State Secrets

by Quintin Jardine

  Everard liked to play games with his when he had an uninvited caller. He’d tried it on me once, a mistake on his part. I eyed the three of them. The oldest of the trio looked familiar from times past and I wondered if he was thinking the same about me.

  As we reached the top step, the youngest of the trio moved half a pace forward, blocking our way. Neil moved across to confront him.

  ‘I’m Commander McIlhenney, Metropolitan Police,’ he announced. ‘We’re here to detain Mr John Balliol in connection with the murder of Ms Emily Repton in the Palace of Westminster, two days ago. Please step aside, for we will enter.’

  The man stood his ground. ‘Warrant!’ he shouted.

  I saw a vein stand out in my friend’s neck. He didn’t reply, not immediately; instead he seized the Korean by his tunic, raised him up and head-butted him, right between the eyes.

  ‘That’s my warrant,’ he said. Then he dropped him like an eighty-kilo sack of spuds.

  They call it the Glasgow Kiss, but trust me, we’re pretty good at it in Edinburgh.

  ‘Fuck me, Bob,’ Neil murmured, ‘I don’t think the glucose balance is quite right yet. I’ll need another couple of those sweets.’

  Our three companions moved round behind us, sweeping Balliol’s other attendants aside.

  ‘Paul, you stay here,’ Amanda ordered. ‘Secure this door. Mark, Ian, find the back entrance and make sure nobody leaves that way. Gentlemen, let us apprehend Mr Balliol.’

  She led the way into the house, and into an entrance hallway. There was a double doorway on our right; one half was open, framing a figure that I recognised as James Ellis.

  ‘What is this?’ he protested.

  ‘I’m a police officer and this is an arrest, sir,’ Neil replied. ‘We’re not here for you, but get in my way and we will be. Mr Balliol; where is he?’

  For a moment, Ellis stood his ground, until I caught his eye and shook my head. Reluctantly, he stepped aside. I went first, my hand behind my back, gripping the butt of the holstered Browning, just in case Evans was waiting with ideas of stopping us.

  He wasn’t; Balliol was alone, standing by a tall marble fireplace but eyeing the bay window as if it was a means of escape. Neil stepped past me and repeated his announcement, told him that we were there to arrest him in connection with the murder of Emily Repton and then cautioned him formally.

  ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  The man was being taken into Neil’s custody but throughout the process he ignored him and stared at me with eyes that seemed all-too familiar. ‘Are you Skinner?’ he whispered, with a hint of incredulity in his tone.

  ‘That’s impressive,’ I acknowledged. ‘How come you know me?’

  ‘My father spoke of you, a lot. He had a file on you, on his computer; he showed it to me. I was never sure whether he admired you, hated you, or was afraid of you. Maybe he was all three, but he wasn’t afraid of much. All he ever said was that he was a better golfer than you, but you were a better putter.’

  ‘He was only half right there. Yes, I met your dad,’ I admitted, ‘mainly on the golf course. The only thing I’ll say about him was that he played to his handicap and he didn’t cheat.’

  ‘That was his handicap. He was a very moral man with old-fashioned ideas. When I was a kid, on one of the rare occasions I was home from school, a guy, one of the local pushers, sold me some pills, Quaaludes. My father found them, and got the truth from me; the guy was never seen again.’

  ‘Old-fashioned ideas didn’t keep him alive, though,’ I countered. ‘But he’s not why we’re here,’ I added. ‘You know why; you’ve been told.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing until . . .’

  ‘I know, I know, until you have a lawyer. But you haven’t arrived at a police station, sunshine, so technically you don’t have a right to one. Even then, Commander McIlhenney can keep you waiting for thirty-six hours for a brief, since killing the Prime Minister is by any definition a serious offence.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Ms Repton,’ he murmured.

  ‘You say, but the thing is, we have a whole long list of people we know didn’t do it; yours is the only name that isn’t on that list and you’ll have a hell of a job persuading us to put it there. But that isn’t for now, John, that can wait. Our immediate priority is rounding up your other house guests, without any unpleasantness.’

