One Man and His Bomb (Harriet Martens Series Book 6)

by HRF Keating

  But had he after all? Isn’t it possible that for these last couple of years, ever since the question of what the twins were going to do came up, he’s been nursing a grudge against me? Because, it seemed to him, by cajoling them into joining the Met I was thoughtlessly risking their lives when I knew what the security situation was and threatened to continue to be. And more, can there have been other things he’s been holding against me? Perhaps for years, perhaps from as soon as the first few wildly happy months of our wedded life had gone by? What things I don’t know, but there could have been things. Held against me day after day, year after year, and nothing ever said.

  And then, when, like me, he was acutely afraid for Malcolm, that he might at any moment slip away to join Graham in death, everything that had festered there for so long erupted out. Not in vino veritas but in — what’s the word? — in timor veritas.

  She stood where she was, in the street just a few yards from Christopher Alexander’s flat, her mobile still clutched in her hand, and surrendered to the welter of storm-dark clouds tossing and racing through her head.

  She fought, at last, for calm.

  Christ, I’m a police officer, a detective. I’m tasked with investigating the break-in at Heronsgate House, something threatening perhaps the whole of the British Isles, the whole countryside, bringing — it could be — ruin and starvation to us all. And what am I doing? I’m letting my own emotions, my own personal troubles, swamp every action I should be taking.

  And, standing here indulging myself in these hysterical thoughts, I’m even forgetting what I should be doing for Malcolm. For Malcolm, not now in intensive care but in an ordinary hospital bed, able to speak more than a few broken phrases, and needing now, more than ever, the support of his parents. My support, John’s support.

  She realised she was still holding the mobile, tapped out John’s number again.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Harriet? You again. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Why — why did you ask?’

  ‘Well, you sounded rather, I don’t know, strained.’

  ‘But I only just said your name.’

  ‘I know. But … Well, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Yes, I am. Now. But you spotted it. I wasn’t, till just a moment ago, feeling all right. I was having some sort of a brainstorm or something, got at by all kinds of nightmare thoughts. But clever of you, more than clever, to have heard all that in one single word of mine.’

  ‘Long years of marriage,’ John replied.

  But, however much that was touched by a certain dryness, it brought to Harriet a surge of reassurance.

  No, someone who understands me so well, right to that extent, cannot have been harbouring and be harbouring still those vicious thoughts I believed were deep in his mind. I’ve been a fool. Even if — Graham and Malcolm — I was perhaps entitled to be.

  ‘John,’ she said quietly into the mobile, ‘I never asked, just now, but do we have to wait till tonight to see Malcolm? Can it be this afternoon? John, I think we should go as soon as we possibly can.’

  ‘So we should. Where are you now?’

  She had to think for a moment.

  ‘I’m somewhere not far from the university area,’ she said at last. ‘Outside a flat where I’ve been questioning someone.’

  ‘All right. You’ve got your car, I suppose?’

  Have I? Oh, of course I have. It’s there. Just round the corner.

  ‘Yes, I came here in it.’

  ‘Right then, go home, and I’ll meet you there. When we’ve had a bite of lunch we’ll head off down the motorway.’

  *

  Arriving home, however, something altogether unexpected awaited her. When she began to open the door she found it obstructed. Stooping down, after a harder push had done nothing to clear the obstruction, she put an arm through the narrow gap she had created and felt about.

  Letters. Dozens of them.

  And then she realised. They must be letters of condolence delivered during the morning.

  And I simply never thought they would be bound to come. So many reminders of what I half-wanted to be able to forget.

  She stood up then feeling — she knew she ought not to — a dull growing rage, rage against all these well-meaning people, all their friends, their good friends, who were intruding on her, forcing her to think of Graham, to admit to her mind the full weight of that great blank, black loss.

  She drew in a long breath.

  No. No, I mustn’t. They may help. What’s been written inside all those white, blue, grey envelopes may help.

