by R. J. Dillon
Danny Redman arrived ten minutes late, pulling up outside the club in a white Peugeot. Nick climbed in and Danny drew away, neither of them speaking for at least a mile.
‘Smells like a forest,’ said Nick, flicking the fresheners dangling from the driver’s mirror.
‘It’s my sisters, the best thing I could hustle up at short notice. You said nothing Service,’ Danny explained. ‘Where to?’
‘Greenwich, Pelton Road.’
Sitting quiet and still, Nick stared straight ahead from where Danny had parked on Pelton Road. In front of them, double wooden gates marking the entrance to a derelict ballast yard on Lovell’s Wharf; concrete stumps from cranes dismantled for scrap poking over its boundary walls.
‘How are things at the Mad House?’
‘Awful, we’re all under suspicion. Stratton has been given temporary command and Hawick’s holding her hand,’ Danny explained. ‘Only essential operations are being sanctioned.’
‘We’re being isolated ready for the kill.’
On the drive back to the club Nick never uttered a word. I’m just a touch angry that you let me down Ricky, he fumed. Trust and timing Ricky had said, not appreciating the danger of his strategy; so let’s change the game plan, Nick decided as Danny kept the Peugeot’s engine idling outside the club as Nick provided a description of Ricky Penda.
‘Don’t lose sight of him,’ Nick said, getting out, waiting as Danny moved off to find another spot to park.
From the long shadows filling a doorway opposite, Nick made two 999 calls from one of his second-hand phones, then slammed it through a grate into a drain with his heel. During the first call he reported a stabbing in the club, the second that shots had been fired inside. Lighting a cigarette he started to walk. ‘Timing, Ricky,’ he said under his breath, the best results always come from timing, trust has nothing to do with it. Weary, considering the problems ahead, he walked briskly past Danny, his head filled by the prospect of never securing rest.
Eight
A Council of War
Wiltshire, November
From this side of the drive Rossan could see the dark stone angles solid against the pale night sky, stiff and confident in a testament to wealth. The Rossan family home in decent grounds, a couple of staff cottages and stable block where he’d played and escaped his father’s attention. A senior Private Secretary to Churchill during the war, Rossan’s father had spent his days steeped in clandestine operations, counting Stewart Menzies, the wartime Chief of the Service as a close friend.
For a moment Rossan stood in jealous admiration of his father having known exactly whose side he was on. His father assured that he was fighting a noble cause, coming home to Wiltshire at weekends, back to his pillared doorway with its added quaint porch for a warm welcome. Rossan could even pick out a single course of stone marking his father’s renovations and the addition of an extra wing to accommodate his expanding family. Away from the house the gracious sweep of lawn ran to his right, where a single cedar rose out from the middle of rhododendrons and holly like a candle in a Christmas table display.
‘Good, God, Paul, I thought you’d got lost,’ his wife called.
Rebecca, four years younger at forty-five still possessed the deportment expected from a daughter of a hereditary peer, a viscount at that, dressing not according to fashion or style, but what came first to hand. Standing inside the dark porch she’d slipped the catch silently and stepped out. From a pocket she took a box of matches and lit the wicks on the oil lamps either side of the door. In this shallow yellow light her face had a resonant power, the kind never accentuated by cosmetics. She saw him look at her left eye slightly closed and puffy, the first darkening of a bruise shading her skin, the result of a fall from Nero her thoroughbred hunter. ‘I’m sure they won’t think that you beat me,’ she said as Rossan drew nearer.
‘Believe what they like,’ Rossan said, making one last check. In the deep beds by the porch high arched bands of rosemary had died back, in the air the sweet scent of burning logs swam gently on the chilly evening breeze.
That was what she liked about her husband, an ego as tall as Nelson’s Column, and he was just as thick skinned as the statue. From the beginning of their courtship and into their marriage which had been stormy and passionate in equal measure, Paul had believed and acted as if the Service was still a club for the privileged and elite ruling classes. Anyone else he regarded as automatically inferior, and their character flawed; which in recent times, she had to agree, was perfectly true when misfits upped and left, selling their tawdry stories.
A car started down the drive and they both stepped instinctively back, their shadows temporarily trapped and defined by headlights, two cutaway paper figures suspended.
