The Cut-Out

by Jon King

  “You mean because she would’ve fallen pregnant with a Muslim child?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Who gave the order to embalm her?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “But you do know she was embalmed illegally, and that the embalming process made it impossible for pathologists to ascertain whether she was pregnant?”

  Lacey didn’t answer.

  “Who was it, Lacey? Who gave the order?”

  “I’ve told you, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  Lacey’s expression soured at this point, his eyes seeming to narrow, his mouth tightening as it always did when he felt he’d said more than perhaps he should have. He glanced down at the guy in the bomber jacket and jeans, who threw a sideways glance back up at Lacey before turning and wandering on along the road. At length Lacey turned back my way and fixed on me.

  “Listen, Jon,” he said. “A lot has happened in these past four years. There are some very powerful people involved in this. Be careful. They know who you are and they know what you know.”

  “I thought you just said they need me—alive.”

  “I can help you this one last time,” he told me, ignoring what I’d just said. “I can give you a lead. But beyond that, I’m afraid there’s little more I can do.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Richard Mason’s Office, MI6 Headquarters, London

  It wasn’t only JB and I who were back in the country. Mason was back, too, ensconced once more in his seat of power at MI6’s Vauxhall Bridge headquarters. Much of his day-to-day work, though, still involved him covering the tracks he’d left behind in Paris four years earlier—cleaning up the mess he’d made there: making sure it stayed there.

  Which is why the agent there with him now, standing at one end of the sprawling smoke-glass table claiming centre-stage in Mason’s minimalist, space-age office, was briefing him on the latest known whereabouts and activities of one Richard Tomlinson. The agent’s name was Wilkinson.

  “I fear he’s too close in and too well-known for us to close the contract on him, sir,” Wilkinson said. “I think a deal is our best option.”

  “Another deal?” Mason wasn’t convinced by that. “Tomlinson’s not a man we can trust,” he pointed out, no trace of emotion in his voice at all. “He’s leaked information before. We paid him a large sum of money and set him up in a job many others would have died for in return for his silence, and he bleated.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Most of what he says is deniable, of course. But that’s not the point. He’s already presented himself to one inquiry. If, God forbid, a British investigation is launched, what’s to say he won’t repeat the exercise? What’s to say he won’t try and expose us again, if only to get his own back?”

  “For that precise reason, sir, I think a deal is the way forward.” Wilkinson laid the folder he was carrying on the table in front of him and snapped it open so that he could read from the notes he’d prepared. “If I may, sir?”

  “Go on.”

  As Wilkinson proceeded to deliver his report, Mason turned and gazed dispassionately out the window at London and its time-dirtied river some 200 feet below, his hands clasped firmly behind his back. His body language betrayed his displeasure. If it was up to him, and him alone, he would order the contract closed on Tomlinson with immediate effect. A simple accident would suffice, somewhere discreet. That way they could deal with the traitor permanently, once and for good. But he knew there were times when even he had to listen to reason. And this was one of them.

  “The deal you refer to, sir,” Wilkinson began, “was when Tomlinson was living in Spain in nineteen-ninety-six, a year after he left the service. As you rightly point out, we secured him a fifteen-thousand pound loan and a lucrative marketing position with the Stewart Formula One racing team. In return, Tomlinson pledged not to reveal in-house protocols or operational secrets, but as you also pointed out, he reneged on that pledge. He bleated. The recent publication of his book, The Big Breach, contained several instances of confidentiality violation, although in truth it didn’t actually reveal anything an avid reader of spy novels wouldn’t already have known.”

  “Quite. But that’s hardly the point.” Mason unclasped his hands and pocketed them, but continued to gaze out on London. “Anyway, it’s not his book I’m worried about, Wilkinson. It’s what he knows about the Paris operation that remains our primary cause for concern.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m just coming to that.”

  Wilkinson turned the page.

