by Alan Judd
‘I’m not sure, rather not know; I haven’t asked how he does it. His company wouldn’t be pleased, I’m sure of that.’
‘If he’s doing it at your request it probably is illegal.’
Robin nodded. His expression was always sharp and alert, a fox on scent, his eye to his own advantage. But he seemed committed to this issue, perhaps through rivalry with Melanie Stokes. He could be – was being – useful. Charles changed his mind. ‘Let me explain why, from my point of view, the exchange with the Foreign Secretary went well. And how you can help, if you will. But this has, as you said, to be strictly between ourselves.’
They both knew that stock phrases of assurance, along with others such as ‘within these four walls’, ‘between you, me and the gatepost’ and ‘keep it under your hat’, were breached as often as they were given. Secrets were part of the currency of bureaucratic life, there to be traded. The only way to keep them was not to tell them until they rusted, when no one was interested. But the ritual of assurance was still useful because it gave the confider the weapon of blame, if required.
Two more people passed them on the stairs. ‘Let’s discuss it outside,’ said Charles. They spent about ten minutes in the quadrangle, sheltering behind government delivery vans from buffeting gusts of wind and rain. Robin was enthusiastic. ‘Always longed to do a bit of secret squirrel stuff.’
‘Just keep it to yourself.’
‘Of course, of course.’
Chapter Twenty
The Present
Sarah was not pleased when he rang with his suggestion. ‘What, after they leaked all that stuff to the press after last time? We don’t owe them anything after that. Anyway, we saw them only the week before last and I don’t think I could trust myself not to give them both a piece of my mind.’
‘I suspect it was James’s doing and that she’s embarrassed about it.’
‘What difference does that make? She should have stopped him.’
‘But it’s not for social reasons. It’s to try to find out more about what he’s planning, whether your suggestion is right.’
‘Can’t you find that out some other way? You ought to be in a position to. It’s ridiculous to say we have to have them for dinner.’
‘I’m being blocked by MI5.’
They went on for a few minutes more until eventually she sighed and said, ‘Well, there’s nothing in the house as you know and I haven’t time to go shopping.’
‘I’ll get some ready-cooked stuff.’
‘We can’t do that when we’re inviting people to dinner.’
‘They didn’t even bother with that. They took us out. We never got to their place.’
She sighed again. ‘I’ll get something on the way home. Not that I don’t trust your choice, of course.’
‘I owe you one.’
‘You owe me masses.’
There was more truth in that than she might have intended. ‘Are you beginning to regret marrying me?’
‘Not quite. But you’re getting close to the edge.’
Melanie sounded pleased when he rang her. They would love to, it would be wonderful to come to dinner and see their new house. She would have to check with James but she was sure it would be all right.
They turned up punctually. Melanie extravagantly admired the house and gushed over Sarah’s announcement of shepherd’s pie, which Sarah did not confess was bought. James, silent until prompted by Melanie, feigned an interest in their new radiators.
‘I’ve some news for you,’ Charles said to Melanie as he poured the wine.
She pulled a face. ‘Don’t tell me. You’ve snatched Victoria Street from our jaws. That’s why you’re being so nice.’
‘Quite the opposite. We’ve changed our minds, told the Cabinet Office we’ll put up with Croydon for the time being. My board feels a move would be too disruptive at the moment. I agreed. So it’s all yours. Assuming you can persuade the powers that be.’ He ignored Sarah’s surprised interrogative glance.
The lie proved fecund. Melanie’s brittle eagerness to please was replaced by a more relaxed sociability, enough for her to resume her conversation with Sarah about the legal profession without too obviously listening for anything Charles might say. He tried to engage James on recent opinion polls which contradicted each other on public attitudes to government spending, probably reflecting the attitudes of those who commissioned them. James’s responses were monosyllabic and he seemed reluctant to meet Charles’s eye. That was fine so far as Charles was concerned, since his target was Melanie. He turned to her and said, ‘We must be about due another tripartite, aren’t we?’ When she looked puzzled, as he anticipated, he explained that these were regular meetings between the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to ensure cooperation and to agree lines to take with Whitehall and the Treasury. ‘Up to you whether MI5 is represented by you or Simon Mall but it would be sensible to talk soon before the budget negotiations. How’s your programme over the next couple of weeks?’
