State Secrets

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘I see, but I’m puzzled,’ she confessed. ‘Security matters rarely land on the chairman’s desk. In fact, I can’t remember anything like this ever happening, and I’ve been in this post for eight years.’

  He grinned, amiably. ‘First time for everything.’

  ‘Indeed.’ She asked the question I’d been expecting, and fearing. ‘Does the Home Secretary know you’re here?’

  ‘I don’t report to the Home Secretary,’ Bob replied. ‘My boss is Mrs Dennis, the Director General; call her if you need confirmation of my authority. Besides,’ he added, ‘the Home Secretary has suddenly become an even busier man, with the indisposition of the Prime Minister. He’s running the whole damn country. I’m sorry, but I have to insist; we need to see Mrs Kramer.’

  She hesitated. For a moment I thought she was going to call his bluff, and phone Amanda Dennis, but finally she nodded, discounting that last option, and said, ‘In that case, you must; we’re not here to obstruct MI5 in any way. Follow me, please, gentlemen.’

  Our discussion had taken place on a carpeted L-shaped landing, and had been interrupted only by the sound of an elevator heading to and from the upper floors. There were only three doors; none bore a name or a number, but the ‘chef d’equipe’ turned and led us to and through the one immediately behind her. We found ourselves in a large anteroom, with three desks; a man and a woman, neither of them any older than mid-twenties, were busy at two of them.

  Another door led out of the anteroom; Shirley ushered us through it, without introduction, then withdrew, closing it behind her.

  The first of two things that struck me about Siuriña Kramer was her height. She was standing when we entered the inner sanctum of the Conservative HQ; she seemed taller than she had appeared in the jerky CCTV footage, at least five nine by my estimate. Then I realised that the only perspective available on the screen had been her near-collision with Montgomery Radley, the Foreign Secretary. He was pointed out to me at one of Louise’s premieres and I’d observed that he was something of a skyscraper.

  The second thing was that she was an extremely attractive woman. I’d seen her on television news reports a couple of times and once on Question Time, where she’d more than held her own against a predominantly left-wing panel, and a studio audience that seemed to have been seeded with hostiles, but not even a large curved OLED screen had captured the deep blue of her eyes, or the height of her cheekbones, or the sheen of her hair. I’d like to have added, ‘or the warmth of her smile’, but the look she gave us was on the chilly side of cool.

  She faced us along rather than across a polished mahogany conference table. It was drawn up against her desk, with five chairs on either side and another at the end, facing her own. She said not a word, simply standing her ground as if she was trying to stare us . . . or freeze us . . . out.

  If it was a contest she won it. ‘Thank you for receiving us, Mrs Kramer,’ Bob said, more formally than I’d ever heard him.

  ‘I haven’t, not yet,’ she responded. ‘You’re presumptuous and I’m still deciding. Show me your credentials, please. And by the way, in this building people usually address me as “Chairman”.’

  ‘They would be the faithful, I imagine,’ he replied. ‘Don’t mistake me for one of those.’

  He took out his MI5 ID and slid it along the table. I followed suit with my warrant card, but walked along and handed it to her.

  She thanked me and frowned at Bob as she picked up his card. ‘Consultant Director,’ she read. ‘How long have you been with the Security Service, Mr Skinner? My husband has never mentioned you.’

  ‘As of this morning, as it happens,’ he told her. ‘Unless you and he had lunch together, he hasn’t had an opportunity to mention me.’

  ‘No, we didn’t. I haven’t seen him since breakfast.’ She pushed the ID back towards him and looked at mine. ‘Commander McIlhenney, Metropolitan Police Service. What are you doing shadowing MI5?’

  ‘I’m on secondment,’ I volunteered, and left it at that.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, her decision made as she returned my card. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes; you must appreciate that the Prime Minister’s sudden illness has put this place on high alert. So, what do you have to tell me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Bob replied. ‘We’ve come here to question you.’

