A Little White Death

by John Lawton

  ‘I didn’t mean cold. I mean it’ll be eclipsed by the next scandal.’

  ‘You mean there’s more!’

  ‘Of course there’s more, Freddie. Don’t be naive. They’re going to roll out for the rest of our days. We have unleashed the flood, opened whatsername’s box. There’ll never be an end to it. This is the shape of things to come. And the shape is priapic.’

  Troy wondered if he was shocked by this. He was not accustomed to being shocked. ‘Can you meet me after work?’ he said.

  ‘I suppose so. The Scandalmonger’s Arms. About six thirty?’

  § 109

  ‘In the course of your investigations have you—’

  ‘Freddie, don’t you think that’s a bit hi’falutin? I’m a reporter, not Plodder of the Yard.’

  ‘Are you going to be serious?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Does the name Wallace Curran mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. What’s the context?’

  ‘MI5.’

  Suddenly the ingenue was wiped from Alex’s expression. He looked hammily around to see who in a roomful of deafening noise might hear their whispers, nudged his glass nearer Troy’s and put his weight on one elbow.

  ‘You mean Paddy Fitz and MI5?’

  ‘Yes. Have you heard this?’

  ‘No. I’ve not heard it. I’ve thought it, my God I’ve thought it, but truth to tell I’d dismissed it as pretty well preposterous. But it does rather explain one thing that’s had me puzzled.’

  ‘Just tell me what you know, Alex.’

  ‘Official, is it?’

  ‘How official do you like your murders to be?’

  ‘There’ve been deals done.’

  ‘Deals?’ said Troy, sounding and feeling rather ignorant.

  ‘In the House.’

  ‘The Commons?’

  ‘Of course the Commons. Does anyone give a fuck what happens in the Lords? Contrary to popular definition, there’s more to being a good parliamentarian than remembering to call your opponent honourable as you shout the bugger down. It covers some very shady cross-party deals. For example, I know for a fact that Wilson agreed not to press for a debate when Charles Leigh-Hunt defected. He even argued against the idea in the House. Didn’t it surprise you to find another Burgess and Maclean scandal spread across the papers and no real reaction from the Opposition? They did a deal. To keep Macmillan in power. If there’s one thing Wilson is scared of it’s facing one of the younger Tories in the next election. He wants Macmillan to lead the Tories till the flesh falls off his bones. They did a similar deal over Fitz and Woodbridge. There’d be only the pretence of a debate. I think the way they handled Charlie set the pattern, and if they hadn’t I might not have been so suspicious this time. They sold Fitz out, for the same reason they did a deal over old Charlie. Complete waste of time of course – Woodbridge has done for Macmillan. Only a matter of time. The smart money says Supermac will go before the year’s out. But . . . and what a but it is . . . I’ve been mightily puzzled to know quite what Wilson had on the Tories, but if it’s this, if you’ve got it right, then it explains everything.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘Freddie, I know you and my father have nothing but contempt for Wilson. In fact, he seems to be the butt of most of your jokes when the two of you get together, but believe me, he’s the most devious operator in the Commons. His mother’s false teeth are not safe in their tumbler!

  ‘Think about what you’re telling me. If MI5 ran the Tereshkov business, then there was no security issue. Labour agreed not to make an issue of Tim Woodbridge’s morals, simply because it was a shot in the dark; it could rebound anywhere. We’re a nation in rut. There are illicit couplings in every layby of every highway; there are orgies twice nightly with matinées on Wednesdays in half the houses of Belgravia. The aristocracy seem to be going mad with Polaroid cameras and blow jobs. There are more nymphs and satyrs in Richmond Park than frolicked in ancient Greece. Who knows who is fucking who? Who really wants that question answered? So they kicked around the non-issue of security instead, knowing it was nonsense. They had a lot of fun, but that’s all it was. However, there still had to be a national scapegoat. And since it couldn’t be Woodbridge, it had to be Fitz. He was a dead duck the minute Macmillan and Wilson put their heads together – and if I knew for certain that that was the literal truth and not just a metaphor, I’d have the story of a lifetime. Now, if I had a name – if in fact you have just given me a name—’

  ‘Don’t even think about it, Alex. If Fitz was a spook, then this is a mess and a half. You may never get to print it.’

