by Tony Park
He checked his watch and called Shuttleworth’s direct number from his mobile phone. When the chief inspector answered, Tom gave him a brief rundown on the advance recce in South Africa and assured him everything was in order at this end.
‘We’ve still had no word from Nick,’ Shuttleworth said.
‘How about the strip club, guv?’
‘Nothing there, either. That girl, Ebony – real name Precious Mary Tambo – appears to have done a bunk. She’s an illegal and they’ve had no further word from her. We’ve got a home address, though. Frank and Bill are going around to check it later today. Nick’s ex hasn’t heard from him, either.’
‘I’ll type up a report when I get back, but from here it seems our Nick was getting his end away when he could while he was in Africa. Also frequented a table-dancing club in Pretoria and seemed to prefer African girls.’
‘Hmmm. I don’t like any of this, Tom.’
Tom agreed. Had Nick got himself into some kind of trouble? Drugs? Gambling? Seeing a stripper wasn’t grounds for dismissal from the force, but it was possibly an indicator that he was involved in something on the fringes of the law. Had Nick been seduced or coerced into helping the African woman? Police officers didn’t just disappear.
The flight to London Heathrow was called and Tom drained his bloody mary. He was looking forward to reaching home and getting a good night’s rest before his first full day with Robert Greeves.
As he got up he noticed a glossy coffee table book standing on a bookshelf. It was about the wildlife of the Kruger National Park. He remembered the excitement of the close encounter with the silent predator – the leopard – in the darkness. Despite his misgivings about the job, he was looking forward to coming back to Africa in a couple of days’ time.
If this was a normal job, he would have been staying in Africa. Another protection officer would have escorted Greeves on his flight and Tom would have met them at the airport. But these were not normal times, as the increased threat alert and Nick’s disappearance had proved. It meant they were cutting corners and Tom felt his initial niggling concerns growing.
7
Tom straightened his tie and knocked on the dark blue door set in the white stone facade of the Belgravia townhouse. The place was worth a fortune, though he was not surprised by the size or location of Robert Greeves’s London residence. He knew from his briefing that the assistant minister was extremely wealthy, in addition to being a successful politician.
Greeves’s family was old money and, unlike many of their breed, they knew how to make a quid as well as spend it. Greeves’s wife, Janet, also came from a well-off family, although hers had made their money in trade, running a nation-wide chain of supermarkets. She came from a long line of party faithful and Tom had read that she had served on the executive.
A girl in her late teens opened the door. She had a pierced nose, a studded leather collar around her neck, jet black hair and a long black dress on. ‘Dad!’ she yelled. ‘I think it’s your bodyguard.’
‘Protection officer, ma’am,’ Tom said. The girl rolled her eyes and turned without a word of greeting and walked down a corridor. Tom smiled. It seemed the picture-perfect political family had at least one gothic sheep.
Greeves appeared, shrugging on his suit jacket and stuffing a piece of toast into his mouth. ‘I want you in by eleven, Samantha,’ he called back through his breakfast. ‘Even though I’m not going to be in the country, I’ll call you.’
Tom looked over his shoulder to make sure all was well on the street and saw Greeves’s official driver, Ray Butler, in the car with the engine running. Greeves had a briefcase and overnight bag in the hallway, ready to go. Tom made no move to pick up the bags, and he’d instructed Ray to stay in the ministerial vehicle.
Sally, the other protection officer who worked with Nick on Greeves’s UK team, was standing next to her BMW five series, its exhaust curling around her legs as the chilly morning breeze caught it. She nodded to Tom. Sally was acting as close protection officer, while Tom was the PPO – principal protection officer. In Nick’s absence he was also the team leader.
‘Hello. Robert Greeves,’ the minister said politely, though completely unnecessarily. ‘Don’t mind my daughter. She can be almost civil when you get to know her well. She’s at college, stays here in the London house when she’s not out clubbing. My wife Janet’s at our country place in Buckinghamshire.’
