‘Which it ain’t, my dear old guv,’ Atherton said gloomily, and then exclaimed, with transferred emotion, ‘God, I hate the suburbs!’
Despite having taken the name of his birthplace for his title, Lord Leuchars, the former Sid Andrew, preferred Northamptonshire for his home on leaving the House of Commons, and had bought himself a handsome Victorian mansion and twelve acres within handy reach of the M1, which of course as well as leading north also led south into the heart of London. They did not have to penetrate the leafy solitude of Blisworth Manor, however, for his lordship was at that moment chairing a meeting of one of his quangos, the Forestry (Sustainable Uses) Advisory Committee, in the library conference room at the Swan Hotel in Bedford.
The staff of the hotel (which depended a great deal on businessmen and conferences for its profits) were naturally unwilling to disturb well-paying delegates, but Slider was in no mood to be brooked and said either they could fetch him out quietly or he’d go in and get him noisily.
So very shortly afterward, Lord Leuchars came out into the corridor, giving them a glimpse of the handsomely panelled room and a dozen comfortable men around a mahogany table before the door was shut.
‘What’s all this about?’ Leuchars demanded shortly, though not as irritably as he might have, for the committee had lunched extremely well before resuming their meeting.
Sid Andrew was a short, wide man, so wide he gave the disconcerting appearance of having been flattened, like a cartoon character run over by a steamroller. His head was rather large for his body; his face was red, with a spreading nose indicating a lifelong devotion to the bottle. It was also much scarred around the lower cheek and jowl by youthful acne, which made shaving difficult, so there were little tufts and sprigs of iron-grey whisker here and there in the craters, which gave him an unfortunately unwashed appearance. He had shaggy white hair, always unkempt, and thick black eyebrows over pale, watery, red-veined eyes. Atherton had never seen him close up, and thought again of pretty Angela Barlow. It must surely have been someone’s idea of a joke to pair them in sexual congress.
‘I’d like to talk to you in private,’ Slider said when he had introduced them. ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’
‘What makes you think I want to talk to you?’ he growled. He had never lost his accent – indeed, he wore it, with his working-class background and his trade-union credentials, almost aggressively as badges of honour.
‘You will talk to me,’ Slider said quietly, ‘and either we can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. I imagine there are things you wouldn’t want said in public.’
‘Aw, bloody hell, what now?’ he said, scowling. His vinous breath wafted towards them as he sighed, but he looked into their faces, shook his head wearily, and then said, ‘Wait a minute, then.’ He went back into the room, and they heard him say, ‘Fellas, I’m gauny have ta love ye and leave ye. Wally, can you take over this lot?’ before the door swung shut of its own weight. Half a minute later he was out again, walking by them briskly saying, ‘You’d better come to my room.’
His room was in fact a suite, with a large sitting-room overlooking the river and the glimpse of a bedroom beyond. He waved them to a sofa and headed straight for the mahogany bar in the corner. ‘Snifter?’ he offered.
‘Thank you, no. Not on duty,’ Slider said.
‘Well, I’m having one. Let me know if you change your mind.’ He fixed himself a large brandy and soda, came back and sank ungracefully into a chair facing them, and said, ‘Well, what do you want? Shepherd’s Bush? I don’t know anyone in Shepherd’s Bush.’
‘It’s concerning the death of Ed Stonax.’
‘Oh, is that it?’ Leuchars rolled his eyes. ‘I half suspected you lot might start digging up old grievances when I read he’d snuffed it. He was a nasty piece of work, let me tell you, so don’t waste any of your sympathy on him.’
Slider could see he was loquacious with drink – and possibly nervousness – which was all to the good. ‘Nasty in what way?’ he enquired.
‘In a bloody bigoted, middle-class, self-satisfied-prig sort of way, if you want to know,’ he said, and laughed. ‘I’m not sorry he’s dead, so you can make what you like of that. Thought himself too good for the rest of us, big-headed bastard.’ He pronounced it with the short ‘a’, which made it sound more vicious. ‘But he was stupit, like all those elitist do-gooders, so everything that happened to him was his own fault. What d’you want to know about him, anyway?’ He took a swig of his drink and said, ‘Christ, I could do wi’ a cigar!’ He jabbed a stubby finger upwards to the ceiling. ‘Smoke alarms everywhere. You don’t know how to disable ’em, do you? Christ, what do they teach you in copper school anyway? I can’t believe our lot brought in these fucking no smoking laws. What the fuck was all that about, eh?’
