Confirm or Deny (Gaffney and Tipper Mysteries Book 2)

by Graham Ison

  “He expressed no views about it?”

  “None. But I’ve been in the service long enough to know that he must have been having misgivings about someone here.”

  “Have you any idea who?”

  Hughes looked round the room, seeking inspiration. Eventually he shrugged. “Not really, no. Where do you start?”

  “Selby?”

  Hughes smiled. “He’s the obvious choice, but quite frankly he’s too obvious. It’ll probably turn out to be someone who any one of us would least have suspected.” He paused. “If there is anyone! I’m not yet convinced that it’s not one horrible coincidence.”

  “Was there any sign that Geoffrey Hodder might have been having domestic difficulties at all?”

  “No…” The word was drawn out, pensive.

  “You sound doubtful.”

  “I was about to say no positively, but then I remembered that he’s on his second marriage. Funny that.”

  “Why funny?”

  “Well he wasn’t the sort of chap you could ever visualize having been through the courts.”

  “Through the courts?” Gaffney knew what he meant, but was a little tired of this self-important poseur’s affectations.

  “Yes – divorce, and all that.”

  “What do you know of his divorce?”

  “Very little. It happened just after I came here. I heard them talking about it, but I didn’t know Geoffrey then. He was just a name. But afterwards – after I got moved to his section – I wondered. You can’t keep anything secret here – funny that, isn’t it, considering the nature of our trade – and it was the talk of the office, how old Geoffrey had shed his dowdy little wife and married some tantalizingly sexy creature who’d appeared in his village. There was some story that he’d been found in bed with her – by his wife, no less.” He laughed at the prospect that anyone could be so careless.

  “Yes, but more recently. Had he had problems lately?”

  “Not that I know of. But I suppose if you’ve got a sexy young wife you’re always worried that someone else is… well, you know.”

  “That brings us back to the professional side of his life, then—”

  “Something that may have made him commit suicide, you mean?”

  “At the risk of repeating myself, Mr Hughes, I am by no means satisfied that he did commit suicide. But supposing for a moment that he did, do you think that he was sufficiently concerned about the failure of recent operations to take his own life?”

  “Well I wouldn’t have done, that’s for sure – not unless it was my fault, and I was the one about to be caught out.”

  “You mean that if you had been a traitor – if you had been passing information and suddenly you realized that you were about to be arrested?” Gaffney wanted to get it very clear.

  “Absolutely, old boy,” said Hughes jovially. “Certainly wouldn’t have done myself in because of some admin balls-up.”

  “But it couldn’t have been, could it – not an admin balls-up as you so graphically put it? For three ‘illegals’ to decamp just as they were about to be compromised is not an administrative matter. In my book it means that someone has passed information – sensitive information about operational matters of the utmost importance. You, as an intelligence officer of some experience, would agree with that, wouldn’t you, Mr Hughes?”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Hughes nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “That then takes me to the next stage. Was there anything, anything at all that you can think of, that would make Geoffrey Hodder’s death an advantage to the other side?”

  Hughes smiled wearily. “At the risk of underselling our little firm,” he said, “No, there isn’t. To be perfectly honest, and you know this anyway, we only exist to counter: to counter espionage, subversion and sabotage. By and large, we’re a threat to operations, not to lives. If there’s a problem, they remove themselves, not us – unlike our cousins across the river.”

  “Like Nikitin, Gesschner and Dickson appear to have removed themselves, you mean?”

  “Exactly so.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Gaffney shook hands with Douglas Craven, whom he had not previously met, and introduced himself and Tipper. “We are making enquiries into the death of Geoffrey Hodder,” he said bluntly.

  “It was a terrible shock to all of us,” said Craven, “but I didn’t realize that the police were going to make enquiries.” He looked from Gaffney to Tipper and back again.

  “I can assure you, Mr Craven, that we are by no means satisfied as to the cause of death. I am here because of the delicate nature of Geoffrey’s work, but Detective Chief Inspector Tipper is here from the CID – and he has been positively vetted,” he added, correctly interpreting Craven’s look of alarm. The members of MI5 worried about such things. The allusion to Tipper belonging to the CID was meant to imply a possible murder enquiry. It was not untrue, of course – Special Branch is an integral part of the Criminal Investigation Department.

  “Well what happened? All we’ve heard here is that he was found dead. I just assumed that it was natural; I think we all did.”

  “What makes you say that? He was only forty-seven. Had he been ill?”

  “Well, no – not as far as I know. Occasional day off here and there with a cold – that sort of thing.”

  “Why then should you think it was natural causes?”

  “I don’t know really. I suppose we wouldn’t like to think it was anything else. He’s not the type of chap to commit suicide.”

  “That’s a fairly downright statement. Would you ever expect anyone to commit suicide?”

  “No, I suppose not, but Geoffrey I most certainly wouldn’t have thought…”

  “Had it occurred to you that he may have been murdered?”

  “Murdered!” Craven’s eyes opened in astonishment.

