And anyway: money. That had never been a goal in his life. Other things mattered more. His wife had left him for a man in Canada, his children didn’t speak to him and he’d no idea what he wanted to do. All he had left was energy: too much energy to retire.
His phone beeped. A text from Karen Hewitt. ‘Have you seen the papers? Do you want to make the public statements when that time comes?’
The other two rescued sailors were waiting in the doorway to the room. They had been hurriedly dressed and given flip-flops for their feet. They looked weak and haggard. You pulled trousers and a tunic on to Westbrook. He stank.
Howe, in nominal charge, gave you the thumbs up. You gave the thumbs down.
‘There’s one more,’ you hissed in his ear. ‘We can’t go without her.’
‘Impossible,’ he said. He glanced at Rogers as if for agreement. ‘We’re here to get three.’
You gestured at Westbrook. ‘His daughter. Impossible to go without her.’
Howe sighed. ‘The diversion starts in five minutes.’ He nodded at Rogers. ‘Go with them.’ He pointed at you. ‘But when the diversion starts, we leave, whether you’re with us or not.’
‘What happened to “never leave anyone behind”?’ you hissed.
He shrugged. ‘All arrangements are fluid in a combat situation – you know that.’
You nodded at Westbrook and led him upstairs with you. He ran out of breath by step three so you and Rogers half carried, half dragged him up the remaining steps, closely watched by Cartwright guarding the top stair.
‘What are you trying to pull here?’ Rogers whispered. ‘You’ve got your own little side-arrangement going on?’
You glanced at him. ‘The same way you have, you mean?’
You knew his team were up to other stuff on operations you’d been involved with. You just didn’t know what – partly because you had no real interest in finding out.
The door to the communal cell was only bolted. You slid the bolts, stepped carefully in and when your man was inside closed the door behind him. You tried to ignore the stench of faeces, urine and blood. There was heavy breathing and snoring and snuffles and gasps.
You shone your torch low on the floor. As you ran the light from front to back you were startled by what you saw. Once, as a schoolboy, you had seen an exhibition about slavery and the conditions in which slaves were transported from Africa to the Americas. The slaves were packed into the holds of the ships side by side, head to toe, with no space between them.
It was the same here. Four rows of people, two rows either side of a narrow central aisle, lying so that the feet of the people in the two rows faced each other. All were lying flat on their backs, naked except for filthy loincloths or underwear. Those woken by the torchlight turned their heads away.
Rogers stayed at the door and you took Westbrook’s hand to lead him down the narrow aisle. He cried out. You shushed him and shone your torch on his hand. The ends of his fingers were a swollen, bloody mess where his fingernails had been torn out.
The cry had woken a number of people in the room. You led the way down the middle, moving the torch-beam along the rows one by one. These were all men.
At the far end of the room, a tall, narrow doorway had been crudely hacked through into the next classroom. You glanced at your watch. Two minutes before the diversion. Westbrook saw your look and pushed past you into the next room. You followed. A room of women pinned to the concrete floor, all virtually naked.
You could not find her as you listened for the dull whump of the explosion two blocks away. Westbrook called out her name. You shushed him again. Women cried out. The despair was unbearable.
Rogers was suddenly beside you. ‘We have to go,’ he hissed.
‘Not without her,’ you said. ‘She must be on another floor.’
You and Rogers dragged Westbrook stumbling through the men’s cell and out of the door you entered. The diversion had begun. Flames were leaping into the sky behind the building across from the prison compound. The hope was that the fire would distract the night guards around the prison but not waken the rest of the garrison.
You set off down to the next floor, Rogers virtually carrying the man behind you.
Two guards lay dead on the ground floor. Otherwise the corridor was deserted. Your unit had left.
Gilchrist wondered if Rafferty had stashed some human remains in the Royal Pavilion. She remembered that Rafferty had personally found the police files relating to the unsolved Brighton Trunk Murder of 1934 in the basement. Those files had formed the basis of her friend Kate’s radio documentary about the case and had involved Bob Watts’ father, the late writer Victor Tempest.
