He sauntered a pace behind Atkins, his armourer. For a man hard to surprise it was an eye-opening experience. Mister had never before been to anything like the Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibition. Outside, the spring morning tipped with rain. Atkins had picked him up at a service station on the north side of the motorway ringing London and brought him down in the four-wheel drive. They'd been clogged in traffic as they'd approached the site and had crawled past demonstrators at the gate, hemmed in by a police cordon, as they held up placards denouncing the 'Death Supermarket'. That he was there, that the arrangements had been put in place, was a reflection of his confidence in the Eagle's assurance that he would walk from the Old Bailey. He seldom spoke, but he listened. His armourer knew enough to initiate conversations that he thought Mister would be interested to hear, but not to involve or introduce him.
They went down the aisles between stands that displayed the pride of military hardware. Everything was on show from tanks and armoured cars to titanium-plated aircraft cockpits, rotating helicopter mounts for rapid-firing triple-barrel machine-guns, protective clothing for troops in a chemical-warfare environment, land-, air- and sea-launched missiles.
At the main door, as their entry passes were processed, Atkins had asked, 'What in particular, Mister?'
'Just what I'm getting,' had been the laconic reply.
'In how long?'
'No hurry.'
In the past he had taken the Princess to the Ideal Home Exhibition, and the Motor Show. Not a lot of difference. From behind the stands, salesmen, who hooked on to any interest, darted out and tried to pressure drinks into hands. But they stayed dry: Atkins knew enough of Mister to know that alcohol was frowned on. Mister had made a major financial commitment to what he was getting, but he regarded it as necessary if the deal were to go through - the deal had been Cruncher's concept.
It was all about 'peace', Mister noted. Peace-keeping, peace enforcement, peace maintenance were the slogans of the day. He didn't hear the word kill, or read it. He hung back when Atkins met a general he'd served under, and who knew his father.
'Hello, hello, how are things going, now that you're out?'
'Struggling along, sir, but not too bad, sir, can't complain - it's an eye-opener, sir, but I haven't seen a bayonet.'
'It's all so damned sophisticated. Easy to forget that fighting is done by men. The better the equipment you give your men, the bigger the chance that it'll crash. If it crashes he's lost. In real combat it's man against man - but all the foreign people want is the best, so they can drool over it and hope to God they never have to use it. Must be getting along. Jolly good to see you . . . '
They came to a mock-up of a 'frontier post' where the British army were 'fighting for peace'. He looked over the Land-Rover with the machine-gun mounted, a sniper in a gillie suit, and a mortar team. In front of him were a cluster of tiny Asians, Chinese and Thais, and towering over them were their escort officers.
They were looking down. Mister's eyes ducked, and Atkins eased the small-built men a little to the side, did it with care so that no offence was given. Prone on the ground in front of the 'frontier post' were two camouflaged soldiers who made a tableau with a squat, thuggish piece of gear mounted on a shallow tripod. The dull light reflected from the launcher's lens. A sergeant was telling the Asians the qualities of the anti-tank weapon system: ' . . . destroys tanks, helicopters and bunkers. Can fire up to three per minute. Aim point is hit point, and it's effective up to 2,500 yards. You can change target during the missile's flight, and because of its low-launch velocity the chance of detection and counter-measures is minimal. It has a double-charge warhead for penetration, packs a hell of a punch . ..'
Mister's question was whispered: 'Is that what I'm getting?'
'The medium-range Trigat - MR Trigat - that's what you're getting. Sorry, that's what you've got. It's an excellent weapon, Mister, the best of its kind.'
He had absorbed everything he had heard. En route to Bosnia was a weapon that could not be afforded locally, that was sophisticated and would be a prized symbol of superiority. On one of his rare visits to Brixton, Cruncher had told him that he should take with him gear that would turn heads. The gear was an offering, a gift - so Cruncher had explained it - to convince doubters that Mister was top league. When Mister came, bearing gifts, he would be listened to. He was going to ride on the back of the MR Trigat. It was heavy stuff, new to anything he had had before.
