‘Why today?’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘Talking to myself. I was asking, “Why today?” He’s had a week to do that, a week to work out what was going to happen to him, so why did he pick this particular morning to top himself?’ He looked along the corridor and saw that Dennis and Shannon were standing at the foot of the stair. ‘Hey, Amanda,’ he said. ‘You told me you never wanted to see him alive again. You can take a look now if you like.’
She walked towards him; he stood aside to let her look into the room, his eyes on her all the time. There was no gasp of shock or horror. Her expression changed not at all.
‘Who saw him last?’ Skinner asked.
The two minders each shifted from one foot to the other, their eyes still on the floor. ‘Answer him!’ Chalmers barked. ‘Marlon, it was you, wasn’t it? You took him breakfast.’
‘Yes,’ the man replied.
‘Did you help him do that?’
Marlon seemed to recoil at the detective’s question. ‘No way! He was fine when I left him.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘He complained that the scrambled eggs were runny and the tea was cold.’
‘Did you say anything to him?’
‘I told him that he had better make the best of them for he was in for a tough day. I said that a hard bastard . . . sorry, sir . . . was coming all the way from Edinburgh to have a serious talk with him.’
Skinner drew a deep breath. ‘Did you normally exchange words with him?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No indeed,’ Chalmers growled. ‘No communication: it’s an operational rule.’
‘Okay, Winston,’ said the Scot. ‘Don’t fry the man for a few injudicious words. Sewell was probably biding his time: looks like he didn’t intend to undergo any form of interrogation, from anyone.’ He frowned. ‘But it’s your mess; you clear it up.’ He turned and walked away.
‘What will they do with him?’ he asked Dennis, quietly, as they reached the top of the stairs.
‘They’ll invent a suitable legend about an operation gone wrong. The body may turn up in a warehouse in a few days, and be blamed on organised crime.’
‘Handy for your lot, in a way, Sewell killing himself.’
‘Means we don’t have to, you mean?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’d have volunteered for the job,’ she said bitterly. She looked up at him. ‘You let that man off too lightly, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was thinking of something Rudy said after that first meeting we had with you up in Edinburgh. You had left, and he said, out of the blue, “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of that man. I’ll bet that if he put his mind to it, he could make a rock spill its guts.” He wasn’t avoiding interrogation: he was avoiding being interrogated by you.’
‘Is that the impression I give?’ he mused. ‘Is it really?’
‘What do you want to do now?’ she asked him. ‘Have another go at Hassett?’
‘You can’t.’ Winston Chalmers’s voice came from behind them, at the top of the stairs.
Skinner spun round. ‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because he isn’t here, sir: he was taken away last night.’
‘Who took him?’
‘His own people: a man from Six called Piers Frame and another fellow. They said that now he’d been questioned, they’d deal with him.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘The DG’s. He called me early evening and told me they were coming.’
Skinner stared at Dennis. ‘Did you know anything about this?’
‘Nothing, Bob,’ she exclaimed. ‘I swear.’
‘Then I guess Sir Evelyn and I are going to have a chat. One conspirator dead, the other disappeared. Is someone trying to sabotage this investigation?’
Thirty-seven
It was mid-morning, and so the coffee shop in Lothian Road was at its quietest. When Alex Skinner opened the door she saw that Neil McIlhenney and Stevie Steele, seated at a corner table, were its only customers. She smiled as she approached. ‘You guys do know, don’t you,’ she said, ‘that you’ve got CID stamped all over you?’ She took a seat and picked up the cappuccino that stood waiting for her. ‘Thanks, I needed this.’
‘Thanks for getting in touch,’ said McIlhenney. ‘We appreciate it.’
‘I appreciate you meeting me here and not marching into my office. Congratulations, by the way, on your promotion. My dad told me about it on Saturday night.’
‘Thanks,’ the superintendent replied. ‘It came as a complete surprise to me. I thought that Mario would get head of CID, and that maybe I’d go into his job, not wind up running the whole of the city.’