‘Mr Andrew,’ Slider began.
‘It’s Lord Leuchars to you, Jimmy!’ he exclaimed, his face reddening. His accent grew stronger with his anger. ‘It’s no’ much, but it’s all I’ve got tae show for forty years service. An’ I fuckin’ earned it, so don’t you disrespect me, boy.’
‘No disrespect intended, I assure you,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘It was a slip of the tongue. What I really wanted to ask you about was the business of the photographs with Ed Stonax and Angela Barlow.’
Unexpectedly, he chuckled. ‘Oh, that old thing! It was a bloody laugh, was that. You’ve seen the photos, have you? Brilliant!’
‘The purpose was to get Stonax sacked from the department, I suppose?’
‘He wasn’t sacked, he resigned. Eventually . . .’ He chuckled again; and then the smile disappeared as if wiped. ‘Mind you, if the stupit bastard had gone quietly when they first showed him the piccies, he’d have saved himself a shitload of trouble. But he started bellowing that it was all a big set-up and he was being framed, so he just made things worse for himself.’
‘But he was framed, wasn’t he?’ Atherton asked.
Leuchars looked at him for the first time. ‘Of course he was. That was the whole point. My God, you’ve seen that girl – what a piece of tail! And look at me! Christ, son, she wouldn’t have touched me with the far end of a bargepole. That was what made it so fucking funny. And Stonax, of all people, the original altar boy!’
‘The photos were faked, then?’ Slider said, feeling relief and rage in about equal proportions.
‘We were never all three in the same room together,’ Leuchars said. ‘Brilliant work,’ he added, though a little morosely. ‘Even I’d have sworn they were real.’
‘Why did you pick on Angela Barlow?’ Slider wanted to know.
‘She’d been partying a bit too hard, done too many lines o’ coke, made mistakes, been indiscreet. She looked like being trouble somewhere down the line so it was a chance to get rid of her. She hadn’t got a boyfriend, lived alone, so she’d be easy to see off. And she’d been in the service less than two years.’ He shrugged, and took another swig. ‘I wouldn’t have worried about employment laws, but they said it made it just that bit easier. Course, if Stonax had gone quietly, her part would never have come out. She’d have taken the settlement all right and no-one any the wiser.’
‘And what about you? You got kicked out as well.’
‘I got my pay-off,’ he said indifferently. ‘Mind you, it’s no as much fun as being in the Commons, I’ll tell ye that. And I can never go back to Fife after the scandal. But what the hell.’ He finished the brandy and heaved himself to his feet. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you gentlemen?’
His gait across the room was just a trifle unsteady, and he came back with another large one, almost dropping into the armchair. ‘Where was I?’
‘You can’t go back to Fife,’ Atherton prompted.
Andrew winked. ‘Aye, and I’ll tell you what – you’d be a fuckin’ moron to want to.’ Another swig. ‘So what is it you want to know?’
‘What it was all about,’ Atherton said. ‘What Stonax had done to make you go to so much trouble to get rid
of him.’
Andrew nodded, going over to serious mode, and said, ‘You’ve heard of the Waverley B Shipyard?’
Slider, who hadn’t, said, ‘Pretend we haven’t, and tell us from the beginning.’
‘Waverley B was one of the biggest shipyards on the Clyde. It was owned by Dansk, the Danish shipbuilders, but they wanted out. They could never make a go of it. It was always an unlucky yard. Plagued with accidents, absenteeism, a lot o’ bad feeling. But – ’ a feeble rage seized him – ‘they were gaunnae close the fucking yard, with two thousand jobs down the toley, just before the last election, with the Nats creaming us at three by-elections within three months, and the polls all tae cock!’
‘Not good,’ Atherton commented, since he seemed to want something.
‘You bet it wasnae good.’ He drained his glass, and held it out to Atherton abruptly. ‘Get me another of these. I can’t get up.’
