Well, well, well, Forsyth thought, that really is what the Americans would call a game changer.
Beresford was standing outside Paniatowski’s door as Downes and Forsyth approached.
‘Not you,’ Beresford said to Downes, ‘just him.’
Downes bristled. ‘Now look here,’ he said, ‘I’m a government official, and if you think I’m going to be ordered about by a provincial copper, you’ve got another think coming.’
‘You’re a sordid little spy,’ Beresford said, ‘and if you get close enough for me to touch you, I’ll break your arm.’
Forsyth came to a halt, so Downes did, too.
‘Go to the canteen, and get yourself a cup of tea,’ Forsyth said.
‘Look, sir, I don’t think—’
‘An excellent quality in a subordinate, especially at a time like this,’ Forsyth said. ‘Go!’
Downes went.
‘You left Diana Sowerbury tied up all day,’ Forsyth said.
‘Yes, that way I knew where she was.’
‘It was most uncomfortable for her.’
Beresford shrugged. ‘She should look at it as an occupational hazard.’
‘Her occupation is nursing – and she’s very good at it,’ Forsyth said.
‘Until you need her for something else.’
‘Yes, until I need her for something else,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘How did you get onto her?’
‘There were a lot of little things. She arrived very suddenly. She seemed very interested in my work, and she knew things about me that I hadn’t told her.’
‘Plus the fact that she was willing to leap into bed with you hours after you first met.’
‘No, she did that because she wanted to,’ Beresford said. ‘You’d be surprised how often something like that happens.’
‘You have a very high opinion of yourself,’ Forsyth said.
‘Yes, don’t I just,’ Beresford agreed. ‘Anyway, the little things on their own meant nothing, but when I found out you were here, they all fitted together.’
‘I think I’d like to see Monika now,’ Forsyth said.
‘Of course,’ Beresford agreed, ‘but a word of warning before you go in there – if you hurt her, I won’t just break your arm, I’ll break your bloody neck.’
Forsyth walked over to the bed and looked down at Monika.
‘I must congratulate you, my dear,’ he said. ‘It can’t have been easy to contact your gorilla without me finding out about it.’
Not easy? It had been bloody hard!
Timing, she’d realized, was everything, and not just in the way it mattered to a comedian, because if he got it wrong all he would lose was a laugh, whereas if she got it wrong she would be bloody well dead.
What she had to do was to let Colin know that she was conscious at the same moment as she warned him to show no reaction at all.
She’d practiced moving her hand. At first, it had seemed unwilling to respond, as if it had got used to a sedentary existence, and resented these calls to action from the brain. Or perhaps it was the brain which had forgotten how to issue commands. Then, slowly, the movement had come, the commands were obeyed.
There was a part of her which had wanted to delay alerting Colin until she had more control, but caution was not a luxury she could have afforded when – at any moment – Mr Forsyth might have decided the time had come to silence her forever.
And so, the previous afternoon, she had waited until Colin was looking out of the window, then raised her finger to her lips.
He had turned – and frozen.
Please, please, her eyes had begged him, say nothing.
When he’d nodded to show that he understood, she gestured that he should go over to the bed and put his ear to her mouth.
‘Sing,’ she had whispered, in a voice that sounded like a brittle dry flower being crushed.
And Colin – good old reliable Colin – had done just that.
‘Ye tek the high road, and I’ll tek the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye …’
It was not until he’d reached ‘the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond,’ that she’d dared speak again, and this time she’d said, ‘The room is bugged.’
‘Yes, it must have been hard,’ Forsyth said, ‘but I’ve long been impressed by your ingenuity.’ He glanced down at his watch. ‘Shall we get to the point of this meeting, Monika?’
‘I’m not talking to you as a police officer who wants to arrest you for what you’ve done,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Even if I did want to arrest you, I don’t think I’d ever have enough evidence to make it stick.’
‘So if you’re not talking to me as a police officer, then why am I here at all?’ Forsyth wondered.
‘You’re here so I can convince you to spare my life,’ Paniatowski said.
‘You think I might kill you?’
‘I know you would, if you thought it necessary.’
‘I have to say, Monika, that if you really do believe that, you seem remarkably calm.’
‘I’m not calm at all,’ Paniatowski said, because there was no point in lying to a man like Forsyth. ‘I’m absolutely terrified, because if you kill me, who will take care of my baby boys? And who will be there to cry at Louisa’s wedding?’
‘I can see why that might concern you,’ Forsyth agreed.
‘You’d decide to kill me if you thought I might be able to piece together what happened,’ Paniatowski said, ‘but if I’d already pieced most of it together – and had it written down – I’d have insurance.’
‘Only if you’d got it right,’ Forsyth pointed out. ‘If you’d got it wrong, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.’
‘It all starts with the Anglo-French fighter plane,’ Paniatowski said. ‘It would be a big boost to the economy if we could sell it to the Saudis.’
‘The treasury was gasping for that money.’