‘God help the villains, eh?’
‘That’s the idea. Now, Alex, what did you want to talk to us about?’
Her eyebrows came together slightly as she sipped her coffee. ‘It’s about these phone calls, this stake-out thing.’
‘We wanted to talk to you about that as well,’ Steele replied, ‘and specifically about that call last night.’
‘I want you to drop it,’ said Alex, abruptly.
‘Drop it?’
‘That’s right. I want you to stop the intercept on my calls, stop listening in.’
‘Why?’ Steele exclaimed, astonished.
‘It’s too intrusive. I have a life, guys, and I’m not going to have this character interfering with it any longer. I wish I’d never let my father talk me into going along with this.’
‘Alex,’ McIlhenney broke in, ‘what do you think your father would say if we did what you’re asking before we’ve caught this man? He’d go nuts; he’d crucify us.’
‘I’ll handle him, Neil. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not asking you to stop tapping my line, I’m telling you. If he was sat at this table, he’d be getting told the same thing.’
‘Ah, but would he do it?’
‘Yes, he would, as you know very well.’
‘You know who the caller is, Alex, don’t you?’ Steele’s question was quiet, contrasting with her increasingly vocal annoyance.
Instantly she was defensive. ‘I didn’t say that, and I didn’t mean to imply it either. I want to be able to phone my friends and share confidences and the odd bit of gossip, knowing that I have the privacy to do so and that every word isn’t being recorded.’
‘How many of us can be sure of that?’ McIlhenney murmured.
‘If you really mean that, Neil,’ she shot back, ‘then you’ve been moved out of Special Branch just in time.’
‘But you do know him, Alex,’ Steele persisted. ‘Don’t you? You recognised him from what he said last night.’
‘He said that I hurt him. Do you think I’ve had a tranquil love life, Stevie? Do you think I haven’t hurt a few blokes in my time? There was Andy Martin for a start: everyone knows I broke his bloody heart! Will you go up to Dundee and interview him if I don’t give you a list of potential candidates?’
‘If I thought that was him on the tape, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.’
‘You’ve heard the call, obviously. Did he say, “You hurt me, Alex, you bitch . . . and I’m going to get you for it?” No, he did not. I tell you, guys, whoever he is, he’s been working up to saying that, and now he has he’ll creep away, back into my past where he should have stayed.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘You’re a good detective, Stevie,’ she replied, ‘and a good detective’s like a good lawyer. He never asks a question unless he knows the answer already . . . or thinks he does. So let’s call it quits at that. Now let me you ask one. Suppose you were right, and I do know this boy, or suspect that I do. Did it occur to you that I might feel sufficiently guilty about what happened between us to want to protect him from a meeting in a small room with Neil and Mario McGuire or, worse still, with my dad?’
‘No, it didn’t, but now that you’ve laid it on the table, I can follow t
hat line of thinking.’
‘Good, for that’s as much as I have to say to you about the matter.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ she said. ‘The phone tap stops now. If I ever find out that it hasn’t, you will find something out too. However good detectives you two might be, I’m an even better lawyer.’
McIlhenney stared at the door, long after it had closed behind her. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered at last, ‘isn’t she just like her old man?’
Thirty-eight
‘Bob,’ Sir Evelyn Grey protested, ‘you must realise that I am walking a tightrope. We have had a great scandal within a community which, for all the talk of openness and public accountability, still lives largely in darkness. Our natural inclination, mine included, was to bury it as deep as we can, but events precluded that. Nonetheless the facts must remain secret, for the good of the intelligence services, which do operate in the national interest, for all this spectacular lapse. My colleagues have to live with your involvement, but they are determined to protect their own interests.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Skinner demanded.
‘It means that once you reported that Hassett appeared to have told us everything he knew, I was forced to hand him over to his masters at Vauxhall Cross.’
‘For disposal?’
‘You don’t really want to know the answer to that question. To be truthful, neither do I. I’m sorry, my friend, but you know the way things are.’ Grey shot him a meaningful glance. ‘But, then, you’ve demonstrated that, haven’t you? There was no autopsy on the dead intelligence officer. They didn’t need one: they simply counted the bullet holes.’
