‘And here comes our mate the super-spy,’ Cousins said, pointing to a set of much lower-slung headlights approaching from the Clitheroe end of the road. ‘He’s turned up, just like you promised he would. I’m proud of you, ma’am.’ He paused. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Not my place to say something like that.’
‘That’s all right,’ Paniatowski assured him. ‘I’m just a little proud of myself, too.’
The car reached the area where the lorries were parked, and pulled in beside them.
‘We need to take a closer look,’ Paniatowski said, with a sense of urgency in her voice. ‘Paul, you approach them from the left-hand side. Jack, you go in from the right. Get as near as you safely can, but for God’s sake don’t push it too far, and end up getting yourself spotted.’
‘I’ve got a question, ma’am,’ DC Crane said.
Of course he had, Paniatowski thought.
And it would be an awkward one – because Jack Crane’s main purpose on earth seemed to be to ask her awkward questions.
‘Go ahead,’ she said resignedly.
‘Just what am I supposed to be looking for, ma’am?’ Crane asked.
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘But I’m sure you’ll recognize it when you see it.’
Running in a crouched position was taking its toll on her calf muscles, and the unevenness of the ground meant that twice she’d slipped, and had to break her fall by holding her arms out in front of her. Even so, it was less than fifteen minutes before she was close enough to the lorries to be able to establish that if they weren’t actually army vehicles, they were certainly very similar to them.
She hunkered down, and considered her next move.
There was no camp fire lighting up the darkness. She could detect no signs of human movement, and could hear no voices. So perhaps the soldiers – or whatever they were – had bedded down for the night.
But that made no sense at all, because Forsyth would not have made the trip out from Whitebridge just to watch other men sleep.
There was the sudden sound of gunfire in the distance, and turning her head she saw the bright red light of tracer bullets flying through the air.
‘Oh my God, what the hell have I got my lads into?’ she asked herself worriedly.
She heard the tread of the footfalls behind her just a split second before a heavy boot struck her in the middle of her back, sending her pitching forward. It was her shoulder, rather than her face, which hit the ground first – but it still hurt like buggery.
‘Move an inch, and I’ll fill you full of holes, you bastard,’ said a harsh voice with a strong Ulster accent.
A beam of light lit up the ground just by her head.
‘Get up – but do it slowly,’ the voice said. ‘And the instant you’re standing up, I want to see your hands behind your head.’
There were two of them, she noted when she was back on her feet. One had his hands dangling by his sides, as if he was not quite sure what to do with them, but the second was holding a torch in one hand and a pistol in the other – and both those objects were firmly pointing at her.
‘Jesus, Johnny, but it’s only a woman,’ said the one with his hands by his sides.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded the one with the pistol.
‘I’m a police officer, Johnny,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And that means I’m the one who’s going to be asking the questions.’
‘It doesn’t work like that out here in the middle of nowhere,’ the Ulsterman said harshly. ‘You might have a warrant card, but I’ve got a gun – and that puts me in charge.’
‘You know you wouldn’t dare shoot a bobby, so why pretend?’ Paniatowski countered.
‘Wouldn’t dare?’ the Ulsterman repeated. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, if I was you. When a man knows he can get away with it, there’s no telling what he’s capable of – and when he has powerful friends, like I have, he can get away with almost anything.’
‘I believe him,’ Paniatowski thought, as she felt a shudder run through her body. ‘Or, at least, I believe that he believes it – and that’s just as dangerous.’
‘Search her, Michael,’ Johnny told his companion. ‘And don’t go easy on the search just because she’s a woman. She looks old enough to be well used to having her tits felt up.’
Michael stepped forward, and ran his hands quickly up and down Paniatowski’s body.
She did not resist.
‘She’s clean,’ Michael said, when he’d finished.
‘Right,’ Johnny said. ‘Now we’ve got that bit of business out of the way, we’ll all go over to the trucks, and find out just what Mr Smith wants us to do with you.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Paniatowski was standing with her back pressed against the wheel arch of one of the lorries. Johnny was positioned less than six feet away from her, his feet wide apart and his pistol unwaveringly aimed at her chest. Neither of them had spoken since Michael had left. And why should they have done? They both recognized that they were merely minor players in the unfolding drama, and that what happened next was entirely in the hands of ‘Mr Smith’.
Michael returned. ‘Are you Chief Inspector Pania . . . Pania . . .?’ he asked falteringly.
‘Paniatowski,’ Monika supplied. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘A Polack!’ Johnny said, with evident disgust. ‘A bloody Catholic!’ He spat on the ground. ‘I knew it! I just bloody knew it! I can smell you Papist bastards from a mile away.’
‘Mr Smith wants to see her, Johnny,’ Michael said. ‘He’s waiting for her in his car.’
‘Then we’d better take the heathen bitch to him, hadn’t we?’ Johnny replied.
The two men led Paniatowski past the lorries, to where the Rover 2000 was parked.
Johnny opened the passenger door, and said, ‘Get in there, you filthy foreign whore!’
Forsyth was sitting in the driver’s seat, with his leather briefcase neatly on his lap.
