by Peter May
‘Can I use your phone?’ He needed to double-check.
‘By all means.’ The policeman got him a line.
Bannerman dialled, du Maurier watching him with interest. ‘News desk,’ he heard him say. Then, ‘George. Neil Bannerman. Do me a favour. Dig out a copy of Who’s Who and look up Lord Armsdale. Armsdale is a place name. I want to check his family name, before he got the peerage.’ He glanced at du Maurier, but each man kept his own counsel. ‘Hello. Yes.’ He drew out his notebook and began writing. ‘Lamb. Thomas Walter Lamb. What’s his address? . . . Armsdale House, Lancashire . . . That’s near Southport, isn’t it? . . . Yes . . . No . . . I’ll be in touch.’ He hung up and sat back in his chair, adrenalin pumping. There was a wild look in his eyes. Everything, quite suddenly, had fallen into place. And it left him feeling strangely empty.
‘Well, Monsieur?’
Bannerman slumped in his chair, almost overcome by weariness. ‘Thomas Walter Lamb, or Lord Armsdale as he is now, is the retired chairman of Gryffe’s political party. In many ways he is, or was, the party. Its chairman for nearly thirty years. He, more than anyone, made it the electoral force it is today. Gryffe was his protégé, his golden boy. Being groomed by the old man for future leadership. The intellectual that Armsdale never was.’ He thought about the cuttings he had read in Slater’s office and wondered why it had not occurred to him before.
Du Maurier sighed and lit yet another cigarette, leaning back in his seat and gazing at Bannerman with big, watery eyes. He understood the implication. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Pretty much so.’
‘And how will you prove it?’
‘I don’t know. But I will. I’ll get the first flight to London tomorrow.’
The policeman seemed to be staring into space. Finally he broke the silence between them. ‘I feel sorry for you, Monsieur. You are bearing a burden that no one man should have to.’
Bannerman’s head dropped a little. He knew it.
‘When you write your story you will bring down your government, whether they were involved in it or not.’
Bannerman clenched his teeth. ‘Yes,’ he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Sally watched how her fingers trembled as she toyed with her cup. She was waiting for the Brussels flight to be called. Some coffee had spilled into her saucer and it dripped across the table from the bottom of the cup as she lifted it to her mouth. The coffee was sweet and dark and strong, and its hotness filled her mouth. It took some of the edge off her tension. She shivered, though the airport cafeteria was hot and airless. All around her, voices prattled gaily in that melodic, aggressive way that Italians speak. Rome. Monday morning. Mild and sunny, only a little chill in the air outside.
She had slept badly, and her face was pale, the skin drawn tightly across her cheeks. The morning had come like a relief, the sheet damp and twisted around her. The hours of darkness had tormented her with all the questions, all the doubts. But she knew she had made a mistake. Even as she had left the apartment in the Rue de Commerce with the silent tears on her cheeks she had known it.
But it had taken a headline on the front page of one of the Rome dailies to make her turn back. Back to the man she should never have left. The job, the money, the security meant nothing now.
The paper had been lying on her table at breakfast at the Hotel Vittoria in the Piazza Mastai where she had booked in only the night before. For a moment the headline had meant nothing to her. Then she realized. GIRL (11) GUNNED DOWN AT BRUSSELS AIRPORT. And in smaller type, GUNMAN SHOT DEAD BY SECURITY POLICE.
*
Du Maurier felt the heat of the sun through the glass. Its warmth seemed such a deceit when outside it was still bitterly cold. He was down to his shirtsleeves, and he screwed up his eyes against the sunlight that streamed in the window of his office and fell across his desk.
In front of him lay Lapointe’s statement, typed and signed. The boys in the commercial branch had already begun going through the suitcase full of Manila folders. He had put in his request to start extradition proceedings to bring Jansen back from the Bahamas. That might prove difficult. At least the examining magistrate, Judge Markelbach, was sympathetic for once. But a man like Jansen would be difficult to convict, especially with friends in high places. And doubtless the old woman would have a few strings she could pull. How much, he wondered again, did she really know about it all? How much control had she really exercised over her son, over Lapointe? She was something of an enigma.
