Confessor

by John Gardner

  The driver was Ginger Bread. Anthony James Bread. The Office could be as predictable as provincial police forces when it came to nicknames. Ginger was a hood, no doubt about that—a bantamweight with a streak of violence written clearly over his smooth face. Herbie knew him from way back and had seen him do things to people that would make a world-class kick-boxer wince with envy.

  “Nice to be working with you again, Mr. Kruger.”

  “Nice to see you, Ginger. You dislocated any good joints lately?”

  “Always looking for the excuse, sir. Salisbury, is it?”

  “Salisbury. Then Warminster, I guess.”

  As they pulled out of the little square in which the Kensington house stood, Ginger said something about a rumor that Warminster was on the chopping block.

  “Shouldn’t be surprised. We’re being stripped to the bone, Ginger. Today Warminster, tomorrow the safe houses. People like yourself’ll be moonlighting to make ends meet. See if I’m not wrong.” He amazed himself, for he was talking as though they had taken him back full-time.

  They traveled in a long contemplative silence that lasted—with the odd punctuation of comment on other people’s driving habits—all the way to the Salisbury nick.

  Herb thought of his old friend Gus Keene. The man and the legends—only he knew some of the legends were true. Gus did it all by guile and stealth. Possibly a little psychology as well, yet he had an abiding interest in the more esoteric ways of torture, and his library spoke clearly of that.

  In the interrogation room at Warminster—the one used for hard cases, not the luxury suites underground away from the house—there was a chair. The chair was high-backed, buttoned leather, with hard arms. The kind of chair that did not leave you alone. A chair that intruded and made you aware of posture. Gus called it his lacrimae rerum chair. There was also the famous picture. It was rumored that he owned several copies, but Herbie had seen only one: a churchyard by moonlight, in which you could glimpse a tiny corner of the church. The canvas bulged with gravestones, some new, most very old, cracked and leaning askew, the whole lit by a gibbous moon, stark, bare trees in the winter background. It was an eerie thing, and after being in that room for more than ten minutes, the eye was drawn to the large painting, and the mind became uneasy.

  Clever bugger, Herbie had said to himself when he first saw it.

  So, Gus had this dark side: a fascination with the old ways of interrogation, and a special knowledge and practice of more modern, less violent methods. Anybody like Gus would inspire myth, and his success rate with the villains of secret history had stood at around ninety-three percent at the time of his retirement.

  Gus the man was totally different. Meeting him for the first time, you would think him less dangerous than a country farmer. He could have been anything from a bank manager to the man who wrote the country column in provincial weekly newspapers. Herb recalled someone telling Gus that to his face, and the inquisitor smiling and nodding. “Yes, I would write a column called ‘Off the Beaten Track.’” Then the smile again, infectious, wicked with a hint of mockery.

  Hard Luck’s real name was Peter Gurney. Nobody knew if Peter was his real name, or a nickname taken from one of the legendary men who, in the old Devonshire song, had ridden on Tom Pierce’s gray mare with Dan’l Widden, Harry Hawk, Peter Davie and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Gurney had been a Sergeant Major of Marines at one time, trading in the spit and polish, Per Mare Per Terram, for spotless overalls and a more dangerous existence, when you came to think of it.

  He had dismantled bombs in the streets of Belfast, on the dangerous border between Northern and Southern Ireland, and in London. He was at his best when examining the burned-out skeletons of vehicles, seeking out the truth of the way in which they had erupted in explosive flame. He knew the trademarks of terrorist bomb makers from the back streets of Belfast to the alleys of Beirut. Many said that he only had to look at a scorch mark to name the culprit. Peter Gurney was, in fact and reality, the bomb man and was owned by the Office, who used him as a trump card. Like a star actor under the old Hollywood studio system, he was loaned out to police forces and military units as the ultimate man.

  The desk sergeant at the Salisbury nick showed an obviously unusual subservience when Herbie mentioned Peter Gurney and flashed his little plastic ID card. They were led around to the big open garage at the back of the building, where Gurney appeared to be giving an impromptu lecture to an assorted bevy of cops—uniformed and plain-clothed—who hung on his every word, knowing they listened to a legend.

