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 Walking the Dog by Smilodon Chapter Two

   I was up early the next day and braved the tail end of the storm to walk
the dogs along the beach.  The waves were high enough to deter Magic from
swimming so he ran around in circles and tried to interest Trotsky in some
rough-and-tumble.  Huskies are the strangest beasts.  That morning Trotsky
was very much on his dignity and Retriever Games were not on his agenda. 
He stalked along the tide line, sniffing at the flotsam thrown up by the
storm.  I threw sticks for Magic to fetch but, in truth, he has never
really got the hang of retrieving.  He'd run off and grab the stick, bring
it back to me and then plonk himself down on the shingly sand to chew it to
death.

   The wind was still quite strong but at least the rain had stopped.  It
was bitterly cold.  We walked for about an hour before heading back to the
warmth of the cottage.  I packed up my things so as to be ready for the
drive back to London after lunch.  I dislike driving in the dark and hoped
to be away by mid afternoon.  Hopefully this would get me back into Town
before the light failed entirely.

   I had arranged to meet Angela in a pub called the Lord Nelson, named for
Norfolk's most famous son.  I was early and slipped into the warmth of the
snug Saloon Bar, which was already starting to fill with lunchtime
drinkers. Listening to the accents, it was obvious that few locals
patronised the place at weekends.  Most of the people were 'second homers',
up from London, as I was.  I ordered a pint of Adnam's Best Bitter and
found myself a table where I could watch the door and be easily seen when
she came in.

   She didn't show.  By One O'clock I decided I'd been stood up.  It wasn't
a great surprise after all; we'd only just met.  I'd invited myself to her
studio, which must have looked pretty intrusive.  Normally it's one of
those things you just put down to experience but for some reason, this
time, I couldn't let it go.  It nagged at me.  I finished my pint and
headed off over to the studio.  Shock stopped me in my tracks as I reached
the front door.

   The place was wide open.  Even from the doorway, I could see at a glance
it had been trashed.  I rushed in, thinking the worst.  There was no sign
of Angela but the studio had been totally wrecked.  The casts she had shown
me that waited burnishing had been smashed.  The floor was littered with
shards of plaster; even the furnace had been toppled onto its side.  My
relief at not finding Angela in the middle of all this mess was replaced by
a sense of panic.  I called the police on my mobile and waited outside for
them to arrive.

   Had this been the middle of London, I don't think they would have
managed to raise any interest but this was rural Norfolk.  Things like this
don't happen there.  They were with me in less than ten minutes.  There
were two uniformed Bobbies and a plain-clothes man who quickly took charge.
I explained about Angela's no show at the Pub and what I'd done since.  He
looked narrowly suspicious but warmed a little when he took my details. 
There really wasn't much I could tell them so I told them everything. 
Meeting her on the beach, my visit the previous afternoon, her anxiety when
she realised how late it had got.

   So much for driving home while it was light.  It was around Six by the
time I finished giving my statement at the Police Station in Cromer.  The
traffic was really heavy when I finally hit the outskirts of London so it
was almost Ten O'clock when I got back home.  Angela's disappearance, they
were now calling it that, made the main News.  I got mentioned as the
visitor who'd raised the alarm, not by name, thank God!  There wasn't
anything else I could do so I had an early night.  Not that it did me much
good.  Between the intrusions of Steph and Angela Sable, I hardly slept.

   I staggered into Chambers on the Monday morning, bleary eyed and panting
from the cold.  My Chambers are in the Middle Temple and not that easy to
find so I was quite surprised when Bernie, the clerk, told me that I had a
visitor.  Bernie was clearly put out.  A clerk to Chambers controls access
to his barristers, hands out the briefs and keeps the appointments diary. I
shrugged when he started pumping me.  "All very 'secret squirrel', Mr
Booth." I certainly hadn't made any appointments and found myself hoping,
for one brief and glorious moment, it was Steph.  This lasted only as long
as it took Bernie to say "I put the gentleman in the juniors' office."
Bernie wanted to say more but I nodded my acknowledgement and went in to
meet my mystery man.

   He had the sort of face to which it is easy to take an instant dislike.
He was about my age with smooth features and slightly over-long hair.  The
tailoring was definitely Saville Row and the hand he offered me as he rose
to greet me had been expensively manicured.  The Jermyn Street shirt and
Hermes tie only confirmed my suspicions.  He was either a property
developer or a senior civil servant.  He turned out to be the latter.  He
introduced himself as Edgar Smythe and I had the strange certainty that
this was not his real name.  When he claimed to be from the Foreign Office,
I knew exactly what he was: a spook.

   "Mr Booth, I understand that you reported the disappearance of Ms Angela
Sable to the Norfolk Constabulary?"

   I agreed that I had and started to explain but he cut across me.

   "Let me tell you a story about Angela Sable, Mr Booth.  It's not her
real name, of course."

   "I knew that.  She told me that she took it from the French word for
sand.  Apparently her Estonian name means 'sand'.  She found the English
word lacked something, so she used French.  I'm not aware using an alias is
yet a crime unless one sets out to deliberately deceive by so doing," I
said pointedly.

   "Quite so, quite so.  My story concerns Ms Sable's father.  It appears
he was a Colonel in the Soviet armed forces; in the Spetsnaz to be precise,
whom, as you may know."

   "Are the Russian, or should I say used to be the Soviet, Special
Forces."

   "You are well informed, Mr Booth," he said, with just the trace of
sarcasm in his voice.  I gave him my most urbane smile and refused to rise.
He continued.

