The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  Some of what I have left you will have been handed to you with this letter, but there is more to find because I could not risk placing all my eggs in one basket. What you have is a primer. The full legacy to you and others will reveal itself in due course. I cannot go into details here.

  The evening I speak of at the start of this note is perfect. I write on a patch of gravel garden in front of the cottage resting on an old metal table, which I inherited when I bought the place. I have a glass of Puligny Montrachet at my side; a neighbour’s dog is making eyes at a bowl of cheese sticks. It has been a very hot day. The sun has set and the sky is bruising a gentle purple in the west. It is just past eight o’clock, and the cuckoos call from the other side of the valley. There are hawks hunting in the dusk above me. As ever, the Dove is their prey. The birds sing but mostly they listen and watch at this time of the day. You will find it all very much behind the times, but I have been happy here.

  If you are reading this it means I’m gone. The evening is yours now with all its grandeur and its flaws: you are more than equal to both. Good luck, and look after my books, my beloved Bristol and my garden – especially my vegetable patch.

  With my love, David.

  Dove Cottage, August 20th

  She read it again while the lawyer looked on.

  ‘Do you want some coffee? Have a drink?’ she said absently.

  ‘I won’t, thanks.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘The letter: it doesn’t sound like him at all. I mean the pretentious stuff at the beginning is very much Eyam, but the rest of it sounds like he’s on drugs.’

  ‘Perhaps he was conscious that you would read this after his death. Maybe it was hard for him to write.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘You’re probably right. What time do you want me to come in?’

  ‘Any time up to eight.’ He got up and gave her a card. ‘These days we country lawyers have to keep our heads down to make ends meet. You can give me your contact details when you come.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, returning the letter and the will to their envelopes. ‘I’ll see you later then.’

  ‘If it’s past six and my secretary has gone home, just ring the bell.’

  He left and a few moments later she watched him hurrying across the square, nodding to people as he went, one hand on top of his head as though at risk of losing his hair in the wind. From where she sat she could almost see the whole square, and if Hugh Russell had not gone at quite such a gallop, she would probably not have noticed. But what she saw now was the discreet choreography of a close surveillance operation. The moves were all there: the man swivelling from the market stall and walking ahead of the target; the woman with a plastic bag tracking him in the left field, pausing to window shop and watch the target in the reflection; the builder’s labourer folding a tabloid and keeping pace behind him as the main ‘eyeball’, the ordinary silver saloon containing two men whose heads did not look up from their newspapers as Russell and then their colleagues passed.

  Russell reached Mortimer Street, a wide thoroughfare with unbroken terraces of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century merchants’ houses that ran down to a medieval gate. He crossed the road with a forearm pressed against his jacket to stop it flying up and entered a large cream-coloured townhouse, which the card on the table told her must be number six, Mortimer Street – the offices of Russell, Spring & Co. At this point the energy of the pursuit suddenly gave out and the men and woman dispersed without acknowledging each other.

  Kate realised they must have picked up Russell at the cafe for the first time, otherwise they would have known who he was and followed him less aggressively. This could only mean they’d latched onto the lawyer because he’d been seen with her. So, she was the main target, not merely someone who was being watched as part of the security measures in advance of the funeral, which was what she had assumed.

  Well, damn them, she thought: if some milk-faced security bureaucrat thought she was worth watching, good luck to him. She didn’t give a damn. She didn’t belong to the town, nor did she have any part in the morbid hyper-anxiety that seemed to have gripped the country in her absence. But in the next seconds she reminded herself that she was now indeed part of High Castle, even if only for a few weeks. Eyam’s will effectively tied her to the coordinates of his mysterious exile. Perhaps he was forcing her to become involved in whatever it was that had made him leave the centre of things.

  6

  The Mourners

  The wake conformed to the pattern in the church. The locals gathered in three defensive circles near the buffet table, juggling plates and glasses; the people from Eyam’s Oxford days staked out the middle of the room for a reunion, while the politicians, civil servants and business people claimed the Old Pineapple House, a conservatory built along the inside of a high garden wall, where they were being conspicuously hosted by Ingrid Eyam with veil raised and a sparkle in her eye.

  Kate took a glass of wine from a tray of drinks and almost immediately became aware of someone clutching at her arm. She turned to find Diana Kidd with an ardent look in her eye. ‘We’re claiming you as ours,’ she said and wheeled round to the half dozen people. ‘This is the person who saved me from those dreadful police. Lord knows what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in. I’d probably have been charged with assault or something. These fine people are David’s closest friends in High Castle. Aren’t you?’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘Do you know the Indian gentleman?’ asked a large man with a stubble beard who looked uneasy in his suit and tie. Then he added, ‘Chris Mooney is the name. Mooney Photographic.’

  ‘Yes, from Oxford,’ she replied.

  ‘What he said chimed with me,’ he said. ‘It was as if he knew about our problems.’

  ‘Oh, what are they?’ Kate asked.

  Mooney looked around the group. ‘There’s a campaign of harassment and intimidation against anyone who knew David.’

