by Roger Pearce
Kerr paused by the toilets. Rich Malone was an accomplished intelligence officer in the US Department of State. With action in Pakistan, Vietnam and Yemen, the former cop had the brain and scars necessary to assemble counter-terrorism’s jigsaw. He also kept the bullshit filter switched on, which guaranteed Kerr’s full attention.
‘So we need to go secure?’
‘John, we need to go personal, as in you getting your ass over to Washington.’
At the end of the corridor Kerr could see Donna through the open door in Ritchie’s private office. She looked busy, probably editing one of Ritchie’s emails, and he wondered again what had kept her back so late. ‘What’s wrong with flashmail all of a sudden?’
‘Listen, I’m not doing a favour for the Brits on account of I don’t know where this leads, and no way am I going mano a mano with the frigging BSS.’ This was the British Security Service, American-speak for MI5. ‘What I have is for you alone. I’m asking you, pal.’
‘So I’ll work something for early next week,’ he said as he reached Donna’s desk.
‘How about tomorrow? Quick in and out? John, this is important.’
Kerr noticed Donna was wearing a new silk scarf and freshened make-up. She picked up the phone to let Ritchie know he had arrived but Kerr covered her hand. ‘Give me a second,’ he said, putting Malone on hold.
‘You’re wearing that face again,’ said Donna, deadpan, before he could ask.
‘Can you get me on the first Washington flight tomorrow? Strictly between us?’
‘Keep it from the boss, you mean?’ Donna gently freed his hand. ‘For that, I need the phone.’
Kerr picked up the BlackBerry. ‘Rich? See you for lunch.’
Malone sounded relieved. ‘Send me the flight and I’ll have you picked up.’
Donna was already dialling and waved him past her. ‘Be ready, John,’ she said. ‘It’s not very nice.’
Ritchie was on the phone as he entered and closed the door, but immediately beckoned Kerr over to the chair beside his desk, cutting the call short. The office was in gloom except for a pool of light from Richie’s desk lamp in the far corner, suggesting his boss had not moved from his chair for a couple of hours, so Kerr switched on the main ceiling lights. Ritchie, in shirt sleeves, had a single document in front of him beside his yellow notepad, one of Donna’s secret green folders. He picked it up as he swung round to Kerr, using Trenchard’s bottom drawer as a footrest.
‘Remember Toby Devereux bragging about a direct line into the dissidents?’
Kerr nodded.
‘Not any more.’ Ritchie handed Kerr the folder. ‘Anyone we know?’
The eyes bulged and the whole face was distorted by the tangerine wedged in the mouth between its teeth, but Kerr recognised the victim in a heartbeat. ‘Mark Bannerman. I went out to Nairobi after the shopping mall attack, remember? On the terrorist finance angle? That was Mark. Where did this come from?’
‘PSNI. It happened a couple of hours ago. Toby Devereux didn’t notify them in advance that he was going over. Nor did Vauxhall Cross.’
Kerr stared at the bloated death mask. ‘This is a good bloke, Bill. An operator. Cleared the way in Tehran, well before the regime change with the Yanks stealing the credit.’
‘He should have stuck to Farsi.’
‘You know about him too, from the nineties.’
Ritchie took the photograph back and held it beneath the lamp, the shadows beneath his eyes deepening in the light. ‘All that beneath the wire stuff in Belfast?’ he said as the memory returned. ‘This is him? We never met but they gave him a nickname, “Roadrunner,” something like that?’
Kerr nodded. ‘And Toby sent him back for a replay.’
‘When they should have known things are a lot different now,’ said Ritchie, jabbing the sign around Bannerman’s thighs. ‘Crazy.’
‘How did they find him so quickly?’
‘They didn’t,’ said Ritchie, holding up the photograph. ‘The killers sent this direct to his chief.’
Chapter Sixteen
Wednesday, 12 October, 20.43, St Jude’s Presbytery, Haringey
To prepare for the confrontation, Vanessa Gavron positioned her almost new white convertible Saab 9-3 in a one-way street about twenty paces from the junction with Green Lanes, a busy thoroughfare in the borough of Haringey. Ducketts Road, a five minute walk from Turnpike Lane Underground station, was marked with residents’ bays, all full at this time of the evening, so Gavron had parked illegally with her front offside wheel perched on a speed bump. This was necessary in order to snatch the best photographs of her target, and the journalist renowned as the ‘Doorstepper’ had never let officialdom throw her off course.