  Following his humiliation at the hands of Judge Hervé Stephan in Paris, Wilkinson reported, Tomlinson fled to Switzerland. But his stay was cut short by the Swiss authorities who, wishing to avoid a diplomatic contretemps with Britain and MI6, promptly threw him out. Tomlinson then caught the first plane home to New Zealand and spent several months there, in the place of his birth, and several more in Australia, before finally returning to Europe. There he spent brief spells in Germany and Italy before eventually moving to the French Riviera, where he was currently working as a yacht broker with a company called BCR Yachts. Between times he’d been refused entry into the United States (where he’d been detained by US customs officials on arrival and, at Mason’s intervention, had been interrogated by the CIA) and on his release had slipped quietly – and briefly – into Russia for the publication of his book.

  He’d then headed back to France.

  Amid all this international border-hopping Tomlinson had taken great pains to sidestep the attentions of his former employers at MI6. The last thing he’d wanted was Mason coming at him like a wounded rhino, especially as more recently Tomlinson had been framed for releasing the so-called Alpha List—an ostensibly damaging list of alleged MI6 officers arranged in alphabetic order. The list had found its way onto the internet by way of US news magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, and although Tomlinson had in fact had nothing to do with its release, the singular fact that MI6 I/Ops had mooted his name in connection with the leak had given Mason sufficient grounds to hunt him down and have him extradited back to Britain to face the music. Mason’s music.

  Which was why Tomlinson was currently lying low.

  “As we know, sir,” Wilkinson concluded, “the Alpha List was a hot cake. But although Tomlinson wasn’t responsible for its release, it’s still something we can use as leverage in any deal we may decide to offer him.”

  “Where exactly is he now?” Mason wanted to know.

  “Cote d’Azur, sir, just outside Cannes. We have a team on him.”

  For a brief moment Mason pondered Wilkinson’s assertion that a new deal should be offered to Tomlinson to keep him quiet about Diana and the ‘Paris Affair’. At length he said: “So what exactly do you propose we offer him?”

  “Immunity, sir.” There was no easy way of saying it, Wilkinson had known that. So he’d just come right up front with it. The backlash he was about to receive was expected, and instant.

  “Immunity?” Mason growled, simultaneously snapping his gaze back from London and jerking it round to eyeball the man who’d just uttered the unutterable. “Are you seeking a swift demotion, Wilkinson, or planning an early retirement? Because either can be arranged.”

  “No, sir. But in the event that a British investigation is launched, as you say, and a judicial inquest results, we have to prevent Tomlinson saying more than he already has. We need somehow to make him dilute even that much. Given that elimination is off the menu, a deal seems the only reasonable option.”

  “But immunity?” Again Mason swung his gaze out the window at London. “That means he could walk the streets of this city again without being arrested or prosecuted.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We would be a laughing stock, Wilkinson.”

  “More than that, sir. There are other considerations.”

  This time as Mason retrieved his gaze and gave it back to Wilkinson it narrowed to the width of
a sharpened razor. “Other considerations?” he said.

  “I’m afraid so, sir. We would need to unfreeze his assets and issue an apology for his mistreatment.”

  “An apology…?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, this is only in the event that a jury is used at the inquest. In any other event we can just leave him to rot in France.”

  For at least half a minute Mason said nothing, but pocketed his hands again and paced. It was more than four years since the Paris operation, he was thinking to himself, and by now everything should have been done and dusted. The French Inquiry should have expunged all possible doubts and closed the book on the matter, period. And so it would have done had it not been for Tomlinson bleating about MI6 involvement in Diana’s death and that man King being suckered into the game by some Tom Fool plan conjured up by the CIA. Bloody Americans should have kept their noses out of it. Their part was purely logistics and support, and that should have been the sum of it. Of course, there were other conspiracy theorists out there claiming assassination, but the difference here was that King was part of the web. He was one of the team; he’d been set up, duped and used as a pawn in a stupid, elaborate and unnecessary subplot, and now there was every chance the subplot was about to backfire. Not that King had uncovered any smoking-gun evidence, of course; no, that wasn’t the worry. Mason was far too skilled and experienced to have allowed that to happen. But the fact King had been used from the outset to propagate the ‘assassination theory’ did give his account added substance. It gave him, and what he had to say, more weight, more leverage with the public—even more so now that Tomlinson’s public bleating had tended to endorse King’s argument and make it sound more convincing. He pursed his lips. Yes, Tomlinson had to be silenced, one way or the other, he realized. But despite Wilkinson’s reasoning, offering the traitor a deal would happen only as a last resort, and never so long as he remained in charge.

