by Oliver Tidy
‘What do you mean?’
‘I take it that it’s going to incriminate Bishop and Smith and exonerate you,’ said Shelby, comfortably abandoning his pretence that Smith hadn’t been there.
‘That’s the idea. Do you think that if that pompous arse got his hands on the original, the only copy, he’d be back here trying to help me?’
‘Probably not, but still, if I were you, I would hold off for a while.’
‘Why? So that you lot can get some kind of super-injunction together to prevent its publication?’
‘Actually, I was thinking that if it’s that incriminating it might just be in your best interests to see what you can negotiate with them. If they really don’t want it made public knowledge that badly then they might agree to some,’ he searched for the right word, ‘bargaining. Something like that could prove very damaging to the government, the country even.’
‘Maybe I’d enjoy that.’
‘Don’t be a fool. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. You’re getting a rough deal from them. I can see that. But you’re letting your need for revenge cloud your reasoning. You’re not thinking it through. You know you’re going to have to face up to some things you’ve done: Harper for example and those two who met you at RAF Lyneham. If you throw away your bargaining power, you’re throwing away any chance you have of making some kind of deal with the higher powers.’
Sansom stared at the policeman. ‘Why are you taking such an interest in my welfare all of a sudden?’
Shelby shrugged unconvincingly. ‘Just offering you some good advice. You don’t have to take it.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Perhaps I just don’t like to see gross miscarriages of justice, especially when they are perpetrated by the men who are chosen to lead us all. Besides, if you broadcast it all to the world the repercussions won’t help anybody. Let us deal with it and do yourself some good in the process.’
‘Let them get away with it, you mean. It’ll amount to the same thing.’
Another knock at the door and the package was delivered into the hands of Shelby. He put the disc in the player and the pair of them settled to watch the production like old friends watching the latest DVD rental offering. All that was missing was popcorn and Coke.
*
For both men it made riveting viewing. Neither made anything of Shelby’s earlier falsehood that Smith had not been present. Sansom appreciated that the policeman must follow his orders. He also sensed that Shelby seemed not in the least bit unhappy to have Smith’s existence make a liar of him. On the contrary, he projected something bordering on satisfaction at being able to abandon the pretence that had clearly embarrassed him.
Bishop and Smith were portrayed in all their inglorious disgraceful scheming. As well as being a journalist’s fantasy it would also be potentially devastating to the government, the nation and Britain’s international reputation and standing. The politician and the government advisor openly discussed the deaths of innocent people, people just doing their jobs, as though they were talking about sacrificing pieces in a game of chess. Sansom’s cameo appearance between them, staring straight at the camera, was the icing on an unpalatable cake. When it was done, Shelby turned the television off, ejected the disc and slipped it back into its case and into his pocket.
‘What will you do with your copy?’ said Sansom.
‘It’s evidence.’ Shelby seemed distracted. ‘I need to make some calls. You’ll have to go back to your cell. Do you want anything? Food? Something to drink?’
‘Thanks. That would be welcome.’
‘I’ll arrange it. And while you’re in there do yourself a favour if it’s not too late – think on what I said.’
He took the voice tape out of the recording machine, rose, went to the door, spoke to the constable outside and disappeared.
*
Sansom was ushered back to his cell to wait for what he knew would be an inevitable visit from the representative of the higher power.
It wasn’t long in coming. He’d barely had time to consume his lukewarm meal and a thin cup of coffee before yet another constable was at the cell door telling him to get to his feet. He had visitors.
He was back in the same interview room. The television had gone. He sat in the same chair and waited and waited. Eventually, the door was opened and three men entered. Sansom felt important. Like an important man, he made no attempt to rise to receive his visitors. Shelby was there with the mystery man from earlier and another older slightly scruffier man. The deference that both Shelby and the mystery man gave the new face left Sansom in no doubt who was the alpha male. The alpha male sat down opposite Sansom. The man from earlier took the chair next to him.
‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ said alpha. ‘We’ll take it from here. We’ll let you know if we need you again.’
Sansom thought he might as well try out his position. ‘He stays,’ he said. ‘If you want me to talk to you, that is.’
The alpha male regarded Sansom through his cheap-looking spectacles. They were slightly askew on his long-ago-broken nose. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We thought you might like a little privacy to discuss your position, that’s all.’
Sansom doubted this. He didn’t respond immediately. Shelby took a wall to lean against. He folded his arms and waited.
‘Who are you?’ said Sansom.
‘It doesn’t matter who we are,’ said the man from earlier, directing his attention to adjusting his tie clip.
‘Yes it fucking well does,’ said Sansom, loudly. ‘It does fucking well matter to me. You stuffed-shirt-arseholes come barging in and out of my life, treating me like some – what was it you called me on your last visit? “an Army grunt” – just expecting me to comply. Well I’m getting a little bit fed up with it. You can start to comply or you can fuck off and face the consequences.’
Sansom’s little outburst appeared to have the desired effect.
When the atmosphere had lost some of its charge the man behind the glasses said, ‘My name is Crouch and my colleague is Mr Hart. We represent Her Majesty’s Government.’ The mellow quality of his voice helped further to restore the calm.
