Kicking Off

by Jan Needle

  It was a joke, which surprised and reassured Pendlebury.

  ‘I didn’t realise you’d hear that in here,’ he said. ‘I thought these pads were soundproof.’

  ‘I hear enough. I heard that bastard Abbey, didn’t I? Any enemy of his is a friend of mine. I’d offer you a seat...’

  He indicated the padded bench. It was smeared with excrement. The cell smelt bad.

  ‘It’s not that I’ve gone back dirty,’ explained McGregor. ‘It’s just that some of the gorillas have started fun and games. No names no packdrill, eh? I wouldn’t want to get them into trouble!’

  The two of them had spoken since the Orchard flare-up. They had patched things up. But Pendlebury was aware that some of his officers had not forgiven McGregor. He understood their fear, their attitude, but still it filled him with disgust.

  ‘You seem to take it very well,’ he said. ‘I’d apologise on their behalf if that wouldn’t sound like arrant nonsense. Some of them are good men. Most of them. Which doesn’t help you much.’

  McGregor, unusually relaxed, went and sat on his bench. He stretched his thin, pale legs.

  ‘Nothing helps me very much.’ he said. ‘It’s too late to save me now.’

  ‘No. Not too late. You’re a sane and intelligent man, Angus. You must never say too late.’

  McGregor lowered his head and smiled a private smile.

  ‘A sane and intelligent man,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve killed more people than you’ve had hot dinners. Although I’m sorry for it, it doesn’t make me sane. By the way, don’t call me Angus, eh? It makes me feel bad, because I can’t call you by your name. I know you say I can, but I can’t. So call me McGregor. Anything. The Animal. Not Angus. What’s the purpose, by the way? Why are you here? Why the visit?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Pendlebury, playing for time. ‘It’s been some days. I just thought—’

  ‘Awa’ tae fuck,’ McGregor jeered. ‘Come off it, sir. Why the ruckus with the space cadets outside? Why all alone? Talking of sanity, what the fuck are you doing in here, alone with me? Come on!’

  Pendlebury’s mouth was drying. He licked his lips.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I want you out of here. You’ve been in solitary far too long, and I don’t like it. Within reason, I’d be prepared to let you choose your cell mates. That is, if you didn’t fit the first time I’d let you change again. Monitor the situation. I won’t have you in a strip cell any longer.’

  ‘Aye,’ said McGregor. ‘Acknowledged. But why?’

  Now Pendlebury was afraid. It had to be said, though. He would no longer be a party to deception.

  ‘Mr McGregor,’ he said. ‘The fact of the matter is that you were brought to Bowscar because of an appalling situation in Scotland. Since then, as you know, I’ve tried to get some decency, some humanity, some answers. I’ve failed. It is, of course, a matter of your brother. And now I’m acting entirely on my own.’

  For a very long time, McGregor did not respond. Pendlebury, standing, was aware of enormous tension in himself; he had no way of knowing what would happen next. He tried to wet his lips once more, without making the smallest noise.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said McGregor. ‘He’s got to be. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s dead.’

  ‘Yes. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘How?’

  Now it was Pendlebury’s turn to be silent for an unnatural length of time. He had been through it all a hundred times, but he had reached no firm decision on what would be best to reveal or suppress. He’d left it till the moment, told himself that the right answer would reveal itself. But it hadn’t.

  ‘He was on the roof at Buckie,’ said McGregor, flatly. ‘Did they murder him?’

  ‘According to the Home Office,’ he said, ‘your brother died of natural causes.’

  There must have been something in his voice, an element he could not control. Angus McGregor raised his head.

  ‘You don’t believe it?’

  ‘No,’ said Pendlebury. His voice was strangled. ‘I do not.’

  In his mind’s eye, the governor had seen this moment as the point of maximum danger. But as the prisoner stood and walked towards him, he felt nothing but relief. The man’s face was calm. He was digesting. A process was working through. He came close, and the governor did not flinch.

  ‘The Home Office,’ said McGregor. His eyes were blank. ‘That’s Whatsisface. Sir Gerald Turner.’

