The last part caused Vincent to wince emotionally.
‘She’s dead. You left her to die; how can you live with yourself?’
37
Mark stopped still. He knew the death of Ali Jacobs would surface at some point following his return to the U.K. but it wasn’t until this moment that he realised just how hard it would be to acknowledge.
‘I know,’ Mark whispered.
‘You just left her to die when the meeting with your cronies went south!’ Vincent spat, still holding his nose. Whilst his swipe at Mark had resulted in no blood, quite the opposite was true of the head-butt. Mark threw him a handkerchief to stop the gushing.
‘You could have broken my nose, you fuck,’ Vincent mumbled.
Mark took a seat next to the detective and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one. He offered the pack to Vincent who declined.
‘I picked the habit up in my new country,’ Mark muttered taking a long drag. ‘They’re so cheap over there that it’s hard not to, you know?’
‘It’ll kill you,’ Vincent admonished. and then almost laughed when he remembered his own predicament.
‘There’s something you need to understand, Vincent. I cared for Ali. She was a real friend to me after you sent me to Belmarsh. She believed in my story and was helping me track down the bastards who set me up.’
‘So you’re still claiming it was a set up?’
‘It was a set up!’ he blasted back. ‘I have relived that day over and over again. If only I had ignored the phone calls; if only I had spoken to the police, maybe none of this would have happened. But the lure of the money, and then the threat to my family meant I was helpless. I integrated their illicit funds, I’ve admitted that, but it was under duress. You saw what happened to my brother Benedict; he’s not been able to walk properly since he was attacked. These are sick people, you must know that or you wouldn’t be appearing in court yourself. They set me up, and then they framed me for the murder of that couple in Chilworth so that I would be discredited if I ever spoke out. These people know how to manipulate others into carrying out their work; it’s how they stay out of the limelight for so long: they walk between the raindrops.’
Mark stubbed the cigarette out on the floor.
‘It was hard for me in prison; spending night after night knowing I had been set up but not knowing by whom. It’s not like I could plot my revenge because I didn’t have a name or face to provide to the authorities.’
‘So you concocted a plan to escape from prison?’
‘No! You have to believe, I didn’t know my father would arrange for the prison break. Hell, until that moment I thought he was something in the oil industry: I never knew he was a spy. After I got out, Stratovsky’s associates captured and tortured us. They forced me to break into the bank; if I didn’t they would have killed my father. Don’t you understand? That’s why we were in the hotel in Southampton: it was an exchange.’
‘I’ve heard the recording.’
Mark smiled. ‘Good. I wore a wire, and asked Ali to record the meeting in an effort to prove my innocence. She was supposed to stay upstairs in the room, capturing everything that was said. I didn’t know she would come down and interrupt the meeting. I told her, Vincent! I told her to stay in the room. I don’t know why she came down.’
‘She was in love with you,’ he replied calmly. ‘I think she was in love with you from the moment she saw you in that bar. She thought they were going to kill you so she intervened. It’s a shame it cost her…her life.’
Mark nodded his understanding. It had always bothered him why she had ignored his explicit instructions. Vincent’s statement made sense, but it also made her death harder to accept.
‘I didn’t know she had been shot, let alone killed, until I saw it on the news the next day. I was angry, livid even. I demanded to attend her funeral but my father’s friends said it would be too dangerous; that Stratovsky’s men and the police would be watching. It’s taken a long time to come to terms with her death, but coming back here to testify and to help bring Stratovsky to justice seemed a fitting way to honour her sacrifice.’
Vincent checked the handkerchief and was pleased that the blood had stopped flowing.
‘Terry…I mean your father, how does he know so much?’
Mark chuckled, ‘You can take the spy out of the job but you can’t take the job out of the spy. It would be silly to expect a man who practised his trade craft for thirty years not to set himself up as one again in a new life. Within two weeks of us settling in our new location he had created an underground lair with computers and monitoring equipment to track what was happening in the world. Don’t forget, he had made plenty of contacts down the years using various disguises and pseudonyms; it really didn’t take him long to build a small fortress. I assume that’s where he is right now. He took me there once, blindfolded of course, so that I could never give away his location even if I was tortured. Due to his age when we fled, they weren’t able to give him a productive job so he received a basic pension and was told to drink his days away. Instead, he got up every day and went to his little tracking station, watching the world. He claimed he was doing it for our protection, but I think it all started because he didn’t know any other way to live.’
Mark lifted the flask of coffee to his lips and again offered it to Vincent who readily accepted it.
‘How did all this come about and what does it have to do with me?’ the detective asked.
‘My father became aware that the C.P.S. and Met police were pulling together a case against Victor and Nicolai. He monitored their progress. I have to say, they did a good job, uncovering a lot that we didn’t know about. It all started with the death of Martin Saunders, the D.C.I. who Ali worked for. They killed him in his own home. That’s not the kind of thing the Met could ignore. They found Saunders’ files and learned the nature of Ali’s investigation into the Stratovsky family. They went after him like a greyhound after a rabbit. My father continued to watch and every now and again he would send intelligence anonymously their way.’
