The reporter speaks of a village in disbelief. Police sources say that this appalling tragedy has all the hallmarks of a burglary gone wrong. Cash and jewellery are missing both from the safe and from Mrs Brooks’s jewellery box in the bedroom.
It is an extreme shock. She tries to work it out. She recalls the conversation in the garden and Jimmy’s constant glancing around. They must have eavesdropped and recorded it – he was neither as smart nor as careful as he liked to boast. Or grew careless with age. They have punished with utter ruthlessness his threat to trigger the public washing of his organization’s dirty linen, both past and present. Perhaps they view his killing as the execution of a soldier who has deserted to the enemy, his wife collateral damage. And it is risk-free: Jimmy is a faceless man from a dark world, and few will mourn him.
Her phone bleeps – a text from Carne telling her to look at the news and offering to be with her. It ends with a single word: ‘Paranoia?’
She replies. ‘I’m working it out. OK for now. Will get you a place in the gallery. A-M x’. She feels temporarily safe. They have cleaned their stables and no one has come for her.
Hinds insists on driving her to the House of Commons. ‘You’re still a minister, Minister,’ he tells her, ‘till you’re not. And I’m still your driver. Till you’ve sacked me.’ She feels reassured with him – realizing by now that he is in the know and, she believes, on her side.
11.30 a.m. The car arrives. The sun is directly above, casting a halo. On what? Her triumph? Her disaster? She has come too far to treat those two imposters just the same.
As they approach Vauxhall Cross, Hinds engages her in the mirror and speaks. ‘Minister?’
‘Yes, Keith.’
‘I’ve been asked to pass on a message.’
‘Oh?’ She displays polite but only mild curiosity. ‘Who from?’ ‘They just want me to say it’s from people who wish you well and want to be your friends.’
‘Ever more mysterious.’ She tries to stay light and bright.
‘Yes, Minister.’ The car stops at lights and he turns round, intent etched in every crevice of his face. ‘This is the message.’ She watches him summon up exact words: ‘“There is no one now who can ever harm you. They have all gone. There is nothing known or to know. We will help and look after you without limit.”’
‘Who are these people, Keith?’
They cross Vauxhall Bridge. As the lights go green and they turn onto the Embankment towards Westminster, he swiftly jerks his head ninety degrees to the right to face MI6 across the water. The monstrous palace of games.
She makes no phone call, she sends no text. She has twelve minutes. She takes a detour via the Central Lobby and stops in front of the fourth plinth, the statue of Margaret Thatcher. She has a frisson of unfinished business.
Noon. The Speaker of the House of Commons reminds the crowded chamber that resignation speeches are traditionally heard in silence and without interruption. It is thirty-two days since that night of her election to Parliament and the words that sent shockwaves through Whitehall and the nation beyond.
She rises from her seat, not from the front benches but from the back, the same feather-light, enticing figure with the pure voice of flowing clarity. Her face fresh-looking, her eyes sparkling, she betrays no hint of the hardworking night and the weeks of menace and sorrow that have preceded it.
Lionel Buller, Steve Whalley and other senior ministers sit on the front bench with their backs to her. In the gallery above, her eye is caught by Rob McNeil. Alongside him, Alan Dalrymple and Jemima Sheffield, talking with a discomforting familiarity. Carne has been allocated a seat just behind. She glances at him, immobile in that apparent melancholy he can display.
She begins by asking the House’s patience as she outlines the story that has led to her letter of resignation. She describes her parents, and her and her brother’s working-class, Catholic childhoods, which ran in parallel with the Troubles that led her brother to join the IRA.
She tells of the entrance of David Vallely into her life, her relationship with him, his disappearance, the visit by a mysterious Englishman who helped her create a new life in England and advised her to change her name.
Then, after a pause during which her audience detects her steeling herself, she winds the clock forward two decades. ‘Four days after the election – one day after my right honourable friend, the Prime Minister, invited me to join his government – these events in my past came back to haunt me. The body of the man I knew as David Vallely was discovered buried in an Irish field. It turned out that Vallely was an alias and his real name was David Wallis. He was a former British soldier, recruited by MI6 for undercover work. Wallis’s mission was to inveigle his way into my life as a way of gaining intelligence on my brother, Martin McCartney, who was believed to be the leader of a faction inside the IRA determined to oppose a ceasefire and carry on their armed struggle. A few months later, around the time David Wallis went missing, my brother also disappeared from Ireland. I have had no contact with him since.’
The chamber is hushed, gripped, entranced, even, by the dramatic story revealed by this lightly framed woman. So far she has proceeded on script – now is the pivotal moment. She leafs through the typed words in the coming pages – the touchpaper for her bombshell. State murder both then and now. Steve Whalley, the new Home Secretary, Sir Edward Latimer, the new head of MI5, key conspirators complicit in the Hawk disappearances and the Kennedy killing. A cover-up rising all the way to the new Prime Minister himself. An image of the Brooks’s dead bodies flashes in front of her.
The chamber is expectant. One, two, three seconds pass. Insider or outcast. Self-sacrifice or self-advancement. Too many seconds have passed – she must speak. One thought from two decades before leaps at her. It crowds out everything around her – the faces on the benches, the spectators in the gallery, the cameras and microphones, the lights. They have used me – I must now use them. She turns over the remaining pages and stares at the blank backs of paper. She thinks of those words of Martin ‘Destiny . . . what you’re born into . . . always there.’ She decides.