‘Lovers looking for somewhere to shag,’ she said casually, and Rebecca’s words had no coarseness; a matter of fact that didn’t shock. Reversing, the car seemed to take the brightness of the evening with it, leaving a velvet darkness behind. ‘Come on, we’d better change before they start to arrive,’ she proposed, linking arms with her husband.
Of course C arrived late, his customary apology and bottle of 1985 Red Bordeaux from Château Rauzan Segla proffered to smooth over anything burnt or ruined, though Rebecca still glared and fumed right through dinner. As the wife of a senior officer, Rebecca graciously made small talk with the others gathered around the dinner table; Roly Blackmore whom she thought a touch common, Jane Stratton she decided was on the rise, Teddy Hawick a sycophantic creep and Sir Martin Bailrigg holding court as if the house were his own. Really, she wouldn’t have minded if Paul had invited them all, but it had been the smarmy Hawick who graciously invited himself and his colleagues, suggesting that Paul could host what he termed a ‘council of war.’ This after coffee and a lengthy pause was the next item on the menu, so Rebecca effortless excused herself and left them to it.
‘Give him an amnesty, allow him to come in under certain terms and conditions,’ Blackmore magnanimously proposed playing his favourite role as devil’s advocate.
‘Torr simply has to be found,’ Hawick chimed his favourite mantra, his cheeks a little too red.
‘He’s a liability,’ Bailrigg announced over the rim of his glass held high, rotating it slowly, its cut surface producing shell bursts of diamond light flashing out an SOS appeal. ‘He’s running us ragged and making us appear like damn fools. I have it, from a very respected source, that he’s even been picking Hayles’s brain on the recruitment of Lubov. Not the behaviour of a guilty man, I’d have thought. Mmm?’ Placing his glass gently down he turned to Hawick. ‘Finding him pronto might save us a lot of work, might even get him off the hook and save me another curtsy at Downing Street.’
‘We’re working on it,’ Hawick said, reddening even more. ‘Torr might have been to Hayles to throw us a feint,’ he added, desperately.
Rossan seated back at the table after fetching the cigars, thought he’d gone quite mad; having to listen as Nick’s character and reputation were maliciously mauled, an outstanding officer who’d consistently risked his life, his wife raped and murdered, was now being systematically stabbed relentlessly in his back.
‘He’s never behaved in this way before,’ said Jane, ‘perhaps for the moment we should give him the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Depends what terms and conditions Moscow offered him,’ Blackmore said freely, ‘doesn’t need a lot for a worm to turn,’ he added, another knife twisted between Nick’s shoulders.
‘I thought you knew him better, Jane,’ Hawick mewed.
‘We’ve got his house under surveillance,’ disclosed Bailrigg, ‘and thanks to Jane, all his known hideaways,’ he smiled, toasting her.
Dear God thought Rossan, he’s been fawning over her the entire evening, shooting Jane a questioning look as to why she’d dump Nick further into the mire.
‘Funeral’s on Tuesday isn’t it,’ Blackmore said laconically. ‘We have plans for that do we?’
Whether he intended askin
g if the Service would be sending formal representation, or had a different intention, Hawick found another opportunity to assassinate Nick. ‘From what I hear they were about to part company anyway, been a rocky relationship from the off. But if he does have the nerve to show his face, I’ve arranged for a snatch team to be ready,’ he said, quite the zealot.
Admiring Rossan’s original paintings of hunters and steeple chasers Blackmore sat back, content for now with his brandy; studying which way Bailrigg was constructing his allegiances, Jane apparently coming top of the class. He would have to keep his eye on darling Jane he decided, she could be quite a cat and a minx. This was no time to be caught cold he reasoned, unable to connect all relevant strands of past and present together; a failure poor Henry Wilcox paid dearly for in Howards End.
‘So, Roly,’ Hawick piped up, perhaps spotting Blackmore’s leisurely study, ‘how should we proceed?’
As each head pivoted slowly round on him, Blackmore smiled. ‘Flush him out, spread his face across the front pages of the nationals, give the media a story to carry and they’ll run him to ground.’
‘You mean smoke him out,’ Bailrigg pressed, sharing a glance with Hawick and Jane, ‘Like dealing with a nasty pest, Mmm?’
