’

  ‘You were close to him by this time?’

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was my friend Janet, the one I did the barista course with. That’s why I went to the police in the end. I wasn’t going to bother but I didn’t want it on my conscience if he targeted other women.’

  She paused, as if unsure whether to go on.

  ‘Like Janet,’ Freddie prompted.

  ‘She’s very lonely. I mean, we all are. I miss my husband but I don’t want to replace him. I couldn’t.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘I think Sid charmed Janet. And then he started asking her for money. What he didn’t realise was – you won’t use her name, will you?’

  Paolo shook his head then looked at Freddie to make sure he did the same.

  ‘She doesn’t have any money. Her husband took care of everything. When he died she found out that he’d changed his will, left everything to the children, apart from a small pension for Janet. Even the house is in a trust. She felt it as a terrible betrayal. I think sometimes that’s why she’s so keen to meet someone else, she thinks she can overwrite the bad memory.’

  She looked thoughtful for a moment then snapped out of it by offering Freddie another biscuit. ‘So she’s got a nice home and lives well enough but she hasn’t got any cash in the bank. And whe
n she told him that he suddenly lost interest. She was terribly upset. Then he started coming round here, ostensibly to talk about poor Janet.’

  Paolo couldn’t imagine how an intelligent woman with an active social life could have been taken in by Sid. As if she’d read his mind, she spoke.

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m a silly woman who fell for a conman. I suppose I am, but not in the way you think. You see, I didn’t like him. I found him irritating and self-pitying and a bit pathetic. And he was coming between Janet and me. He seemed to be here all the time and she thought I was encouraging him so that caused difficulty between us. She’s my best friend! It would be terrible if I lost her, when we’ve both already lost so much. So when he asked me for money I gave it to him.

  ‘I didn’t know if he really had a brother or if he’d really go to Spain but I was pretty sure that if I gave him the money he’d vanish and I’d never have to see him again.’ She sighed and then looked at Paolo mischievously. ‘Perhaps that makes me a suspect. I wonder how many people have been driven to murder by sheer irritation?’

  23

  Inevitably, they debriefed in a pub. There wasn’t a great selection in the town but with his unerring nose Freddie found a place that did reasonable beer. He wasn’t driving, he told Paolo, he had booked into a hotel room in London for the night and come by train. He was having coffee with a contact and might meet someone else for lunch, he said, with forlorn hope.

  He ordered a pint for himself ‘with a proper head on it’ but the comedy northerner routine didn’t get such a warm response here. Paolo said he’d give him a lift as he would have to brave the London traffic anyway. At least driving home wouldn’t be so bad. He was working till late, doing a live report for Newsnight on the latest doomed diplomatic initiative on Syria.

  ‘So what did you make of that?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘I’d like to know more about this campaign group. What Sid’s interest in it was.’

  ‘You think this was about the group?’

  ‘You don’t?’