The phone rang and he snatched the receiver, anxious for some distraction. ‘There is a young lady here to see you, Inspector. A Mademoiselle Sally Robertson.’
‘Send her in.’ He leaned back in his chair to light a cigarette and wait for the knock on his door. When it came he said, ‘Entrez.’
She came in, pale and hesitant, the cold winter air still clinging to her clothes. Du Maurier stood up and indicated the seat at the other side of his desk. ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle. I am happy to see you again. Please take a seat.’ Sally sat gingerly on the chair opposite and saw the weariness etched into the face of the old policeman. He said, ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I . . .’ she began self-consciously. ‘I only heard this morning about Tania.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve just come from Rome. Is she, will she . . .?’
‘Still in the balance I’m afraid, Mademoiselle,’ du Maurier said. ‘I’m expecting a call at any time.’
She nodded. ‘I tried to phone Neil . . . Mr Bannerman . . . from the airport. He’s not at the apartment or his office. Do you know where he is?’
Du Maurier smiled sadly. ‘I’m afraid, Mademoiselle, that you have missed him. He took the ten o’clock flight to London this morning.’ The phone rang and he lifted it quickly. She watched him closely. The droop of his shoulders. ‘When?’ he said, his voice thick with emotion. And she feared the worst.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
London was blowy, a light rain carrying spots of city smut in the wind. A wind that gusted into Sally’s face as she hurried down Fleet Street from the tube station. Past the rising glass windows of the Daily Express.
There was a quiet desperation in her now, a disturbing sense of confusion and uncertainty. Perhaps, she thought, she was just compounding her original mistake. There was a sad hopelessness in her pursuit halfway across Europe of this man whom she might or might not love. How would he react? What if he did not want her? Why had she ever left him in the first place? And then there was Tania. She felt an ache inside her.
After leaving du Maurier’s office she had taken a taxi back to the airport in time to catch the two o’clock flight to London. Despite the months she had lived in Brussels, the city seemed strange to her, almost alien. She felt nothing in common with the people she passed in the street and they, in turn, barely seemed to notice her existence.
She found the Post’s London office at the bottom end of Fleet Street, a grey sandstone Victorian building rising into the late afternoon sky. Heads in the newsroom turned as she came in. She looked helplessly about her for a familiar face.
‘Can I help you?’ a young man at the nearest desk said.
‘I . . .’ She broke off to catch her breath. ‘I was looking for Neil Bannerman.’
‘You’ve just missed him, love. He left about an hour ago to get the Glasgow train from Euston.’ A pause. ‘Stood you up, has he?’ But she was gone, the door swinging behind her.
In the street below she had to wait nearly five minutes for a taxi. ‘Euston station,’ she told the driver. ‘Please hurry.’
‘I’ll do me best, Miss. But you picked the wrong time to get through London in a hurry. Traffic’s bloody diabolical at this time of day.’
It took over half an hour to get to the station, and she ran up the steps from the covered rank and across the concourse towards the barriers, searching frantically for the Glasgow train on the departure
board. She grasped a porter’s arm. ‘The train to Glasgow,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Has it gone yet?’
‘Fraid so, Miss. About ten minutes ago. But there’s another one at quarter to six.’
She turned away, the weight of her case – the entire contents of her life – straining her arm. She felt disappointment bring tears to her eyes. And for a moment she wondered if perhaps it was a sign. That she should just give up and turn back to the future she had left only eight hours before.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The car bumped and rattled its way over the rough, rutted mud track, headlights picking out the grass verge and the blasted wooden fence posts. In the distance the lights of the house twinkled intermittently through the branches of tall, dark trees that swayed in the wind. It was a wild night.
Bannerman turned the wheels over a small humpbacked bridge across a narrow gushing stream. The track broadened a little, lined by trees along one side. He did not know what to expect, or what he was going to say to the old man. But he felt, somehow, that this time it really would be an end to it all. The car clattered over a cattle grid and Bannerman pulled up on a gravel courtyard.
