The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  ‘Sounds like someone is looking for something,’ she said.

  ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘But don’t you go asking about that. Proceed with caution, Miss Lockhart. Some of the larger circle of friends belong to Civic Watch, and be careful how you use that,’ he said, pointing to her smart phone on the table. ‘They can listen to any call or read any message or email you send.’

  ‘I know. What the hell is Civic Watch?’

  ‘A quasi-secret network of volunteers – mainly public officials and council employees – who each have a code number. They monitor the communities they live in for signs of anything untoward. They call it “community tension”. It’s all very informal; a way of passing information up to people who may find it significant. It gives the state another pair of eyes – actually hundreds of thousands of pairs of eyes. I am a member of CW, though not a very active one it has to be said.’

  ‘A network of spies and informers. I’ve never read anything about this. Why would you want to sign up?’

  ‘There’s discreet pressure. It’s easier to join and forget the thing exists than have to explain your reasons for not doing so.’

  This depressing fact was the last useful information she got out of Tony Swift. She pleaded exhaustion, paid the bill and left him flushed after darting a strictly consoling kiss to a plump and unloved cheek.

  At the hotel, Karl was on the desk. When she asked for her room key he said, ‘I’m sorry, Miss Lockhart, the hotel management must now insist you comply with the identity regulations.’

  ‘I repeat: you have seen my passport and credit card. What else does the hotel need?’

  ‘We need for you to complete this form.’ He slid the papers over the desk with a camp backwards movement of his fingers. She glanced down the list of some forty items contained in the ID Supplement Form which included mandatory fields on credit card details, phone numbers, email address, movements over the last month, including any visits to countries of special interest (Russia, Pakistan, Iran, etc.) and destinations during the period of stay in Britain (dates, addresses and telephone numbers all required). At the base of the form was a panel where the respondent was invited to lift the clear plastic strip, moisten their right index finger with a generous amount of their own saliva and place it firmly on the spongy material in the panel, thus allowing their DNA and fingerprint to be recorded without ‘any further inconvenience’.

  ‘Can’t we just forget it? I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s an offence not to complete it,’ Karl said. He handed her a pen with her key. ‘Just leave it here when you’ve finished.’

  She sat down in the lobby with the form. Her answers showed an uncharacteristic lack of precision and in one or two questions she simply gave false information and made up her telephone numbers and credit card details. When she came to Biometric Window she lifted the flap but failed to complete the procedure.

  By this time her concentration had wandered to the dinner in the Jubilee Rooms, now visible through a glass door from which a curtain had just been drawn. Her eyes met the heavy gaze of a man in his mid-fifties at the centre of the table, who wore a simple grey suit and a dark-blue and white striped shirt open at the neck. The other men were in dinner jackets. Behind him stood a tall blonde man whom she had seen with Glenny at the wake. Mermagen was leaning into the composition, his expression eager and confidential. On his left, Glenny expounded, and in the foreground two heads nodded in silhouette.

  Eden White in chiaroscuro. The few photographs she had seen of him during Calvert-Mayne’s defence of Raussig Systems Inc. showed an unexceptional-looking man of average height, understated in dress with slightly hooded eyes, a smile lurching to the right.

  Old Sam Calvert once leaned over her desk to look at the photograph on her computer then placed his hand on the screen to cover the right side of his face. ‘That’s the man we’re dealing with,’ he growled. ‘He’s not the pathetic jerk-off he looks.’ The corporate raptor came into focus: all the power in his face was concentrated in his left eye. The smile on the right side of his mouth became a neat incision on the left. When Sam removed his hand, a mild-looking insurance executive reappeared. ‘He’s a remorseless, two-faced, vindictive bastard.’

  In the flesh, White was even less impressive than his photograph, though it was evident from the body language and glances of those around him that he held all the power in the room. He was very still; his eyes moved slowly around the group then settled on her again. She couldn’t tell whether he was appraising her or simply lost in thought, but then he seemed to nod in recognition, perhaps to himself, before his attention moved to Mermagen, who was clinking a glass for silence. A few seconds later the door was closed and the curtain drawn again, but she could still hear the rumble of Oliver Mermagen making the most of his audience.

  She got up and placed the identity form on the empty reception desk with a scribbled note saying she would check out in the morning. Instead of going to her room, of which she was heartily sick, she crossed the stone flags of the lobby to the bar and ordered a drink, which she didn’t particularly want, and stared at a huge log smouldering in the grate. She was there about twenty minutes when she heard Mermagen’s voice in the hall, which caused her to sink into the button-back leather armchair. His face loomed in the door.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Kate: I’ve brought Mr White to meet you.’

  White was in the doorway. Kate rose and nodded to him. ‘Hello, she said. ‘Did you enjoy the dinner? David would have been touched, I know.’

  Mermagen was looking agitated. Clearly something more was required of her.

  ‘I would offer you a drink but—’ she started.

  ‘Yes, I think we have a few minutes. Mr White was interested to know that you were on the other side of the Raussig deal.’

  ‘A minor legal role,’ she said.

