“Monday afternoon.”
“Do you know where she was going?”
“She was meeting someone.”
“Who?”
The girl paused.
“A man. I don’t know who.” She looked at Belsey blankly.
“A man she was seeing?”
“Something like that.”
“Could you show us her room?”
The girl led them upstairs, then went to wake the third flatmate. There had been no change to Jemma’s room. Trapping admired the photos on the wall.
“She’s fit. She’ll be dead.”
“Shut up, Rob.”
“True though, isn’t it. It’s what you said. That’s how it goes.” He sat down and switched on her computer.
“Don’t,” Belsey said. “Might be traces.”
“You think someone’s been in here?”
“Look at the shoe print on the paper by the bed. It’s not a woman’s foot size.” Trapping went and stood over the sheet. Then he turned to Belsey with a quizzical expression.
“What’s going on?”
“My guess is that a man’s been in here recently. Either that or she’s been wearing men’s shoes.”
“You got a suspect? Someone in mind?”
“Not yet.”
Trapping picked the sheet up by its corner. They returned to the living room. The girl was smoking a menthol cigarette.
“Anywhere else she might stay?” Belsey asked. “Parents, maybe, or friends?”
“No one’s heard from her.”
Out of the corner of his eye Belsey saw the boy, the barman, stretching in the doorway. He wore silk boxer shorts and a lot of thick black ink. He studied Belsey’s face as if he couldn’t quite place it. Alongside the tattoos were a pierced eyebrow, spiky hair and a lot of beer-softened muscle. His stare was too steady for Belsey’s liking. He was a good barman. Good barmen remember customers. Especially ones chatting up their flatmate and probable fuck-buddy.
“What’s happened?” he said.
“They don’t know where she is,” the girl explained.
“When did you last see her?” Belsey asked. The barman watched him.
“You come to the club,” he said. “You were talking to her.”
“That’s right. Any ideas where Jemma might be?”
“No.”
Trapping sensed something wasn’t right and chose sides.
“What is your relationship to her exactly?” he asked the barman.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Answer the question,” Trapping said.
“I work with her. I live with her.” He turned to Belsey, forming his own next question.
“Let us know if you hear anything,” Belsey said before he could ask it. “We’ll be in touch.” He led his colleague out and felt the barman’s eyes on them all the way.
They sat in the Skoda. Trapping dropped the shoe print into an evidence bag. He put his hands on the wheel.
“You knew her?” he said, after a moment.
“So it turns out.” Belsey shut his eyes. “Jemma Stevens,” he said, quietly. He repeated the name a few times. “It’s the same girl.”
“Who is she?”
“I arrested her on a march a while back. She was carrying three grams of coke. I decided to put her under a bit of informal observation—see if she was dealing, see where she was getting the stuff. She works at Euphoria, the bar on Eversholt Street. I swung by a couple of times. That guy was there. He’s a barman.”
“He doesn’t like you.”
“He wouldn’t. Probably flushed his stash when I turned up. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was part of the supply chain.” Belsey shook his head in wonder. “Jemma Stevens,” he muttered again.
Trapping considered all this. He found his fan but didn’t turn it on.
“I knew there was something with that guy. I could tell. Just from his eyes.”
BELSEY GOT DROPPED OFF in Hampstead Village. He walked to Waterstones, asked for Britain’s Most Notorious Spies by Thomas Monroe. No copy in stock. So he crossed the high street to the second-hand bookshop on Flask Walk. The owner was opening up, first pipe of the day sending smoke signals.
“You’re keen,” he said.
The shop was a maze burrowed through yellow paper, leaning towers of books prevented from collapse by some mysterious property of dust. The sections weren’t exactly alphabetical but his luck was in: he found Monroe’s book quickly enough, filed under twentieth-century history. He turned to the page he needed:
Ferryman (dates unknown; identity unknown)
One of the cold war’s most enduring mysteries . . .
It cost £3.00 according to the pencil mark on the inside front cover. Belsey took it to the counter and counted his change. The owner clamped the pipe between his teeth and turned it over in his hands.
“A bargain,” he said, folding it into a paper bag.
BELSEY TOOK HIS PURCHASE to the small cafe next door. He couldn’t face the food. He ordered a smoothie, which promised to satisfy most of his daily nutritional needs. Then he turned to the book.
The Ferryman entry was only two pages long. Monroe didn’t have much but he delivered it with style. Ferryman was privy to top-secret information about the UK’s preparations for nuclear war. This was now accepted as fact. He was a central part of the KGB’s intelligence drive in response to Russian fears about NATO in the early 1980s—fears that NATO was ready to launch a first-strike attack on the Soviet Union. All Soviet agents in NATO countries were told to keep an eye out for signs that war was looming: the mass slaughter of cattle, putting of food into cold storage, the stockpiling of blood, the distribution of civil defence leaflets. But the KGB also established a department specifically devoted to monitoring preparations by government and military command. This department was called Line X.
No one knew exactly what Line X was about. But Ferryman was part of it.