  He shrugged. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Help would be appreciated.’

  ‘Mr Skinner, in a few hours I’m going to be the most famous man in this country and free and clear of any charges. So why the hell should I help you in any way?’

  ‘Possibly to stop me from going Old Testament on you.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You might at that: my old man reckoned you would. Ah, what the hell. Upstairs, bedroom facing you; you’ll find Wheeler there, and probably the other man.’

  ‘Daffyd Evans?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘If you say so. I don’t know his name. He’s Wheeler’s nurse, that’s all I know.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that; in fact I disliked it so much that I took the stairs two at a time till I reached the top, then threw the door that faced me wide open.

  Wheeler was lying supine on a king-size bed; his arms were spread out, and his wrists and ankles were secured to its four corner posts by plastic restraints. His golden skin was dulled and his eyes were no more than slits.

  As I burst into the room Daffyd Evans was hovering over him, with his back to me. As he straightened up, startled by the noise, and turned to face me, I saw that he had a large syringe in his right hand, and that a pistol hung beneath his left armpit in a shoulder holster.

  ‘Drop it,’ I snapped, drawing my Browning as I spoke.

  He smiled at me. ‘Well, well, well. It’s the awkward copper. I’ll be happy to accommodate you, Mr Skinner, however you’d like it, just as soon as I’ve given our friend here his medication.’

  As he was speaking he had moved round to the other side of the bed, putting it between us.

  ‘Drop the syringe,’ I repeated, slowly.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘You’re a policeman, Mr Skinner, a retired chief constable, a desk jockey. You’ve got a policeman’s mentality. All I’m doing is administering a sedative; there’s no threat to life, so we both know you’re not actually going to shoot me.’

  He leant towards the semi-conscious Nicholas Wheeler, grasping his left forearm, his thumb on the plunger of the syringe, and directing its needle towards a bulging blue vein.

  ‘You got that one wrong, mate,’ I said, and then I blew his right kneecap off.

  Thirty-Eight

  I heard the shot just as I reached the top of the stair; then I heard the screaming. I suspect they heard that in Aldermaston.

  The door was open. I saw at once that Bob was all right and that Nick Wheeler had been restrained and incapacitated in some way. That left only Evans unaccounted for, but it wasn’t until I reached my old boss that I could see over the bed, and realised what he had done.

  Roland Kramer’s minder was thrashing on the floor clutching his shattered right knee, still screaming as he banged his head backwards against the heavy curtains as if he thought that generating a second pain source would offset the first.

  ‘You took your time,’ Bob said as he cut the first of Wheeler’s restraints with a tiny pair of scissors he’d produced from somewhere.

  ‘Those Soor Plooms you brought me,’ I complained. ‘Did you not read the packet? They were sugar free. So I’m still not exactly stable.’

  ‘Take it out on Evans,’ he grunted as he cut another of the plastic bracelets.

  I moved round and crouch
ed beside him, feeling my knee settle into something wet. I glanced down, saw that it was blood, and gave myself a pat on the back for having the foresight to put on an old pair of chinos for the stake-out.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ I told him, a little brusquely perhaps, but his yelling was getting on my nerves. He was bleeding like something hanging upside down in a halal butchers, so I stripped his belt from its loops and used it as a tourniquet, forcing him to straighten the wounded leg in the process.

  The knee really was a hell of a mess; Bob’s a crack shot, as he’s had to demonstrate a couple of times during his career, with unfortunate outcomes for the shootees.

  I could see bone, and splinters of something that was once patella; the bullet might have penetrated the joint or ricocheted off and buried itself in the carpet, but I couldn’t be sure of either. I did look around for it, though, and that’s when I saw the syringe lying on the floor.

  ‘What’s in it?’ I asked.

  ‘Thiopental,’ he gasped, though clenched teeth. ‘Anaesthetic.’

