But nonetheless, it had still been his decision to proceed, to go with the current line-up one more time. His decision, pressured, high-stakes or not. He had known the risks, he had considered the implications, and he had gone ahead.
But not without devising a back-up.
He reached down to the passenger seat and took hold of the Mars bar he had bought at South Lakes, squeezing it up out of the wrapper with his left hand and biting off a ravenous mouthful. He hadn’t eaten since that fish and chips yesterday evening, and he’d left half of it after seeing one of the local cops devour a deep-fried pizza. Bleeagh. Fucking pervert. He chewed noisily on the chocolate and tossed the wrapper to one side. It landed on top of the map, which itself sat above the unopened copy of The Saltire he had picked up at the service station. The story was all over the radio and the TV, but he had decided that a copy of the paper itself would come in useful.
He had actually phoned Swan before Morgan’s unit got themselves arrested, and before he found out what The Saltire had blabbed. Bowman and Paterson’s failure had caused too much damage on its own, and everything thereafter was to be geared towards limiting the consequences. Even if the lawyer and that hack had been plugged, even if Harcourt and Addison had made it to Strathgair and taken out the three runners, there were already too many question marks all over the place. Never mind whether the great unwashed were going to start questioning the Voss Four’s previously indubitable guilt, he had to worry about what was happening on the inside. There were plenty of men who would do you favours and be happy (i.e. protected) not to know what was really going on or what it was really about, but if it went fugazzi, they didn’t know you. That was no reflection on them, that was just the rules. While the op was under control, so was the information; everyone, from the top down, asked only the questions you let them ask. But now every last flatfoot in the highlands was a potential loose cannon; they would all be trying to work out why two covert agents had been found tied to a tree in front of a pile of guns, to guess why the prints of one of them were all over the prison bus, and generally wondering what the bloody hell was going on. And more importantly, so would their bosses.
He had phoned Swan at his Westminster flat, and the bastard woke up fast when he heard the situation. Knight let him babble a bit – lots of “Oh my God"s and “does Dalgleish know"s and “are you sure there’s no chance"s – then told him to shut up and listen.
“I think I can still get you out of this,” he said.
Swan shut up and listened.
“Dalgleish, I’m not so sure about. He might have to take his own chances, I don’t know. It’s nothing personal, just how the cards have fallen. Simple luck. There’s a way to save you, and had it gone another way, I might have been having this conversation with him. But understand this: if I do this for you, you don’t just owe me, I own you. Got that?”
Swan paused.
“All right, fuck you then . . .”
“NO! NO! Please, don’t hang up,” Swan blurted. “It’s just . . . I don’t know what you’re trading here. I want . . .”
“You’re not getting this, are you? I’m not asking for a trade, Michael. It’s not a question of me getting you out of this and then you being bound to repay me as I see fit. Me owning you wouldn’t be an agreement of this deal that you had to honour, or that you could try to wriggle out of. It would be a bare fact. That’s what I’m telling you. I just want to hear you acknowledge and accept it before I do anything, because I’ll need your full cooperation if this is going to work, and I don’t want you wasting time looking for escape clauses.”
Swan sighed. He sounded resigned, broken. “Okay. I accept, I do. Whatever you want. You own me. Just tell me what I have to do.”
“Not over the phone, you idiot.”
“Where then? I thought you were in Scotland.”
“I am. But we can meet halfway. Get in your car.”
“But it’s . . . I’ve got a meeting with Camelot in five hours in Westminster.”
“Michael, get a grip. If you walk into the House today, there’ll be a dozen coppers waiting outside for you by the time you leave. You have to act now. This is for keeps.”
“All right. All right. Where?”
“Giggleswick. Your little cottage in the Yorkshire Dales you think no-one knows about, where you ‘entertain’ that Rugby League player from Leeds.”
“Jesus.”
“No, I don’t believe that’s his name. Get driving, Michael. Forthwith. I’ll tell you how we’re going to play it from there.”
“All right. All right.”
Knight could hear the trembling in Swan’s voice. He sounded like he was about to cry.
“Now, we’re not just going to have to work out our answers in advance, we’re going to have to anticipate what the questions might be, and I’ll need all the help you can give me on that. You’ll have to bring whatever documentation is to hand about the FILM Accord, so that we can see where the danger is likely to lie.”
“I’ve got . . . some stuff here, some papers. But most of it’s at the Department. Should I . . .?”
“No. Just what’s to hand. Time is going to be the most important factor here. Get driving. And talk to no-one. I mean it. I find out you’ve spoken to anybody – Dalgleish, anybody – and I walk.”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
“I know.”
*
Knight turned up the car radio and allowed himself a smile of satisfaction as this morning’s deft act of spin-doctoring took effect across the nation’s airwaves and penetrated the nation’s minds. It was so laughably simple. No-one believed it, no-one even listened to it if you sent some sod out to the front steps to make a statement. But if you called up the right person, told them it was utterly hush-hush and that they’d owe you heavily for giving them this, not only did they swallow it in one gulp, but they gave it top billing and practically the whole country bought it too. That was what this hack – this Lapsley or Parlabane or whatever he called himself – didn’t understand. He had found out a few facts; so bloody what. But the fool thought the facts were the start and finish, like inert exhibits that everyone would look at and draw the same conclusions from. They weren’t. They were materials. And the art of controlling information lay in shaping the materials.