Atkins, the armourer, had provided him in the past with Uzis and Glocks, Skorpions, Hecklers and a Kalashnikov, and with two-ounce measures of Semtex explosive to blow a reinforced warehouse door for a protege. He liked Atkins, nine years in the Royal Green Jackets with a final rank of captain; the man's leaving his regiment in the wake of a scandal - impregnating a brigadier's daughter and running from the consequences - then setting up as a freelance military consultant had slotted in well with Mister's plans.
Atkins had a mannered drawl, offhand, but he took no liberties, and he delivered. Atkins had also done time in Bosnia. Mister had no complaints. Atkins had suggested the way to acquire four MR Trigat launchers, and twenty missiles, as well as seven hand-sets and the control unit for an ITT-built Advanced Tactical Communications System, combining data and voice-network capability, and security. When Mister travelled, he would be well laden with gifts. He did not understand how the anti-tank weapon or the communications system worked, but that didn't leave him with any feeling of inferiority. The gifts guaranteed that he would win a hearing and respect
. . . Cruncher had been laying the ground.
'What about lunch, Mister? You've seen about everything other than the open-air displays, but there's no call for you to get soaked. I expect it'll be a salmon steak in the VIP restaurant.'
'Why not?'
He could beat the legal system, and he could buy into supplies of the latest, most restricted military equipment, and they could not touch him.
'Tell me, all this stuff here, who are the customers?'
'Other than you, Mister, they're governments.
That's the level this place is at.'
The pathologist had few illusions as to the technical knowledge of those who would read his reports, so he doubled up: one report for men and women with a medical and forensic background, and a second for policemen, Security Service officers, civil servants from the Home Office and Customs & Excise. The second report, for laypersons, explained the finding of a narrow bruised contusion at an upper position at the back of the cadaver's - Dubbs's - neck. The blow causing the contusion would have been sufficient, in the pathologist's opinion, to cause death or, at least, total disablement. It followed that the cadaver could not, in the pathologist's opinion, have then mounted a railing or a wall and pitched himself into the river. An intervening paragraph stated that the injury had not been sustained during the cadaver's journey down the river. The half-page report concluded: 'The blow was probably effected with the heel of a hand by a man of considerable strength and with a knowledge of where to strike. Assume he is trained or has familiarized himself with the techniques of unarmed combat, as taught to Special Forces. Conclusion: Murder.'
After anxiously telephoning the chief investigation officer, a civil servant agreed to follow the unusual and possibly illegal road of withholding the post-mortem's findings sine die. Rank was pulled. The civil servant was left in no doubt as to the importance of the connections of the CIO, and his Whitehall influence, and took a sensible course. The pathologist's conclusion would not enter the public domain.
Hardly a month went by without the CIO telling colleagues: 'There's no point having authority if you're not prepared to exercise it.' The final twisting of the civil servant's arm, close to verbal breaking-point, was the CIO's clear message that the findings represented a matter of national security.
Both reports, technical and layperson's, were locked away.
'You come with a backpack of recommendations.'
'I didn't put them th
ere.'
The chief investigation officer, Dennis Cork, poured tea from a silver pot into a bone-china cup. He held up the milk jug, an invitation, but across the desk there was a shake of the head. He pointed to the lemon slices, but there was a hand-gestured refusal. He passed the black tea to his guest. It was passed back.
' I'll take three sugars, please.'
Three sugar cubes went into the cup. It was returned, then stirred vigorously. 'Thank you - it's the way my father always took it.'
'The recommendations wrap round, and protect, a considerable reputation.'
'That's for others to say . . . and I don't believe compliments, sincere or otherwise, ever contributed much.'
