Truth and Lies

by Marguerite Valentine

  ‘Yes, but surely we need to know a bit about an employee… Mike could help. He has contacts in Langhithe.’

  He felt a flash of jealousy. ’Maybe he has. But so what? It’s not necessary to know someone who works there. It’s a random attack, via someone whose mind is elsewhere. Besides, think about it. Who’ll be the first in the police round up?

  ‘I’ll tell you. It’ll be the usual suspects in Grassroots, and that includes Mike. What we need is someone they don’t know about, but who’s got the necessary background.’

  ‘Like who? Like you?’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised. I’m not on their radar – as far as I know. The contracts and main players at Langhithe will be documented somewhere. It’ll be a public record. Who’s paying what to whom. Leave it to me.’

  Nixie looked at him intently. ‘Okay, but I’ll have to persuade the operations group. It’s a major change of plan.’

  ‘Go ahead, but don’t say too much. For all we know there’s a nark already in Grassroots. What clinches it for me, is that once it’s started, it can’t be shelved, not like the Big Ben project.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about that, it still pisses me off. All that practice. For nothing.’

  ‘What happened, you’ve never told me.’

  ‘Nobody knew for sure. Mike said there were extra police on duty, too many for it to be normal, so on his advice, at the last minute it was pulled by the operations group.’

  ‘So what’s the crack?’

  ‘He thinks there’s an informer in the group. We’re on high alert.’

  ‘That could be anyone. Someone that’s been around a while, who looks as if they’re going along with things.’

  ‘Well, that covers about everybody, with the exception, that the “he” might be a “she”. It could be a woman.’

  ‘A woman. Is that the kind of thing they’d get involved with?’

  ‘Course they do. What planet do you live on?’ She laughed. ‘Women are like men. Cross them, and they’re out for revenge. Look what’s happened to my mum. It was horrible.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about.’

  She looked hard at him and said, ‘You do know. I told you. She took a baby when she was young. Well, a few days ago, some nutter had got hold of the baby’s favourite toy, a giraffe apparently, broke into the farmhouse and stuck it inside her bed. When she drew her duvet back, it was lying there.She freaked.’

  ‘That’s sick.’

  ‘It gets worse. There was a note as well and a poem, and they’d been left on the kitchen table. The poem was a copy of the one my mum had left with the baby when she tried to escape off Jura. She’s always said it was the worst decision she’s ever made and I should know, I’m her daughter. It’s really screwed her up. It broke her heart. And now, because of some sick bastard, it’s all been brought back.’

  ‘A poem? What about?’

  ‘Love, it was about love because she did love him.’

  ‘But he wasn’t her baby to love.’

  She was silent and then she said, ‘I know that. But love’s a strange thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Love? What do you mean? How’s that come into the equation?’

  ‘No, you don’t understand, do you?’ She gave him a long look. ‘It’s irrational. Nobody knows why someone loves somebody.’

  He stared at her, remembering how she’d said she was falling in love with him. All he’d felt was apprehension and curiosity. He’d felt disconnected from what she was saying. The words were meaningless. They had no emotional content. And neither did he care about her mother’s response. He felt no guilt he’d caused her pain. He felt himself withdrawing from Nixie. He could hear her voice, but it was faint, as if she were speaking from a great distance.

  ‘Well, whatever, it’s set my mum back. She’s having nightmares again. She sleeps with the light on, and she’s back on anti-depressants.’

  He forced himself back into the present. ‘Any idea who could have done it?’ He waited apprehensively for her answer, wondering whether she might, after all, suspect him.

  ‘Rose, or Anami, or some random nutter.’

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Rose was my mum’s best friend. She’d started off helping her, but then she copped her to the police.’

  ‘Isn’t she the one your mum said she was visiting the other day?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve made up. Apparently… You’ve got a good memory.’

  ‘And Anami?’

  ‘My dad’s ex.’

  He was silent. She didn’t appear to be suspicious, but he had to continue playing the game of the concerned outsider.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Nixie. It’s a shitty thing to do. But why would either of them want to do this, after all these years?’

  ‘Well, Rose might.’

  Again he kept his mouth shut, wondering whether she’d made anything more about his slip-up in the restaurant, but she seemed to have forgotten, or at least she didn’t refer to it.

  ‘She has a motive. After the Court Hearing, there was an Order banning them contacting each other. The press were incredibly hostile and they both came in for a lot of stick. After it was over, she went to Canada to do research and they hadn’t been in contact for years, but now she’s in the UK. So it could be her.’

  ‘But your mum said she was seeing her, when she was in London?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, it could still be her. After all, she’s let my mum down once, and she’d always blamed her for getting her into trouble. She’s capable of anything.’

  He kept his mouth shut, avoiding asking the question how she could have got hold of the toy and the letter. That detail seemed to have passed her by. He was safe for the moment.

  ‘And Anami? What about her?’

  ‘Like I said, Anami is my dad’s ex, the mother of my half sister. She’s called Nami. Anami never liked my mum, for obvious reasons. She blamed her for their break-up.’

