The Convenience of Lies

by Geoffrey Seed

  ‘Being smart doesn’t help you. Just answer my questions.’

  ‘He’s a journalist, Francis McCall - but I’d say you knew that already.’

  ‘What sort of things have you told him that you shouldn’t?’

  ‘I’ve told him nothing which hadn’t been authorised by DI Benwick.’

  ‘Is that a fact? Well, let’s listen to this.’

  He pressed the play button on a small tape recorder.

  Sitting in a tree? Even we couldn’t make it up, Mac.

  No, but as with much else in this affair, it doesn’t make sense.

  Like I’ve been trying to tell you all along, it’s a hell of a tale. The papers will love it.

  ‘This is scandalous,’ Hoare said. ‘You’ve been bugging my mobile phone.’

  ‘And you’ve been leaking confidential police files to a journalist.’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’

  ‘McCall’s the good pal you’d trust to pay you on the quiet for the story.’

  ‘So when you snatch him off the streets, you can ask him.’

  ‘We will and that’s for sure. Now, tell me about Benwick.’

  ‘Tell you what about him?’

  ‘About his private life, where he spends time, girlfriends he’s got. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I know nothing about any of this.’

  ‘You work closely together yet you know nothing about him out of office hours?’

  ‘DI Benwick doesn’t socialise, doesn’t talk about himself.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen him drunk?’

  Hoare shook his head. The interrogator switched on the tape again.

  For Christ’s sake! You’re half cut and running round London with a gun.

  No, that’s just my new portable phone.

  ‘So you bastards have put a spike mic in my flat, too?’

  ‘You didn’t report this drunken incident to your line manager. Why not?’

  ‘Because I only thought I saw a weapon. I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘All right, tell me where is Benwick at the moment.’

  ‘He’s on leave but he didn’t confide his holiday plans to me.’

  ‘And he’s not been in touch with you in any way since you last saw him?’

  ‘No, why should he?’

  ‘If you don’t know where he is, what about the child who disappeared?’

  ‘Little Ruby Ross?’

  ‘Yes, the girl… where has she been taken and who is she with?’

  Hoare held the man’s wintry gaze. Only then did he realise something was a mite more suspect than he’d first thought. If he was being questioned by a police officer, they already knew Ruby was being cared for by Lexie and McCall.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Hoare said. ‘It’s not something I’d be told about.’

  ‘Really? I think you’re a bloody liar. But we’re through for the moment.’

  ‘So I can go?’

  ‘We’ll drive you home shortly,’ he said. ‘But you’re not out of the woods yet.’

  ‘You’ve no damn right to treat me like this.’

  ‘It’s for a greater good, Hoare, for the benefit of our green and pleasant land.’

  ‘You mean Benwick’s some sort of risk to national security?’

  ‘You can work it out for yourself. But if you want this nastiness to stop, resume your job and use every means to find out where Benwick is then tell me.’

  ‘Aren’t there official channels you could use rather than put my feet to the fire?’

  ‘That’s our business. Just you remember you’ve blundered into a drama bigger than your own. If you’ve any sense, you’ll play ball because if you don’t, you’ll find the alternative will do your dicky heart no good at all.’

  Twenty-Three

  Ruby always took refuge in the virtual reality of her imagination. Here, she could see what those without her gifts could not. Just occasionally, she allowed herself a part in the lives of others - never more so than when Hester drove into the service area behind Café Leila.

  Her camper van looked like a gaudy fairground ride, painted with exploding stars, psychedelic swirls and a unicorn flying over the silver VW badge on the bonnet. Hester was no less exotic herself - untamed barley-twist hair, strings of beads, sweeping kaftan and slippers of gold. Ruby was captivated.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ Hester said. ‘So you must be Ruby but they never told me you were such a pretty little girl.’

  ‘You speak in a funny way.’

  ‘I know I do but that’s because I come from the other side of the world.’

  ‘Do all the people there have old faces?’

  ‘Only when they’re very wise and have learnt magic powers.’

