by Mick Herron
“And that’s how you found this story you’re selling,” said John.
Benny gave him a hard stare, blurred at the edges.
“The story Daisy thinks is important, but her editor doesn’t believe.”
“Yes he does. Just thinks it needs . . . nailing down.”
“Because you stole it,” John said. “Making things tricky from a legal point of view.”
“Fag break.”
This time, John followed him outside. There was a gaggle of smokers there, if that was the collective noun—a chokehold? Which sounded clever, though maybe wasn’t. Benny begged a light then drew away, John following. The streets were busy, everyone enjoying a summer’s evening: fun while it lasts. Tomorrow he’d feel more bruised than hungover, like he’d been dragged through a gravel pit. His mouth was numb and his pockets empty. He hated to think of the punishment he’d put his credit card through. But Benny was talking.
“Nice little score, that’s all it was supposed to be.”
A conversation in a pub: man who worked for a carpet-cleaning firm and had just that day completed a four-storey place in Hampstead. Family away for a fortnight. Some of the chemicals, you’re best off being absent for a while.
Benny had laid a twenty on him before fading into the background.
“Some people,” he said, “like the idea of getting their fingers a bit dirty. Too chickenshit to actually plunge their hands in.”
Or just too law-abiding, John thought. A bit chatty down the boozer, but generally law-abiding.
“Thing is, the guy in the four-storey house? The family man? He was connected, right? Well connected. If you get my drift.”
John didn’t. Organised crime?
“Give you a clue, mate. A recently deceased gentleman.”
John couldn’t think of anyone who’d died since 2016. Nobody famous, anyway.
“Headlines?”
. . . The American, John remembered. The American billionaire. The American billionaire sex trafficker who suicided in his cell.
“Yeah, him.” Benny sucked hard on his cigarette, as if he were trying to get the lit end into his mouth. “He lived over here half the time, didn’t he? And that’s who my man was connected to. Used to be invited to those house parties, the ones with happy endings guaranteed.”
Happy endings for the fat rich men his age, thought John. Less happy for the teenage girls involved.
The beer and the gin were sloshing about inside him. He felt like a car wash.
He wasn’t even sure he was still taking part in this conversation. Benny was doing all the talking.
“And of course, you know who else used to attend those parties.”
John didn’t.
Then he did.
Benny tapped the side of his nose with his finger. He seemed to have adopted most of his gestures from cheesy soap operas.
“H.R.H.,” he said. “If you’ll pardon the abbreviation.”
The car wash was going into its lathering cycle. Cigarette smoke was drifting past John’s face, crawling up his nose, into his mouth.
“And my man—Mr. Four-Storey—well, he had a few crafty souvenirs, didn’t he?”
Audio and visual, John remembered.
“All on his laptop, handy as you like. Course, I fed that into a crusher first thing. Soon as I knew what I’d got hold of, I mean.”
He put a hand in his pocket, and when he withdrew it was clutching a USB stick.
“Always with me,” he said. “One and only copy.”
John Bachelor turned and threw up into the gutter.
Benny stood next to him, a hand on his shoulder while he heaved.
“You’re my milkman, John,” he said. “Don’t forget. You’re here to make sure I’m all right.”
“Oh God. What now?”
And here was Daisy back.
“John’s been taken poorly,” Benny said. “Must have been something he didn’t bother to eat.”
He felt better after being sick. Not brilliant, but better. And was capable of ambulatory motion—capable of constructing the phrase “ambulatory motion,” even—because here he was, cutting through Holborn, the three of them like friends, Daisy one side, Benny Manors the other. Yes, friends. He hadn’t had a day like this in as long as he could remember. Spending the sunshine getting wasted with his best mate, and staggering home shot to pieces. Jesus, he’d had a skinful. How much money had he got through? Best not think about that.
Daisy pulled on his arm as they reached a road. “Oi! Let’s not walk under a bus, all right?”
