So the MI6 and MI5 operations had been blown from the beginning. Liz sighed, and Blakey seemed to sense her disgust. He protested, ‘I don’t see what use that would be to Islamic militants in Birmingham.’
Liz shrugged. ‘I wasn’t thinking of Birmingham; I was thinking of Athens. Did she know about that?’
Blakey flushed. ‘You mean, the girl?’
‘I do. Let’s give her a name,’ Liz said icily. ‘Maria Galanos.’
Blakey wouldn’t look at her, which gave Liz her answer. At last he said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, ‘Oh, God.’ He was rubbing his hands together now, as if trying to wash everything away. ‘But Katherine couldn’t have killed her,’ he said, almost hopefully. ‘She wasn’t in Greece when Maria was murdered. She was here.’
‘Enter Mo Miandad,’ said Liz.
Blakey’s hands stopped moving, and he stared at them as if they had been stained again by her words. Then he spoke without looking at Liz, averting his face, as if it would somehow make the horror less. ‘You have to believe me, I had no idea. She never gave the slightest indication of sympathising with Islam – I’d have bet you anything that she’d never set foot in a mosque in her life. Her husband was Middle Eastern, but from everything she ever said he was thoroughly Westernised – educated in the States, enlightened, liberal. And the information she got from me – well, I’ll be honest, it was me telling her; I wasn’t being pumped.’
Pillow talk, thought Liz bitterly, which had cost Maria Galanos her life. Blakey seemed to sense this, for he continued, ‘I have no excuse, I understand that. I’m just trying to explain things. Even now that I know, I find it hard to believe. If she was trying to entrap me, she did a miraculous job of disguising it. I made all the running,’ he said emphatically.
Yes, thought Liz. An attractive intelligent blonde woman who works in the same office didn’t have to do a lot to catch the interest of a known womaniser whose wife had left him. The smallest signs would do – the chance arrival at the lift when her target was leaving for the day, perhaps turning down the first invitation for a drink but making it clear a second offer would receive a different reception; a few sympathetic words about his personal troubles, a suggestion that she knew ‘how it was’ since she was lonely too. She’d played him very cleverly, you had to give the woman that – even now Blakey was thinking he had seduced her, that he had made all the running.
Blakey was waiting anxiously for her to say more. ‘When are you due to see Katherine next?’ she asked.
‘This evening. She’s at a meeting away from the office today; a get-together of other similar charities – it happens twice a year. She said she’d come round to my flat at seven or so. I can give you the address.’
‘We’ve got that already,’ said Liz. It was somehow worse having Blakey trying to be helpful.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to face her,’ he said plaintively.
‘I don’t think you’ll find it’s much of a problem.’
Normally Ivy Howson would have been at home by now. Thursdays were her late day working for Mr Blakey, but even then she was usually off by four, having done two loads of laundry, put them through the dryer (she’d told him twice now it was on its last legs), and ironed the sheets and pillow cases as well as the shirts she hadn’t got round to on Tuesday.
But today she was still in the neighbourhood a good three hours later, though in fairness it was not because of Mr Blakey. Before she’d gone to work for him, she’d worked for an American family who’d lived around the corner, in a trim little house that the American woman had insisted on calling ‘cute’. It was there that Mrs Howson had met Eloise the au pair, a nice New Zealand girl who’d looked up to Ivy like a second mum. And it was Eloise she’d gone to see today, still working as an au pair, in the same house funnily enough, though now it was for a Chinese couple called Tang or Tong or Ting – Mrs Howson didn’t know.
Though Eloise was working so close by, Ivy hadn’t seen her for yonks, so they’d had a lovely time over tea, catching up and chatting. Not that Eloise had that much to tell – the Tangs or whatever they were called were quiet people, with one young child, but they didn’t speak that much English, according to Eloise, so it was a bit boring for her. Yet Ivy Howson had more than filled the conversational gap, what with the goings on in the Blakey household since she’d last seen Eloise. How they’d laughed as she’d described this new blonde woman that Mr Blakey didn’t like to admit was his girlfriend. She wasn’t a patch on Mrs Blakey, who, poor thing, was said to be living in Acton now, all on her own. ‘It’s tough on a woman if she gets hitched up to a bastard,’ Mrs Howson had said. ‘You watch yourself, Eloise,’ she’d warned, more than once.
