The Walking Dead

  Winded, as if he'd been punched in the solar plexus, Banks nodded. Humiliated, he went to do the escort bit to the coach.

  Chapter15

  Thursday, Day 15

  He heard the screams, the shrieks, then the quiet.

  They came from inside the Nissen hut, into the car, and Naylor flinched. Silence rang around him.

  A dog-walker, a woman with two yellow Labradors, had come to within a half-mile of the hut, and the brick building. He had seen her through the steamed-up windscreen. She had paused by the pole that flew the red flag. Probably she walked there, wrapped in her waterproofs, shod in wellingtons, every day. He had thought the raised flag blocked a regular route, and she would have looked for the parked vehicles that proved live firing was expected. None of the usual Transits that brought police marksmen to the old airfield were there, but the flag had been flying and she had obeyed the disciplines it imposed.

  The screams and shrieks were gone. He heard the rumble of his stomach, hunger. Darkness was coming. He grimaced, remembered what Xavier Boniface had told him when, years before–before the first pangs of rheumatism had settled into his hip–they had lain with Donald Clydesdale in a bandit-country hedge in County Armagh and had waited for a farm-boy to come out of a barn, to lift him and interrogate him…remembered: 'Mr Naylor, dogs are always a right nightmare when you're lying up. So bloody inquisitive. Best thing for them is pepper spray up the nose.'

  The screams and shrieks had cut at him. Now the silence did.

  He reflected: What would the woman have thought? What would have been her response if she had walked past the flag, had approached the building, and he had intercepted her? 'Of course you understand, madam, That those screams, shrieks, are from a prisoner currently undergoing procedures of extreme torture. In the interests of the greater good, to learn where a bomb will explode, we have torn up all that human-rights jargon and are inflicting extreme pain. If you'd like to, madam, you're very welcome to go in there and have a look at the wretch because–you see–it's all in your name…Your name, madam.' Would she have gone white, blanched at the gills, or fainted? Would she have shrugged, as if it was none of her concern? Would she have cared about the torture and pain suffered by a fellow citizen, or would she not? It was done in her name. And he reflected further, with the hunger pinching at his gut: it was easy enough to do torture and pain abroad, but not against an obesely muscled boy from an East Midlands comprehensive, 'home grown'. Before, there had always been a plane to get on to, and the debris left behind. But this was close, new.

  He left his car, went to see what was done in the name of a woman who walked a pair of yellow Labradors. He strode through the rain, oblivious to it, and came to the building.

  'That you, Dickie?'

  'It's me, Joe.'

  Hegner was sitting easily in a collapsible chair, picnicking. Boniface and Clydesdale were hunched on the floor, eating, but were not on their backsides because water lay in splashed puddles across its whole width and length. The prisoner was prone, still hooded and bound, with most of his weight against the back wall. Above him was a quite ghastly meat hook, and a canvas bucket was beside him. His body was soaked and his shivering was convulsive. Naylor understood the use of the bucket, had seen it often enough and knew its proven value. A man's head was forced down into a filled bucket. Water was swallowed and ran through the nostrils, and he was held down for perhaps ten seconds. Then he was dragged up, coughed, spluttered and choked, and was asked a question. No answer was given. The head went back into the bucket, perhaps fifteen seconds: no answer. The bucket was refilled, and the head was inserted again, for perhaps twenty seconds–and the coughs, splutters and chokes were worse, and it was ever harder to get the water up out of the lungs. On and on, through thirty seconds and thirty-five. That was torture and pain–and it was expressly forbidden in the police interview rooms at Paddington Green.

  Boniface looked up at him. 'Just having a break, Mr Naylor, and something to eat. It's only MREs, but you're very welcome to what we have.'

  Clydesdale said, 'Meals Ready to Eat, Mr Naylor. I can do you a beef curry.'

  He saw the small tins in their hands, and the little plastic utensils. In Ireland or Bosnia-Herzegovina there had always been a garrison barracks to return to. He had never eaten from a Meals Ready to Eat tin, and the sight diminished his hunger. 'Don't think I will, but kind of you to offer.'

  He saw that the prisoner had not been given food.

  Hegner leered at him. 'We're getting there, Dickie, slowly but surely. Before we stopped for lunch, we'd gotten far enough down the line to have a location and an approximation of the time. The target, he says, is Birmingham and the timing is the coming Saturday morning. That's what he heard but was not told it directly. He does not know where in Birmingham or at what hour. He was not in Birmingham, himself, on the reconnaissance.'

  A sharpness in Naylor's voice. 'Do you believe him?'

  'I think I do, haven't found a reason not to.'

  It had to be said. Naylor would not have admitted to being expert on the arts–bloody dark ones–of torture, but papers crossed his desk that raised the question. Psychiatrists–and God only knew where they'd been dug out from–wrote that men or women, under the extremities of agony, would blurt out anything, any damn thing, to halt the pain. He saw the twitch in the prisoner's body and could smell that the sphincter had broken. It must be asked.

  'After what's been done to him…You know, after…Well, is that information to be relied upon? There are heavy consequences if it cannot be.'

