The Distance: A Thriller

by Helen Giltrow

  And that’s the way it stayed: twenty-nine days of half-life and grief in limbo. Until last night, when they brought the man to me.

  POWELL

  It ends as it began, in the Long Room, the soundproofed box overlooking the inner courtyard, though this time someone else is doing the talking; all he has to do is listen. It works for him: he’s dead on his feet, strung out and laid low by the events of the last two days; not that he’ll let it show. If there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that you never let it show.

  “All right,” says Suit One brightly, “so Anna Leeson works out where Catherine Gallagher is—”

  “And she can’t get access to the Program,” Suit Two chips in, “so she gets someone hired to do the job, with the American Whitman providing cover. Whitman confirmed it, when we tracked him down in Paris: the woman that he knew as Laura Pressinger was definitely Leeson. We can’t double-check it—she did something to disrupt CCTV feeds, the one time they met recently, and she wiped all records from her phones—but we’ve spoken to Langley, and Whitman’s reliable.”

  Suit One picks up: “And in any case Whitman won’t say a word. He’s family—in a distant-American-cousin way—and he’s very keen to work for us; these French girls must be expensive.”

  Suits One and Two both suppress an oily smile. He wonders who they are; where they’ve been whistled up from. Special Branch? MI5? He wasn’t told their names—perhaps that’s information released on a need-to-know basis and someone’s decided he doesn’t. But even if he had been told, would he have remembered? The room’s coming and going around him. Any minute he’ll be flatlining.

  Suit One resumes. “We’re not sure where Mark Devlin fits into this. He seems to have provided the house where Fenty was taken, whether knowingly or unknowingly we’re not sure. His death could be self-defense, but if it’s murder—”

  “We must assume Leeson was involved—”

  “Covering her tracks again. Now, obviously it’s in the public domain that Devlin and Leeson were … friends”—Suit One congratulates himself on the euphemism—“but that works for us, too: he dies under suspicious circumstances, she’s unbalanced by the loss. We are still going with suicide for Leeson?” The Section Chief nods, cautiously. “Well, there you are. As for the other parties in the know—”

  Suit Two picks up again: “Hamilton and Graves are out of the picture. Graves, we’ve already got the burglary option. Hamilton was probably killed in case he talked, but she was clever there, it looks like suicide—”

  “Oh, certainly suicide.”

  “And while there are some oddities in the records—”

  “For three weeks before his death we can’t pin down his movements—”

  “We can spin that as a nervous breakdown.”

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Powell’s losing track of which one’s which. Now more than anything he wants to go to bed and sleep. He’s far too tired for this.

  “DI Ellis?” the Section Chief asks beadily.

  “Ah, poor Detective Inspector Ellis: getting it so right and yet so wrong. Because in fact he wasn’t even warm: he thought he was looking at a murder. Still, nasty injuries. Leeson really went to town there—some mistaken belief he knew where Catherine Gallagher was. He’s still on sick leave. He’s been cooperative so far. Likes to think he’s smarter than us—”

  “But he’s ambitious, we can work with that.”

  The Chief again: “He won’t suddenly recall the details of the attack?”

  “We’re certain, sir.” They smile, in unison.

  Powell says, “And Charlotte Alton? Do you think she’ll forget?” and they look at him as if surprised to find he’s actually in the room.

  Suit One recovers first. “Ah, another case of wrong place and wrong time. She knew Devlin, though not well; had dinner with him a week earlier, and Anna saw them together. And she and Ellis use the same garage.” He shrugs. “She became hysterical at the scene, didn’t she? I think that says it all. I doubt she’ll come up with anything we can’t discredit.”

  “Though she does have influential friends,” Suit Two says, more cautiously, and Suit One seems to pull up slightly. Oh yes: bankers and lawyers and that politician woman—a Home Secretary in training. Influential friends indeed.

  Suit Two says, “The main thing is, I think we’ve convinced her not to complicate the issue. She doesn’t seem to recall much of the incident. Terror, shock … Plus we’ve assessed her and she’s open to influence. We think we can control her.”

  Powell thinks: So she’s become a footnote. He remembers her straining against the gag, her eyes the moment her finger snapped, and something turns inside him. A month gone and he’ll still wake sometimes in the night, drunk on his own brand of terror. Is she the same?

  The Section Chief says, “Shall we turn our attention to the third party? The hired man who changed sides? I take it we still don’t have a name for him.”

  The Suits exchange glances. “We’re having a few difficulties with that.”

  “You think he might have been one of ours, do you? A cleanskin? In which case someone knows, but they’re not saying. Well, certainly he won’t be talking now.”

  Another glance between the suits. Neither of them comments.

  The Section Chief says, “And we can get rid of Catherine Gallagher, can’t we? She still wants to go back into the Program?”

  Powell visited her himself three days ago, in the isolated house in Shropshire that her minders ensure she never leaves; they spoke only briefly. She said, “You won’t want me talking about this.” When he told her he was still awaiting a decision on whether she’d be prosecuted she said coldly, “I won’t.” He still doesn’t know what to make of her: sometimes he thinks the whole thing’s left her no more than a shell; but then that shell seems to have been constructed out of Kevlar or titanium, or some other substance formed under extreme conditions, and impossible to break … Sometimes there seems to be nothing left of her, and sometimes there’s simply nothing that he can get a purchase on. He doesn’t know whether to be afraid for her, or of her. Mostly he’s both.

