Lambs to the Slaughter

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Do you think Monika will get her deal?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meadows admitted. ‘It depends on how much Forsyth wants to guard his secret.’

  ‘Assuming he has got a secret to hide,’ Beresford pointed out.

  ‘Yes, assuming that,’ Meadows agreed.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘We did not kill Len Hopkins,’ Forsyth told Paniatowski firmly. ‘I want to be quite clear on that point. We are strictly prohibited, within our remit, from taking life unless it is a case of self-protection.’

  ‘So you used poor little Becky Sanders to do your killing, instead,’ Paniatowski said in disgust. ‘You scrambled her brain up so much that on Monday morning, her main concern was not that she had taken a life but that she had a history test.’

  ‘She places great importance on her education – and that is just as it should be,’ Forsyth said.

  ‘So if you didn’t have Len killed because he refused to handle your bribes for you, why did you have him killed? Even without working for you directly, he was still an asset, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but he was a greater asset dead than alive.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘If you kill a man, you make him a martyr. The death of Thomas à Becket meant that it was nearly four hundred years before the English crown felt really confident about clashing with the Catholic Church again. John F. Kennedy’s legislative programme would never have been passed by Congress while he was alive, but in the wake of his assassination, it was swept through. Those are only two cases, but I could provide you with countless other examples of men who did more for their causes by dying than they could ever have done by continuing to live.’

  ‘So if Tommy Sanders had died, it would have strengthened the will to strike, but Len Hopkins’ death turned the wavering miners against it?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You wanted the right kind of reporter covering the story for Northern Television – one who would really stir things up – and that’s why you put pressure on the management to assign it to Lynda Jenkins.’

  ‘Ah, yes, dear Lynda. The woman may have impressively large breasts, but their size is as nothing when compared to the size of her mouth and her willingness to do whatever it takes to get on.’

  ‘And, of course, things were only made worse by what Ed Thomas said at the meeting on Monday night.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ed Thomas. He brought fraternal greetings from the Kent branch of the National Union of Mineworkers. Then he gave a speech in which he said that Len was a traitor to his class who had deserved to be killed, and that if a hundred more traitors were murdered, that could only be a good thing. By the time those Special Branch officers – who you’d conveniently arranged to be there – hustled him out of the building, the pro-strike and anti-strike miners were at each others’ throats, and those men who were undecided were tilting towards the anti-strike side.’

  ‘From which it would appear that if he really did want a strike, he should have moderated his words a little,’ Forsyth said.

  ‘He was a plant.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘I rang the Kent NUM.’

  ‘And they said they’d never heard of him, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh no, they’d heard of him. They even put him on the phone to me. He’s a real firebrand.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’

  ‘He’s also sixty-two years old, and lost his right arm in a mining accident twenty years ago. The “other” Ed Thomas was one of your people, wasn’t he?’

  ‘There’d be no point in denying it, because you simply wouldn’t believe me,’ Forsyth said.

  ‘And anyway, it’s true,’ Paniatowski countered.

  ‘And anyway, it’s true,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘Have you worked out yet why, with great regret, I considered it necessary to abduct your daughter?’

  ‘It was a way of removing me from the investigation.’

  ‘Precisely. Suspicion can sometimes be a much more powerful force than certainty, and is undoubtedly more effective in dividing communities. So I didn’t want anyone arrested for Hopkins’ murder – and I certainly didn’t want you to arrest the person who had actually carried it out, because that would have defeated the whole object of the exercise.’

  ‘And you thought that Colin Beresford would make a worse job of handling the investigation than I would have done?’

  ‘Just so – which is, when you think about it, quite a compliment to you.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you went to such elaborate lengths to snatch Louisa,’ Paniatowski confessed. ‘You could have just had her grabbed off the street.’

  ‘I did it the way I did to protect Louisa,’ Forsyth said. ‘If Gary had grabbed her off the street, she would have struggled and might well have got hurt, whereas, arranged the way it was, she had no suspicion that anything was wrong until she was too doped to care.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that,’ Paniatowski said. ‘There has to be.’

  ‘It would also have been putting my operative – Gary – at more risk. There might have been witnesses. A police car might have arrived on the scene.’ Forsyth paused. ‘Besides, by using Dr Sutton, I was killing two birds with one stone.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sutton has grown into something of a force in left-wing politics in this area. He was starting to be annoying, and needed knocking off his perch. I thought that his being charged with child neglect would achieve that aim. If he’d just kept his mouth shut and taken his medicine, he would probably have got away with no more than a fine and a stern talking to, but it would have ruined his credibility in the namby-pamby left-wing circles. It never occurred to me that he would be foolish enough to break down and confess that he’d been working for me – so kudos to Sergeant Meadows for forcing that out of him.’

  ‘So it was a mistake to use Sutton,’ Paniatowski said, almost gleefully. ‘You made a mistake!’

