‘As a thank-you?’ As soon as the words came out, he wished they hadn’t.
‘No. No, of course not.’ Her protest was too instant and too strong.
‘Of course I want to,’ he said. ‘But not now. Not like this.’
‘I just wanted you to know.’
‘I understand. Maybe when it’s all over.’
She smiled. ‘Yes. Maybe. When it’s all over.’
She had booked her return flight for the early Sunday afternoon. They rose late, neither displaying any urge to attend church in this still-God-fearing island. It was more a shared relief than a celebration. Instead, they strolled under the vaulting oaks of the botanical gardens, the June sun streaming through the branches. There was no reference to what had been said in the night.
On the way to the airport, they discussed her parting conversation with Brooks in the garden. They listened to some of the tape and he felt a cold shudder.
‘If you tell the whole story and expose them too, you risk everything. Your career, your reputation. Not to mention the enemies you’ll make.’
‘Do I have a choice?’ she asked.
CHAPTER 36
Post-election, Monday, 5 June
‘Good weekend, Minister?’ Hinds asked, breezy as always. He had arrived, as usual, at 8.10 a.m. She wondered what he knew, whether they were still listening in and passing it all on. If so, he was giving nothing away.
In the private office Alan, Nikki and Dan looked up and smiled. ‘Good morning, Minister,’ they chirped in unison. They had seen how distracted she had been and wanted her tuned back to her work and to them.
‘You’re nice and supportive people,’ she said, ‘I want you to know that. But there’s now a letter I must write and you must deliver without delay to Number 10.’ She dictated:
‘Dear Prime Minister. As you are aware, I have found myself caught in what has become clear to me is a conflict between promises I made to my constituents and what you and others deem to be the overriding interest of the state. I have decided that, as there seems no resolution in sight to this conflict, I should resign from your government. I will give a full account to the House of Commons but, in advance of that, I would like to express my gratitude for the honour you showed me in inviting me to join your administration and your personal kindness. Yours sincerely Anne-Marie Gallagher.’
‘You can’t do this, Minister,’ protested Alan.
‘Please, Minister, think again,’ joined in Dan and Nikki.
‘I have no choice,’ she told them. How many more times would she have to use that word? ‘I can’t tell you why now. You’ll find out soon enough.’
Rob McNeil lifted the phone as soon as the letter arrived in the Prime Minster’s office.
‘Don’t do this, Anne-Marie,’ he said.
‘I decide what I do and don’t do, Rob,’ she replied. She needed to sound at her most implacable, to convince him, and anyone else, that their interventions would be shot down.
‘But why?’ he asked. ‘It’s not worth it. It will end your career. Ruin your life.’
‘My life went a long while ago.’
‘Do you honestly think David would approve of what you’re doing?’
‘It would be as little his business as yours. Though now that you ask, the answer from the man I knew at the end would have been yes.’ She paused. ‘Except that he might have dispensed a different form of justice.’
‘Is there nothing I can say, or suggest, to persuade you to reconsider?’ She could detect the defeat in his voice. Oddly, it provoked a tiny wavering. She crushed it.
‘No, Rob.’
‘Or Lionel himself.’
‘Lionel least of all.’
‘OK, I wish you well. But don’t be surprised if Lionel delays in replying his acceptance. Indeed, don’t bet on him accepting it just like that.’
She ordered Dalrymple to contact the office of the Speaker of the House of Commons to make time the next day for a personal statement. The reply came instantly. The Speaker, never unwilling to embarrass the Prime Minister, would give her fifteen minutes at noon.
Before she left the building, Steve Whalley popped his head around her door asking for a quick word.
‘I’m sorry, Anne-Marie,’ he said quietly as they stood close together in the corridor. ‘Mind you, I always knew it would end in tears. I told Lionel that.’ She had nothing to say to him. ‘I’ve some advice for you, kid. Keep your mouth shut, leave the bodies undisturbed, you can come back. He’ll give you a second chance.’
