“Be there, Greta. Just in case. If somebody turns up, I want a photo. I get an instinct for things.”
“Which is why you’re still here, my love.”
“True. But something here isn’t right. Let’s try and find out what it is.”
At Cavendish Place, Dillon and Blake were admitted by Kim, the General’s Ghurka manservant, and found Ferguson, Hannah Bernstein and Roper in the drawing room. Ferguson was in his sixties, a large, untidy man in a crumpled suit and a Guards tie. Hannah Bernstein was in her early thirties, with close-cropped red hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. Her Armani trouser suit was certainly more expensive than most people could afford on police pay. Major Roper sat in a state-of-the-art electric wheelchair, wearing a reefer coat, hair down to his shoulders, his face a taut mask of the kind of scar tissue that comes from burns, the explosion that had ended his career.
“Here he is, the man of the moment,” Dillon said. “I’m sure he’ll give it to us in graphic detail,” which Blake did, everything that had happened in Manhattan.
Afterward, Blake said, “So there it is. For the disposal system, I’m indebted to you, General. We’re fighting a new kind of war these days, although I can understand Hannah’s moral principles being bruised a bit.”
“Bruised or not, the Superintendent works for this department under the Official Secrets Act. Isn’t that right?” Ferguson glanced at her.
Hannah didn’t look easy, but said, “Of course, sir.”
“Good. Tell us about Mrs. Morgan, then.”
“She’s sixty-five and looks much older. I managed to get hold of her hospital records, and it’s bad. The automobile accident that killed her husband almost finished her off. She narrowly avoided being a paraplegic, but she has money. Her husband owned a pharmacy, which was sold after his death, and there was insurance, so she’s well-fixed.”
“Go on.”
“Her family disowned her when she married a Christian, but now she’s returned to Islam, as you know. Her son started taking her to the Queen Street Mosque in her wheelchair. It used to be a Methodist chapel.”