  “With cars,” he was saying, “you must have a good knowledge of the wiring. If any of you are thinking about going into this line of work, start now: memorize the wiring of every car on the road and keep updated. I’m talking all vehicles, not just the most common wheels you see around your particular patch. The point is that, with car bombs, you must be able to sort out infiltrated wire from the stuff that’s already there. I know it’s difficult with more and more computerization coming in, but it is essential, as in this case. The first thing we found were the four strands of burned wire you see lying on the table here. That wire has no place in a Rover of this type—or any Rover, come to that.”

  What was left of Gus’s car seemed to have been further dismantled, and a plain long folding table had been set up next to the burned and twisted thing that had been a Rover. Sections of it had been sliced away and now lay on the table together with smaller items: tiny pieces of metal and the strands of wire to which Gurney was pointing.

  He looked up, saw Herb, smiled and told his audience that his guv’nor had arrived, so they would have to call it a day.

  “The wire?” Herbie asked him. “That for real, or your usual line of bullshit?”

  “Unhappily, it’s for real.” Gurney traced a finger along the strands of charred wire, some of it almost crumbling to dust. “There’s no black magic, Mr. Kruger. We were lucky. First thing we found. Someone had taken a lot of pains with this. It isn’t your quick device with magnets plonked on the underside and blown at your leisure. It took time and trouble. I told you that there was a cluster of dynamite sticks inside, under the driver’s seat.” He gestured to what had been the driver’s seat, which now looked like a piece of modern metal sculpture—the kind that art galleries paid thousands to own and exhibit. “Another close to the gas tank, and a third right under the trunk.”

  “Any takers?” Herb asked quietly.

  “If I had to make a substantial bet, I’d say Middle East. It has Arab handwriting all over it. Also, they rarely work bombs over here, so they’d probably go in for some petty pilfering. Some quarries and specialist firms aren’t too careful with their dynamite.”

  “You prove it?”

  “Have to get analysis on the dynamite first. Find out if it’s from one source or several, but we know how the deed was done.”

  “Show me.”

  “There was a magnet.” The expert picked up a small bent circle of metal, with varied attachments. “Mercury switch,” he said. “Mercury switch attached to a magnet and so to the underside of the chassis. You’re conversant with mercury switches, sir?”

  “Sure, but tell me just the same.”

  “Glass vial containing mercury. Usually tilted so that the mercury lies at one end. When it slides down the vial, it provides the necessary to make contact with wires and batteries, so that a small amount of electricity takes a swipe at the detonator or, in this case, detonators. Then bang!”

  He turned the charred remnant in his fingers. A pair of AA batteries were visible, and some fragments of wire. “This one,” Gurney continued, “was fairly highbrow. Mercury switch with a little flap to stop it running down to complete the circuit and boom. It had a solenoid here”—pointing—“and the solenoid was probably operated by something as simple as a remote from one of those toy aircraft or cars. Press the button and Puff the Magic Dragon sends a bloody great firework straight up your arse—if you’ll excuse the expression, sir—and two othe
rs which ignited the gas.”

  “Sure. You can prove all this in a court? In front of the beak?”

  “Not at the moment, but we will be able to once we’ve got all this stuff into the lab, back in the Smoke.” For the uninitiated, the Smoke was London. Herb was initiated.

  “So where they put the dynamite?”

  “Under the driver’s seat, as I’ve said. Another lot near the gas tank, and the final handful under the trunk, which had three four-gallon gas containers inside. The explosive didn’t even have to rupture the metal to set the Rover ablaze, though it did with the trunk. When it pops, the stuff generates enough heat to cause spontaneous combustion—if it’s set near some combustible material. The driver would be dead before the flames got near him. In fact, they have what’s left of him down at the hospital. The doc says it’s like doing a jigsaw, and the local law’s out combing the ground for more spare parts. Poor old Mr. Keene’s been rendered down to kit form, as it were.”

  “Mmmmm.” Herb frowned. “And nobody’s going to be able to ID him, because there’s no nice, convenient dental records.”

