Exit Day: Brexit; An Assassin Stalks the Prime Minister

by David Laws

  Chapter 47

  Thursday 28th March 2019; 1 day to go

  Harry spent his working day worrying about the rift in their relationship. It was a shock, and he knew he couldn’t face Erika’s stonewalling aggression, her mystifying hostility. The tin-can shooting, the fun run around Chequers, the stranger in the kitchen and the stand-off over the Glock were all a long way from the kind of relationship he hoped for. How should he react?

  Other concerns forced their way into his attention. He had been waiting for news from Patronella. What would the captured Crab contain when Six managed to open it? He dearly wanted to know. In the meantime he followed his normal routine at The Anglian – courts, calls, follow-ups – hoping to beguile anyone sent to watch him into believing he was dormant on the spy story.

  In the event it was a tedious day in court. In quiet moments he tried without success to think out a solution to the Erika problem, and by early evening there was a certain inevitability when he stumbled into his normal comfort zone, the Old Cannon brewery.

  He wasn’t going home this night. It was going to be a serious pub session. And he put in a call for help to the one man he could rely on at The Globe.

  “The fire brigade’s arrived,” Lufkin called as he stepped through the door and eyed the two huge brewing domes in the corner of the Old Cannon. “What do we pour on the flames? Gunner’s Daughter or some new brew?”

  “Spitfire.” Harry was seated on a stool at the bar and indicated another Old Cannon speciality. “I don’t want you drinking my pump dry.”

  A discourse on alcohol was always a necessary precursor to any discussion, and Lufkin was in an ebullient mood.

  “Good of you to come,” Harry murmured, “in the midst of…” He waved a hand. “Of everything.”

  “A friend in need,” said Lufkin. “Besides, I was in need… of a break. It’s mad down there.” And he proceeded to enumerate his frustrations: an information blackout on the new man in Number 10, no briefing for the lobby, no inside whispers, no steer on what Boothroyd really intended to do about Brexit. Just those insane tweets – and the impossible Heffernan roaring down the phone, demanding more. “Thought you might have something new and useful to tell me. Maybe something completely different, like a good story to get Heffernan off my back.”

  “Not yet… not yet, I’m afraid. All in good time, old chum.” Harry was making a big effort to concentrate his thoughts and connect them to his words, but then he didn’t feel too embarrassed. It was clear his friend had also been imbibing freely. The buffet car on the way up from London was an old favourite.

  “I know you,” Lufkin was saying. “Always dabbling in deep waters. All that energy and commitment. Can’t keep a good man down. You’ll be back, I know you will.”

  Harry nodded. “How true, how very true. You’ll see.”

  “They don’t call me a political corr. for nothing, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So tell me.”

  Harry gathered himself together. “Too soon for the big one, I’m afraid. Can’t put it together, not just yet. Loose ends, know what I mean?”

  Lufkin looked disappointed. Rocked back on his heels. It was clear the problem, whatever it was, was not going to be the new story. “So, let me guess – it’s that woman of yours.”

  “Feeling slightly out of my depth,” Harry said. “A mystery I can’t quite unravel. You’re my sounding board. Maybe you can get me out of this fix.”

  Lufkin took a long sip of his Spitfire, swilling it round his mouth, savouring the flavour, indulging his taste for small-town real ale breweries. Then he said, “So what’s she been up to?”

  “Thing is, she’s a big personality. She’s so full on, the sort you can’t say no to.”

  “Plenty like that.”

  “Her trouble…” Harry weighed his glass, gauging its weight and strength as if testing his own argument. “Her trouble is, she can’t make her mind up who she wants to be.”

  “Case for the shrink?”

  “That’s what makes her so endlessly fascinating. One day she’s this full-on, expansive, athletic, fun person—”

  Lufkin interrupted. “Please, just don’t mention the word ‘enigma’, right?” He looked into his glass. “Used it too many times in copy recently. A Heffernan bugbear.” He shrugged. “Anyway, entertaining strangers in your kitchen, that doesn’t sound fun to me.” Details of recent events had emerged piecemeal during the ordering of fresh drinks, and the conversation quickly became uninhibited when mention was made of the Glock.

