Agent of the State

by Roger Pearce

  ‘That would be great.’

  They continued a few steps in silence. ‘Look, John, I appreciate this other thing is highly confidential and all that. Is there anything you can tell me about your source?’

  Instinctively Kerr checked behind him and saw the mother ushering her children through the gate to the safety of the Savoy. ‘Sorry, Theo, I gave my word.’

  ‘All understood, my friend,’ said Canning, holding his hands up. ‘Third-party rules and all that. Forget I ever spoke.’ He slid Kerr a mischievous glance. ‘But you don’t mind me trying, do you?’

  ‘What – to bend the rules?’ Kerr laughed. ‘I think we both know the answer to that.’

  Forty-two

  Saturday, 22 September, 15.07, St Benedict’s Independent School for Girls, Berkshire

  Mid-afternoon on Saturday, Pamela Masters sat in Classroom 7C tutoring four of St Benedict’s brightest for the Oxbridge entrance examinations. They were working through Chaucer for the specialist paper, and Masters was content to sacrifice her weekend because the pursuit of excellence in her students was the most important part of her role as head of department. Diligence had characterised her professional life and she wanted to give the girls the opportunities Fate had denied her.

  She still wondered how life might have turned out had her own application to St Hilda’s College, Oxford, been successful twenty years ago. She could have pursued a career in the private sector, perhaps, or one of the more respectable civil-service departments, with marriage and family life displacing a thankless existence in the shadows.

  With knowledge came power, the MI5 training officer had cautioned her on her first day at Gower Street, but with power came the prospect of corruption. In her first years with the Security Service she had relished the adrenaline rush that accompanied secrets, but by the time she had left, she hated the terrible knowledge they gave her. St Benedict’s had released her to share her love of literature and lap up her pupils’ hopes as if they were her own. And in the quiet times she was happy to settle for her books, University Challenge on BBC2, and generous glasses of Tuscan red.

  Her living quarters in the school grounds lay within a five-minute stroll around the perimeter of the netball courts. She had a one-bedroom flat at the top of the West Tower with panoramic views of the countryside, and on a good day she could just see Windsor Castle. Searching for her keys, she almost bumped into Melanie and Justin waiting for her outside the main door.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she exclaimed, appraising Justin’s woollen hat, sweatshirt and jeans as if he were a truant fifth-former. ‘I’ve already told you I can’t be of any help.’

  ‘Are you going to invite us in, Pamela?’ asked Melanie.

  Unsure what to do, Masters fiddled with her keys and fell back on a lie. ‘I can’t talk now. I have coursework to prepare.’

  They had made their visit outside office hours to avoid a counter-attack from the receptionist, and Justin had driven the BMW right up to the building. ‘This has to be cleared up now,’ said Melanie, nodding at the car, ‘so we can either talk here or invite you back to London for the afternoon.’

  ‘Arrest me, you mean?’ Masters laughed at Melanie. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Try us,’ said Justin, quietly, suddenly looking grown-up as he absently rubbed his neck.

  Reached by two narrow flights of uneven stairs, Masters’s flat was Spartan and impersonal. The living room had a single armchair, cramped sofa, drop-leaf dining-table, 1930s oak sideboard and a television. In places the plaster had blown from the walls and, before the gas fire warmed the room, there was a faint smell of damp. The low ceiling, creaking floorboards and gurgling pipes recalled the decrepit safe-houses Kerr’s team used for agent debriefings. There was not a single photograph in the room to suggest a life outside. The only personal touch lay in the poetry and literary novels crammed into floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the opposite wall, and there was nothing on politics or current affairs.

  Worn with schoolteacher’s flat, lace-up shoes and thick black tights, Masters’s maroon raincoat looked too long as she hooked her bag on a door-handle and flopped into the armchair. ‘Well, can we get on with it?’ she said, slightly breathless, ‘and to save time, anything to do with my career in MI5 is off limits.’

  ‘You may just have to rethink that,’ said Melanie, squashing against Justin on the clapped-out sofa. He had kept his hat on and drew another look of distaste from Masters.

