Secrets

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Oh, a volume of poetry, ‘Molly said. ‘W.B. Yeats, collected works. It doesn’t have everything, of course, but it will do.’

  ‘And the postcard inside?’

  ‘Was just a book mark, Alec. You are so suspicious.’

  ‘Can you blame me? Molly, why would someone bug Joseph’s place?’

  ‘As Adam suggested, so someone could hear what the likes of us might say about him. What we might find.’

  ‘And do you think there was anything to find?’

  She shrugged. ‘How would I know?’

  Alec gave up. ‘We should report it to the police,’ he said grumpily.

  ‘Report what? That Joseph’s house had been bugged? Joseph being a person of interest to more than one government department.’

  ‘A fact you failed to tell me.’

  ‘One I’d have thought you’d have worked out for yourself. Anyway, by the time the police did anything, the bugs would have been gone.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘Can’t I? Alec, look, what will be will be. For me, probably for Adam, but you and Naomi can still walk away from this and I think you should.’

  ‘And that little speech about contamination by association?’

  ‘Maybe overstated the mark a little.’

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Alec, you’ll have to forgive an old woman. I don’t know what events have been set in motion and I don’t actually know what I’ve precipitated either. I could, perhaps, have been guilty of a misjudgement.’

  ‘You mean by dumping that file in Gilligan’s cabinet. What is that thing anyway?’

  Molly sighed. ‘I suppose I thought I was still in the game,’ she said. ‘Truth is, the game, like life, has moved on and I’ve failed to realize that.’

  Alec felt a twinge of sympathy. She sounded so melancholy. He crushed the twinge ruthlessly. That was the way Molly got to people; the way she manipulated those around her. ‘The file, Molly? What was in the file?’

  ‘Oh you are such a bore, sometimes, Alec.’

  ‘It’s been said before. But sometimes the world needs bores. Can you imagine a world made up of people like you?’

  Molly laughed softly. ‘Hideous thought,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I could cope.’

  ‘So, the file?’

  She seemed to be gathering her thoughts, then she said, ‘You know I grew up in Kenya?’

  ‘I knew that, yes.’

  ‘My father had a farm, but it was my mother and a farm manager who took care of the day to day operations. He worked for the government, the British Government as a local administrator. I like to think that he did a good job, that he was a fair man, but at that time, good and fair on either side didn’t count for very much.’

  ‘You mean the Mau Mau thing?’

  ‘Thing!’ Molly was outraged. ‘I’ll have you know—’

  ‘OK, bad choice of words.’ He slowed for a bend and frowned.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Brakes are a little spongy. Pads probably need changing or something. Anyway, you were saying?’

  Molly looked long and hard at him and then, finally she said, ‘I was about fourteen or fifteen, I suppose, when it all started to happen. At first it was just the Kikuyu, one of the biggest tribal groups in the region. They wanted independence and were no longer prepared to wait for it. There had always been underground movements, secret societies and the like, but this one felt different right from the get go. It was intense, organized and quite, quite brutal.’

  ‘From what I’ve heard there was brutality on both sides.’

  ‘Oh, there was. I heard reports of people being burned alive, of the wives of two missionaries being kidnapped and forcibly circumcised, of people being forced to make the oath to join the Mau Mau at knifepoint. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t and once you’d joined, then you had to kill, prove your loyalty by killing a white farmer or a member of his family.

  ‘Believe me, Alec, we were all afraid. Black and white. No one knew what would happen. The colonial old guard declared this was their land by right and wouldn’t give it up without a fight and the Kikuyu and the rest said this land was their birthright and were equally immovable. It was not going to end well.’

  ‘So, what did your family do?’

  ‘Made sure we always had weapons to hand in case of attack. But the worst of it was, Alec, no one knew who to trust any more. People who’d lived and worked with us for years were suddenly people we were suspicious of. Would they suddenly turn on us? And my father, as the local bureaucrat, he was right at the forefront when orders came from London. Then the news came that the troops were being sent.’

