Rough Justice

by Higgins, Jack

  “Not much to say, really.” Dillon shrugged. “So what do we do about it?”

  “I know what I want to do,” Harry said. “Bury the bastard, and alive if possible.”

  Billy nodded. “I’d second that.”

  There was another long pause, and Roper said, “So how are you going to handle it, General, confrontational or what?”

  Ferguson turned to Harry Salter. “You still have those pleasure boats on the Thames, don’t you?”

  “That’s right. There’s the River Queen and the Bluebell.”

  “Westminster Pier. Let’s say seven o’clock” He turned to Dillon. “Would that suit you—the River Queen?”

  “Fair enough, but would he come?”

  “He will if I make it seem important enough.”

  “And what happens?” Dillon asked. “That’s the thing.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, the implications are too enormous, we simply go with the flow.” Ferguson stood and said to Roper, “I think you should be there with this.” He gestured at the frozen image and turned to Harry. “Do you have a television set on board?”

  “In the lounge.”

  “I’ll manage,” Roper said. “Billy and Harry will help.”

  “No one else,” Ferguson said. “This is very personal for all of us. I’ll go off now and make contact. If it isn’t going to work, I’ll let you know and we’ll decide on something else.”

  He went out. Harry said, “You could always wait for a wet Saturday night when the bastard is walking home and simply give him a bullet in the head.”

  “If only life were that perfect,” Dillon said. “But let’s get started. There’s a lot to sort out.”

  WESTMINSTER PIER at around half past six. The rain had increased with force as darkness fell. Harry and Dillon had been on board the River Queen for some time, organizing things, and now Billy arrived in the van with Roper. He got him out, hurried ahead, went on board, and opened a section of the rail that allowed wheelchair access to the deck. He made sure that Roper had negotiated safely and once more moved ahead. He opened the door of the lower-deck saloon and Roper followed him in.

  There was a television high up in a corner. Dillon and Harry were standing at the small bar, having a drink. “There’s your television,” Harry said, “and it does DVDs.”

  “And I’ve made one. Put it in for me, Billy, and give me a drink, Harry. No sign of Ferguson?”

  There was the sound of a car. “That’ll be him now.”

  He went out on deck to put up the rail again and saw Ferguson paying off a taxi. It drove away, and Ferguson came toward him as Billy put up a sign that said: Private Party Only.

  Ferguson came up the gangway. “A taxi seemed the sensible thing to do.”

  “I wonder if he’ll think so, too.”

  “Who knows? Join the others and get moving as soon as he arrives.”

  Billy went and Ferguson turned, waiting. It was quite still, just traffic sounds in the distance, and then a small man, holding a large black umbrella over his head, simply emerged from the darkness. He stood there, looking up at Ferguson, his face yellow in the jetty lights, his hair still obviously white: Simon Carter, Deputy Director of the Secret Security Services.

  “There you are,” Ferguson called. “No taxi?”

  “Walked along from the Houses of Parliament. What’s it all about? I thought all this kind of cloak-and-dagger stuff went out with the Cold War. What’s so important that we have to meet like this?”

  He came up the gangway and boarded. Ferguson unhooked it. There was a line coil dropped over a deck post. Ferguson slipped it off, strode to another amidships, and did the same. The River Queen started to edge away at once on the current and the engine rumbled, started by Billy up in the wheelhouse.

  “What in the hell is this?” Carter demanded.

  “Evening cruise on the river, Simon, maybe as far as Chelsea while we discuss business. Sorry about the rain. It turns up everywhere when you least expect it. Raining on the coast road in Louth when Dillon ambushed Volkov and two GRU hard men and killed them, raining in Drumore last night when we finished off Michael Quinn and company at Drumore Place.”

  Carter was dumbfounded. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  The saloon door opened and Sean Dillon said, “Come in, Mr. Carter.”

  And Carter, urged forward by Ferguson’s hand in his back, had no option but to go.

  THE FILM ENDED with the frozen image of the Broker, turning to walk away. Billy, in the wheelhouse, had the windows open as they proceeded upriver toward Chelsea in spite of the rain, and had the rear door of the wheelhouse open at the top of the steps leading down to the saloon so that he could hear what went on.

  “So what have you to say?” Ferguson demanded. “That screen damns you. Your guilt is absolute.”