  Suit One says, “She could remain officially missing, in return for her … cooperation.” He means silence. “Though isn’t the Program coming up for review? Won’t they close it down? Still, in the short term—”

  Powell says, too clearly, “And Fenty? What’s the official story there?”

  The Suits look at him and shift uncomfortably in their seats. It strikes him for the first time that they don’t know who he is either.

  He pushes on. “Fenty never stole that missing file. Never posted it on the open market—”

  Suit One says quietly, “We can’t be sure of that.”

  “Oh yes we can. And that won’t go away. Whatever you do to hush this up—whatever you do to buy off or discredit any of these individuals—”

  Suit One gives an almost embarrassed smile. “With respect, we’ve made bigger things go away—”

  Powell says coldly, “Have you ever heard of Knox?”

  When the Suits have gone, the Section Chief says, “We couldn’t have known how badly she was broken.” It’s the only comment he’s made about Leeson so far. Powell thinks, Oh yes we could. He doesn’t say it. He missed it, too.

  “So what do we do now?” the Section Chief says bitterly. “Wash all the dirty laundry in public? We can’t have sources making terms like this—doesn’t Knox realize?”

  “Knox wants Daniel Fenty in the clear. His parents are in their sixties. When he disappeared they were left with no illusions: their son was a traitor. We’ve got to put it straight.”

  “Tell them he’s dead?”

  “I don’t know.” The argument’s been looping in his head. He can’t give them a body to bury: the searches of the hillsides round Mark Devlin’s house have so far turned up nothing. And what’s to be gained from telling them the truth, about the four days Daniel Fenty spent in that house, begging Catherine Gallagher to kill him? Perhaps
this time it’s kinder just to lie: let them believe he might be out there, safe, thinking of them, wanting to come home … “But tell them that his name’s been cleared.” He pauses. “And make that public, too.”

  “Sweet Jesus.” For a moment the Section Chief looks savage. “And if we don’t?”

  “Then Knox puts it out there. All of it. It will be across a thousand websites in an hour, and we’ll be tainted by it. And we’ll lose Knox. To the Americans if we’re lucky. If we’re not …” He lets that hang in the air between them.

  “And how does Knox know about it in the first place?” The Section Chief glowers at him. “Don’t tell me we’ve sprung a leak.”

  “I’ll look into it.” He doesn’t add, I think Knox knows things about this even we don’t know. It’s only a feeling; he can’t be sure.

  “I thought we were good at sweeping things under the carpet?”

  “It’s this or Knox goes public. With all the evidence. At least this way we get to control the process. And we do get something in return.”

  The Section Chief says, “Will it be worth it, do you think?”

  Powell doesn’t reply. His mind has suddenly jumped back twelve hours: he’s seated in an echoing room, with a hood over his head, while a voice distorted by electronic technology—a voice that from now on will always be the voice of Knox—is telling him exactly what the terms of their future business will be.

  “I said, will it be worth it?”

  Powell shakes himself. He says, “It’s Knox.”

  After a moment the Section Chief says, with some distaste, “You sure you’re quite all right? You shouldn’t have gone.”

  Powell wants to smile, but doesn’t. He says, “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “And did Knox come up with anything else? Anything that we can work with? We have to find out who we’re dealing with—”

  “Nothing, sir.” And there’s that first small lie: the one he realizes now he was always going to tell. You’re turning into Laidlaw.

  The Section Chief sighs heavily. “All right,” he says. “Do what you have to.”

  He’ll phone the Fentys tonight, when he’s ready—when he’s got his story straight, his resources sufficiently recovered to manage the situation, deal with all their questions. But not yet.

  Now he’ll go home and try to sleep … The flat is chaos, Thea moving through it like a storm, casting up glittery pink debris on all sides. The place is far too small, he thinks, and smiles.

  His rental car is parked in the basement car park, but he’s too tired to drive. Instead he leaves by a side entrance and hails a taxi in the street.

  And knows he’s being watched.

  KARLA

  There’s a crackle in my earpiece: Robbie. “He’s on his way.”

  I’m not looking at the door when he comes out, but I see him anyway, stepping across the pavement, hand raised to hail a cab. He looks tired. He’s been up all night. But so have I, and I don’t feel tired at all.

  Robbie says in my ear, “Do you want him tailed?”

  Powell leans in through the taxi window, and his mouth forms his own address; then he straightens, he looks up, and he nods at no one.

  We have a deal.

  The man in the hood, who shook in his chair, his knees twitching to a rhythm he couldn’t control. He wasn’t ready for it, or for the thirty-six hours that had preceded it: antisurveillance drills and maneuvers and precautions. Twice he was strip-searched, and ordered to dress in different clothes. Four times he was blindfolded and moved—in vans and in the boots of cars and stumbling through empty buildings in the dark. At each stage he was given the option of quitting, but he never took it, despite everything he went through with Anna Leeson. Those were the terms Knox had set, and he couldn’t let himself refuse.

