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  The author has used the real names of structures and hotels in the novel, with a few exceptions. For example, the Hotel Brabazon in Paris does not exist. Hotel Parisienne is completely fictional in this novel and should not be confused with any other hotel in Paris that may have a similar sounding name. Similarly, the terms Shropshire Police Headquarters and Shropshire Royal Infirmary are purely historical. Miles, gallons, kilometres and litres have been used depending on where the action is taking place.

  Nobeca is entirely a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are a product of the author’s imagination and should not be interpreted as real events. Names of actual persons, living or dead, actual names, actual places and actual historical events in the public domain are incidental to the plot of the novel and are not intended to alter the wholly fictitious character of the book.

  By the same author (Norma Lloyd-Nesling)

  Season of the Long Grass

  The Regis Connection’

  Nobeca

  Lloyd Nesling

  Copyright © 2018 Lloyd Nesling

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador

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  ISBN 9781788033992

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  For Tracey and Richard.

  Looking forward to your next gourmet dinner.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE 1976–1989

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PART TWO 2016–2017

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  October–December 2016

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  PROLOGUE

  Leningrad (St. Petersburg), 1970-1973

  It happened when he was nineteen. The old woman wrapped in a shawl walking near the Wall sparked the memory of that terrible night. She looked so much like his mother, Irina. Images crowded his memory like scenes from a horror film. A drunken, slobbering woman, lips painted bright red. It was more than fifteen years ago, but he still remembered the metallic smell of her blood. He felt no remorse only a consuming anger and a hunger for revenge.

  His stomach clenched when he thought about the abuse his mother had suffered at the hands of his father, Feliks; an arrogant, violent man with an insatiable sexual appetite. That night he had brought home a whore after drinking in his favourite haunt. Fuelled with vodka, they laughed and taunted Irina. She cowered in a corner, her face bruised and swollen from a recent beating.

  Pasha snapped and went at his father with a kitchen knife, slashing in a frenzy of hatred. Terrified, he ran into the bedroom and bolted the door while Pasha turned on the woman. She was too drunk to fend him off. He stabbed her over and over again. Horrified, Irina screamed for him to stop, but nothing could stop him. All he could hear was mocking laughter. With the tip of his knife he carved the word ‘whore’ on the woman’s forehead.

  Panting with rage, he watched her writhing on the floor until her lifeblood drained away. Irina stood with her back against the bedroom door pleading with Pasha not to harm his father. Eventually, she managed to calm him enough to grab the knife. When Feliks finally emerged from the bedroom and saw the woman’s blood-covered body, he panicked. Even more frightening was the hatred in his son’s eyes. He tried to run to the door, but Pasha barred his way. Grabbing him by the throat, he lifted him off his feet and smashed him against the wall. He dropped to the ground, whimpering with fright.

  Irina stared in disbelief at the woman’s mutilated body, her mouth open in a silent scream. Pasha put his arms around her reassuringly and guided her to a chair. He had to get rid of the body. It wouldn’t be an easy task with security police on the lookout for suspicious behaviour in the middle of the night.

  Icily calm, Pasha avoided the sticky mess on the floor. Quickly, he stripped the bloody topcoat off the body and replaced it with a coat belonging to Feliks. Hundreds of workers wore similar garments so it would be hard to trace. He tied a woollen scarf around her head, covering her face. Nobody would think it suspicious on such a cold night.

  Putting on a heavy overcoat and fur hat, he pulled down the earmuffs and fastened them over the lower part of his face. He hoisted his dazed father to his feet and slapped his face viciously from side to side. Wordlessly, Feliks obeyed his son’s instructions and helped carry the murdered woman from
their ground-floor apartment into the unlit road.

  While Irina scrubbed the floor clean of blood, Feliks and Pasha staggered along, pretending to be drunk. Supporting the body under each arm, they lurched along singing Red Army songs, to the amusement of drinkers emerging from the bars. When they reached the nearby Obvodny Canal, they pushed the body into the murky water.

