by Oliver Tidy
‘You’re not unlike us, Sansom,’ said Bishop.
‘Oh, really? How’s that?’
‘That business in Turkey. You didn’t take much persuading to get out there and into them, did you? As I remember, you were more than happy to accept our assistance to satisfy your own vindictive motives. How many did you kill? Was every fatality necessary? Was every death justifiable? Were you guilty of murdering people in cold blood without trial or evidence just because they were either in your way or because you wanted to believe that they were implicated in your “business”?’
‘That was different and you know it.’
‘And what about since you’ve been back in England? Osman and Sharp? Were their deaths absolutely necessary, or did you perhaps just lose your temper? Did you ever stop to consider whether either of those men were husbands or fathers? They were certainly somebody’s sons,’ said Smith.
‘We’re not the same,’ said Sansom, wearily. ‘I wouldn’t shoot dead unarmed people just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, let alone sanction it remotely from behind a comfortable desk.’
‘Taking life is taking life. There is no grey area. Once you’ve taken your first, once you’ve crossed over that moral boundary, there is no going back. And I think that deep down you know it,’ said Smith.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much about the philosophical and ethical debate surrounding the taking of life just now if I were you,’ said Sansom. ‘The light is going. You should channel your creative energies into how you’re going to clear me from any role in your trail of death and destruction without implicating yourselves. Probably you want to have a chat about that; sort out your lies. Just remember, whatever you say only needs to satisfy one criterion where I’m concerned: I must be categorically cleared of any involvement in the deaths of Hatcher, Martins, Tallis and those unfortunate two uniforms. Get it right first time and we can all sleep in our own beds tonight.’
Sansom turned away from them and went to the window. He listened to their scheming and their fabrications with a growing sense of pleasure and relief as he made the best impression he could of simply looking out for a delivery of a video camera.
***
22
He listened with guarded satisfaction to their dishonest conniving. Every morsel, every untruth, every indiscretion, every detail combined to slowly buoy his spirit like the raising of some long-ago sunken ship from decades of sucking sludge. If this didn’t work for him then he didn’t know what would. And if it didn’t, he’d find himself either incarcerated for the rest of his life or assassinated. It was a sobering thought and one that gave him a late wobble. It was still possible to just run and hide.
But that thought was quickly dismissed. As he listened, he tempered his natural reaction to hope that it might, actually, finally, be coming to an end. And, despite his best efforts to stem it, he experienced a trickle of relief filter through his system at the apparent success of his deviousness. He recognised that sensation for the dangerous potion that it was: something to be guarded against. He still had work to do.
While they bickered over the details, engrossed in their scheming, he walked around behind them, careful to get his face in the shot. When he felt that he had enough – enough to hang them both with and save his own skin – he moved back to rummage in the holdall. With his back to them, he extracted the tape from the machine and replaced it with a blank. He couldn’t take the original with him. When he was searched it would be confiscated and then he knew he would be lucky if he ever heard of it again. He slipped it into a case and then his back pocket.
He moved back to the window. They weren’t paying him much attention any more. Their deepening conversation had become more animated as they wrestled with how they could suppress their individual and collective guilt. He took up the mobile phone and dialled Susan’s number. He was facing the two men now, watching them with revulsion for what they stood for. It was answered by a man’s voice.
‘Shelby?’ said Sansom.
Smith stopped talking and looked up. Bishop hadn’t heard him and continued to argue his position.
‘Speaking.’
‘I said I’d call when I had what I needed.’ Sansom and Smith’s eyes were locked, the latter trying to work out what the soldier was up to.
‘And have you?’
‘The best I think I’m going to get. The best I could hope for.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Let me talk to Susan first and then I’ll give you the address. My word on it.’
There was a brief delay as the phone was passed across.
‘Acer?’
‘All done. You can make your call now. I’m going to tell Shelby that you must come with him. Insist on it. I’m going to tell him that if I don’t see you out there next to him then I’m not coming out. Clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘You remember where I’ll leave it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Put him back on.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ said Smith. Bishop’s noise had petered out and he looked confused.
Sansom held up a finger indicating for them to be quiet.
‘Yes,’ said Shelby.
‘Where the two uniformed police officers were shot dead. There are three of us here: me, Alex Bishop MP and a man named Francis Smith, who probably works in military intelligence. No doubt you’ll be surrounding the place with armed officers. If it hasn’t occurred to you already, I wish to surrender myself to you. When you arrive, make yourself known. I’ll know it’s you because you will have Susan standing next to you. No Susan and you have a hostage situation instead of a peaceful resolution to put on your CV. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly. Anything else? Yes. Susan gets one phone call now. I’ll hold on the line until she confirms that it’s made.’
Smith’s face had coloured noticeably and suspicion burned in his eyes. He looked a very uncertain and anxious man.
‘What’s going on?’ said Bishop.
‘Change of plan,’ said Sansom.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. Just sit tight. Cavalry’s on its way.’