  ‘That must have been a terrible time.’

  ‘Oh, it was. I’ve lived through worse, but that was the hardest in many ways because that place was my home. Home is a place where we hope to be safe, but nowhere was safe.’

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ Alec said, glancing at the sky. Hoping it would hold off until they got back. The road ahead was full of bends and tight curves and for a second time now, he’d felt the brakes were spongy, slow to respond.

  ‘The troops arrived that October and the arrests began. Schools were closed down, they arrested Jomo Kenyatta who was then President of the African Union. He disappeared for several weeks, held incommunicado somewhere in the hills. Rumours spread that the British had killed him. He lived, but many, many others were killed by British patrols. It was a bloody time.’

  ‘And what does this have to do with the file?’

  ‘With that particular file, not a great deal. The chain of which that file is a part was begun back then, though, in my father’s study.

  ‘I first met Edward when I was seventeen. And he was a young man of twenty. He’d been sent to help my father, I didn’t know what with at the time only that suddenly the farm had become the centre of operations for the British administrators in the area. My mother and I were told to leave, we’d be given an armed escort to the airfield and then we’d be going to spend a little time with her sister in South Africa. In the few days between Edward arriving and our departure, I got to know him. Though it was another eight years before we married.’ She smiled. ‘He could have asked me right there and then and I’d have said yes. He was such a handsome young man, so kind too.’

  Alec laughed. ‘And tolerant,’ he said.

  Molly smiled in return. ‘That too. Boxes and boxes of files began to arrive and be sorted. Some were sent out to the airfield and eventually, I think, flown back to the UK. Many were burned and the ones due for burning were stamped with a ‘W’. They called them watch files. Some others, not stamped, simply had their contents burned and those files had other contents created to replace them. I learnt later that these were put back into the records, taken back to where they’d come from.’

  ‘The authorities covering their tracks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your file?’

  ‘Ah, that was a strange one. One page did originate from that time. I remember my father directing it to be stamped and Edward questioning that decision. There was an almighty row. Edward, young though he was, never worried about facing anyone down. My father stood over him while he burned the file, except, of course, that he didn’t. Later, much later, I realized that the argument had been staged, that my father agreed with Edward’s decision, that the little show was put on for the benefit of another.’

  ‘Clay?’ Alec guessed.

  ‘Clay,’ Molly confirmed.

  ‘And what does Clay do now? He must have retired.’

  ‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘I have lost touch with what he’s doing.’

  Alec glanced over at her. ‘Is that true, Molly?’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Alec. I do not lie.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’

  He returned his attention to the road ahead. Signs promised a series of bends, that he remembered from the journey that morning.
Tight bends at the top of a steep incline. The view of the valley had been wonderful that morning but now the rain had begun and was growing heavier by the second. Alec slowed, easing his foot off the accelerator. He glanced at the dashboard clock and decided that they were going to be later that he had estimated. He’d have to call Naomi when they got to Molly’s house.

  He touched the brake again, aware that they were approaching the zig zag bends far too fast. Nothing happened. He tried again.

  ‘Alec?’

  ‘Hang on, Molly. I can’t get the brakes to work.’

  ‘Take your foot off the accelerator and then shift down through the gears,’ she told him. She sounded oddly calm, Alec thought. He felt anything but. Panic rose and for a split second her words made no sense.

  Then the sense of them broke through. ‘I know,’ Alec mumbled, doing what she said with alacrity. The engine braking slowed them down, a little. Alec wrestled with the steering. The bends were tight and the road slick with rain. He pumped the brake again, but to no effect. Molly grabbed for the handbrake and wrenched it on. The car skidded, turned, Alec struggled to bring it back on line, but knew immediately that it was hopeless. He turned the wheel sharply as the car began to tilt, realized in that second that he’d made the move too late and then the world began to spin and then explode as the airbags deployed. He heard Molly scream as the car turned and tumbled off the road and down the side of the steep fall. Then the world went black and Alec knew nothing more.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The landlord of The Green Man tapped on Adam’s door. ‘You’ve got someone downstairs looking for you,’ he said. ‘Young man, says his name is Nathan Crow.’