There was one inset box devoted to “Ferryman and Exercise Able Archer” and it achieved little other than adding some mystery to this enigma.
Soviet insecurity reached a crisis point in early November 1983. The cause of this was a NATO conflict simulation exercise codenamed ABLE ARCHER, which ran 2–11 November . . .
Belsey brought out the war diary he’d found beneath King’s Cross. Covert civil preparations ongoing across London. Key personnel meeting at relevant centres . . . This had to be the exercise it was recording: Able Archer. According to Monroe, the Soviets were thrown by a new level of secrecy surrounding the exercise. They knew the UK government was hiding something . . . And then the rest of the entry descended into speculation. Exercise Able Archer was rumoured to have been called off midway through. Was Ferryman somehow responsible for this premature conclusion? Maybe because Britain’s military chiefs realised their security had been compromised? As no one seemed to know what exactly the exercise involved it was hard to say. Monroe did manage to turn up a “Foreign Office insider” who claimed: “There is more to this than any government will feel comfortable revealing for at least a hundred years.” Monroe added, with a swirl of the cape: “By that time the true identity of Ferryman may be lost forever.”
Belsey turned through the diary again. Able Archer 1983. He had an actual relic. And a name. He knew one person who had been involved: the dutiful S.R., Suzanne Riggs. The diary ended abruptly.
11 November 1983: thirty-eight fires reported across north-west London, retaliatory strikes on Omsk and Samara; another Soviet attack predicted. Awaiting further instructions.
Then nothing. The bunker must have been hit. Suzanne Riggs had become a victim of the war she imagined. Unless she was as fictional as it was.
He typed the name into his phone’s browser. According to the Internet, not only did a Suzanne Riggs exist, she was now MP for Camberwell and Peckham. She had entered Parliament in 1987. Before that she was Leader of Camden Council.
That put her in the right place at the right time.
Belsey found the number for her constituency office and dialled.
“Can I speak to Suzanne Riggs?”
“Not this morning, I’m afraid,” a young man said.
“It’s urgent.”
“She’s out of the office.”
“Can I call her?”
“She’s at a funeral,” the man said. Then added, “Sir Douglas Argyle’s,” with a stretch on the vowels as if this might scare Belsey off.
“When does it finish?”
“She’ll be going straight to another appointment. But you can try again on Thursday.”
“It’s urgent.”
“Nothing I can do about that, I’m afraid.”
Belsey hung up. He called Diplomatic Protection.
“Are you covering Sir Douglas Argyle’s funeral today?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“St. Mary’s in Kensington. It’s on now.”
20
KENSINGTON, 11 A.M. A SOFT, SUNLIT RAIN HUNG IN front of the church like confetti. The church itself looked as smart and well preserved as the houses around it. Mourners had begun to spill out, grief offset by the satisfaction of being on the guest list. He checked the latest pictures of Riggs on his phone and scanned the women in their funeral dresses until he saw her.
Riggs was wearing pearls and a large black hat. She was a little bigger than in her publicity shots, less groomed than some of the aristocratic company around her. She said goodbye to a handful of people then headed to the roadside to look for a taxi, trying to hold a BlackBerry, a handbag and the order of service while putting up an umbrella. Belsey found his badge and cut her off.
“Suzanne Riggs?”
“Yes.”
“I need to speak to you concerning a police investigation.”
Riggs’s expression faltered.
“What’s happened?”
“A woman is missing. I think she may be being held in deep-level tunnels under London.”
There was a double beat, as Riggs processed these words and then the fact that she had been singled out to receive this news. She didn’t offer to share her umbrella.
“And why exactly do you want to speak to me?” she asked.
Belsey took the diary from his pocket and handed it to her. Riggs studied the front, then opened it carefully, turned a few pages and gave a bemused smile.
“Where on earth did you get this?”
“Beneath St. Pancras Library.”
She nodded slowly. Belsey watched a reunion with old knowledge and its implications.
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what’s down there, where the tunnels lead.”
She paused again, turning the question over with bomb-disposal caution.
“I have to be at a TV studio in fifty minutes. I need to go home first. Can we do this tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Who did you say you were?”
“Detective Constable Nick Belsey, Hampstead CID.”
The whole thing was puzzling her.
“Can I ask, with all due respect, why there is not a more senior officer investigating? I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge before answering any questions.”
“I’m in charge. We don’t have time to waste. It’s going to be a lot easier talking about it now than to some journalist after she’s found dead.”
Riggs widened her eyes. They were starting to draw attention. The rain picked up.
“Do you understand the Official Secrets Act?” she asked.
“Not as well as I need to, it seems.” Belsey steered her to his Skoda and opened the passenger door. “Perhaps you can explain while I drive. I’ll give you a discount on the fare.”
Riggs climbed in, still clutching the diary, muttering displeasure. She removed her hat and smoothed down businesslike brown hair.
“Where to?” Belsey asked.
“Pimlico.”
He drove. She turned through the diary again. “I’ve no idea how much of this has been declassified. That’s why I’m being cautious. We were a small part of a very big thing.”
“What did your part involve?”
