Dirty Business (The First Acer Sansom Novel)

by Oliver Tidy

  ‘I felt sure anyone passing that island that saw a beacon on top of the place would have to investigate. What else could it be but a cry for help?’

  ‘And it worked,’ said Harris, finding himself completely gripped by the story.

  Sansom nodded. He was temporarily unable to speak and Harris realised that Sansom’s eyes had moistened once more at the recollection of the intense relief that had not diminished with the passage of time; the realisation that his sentence was at an end.

  ‘Yes, it worked,’ he said, thickly. He paused to drink from his water. ‘The moment when I realised that the yacht was slowing, was putting about… it’s difficult for me to describe how that felt.

  ‘They anchored outside the reef and I saw a small dingy lowered into the water. I knew that they were coming. I got down to the beach as quickly as I could to meet them, stopping only to conceal the gun. I didn’t want to frighten them off.

  ‘The one thing I realised I hadn’t prepared myself for was the initial meeting of any rescuers. I stood on the shore not knowing what I was going to say to them. But as they came up through the surf, I could see from the looks on their faces that I wasn’t going to need to explain my position.

  ‘I’d forgotten what a state I must have looked. Obviously, I hadn’t had a chance to look at myself properly for a year. I’m sure you can imagine: a modern-day Ben Gunn.’ Harris nodded. ‘They were German,’ said Sansom. ‘A family. It was the father and teenage son who came to the island. The children spoke pretty good English.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘I kept it as near to the truth as I could. I didn’t see any point in scaring them. I told them that I’d been shipwrecked with my sailing partner who had died and had been surviving on the island until help showed up.’

  ‘You know that as part of the verification of your story we’ll have to find them, speak to them.’

  ‘Of course. I have their names and the name of their yacht, all their details. It’s all in my record.’

  There was clearly nothing that could be done then except to encourage Sansom to talk, to tell his story and check up on the details later. ‘Tell me what happened then.’

  ‘They accepted my version of events and agreed to take me with them. What else could they do? It didn’t take me long to gather anything that I wanted to take with me and within an hour I was on their yacht. It was certainly not ideal having an extra body in their boat and we agreed that, if it were possible, they would pass me on to a bigger vessel if we came across one before they reached their destination.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘They were heading for South America. As it turned out, I was only with them three days. We made radio contact with a cargo ship making its way to England from New Zealand, again I have all the details of that in my record,’ he said. ‘But I suppose you could check up on that for yourself through a different route.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We were at sea for six weeks. When we docked at Tilbury I disappeared, got to shore before the authorities could intervene. It must have been reported.’

  Harris nodded again. He could easily check up on that. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why not come to the authorities and let them take charge of things? You’d done nothing wrong. You’d have been looked after.

  ‘The British authorities could have investigated, helped you get justice. And of course, as I’ve already said, you were and still are technically a member of the Armed Forces. Sooner or later it becomes absent without leave.’ He suddenly realised how pompous his remarks must have sounded to the man who had lost everything.

  ‘I didn’t want legal justice, Captain Harris. My wife and daughter had been murdered. I wanted answers, information – and I wanted revenge.’

  Sansom’s cold blue eyes snared Harris’s. For the first time since meeting the Lieutenant, Harris felt a chill of unease at the realisation of what this man’s purpose had become, how dangerous he potentially was. He shifted in his seat. ‘And how did you propose to do that?’

  ‘I knew that Harper, the UK agent for the trip, was involved in our change of itinerary. It was a place to start. I could also imagine how newsworthy my reappearance would have become. If he heard about it and he had something to hide, I could lose the advantage. My advantage was that no one knew who I was, let alone that I was alive, and I wanted to keep it that way.’

  ‘And your obligations to the Army, to the families of the other people who lost their lives in the incident? Don’t you think you owed them something?’

  ‘In time, yes. But I had my own obligations – obligations to my dead wife and dead daughter and obligations to myself.’

  ‘I’m sure I need hardly remind you that the British legal system takes a very dim view of people taking the law into their own hands, especially when it ends in murder.’

  Sansom’s face clouded. ‘He died then? Harper?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you know?’ For answer, Sansom shook his head. ‘Perhaps if you’d come to us in the right and proper way…’ he trailed off, conscious of the bullying, judgemental tone he had adopted. ‘What did you hope to achieve by tackling the man?’

  Sansom’s answer came in dejected tones at the realisation that his best connection to the events that had cost him everything was dead. ‘I told you – answers, information. I had a very long time to think about what happened while I was stuck on that God-forsaken place.

  ‘I’ve found out a few things since I’ve been back, as well. The Internet is one of the wonders of our society. No ransom demands, so that rules out kidnapping and piracy. In fact, there was not a sign of anyone, no wreckage, not a hint of why it happened – a complete fucking mystery.

  ‘But there must have been a motive, a reason why people would do something like that. No one just hijacks a vessel, kills everyone on board, leaves no trace, asks for nothing and disappears, particularly not a group of South African mercenaries in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.’

  Now, Harris could only sit silently agreeing with him as the cogs of his mind processed the logic that Sansom spoke.