  ‘So Wallace Curran is between you and me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you find out about him?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘You know, Uncle mine, there are times when the family act seems singularly less effective than the old pals’ act. Whatever happened to you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?’

  Troy said nothing. Alex changed tack. ‘How do you think Wilson found out about it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Troy lied, with copies of Wilson’s replies to Fitz tucked away in his wallet. ‘Have you spoken to your father?’

  ‘No,’ said Alex. ‘I don’t know how to. How does one discuss such a thing with one’s own father? I can’t think of a way to raise it with him.’

  ‘I can,’ said Troy.

  § 110

  ‘How long have you known Fitz was MI5?’

  Rod hung up on him.

  Troy walked round to the Commons, through the tunnel that linked the Palace of Westminster to the Underground and the Thames Embankment. He found Rod already coming down the staircase, briefcase in hand, hell-bent on avoiding him.

  ‘I can’t talk to you, Freddie,’ Rod said and bustled past him and out into the courtyard. ‘Not now, not ever.’

  Troy followed closely, feeling more than a little winded by the haste, but casting around him for the makings of an embarrassing confrontation. All he needed was string, sealing wax and eye of newt.

  He grabbed Rod by the sleeve.

  ‘Rod, you talk to me and you tell me what you know or I ask you all the questions you don’t want to hear right now and at the top of my voice.’

  It worked. Out of term it may have been, but enough nobs and names seemed to be hanging about the corridors of blather to impress a sense of privacy on Rod. Troy recognised the lean, dog-like figure of George Wigg stalking the cloister, received a fleeting if friendly wave of hello from George Brown, and fended off an anxious-looking Driberg with a killer look. Whatever Tom wanted, it would have to wait. He’d got Rod by the trouser buttons and he was not about to let him go.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Freddie. Not here. I’ll meet you in the park in an hour. Downing Street entrance.’

  The old routine. How often had he met someone for the purposes of indiscretion in St James’s Park? The nearest bit of open space to Whitehall, Westminster and Scotland Yard. Here permanent secretaries heard secrets from private secretaries, ministers dallied with the kind of secretaries who typed and took shorthand, and Murder Squad detectives swapped information they didn’t want to hear whistling down the corridors at the Yard. He and Jack had stood in the park a thousand times and thrashed out matters that never saw pen and paper – Clark, even now, was in the habit of ostentatiously picking up his plastic bag of sandwiches and his Boots’ thermos flask and saying none too convincingly that he was ‘just off to feed the ducks’. If the secret intelligence services had any intelligence they’d have had a microphone in every tree, up every damn duck, years ago. At the very least they’d have hours of tapes of Fitz fucking in the bushes.

  An hour later Troy stood by the pedestrian entrance to the park on Horse Guards Parade opposite the narrow back end of Downing Street. He had no doubts that Rod would show up, he was, after all an honourable man all but crippled by his sense of honour – and ten minutes past the hour he saw him coming down the step
s by the whips’ office.

  He walked a few feet past Troy, stopped and turned.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Are you coming or not? You do want your pound of flesh, don’t you?’

  Troy followed. Rod could not cow him now. No one could.

  Rod picked a spot on the north side of the water, opposite a couple of preening pelicans. Unless Troy was very much mistaken, it was the same spot at which he and Jack had stood nearly twenty years ago, in the last year of the war, at a time when secret services were just that, secret – and Troy had set Jack to follow one of MI5’s section heads, Muriel Edge. And if she were alive now he might not be buttonholing his own brother. Troy dearly missed having a nark on the inside of the not-so-secret-service.

  Rod was hurt. Troy could see that – could hear that. He could not afford to care.

  ‘Ask me again, Freddie, and be very careful how you phrase it.’

