Straker took advantage of the distraction.
Quickly digging into his pocket, he pulled out his phone and, without looking down, turned it off and shoved it into Sabatino's hand, closing her fingers around it. He then pulled the blanket up over the phone. Bending down, he appeared to be kissing her; instead, he was whispering: ‘Take this. Turn it on only for a few minutes every four hours – eight a.m. to eight p.m. each day – and wait for any instructions or news. To save the battery, turn it straight off again after you check for messages. If anything happens here that you’re worried about – text Andy straight away, yes?’
Tightening her grip around the phone, Sabatino felt some relief that she might at last have a link to the outside world.
A few minutes later McMahon and Straker were being physically escorted out of the main entrance of the hospital.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Standing outside the front of the medical centre in the twilight, neither Straker nor McMahon knew how to react professionally to what had just happened. It was so far removed from anything they might have expected. If anything, the lawyer was taking it worse.
‘This is intolerable,’ said McMahon. ‘Either one hand of government doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, or they are maniacally changing their minds.’
Straker was quiet, trying to weigh it all up.
‘Aren’t you appalled?’ she asked him.
‘I take it this incident has finally taken us beyond the stock response of: “This is Russia”?’
McMahon wasn’t happy at her own line being used back at her.
Their car drew up. Both climbed in to the rear. Pulling away, it headed towards the centre of Moscow.
Straker spent some more time looking out of the window. As he turned to face McMahon, though, he was intrigued: for the first time that day she looked as if she was ready to defer to him.
In response, Straker offered: ‘We need to try and see what has been going on for what it might mean.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We need to put all this in perspective,’ explained Straker. ‘The accident at the Grand Prix was horrible … dreadful. It would be perfectly natural – and expected – for there to be a negative public reaction – a public outcry.’
‘So?’
‘We need to consider what a rational and proportionate response to that ought to look like, even if it was horrible.’
McMahon looked as if she didn’t know whether that was a rhetorical point or whether she was meant to hazard a response.
Helping her out, Straker went on: ‘No aspect of the “system's” reaction to this tragedy, so far, could be considered as anything close to “normal”. None of the authorities’ actions could be described as “expected”. A humiliating arrest and a Black Maria? Impounding the wreckage and the crash site, denying us the chance – and the best experts – to examine them both? Initiating legal proceedings ahead of any investigation?
‘At the same time, some of their actions could only be described as overkill: appointing the country's most senior prosecutor? Escalating this case to the highest court in the land? Holding the trial in four weeks?
‘While some of the “system's” other actions seem almost vindictive – such as denying both the accused legal representation, and even countermanding permission to see your clients when such permission had been granted?’
McMahon didn’t offer a challenge to any of these observations.
‘I am prompted, therefore, to wonder … Why?’ said Straker. ‘Why is nothing about what has happened since the accident “normal”, let alone reasonable? Why has everything been so exaggerated?’
With the continued lack of pushback from McMahon, Straker paused.
‘You know,’ he said in a softer tone, ‘when things occur in line with expectations, no one thinks to question them. But in an investigation, whenever something unexpected occurs, my curiosity is always piqued – because things very rarely happen without a reason. In this case, it is not just the exaggerated occurrences that have me curious, but the combination of them. How can there have been so many here – one after the other?’
McMahon was still silent. The legal part of her brain was desperately trying to question Straker's logic. ‘Are you suggesting that, because the sequence is so extraordinary, you think they are linked?’
‘Doesn’t the sequence surprise you: how likely is such an unbroken chain of such disproportionate occurrences from different institutions?’ he asked. ‘If they didn’t happen randomly, then – logically – it means they would have to have been orchestrated.’
McMahon found herself inhaling. She would never have let her mind leap from F to Z like this in one go. ‘But that's ridiculous,’ she said. ‘If they were orchestrated, it would have to imply that they were intended? Why on earth would someone want all this to happen?’
Straker went on: ‘God knows why … for some sick reason? But it isn’t impossible, is it?’
McMahon shook her head less tentatively than she felt.
‘So if – for whatever warped reason – the institutional responses were intended,’ Straker said, ‘none of them could have happened without the accident having occurred in the first place.’
McMahon looked at him incredulously. This time, her legal instincts didn’t allow her to follow him from F to Z: ‘You’re not serious?’ she asked. ‘You’re not saying that you think … the accident … was premeditated?’
Straker maintained direct eye contact. ‘That deduction would not be inconsistent with everything that's happened since,’ he said. ‘Besides, Tahm and Remy both stated that there was nothing wrong with that car. Something, then, must have happened to it. My starting point in this investigation, therefore, is now clear: we have to establish what that might have been.’
‘How can you ever hope to do that, when the car and crash site are impounded?’
‘Andy Backhouse has a fair amount of data in the motor home and we can do a lot more analysis of it.’
‘What if that isn’t conclusive, though … isn’t enough?’
They continued to make their way through the Russian capital as the last of the light was fading.
Straker shifted in his seat. Softly, he said: ‘We might need to get proactive.’
‘What does that mean?’
