*
For the very first time in their friendly arrangement, Hester resented McCall. He’d no right to expect her to continue holding the fort on her own. His world wasn’t hers. It threatened her, made her feel anxious in the very place where she’d finally found peace of mind.
‘Ruby, sweetheart, I’m so sorry but we’ve got to go out.’
Ruby was in bed and almost asleep. Hester raised her into a sitting position and put a coat over her pyjamas then slipped her trainers on.
‘Don’t want to,’ Ruby said. ‘Go away.’
Hester carried her downstairs and into the camper van.
‘We’ll only be gone a few minutes but I’ve got to make a phone call.’
She drove to the kiosk from where she’d rung McCall’s new mobile before. Ruby screamed and kicked the dashboard. None of what was happening was the kid’s fault. She needed calm and security but was getting neither. Hester locked her in the van and dialled McCall. When he answered, she told him about Roly Vickers putting pressure on her to reveal McCall’s whereabouts.
‘The little rat even suggested Ruby could be taken from us.’
‘Look, I can’t talk now. I’ll be home as soon as I can but I don’t know when.’
‘I can’t take much more of this, Mac, not all these threats and this talk of killings.’
‘What killings?’
‘Vickers says you’re with a man who’s wanted for assassinating someone. He says you’re in danger and that’s why they need to find you.’
‘I can’t explain his reasons now but what Vickers says isn’t right.’
‘I don’t know what to believe any more. Only little Ruby matters in all this. Her and Lexie. I think you’re forgetting what’s important in your life, Mac.’
As Hester left the phone box, she was observed from a chauffeured Range Rover parked unseen in a field entrance. She’d done exactly what Vickers told his associates she would - called McCall’s new mobile from a public phone. She would’ve been warned by him that their line at Garth Hall wasn’t secure.
So now their source at British Telecom could de-pip the number she’d rung and get it for them. With this, another contact in the mobile phone network would quickly triangulate McCall’s location to within fifty yards. Wherever he was, the rogue detective wouldn’t be far away.
*
McCall was finding it difficult to concentrate. Vickers leaning so hard on Hester - that bothered him. He’d wanted Benwick flushed into the open. When McCall hadn’t played ball, Vickers turned nasty - not least in regard to Ruby. So who was he really running with?
More immediately, McCall had no idea where he and Benwick were driving. They’d travelled south from the golf club on minor roads. After about twenty miles, Benwick told him to turn into a thinly populated stretch of flat, wooded farmland. He seemed to know the area. They bumped along a dirt track towards a tangled hedge of alders and hawthorn.
Tucked behind were a corrugated iron implement shed and a small barn-like structure, almost overwhelmed by ivy.
‘Pull into the shed,’ Benwick said. ‘Then kill the lights.’
‘What is this place?’
‘Just a little port in a storm.’
McCall parked then Benwick led the way into the barn. It had once been a kitchen and sleeping area for seasonal agricultural labourers. There was no electricity, just candles and a paraffin lamp.
But it had a cast iron range with charred wood in the grate from a recent fire. On the hob were a kettle and a brown teapot and on the table, a plastic pannier of water, mugs, plates and cutlery.
‘The Ritz it ain’t,’ he said. ‘But we’ll be OK roughing it here for a while.’
‘What about whoever owns it, the farmer?’
‘He knows me as a bird watcher, doesn’t mind me using it.’
McCall couldn’t immediately think of a reply. It was endearing, if puzzling, that a rogue detective who might yet turn out to be an assassin or a spy, should have so gentle a side to his character. But the terrorist, like the paedophile, is always a guy next door, the quiet one who goes unnoticed.
The barn had a single small window with a potato sack nailed over it as a rough curtain. Benwick pulled it aside and scanned the darkened landscape with a pair of military night vision binoculars from his backpack.
‘You think we were followed?’ McCall said.
‘No, but I want to make sure.’
Benwick then began screwing up newspaper to start a fire with the sticks and split logs piled in the hearth. Some of the pages carried dispatches about Iraq’s advance into Kuwait so were almost a month old. This must have been one of Benwick’s long-term boltholes.
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ he said. ‘When this fire gets going, I’ll boil some water for some tea and warm up a can of soup and there’s bread, too, if the mice haven’t got in the bread bin. Got to keep our strength up for the chase, haven’t we?’
Benwick appeared almost euphoric, as if relishing playing a fox outwitting his pursuers. But McCall needed to know why they were being hunted.
‘At some point, you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on, aren’t you?’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough.’
*
Lexie, fading in and out of consciousness in the dimly lit ward, felt she was being digested in the belly of the beast. The essence of her very self had been torn out and devoured. Like the purblind victims around her, she would eventually pass through the system - but none as they had entered it. And not all would survive.
Yet on this night, she had to cling to the hope that she would, albeit life as she’d known it would be in remission. But she’d made a start on whatever future she had. Her business partner had driven over from Bristol. Agreements had been made, documents signed. There had to something to plan for and Lexie now knew what it must be.
