“That’s what we’d like to know: what was the nature of the exercise? No doubt the involvement of children is one reason it’s all been hushed up. Heaven forbid that should get out.”
“And why wasn’t the plane checked?” John said. “Problems had been reported with other C-130s.”
“Why did it take five days to inform us?” Malcolm said. This returned them all to silence. Belsey understood. It was what you looked for as a detective, unexplained gaps. John leaned forward.
“The plane sent out twenty-four automatic messages signalling system failures in the moments before the crash. That doesn’t rule out pilot error or weather conditions.”
“But the weather was fine,” Malcolm said.
“First we thought it was a technical malfunction,” John said. “It remains an outside possibility. These planes are still being used, you see. It would cause a stink if it turned out the government had been hiding evidence of faults.”
“But we think there’s more they’re not telling us.”
“Like?”
“The nature of the posting, the role of the children. In Amy’s letter, sent a few days beforehand, it seems she hadn’t been fully briefed.”
“What did she say?”
“Just that she might be out of contact for a couple of weeks but hadn’t been told why.”
Again, there was hurt mixed in with the grief, hurt at the infidelity of the dead, in their secret place, whispering among themselves.
“Any suggestions that she would be doing something dangerous?”
“No.”
John said: “My brother told me he was involved in something highly important. He said he shouldn’t have even told me that much. We believe they had all received extra security vetting. We know this because for at least ten months prior to deployment their letters arrived late. They’d been opened. Someone was checking them.”
“Did either of them ever talk about any military or government facilities underground?”
“No.”
“Anything secret?”
“We think possibly their training meant they knew something. We have no idea what.” Belsey waited. He was learning the rhythm. He went for it.
“What if they were killed because of what they knew?” He braced himself for outrage but they didn’t flinch.
“It’s possible. We don’t know.”
Belsey looked at the photographs of the wreckage again. He imagined the plane breaking some barrier of possibility, vaporising, leaving faint traces on the waves. When he looked up the two men were staring at him.
“But what is it you know?” John said. “Why are you here?”
For a second, Belsey struggled to think. He was sleep-deprived. He felt himself stepping through puzzled grief again, incompetently, so that he wasn’t building an answer, just trailing around other people’s questions. He got to his feet. The men looked defensive now, as if Belsey had taken their money in a game of cards. He wondered if they’d let him out of the house.
“Come on then,” John said. “Who was leaving the flowers?”
“I’m going to find out for you. Now. Tonight.”
43
BELSEY SAT IN HIS SKODA WATCHING THE END OF a sunset whose drama was disproportionate to the town beneath it: a sky of ash on embers, black scraps of cloud across what looked like lava dripping over the entertainment complex.
Children.
He brought up the names of the dead on his phone, looked for the children: James and Rachel Kendall; Susan and Michael Forrester. Michael Forrester had been eight years old when he died. Son of Corporal Terence Forrester, 2nd Signals Brigade, and Eleanor Forrester, staff sergeant in the Women’s Corps.
Only somehow Michael Forrester didn’t die.
Was that his message? What answer could Belsey provide that would restore Jemma to the living? He couldn’t see how the flight connected to the tunnels. But they had all been engaged in something sensitive before it took place.
Belsey turned to the reunion advert. There were the adults in the pub. Thrown together. Not much physical contact between them. Maybe they hadn’t known each other long. Where were they? He couldn’t see any military memorabilia. There was one clock, which said Guinness Time, a shelf above the bar with a hunting horn, an old drum, Toby jugs. The bar was distinctive: elegantly curved and divided into three by wooden buttresses that broke against the ceiling like wooden waves. And the ceiling itself was ornate, with bowls of light set among the moulding. Not a country pub: it had an air of buttoned-up city heritage; a London pub, brass and polish. Not rough around the edges, not cosy with darts-tournament clutter either.
He took a photo on the Samsung and zoomed in. Where would you get identifying marks? He checked the mirror behind the bar. There was a heraldic lion engraved. A lion with its claws out. Belsey thought of the undelivered crates in the Belsize Park shelter, the bottles of champagne. For Dispatch: Red Lion.
And then he knew he’d been there. Something clicked as the name and image merged. The hunting horn, the Guinness clock . . . Belsey rifled his mind’s sodden archive of pubs, working through the Red Lions of his life. The slight stiffness of the place suggested a business district, somewhere central, preserved by well heeled footfall. Now he looked again at an object on the end of the bar. It was a bell. A fine bell, wooden handled. A division bell. Belsey’s memory was waking up and stretching. A bell for calling MPs and their aides back to parliament when a vote was on. It was the Red Lion on Parliament Street.
Now he saw it: the ornamental jugs had the faces of politicians. Churchill, Thatcher, Harold Wilson. He had been there several times. It was always filled with exiles from the Commons’ own bars, getting drunk on expenses before smuggling their interns back to Portcullis House. A few years ago he’d stopped the daughter of a Tory whip driving her father’s Audi loaded with five boxed stereos and three members of the Peckham Ghetto Boys. He’d been treated to a lot of Beaujolais in the Red Lion while her father convinced him that neither he nor his daughter were Ghetto Boys. It was a good pub in which to take a break from kettling protests. Hard to get a seat, though.