  ‘Really!’ said Mrs Kidd. ‘She doesn’t want to hear about that. And anyway we’ve got no proof.’

  ‘Why do you think you were stopped this morning?’

  ‘I parked in the wrong place. It was all my silly fault.’

  ‘How do you account for that van in the square?’ asked a strikingly pretty woman in her late twenties who introduced herself as Alice Scudamore.

  ‘Security for the minister and all those important people: we live in an age of terrorism and assassination, dear. Look at what happened to David.’

  ‘No, they were filming us,’ said Alice Scudamore. ‘They weren’t protecting anyone! The important people had gone. They were filming us, not from above but head on so they could get everyone’s face.’

  ‘Well, who’s to say?’ said Mrs Kidd with an apologetic smile to Kate. ‘We mustn’t bore her, must we? Hugh Russell says Miss Lockhart is a high-powered lawyer from New York. She doesn’t want to hear about our little gripes. Did you like the service? The readings were beautiful, weren’t they?’

  ‘And you saw the police drone,’ said Mooney aggressively.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t notice them because they don’t make a sound. We see a lot of them in this town. It was over the square. This one was larger than usual. You know what the police use them for?’

  ‘Surveillance.’

  ‘More than that,’ said Mooney. ‘They mark targets with smart water – crowds and that sort of thing. It’s like being pissed on by a bat. The marker chemical stays on you for weeks. They were marking people in the square, as well as photographing them from the van.’

  ‘You say that’s proof?’ said Mrs Kidd.

  A short man with wiry black hair and intense black eyes leaned into the group conspiratorially and raised a finger from the rim of the wine glass. ‘Evan Thomas is the name, Miss Lockhart. When are you going to get the message, Diana? We’re being persecuted because we knew David.’

  ‘Can that really be true?’ asked Kate evenl
y. ‘Haven’t the authorities got better things to do these days?’

  ‘Precisely. That’s I exactly what I say,’ said Diana Kidd.

  The man straightened to her. ‘There’s too much evidence for it to be a coincidence. I mean, look at us. We’re ordinary people and we’re being hounded as though we were some kind of terror cell.’

  A voice came from behind Kate and a hand was placed on her shoulder. ‘Well, the day is looking up – Kate Koh!’

  She turned to see Oliver Mermagen, a contemporary from Oxford.

  ‘You were ignoring me?’ He leaned forward to kiss her on both cheeks.

  ‘I didn’t see you,’ she said. ‘And my name is Lockhart now, Oliver.’

  ‘Yes, of course: is the lucky man here?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘What a pity,’ he said and then looked at the group around her. ‘I wonder if I can borrow our Kate. I won’t keep her long.’

  She was steered into the middle of the room. ‘I don’t remember you being very close to David,’ she said.

  ‘Haven’t lost your bite, have you? If you want to know, we became friends after Oxford. We used to have dinner quite often together in London. Of course I didn’t see him much when he moved down here to the sticks.’

  ‘If you saw David you must know about the illness he had last year; it was quite serious apparently.’

  ‘I heard nothing about that,’ said Mermagen.

  He went on to tell her that he ran a PR and lobbying business, which seemed a plausible setting for Mermagen’s talents. At Oxford he was always panhandling the room for new connections. Eyam gave him the name ‘Promises’ because of his technique of promising someone what he thought they wanted, whether it was his to give or not. Little seemed to have touched Mermagen. His face had flattened and spread outwards and the eyes had become two feverish dots in an expanse of greyish white flesh. Eyam had always said Mermagen reminded him of a Dover sole.

  ‘You must at least know why David came here,’ she said.

  His eyes glided across her face. ‘My word, you have been out of it. David fell from grace big time. Everyone knows that. Easy enough when you get to the very top.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know the details.’

  ‘You didn’t talk to him to find out what happened?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. What about you?’

  ‘I didn’t know anything was wrong. I’ve been in the States for nearly eight years, working at Calvert-Mayne in New York.’

  Mermagen saluted the name with a nod. ‘So you weren’t in touch at all. You two used to be so close. I mean, I’d have put money on you eventually getting together, but then you went off and found someone else. Who’s this Lockhart?’

  ‘Charlie Lockhart: he was in the Foreign Office. He died nearly ten years ago.’

  Mermagan did a good impression of recollection followed by regret. Charlie’s face flashed in front of her. They were playing tennis with another couple from the embassy. Charlie missed a shot at the net and without warning doubled up in agony. When he straightened, his expression had changed for ever. That pain would last until his death from liver cancer nine months later at his family home on the Black Isle in Scotland.

  She looked around the room. Mermagen couldn’t tell her anything, or wouldn’t. Through the glass of the Pineapple House she could see Darsh Darshan sitting on a garden bench. He was staring ahead with his arms clamped round his chest. Glenny’s bodyguards stood at a distance.

  ‘I’m surprised Darsh wasn’t arrested,’ she said.

  ‘The home secretary was very understanding: he put it down to grief. Darsh was always a rather overwrought character.’

  ‘Surely you didn’t know him at Oxford? It was just our crowd at New College that knew Darsh.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he said.