She smelt the menace as he turned on his heel and retreated down the corridor. She felt nothing. Nothing at all. No fear, no celebration. She smiled and returned to her office.
News of her letter of resignation broke in the early afternoon. Speculation for the reasons was limited, so genuine was the surprise. Carne was in the CID office with Billy Poots, writing up the results of their investigation into David Wallis’s death.
‘Did you know, boss?’ asked Poots.
‘I’d hoped she wouldn’t,’ replied Carne.
‘Well, that’s the end of her,’ said the sergeant gruffly.
‘Billy?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘I need your help.’
They left the office a few minutes after the 3 p.m. news bulletin. Carne said that, for the same reasons as before, he would use a travel agent to book the next available flight. He told Poots to dress casually, avoiding bright colours, and take a small bag with the bare essentials for one, maximum two, nights. They should have their police IDs but would be unarmed.
They disembarked at Gatwick shortly after 8 p.m., reached Victoria station by 9 p.m., and Vauxhall tube station twenty minutes later. They had made it before sunset. Carne was sure that nothing could happen before darkness came and thanked heavens that summer hours had allowed them to make it in time.
They walked along the river from the Tube station, reaching the apartment block as the sun set over west London. They found a bush to relieve themselves, knowing that, once they were inside, their vigil could last through the night. Carne could see from Poots’s sceptical eyes that his sergeant thought he was being an idiot but, after all the times they had spent together, was happy to tolerate him. He hoped his foreboding was indeed far-fetched and the night would pass uneventfully. Even after everything he had learnt in the past few weeks, would they really dare to act again? In the law-abiding state he had believed he lived in, it should have been unthinkable, but some instinct told him not to risk leaving her unshielded.
At full darkness, they walked to the apartment block entrance and he punched the entry code, which he knew from previous visits. He was a familiar enough visitor for the commissionaire to do no more than raise his head, nod and say ‘Good evening’. They entered the lift, pressed Floor 11, exited, and, Carne pointing silently, took up their positions in the two recesses he had earmarked in the curving corridor. He had decided not to tell her or warn her. He did not want to alarm her and she had work to do. Their preparations would be the same, whether or not she knew of their presence.
That night, working alone in her flat on her speech, Anne-Marie felt a curious combination of inner peace and righteous anger. As she had risked before, she would risk again.
Tapping lightly on the keyboard, she went over and over that last conversation with Brooks in his garden.
‘You’re determined to expose them, aren’t you?’ he had begun.
‘Why are you asking?’ she replied, walking alongside him beside a flowering violet hydrangea.
‘And name names,’ he continued, ignoring her question.
‘Of course. Where I can.’
‘Including me, dare I ask?’
‘Can’t see why not,’ she said lightly.
He stopped, the flowers and branches overhanging, took a 360-degree sweep of the garden, and moved close to her.
‘If you keep my name out of it,’ he spoke softly, ‘I will help. I’m just a minnow.’
‘I
’m listening.’
‘I didn’t tell you this. And you’ve never heard of me. Agree?’
‘Agree.’
‘I told you that the Hawk operation, both Phases One and Two, were discussed by me with a then rising star of my service.’
‘You did.’
‘That man was Edward Latimer, now Sir Edward.’
She felt her pulse racing. ‘I see.’
‘At that time he was MI6.’
‘Go on.’
‘Latimer also commissioned the dispatching of Kennedy shortly after he made contact with you in that phone call.’
‘Who did it?’ she demanded sharply.
‘That I cannot tell you.’
She thought of her Achilles’ heel. ‘OK. Just tell me who put the newspaper cutting in his pocket.’
He stole another glance around. ‘That was me. After they’d done it. I was trying to warn you not to pursue it.’
‘Who else knows about that?’
‘I’ve told you. No one. It was erased. It never happened. I kept that promise.’
‘OK.’ She made to turn and head back to the drive. He grabbed her arm.