Slider nodded minutely, and Atherton did as he was asked. Andrew nursed the glass tenderly and went on. ‘Well, we couldn’t persuade Dansk to hold on. But then I had a stroke of genius. Anderson-Millar – you know who they are?’ It was an ironic question.
‘Ships, planes and tanks,’ Atherton said tersely.
‘Right. Well, they’d been wanting to merge with BriTech, who did all the military electronics for the Ministry of Defence, and we’d been blocking it. Too much defence provision in one company. The Monopolies Commission was my baby, of course, as head of the DTI. So my brilliant idea was that we drop our objections, let the merger go ahead in return for Anderson-Millar buying the Waverley B and keeping it open. And it worked. It fucking worked!’
‘It did?’
‘We won the election, didn’t we?’ he said aggressively. ‘But Mr God Almighty Stonax wasn’t happy. He’d been in on the meetings and he thought the AM-BriTech merger wasn’t good for the nation. Without competition we’d end up having to pay too much for our defence kit – that was his beef. When he couldn’t stop it, he threatened to go to the press with it, cause a stink – maybe force another election if the stink was big enough. Well, we couldn’t let him do that. So we had to get rid of him – and do it in a way that would stop his mouth. Hence the pictures. The fancy artwork. Destroy his reputation. Disgraced ex-journo chucks mud, it doesn’t stick like it would from Mr Clean. We thought the threat would be enough – ’ he shook his head in wonder – ‘but he wouldn’t roll over. We had to leak the photos to the press, and then threaten to do the same to his kid and his burrd before he caved.’
He took another slug of brandy, and Slider said, ‘I’m glad you’re being so frank and helpful over this matter—’
‘Nothing you can do about it now, is there?’ Andrew interrupted. ‘Election’s over and done with.’
‘There’s the little matter of blackmail,’ Atherton said.
Andrew wasn’t moved. ‘You could never prove it. Anyway, Stonax is dead, the girl’s dead, and I’m not going to press charges, am I?’
‘Yes, you were the third victim. Why was that? It can’t have been pleasant for you. Had you upset them in some way?’
He tried to shrug it off for a moment. ‘I’ve done all right out of it. I got ma title, all these quangos, directorships – I’m earning ten times what I got as a minister.’
‘But the public humiliation,’ Atherton suggested gently. ‘You had to take the rap for something you hadn’t done – and when you were the one to solve the problem for them.’
It was enough to break through the crust into the self-pity reserves beneath. ‘You’re fucking right! You’re no wrang! Money’s all very well, but I’m nobody now. I was an MP and a minister, I was in the cabinet, for chrissake. I had power, and now I’m Jimmy nobody! Nothing I do makes any difference to anyone now. Lord Leuchars? I’m a joke!’
‘So why did they turn against you?’
‘They blamed me for hiring Stonax in the first place. I was the one suggested we ought to get a media star on the press team, I was the one who picked him out of the applicants. So I had to go down with him. And I’ll tell you something else. They didn’t want me to get the credit for winning the election. Oh, no. That was reserved for bloody Tyler, the wonder boy.’
Slider felt a prickle, like the sting of electricity, along his scalp at the name. ‘You mean Richard Tyler?’
‘Aye, who else? There was only the five of us in on the whole thing – me, Tyler, Molly Scott from the number ten office, Stonax to work out the press angles for us, ha ha, and Stuffy Paxton from Anderson-Millar.’
‘Sir Henry Paxton,’ Atherton supplied.
‘Aye, him.’ He made a sour face. ‘Him and Tyler were thick as thieves. I bet they worked out the stitch-up between them.’
‘But Tyler wasn’t DTI,’ Slider said, remembering aloud. ‘Tyler was Department of the Environment, wasn’t he? He was the junior minister there.’
Andrew shrugged. ‘Tyler was Paxton’s liaison with the government. I dunno where they knew each other from. All I know is Tyler ended up getting the credit and I ended up getting the sack. There’s no justice.’
He seemed to be sinking now, literally deeper into the chair, and figuratively into a drunken gloom. Slider hastened to ask his next question. ‘So what has Stonax been doing since he left the department? What has he been investigating? Has he been following up the Waverley B business?’