He had left the train at Preston and hired a car to drive the ten or twelve miles south-west on the A59 and A565 to Armsdale House near the tiny Armsdale landfall. He switched off the lights and stepped out into the blustering wind that drove in across the Irish Sea. But there was a softness in the air that was mild and smelled of rain.
The house itself was a big, stone, turreted affair that stood dark and impressive in its own grounds. The door was opened by a thickset man with a crop of white, wiry hair. His face was tanned and leathery with age. He wore a heavy tweed jacket over a thick sweater and moleskin trousers. He stared at Bannerman suspiciously and the journalist noticed that his big working-man’s hands were weathered and calloused.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve come to see Lord Armsdale.’
‘And who is it that’s wanting ’im?’
‘My name is Neil Bannerman. I’m the investigative reporter of the Edinburgh Post.’
There was a pause as the man considered this. ‘Does ’e expect you?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Then you’d better come and wait in the ’all and I’ll see if ’e’ll see you.’
Bannerman waited in the big hall, worn flagstones beneath his feet, a staircase rising to an unlit floor above. It was cold here. He thought about Tania and felt guilty. Not knowing if she was alive or dead. He should have been there . . .
A door opened on his left and a shaft of warm yellow light fell out at his feet. ‘In ’ere.’ The white-haired man beckoned. Bannerman went through the door and found himself in a sprawling, cluttered sitting room filled with cumbersome articles of old-fashioned furniture. A sofa, two well-worn easy chairs, a writing desk, bookshelves, walls hung with landscapes and portraits. A fire burned in a large stone fireplace and Lord Armsdale sat beside it, languid and relaxed, in one of the easy chairs. He was pulling gently on the stem of a pipe, blue smoke lingering in the air above him. The eyes that gazed out from his lean, lined face twinkled sadly as they turned towards Bannerman.
‘Take a seat, Mr Bannerman. Will you have tea?’
‘Thank you, no.’ Bannerman sank into the softness of the chair opposite and felt strangely at home in this warm and friendly room. It was a lived-in place. Nothing pretentious here. Just comfort. Lord Armsdale surveyed Bannerman shrewdly for some seconds.
‘Would I be right in thinking I know what you are here to talk to me about?’
Bannerman nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Probably.’
The old man glanced beyond him towards the white-haired man who had remained by the open door. ‘That’ll be all, Arthur, thank you.’
Arthur turned reluctantly and pulled the door shut behind him. Lord Armsdale went on puffing on his pipe, lost in a gentle euphoria of smoke and thought. At length he said, ‘He has been with me a long time, my Arthur. Almost from the start. A good man. Gardener, chauffeur, general factotum. He carried my messages for me, found the right men for the right jobs. Trusts me implicitly. Always has. In a way I suppose I have let him down, too. He worked in the mines when he was a boy. I wonder how he will manage without me. I think, perhaps, he needs me as much as I have needed him.’
He looked at Bannerman as he emerged from his reverie. ‘I have been expecting someone since I heard the news yesterday. I had no idea who it might be, but in a way I suppose I should have guessed it would be you. I have heard that you are very good.’ He paused again to take comfort in his pipe. ‘At the beginning I took a great many precautions, you know. I thought it was foolproof. But then, when it went wrong, the business of the child, I think I knew that somehow it would end this way.’
He pointed the stem of his pipe at Bannerman.
‘But please, don’t get me wrong. I regret none of it. Only that I have failed. That by my own actions I have put the party I love in peril. As well as the government that has brought light to the darkness of many lives.’ He seemed emotionless, almost tranquil. ‘Will the child live or die?’
‘I don’t know.’
He nodded. ‘You must think me some kind of a monster. And I suppose history will judge me as such. But you see, Mr Bannerman, what are the lives of a handful of people compared to the well-being of millions?’