She took her phone from her handbag, cited some dates the following week, then retracted. ‘Oh no, we’re away on a midweek break, aren’t we?’ She glanced at James.
‘Only me,’ he said promptly. ‘I’m on that conference.’
‘The conference, of course. I was muddling this month with next. So, no, yes, I am free then.’
‘I’ll ask my secretary to get in touch with yours,’ said Charles. The three days of James’s alleged conference were, he saw, the three before Triple A’s Trafalgar Square rally.
‘Midweek breaks are such a good idea,’ said Sarah. ‘We went to Salzburg before Christmas. The benefit lasts much longer than the break itself.’
Later, when Melanie went to the loo, Charles prepared coffee in the kitchen. She stopped on her way back. ‘Nice to see your domestic skills on display.’
‘I’m pretty hot at putting cups on a tray.’
She indicated the coffee machine. ‘Are they any good, these things? I was wondering about getting one.’
‘Wait and see. I’m not sure it’s ever hot enough.’ He folded his arms and stood leaning against the sink. ‘Tell me, you and the Home Secretary – I mean, it’s common knowledge that you and he were once . . . does it make your professional relationship easier or more difficult?’
The question caught her off guard but she managed a smile. ‘Well, I’m not sure it’s that common, is it? More so than I thought, obviously. But, no, it’s not a problem. I don’t think it makes much difference either way.’ She folded her arms too, pushing up her breasts and leaning against the kitchen cupboard opposite him. ‘After all, we’re all grown-ups, aren’t we?’ She smiled.
Charles turned to attend to the coffee. People felt less like cornered interviewees if you seemed otherwise engaged while questioning them. ‘Presumably it makes it easier if he trusts you to know his mind on things without having to go to him about everything you’re doing.’
‘I suppose so. He leaves me a pretty free hand, but I still make sure he knows what I’m doing.’
Charles looked at her now, raising his eyebrows. ‘Everything?’
She raised her own eyebrows. ‘So far.’
Flirtation, now that he was married, felt like adultery, though that was not his motive. ‘He doesn’t worry about you and James? I don’t mean personally but politically, given James’s . . .’
She shook her head. ‘He knows I play no part in what James does. Or writes. Not that he necessarily disagrees with it. They coincide on some issues.’
‘He’s not worried about being damaged by association?’
She looked down at her feet. She wore black boots with moderately high heels, her blue jeans tucked into them. Her arms were still folded. She looked up again. ‘The thing is, with me and James, it’s been a long time. Things change over the years. I don’t see it as a permanent fixture.’
‘Are you all right with the coffee?’ Sarah stood in the door.
‘Just coming.’ Charles handed the loaded tray to Melanie. �
�You take that and I’ll pour.’
In the hall, when they were leaving, he said to James, ‘How many are you expecting?’ James looked nonplussed. ‘At the rally.’
‘Oh, the demo, yes. Forty to fifty thousand.’
‘See you there.’
James looked puzzled again until he saw that Charles was smiling. ‘Don’t bet on it.’
‘Will you be speaking?’
‘Not this time.’
‘But you’ll be there?’
‘If I can.’
When the door was closed on them and their footsteps had faded Sarah threw the tea-towel at him. ‘Your turn. I want a leisurely bath. Talk about sticky, he could barely bring himself to speak to me in there while you and Melanie were in the kitchen. In the end I stopped trying. At least he won’t have any gossip to leak to the Sunday Times this time. What were you two talking about, anyway?’
‘Trying to gauge where her loyalties lie and whether she and the Home Secretary have any idea of what might be going on.’