  “They’ll be able to size him up, and we do have one or two small items.” Peter Gurney turned towards the table again. “Oh, and it was his Rover. Engine serial number fits.”

  “So what else you got?”

  What was left of Augustus Claudius Keene’s personal possessions was assembled in several small plastic bags. “Bits of metal.” Gurney pointed. “Looks like the remains of his watch here. This is probably the metal lining of a spectacle case. A Zippo lighter, almost certainly. Then there’s this little doo-dah.”

  This little doo-dah was a tiny twisted metal disc, the size of a small button. On the underside there was a pin almost an inch long. How that had escaped the fire was a mystery.

  “What you reckon?” Herb asked.

  “Lapel pin probably. Can’t really tell. You taking charge of this stuff?”

  Herbie nodded slowly. “I have to get him ID’d. Bugger of a job. Ask his wife if he had a Zippo—which I am pretty sure he did. Find out what this dah-doo is.”

  “Doo-dah.” Gurney corrected, for he was not cognizant of the English language according to Kruger.

  “Sure.” Herb nodded. “You done a lot in a short time, Pete. What else?”

  “No idea.”

  “I mean what’s your general feelings about this?”

  Peter Gurney could not meet his eye. He had known Gus en passant and realized that Big Herb had been a friend. “It’s a very pro job. Whoever did it knows all the tricks, and I’d say that the victim had to be dead or unconscious before someone did this to him. Mr. Keene, I gather, was astute.”

  “A what?” Herb was running on autopilot and did things like this instinctively.

  “Astute, as in shrewd.”

  “Ja. Yeah. Yeah he was. Shrewd, Gus was.”

  “Wise to the ways of the badlands?”

  “Very. Now is the taming of the shrewd, ja?”

  Gurney frowned. “I’d say the car was not rigged when he drove from Salisbury or wherever he’d been. Or, put it another way, it was not completely ready. He’d have felt uncomfortable with those sticks of bang under the seat. If he was good in the ways of tradecraft, he’d have felt something fishy.”

  “So, he was stopped on the road—which he was, Peter. You think they gave him a bounce on the melon, rigged the car, then set him off to his final destination?”

  “Probably. A lot more work needs to be done.”

  “How long it take, Pete? Rigging the car?”

  “Ten, maybe seven, minutes. They’d have to have the clumps of dyno already rigged, put them in place, push in the detonators, run the wires, screw them into the switch, then plug in the batteries. Really good boys would cut the time down to six or seven minutes, and I’ve no doubt these were really good boys.”

  “Go do your stuff at the lab. I’ll take the geegaws.” Kruger pointed to the neat plastic bags.

  “You have the authority to take these?”

  “Trust me.” Herb gathered the evidence bags into his huge paw, said he would be in touch and lumbered away, Ginger in his wake like a tugboat.

  “Warminster next?” the driver asked.

  “Warminster, but stop off at a telephone booth on the way. There’s one near the turn at Knook Camp.”

  “Anything you say, sir.”

  Big Herbie Kruger slumped himself into the passenger seat. He was in despair and heavy with emotion. Carole Keene, who had loved Gus with deep passion, waited at the end of this particular leg of the trip, and Herb was not looking forward to that meeting.

  Knook Camp lies about two miles from Wylye and three from Warminster itself. It is an old, decrepit military complex, and to reach the Office’s facility known as Warminster, you take a right at Knook Camp and go on for a couple of miles until you reach the high redbrick wall that is studded with electronic eyes and sensors. There is a lonely British Telecom telephone booth half a mile from the main entrance. From this booth Herbie called the office and spoke to Young Worboys.

  “Touching boos with you, Tony.”

  “Base, Herb.” Then he heard the chuckle at the distant end. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “No problem. I seen Pete Gurney and they figured some of it. It’s all nasty and I’ll have to be doing lots of gumshoeing around. Whoever did Gus was good. Probably Middle East.”

  “Yes, I’ve talked to Pete. It adds another dimension.”

  “Several. Pete says it’s got Arab handwriting. Anyway, I’m pretty unhappy, young Worboys. Just about to go talk with Carole and that’s not going to be a barrel of laughs.”