  Forsyth bridled. ‘I’d much prefer to call it a minor misjudgement,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you would – but you’d be wrong. If you hadn’t used Sutton, I’d never have seen your hand at work in Bellingsworth,’ Paniatowski insisted. ‘I would have known about Gary, of course – but I’d never have connected him to you. Let’s face facts, handling things the way you did was the sort of blunder an amateur would make.’

  Forsyth had begun to redden. ‘I made a hurried decision, in the early hours of the morning, and anyone else who found himself in my position would have acted in just the way I did.’

  The words echoed around Paniatowski’s brain.

  I made a hurried decision, in the early hours of the morning.

  And what was it Forsyth had said earlier?

  Events have moved on since the competition, so we have no real way of assessing its impact.

  She needed time to weigh those two statements – to work out exactly what they meant.

  ‘I will arrest Gary, you know,’ she said, buying herself that time. ‘You need have no doubts about that.’

  Forsyth’s annoyance drained away, and was replaced by a glow of complacency.

  ‘He boarded a plane in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and now he’s far away from here, with a new identity,’ he told Paniatowski. ‘Now, no doubt when I say “far away”, you think I am referring to Australia, and that may well be the case, but it could equally be Canada, the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, or anywhere else in the English-speaking world. You’ll never find him, Monika.’

  ‘Then let’s forget him,’ Paniatowski said easily. ‘Let’s talk about you, instead.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I know you. You plan everything out long in advance – you consider every little detail – so what were you doing making a hurried decision in the early hours of Monday morning?’

  ‘There are many things you don’t understand, my dear Monika . . .’ Forsyth began.

  ‘And wh
at would have been the point of fixing the brass band competition – of creating a feeling of well-being in the village – when you intended to shatter that feeling, only hours later, with a murder?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Forsyth said.

  But he did.

  ‘Once Len Hopkins was dead, you accepted it as a fact, and milked it for all it was worth, but it was never part of your plan to have him killed. That decision was Gary’s – and it took you completely by surprise.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Forsyth said. ‘You surely know me well enough by now to realize that I keep a very tight grip on my operatives.’

  ‘I’m sure you do – normally,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But Gary’s not a normal agent, is he?’

  ‘I have no idea what you mean,’ Forsyth said.

  ‘Here are my demands,’ Paniatowski told him abruptly.

  ‘Your demands!’ Forsyth repeated incredulously.

  ‘My demands,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Firstly, I want Tommy Sanders admitted to the best – and most expensive – sanatorium you can find.’

  ‘And who’ll pay the bill?’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘That’s an outlandish suggestion.’

  ‘Secondly, I want Becky Sanders kept out of prison until her grandfather dies, so that she can be with him to the end.’

  ‘But it could take him months to die – especially if he’s receiving expensive care.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And how do you expect me to keep the entire judicial system at bay all that time?’

  ‘You’ll find a way. Thirdly, once she’s in gaol, I want her given the best psychiatric help available, and once she’s stabilized, she’s to be immediately released into the care of good well-trained foster parents. I also want her to be given a new identity.’

  ‘And would you perhaps like me to throw in the kitchen sink as well?’ Forsyth asked.

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘But I would like you to set up a trust fund for her, one that will ensure that she never has to worry about money again for the rest of her life.’

  ‘All that would cost an absolute fortune,’ Forsyth said.

  ‘Yes, it will,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘And why would you think, even for a moment, that I’d agree to any of those demands?’

  ‘You’ve already pointed out that we’ll never catch Gary, and I accept that,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Good,’ Forsyth replied, though he was clearly puzzled at why she was going off at such an apparent tangent.

  ‘But if you don’t give me what I want for Becky, I’ll pretend that there’s a real possibility that we could catch him,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘I’ll organize a huge nationwide manhunt, and I’ll have the artist’s impression of him on the front page of every daily newspaper. We’ll get a lot of crank calls – we always do – but eventually we’ll get one from someone who really does know him.’

  ‘And a lot of good that will do you,’ Forsyth said, though he was starting to sound concerned.

  ‘That’s when things will really start hotting up,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘I’ll pull in all his family – and all their friends – for questioning. They’ll say they don’t know where he is . . .’

  ‘They won’t know where he is.’

  ‘. . . but I’ll pretend I don’t believe them. I’ll turn their homes – and their lives – inside out. By the time I’ve finished, they’ll be nervous wrecks, and none of their friends will want to have anything to do with them ever again.’

  ‘Why should I care what happens to Gary’s family?’ Forsyth asked, uneasily.

  ‘Because it’s your family,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Rubbish! Pure fantasy!’ Forsyth told her.

  But there was the faintest flickering of an eyelid which told her that what had been a strong suspicion was now a stone-cold fact.

  ‘I thought he reminded me of someone – someone unsettling – when I first saw the sketch, but it wasn’t until I was sitting down here that I was sure it was you. He’s your grandson, isn’t he?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Forsyth said weakly.

