In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  That is what Harvie appeared to be doing as Lynley approached him. He ran with arms bent, elbows held to his sides, and eyes anchored upon his own reflection. His lips were drawn back in what could have been either a smile or a grimace and as his feet thudded upon the rapidly moving track, he breathed evenly and deeply like a man who enjoyed testing his body’s endurance.

  When Lynley produced his warrant card and held it at Harvie’s eye level, the MP did not stop running. Nor did he look concerned by this visitation from the police. He merely said, “Did they let you in below? What the hell’s happened to privacy round here?” He spoke in the unmistakable plummy voice of the old Wickhamist. “I’m not finished with this. You’re going to have to wait seven minutes. By the way, who told you where to find me?”

  Harvie had the look of a man who’d take all too much pleasure in sacking the mousy little secretary who’d given Lynley the information in a burst of nerves upon seeing his police identification. So Lynley said, “Your schedule isn’t much of a secret, Mr. Harvie. I’d like a word please.”

  Harvie didn’t react to a policeman’s producing an equally cultivated public school voice. He merely commented, “As I said. When I’m finished.” He pressed his sweat-banded right wrist to his upper lip.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the time to wait. Shall I question you here?”

  “Have I forgotten to pay a parking fine?”

  “Perhaps. But that’s not the province of CID.”

  “CID, is it?” Harvie kept up his speed on the treadmill. He spoke between carefully regulated breaths. “Criminal investigation of what?”

  “The kidnapping and death of Eve Bowen’s daughter, Charlotte. Shall we talk about it here, or would you prefer the conversation take place somewhere else?”

  Harvie’s eyes finally left his own reflection and settled on Lynley’s. They watched him speculatively for a moment as a bandy-legged exerciser with an excessively protuberant stomach clambered onto the treadmill next to them and began fumbling with its dials. It rumbled into action. Its user yelped and began to run.

  Lynley said in a manner designed to carry if not to the rest of the room then at least to the treadmill runner next to them, “You’ve no doubt heard that the child was found dead Sunday evening, Mr. Harvie. In Wiltshire. Not all that great a distance from your home in Salisbury, I believe.” He pressed his hands against the pockets of his jacket, as if looking for a notebook in which to record Alistair Harvie’s statement. He said in the same manner, “So what Scotland Yard would like to know is—”

  “All right,” Harvie snapped. He adjusted a dial on the treadmill. His pace began to slow. When the running track stopped, he stepped off and said, “You have all the subtlety of a Victorian costermonger, Mr. Lynley.” He grabbed a white towel that draped over the treadmill’s railing. As he rubbed it up and down his bare arms, he said, “I’m going to shower and change. You can join me if you want to scrub my back, or you can wait in the library. The choice is yours.”

  The library was a euphemism for the bar, Lynley found, although it made obeisance to its name by offering a fan of newspapers and magazines on a mahogany table in the room’s centre and by containing two walls of bookshelves whose leatherbound volumes didn’t look as if they’d been opened during the current century. Some eight minutes later, Harvie took his time getting to Lynley’s table. He stopped to exchange a few words with an octogenarian who was playing patience with a fiercely proud rapidity. Then he paused by a table at which two pinstripe-suited youths were poring over the Financial Times and making entries into a laptop computer. After imparting his wisdom upon them, Harvie said to the barman, “Pellegrino and lime, George. No ice please,” and finally joined Lynley.

  He’d changed from his workout clothes into his Member of Parliament ensemble. In best public school fashion, he wore a navy blue suit just tatty enough to suggest that a family retainer had broken it in for him first. His shirt, Lynley noted, was a perfect match for his percipient blue eyes. He pulled out a chair at the table and, once seated, unbuttoned his jacket and touched his fingers to the knot—then to the length—of his tie.

  “Perhaps,” Harvie said, “you can tell me what your interest is in interviewing me about this business.” A bowl of mixed nuts sat in the centre of the table. He picked out five cashews and rested them in the palm of his hand. “Once I know why you’re here, I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions.”

