In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  “You’re here about Lottie, aren’t you?” he said. “I’ve rather expected it. I didn’t think that bloke last week would be the only one to come round if she didn’t turn up.”

  “Did you expect her to turn up?”

  “I’d no reason not to. She always liked to make mischief. When they told me she was missing—”

  “They?”

  “That bloke who came here on Wednesday night. Last week. He had a woman with him.”

  “Mr. St. James?”

  “I don’t remember his name. They were working for Eve Bowen. They were looking for Lottie.” He took a sip of his water. “When I saw the story in the paper—what happened to Lottie, I mean—I thought someone would come round sooner or later. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” He asked the question casually. But his expression was moderately anxious, as if he sought reassurance rather than information from them.

  Without answering directly, Lynley said, “What time did Charlotte Bowen leave here on Wednesday?”

  “Time?” Chambers looked at his watch. It was fastened to his thin wrist with a strap made from twine. A braided leather bracelet accompanied it. “After five, I’d say. She stayed to chat—she usually did that—but I sent her on her way not too long past the end of her lesson.”

  “Was anyone in the alley when she left?”

  “I didn’t see anyone hanging about, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So consequently, no one was out there to see her leave.”

  Slowly, the musician’s feet drew up under his chair. He said, “What are you getting at?”

  “You’ve just said that there was no one in the alley who might have seen Charlotte leaving here at quarter past five. Am I correct?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So it follows that there was also no one in the alley to confirm—or to refute, for that matter—your claim that she ever left your home in the first place.”

  His tongue went out and passed over his lips, and when he next spoke, the Belfast in him bled through his words, spoken in haste and with rising concern: “What are you on about, then?”

  “Have you met Charlotte’s mother?”

  “Of course I’ve met her.”

  “So you know she’s a Member of Parliament, don’t you? And a Junior Minister at the Home Office as well?”

  “I suppose. But I don’t see what—”

  “And with a little effort to discover her views—which wouldn’t be much of an effort at all since you’re one of her constituents—you might have come to understand where she stands on certain controversial issues.”

  “I’m not political,” Chambers said in immediate response, but the very stillness of his body—every nerve held in check lest he somehow betray himself—acted to give the lie to his words.

  Lynley recognised the fact that his presence alone in Chambers’ house was every Catholic Irishman’s nightmare. The spectres of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four crowded the small room, made already overfull by the ominous proximity of Lynley and Nkata, both English, both Protestant, both well over six feet tall, both in their prime, and one bearing the sort of facial scar that suggested violence had once been part of his life. And both policemen. Lynley could sense the Irishman’s fear.

  He said, “We’ve had a talk with the RUC, Mr. Chambers.”

  Chambers said nothing. One of his feet rubbed against the other and his hands crawled up to hide in his armpits, but otherwise he maintained his calm. “That must have been a dead boring conversation.”

  “They had you pegged as a lout. Not exactly an IRA chummy, but someone well worth watching. Where do you suppose they got that idea?”

  “If you want to know if I’ve sympathised with Sinn Fein, I have,” Chambers said. “But so has half the population of Kilburn, so why don’t you drive round there and roust them out? There isn’t a law against taking a side, is there? And besides, what can it matter now? Things’re cooled off.”

  “Taking a side doesn’t matter. But taking a stand is different. And the RUC have you taking a stand, Mr. Chambers. From right round your tenth birthday onwards. Are you preparing to take more stands, I wonder? Unhappy with the peace process? Think Sinn Fein have sold out, perhaps?”

  Chambers rose. Nkata got to his feet as if to intercept him. The black man towered over the musician by at least ten inches. He outweighed him by a good seven stone. Confronted by him, Chambers said, “Hang on, all right? I only want a drink. Something stronger than water. The bottle’s in the kitchen.”

  Nkata looked to Lynley for direction. Lynley indicated the kitchen with a nod. Nkata fetched a glass and a bottle of John Jameson.

  Chambers poured himself a shot of the whisky. He drank it down and recapped the bottle. He stood for a moment with his fingers on the bottle’s cap, in a position that suggested he was considering his options. Finally, he shoved his long hair back from his face and returned to his seat. Nkata did likewise. Chambers, apparently now fortified for disclosure, said, “If you’ve talked to the RUC, then you know what I did: what any Catholic kid in Belfast was doing. I threw rocks at British soldiers. I threw bottles. I banged dustbin lids. I set fire to tyres. Yes, the police slapped my hands for that, and they did no different to my mates, all right? But I outgrew causing the soldiers aggro, and I went to university. I studied music. I have no IRA connections.”

  “Why teach music here?”

  “Why not teach it here?”

  “It must seem at times a hostile environment.”

  “Yeah. Well, I don’t get out much.”

  “When was the last time you were in Belfast?”

  “Three years ago. No, four. My sister’s wedding.” He dug a cardboard-framed photograph from a pile of magazines and sheet music that stood on a large stereo speaker. He handed it over.