  The blue eyes grew even more chilly. ‘Question me?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why on earth should you want to question me? Did I jump a red light taking my daughter to school? Two Scotsmen,’ she laughed harshly. ‘Are you the heavy squad?’

  ‘We are, as a matter of fact,’ he said, and there was something in the quietness of his tone that made a flicker of apprehension show in her eyes. ‘I have to tell you, Mrs Kramer, that so far I dislike you as much as I dislike your husband, and that saddens me.’

  Uninvited he took the seat at the table nearest to hers; I chose the third of the five, to give me a clear view of her. ‘Sit, please,’ he murmured.

  She complied; her face looked a little flushed.

  ‘How does Emily Repton feel about you?’ he asked.

  ‘How would I know that?’ she retorted.

  I saw his grin reflected in the window opposite. ‘Somehow I’m pretty sure you would. She has no reason to like you, has she? You did your very best to shaft her during the last leadership election.’

  ‘I supported my husband’s candidacy,’ she insisted. ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘There is when you put the word out that she misused her powers as Home Secretary, and hint that it wasn’t only Lord Forgrave who was playing away games.’

  That was news to me, but I could see that it had stung Siuriña Kramer.

  ‘Those were stories that she spread around herself; then she accused me of doing it, to discredit Roland,’ she protested.

  I had to jump in on that one, if only to remind Bob that I was still there. ‘Chairman, are you trying to say that she accused herself of adultery to make you look bad?’ I asked.

  Bob nodded to emphasise my question; also, he got the message, pulling his chair back and changing its angle, so that I could eyeball her directly.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Come on, nothing’s going to leave this room, so let’s be honest about it. You call it briefing down here, isn’t that right? You were briefing against her and she found out.’

  ‘She reappointed me as Chairman of the Party,’ she countered.

  ‘Because she wanted to keep your husband onside and on the Front Bench,’ he shot back, ‘but she kicked you out of the Cabinet, did she not? Let’s just accept it as fact, shall we? You and Emily Repton are the best of enemies.’

  ‘Very well,’ she snapped. ‘Let’s accept it. I can’t stand the woman and she can’t stand me. She’s a manipulator and she’s an upstart; Roland should be in Downing Street, not her.’

  ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ Bob murmured.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘If she doesn’t recover from this mysterious tropical disease, chances are he will be. Will that make you happy?’

  ‘Ecstatic. I admit it quite freely.’

  Bob slapped the table with his right palm. ‘Excellent,’ he exclaimed. ‘I like it when people are honest with me. So tell me,’ he said, ‘given your antipathy to Ms Repton, why were you seen hurrying towards her office corridor this morning?’

  She stared at him, then at me, then back at him, for several seconds. ‘Why do I have the feeling,’ she mused aloud, ‘that in other circumstances this is where I would insist on having a lawyer present?’

  ‘We’re not there yet,’ I said, ‘unless you’re about to admit to a criminal act.’ I paused, as the policeman in me took over. ‘Maybe I should caution you formally, just in case.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ she replied, then she looked back at B
ob. ‘Who told you that? The Right Honourable Montgomery, I imagine.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ he told her. ‘We haven’t had time to speak to him yet. I’m surprised you noticed his presence; you seemed to rush past him without a word.’

  ‘I never speak to that man, unless it can’t be avoided. He’s a loathsome creature.’

  ‘What? The nation’s representative in the wide world?’

  ‘The best thing about Monty Radley being Foreign Secretary is that it involves him being out of the country for long spells.’

  ‘Why don’t you like him?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a likeable bone in his body. He’s a bully, he drinks too much, and he alienates practically everyone who comes into contact with him. And he’s a lech, a great lumbering lecher. Ashley, the first Mrs Radley, was a very happy lady when he left her for Valerie. She only stayed for the girls’ sake; not that she was doing them any favours.’