The darkened street narrowed at the junction with Green Lanes in a block paved crossing with black iron posts each side, and traffic along the main road was busy, with many of the shops still open. On the far side were the lit windows of Café Venezia beside Sunderban Curry House, and she screwed her face at the errant apostrophe in Sunbed’s and Tints. Beyond the corner to her right was St Jude’s Roman Catholic Church, a red-brick monstrosity glowering over Ladbrokes and Altemaar Gold.
The church presbytery, in which Gavron had a specific interest, lay directly opposite, a dilapidated Victorian pile with pitched slate roof, peeling window frames and bricks as dark as St Jude’s. The windows and scrubby front garden were overshadowed by a yew tree, gnarled and sombre, that leant towards the porch like a giant signpost. The house lay in pitch blackness except for a glimmer of light through the stained glass fanlight over the front door.
Ducketts Road itself, straight as a die, was lined with terraces of modest Victorian houses in varying states of disrepair. On the way down, Gavron’s passenger had remarked that her Saab was at least five years newer than any of the other vehicles they had passed: he noticed such things because he liked cars more than people, and one of his short-lived jobs in a working life that never passed Go had been a courier driver for FedEx.
Donal Quinn was in his early twenties and had spent the past nine years in New Jersey until Gavron had tracked him down a week earlier, persuaded him to return to London with her and paid for his Virgin Atlantic ticket out of her own pocket. Fingernails chewed to the quick, his face scarred from teenage acne, Donal wore a grey New York Yankees sweatshirt with a navy baseball cap the wrong way round.
They were separated by almost a generation, but had been sitting with their hands joined since Donal’s first sighting in over a decade of Father Michael. The priest had turned into the street just before eight, later than Gavron expected from her previous observations, hurrying home from Confession at St Jude’s. Gavron had heard the boy’s sharp intake of breath over the camera shutter as his tormentor emerged from the dusk, black cloak fastened with a metal clasp and flapping over his cassock, wispy hair lifted by the breeze.
‘Donal, it’ll be okay.’ For the next forty minutes the journalist old enough to be his grandmother had spoken with the quiet urgency of a lover, calming the victim’s fear, steeling the survivor’s courage. Gavron had been unlocking childhood memories from blighted grown-ups while Savile and other rapists were still hiding in plain sight, long before the police had been jerked into action. Through the years of scepticism and cover-up she had listened to men and women unable to hold down a relationship at home, difficult to manage at work, their sex lives stone cold or suicidally risky, and believed them.
Over three days of isolation with Donal in her Bankside apartment, Vanessa Gavron had mined the seam of fear his brain had shut down long ago. As the words at last began to flow, she had found herself amused by his Irish American patois, incensed by the scale of his abuse and fired up to expose the guilty. Afterwards, with both of them wrung out, Gavron had convinced him things were different now, that the new world would believe his nightmare beneath the Gothic roof of the Olive Tree children’s home outside Belfast.
‘You see what I see?’ Donal had rasped as the priest disappeared beneath the yew
tree. ‘Satan dressed as the fucking Man of God.’
They were probably someone else’s words, but Vanessa Gavron would write them up, along with all the others. The garb of this particular devil, she now knew, included the musty striped pyjamas he had worn when young Donal brought his morning cup of tea. There had never been grooming or befriending, just a hand working hard under the blanket, the other pulling the boy’s head onto him, tainting him for life with his stale, whiskey breath.
‘You ready?’ The driver’s door clunked open. ‘Let’s hear what he’s got to say for himself.’
‘No…I’m sorry.’ Gavron had the interior light switched off but the boy had turned his face from her. ‘Can’t do it.’
Gavron silently regarded him. ‘Donal, that’s absolutely fine, dear.’
‘Next time,’ he murmured, his eyes flickering another apology.
She reached for his hand again. ‘Look after the car for me.’
The black front door was oak, with a heavy iron knocker, two frosted glass panels covered by cheap pleated curtains and an old ceramic doorbell marked Press. It made no discernible sound but, as she gave the knocker a double tap, the stained glass above the door brightened and rapid footsteps approached down the hall. Two heavy bolts clunked back, then someone was pulling at the door. It was jammed, probably swollen from the recent rain, but juddered open with a hard push from one of Gavron’s gold buckled pumps.
