“Man named Martin Kreutzmer.” He breathed smoke. “He’s a BND player. Semi-retired, he says, but running an agent here in the Brexit office, would you believe? Almost like they don’t believe we can fuck that one up by ourselves.”
“Imagine.”
“The Park thought she was ours, and that we had a warm body inside the BND. Reality was the other way round. And when Kreutzmer’s cover name turned up on a search Wicinski ran, Kreutzmer got to hear because the mole’s Park handler told her about it.” He paused. “Do you want to hear that again? It’s not that complicated, but it’s so fucking comical it bears repetition.”
Catherine said, “And Kreutzmer planted the porn on Lech’s laptop. To discredit him.”
“But not by himself. He called in favours to get it done, which was a breach of BND protocols. So when Wicinski looked like he was starting to pull at loose threads, Kreutzmer hit him again, hard. To cover his own arse, not just to protect his joe.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Well, Molly Doran told me Kreutzmer was involved. But Kreutzmer himself told me the rest.”
“Because you can be persuasive.”
“And because I had him over a fucking barrel. He wasn’t worried about the Park putting him on a plane. He was worried about being fired once it landed.”
Catherine was still standing. She lowered herself into a chair. The only light crawled in through the open office door, and Lamb’s face looked like a candleless pumpkin: its holes and hollows lacking any internal flame.
She said, “And he shot Harkness? Assuming that’s who got shot.”
“Harkness was playing with hired talent. And a thing about hired talent? There’s always someone’ll pay better.”
“You bought them.”
“Not with money. One of his crew, a rat called Anton Moser, remember? Coe identified him.”
She nodded.
Lamb said, “The mad monk had his moments. It turns out Moser used to bang heads for the BND. Molly has a file. They got rid of him when the heads he banged got too scrambled to debrief. There’s such a thing as being too good at your job.”
“Apparently.”
“So he went freelance, and you know what they say about freelance work. There’s nobody handing out gold clocks at the end of it.” Lamb ground his cigarette out on his battle-scarred desk. “So I had Kreutzmer send Moser a message. Let him know there’d be a welcome in the homeland if he did this little favour. A return to the fold.”
“So he murdered Harkness for the chance of a pension?”
“Wait’ll you’re down to your last tin of sardines, see how you feel about it then. Plus, Harkness was a legend, don’t forget. If you’re in the business of collecting scalps, that’s a nice one to have. Front and centre of the old CV.”
She looked at the paragraph again, and filled in its blanks. A final debrief after the aborted contract in Wales. Payday, even: would they still have been paid, despite the way things had gone? Another bugbear of the freelance life. Whatever the reason, Harkness and Moser in a car, and Moser pulling the trigger; a trigger Lamb had primed, here in London. She had to remind herself, maybe for the millionth time, that this was the world she lived in; that Spook Street wasn’t all boring reports in manila folders. That joe country lay just around the corner.
“And what did you promise Kreutzmer for this?” she asked.
“A free pass.”
“He’s running an agent in London, and you gave him a free pass?”
“I said I promised him one. I never said I gave him one.” He’d found another cigarette somewhere. “And once he’d done his bit”—he gestured towards the newspaper—“I called Taverner, let her know there’s a mole within spitting distance of Number Ten. Bet that went down well with the Oversights.”
“Not to mention Kreutzmer.”
“Fuck him. He branded my cattle. That used to be a hanging offence.”
He lit his cigarette.
“He’ll be back in Munich by now. His joe’ll be at the Park. And whoever they had handling her this end, well, if we’re really unlucky, he’ll end up downstairs. Maybe I’ll make him share a room with Wicinski. What do you reckon?”
“I reckon,” said Catherine, laying a quiet stress on the word, “that we lost someone. Emma Flyte too. And she was a good woman.”
She still had River’s report tucked under her arm, and she laid it on the desk now and left the office, closing the door behind her, leaving Lamb cloistered in his dark.