‘Your father has repeatedly said that a number of cases I have open are all linked to this trial but I don’t quite see the link, other than some of the people involved visited the same casinos.’
Mark smiled, ‘The shadow line is a complicated puzzle. I’ll do my best to piece it together for you. How do you think the family became aware of my presence originally?’
‘Surprise me,’ Vincent said dismissively.
‘My father had something that they wanted and so they used me as leverage to get it. That’s why they set me up! They wanted me banged up, out in the public eye to force my father out of hiding. But they needed a way to get to me. They must have discovered that my best friend Mike McGee was in debt to them, and they used him to get information about me.’
‘You knew McGee?’
‘Yeah, we worked together at General Financial in the call centre. We were good friends.’
Vincent smiled slightly as he made the connection.
‘Mike was due to testify in the trial that he was blackmailed into providing them with my personal details: address, account details, phone number, that kind of thing. I read his initial statement. It hurt, to be honest, to learn that my best friend had been involved in what happened to me. But then I remembered just what bastards they are, and I accepted that Mike wouldn’t have had any choice. In fairness, he tried to warn me about them; when the phone calls first started he urged me to go to the police, but he was probably too ashamed to admit what he had done. After my apparent death, I guess he thought he had nothing to lose and came forward to offer what he knew. He would have been taking a huge risk to do it, but nonetheless he did. As soon as we saw there had been a shooting at the IPSA office I knew they had taken him out. It’s his wife and children I feel for most, though. Mike was a good friend, despite what happened, and I know he was a good father. I saw him briefly before the hotel meeting, and I could sense there was
something he wanted to tell me, but he just couldn’t say the words. I have no animosity towards him.’
‘The shooter at the office was in debt to the same casino as McGee. Did you know that? They must have blackmailed him into taking the gun to work.’
‘That’s my point, Vincent. They will do whatever it takes to get what they want. They may have offered to clear his debt or they may just as easily have threatened to murder his family before his eyes. Know one thing: the shooter wouldn’t have felt he had a choice but to kill Mike.’
‘You said the case against Stratovsky is falling apart but I spoke with the C.P.S. barrister this week, and he seemed pleased with progress despite McGee’s death…’
‘Then he was lying to you,’ Mark interrupted. ‘The case is falling apart. Even if I make it through to testify, there are no guarantees the jury will believe my evidence. Stratovsky is winning.’
‘I don’t agree,’ Vincent challenged. ‘There must be more than enough evidence against him.’
‘Innocent until proven guilty, remember? The burden of proof is still on the prosecution.’
‘But the recording of your meeting with them that Ali made…’
‘Nicolai wasn’t at that meeting. Victor was but then he could argue that he was entrapped. It really isn’t strong enough. The shot that killed Ali was fired by Victor’s henchman, Boris, and he has already been eliminated.’
‘There was a heist at a Securitas depot this week as well. Your father seemed to imply that it was related too.’
‘Oh it is,’ Mark replied eagerly. ‘Your team were already stretched, dealing with the plane crash, shooting and bomber. What’s the one thing you didn’t need last week? Another big case to worry about. When teams are stretched, errors occur don’t they? Evidence goes missing or becomes contaminated. Potential lines of enquiry are ignored due to higher priority intelligence. They didn’t want you linking the cases together so they created a situation that you would find impossible to cope with. That’s why my father started to contact you. He is just as keen to see Stratovsky locked up as we are!’
‘I don’t buy that at all. It’s just coincidence.’
‘Coincidence? A gang decide to knock off a cash depository in broad daylight in the same week that you have three of the biggest cases of your career? And then the gang members are all discovered dead?’
Vincent considered the connection: it was tenuous but he could believe Mark’s suggestion.
‘But they burned the house down along with the money, what would they gain?’
Mark laughed, ‘I doubt all the money was in the house when it went up. They would have left a few stray notes to be found so that the money would be written off as destroyed. I would bet my life that the cash is holed up in a safe somewhere waiting for the heat to die down. Money is power to these people. Stratovsky is probably considering it as his pension pot.’
Vincent shivered. He hadn’t eaten all day and he was beginning to feel weak.
‘Look, I’ve got a room at a hotel up the road,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and talk there where it’s warmer.’
Mark looked questioningly at Vincent, ‘How do I know there isn’t an armed response unit waiting for me there?’
‘You’re asking me to trust you Mr Baines; you need to reciprocate too.’
Standing, the two men began the walk back towards the Southampton Park Hotel.
38
Half an hour later, Mark and Vincent were in his room, waiting for the kettle to boil. A short stop off at a local kebab shop meant Vincent had a chicken burger to satisfy their pangs of hunger. He knew that another takeaway would do his insides no good whatsoever but those first two mouthfuls were comparable to manna from heaven, such was his hunger. The kettle reached its inevitable crescendo and Vincent fixed two steaming mugs of tea.
‘So when did you arrive back in the UK?’ he asked as he threw the now empty burger container in the room’s cylindrical bin.
‘Last Thursday night,’ Mark replied and waited for Vincent to make the connection.