For the first time Bannerman felt compelled to speak. ‘If you deny the right to life of any one man, simply because he does not fit with your idea of what is good for all, then you deny the rights of all men.’ He shook his head. ‘And what gives you the right to play God?’
Armsdale shrugged. ‘Ah, Mr Bannerman . . . we all have our ideals. And wouldn’t we just love to be able to achieve them with a snap of the fingers? But, you know, one has to be realistic. Pragmatic. Sacrifices must always be made. The end has to justify the means.’
‘Even at the expense of the very principles you hold dear? Democracy? Human rights? Even if it means murdering a child whose only crime was to see her father shot dead by a man you hired?’
The old man sighed. ‘Clearly it is not something we will ever agree on. If I had the time, I believe I could make you understand. But we have no time, and there would be little point now. I have devoted my life to the party, Mr Bannerman. A party which has done more to improve the lives of ordinary men and women in fifty years than monarchs and politicians achieved in the previous five hundred. Do not think it did not pain me to do the things I have done. But I was not prepared to let the work of a lifetime, and this country’s only real hope for the future, be destroyed by a man consumed by greed. A man who deceived not only myself and my party, but the many millions of people who saw in him the same qualities we all did. Qualities that could have made him great. Qualities that could have brought so much to so many. Except that behind that bright, shiny façade there was something rotten. A sickness that made a nonsense of all the trust we placed in him.’
He had grown agitated now, and he rose to pace across the room to the window. And there he stood, gazing out into the blackness beyond it.
‘How did you find out?’ Bannerman asked. ‘About Gryffe’s involvement in the sale of arms?’
Lord Armsdale chuckled ironically. Bannerman could not see his face. ‘He came to me for help. I can still hardly believe his nerve. Neither, I think, will I ever understand his motives. You can live even to my great age, Mr Bannerman, and people will still take you by surprise. He told me he was being blackmailed by a journalist in Brussels. Slater. At first he wouldn’t tell me why, but finally I got it out of him. He was desperate. Slater had wrung nearly one hundred thousand pounds out of him over a period of several months, and was pushing for a final pay-off. But Gryffe didn’t believe that would be an end to it. He was convinced that Slater was going to blow the whistle on him, regardless.’
The ageing peer turned from the win
dow.
‘He degraded himself, Mr Bannerman. Promised to do anything if I would help him. Even resign his seat. Clearly he had weighed up the pros and cons of coming to me. He knew it would destroy me to see my party wrecked by him. And he must have calculated that by sacrificing his career in politics he could maintain his association with Jansen, and continue to live in the style to which he aspired. He was gambling that I would help him dispose of the threat that Slater posed, rather than risk the party. Or that my own humiliation would be sufficient motivation. He had, after all, been my protégé. Of all those he had taken in, wasn’t I the biggest fool of all?’
He put the pipe to his lips but it had gone out.
‘So I promised to help him deal with Slater, and then set about destroying Gryffe himself before he could destroy me or my party. I was not prepared to leave anything to chance, Mr Bannerman.’
He crossed to his writing desk and drew a sheaf of papers from a drawer.
‘This, if you like,’ he held it up, ‘is my full confession. I spent many hours composing it last night. I had hoped that perhaps I might not need to use it until after the election. Just ten more days. But, of course, that is not possible.’
He crossed the room and handed it to Bannerman. There were six foolscap pages, closely typed. It was dated and signed.
‘The point that I make in it, Mr Bannerman, the point that I would like to stress, is that neither the party nor the government itself were in any way implicated or involved in this affair. The responsibility is mine and mine alone. Perhaps . . . perhaps it will salvage something. The last and only sacrifice I can make now is myself.’
Bannerman flipped through the sheets without looking at the old man. He did not want to feel pity for him. Only contempt, to remember the child lying bleeding on the concourse at Zaventem.
‘I don’t think that is strictly true,’ he said. His voice was cold and unforgiving. ‘The cover-up after the killings was just too fast. There had to have been political collusion between the British and Belgian governments. Diplomatic pressures brought to bear. Not to mention the SIS agent who shot at me in Flanders.’