  ‘You said you had something specific to clear up about a murder,’ she said, eyes flitting around the room again. ‘Or was that a lie?’

  ‘I want you to tell us why you left the Security Service,’ said Melanie.

  ‘I repeat, I absolutely will not talk about my time in MI5,’ Masters said, with finality, ostentatiously checking her watch.

  ‘Can we stop playing games, Pamela?’

  Strands of greying hair had become detached from Masters’s bun and distorted her face, tightening the look of pinched anger. ‘Who told you all this nonsense, anyway?’

  Melanie put down her pen and sighed. ‘Remember those comprehensive enquiries we used to do for the Service?’ she said drily. ‘All those extremists, subversives and future government ministers? Well, now we’ve done a job on you, so let’s cut the crap, shall we? Who did you call when we left on Wednesday?’

  ‘Haven’t got a clue who you’re talking about.’

  ‘We know you rang a mobile phone the minute we left. Whose was it? I’m asking you to tell us.’

  Abruptly Masters stood up to switch on the standard lamp. On the court below they could hear a group of girls beginning netball practice. When Masters sat down again she played with the stray hair, as if Melanie was not worthy of an answer. The girls’ laughter wafted through the window.

  ‘Are you tapping my phone?’ Masters demanded.

  Melanie ignored her. ‘We know you made a second call, too. Somewhere outside the UK. Both numbers are blocked, so we’re assuming these are friends from the old days. We’ll find out anyway, whether you co-operate or not. But I’m inviting you to tell us now. We’re getting information about a sting operation, Pamela. Against someone significant.’

  ‘Really? Well, if you’re so bloody clever you obviously don’t need me to help you.’

  ‘Using a young girl, probably trafficked from Europe. We already have evidence. A photograph. We’ll piece this together, however long it takes. Is that why you left MI5 in disgust? Because you learnt how depraved things had become?’

  ‘That’s enough rhetorical clap-trap for one afternoon,’ said Masters.

  ‘Did you tell your reporting officer?’ said Melanie.

  ‘How much more of this shit do I have to take before you get out of my home?’

  ‘Or the Service ombudsperson? Whistleblowers get a promise on non-retaliation these days, don’t they? Since the cock-up over David Shayler? So why didn’t you report the terrible things you were uncovering, as you were morally bound to do?’

  ‘This is absurd.’ Masters drew her knees together and shifted to the edge of the chair, getting ready to stand and see them off the premises. ‘You’re here under false pretences.’

  Melanie’s voice was kind. ‘And you’re a decent person, Pamela. You must have been horrified at what was going on. What’s still happening today, because you chose to do nothing.’

  Masters walked to the door and held it open. ‘Arrest me if you like. Otherwise I want you both to leave immediately.’

  Melanie got to her feet. ‘Have you ever had dealings with a government lawyer called Robert Attwell?’ Silence hung in the air, broken only by the laughter of the girls below calling for the ball. ‘Is there anything at all you want to tell us?’

  Holding the door handle, the other hand thrust into her raincoat pocket, Masters looked away. Suddenly she seemed deflated by the extent of their knowledge. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she said quietly, close to tears now. ‘I’ve moved on and don’t want to go back
.’

  On cue, Justin slipped between them and disappeared down the stairs. ‘Pamela,’ said Melanie, gently, when they were alone, ‘I’m sorry to intrude in your life. Truly. But you know we won’t let you hide away for ever.’ When she touched her arm, Masters did not pull away. ‘And I know you’re troubled because you have so much to tell me. When your conscience is ready you must call me any time, day or night.’

  Forty-three

  Saturday, 22 September, 19.54, Kerr’s apartment

  Because he waited until Melanie and Justin had returned from Berkshire to brief him on the meeting with Pamela Masters, Kerr did not arrive home until shortly before eight, immediately checking Justin’s security tape.