  It was a picture of a large family all gathered round a bride and groom. Lynley counted eight siblings and saw Chambers at their edge, looking ill at ease and slightly apart from the group who, aside from him, were standing arm in arm.

  “Four years,” Lynley noted. “A fairly long time. None of your family are in London now?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve not seen them?”

  “No.”

  “That’s curious.” Lynley returned the picture.

  “Why? Because we’re Irish, d’you expect us to live in each other’s knickers?”

  “Are you at odds with them?”

  “I don’t practise the Faith any longer.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Chambers shoved his hair back behind his ears again. He pressed several keys on the electric keyboard. A dissonant chord sounded. “Look, Inspector, you came here to talk about Lottie Bowen. I’ve told you what I know. She was here for her lesson. After it, we chatted. Then she left.”

  “And no one saw her.”

  “I can’t help that. I’m not responsible for that. If I’d known she was going to get snatched, I would have walked her all the way home. But I had no reason to believe there was any danger round here. No one’s house gets burgled. No one gets mugged. No drug deals go down. So I let her go off on her own and something happened and I feel like hell about it but I’m not involved.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll need corroboration for that.”

  “Where am I supposed to get it?”

  “I expect you can get it from whoever was upstairs when Mr. St. James was here on Wednesday. If someone—other than Charlotte Bowen, that is—was actually here in the house with you. May we have her name and address, please?”

  Chambers’ chin dimpled as he sucked nervously against the inside of his lower lip. His eyes looked distant, as if he were examining something no one else could see. It was the look of a man who had something worth hiding.

  Lynley said, “Mr. Chambers, I don’t need to tell you how serious a situation you’re in. You’ve a background that touches marginally upon the IRA; we’ve the daughter of an MP—with a history of unconcealed hostili
ty towards the IRA—first missing then murdered; you’re associated with that daughter; you’re the last person known to have seen her. If there’s someone out there who can assure us you had nothing to do with Charlotte Bowen’s disappearance, then I’d suggest you produce her straightaway.”

  Again Chambers touched the black keys on the electric keyboard. Sharps and flats issued forth in no particular order. He breathed out a word that Lynley didn’t catch and then finally said in a low voice and without looking at either of the other men, “All right. I’ll tell you. But it can’t get out. If the tabloids catch hold of the story, it’ll smash things to bits. I couldn’t cope with that.”

  Lynley thought that unless the musician was having a clandestine affair with a member of the Royal Family or the Prime Minister’s wife, he was hardly likely to be of interest to the tabloids. But what he said was, “I don’t speak to journalists, tabloid or otherwise. That’s generally handled by the police press bureau.”

  This was, apparently, enough reassurance, although Chambers required another shot of John Jameson before he spoke again.

  It wasn’t a woman he was with on Wednesday night, he told them, keeping his eyes averted. It was a man. His name was Russell Majewski, although the Inspector might better recognise him by his professional name: Russell Mane.

  Nkata said to Lynley, “A telly bloke. He plays a cop.”

  He played, Chambers said, an oversexed police detective whose patch was the eponymous West Farley Street, a gritty drama about crime, detection, and punishment set in South London. It was currently a smash hit on ITV, and his part had launched Russell Mane—if not into the entertainment stratosphere—then at least into heightened public awareness. This is what every actor wanted: recognition for his talent. But with recognition came certain expectations that the actor in question actually be in real life at least somewhat like the character he played. Only in this instance Russell wasn’t at all like his character. He’d never even been with a woman other than on screen. Which is why they—Russell and Damien—went to such pains to keep their relationship a secret.

  “We’ve been together three years, nearly four.” He looked everywhere but at either Nkata or Lynley. “We’re careful because people are phobic, aren’t they? And it’s shortsighted to think they’re anything else.”

  Russ lived here, Chambers concluded. He was filming at the moment and he wouldn’t be back till nine or ten that night. But if the police needed to talk to him…

  Lynley handed over his card. He said, “Tell Mr. Mane to phone.”

  Back in the alley with the door shut behind them and the music once more emanating from within, Nkata said, “Think he knows our Special Branch blokes have him under the daily microscope?”

  “If he doesn’t,” Lynley said, “he’ll be thinking of it now.”

  They walked in the direction of Marylebone Lane. Lynley sorted through what they knew so far. They were amassing an appreciable amount of information and evidence: from fingerprints to a prescription drug, from a school uniform recovered in Wiltshire to a pair of spectacles found in a car in London. There had to be a logical way in which everything they were amassing was connected. All they needed was the clarity of vision that would enable them to see a pattern. Ultimately, everything they had and everything they knew had to be tied to one person. And that was the person who possessed the knowledge about Charlotte Bowen’s paternity, the ingenuity to carry off two successful abductions, and the audacity to operate in the full light of day.

  So what sort of person was it? Lynley wondered. There seemed to be only one reasonable answer: Their perpetrator had to be someone who, if even seen with the children, knew being seen did not necessarily mean being caught.