‘And did she tell you?’
‘Not in so many words. But the evening told us that James will be away the three days running up to the rally, just when you’d expect him to be fully focused on it, which suggests to me they’re planning their spectacular to coincide with it. It was clear, too, from that last exchange, that his mind isn’t on the rally at all. And Melanie made it sound as if the Home Secretary isn’t entirely unsympathetic to at least some of James’s aims. Doesn’t mean he knows what James is planning, of course. Nor she. My guess, given what she’s said before, is she doesn’t know about it.’
‘But there isn’t an it, Charles. There’s only my theory which happens to coincide with what they might have tried and failed to do years ago. You don’t actually know anything, except that they seem to be planning to do something with this Deep Blue thing.’
‘That’s what we find out next, I hope.’
She paused on the stairs. ‘We?’
‘Faslane was your idea. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems. You’d want to be in on it, wouldn’t you? See yourself triumphantly proven right. If you can get leave.’
‘Get on with the washing up.’
Charles’s contacts with Robin over the next few days were more frequent than Charles would have liked and hard to regulate, with Robin becoming ever more excited through texts and calls. They had one face-to-face meeting, unavoidably in Charles’s club.
‘We’ve got them now,’ said Robin in dramatic undertone as they took their drinks to a corner. ‘They’re driving up to Newcastle in James’s car on Sunday and staying in some place belonging to someone Ready knows. That is his real name, by the way, Rob S. Ready. Not clear when they’re planning to be back.’
Charles’s mind was half on possible consequences. ‘This is through your software contact acting illegally?’
Robin held up both hands. ‘Did I say that? Did he tell me he is? I ask him things and he tells me. I don’t ask how he finds out.’
‘I doubt that’s a defence, but go on.’
‘Well, that’s it. Except they’re taking a lot of cash with them. Five grand. No mention of why. So how are we going to keep tabs on them when we get there if we don’t know where they’re going to be?’
‘There’s someone up there who might be able to help us.’
‘I still don’t quite understand why you can’t use your own people. You must have people trained to do this sort of thing.’
‘I’m trying not to use Office resources, as I said before. Partly because it couldn’t be done officially without risking Melanie finding out, partly because it’s not our patch but MI5’s and they’re not keen, and partly because if it all goes pear-shaped there’s less splash-back on my Service. It’s me that would take the blame.’
‘And this wonderful establishment, your club, where the dastardly deed was planned. Better put me up before it happens.’
The next morning, Charles rang Bob Shea, now head of Northumbria Special Branch. ‘A blast from the past,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘We haven’t spoken this century. I don’t know whether you remember our wild goose chase—’
Bob remembered, laughing. ‘And your colleague, that nice . . .’
‘Sue, still around, still working. Married now – or again, rather – with children. Sends her best.’
‘Have a lot more to do with her office now than we used to, all this terrorism stuff. They’re even embedded with us sometimes. Makes life interesting. What can I do for you? Not still chasing after Deep Blue, are you?’
‘Something like that.’ Charles outlined the story and his theory. ‘I’ll give you chapter and verse when we come up, including why we’re going about it in this slightly unconventional way.’
‘I’m all for that. Bit of fun does us all good.’
Chapter Twenty-One
The Present
The red-brick terraced cottage in Carlisle was superficially as neat and inconspicuous as its neighbours, with its black front door, white window frames, grey slate roof, two-pot chimney and lop-sided television aerial. Closer inspection, however, would have shown the door-paint beginning to peel, some rot in the window frames and the once-white windowsills a dirty grey. There were faded net curtains on all the windows.
The neighbours knew it as a rented house occupied in quick succession by tenants who were part of a large, amorphous, itinerant, youthful urban population. In the past two years the oldest and longest-lasting had been a woman in her thirties with three young children. She was there about ten months before disappearing overnight. The house was then given over to builders and decorators for a few weeks before two women in their twenties moved in. After a month or so they were joined by a man who left a fortnight later with one of the women, the other staying for another month. Next came a young man who was rarely seen or heard except late at night when he played loud music. He would turn it off after threats from neighbours but would start again a few nights later. After six months the police came at six o’clock one morning and took him away. The house was said to be owned by a landlord who had many such properties and lived in Keswick.