  Afraid to report his son to the police, in case he was implicated in the murder, Feliks went to work the following morning as though nothing had happened. That night the three of them sat down to supper. On the surface a normal family, but the urge to kill Feliks had triggered a violent hatred in his son he could not quell.

  Feliks was so frightened he stopped drinking and kept his hands off Irina for months, but it didn’t last. One night, he staggered through the door stinking drunk and gave her a savage beating. When Pasha arrived home from university he found her lying on the floor, her face covered in blood.

  Feliks was in the kitchen bending over the open stove looking for his supper. Grabbing him by the hair Pasha pushed his head into the oven, straight into the sizzling stroganoff. Feliks tried to struggle, but he held him down until he felt his body go limp. A whimper behind him turned to a shriek. Irina was standing in the doorway screaming, her eyes wide with terror.

  When the authorities turned up she was sitting in the middle of the floor babbling incoherently. The horror of her husband’s death had sent her over the edge. A neighbour verified that she saw Feliks staggering home drunk that night. It wasn’t unusual. It was assumed he had stumbled head first into the oven whilst trying to take out the stroganoff. Irina died nine months later. She didn’t even recognise Pasha when he visited her in the hospital.

  There was little money left after his father’s drinking and womanising, but Irina had secretly squirreled away some money and a few pieces of precious jewellery she had inherited from her Russian–English parents. It was enough for Pasha to continue his education. A brilliant student he soon came to the notice of the KGB. Three years later, with a degree in engineering and computer science under his belt, he bought a train ticket to Moscow.

  He stared up at The Lubyanka in Red Square. This is where his future would begin.

  1973–1976

  Pasha was sent to Helsinki, a training ground for spies from the Eastern bloc. At the Soviet Embassy on Tehtaankatu Street he crafted his art. This was where the Soviets concentrated their intelligence. Finland was a neutral country so it paid to foster amicable relations on both sides. It was only a ferry voyage on the Viking Line from Tallinn to Helsinki. The KGB used the city as a portal for Soviet spies infiltrating the West. He excelled: no assignment was too onerous for him. He was a natural linguist, like his English grandmother, and mastered several languages.

  At first he slipped into Scandinavian countries. Sweden, Denmark and Norway, followed by brief spells in Dublin and Chicago. In London he worked hard perfecting his received pronunciation. By the time he returned to Finland, his English was perfect.

  On a chilly day in April he was summoned into the ambassador’s office. A man he had never seen before stood near the window.

  “This is Colonel Petrov from Moscow.”

  Pasha’s stomach churned, but he managed to maintain his equilibrium. Why had a high-ranking officer turned up from Moscow? Petrov motioned for him to sit down. He leaned against the ambassador’s desk and lit a cigarette before continuing.

  “We’ve been watching you for some time. We think you’re ready to integrate into American society. An interview, under the name Ralph Wilson, has been arranged for you in the computer science department at New York University.”

  “But sir, there are others more experienced.”

  “Yes, but they don’t have your specific qualifications for the post.”

  “What if I don’t get the job?”

  “You will be highly recommended from within the department. Besides, your research activities and references from Oxford and McGill in Montreal will be impeccable.”

  Pasha felt a flicker of uncertainty. He had not expected to be sent into the field on such an important assignment this early in his career. They could be testing his commitment and resilience.

  “I’m flattered that you consider me capable and honoured to serve my country.”

  Petrov nodded his head. It was the response he wanted.

  “You must ensure that you do nothing that will arouse suspicion. There are hundreds like you in the United States. They live completely normal lives under the noses of the FBI and the CIA. Some of our agents have been over there for over twenty years.” Petrov studied him closely for any sign of tension. All that registered on his handsome face was satisfaction and confidence. He was ready. “Success or failure depends on you, Pasha.”

