Westwind by Ian Rankin

Author:Ian Rankin [Rankin, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409196075
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2019-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

23

On the way to the Park Lane Achilles Hotel, Sanders told them about Harry.

‘It was four or five years ago. I’d just joined the department …’

What department? Hepton was tempted to ask.

‘I remember meeting Mr Parfit for the first time. He struck the fear of God into me.’

Sanders seemed excited. Hepton decided that the secret agent hadn’t seen much action in his musty set of offices. He didn’t appear to be over-experienced either, driving a little too fast, potentially attracting attention. And now that he had been assigned to protect Hepton and Jilly, he was much less reticent, much more talkative, much more like a human being.

Hepton wondered why it was, then, that he liked him less this way.

‘Mr Parfit had spent months on the case. There was going to be an assassination attempt.’ He turned to them. ‘I won’t say on whom. But the identity of the assassin was what we couldn’t uncover. We were looking for a regular, you see, a Carlos the Jackal or whatever. But it turned out to be a woman, a young and good-looking one at that.’

Hepton could feel Jilly bristling at this.

‘The beautiful Harriet, in other words,’ Sanders continued, unaware of Jilly’s glowering face. ‘She was the assassin.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Oh, Parfit tracked her down, or at least his team did. She did a runner and was never heard from again. Until now.’

‘What about Villiers?’ Hepton asked, his voice as neutral as an idling engine. Not that the Cavalier’s engine was idling. Sanders pulled past some evening traffic and cut into the stream again just ahead of a purring Jaguar.

‘I’ve worked with Mr Villiers for two years. When I started with him, I was told he was a bit … well, that he might be prone to … outbursts.’

‘What did his job entail?’

‘Nothing very much. He just waited. When advice was needed on one of his specialities, he’d be called for.’

‘That must have been tedious.’

Sanders nodded. ‘He hated it. Desk-bound after years of combat training. God knows, I’d hate it too in his position. They say he was a great soldier.’

‘You mean good at killing people?’ Jilly asked. Sanders reddened, but didn’t answer.

‘Did you ever suspect he might be involved in something?’ Hepton asked him. ‘Something you weren’t allowed to know about?’

Sanders shook his head. ‘Mr Parfit asked me a similar question on the telephone back there. I’ll tell you what I told him: I didn’t suspect anything. I’m still not sure that I do … I mean, it could all be some ghastly mistake, couldn’t it?’

‘No,’ said Hepton flatly. ‘No mistake.’

The car had reached the top of the Mall. Buckingham Palace lay directly in front of them. Hepton watched intently as a slow-moving line of army trucks approached from the other direction and drove past, heading in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

‘There’s a lot of troop movement at the moment,’ said Sanders, attempting a change of subject. ‘To do with the pull-out, I suppose. I’m against it myself. The pull-out, I mean. I think most people are.

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