Kicking Off

by Jan Needle

  Pendlebury, although he did not know it yet, had got the sack, losing many of his pension rights. He was in a private hospital room, paid for by the Home Office, in case he was tempted to contact anybody. He did not know that he was effectively incommunicado, having been allowed a visit from his daughter. For the moment, for him, that was enough.

  ‘Is the crisis really over, that’s what bothers me,’ said Sinclair. ‘I feel rather flat about it. How many men are still at large?’

  ‘Only seventeen who might be dangerous,’ said Judith.

  ‘But there’s been no violence for days. They’ll come in, in dribs and drabs. The papers have forgotten them, in any case.’

  ‘Just like Sir Gerald said,’ grinned Fortyne. ‘These things are never as bad as you think they’ll be. How many dead were there? Twenty, forty, fifty-five? You see, we don’t even know exactly, and we’re in charge of it. If it was an air crash it would’ve been two hundred odd, all in one lump, indigestible. Although they’d still have been forgotten, soon enough. What’s more, most of these were prisoners, so it matters even less.’

  ‘You’re so bloody cynical, Christian,’ laughed Judith. ‘Stop it, you’re upsetting Donald.’

  ‘Donald should be laughing,’ said Fortyne, disapprovingly. ‘Look on the bright side, Don. You can bring in any new regime you like now, and nobody will squeak. Marion Jail with knobs on. National ID cards, micro chips, brand the buggers – anything you like!’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Sinclair. ‘You sound just like my wife. This is not a fascist state!’

  ‘Who said it was? I’ll vote for democracy every time. The police, the military, the press, the television, the MP on the ground – we’ve trained them all up, haven’t we? No more chance of civil disorders now, eh – we’ve got the expertise. No guerilla strife for us! No voices of dissent! Who needs fascism?’

  Sinclair looked sour.

  ‘Look, knock it off, it’s not a joke I relish, OK? You make it sound as if it’s all turned out for the best, as if somehow we dreamed up and orchestrated the whole damned thing. It’s been a pretty bloody tragedy, one way and another.’

  Fortyne studied his face to see how far this line would be taken. Sinclair looked back levelly, no humour in his eyes. Fortyne glinted.

  ‘Donald,’ he said, ‘one day you will be the PM.’

  But in the meantime, there was a prior call. That afternoon, Sinclair was conducted to the Prime Minister, and given a small whisky. He emerged as the Home Secretary.

  ‘Well,’ he thought. ‘Result.’

  *

  Cynthia’s Beam. Sam Hopkins.

  The bodies of Sarah Williams and Brian Rogers were discovered by a twelve-year-old boy called Sam Hopkins. He had been sitting in the forward cockpit of his family’s narrowboat, Emma, when she came round a bend in the canal to be confronted with another boat swung out almost bank-to-bank. Sam called back to his father, who was steering, and the engine was reversed.

  ‘Their stern line’s come undone,’ shouted Sam. ‘Spike pulled out, I expect. There can’t be anyone on board.’

  His father edged Emma’s nose into the bank, and Sam jumped onto the towpath. He ran towards the canal boat, Cynthia’s Beam. It seemed a stupid name to Sam, but he noted with satisfaction that his prediction was correct. There was a jagged mud-hole where the stern spike had pulled from the bank. Someone must have gone past too quickly, and sucked the boat towards the middle.

  All the curtains on Cynthia’s Beam were drawn, and nobody responded to his shouts. After a minute or two, Sam pulled in on the bow line, and jumped on board. He clambered aft along the cabin roof so that he could retrieve the stern rope, then throw it to his sister Angela, who had followed him along the bank. He noticed that the after hatch was open, and being twelve, looked in. Even over the sound of Emma’s engine, his father heard his screams.

  The discovery of two unnamed bodies, both savagely murdered on one boat, came on the same news bulletin that told the world of Sinclair’s elevation to Home Secretary. Although the canal boat was identified as the Cynthia’s Beam, the name of Bowscar Prison figured not at all.

  TWENTY SIX

  Clapham, Stockwell.