She’d heard Rafferty was a pretty hands-off director of the Pavilion so wondered what he was doing rooting around in the basement to be able to find the files. Had he stumbled upon them when he had been stashing other things there?
A young woman in a black skirt and shirt was waiting for Gilchrist and Heap in the portico of the Pavilion. She introduced herself as Rachel, from marketing.
‘I remember you,’ Heap said.
She looked at him and nodded. ‘I remember you too.’
Heap turned to Gilchrist. ‘This young woman was working in the shop at the Art Gallery when that Gluck painting was stolen a few months ago.’ He gestured vaguely around the hallway. ‘Promotion?’
She smiled and pointed at his warrant card. ‘It is. For you too, I think? Weren’t you a constable then?’
Heap flushed.
Rachel turned to Gilchrist. ‘I understand you want to see the tunnel.’
‘Tunnel?’ Gilchrist said. ‘We want to see the basement.’
‘That too, but there’s a store where Mr Rafferty deposited stuff halfway along the tunnel.’
‘Lead us to it,’ Gilchrist said.
‘The tunnel is usually out of bounds because of asbestos so you’ll have to be careful.’
She led them down a short flight of steps and passed over hard hats and masks. A long corridor led off to their left with, at intervals, solid wooden doors.
‘We use some of these as workshops and others as storage space.’
‘And you know what is in each of them?’ Gilchrist said, her voice slightly muffled by the mask.
‘Only that there is nothing of real value. It’s a bit damp down here so we don’t store museum pieces. It’s mostly lumber, old files, that kind of thing.’
‘Where did Mr Rafferty find the police files some months ago?’
The woman gestured to her right. ‘In the old tunnel.’
‘What was the tunnel for?’ Gilchrist said.
‘How much do you know about the history of the Pavilion?’ Rachel asked with a smile.
‘Clearly not enough,’ Gilchrist said. She gestured to Heap. ‘I bet my sergeant will know, though.’
Heap reddened a little. ‘It’s a tunnel connecting the Pavilion with the Dome complex a couple of hundred yards away. The story goes that the Prince of Wales had his women smuggled in and out of the Pavilion in secrecy via this route.’
Rachel nodded. ‘A story that is total rubbish, of course,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Women like Mrs Fitzherbert would have gone through the front door.’
‘Shame,’ Gilchrist said. ‘It’s a good story.’
Rachel led them to the right then turned left. She flicked a light switch and Gilchrist and Heap were looking down a long, slightly curved tunnel with a brick floor and plastered ceiling and walls. Utility cables and pipes ran at head height down each side of the vaulted ceiling and a bigger pipe, presumably for sewage, ran along the left-hand wall at floor level. There were electric wall-lights every twenty yards or so.
‘This was in use when the Pavilion was being used as council offices. Then asbestos was discovered all down here and down the other tunnel back there, so it’s been closed to the public ever since. We’re planning to refurbish and reopen it soon, though.’
‘What was its purpose, then, if not to shut
tle the Prince’s totties to and fro?’ Gilchrist said.
Rachel frowned. ‘Just a convenient way to get between here and the Dome, I suppose.’
‘Why would you want to?’ Heap said. ‘The Dome was just stables, wasn’t it?’
Rachel shrugged. ‘Maybe they didn’t want to track horse-poo on the carpets upstairs.’
They all smiled.
Rachel pointed. ‘See that window bay down on the left there? The files were piled there with a lot of other stuff. And there’s a storeroom on the other side a bit further along. But I think both spaces are empty now.’
Heap went first with the bolt-cutters. Gilchrist instinctively ducked, although the curved roof of the tunnel was a good foot above her head.
The window bay looked out on to a brick footway. It was empty. Heap walked on to a solid-looking wooden door on the opposite wall. A large padlock hung from it. He looked back down the corridor to where Rachel was waiting.
‘Sure you don’t have a key?’ he called, brandishing the cutters.