‘There’s more.’
She halted. ‘I’m still listening.’
‘A senior government minister and also a shadow minister were informed of Hawk and agreed to it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Doesn’t matter how I know. It required approval.’
‘Both phases?’
He stared at her angrily. ‘They’re not stupid. It didn’t have to be spelt out.’
‘So not documented.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Anything you say in Parliament is privileged. You don’t need written proof.’
‘I do know that.’
‘Apologies.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The then government minister is long dead.’ He gave her the name. ‘The then shadow minister is very much alive and kicking.’ He bestowed a beneficent smile on her.
‘For fuck’s sake, Jimmy.’
‘Whalley.’
‘Whalley!’ Her calm, clear voice jumped an uncharacteristic octave.
‘Yup,’ replied Brooks with satisfied glee. ‘And there’s more. He’s our Joe.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Five recruited him in the mid-seventies.’
‘What? Why would he do a thing like that?’
‘Easy,’ replied Brooks. ‘Money. We were desperate for informants from inside the unions. They were ruining the country in our view. We identified candidates we thought might be weak links. He was an ambitious young trade union official. Bit our hand off. Greed, sheer greed.’
‘There must have been more than that.’
‘We promised we’d do everything to support him up the greasy pole. But he had to play our game. That’s why we got his approval for the 1994 operation. It’s worked out well for him, hasn’t it? We’ve been with him all the way to the very top of the Home Office. The man with ultimate responsibility for the very organization that recruited him. There’s an irony for you.’
‘What about the killing of Joseph? Did Whalley know?’
‘What do you think, Maire?’ he replied. ‘You’re the one with Parliamentary privilege, not me.’ With that, he turned nimbly and led her back to her car.
Shortly before midnight, she took a break. As was her habit when summer finally arrived, she opened the door onto her small balcony overhanging the river below. She could just see the minute hand of Big Ben on its hesitant march to the Roman XII and hear the hushed sounds of the city floating above the water.
Her eye was caught by a man a hundred yards or so up the towpath who seemed to be watching her. He raised a hand, waved, then suddenly turned and walked off, disappearing into the shadows. She caught the unmistakable outline of a dark brimmer hat. For a moment it spooked her. Then she understood something and it made her smile. Her own Big Brother.
She returned to her desk, anticipating her final chauffeur-driven ride to the Gothic horror of the Palace of Westminster. On the way, she would cast her eye on the fawn ugliness of MI6 and its occupants, look up at its windows and cast her contempt.
She assembled her roll call of ignominy. The murder of Joseph Kennedy by the state. The same state that carried out disappearances and murders two decades before in the name of peace. Operation Hawk, the product of the same perverted minds. The final betrayal and discarding of the state’s own agent, David Wallis. The personal responsibility of the politician and the official now in charge of the nation’s Security Service.
And she would not stop there, ascending to the very top and a Prime Minister who, despite his much trumpeted belief in the sanctity of an individual’s human rights, did not have the courage to inspect the poisoned entrails of the nation state he claimed to preside over.
She worked on into the small hours, so consumed by her story, so exhilarated by the devastation she was preparing that the hum of the city and the creaks and groans of the building she lived in became a wall of silence, and the only sound she heard was the time bomb clicking on her keyboard.
All she needed to do was light the fuse.
Carne and Poots waited. Though it was hardly an everyday occurrence, they were both trained in stake-outs. If necessary, they could go through the night. They knew that most stakeouts lead to nothing. It was a job, like any other. They were professionals.
They could faintly hear Big Ben strike the quarters of hours and the hours themselves: eleven, twelve, one, two, three . . . three-fifteen . . . three-thirty . . .
The lift stirred into motion. Alerted, Carne tensed. From his vantage point he could see the lift light rising fast through the floor numbers: two, five, eight, nine, ten, now slowing, eleven. Butterflies buzzing in his stomach, he knew it was going to stop. Eleven. It passed and stopped at twelve. He turned towards the stairs, listening out for descending footsteps. The only muffled sound was a door above clicking softly shut.