  Meantime he would have a quiet word with the CIA about further dissuading the conspiracy theorist, King.

  “That will be all,” Mason suddenly said to Wilkinson as he paused by the window and again turned his gaze on London “I’ll deal with things from here on in.”

  “Sir.” Wilkinson sensed, rightly, that he’d failed in convincing his boss that a deal should be offered to Tomlinson, and he knew there was no point restating his case. Not now. Of course, the time would come when such a deal would indeed be struck—when Tomlinson would indeed be granted immunity from prosecution and have his assets unfrozen by MI6 on condition he discontinued in speaking about the ‘Paris Affair’, and all other MI6 operations. Much to Mason’s chagrin, MI6 would also offer Tomlinson a public apology.

  But as Wilkinson realized, that time was not yet.

  Gathering up his notes from off the table Wilkinson turned and left the room.

  A few moments later Mason picked up the phone. “CIA, London” he said. “Paris liaison. I need to arrange a meeting.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The message reached us via email, anonymously.

  It read: I am a final year medical student. My tutor is a friend of Diana’s nutritional guru, one of Harley Street’s elite practitioners. If you want proof that Diana was pregnant when she died, you should speak to him.

  End of message.

  I read it again: If you want proof that Diana was pregnant when she died, you should speak to him.

  The medical student in question had posted a comment on one of several online forums we were running on the death of Diana. The forums were all part of our effort to force a public inquiry—to gather signatures for our online petition, which we intended to deliver to Downing Street, or Scotland Yard, or both, if a British investigation failed to materialize. The student had also stated in his post that he had some information that he didn’t wish to post on a public forum, so I sent him my email address and the above message formed the main thrust of his reply. It piqued my interest, not only because it seemed to suggest Diana might have been pregnant at the time of her death. But because it also contained evidence of a cover-up, as follows:

  The name of the Harley Street practitioner is Roderick Lane. My tutor said that just prior to Diana’s Mediterranean holiday with Dodi Fayed she visited Mr Lane for nutritional advice. She feared she was pregnant. Shortly after her visit Mr Lane’s clinic was broken into and his computer was stolen. Diana’s personal records were stored on the computer. It seems someone didn’t want the world to know about the baby.

  I telephoned Roderick Lane. No joy. He flatly denied that his office had been broken into and refused to talk about Princess Diana. In the meantime JB spoke to the contact Lacey had given me at our last meeting in Hyde Park—well-known investigative journalist and independent television producer, David Campbell, evidently a personal friend of Roderick Lane. During the conversation Campbell inadvertently let slip that, yes, he’d been made aware of the break-in but, no, he didn’t believe “it had anything to do with Princess Diana’s visit”. Bingo! Despite Lane’s denials it seemed the break-in probably had occurred, after all. We were on to something, then. We went to see Roderick Lane.

  It turned out Mr Lane’s clinic wasn’t actually on Harley Street, but New Cavendish Street, which intersected Harley Street from Tottenham Court Road. Like most other Harley Street clinics, surgeries and medical facilities it was housed in one of the area’s typically Georgian-styled mansions, with their customary rectangular sash windows and parapets that gave the illusion of a flat roof. Owned by the superrich De Walden dynasty, one of the UK’s wealthiest families, the Harley Street Estate, together with the surrounding Marylebone Village, was worth billions. Indeed, the average person’s entire annual salary would scarcely have covered the booking fee for most of these exclusive health parlours, much less pay for the treatments they offered. But mercifully that wasn’t why we were here. We were here to question one of this elite community’s more high-profile members about one of its more high-profile clients, Princess Diana.