  “For God’s sake, Harry, guns and kids don’t go together. You’ve got to shop her to the cops.”

  Harry shook his head. “No, no, I can’t do that.”

  “Look, I’m going to be frank here, I’m gonna be very frank here, is that all right with you? Can you take that? You’re not going to be defensive or offended?”

  Harry bowed without leaving the bar stool. “That’s all right with me, Barney, old chum. You go right ahead.”

  “Then I say, the answer’s brutal but simple. Give her the big heave-ho. She’s been using you.”

  “Using me? For what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “No, no, it’s just her way. She’s a chameleon. Even though I’ve known her for years, I never know who’s going to turn up today.”

  “Bit like Bury United, then?”

  There was some distant chuckling beyond the beer pumps. Including from the landlady, Ziggy.

  Lufkin was working up to some important point. He clutched the side of the bar and grimaced in concentration. “What I can’t understand is why you’ve stuck with her all this time. Stayed loyal. What’s really so special about this strange woman?”

  “Special, yes, very special.” Harry had reached the repetition stage. “Special. It’s a bond that pulls us together even though we’re different. We’re attracted by our differences, by our individuality, the cross-cultures of here and there, her way of looking at things…”

  “But what did she ever do for you? That’s what I want to know. Did she ever really commit to you?” Harry was silent, pondering an answer, but Lufkin carried on: “Sounds to me like you indulged her, gave her everything she wanted. Forgave her affairs, tolerated her kid and her crazy stuff…”

  “You have to take into account a certain amount of cultural alienation here.”

  Lufkin leaned closer. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She thinks we’re a crazy lot. Us Brits. Postmen in shorts. Litter in the streets. Woods left to rot. Poor hygiene, bad food. It’s all a painful contrast to her ordered, clinical, efficient origins.”

  “Thought you said she had a terrible childhood.”

  “She did.”

  “Then that’s the problem.”

  Several heads bobbed knowingly.

  “She’s too old for you, Harry.” Ziggy had joined the conversation. “Told you that before.”

  But Harry was not to be deflected. He recognised some bad past choices in female companions. He knew he had form: Celia, who wanted to emigrate to a coral island; the shopaholic Jane, who became a stiletto stabber when thwarted; and Angela, who stole his savings. By this standard, Erika’s behaviour did not seem strange at all. “This is a woman,” he insisted, “who has been wounded by years of bad treatment and betrayals during her childhood and her teens. Some seriously evil people have reached down into her depths and wrecked her soul. I’m deeply into the shattered remains of her personality.”

  Lufkin swayed a little. “A shade pompous of you, if you don’t mind my saying so, and anyway, you can’t expect to put her back together again, not all by yourself.”

  “She needs me to be faithful to her,” Harry said, “exactly because she has difficulties in that department. I’m her survival rock.”

  Both Lufkin and Ziggy were shaking their he
ads as Harry sighed and looked into his beer. “But with this latest business,” he said, “I have to admit I’m beginning to wonder, did I ever really know her at all?”

  Lufkin was all out of patience. Throughout their conversation he’d been scrolling his tablet and still the caretaker PM was silent. No more tweets and no new story! Lufkin sighed and said, “Dump her, Harry! That’s the only way. And now, order me a cab, will you? I have to get back to where it’s not all happening.”

  Chapter 48

  Friday 29th March 2019; Exit Day, 18 hours to go

  Dawn was just breaking, and Harry needed a shower and clean clothes. With a feeling of dread at what awaited him, he headed back to Blackthorpe Grange, once again wondering if he should maintain a steely resolve in response to Erika’s strange attitude, or whether he should try to find a way to make peace.

  When he rode down the driveway and parked the bike, he was confronted by an empty house. His mood darkened. This was becoming a signal for trouble.