“. . . geant Shearer has come in for some heavy fire over his decision to go public with his information rather than take it directly to the detectives supervising the manhunt, but he has strongly rebutted this criticism, saying that as the finger of suspicion was pointing at unknown sources within the investigation, his actions were entirely in the public interest. This criticism comes in the wake of remarks by the Scottish Secretary, Alastair Dalgleish, warning against what he called ‘media hysteria’, but with police confirming that they are holding three men in relation to incidents last night at two Edinburgh addresses – one of which was the home of the journalist John Lapsley – and with accusations of conspiracy and cover-up more widespread by the minute, it seems Mr Dalgleish may have closed the door after the horse has bolted. Indeed, on the line now is our correspondent, John Crispen, who may be able to shed some new light on this morning’s developments.”
“Thank you, Sally. Yes, I spoke this morning with a very senior figure in the security services – someone who refused to be named, but someone who, I must stress, is involved in the Voss investigation at the highest level. And he admitted to me that suspicions had been growing among detectives that police and security-services personnel – possibly even figures within the investigation – were involved in the murder of Roland Voss and in the events that have followed. He pointed to the suicide of Craigurquhart security chief Donald Lafferty on Monday, and admitted also that detectives had already expressed fears that the prisoners’ escape was not the opportunist outcome of a fortuitous accident, but the result of an orchestrated operation. He said he could not rule out the possibility that one or more of the men killed may have been party to the plan and subsequent
ly betrayed.
“However, most dramatically, he told me that he still had no doubts over the guilt of the Voss Four, and believes that they have been continuously assisted – rather than somehow framed – by whoever these insiders may be. In response to some of the revelations and theories posited this morning, he asked what he considered the obvious question: why would a group of conspirators engineer the escape of the men they had framed for Voss’s murder, when they were already set up to take the blame?
“I asked him, in that case, why the fugitives were not then evacuated from the area by car. He admitted he had no answer to that, saying he could only speculate that perhaps their plan had not gone off perfectly, and be grateful that this was the case.”
“What of the two men arrested by Sergeant Shearer?” the newsreader asked.
“My source said detectives believe these men were involved in assisting the escape, but may have subsequently been double-crossed by the fugitives. However, he admitted he was not optimistic that the two men would avenge themselves by forwarding vital information, reminding me that Donald Lafferty had swallowed a cyanide pill rather than betray his superiors.”
“And did your source have any response to the alleged attempts on the life of Thomas McInnes’s lawyer, Nicole Carrow, and the suggestion that Finlay Campbell’s death was also related to the conspiracy?”
“Yes he did, Sally. He refused to comment on Mr Campbell’s death until Strathclyde Police had concluded their own investigation, but he said he wholly understood Miss Carrow’s reluctance to approach the police for protection. He admitted that in light of recent developments it was as well she hadn’t, and said he believed she was among the innocent victims of this affair. He pointed out that Miss Carrow had only met McInnes once, having just joined the firm of Manson & Boyd a few weeks ago, and said he feared she had been unknowingly set up when she received the letter she presented to detectives on Monday. He said it would be entirely consistent with the ruthlessness the investigation had so far uncovered if the attempts on her life were a brutal and cynical ploy to cast doubt on the Voss Four’s guilt by suggesting that they themselves were the victims of a cover-up.
“Finally, he warned that it would be suicidally negligent to be influenced by sensationalism and consider these three fugitives anything other than extremely dangerous.”
Swan resembled something that had fallen out of a rolled-up mattress in a skip. He was wearing a blue Benetton sweatshirt which must have lain crushed in a drawer for the several years since it had been fashionable, and a pair of brown corduroys. For a man who usually looked like he had been born in a suit, it was a sartorial statement of distress and desperation. The normally immaculately coiffured mane of hair now looked like Heseltine in a wind tunnel, as if he had driven up from London with all the windows open, and his solarium-tanned cheeks had undergone a rapid bleaching process. He stood impatiently at the open front door like a kid bursting for the toilet, Knight having noticed him twitching at the curtains as he rolled the Scorpio up the driveway.
Knight was deliberately and demonstratively unhurried as he slowly climbed out of the car and locked it, even putting on the burglar alarm despite there being not a soul for bloody miles. He ambled up to the cottage’s porch, patting Swan firmly on the shoulder and walking past him into the hall.
Swan patently didn’t know what to say, not even how to greet him. Circumstances he wasn’t programmed for. No protocol from the image-makers on this one.
“Christ almighty, man, fix yourself a drink and for God’s sake relax,” Knight told him. “You’ve got to play the unflappable statesman, not wobble around ashen-faced like you’ve just seen Banquo’s ghost.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Swan muttered, bending down and reaching into an antique lacquered cabinet as Knight sat back in an armchair. He poured himself a large brandy and gestured to Knight with a glass. Knight shook his head.
“Drink up,” he instructed. “And then have another.”