  Forbes and Rosanna, holed up in the rather poky borrowed flat in Stormont Road, listened to all the news they could absorb, and watched the news channels almost obsessively. There had been no mention of them, and no pictures on the screen, but they found this unsurprising in view of the vast amount of footage that the end of the siege provided. They noticed the brief announcement that Masters had been ‘executed’ with a chill, and wondered at the lack of further information. They lived from the fridge and freezer, and slept a lot, and made love.

  At ten o’clock on the evening that Sinclair was made Home Secretary, they took a bus to Stockwell and walked to the address that Carole Rochester had given them. They watched the street door for nearly half an hour before they moved. Sinclair might not use it any longer, but it certainly wasn’t guarded.

  Inside, Donald and Judith were talking seriously. The evening was meant to have been a celebration, and they had drunk champagne and eaten some marvellous game pie she’d sent out for from Queen Anne’s Gate that afternoon. But Sinclair had been quite moody and Judith, attributing it to his wife, had swung between sympathy and irritation. Mary’s continued influence, especially when his triumph should have been unalloyed, was galling. He had reluctantly given her the details of Mary’s phone call.

  ‘You’re mad,’ she’d said. ‘How can you be bothered with crap like “moral vacuum”? It’s like a Guardian leader, for God’s sake. She doesn’t just mean you, she means the system. Politics is compromise, playing the cards you have to win the best you can. Mary doesn’t want the real world, she wants Utopia. What she calls hypocrisy, I call common sense. You’ve beaten Gerald Turner because he had to lose. He’s had his day. He was an ineffectual weakling.’

  ‘She thinks I’ve stabbed him in the back. She thinks that basically he’s a good man and I’m not.’

  ‘Then she’s wrong. Gerald Turner is as much a snake as anyone. He started it, for God’s sake! He’s charming, he’s civilised, he’s urbane, he’s plausible, and he’s a swine. His method was to delegate the no-win situations, always. How many juniors did he use then kick downstairs? How many times did someone carry the can for some disaster while he smiled on, smelling of roses? He used to make snide remarks about how he could never find the man to match the task, how sad it was the way he was let down. Then you came on the scene and screwed him. Your wife’s stupid.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe nothing. You played Turner at his own dirty little game and you wiped the floor with him. You’ve done an exhausting, demanding, impossible job, and you’ve done it brilliantly. Ever since Buckie you’ve run the whole shebang, you’ve cleared up Turner’s messes, and you’ve managed – for the first time ever – to stop him grabbing all the credit. Christian’s right, darling – you’re a genius. You’ve been the voice of sanity, against a Prime Minister with the mind of a caveman, and a duplicitous bastard of a boss. And you’ve won! Now cheer up, damn you!’

  ‘I’ve won.’ It sounded good. The shades of doubt were lifting.

  ‘Yes,’ repeated Judith. ‘You’ve won.’

  Nevertheless, he was very cautious when he went down the stairs to the street door. It was not unknown for somebody to ring the bell, usually looking for another flat, so there was no reason not to answer it. But Sinclair put the safety chain on first.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said, to the man and woman standing on the doorstep. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘My name’s Andrew Forbes. This is Rosanna Nixon. We understand you’ve been looking for us.’

  At first, and for several seconds, Sinclair was stunned. The secret services and police had been searching for this pair for days. Yet they’d found him, at an address even the spooks didn’t know. Suddenly, it struck him as laughable, ridiculous. Instead of fear or anger, he felt euphoria. He was tempt
ed, for a moment, to ask them in. He did not, though.

  ‘Indeed I have,’ he said. ‘How nice of you to drop by. What can I do for you?’

  The couple appeared to him to be totally unthreatening. The man was scruffy, even seedy, and the woman was small and fragile, like a child. She was nervous.

  ‘There were a few things we wanted to put to you,’ said Forbes. ‘Miss Nixon, as you know, saw James McGregor murdered on the roof at Buckie the night you were staying at the Fox Hotel, under the name of Swift. Then you had his brother taken to an English prison, and held in isolation. The governor complained, and warned you about the unrest in the prison, and ultimately freed him from solitary confinement, against your instructions.’

  ‘Which were probably illegal, anyway,’ put in Rosanna, fiercely. ‘Then you had the gall to blame Mr Pendlebury for everything. You can’t deny that.’