  ‘Fitz was MI5. I have no doubts about it. I know that he wrote to Wilson, at least twice. I have Wilson’s replies. It took me an age to figure out why Fitz had bothered to write to him but I know now. It’s my opinion, my professional opinion, that Fitz was covering his back. Letting the powers that be know that he was one of them and that he expected them to get him out of the mess they had made. I also think that everyone concerned sold him up the river. I think Wilson knew Fitz was MI5 because Fitz told him so. I think Macmillan knew because if he didn’t it was an appalling dereliction of duty. And I think that they put their heads together and, far from covering Fitz’s back for services rendered, decided to let him go hang. Your party conspired with the government to handle the Tereshkov affair in such a way as to preserve the status quo. Fitz was framed. Your lot knew this and let it happen. My question is simple, and I will alter not one syllable of it. How long have you known?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Freddie, I am not one of Wilson’s inner circle – there’re hacks on the Daily Mirror know more about the goings-on in the Shadow Cabinet than I do!’

  Rod gathered himself. Something in Troy’s tirade had struck home.

  ‘You say you’ve got Wilson’s letters to Fitz?’

  Troy took the copies from his inside pocket and opened them out for Rod. He held onto the third, left it folded in the palm of his hand and waited while Rod skimmed the first two.

  ‘They’re standard replies, Freddie. I send out over a hundred a week just like these. The second one isn’t even signed by Wilson. They’re . . . they’re nothing. Fitz wrote to a lot of people. He tried to ward off prosecution by threatening to tell the truth about Woodbridge. Of course he wrote letters to Wilson. Wilson even brought them up in the debate about Woodbridge in June. The first letter was about Cuba, he said that quite openly. The second was about . . . well it was about Woodbridge . . . wasn’t it?’

  ‘I know, I’ve read Hansard. I’ve spent most of the morning at the British Museum. It’s what Wilson doesn’t say that bothers me.’

  ‘Meaning . . .?’

  ‘All he does is quote the first letter, Fitz saying, “I was an intermediary.” Wilson inserts the word Soviet, as though Fitz had never used it, but we are meant to believe that he did. In either letter he could have told Wilson everything about his MI5 connection. And Wilson is careful not to quote directly from the second at all.’

  ‘Could have, Freddie, could have?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Fitz’s letters to Wilson. Only Wilson’s answers. But I have read Hansard in its entirety for the day of the Woodbridge debate. Wilson avoids quoting anything from Fitz wherever possible. There was parliamentary hay to be made by reading those letters out loud. He could have brought the House down, and I am very curious to know why he didn’t simply cash in and do just that. And I think there’s only one reason why he didn’t.’

  Troy paused.

  Rod said, ‘Do you want me to guess?’ As though he could not.

  Troy held the third letter up between the largest fingers of his left hand, like a ticket tout hawking his wares. Rod took it from him, looking deeply puzzled.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Look at the date.’

  Rod peered.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Wilson must have got Fitz’s letter that day. Three days before the Woodbridge debate. He doesn’t mention it at all in the course of that debate. Reading Hansard you’d end up thinking Fitz had written to him twice; you’d get no hint that Fitz had written to him three times and the third that recently. Fitz was in jail on that day and for quite a few before it. Took him a while to get bail. The Yard had been round bullying most of his friends, after all. Unless Wilson took a fortnight to answer, Fitz was writing to Wilson from prison. And I’ll bet you a penny to a pound Wilson’s reply went out within twenty-four hours. That would make it June 13th. Why would Fitz write to Wilson about Woodbridge then? He couldn’t threaten to expose him. The man had already resigned. There was only one card left to play. Fitz told him about Tereshkov and the plan to turn Tereshkov, told him he was MI5, and if Fitz was working for MI5 there was, there could be, no security issue, only an unholy cock-up. Wilson could have wiped the floor with the government, but he didn’t do it. Instead he pushed at a security issue which did not exist, when what there was beneath it was an operational issue, and that’s not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. There’s a world of difference between secrets of the security services and secrets of state. There’s loyalty to the country and there’s plain old watching your arse. Wilson played a colossal red herring. He knew there had been no leak; he knew Fitz was working for the British not the Russians; even as he speculated on Fitz’s loyalties, he knew Tereshkov was the object not the instigator. And after what he said it was inevitable there’d be a scapegoat – and it was never going to be Woodbridge, was it?’