  You’ll answer my questions one way or another, Lynley thought. But he said, “Feel free to phone your solicitor if you think it’s necessary.”

  Harvie popped one of the cashews into his mouth. He bounced the rest of them in his hand. He said, “That would take some time, of which, I believe, you recently mentioned you have very little to waste. Don’t let’s play games with each other, Inspector Lynley. You’re a busy man, and so am I. In fact, I have a committee meeting in twenty-five minutes. So I can give you ten. And I suggest you use them wisely.”

  The barman brought his Pellegrino water to the table and poured it into a goblet. Harvie nodded his thanks, ran a wedge of lime round the glass’s rim, then plopped the piece of fruit into the water. He popped another cashew into his mouth and chewed it slowly, watching Lynley as if he were gauging him for a response.

  There didn’t seem a point to verbal duelling, especially in a situation in which his adversary was primed by his vocation to win at any cost. So Lynley said, “You’ve been an outspoken opponent of a new prison in Wiltshire.”

  “I have. It may provide a few hundred jobs for my constituency, but at the cost of destroying several more hundred acres of Salisbury Plain, not to mention bringing a highly undesirable specimen of human being into the county. My constituents oppose it with very good reason. I am their voice.”

  “This puts you at loggerheads with the Home Office, I understand. And with Eve Bowen in particular.”

  Harvie rolled his remaining cashews in his palm. “You can’t be suggesting I engineered the kidnapping of her daughter because of that, can you? That would hardly be an efficacious approach to moving the prison site to another location.”

  “I’m interested in exploring your entire relationship with Ms. Bowen.”

  “I have no relationship with her.”

  “I understand that you first met her in Blackpool some eleven years ago.”

  “I did?” Harvie looked perplexed, although Lynley was more than willing to discredit this perplexity as a demonstration of the politician’s ability to dissemble.

  “It was a Tory conference. She worked as a political correspondent for the Telegraph. She did an interview with you.”

  “I don’t recall it. I’ve done hundreds of interviews in the last decade. I’d hardly be likely to remember any one of them in detail.”

  “Perhaps the outcome of it might jog your memory. You wanted sex with her.”

  “Did I?” Harvie took up his Pellegrino and tasted it. He seemed more intrigued than offended by Lynley’s revelation. He leaned towards the table and picked through the nuts to fish out more cashews. He said, “That doesn’t surprise me. She wouldn’t have been the first reporter I wanted to take to bed at the conclusion of an interview. Did we do it, by the way?”

  “Not according to Ms. Bowen. She rejected you.”

  “Did she? Well, I can’t think I would have put very much effort into seducing her. She isn’t my type. It was probably more a case of my testing the waters to gauge her reaction to the idea of a bonk than actually wanting to screw her.”

  “And if she’d been willing?”

  “I’ve never been an advocate of celibacy, Inspector.” He looked across the room, towards an embrasure that enclosed a window seat of tattered red velvet. Through the windows, a garden was in full bloom and the heliotrope flowers of a wisteria drooped grapelike against the glass. “Tell me,” Harvie went on, turning from the sight of the flowers. “Am I supposed to have kidnapped her daughter as retaliation for that rejection in Blackpool? A rejection, m
ind you, that I don’t recall but one that I’m willing to admit might have occurred?”

  “As I’ve said, in Blackpool she was a reporter for the Telegraph. Her circumstances have changed rather markedly since then. Yours, in contrast, haven’t changed at all.”

  “Inspector, she’s a woman. Her stock has been rising politically more because of that than because she possesses any particular talents over and above my own. I am—like you, I might add, and like all our brothers—a victim of the feminist outcry for more women in positions of responsibility.”

  “So if she weren’t in her position of responsibility, a man would be.”

  “In the best of all worlds.”

  “And possibly that man would be yourself.”

  Harvie finished his cashews and wiped his fingers on a cocktail napkin. He said, “What am I to conclude from that comment?”

  “If Ms. Bowen were to resign her post at the Home Office, who stands to gain?”