  He did the usual rounds but hit a blank. She was not in the garden, nor the woods, nor anywhere in the house. Even more troubling was that the boy was missing. He should have been in his room asleep, or stirring, ready for the tutor.

  Harry checked the mantelpiece for a note of explanation but, of course, this was too predictable a place to look. He tried the kitchen, the bedroom and both front and back doors without result. She was indeed unpredictable in all things – with the exception of protecting her son.

  The silence in the big house began to get to him. He started looking in cupboards – even the kitchen drawer – but was relieved to find the big gun missing. Surely, there had to be a clue. And then an idea: her friend at Great Barton.

  He scanned the bedroom for her diary to locate the telephone number, drew a blank, but found what he needed scribbled on the cover of the local Yellow Pages. Dialling with a sense of foreboding, he was relieved when he heard the old lady’s voice. But his sense of relief was short-lived.

  “She’s gone up to London,” Mary said.

  “What? On her own?”

  “No, she’s taken Stefan with her.”

  “To where? What for?”

  “Visiting a friend, she said.”

  “But she hasn’t got any friends in London.”

  “That’s what she said. Can’t tell you any more than that, I’m afraid.”

  Harry wandered around the house in a state of limbo. Did this mean she had left him again? Taking the boy away from his lessons – that didn’t sound like her.

  What about that damned gun? Had she returned it to the shop, as she promised? He began a new search, anxious to put his mind at rest. He hoped she hadn’t hidden it away, and thought of all her canny hiding places. He was up the ladder and in the loft, poking around on all fours behind the water tank, when he felt the rough cloth he recognised from the day before. Still, it didn’t feel like a gun inside it.

  When he had the package in the daylight, what he discovered was just one box of ammunition.

  He sat on the floor at the foot of the loft ladder, contemplating the significance of this find: she and the boy missing, the gun missing, two boxes of ammunition missing and one left behind, secreted in the loft.

  His mind began to rove over all the strange things she had said during the past few days – how the Kameraden were dangerous, how he should stay well clear – and her fascination for circling the countryside around the Prime Minister’s country retreat at Chequers. Remarks, even, about its poor security. Did this add up to anything?

  He sighed and went downstairs, feeling nonplussed, turning on the TV for some kind of distraction. It was a news programme and it startled him. Westminster was in lockdown. Someone had just put an anti-tank missile through the front door of Number 10. The Prime Minister and other ministers had survived the attack, although three office staff had gone to hospital with life-threatening injuries.

  Harry stared, stunned at the screen. But he sat up soon enough when a follow-up announcement came from Number 10: in view of the security situation in London, the Prime Minister had decided that the entire Cabinet would be leaving the capital and heading instead for the safety of the country house at Chequers, where the formal exit from the EU would be signed.

  Chequers, Chequers, Chequers!

  The name resounded round Harry’s head.

  And suddenly it all made some kind of horrible sense. The shock was immense. His own partner, with gun and two boxes of ammunition in hand and her son in tow, was headed for this same destination. Now he glimpsed the awful realisation of the truth behind her lies and erratic behaviour. It was as if he had suddenly emerged from a long hibernation from reality. He began to recall all the criticisms people had made of her: just crazy, according to his sister-in-law; a headcase, according to Ziggy at the pub; a case for the shrink, according to Lufkin.

  With sickening clarity, he saw that he had been a fool. She had been kidding him all along, playing him for the dupe, taking advantage of his good nature, making a mockery of their friendship. He saw, with a new vision, her true character.

  He was furious with himself. She was no partner. She was a cuckoo. A deadly cuckoo.

  He leapt from his chair, panic taking hold where a sickening loathing had been before. This woman was a potential threat to those at Chequers. Perhaps she even planned to make some fatal gesture at the formal signing. What should he do?

  First instinct: tell the spook. Tell The Globe.