  “Yes. I’ve spoken to the Old Man. He has some rather good ideas. Want to hear them?”

  “Shoot, old sheep.”

  “You should have someone with you …”

  “I got Ginger.”

  “He’s muscle, Herb, and you just might need muscle. Pete tells me whoever did the thing is a pro; but you know that already.”

  “Sure. Okay, Ginger’s muscle.”

  “Any ideas about who you’d like with you to run interference?”

  “You, old sport, like in the old days when you were my junior.”

  “Be sensible, Herb. The Chief says Bitsy. She’s already down there and she knows enough. I think he wants to keep her, in this time of dwindling resources and people taking golden handshakes. Wants to give her experience.”

  “She looking after Carole?”

  “Not for much longer. I’ve already got a pair of nurses on their way down.”

  Herbie grunted. For nurses read minders and mind readers. “Why?”

  “It has been suggested that Carole should be moved into the luxury apartments …”

  “Leave her home?” Slightly shocked.

  “She’ll be near enough. For her own safety, Herb. You’ll have to tell her.”

  “Great. I show her the bits of metal that, apart from a model kit that’s his bones, is all that’s left of her husband, then I tell her she has to get out of her home.”

  “That’s about it. You will stay there—in the Dower House—with Ginger doing the minding and Bitsy running the errands. You’ll have peace and quiet, plus all Gus’s documents, including what he’s done on his memoir. Go through it like—”

  “Grease through a duck, sure, I know.”

  “It’s handy, Herb.”

  “Sure, it’s also insulting to Carole.”

  “Herb, for all we know, the dark and lovely Carole could be our first suspect. Isn’t that the old rule? Wife is the first one you turn over.”

  Big Herbie, cramped in the phone booth, gave another of his long sighs. “His wife is a former member of the Office as well. But okay, I call you from the Dower House. Is the line clear or have we got a dodgy bit of electronics there?”

  “Safe as the Bank of England.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Do it, Herb.”

  “Okay. You’ll have to pick up the pi
eces.”

  “Of course, Herb. You know the Office’ll stand by you.” Pause for twenty seconds, ten seconds longer than necessary. “We’ll also stand by you when the anti-terrorist Plod comes calling.”

  “When’ll that be?”

  “Three, maybe four days. They’re clearing a DCI from other work.”

  “Keep him at bay, Tony. Get him to check out those two car bombs FFIRA say they didn’t do, eh?”

  “We’ll try, but we’re right behind you, old friend. Watch your back.”

  Like hell, Kruger thought, easing himself from the booth. “Let’s go,” he said without looking at Ginger. “Warminster. The place they call the Dower House. Where the old main entrance used to be.”

  “Know it well, guv. Residence of the late Mr. Keene, right?”

  “And the lovely widow Keene, yes.” Herbie reflected that he truly did not know how he would do this.

  4

  THE FACILITY KNOWN AS Warminster is very much alive and well in spite of the rumors, the reorganization, the shortage of government funds for the Office—apart from the much-criticized two hundred million sterling for the new headquarters—now the Soviets have shouted Pax. In fact, in the past three years some of the security has been beefed up against the possible threat of terrorism. In reality, nobody is about to close the place down or sell it off.

  Since the demise of the old Evil Empire, the world has become a more dangerous place, and some of those dangers were being addressed right here in the complex called Warminster.

  The huge, rambling old house and its estate had originally been known as Fenley Hall. Indeed, that is still the correct post office address, and it is shown as such on ordnance survey maps. The Fenleys’ reign as part of England’s aristocracy had been relatively short. The baronetcy was created in Georgian times, and the first baronet, Sir Charles Fenley, had built the big house, where he lived in grand style and rode roughshod over his local tenant farmers.

  Only two generations later the Fenley line died out, but during that period certain additions were made to the property. These included the building of the Dower House by the last Fenley, Sir William—or Billy Tuppence, as he was known—as a place to farm off his mother while he attempted to impregnate his wife, and several other ladies, in the big house, other houses, fields and, in one case, the stable of a coaching inn on the Brighton Road.