  He had spent his second Saturday in the office, catching up on paperwork and trying to make sense of the pieces of intelligence springing up all around him. There were myriad operational demands in addition to the secret work against Jibril, a pile of regular political and security briefings and assessments of terrorist threats to Europe and around the globe that cascaded over his desk, waiting to be read.

  From habit, he switched the TV to Sky News for the headlines on the hour. He caught the report about the missing girl while he was mixing a long gin and tonic.

  ‘Police in Hampshire are investigating the disappearance of Sara Danbury, the eleven-year-old daughter of shadow justice minister Michael Danbury, whom they believe was kidnapped as she left a dance class at Lyndhurst in the New Forest in Hampshire earlier today. Officers are keeping an open mind, but say there is no indication at this stage of any connection to her father’s politics. Michael Danbury came to prominence earlier this year with controversial demands for a further tightening of the government’s immigration policies. Police are seeking witnesses and collecting CCTV footage from cameras in the surrounding area. A friend of the family says the parents are distraught and appeal to the kidnappers to return their daughter unharmed.’

  Searching the fridge in vain for anything edible, Kerr ordered an Indian takeaway, then took a shower. As he came back into the living room his BlackBerry was vibrating with a text from Robyn: ‘nice to c u I herd the bent guy drives the beast thru hull but that’s yr lot u owe me big time. TALK TO GABI.’

  He fired back a ‘Grazie’ and was through to Jack Langton’s home number when the lamb Madras arrived. He could hear a baby screaming in the background. ‘Hope I didn’t do that,’ he apologised unconvincingly to Langton, as he opened the front door, slipped the delivery rider a tenner and refused the change. ‘What is it? Teething?’

  Langton told him he was changing his daughter’s nappy before the last feed of the day. ‘She’s eight months. It’s what babies do, John, remember? And shouldn’t you be getting your head down?’

  ‘You know that info I gave you earlier? About a corrupt undercover officer?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Langton.

  ‘How long would it take you to bike it to Hull?’

  ‘Depends on the traffic and whether I’m ignoring the speed cameras.’ Langton had dropped his voice to a whisper, so Kerr guessed his new wife was nearby. He had met Katy once, and liked her. She was a sports teacher, also a Geordie, and Langton had met her on a return home to watch Newcastle United. ‘And I’m assuming you mean late tonight, so I’d say a couple of hours, give or take. Hold on.’ There was suddenly a lot of murmuring in the background. Kerr imagined Langton breaking the news to his wife with his trademark nothing-I-can-do-about-it shrug and overactive eyebrows. ‘No problem,’ he lied when he came back on the line.

  ‘Jack, that would be great,’ said Kerr, pouring the curry onto a plate. ‘Latest info is this guy has been driving the girls in through Hull. I need you to get into the Customs office and check the port warnings.’

  ‘How far back?’

  ‘Two, three months, as far as you can without pissing off the Cuzzies. Our boy will be marked up in the protected caveat list. Not sure what colour they use these days.’

  ‘It’s a blue flag for undercover officers and agents under control.’

  ‘Theo Canning is going to check things out this end. Thanks, mate. Apologise to Katy for me and call if you get anything, yeah?’

  By nine o’clock Kerr was ready to hit the sack. He dumped the takeaway packaging in the rubbish-chute on the landing, double-bolted the front door, locked the door onto the balcony and checked his emails. Wandering through into the bedroom he vaguely heard a second report about the disappearance of a young girl, but it would be many hours before his exhausted brain registered its true significance.

  Langton snatched a couple of hours’ sleep and was on the road just after midnight. The baby was stirring as he left and burped when he winded her, leaving a rancid gobbet of sick on his shoulder. To avoid waking his wife, he free-wheeled the Suzuki away from the house, as he did on his early-morning ops, and started the engine up when he reached the park.

  The Langtons lived in Mill Hill, north-west London, in easy reach of the start of the M1. Kingston-upon-Hull lay almost two hundred miles away, but Langton’s surveillance teams regularly travelled there to pick up targets who believed security was less rigorous outside London. Monitoring police messages on the multi-channel radio as he flashed through each force area, Langton cruised at a steady hundred and ten and reached the city outskirts in one hour fifty-seven minutes.