The CIO liked him. His office was temperature-controlled: a new system he'd had put in when the suite was refurbished - at expense - enabled him to be shirt-sleeved and comfortable. He thought it displayed eccentricity and character that the guest still wore the heavy tweed jacket and the buttoned waistcoat with its watch-chain. They were bright eyes facing him, a little rheumy with age, but they were hard, and when they were fastened on him he found them difficult to meet.
'You've read yourself in?'
'I've read as much as I can in two and a half days of a three-year investigation.'
'It's wounded us.'
'When a man like that walks it's always hurtful, particularly if you have to account for the expenditure.'
If the CIO had been looking to be rewarded with sympathy he would have been disappointed. He doubted this man was big on commiseration. It was hardness he wanted, and chilling coldness - and leadership. He pressed on. 'You are fifty-nine years old, facing retirement. You have done us the kindness of travelling south at short notice, personal inconvenience, and now I am asking you - it is a request to spend a few weeks, maybe a month, of your last year with us, to squat down here. A last tilt at Packer while the iron's still moderately warm, if you know what I mean. If it all goes cold then it might be years before I can justify the same level of resources to target him - a final throw. Will you?'
It was a plea for help. He was offering the best and most responsible job in the Service, and the most difficult. Short of getting down on bended bloody knee he could hardly have gilded that particular lily further. The guest pondered, took his time. It seemed an age. The CIO drummed carelessly at his desk top with a pencil. A frown had cut the man's forehead; his fingers were locked together and creaked as he opened and closed the palms of his hands. Then he sipped the tea, and made up his mind.
'My way, without let or hindrance.'
'Any way you want, within the law. I don't know how often you'll get back-up there . . . '
'They'll still be there when I've finished.'
The CIO imagined mountains and sea cliffs that were as remote and inhospitable as the eyes that were again locked on him. The file told him this dour man spent his weekends away on a peninsula up the north-west coast from Glasgow. He supposed, a flight of fancy, that the terrain and the seascape, harsh and without charity, had moulded the character of the man. The response was a challenge.
'It'll be a new team.'
'Agreed.'
'Chosen by me, from outside London, from outside the Custom House.'
'Agreed.' He started to beam his charm. 'But with one exception.'
'I'm not hearing you.'
He hadn't wanted to recruit an easy man to take over Sierra Quebec Golf. He wanted a man who was contrary, awkward and dogmatic, a man who bullied.
'A new team from outside London, chosen by you, is what you'll get - with one exception.'
'I'm not a negotiator.' The response, rasped back, was immediate.
'The record says, which is why you're here, that you don't compromise. The one exception - I think you should consider it - was described to me as "an arrogant shite". At least meet him.'
Joey Cann sat alone in the room, with the empty lockers, clean walls and blank computer screens, and waited. He did not know what to expect.
Chapter Four
His head rested on his hands in front of the screen. He heard the door open and the beat of heavy shoes on the floor. He felt the presence of the man behind him.
'Are you Joey Cann?'
'That's right.'
'The name's Douglas Gough - Dougie to friends, but slow to make them.'
He had used a cold, pebble-rattling voice. It took Joey a few sharp seconds to realize why there was no warmth. They were not friends, pals, chums, mates.
He had been told during the phone call bringing him in, from the CIO's personal assistant, that a new team would reactivate Sierra Quebec Golf, and that he was to meet, and brief, the team-leader replacing Finch. He thought that the banter, wit and crack of the old team was dead. He turned to face Gough and saw no welcome offered him.
'I'm lumbered with you.'
'Don't expect me to apologize.'
'I was told I needed you because you're the archivist.'
'I know more about it than anyone else.'
'And that you're an arrogant shite.'
' I do my job as best I can.'
'The "best" is only adequate. Go short of the best and you're out on your neck.'
'Thank you.' He meant it. Joey felt a surge of gratitude and relief. In his room, over the weekend, he had lain on his bed, toyed with a takeaway, sipped and not enjoyed his beers, and imagined a life divorced from Albert William Packer. Anything, he'd thought, other than the work around Packer would be second-rate.