  ‘My Mum could do magic but she’s dead now.’

  Hester tried not to be taken aback by the child’s matter-of-fact voice or the unemotional eyes which hardly blinked. Nature didn’t allow Ruby to be nuanced. Something was, or it was not. That was how she called it. In all her innocence, Ruby couldn’t tell a lie - social or otherwise - still less, spot when she was being spun one.

  Leila brought toast and coffee to their table. McCall poured and Lexie set about mending fences with Hester.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been overwhelmed by some tragic events,’ Lexie said. ‘I’m really thankful for you helping me like this.’

  ‘Please, it’s fine. Only Ruby’s important here.’

  Ruby continued to stare at Hester, fascinated by the sparkling rings on her fingers, the silver triangles dangling from her ears. Hester unhooked the clasp of an emerald brooch and said it was for Ruby. She took it as a princess might a gift from a visiting dignitary and pinned it to her denim overalls.

  ‘Now listen, honey,’ Hester said. ‘I’ve come to London because I need your help.’

  ‘Well, you’re silly because I don’t go to school anymore because I’m backward and naughty and I don’t think right.’

  ‘Whoever says that is so wrong,’ Hester said. ‘You know all about the unicorn who lives by the reservoir, don’t you?’

  ‘In the yellow castle. Yes, he’s mine and not anyone else’s.’

  ‘I know, but he’s ten years old now just like you and that’s the age when all unicorns have to leave the castles where they were born and move to new ones.’

  ‘No, he won’t want to do that because he likes living near me.’

  ‘But the castle that’s been chosen for him is so much nicer.’

  ‘Nicer than the yellow castle?’

  ‘Sure is, sweetheart, and that’s not all… you can live nearby when he goes.’

  Lexie joined in at this point with feigned surprise and delight.

  ‘Wouldn’t that be lovely, Ruby? Can I come and live there as well, Hester?’

  ‘Of course you can. We can all live together and then Ruby can visit her unicorn any time she wants.’

  Leila smiled her approval of the plan.

  ‘Go with them, special one,’ she said. ‘Go where you will be cared for.’

  Ruby, ever literal and trusting, asked how the unicorn would know where the new castle was and how to get there.

  ‘Because you and I will go across to him right now and we’ll tell him.’

  Ruby considered this for another moment before replying.

  ‘You mustn’t step on a crack on the way or you’ll have to come back here and start all over again because those are the rules.’

  Lexie and McCall stood at the café window watching them cross the road. Each of the adults felt uneasy about tricking Ruby but the alternative would have been worse.

  ‘Looks like she’s taken to Hester in her own way,’ Lexie said. ‘That’s a first.’

  ‘She’s probably never met a grown-up who believes in unicorns before.’

  ‘True enough, but please God she gets to trust her enough to say what’s happened.’

  *

  McCall left the keys to Etta’s flat with the Linden House caretaker after the last of her furniture was take
n away by a housing charity. Hester was already heading towards the Welsh borders with Lexie and Ruby. Packed in the back of the van were all Ruby’s drawings, her pencils, art pads, bed, desk and clothes and the few family possessions Lexie wished to keep.

  McCall was about to follow on in the Morgan when Roly Vickers rang his mobile.

  ‘I’ve dropped on something that’ll interest you,’ he said. ‘Can’t talk on this but come to my office as soon as you can.’

  It was best to sup with a long spoon when dealing with Vickers. He was McCall’s best-placed contact for sourcing sensitive information. But he always wanted paying in favours. Most times, money would’ve been a safer exchange.

  McCall left his car in the yard behind Linden House and took a cab to Gray’s Inn Road. Vickers, well into his seventies now, still ran his publishing business from rooms in an Edwardian mansion block in a street nearby.

  His premises were as precise as the man - floor to ceiling shelves of books on politics and world affairs, a desktop of tooled green leather neatly arranged with telephone, diary, blotter and notepad. And close by, a fireproof metal filing cabinet with a combination lock more commonly seen in a bank vault. Vickers had reason to take security seriously.