A spindly woman in her sixties stood silhouetted in the light, drying her hands on a faded floral apron tied around a black cotton shift. ‘Yes?’ The housekeeper wore scuffed black lace-up shoes over thick stockings, her greying hair stretched back in a bun. She looked unfriendly, so Gavron did not waste a smile.
‘I’d like to see Father Michael.’
‘He’s having his supper.’
Gavron was already looking past the woman’s shoulder into the long hallway. The walls were covered in a sickly green wash with a smattering of ecclesiastical prints in cheap frames, and the only lighting came from a helix bulb curling from a dusty conical shade. To the left was the narrow staircase with a threadbare carpet runner, opposite the darkened front room, but Gavron guessed the priest was to be found through the brown door to the morning room at the far end, beneath the landing. ‘He will want to see me,’ she said, staring her down.
The house-cum-gatekeeper fiddled with the apron strings behind her back while she took in Gavron’s grey pin-stripe trouser suit with revere collar and imitation pearls, as if calculating the visitor’s status. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘It’s personal,’ said Gavron, one foot on the threshold.
Perhaps the old woman smelt trouble, for the apron stayed where it was, but the face turned hostile. ‘It’s late.’
‘Personal for Father Michael, I mean. To do with a confession.’
‘Well it’s not possible.’ Eyes hard as flint, she peered beyond Gavron into the street, still sniffing out danger.
‘Anything’s possible.’
The woman’s skinny right arm was already reaching for the door. ‘I told you. The Father is not available.’ She sucked in her cheeks, tightening the skin of her forehead, her whole face suddenly vacuum wrapped. ‘You’ll have to come back in the morning.’
‘What are you,’ murmured Gavron with a smile, ‘his frigging guardian angel?’
The housekeeper looked down at Gavron’s loitering foot. ‘Another inch and you’ll be trespassing.’
The door hit the wall with a crash and bounced back against Gavron’s outstretched palm, though her eyes never left the housekeeper’s. ‘Any more shit from you and I’ll wring your scrawny chicken’s neck.’
‘What’s going on down there?’ A yellowish light fanned from the end of the hallway as Gavron held the front door wide. Still in his clerical shirt and collar, Father Michael approached down the hall, dabbing his mouth with a white linen napkin. ‘What is it, Mary?’
‘I’m Vanessa Gavron, Father, and I’m…’
‘I know who you are.’ The priest took his place beside the housekeeper, blocking the entrance with one arm across the frame, his underarm dark with sweat. He wore brown furry slippers with a yellow smiley on the uppers but looked red-faced and angry. ‘I’ve seen your photograph. Read your poisonous smears against the Church.’
Gavron stepped forward into a mist of his whiskey breath, as if the housekeeper had never been there. ‘I’d like to come in, Father.’
‘It’s alright, Mary.’ He patted the housekeeper on the shoulder, sending her back to safety, making room to square up to Gavron. ‘There’s nothing to say. Lies and tittle-tattle. You know it, too,’ he said, wiping his mouth again and looking into the street, eyes glassy from drink. ‘Otherwise you’d be standing here with the police.’
In all the faded colour school photos Gavron had researched over the years Father Michael looked jovial and avuncular, a man incapable of impropriety. But in real life, stooped with age as he guarded his territory, she was struck by the arrogance that had enabled him to abuse for so long. ‘We need to talk tonight, Father,’ she said, evenly.
‘No, we do not,’ he said, hissing the words as the door began to close again. ‘So fuck off and leave me alone.’
Gavron calmly wiped her cheek. ‘You think you can keep this buried?’ She had her foot ready again, but the priest’s eyes had shifted beyond the pool of light, suddenly wide in recognition.
‘Donny. Is it you?’
Gavron swung round in time to see the boy emerge from the shadows around the tree. She braced herself for another battle over the front door but the only movement was a flash of white as the napkin dropped to the floor. The three stood perfectly still, the silence broken by the cooing of pigeons on the roof as Gavron took the boy’s hand and held him a pace from the doorway.