  “Don’t be so stupid. Guilty of what? A voice on the phone to everybody for years, that’s all.”

  “To Volkov, and through him the President of the Russian Confederation himself,” Roper said. “High treason.”

  “Even Kim Philby or Guy Burgess couldn’t compare with what you’ve done,” Ferguson said. “The links with Al Qaeda and the international implications alone are unbelievable, and the fact that it was all passing through Volkov’s hands.”

  “I say again, even there, I was just a voice and I never met one of them. How do you prove a voice? Your people have always operated outside the law. Look at the things you do, your cavalier attitude toward the legal system, which is, why try a suspect when you can kill them and have your disposal unit handle the consequences? Yes, I know all about you.”

  “You missed on Miller in Beirut, but you were away, as I recall, and I put a stop on any mention of his flight from Farley. I did that when we flew up to Oban the day before yesterday and foxed you again. Dillon got Volkov, we all finished off Quinn and his people. In case it hasn’t got through to you, Abdul, sent by Hassim, stabbed Fahy on your behalf, but Fahy shot him dead. He then made a dying confession to Dillon and Miller. Both he and Abdul went for disposal. Miller executed Hassim later that night.”

  Carter’s face was contorted. “Miller’s not with you, I see. Could it be a certain young girl got to him with her knife? Disposed of, was she? Thank you, Ferguson, I only have to look at your face. Her knife was treated with a particularly virulent poison. If Miller isn’t dead, he soon will be.”

  “You fucking bastard,” Harry Salter said.

  “My God, it can talk, just look at it.” Carter’s contempt was total. “You never liked me, Ferguson, just because I was a desk man and never served in the field, but at least my job took brains. How else would I have come to be Deputy Director of the Security Services? I never liked you or this nonsense about heading the Prime Minister’s private army, or your IRA gun hand.”

  “God save your honor,” Dillon said. “It’s a blessing such a great man as yourself would allow me in the room.”

  “You murdering Irish dog.” Carter laughed harshly. “I’ll tell you how I started, though it won’t help you one bit, Ferguson. Professor Drecq Khan. The other year, MI6 heard from Pakistan sources that he’d met Osama in Afghanistan and was bedazzled. Naturally, the news landed on my desk and I seized on it. You were having bad trouble with British Muslims at the time, so I couldn’t resist stirring the pot. I invented the Broker, phoned Drecq Khan and said I represented Osama and Al Qaeda, passed privileged information to him that helped the cause. Khan believed me, the man of mystery, the voice on the phone, because I could also speak Arabic, thanks to Oxford. It so amused me that I did the same thing to Volkov when he entered the game.”

  “And you couldn’t stop?”

  “I wasn’t allowed to. After a while, a message came from Osama himself direct to me. My cover was blown—I’ve never been able to find out how, but it was.”

  Dillon said, “So your instructions were to keep the Broker going or else?”

  “Something like that, and it was so eas
y to protect my back. Take Miller’s escapade in Washington. I knew exactly what had happened because I’d been with the Prime Minister when Ferguson reported the facts, but I couldn’t tell Quinn or Volkov in that case, for obvious reasons.”

  “Very clever,” Ferguson said.

  “I always was, so what are you going to do? Send for Scotland Yard? Stand me up in the Old Bailey? Do, and I’ll sing so loudly they’ll hear me in China. I’ll expose everything you’ve put your hands to, all of you, and we’ll include all your dealings in Washington on behalf of the American President by Blake Johnson. I’ll bring it all out. You can’t afford it, Ferguson, neither can the government or the Prime Minister, so why don’t you go to hell, the lot of you? You mentioned Chelsea. I’ll get off there.”

  He turned, opened the door and went out, paused to raise his umbrella, and went up the six steps to the foredeck, lit by deck lights, where Billy stood in the wheelhouse, the window open. Carter paused and glanced in. “Oh, it’s you, you swine. Don’t worry, you’ll go the way of the rest of them.”

  Billy shouted, “Collision course, hard aport.” He spun the wheel, and as the River Queen veered around, Dillon, Ferguson, and Harry in the saloon staggered and fell over, the deck tilted, and Roper in his wheelchair ran into the table.

