In separate cars, from the separate small hotels in which they were lodging, the four agents slipped into Luton two days later. In short – their instructions were: move fast.
Agent A was tasked to have a look at the electoral register. In the UK, this is a public document. Political constituency officials study it. It also includes addresses. Agent A reported back within a day. There were nine Jennings families in Luton but only one contained someone named Luke. He was listed as being eighteen, just on the electoral register after qualifying on his last birthday. The register showed him as living with his parents. There was an address for the now three voters who lived there. Two parents, Harold and Sue, and the teenager.
Agent B was told where to go and cruised past. In the garden a placard on a post announced that the house was for sale. The estate agent was listed. Agent B went there and secured a viewing that afternoon.
On his visit he could see that the house had clearly been gutted and professionally cleaned. There was not even an old envelope, an invoice or a bill indicating where the family might have gone. Until the cupboard under the stairs. Agent B insisted on peering everywhere and in the small area off the hallway, up against the far wall, lay a discarded golf tee. It was possible the dark cupboard had once played host to a set of golf clubs, a hobby of the father, perhaps.
The next day Agent C took over. There are three golf clubs serving the town of Luton. From his hotel bedroom the Russian rang the first then hit gold with the second. His patter was perfectly inoffensive.
‘Look, I wonder if you can help me. I have just moved into the Luton area and I’m trying to make contact with an old mate who lives here. He sent me his card but, like an ass, I’ve lost it. But he did
tell me at the time that he had joined a terrific golf club. Would that be you? Fella called Harold Jennings.’
It was the assistant secretary on the line.
‘We do have a Harold Jennings on file, sir. Would that be him?’
‘Yes, that would be him. Would you have a number for him?’
It was a landline number and it was disconnected. Almost certainly the number of the abandoned house. Not that it mattered any more. Agent C drove out to the golf club.
He chose the lunch hour, asked to see the secretary and enquired after a membership.
‘I think you may be in luck, sir,’ said the affable official. ‘We are normally jammed full, but we recently lost a couple of members. One went to the great nineteenth hole in the sky and I believe the other has emigrated. Let me introduce you to the bar while I go and check.’
The bar was crowded and jolly, with members coming in off the eighteenth hole in twos and fours, leaving their kit in the changing room and ordering a stiffener before lunch. Agent C began to circulate. His patter was the same as on the phone.
‘I’ve just moved out here from London. Used to have a very good mate who was a member here. Harold Jennings. Is he still here?’
Toby Wilson was at the bar, and his large, veined nose indicated he was no stranger to it.
‘He was until a month ago. Are you joining? Good show. Yes, Harold’s gone and emigrated. Oh, don’t mind if I do. Gin and tonic. Many thanks.’
The barman knew his man. The fizzing glass was on the bar before its predecessor was empty. The secretary returned with forms to fill in. Agent C complied. They would never trace him anyway; the address he gave was completely phoney. Just a formality, explained the secretary. It would have to go before the committee, but he foresaw no problem for a chum of Harold Jennings, playing off ten. In the meantime, why not enjoy the bar as his guest? Then he was called away. Agent C returned to Toby Wilson.
‘Yes, sad, really. His marriage broke up. Mind you, I wouldn’t have minded taking that wife off him. What a cracker.’
‘Sue, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right. Gorgeous girl. Anyway, they’ve parted, and he’s gone off to New York. Good job, nice flat, new life, last I heard.’
‘He’s been in touch, then?’
‘Gave me a call the other day.’
An hour later Agent C helped Toby to his car and, in the process, a mobile phone found itself transferred from Wilson’s pocket to that of the agent.
When Agent C reported to Dmitri Volkov, he was able to be very helpful. If the hacker was the boy, he and his mother had definitely disappeared from Luton. But if anyone would know where they were, it would be the father. He was in New York, but the agent now had his mobile-phone number.
The SVR has another chain of agents in New York City and, with modern tracing technology, a mobile-phone number is as good as an address. The colony of Russian gangsters in New York was duly contacted.
Chapter Six
THERE WAS NOTHING unusual about the garbage dumpster on the dingy New York street that morning in mid-May, except for the human leg dangling out of it.
If the skip had been empty, the body would have been at the bottom of it and out of sight, for days or even weeks. It wasn’t. Had an apartment owner high above looked down, that person might have seen the limb of the cadaver hanging out of the dumpster, but there were no such apartments.
The skip was on a patch of waste ground off a dingy alley in Brownsville, not far from Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn. Flanking the alley were old and empty warehouses; the whole area was an industrial slum. The only reason the police patrolman had seen the leg was because he had entered the waste ground to relieve himself.