Then something stirred in the priest. ‘What are you doing here?’ He turned the question into a demand, intimidating, the housemaster still commanding his pupil. ‘With this woman?’
Suddenly Donal’s hand ripped away from Gavron and he was standing in the threshold. He froze, struggling for the words, then took a deep breath, lifted his head and spat directly into the old man’s face. ‘Don’t ever call me that again. My name is Donal. Donal Quinn.’
The priest stood rooted to the spot, Donal’s spittle trail glistening on his cheek. ‘Wait in the car,’ said Gavron, gently tugging at the boy’s arm, feeling his whole body tremble. She watched him walk away without a backward glance and fold himself into the Saab. ‘I brought Donal back with me from America,’ she said quietly as Father Michael slowly pulled a clean handkerchief from his sleeve, like a magician, and wiped his face. ‘Today the past has caught up with you. He’s not afraid, Father. You can see the hatred in his eyes.’
‘No. It’s nothing. All the boys had pet names.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ve been appointed to Rome, for pity’s sake. You’ll fucking destroy me.’ This time the words came in a wheeze as the energy seemed to drain from him. His face rearranged itself in the gloom, as if weighing confession and denial. ‘Have you been to the police?’
Gavron shook her head. ‘It’s the boy and me. That’s how he wants things. For now.’
‘Blackmail, then?’ Father Michael studied the spittle in his handkerchief. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Your story,’ said Gavron. She handed over a card. ‘To know what happened.’
She sensed the housekeeper’s shadow hovering in the background and wondered how much she knew. ‘It’s alright, Mary,’ called the priest, without turning. ‘Nearly done.’
‘No, Father,’ said Gavron, quietly. She reached to brush a stray breadcrumb from his other cheek, making him flinch. ‘You should go back inside and finish your supper. Drink some more whiskey. But be sure to give me a call.’
Chapter Seventeen
Wednesday, 12 October, 20.53, home of Melanie and Rob Fleming
Melanie Fleming and most other SO15 officers had been on duty almost
without a break since bombings in Victoria two days earlier. There were no obvious suspects but Room 1830 maintained what Fargo called The Mushroom, an ever expanding schedule of extremists capable of manufacturing and delivering similar lethal devices.
Outside Victoria station, the work continued non-stop. A minute after the all-clear from the bomb disposal officer, with smoke still hanging in the air and corpses scattered on the ground, Derek Finch’s scientists had donned their white overalls and begun work to recover forensic traces from the scene. In the meantime, frenetic activity filled the evidential vacuum, a racing cycle of witness searches, MI5 liaison, agent deployments, data mining, Facebook traces, telephone checks and media briefings. Until the longed-for intelligence breakthrough John Kerr had to make judgments about operational priorities, but it fell to Jack Langton, as his surveillance leader on the ground, to make them happen. For the operatives working to prevent another atrocity the list seemed endless, the mission impossible.
Her warnings about Dodge apparently unheeded, Melanie had hurried out of 1830 a few minutes after John Kerr. Over the previous two nights she had snatched less than nine hours’ sleep and was tired from the day’s lone surveillance from Rotherham. She had chatted with Alan Fargo a little longer while changing her clothes, then called Rob, her husband, to let him know she was on the way home.
The Flemings lived in an Edwardian halls-adjoining semi in Elms Avenue, Muswell Hill, twenty minutes’ walk from East Finchley tube and close to the local schools for their two sons, aged six and four. The four bedroom house had come on the market in a probate sale six years earlier, and they had stretched their incomes to breaking point to seal the deal.
For half a century the previous owners had kept it more or less frozen in time, and the house had avoided the horrors of ripped out fireplaces, artex ceilings, plastic and minimalism. Melanie and Rob had loved bringing their new home back to life, restoring the sash windows, ceiling roses and cornices, installing a modern kitchen and making space for an ensuite.
At five the next morning Melanie had to be on a surveillance plot in Kilburn, so she drove home in one of the Red team vehicles, an ageing Vauxhall Corsa. On the way she stopped at their local stores for the family shop: fruit and vegetables from Stayfresh in Fortis Green and the rest from Sainsbury’s, just off the Broadway. By the time she pulled up outside the house behind their white Ford Fiesta it was almost nine o’clock, with the curtains drawn and a welcoming light in the porch.