She grinned. ‘Afraid not,’ she shouted back. ‘Do your worst.’
It was fiddly getting the blades of the cutter in the right position around the shackle but once Heap had done so he cut through without any difficulty. So easily, in fact, that the lock clattered to the floor before Gilchrist, who was standing beside him, had a chance to catch it.
They looked at each other.
‘After you, Detective Sergeant,’ Gilchrist said.
Heap undid the hasp and pulled open the door. The daylight coming through the window behind them illuminated the storeroom enough for them to see that there were things in it, but both turned on their torches to see what those things were.
Mostly they were green bin bags.
They exchanged looks again.
‘Seniority, ma’am – you should go first.’
Gilchrist approached the pile of bags cautiously. They were knotted at the top but she used her Swiss army knife to make a small slit in the side of the first one. She pulled on the sides of the incision to make a hole. Heap stepped forward to shine his torch inside. He didn’t need to: they could both see the end of a bone protruding from the hole in the bag.
‘And that’s just the first bag,’ Gilchrist murmured. She played her own torch on the rear of the store. ‘There are packing cases here too.’
She shouted back at Rachel hovering a few yards into the tunnel. ‘We’re going to have to get more people down here. This tunnel is now off-limits.’
You looked across the compound. The other guards were still gathered at the gate, alarmed by the flames shooting into the night sky.
Westbrook pointed into the yard. ‘There.’
You saw now that one of the people hanging from the goalposts was a woman, her small breasts exposed, long hair falling down over her face.
Rogers exchanged a glance with you. ‘The guards won’t be diverted by the fire much longer.’ You nodded. ‘Going out there to cut the woman down is very risky.’ You nodded again. ‘You’ll be totally exposed – especially if the guards on the landings of the other buildings turn on the searchlights.’
You nodded and walked out on to the courtyard, trying to make yourself inconspicuous. The guards at the gate were still looking outwards. Twenty yards. The woman was unmoving. She might well be dead. Ten yards. A couple of the guards started to drift away from the gate. Five yards. Several others turned away from the conflagration.
She was alive. Her eyes moved as she watched you reach behind her to cut the rope. Her face contorted in agony but she made no sound as she started to fall. You caught her and hoisted her over one shoulder. You took a firmer grip on the weapon in your other hand. She too smelt of sweat and shit and vomit. She weighed scarcely anything.
You started to reverse your steps. You couldn’t see Rogers but you knew he was there. Thirty yards to go.
A shout off to the left. A clatter of movement by the gate. More shouts. A rattle of gunfire from Rogers aimed at the tower away to your right. Single shots whizzed by you. None close enough to worry about.
Twenty yards. A searchlight burst on to you.
You moved to the right and Rogers turned his fire on the guards at the gate. You ran the last few yards, conscious of the woman gasping as her body jogged on your shoulder.
Rogers shot out the searchlight.
You kept going to the gap in the barbed wire and ducked through. You’d thought your unit might leave one of the lorries. Both had gone.
‘Fuck,’ Rogers said from behind you.
‘We’re on our own,’ you said.
‘Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.’ Rogers pointed towards a block of flats about fifty yards away. ‘Let’s get there.’
Rogers was big, much bigger than you. He hoisted Westbrook over his shoulder. He set off at a staggering run. You followed. The woman was making odd mewling noises now.
‘Sorry, love,’ you whispered.
You were aware of single shots pocking the ground pretty randomly around you. They came from the guard in the tower who had been firing at you earlier. He couldn’t shoot for shit.
The block of flats was built on concrete stilts with a kind of through road running between the stilts to the street on the other side. You ran beneath the building. Rogers leaned the man against the wall. You kept the woman on your shoulder.
Rogers looked back at the prison and shook his head.
‘I can’t believe they’ve fucking left us.’
‘They were on a schedule,’ you said.
‘Yeah, but the job was to get three people. They’re one short.’
‘It’s me they’ve left, not you,’ the man croaked.