  Had she been pregnant when she died? Had she confided in Roderick Lane? Would he tell us if she had?

  These were the thoughts foremost in my mind as, by some twist of irony, we passed by the Royal College of Midwives on our left as we made our way along Mansfield Street on approach to New Cavendish Street and Roderick Lane’s clinic. The oak-panelled front door that confronted us on our arrival was impressive and imposing, and for a beat and two more we simply stood there, staring at the door, its solid façade, its engraved bronze plaque, wondering if we’d made the right decision to come here at all, much less to turn up unannounced and expect to be seen. I turned to JB and gave him that look that said Ready? He nodded, affirmative.

  I pushed the door open and we stepped inside, and were greeted by a traditionally furnished reception area supervised by a traditionally humpy receptionist.

  “Good morning. Can I help you?” The receptionist didn’t look at me as she spoke, but squinted slightly off to one side, as though addressing an imaginary parrot on my shoulder. Everything about her seemed fake, even her pimped-up accent.

  “We’d like to see Roderick Lane,” I said.

  “I see. One moment…” She ran her finger down the long list of names in the appointment book. “…Your name?”

  “It’s King. Jon King. I’m afraid we don’t have an appointment.”

  “Oh, I see. Are you clients?”

  “No, not exactly. But we’ve spoken to Mr Lane on the phone.”

  “You’ll have to make an appointment, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, couldn’t we just…? I mean … we’ve come a long way, you see, and … we only want a minute or two of his time. If you could just let him know we’re here…?”

  Just then, as luck would have it, a door opened midway along the corridor that led off from reception and a man in office shirt and tie stepped out, reading notes. For a man closing on forty he looked in good shape.

  “Mr Lane…?” As he neared reception I made a point of stepping in front of him and
offering my hand to ensure he couldn’t sidestep me. I didn’t know if this was Roderick Lane, of course, but I was running on instinct at this point. As it turned out, my instincts were right. “My name’s Jon King. You might remember we spoke on the phone…?”

  The man didn’t answer, not right away. But he did stop in his tracks and look me up and down, like he was viewing an unwanted curiosity. Who is this man? What does he want? “On the phone?” he said, finally. “Mr King…?”

  “Yes. And this is my colleague, John Beveridge. If you recall, we’re investigating the death of Princess Diana. We understand she was one of your clients.”

  “Well, I…”

  “We were told she came to see you just prior to her Mediterranean holiday with Dodi Fayed.”

  “Well, as I’m sure I would have told you on the phone, if she did I’m afraid it’s none of your business.”

  “Our source said she came to see you because she thought she might have been pregnant—”

  “Who told you this?”

  “—And she wanted nutritional advice.”

  “Sophie?” He turned to the receptionist.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Lane,” Sophie said, flustered. “I did try…”

  He turned back to me. “Mr King, you can’t just barge in like this.”

  “Did Diana tell you she was pregnant?” I demanded to know.

  “What the princess may or may not have said is confidential.”

  “So she did visit you, then?”

  “As I just said, that is confidential information. Now if you don’t mind I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Again he turned to the receptionist. “Sophie, would you show these gentlemen out, please.”

  “No, wait! Please, Mr Lane…”

  He’d already turned his back on me and was now headed off along the corridor, back the way he’d come. I swung a glance at JB, who shrugged, as if to say I guess that’s it, then; I guess we’d better leave. But something inside me snapped in that moment. Perhaps it was all the dead ends we’d encountered over the past four years, or the strain of being watched and followed and duped and manipulated. Could even have been my personal life catching up with me, as Katie and I were still struggling to keep it all together under the stress. Who knows? Maybe I’d just clambered out the wrong side of bed that morning. But whatever it was, it caused something in me to snap, and I found myself chasing Roderick Lane along the corridor, glued to the man’s heels like a hound on a hare.