At Risk

by Stella Rimington

  Peregrine’s gaze turned to ice. His mouth was a thin, taut-clamped line. “My private life, young lady, is my own business, and I will not, repeat not, be blackmailed in my own house.” He rose from the sofa. “You will kindly leave, and leave now.”

  Liz didn’t move. “I’m not blackmailing you, Mr. Lakeby, I’m just asking you for the precise details of your commercial relationship with Ray Gunter. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. The easy way involves you giving me all of the facts in confidence; the hard way involves a police arrest on suspicion of involvement in organised crime. And given that, as we all know, there’s a regular flow of information between the police and the tabloid newspapers …”

  She shrugged, and Peregrine stared down at her, expressionless. She returned his gaze, steel for steel, and gradually the fight and the arrogance seemed to drain out of him. He sat down again in slow motion, his shoulders slumped. “But if you’re working with the police …”

  “I’m not quite working with the police, Mr. Lakeby. I’m working alongside them.”

  His eyes narrowed warily. “So …”

  “I’m not suggesting you did anything worse than take Gunter’s money,” said Liz quietly. “But I have to tell you that there’s an issue of national security at stake here, and I’m sure you wouldn’t wish to endanger the security of the state.” She paused. “What was the deal with Gunter?”

  He stared bleakly out of the window. “As you surmised, the idea was that I turned a blind eye to his comings and goings at night.”

  “How much did they pay you?”

  “Five hundred a month.”

  “Cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did those comings and goings consist of?”

  Peregrine gave a strained smile. “The same as they’ve consisted of for hundreds of years. This is a smuggler’s coastline. Always has been. Tea, brandy from France, tobacco from the Low Countries … When the Channel ports and the Kent marshes got too dangerous, the cargoes moved up here.”

  “And that’s what they were landing, was it? Booze and tobacco?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “By who? By Gunter?”

  “No. I didn’t actually deal with Gunter. There was another man, whose name I never found out.”

  “Mitch? Something like Mitch?”

  “I’ve no idea. Like I said …”

  “How were you paid?”

  “The money was left inside the locker on the beach. The place where Gunter kept his fishing gear. I had a key to the padlock.”

  “So apart from this second man, did you ever meet or see anyone else?”

  “Never.”

  “Can you describe the second man?”

  Peregrine considered. “He looked … violent. Pale face and a skinhead haircut. Like one of those dogs they’re always having to shoot for biting children.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “It was about eighteen months ago. Anne was up in town for the day, and he and Ray Gunter came up to the house. He asked me outright if I wanted to be paid five hundred pounds on the first of every month for doing absolutely nothing.”

  “And you said?”

  “I said I’d think about it. He hadn’t asked me to do anything illegal. He rang me the next day, and I said yes, and on the first of the next month the money was in the locker, as he had said that it would be.”

  “And he specifically said that it was tobacco and alcohol they were bringing in?”

  “No. His actual words to me were that they were continuing the local tradition of outwitting the Excise men.”

  “And you had no problem with that?”

  He leaned back against the sofa. “No. To be absolutely frank with you, I didn’t. VAT’s the bane of your life when you’ve got a place of this size to run, and if Gunter and his chum were giving Customs and Excise a run for their money, bloody good luck to them.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me? About their vehicles? About the vessels they picked up from?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. I honoured my side of the bargain, and kept my eyes and my ears closed.”

  Honoured, thought Liz. There’s a word.

  “And your wife’s never suspected anything?”

  “Anne?” he asked, almost bullish again. “No, why on earth should she? She heard the odd bump in the night, but …”

  Liz nodded. The second man had to be Mitch, whoever Mitch was. And the reason he had been so furious with Gunter for talking about tobacco-smuggling to Cherisse was that the two of them had something much more serious to hide. Gunter had clearly been an indiscreet and generally far from ideal co-conspirator. As the man who owned the boats and knew the local tides and sandbanks, however, he had equally clearly been a vital cog in the operation.

  Would Frankie Ferris come up with anything on Mitch? His manner on the phone had suggested that he knew who Mitch was, which in turn suggested that Mitch was one of Eastman’s people. But then that was Ferris all over—desperate to prove his usefulness, even if it meant stretching the truth.

  She looked at Peregrine. The urbane façade was almost back in place. She had given him a brief scare, but no more. On the way out she passed Elsie Hogan, who was standing, arms folded, in the kitchen doorway. Peregrine didn’t waste a glance on her but Liz did, and saw the calculated blankness of the older woman’s expression. Had Elsie, she wondered, spent the last ten minutes engaged in the household servant’s traditional pastime of listening at the door? Would there soon be lurid tales of bared bottoms and upper-class spanking orgies circulating in the local bus queues, post offices and supermarkets?

  I n the thirty-six hours since his arrival, Faraj Mansoor had spoken very little. He had described the circumstances surrounding the death of the fisherman and he had satisfied himself that there was no particular reason for the police to come knocking at the bungalow door, but otherwise he had kept his own counsel. From 8:30 to 10 p.m. on the evening of his arrival he had paced the beach in the dark. He had eaten the food that the woman had put in front of him, and smoked a couple of cigarettes after each meal. At the prescribed time he had prayed.