  On the foredeck, Carter was thrown violently to the side and attempted to hang on to his umbrella, losing it and falling on his front as the deck inclined more, slipping backward under the lower rail, a situation in which his small size did him no favors. His head was raised as he grabbed at the rail, Billy caught a flash of the desperate face in the desk light, then he was gone into the darkness. He spun the wheel again, bringing the River Queen back on course, and as things calmed, Dillon came up the steps from the saloon behind him.

  “What was all that about?”

  “I thought we were going to hit something, but I got it wrong. Darkness, rain, you know how it is? Unfortunately, Carter fell down and slipped under the rail. I’ll turn and take us back to Westminster.” He smiled savagely. “At least that’s my story, Officer, and I’m sticking to it.”

  Dillon returned to the saloon. “When Billy spun the wheel, Carter lost it, slipped under the rail into the river.”

  “A likely story.” Harry said. “But he got what was coming and no one put a finger on his. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a drink. Do we report it?”

  Ferguson said, “You’re the original river rat.”

  “It’s a known fact that more than half of those who go in never get found, the tide takes them out to sea. Another thing, he didn’t arrive by taxi, he walked—so nobody knows he was here.”

  “We’ll leave it to the river, then. I’ll join you in a scotch.”

  “I’ll have one, too, as Carter was wrong about one thing,” Roper said.

  “What was that?” Ferguson asked.

  “The Muslim girl’s knife, the poison. Monica phoned me just before Billy picked me up. Bellamy has a report from the pathology lab. They’ve discovered what the poison is and they’ve got an antidote, which has already been delivered to Rosedene.”

  “Why do I feel like cheering?” Ferguson said.

  “Because we all should be,” Dillon told him, and he walked outside and stood on deck, feeling absurdly happy as Billy took the River Queen into Westminster Pier.

  LATER, MUCH LATER, with everyone dispersed, he got out of a taxi at Rosedene and went in. Ferguson had given him the task of telling Monica and Miller everything that had happened. Reception was quiet, no sign of Maggie Duncan, just a young probationer on night duty, but she knew him.

  “How’s the Major?”

  “A wee bit better. He’s on new medication. Lady Starling’s with him now.” She was from Northern Ireland and fond of Dillon. “I’m sure they’d love to see you. I heard them talking only minutes ago.”

  “You’re a grand girl, Molly, so I’ll do as you suggest.”

  He moved along the corridor, knocked on the door, and went in. Miller did look a little better, leaning back on the recliner, but Monica was delighted. Jumped up and reached for his hand.

  “I left a message for you with Roper. Such good news. Did he give it to you?”

  “Not right away. We had serious business to deal with, but I know now and I’m delighted for you, Harry, it’s great news. How are you up to hearing mine?”

  “It’s that important, is it?”

  “It’s closure for you as regards the matter of Olivia’s death. Roper finally found out who the Broker was, someone you know well.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon Carter.”

  There was total shock on Miller’s face, and it was as if life stirred in him again. “What nonsense is this? The Deputy Director of the Secret Security Services, the Broker? It’s impossible.”

  “We have him on CCTV film taken at a Turkish bath putting the envelope with the bank draft for Fahy into locker seven. Confronted by Ferguson and the Salters, me and Roper, he admitted everything.”

  “Confessed?”

  “Boasted. Defied us to do anything about it. He was going to ruin the lot of us, including the government, if he ended up in court, and had already finished you because he’d been responsible for the Muslim girl and her poisoned knife. He’s dead now.”

  “You killed him?” Monica asked.

  “Never touched him. Let me go over the whole thing.”

  When he was finished, Miller shook his head. “The bastard came to Olivia’s funeral, remember, with the Prime Minister. He offered his condolences, gave me his hand.” He shook his head. “Deputy Head of the Secret Security Services. How did that happen?”

  “Well, they’ll need a new one, and I know where the Prime Minister should be looking, and maybe he will. Of course, you’d have to resign your seat in Parliament.”

  “You must be crazy.”

  “Think about it. Night, love,” he told Monica. “I’ll get off.”

  In the porch at the front door, he phoned for a taxi and stood staring out at the rain. He took out a cigarette, and as he was lighting it, Monica appeared from behind and took it from him.

  “I’m pleased for you,” he said. “Harry, I mean.”

  “So am I, pleased for all sorts of reasons. Do I see you again?”

  “I think I’d be seriously silly not to.”

  “Sensible man. One day at a time.” She passed him his cigarette back, took his arm, and together they waited for his taxi.