  Gritting her teeth hard together, as she found she had to, she stooped again and managed to brush the pile clear.

  But, with the door properly open, she could do no more at first then stare down at the tossed-about heap.

  Then, at last, she reached forward, picked out the first letter that her fingers came in contact with, took it up, peered at the handwriting of the address — didn’t recognise it, blockish somehow — and ripped it open.

  There was only one word written in the same crude hand on the single sheet of white paper she had pulled out.

  ‘Traitor.’

  For what seemed like long minutes she stood there, her eyes fixed on the seven black-ink letters. And then, trickling into her brain, came the knowledge of why they had been scrawled there.

  That TV interview. What I said at the end of it. What was forced out of me. What I found 1 believed. And to this person what I said must have seemed like an insult, an insult to the fighters in the War on Terror to which they had given their belief.

  She let the sheet flutter to the floor. Then, with her foot, pushed away the rest of the pile — it can’t all be as horrible as that — and staggering into the sitting room, dropped, a deadweight, into a chair.

  It was there that John, arriving only ten or fifteen minutes later, found her.

  *

  For the third time in as many days, Harriet realised, with a sense of shock at the suddenness with which her life had been transformed, she was sitting beside John heading along the motorway through steady rain towards London and St Mary’s Hospital. Good God, she thought, was it only on Tuesday that we were talking about distant thunder and the meaning it somehow carried with it, and then the phone rang and heavy-voiced Superintendent Robertson told me about Graham and Malcolm?

  She took a look at John.

  Yes, as I might have expected, zipping us along, as calmly and confidently as when he had told me that I mustn’t let that letter, that word ‘Traitor’, get to me.

  ‘Darling,’ he’d said, ‘you have to remember the person who wrote that, man or woman, may well have lost a son in the sort of war that’s being fought, just as we have. They’re in as precarious a state as you are, as I am. Just let it pass till we both feel more able to cope. We won’t even open any of the other letters. I’ll put them away in the spare room cupboard till we feel strong enough. What we’ve got to do now is to see Malcolm, encourage him, reassure ourselves.’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she said now, ‘it was just a week ago — no, less, less — that we were having that discussion about how oddly threatening even a single far-off peal of thunder can seem, when the phone rang and —’

  She balked at the words she had been about to say, despite having already uttered them in her mind.

  ‘And we heard,’ John supplied.

  ‘Yes, we heard about that devilish bomb.’

  Then into her head there came another totally unconnected recollection.

  ‘John, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s absurd. I’d forgotten all about it. But now suddenly, thinking about that awful moment, it’s somehow come back. It’s this. In the course, as we say, of my inquiries I was talking to that dreadful reporter on the Star, Tim Patterson. I asked him how he’d come to know what research they were doing at Heronsgate House, and he patted himself on the back about another scoop he’d had, somethi
ng to do with some funny little organisation called … Can’t quite remember. Some ridiculous name. But, whatever it was, he said that a relation of yours was a member of it. He boasted his story had resulted in a bunch of them coming up before the magistrates. I don’t know which of your —’

  ‘But I do,’ John broke in. ‘It’d be Aunty Beryl. Not in fact an aunt at all, but an elderly distant-ish cousin. She was actually at our wedding, but I doubt if you’ve seen her since. I do sometimes go and visit her when you’re working on a Sunday for some reason. I’ve never liked to ask you to come with me. She’s a bit difficult, never married and poor as your church mouse. Left a little bit when her mother died, but in such a way it’s paid out the same amount for all the years since, while good old inflation’s gone up and up.’

  He made a face.

  ‘Oh, dear. I haven’t been round for weeks and weeks now. Somehow let the time slip by. I ought to have done, though. She lives a pretty miserable life, shut up most of the time in an awful tiny flat. In Moorfields of all miserable places, all she can afford. There she is, absolutely afraid to go out at night because she thinks she’ll be mugged, and living mostly, I suspect, on tea, bread-and-butter and baked beans.’