‘Good evening, Mr Smith,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Oh, that’s not my real name, as you well know,’ the man replied. ‘But then, of course, neither is Forsyth.’
He opened the briefcase, took out his hip flask and two small glasses, and placed them on the dashboard.
‘On this occasion, all I can offer you is malt whisky,’ he said apologetically. ‘I didn’t bring the vodka with me, because I never imagined you’d be stupid enough to pull a stunt like this.’
‘Who are these men?’ Paniatowski asked, ignoring the comment.
Forsyth poured out two glasses of malt, and handed one to Paniatowski. When he saw her knock it back in a single gulp, he couldn’t resist a faint smile.
‘Who are these men?’ he repeated. ‘Well, they’re Ulstermen, obviously. In fact, they’re part of the Ulster Freedom Force.’
Paniatowski nodded, unsurprised.
‘The Ulster Freedom Force,’ she said, rolling the words carefully around in her mouth, as if they were an unexploded bomb. ‘In other words, they’re part of a terrorist paramilitary organization which your own government has declared illegal.’
‘It’s your government, too,’ Forsyth reminded her.
‘And you’re in charge of training them, are you?’
‘Of course not!’ Forsyth said disdainfully. ‘I wouldn’t even know how to begin. My military experience was all in the Guards, and we fought a much cleaner, more gentlemanly kind of war than the one these chaps will be fighting. All I’m doing here, Monika, is facilitating their training.’
‘So who is training them?’
‘A number of ex-soldiers who’ve had experience of serving at the sharp end in Northern Ireland.’
‘Men like Andy Adair.’
‘Yes, he was one of the instructors.’
‘And that’s why he was killed?’
Forsyth sighed. ‘As I’ve told you at least a dozen times already, Monika, Adair’s death had nothing to do with the IRA.’
‘Then who did kill him?’
‘I really don’t know. But there must be plenty of people – people with no interest in politics at all – who would have wanted him dead.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was the kind of man who made enemies easily. Adair was both greedy and unscrupulous, and in a place like Ulster – where there are few rules, and even less restraints – he must have felt right at home.’
‘You’re telling me that he was involved in some kind of criminal activity over there, are you?’
‘I’m telling you that he was involved in a myriad of criminal activities. He sold goods on the black market. He provided the protection for a prostitution ring. He may even have been involved in drug dealing. I don’t know about that. But I do know that if he hadn’t left the army when he did, he’d probably have ended up being court-martialled.’
‘Yet, despite all that, you recruited him for this job.’
Forsyth laughed. ‘You’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick. It’s because of all that I recruited him. He knows the way Ulster works. He knows what buttons to push to get the desired outcomes.’
‘The desired outcomes!’ Paniatowski repeated scornfully. ‘What a nice, neutral, antiseptic phrase that is.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Forsyth agreed.
‘When what you really mean is that he’s been training a bunch of mad dogs who, once you think they’re ready, you’ll set loose on Ulster, to intimidate, torture and murder at will.’
‘Scarcely at will,’ Forsyth corrected her. ‘There have to be some limits set on their behaviour, even in a place like that.’
‘But the simple truth is that they’ll be doing the dirty work for you – work you daren’t have the army implicated in.’
‘Essentially, yes.’
‘And innocent people will die.’
‘It’s a war we’re fighting over there, Monika. And in a war, innocent people on both sides die all the time.’
‘I can see now why you were so keen to dispel any rumours that Adair was killed by the IRA,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Can you?’
‘Yes. It would have been very bad for the morale of these men to think that the Republicans could get at one of their instructors so easily.’
‘Quite so.’
‘But what I don’t see is why, once Adair had been killed, you didn’t pull them out immediately.’
‘It’s very simple,’ Forsyth told her. ‘When their training period is over, we’ll be putting these men back into a war zone, where not only they, but also their families, will be at risk. They have to be confident – in a situation like that – that they have our full and unqualified support.’
‘And do they?’
‘Of course not! If they do something particularly horrific – and they will – or end up in serious danger – and that will happen too – we’ll say we never heard of them. Their value to us, you see, is based almost entirely on their deniability. But they mustn’t know that.’
‘I still don’t see . . .’
‘We have promised them that they will have the full force of the British government behind them. And how strong would that government look if, just because the police were investigating the murder of one of their instructors, we made them cut and run?’
‘So they’re still here simply to prove they can still be here?’
‘Exactly. I suppose that, in some ways, Andy Adair’s murderer did us a favour.’
‘A favour?’
‘Indeed – because it presented us with the opportunity to show these men just how determined we are to give them our full backing.’
‘Even though you’re not.’
‘Even though we’re not.’
‘So what happens next?’ Paniatowski asked.
Forsyth opened his briefcase and took out three forms. ‘Now, you and your colleagues . . .’ He paused. ‘I did mention that we’d also caught your colleagues, didn’t I?’
‘You know you didn’t.’
‘Well, we have. DS Cousins, isn’t it? And, of course, DC Crane, my friend from last night’s little adventure.’