*
McCall and Benwick sat either side of the fire. The wind cut through the silver birch trees shivering beyond the barn and howled around the chimney. Neither man wanted to be the first to speak. Both knew the advantage silence gave against anyone seeking information they’d rather not divulge. Yet this was different. Each had need of the other - and to give ground.
They’d eaten and were getting warm. Benwick poked at the logs. They cracked and sparked and threw ever-bizarre shadows on a scene that was weird enough already. He reached into his rucksack for a half bottle of brandy and offered first swig to McCall.
‘So, you want a bit of the back story to all this drama, do you?’ Benwick said.
‘I think I’m owed that much, don’t you? A sort of payment in kind.’
Benwick took his pull of brandy as he considered his next words.
‘Did you ever hear of a police investigation called Operation Kid Glove?’
‘No, what was that about?’
‘The sexual abuse of young children, not just by the usual grubby little perverts but a few seriously influential people.’
‘Really? Like who?’
‘Some politicians… high ranking household names, rarely off the TV some of them.’
‘I don’t remember reading about any of this in the papers.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘Why not? They were committing crimes, weren’t they?’
‘The case never got to court, that’s why.’
‘You mean the evidence wasn’t there?’
‘No, there was plenty of that. The investigation was deliberately sabotaged.’
‘In what way?’
‘Some exhibits and statements went missing, witnesses changed their stories or just disappeared then as the arrests were being planned, guys in suits turned up at the nick early one morning and took away every incriminating file and every cop’s notebook.’
‘So it was covered-up?’
‘Too damn right it was. Someone somewhere decided it wasn’t in the national interest to pull down these pillars of society. That’s what power and
influence buys you, McCall. We’re all equal under the law but some are more equal than others.’
‘I get that but who were these MPs and why were they being protected?’
‘Sorry, but you and I have a way to go before I’ll give you chapter and verse.’
‘I see… so you’re just baiting the hook, then?’
‘Only so that you’ll understand there’s a link between these untouchable politicians and little Ruby Ross.’
‘For Christ’s sake, you can’t just leave a claim like that hanging in the air.’
‘All I’m going to say for now is that if the cops on Operation Kid Glove hadn’t had their balls cut off, those who put Ruby through her wicked ordeal would have still been locked up.’
Thirty-Three
Benwick’s words were edged with genuine anger, controlled but evident in his eyes. It seemed to McCall that the intensity of his feelings was rooted in something deeper than professional animus alone.
He was coming across as a man starting to make sense of himself to his priest for the night. If his past actions seemed incomprehensible, he might now offer context if only to keep McCall inside the tent while it suited.
Nothing of what he’d hinted at so far explained why he carried a gun or from what - or whom - he was running, still less his interest in a munitions factory. But this might come with patience.
‘You’ll have gathered I’m out in the cold,’ Benwick said. ‘But if I’m to tell you things I shouldn’t, then you must be just as open with me.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘How you found me… and this isn’t just about my injured pride because you did, it’s more about my neck.’
Benwick wasn’t alone in having concerns about personal well being. McCall didn’t feel bad about holding back on the whole story.
‘I saw the postcard you sent to Malky Hoare,’ McCall said. ‘This helped me to trace the hotel where you’d stayed in Blackrod then I asked around and dropped on someone who’d heard you went bird-watching near the weapons factory.’
‘You’re saying your first clue was Hoare showing you my postcard?’
‘No, he didn’t show it to me. I found it when I found his body.’
He stared at McCall even more intently as the implication of his words registered.
‘Hoare’s dead?’
McCall nodded.
‘Christ, I thought the Lord above was supposed to look out for drunks and fools.’
‘Well, Fleet Street’s got plenty of both so even He would be hard pushed to keep up.’
‘Was it natural causes?’
‘It looked like it to me,’ McCall said. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
Benwick fell quiet again but hardly with grief. It began to rain, steadily enough to seep through the barn’s dislodged slates and drip on the floor by the window. He took another mouthful of brandy then came at McCall from left field.
‘You’ve got a source, a man called Roly Vickers.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes, a publisher, does books written by communist bloc defectors once they’ve been pressed dry of all useful information by the British and need a bit of extra money paid by the back door.’
McCall stayed as expressionless as he could but was alarmed that his contact with Vickers wasn’t the secret he’d always taken it to be.
‘How do you know him?’
‘I swam in a small pond, McCall. Vickers might have always appeared to be your friend but he’s a dangerous man to know.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘That he’s an agent of influence for the spooks, does deniable favours for them when they’d rather not show their hand. Because of that, I don’t think it was my postcard which steered you to me, I think it was Roly Vickers.’
This was Benwick displaying strength while probing for weakness.
‘You must think what you want,’ McCall said. ‘But why would it concern you if he had given me a leg up?’
‘I’ll answer that once you prove your loyalty.’
‘Why do I need to prove loyalty to you?’
‘Because like it or not, we’re in this mess together. We stand united or fall separately.’