Swan sat down opposite with his second brandy, not relaxing but at least now attempting to give the impression that he was.
“So what are we going to do?” he asked, finally.
“The documents?”
“Oh yes, yes,” he muttered, getting up and retrieving a folder from his briefcase, which sat at the foot of a hatstand just outside the living-room door. He handed it to Knight and then sat back down, picking up his drink from the carpet. Knight opened the folder and began to flip through the thick wad of papers.
“Hmm,” he said. “I think we should be . . . look, do you have a desk or something?”
“Yes,” Swan said, springing up, jumpy and over-eager. “I have a study, sort of.”
He led Knight back into the hall and along past the kitchen to a cramped chamber opposite the bedroom. It contained an old desk and a chair, its back to the window. This last afforded a view of a stately oak in the garden outside, which blocked out a good deal of the light and contributed to the study’s atmosphere of claustrophobic and depressing dinginess. A bookcase climbed to the ceiling on one wall, bearing several shelves of suspiciously neat and sequential legal volumes and encyclopaedia, which, along with the conspicuous lack of cup-rings and writing utensils on the desk, betrayed the room’s phoniness. Swan never worked there; probably seldom went in there. It didn’t even have a phone. It was just a cover, an excuse for having the place if the wrong people found out about it. “Yes, I go there to read and work and be alone.” Not to shag strapping young rugger stars.
“Have a seat,” Knight commanded, placing the folder on the desk and standing over it as he began to sort the documents into piles. Swan finished his brandy and leaned back in the chair, tipping its spine against the wall.
“If you were listening to the radio you’ll have heard the first part of my damage-limitation strategy,” Knight said, looking up momentarily from the paperwork.
“Yes, I did,” Swan confirmed enthusiastically.
“It’ll dampen the hysteria down a little, but the questions are still going to pile up, even if we can neutralise the remaining three accused.” Knight walked around to one side of the desk, staring through the window at the oak as he spoke. “The problem is that whatever conspiracy theories start flying around, about cops or MI5 or the bus crash, Voss, blah blah blah, the one thing they’re missing is a motive. I mean, have you seen this, for instance?” Knight picked up his copy of The Saltire from underneath the now empty cardboard wallet and handed it to Swan, who unfolded it and placed it face-up on the desk in front of him.
“I’ve heard the radio references, of course,” Swan said, looking down at the broadsheet, “but I hadn’t seen the actual . . .”
Swan was unable to finish his sentence, due to his brain suddenly applying itself to the task of decorating the bookshelves in a glistening red and pink. Knight wiped his prints from the gun and placed it in Swan’s right hand, which dangled at the end of his arm as it hung over the edge of the chair. He had a quick look at the corpse’s right temple, satisfying himself that there was a powder-burn underneath the trickling blood. Knight removed a sheet of newsprint from inside his own jacket, and placed it among the piles of FILM Accord bumf, in front of The Saltire. It was a report from an American economics and business journal analysing figures sourced to a Dutch newspaper, detailing the breakdown of Roland Voss’s turnover for 1995, company by company. Messy slashes of luminous yellow highlighter pen picked out the pornography production, sales and distribution operations. The figures underneath each had a lot of zeros on the end.
“So, what we got?” asked Gilmore, standing up and walking towards them, Fraz moving quickly into the vacated seat on the settee.
Parlabane had returned to the office about an hour earlier. He had gone home with the purpose of joining Sarah in grabbing some kip, she having been persuaded that an attempt on her life and her part in a danger-fraught rescue mission was sufficient grounds for (for once) phoning in sick and taking the day off. She had been busy with the
SOCOs while he had been flying the friendly skies. The cops found the missing section of their kitchen window on the roof, and took samples of the glass to match against fragments they might find on the suspects’ clothes. They had also removed the duvet cover as it had Harcourt’s bloodstains on it, and photographed some bootprints left on the stainless-steel draining board. When Parlabane showed up, she had gone directly to bed and left him to wait for the glazier, familiarly sacking out in about a second and a half despite the daylight pouring through the flimsy curtains like they were more a sieve than a basin. In fact, Sarah was so sound, she didn’t even notice him climbing under the bed and re-attaching his gun and its clip to the boards below the mattress. After the new pane was in place, Parlabane tried to get his own head down for a while, but it was useless, with his brain still running like Kevin Harper on speed. He settled for a long bath, a change of clothes and a coffee, then walked back up the hill to The Saltire.
Gilmore’s office was a picture. First, Parlabane had to wait for the security guard now posted outside to receive clearance to let him in. As far as he knew, there hadn’t been a security guard outside the editor’s office since 1990 when the then incumbent wrote an editorial backing Wallace Mercer’s plan to buy Hibs and merge the club with Hearts. Parlabane almost tripped over the two camping mattresses and sleeping bags that lay on the floor of the ante-room where Gilmore’s secretary, Catriona, normally worked, her desk now backed up tight against a wall and her chair perched on top of it out of the way. He later discovered a third such mattress just outside Gilmore’s exec bog and shower-room, in the carpeted area where the coffee-percolator sat and gurgled.
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