‘Sometimes you sound just like a big kid,’ Paniatowski said, with utter contempt.
Forsyth smiled. ‘You seem surprised at that. I’d have thought you would have realized, long before now, that the security service is the natural home of overgrown schoolboys. Who else would throw themselves with such relish into a game which, in the long run, we’re bound to lose?’ An expression of deep sadness crossed his face, and then was gone, leaving no trace. ‘But to return to my point,’ he continued, ‘what happens next is that you and your colleagues sign the Official Secrets Act. And once you’ve done that, of course, you can leave.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Yes. At this delicate stage of the operation, the last thing I’d like to have on my hands is the unexplained disappearance of three police officers, and so I’ve decided to let you go.’
‘As long as we sign the Act?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Why does it matter if we sign it or not? An official secret is an official secret, and if we reveal what we’ve seen, we’d go to jail whether or not we’d put our names to a piece of paper.’
‘Indeed you would,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘You would not be the first to suffer, of course – other heads would roll before yours . . .’
‘Yours, for example,’ Paniatowski taunted.
‘Yes, mine would probably be the first, rapidly followed by those of some quite influential men in the Ministry of Defence,’ Forsyth admitted. ‘But your turn would come. You’d be given a long sentence for breaching national security – but it’s not really the length of your sentence you should worry about.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Oh dear me, no. The security services have considerable influence in our prison system, and they’d make sure you had a very hard time while you were inside. You’d be raped, probably with some rather unpleasant kitchen implement. You’d be beaten on a daily basis. I honestly doubt you’d survive the experience.’
‘Why would your mates in the security services want that to happen?’ Paniatowski wondered. ‘Is it because they’re all sadistic bastards like you?’
‘Of course not! Overgrown schoolboys we may be, but we rarely have the luxury of doing things simply for our own pleasure, Monika,’ Forsyth said. ‘You would be made to suffer as an example – and the more you suffered, the better the example would be. You would serve, if you like, as a deterrent to others who might be contemplating following in your footsteps.’
‘You still haven’t answered the question I asked earlier,’ Paniatowski said.
‘That was very remiss of me,’ Forsyth said. ‘Remind me what that question was.’
As if he needed reminding! Paniatowski thought.
‘Since it’s illegal to reveal official secrets under any circumstances, why do you need me to sign the Act?’ she asked.
‘I suppose there are two main reasons,’ Forsyth said, speaking in slow, measured terms, almost as if he were delivering an academic lecture. ‘The first is that this country unaccountably still believes in trial by jury – an archaic system in which those least able to reach a verdict are given the sole right to do so – and these juries feel happier convicting if the prisoner in the dock has signed the Act. It is almost, in their poor muddled terms, as if he or she had signed a confession.’
‘And the second?’
‘The person who has signed the Act almost invariably feels as if it has put him or her under a moral obligation. It isn’t logical, of course, but I have seen it happen too often to deny that it’s the truth.’
‘That’s not it,’ Paniatowski said firmly. ‘That isn’t why you want me to sign.’
‘Then why do I want you to sign?’
‘As an act of submission – as proof that I’m prepared to bend my will to yours. I wouldn’t be just signing away my right to speak – I’d be signing away part of myself.’
‘In one way, you’re right,�
�� Forsyth conceded. ‘That is part of the process. But you’re wrong to see it – as you so obviously do – in personal terms. I have no desire to bend your will to mine – I merely wish to bend the will of a British subject to that of the British government.’
‘You’re a bloody liar,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You’re a bloody liar and I won’t sign.’
‘Then you’ll never get your father’s remains back,’ Forsyth said. ‘In fact,’ he continued, his voice hardening, ‘I’ll see to it personally that they’re flushed down the sewer.’
There was always excitement in the house when the colonel was coming home.
The mistress would go through her entire wardrobe, rejecting each and every dress as being unworthy to greet him in, and finally, out of desperation, select one which she hoped would more or less pass muster.
On the floor below her, the maids rushed around in a flurry, searching out even the most minute particle of dust and vanquishing it. In the kitchen, the cook laboured long and hard, striving to produce the best meal the master had ever tasted. In the stables, the grooms brushed the horses. In the grounds, the gardeners removed plants which were only just past their best, and replaced them with new ones in their full glory.
And little Monika?
She would post herself at an upstairs window, hours before he was due to arrive, in order to ensure that she was the very first person in the entire household to catch sight of him.
Finally, he would appear, riding his magnificent black stallion down the long avenue of plain trees. The horse would be moving at no more than a steady trot – for it would have been unseemly for the colonel to appear to be in a hurry. But the man himself would have his eyes fixed on that upstairs window from which he knew his daughter would be watching.
‘Did you hear what I said about your father’s remains?’ Forsyth asked.
He’d been a wonderful man, Paniatowski thought. Though he’d died when she was no more than a child, he had largely made her the woman she was. It was he who’d given her a fighting spirit, and without his example, she’d have gone under long ago.
‘Monika?’ Forsyth said, with just an edge of irritation slowly creeping into his voice.
The Ring of Death Page 21