  ‘Well, I certainly don’t remember ever having met her, even at the wedding. All I can remember about that is my old Uncle Michael, all dressed up in morning coat and whatnot after years and years, and never realising his top hat still had dried lavender leaves in it. They were stuck with sweat all over his forehead.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember him, though, like you, the rest of that day’s just a blur for me.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re as bad as I am. But, yes, your Aunty Beryl’s very likely the one Tim Patterson mentioned to me. He said she’d been up in court because she was involved in something called Waggy. Not a name, initials. WAGI, Women Against something or other.’

  ‘Genetic Interference.’

  ‘Oh, John, how is it you always know everything?’

  ‘In this instance simply because Aunty Beryl does belong to that ridiculous outfit, and I had to stump up to pay her fine for her share in cutting down a field of GM maize.’

  ‘Simple explan — Oh, wait. John, can it be that Waggy would be interested in the runaway herbicide, CA 534?’

  ‘Oh, I very much doubt it. WAGI’s an absolutely tinpot affair, and an all-women one too. They made a real mess-up of their attack on that maize field. So I can’t see them actually breaking in anywhere, let alone at the dead of night.’

  ‘No. No, neither can I. Especially as the intruders — keep this under your hat — appear to have been a pretty nasty bunch of professionals.’

  ‘Oh, were they? Well, that lets Aunty Beryl off any list of suspects you may have. I’d even say the Number One at WAGI, a much more frighteningly ferocious old lady called, I think, Tritton, Miss Gwendoline Tritton, is not worth adding to that list.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think she would be. I suppose it’s possible, though, that she might have managed to employ the toughs who poured petrol over one of the security guards. But I can’t see someone like her even knowing how to get hold of them.’

  She lapsed into silence then as the motorway came to an end and John sat a little further forward in his seat, negotiating the London traffic coming jockeying in on his right.

  *

  So, finding their way to Malcolm’s ward at St Mary’s, all thoughts of theft of the CA 534 and the potential disaster it threatened, even set against the appalling EuroVin havoc, went out of Harriet’s head.

  Malcolm? How are we going to find him? Better than when we last saw him? Or deteriorated in some way? Even back in intensive care?

  In a moment her questions were answered. Malcolm, though flat on his back and with a blanket tent over his legs, was immediately responsive as they came into his sight.

  ‘Mum, Dad, good to see you.’

  A wide smile.

  Which, at once, was replaced by an acute grimace of pain. His face went in an instant white as bone.

  ‘Malcolm, what is it?’ Harriet shot out. ‘Shall we call a nurse? Or — or —’

  ‘No, it’s OK really. It’s just — just that sometimes I get dead scared of — of what may happen, you know.’

  God, what can I say, Harriet asked herself. It’s true, after all. He is in danger of death still. I can’t bear it.

  But John was coming to the rescue.

  ‘Understandable, Malcolm, old fellow,’ he said. ‘I’d be scared in your situation. Anybody would. But, from what the medics tell us, you haven’t really all that much to fear now.’

  Malcolm managed a smile, if a pallid one.

  ‘It’s just that every now and again a spasm of something down below sets me off,’ he said. ‘Can’t tell which leg it comes from, actually. They’re both quite a mess. But it passes away. Gone now, in fact.’

  So they sat on, exchanging news. He told them about the treatment he was having. ‘I’m under a Sir. See that board above the bed. His name there in beautifully painted letters.’

  They both contrived to respond with a laugh. More of which, encouragingly, came and went as they told him that life in Birchester was going on much as usual, despite all the police activity and the papers and TV still being full of the EuroVin bloodbath.

  Then, to her surprise, Malcolm abruptly put a sharp question.

  ‘Look, there’s something I want to know. Those people who planted the booby trap that caught us, some Indians I heard on the TV news. What were they aiming to achieve?’

  Harriet was immediately baffled. But John, she found, was not.