  “I’m not saying that he was, Mr Craven. I’m just asking whether you would have been surprised if that had been the case.”

  “Well of course. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to murder Geoffrey Hodder.”

  “As the result of something done in the line of duty, maybe?” Gaffney’s questioning was casual, conversational, and that made what he was saying unreal.

  Craven appeared to be making a positive effort to think that one out. Eventually he said; “No, frankly, I can’t, but I suppose in our line of business it’s always a possibility.”

  “Why?” Gaffney knew what the answer would be.

  “We are up against the KGB – and similar organizations.”

  “Never happened before, though, has it?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  Gaffney moved his position slightly, regretting the hard chairs. “Let’s talk now about the three operations in which he was involved recently – and yourself, I believe.” Craven frowned. “I’m talking about Nikitin, Gesschner and, more recently, Dickson.”

  “Yes,” said Craven flatly.

  “You’ll be aware, naturally, that on all three occasions, the contacts – the three I’ve just mentioned – disappeared at the very moment that they were about to be arrested. Actually in the case of Gesschner—” He corrected himself, “some time before. That case hadn’t even been referred to Special Branch.”

  “Yes,” said Craven again. “Those were very worrying events.”

  “That’s putting it mildly I should think. It must have caused some concern in the service.”

  “Yes, it did. The first time it was put down to bad luck – the sort of thing that happens occasionally. The second time was a bit unnerving, but the third…” He left the sentence uncompleted.

  “Was there an enquiry?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “John Carfax went through all the papers and then spoke to each of us informally.”

  “And what were his findings?”

  “I’ve no idea – it wasn’t an official thing.”

  “Sounds a bit slap-dash,” said Tipper, familiar with
the searching enquiries usually conducted by the police Complaints Investigation Bureau that went on for months and left nothing that hadn’t been examined thoroughly.

  Craven looked hurt. “It’s the way we do things in the service,” he said.

  “What do you think went wrong?” Again Gaffney’s quiet questioning got them back to the core of the enquiry.

  For a while, Craven didn’t answer. Then, reluctantly, he said, “It looked very much as though someone had spoken out of turn.”

  “You mean there was a mole in your organization,” said Tipper brutally.

  “In all honesty,” said Craven, “I don’t think any of us wanted to face up to that possibility.”

  “But surely,” said Gaffney, “It’s the only logical answer?” Slowly, Gaffney’s questioning was pulling Craven down from the esoteric world in which he lived and operated to the stark reality of traitors and sudden deaths.

  “I suppose so,” Craven admitted.

  “How well did you know Geoffrey Hodder?” asked Tipper. Craven looked puzzled at the shift in questioning, as though having to adjust to the fact that these two policemen were here to enquire into his boss’s untimely death. “I worked with him on an almost daily basis for – what – two years, I suppose.”

  “Yes?”

  “I got to know him quite well in that time, although…”

  “Although what?”

  “He was a very private person – never said much. Didn’t give anything away about himself, if you know what I mean.”

  “Not exactly – no.” Tipper wanted details.

  “Well he never talked about himself. Never mentioned his family, or domestic things. Most people working together will bore everyone else with trivia, like burst waterpipes, or their children’s illnesses – that sort of thing. But Geoffrey never mentioned anything like that. He seemed to live in a vacuum; very much the technician.”

  “Did you ever meet socially?”

  “Good heavens no!”

  “Why so emphatic?”

  “Firstly, I suppose, because he was my boss,” said Craven, “and secondly you never felt you could ask him – couldn’t imagine him sitting round your dinner table or spending a night at the theater. Pity really, because he always gave the impression of being a lonely man.”

  “Was he happily married?”

  “As far as I know, but he never mentioned his wife. I suppose he had one.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Tipper. “Children?” Tipper knew the answer to that, too.

  “No idea – he never mentioned any, but then I’ve already said that he never discussed domestic things. To be perfectly honest I only knew that he lived in Surrey because he was late for the office one day, and seemed to feel that he owed us an explanation. It was a meeting that he’d arranged, and he wasn’t there. He came in and said something about trains from Guildford being delayed. That’s all he said, and then looked as though he wished he hadn’t.” Craven hesitated. “He was very self-effacing, you know; the epitome of a Security Service officer. Very mild-mannered – bland features. You never quite knew whether he was there or not. Eminently forgettable is, I suppose, the best way of describing him.”

  “Do you think that he could have worked for the KGB?” It was a stark, ruthless question that Gaffney posed.

  “Good lord, no – absolutely out of the question.”

  “You seem very certain,” said Gaffney. “Why?”

  Craven wavered a little before coming up with an answer that was not really an answer at all. “Well, he was… he was too English!”

  Gaffney smiled to himself. They always got it the wrong way round. He recalled a lecture he had attended in his early days as a Special Branch officer when one of his seniors, who had been involved peripherally in the arrest of Gordon Lonsdale, talked about the reaction of the spy’s neighbors. They could not believe that the friendly Canadian business man they knew so well could have been a Russian spy. What they should have been asking was how KGB Colonel Konon Molody could have duped them into believing that he was a friendly Canadian business man.