‘Does this mess involve you being mixed up in an assassination in Belgium back in March?’
‘If that’s what Roly Vickers told you then he was slipping you a FUD.’
‘A what?’
‘A FUD… the creation of fear, uncertainty and doubt among your enemies by the use of disinformation. It’s this relationship you have with Vickers which bothers me.’
McCall waited. There were times when a denial as to a matter of fact or falsehood could be equally incriminating. This was one of them.
‘I’m not sure how much I can trust you, McCall. You’re quite amoral. You’d cut a deal with the devil himself if it got you the story you wanted.’
‘Once upon a time, maybe.’
‘Oh, really? That doesn’t sound like the guy who once had nerve enough to run around some of the nasty countries where Vickers sent you on errands. Not exactly friendly to Her Majesty’s Government, were they?’
‘Good stories often happen in bad places.’
‘Sure, but information is the currency traded by spy and journalist alike, isn’t it?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘You don’t really need me to answer that. Still, I guess all the exclusive stories old Roly put your way in return made the risks worthwhile.’
McCall winced at the professionally damaging truth of this. Benwick could hold a gun to his head in more ways than one.
*
Lexie, weak and dosed with analgesics, couldn’t be sure if the words going round her head were remembered from a script, a song or a book.
You’ve got to be lost before you can be found. Only now, capsized by disease and surgery and obliged to audit the ungrounded life she had lived, did she see their relevance to her.
She’d always presented an image of confident fulfilment. Yet lying in hospital on that sleepless night, Lexie was confronted not just by the fiction of such apparent self-belief but the vacuity of her life, of time wasted and mortality itself. She sensed a curtain coming down on all she had known and had been.
The slow, electronic tick of the ward clock came through the sighs and groans of other patients. In the bed by Lexie, the breath of an elderly woman guttered in and out from the rafters of bones which were her chest. The tired skin of her face sank into the many hollows of the skull within. And yet a lover might once have craved those lips, blue and bloodless now in this, the dimming of her day.
Who was she? What was her story? Something about her suggested a likeness to Lexie’s mother - and to how she herself might yet become. Maybe they could exchange a word or a smile after breakfast for who will remember any of us in the end - and for what? We all walk the cobbles of the same coffin path, each weighed down along the way by different burdens.
Lexie was never sentimental but her emotions no longer seemed under control. Try as she might, she couldn’t fend off the mood of remorse and regret welling within her.
Thirty-Four
‘All right, so you’ve got some black on me,’ McCall said. ‘But don’t tell me you always played by the rules when you were an undercover cop.’
‘Who says I was a UC… Roly Vickers?’
‘Believe it or not, I do have other sources.’
Benwick stretched out his damaged leg towards the fire and took his time finishing the last of the brandy.
‘OK, McCall… I’ll tell you what’s relevant to Ruby but don’t push for any more.’
Benwick read linguistics at university then worked at the Foreign Office. Diplomacy was dull so he joined the police. He spoke Russian and some Arabic so was fast-tracked through the ranks.
‘I’m walking to the tube one morning and - bang, I’m grabbed from behind, my eyes and mouth get taped over, hands bound and I’m shoved in the boot of a car, scared shitless that
some terrorists had got me.’
‘That can’t have been pleasant.’
‘No, but the car finally stops then I’m put into something like a metal coffin and left there. When it’s finally opened and my eyes get uncovered, some guy’s standing over me having a smoke and he says “…you’ll do. Welcome to S.O.10.”’
‘To what?’
‘Special Operations ten, the Met’s undercover unit.’
‘Quite some job interview.’
‘Yes, but they needed to see how much stress I could take before I started gibbering.’
‘Why did they choose you in the first place?’
‘I guess I’d not been a cop long enough to look or sound like one.’
‘Or were a plausible liar?’
‘A useful attribute in both our trades, McCall.’
‘Touché.’
‘Anyway, I was given the identity of a boy who’d died young and I used his name to build a phoney legend with bank cards, rented flat, driver’s licence, the lot.’
‘So if any background checks were made, you’d look kosher?’
‘Right, but I was really in a repertory company run by the cops.’
‘Did you enjoy the work?’
‘Loved it, living on nerves and adrenaline, being privy to secrets. All so addictive.’
‘So how did this lead to you investigating Ruby’s case as a regular detective?’
Benwick threw more logs on the fire and said it started by him being assigned a role as a lobbyist, cultivating new sources in Westminster.
‘I hooked into this really strange guy fronting a freelance dirty tricks campaign for the benefit of the Labour Party,’ he said. ‘Always in the market for any dirty gossip about Tory MPs, boozing, extra marital affairs, stuff like that. Every Tuesday, he’d hold court in a curry house in Soho and buy lunch for anyone who delivered the goods.’
‘What did he do with this gossip?’
‘If it came up to snuff, he’d plant embarrassing stories in the papers. He was a bit like Vickers in that way, a cut-out for those who wanted to keep in the shadows.’
The Convenience of Lies Page 18