  ‘You do yourself a disservice,’ said White quietly. ‘My information is that you devised the strategy – the use of the public relations and lobbying firms, the approaches to government.’

  ‘To match the endeavours of your company, yes, we did, but I am on the legal side. I am a simple lawyer.’

  ‘I know that it isn’t true,’ he said without smiling and moved to place his hands on the back of the chair in front of her. ‘Yes, I believe we do have time to converse with Miss Lockhart . . . Would you tell them, Oliver.’ Mermagen nodded and vanished.

  ‘I don’t want to delay you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed soon: it’s been a long day.’

  White sat down in the chair opposite. ‘You should have been at our event for David: a most interesting evening. We had one or two informal presentations.’

  ‘David would have loved that,’ she said with such underlined sarcasm that it was surprising White didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘A deep dive on the purpose of modern government.’

  Mermagen appeared between them looking anxious and pulled a chair over. ‘As you know, Kate, Mr White has been putting most of his energies into government through his consultation business and Ortelius, his think tank.’

  Kate nodded. ‘But you still have a heck of an empire to run.’

  ‘I’ve got good people: they look after the day-to-day business, leaving me free for my . . .’

  ‘Strategic interests,’ said Mermagen.

  ‘Right,’ said Kate.

  ‘Oliver tells me you are looking for a new position.’

  ‘I still work for Calverts. I’m going to their London office after a break.’

  ‘You should consider coming over to us. We are doing a lot of work on the governmental side, repurposing technologies developed in our corporate arm and applying them to social intelligence programmes. Ortelius has been concerned to deliver solutions that help business and government simultaneously under our long-running Government of Insight project.’

  ‘That sounds like a Powerpoint presentation,’ she said. ‘What the hell does it mean?’

  ‘It means that government k
now what individuals want before they know themselves.’

  She snorted a laugh. Mermagen looked nervously at White. ‘You see! I’d be no use to you,’ she said. ‘I can’t even understand what you’re saying. How can the government know what I want before I know myself?’

  ‘Your behavioural patterns: what people of the same generation, social class, income bracket, beliefs and expenditure want will, ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time, tell us what you want.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said.

  ‘It is a fact. Government is now learning to read the public in the way corporations like mine have been doing for a long time, and that can only lead to good outcomes, better understanding between the governed and those who govern.’ He continued with a ten-minute speech full of gristly little abstractions and jargon that was delivered with an accent that oscillated between a functional American management drone and a South African sports commentator. What the hell had Eyam seen in him?

  White had good recall, yes, and a certain chilly mental organisation, but Sweet Jesus the man was such a bore and, despite his hard, rather plain face, he seemed vain too. It was her father who had pointed out to her that people obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte were often psychologically flawed. In Napoleon’s self-aggrandising, unprincipled, bloodletting ambition they recognised their own amorality, though it was disguised as something altogether more noble. She remembered now that during the Raussig defence they discovered almost nothing on his personal life: a wife and family long dispensed with, few friends, no culture, and no interest apart from this obsession with Napoleon. There were no skiing or yachting or hunting pictures in the White album. Just White on a dais and White arriving at Bohemian Grove in California for his annual misanthropic jamboree with the boys or at the Sun Valley Conference with media and banking moguls. White became American and connected to the most powerful men in American business very quickly indeed, but you didn’t get the impression that his company was sought after. The research department could not work out whether there was a vast secret to White’s life or if he was simply a dismal modern success story.

  The bare facts were these. Born in South Africa to an engineer of Russian Jewish extraction and an English mother, White changed his name from Riazanov soon after leaving South Africa and finding work for a Bombay-based trading company in Kenya. He rose quickly to a position of trust, which he used to lease planes on behalf of the company. On the outward or return journey, the plane always carried White’s own shipments – anything from arms to rare metals such as indium and tantalum. He made a tidy fortune, particularly as he seemed to be able to tap in to supplies that were not available to other companies. This period came to an abrupt end when one of the planes was discovered with twenty crates of small arms on the way to the Congo. Plane and cargo were impounded. White skipped Nairobi. Aged twenty-four he entered Lausanne Business School using a forged degree certificate and a reference from the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Cape Town, also forged. Two years later he turned up in Las Vegas with an MBA working for Saul Carron, the casino and entertainment magnate. White never stayed long in any job. He learned fast, took what he could and moved on. By thirty he had bought his first business, a supermarket chain in the Midwest, then he moved quickly into systems, after realising the importance of customer databases. At this time he became known as The Grinder for his remorseless and punitive business methods. There were periods when he seemed to be consciously softening his image by following Saul Carron’s example and making large charitable donations as well as ingratiating himself with legislators by financing their pet projects. But it didn’t work for him on the Raussig deal. Calverts and their attack dogs threw up enough dirt to panic the government into finding another buyer, which even Kate admitted was no better qualified than Eden White.

  Perhaps aware that she hadn’t been listening, White leaned forward and touched her arm. ‘We can work together I believe, Miss Lockhart. I have come to love this country – to see a lot of good and some great people who’ve got much to contribute. Let’s be in touch.’ He got up, buttoned his jacket and left with a bleak little grin. This caught Mermagen by surprise. By the time he struggled out of his chair White had left.