  Now, however, he seemed disposed for conversation. He called the woman Lucy, since this was the name on her driving licence and other documents, and for the first time he seemed to look at her closely, to fully acknowledge her presence. The two of them were bent over the bungalow’s dining table examining an Ordnance Survey map. As a security precaution they were using stalks of dried grass as pointers; both were aware that a bare finger leaves a fine but easily traceable grease trail on map paper.

  Road by road, intersection by intersection, they planned their route. Where possible they selected minor roads. Not country lanes where every passing car was a memorable event, but roads too insignificant for speed cameras. Roads where the police were unlikely to be lying up waiting for boy-racers or drunk-drivers.

  “I suggest we park here,” she said, “and walk up the rest of the way.”

  He nodded. “Four miles?”

  “Five, perhaps. If we push ourselves we should be able to do it in a couple of hours. There is a track for the first three miles, so we shouldn’t look out of place.”

  “And this? What is this?”

  “A flood relief channel. There are bridges, but that’s one of the things we need to recce.”

  He nodded, and stared intently at the gently undulating countryside. “How good are the security people?”

  “We would be foolish to assume that they are not very good.”

  “They’ll be armed?”

  “Yes. Heckler and Koch MP5s. Full body armour.”

  “What will they be looking out for?”

  “Anything out of the ordinary. Anything or anyone that doesn’t fit.”

  “Will we fit?”

  She glanced sideways at him, tried to see him as others would. His light-skinned Afghan features marked him out as non-European in origin, but millions of B
ritish citizens were now non-European in origin. The conservative cut and idiosyncratic detailing of his clothing indicated someone who, at the very least, had been educated in Britain, and probably privately educated there. His English was flawless, and his accent was classic BBC World Service. Either he had attended a very smart school in Pakistan, or he had had some decidedly patrician friends over there.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “We’ll fit.”

  “Good.” He pulled on the dark blue New York Yankees baseball cap that she’d bought him in King’s Lynn. “You know the location? They said that you knew it well.”

  “Yes. I haven’t been there for several years, but it can’t have changed much. This map is new, and it’s exactly as I remember it.”

  “And you will have no hesitation in doing what has to be done? You have no doubts?”

  “I will have no hesitation. I have no doubts.”

  He nodded again, and carefully folded up the map. “They spoke highly of you at Takht-i-Suleiman. They said that you never complained. Most importantly, they said that you knew when to be silent.”

  She shrugged. “There were plenty of others prepared to do the talking.”

  “There always are.” He reached into his pocket. “I have something for you.”

  It was a gun. A miniature automatic, the size of her hand. Curious, she picked it up, ejected the five-round magazine, ratcheted back the slide, and tried the action. “Nine millimetre?”

  He nodded. “It’s Russian. A Malyah.”

  She hefted it in her hand, slapped back the magazine, and thumbed the safety catch on and off. Both of them knew that if she was forced to use it, the end would not be far away.

  “They decided that I should be armed, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Fetching her waterproof mountain jacket, she unzipped the collar section, pulled out the hood, and zipped it up again with the Malyah inside. The hood effectively hid the slight bulge.

  Mansoor nodded approvingly.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said tentatively.

  “Ask.”

  “We seem to be taking our time. A recce today, a rest day tomorrow … What are we waiting for? Why don’t we just … do it? Now that the boatman is dead, every day makes it more likely that …”

  “That they’ll find us?” He smiled.

  “People don’t get shot here every day,” she persisted. “There will be detectives, there will be pathologists, forensics people, ballistics … What’s that round of yours going to tell them, for example?”

  “Nothing. It’s a standard calibre.”

  “In Pakistan, perhaps, but not here. The security people here aren’t stupid, Faraj. If they smell a rat they’ll come looking. They’ll send their best people. And you can forget any idea you might have about British fair play; if they have the faintest suspicion of what we are planning to do—and a search of this house would give them a pretty good idea—they will kill us outright, proof or no proof.”

  “You’re angry,” he said, amused. Both of them were conscious that it was the first time she had used his name.

  She lowered her fists to the table. Closed her eyes. “I’m saying that we can accomplish nothing if we are dead. And that with every day that passes it becomes more likely that … that they will find and kill us.”

  He looked at her dispassionately. “There are things that you don’t know,” he said. “There are reasons for waiting.”

  She met his gaze for a moment—the gaze that at times made him look fifty, rather than a score of months short of thirty—and bowed her head in acceptance. “I ask only that you don’t underestimate the people we are up against.”

  Faraj shook his head. “I don’t underestimate them, believe me. I know the British, and I know just how lethal they can be.”

  She looked at him for a moment, and then, taking the binoculars, opened the door, stepped outside on to the shingle, and scanned the horizon to east and west.