‘Prove it,’ said Sansom, pushing his luck with them in order to discover just how powerful he had become.
Clearly both were quite unused to such demands but after a moment Crouch, looking a little bemused, produced some identification and Hart, grudgingly, followed suit. They laid them on the table before him.
‘Satisfied?’ said Crouch.
‘Thank you. Yes,’ said Sansom and his tone and his manner had returned to something like civilised. He was indeed powerful, albeit temporarily, he thought, and hoped that his face betrayed none of the smarmy feeling that it gave him.
‘Now,’ said Crouch, ‘why don’t we order some tea? and, Chief Inspector, if you are going to stay, please, have someone bring you a chair.’
Shelby spoke out of the door and returned to his place propping up the wall.
Crouch arranged his arms and hands on the table in front of him. ‘What a time of it you appear to have had, Mr Sansom,’ he said and there seemed genuine sympathy in his tone. ‘I for one would like to extend my personal condolences. The fact that you have survived what you have to be here in the position that you are in today bears great testimony to your resilience and fortitude. I sincerely mean that.’
To Sansom, it was only good manners to thank him for that.
‘I can only try to understand how angry you must be with your treatment. You want the people who have done this to you exposed, punished and ruined, I dare say. It’s understandable. But will it be for the best? Would that be in your best interests, really? Would it be in the best interests of your country? I can certainly answer the last question and the answer would be an emphatic no. The ramifications of such an exposure would not profit anyone. In fact I can assure you that such revelations, particularly at this extremely sensitive time internationally, with the Uni
ted Kingdom’s delicate situation in certain parts of the world, would almost certainly be catastrophic. Quite possibly the fall-out of certain aspects of your “story,” if you’ll forgive the term, would lead to further loss of innocent lives abroad. I won’t bore you with those details.’
‘So you want to make a deal with me?’
‘I want to appeal to you as a British citizen, a member of the Armed Services and a man who I hope has seen enough bloodshed over this sorry episode.’
They were interrupted by the arrival of tea and a chair. Sansom found himself wondering where they found four matching cups and saucers, unchipped. As the tray was set down, he was struck by the outward appearance of the little tableau and then it crossed his mind that he was indeed fortunate to be in the position that he was. He owed Susan a huge debt for that. The constable retired, leaving them to sip from their bone china. Someone had even thought to arrange a fan of biscuits. Sansom helped himself. No one else did, so he took another. Being powerful gave him an appetite.
After the interval, Crouch said, ‘Her Majesty’s Government wants to help you, Mr Sansom. I’m sure you appreciate that this business aside...,’ Sansom flinched at the term and then realised instantly that of course it was just business to them, whatever their platitudes; however they dressed up their intentions; whatever language they poured into his ear – the same way that it was just business to Smith and Bishop. It was always, just business. Well, if it was business to them, he would treat it the same way. Get out of it what he could for himself. Shelby had given him good advice. He looked over towards the policeman whose gaze was fixed on Sansom’s face. Their eyes held briefly and it seemed to Sansom that Shelby had read his thoughts. He just caught the rest of Crouch’s sentence, ‘...you will have to answer for certain serious misdemeanours.’ The weight of the remark was allowed to settle.
Sansom said, ‘Stop me whenever you like. You want me to make sure this recording does not go out to every newsdesk in the country. In return you will “help” me?’
‘You could put it that way. We can help you with your legal problems and, of course, we can compensate you in return for your cooperation.’ Clearly, Crouch was past appealing to his sense of loyalty to his country, threatening him with all manner of misery or reminding him that he was still officially a member of the Armed Forces who should just do as he was bloody well told, keep his mouth shut and hand it over.
Sansom burst out in genuine, uncontrolled mirth, the manic release of pent-up emotion at an absurd realisation. The rest of them waited with perplexed expressions until it passed. He wiped at his eyes and wondered when was the last time he had had to brush away tears of laughter. ‘You’re wondering what’s so funny?’ he said. ‘You’re funny. There’s a comic irony here. If you’ve watched the recording of Bishop and Smith, I don’t know why you’re not laughing yourselves or squirming in embarrassment. It’s like I’m talking to them all over again. The false deal that I discussed with them only a few hours earlier is now back on the table almost replicated, only this time it’s the good guys, the forces of law and order, who are trying to buy my silence. There is nothing to choose between you lot morally or ethically, even if you might argue that your reasons are more altruistic than theirs, but that’s something I’d have to take with a good shovel of salt. Still, as Bishop, Smith and you, Mr Crouch of Her Majesty’s Government, have gone to pains to have me believe – this is all just business.’
They looked at him like perhaps he had gone a little mad. And perhaps, he reflected briefly, there was a touch of the manic, of the insane, about his reaction.
‘Would you like us to come back another time, Mr Sansom?’ said Crouch. ‘Perhaps you need some rest.’
‘OK, pretend that you can’t see it. It makes no difference to me. We’d better get this thrashed out now – our business deal, if there is to be one that is – because in a couple of hours if my friends don’t hear something positive from me, the copies of that little meeting start getting delivered.’ He smiled, back under control and purring along nicely. ‘Sure, if that happens, I’ll probably be fucked, but you never know.’