Let’s not.
He’d cleaned himself up in the loo before leaving the pub, and had managed a quick call to Di Taverner. Voicemail. So he’d left a message—nothing too revealing, but enough to let her know he’d completed his mission. And that Benny Manors carried his evidence, the one and only copy, on his person at all times. It was possible he’d mentioned Solly’s flat, and their arrangement that he get to stay there. Anyway, that done, he’d returned to the bar to find Benny had bought another round, and it would have been rude not to drink it. Settled his stomach. That or the one after.
And now they were walking through Holborn, cutting down a back street, heading for a bus stop. And that feeling, the feeling of being with friends, wouldn’t go away: it had been months, years, since he’d felt this companionship. Sure, there were clients. Mornings drinking weak tea with old men and women; hearing stories he’d heard before. Tales of courage as faded as the throws on their sofas. He didn’t doubt their heroism, these wizened heroes; he just wondered what stories he’d have to tell when his time came, and whether there’d be anyone listening. Benny was saying something funny, and John hadn’t caught it but laughed anyway, like friends do, and the large man who loomed out of nowhere didn’t touch him hard, just rammed a forearm across his throat and the world went watery. He dropped to his knees so suddenly, something gave. And Daisy screamed, but not for long, and then she too was on the ground, everything about her out of focus. None of that took long. Benny, though; Benny was really being given the business. He was making the noises a punchbag makes. There must have been two of them, because someone was holding Benny up; he’d have been a puddle on the pavement otherwise. John stopped paying attention and threw up again. Then practised breathing. The men stopped hitting Benny and went away. More people came running towards them, shouting nothing coherent. And somewhere on the far side of London a siren was already wailing their way; would grow louder and louder until John couldn’t hear it at all but was wrapped up inside it instead, a little lump of silence at the heart of a beating city.
He remained in bed for two days. Then his phone rang and wouldn’t stop, and he had to crawl out to find it. Whatever they’d done to him at Casualty had stopped the pain for a while but not forever. It felt like his knee was bursting.
“You bastard. Thought that was clever, didn’t you?”
“. . . Benny?”
His voice was a scratchy old recording; one of those Victorian wax pressings that captured starched collars and indignation, but failed to convey much meaning.
“You bastard.”
John managed to haul himself onto a chair. Here, once, Solly had sat, looking at the houses opposite and imagining the lives they held, all the different possibilities crammed into a terrace. His own possibilities had ended in the room John had just emerged from.
“They took my memory.”
That’s what he thought Benny said, and for a moment he revelled in the idea of the same thing happening to him. Total erasure. He could start again with a blank slate, make less of a mess of things this time.
Stick, though. Benny meant memory stick.
His one and only copy.
John said, “I didn’t know . . .”
But he had really. Had known Lady Di Taverner would cause bad thin
gs to happen. You couldn’t walk around with the kind of knowledge Benny had been carrying and not expect ramifications.
My man—Mr. Four-Storey—he had a few crafty souvenirs, didn’t he?
H.R.H. If you’ll pardon the abbreviation . . .
John remembered that feeling he’d had of being with friends, walking through Holborn with Benny and Daisy, and closed his eyes. Never friends. Never friends. They’d all wanted something from the others.
And then Benny was laughing: a manic chuckle. John pictured it escaping through broken teeth and swollen lips.
“You really thought that was it, didn’t you? The one and only. You fucking idiot.”
“. . . Benny?”
“Why’d you think I told you that? You think I wasn’t expecting your pals to show up?”
“I didn’t know, Benny. I didn’t know they were coming.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
“. . . How’s Daisy?”
“How’s Daisy? Daisy’s battered, isn’t she? Face like an overripe melon. Still, she’s feeling better about things than you are.”
“What do you mean, Benny? What do you mean?”