  ‘I know what thiopental is. Do you want it?’

  He nodded, his eyes pleading with me. ‘But not the whole lot.’

  I could see why. There were thirty millilitres of solution in the syringe; I’ve done a field first aid course and know that given a five per cent mix, that was a potentially lethal dose. I injected one-third of it into Evans’ veins and he was unconscious in seconds.

  ‘They weren’t messing about,’ I told Bob, as he freed Wheeler. ‘The guy would never have come round if he’d had all of that.’

  I stood up slowly, my balance felt a little uncertain. ‘I need to find the kitchen,’ I told him. ‘There must be sugar somewhere.’

  There was, in brown cube form. I laid a couple on my tongue and let them dissolve. As they did, I sneaked a quick look into the fridge; some of that sushi delivery was there, so I helped myself.

  As I walked past the drawing room where we’d found Balliol I saw that he’d been joined there by Ellis and the three Koreans, under the guard of Paul, Mark and Ian. The guy I’d banjoed glowered at me; if the handkerchief he had pressed against his nose had once been white, it wasn’t any more.

  Amanda Dennis had joined Bob upstairs. ‘Daffyd’s going to need medical attention soon,’ I warned them. ‘That anaesthetic won’t keep him under for ever.’

  ‘I’ve made arrangements,’ she said. ‘A private ambulance is on the way already; there’s a Ministry of Defence hospital unit at Frimley Park in Surrey; it’ll take him there and he’ll be operated on by an army surgeon. Then he’ll be held incommunicado under ministry police guard. Suppose Kramer goes looking for him, he’ll have trouble finding him.’

  ‘What about him?’ I asked. Wheeler was showing signs of being more responsive than when we’d found him.

  ‘Take him home,’ Bob said. ‘Have a doctor look him over, then have one of our trio downstairs babysit him until we’re ready to talk to him, or vice versa, depending on how long that stuff takes to wear off.’

  ‘What about Balliol?’ I asked.

  He looked me in the eye. ‘He’s in your custody, Commander,’ I knew there was a ‘but’ coming, ‘but we don’t have time to play by the rules. I don’t believe we have time to take him to Westminster Police Station or anywhere else; we need to interview him right now. You can charge him when you’re good and ready; that doesn’t matter.

  ‘Kramer is covering his arse here; everything will be deniable as far as he’s concerned, unless Balliol and Ellis incriminate him. It all goes back to him, and I will nail him, but I need to do it before he stands up to make the Spitfire announcement in four hours’ time. After that he really will be untouchable.’

  Thirty-Nine

  Balliol’s self-confidence was impressive; in that respect he reminded me even more of his father. He sat in a small room off the entrance hall, dressed in a white silk shirt and pale blue tailored trousers that had probably cost twice as much as my suit. I had decided to interview him there, rather than in his main lair, the opulently furnished drawing room. He gazed at Neil and me, as if he was daring us to begin.

  Through the window I could see a private ambulance as it drove away, with a still-sedated Daffyd Evans inside. Wheeler, who was rapidly regaining his senses, had left a few minutes before in another, bound for his Smith Square flat in the care of Ian, the Security Service operative.

  Balliol’s assurance cracked just a little when I said, deadpan, ‘It’s best that you leave us alone now, Commander,’ and Neil did just that, equally grim faced and without a word.

  I hoped it would look menacing to our interviewee, but the truth was that his departure wasn’t a tactic. I had persuaded him, not without difficulty, that he should go home for a while to freshen up. The sugar cubes had put him back in balance . . . although I knew I was going to be reminded of those sugar-free Soor Plooms for years to come . . . but he’d had a tiring night and needed some down time.

  ‘So how the hell,’ I asked, as the door closed on my valiant friend, ‘does Nick Wheeler MP come to be upstairs tied to a bed, drugged up to his eyeballs?’

  My prisoner looked back at me. I wasn’t sure how it would go. He wasn’t going to incriminate himself, I was sure of that, but if he judged that a show of cooperation might look good later on . . .