  ‘You’re trying to set up an interview with a detective, aren’t you?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘There’s no could be about it. His name’s Benwick and he’s a detective inspector.’

  ‘OK, I’m researching a piece about a missing kid and he was in charge.’

  ‘The Ruby Ross case, I know. Anyway, Benwick’s supposed to be on leave, yes?’

  ‘That’s what I was told. Why?’

  ‘Because he’s not on his holidays.’

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘That’s the twist. He’s folded his tent and cleared off.’

  ‘Why - bedroom troubles, gambling debts?’

  ‘Neither. Understand this - Benwick isn’t your average plod. It seems he was carrying when he went AWOL - a Makarov, Russian job for close-quarter work.’

  ‘He’s armed? Christ. Has he had a breakdown or something?’

  ‘I don’t have a white coat but a bit of sleuthing on your part might pay dividends.’

  ‘Where do you suggest I start?’

  ‘Well, while you were running round bloody Africa to no good purpose, some people were getting bumped off closer to home.’

  ‘Really? Tell me more.’

  ‘A Canadian scientist called Gerald Bull; he’d be of most interest. Ambushed and shot in the head outside his flat in Brussels last March.’

  ‘Why? What had he been up to?’

  ‘Dig and ye shall find, my son.’

  ‘But what’s Benwick got to do with any of this?’

  ‘That’s what we’d all like to know, McCall.’

  ‘I’ve only met him once, on this Ruby story. But like you say, not a bog standard cop.’

  ‘And he disappears, armed and dangerous on the day after she turns up again. I’d say these are all interesting connections. Anyway, let me know what you find out.’

  McCall knew it was pointless - bordering on insulting - to ask how Vickers knew any of this. But there would be a reason he was passing it on. There always was.

  *

  Hoare couldn’t sleep after being delivered back to his flat by the men with no names. Who would ever let their guard down again knowing each sound and move they made was being monitored?

  He needed time to think. He’d phone the office later and claim a migraine or worse. At first light, Hoare was dressed and walking the cold morning streets. The sun would soon burn through, birds start singing and all of London busy itself as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Yet his little world was falling apart just as he was getting back on his unsteady feet.

  He ordered a full English breakfast at his favoured café and sat where he’d a clear view of the door. His first cigarette brought a little calm.

  A crew of construction workers piled in from the building site opposite. They shouted orders for eggs, bacon and sausages and filled the place with noise and banter about their enviably uncomplicated lives. Hoare’s problem was simple, too - his abductors had him on toast.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t figure what game was being played around him. He knew only that he could be taken out of it without warning. He wasn’t even sure if he’d been caught up in a Special Branch operation or not.

  If Benwick really was a security risk and this was a spook job, why weren’t the funnies liaising with senior police to trace him? What was the point of complicating matters by blackmailing Hoare?

  If he’d still been a hack on the road, he would think a damn good story was being covered up. Maybe that was the way to go - don’t get mad, get even. Run the tale to earth then threaten to go public if the buggers put the squeeze on him again. He had the postcard from Benwick and his mobile number. That’d be a start to trace him, to find out what was really going on.

  Then the doubts set it. What if the blackmailers called his bluff or leaked dirt on him to Private Eye or a diary column? He’d be rat-fucked to bankruptcy and never welcome in EC4 again.

  By his third coffee and fourth cigarette, he knew the least risky option was what he was planning before the watchers swooped - bail out from the police and take Guy Inglis’s offer of a PR job in Westminster. He’d then be jumping, not being pushed.

  First, he had to get away to write the fullest note of all that’d happened the previous evening and everything he could remember from the vanished Ruby Ross files.

  This time, he’d find a safer hiding place, maybe with a lawyer. McCall looked certain to get lifted soon. He considered warning him but thought better of it.

  Hoare was under surveillance by men who could see through walls and had powers he hardly knew existed. Any move which confirmed their suspicious could compromise him even further.