He noticed the scrubbed clean, babylike, out-of-doors complexion of Gough; the skin on his cheeks, veined, was the same as his father's down on the estate in Somerset. The shoes, polished and cracked, were the same as his father wore, and the suit when his father went up to the house to meet with the owners. There was the scrape of a match then the face was diffused behind pipesmoke.
A gravelled question. 'How did you come in, Joey?'
'I walked to the Underground, took a tube from Tooting Bee to Bank, then walked.'
'Did you see any soldiers?'
'No.'
'Did you see any police with guns?'
'No.'
'Did you go through any road-blocks, were you body-searched, did you have to produce ID?'
'I didn't.'
'This is just so that we understand each other, so you get to appreciate where I'm coming from, and where I'm going to. If the threat were terrorism, a similar threat, a threat on the scale we face now and today, then there would have been troops on the streets, guns, blocks and identity checks. Headlines in papers, worried faces on TV, pundits chattering - but it's not terrorism. It's crime . . . At the height of a terrorist campaign, assassinations and bombs in railway stations, how many people get hurt, get killed
- ten a year, maximum ten? What I'm saying, Joey, terrorism is pine marten's piss compared with the threat of crime. Where I come from, where I was reared, we have a small church, a free church, that makes a deal of laughter from people who don't know us. Our church believes in the power of evil. We don't make excuses for evil, we believe it should be cut out, root and branch, then burned. Crime is narcotics, narcotics are evil. They kill and they destroy. They threaten our values. There are no "sunlit uplands" in crime fighting, no bayonet charges, heroic it is n o t . . .
Do you get where I'm coming from, and where I'm going?'
'I think so.'
'Do you think I'm a mad, daft beggar?'
'I think I'd feel privileged to work on your team.'
'You can walk now.'
'I'd like to stay.'
'Why did the case go down?'
'All the usual suspects: incompetence, intimidation and corruption.'
'Listen hard to me, young man. We are losing the war against the importation of class A drugs. With our seizures we are not even touching the customer's supplies. We are incapable of creating shortages on the street. We are hemmed in by the restrictions of legal process, by the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, and we can shrug and walk away,
and say tomorrow'll be better. It won't, it'll be worse.
I don't accept that. I have to win, Joey, and I will walk over people in my way to do it. I'll walk over you, if I have to, and not break stride. What's going on now, the volume of narcotics importation, shames us. It'll destroy us, it's a cancer in us. I'll tell you what I like -
when a judge says, "Fifteen years. Take him down."
What I like better is when the guy then turns and shouts, "I'll fucking kill you, see if I won't." If you go after them hard you break the power. Without the power they're rubbish. You bin rubbish. When the pressure is exerted on an evil man he makes mistakes. When he makes mistakes you have to be there
. . . You may be arrogant - you may have an attitude problem - but it means nothing to me, as long as you're going to be there and ready when the mistake's made.'
Joey said, 'I want to be part of that being there.'
'Do me a cartwheel.'
Joey switched on the computer. A cartwheel was a diagram to show the organization of a criminal enterprise. He drew a box in the centre of the screen. He typed the two names in the centre of the box: Mister and the Princess.
'He's always called Mister. It's the code on the phones and how he expects to be addressed - we think it started off as respect. He wanted to be Mister Packer.
She's Primrose, her code and what he calls her is the Princess. She's a part of his firm, talked to and trusted.
He doesn't play about, he's totally loyal to her.'
Joey drew a circle around the box, and then the spokes from the box to the circle. He typed at the end of a spoke the Cruncher. 'All the prime associates are coded names. The number cruncher, the accountant, Duncan Dubbs. He does the finance on every significant deal - wasn't at the Old Bailey.'
He was passed a sheet of paper by Gough.
His brow furrowed as he read the pathologist's report, the layperson's version. 'I don't understand what was for them in Sarajevo.'
The Untouchable Page 8