‘I don’t know,’ Andrew said. ‘Nobody tells me anything any more. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has. Never could keep his nose out of things that weren’t his business. But there’s nothing to follow up. The election’s over, the yard’s closed anyway, and AM are selling it. What’s to investigate?’ He closed his eyes. ‘Tell ye what, fellas, I’m just gauny have a wee nap, ’cos I’ve got a helluva headache coming on.’
It was clear they would get nothing more out of him – and Slider doubted he had any more to tell, so they left him in peace. As they left, Atherton kindly removed the brandy glass from his slackening fingers and set it on the coffee table, before it could tip over and wet his trousers. At least that would be one less thing for him to worry about when he woke up.
Fourteen
A Legend in His Own Lunchtime
They had to pass Emily’s cubbyhole on the way to the office, and she was already back, beavering away on the laptop. She looked up as Atherton paused in the doorway and the look that passed between them, brief as it was, shook Slider. It was not that it was a look of unbridled passion: that wouldn’t have been so very surprising, knowing Atherton’s past record. It was that it was a look of acceptance, accustomedness, belonging, the sort of look you usually have to be together for some years to achieve. Somehow in three days they had passed from strangers to companions. It had happened that fast for him and Joanna, but their circumstances had been much more favourable. He hoped desperately, for his friend’s sake as much as Emily’s, that the whole murder-bereavement thing didn’t rear up and bite them when things calmed down a bit.
‘I’ve got a lot to tell you,’ she said. ‘I’ve been finding out things.’
‘I never doubted you would,’ Atherton said.
She half rose, looking from him to Slider. ‘D’you want me to tell you now?’
‘I need tea,’ Slider said.
‘Canteen,’ Atherton translated, and they headed for the stairs.
As they climbed, and while they queued at the counter, she described how she had found Chris Fletcher and what he had told her; when they were seated with their cups, she got on to Trish Holland.
‘I’m sure now that Bates was sprung deliberately,’ she said, ‘and how it was done. The beauty of it is that nobody misses him. Wormwood Scrubs thinks he’s at Woodhill. Woodhill assumes he’s still at Wormwood Scrubs. And as far as Ring 4 are concerned, he never went anywhere. After a bit of useful confusion at the site where the van is found, it’s confirmed that it wasn’t a Ring 4 vehicle and there was never a prisoner in it.’
‘But then why get the police in on it at all?’ Slider asked.
‘I think that was a bit of insurance, in case anyone does miss him at any point. Then they can say, oh, yes, he escaped, but we suppressed the news for public-safety reasons. You can justify anything on health and safety grounds. But I don’t think his name was meant to get out. That was probably a mistake: the story was supposed to get the one outing as a deniable unnamed prisoner. The fact that his name was mentioned might account for why the escape filtered down through police levels to your superintendent. But it was never in the public domain. I’m sure if you asked in the prison service they wouldn’t know anything about it.’
‘But how was it done?’ Slider asked.
Emily looked pleased to be the one to be telling him something, rather than vice versa. ‘All you need is someone who can produce the right documents in the first place, someone who knows what they look like, the wording and everything, and knows the protocol. That suggests someone in the Home Office or with access to someone in the Home Office, but it needn’t be. It could be anyone who’s ever had anything to do with prisons or moving prisoners. With modern computers and printers, making the documents isn’t hard as long as you know what to put on them. And then, of course, you need someone with influence inside Ring 4, someone who can give the orders without being questioned.’
‘Who did you say this Holland woman said cancelled the movement?’ Atherton asked.
‘She said it was one of the directors. She said his name was Mr Mark.’
‘Mark?’ Atherton and Slider looked at each other.
‘I looked him up,’ Emily said with exquisite relish. ‘Thomas Mark, director and, more recently, major shareholder. He owns forty per cent of the shares – transferred to his name by their previous owner, Trevor Bates.’
‘Thomas Mark, Bates’s driver and right-hand man,’ Slider said bitterly. ‘We couldn’t implicate him when we took down Bates, and he disappeared off the radar.’
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