Knife Edge : A Novel (2020)
Page 33
Into the newsroom. Cavernous, quietly buzzing. A room lit by neon and screen. Two hundred stories being written and all of them about to be forgotten. The Assistant Commissioner strode down the lines of desks, reporters standing in a wave as she passed. Famie spotted Jane Hilton moving in for a better view. Ghosting towards the story. She tried to ask the AC a question but it fell on deaf ears. Famie smiled as she drew level, leant in. ‘Shocked and devastated,’ she said. ‘Interview me later.’ She didn’t wait for a response.
Ahead, the glass office of the bureau chief. Andrew Lewis was at his desk. Computer screen, bowl of mints. His head was down, typing. Someone tapped on his door and he looked up. Famie leant left to catch everything now. She saw smiles for the Assistant Commissioner. Puzzlement and worry for the armed officers and Hunter. Then Lewis saw her. Understanding began to flower. A quick glance to Sam and Sophie, then back to her. And Famie saw a quiet look of horror pass across his face. A career-ending, life-changing, family-destroying horror.
Guilty as fuck.
Lewis rose and stood behind his desk, one hand holding his chair for support. The AC opened his door, left it wide. The armed police stayed outside, Hunter and the West Midlands officers followed the Assistant Commissioner inside. Famie stood in the doorway, Sophie and Sam at her shoulder. Behind them, a whole newsroom listened.
‘Assistant Commissioner?’ began Lewis. That was all he managed.
The AC read from a card. She spoke loudly, her audience stretched all the way back to the stairs. There were a lot of names. ‘Andrew Lewis. I am arresting you for the murder of Mary Lawson, Seth Hussain, Harry Thomas, Sarah Thompson, Brian Hall, Sathnam Stanley, Anita Cross, Tommi Dara, the Reverend Don Hardin, John Carney, Arnold Hall, Gill Gallagher, Tobias Smith and Paul Shilling. For carrying out acts of terror, and for attempted murder. And for being in the pay of a foreign country. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
Famie thought she would remember each word, every name. It was only a very short time since she had been accused of some of those murders. In the twenty-four hours since Coventry, she had learnt from Hunter that the inquiry was focusing on Lewis’s reporting in Chechnya, the possibility of faked stories and his subsequent recruitment by the FSB. The arrest was possibly premature but they feared his disappearance. His defection. It had to be now.
Lewis stayed standing, eyes glassy, unfocused. Said nothing. When the Assistant Commissioner was finished, she nodded at one of her officers. The ratchet and snap of her handcuffs played loud in the room. She steered Lewis to the door. He looked at the path that had opened in front of him. The route to the lifts was now lined on both sides by shocked, disbelieving staff. The line between the UK and City desks, one he had trod a million times before, had just become a gauntlet he had to run.
The AC went first, then Lewis. She set the pace. It was conspicuously slower than her arrival and just the right speed for every journalist present to eyeball their departing, traitorous bureau chief.
93
9 p.m.
LONDON POLICE ARREST INTERNATIONAL PRESS SERVICE BUREAU CHIEF
POLICE CONFIRM SUSPECT HELD IN WAKE OF UK TERROR ATTACKS
LONDON, June 15 (IPS) – London Police said arrest of IPS bureau chief Andrew Lewis was in connection with their enquiries into the British capital’s May 22 attacks and Thursday’s murders in Coventry.
Six people were killed and twelve seriously wounded in Coventry Cathedral, England.
After the pub, after the toasts to their departed friends, Famie cabbed it home. The driver recognized her, waived the fare. As soon as he drove away, she heard some of Max Richter’s music playing. She smiled. Charlie might not get her music taste but she tolerated some of the newer composers. The slow repetition of the ambient piano drifting from the flat was a sign that her daughter was home and had probably sorted food. Something she needed badly.
‘Chinese and Thai,’ called Charlie as Famie hauled herself up the stairs.
‘All of it,’ she said.
‘And a guest,’ said Charlie.
‘Oh God, no guests,’ said Famie. ‘I hate fucking guests.’
Laughter from the kitchen. ‘You’ll like this one.’
The food had arrived with Hari. Plastic containers of rice, green and red curry, shrimp soup, spring rolls and crispy duck filled the kitchen table. Pinot Grigio had been poured into tumblers. Famie embraced Charlie then Hari. She ate two spring rolls before speaking.
‘I think I might cry,’ she said.
Famie did cry. Afterwards, relief and alcohol worked their way through her self-control. She wanted to talk, they wanted to listen. Wanted to hear every extraordinary, speculative, prejudicial word that she had to offer.
‘They couldn’t tell me all the details in the debrief earlier, but they think he was turned in Grozny,’ she said. ‘That Lewis filed fabricated reports about a massacre in 2003. It made his name but turns out he just made figures and quotes up. The Russians got to him first. He became their agent. Paid to undermine the UK. All of his work is being re-examined.’
Charlie and Hari wanted her to keep talking. They let her eat. They kept silent. They served more duck.