‘That was different.’
‘No, Bob, it wasn’t, and you know it. If I may say so, it even handicapped the investigation on which you are now engaged. How do you intend to proceed, by the way?’
‘Carefully,’ Skinner replied. ‘I’m going to follow up Hassett’s information as far as I can. After that, there may be nothing. I may well report that there’s no evidence that the conspiracy went beyond the people we’ve identified already.’
‘Can I give Downing Street a progress report? You can imagine how anxious the PM is about all this.’
‘Are you going to tell him that you threw Hassett to the wolves?’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Then don’t tell him anything yet. Wait for my final report.’ Skinner turned and walked out of the director general’s room. Ignoring the lift, he trotted down two flights of stairs to the office that he and Shannon had been assigned. It was in Amanda Dennis’s Serious Crime section, since it offered a natural cover story to explain their presence in Thames House.
‘How are you doing on the houseboat?’ he asked the inspector, as he walked in.
‘I’ve eliminated most of them in that area, but I’m left with one that might fit the bill. It’s a converted Dutch barge called the Bulrush, and it’s on a pier just off Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea, as Hassett said. The mooring fees are paid by a man called Moses Archer.’
‘What?’
‘Moses Archer,’ Shannon repeated.
‘Do we know anything about him?’
‘Nothing, only that name.’
Skinner picked up the phone, looked for the button with ‘AD’ on the nametag alongside and pressed it. ‘Amanda, are you free?’
‘Yes. Do you want me to come along?’
‘I’ll come to you. If your people see you answering my call they may start wondering. That’s their job, remember: to wonder about everything.’ He hung up and walked along the short corridor that led to Dennis’s office.
‘What do you need?’ she asked.
‘Everything you can get me on a man called Moses Archer: bank accounts, criminal record, family background. Start with the Port Authority: he’s paying the mooring fee on the Bulrush; it’s a barge where Hassett’s meetings might have taken place. That’s priority, but I also think we should look at the CCTV tapes from the safe-house.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to see if we can identify the man who was with Frame when he picked up Hassett.’
‘Do we need to know that? He’ll have been a Six operative, and they hate us snooping on their people.’
Skinner smiled. ‘The DG’s wrong about me in one respect: I do need to know the answers to all the questions. Don’t delegate; do it yourself, and have it all ready for me when I get back.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘We’re off to take a look at the Bulrush.’
Thirty-nine
They found it without difficulty, on a mooring in Chelsea, not quite within sight of the homes of one or two world-famous rock stars. The barge looked deserted, as Skinner had suspected it would be.
He stepped on board and took a look around: most of the accommodation appeared to be under a long wooden deck, but close to the short gangplank there was a wheelhouse, complete with steering gear. He looked inside and saw a hatchway.
‘What are we going to do, sir?’ Shannon asked. ‘Wait here for the owner?’
‘We could do that, but my gut feeling is that he’s not coming back.’
‘You mean we’re going in? Without a warrant?’
‘The outfit we’re working with tend not to use those. Let’s look for an alarm system.’ By the clock, it was still afternoon but the light was fading: he produced a small torch and looked around for sensors, spotting one on the cockpit door. ‘Gotcha,’ he said. ‘There’s no sign of a telephone land-line, so it can’t be monitored: it must be a bell-only system. So where the hell is it?’
‘Here, sir,’ Shannon called out, from behind the superstructure. ‘There’s a bell housing out of sight of the pier.’
Skinner produced an aerosol can from his coat and tossed it to her. ‘Shake that up and spray it inside the casing; get as much as you can in there. It’ll set in an instant and keep the thing quiet. While you’re doing that, I’ll get us in there.’ Amanda Dennis had provided him with a set of locksmith’s tools; he took them from his back pocket and set to work on the door. ‘I used to be quite good at this,’ he told Shannon, ‘but it’s been a while. Hold on, yes, there we are.’ He opened the door and waited, listening as the alarm bell let out a strangled whisper. There was a light switch just inside: he threw it, but nothing happened. He looked back on to the pier and saw a service point, with a heavy plug attached: he jumped back on shore, found a switch and turned on the power.