AN HOUR’S DRIVE INTO London, back from the sleepy suburbs into the airless unsleeping city. Then through, into the business heart of it, where things almost got quiet again. Westminster, Whitehall, past the taciturn monuments and ministries resting on their tunnels. Maybe that’s where all the civil servants were; you never saw them out and about. He cruised past the Red Lion. Its windows glowed. Belsey parked on the first road he found that wasn’t drowning in cameras and stepped into a photograph.
It was 9:30 p.m., and a greyer uniform was in attendance. Women in blouses tilted glasses of white wine at one another while a scrum of suited men occupied the centre ground. But the pub was unmistakable. Belsey squeezed himself in, knocked by the throng as he unfolded Military Heritage. They were here, he thought. Why? It was a long way from RAF Lyneham. He felt the ghosts mingling. The Toby jugs remained above the bar, an enhanced collection now, and there were a few other additions to the clutter: a flatscreen in the corner, a fruit machine. But he was in the right place. He pushed his way to the bar.
“Is the manager about?”
The landlord came over. He had bushy white sideburns and a moustache. He was a little flushed, a little yellow of eye, whisky of breath. Belsey laid the picture on the bar.
“I’m interested in this—whether you remember or have heard anything about this photo being taken.”
The man lowered a pair of glasses from his brow and peered through them. He tilted the advert until the light was on it.
“I’ve never seen this picture before.”
“How long have you run the place?”
“Twenty-five years. What year was this?”
“1983.”
“That would have been my father’s time.” He turned to the front cover of the magazine then back to the advert. He stroked a sideburn.
“It’s my pub, but that’s not my pub.”
/> “What do you mean?”
The landlord took his glasses off. He looked around the pub itself, came out from behind the bar and stood next to Belsey. He used the arm of his glasses to point at the photograph.
“There are no windows.”
They both turned to the pub’s windows, then back to the magazine. The windows would have shown in the mirror behind the bar. The clock in the picture said 3.30. Eternal Guinness Time. But there was no daylight, no windows, no outside.
“And where’s the photographer standing?” the landlord added. He grabbed the magazine, marched through the crowd to the furthest corner, by the door. He climbed up onto a bench, still holding the magazine. Customers were looking now. “It’s impossible.”
“Yes,” Belsey said.
“So what is this?” the landlord asked from his perch. “Has someone copied my pub?”
44
HE MADE WHITEHALL TO WILLESDEN JUNCTION in forty minutes, heading for the home Duncan Powell had left half-empty. Belsey tried to establish the chain of events as he drove. Five months ago Duncan Powell visits Malcolm Walsh. He has a theory the accident might connect to Line X sabotage, to Ferryman. He gets the sister’s photo of the regiment and, one week later, he places the advert for a reunion in Military Heritage.
Meanwhile someone, somewhere, is trying to break the code of their own name. Easton types in searches, trying out combinations of words; a safe-cracker coaxing the mechanism. What would he have to go on? The year his old life ended. He starts with that: 1983. And then he adds military accident. Nothing useful. Maybe he knows a little about his real parents: he types in 81 Signal Squadron. And his father’s face appears.
So Michael Easton calls the number. I’d like to come to the reunion. I’d like to reunite with myself, if that is possible. Duncan Powell invited thirty-seven dead people to a reunion and one got in touch.
Belsey parked at the far end of Viners Road. He rested his arms on the steering wheel and watched the orange silence of the street. And he tried to remember what it was like being eight. The memories were there, over-handled fragments worn to dullness. He imagined being a young Michael Easton—adopted, transplanted to Cumbria. How much would you remember if your past was amputated from the present? M claims the confidential information is within him. Your new parents give you an approximation of the truth: your birth parents were in the military. They died in an accident. And maybe for a while it suffices but it does not stop you wondering. And then, when your adopted parents are no longer around to hold the story together, deep memories grow. They are like the bacteria inside us, peaceful until we die, when they begin to consume us from within.
Cut to five months ago. Powell is stopped for speeding on 23 January—that was how Belsey got the fingerprint match. It would have been a few days after Powell’s visit to Malcolm Walsh. Stopped by police, only he’s not charged, just printed and filed away. So that must have been the security services already on to him. They were tracking Powell as soon as he got involved with the campaign for truth.
Meanwhile Easton sells his home. Powell has given him a lead. He’s suggested that the tragic accident that stands as a gateway between Easton’s identities was in fact a crime, with a name attached: Ferryman. Easton goes researching across Eastern Europe, hunting for Ferryman’s identity. For any other clues as to what happened in November 1983.
He tries to find an answer under London. Tries to find one in the depths of his own mind. One night he shows Powell the St. Pancras Library bunker and they run into trouble. The two of them surface. The two of them are chased. Powell is knocked down by a black Land Rover. Easton flees for his life, straight into Belsey’s. And then, just when Easton was backed into a corner, when he had no cards left to play, Belsey hands him one more—a hostage. Now Easton can get the world to pay attention to whatever it is he and Duncan Powell are not allowed to say. All it costs is an art student and a crooked detective.