  ‘Not him personally, necessarily. It was a press announcement. Released in Scotland.’

  ‘He’ll do, right enough. He’s the man in charge. I’ll maybe kill him, one day. That would be the best. And Jimmy’s gone.’

  McGregor was talking absent-mindedly, half musing. Pendlebury wondered if he would do what he said. He doubted it. It was like a dream, like therapy. The blankness in McGregor’s eyes was clearing.

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ he said. ‘I guess I knew, but thanks. I’d like to leave this cell. Thank you.’

  Pendlebury, unhappily, took the proffered hand.

  ‘I’ll sort it out,’ he said.

  *

  Michael Masters’ House. Sarah.

  Sarah Williams stood in the shadow of an outbuilding, and listened to the soft wind sighing through the trees. It was not a cold night, and she was well dressed up, but she felt chill and sick. She could still hardly believe that she was doing this. She could hardly believe that he had asked her to. She was still unsure why she had finally said yes.

  The call had come while she had been picnicking beside the canal one sunny afternoon. She had moored Cynthia’s Beam on her spikes, shut off the engine, and pulled a bottle of Vinho Verde from the fridge. If Michael had been with her they would have sat and watched the sunlight on the water, but as it was, she read a book. The boat was only two days’ running time from Bowscar and she felt very hopeful. She was almost happy.

  The warbling of the telephone inside the boat increased her happiness with a bound, because it could only be him. She glanced at her watch and jumped up to get it, her light skirt whirling.

  ‘Hallo,’ she said, still wary of the magic of it all. ‘It’s me.’

  Michael’s voice was anxious, and his message grim. He had little time, he said, and she could not argue – it was vital that she did what she was asked. He promised it was safe, but if she failed, he would be stuck in Bowscar. He would not get out.

  Until now, Sarah had not known the plan was to escape, but she had understood it in her heart and hopes. She had left her job on some bold pretext of going abroad for a long while, and was living on the cut. Fantasising had been enjoyable, and easy. Now Michael was giving her a time and day to break into his house. And take his pistols.

  The breaking in was not the hard part. It was a big house, with three separate burglar alarm systems, and Masters used one part exclusively as his own, especially when his sons were away at boarding school. It contained a games room, a squash court, a billiards room, his study. In that were the steel cabinets, one for shotguns, one for his pistols. There was also a bed. Some nights, when he was busy at the battery of computers and tape machines he used to juggle fortunes with, he stayed in the room all night. He slept there. Some nights, Sarah Williams opened a small side door with her own key, tapped in the digits that silenced the alarm, and went to join him.

  ‘It’ll be a piece of cake,’ he told her on the mobile. ‘An adventure. Barbara never goes into my wing, and anyway, she’ll be in bed by midnight. I’m sorry to ask you, Thing, but there’s no alternative. Sarah?’

  But you can’t, she thought. You can’t ask me to go into your house. Where your wife is. You can’t ask me to break the law, to risk being caught by her! It’s horrible.

  ‘Sarah? Listen, for Christ’s sake, darling. Listen, they’re only target guns. There’s not going to be a shoot-out or anything. Sarah?’

  She had been gazing through the window of the boat. Two swans had swum by, majestic on the sparkling brown water. She could hear the thud of a diese
l slowly coming nearer. She did not speak.

  ‘Sarah!’ Masters’ voice was raised, insistent. ‘For fucksake, do you think this is normal, a fucking phone in fucking prison? Answer me!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. But Michael—’

  He cut in, harshly.

  ‘Will you do it or won’t you? That’s all I need to know. If you don’t – I’m finished.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah Williams. ‘Of course I’ll do it, Michael. Of course.’

  He did not waste time with thanks. He was speaking fast now, blurting.

  ‘It must be Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘I won’t give you the gun safe combination, but it’s the burglar alarm backwards, right? Just the pistols, not the shotguns, obviously. Be clear by 2 am, then wait in Abel’s Lane, near that split tree, you’ll need your car, of course. A white Polo will arrive, with two men in it. They’ll say Cynthia’s Beam is bright tonight. Nothing more, nothing less. Give them the pistols. And ammunition, of course. That’s in the cabinet as well. It’s all in one box, mixed up.’