  There was a little chorus of mild complaint.

  'Not like you to doubt us, Mr Naylor.'

  'No, not after all these years.'

  Hegner said, 'I'm sure you won't want to rubber-neck, Dickie, and I'm sure you will want to communicate what's been told you. I'm watching your back, but these are fine men and don't seem to need an oversight…It's best, Dickie, that you get on out and not clutter up the floor space.'

  He was flustered. Their calm detachment from their work bit into him, but his eyes were on the hooded body and the tremors running through it. 'It's only a start that you've given me. I need so much more–the size of the bomb, what the bomber is likely to wear, targets that have been talked about, the safe-house, the numbers in the cell and the identities, the recruitment, the–'

  'Get on out, Dickie. I'm very clear on what you need to know.'

  The tins had been dropped into a plastic bag, mouths were wiped with handkerchiefs and fingers sucked clean. Hegner settled back in his chair, and the two men–not unkindly–hoisted up the prisoner and linked his hands back over the ceiling hook. And he screamed. Naylor fled into the dusk, and ghosts scrambled round him.

  From his car, he made the call to Riverside Villas, and told what he had learned.

  The row erupted on the coach. As with anything volcanic, it had simmered and rumbled for an hour. When they were within a half-hour of the barracks, it fractured the membrane that had hidden it. It spewed, and the catalyst was Peter. He articulated what they all knew.

  'I can see it, and you can see it, what old Herbert's schedule is…All right for him. Damn certain he didn't stop to think of us. Defence grinds on all day, and could have done it, said it, before lunch. Summing up from Herbert should have been this afternoon, but he's doing it tomorrow. So, instead of us going out in the morning and getting the whole thing wrapped up by midday and going home, we're stuck in that God-forsaken place for the weekend.'

  Peter was acquiring the mantle of spokesman. Now he was out of his seat and had advanced in the aisle as far as Rob, the foreman…and Rob, Jools realized, was canny enough to see the strength of the wind blowing Peter's sails, and stayed quiet; probably felt the same.

  'The legal crowd, they're all finished for the week. The judge is finished, has a nice couple of days at home. The brothers are banged up and aren't going anywhere. It's only us. What a time we're looking at. it'll be a weekend to remember. We're going to be locked ins
ide a damn barracks from Friday evening to Monday morning. Why? Because the lawyers wouldn't hurry themselves, didn't spare a thought for us. Tell me, is anyone happy to be spending three nights and two days in a half-empty army camp?'

  Jools thought Peter played to his gallery with skill, couldn't fault him. He had Corenza on side, all scratchy about her lost weekend. Where Peter the Moaner led, they followed with a chorus of dissent. Jools,was far to the rear of the coach and kept quiet, but he glanced round at the detective, saw that the man seemed not to hear the simmerings of revolution in front of him, and had his eyes closed. Vicky was complaining–all flushed in the cheeks, which made her prettier, and her chest bounced, straining the buttons–about a lost pottery class. Jools thought it fun: he knew where he would be and what he would be doing at the weekend, and it would take more than a main battle tank and more than the guard-duty platoon to stop him being there and doing it.

  'It's typical. It shows the complete lack of respect they have for us. They can't have a trial without us, but they play their games and do their fancy dress, and we're just the hired help that lets the show go on. They can all have a jolly weekend–but us? We don't matter. I reckon that Rob, as he's our foreman, has to let them know what we think You going to do that, Rob?'

  Jools saw their foreman writhe in discomfort. Probably, he thought, Rob dreaded the day the trial finished when his little trifle of status would be snatched away. He didn't know what Rob did–where he peddled his officious pomposity–but he might have been Inland Revenue or local-government housing or perhaps quality control in a factory. But Rob was in a corner, backed in. He wore that serious expression and nodded vigorous agreement.

  'Well, go on, man. Do the business. Let them know we're not prepared to tolerate this treatment. We've had our fill of this lot, and that's what you're going to tell them–better than that, tell him. Or am I going to?'

  A decisive moment, Jools could see it. The authority and dignity of the foreman was on the line. Back off and he'd lost the authority. Step forward and he maintained the dignity. Jools glanced back again at him. The detective was away, lost in his own thoughts, with his eyes closed, but was not asleep–must have heard each tinkle of complaint. The foreman left his seat, came up the aisle and passed Jools.

  He paused, stood awkward, hesitated, then spouted: 'It's Mr Banks, isn't it? Mr Banks, you must be aware that there is deeply held annoyance among colleagues at our being locked up for the weekend at -, 'Tell my guv'nor tomorrow'

  '- at this camp. The general feeling is that more concern should have been shown for our welfare and -, 'I don't have the authority to swat a fly without an instruction. See my guv'nor in the morning.'

  '- and there is resentment at the inconvenience being heaped on us. As the foreman I am protesting most strongly, and am representing the general view of colleagues, who feel–'

  'It's against regulations to stand when the coach is moving. Please return to your seat.'