  *

  ‘As this morning, keep it chronological,’ said Harris, as the pair resumed after a break, in which Harris had set someone at Army HQ checking verifiable details of Sansom’s story. ‘Go from when you left the ship.’

  ‘Getting away from the ship was easy enough. I had the freedom of it while I was on board. They were very good to me. I didn’t enjoy betraying their trust. I left a note letting them know that they should report the circumstances of my passage and disappearance to the proper authorities, not just to cover themselves, but because I needed it officially documented in case I got myself into a position such as this.

  ‘It was just a matter of slipping over the side as we approached the port. I’d taken the opportunity during my time on board to make myself look less like a shipwreck victim and they’d provided me with clothing. So, as soon as I reached the shore I could blend straight in.’

  ‘You had money?’

  ‘No, but I didn’t need any.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Lieutenant Sansom met his interrogator’s stare. ‘Captain Harris, so far I’ve been completely open and honest with you about everything that I can remember. I intend to keep it that way all the time that it involves just me and my actions.

  ‘I appreciate that my position is difficult and that I have acted outside of the law. However, I am not going to willingly implicate people who may have helped me and who could find themselves in trouble with the law for it. There is no need. For that reason, I can’t tell you why I didn’t need money and I can’t tell you where I stayed between the time I arrived back in England and my appearance at Harper’s.’

  The information hung in the air between them for a few seconds until the Captain, having weighed up the importance of it, nodded acceptance of Sansom’s terms, for now.

  *

  When Sansom had crawled up the river bank of The Medway, soaking, cold and exhau
sted, he had known exactly who he was going to contact. Alison’s father had lived in London all his life. In his late sixties, he refused to abandon what had been the family home and the capital. He kept the Georgian townhouse going, preferring to rattle around on his own over four floors since his wife had died, rather than sell up for some retirement cottage on the Sussex coast and wait for death to pay him a visit. He kept himself busy and a car in his garage.

  Once over the shock of the reverse charge phone call from the son-in-law he believed to be dead, he listened to directions and instructions and within two hours the two men were embracing tearfully in the car park of the local railway station.

  Sansom hated involving the old man he’d come to see as a father figure; hated bringing such terrible news – the loss of his only daughter and grandchild – but there was no one else he could trust to keep the secret of his return to civilisation. The old man looked frail and a shadow of his former self. In retelling the events of the incident that had cost them both all the family that they had apart from each other, Sansom spared him the details of the executions. The loss alone was clearly harrowing enough for him.

  Back at the townhouse, they had talked into the small hours of the next day. The old man had tried in vain to persuade his son-in-law to report to the authorities, to let the police deal with the man, Harper. He had tried to impress upon him the dangers and the recklessness of the course of action he was proposing. But when he realised that his son-in-law was resolute, was not to be deterred from personally discovering Harper’s involvement, then he could only promise his reluctant support.

  Sansom stayed with his father-in-law for as long as it took him to rest, recuperate and organise. He took time to go through the personal possessions the old man had seen fit to save and bring to London from the home in East Sussex that had had to be sold when it seemed that he and his wife were dead. In this he was clinical; despite the heart-wrenching emotions that he found himself at the mercy of as he picked through knick-knacks and mementos, only photograph albums and important documentation were saved.

  He visited the local library to use the Internet facilities, trying to discover anything he could of what was reported of the missing ship and to track down the business address of Harper Holdings.

  Finally, he felt ready to face the man who was the only lead that he had to explain what had happened in the Pacific Ocean. He promised the old man before they parted that if a visit to Harper proved unfruitful then he would make himself known to the authorities and put his faith in the justice system to investigate the events that had seen men, women and children slaughtered in cold blood.

  He gratefully accepted the money that the old man thrust upon him to see him through and his offer to return if and when he needed to under any circumstances. At the train station they embraced again and for the last time.

  Sansom had one more task to perform before he called on Harper. He took the fast train from London to Ashford in Kent and from there the more sedate cross-country service to the village of Rye in East Sussex.

  He arrived in the evening. Dusk was drawing in, although it was not the accompanying dip in temperature that seemed to chill his core. He had known that this would be difficult – visiting the place where he had shared a home with his wife and daughter. His father-in-law had told him that, as the only surviving relative of the pair, it had fallen to him to deal with their estate after they had been declared dead by a coroner some months before.

  The house had had to be sold. A home that the Sansoms had bought together. The first home that he had ever owned. A home that they had renovated together, sweated over, fought over, conceived their daughter in and lived together in as a family when he was on leave.

  He booked himself into a hotel in a steep cobbled street, confident that even if he were to find himself in the company of someone that he recognised from his old life, his new appearance would make him virtually unrecognisable. Yet, he felt secure enough; he had had no friends in the town to speak of.

  He ate at the hotel and later left to take advantage of the darkness that had descended upon the streets. He navigated his way through the historic narrow lanes until he found himself outside the house that was once his own.