“Like I said, I was expecting your pals to show up. And that was the clincher, wasn’t it? Daisy getting a battering too, that was the cherry on top.” He paused, and John heard a fizzing sound, a cigarette being lit. “No editor in the world’s gonna take that lying down, are they? Someone smashes your reporter’s face in—spook heavies smash your reporter’s face in—stands to reason you’ve a story on your hands. A real live breathing story. Your lot think they stole the proof when they took my memory stick.” Another pause for inhalation. “But that was a copy, John. I’m not a fucking fool.”
“That’s why you kept me drinking.”
“Well it wasn’t for your company, was it?”
John shook his head, though he couldn’t have said why.
“So it’s a happy pay day for me, and fuck you, John Bachelor. I imagine your bosses are ready to dump on you good and hard.”
He didn’t want to ask why, because he suspected he already knew.
“Go look at the papers, John. All of them are running it now. Every last one.”
“Benny—”
“Bye bye, milkman.”
And Benny laughed again, that same broken chuckle, though there was genuine mirth in it, John could tell. And it continued bouncing round his head long after the call had ended.
Oliver Nash laid the newspapers out as if he were playing solitaire. Eleven front pages. Two broadsheets, the rest tabloid. The headlines on each were much the same, as was the photograph on all but one: a figure, naked from the waist up, turning away from the camera, a salacious grin shining on his teeth. The young woman he was reaching for was also topless, her frightened eyes gazing directly at the lens. The picture on the eleventh front page was of a woman in a bikini holding a lottery card. It was reassuring to know that some standards never wavered.
Nash said, “Well. This the sort of thing you were expecting?”
Lady Di scanned the display. It reminded her of similar situations, none of which had ended well for the subject of the photograph. Some heads rolled farther than others, of course. There was an historical precedent there which the broadsheets, at any rate, would no doubt cite in their editorials.
She said, “More or less.”
He said, “The Palace has issued a denial in the strongest terms, of course. But then, it would, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“It’s the worst crisis for the monarchy since the death of the princess.”
“Yes, well, don’t look at me. That was nothing to do with us.”
He looked at his phone. “And the internet is going crazy. Calls for his immediate trial and imprisonment.”
“The rule of law actually takes a little longer.”
“Try telling that to our keyboard judiciary.” He gave her a long stare. It was hard to tell whether it contained admiration. “I’m wondering whether you appreciate the scale of what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done?”
“The Park.”
“I take instruction from our elected leaders. You know that. And Number Ten wanted this business dealt with once and for all.”
He returned his gaze to the headline display. “Yes, I’m not sure this was the outcome the PM had in mind.”
The PM had arguably weathered worse himself.
“And when do you pull the plug?” Nash asked.
“Twelve twenty-seven.”
“Admirably precise.”
“It’s an operation, Oliver. We find it best to be precise. Aiming for there or thereabouts can prove woefully inadequate.”
“And who gets it first?”
“The BBC.”
“There’s nothing like tradition, is there?”
“Well,” said Lady Di. “Auntie does do these big occasions so well.”
She glanced at her watch. Two and a half hours to go.
Nash removed one of the newspapers. “This one’ll die in a ditch,” he said.
“Probably.”
“Shaky financial ground as it is,” he said. “And once H.R.H. has sued its arse off, it’ll be curtains.” He shook his head. “You know, our national press has always been a guardian of our democracy. And here we are destroying its reputation for the sake of one of our, shall we say, less reputable figureheads.”
She said, “It’s not the first time I’ve green-lit an operation I’m not overwhelmingly proud of. It won’t be the last. But look at the bigger picture. The Service hasn’t enjoyed many favours from the present government. Any smile we can bring to its face, we’ll be glad about when our budget’s next considered. You of all people should think of that as good news.”
“And democracy, anyway,” Nash said, “isn’t the PM’s favourite institution.” He dropped the paper. “He’ll be glad to have this disappear from the news stands. Not exactly an admirer of his antics.”