‘Detective Sergeant Tom Furey, sir.’ Tom shook the minister’s hand. It was the strong grip and eye contact, Tom thought, of a man who had spent a large proportion of the past twenty years shaking people’s hands for a living.
‘You and I should have a word, Tom, about how things are going to work between us. It’s a busy day, as usual. Where’s Ray?’
‘In the car’s the best place for him, sir. With the engine running.’
Greeves looked at him for a second, then down at his bags, before picking them up. Tom wasn’t fazed. If Nick did things differently – let the chauffeur act like a bellboy – then that was his business. Tom moved to one side as Greeves walked out past him. Tom pulled the house door closed, then said into the microphone of his radio, ‘Moving now, Sal.’
‘Okay, Tom.’
Tom moved ahead of Greeves, opening the back door of the dark blue Jaguar saloon. Greeves tossed his bags in ahead of him and climbed in. Tom closed the door. He’d once been protecting a newly promoted minister who’d insisted that he should sit in the front seat, next to the driver, and that Tom should sit in the back. Also, he’d told Tom he didn’t want his protection officer opening the door for him, like a footman. Tom had politely but firmly explained that the reason he acted as he did was not out of courtesy. ‘I control the door, sir,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t get in until I know you’re secure and the street is clear, and you don’t get out, sir, until I know it’s clear outside.’
Tom took another look up and down the street. ‘Clear, Tom,’ Sally said into his earpiece. When they were talking on the back-to-back channel, for interpersonal communication, it was first names. Tom looked back and saw she was waiting outside her car until he was in the front of the Jag. She was good, even if Nick had let things slide. The Jag indicated and pulled away from the kerb, with Sally following in the BMW.
Tom scanned the road ahead, looking for anything unusual – cars or vans double parked, people on the street who took an interest in them.
‘Funny business about Nick,’ Greeves said from the back seat.
‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said, without looking back at the minister. ‘We’ve got detectives out looking for him and following up leads.’ Tom checked the wing mirror and saw Sally was close behind them.
‘I’m starting to become concerned about his welfare, Tom. Nick seemed a bit of a lad in his spare time, but he was never a second late for a job, and that counts a hell of a lot to me. What he got up to in his own time was his own business, but I’m alarmed at hearing reports of investigations in strip clubs and so forth.’
Tom was surprised that Greeves had that much detail on the investigation, although he certainly had the clout and the motive to keep himself informed. A threat to his protection officer could mean a risk to Greeves himself, if someone was trying to get at Nick or compromise him in some way. Greeves had enemies the world over, as well as plenty at home.
‘Nick and I got on,’ Greeves went on, ‘because he was good at his job and he was always ahead of the game. I know of your background – it’s similar to Nick’s – and I’m sure you’ll do just as good a job.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said dutifully. It was the sort of welcome he’d expected. Robert Greeves might be well known, rich and powerful, but he was just a man to Tom, flesh and blood who could fall to a bullet or a bomb or any number of other threats as easily as anyone else in the street. It was simply Tom’s job to see that it didn’t happen on his shift.
‘What did you think of Africa?’
That took Tom by surprise. ‘Very nice, sir.’
>
‘A man of few words, I see, but well chosen. Are you hooked by her?’
‘Her, sir?’
‘Africa.’
Tom thought of the drinks under a setting red sun, hearing the lion calling in the distance, seeing the leopard and its prey. He thought of Sannie van Rensburg, even though they’d parted on frosty terms. ‘Could be, sir,’ he said.
‘Well, if poor old Nick doesn’t show himself soon this won’t be the last time you get to go to the dark continent.’