  The current occupiers had done nothing to alter the clapboard exterior that he and Alison had laboured long, hard hours to strip back, repair and repaint. Inside, he could see through net curtains a life being lived and enjoyed. Thinking it reckless to loiter, he wandered around to the communal alley that served as a rear entrance for all the properties in the small terrace. Satisfying himself that all was as he remembered, he left and walked back to his rooms.

  *

  ‘So you tracked Harper down from the Internet?’ said Harris

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Will you tell me the details of the visit and how you came to be armed? We know that the weapon you had in your possession was an Iraqi Army issue pistol. Souvenir from your campaign out there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course, you must know that that in itself is a court martial offence?’

  Sansom smiled at the Captain. ‘Of course, but that seems to be the least of my worries, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Harris, with a resigned and understanding sigh.

  ‘The weapon was something that I brought back from Iraq. Like you said, it was a souvenir. Everyone was doing it. I’d kept it at my home in East Sussex. It was well hidden and I knew that if whoever occupied my home hadn’t done any severe restructuring work then it would probably still be where I had concealed it.

  ‘I wasn’t about to take the risk of seeing a man who was potentially ruthless enough to be a part of the massacre that I had witnessed without a weapon. Besides, as well as for my own safety, I needed to scare the shit out of him.

  ‘If you check with the police, I’m sure they’ll have a report of a recent break-in at my old home address. I needed to break a window to get in. I didn’t take anything except the gun. I even left fifty quid on the kitchen table to pay for the repair.’ Harris raised his eyebrows at that.

  ‘I made my way down the south coast to Portsmouth where Harper lived. I watched him for a couple of days, getting a feel for his movements and his company. And then I paid him the visit.’

  ‘What would you have done if his wife had been in?’

  ‘Used her as leverage. I wanted her there.’

  ‘You’d have been disappointed if you’d thought that threatening her would get to him. I’ve met her. Certainly no love lost.’

  Sansom shrugged. ‘Academic.’

  ‘How did you get in to the house?’

  ‘I knocked on the front door. When he opened it, I gave it a kick and sent him sprawling. Simple. Just like the movies. I knew he was guilty of complicity as soon as he understood who I was; it was written all over his face.

  ‘When I showed him the gun, he fell apart. Jabbered on about how he hadn’t known that anyone was going to be hurt. That he was nothing to do with what happened. That he’d been threatened to change the itinerary or face consequences himself. He didn’t say what the threats were or who they were from. He told me that he had evidence in his study. That he would show me, tell me everything he knew.’

  ‘And did he?’

  There was a brief pause as Sansom remembered the way events had unfolded. He scowled. ‘We were in his study. I had my pistol pointed at him. He was going through his desk drawers. I was sloppy. I remember an almighty bang and a piercing pain in my stomach. I fired reflexively, I suppose. I knew that I’d hit him because he went down. As I lay there drifting into unconsciousness, I realised that the bastard has shot me through his fucking desk.’

  ‘And you, Lieutenant, shot him clean through his left eye.’

  ***

  4

  Sansom was standing at the open window of his hospital room looking out over the expanse of the military base when Captain Harris next visited. His dressing gown hung on him as it might
on a coat hanger, the bones of his shoulders sticking out against the thin material.

  The heavily-tanned skin of his exposed legs and bare feet contrasted starkly with the light fabric. A wheeled contraption stood next to him, supporting a bag of fluid that fed into a vein in his arm. In his hand was the dictation device that Harris had left with him, just in case he remembered anything and wanted to record it quickly and easily, to fill in some of the blanks.

  Harris had company.

  Sansom turned as the door opened. He recognised the newcomer immediately, although he seemed to have aged considerably since the last time he had met him. Automatically, he adopted a respectful stance and pocketed the recording device.

  Captain Harris made introductions, ‘Morning, Lieutenant Sansom this is…’

  ‘Mr Bishop, Minister for Defence Procurement,’ finished Sansom, clearly puzzled. ‘I did my time in Iraq. You paid us a flying visit. We actually shook hands.’

  ‘Did we really?’ said Bishop, genuinely surprised. ‘Well, I shook a lot of hands out there, so I hope you can forgive me if I don’t remember you, Lieutenant.’ He offered his hand again and Sansom took it. ‘It’s former Minister now, by the way.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, sir,’ said Sansom. ‘There was a feeling among the troops that you got things done.’

  ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. It’s nice to hear sometimes that all one’s efforts weren’t completely unappreciated.’

  Bishop turned to Harris and said, ‘Would you mind giving us some privacy for a few minutes, Captain? Take yourself off to the canteen or something. I’ll come and find you when I’m finished. That all right?’

  Harris exchanged a quick look with Sansom but got nothing out of it. With no good reason to refuse, he did as he was asked and went in search of refreshment.

  Harris had been surprised when his CO had notified him of his escort duties for the afternoon. Knowing what he did, he could understand that the tragedy that had devastated both men’s lives would involve them meeting eventually, but he hadn’t expected that the former Minister would be so quickly aware of Sansom’s existence and then paying him a visit in his hospital room. The clandestine nature of their arrival at the base and Bishop’s lack of entourage had made the episode only more puzzling.