  “Anything?” he asked, when she returned.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  He watched her. Watched as her eyes flickered to the jacket containing the concealed Malyah.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Took an uncertain step back towards the front door, and then stopped.

  “What is it?” he said again, more gently this time.

  “They’re looking for us,” she replied. “I can feel it.”

  He nodded slowly. “So be it.”

  P ulling her coat tightly around her, Liz installed herself on the bench overlooking the sea. The mudflats were underwater now, and the incoming tide slapped fretfully at the sea wall in front of her. A seagull landed heavily beside the bench, saw that Liz had no food with her, and swung away again on to the wind. It was cold, and the sky was hardening to an ominous slate grey at the horizon, but for the time being the village of Marsh Creake remained washed in light.

  The enhanced CCTV tape, according to Goss, was expected back from Norwich at noon. The Special Branch man had been surprised to see Liz back so soon, he had told her, given that Whitten’s investigation had thrown up no clue as to Ray Gunter’s killer. The detective superintendent had told Goss that he was “ninety-eight per cent certain” that the murder was connected with drug-smuggling. His theory was that Gunter had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, had seen a consignment brought to shore, and received a bullet in the head for his pains. Whitten wasn’t particularly worried by the untypical calibre of the fatal round; British gangsters, he reckoned, used any firearms they could get their hands on.

  Liz continued to turn over in her mind the facts that she had learned from Peregrine Lakeby and Cherisse Hogan. At another level, she came to a decision about Mark. As far as she was concerned, the affair was now over. There would be moments when she would long for his voice and his touch, but she would simply have to endure them. Quite quickly, she knew, such moments would become fleeting, and then they would cease altogether, and the physical memory of him would fade.

  It would not be a painless process, but it would be one with which Liz was familiar. The first time had been the worst. A few years after joining the Service she had attended the private view of an exhibition of photographs by a woman she had known at university. She had not known the woman well, and several address books must have been trawled through when the guest list was made up. Amongst the others present was a handsome, scruffily dressed man of about her own age. His name was Ed, and like her he had only the faintest of connections to their host.

  They escaped to a Soho pub. Ed, she discovered, was a freelance TV researcher, and was currently involved in putting together a film about the lifestyle of New Age travellers. He had just completed a fortnight’s stint accompanying one such tribe as they moved from campsite to campsite in an old bus, and with his rough-edged, wind-burned good looks he might easily have been one of their number.

  She proceeded with caution, but their mutual attraction had an air of inevitability about it, and she was soon spending nights in the converted warehouse in Bermondsey that he shared with a shifting cast of artists, writers and filmmakers. She told him that she worked in one of the personnel departments of the Home Office, that her job was fulfilling in an unspectacular sort of way, and that she couldn’t be contacted at work. Ed, not on the surface the possessive type, appeared to have no problem with this. His researches took him away for days and sometimes weeks at a time, and she was careful never to press him for details of these absences, in case he should do the same thing to her. They lived lives which were physically separate for the most part, but which were lit by passionate points of contact. Ed was clever, he was entertaining, and he viewed the world from a fascinatingly oblique perspective. Most weekends there was a party, or something like one, at the Bermondsey flat, and after a grim week with the Organised Crime Group, the arty, kaleidoscopic world of which she had part-time membership provided a blissful escape.

  One Sunday morning she was lying in bed in Be
rmondsey, the papers strewn about her, watching the slow progress of the barges and the Thames coalers on the river.

  “Where exactly did you say you worked?” he asked, flicking through the pages of a colour supplement.

  “Westminster,” said Liz vaguely.

  “Whereabouts in Westminster exactly?”

  “Off Horseferry Road. Why?”

  He reached for his coffee mug. “Just wondering.”

  “Please,” she yawned, “I don’t want to think about work. It’s the weekend.”

  He drank, and returned the mug to the carpet. “Would that be Horseferry House in Dean Ryle Street, or Grenadier House in Horseferry Road?”

  “Grenadier House,” said Liz warily. “Why?”

  “What number Horseferry Road is Grenadier House?”

  She sat slowly upright and looked at him. “Ed, why are you asking me these questions?”

  “What number? Tell me.”

  “Not until you tell me why you want to know.”

  He stared ahead of him. “Because I rang the main Home Office enquiries number at Queen Anne’s Gate last week, trying to get a message to you. I said you worked in personnel and they gave me the number of Grenadier House. I rang it and asked to leave a message for you, and the person I spoke to had clearly never heard your name in her life. I had to spell it for her twice, and then she thought she had put me on hold but she hadn’t, and I could hear her talking to someone else, and that someone else explaining that you never confirm or deny people, just get the caller to leave a name and number. So I left my name and number, and of course I never heard back from you, so I rang again, and this time someone else took my name and number but wouldn’t say if you worked there or not, so I rang a third time, and this time I was passed on to a supervisor, who said my earlier calls were being processed, and no doubt the officer in question would get back to me in her own good time. So I’m wondering, what the hell is this all about? What have you not told me, Liz?”