Tom pulled the printout of the day’s schedule from the inside pocket of his suit coat and glanced down at it. As Greeves said, it was a typically busy day for a minister, even though parliament had risen the previous day. Their first appointment, where they were headed now, was a fundraising breakfast in the city, aimed at garnering and shoring up donations for the coming election campaign. After that was a last-minute briefing from the defence company vying to sell aircraft to the South Africans, followed by a media conference at the company’s offices with its chairman; a visit to an HIV-AIDS clinic in Islington – a cheque presentation of some sort; afternoon tea with selected constituents in the Westminster office at Portcullis House; and then, finally, off to Heathrow for the evening flight to Johannesburg. Tom’s bag was in the boot of the police car. He wouldn’t see home again for another five days. He’d call Charlie Sheather in Cape Town to make sure things were ready there. It was another reminder that this was a shoestring operation. Sally couldn’t come to Africa because she was due leave and had a daughter about to go into hospital to have her tonsils out.
The breakfast function was Tom’s first opportunity to see Greeves address an audience in the flesh. Tom had sat through hundreds, maybe thousands of these types of speeches while protecting various politicians over the years. He considered himself a cynic when it came to politics, believing there was little to differentiate either of the main parties. He would have classed himself a left-leaning conservative, and that meant he might as well close his eyes and use a pin to pick the people he voted for. It was rare that someone could hold his attention in a speech, especially as part of Tom’s job was to keep a weather eye on the audience, catering staff and anyone else in the room other than the person doing the talking. This crowd were invitees who had paid five hundred quid a head to listen to Robert Greeves. They were blue pinstripe to the core. While Tom didn’t drop his guard he did keep an ear open to the words coming from the man behind the lectern. He wanted to learn as much about Greeves as he could during the day.
‘Does it really matter,’ Greeves was saying, leaning forward, elbows on the lectern in a bid to get closer to his suited audience, ‘if there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – chemicals, poison gas bombs, Scuds full of nerve agents, et cetera, et cetera?’
Greeves waited during the seconds of hushed silence. Tom half felt like chirping up and saying, ‘Yes, it bloody well does matter, since the government sent us into a war based on a dossier of fiction and half-truths.’
Greeves seemed almost to be looking right at Tom when he said, ‘There was, in fact, one WMD in that country that we know of for sure. Saddam Hussein. Is it right for Britain or the United States to sit back and do nothing while a man gases his own people, assassinates dissidents by the score; while his sons torture, rape and massacre at their whim? No, ladies and gentlemen, it was not right to deal with Iraq in the way we did. It was not right to stop at the gates of Baghdad in 1991; it was not right to abandon the marsh Arabs when they rose against Saddam after that war; and it was not right to say, “Leave him to his own devices, eventually one day his people will wake up and get rid of him. It’s not our fight.”’
Tom had heard the argument before – and it continued to smack of band-aid policy to him. This government was still trying to convince the people that it had been right to get involved in Iraq, even if it wasn’t for the reasons originally put forward. Tom hadn’t become a convert, but he was impressed by the way Greeves was putting his case forward. He went on, as he had done in parliament the day before, to personalise the conflict, to make it about standing up for the people of Iraq – presumably the majority – who were sick of the bombings, the fighting, the executions.
Metropolitan police protection officers had been to Iraq and Afghanistan, accompanying the Prime Minister, Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. Tom hadn’t been picked for these teams as he had yet to renew his qualification on the Heckler & Koch sub machinegun – the weapon he would have carried on such an assignment. He’d go if he was told to but, unlike some of the younger officers, he wasn’t volunteering.
Greeves alluded again to the bomb blast in Enfield and Tom couldn’t help but listen in now; he had felt the heat of the blast, seen the charred remains of the computer expert wheeled out.
‘We’ll probably never know what the terrorists were planning when that brave member of the security services lost his life in that house, but what we do know, ladies and gentlemen, is that Britain remains at war with the forces of evil. All of us, not just our tireless security services, need to remain vigilant, committed and resolute in our determination that Britain will not yield to terror; that we will support and agitate for democracy in places around the world where decent people can only dream of such a concept, and that we will remember all those who put their lives on the line every day for people like you and people like me.’