  Patronella didn’t answer his call, and Harry had to leave a cryptic message about a dangerous situation at Chequers. And Heffernan at The Globe was his usual disparaging self, suspecting Harry of trying to fly a kite. “We’re up to our armpits in this Downing Street stuff right now… just let me know when the shooting starts.”

  Sarcastic bastard! Why were they all so sceptical? No one was taking him seriously. Try Sergeant Rudd at the nick?

  “Do me a favour!”

  Harry clenched his fists and yelled at himself some more. “I can’t just sit here and watch events play out on the news! Do something!”

  Wild-eyed, he strode from the room. In the hall, he spotted his flying gear hanging on a peg. The Moth! He’d fly there and warn them in person.

  With the adrenaline of action and the release of a decision made, he grabbed the gear and leapt on the Triumph, kicking her into action and roaring off at full throttle down the drive. His mind was in a whirl of anger and urgent purpose.

  Later, he couldn’t even remember riding through the town. At the airfield he was relieved to find the Moth in her usual place in the hangar. At a steady eighty, she would be faster than the bike at this time of day, avoiding the rush-hour traffic. He untied her, recruited Charlie Lema from the workshop to push her out on to the apron, leapt in and worked the switches.

  Good lad, Charlie, you could rely on him for help, but this manoeuvre was spoilt by the sudden appearance of Control standing next to the prop. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Emergency. Got to get going ASAP.”

  “You know perfectly well, I’ve told you often enough, file a flight plan first and then wait for permission. And in any case, it’s not one of your diary days…”

  Harry was not a violent man, but there were times for decisive action. He leapt from the cockpit and hovered a clenched fist just below Control’s chin. “Back off and try bullying someone else.”

  Back in his seat, he switched the magnetos to positive, shouted, “Contact” and signalled with a thumbs-up for Charlie to swing the prop. A downward flip, but no contact.

  Charlie tugged the prop back into position. Harry touched the switches again and gave him the signal. A swing, a splutter, but no contact.

  Harry swallowed and willed himself to stay calm. Sometimes it took a dozen swings to start a Gipsy motor when it had been idle for days. Sometimes, even when it was wa
rm.

  A third try, a fourth, fifth, sixth…

  Charlie was flexing his shoulders and wincing. You could get a serious arm ache starting these old kites.

  At the seventh try the silence of the aerodrome was shattered by the roar of the motor.

  Then it died.

  Harry almost howled, working the priming gear to suck fuel into the empty carburettor. It took two more swings and a throaty cough from the big engine before it finally announced itself as ready for business.

  With a relieved wave, Harry let the motor tick over before raising the revs and pulling out into the grass strip. Control was on the radio repeating his objections, but Harry turned him off and took the Moth up, veering away from the school that someone had ill-advisedly placed at the end of the runway. Then he turned westwards and got out his chart, confronting for the first time the challenge of flying around the controlled zones linked to Heathrow. He managed a course north of Cambridge and Daventry to avoid London airspace, but in his panic and haste, he hadn’t carried out any of the preflight checks every pilot should insist on for his own safety. He hadn’t done the walk-round, checking flying surfaces, testing rudder cables, making sure the ailerons were free and unobstructed. Then, with a spear of fear reaching right down to the pit of his stomach, he looked at the fuel gauge for the first time.

  Half empty.

  He did a rapid calculation: normally, he wouldn’t have flown more than thirty miles on such a setting, so as to allow plenty of spare capacity to cope with emergencies or diversions.

  It was at least seventy miles to the Dunstable Downs.

  Forget safety margins, he asked himself; will I make it?

  He breathed in deeply, did the arithmetic again, and realised it was marginal. Should he turn back?

  He looked over the side of the cockpit and shook his head.

  Should he warn someone using the radio? Then he thought of the put-downs he had already suffered. And his message would sound absurd: My crazy girlfriend is carrying a gun to the Prime Minister’s retreat. It sounded more like the hysterical reaction of someone in the middle of a romantic bust-up. No one would take him seriously.