‘I never asked about these three people we were rescuing,’ Rogers said. ‘But, of course, I had my suspicions. Sailors drifting into Kampuchean waters? Only three kinds of sailor would go anywhere near this nuthouse country: drug traffickers, smugglers or spies.’
Rogers looked across at the rangy man leaning against the wall. ‘Which are you?’ Rogers stepped in front of Westbrook. ‘Looking into your eyes and seeing how alert you are I’m going with spy. But then I’d always kind of assumed that. The British government wouldn’t sanction an illegal mission just to get back some tourists.’
‘But what interest would Britain have in Cambodia?’ you said. ‘How are Britain’s interests affected by what’s going on in Cambodia? Is it a Pacific thing? Australia? An Indian sub-continent thing?’
Rogers stepped back. ‘Above my pay grade, that kind of information.’ He turned to you and gestured towards Michelle. ‘And then there’s you and Mata Hari here, sonny boy.’
You ignored him and turned to watch the street between the prison and the block of flats. A dozen or so soldiers were milling around the broken wire, looking out into the street but with no clear focus.
‘They have no idea what to do,’ you said.
‘And we do?’ Rogers said.
‘We just head back to the harbour.’
‘On foot with two banged up people?’
You hefted your machine gun. ‘Sure.’
Rogers shook his head. ‘I think we make a stop and wait until it quietens down.’
You thought he might say that. ‘It’s three miles maximum,’ you said. ‘And unless we meet a tank we’re better armed by far than anyone we’re going to come across.’
‘It’s not about being better armed,’ he said. ‘It’s about numbers. They have a whole bloody army in the city.’
‘You know that how? What’s left of their army is on the border with Vietnam. What’s left in this city is their equivalent of the Home Guard. I think even you can handle Private Pike, can’t you?’
Rogers looked at the woman. ‘We need to get her arms back in their sockets.’ He shook his head. ‘She must be in bloody agony. I don’t understand why she’s not screaming non-stop.’
You looked out into the street. The guards were fanning out along the pavement. A number of them were looking your way.
‘I think we need to move from here first,’ you said. ‘At least a couple of blocks.’
You glanced towards Westbrook, who was watching you intently.
‘I can walk,’ he croaked. He reached behind you and stroked Michelle’s head, murmuring something in French. You didn’t hear her respond. He looked at you. ‘Thank you.’
You led the way to the back of the block of flats. There was an alley directly across from you. You navigated between three decaying bodies at the entrance.
‘The City of Death,’ Westbrook croaked, his legs flexing awkwardly as he jerked along almost robotically, his joints stiff and inarticulate.
‘How did they get you?’ you said, aware that the woman was moaning constantly now. ‘What were you even doing here?’
Westbrook glanced across. ‘That’s a long story.’
‘That may be. But is there stuff you need to be telling me in case we split up and you don’t make it?’ No point sugaring the pill.
The man grimaced. You thought he was trying to smile.
‘What I know about anything I could write on the back of a postage stamp.’ He raised his bloody hand. ‘Were I able to hold a pen, that is.’
‘Michelle?’
You were reaching the end of the alley now. It was dark down here so you paused for a moment.
‘Long story,’ he said. ‘We were in Angkor Wat.’
‘She has information?’
‘Long story,’ he repeated, touching her hair again.
You knew Rogers was listening as he watched the street. He seemed to sense you watching him.
‘They’ll be sending out patrols by now,’ he said. ‘This place will be humming. We’ve got to get going before the whole city goes into lockdown.
You looked at your watch. Still a few hours of daylight. ‘We need to circle round to get back to the harbour.’
‘Lead on, Big Mac,’ Rogers said.
‘I think you mean Macduff,’ you said.
‘Whatever,’ Rogers said. ‘As long as dill pickle features.’
SIX
Gilchrist had arranged an urgent appointment with a psychologist called Mike Simeon at Sussex University to see if he would do a psych evaluation of Rafferty before they decided how to proceed.
Those Who Feel Nothing Page 8