‘Mr Sansom, if they get delivered all over London, as you are threatening, I can guarantee you that you will not just be fucked, you will be gang-raped. I will personally arrange it and I assure you that you’ll never get over it,’ said Crouch in an uncharacteristic display of the vernacular that had both Shelby and Hart staring at him agog.
Sansom, still smiling said, ‘I like a man who’s not afraid to swear sometimes, Mr Crouch. Let’s talk.’ He took a slurp of his tea and another biscuit.
***
24
At a nod from Crouch, Hart took a pad of fine-looking notepaper from an expensive leather briefcase. Then from his immaculately-tailored jacket he took the classiest-looking fountain pen Sansom could ever remember seeing. He wrote a title and underlined it twice. It was a bit old-fashioned and Sansom was struck by the thought that old-fashioned was probably what these two were all about – archaic cold-war men; dyed-in-the-wool civil servants of the clandestine variety, brought up on a diet of Fleming, le Carré and Deighton in their boarding school dormitories, reading by torchlight under the covers and dreaming of espionage.
Crouch said, ‘We need to start somewhere, so tell me what you want, Mr Sansom, and we’ll go from there.’
During the periods of inactivity and quiet he had experienced recently, Sansom had given a good deal of thought to the possibility of arriving in the position that he now found himself, along with what his demands should be if and when the time came. He had countered his self-chiding side, reasoning that if he did fulfil his objectives – if he did beat them against all the odds – he’d look pretty silly if he got his five minutes at the negotiating table and had nothing to say.
He experienced another moment of déjà vu as he initiated his demands. What he’d reeled off to Bishop and Smith was, actually, not so far from his truth.
‘I can’t replace my wife and daughter. I can’t get back the year out of my life that I lost on the island. My career is finished. I can’t be compensated for everything. But you can give me back my future – and that’s what I want. I want immunity from prosecution for all those ‘serious misdemeanours’. I want an honourable discharge from the Army with back-pay and a full pension as befits the rank that I was when that life was ended. I could never go back to them and I doubt that they’d want me. I lost my home because of all this. My wife and I had a sizeable sum invested in it. My dead father-in-law’s property is on the market. I want it, freehold and mortgage-free.’ Hart’s nib scribbled and scratched away without hesitation. Sansom noted that no one was throwing his arms up in protest at his demands thus far. ‘I want a completely clean slate, no little red flags on files – and of course I want this whole media-murder-hunt believably explained away. I don’t want to find myself being attacked by over-zealous vigilante types every time I step outside my front gate or being spat at in the street. Oh, and the reporter, she’ll need something out of this if she’s to keep her mouth shut. Of course, I suppose you could threaten her to keep her silence, but that’s not what she deserves or what I want. And this is about what I want, right? I want it all in writing and signed by someone very important – the Home Secretary, perhaps.’
Crouch managed to raise his bushy eyebrows at that. There was a long moment’s delay before he said, ‘Is that it?’
‘I think so.’ He waited for their arguments and the haggling.
The eyebrows dropped and knitted in response to a frown. ‘On the recording with Bishop you were demanding millions.’
‘I had to make them believe that I was as bad as them, that money would make it all go away – that I could be bought. It’s all they would have understood.’
The man in charge seemed to be appraising Sansom in a new light. ‘I don’t see that we would have any great difficulty with any of that,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a bit of time, of course.’
‘I know,’ said
Sansom. ‘I’m a realist. That part was true.’
‘And I can rely on you calling off any mass-distribution of your little cinematic debut?’
‘It would seem the smart thing to do,’ said Sansom.
‘Who knows about it?’ said Crouch.
Sansom smiled back at him. ‘I can guarantee you that the lid will be kept firmly screwed down. All copies will be destroyed, apart from one or two, of course. I’m sure you understand.’ He allowed another jolt of irony escape him in a short laugh. ‘Let’s call it insurance, shall we?’
There was little that Crouch could do about that and everyone in the room knew it. He took it with good grace. It seemed that their business was concluded. Crouch indicated as much with his body language and Hart packed his things back in that expensive briefcase of his.
‘Does this mean that I’m free to go?’ said Sansom.
‘Unless the Chief Inspector is going to charge you with anything?’ said Crouch, looking in the policeman’s direction. Shelby shook his head. ‘Naturally, Chief Inspector, you understand that everything that has been discussed in this room is strictly confidential and not to be repeated.’
Shelby inclined his head in assent.
‘In that case, Mr Sansom, we will leave you to call off your couriers. Here is my card. Please, call me tomorrow.’ It was plain and unassuming. Strictly functional. No frills.
Crouch stood, quickly followed by Hart and Shelby.
Sansom looked up at the senior man. ‘Can I trust you, Mr Crouch?’
‘I give you my word that I am leaving here confident that all your demands can be met. Can we trust you, Mr Sansom?’
‘Yes,’ replied the soldier.
Crouch extended his hand and Sansom stood and took it. It was like a cool slab of raw meat but there was strength there too. They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment and then Crouch led Hart out.
As Hart passed him, Sansom said, ‘I’d say that was a better offer, wouldn’t you?’