ANDREA’S FACE APPEARED IN the window beside the front door when he knocked. She opened the door but kept it on the chain.
“I need to talk to you,” Belsey said.
“Why?”
“I may have discovered why Duncan died.”
She let him in. She was alone; no friend around, thank God. The front room was lit by the dull glow of an American sitcom. The sofa was still being used as a bed. Belsey took a seat in the armchair. Exhaustion hit him. He felt gnawed away inside. No sleep for forty-two hours. He was on the edge of delirium. Not where he wanted to be. The power to discern reality was one of his most valued traits right now. Had it already gone? He tried to focus on Andrea.
“Did Duncan ever mention a man called Michael Easton or Michael Forrester?” he asked. She shook her head. “I think they met. I think Duncan was killed deliberately, to stop him writing about something.”
Andrea sat down and seemed to grow paler still. Turning a death into a murder is an announcement of its own, Belsey reminded himself. Into an assassination. That was moving things into a different world.
“Who are these Michaels?” she asked.
“It’s a good question. That’s what I’m trying to find out. I think Michael Easton was another name for Michael Forrester. I think he shared an interest with your husband. The place where Duncan was knocked down is near an entrance to underground tunnels. My theory is he’d been down there and seen something—maybe shown by Easton, who contacted him as a result of this advert.”
He passed the magazine over, studying her face for any stray flickers of knowledge.
“This is Duncan’s work number,” she said.
“Yes. The magazine’s from February. Do you remember anything Duncan might have said about work, research, around that time?”
And then the flicker came.
“Someone had contacted him. He was excited. Why didn’t he tell me what he was doing?”
“I think Duncan didn’t tell you because he knew it was dangerous. I need to see any notes he might have left behind.”
“You already have them.”
“You mean the police?”
“The Inspector already has everything.”
“Inspector Gary Finch.”
“Yes.”
“Andrea, what did Inspector Finch say exactly?”
“He said he was investigating Duncan’s death.”
“What else did he take?”
“Notes, computers, books.”
Belsey got to his feet. Of course. Road accident, take the fucking hard drive.
“And he asked about his work?”
“His work, his friends, where he’d been, where he’d been that afternoon, the day before.”
“And where had he been?”
“Nowhere. The library.” Belsey found the same library books, still on the floor, still waiting to be returned. Sailing, bird watching. Birds of the Mediterranean, Bird Migration in the Adriatic. He picked up the book on the Adriatic. There was that blue again, the dazzle of light on waves, only without the floating debris. He thought of the white birds on the remains of the Hercules.
“Planning a holiday, you said.”
“Yes.”
“Was Duncan always interested in bird watching?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. Was he?”
“No.”
Birds of the Adriatic. Belsey flicked through. The wetlands along the Eastern Adriatic coast provide internationally important resting areas for more than twenty waterbird species. What were they in the debris photo? He looked at the picture on his phone. He searched the book again until he had a match. Spoonbills. And his heart kicked. One of nature’s great wonders, the spoonbills undertake a flight of thousands of miles, year after year, each spring and each autumn. But never the middle of November. Not for the spoonbills. Whatever the accident photographs showed it wasn’t what happened in November 1983. Any more than the squadron in the Red Lion was drinking on the corner of Whitehall.
He had moved b
eyond the relatives of the dead. In a matter of hours he had moved beyond the mystery they had lived with for three decades, past the company of their anger onto new ground. They thought they had a mystery but they had just the beginning of it. And now he missed the companionship.
Only one companion left.
Belsey tried Jemma’s mobile. Maybe Easton would pick up. But there was no answer. He sent an email to the Ferryman account: What happened on 9 November 1983?
Andrea was at the window, peering around the curtains. He felt her rising panic. A lot of half-pieces of information were stirring unfocused anxiety. He’d subjected her to the same fate as Malcolm Walsh. People die, their secrets turn up like lovers at the funeral. Memories, which you thought you got to keep, start to change.
“Should I tell someone?” she said. “Other police? The ones who spoke to me? Who can I trust?”
“I wouldn’t call any other police right now. Let me see what I can find out. Try to be calm.”
“Am I even safe?” She was about to cry.
“You’re safe. You’re here. They’re not interested in you.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know.” He saw her expression and realised what she was asking. “Andrea, I don’t think my presence is going to keep this place secure. Is there somewhere else you can go for tonight? That friend of yours?”
“She’s not in London.”
“I can stay for a bit if you want. You should get some sleep. I can’t promise I’ll be here when you wake up.”
He sat down. She propped on the edge of the sofa. The sitcom ended with someone proposing and laughs all round.
Then came the news.
A man in a shirt and sports jacket stood outside Cromwell Hospital, microphone up, excited by possibilities.
“Detective Sergeant Kirsty Craik was the officer originally assigned to the investigation of missing student Jemma Stevens. Craik was involved in a car accident last night. There were rumours that she was being treated behind me at the private Cromwell Hospital in west London. No word from the Metropolitan Police yet as speculation mounts regarding possible connections between last night’s events and the Jemma Stevens investigation.”
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