  ‘What did you think of the things he said in church – all that stuff about murder?’

  ‘Well, you know Darsh was virtually in love with David.’

  ‘But what did he mean?’

  His eyes moved to the home secretary. ‘He was blaming them for David’s fall and therefore his being in High Castle and therefore his being in Colombia when a bomb goes off and kills him instead of some bloody union leader or whatever – logic that is surely not worthy of the man who invented the Darshan Curve.’

  ‘What was David doing before he left government service, Oliver?’

  ‘He was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee; before that at COBRA – the Cabinet Office Briefing Room “A”, mostly to do with energy, I gather but I don’t fly at that altitude so I do not know the details of his jobs. He darted about giving a lot of people the benefit of his laser mind. You did know that he was thought likely to become cabinet secretary one day. All he needed on his CV was a big department to run. There was talk of the Ministry of Defence.’

  ‘Darsh said he was mortified. What did he mean by that? It’s an odd word to use – mortified.’

  Mermagen pouted mystification and touched the handkerchief in his breast pocket. ‘Better ask him. By the way, how’s your mother?’

  ‘My mother!’ she said, astonished. ‘My mother’s fine, thank you: why do you ask?’

  ‘Still playing golf?’

  ‘Yes, between bridge and running the Faculty of Advocates In Edinburgh.’ She remembered her parents’ excruciating visit to Oxford, her disruptive father smirking in the wake of his rigid wife. Perversely the only student her mother had taken to was Mermagen, who had ingratiated himself by pretending an interest in women’s golf.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Kate said. ‘Did anyone have a reason to kill Eyam? It was raised – well, hinted at – during the inquest.’

  ‘Kill David? What on earth for? Really, you’ve been watching too much American television, Kate. What an absurd idea.’ His arm swung out towards a tray of canapés that was just about in range. ‘I must say, Ingrid’s done David proud with these caterers. Are you coming to the dinner tonight? No, of course not. How could anyone know you’d be here?’

  Kate began to look for an escape. ‘Who’s giving the dinner?’

  ‘Ortelius. You know, Eden White, the head of Ortelius and much else besides.’

  ‘Eden White was a friend of David’s? I don’t believe it. The information systems creep? That Eden White?’

  ‘The same but be careful, my dear Kate. He’s a partner of mine, and he’s quite a power in the land – a friend of the prime minister’s. Hardwired into the government. Immensely influential.’

  ‘Jesus, what’s happened to this country? Eden White best friends with the prime minister.’

  ‘They were always friends. Same with Derek Glenny. They go way back. Pity you’re not coming to the dinner for David.’ He bent forward to allow his jacket to fall open and lifted a printed card from his inside pocket. He handed it to her. ‘Here are the names for the dinner. It’s quite a gathering.’

  Under the heading The Ortelius Dinner to Celebrate the life of David Lucas Eyam were twenty names of politicians, business leaders and permanent secretaries. ‘Is it Eyam’s life they’ve come all this way to celebrate,’ she said, running down the list, ‘or his death?’

  ‘Now that’s simply not fair, Kate,’ said Mermagen. ‘In fact I think it is rather silly and disruptive of you.’ His attention had switched to a group around Derek Glenny and before she could say anything more he had moved on, leaving her with the card. She looked to discard it somewhere but then slipped it into her jacket pocket.

  The wake had become a party and all thought of David Eyam seemed to have left the Jubilee Rooms. She considered going up to her room but then noticed Hugh Russell take a drink and knock it back in one.

  She went over to him. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come.’

  ‘I wasn’t, but I did just want to make sure that you were – eh – dropping in this afternoon.’ His upper lip was beaded with sweat and the top of his cheeks flushed.

  �
�Has something happened?’

  ‘No, no. Everything’s fine, but I want to get as much done as we can. I wasn’t sure that I’d made that clear.’

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ He looked down to the ground for a few moments. ‘Mr Russell, please tell me what has happened.’

  His gaze rose to hers. ‘These papers should be in your possession. I perhaps underestimated their value to you earlier, which is the reason I came over. I really feel that you should take them as soon as possible.’

  ‘You read them.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You glanced at them.’

  He lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Just give them to me later. I’ll come in after this.’

  ‘But you will need somewhere secure for them. I feel certain about that.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll be there about five.’ She felt they had said all they needed, then something occurred to her. ‘Tell me, did anyone know that you were acting for David Eyam?’

  ‘Nobody, apart from my secretary of the time, and she has left to work in Birmingham. Certainly no one knew the substance of his business. It was confidential, and David wanted a very discreet relationship.’

  ‘How many times did he come to your office?’

  He thought for a second. ‘Never, once he had purchased Dove Cottage. We met at a pub and did business over a bite. He always gave me lunch at the Bugle, a pub about twelve miles from here. It has a rather good restaurant, though no one uses it for lunch. I lent him a laptop so he could write out the instructions for the will, then printed it out.’

  ‘Didn’t he have his own computer?’

  ‘He said it was unreliable and kept on losing material.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like him.’

  ‘At any rate that was the arrangement.’