  PART ONE

  1976–1989

  CHAPTER ONE

  California, 1976–1984

  Ralph Wilson started his new job the following September. His brief was to build up a reputation for excellence before he was moved on. Two months into the job, he was joined by his ‘wife’, Andrea. After four years building up his reputation, he secured a post in computer science and engineering at Stanford University in California.

  The Wilsons set up home in rented accommodation in Santa Cruz. The commute to San José every day was hellish, but it deterred colleagues from dropping in unannounced. He soon became involved with research projects in Silicon Valley. He befriended anyone where he could glean intelligence for the Soviets.

  Sex wasn’t a part of the relationship with his ‘wife’. The thought disgusted him. The KGB knew about Andrea’s secret transgressions, but sexual preference could be very useful to them in gathering intelligence. Her interests leaned towards the pretty girls in the banking complex where she worked as a senior auditor. Pasha took his pleasure with cheap girls in downtown motel rooms, but Andrea baulked at casual relationships.

  Two years into the ‘job’ she fell for Jodie, a blonde cashier of the same persuasion. It was the start of a turbulent affair that frequently flared into bouts of insane jealousy. Pasha only found out about the affair after the blonde discovered where they lived and turned up on the doorstep. She was a threat that had to be eliminated immediately.

  Late one night, he tailed Jodie to her home in a small housing community in Palo Alto. He shimmied the window at the rear of the single-storey house and crept into the darkened bedroom. He crept along the narrow hallway looking into every room. As he passed the kitchen, the outer door swung open. A woman stood silhouetted in the light from the veranda that circled the house. The damn door was open all the time! Pressing himself into the shadow of a large bookcase he froze, knife in hand.

  “Come on in, honey,” Jodie called, “the late show’s just finished.”

  “Darn it, I forgot the wine. I’ll go get it; won’t be a jiffy.”

  “Don’t be long, the movie’s gonna start any minute now.”

  The kitchen door slammed shut. He heard the woman crunch along the path to the house next door. He only had a few minutes to get the job done before she came back.

  Jodie was lounging on the sofa with her back to the door. She was laughing at some animated advertisement for breakfast cereal. Leaning over, he grabbed her head and pulled it back. She kicked out and flailed her arms, but Ralph was too strong for her. Clamping his hand over her mouth he drew the blade across her throat and waited until her body slumped down into the chair. With the tip of the knife he carved a single word on her arm: ‘dyke’. He wiped off some of the blood with one of Andrea’s sweatshirts and stuffed it into a plastic bag. Now he had to get rid of the other problem, his ‘wife’.

  Supper was a sombre affair. Andrea was in a bad mood, because her girlfriend had failed to show up at their usual haunt.

  “Is something wrong, Andrea?” he asked. “You seem a bit down.”

  “It’s nothing.” She didn’t know that Jodie had turned up out of the blue a few days previously. “I’m just tired. It’s been a hard
day.”

  “Let’s have a drink. It will relax you,” he said sympathetically. “Help you to sleep.”

  She loosened up when he offered her a glass of vodka. Knocking it back in one gulp, she poured another. She could match him drink for drink. A fellow graduate of the Tehtaankatu spy school she was no pushover. He had to be very careful not to arouse her suspicions.

  After her sixth vodka, her speech started to slur. She staggered into her bedroom and dropped onto the bed. Within seconds she was snoring like a pig. He had spiked her last drink with diazepam. She wouldn’t wake up for hours, not that she would ever wake up again.

  At two-thirty in the morning, he hauled her through the interconnecting garage door and pushed her into her Chevette, dressed in the blood-soaked sweatshirt. He hated the drive through the hazardous Santa Cruz Mountains, but there would be little traffic at this early hour. Fog descended as he drove along Highway 17. Ascending the tortuous highway, he crossed the Santa Clara–Santa Cruz county line through the summit at Patchen Pass. In the distance brake lights winked on and off as a vehicle negotiated Valley Surprise curve.