  Nathan? Adam felt a stab of shock which almost immediately gave way to pure curiosity.

  He followed the landlord down and went through to the bar. It had emptied of funeral guests now, though the vicar was still there, chatting in the corner with a man and woman Adam had noticed earlier. They had the look of old friends, relaxed in one another’s company, Adam thought.

  Nathan sat alone at the bar, drink in hand. Adam wandered over to a table close to the window and waited for the younger man to join him.

  ‘Gustav Clay’s blue-eyed boy,’ he said.

  ‘Except that my eyes aren’t blue,’ Nathan argued. He took a seat opposite Adam. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘No, I think I’ve had enough for one day.’

  Nathan nodded. ‘I asked the landlord to bring us some coffee,’ he said. ‘I thought that might be a good idea.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because we’ve got a lot to talk about. What’s the food like here? I could be hungry.’

  Adam studied him thoughtfully. Nathan was twenty-six or twenty-seven, Adam remembered, depending on which version of events you believed. He looked both younger and older. The eyes were unreadable; experienced and a little cold – and definitely not blue, but there was something very youthful about Nathan. Something almost innocent-looking that made it very hard to pin his age. ‘Did Clay send you?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, most definitely not.’

  ‘Then?’

  The coffee arrived and Nathan smiled at the landlord. ‘Are you still serving food?’ he asked.

  ‘Evening service starts in an hour. Last orders at nine,’ he was told.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Landlord gone, he turned his attention back to Adam. ‘You’ve got absolutely no reason to trust me or even to listen, but I talked to Annie.’ He paused. ‘You know about Annie, of course?’

  Adam nodded. ‘Another of Clay’s protégées,’ he said.

  ‘We were.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now I think we may well be on the same side, Adam Carmodie.’

  Adam smiled and sipped his coffee. ‘I always thought Clay inspired loyalty,’ he said. ‘Don’t you owe him, Nathan?’

  Nathan nodded slowly. ‘I was thirteen or something around that when Clay found me, and he’s had thirteen years of service and loyalty and, from Annie at least, something close to love. Don’t you think there’s a nice balance to that? He’s had an equal part of my life. I don’t think I owe him more.’

  ‘I think you are just playing games,’ Adam said.

  ‘And, in your place, I’d think the same. The fact is, Adam, that Clay can no longer be trusted with something as precious as loyalty. Clay is on something of a campaign. And I don’t think he’d extend that loyalty to any of us.’

  Adam laughed. ‘I’m not sure he ever would have done,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, now there you are wrong. Without Clay, Annie and I would have been lost. Annie because she had no one. Me, because I cared for no one. Clay may have trained us both, may have channelled what we felt; in my case simply honed what I already was, but he did a fine job. We wanted for nothing and we were never alone, never in need. I count that as loyalty. Not as affection, perhaps, I’m not certain Clay is capable of that, but he took care of us and we did what he needed us to.’

  ‘So, what’s changed?’

  ‘What’s changed is that Clay is no longer in control of what he does. At first, Annie and me, we assumed he was just settling old scores. Winding down to a peaceful retirement, if you like, but it’s more than that. Clay might have been possessed of a cold kind of logic, but it was still logic of sorts. It took me a while to figure it out.’

  ‘Clay is a megalomaniac,’ Adam said. ‘Surely it didn’t take you all this time to work that one out?’

  Nathan said nothing. He sipped at his coffee and waited for the silence to break. Adam half listened to the conversation in the opposite corner of the room. Snatches of it reached him; the woman slightly drunk and becoming overloud seemed to be recounting a comedy act she had seen on the television. Adam, who rarely watched television, couldn’t get any of the references.

  ‘Why have you come here?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘To ask for help in taking him down,’ Nathan said simply.