  ‘If he’s that much of a swine, how did he rise so high?’ I asked.

  ‘He appeals to a certain type of Tory, within the parliamentary party and among the more right-wing membership. And he’s rich, of course.’

  ‘And all that compensates for him being a boozer and a bully?’

  She frowned at me. ‘Nothing compensates for him slapping Valerie around.’

  ‘You’re saying he’s violent towards women?’ Bob murmured.

  ‘There have been stories,’ she replied, ‘but I’m saying no more about it, or him.’

  ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Let’s concentrate on you, Mrs Kramer. You were in the PM’s Commons corridor this morning. Did you go into her office?’

  ‘No, I did not. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Hasn’t your husband told you?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I haven’t spoken to Roland since he left home this morning. What might he have told me, suppose I had?’

  ‘Let’s just say that her indisposition is still a bit of a mystery. We’ve been asked to find out all we can about its onset so we’re speaking to anyone who might have seen her around the time it happened.’

  ‘I thought she has a tropical disease: that’s what the news bulletins are reporting, according to my press office people.’

  ‘Yes, but if we can find out how she reacted when it struck, or how she behaved just before it, that might help the medical team.’

  ‘In which case I can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You heard nothing? No sound from her office?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘You saw nobody else in the corridor, heard nobody?’

  ‘I might have seen the Chancellor.’

  Bob smiled. ‘That’s a yes or no, surely; you did or you didn’t.’

  ‘Well no, I didn’t,’ she acknowledged, ‘but I thought I heard sounds coming from his office.’

  ‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘If I might ask, Mrs Kramer, if you didn’t go to the Prime Minister’s room, you didn’t go into the Chancellor’s office, and your husband was out at the time, why exactly did you go there?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business,’ she said, archly.

  ‘Neither am I,’ he conceded, ‘but I won’t know for sure until you tell me.’

  She sighed. ‘Very well, if it’ll get you out of here. I was looking for something in Roland’s room.’

  ‘You have a key to his Commons office?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘What was it? What were you looking for?’

  She shrugged, impatiently. ‘Just something I needed, that’s all.’

  ‘Something you needed?’ Bob repeated. ‘It must have been urgent if you couldn’t wait another few minutes for him to be clear of his engagement in Central Hall. Come to think of it, wouldn’t it have been quicker for you to have nipped round to Central Hall and collared him there, asked him for whatever it was, or if it did turn out that it was in his office, have his driver drop it off here, when he got back? Wouldn’t it have been easier to do that?’

  ‘With hindsight, yes,’ she agreed, ‘but I didn’t.’

  ‘Or was it something else,’ he suggested, ‘something you wanted to see that Mr Kramer hadn’t shared with you?’ She would have replied but he held up a hand to stop her. ‘How much do you know,’ he asked, ‘about the content of the defence statement that Ms Repton was due to make this afternoon?’

  ‘Nothing!’ she snapped, vehemently. ‘I asked my husband but he wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘I’ll bet that annoyed you: you being Chairman of the Party and him telling you that something is above your pay grade. Yes, I’ll bet it did.’

  She said nothing but her cheeks were flushed.

  ‘So here’s what I’m seeing,’ he continued. ‘The whole Westminster world wants to know what’s in it. They expect you to know, but you don’t because Roland’s kept you out of what they’re calling “the circle of knowledge”. You’re embarrassed; you’re furious, but you can’t admit it; so at a time when you know he’ll be out you go round to the Commons, you go into his office, and you go through his desk, through his papers. But you don’t find a damn thing, because there is nothing to find, because the project is so damn secret that there is hardly anything about it on paper.’ He smiled again. ‘That’s what I’m seeing, Mrs Kramer. Am I right?’

  The lustre of her veneer dulled; her control dissolved. ‘Okay,’ she shouted. ‘Okay, have it your way; that’s what happened. Now get the hell out of my office.’ She stood, drawing herself to her full height.