  “Ah. You see me as waiting in the wings, the understudy who’s desperately hoping that ‘break a leg’ comes to mean more than a wish of good luck for the leading actress. Is that correct? Don’t bother to answer. I’m not a fool. But the question reveals how little you know about politics.”

  “Nonetheless, if you’ll answer it,” Lynley said.

  “I’m not opposed to feminism per se, but I’ll admit to a belief that the movement is getting out of hand, especially in Parliament. We have better things to occupy our time than engaging in dialogues over whether tampons and stockings should be sold in the Palace of Westminster or a crèche provided for the female MPs with small children. This is the centre of our government, Inspector. It is not the Department of Social Services.”

  Getting a straight answer from the politican, Lynley decided, was like trying to stab a greased snake with a toothpick. “Mr. Harvie,” he said, “I don’t want to make you late for your committee meeting. Please answer the question. Who stands to gain?”

  “You’d like me to incriminate myself, wouldn’t you, but I stand to gain nothing if Eve Bowen resigns her post. She’s a woman, Inspector. If you want to know who gains the most if she stands down as Junior Minister, then you need to be looking at the other women in the Commons, not at the men. The Prime Minister isn’t about to replace a female appointee with a man, no matter his qualifications. That’s not going to happen in the present climate, not with his current rating in the polls.”

  “And if she stands down as a Member of Parliament altogether? Who gains then?”

  “She wields more power from her position in the Home Office than she could ever hope to wield as a simple MP. If you’re looking at who gains what if she stands down, then study the people whose lives are most affected by her presence in the Home Office. I’m not one of them.”

  “Who is?”

  He went for the nuts again, picking two almonds from the bowl as he considered the question. “Gaolbirds,” he said. “Immigrants, coroners, passport holders.” He started to put an almond in his mouth, but stopped abruptly and lowered his hand.

  “Someone else?” Lynley said.

  Carefully, Harvie placed the nuts by his goblet. He said more to himself than to Lynley, “This sort of thing…What’s happened to Eve’s daughter isn’t their normal way of making a point. Besides, in the present environment of cooperation…But if she were to stand down, they would have one less enemy…”

  “Who?”

  He looked up. “With the cease-fire being called and the negotiating going on, I can’t really think they’d want to cock things up. But still…”

  “Cease-fire? Negotiating? Are you talking about—”

  “I am,” Harvie said gravely. “The IRA.”

  Eve Bowen, he explained, had long maintained one of the hardest lines in Parliament on dealing with the Irish Republican Army. Developments towards peace in Northern Ireland had done nothing to allay her suspicions about what the Provos’ real intentions were. In public, of course, she gave lip service to supporting the Prime Minister’s attempts at resolving the Irish question. In private she voiced her belief that the INLA—always more extreme than the Provisional IRA—were a good bet to revamp themselves and emerge as an active and violent force against the peace process.

  “She thinks the Government ought to be doing more to prepare itself for the moment the talks break down or the INLA takes action,” Harvie said. Her belief was that the Government needed to be ready to deal with potential problems at their source and not run the risk of facing another decade of bombs going off in Hyde Park and Oxford Circus.

  “How does she propose the Government do that?” Lynley asked.

  “By examining ways both to broaden the powers of the RUC and to escalate the number of troops deployed to Ulster—all this on the sly, mind you—while still claiming a stalwart belief in the negotiating process.”

  “That’s a risky business,” Lynley said.

  “Isn’t it just.” Harvie went on to explain that Eve Bowen was also a proponent of heightening the police undercover presence in Kilburn. Their purpose would be to identify and monitor London supporters of any maverick elements within the IRA who were intent upon smuggling weapons, explosives, and guerrillas into England in anticipation of not getting what they wanted from the peace talks.

  Lynley said, “It sounds as if she has no belief that a resolution can be found.”