  ‘He likes you,’ he whispered. ‘It’s those foxy oriental looks of yours, Kate.’

  ‘Oh that’s great news. Do me a favour, Oliver, and tell Mister White that I’m a dyke.’

  ‘I’m serious, Kate. Someone with your brains could go a long way with White. He owns so much and he’s the influential person in the private sector in the UK at the moment. It’s just the sort of change you’re looking for. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Don’t, Oliver: I am not interested.’ She put down the drink she had resorted to while White spoke and got up. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  At any other time she might have blamed Ella, the Romanian maid, who cleaned her floor and in the evening was responsible for turning down the bed, switching on the bedside light, placing a scented candle on the dresser and chocolate mints on the pillows. More than once she had contrived to allow a mint to slip between the pillows, and Kate had found it in the morning, warm and compressed in its gold foil. The candle was lit but the mints had been put on the bedside table behind the phone, one on top of the other. Ella might have left them there, but it was also possible that someone had removed them to search the bed and forgotten to return them to the little depressions in the pillows.

  Charlie used to say she ordered her possessions to withstand military inspection at any hour of the day, which was almost true, and it was why she now looked around the room, alert to a disturbance that could be described as no more than a change in the barometric pressure. If the room had been searched, it had been done by experts. Except for the mints there was no other sign. She went to the desk and looked down at the small laptop. She knew the battery was still out of juice because she’d failed to leave it on charge. So no one could have found anything on that unless they had plugged it in. She checked the lead in the computer case, but it was bunched and held together by a wire tie that she wound in a particular way. The big red folder containing information on the hotel had been moved, again possibly by Ella, and the usual effects of the drawers in a hotel room – the hair dryer, bible, notepaper and pen – might have been rearranged but she couldn’t be sure. She opened the doors of the wardrobe, causing the unused hangers to knock into each other and emit the sound of a wind chime, rifled through the trousers, cardigans and sweater and the three jackets, all of the same chic, utilitarian business cut. There was only one mistake: the herringbone she’d worn to the funeral was on the left instead of the right of the rail and a little of the dark-grey lining protruded like the tip of a tongue from the right-hand pocket. The room had been searched but nothing important had been found because the will and Eyam’s note were in her handbag.

  She pulled out her cell phone, switched it on and dialled the handwritten number on Darsh Darshan’s card. A female voice asked her to leave a message for Darsh. Without giving her name, she said, ‘I’m calling on Tuesday evening in response to your note. You remember where we first met? Can you be there at noon on Thursday or Friday? Indicate which by text. Don’t call.’

  9

  Dove Cottage

  They left High Castle and followed the river road to the west. The brief panorama across the Marches of Wales with all its fairytale promise was soon lost to them as they plunged into a landscape of modest hills and rounded valleys delineated by ancient hedgerows, coppiced stands of hazel, woods of alder, beech and ash. The mild beauty gave no hint that the land was dotted with sites of unspeakable violence and treachery, pointed out by Hugh Russell, who turned out to be an expert on the Wars of the Roses and went into the bloody detail of a skirmish at a bridge they crossed. He drove sporting a small bandage at the back of his head and a bruise on his cheekbone and once or twice assured her that despite the advice of the hospital he was quite well enough to show off his new silver Audi estate.


  She kept an eye on the road behind them but nothing showed in the mirror as they approached Watling Street, the old road that once served the western border posts of the Roman Empire, and took a turning north. This led them to a narrow lane, which was cut through steep wooded banks and rose to a summit where there was a gate that announced Dove Cottage. The way was blocked by a herd of cattle being driven along the track by a young man on a quad bike, who did not acknowledge them.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Russell. ‘I’ve been caught behind this lot a few times before. We’ll just have to wait.’

  She began gently. ‘David didn’t go straight to Cartagena: did he tell you where he was going before?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘But he must have mentioned it to you. I mean, when he was drawing up the will you would surely have seen him?’

  ‘Yes, once or twice, but always for lunch at the pub. This was some time before he left in December. But he said nothing about his plans.’

  ‘Do you know who his doctor was?’

  He shook his head vehemently. ‘No.’

  The car crept fifty yards down the track to the point where the cattle had reached. The sun lit a bank of moss and flowers to their right.

  ‘I haven’t seen primroses for years.’ She paused and turned to him. ‘Hugh, I know you saw some of the material that was taken.’

  He stared at the cows for a long time before answering. ‘Has it occurred to you that if they wanted it so badly it’s a damned good thing they’ve got it? You shouldn’t mess with these people.’

  ‘What would you have done if you hadn’t found me? What were your instructions?’

  ‘To send the documents anonymously to the newspapers – a liberal newspaper.’

  ‘And you would have done that?’

  ‘Probably, yes. If . . .’

  ‘If you hadn’t seen any of it?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Technically those documents are mine and now they’ve been taken you probably have a duty to tell me what was in them.’