‘You weren’t on board the flight that…’
‘Crashed? Yup. Why do you think it went down?’
Vincent frowned, ‘Now who’s being paranoid?’
‘It isn’t paranoia when they’re really out to get you, Vincent,’ Mark argued defensively. ‘There hasn’t been a crash landing of any commercial flight in Southampton in over a decade, and I just happen to be on the flight that crashed here on Thursday? It’s no coincidence, I promise you.’
‘You’re the missing eighty third passenger, aren’t you?? What were you doing in France?’
‘It took a couple of flights to get from my base to the U.K. Paris was just a stop-over. I wanted to try and avoid anyone recognising me. It was all arranged by the Security Services. Their man came to my home and escorted me across the globe on each flight with a view to taking me into protective custody here in the UK.’
‘But how would Stratovsky know you were coming in? As far as he would have known, you were dead. I mean, it was in all the newspapers at the time: Escaped convict in hotel shoot out dies in tragic car accident fleeing the police. The story was headline news for weeks. There were interviews with your brother, former workmates and the like. Your face was plastered all over the front pages as were images captured in the hotel bar where Ali…where Ali died. As far as the world knew: Mark Baines was dead. There is no way Stratovsky knew you were on that flight!’
‘He may not have known it was me specifically on that flight, not at first anyway, but he certainly knew that the Prosecution’s key witness was on board that flight. I mean, he shouldn’t have known any details of the flight. It was hush-hush, an eyes-only operation. I travelled under my new identity using small airports with flight tickets booked the day before travel. We took all the precautions we could to avoid detection. My father even ran profiles of the other passengers booked on the same flights to check for cover stories and to make sure that nobody aboard the flight would be likely to carry a weapon. Yet still, they knew I was there.’
‘We did identify that the pilot, Captain Adams, was also in debt to the casino. Presumably he was blackmailed or threatened into hijacking the plane. That doesn’t explain his change of heart though.’
‘The agent I was with, Aldridge, did what he could to get into the cabin but the pilot had virtually sealed himself in. It looked like we were all set to crash when he started talking to the pilot. I guess he just couldn’t bring himself to kill so many innocent people. Aldridge saved everybody on that flight and should be commended for his quick thinking but instead his role is being rewritten.’
‘So the men in suits at the airport interviewing passengers…’
‘Were Security Services people that work with Aldridge. He watched and observed each interview behind a pane of glass. It was a standard clean-up operation: find out who knows what and pay off or threaten the high risks.’
‘How did you get off the flight?’
‘When Aldridge returned to his seat he told me to make my way to the toilets as soon as we touched down, and there I hid until everybody else had disembarked. He then escorted me to a waiting car which took me away to a safe house for an hour before I was moved again. I have been under surveillance ever since; only allowed to speak to my father via a secure line.’
Vincent looked out of the window.
‘Are you under surveillance now?’
‘No, I managed to slip out of sight this afternoon. They are probably going spare trying to figure out where I have gone. Before I left home, my father made me promise to drop things and get away if he gave the word. Well, when he spoke to me last night, he told me to get free and await further instruction. He then told me to come and speak to you…to convince you that our intentions are true. Don’t worry: I’ll make contact with them at some point but for now, it’s nice not having a shadow.’
‘The flight records were altered to remove your details.’
‘Yes they were; that
was my father’s handiwork. He kept my name on the flight manifest that arrived in France like a trail of breadcrumbs in case anything went wrong.’
‘One of my officers identified Sam Jones as the eighty third passenger not registered on the flight into Southampton.’
Mark thrust a hand out, ‘I’m Sam Jones, nice to meet you.’
‘Wait a second; how the hell did you get the AAIB to conclude that mechanical failure caused the flight to come down suddenly?’
‘That wasn’t me, or my father. I guess that was the work of M.I.5 again but I’m not sure. Hell, it could just as easily be Stratovsky covering his own tracks!’
‘Doesn’t it bother you? People tried to have you killed just for what you know?’
‘Does it bother you, Detective?’
Vincent had no answer.
39
Mark nodded towards Vincent as he winced again, ‘You okay?’
Vincent waited for the pain to subside, and then said it was just indigestion following the burger. The truth was it did feel like heartburn, just ten times worse. For the first time, he was beginning to wonder whether escaping from the hospital had been such a great idea. He tried to push the doubt from his mind and concentrate on work.
‘What about Laboué? How does he tie into your conspiracy theory?’
‘Conspiracy theory?’ Mark chuckled. ‘How can you still have doubts?’
‘Call me a pessimist,’ Vincent offered.
‘Okay, let me ask you a question: why would Stratovsky manipulate someone into trying to set off a bomb in Southampton’s main shopping centre?’
‘I don’t know…to waste more police time, like the Securitas heist?’
‘No…try again.’
He had been struggling to figure out Laboué’s motive since they had first met last Saturday. He had seemed uncertain when declaring his intentions on the speaker system and Vincent had silently questioned how a suicide bomber could be so nervous. Ultimately the bomb hadn’t detonated and whether there had ever been an intention to actually blow up West Quay that day was unclear to him.
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