“I was head of the north London Regional Defence Group. Not a role I was sorry to pass on.”
“That was your full-time job?”
“No.” She laughed. “I ran the council. Chief Regional Defence Officer in my spare time.”
“And this log?”
“I was told to record our experience of the exercise: the course of events, how we held up in the bunker, how it all functioned. I assume everyone in an equivalent position kept one.”
“What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“The war? How did it end?”
“You mean who won?” She laughed again. “I don’t know. It just ended. Suddenly. No reasons given. I know when it ended because I remember observing the two minutes’ silence down there. Very surreal. It ended on the eleventh of November, Remembrance Day.”
“Then you just came back up.”
“Yes, thank God. I believe there were cyanide capsules available as an alternative. To spare us the radiation-crazed hordes. But we thought we’d risk it.”
“Why is everything still down there?”
“Why wouldn’t it be, I suppose? No one ever turned round and said, ‘The cold war’s over, clear up.’ No one tidies a decommissioned nuclear bunker. How did you get in?”
“The first time, I came from the deep shelter in Belsize Park, then from Golders Green tube station via a place called North End. Know about that?”
Again a look crossed her face as she divided what she knew from what was public knowledge. “North End. Well . . .” She was saved by the ringing of her mobile. “Hello? Yes, speaking . . . A quote? I barely knew the man. Yes. Well, the funeral was fine. Douglas Argyle himself was a cornerstone of the nation that won’t be replaced. Will that do? No, I can’t say I even knew him personally, and I’m not going to peddle gossip. Goodbye.” She shook her head. They passed Sloane Square.
“What’s the gossip?” Belsey asked.
Riggs laughed, hesitated. “Well,” she said, “in what slightly awkward situation do ageing Lotharios have heart attacks?”
Belsey liked Sir Douglas a little more.
“Out jogging?”
“Not quite.”
She directed Belsey to a house on Warwick Square, freshly painted white with a shiny black door.
“Hello?” Riggs called as they stepped inside. Belsey followed her into a large kitchen. Radio 4 was on, a kettle already bubbling. A silver-haired man in expensive glasses sat in a paved garden behind the kitchen with an FT on his lap.
“Richard,” the MP said, “this is Detective Constable . . .”
“Belsey.”
“Belsey.”
“What have you done now?” the man asked, folding the paper.
“He wants to know about my experiences in the nuclear bunker.”
“Really?” Her husband looked amused. “That’s an awfully long time ago.”
They sat down at a kitchen table crowded with letters and headed House of Commons paper. Riggs spilled her bag and belongings onto the surface and glanced at the clock on the microwave. “You’ve got ten minutes.” She shrugged her jacket off and took her earrings out.
“That bunker is part of a bigger tunnel system. I need to know what it is, where it goes.”
“I don’t know much about any ‘system.’ I know each borough had its own control centre.”
“So there are more like this?”
“One in every borough. Most are beneath town halls. I know there’s a large one under Commercial Road for Tower Hamlets staff. And I always remember the one in Southall because it’s under a primary school.”
“Were they all involved in the 1983 exercise?”
“I believe so. That’s what I’m saying—we were a small cog, and the whole point was we did our thing and didn’t have to know about the rest.”
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“Do you know of any underground connections to other bunkers?”
“No.”
“Did you move about underground at all? Beyond the shelter itself?”
“Nothing like that.”
“There was a sign down there that said ‘Red Passholders Only.’ What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would the security services know?”
“Look, I don’t have any more privileged access to the security services than you do. Thirty years ago I was involved in this exercise. I’ve barely thought about it since.”
“There’s something still being kept secret.”
“There’s a lot being kept secret. There are institutions that do not like to think the public will ever get their grubby hands on certain kinds of material.”
Belsey produced his phone and brought up the picture of Jemma taped to the HANDEL machine.
“Recognise this equipment?”
“It’s the Attack Warning System,” she said quietly, but she was looking at the girl, as he’d hoped. Riggs took a deep breath, an intake of humanity. “Wait there.”
She went upstairs. He could hear searching, opening cupboards, dragging furniture. She came back a few moments later with a tattered cardboard folder and dropped it on the table. It was filled with memorabilia: papers, clippings and photographs. The photos weren’t of the exercise, he was disappointed to see: they were protests. There was Riggs—Belsey only just recognised her—long hair and a jumper, serious glasses, the diligent diary keeper, more earnest than she appeared today.
“This is everything I’ve got.” She checked her watch. “Four minutes.”
There were several newspaper clippings: Civil Defence a “cruel deception” says Lambeth Council. Government inducing “war psychosis”—Cook MP. There were photographs of bearded men marching beneath hand-painted signs. In one photograph a small group gathered with CND placards around a four-storey block of flats. It took Belsey a moment to recognise it: Pear Tree House. The block floated on its windowless concrete. The surrounding trees were saplings, the concrete newer, but the building was unmistakable.
“This is in Gipsy Hill,” Belsey said. “My suspect tried to break into it.”
“Yes. Pear Tree House. It became the site of a lot of protests.”
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