  ‘She’s the one in Japan?’

  ‘Yes. When my dad goes over to visit, usually he sees her as well as Nami, but this time she wasn’t there. No explanation given, so she could have been here, in the UK.’

  ‘But that’s not credible.’ It was a moment’s inattention and the words fell out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

  ‘What’s not credible?’

  He tried backtracking. ‘That she was in the UK and broke into the house. That either of them would do that kind of thing… it just isn’t plausible.’

  ‘How would you know? You don’t know either of them. There’s a motive. Isn’t there?’

  ‘I guess so. I suppose if either of them hated your mum, they’d know putting the giraffe in her bed would freak her.’

  Nixie gave him an intense look. ‘Well, that’s what we thought.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nixie. Is your mum getting any help?’

  ‘She is. She used to see a therapist years ago, but now she’s retired, she’s starting with a new one. In London.’

  ‘London, why come here?’

  ‘Someone’s recommended her. She’s going to see her on a monthly basis.’

  He said no more. That her mother had had a strong reaction to finding the giraffe and the letter was of little concern. That’s what he’d wanted; revenge, to give her mother a dose of her own medicine. The feelings were similar to those stirred up by passing on his father’s emails to the press. He felt powerful. He pulled her towards him. ‘Nixie, let’s forget about all of this.’ He knew she’d respond and she did. It always worked ─ for both of them.

  His plan, ironically entitled, ‘Fair Shares for All’ included what he knew of Makepeace and Fortescue, was passed onto the operational group of Grassroots. He left his father out of it on the grounds his interests were primar
ily financial and he’d gone as far as he wanted in shopping him. The police could do the rest. The plan was reviewed and two weeks later he was given the green light.

  It was the opportunity to redistribute money amongst the various anti-capitalist groups that had won the argument. He was pleased. It would give him the opportunity to screw Makepeace. His own role was kept under wraps. Only a few were in the know and that suited him. It was the way he wanted it. There’d been a feeling of triumph in the meeting which he’d tried to dampen down. He warned them the gravy train wouldn’t last and that it was only a matter of time before someone noticed money was going missing. Then the questions would be asked and investigations into the breach of security would begin. He planned not to be around then.

  He began his research into Makepeace, trawling through a combination of Grassroots’ contacts, the business press and published accounts. He was a big player, involved in various projects, all based on the development of transport to and from the power plant, but the biggest was the proposed construction of an enormous jetty. Materials were to be brought in from the sea, presumably to avoid the roads, where they’d be vulnerable to attack.

  He reasoned that there had to be extensive emails and invoices flying back and forth between Makepeace’s company and Langhithe, and any one of them could, in theory, be programmed to carry the Trojan into the computer system. To save time, he bought a version of the Trojan malware from the ‘dark web’ and, working through the night, wrote two plausible emails; either one would tempt a recipient into opening the email.

  One promised an easy way to make money; the other was a fee-paying service to access porn sites. Clicking on either was potentially disastrous. It was the computer equivalent to leaving your door wide open and going on holiday. Once in the system, the Trojan would do its work and a steady stream of money would be siphoned off from Makepeace’s company into a secret off-shore account of Grassroots. From there it would be further distributed to the favoured few.

  He’d felt obliged to tell Gimp something about the plan. He realised that working as an undercover agent, as far as what lawbreaking was permissible and what was not, he was sailing close to the wind. So he focused on saying how key members in Grassroots and others working in anti-capitalist groups in the UK, could be entrapped. He left out the proposal to redistribute the money and his personal vendetta against Makepeace. He justified his actions by pointing out it was a way into the heart of the organisation, that he was supplying valuable information on the various environmental pressure groups for his employer and that this could also be passed on to the Met and MI5. He’d sensed Gimp’s disapproval, who’d pointed out what he was doing was illegal and warned him to go no further, but he hadn’t actually told him to stop. For Seb, that was the equivalent of giving him the green light.

  — 14 —

  The following month, Seb pored over the numerous press commentaries. When he wasn’t reading, he was glued to the television. The ‘three fraudsters’ had caught the imagination of the public as well as that of the investigative press. Seb watched, fascinated, as Channel 4 did what they do best – expose the corruption and hypocrisy of the rich and influential.

  Fortescue had been at home when the police called. A tall, thin man with an angular, humourless face, his response was initially arrogantly self-confident. He treated the press and the police with disdain, confidently asserting his innocence to whatever was thrown at him, but as the days passed, and rumour and gossip swirled round what the press liked to call the ‘Westminster Village’, his mask began slipping.

  Large numbers of camera men and reporters were shown camping outside his house, which was situated in Pimlico, and within walking distance of the House of Commons. But such was the press’ intrusive interest the curtains were kept permanently drawn, and on those occasions when Fortescue was obliged to leave his house, the event took place with military precision. His chauffeur pulled up outside, the front door opened and he and his secretary would make a run for the car, accompanied by a retinue of photographers who ran alongside, snapping as they went.