‘Over the past weeks I have come to realize that my failure to inform the Prime Minister of these circumstances in my past, however innocent a victim I was, and also to inform him that I changed my name at that time, however legal that was, might cause me to become an embarrassment to him. When I accepted his invitation to join his government, this seemed of little account. But our media will not allow the past to be past – and one may reasonably ask: why should they?
‘It became apparent to me that my innocent involvement in these events of 1993 and 1994, and my response to them, could make me the subject of media scrutiny that would stand in the way of the vital work this administration needs to do. I want to make two things clear. Firstly, I bear no ill will towards our intelligence services for the operation they mounted which involved me. It was both understandable and, in my view, legitimate at that time. Secondly, it is for the reason I have stated, and that reason only, that I tendered my right honourable friend my resignation.’
She looks up at the gallery. Rob McNeil colours with astonishment. Alan Dalrymple and Jemima Sheffield exchange a brief smile. Behind them, a glimpse of Carne.
Her words are received initially in silence, followed by growls of ‘hear, hear’. Lionel Buller catches the Speaker’s eye and rises to his feet. ‘We have just heard,’ begins the Prime Minister, ‘a remarkable and courageous speech. I am sure that the whole House and the whole country beyond will, like me, be overwhelmed with admiration for my honourable friend’s courage, honesty and the unselfish offer she has made to me.’
The cries of ‘hear hear’ grow louder and order papers are waved. Buller continues. ‘My honourable friend is aware that I have not yet replied to her letter. Now that I understand more fully her underlying reasons, I would like to assure her that her resignation is not necessary and that I will not accept it. I very much hope that, after the most generous recept
ion by this House, she will now feel able to withdraw it and continue her important work in this government.’
Anne-Marie rises again to her feet and says simply, ‘I am deeply grateful to the Prime Minister.’ Buller waves her towards him and she descends five rows to the front bench. As she passes Steve Whalley, she pauses and, with a smile, whispers, ‘I know, Steve. I know who you are.’ She enjoys his flicker of fear. The Prime Minister motions her to sit beside him as the House resumes its business.
Her political career is secured, the shadows gone, the ghosts banished. She thinks of David and Joseph. Both dead. Her brother Martin, as good as dead. And now Brooks, too. ‘Uncle Jimmy Vallely’. And Dorothy. Perhaps she also knew too much. Hinds’s words clamour in her ears. ‘There is no one left who can harm you. No one who knows. They’ve all gone.’
But there is one person left who does know. Who knows everything – because she told him everything. The man who put his trust in her and helped her wrest back her life and overcome her past. The last man standing, dead or alive. She looks up at the gallery and sees him gazing blankly ahead. She catches his eye.
Carne slowly shakes his head, not in accusation but in bewilderment. Something must have happened. She seemed so set on her course. He had come to believe there might truly be a future – the two of them standing together against the demons the speech she had intended would unleash. A togetherness beyond anything they had achieved so far. But she’s changed the script. Why? Into whose hands has she committed herself? Has she been offered something impossible to resist? Is she a captive? But then he understands he never came close to the recesses of her mind and heart. Or soul – if she has one. She will be forever opaque – that complexity that can never be untangled.
Is he casualty, victim or fool? Or all three combined? Not that it matters now. He breathes hard, tries to bite on feeling or regret. Can it really be over? The end of the story? Must it be? He is afraid for her. In that fear lies his only solace: that she will need him again. He turns to leave the gallery. For himself, he is unafraid because, without her, what is there to live for?
She casts a look of panic at his disappearing back. A premonition seizes her. Has she now condemned this man to death too? This good man. A man she had even begun to feel for – feelings she had thought lost for ever. Has she used him – just as David used her? Has she betrayed him? Has she deprived herself of a renewed life?
It is too late. She has made her choice.
She looks out over the pink, grinning faces sweating under the chamber’s lights, their bovine cheering, their outdated waving of order papers. She thinks again of those she knew who are dead or disappeared.
The noise in the chamber calms and its occupants subside onto its benches. She flicks a glance at the Prime Minister beside her and the pillars of his government beyond. They have no inkling that she has found the way to keep her options open. She will await her moment. To embrace them can be to subvert them.
Yes. Atonement is needed. She will ensure it comes. And she will decide how.
She remembers her brother’s words of long ago: ‘You’re the ballot, not the bullet.’ It is no longer true. She is both. She is a woman of state.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to those whose expertise, insight, support, inspiration and calm surroundings made such a difference; Julian Alexander, Andrew Allberry, Sue Carney of Ethos Forensics, Hugh Dent, Gavin Esler, Joanna Frank, Lucy Gilmour, Paul Greengrass, Val Hudson, Brian Lapping, Lucinda McNeile, Lisa Milton, Sophie Nelson, Juliet and Charles Nicholson, Babs Oduwole, Ana and Graham Ross, Dominic Streatfeild, Robert Young and the friends in Ireland I never forget.
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Simon Berthon 2017
Simon Berthon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008214388
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