  He’s a tough man, a determined man. He’s going to be difficult to handle. Craigie’s not happy. But a deal is a deal is a deal.

  I turn away—even though at this moment I look nothing like Charlotte Alton—and the taxi moves off.

  “Karla?” Robbie says.

  The elderly woman in the coffee bar says dreamily, to herself, “Let him go.”

  Last night we talked about Anna Leeson, and Catherine Gallagher, and what happened to Daniel Fenty: things no one but Powell himself should know. But Knox is still an enigma, isn’t he? He knew about the Maternity Unit Bomber, the ricin plotters, the Aiya Napa shooting: why shouldn’t he know about all this?

  Then at last, buried in all that talking to a man who’d been awake for thirty-six hours: “The hit man Leeson sent to kill Catherine Gallagher, the one who changed sides and took a bullet in the jaw. The one who saved your life”—and Powell twitched. “You’ve told everyone he’s dead. Why did you do that?”

  He paused before answering, and that was all I needed.

  Johanssen is alive.

  JOHANSSEN

  They come with questions: two men in suits, who lie when they give their names. They sit beside his bed, in the little first-floor room overlooking the grounds; press pen and paper into his hands, fire questions at him; when he doesn’t write, they say, You can just nod, or shake your head? And then they try again: questions about how he was hired, who put him in the Program, how he got in and out, who he reports to … Sometimes he pretends he is asleep, but still they question him, as if they’ve guessed; he listens with his eyes closed, senses them watching for a reaction, but doesn’t give one.

  Each time they stay for an hour. They think they’re good, but every visit leaves him with a clearer picture of the limits to their knowledge. One thing’s certain. They still don’t know his name.

  And sometimes he gets visits from the other one: tall, black, educated accent, good suit, desk-man’s hands. The one tied up with Karla in that van. The one Johanssen would have used to block a bullet; though he’ll never know. Each time he, too, sits beside the bed and talks, but only about what happened at the end, and he doesn’t ask any questions.

  None of them came today.

  Today he’s had another visitor, though he didn’t see or hear them: he must have been asleep when they called. But when he opens his eyes, there it is, on the cabinet beside the hospital cot: a little red-and-purple Christmas bauble, almost bald of its glitter.

  He doesn’t touch it, just leaves it there.

  Beyond the window a breeze has got up: across the lawn, a flurry of blossom drifts from the trees, like pale pink snow.

  His jaw’s been wired while they rebuild it: surgery, and then more surgery. He can’t talk or eat solids; he’s lost weight. But he will heal, though he may never be what he was. He’s not sure if that matters. Not sure what he will need to be when he gets out of here. It’s too early to say.

  There are other changes, too. He still has dreams, but they are quieter. The man behind the desk seems muted, cautious; his opinion matters less. Johanssen still goes back to the farmhouse, and sometimes there’s the screaming, but sometimes he’s just standing in that hallway all alone and doesn’t know what he’s doing there. He counts it as a temporary respite; must be the drugs. You don’t fix things that easily.

  He hasn’t dreamed about the rooftop at all. But he has dreamed of Karla.

  And one day he’ll be ready to leave, and find her again.

  He passes the time with that sniper’s habit: reducing the world to its dimensions.

  Two meters to the window. Three meters from the window to the ground.

  It is all about distance.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The following have generously allowed me to draw on their knowledge and experience during the writing of this book: Katie Ben, Tony and Jane Lee, Gill, Gerti, Clive, Claire Mitchell, and Sarah Ramsay. Huge thanks to all of you, and apologies for any errors of interpretation or omission, which are entirely the author’s.

  Very special thanks to Geoff, for location scouting, and all the rest.

  Thanks to Frankie Edwards for late-night e-mails, sounding-board facilities, and names.


  To my initial readers: Jean for her wisdom and advice, Pat for encouraging me to go for it, and especially Lesley, not just for reading and commenting with more insight than I could ever muster, but also for the Friday phone calls and the BFI sessions.

  To the Moniackers generally, for always keeping me in the loop. You know who you are.

  To Alison Sage.

  To Mark and Simon for reminding me what a thriller is supposed to do; especially Mark for structural analysis, and Simon for “the Quantum of Solace moment” and for telling me to do it in a sentence.

  To Judith and the team at Greene & Heaton, Grainne at Fletcher & Co, and Sally at the Cooke Agency, for all their support.

  Many smart and terrific people have been involved professionally in the publishing of this book. I can’t hope to name all of them, but special mentions are most definitely due to Barbara Heinzius at Goldmann Verlag for getting the ball rolling; to Shunichiro Nagashima at Bungei Shunju; to Bill Thomas and Coralie Hunter at Doubleday; and to Laura Gerrard at Orion.

  And finally to Bill Massey, good bloke and great editor: for his patience, intelligence, and humor, for his willingness to walk into the minefield, and for getting me to write a better book than I knew I could.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Helen Giltrow is a former bookseller and editor whose writing has been short-listed for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award and the Daily Telegraph’s Novel in a Year competition in the United Kingdom. She lives in Oxford, England.