  That was the choice he made.

  ‘His nurse brought him here,’ he replied, ‘the day before yesterday. He told me that he’d been at a party, that he’d seriously overdosed and it needed to be hushed up. I agreed that he could look after him here . . . although at this stage of the game, it was a complication I didn’t need.’

  ‘The Spitfire game?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Balliol drawled, ‘but that’s a state secret, for a few hours yet. I’ve told you about Wheeler, but I’m not going to talk about that, or anything else.’

  ‘That’s what you believe,’ I retorted, ‘but you’ve just made your first mistake.’

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘You opened your fucking mouth,’ I chuckled, ‘even if it was to say you were saying nothing. That’s a sign. People who really are in silent vigil, they keep it zipped.’ I drew a finger across my lips. ‘On the telly they say “no comment”, but in real police situations they don’t speak at all. You have to draw it out of them with pliers . . . not that I go in for that stuff, mind you.

  ‘There are damn few of those in my experience, strong silent types. Most subjects want to talk to me; they want to show off, they want to tell me how clever they’ve been, or how ruthless, or how violent. It’s a game of course. They want me to work for it; yell at them, threaten them, bang the table.’

  I smiled. ‘I don’t play, though, not any more; at least I didn’t when I was a serving cop in an active role. My technique was to wait my subjects out, to frustrate them by saying nothing at all.’

  I locked my eyes into his. ‘It also scared the shit out of many of them,’ I added. ‘They wound up telling me things I’d never even imagined them knowing.

  ‘One bloke actually told me about a murder nobody knew had been committed; a very wealthy man hired him to kill his mother-in-law and get rid of her body. He was very efficient; we’d never have found her if he hadn’t drawn me a wee map.’

  I laughed. I’d made the story up but Balliol seemed to have bought it. ‘The wealthy, John, they think they can get away with anything. You should know that; you did.’

  He stared back at me, his mouth tight. He seemed to have taken my advice. I decided to open it by massaging his ego; that can work just as well as squeezing a man’s scrotum . . . a practice I never tolerated, by the way.

  ‘How much are you worth now?’ I asked. ‘I know the media reported that you inherited six and a half billion dollars from old Everard, but how much are you worth today? Have you grown your inheritance or eroded it?�
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  ‘The media got it wrong, as usual,’ he replied, indignantly. ‘I inherited closer to ten billion, net, from my father. When you have that much wealth it’s hard to measure it,’ he smirked, ‘or to count it on a given day, but I reckon I’m worth fourteen billion as I sit here, patiently indulging your bullshit.’

  ‘So you’re a better man than your father ever was?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he countered. ‘I have clearer vision than my father. I don’t allow myself to be distracted by a pointless obsession with family history, or by a mad dream to regenerate Scotland by buying as much of the place as possible then building new townships to lure emigrants back to the country, and factories to give them employment.’

  ‘As far as I recall,’ I said, ‘he started to fulfil his mad dream by building a golf course on a piece of land that could only be reached by air.’

  ‘He did, but golf was another of his obsessions. He thought the world was ready for another Bobby Jones. He hoped it might be me for a while; he dragged me on to the course every day I was home, but I never broke eighty in my life and the lowest handicap that even he could manufacture for me was thirteen, at a course he owned in South Carolina, where the worst golfer in the world wouldn’t have played off any more than twenty.

  ‘Eventually he gave up on making me a top golfer and he more or less gave up on me. He never brought me into any of his businesses, or gave me any preparation for the future.’

  ‘He thought he was immortal,’ I ventured. ‘And he was, as you say, more than a little obsessional, in the way that Genghis Khan was a little obsessional, or Napoleon, or Henry the Eighth. He never introduced you to any of his enterprises?’

  ‘I knew what they were: petrochemicals, software development, armaments, aviation, publishing, but not much more than I’d have picked up by reading the Financial Times or Forbes magazine. The one thing he did tell me about was laser propulsion.’