  Piranhas, Eve Bowen thought. She’d thought jackals earlier, but jackals were by their nature carrion eaters, while piranhas went after living—and preferably bleeding—flesh. The reporters had been gathering all day: outside her constituency office and the Home Office as well as in front of One Parliament Square. They were accompanied by their cohorts—the paparazzi and the press photographers—and together this group milled about on the pavement, where they drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, ate jam doughnuts and packets of crisps, and surged round anyone who might give them a titbit of information as to the fate, the state of mind, or the reaction of Eve Bowen to the disclosures made by Dennis Luxford in today’s Source. As the reporters surged, they fired off questions and shot off pictures. And woe betide the victim of their attention who attempted to shield a face or parry an enquiry with a sharp retort.

  Eve thought last night had been hell. But each time the front door to the constituency office opened to the babble of voices and the flashing of camera lights, she knew the hours between Dennis Luxford’s phone call and her final realisation that she could do nothing to stop his story had only been Purgatory.

  She’d done her best. She’d pulled in every debt and every chit, sitting with the phone pressed to her ear hour after hour as she contacted judges, QCs, and every political ally she’d ever established. Each phone call was to the same purpose: to quash The Source story that Luxford had claimed would save his son. Each phone call produced the same result: the conclusion that such quashing was not going to be possible.

  Throughout the night she heard every variation on why a court injunction was out of her reach, despite her power in the Government:

  Did the story in question—she would not reveal the exact details to any recipient of her phone calls—actually constitute libel? No? He’s writing the truth? Then, my dear, I’m afraid that you haven’t a case. Yes, I do realise that details from our pasts might sometimes prove embarrassing to our presents and our futures, but if those details comprise the truth…Well, one can only keep a stiff upper lip and hold one’s head high and let one’s current actions speak for who one is, can’t one?

  This isn’t exactly a Tory newspaper, is it, Eve? I mean, one could ask the PM to phone and rattle a cage or two if the editor of the Sunday Times or the Daily Mail or even, perhaps, the Telegraph had been planning to run a story seriously detrimental to a Junior Minister. But The Source was a Labour sympathiser. And one couldn’t reasonably expect a little bout of verbal thumb-squeezing to produce an agreement not to print an anti-Tory story in a Labour tabloid. As a matter of fact, should someone even attempt to thumb-squeeze a man like Dennis Luxford, there’s little doubt that an editorial would expose that fact the very same day the story ran. And how would that look? How would that make the Prime Minister look?

  That final question was a thinly veiled prod to action. What it really asked was how The Source’s story was ultimately going to reflect on the PM, who had personally raised Eve Bowen to her current position of political power. What it really suggested was a course of action should that same story be likely to put more egg on the already yolk-smeared face of the man who’d had to endure the humiliation of one of his party colleagues cavorting in a parked automobile with a rent boy just twelve days ago. The Prime Minister’s Recommitment to Basic British Values had already taken some serious body blows, Eve was being told. If Ms. Bowen—not only an MP but also, unlike Sinclair Larnsey, a Government Minister—believed that there was the slightest possibility of The Source’s article causing the Premier any more embarrassment…well, certainly Ms. Bowen knew what course she ought to take.

  Of course she knew. She was to fall upon her sword. But she didn’t intend to plunge earthward without putting up a desperate fight.

  She’d met with the Home Secretary that morning. She’d arrived in Westminster in darkness, long before The Source hit the street and hours before her normal arrival, so she eluded the press. Sir Richard Hepton met her in his office. He’d apparently dressed in what came immediately to hand upon receiving Eve’s phone call at quarter to four. He wore a rumpled white shirt and the trousers to a suit. He had put on neither jacket nor tie, merely a cardigan. He had not shaved. Eve knew that it was his way of telling her that their meeting would perforce be a brief one
. Obviously, he would have to return home in good time to shower, to change, and to prepare himself for the day.

  It was fairly clear that he thought her call was the result of two days spent grieving her daughter’s death. He thought she was there to demand stronger action on the part of the police, and he had come to mollify her in whatever way he could. He had no idea what lay behind Charlotte’s disappearance. Despite experience in the Government which might have taught him contrary, he assumed that things, at least with his Junior Ministers, were what they seemed.

  He said, “Nancy and I received the message about the funeral, Eve. Of course we’ll be there. How are you coping?” His expression was watchful as he asked the question, adding, “These next few days aren’t going to be easy. Are you getting enough rest?”

  Like most politicians, Sir Richard Hepton asked questions that were really references to another topic entirely. What he wanted to know was why she had phoned him in the middle of the night, why she had insisted they meet at once, and above all why she was displaying a disturbing potential to act like an hysterical woman, which was the least desirable characteristic in a member of the Government. He wished to give her leeway because she’d suffered a monstrous loss, but he didn’t want the immensity of that loss to undermine her ability to cope.

  She said, “The Source is going to run a story tomorrow—this morning, rather—that I want to advise you about in advance.”

  “The Source?” Hepton observed her without a change in expression. He played political poker better than anyone Eve knew. “What sort of story, Eve?”

  “A story about me, about my daughter. A story, I should guess, about what led to her death.”