Smith was looking around the room. His gaze settled on the holdall on the table opposite him. Sansom observed him with satisfaction as he worked it out. Smith brought his stare back to meet the soldier’s.
‘It’s in there, isn’t it?’
Sansom nodded.
‘What’s in where? What are you two talking about?’ There was a rising panic in Bishop’s tone, the panic of a man who was experiencing the dawn of a terrible realisation but was blind to its source.
‘Acer?’
‘Still here.’
‘It’s done.’
‘Good. See you soon.’
He closed the phone and slowly filled his lungs with fulfilment. Expelling the deep breath brought calm to him.
‘Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?’ Bishop stood. His raised voice betrayed the essential weakness of his character.
‘Sit down before I put you down,’ growled Sansom.
Bishop sat, remembering that Sansom delivered on his threats.
‘He’s duped us, haven’t you?’ said Smith. Sansom detected a hint of admiration in the civil servant’s tone. ‘While we’ve been spilling our guts trying to worm our way out of the shit he’s been recording us.’
‘What? But, you said...’ Bishop’s incredulity was bordering on hysterical and pitiable.
‘Yes, he did. And we believed him. We were so focussed on the chance of getting out of here alive that we didn’t read the small print. Silly us.’
Sansom reached into the holdall that had been resting on a piece of furniture opposite the two seated men and withdrew the video camera. He removed the blank tape and waved it at them.
Bishop stared at it as though he had just been told it was a bomb about to explode. He shrank back into the upholstery. In little more than a whisper, he said,
‘Who were you talking to on the phone?’
‘The police. They’re on their way.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Why what? Why are they coming? Because I’ve asked them to.’
‘What about our arrangement? How do you hope to get the money, to get away now?’
‘You fool,’ said Smith. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet? He never had any intention of following through on that little charade, did you? He wanted our testimony all right – our unguarded testimony. All that crap about money and new identities was smoke and mirrors, so he could get what he thinks is going to extricate him from his mess. Once again, it seems that we’ve underestimated you, Sansom.’
‘You don’t seem very worried about it,’ Bishop said to Smith. ‘If he’s going to incriminate us we’re going to jail for a very long time. We’ll be facing total ruin.’
‘Correction,’ said Smith. ‘You will. Not me.’
‘How do you see that working?’ said Sansom.
‘The position that I hold has a clause excusing me from prosecution for anything that I may be forced to sanction in the name of national security. It’s a little legal loophole that I insisted on when I took this job. I can’t be tried for anything even if you could make a cast iron case against me. It’s a privilege of my position. I’m above the law. And it’s legal.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Sansom, although his conviction was less than emphatic.
‘I’m not bloody insulated against the law,’ said Bishop, almost shouting.
‘That’s your problem,’ said Sansom.
In the far distance of the still evening the sound of a siren drifted in on the ether. ‘I told you I wasn’t like you. I want my life back and my name cleared. I’ll take my chances with the authorities for my actions but I won’t let myself be saddled with yours. You can face the music for that.’
Bishop stared at Smith but Smith only smiled back. His confidence in his position was either supreme or he was keeping a very cool head. Either way, Sansom was still prepared to let the authorities deal with him now. He had what he wanted.
It was more than one siren and the wailing got progressively louder as they closed in on the address. Bishop’s eyes assumed a wild look, like a show pony finding itself suddenly corralled with a bunch of wild mustangs. Sansom let him see the pistol again lest he got any stupid ideas. He peered through a join in the curtains. Two police cars had arrived in the street. Armed and armoured men scurried about. Along to his left, he saw the television vehicle arrive. Everything seemed ready. It was time to play his last card.
‘There is still a way out for you, Bishop. He might be protected but you are all exposed. This isn’t a bit of perjury. You’re not going to find yourself making park benches in some comfortable open prison and back in society in a few easy months. The only way out of jail for you will be in a body bag.’ Sansom let that fester for a long moment. ‘You want to hear my idea?’
‘What is it?’
Smith had been reduced to observer now and wore an enigmatic smile, apparently enjoying his ring-side seat.
‘It’ll cost you,’ said Sansom.
‘Anything.’ Bishop was almost pleading.
It wouldn’t be long before the loud hailer summoned him. Despite his assurances to Shelby, the policeman would need to observe certain operational protocol and that would take time. It wouldn’t be worth it to the senior policeman to do it any other way than by the book in case something went wrong, especially with television cameras now on the scene.
‘Botha told Tallis that there was more to the massacre on The Rendezvous than just a lesson for you. I want to know what it was.’ It would be the soldier’s last opportunity to discover why his wife and daughter, along with every other person on board, had been slaughtered.
‘What guarantees can you give me that I can get out of this?’
‘My word. That’s all I’ve got. There is a way and only I can provide it. They won’t be able to touch you.’
‘Shut up, Bishop,’ said Smith, his confidence slipping. ‘You tell him and you are fucked. I’ll fuck you.’
‘I’m fucked if I don’t tell him. You’re all right, aren’t you, with your fucking clauses?’
‘You think you can trust him to help you after all you’ve admitted to? Don’t be a bigger idiot than you already are.’