It was not in London but another part of the country that two hooded figures in skin-tight black clothing, knives in hand, approached a front door. One of them removed objects from his pouch. Standard lock picker’s tools: thin metal rods, torque wrench. In a few seconds they were easing the door open and creeping silently into a hallway and up a flight of stairs. At the top they separated. Both were familiar with the geography of this house.
One headed into a bedroom, and made silently towards the shape of a single person lying on one side, softly snoring with a peaceful regularity. With extreme speed, the head was turned and the knife sliced across the sleeper’s throat. The snoring ceased.
The second figure in black headed towards a room at the end of a corridor where the back of a broad-shouldered man, lit by a single Anglepoise lamp, was crouched over a computer. The figure tiptoed towards the man, grabbed his head from behind and brought the knife to his throat. The man reacted with surprising agility for someone of his age, screamed at his assailant and a brief struggle ensued before he was overpowered and his throat slit.
The two black-clad figures then used a safecracker key to ease open the safe in the study, removing cash, valuables and a stash of documents. They returned to the bedroom, took whatever jewellery they could find easily and quickly, descended the stairs, silently closed and locked the front door and retreated into the night.
What they did not know was that the man’s safe was wired to a local police station. But it mattered little as, by the time the station’s fatigued duty officer managed to mount a response, their black clothing had been disposed of and they were many miles away.
CHAPTER 37
Post-election, Tuesday, 6 June, 8.30 a.m.
She rises later than usual. It is an early summer day of particularly English brilliance, the sun already high, the sky an unbroken sheet of piercing blue, a light breeze fanning the city. Perhaps she will do some circuits round the park to calm her for the fifteen minutes delivering the speech that will define the rest of her life.
It is Carne – worn and unshaven. A smack more of surprise than alarm hits her.
‘Jon! What are you doing here?’ She regrets her sharpness. ‘Sorry, I guess it’s the nerves. Where have you been hiding?’ She is half-joking.
‘In the landing outside the lift,’ he replies. He is not. ‘I needed to know you were all right.’
‘Sure you’re not going paranoid?’
‘I wish.’
She smiles curtly. ‘Come in just for a minute. But then I’ve got to get ready.’
‘OK, thanks.’ He enters – there is an unfamiliar awkwardness between them. ‘I feel a fool now.’
‘Me too. I can’t imagine there’s ever been a maiden speech that’s a resignation speech too.’
She smiles – the tension eases. But she does not offer him coffee or a chair and he knows her well enough to get the message. ‘I’ll leave you in peace,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ she replies softly. ‘I could do with the time.’ She walks over, pecks him on the cheek and sees his regret as he turns back to the door.
Just as he is closing it, he halts. ‘I’ll still be watching over you.’
‘Just this day to get through,’ she says.
10 a.m. After briskly showering, she switches on Sky News. She doesn’t want to be caught on the hop by last-minute chicanery from Number 10. She sees a reporter standing in front of a house that looks vaguely familiar. A banner headline on the lower third of screen says ‘Wiltshire double murder’. She pays closer attention, gasps and turns up the volume.
The reporter describes how, in the small hours, local police are alerted by an alarm triggered by a safe inside a house in the village of Old Witham. Initially, as most such incidents in this peaceful part of the country are caused by faulty equipment, they phone the house telephone number but there is no answer. Within forty minutes a patrol arrives at the scene. The house is locked. After repeated knocking and ringing with no response or sign of activity inside, police officers force open a window and gain entrance. Upstairs they find the dead bodies of an elderly couple, James Beresford Brooks and his wife Dorothy. Locals say they have lived in the village for many years and are highly respected – Mr Brooks is a long-serving churchwarden and pillar of the community, Mrs Brooks a keen amateur gardener and organizer of Old Witham’s entry into the annual competition for England’s best-kept village.
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