  Rod sighed. Troy could hear the truth surface like bubbles breaking the meniscus on water.

  ‘I don’t know for sure. I know nothing with the certainty you seem to desire so. We are stuck with a colossal “if ”. But Fitz did talk to one of Wilson’s narks – George Wigg. That’s common knowledge, after all. And Wigg talked to Wilson and Brown. Brown said, “Drop it,” but as you rightly surmise Wilson talked to Macmillan. But what was told by Fitz to anyone else, and by anyone else to whomsoever, and what of the whatsoever Wilson passed to Macmillan, you cannot prove. Without Fitz’s letters you have no proof – but you are, as ever, Freddie, trying to prove something to just one person. Me!’

  ‘Tell me you didn’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t. Not in the sense you mean. Wilson doesn’t tell me a damn thing. The only confirmation I’ve received came from you about an hour and a half ago. I’d heard that Fitz met with people in the PM’s office, Macmillan eventually admitted that, and it was no secret that Fitz had had a meeting with Wigg. But it’s anybody’s guess what he told him. I worked it out for myself. Much as you did. I do not think the front bench as a whole knew or knows now. I think it’s confined to Wilson’s kitchen cabinet – to the narks, to George fucking Wigg and the likes of George fucking Wigg. I was told to keep out of it. I think George Brown was too. God knows, he said bugger all, and that’s rare enough for George. I think I first knew when I realised we were pussyfooting through it. A nice show of bluster from Wilson – ‘in glorious Technicolor’ as the bastard put it – the predictable tub-thumping from backbenchers who can’t be silenced, but all of it hollow, short of the mark, leaving the big stones unturned. And people like me who might have asked the awkward questions told to shut up. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. To be honest, I think the last thing Wilson wanted was a public row with the security services. We’ll be in power any minute – why would he risk their enmity? He’s paranoid enough on the subject of the spooks as it is. If Fitz told him he was a spook then it would be purest Wilson not to want to know. And when Fitz killed himself that was an end of it – neat, nasty, but an end. I could never see the man accepting prison. It was the only way out. They had him trussed up like a turkey.�
��

  ‘You could have spoken. The Yard answers to the Home Office. The Home Secretary’s the highest court of appeal within the Metropolitan Police Force. It’s your brief to challenge the Home Office. You could have defied Wilson. You’d have had no difficulty catching the Speaker’s eye.’

  ‘In an election year? How do you think it would look if we fell out among ourselves? We’ve only just got over the last row about nuclear disarmament. The Labour Party has an infinite capacity for shooting itself in the foot. We’re weeks away from an election. This is no time to do it. I had to stand with the party.’

  ‘So you built your garden wall and let Rome burn.’

  ‘Freddie, so help me, I’ll thump you—’

  ‘Anything for power? Has that become the ethos of the Labour Party?’

  ‘For God’s sake Freddie—’

  ‘And Fitz?’

  ‘One can never accept responsibility for another man’s suicide. It was his life and hence his choice and his death. In a sane society, it would be his right.’

  Troy spoke softly. ‘His right?’

  ‘Yes – his right to kill himself if life had become so . . . so . . . intolerable.’

  ‘How very fashionable. How very liberal. A pink at the edges sentiment if ever I heard one.’ ‘Freddie, I don’t—’ ‘He was murdered!’ The blood drained from Rod’s face.

  ‘Murdered by those fuckers in MI5!’

  ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘Murdered by MI5 while you and your fat-arsed cronies were playing power politics with the striped ties of the Conservative Party. Fitz didn’t kill himself. He was murdered, and he was murdered because no one in Opposition had the guts or the brains to ask the right questions in the one forum this country has that can’t be silenced.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was shot by a Special Branch officer who was probably, even if indirectly, working for the spooks. I can prove he did it, and no one in the Yard is arguing with me about it, but I can’t make the connection to the spooks. I knew Fitz. He would never have touched a gun. He went through the whole of the war without touching a gun. I have a fingerprint from the inside of the gun that killed him matching that of Chief Inspector Blood. Fitz was run for Five by a bloke called Wallace Curran. Maybe Blood was too, maybe not – but I need to know who he is and where to find him.’