The latest tenant was another young man, a quieter one who played no loud music, slept at night and went to work during the day. No one knew what he did but his hours were long and it was often late evening before his ten-year-old Nissan Micra returned to the street. He was overweight, sometimes wore grey tracksuit trousers instead of jeans, shaved infrequently and bought his meals at the nearby Turkish takeaway. He told a neighbour his name was Zac.
During the evening before Charles and Sarah travelled north two visitors arrived to stay with Zac. One was James and the other his friend, Rob. They arrived in James’s Toyota from which Rob, tall and gangling with shoulder-length brown hair, took time to unfold himself. Straightened, he looked up and down the quiet street, whooped loudly, then grinned at James. ‘That’ll wake ’em up, the buggers.’ His accent was Glaswegian. He shouldered his sleeping bag and rucksack. James looked disapproving but said nothing.
Later, amid the detritus of kebabs and cans of beer, the three of them sat in the small living room. Rob was on the floor, his back against the wall, smoking roll-ups and using an empty beer can as an ashtray. Zac slumped on the sagging sofa, drinking. James sat at the small folding table near the window, with a notebook. The atmosphere was tense.
‘It’s not as complicated as it sounds,’ James said quietly, looking at Zac. ‘You pick it up as arranged, all official and above board. You set off back towards Sellafield—’
‘He’s crapping himself, got the trots about it, haven’t you, Zac? Eh? Smell him from here,’ said Rob.
James ignored him. ‘You stop at the Little Chef after Hexham on the A69 because you need a leak or a cuppa or because you’re tired or your tachometer shows you’re running close to your hours. Whatever suits. You often stop there, that’s your story, remember, whenever you’re moving stuff that way. And you park in the corner by the hedge and
trees, nose in as close to the hedge and trees as you can get. There’s a wastebin there, you can’t miss it. You go in and get a cup of tea or have a pee or whatever—’
‘Half a dozen cream buns, more like,’ said Rob.
‘ . . . leaving the cab unlocked. Important, that, because we’ll be in the trees and we’ll climb in when no one’s around and you’re having your pee.’
‘Where will you park?’ asked Zac.
‘Other side of the road in the Henshaw service station, in the MOT bit. We’ve actually booked it in for one. Better bloody pass. Don’t want a wasted journey, do we, Zac?’ James smiled as if encouraging a child. Zac remained slumped over his beer can, mouth open, looking at him. ‘Then we drive off to where we’re going, you keeping your head down out of sight with us in the cab until we’re clear. When we get there Rob and I unload it, no danger to you or us, then we drive back, tie you up in the back of the lorry – empty now, remember – in such a way that you can get free after a while, and then you call the police and tell them two blokes jumped you when you went to get back in the cab, drove for miles, stopped and unloaded it, God knows where or into what – you were blindfolded – then drove back and left you. Never said a word to you apart from keep still and you’ll be all right. OK, Zac?’
‘When do I get paid?’ He had a squeaky, incipiently resentful voice.
‘Half now and half when we get back.’
‘Where?’
‘In the lorry. We won’t come back here, to your home.’
‘What if the police find all that cash when they search the lorry?’
James glanced at Rob and raised his eyebrows, but Rob merely shrugged. ‘Stick it in your wallet,’ said James. ‘They probably won’t search you but if they do just say you’re looking to buy another car and you always get them cheaper with cash.’
‘And will I, you know – it’s dangerous, all this radiation, that’s why it’s in that heavy container – stop it leaking? When you take it out, how do we know we won’t all get . . . ?’
‘Zapped? Fried to cinders? Good thinking, Zac. Hadn’t thought of that.’ Rob laughed.