Sansom pushed over to Smith. ‘How would you like to lose some teeth? One more word.’
A burst from the tinny whine of the megaphone shattered the ensuing silence. Bishop flinched.
‘Acer Sansom. This is Chief Inspector Shelby. Are you in there?’
Keeping out of sight behind the closed curtains, Sansom cracked a window. ‘I’m here. I can’t see Susan.’ He saw the man with the megaphone, presumably Shelby, beckon to someone out of sight. Susan walked over to join him.
‘She’s here.’
‘I see her. Give me five minutes. I’m coming out of the front door.’
‘Five minutes,’ echoed the policeman. He would be happy to wait the extra short delay if it could bring a calm and ordered resolution to a tabloid saga that had gripped the nation for nearly two weeks.
‘You heard,’ Sansom said to Bishop. ‘When I’ve gone, you’re all theirs.’
‘You tell him and you’ll be signing your own death warrant, you bloody fool. It’s treasonable,’ said Smith.
Sansom covered the few paces to Smith and with no small satisfaction whipped the pistol across his forehead. He slumped. The blood coursed freely down his face. Sansom understood that whatever it was Bishop had to say must be something hugely significant to Smith to risk the blow that he must have known Sansom would deliver with his promise.
‘You were saying,’ said Sansom.
Bishop’s oversized Adam’s apple worked several times before he spoke. ‘The target was another family on board. The Hammonds.’ Sansom remembered them. ‘They were both nuclear physicists working in UK government research. I owed Botha and I couldn’t deliver on our original deal. He was threatening to ruin me. He threatened to harm my family. Botha was an arms dealer who didn’t restrict himself to weapons. He traded hardware, software, secrets, whatever he could make money on.’ Bishop swallowed hard. ‘He also viewed important, useful people as a commodity that he could trade in. I gave him the Hammonds to pay my debt.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Sansom, a deep frown creasing his brow.
It all came pouring out from Bishop in a tide of guilty desperate hope, hope that he was to be spared accountability for his involvement by something that Sansom might do for him. ‘Botha’s men abducted the whole Hammond family – him, her and their two children – and sold them to a third party. In order to make it look like there were no survivors from the ‘accident’ they did what they felt necessary.’
Sansom interrupted him. ‘They murdered everyone on board so that no one would suspect that the Hammonds had been abducted?’
‘Yes. I swear I had no idea they would commit such a heinous crime.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense. Why kill everyone? Why not just take them if it’s kidnap? They didn’t have to kill everyone on board. It would all come out when the ransom demands were made.’ He was almost shouting now.
‘They felt that they did,’ said Bishop. He was cowed under the memory of his burden. ‘You see, where the Hammonds were going there was never going to be a ransom demand. It had to look like they perished along with everyone else. If anyone knew they were still alive and where they had gone then there would certainly have been major diplomatic repercussions. They had to be believably disappeared.’
‘Where did they go?’ said Sansom.
‘My way out?’
‘It’s still there.’
‘Iran.’
Sansom looked at Bishop in disbelief. But he could see in the politician’s eyes that it was the truth. He was momentarily swamped with a giddy nausea that threatened to overwhelm and destabilise him. Somewhere deep within his subconscious a waterti
ght door to a compartment that he had managed to keep sealed and isolated was being prized open under the weight of his emotions. If they escaped, they would threaten to flood his reasoned thinking and ruin the carefully calculated leave-taking of the pair that he had envisioned, finishing him as a believable victim in the process. Whatever they had conspired in, however low they had sunk in the dregs of humanity, they were not worth destroying his own chances of salvaging something of what remained of his life. He sucked in air and brought himself under control.
Sansom cocked the pistol and pointed it at Bishop’s face. Then he laid it down on top of the cupboard by the holdall. He met Bishop’s watery stare.
‘There’s your way out. The solution to all your problems. There’s one round in it if you’ve got the balls. With what you’re facing, I’d say a bullet is the easy option.’
He turned and walked out of the room, down the familiar hallway, unlocked and opened the front door and stepped out.
The thick foliage that cramped either side of the small front path to the gate hid him from those awaiting his appearance. He needed that. In one hand he held the tape that would be the key to his freedom, the irrefutable testimony of his innocence; in the other, the blank. Under the cover of the rambling shrubbery he walked slowly towards his reception committee. As he stepped out on to the pavement, he dropped the tape that Susan must recover for him into a dense green bush just inside the front wall. Holding his arms well out from his sides, he stood and awaited instructions.
Shelby barked out commands. Sansom complied. Armed officers moved in, handcuffed him, searched him and hauled him roughly to his feet. The glare of the media spotlight forced them to show some restraint when what they wanted was to tear him limb from limb for his ‘crimes,’ for what they believed he’d done to three of their own. He was led across to Shelby. Susan was standing with the senior officer still. The videotape that he had retained was taken from him and handed over to Shelby. The policeman and the soldier stood appraising each other from a similar height when a single pistol shot punctuated the air.