  “That’s a fair assessment. Her formal position is twofold. First, as I’ve already said, that the Government needs to be prepared for the moment talks with Sinn Fein break down. And second, that those six counties voted to be part of the British Empire and by God they deserve the British Empire’s protection to the bitter end. It’s a popular sentiment among those who like to believe there actually is a British Empire any longer.”

  “You disagree with her views.”

  “I’m a realist, Inspector. In two decades, the IRA have demonstrated rather well that they’re not going away because we clamp them in gaol without benefit of counsel whenever we get the chance. They’re Irish, after all. They breed continually. Put one in gaol and ten more of them are out there procreating beneath a picture of the Pope. No, the only sensible way to end this conflict is to negotiate a settlement.”

  “Something Eve Bowen would be reluctant to do.”

  “Death before dishonour. Despite what she says in public, Eve believes at heart that if we negotiate with terrorists now, where will we be in ten years’ time?” He looked at his watch and downed the rest of his water. He got to his feet. “This isn’t typical of them, kidnapping and killing a politician’s child. And I couldn’t say that either event—as horrible as they must be for Eve—would result in her standing down from her position. Unless there’s something connected to those events that I don’t know…?”

  Lynley made no reply.

  Harvie rebuttoned his jacket and adjusted his cuffs. “At any rate,” he said, “if you’re looking for someone who’ll benefit mightily should she stand down, then you need to consider the IRA and its splinter groups. They could be anywhere, you know. No one knows better how to meld inconspicuously into a hostile environment than an Irishman with a cause.”

  20

  ALEXANDER STONE saw Mrs. Maguire out of the corner of his eye. He was staring into the clothes cupboard in Charlotte’s bedroom when the housekeeper came to the door. She had a plastic bucket in one hand while the other hand clutched a limp bouquet of rags. She’d been washing windows for the past two hours, her lips moving soundlessly and ceaselessly in prayer, her eyes dribbling tears as she scrubbed away dirt and polished the glass.

  “If I’m not disturbing you, Mr. Alex.” Her chin dimpled when she looked round the room where Charlotte’s belongings were just as she’d left them nearly a week ago.

  Alex said past the dull ache in his throat, “No. Go ahead. It’s all right.” He reached into the cupboard and fingered a dress, red velvet with an ivory lace collar and matching cuffs. Charlie’s Christmas dress.

  Mr
s. Maguire shambled into the room. The water in the bucket sloshed about like the insides of a boozer’s stomach. Like his own stomach, in fact, although it wasn’t drink this time that was acting upon him.

  He reached for a child-sized tartan. As he did so, he heard behind him the sound of the curtains being drawn back, followed by the sound of Charlie’s stuffed animals being moved from the window seat to the bed. He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought of the bed, where last night in this very room he had fucked his wife, riding her frantically to Destination Orgasm as if nothing had happened to change their lives forever. What had he been thinking of?

  “Mr. Alex?” Mrs. Maguire had dipped one of her rags into the bucket. She had squeezed it out and now she held it in her reddened hands, twisted into a shape like a rope. “I’m not wishing to cause you further grief. But I know the police phoned an hour ago. And as I didn’t have the heart to intrude on Miss Eve’s sorrow, I’m wondering if you might find a way to tell me that won’t cause your dear soul more torment….” Her eyes became liquid.

  “What is it?” He sounded abrupt although he didn’t intend that. It was only that the last thing he wanted was to be the object of anyone’s compassion.

  “Can you tell me, then, how it was with Charlie? I’ve read only the newspapers and, like I said, I haven’t wanted to ask Miss Eve. I’m not intending to be ghoulish, Mr. Alex. It’s just that I can pray more from the heart for her repose if I know how it was with her.”

  How it was with Charlie, Alex thought. Having her take that rapid skip at his side so that she could keep up with him when they walked together; teaching her to cook chicken with lime sauce, the first dish he himself had learned; tracking down the hedgehog hospital with her and watching her wander delighted—small fists clutched to her bony little chest—among the cages. That’s how it was with Charlie, he thought. But he knew what information the housekeeper wanted. And it wasn’t about how Charlie had lived.