  “I have been asked by your Director-General,” said Gaffney, changing the drift of the interrogation yet again, “to look into the apparent leak that resulted in the escape of Nikitin, Gesschner and Dickson, and that will necessitate some fairly probing questioning.” Craven nodded. “Setting aside the first two for a minute, what exactly did you know of the Armitage – Dickson case?”

  “Very little. Geoffrey briefed us – Selby, Patrick Hughes, Jim Anderson, Fred Weston and me – but told us very little—”

  Tipper touched Gaffney’s arm. “May I?” he asked. He knew the dangers of interrupting at a delicate point in an interrogation, but Gaffney nodded.

  “I noticed just then that when you were listing the other four members of the team you referred to each by his Christian name and his surname – except for Selby. Why was that?”

  Craven looked momentarily flummoxed. “Er – I don’t know really.”

  “Do you not like Selby?” Tipper persisted.

  “No, it’s not that, it’s just that I don’t know him awfully well.”

  “I’m beginning to think that none of you knew the others awfully well.”

  “No, that’s not true. But Selby’s different.” Tipper bit back the obvious retort. “He’s not married, and his interests are different. He has strange tastes, and—”

  “You mean he’s a snob.”

  Craven looked pained, but eventually admitted it. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And?”

  “Well for one thing he used to boast about his Cambridge education, as though he was the only person in the world ever to have been there and got a degree. He probably was the only one in his family.”

  “Bitchy!” said Tipper.

  “It’s true. I got sick of him going on about it. I went to Sandhurst, but I didn’t find it necessary to tell everyone. And he never hesitated to tell us when he’d been to a concert, or to something that he thought was a bit above the rest of us.”

  “Did he ever boast about women?” asked Tipper mildly.

  Craven appeared to give that question some thought. “No,” he said with some naivete.

  “Was he a queer, then?”

  Craven appeared stunned by the question. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “Very simply,” said Tipper, “Because I’d like to know. lt may have some bearing. Generally speaking it is easier to apply pressure to sexual deviants who are in sensitive posts than to other people. It has happened before, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. I’d never thought about it, to tell you the truth.”

  “You’re married, Mr Craven?”

  Craven smiled. “Yes,” he said. “But you’d know that, wouldn’t you. I married when I was in the army in Germany. My wife’s name is Anna, nee Kurz – illegitimate daughter of Sophie Kurz of Paderborn. And every time I’ve told that to a vetting officer, his eyes have lighted up.”

  Gaffney laughed. He had been wondering whether Craven had a sense of humor, but now it looked as though he had. “I’ll bet they did. Children?”

  “No, unfortunately, but that’s a genetic problem which we’re trying to do something about.”

  “Let’s go back to the Dickson case. You said that you were briefed by Geoffrey Hodder, but that he told you very little.”

  “That’s right. It was almost as if he was afraid to tell anyone anything. They tend to get a bit like that in the Security Service after a few years. They’re terribly secretive about things which aren’t secret at all. I suppose it becomes a habit. But on this occasion, Geoffrey was worse than usual. He really only gave us a very sketchy outline. It was something like the fact that there was an army officer suspected of passing information and that there might be an arrest very soon.”

  “If that was all there was, why did he bother at all?”

  “It was a courtesy more than anything else, I think, and he wanted to make sure that we weren’t
tied up in anything else when the job broke.”

  “Well he’d know that anyway, wouldn’t he? He was in charge of the section, after all.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I must say that I found it a little odd, because on the previous jobs he’d always been fairly forthcoming – giving us a bit of background, even about things that weren’t to affect us directly. But this time – well, it was as though he’d been told to keep it to a minimum because of what had happened last time – the last two times.” He corrected himself and paused. “He certainly looked as though he was under a lot of strain. I wondered whether he’d been spoken to about it – you know, by the DG or someone like that.”

  “What’s your speciality, Mr Craven?” asked Gaffney.

  Craven looked uncertain. “My speciality?”

  “I understand from the enquiries I’ve made, that each of you is specialized in some way.”

  “Did your informant happen to mention that his speciality was modern languages and fluency in Russian, by any chance?” Craven smiled.

  Gaffney laughed. “I never disclose my sources, Mr Craven.”

  “It’s not that clearly defined. We can always find someone who can come up with the answers. As far as I’m concerned, I suppose I could have found my way through the labyrinth of military organization – speak the language, if you like – but only on this Armitage case. Anyway, there are quite a few ex-services people here. Of course, you do have a few real specialists – locksmiths, code-breakers, that sort of thing – and I suppose that the Arabists would want to be seen as experts; they always regard themselves as a race apart.”

  *

  “Fred Weston’s the name. They tell me you want to see me. Mr Gaffney, is it?” He was over six feet, and broad-shouldered, with a bluff, round face that made him appear more like a farmer than an intelligence officer, and he had entered the room with his hand outstretched. “We’ve met before.”