  By twenty past two he was strolling up to the deserted security checkpoint, crash helmet under his arm. The police and immigration posts were unmanned, as expected, but there was a light in the Customs office, where a middle-aged Jamaican woman in a blue overall and name-tag was vacuuming the heavily stained carpet. She did not hear his knock, so he had to distract her through the window. As soon as she unlocked the door he was inside, ID at the ready with a glance at her tag. ‘Hi, Celia, DI Jack Langton, remember? Nice to see you again,’ he lied, face in a reassuring smile. ‘Just need to collect something. They’re expecting me.’

  The woman’s tired face clouded as she studied his ID. ‘I’m not supposed to let anyone in,’ she said, uncertain, but Langton was already sitting at the desk nearest the checkpoint, riffling through the rubbish left there by the late shift. ‘I know, but no worries, I’ll only be a few secs.’ He walked over to the kitchen area and filled the kettle to make her think he was familiar with the place. ‘Give them a call if you like,’ he said, flicking the switch, ‘while I make us a nice cup of tea.’ Langton sat at the desk again, making unnecessary notes, wondering if she would know who ‘they’ were and getting ready to escape the moment she picked up the phone. Instead, the vacuum cleaner started up again.

  Customs messages requiring attention to particular vehicles or travellers, known as ‘all ports warnings’, were forwarded electronically from London, but the two computer terminals were obviously broken with their plugs dangling from the desks. Hard pressed customs officers at the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, it appeared, were expected to secure the border with clipboards and sheets of A4.

  There were three drawers on each side of the desk, but only the middle right was locked. Langton jiggled it as soon as Celia’s back was turned, before the kettle came to the boil. Inside there were disordered bundles of routine copy search forms, a couple of condoms and a Rolling Stones CD, but nothing connected to special warnings. On the adjacent wall there was a grey metal security cabinet with a special lock that Langton cracked in two minutes while Celia finished the hoovering. The cupboard contained rows of outdated spiral binders bulging with a forest of directives, regulations and PR rubbish reaching back nearly a decade. But there was nothing of the remotest operational interest.

  He found the confidential information he was looking for in the bottom drawer on the other side of the desk. It was a lined, red hardback document known as a ‘Book 40’, a survivor of hi-tech law enforcement favoured by generations of police and Customs officers. The dog-eared pages were full of scrawled notes made on the hoof but, from the back, roughly pasted to each page, were copy printouts of outdated port warnings in
sequence. The format was instantly recognisable to Langton, with a different-coloured flag against each name or vehicle number. For satellite offices without a colour printer they included a letter beside each flag: R for red, B for blue, and so on.

  As he flicked back, Langton found only a few blue flags. Against each was the vehicle registration number and the coded reference to the source, two letters and a four-digit number: PI for an agent, short for ‘Participating Informant’, and MI for an undercover officer, a reference to the ‘Main Index’, the definitive national list of undercover officers retained by the National Crime Agency. Celia had disappeared into the washrooms and Langton heard water running as he primed one of Justin’s Pentax cameras and switched on the desk lamp. By the time she returned with her mop and bucket, Langton had captured each of the twenty-three pages and isolated three references to MI/2403.

  ‘So what’s happened to me cup of tea?’ she laughed.

  ‘Coming right up, Celia,’ Langton said, slipping the camera into his pocket and squeezing past her through a haze of disinfectant, ‘and I think we both deserve it.’

  He was back home just after five-thirty. Katy was feeding the baby again, so he prepared breakfast while he made his checks. By seven his exhausted wife was in bed again and he was in the living room, on the phone to Kerr. ‘John, I tracked the Customs warnings back over three months. There are plenty on the list but only one possible undercover officer if you’re definitely linking this to recent Crime Agency operations. He’s on the national register for trained undercovers, and I cross-checked him with a mate in the Serious Crime UC Unit. He appears three times on the warnings, different truck each time.’