  Only number one was important now. McCall might come in useful later. This wasn’t about a lack of trust or friendship. It was about fear.

  Twenty-Four

  All Hester’s repressed maternal instincts to protect and nurture welled within her as she looked down on Ruby from a bedroom window at Garth. The child stood in the middle of the front lawn like a cherub in a churchyard, gazing into the next world.

  Hester had just answered the phone on the landing. It was McCall ringing from a call box to say he’d been delayed in London by something urgent. He sounded preoccupied.

  It wasn’t for Hester to be annoyed but she guessed Lexie might be. She’d wanted McCall there to help to unload the camper van and get Ruby settled in. In the event, he wasn’t needed. Far from spinning into a temper about her new surroundings, Ruby became almost serene at her first sight of Garth Hall.

  This didn’t surprise Hester. For her, the ghosts of the old place were gathering this strange little girl to themselves, fitting her into the continuum of all their stories. It’d happened to Hester.

  Impossible as it was to explain to the spiritually insensitive, she’d felt a presence, sensed an invitation to stay awhile, to rest and be content for Garth would still be there long after all who dwelled within had departed.

  If this defied logic, so did the cat’s bizarre reaction to Ruby. As she stepped from the van into the stable yard, Ludo - an anti social black tom once owned by Bea and Francis Wrenn - purred round Ruby’s bare legs and hadn’t left her side since.

  ‘How amazing,’ Hester said. ‘He usually makes himself scarce when visitors come.’

  ‘My sister always said that Ruby had a closer affinity to animals than people.’

  ‘Did Ruby have lots of pets, then?’

  ‘Oh, no. Etta was allergic to animals.’

  They watched Ruby and the cat walk the paths around Garth. Every ancient detail absorbed her - the great oak frame, bent with age, panels of narrow, hand-made bricks the colour of the Tudor rose and windows of imperfect medieval glass, glinting in the sun. Ruby recorded it all with a sav
ant’s concentration, as if she were a camera on a tracking shot.

  For now, she stood unsmiling and motionless with the obedient Ludo sitting on the grass at her feet, looking up at Hester looking down on them.

  Such an unwavering stare, such a mysterious child. Where had she hidden so that even the police couldn’t find her? And to reappear in a tree - would the truth behind that ever come out?

  Maybe she’d inherited her mother’s gift for magic and illusion. How fortunate Ruby hadn’t lived at the time of Salem.

  Then Hester heard Lexie cry out from the next bedroom as if in pain. She turned from the window and went to see what was wrong.

  *

  The irony of Hoare’s ex-wife living in a three-bed semi known as The Haven wasn’t lost on McCall, waiting outside in his car. Hoare called it his sinkhole because it swallowed almost every dime he ever earned.

  It was close to the North Circular in an avenue indistinguishable from hundreds of others on this dreary edge of London - radiating corridors of identical brick boxes with bay windows, an apron of grass each, a cherry tree here, privet hedge there.

  McCall was running late and wished the former Mrs Hoare would hurry home. Yet again, he was putting the professional before the personal. But any guilt about not being at Garth faded against the tantalising steer from Vickers - that Benwick had gone AWOL with a gun and might be linked to an assassination in Belgium. How - and if - this connected to Ruby remained to be seen. But it made a good story even better.

  A pal at The Sunday Telegraph dug out a background piece on the murdered scientist, Gerald Bull, dated March 25 1990. Bull was obsessed with developing a super gun to launch a missile into space. The intelligence services of America and Israel hadn’t bitten. But Iraq’s maniac ruler, Saddam Hussein, had seen how he could dominate the Middle East with it. Bull’s gun could lob a dirty nuclear or chemical bomb into Israel or any other regional enemy. So far, so nasty.

  McCall now needed to pour enough hooch into Hoare till he coughed everything he knew about Benwick. But calls to his mobile, his flat and office, all went unanswered. Hoare’s ex might know where he was. When she eventually walked towards the gate of The Haven in her auxiliary nurse’s green uniform, she was weighed down with plastic bags of supermarket shopping.