  ‘And why should I help you?’

  ‘Because, if you don’t, I think you’ll be next on his list. He failed with Molly, I still don’t know how. I do know he’d more or less written you off as harmless, but when you visited Joseph … well that attracted him. He scented blood.’

  ‘And, if Clay has just sent you here to test me out? To see if I’m a threat?’

  Nathan shrugged. ‘No way to prove anything,’ he said. ‘You could ask him, of course.’

  ‘I could.’

  Nathan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Clay is dying,’ he said.

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Brain tumour. Inoperable.’

  ‘Then our troubles will soon be over.’

  ‘I doubt that. Adam, I think he wants to erase his past before he gets erased. He’s a very angry man, right now, and I don’t think he knows friend from foe any more.’

  ‘Nathan, he never did. Clay was a bastard all his life. If occasionally he managed to do some good as a by-product to what he wanted, then that was pure coincidence and you know it. He got his pound of flesh from you and Annie and from others too. Then he cast them aside when they were no more use to him. He’s always been the same and if you think any different then you are just plain delusional.’

  ‘Annie said you wouldn’t listen,’ Nathan said. He smiled. ‘OK, Adam, that’s fine, but if you won’t help out then just keep your head down. I can’t predict what he’ll do next or what collateral damage there might be.’

  ‘And what makes you think I might not just warn him?’

  Nathan got up and stretched himself. There was something catlike about the young man, Adam thought.

  ‘Because you hate him,’ Nathan said. ‘Because although you’ve never been able to prove that Clay killed your wife and child, you’ve always known it. The only reason you’ve not taken him down yourself is you don’t know what surprises he’s left. What skeletons of yours might just rattle their way out.’ He laughed softly. ‘That’s the amazing, crazy thing about this game. There are no innoc
ents. We all have our guilty little secrets, don’t we?’

  Adam said nothing. He saw Nathan take out his mobile phone and then heard his own chime as a text was received. ‘I’ve sent you my number,’ Nathan said. ‘In case you change your mind. I could use your help, Adam; there’ll be a hell of a lot of damage limitation to do.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Tariq knew that he could do nothing at work. Any search he began would be flagged; Clay would note it. He knew, from work he’d done for him, that Gustav Clay had a number of alter egos – they were far more than simple aliases, and also that he was often paid through corporate tax schemes and into companies that, strictly speaking, did not exist.

  Tariq went home, sat down with a cup of decent coffee and a sandwich, promising himself that he’d eat properly later on; he checked his firewalls and his security systems, examined the alerts and then went to work with the search. He used a beta version of his usual search engine and obfuscation, hiding his IP address. Anyone tracking the search would find that it originated in the Seychelles. Later, he’d change the IP again, be somewhere else.

  Tariq had learnt a long time ago that often you could find unlikely links by examining the commonplace and that’s where he began, looking for news reports on the deaths of Gilligan and Hayes and then, when that failed to produce many hits, looking at the break in at the warehouse. He moved to news of Molly Chambers, of the shooting at her house and then on to his friend Herbert Norris. He had known, when Clay handed him the photograph, that Gustav Clay had been responsible for Herb’s death. Frankly, Tariq couldn’t understand why. Herb had been one of Clay’s fosterlings, as he called them. Kids he’d taken off the street somewhere and helped into a fresh life. He’d met a few of them along the way; Tariq supposed that in a way he was one of their number.

  Herbert Norris had been a good kid, Clay had once said. ‘But not our sort. Too straight, too simple.’

  Tariq had been amused at the time, had been flattered by the idea that he, Tariq Nasir, was of the special kind that Clay approved. Now he was not so sure he wanted that accolade.

  He deepened his search around Molly Chambers, finding the record of her husband’s funeral and his obituary, using that as a jumping off point, searching his diplomatic record, his history and hers. Cross-referencing in his memory the things he knew about Clay and where he had worked. What he had done. Then he backtracked, looking for information on Arthur Fields.