‘But before the Saudis would buy it, they wanted the planes equipped with the Z-13 missile guidance and detection unit.’
‘How in God’s name do you know about that?’ Forsyth asked, shocked.
‘It came to me in a dream,’ Paniatowski said. ‘At any rate, the Z-13 was an American system which they were perfectly willing to share with their NATO allies – at a price – but were never going to give to France, under any circumstances.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Certain. France had left NATO, and the Americans were so angry that they wouldn’t have pissed in France’s mouth if its throat was on fire. So, the Saudis were insisting on the Z-13 or something just as good, and the French could come up with nothing. And that left you with a big problem.’
‘Are you saying that we found ourselves in a Henry II situation?’ Forsyth asked.
‘I’ve no idea – because I haven’t got a bloody clue what you’re talking about.’
‘Then I’ll explain. Henry II was always having trouble with his archbishops of Canterbury, so when he saw the chance to put his best friend, Thomas Becket, in the post, he took it. The only problem was that Becket turned out to be even more of a troublemaker than his predecessor.’
‘I’m not here for a history lesson,’ Paniatowski said angrily.
‘You should be,’ Forsyth told her. ‘History teaches us what mistakes we have made in order that we can better understand why we are repeating them.’
‘Does this have anything to do with why we’re here now?’
‘It has everything to do with why we’re here now.’
‘Then get on with it, for Christ’s sake!’
‘It was December. Henry was in France, at a banquet, when news reached him that Becket had excommunicated some of his allies. “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” he asked. And four of his knights immediately set sail for England. They found Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, kneeling before the altar. They surrounded him. In their hands, they had broadswords, huge, heavy weapons which, if used correctly, could decapitate a horse with a single stroke. Can
you picture it, Monika?’
Yes – and worse than just picture it. The room was suddenly as cold as the great cathedral in winter, and though she was lying in bed, she could feel the hard stone flags pressing against her knees.
‘They killed him, of course,’ Forsyth said matter-of-factly. ‘The king was delighted with the result – without their leader, the rebels in the church were silent – but unhappy with how it had been attained, and it was not long before he started saying that he had never wanted Becket killed at all. In other words, he wanted the cake, but he would rather not have known how it was baked. Anyway, four years ago we had a minister at the Treasury cast in much the same mould. He told us we desperately needed those aircraft sales, and he didn’t care how we got them. Of course, if we’d told him what we actually did …’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry, Monika, I seem to be doing your work for you.’
‘Or rather, you’re cutting into my audition for my right to continue living,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Whatever,’ Forsyth said airily.
‘My guess is that getting hold of the Z-13 wasn’t a problem,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Dr Pemberton’s team probably had access to it through the project they were doing for the Americans. But you couldn’t just hand it over to the Anglo-French project, so what you had to do was to pretend to steal it, and sell it to the French through a third party. Once it became known that the French had it, someone in the government will have gone over to the States and grovelled to someone in the White House. It was a shocking lapse of security, he will have said. Left to ourselves, we would never use it, but now the French had got their hands on it, and they were insisting. As a sweetener, he probably also promised to pay a royalty on every plane sold.’
‘Interesting,’ Forsyth said.
This was even harder work than she’d thought it would be, Paniatowski told herself.
It was like climbing the steps to a scaffold, with each step becoming steeper and more difficult. She wondered where the image had come from – wondered if all that talk about Henry II and his knights had been partly calculated to plant such thoughts in her mind.
Focus, Monika! You need to focus! Focus or you’re dead!
‘But that wouldn’t have been enough, would it?’ she asked. ‘The Americans will have wanted the guilty party – the person in the lab who committed the actual theft. But you couldn’t give him to them, because under interrogation, he’d be bound to confess who was behind it.’
‘There are very few people who can withstand prolonged interrogation,’ Forsyth said.
‘So you said that you’d questioned Wheatstone and were convinced he’d worked alone and had nothing more to tell, and since he was your traitor, you reserved the right to execute him yourself.’
‘Very good,’ Forsyth said.
‘So once they’d … once they’d …’
‘What’s the matter, Monika?’
The matter was that Forsyth had agreed far too easily.
‘It wasn’t Wheatstone, was it?’ Paniatowski said shakily. ‘I can tell from the way you reacted.’
‘The whole purpose of this meeting is for you to tell me what you know, so that I can assess whether or not we dare let you stay alive,’ Forsyth said. ‘If we’ve hit a roadblock at this early stage, then clearly you can have nothing else to tell me, and I should go.’
He turned and walked towards the door.
She felt as if she had reached the scaffold, and could see the spot on which she was to die.
‘Why wasn’t it Wheatstone?’ she asked.
Forsyth reached out for the door handle.
She could almost see the axe – glinting in the light, stained with the blood of countless others who had gone before her.
‘Why wasn’t it Wheatstone?’ she repeated desperately.
Forsyth turned around. ‘Do you know, I’m enjoying this game so much that I think I’m going to tell you,’ he said. He walked back to the bed. ‘It wasn’t Wheatstone because our psychologists didn’t think he’d do it. It seems that while he had no morals to speak of, he had an ample sufficiency of principles.’
