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 Walking the Dog by Smilodon Chapter Three

   The rest of that week passed normally.  I had a slightly uncomfortable
interview with the head of Chambers.  He'd found about my uninvited visitor
and wanted to register his concern but was unsure quite what it was that
should concern him.  I was taciturn rather than truculent - we never have
seen eye to eye.  So it came to Friday and I was having a quiet glass of
wine in El Vino's on Fleet Street.  The old wine bar was once the haunt of
the 'fourth estate' but since the newspapers had all relocated to
Docklands; the legal profession now claimed it as their own.

   I was chatting to couple of 'silks' - Queen's Counsels - when Joachim
called me from behind the bar.  "Telephone for Mr Booth!" He pronounced it
'Boot' but I'd heard his mangling of my name often enough to know he meant
me.

   "Hello, Martin Booth speaking."

   "Mr Booth, thank Gawd I've caught you."

   "Bernie!  What's the panic?"

   "There's a young lady to see you Mr Booth, here in Chambers!"

   "Do we have a name, Bernie or have you been unusually coy?"

   "She won't give no name, Mr Booth, just says it's very urgent."

   "Let me see, Five foot Eight and Blonde?"

   "No, Mr Booth, about Five Six and dark with very blue eyes."

   "I'll be right there."

   I dashed back to the Temple.  It had to be Angela Sable.  I didn't know
whether to be relieved or worried.  In the end I managed to be both at the
same time.  She was sitting in the cubby-hole that passes for a waiting
room in our Chambers.  She rose as I came in and stared at me intently, as
if it were me that was out of place.

   "Angela, this a turn-up.  What are you doing here and what happened last
Sunday?"

   "Hello, Mr Booth."

   "It's Martin, remember?"

   "Ah yes.  Martin.  I have no one else to turn to.  I need help, Martin.
I'm sorry but you are the only person I could think of."

   "OK.  Let's get out of here and go somewhere we can talk in private."

   She looked hurriedly about her and I indicated Bernie with a flick of my
eyes.  She gave the briefest nod of understanding and followed me out.  I
cudgelled my brain to think of somewhere we go where we could talk without
being overheard.  It was early Friday evening and the pubs and bars in that
part of London were full of people celebrating the weekend.  In the end I
gave up and hailed a Black Cab.  We went to my place.

   I have a small Mews house just off Queensgate.  I bought it for a song
years ago, unconverted and run down.  It had been a bit of a money pit in
the beginning and my Bank Manager had not looked favourably on a Pupil
Barrister taking on such a pile of debt.  Fat lot he knew!  Modernised and
tarted up, it 's now worth around a million.  It's no palace, three rooms,
kitchen and bath, as the Estate Agents would say, but Freehold houses in
SW7 are as rare as hen's back teeth, especially ones with integral garages.
Apart from anything else, it's quiet.  No traffic, no pubs, no shops.  It
suits me very well.  I looked at it as being a good part of my pension. 
When I call it a day, London won't see my arse for dust.  I'll settle in
the country somewhere, the Cotswolds, maybe.

   I showed Angela into the sitting room and asked what she wanted to
drink. She shrugged.  Well, if she couldn't be bothered, I'd decide.  I
opened a bottle of Chateau Lestage, a very respectable little Haut Medoc.
Once she got the drink in her hand, she couldn't stop talking.  It was like
a dam bursting.  The whole story of the last week came flooding out of her.

   After I had left on the Saturday, two men arrived at her studio.  She
had been expecting them.  They had contacted her earlier in the week,
claiming to have to have been colleagues of her father.  She had been
suspicious, but not overly so.  She had left Estonia years before and was
not really aware of what her father had been doing latterly.  She knew he
had been in the Soviet Army, of course, but he had never spoken much about
it and had been away a lot, when she was growing up.  They hadn't been
particularly close and rarely wrote to each other.  She didn't know if
these colleagues were from his Red Army days or more recent times.  She
only thought to ask after they had hung up.

   The two men arrived, introduced themselves as representatives of the
Russian Federation Ministry of Culture and started talking vaguely about
offering her an exhibition.  She grew nervous when it became obvious that
neither had the slightest idea about her work.  One of them mentioned 'your
paintings.' Then they started to talk about her father.  What a Grand
Fellow he had been; how he must have been proud of his artist daughter. 
They were about as subtle as a charging Rhino.  They kept asking her if her
father had given her anything for safekeeping, just until his 'comrades'
could reclaim it.  She said she had nothing - had never had anything - of
her father's.

   They clumped about some more and left with vague promises of being in
touch.  Once they had gone, she called the Russian Embassy.  They confirmed
her suspicions that there were no Ministry of Culture representatives
currently in the UK and that the Cultural Attaché was presently in
Edinburgh with the Ballet.  Angela said that she had lived long enough
under Russian occupation to know that all of this meant trouble.  She was
scared, she said.  She thought of coming to see me but didn't feel she
could involve someone she'd only just met.  She worried late into the
evening and decided it was high time to get out of there, to go to ground,
so to speak.

   She packed up her few valuable belongings into her old Ford Escort and
left at around midnight.  She knew some Estonian friends in Leicester and
had arrived there in the early morning.  She slept in the car until it was
light and then went to call on her friends.  They had seen the story on the
TV News.  They claimed to be worried for her.  What had happened?  She told
them her story, foolishly, she now said, as they became very interested in
what it might be the men were after.  They pumped her about her father. 
She became paranoid, jumping at shadows, perhaps, but she had to leave.

   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 sort 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."