  ‘Then why have you kept referring to him as “the boy”?’

  ‘It’s a figure of speech.’

  ‘The fact that he’s your grandson explains a great deal,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘I’m guessing that, much as you wanted him to, your son flatly refused to follow in your footsteps. What is he now? A stockbroker? A merchant banker?’

  Forsyth’s eyelid flickered again.

  ‘No comment,’ he said.

  ‘No comment!’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘That’s the last refuge of the trapped and harried. You must have been so sorely disappointed in your son, but then your grandson came along, and he wanted to be a spy – just like you. You were over the moon about it, and because you were over the moon, you made the mistake of handling him yourself, instead of letting some other controller do it. Not only that, but you were so keen that he should succeed that you gave him far too much responsibility, far too soon. And he screwed up. He mishandled his attempt to bribe Len Hopkins, and he came up with the crazy idea – which you would never have sanctioned in a million years – of turning Len into a martyr. He also – and you probably don’t know this – got Becky pregnant.’

  ‘The stupid little shit,’ Forsyth scowled. ‘The stupid, stupid little shit.’

  ‘From the moment you learned that Len was dead, you’ve been doing little more than cleaning up your grandson’s mess,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘But he’d never have got in the mess if it hadn’t been for your ambitions for him. In some ways, he was as much a lamb being led to the slaughter as Louisa and Becky were. This whole thing only happened because you allowed it to happen, so it’s at least as much your responsibility as it is his.’

  Forsyth sighed. ‘We all make mistakes when we’re dealing with the ones we love,’ he said.

  ‘Even if that someone is a stupid little shit,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘I can stop you doing what you’ve just threatened, you know,’ Forsyth said. ‘I can nip it in the bud.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘I’ll have the support of my chief constable – who hates your guts – and he’ll have the support of all the other chief constables around the country, who are sick of people like you getting in the way of honest decent policing.’

  ‘They can be dealt with,’ Forsyth said grimly. ‘They can all be dealt with.’

  ‘Yes, they can – in time,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But not before I’ve had the opportunity to make your family aware of just what a monster you’ve turned Gary into – not before they’ve started to hate you for it.’

  Forsyth fell silent, but Paniatowski knew what was going on in his mind.

  He was picturing himself walking through rose gardens, hand-in-hand with his granddaughters, and playing happy, noisy games of cricket with his grandsons. He was remembering happy family parties, at which he sat at the head of the table. And he was realizing that she was right – and that he could lose it all.

  ‘If I give you all that you ask for, Monika, you must promise that you’ll never mention it to me again,’ he said finally.

  He was looking into her eyes, and she read the hatred in his. She knew the feeling wouldn’t last, and that by morning his mind would have written a different version of this encounter – a version he could live with. But for moment he did hate her – hated her for outmanoeuvring him, hated her for refusing to be intimidated by him. She experienced a sense of triumph which was almost joyous. She knew that wouldn’t last either, but while she had it, she was determined to savour it.

  ‘Well?’ Forsyth demanded.

  ‘The best way to ensure I never mention it again is to make certain that we never meet again,’ she said.

  Forsyth shook his head, impatient at what he saw as her stupidity.

  ‘Make certain that we never meet again,’ he repeated. ‘Oh, please, Monika, don’t
be so naïve.’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In March 1984, the British government, headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, announced that the agreement reached with the miners at the end of the 1974 industrial action was no longer relevant, and would therefore be revoked. It added that twenty mines would be closed down, with the loss of 20,000 jobs.

  The strike which inevitably followed was a bitter and divisive one. It tore the union apart, and engendered a distrust of the police which still exists in many ex-mining communities.

  The role played by the security forces in the strike is – as it was bound to be – far from clear. It is certain that the F2 branch of MI5 (under Stella Rimington, who would later become the organization’s director) used the government communications centre in Cheltenham to tap the phones and bug the offices of miners’ union officials. It has never been really denied that MI5 had moles in the NUM, who kept it appraised of both the miners’ tactics and the private lives of some of their leaders. And there is a clear link between Rimington and David Hart, a millionaire friend of the prime minister’s who pumped a considerable amount of money into the dissident back-to-work movement.

  Beyond that, there is only speculation.

  Did MI5 use covert and dubious strike-breaking tactics, while keeping the police, who were nominally in charge, completely in the dark? There is at least one senior police officer, Donald McKinnon, who is down on record as claiming this was most certainly the case.

  Did the security services deliberately set out to smear the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill? A number of well-informed people – including members of parliament – think that they did.

  But though we may never know the full extent of the activities, we now have a clear picture of the consequences. In 1983, there were 174 mines operating in the UK – by 2009, there were six.

  It is likely that despite whatever else had happened, the development of alternative sources of energy and globalization had already sent the coal mining industry into terminal decline, but it is doubtful that the decline would have been quite so rapid without the political will of Margaret Thatcher and the support given to her by MI5.