‘When did you learn to do that, sir?’ the inspector asked him.
‘During my interesting and varied career,’ he replied. ‘We don’t always open doors with sledgehammers. Come on.’ He led the way into the cockpit, raised the hatchway and eased his way down the steep stairway that led below.
The accommodation was more spacious than he had expected: the headroom was adequate, although he was glad that he was no taller than six feet two. He explored and found a double bedroom and bathroom off the big living area. He looked at Shannon. ‘What do you think?’
‘It doesn’t look lived in, sir. It’s well furnished, and well looked after, but there’s no personal feel to it. There are no photos, for example, no television or music system.’ She stepped into the bedroom, returning after a few seconds. ‘There are clothes in the wardrobe, though, men’s clothes.’
‘I’ll take a look; you search in here.’ He went through to see for himself. Sure enough, a sports jacket and blazer and three pairs of trousers hung there. He lifted a pair of jeans out and checked the size. ‘Waist thirty-four, inside leg twenty-eight,’ he murmured. The jackets looked as if they belonged to a much bigger man: he tried one on and found that it fitted him round the chest, although it was much too short in the sleeve. He replaced it; and searched through the storage drawers, finding socks, shirts and underwear, but nothing else. There was one pair of shoes tucked under the double bed, and a travelling alarm in the drawer of a small side-table. Leaving the bedroom, he walked into the bathroom and looked in the cabinet, finding shaving foam, ra
zor and aftershave, but nothing else. He checked the galley kitchen, looking in the fridge: he saw five bottles of lager, and one of white wine, a carton of UHT milk and a tub of spreadable butter, which was three weeks past its best-before date. There was coffee in a cupboard and a pack of biscuits, but no other food.
He returned to Shannon in the living accommodation. ‘You’re right, Dottie,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a home, it’s a bolt-hole. There isn’t enough of anything for anyone to have been living here. This is either a fuck-pit, pardon my French, well trendy to impress the ladies, or a place for secret meetings, or both. Have you found any mail? Any papers?’
‘No, sir, none at all. What do you think? Were Moses Archer and Rudolph Sewell one and the same?’
‘If they were, Rudy must have been pretty conspicuous when he went out in those trousers: they’re four inches too short for him. On the other hand, the jacket would have been pretty baggy. No, Moses was someone else.’
‘D’ you know who? Could he walk in on us here?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I know who Moses was, and I can promise you he won’t be dropping in here any time soon.’ He glanced at her. ‘No mail at all?’
‘None: I’ve been through all the drawers and cabinets.’
‘Then let’s give it a real search.’ He picked up an armchair and turned it upside down, then took a clasp knife from his pocket and slashed open the webbing underneath.
They spent the next half-hour taking the place apart, probing for weaknesses in the wood panelling, stripping the bed, overturning its frame and looking under the mattress, ripping drawers from their runners and searching underneath them for anything that might have been taped there, easing the fridge from its slot and using the torch to peer behind it. ‘It’s clean, sir,’ Shannon announced at last.
‘Not quite,’ Skinner told her. ‘There’s one place I’ve still to look.’ He went into the bathroom, lifted the top off the toilet cistern and looked inside. ‘And why the hell didn’t I search here first?’ He sighed. ‘There was a time, after the Godfather movie came out, when everyone did this.’ He rolled up his sleeve, reached inside and drew out a package, wrapped tightly in a waterproof bag. He dried his hand on a towel, then used his knife to slash through the binding tape. He carried his find through to the kitchen and emptied it on to the work surface. It contained a pistol, which the DCC recognised as a Sig Sauer P229, a serious, special weapon, an extra clip of ammunition and a zipper-sealed clear plastic envelope, which held . . . photographs.
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