  We did too, withdrawing as gracefully as we could. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for about Emily’s illness,’ she called after us; her accent had slipped, a hint of Brummie had appeared. ‘And I hope it does her no good at all. In fact, I hope she fucking dies!’

  Fifteen

  ‘What the hell was all that about?’ Neil exploded as we emerged from the Conservative Party HQ, after a lively meeting with its lady chairman.

  ‘Cage-rattling, that was all,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t take to the woman and I wanted to make her as uncomfortable as I could.’

  ‘You went beyond uncomfortable,’ he said glumly. ‘You lit a fire under her, and I can see my pension going up in its smoke. She’s going to give her old man, the Home bloody Secretary no less, chapter and verse and he is going to come after us with everything he’s got.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it if he does,’ I promised him, as we walked out of Matthew Parker Street, and back into Tothill Street. ‘But it’s not going to happen, because she won’t say a word to him. She was ferreting around in his office when she knew he was out; I’ll bet you she’s more worried at the moment about us telling him than you are about her shopping us.’

  ‘You sure?’ he asked, doubtfully.

  ‘Stone cold certain.’

  ‘How did you work it out, that she went there to find out about Spitfire?’

  ‘I didn’t; I flew a kite, that was all.’

  ‘It caught a nice air current then.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. I’m not convinced. The only thing I know for certain was that she wanted us out of there, as fast as she could. If I’d said she was looking for last Saturday’s Lotto ticket she’d probably have admitted to that as well.’

  ‘You don’t believe her?’

  ‘Not a word of it. Not even her claim that Roland wouldn’t tell her about Spitfire. She was too quick with her denial, too insistent; I suspect he did tell her, maybe not the whole story but some of it.’

  ‘Do you believe she didn’t go into the Prime Minister’s room?’

  ‘Why should she?’ I countered. ‘She hates her. She didn’t stab her, that’s for sure. “I hope she fucking dies!” isn’t something I’ve heard too many murder suspects say. No, Neil, she was up to something, but I’m not going to get drawn in
to pursuing it. We have other priorities.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Merlin Brady for a start.’

  I nodded. ‘Merlin, yes, but not for a start. We have to interview Radley before anyone else.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Hopefully in the Cabinet Office. Hamblin hoped that he’d be able to persuade him to meet us there. If not, we’ll have to go to the Foreign Office.’

  ‘And if he won’t agree to see us at all?’ Neil asked.

  ‘He doesn’t have that option. This is an investigation into an attempted murder. Unorthodox maybe, but that’s what it is. We have a man with a history of violence against women being seen approaching and then leaving the area of the crime scene. The timing of those phone calls to Wheeler may suggest he didn’t do it, but one way or another, I’m talking to him.’

  We walked in silence for a while, until, as we approached Whitehall, I spotted a coffee sign that I hadn’t noticed before, in a small cloistered shopping area. We crossed the street and picked up two lattes to go, in polystyrene beakers. We had just emerged when my phone sounded. Awkwardly, I retrieved it, and took the call, when I saw that it was from Amanda.

  ‘Any progress?’ she asked, briskly. ‘I’ve just had the Home Secretary asking me for an update.’

  ‘And that’s all?’ I chuckled. ‘We’ve just interviewed his wife; let’s just say she terminated the meeting abruptly.’

  ‘God, Bob! He didn’t say anything about that.’

  ‘That’s not a surprise. I may not be finished with her,’ I said. ‘Our focus at the moment is on the Foreign Secretary, but there’s one other person of interest.’

  ‘Who’s that? There was nobody else on the video who attracted my attention.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was. You do know there’s another entrance, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s manned and used only by the three occupants of those offices. Are you trying to tell me that the Chancellor was there too? Or the Defence Secretary?’

  ‘Neither. I’ll deal with it. I’ll need to be cute to set up a meeting, but I know how I’m going to do it. What’s the news from the Royal Free Hospital?’