  ‘But Michael she croaked. ‘Cynthia’s Be—’

  ‘They won’t know what it means. It’s safe, they’re policemen, for God’s sake! They’re thick!’

  There was an angry voice at a distance from the mobile. An argument. The line went muffled, then dead. Slowly, she switched off the signal, and sat heavily on the bed. She watched the long dark shape of the other narrowboat slide by, its diesel thumping loudly. The man on the tiller saw her through the window and waved.

  ‘Cynthia’s Beam,’ she heard a woman shout. ‘What a lovely name!’

  Sarah, as she turned her key and entered the silent house, could not keep down the thoughts of Michael’s criminality. It was a subject that she always held at bay, although she’d known almost from the first that his fortune was the result of some kind of tightrope act, an act he revelled in. His attitude had been that the whole of modern life was based on buccaneering, a system for the clever and the daring to exploit. And in any case, he said – no one had ever been hurt by him or his activities.

  Even when he‘d been imprisoned it had still been easy for her, because of the injustice someone had done him, because he’d been betrayed. But she had, inevitably, wondered how other women managed – as they did so often and so publicly – to stand behind more truly awful men.

  Now he was after guns, which could only mean one thing. He was going to become a criminal, even if he was not one now, and he was making her one in the process. Sarah experienced a wrench of awful pain as the beam of her small torch picked up the pistol cabinet and she twisted in the combination. She put four handguns and the box of ammunition into a plastic bag. They were not target pistols, either, as she knew. There was a .25 automatic, nickel-plated, a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, a long, inelegant Ruger automatic, and a stubby American .32 with its maker’s name obscured. Michael was not interested in boys’ toys as he called them, but he let the children use them – under supervision – in the woods, the complete indulgent father. Now they’d kill someone at last. They’d come into their own.

  She was almost tearful as she waited under the split tree in Abel’s Lane for the white Polo to nose up to her, and a little frightened. There were two men in it, and in the darkness she could see that they were big and powerfully built. Her own car was parked a hundred yards away, and the nearest house was Michael’s, nearly a quarter of a mile. The country lane was deserted, silent except for the soughing of the leaves, and absurdly dangerous for a lone woman to be standing in. If the men got out, she would run. She would try to. But to what use? She felt a flash of rage at Masters.

  You shit, she thought, you utter, utter shit.

  As the car stopped she stepped firmly to the passenger window, holding up the heavy plastic bag. The pistols cracked against the glass before the man could wind it down.

  ‘Go easy, darling,’ he began. But Sarah, forgetting she was meant to hear a password, shoved the bag in and dropped it, heavy, onto his lap, and began to run. She ran away from her car, away from the direction they were facing, because they would have had to turn round if they wanted to give chase. She ran a hundred yards, to the edge of a small copse, and hid behind a tree. She could still see the car. One door was open, with a man standing beside it, looking down the lane towards where she was hidden. The interior light, switched on automatically, revealed the second man inside.

  ‘You’re all right, love,’ the first man shouted. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. You’re OK.’

  Sarah waited, frightened by the harshness of her breathing. After half a minute the man got back into the car and slammed the door. He moved off smoothly, going quickly through the gears. The car was out of sight around a bend in moments, but the engine did not falter. Sarah went quickly to her car and got inside and locked the doors. She started up the engine.

  So now she knew. She’d done it, she’d ‘stood by her man’. You fucking shit, she thought, I fucking, fucking hate you. Her hands were shaking so badly that she started off in third, then could not get a better gear. She stalled the engine, and restarted it. She crunched it into bottom, and began to cry. She had never been so devastatingly alone.

  After a mile or two she had to stop the car and give way properly to her tears. She switched the lights and engine off and held onto the wheel and sobbed and shuddered until she was exhausted. Then, calm, she blew her nose, and dried her puffed up eyes, and her cheeks, and her hands, and the steering wheel. She went round the inside of the car with a wad of Kleenex, to clear the condensation from the windows. She put her seat belt back on, and she prepared to drive.