  As for his father, he’d been away on his Norway cruise when the story first broke, but, Seb thought, he’d guess what was coming to him. A day didn’t pass, whether on holiday or not, without him reading the financial press, and since this was particularly bad news, he’d have predicted that, like Fortescue, he’d be given the full treatment by the media. And there was no escape. The only let up being that since he lived outside London in an electronically controlled and gated residence, the press were prevented from getting too close. This hadn’t deterred them. They took to camping along the verges of the lane outside the grounds, their vans transmitting the everyday comings and goings, their ladders providing the only means of catching a glimpse of his father as he swept past at high speed. He, however, unlike Fortescue and Makepeace, wasn’t a Member of Parliament and therefore, ultimately, was of less interest to the press.

  Makepeace, however was of particular interest. As a member of the Energy Committee, as well as being on the Board of a large construction company, it was gently implied, that theoretically, he would have the knowledge and interest in the development of Langhithe Marshes Power Station to provide a possible foundation for financial misappropriation. And since these issues were now in the public domain, questions were raised both inside and outside the House, which with passing of each day became more and more strident and insistent. Makepeace eventually went into hiding, only to emerge, with his solicitor in tow, when the police issued a warrant for his arrest.

  There was no let up, because, unfortunately for him, someone in the press corps remembered he’d been attacked at Aldeburgh some weeks before. The photos were unearthed and again reprinted, his bruised face and black eye creating as much speculation and excitement as the attendant financial corruption.

  The Mirror was first with the beginnings of an explanation. The attack in the sand dunes at Aldeburgh was recent, but one reporter, Jennie Lee, ran a search going back fifteen years on the paper’s powerful computer. She was also creative with the spelling of Makepeace’s name. From her experience as an investigative reporter she knew changing even one letter in a name was a way of avoiding discovery. What she uncovered was shocking and enough for the papers to now insert the word ‘alleged’ into their accounts. That Makepeace had a history of a strong and unhealthy interest in pre-pubescent girls was of no surprise to Seb; after all he’d seen him in action already, his only regret being that he couldn’t pass on what he’d seen.

  Lee had unearthed an early BBC documentary, and one where Makepeace had been an unwilling participant. The same programme was shown again. The programme claimed that Makepeace was one of several influential and powerful people who had contacts with Social Services’ Children’s Homes in a north London borough. The children cared for in these homes were angry, confused, vulnerable, the type to be open to sexual exploitation and manipulation by the powerful and moneyed − men such as Makepeace.

  At the time, he’d denied all knowledge, claimed it was defamatory and threatened to sue. In the absence of hard evidence the reporter backed down and it all went quiet. But the programme had remained online and it now transpired others also knew of his sexual proclivities. The story was immediately picked up and pursued by the Daily Mirror and three weeks later the plot between Fortescue, Makepeace and Seb’s father began unfolding.

  Seb had woken up one particular morning and saw the three had been given front-page prominence. The press were in a state of economic and political ferment. It was an Aegean Stable of financial deception and sexual exploitation, and the press were enthusiastically on hand to clear it up. The hacks, along with their readers, took delight in exposing the corruption of the ‘honourable members’ although, as they dug deeper, the circumstances of the trio’s involvement with each other became increasingly dark. Little by little, the story unfolded of the financial misappropriation. The trio had been snapped eati
ng breakfast together at Harpy’s Bazaar which the satirical press dubbed as ‘Brunch at the Bizarre’.

  That brunch turned out to be an hors d’oevre for what followed; the exposure of blackmail, extortion, and bribery − enough to cause a permanent state of food poisoning. As the evidence stacked up, Jennie Lee, a tireless investigative reporter, had had Makepeace followed, since his denials of involvement were, as far as she was concerned, arrogant hogwash. The result? A series of photographs taken of Makepeace and Fortescue, and one was of particular interest. It showed Makepeace with a young girl on a deserted shingle beach. The girl was Imogen, and although long-distance shots taken in low light, the photos were clear enough to show where Makepeace’s interests lay.

  The images showed him horse-playing, pretending to fall, pulling the girl on top of him, and pulling up her very short skirt. Others showed the same girl entering a taxi and in an apparent drugged state leaning on Makepeace. According to the gossip on the web, Lee had taken them to her editor, who consulted the paper’s lawyer. He’d advised against publication on the grounds of a possible breach of privacy but Lee was not put off. With friends in high places, she was determined not to be silenced, and passed the photos to Freda Arnsberg, the MP well known for her support of the ‘Stop the Langhithe Marshes Nuclear Plant’ campaign.

  She couldn’t have chosen a better person. Arnsberg with others had a track record in investigating the development of Langhithe Nuclear Power Plant. The organisation had already exposed the potentially terrifying safety concerns not only for the UK but countries across the Channel. They’d pointed out the costs of building a new reactor and that the government was underwriting its development, fixing costs, and inflation-proofing the price of electricity. The quoted price was double the market value for a period of thirty-five years and the burden of risk and responsibility for this would lie, not with the investors, but with the British tax payer. Furthermore, despite all the criticisms and the possibility of such a contract being illegal under EU law, the government and a certain well-known energy company continued ploughing ahead.