  Forbes put his hand out to touch her sleeve. It was a tender gesture.

  ‘There’s the question of Michael Masters, too,’ he said. ‘We know you’re in cahoots with him. Were. We’ve quite a lot of evidence that you were directly responsible for his imprisonment and death. Don’t you think you’d better let us in to talk?’

  Sinclair, disconcertingly, began to laugh. Both Rosanna and Forbes experienced fear. They glanced behind them, as if expecting spooks to emerge from the shadows round the cars and railings on the street, spooks with guns. They saw nobody.

  ‘Carole Rochester,’ said Sinclair, finally. ‘It was her. She knows this place, she knew Masters. Well well, the bitch.’ He was quite amused.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he went on. ‘All this juicy information, these so-called facts. What do you propose to do with them? Who do you think’s going to believe a word of it? What does it all add up to?’

  He laughed once more, a bark, almost of delight.

  ‘The ragged-trousered philanthropist and his moll!’ he said. ‘Who do you reckon’s going to publish it? How quickly can you persuade the media to put their heads on the chopping block for me, I honestly can’t wait. Fuck off, will you, crawl back to your hole, the pair of you.’

  At this time, in this place, until they had regrouped, Andrew and Rosanna had no shots left, and all three of them knew it. The frontal ploy had failed. Sinclair unclipped the chain and stepped out of the doorway. They retreated before him, as if from an attack.

  ‘How far do you think you’re going to get?’ he asked them. ‘We’ve almost picked you up before, you know, we’ve missed by inches. Does that worry you? It ought to. Now go.’

  He swept towards them, and they retreated further. They turned, and began to walk away. Sinclair shouted after them, ‘Did you come by car, you idiots? You’d best check underneath it before you drive away. You might just find a bomb!’

  Two minutes later, as the bell buzzed yet again, he clattered down the stairs in high good humour to give them another earful. What fresh nonsense had they remembered? What threats to make his blood run cold? He slipped off the chain and pulled the door back wide.

  ‘Now look, you fools,’ he started, and the words froze in his mouth. His mouth hung open, his eyes grew wide, the blood drained from his face. It was Michael Masters. In his hand he carried a heavy automatic, and he was flanked by two stocky men, one blond, one rather bald.

  ‘I’ve come to kill you, Donald,’ Michael Masters said. ‘Because you double crossed me. I’m killing you for Sarah. Sarah’s dead.’

  The automatic leapt like a cannon in Masters’ hand. Donald Sinclair was thrown backwards into his safe house, and collapsed onto the stairs. Michael Masters fired twice more into his body, then turned away. A van pulled smoothly to a stop beside the parked cars in front of him.

  ‘Nice one,’ said the older of the men. ‘He won’t be sending any Christmas cards this year.’

  *

  Aberdaron. Peter Jackson.

  He had been staring at the Irish Sea for hours when he finally decided that Andrew and Rosanna must be told. The scene in Carole Rochester’s mobile home had been gruesome, but the attitude of the men he’d spoken to was worse. They were Special Branch, he had no doubt of it, and they had been as calm and ruthless as any contract killer on the other side. The great divide, he thought. Us and them. The law abiders and the criminals. Increasingly, he felt the gap was narrowing. Increasingly, he found himself appalled.

  Hard enough to get a signal where he was. He tried several locations, walking up and down. He climbed a steep bank, went on to the shore. Nothing. Not enough to make a call.

  In the end he texted them, and even that sat in his mobile for long ages, refused to go. It never happens on the telly, Jackson thought. You never see a police sting end with no one getting through. You never see a gang of criminals miss a bank raid rendezvous because the signal’s crap.

  He kept it brief, avoided text speak, avoided melodrama. It still sounded stupid, though. With luck they wouldn’t even get it.

  mobile home disaster. ca roch hit. gone to seaside.

  drive careful. mean it.

  He wondered, as a car drove by him very slowly, if maybe he’d been followed. Bollocks. He was going mad.

  He went and had a pint of bitter. He was missing London badly.

  *

  Barbara Masters. Home alone.

  The door had opened, but she had heard no knock. She had heard footsteps in the passageway, but she had assumed it was one of the staff. The two boys were away at Eton, and she was alone in front of the TV when her husband walked through the door. Barbara Masters turned, then stood, then dropped back onto the settee. She was speechless.