  So now she knew. Like all the other stupid, tragic women, she would do anything for him. As she drove along, she began to cry again. But gently.

  SIXTEEN

  The Inner Temple. Sir Cyril France.

  He’d been on the phone for half an hour, now, and he knew that he was getting nowhere. His private office had been cleared; no junior or clerk must overhear this. The voice at the other end of the line was unbending, but eternally urbane.

  ‘But I don’t know why you’re telling me all this, Cyril. I’m working on it, but we’ve been through it all before. It’s a minor issue, a matter of regret. Something went wrong, the climate changed, the ball-game changed. Please don’t say it all again, dear chap.’

  Sir Cyril, because he had to, tried again. There was more than just his duty to a client at stake. There was the possibility of real disaster.

  ‘But when you say you’re working on it, what exactly do you mean? I must have something to tell him. I must have something concrete.’

  ‘You can tell him to stop whining, for a start. It may not have been intended, but most people think Mike Masters got what he deserved. Tell him the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-fucking-gley. Tell him he’s got my deepest sympathy, Tell him to wait.’

  ‘I don’t think you entirely understand. Masters is talking seriously of a major incident. He’s being treated like an animal. He’s talking of drastic action, some sort of explosion. He’s talking of making certain items public.’

  ‘He’s in prison, for Christ’s sake. He’ll make nothing public. And if we’re talking bloody revolution, tell him this – when they start stringing people up from lamp-posts, he’ll be the first to bloody dangle, won’t he? I’m doing everything I can, and I’ll continue to. Until then, he can keep his head down and his mouth shut. He hasn’t been forgotten.’

  Sir Cyril France, wearily, knew he had to try another tack. Giving up was not an option.

  ‘Look here,’ he started.

  But he realised there was no one listening.

  *

  Princess Louise. Forbes and Jackson.

  ‘And how’s he doing?’ Peter Jackson asked. ‘How’s the Beast McGregor?’

  ‘Ah, the bloody story’s turned to mush.’ Forbes shook the last drops comfortably away and zipped up. They were standing at the piss-stones. ‘That’s the trouble with the Sco
ts. You just can’t trust them.’

  Jackson stepped to the basin and rinsed his fingers.

  ‘You married one,’ he said. ‘You’re not about to repeat the prescription, I suppose?’

  ‘Case in point,’ said Andrew. ‘The first one died on me. This one’s pretty fragile, looking at her. I’m nae sae sure, Jummy, I’m nae sae sure!’

  They collected the two pints of bitter and the half of lager they had ordered and rejoined Rosanna in a corner seat behind a table. They were on their third drink, and were feeling quite euphoric. Jackson, at least, had had good news to tell. John de Sallis, his American oppo, had picked up intelligence, good intelligence. Rosanna, not waiting for a sip, got back to the subject.

  ‘And do they know why they’re coming over,’ she asked. ‘Is it definitely connected?’

  Jackson shook his head.

  ‘Nothing’s definite,’ he said. ‘But it must be our op, realistically. My guess is they’re sweating nitric acid in the US because Lister’s been inside so long. They’re coming for a look, maybe. They’ve got to have that man.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve got some spectacular escape lined up,’ Rosanna said. ‘Maybe they’ll go in with a helicopter!’

  ‘No chance at the Scar. The only put-down pad is cabled, they’d lose their rotor. No, maybe it’s panic, or maybe they’ve got an ace to play. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  Rosanna’s eyes were bright.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to let him out,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you do that? Persuade the government, or something? Then he could, sort of...lead you to them?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. He’d disappear just like he did before. No, Charlie being stuck in Bowscar is the good thing. We don’t know precisely why they’re coming, but we know they’ve got to end up there. Without our Charles they’re knackered, aren’t they? Their whole plan turns to shite.’

  ‘I suppose de Sallis and his lot have got good tails on them? Could they slip away?’

  Jackson shook his head.

  ‘John’s pretty confident. They’ve got a contact in Dutch Customs, a bent one, and we’re tapped into him. It’s looking good. Hey, by the way, what’s this about your story going flat? Andrew said, in the gents.’