‘So who was it who you persuaded?’
‘Roger Pemberton. I don’t think it was so much the money as the promise that if he did it, we’d kill Wheatstone for him. That was rather convenient for us, since we were planning to do it anyway.’
‘If Pemberton did the deed, why not kill him and leave Wheatstone alone?’
‘Think about it, Monika,’ Forsyth said.
‘Because … because Pemberton might have written something down as a form of insurance.’
‘As you claim you have.’
‘As I have.’
‘Good for you. Now carry on.’
‘But Wheatstone wouldn’t think he’d need any insurance, since he knew nothing about it.’
‘Exactly,’ Forsyth smiled awkwardly. ‘Actually, Pemberton didn’t take that routine precaution, which just shows what a complete fool he was.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Paniatowski agreed.
Forsyth frowned. ‘You’ve missed a trick there, Monika,’ he said.
‘Have I?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Ah yes, I get it now.’
‘Get what?’
‘I’m supposed to ask you how you know Pemberton didn’t leave any papers behind him. I’m supposed to point out that since it’s less than two days since his body was washed up, the person holding his papers may not even know he’s dead yet. Isn’t that what you were expecting?’
‘Yes, it was – but it seems you’re not quite as sharp as I anticipated you’d be,’ Forsyth said.
‘Or it may be that we both know it wasn’t Pemberton who was washed up in Cornwall,’ Monika said.
Forsyth smiled. ‘Nicely played,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ Paniatowski replied.
‘Why don’t you tell me about Arthur Wheatstone’s termination,’ Forsyth suggested.
‘Don’t you mean Arthur Wheatstone’s murder?’
‘If that’s the term you prefer.’
‘There was someone in the States – someone calling the shots – who was adamant he shouldn’t take his own life, wasn’t there?’
I was to make sure there’d been no possibility of him having killed himself, Robert Proudfoot had said.
‘Yes, there was,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘He was, I believe, a middle-ranking member of the State Department, which – if we’re honest about it – means he had more clout internationally than virtually anybody in our own Foreign Office. His grandparents came from Sicily, and brought with them a Sicilian code of honour which includes – along with many other quaint notions – the idea that you never give your enemy the easy way out.’
‘So Proudfoot was here to make sure that the traitor wasn’t given the soft option.’
‘Just so. The plan was that he was there to witness the elimination, but his plane was delayed. By the time that message got through to us, Pemberton and the terminator were in Wheatstone’s house. Pemberton was already a nervous wreck, and terminators as a breed don’t like taking unnecessary risks, so they went ahead as planned.’
‘But why hang him?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Why not shoot him? Or knife him?’ She thought for a second. ‘Ah!’
‘Ah?’
‘If Henry II’s knights had told the king that Thomas Becket had committed suicide, they might just have got away with it.’
‘Precisely so. The man in the Treasury wanted matters clearing up, but he didn’t want a murder on his conscience. And we are, after all, the British secret service – a rather gentlemanly organisation. We don’t want to be thought of as assassins.’
‘Even if you are.’
‘Especially if we are.’
How was she doing? Monika wondered.
No – she couldn’t afford to ask herself that, because she was no longer on a gallows, she was on a tightrope – and if her mind wasn’t focussed purely on moving forward, she would fall off into the darkness below.
‘I would have loved
to have seen the looks on their faces when they realized they were missing an essential piece of equipment for staging their little drama,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Forsyth said.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Perhaps so – but I would still like to hear it from you.’
‘There were three things they needed. The first was a syringe of some kind of dope to knock Wheatstone out, which the killer brought with him. The second was a rope. There was one of them hanging on the garage wall, but even if there hadn’t been, that was no problem, because the killer could have used a bed sheet instead. The third component was a ladder. Now the killer had all the reason in the world to expect to find one, hadn’t he?’
‘Had he?’
‘Of course he had. Every house has at least one ladder – but Mrs Wheatstone had got rid of hers after her suicide attempt. All that was left was a set of steps, slightly higher than a chair, and no help in reaching the beam unless the person using them happens to be an exceptionally tall man.’ She paused. ‘Why do you employ such a tall killer? Isn’t he a bit conspicuous?’
‘I do not employ killers at all,’ Mr Forsyth said, with a sudden chill edge to his voice.
‘Not your department?’
‘Not my department. However, I am told that this particular terminator compensates for his conspicuity by being extremely good at his job.’
‘So the whole thing was a fiasco right from the start,’ Paniatowski said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I worked out almost immediately that Wheatstone couldn’t have hanged himself using only that small stool, and so would any other bobby who’d discovered the body.’
‘Unless that other bobby was Chief Superintendent Snodgrass,’ said Forsyth, clearly stung at what he took to be criticism.
‘Snodgrass was supposed to be the first police officer to arrive at the scene of the crime?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he have a reason for calling on Wheatstone?’
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