Provo. Gordon Stevens

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      Saunders’s day had been straightforward, no big stories and no scares that another paper had something he had missed. By five he had finished what he considered a minor item on the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York but which would still make the front page, copied it on to a floppy disk, entered the names and home telephone numbers of two new contacts into the computer notebook, and left the building.

      He returned to the flat, copied the article and the contacts on to the relevant files on the PC in the spare bedroom which also doubled as his study – the bed a fold-up and the bookshelves filled with reference books – booked a minicab, then showered and changed. Forty minutes later the telephone rang and the minicab controller informed him that the car was waiting. He put the computer notebook and Cellnet in his pocket, locked the flat and was driven to Joe Allen’s.

      Philipa Walker arrived ten minutes later.

      Sometime, he assumed, she would agree to go to bed with him. Meanwhile she was good company – intelligent and attractive.

      Sometime, she assumed, he would let slip the remark that would give her the way in. And if he didn’t, or if he wasn’t the key she wanted, then she would have to look elsewhere. Meanwhile he was good company. Except that she was already three months into the schedule Conlan had given her.

      ‘So what are you doing this weekend?’

      ‘Wiltshire.’ Wife, the girls and the ponies. ‘How about you?’

      ‘I’m away.’

      ‘Skiing?’ He had seen the snow reports.

      ‘Spain. Way down south for the sun.’

      ‘All right for some people.’

      ‘The advantage of working for oneself.’

      ‘Send me a postcard.’

      By the time she returned to Primrose Hill it was 11.30. Twelve hours later she left the flat and took a cab to Heathrow . . .

      *

       . . .it was the middle of the spring term, her first year at university. That summer she and the students with whom she shared a flat had decided to drive across Europe to Greece. The previous afternoon, therefore, she had collected the passport application form from the post office.

      She’s done all right. Considering.

      It was five years since she had stood on the stairs of the house in Orpington and heard her mother’s voice, yet still the words haunted her. Not every hour of every day, not even every day of every week, yet always hanging in the recesses of her mind, sometimes conscious though most times not.

      Birth certificate and two photographs – she checked the requirements for a full passport then went downstairs. The telephone was in the hall. She sat on the bottom stair, dialled directory enquiries and asked for the Orpington office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. The line was engaged. She waited two minutes then tried again. The woman who answered the enquiries number was friendly and helpful.

      There were two types of birth certificate, both sufficient for a passport application. The short certificate gave merely the details of her name, date of birth and the registration district in which she had been born, and would cost £2.50. The full certificate would be a copy of her original birth certificate and would cost £5.50. She could come in person, or send a postal application stating full name, place and date of birth, plus a stamped, addressed envelope and a cheque for the relevant amount.

      ‘How long will it take by post?’

      ‘A week, perhaps ten days. No more.’

      Post, she decided; there was no hurry and it would be simpler. She thanked the woman, returned to her room and wrote the letter.

      Name: Philipa Charlotte Louise Walker. The names came from the two sides of the family.

      Date of birth: 12.3.61. Each year, for as far back as she

      could remember, her parents bad always given her a party.

      Place of birth: Orpington.

      She would have the full certificate rather than the short one, she also decided, even though it cost more. The document wasn’t just a piece of paper, it was part of her life. She wrote out the cheque and posted the application that evening.

      The stamped, addressed envelope which she included came back nine days later. It was lying on the hall floor when she and the others returned to the flat in the early evening. She slit the envelope open, already smiling. Her name, her date of birth. Her, officially recognized as a person for the first time. The thought was innocent and enjoyable.

      There was no birth certificate. Instead was her cheque and a standard letter.

       Dear Miss Walker

       I refer to your recent application for a birth certificate. I have made a search of our records for the relevant district and period but I regret that I am unable to trace an entry.

       The letter was signed by the Deputy Superintendent Registrar. Typed below the signature was a note suggesting she applied – in writing or personally – to the General Register Office, St Catherine’s House, Kingsway, London WC2 . . .

      . . . the late afternoon sun was low and the land was patch-worked brown and yellow, only the occasional green. The 727 banked to port and she saw Seville: the heart of the old city with the newer part sprawling out from it; the Guadalquivir snaking its way south-west towards the Atlantic. Twenty minutes later Philipa Walker cleared immigration and customs, collected a hire car and picked up the N4 motorway south, then switched to the toll road.

      The temperature was still a pleasant 65°. A little over an hour later she cut right towards Cadiz Bay. The city was opposite her, across the causeway, the off-white concrete of the modern city at the neck of the peninsula and the honeycomb streets of the old quarter at the tip. She skirted Puerto de Santa Maria and took the road to Rota. Three kilometres on she turned left into the housing development called Las Redes, its streets named after the oceans of the world, only the line of sand dunes between it and the Atlantic.

      The house on Mar Timor was two hundred metres from the sea, protected by a whitewashed wall. She entered the security code, drove into the garage, locked the door behind her, then tapped the security code of the front door and went inside. The house was cool and well-furnished, and the safe was concealed beneath the flagstones of the small courtyard round which the house was built.

      She had not been operational for two years. She was still sharp, her basic talents and instincts still intact, but it was logical both that Conlan should recommend a refresher and that he would arrange it this way.

      That evening she ate in a fish restaurant close to the river in Puerto de Santa Maria, the streets cobbled and the smell from the sherry bodegas hanging in the warm night air. The next morning she placed her passport and personal documents in a deposit box in the Banco de Andalucía in the town centre, then spent three hours exploring the maze of streets and alleyways of old Cadiz; that afternoon she drove south to Tarifa, passing an hour in a cafe on the long, windswept beach to the north and two hours in the fortified part of the old town. That evening she filled out the postcards which had been placed in the floor safe.

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