  ‘Yes, I can tell you something about them,’ he said. ‘I’ve been making some inquiries. They belong, it seems, to something called — can’t remember exactly — Hindu Marg or something, means more or less India’s Way. It’s a protest organisation dedicated to ending what they see as wicked Western influences. They’re anti-American, of course — very down apparently on Hollywood films, which are extremely popular there. But also, in view of what you might sum up as “the days of the Raj”, they’re strongly anti-British. Cricket, also of course immensely popular in India, gets a pasting from them. Naturally, too, and perhaps rather more understandably, all missionaries are wickedest of the wicked. Big international firms come in for stick as well. And, when I say they’re dedicated, I mean they’re violent. Apparently the most recent British affront to them was a comedy film made here, not very successful, but now being shown in India, called, yes, Here Come the Kapoors. Arson attacks because of that.’

  Harriet was horrified.

  ‘And because of — of this comedy film,’ she burst out, ‘they planted the booby-trap bomb that killed Graham. Killed him. Just because of that.’

  ‘Yes,’ John replied. ‘Though I’m surprised that — well, that you’re surprised. You should know, more than most people with the work you’re doing, that terrorism is, if you like, the new revolutionary idea. I think it probably springs from the effect of the destruction of the Twin Towers. Nasty eyes lit up then all over the world.’

  ‘And is anybody doing anything about it?’ came Malcolm’s voice from the bed. ‘Is anybody doing anything about their threat, saw it on the TV there, to go on planting bombs here until we yield to their impossible demands?’

  ‘Well, it’s the usual thing,’ John answered. ‘What’s always said when there’s anything like this. We cannot yield to terrorism, or we will be under threat for ever more.’ A bite of a laugh.

  ‘So what’s happened since 9/11? We’re all of us under more threats than ever, that’s what. All sorts of people have seen how, if you’re prepared to risk your life for any cause, you’ve got an extraordinarily powerful weapon in your hands. But, look at it the other way round, there’s the perfectly good argument that, if we do yield, it will still, in fact, encourage all these mad groups to go further and do worse.’

  ‘So here I am with my legs under this tent thing,’ Malcolm said, with remarkable cheerfulness.


  He let his eyes stray to the TV screen high on the wall opposite. EastEnders had just begun. A fight was brewing.

  ‘And here I’ll stay,’ he added, still smiling, ‘till my legs get strong enough for me to totter out.’

  *

  In the car on the way back — the rain had not stopped — those happily optimistic parting words came back to Harriet with a whole extra meaning.

  They’d been driving for less than half an hour, just entering the motorway, when John put in a careful question:

  ‘Listen, what do you actually feel about those people, the India’s Way lot?’

  ‘Oh, I know why you’re asking,’ she said. ‘You were surprised when you’d produced your potted history that I didn’t leap up, all guns firing, and swear I was going to see the criminals who set that booby trap go to prison for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘Well, I was surprised for a moment. I hadn’t actually intended to say anything about them to Malcolm, at least not until I’d seen he was on firmer ground. But when he put that sudden question, I felt I had to be as frank in answering.’

  He turned his head and gave her a quick smile.

  ‘It was for much the same reasons that I’ve been holding back from telling you what I’d found out about that lot. I didn’t know whether you’d be ready to take it. Equally, at St Mary’s just now, I thought you must be managing to restrain yourself because you didn’t want to excite Malcolm.’

  ‘Yes, that was what did make me keep my big mouth shut, at least while we were still sitting with him.’

  She spent a moment getting her thoughts in order.

  ‘But,’ she said eventually, ‘it was the way Malcolm looked at it all, what he said just before we went, that stopped me exploding as soon as we were out of the ward there. I was all ready to, I promise you. Boiling over in fact. But then I saw in my mind’s eye, Malcolm lying there as we’d seen him, with God knows what had been done to his legs under that tent thing. And I thought that shouting and cursing, which was what I was about to do, would get me nowhere. If Malcolm, never the soul of patience as we well know, could take it as philosophically as that, then who was I not to try to put it all into place myself?’