The applause was as close as Tom had seen to thunderous in many years. He, too, found himself on his feet, not wanting to be seen as the only person sitting, but also oddly moved by the speech, especially the last line. A young banker at his table, his face still spotty, who had introduced himself to Tom and therefore knew that he was Greeves’s protection officer, nodded to him and mouthed, ‘Well done.’ Tom felt embarrassed.
‘He’s good,’ Sally said. ‘Too bad he can’t get his bleedin’ children to behave as well as this mob,’ she added as an aside.
Sally left first, as Greeves moved from table to table, shaking hands with the Party faithful. Tom stayed just behind him, at his shoulder.
‘Vehicles ready. All clear outside.’
‘Thanks, Sal,’ he replied into his radio. ‘Moving now.’
Greeves read The Times in the backseat on the drive to the aircraft manufacturer’s headquarters in a business park in Ealing. Tom and Sally repeated their routine on arrival. They waited in an anteroom in the office tower while Greeves had his meeting with the company’s executives. Tom knew the contract was important, not only for local jobs, but for Britain’s standing in the international defence and aviation industry – hence the minister’s personal lobbying in South Africa.
The press conference was held in a purpose-built room on the ground floor. Tom moved in with Greeves and positioned himself off to one side of the podium, where the minister sat with the chief executive officer and chairman of the board. The company’s PR people said all of the reporters in the conference were known to the firm and their identities had been double-checked. From what Tom knew of the media and its workings, this conference was poorly attended – only half-a-dozen reporters and he recognised none of them. No one from TV or radio, and none of the usual Westminster gallery hacks were present. These were defence correspondents, most of them from industry magazines.
The company’s chairman, an ex-Royal Air Force air commodore, gave a long-winded introduction about the merits of the jet trainer on offer to South Africa and Greeves followed with a succinct spiel about the importance of creating British jobs and maintaining good relations with Africa’s most stable democracy.
The questions were a mix of technical probing about the jet’s reported avionics flaws and points of clarification regarding revenues, jobs and the possibility of more sales on the African continent if the South Africans came on board. When the conference was nearly over, one reporter, a young man with red hair and glasses, said, ‘Mr Greeves, why is it that you’ve made fourteen visits to southern Africa in the last four years?’
Greeves loo
ked slightly off balance as he reached for the glass of water on the table in front of him. Tom noted that two of the other reporters looked askance at their colleague, as if they, too, were surprised he had asked something out of the ordinary. Clearly these defence journalists were a different breed.
‘Africa’s important to Britain,’ Greeves began, quickly regaining his composure. ‘We have, of course, strong historical links to many of the countries on the continent and, if you read the papers,’ this brought a chuckle from a few of the other members of the press, ‘there are also many serious, pressing issues which require the attention and input of this government.’
‘Why so often for pleasure, as well as business?’ the young man persisted.
‘Who is he?’ Tom whispered to the company’s media relations director, who was hovering off to the side of the podium.
‘Michael Fisher, the World.’
If the media was an ‘estate’, as the Americans put it, then the World was the gardener’s snot rag. It was tits and arse and barely legal page-three girls. What, Tom wondered, were they doing here?
‘Where I spend my holidays is my business. Now, as I was saying before, the important points to remember about this contract are that it’s good for Britain – four hundred jobs in the factory in the north; good for South Africa – they get a modern, safe, state-of-the-art aircraft at a very good price; and it’s good for British industry and technology. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.’
Greeves had shut down the media conference expertly. Tom was impressed. Tom spotted the reporter, Michael Fisher, springing from his chair as Greeves left the conference room. Tom slid in behind the man he was protecting. He didn’t say a word or lay a finger on Fisher, but the man quickly got the message that he would get no closer to the minister. The PR woman moved in to corral the journalists as the officials walked through a security door back into the bowels of the building.