  Bravo. Jools fancied he heard, almost, the hiss of escaping air–deflation. But regulations were the oxygen of a taxman, a housing officer or quality-control management. The foreman shrugged for his audience and returned to his seat, and Jools stole a glance behind him. The detective's eyes were closed–might not have opened them during the exchange–his head was tilted back and a frown furrowed his forehead, as if bigger matters were weighing in his mind than a jury's inconvenience.

  He heard the dissent down the aisle, reckoned he'd lanced it but didn't care. In his mind he constructed the letter. In whatever form, he would write it that weekend in his room in the block where the jurors, grumbling, were housed.

  Alone, swaying with the motion of the coach and hemmed in by the newspapers covering the windows, he thought it most likely that he would aim for the two lines, handwritten, what was left of his pride intact, and he would hand it to the REMF's outer-office assistant–and he would walk away. He would leave behind him the letter stating, 'After careful consideration, and bearing in mind recent conversations, I am resigning from the Metropolitan Police Service, with immediate effect, Sincerely…' and on the assistant's desk would be his warrant card and his firearms-authorization ticket.

  He thought of the short term, and the long term.

  Short term, he would clear the bedsit in Ealing and load what he had into his suitcase and bin bags. He would drive them down to the bungalow on the Somerset and Wiltshire border, and dump what he did not need far at the back of his mother's garage…Long term, he might put it all behind him and forget his past, fly to Australia, New Zealand or Canada. He did not know which. Somewhere that had mountains and valleys and isolation. He could imagine the short term, his mother's anxiety at the direction change of his life, and could summon up a picture of the long term, the freedom from burdens–and the coach lurched to a stop.

  They were at the barrier by the guard-house.

  Banks went forward down the aisle, stood on the step, and the driver opened the door. He spoke to the sentry, saw the motorcycles that had escorted them peel away, and the barrier was raised. He would write the letter at the weekend, put failure behind him…and he would never again go to Isosceles stance and fire a weapon. It was for the best.

  'I am not at liberty, even in this company, to divulge the source of this material.' The assistant director was loath to think of the circumstances in which it had been obtained. He had come down from his upper floor to what he liked to call the 'coal face', the open-plan area where a desk head analysed material, then passed taskings to surveillance, police liaison, the Internet watchers and those who trawled the financial records of suspects. His audience, perhaps twenty of them, was young and most were half his age.

  'From an operation currently running, we understand that the Saudi citizen Ibrahim Hussein–you are familiar with the biographical details–will detonate himself somewhere in Birmingham, some time on Saturday. I regret this information is sketchy, but it's the way things pan out. That's all I have, all I can give you to work from. As we have done for the last several months, we all have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for a result, a satisfactory one. Thank you.'

  He looked around him, hoped he wore an expression of suitable gravity and seniority. A rather bright little thing, a recent recruit from the Asian community in Bradford–working in the section that followed air journeys by Muslim boys from the UK to Pakistan and back–asked whether further intelligence could be expected, and added boldly, 'because this is pretty thin, Tristram, and gives little hope of interception'. He replied gruffly that he hoped for more but could not guarantee it. He had been sifting on the corner of the desk head's table, was shirt-sleeved with his tie loosened. The faces confronting him were grim, set, and he felt the sense of grievance. He slid off the table, was anxious to be gone before they found a mouthpiece. His shoes hit the floor. He gave them a fast smile and was on his way.

  'Does this morsel have provenance, Tristram?'

  He stopped, turned. She must have come in late, must have been standing beside him. 'I'm sorry, Mary but I'd rather not…'

  'It's a perfectly straightforward question, Tristram. Does the intelligence have provenance?'

  It was asked with innocence. The assistant director had not reached his eminence without recognizing danger. He would have said that Mary Reakes–and it was why she had earned the promotion that would put her inside Dickie Naylor's cubicle first thing on Monday morning–had the innocence of a darting snake, a black mamba, and that reptile's venom in her sacs.

  'It's an area of delicacy that I am not prepared to expand on, if you'll excuse me.'

  'I don't think that's good enough, Tristram.'

  There was silence around her–just the subdued bleep of computer screens and the stifled hack of a cough.

  'It's what we have. It's where we are.'

  'Would that be where Dickie is and where Joe–where the American is?'

  'You're pushing me towards areas, Mary, that I'm not prepared to visit'

  He had take
n two, three steps towards the door, then realized she was in front of him, blocked him.

  'May I summarize, Tristram? A prisoner has explosive traces and is in police custody. The forensics are then denied, and the police are instructed to release the prisoner. He disappears into the night. Dickie is not at work today, and the American is off radar. I rang the Naylor home–no, he's not there, not off sick. I rang the American's hotel. He left at four this morning. I assume the two are involved in the gathering of this intelligence. Can you confirm that conclusion or do you deny it?'

  She stood straight, shoulders back, legs slightly apart. At that moment, he thought her rather handsome. She was quiet-spoken but there was a spit in her voice. Every other head was turned towards her, as if she were their oracle, their soothsayer. The assistant director had been more than thirty years with the Service and had never before confronted anything that was remotely close to mutiny in the ranks. They were the future of the Service: it would be in their hands when he was gone and when Dickie Naylor was out of the door. He had no answer for her.