   "The Colonel made a name for himself in the unpleasantness in
Afghanistan.  As you may also know, the Soviets used a lot of troops from
the satellite states there.  It was their way of managing the bad news and
keeping the truth about their casualty rates from the Russian people."

   "As opposed to our own dear enlightened Government who just lie."

   "Ah, not a fan of New Labour, Mr Booth?  I'd have thought that your
profession would have taken them to your bosoms, seeing how very well
you're represented in the cabinet and elsewhere."

   I grunted.  He was alluding to the fact that both the Prime Minister and
his wife were once in Chambers not too far from my own.  "You were telling
me about Angela's father, I believe." He smiled again, but it didn't reach
his eyes.

   "Yes indeed.  The Colonel was a junior officer back in Afghanistan but a
highly effective one.  He gained promotion and a transfer to Spetsnaz.  Our
boy is, or rather was, a bit of a hard man.  His only soft spot was for his
two daughters, Angelika and Vika.  We all know the wheels came off the
Soviet Union in the early 90's.  It was a mad time, a touch of the Wild
West about it."

   His eyes took on a distant look and I got the strong impression that he
had been there when 'the wheels came off,' as he put it.

   "To cut a long story short, the good Colonel turns out to have more than
a passing resemblance to the Vicar of Bray.  When the Reds were in the
driving seat, he was a good communist; exit Gorbachev and our man is
Yeltsin's staunchest ally.  I'm sure you get the picture?

   "Rumours started to circulate in the late 90's that a large amount of
Russian Federation foreign exchange had gone missing, largely D-marks and
sterling, which is odd because most of the ex-Soviet hoods went for US
dollars in a big way.  At this point the good Colonel drops out of sight.
He re-emerged a couple of years later in Gothenburg.  He lost a short but
valiant fight against cancer in a Swedish sanatorium and officially turned
up his little pointed toes two years ago.  We thought at first that this
was a 'ruse de guerre' but we checked and it seems kosher.  However, there
was no trace of the missing millions.

   "At this point some particularly nasty gentlemen appeared from out of
the woodwork searching for the Colonel's Holy Grail.  Attention focussed on
Vika, at first.  She had accompanied her dear Papa to Sweden.  She turned
up in a canal in Stockholm a few weeks back.  Poor Vika.  It appears she
didn't know anything after all."

   "How can you say?"

   "The Knights of the Grail came after your Ladyfriend.  Angelika seems to
have been something of a black sheep.  She split with the family at the
beginning of the nineties and moved west, first to Barcelona, where she
studied Art and then to Britain by way of Paris and Frankfurt.  She settled
in the UK at the beginning of '93.  About this time she changed her name
and became Angela Sable, talented but struggling sculptor.  With, and this
is the bit that has everyone jumping, no visible means of support.  A quick
check on her bank records shows someone paid the rent and slipped her £500
a month from a Bank in Liechtenstein.  We were wondering if that someone
was you?"

   I almost laughed; the idea was preposterous.  Instead I gave him my best
lawyer's poker face.

   "Mr Smythe, I told you and I told the Police, I met Ms Sable for the
first time on Saturday, purely by chance.  Prior to that, well, I knew of
her.  I bought three of her pieces through a Gallery in the Fulham Road.  I
can tell you no more.  But you might tell me why Her Majesty's Government
are interested.  I can see that it is a matter for the Police but where
precisely do MI5 or 6 come in?"

   He gave a tight smile and bowed to acknowledge my identification of him
was close, if not entirely accurate.

   "Let us just say that the Foreign Office was asked for assistance by the
Russian Federation Foreign Ministry in tracing a large amount of stolen
currency.  Thus far we have been unable to render that assistance.  The man
who introduced himself to you yesterday as a Detective Constable in Norfolk
CID was in fact our own Inspector Willis from Special Branch.  He went to
Norfolk to interview Ms Sable.  I believe he had an appointment to see her
at around 5:30 pm on Saturday.  That might explain the agitation you so
acutely observed.

   "Unfortunately, when he arrived at her home, she was not there. 
However, there were no signs of the disturbance you discovered on Sunday
lunchtime."

   It was clear to both of us that I could shed no further light on events
in Norfolk.  He didn't waste time with small talk and left shortly
afterwards.  Bernie rushed in the moment Smythe left the building.  "What
did Michael the Mouth want with you then Mr Booth?" He spoke bitterly.

   "Who, Bernie?"

   "Michael-bloody-Cornell, that's who.  Or Mickey the Mouth to his mates
in Special Branch."

   "I see, he told me his name was Edgar Smythe.  You know him, I take it?"

   "Know him?  'Course I bloody know him.  He's a fixer for SIS."

   SIS, more commonly, if erroneously, known as MI6, is the foreign
intelligence branch of the British Secret Service.  They aren't supposed to
have any domestic interests and the history of British Spydom is littered
with cock-ups caused by interdepartmental rivalries.  'Mickey the Mouth'
was obviously a liaison officer between the two branches and Special
Branch, which is actually part of the Metropolitan Police.  It didn't
surprise me that Bernie should know him.  He had joined our Chambers from
another that specialised in some of the high profile criminal cases,
including those involving terrorism.

   I told Bernie the full story.  He listened in silence.  Finally he said,
"Sounds like Russian Mafia to me, Mr Booth.  Best you stay out of it." I
assured him that was precisely what I intended to do but a small voice in
side contradicted me even as I spoke.