‘Lewis hired Amal Hussain to run his cells. He was up for some mercenary work. The timing was perfect. He had discovered that his brother had been shagging his wife and nanny. As well as half of IPS. So he killed Seth himself. On that zebra crossing. That knife was his. While we all obsessed over Islamic terrorism, it was good old-fashioned fratricide. Family honour and all that shit. Once it was clear I’d been one of Seth’s partners, he came after me. Us.’ She waggled the fork between her and Charlie. ‘It was, they think, probably Amal who ordered the attack in Exeter, then the one that would have been on me, here. A moral crusade, you see. If he’d found Sophie in Coventry, he’d have killed her and her baby too. Niece or nephew. Whatever.’ She raised a glass to Hari. ‘Here’s to justifiable homicide,’ she said.
Hari sipped, stayed quiet.
‘The money thing, Seth’s borrowing, was probably a red herring. Seems he was a gambling addict who was just shit with money.’ Famie shook her head. Disbelieving still. ‘Two totally separate lives. And I only saw the compassionate journalist side. What an idiot.’
Her shoulders slumped, her fork held mid-air. A silence. Charlie was about to ask a question when Famie started up again.
‘Having set up the cells, he then set about exposing them. The whole point was to undermine the UK. Make it look stupid and weak.’
‘Like we need help with that,’ said Hari.
Famie acknowledged the point with her fork. ‘So he tells Mary Lawson that he thinks there are no-tech, off-the-grid revolutionary cells working in the UK and she takes it as her next project for the Investigating team.’
The Richter playlist finished. Charlie selected some Chopin.
‘So set up the chaos,’ said Hari, ‘then report it. So it looks like everything is totally messed up.’
‘The first doubly incontinent country in Europe,’ said Famie. ‘Correct. They think Lewis knew about poor Toby Howells but not you, Hari. You must have been Mary’s idea. Maybe she suspected Lewis by this time. Who knows? Certainly Lewis told the police not to trust me. That I was some bat-shit crazy reporter who’d lost her marbles. That’s why the police did nothing and why Milne was such an insufferable prick.’ Famie’s grip on the fork tightened. ‘And then there’s Tommi,’ she said, her voice quieter. ‘They think his search for Toby’s name on the IPS computers triggered an alert. Lewis had time to get one of his thugs on it.’
She pushed her plate away, dropped her cutlery together. ‘That might be enough for now,’ she said.
‘And we’re assuming there are just the two cells,’ said Charlie. ‘Otherwise Hari is most definitely not safe.’
Famie felt sleep coming up fast. �
��Probably. Not sure. They think they got everyone.’
‘Think?’ said Hari.
‘Maybe Lewis had help?’ said Charlie.
‘They don’t think so,’ said Famie.
‘Think?’ said Hari again.
A final drop of Pinot. ‘You should stay here tonight anyway, Hari,’ said Famie. ‘It’s not safe out there. The couch is quite comfy.’
‘Charlie has already offered it,’ he said. ‘I hope that’s OK.’
Charlie began to clear the plates.
‘Oh right,’ said Famie. ‘Fine. I’ll say goodnight then. And leave the piano tunes, it’ll help me sleep.’
She closed her bedroom door, sat on the bed and listened. She held the moment while she could. She knew she was drunk, she knew she was safe. She knew Charlie was safe. And she knew it was the Nocturne No. 8 in D Major. Vladimir Ashkenazy, she thought. Delicate, exquisite playing. So many ornaments in such a short time. When it finished, she was aware that the sotto voce, through-the-wall conversation had finished too.
She wondered if she was missing something.
Acknowledgements
A few words before we go …
Knife Edge is dedicated to the memory of Sophie Christopher, a senior publicity manager at Transworld. She died of a pulmonary embolism in 2019 at the age of twenty-eight. Sophie was an inspirational woman, mourned and missed deeply by everyone who knew her. I read her the opening chapter of this book (it actually made her laugh, but the names of the victims have changed since then!).
The character of Famie was inspired, at least in part, by Nyta Mann, a former BBC and New Statesman journalist I worked with at 5 Live, described by Nick Cohen in his Observer obituary of her as ‘spiky and arch’. She was tough, uncompromising and, to quote the BBC’s Chris Mason, ‘waspish, funny and super bright’. The blessing used by Reverend Don for his daughter comes from ‘Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year’, part of the collection Benedictus: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue. The ‘Embrace the butcher’ quote is from Brecht’s The Decision (Die Maßnahme in German) and referenced in Howard Brenton’s Magnificence.
I feel I should add that Coventry Cathedral has been a centre of Christian worship and prayer for over a thousand years and has a noble tradition of working for peace and reconciliation. It was also where I received my degree from the then-chancellor Lord Scarman! You can find out more about their work from www.coventrycathedral.org.uk
Some thanks …
To Bill Scott-Kerr and Eloisa Clegg at Transworld. Bill is editor supreme. The Emperor. The Governor. The guru. Eloisa is the sage. The wise councillor. The author’s satnav. A great team. None better.
To Sam Copeland at RCW. He tells me he’s agent of the year and I’m inclined to agree. To Gordon Corera, the BBC’s security correspondent, to former police commander John Sutherland, author of Crossing The Line and Blue, to author and broadcaster Anita Anand and Reuters journalist Robin Pomeroy for their expertise and advice in shaping this book. And to the unsurpassable Lee Child who shows us how it should be done.
Any mistakes are, of course, all mine.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Killingback Books Ltd 2020
Cover design by Richard Ogle/TW
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Simon Mayo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Author
By the Same Author
Dedication
A note on the text
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Acknowledgements
Copyright