Diana said, “That paper bought the story from a known thief and blackmailer. Who, in turn, claims to have discovered those photographs, and the audio recordings, on a laptop stolen from a house belonging to an associate of a billionaire paedophile, an associate who does not in fact exist. The property our thief and blackmailer burgled is currently vacant, and has been for some time. And the evidence itself—the audio, the photographs—while extremely convincing, are fakes. And we can prove this because we have video footage of their being faked. Footage which everyone in the country will have seen a hundred times over by bedtime. On the BBC to start with, and then YouTube or whatever.” She steepled her fingers. “After which, all further rumours about H.R.H.’s involvement with a convicted sex trafficker will be stomped on by every newspaper proprietor in the country, not to mention every editor of every TV and radio news show in the land. Goodbye nudge-nudge headlines, goodbye sniggering comments on Radio Four panel shows.”
“And the attack on the journalist?”
“She was on a drunken spree with Manors. Probably planning how they’d spend the loot.”
“So our version is, she was involved from the start?”
“I think that’s tidiest, don’t you?”
Nash said, “Manors will know he was set up. The carpet cleaner he met in the pub, who pointed him at the target house. Obviously one of us. And John Bachelor, of course. Someone he actually recognised as a spook.”
“He can know all he wants. Nobody will touch him with a bargepole. As for Bachelor, he didn’t have a clue what was going on. He’d have found a way to mess it up if he did. But he owed the Service rent, and all he had to do was show his face, so Manors would think we were trying to shut his story down. Which, in turn, would corroborate the whole thing as far as the press was concerned. Job done.”
“And yet
, and yet,” said Nash. He tapped the photograph of a leering H.R.H., or someone very like him, on the nearest front page. “Some mud’ll stick.”
“Enough’s stuck already he could start his own farm. But a lot of people will think that him being innocent of this makes him innocent of everything else he’s accused of. It’s worked before.”
“Oh, God in heaven! Who else have you—No. Don’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t about to.” She regarded him almost fondly. “I know it doesn’t sit well. But if it makes you feel better, we’ll expect certain assurances. As regards future behaviour.”
“Assurances,” repeated Oliver Nash. “Yes, that’s a comfort, isn’t it? Assurances.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“Well, you consider the source, don’t you?” said Nash. “From a man of honour, no. It wouldn’t be nothing.”
He stacked the papers into a pile, tucked them under his arm, and left the office.
And before the day dies John Bachelor, too, has caught up with events, or at least, has learned that events have moved on without him; has switched on Solomon Dortmund’s funny little television set, with its rabbit-eared aerial, and switched it off again once the news has rolled past, over and over. It seems that the story Benny Manors was anxious to sell is just that: a story. It seems that writs are descending from on high, and that lawyers all over London are rubbing their hands in glee or running for cover. It seems that rumours that have slow-cooked for a decade or more have been plated and served, and found to be foul. And it seems that John himself was party to this feast, though on whose side, and hoping for what end, he remains unsure.
Perhaps the peach brandy will clarify matters. But for the moment all he has is a painful knee and a sore throat, and a mind that can’t keep up with itself.
He wonders about Benny and Daisy, and how they will fare in the face of this reversal. (He will not have to wonder long. Partners in slime will read one headline the following morning. Devious pair plot to destroy Prince’s reputation. And Daisy’s bruised and battered face will grace many pages, next to an old mugshot of Benny Manors, current whereabouts unknown.) Mostly, though, out of habit and fear, he wonders about his own situation, and how bad it will turn out to be. And again, he will not be left long in limbo: soon the phone will ring, and it will be Diana Taverner, or if not Lady Di, someone tasked by her with making a tiresome call. Is he John Bachelor? He is. Is he currently residing at blah blah, blah blah, blah blah? Yes, and yes, and yes. In which case, he is hereby informed that his presence at such address is illegal and unwarranted and shall cease forthwith. Keys to be surrendered. Absence to be swift and permanent.