A Delicate Truth A Novel

will in yours. Plus Brigid, if you’re short of Cash in any way, call this mobile number attached and I will remit without fail. Plus Brigid, I will trouble you kindly to remit forthwith two Pics on loan which are Personal property of self. SAE attached.
As ever in Grief, Jeb’s old Comrade, trust me,
Shorty.
    Shouts of argument from outside the front door: Danny having a screaming fit, Harry vainly reasoning. Brigid makes to grab back the photographs.
    ‘Can’t I keep them?’
    ‘Can you fuck!’
    ‘Can I copy them?’
    ‘All right. Go on. Copy them,’ she replies, again without a moment’s hesitation.
    Beirut Man lays the full-plate photographs flat on the dining table and, ignoring the advice he gave to Emily only a couple of days ago, copies the photographs into his BlackBerry. Handing them back, he peers over Brigid’s shoulder at Shorty’s letter, then copies his cellphone number into his notebook.
    ‘What’s Shorty’s other name?’ he asks, while the din outside rises in a crescendo.
    ‘Pike.’
    He writes down Pike too, for safety’s sake.
    ‘He called me the day before,’ she says.
    ‘ Pike did?’
    ‘ Danny, shut the fuck up, for Christ’s sake! Jeb did, who d’you think? Tuesday, nine o’clock in the morning. Harry and Danny had just gone off on a school outing. I pick up the phone, it’s Jeb, like I never heard him these last three years. “I’ve found my witness, Brigid, the best you could ever think of. Him and me are going to set the record straight once and for all. Get rid of Harry, and as soon as I’m done we’ll start over again: you, me and Danny, same as old times.” That’s how depressed he was a few hours before he shot his fucking head off, Mr Bell.’
     
    *
     
    If a decade of diplomatic life had taught Toby one thing, it was to treat every crisis as normal and soluble. On the taxi ride back to Cardiff his mind might be a cauldron of unsorted fears for Kit, Suzanna and Emily; it might be in mourning for Jeb, and wrestling with the timing and method of his murder, and the complicity of the police in its cover-up, but outwardly he was the same chatty passenger and Gwyneth was the same chatty driver. Only on reaching Cardiff did he go about his dispositions exactly as if he’d spent the journey preparing them, which in truth he had.
    Was he under scrutiny? Not yet, but Charlie Wilkins’s warning words were not lost on him. At Paddington, he had bought his railway ticket with cash. He had paid Gwyneth cash and asked her to drop him off and pick him up at the roundabout. He had kept to himself the identity of the person he was visiting, althoughhe knew it was a lost cause. More than likely, at least one of Brigid’s neighbours had a watching brief to tip off the police, in which case a description of his personal appearance would have been reported, although, with any luck, police incompetence would ensure that word would take its time to travel.
    Needing more cash than he’d reckoned on, he had no option but to draw some from a machine, thus advertising his presence in Cardiff. Some risks you just have to take. From an electronics shop a stone’s throw from the station he bought a new hard drive for his desktop and two second-hand cellphones, one black, one silver, with pay-as-you-go SIM cards and guaranteed fully charged batteries. In the world of downmarket electronics, he had been taught on his security courses, such cellphones were known as ‘burners’ because of the tendency of their owners to dispose of them after a few hours.
    In a café favoured by Cardiff’s unemployed he bought a cup of coffee and a piece of slab cake and took them to a corner table. Satisfied that the background sound suited his purpose, he touched Shorty’s number into the silver burner and pressed green. This was Matti’s world, not his. But he had been at the edge of it, and he was not a stranger to dissembling.
    The number rang and rang and he was reconciled to getting the messaging service when an aggressive male voice barked at him:
    ‘Pike here. I’m at work. What d’you want?’
    ‘Shorty?’
    ‘All right, Shorty. Who is this?’
    Toby’s own voice, but without its Foreign Office polish:
    ‘Shorty, this is Pete from the South Wales Argus . Hi. Look, the paper’s putting together a spread on Jeb Owens, who sadly killed himself last week, as you probably know. Death of our unsung hero stuff. We understand you were quite a mate of his, that right? I mean, like,