  Masters, in her eyes, had aged ten years. His face was pale and haggard, his bearing was slack, almost slumped. As she gazed at him, Barbara felt no great surprise that he was not really dead. Her eyes slowly filled with tears.

  ‘Mike,’ she said. ‘Oh, thank God. Oh Michael.’

  He did not move, or protest, when she ran to him and put her arms around him, sobbing. He looked down at the top of her head, dark-brown hair with a small streak of white he did not recognise, and he tried to feel emotion, anything. All that came into his head was the name of Sarah. This head was not the head of Sarah Williams. After a minute, though, he managed to raise his right arm from his side, and put it round the heaving shoulder of his wife. He thought of Sinclair’s face, and the way his body had hurtled backwards under the weight of the .45 bullet and crumpled on the stairs.

  He did not explain much. He told her that he’d done a deal with the kidnappers, and he told her that the YouTube execution had been faked. He didn’t say how much it was costing him, or that he would spend it all again to avenge Sarah Williams, and revenge himself on Sinclair for betraying him. He did not tell her Sinclair was dead, or that his body would very soon be found, or where.

  ‘Call Cyril France,’ he said. ‘I want him over here, tonight. I’ve escaped from a gang of psychopaths because the Government were prepared to let me die, and I want every paper in the world to know. I want publicity, quickly, before Whitehall can get the gags on, I want the public on my side. I know things, Barbara, I know things that’d make your hair curl. Tell Cyril France to get his arse in gear. Tell Cyril France I don’t go back to prison. Ever.’

  Barbara Masters nodded. She knew nothing, she knew everything.

  ‘I’ll go and ring him. Would you like a drink,’ she said.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Masters. ‘I’m going to my study. There’s some money I’ve got to move around before anyone tries to stop me. There’s some arrangements I might have to make. I’ve got a new partner. I want to think.’

  ‘Partner? Michael?’

  ‘Not that sort of partner. We’re solid, Barbara, you know that. But I might have to disappear for some time. Regroup.’

  ‘Will you see the boys?’

  ‘People will say things about me. Lots of things. Tell them they’re not true. Tell them to trust me.’

  ‘But Michael. What things?’

  He looked at her. His e
yes were bleak.

  ‘Go and ring Sir Cyril Fucking France.’

  TWENTY SEVEN

  Llyn Celyn. Forbes and Rosanna. Peter Jackson

  They were well into Wales when they heard the news of Donald Sinclair’s death. They had decided to go back to Llanbedrog to try and warn Carole Rochester if that were possible, or to see what had transpired. They expected to run into trouble, although Peter Jackson’s text had never reached them, but they could think of no alternative: they had blown her cover to Sinclair before he’d died, they were responsible.

  They had tried to get Jackson on his mobile, but had failed there, too. For lack of alternative again, they had hired a car in Rosanna’s name, and on her licence. They were both tired, and miserable.

  After the first, terrific, shock, the news had rather cheered them. Ghoulish, they conceded, but why try to hide it? The BBC said only that Sinclair had been gunned down in a terrorist attack in South London, and the police had several leads. They were relieved, in view of the fact that they’d spoken to him on the doorstep, that they were not named as suspects, or at least described. It seemed unlikely that Sinclair’s vendetta had died so quickly after him.

  As the news rolled on, their faint feeling of relief soon faded. The stark statement of the facts was followed by a panegyric which was the soul and model of obsequiousness. From the Prime Minister downwards, Sinclair’s colleagues on both sides of the House vied with each other to condemn the atrocity and extravagantly praise the man. From Buckie to Bowscar, they were told, his star had glittered in the firmament, ever climbing. For Rosanna and Forbes, who had watched the ascent from the inside, it was a bitter cup to swallow. After a few minutes, Forbes switched off.

  ‘Another hero for democracy,’ he said. ‘They’ll be giving him a State funeral next. The fucking hypocrites.’

  ‘All dressed in black. Andrew – do you think we ought to go on now? Just to get arrested? Shouldn’t we try and get away somehow? I’ve got friends in France, you must have contacts. We can get the story out. There’s got to be a way.’