Undecided just how to deal with Nick, they talked round the whole issue again coming from a different angle until Rossan could bear it no longer, and as a genial host suggested they sleep on it and pick up the threads over breakfast. So with a final nightcap dispensed, his guests delivered safely to their rooms, the fire checked, doors locked, Rossan finally retired at a quarter past one only to find Rebecca propped up in bed still reading the Marquis of Lorne’s biography of Palmerston.
‘Thought you would be weary of politics by now,’ he said, rather ungraciously, getting undressed.
‘And I thought you would have managed to get that cabal to bed much sooner,’ she retorted, slipping a page over. ‘Why you all can’t just let Nick alone is beyond me,’ she said, removing her glasses which Rossan took to be an omen for one of Rebecca’s polemical points of order. ‘The poor man is probably working out which one of your guests is so determined to deliberately wreck his career.’
Sitting on the corner of the bed he stared at his wife, one Lobb Oxford full brogue on his knee its cedar shoetree half inserted, he marvelled at how Rebecca did it, sometimes he thought she knew more of Service intrigue than he did.
• • •
The Rope & Anchor was in Canning Town, a derelict tavern that hadn’t served anything legally intoxicating or mind altering for years. A haunt for junkies, most recently a squat, Nick thought Danny was completely and utterly mad. Half the roof had been hacked away, exposing charred trusses and purlins from a fire someone had built on the first floor either maliciously or stupidly to keep warm. The tavern’s brickwork on its upper floor had split and peeled in the fire; a mysterious fruit that had flowered, the flock wallpaper in bedrooms and living quarters laid bare for everyone to admire. All the ground floor windows and doors were boarded, decorated with fly-posters of events and bands going back five years, curling and ripped loose by the coarse marauding hands of Thames’ winds.
Making his way round the back Nick stepped over mounds of rubble, a trail of broken bottles and dirty needles. Across the rear upper floors Nick could see where the fire had begun in earnest; smeared in swathes down the cracked windows the soot had a magical quality and its ugly streaks made abstract shapes. A boarded door had been levered free and jammed slightly open which Nick took as his invitation to step inside; giving grudgingly when he applied pressure he forced enough space to squeeze through. He stood in an uninviting thin corridor; smoke blackened doors for the LADIES and GENTS hanging by one hinge. There were no lights and rainwater leaked out in a filthy tidal rush. Pressing on he came to a games room with waterlogged carpets heaped by the kitchen doors, the bar area ravaged, its plastic wood fascia melted and congealed in an ugly knotted pile. Along the back wall under the spirit optics, he traced the hungry fingers of the fire along wooden panelling; across a menu board still holding its offerings done in yellow chalk.
Turning a corner Nick heard voices conversing in low murmurs in the main saloon. Glass, scattered newspaper, packaging from ready-made meals scrunched under his feet in an improvised early warning of his arrival.
‘Made it then,’ said Danny cheerfully as Nick appeared through a corridor opening marked TOILETS THIS WAY.
‘Make mine a double,’ said Nick.
In what had been the main saloon area the fire hadn’t taken hold, a long curving bar randomly scorched as though someone had attempted to ignite it with lighter fluid, which they probably had, was lit by five flickering candles with Danny standing where a landlord ought to be. Behind him, the nasty tendrils of smoke had only managed to spread their trail on one wall and across the ceiling.
‘Planning on starting a war?’ a heavy accented voice asked from the corner where the candlelight couldn’t quite penetrate.
‘That’s my business,’ said Nick turning. Sitting as comfortable as if he was about to be served chicken in a basket, Nick recognised a Brother Grimm. Greek or Cypriot, no one ever bothered to ask, he was one half of a pair of twins with a surname that rhymed with Grimm, which over the years had become their trading name as merchants who dealt in anything illegal that had the capability to kill or inflict serious injury.
Laid out between the candles the Brother Grimm’s offerings, the nearest matches to items on a shopping list Nick had provided Danny. Working his way along Nick took his time, selecting a Mossberg 590 Compact 14” barrel shotgun with scabbard, stun grenades, ammunition, disposable double cuffs and other sundry pieces of equipment that he held up for the Brother Grimm to add to his bill.
‘What’s the total?’ Nick asked.
‘Call it five grand,’ the Brother Grimm announced.
‘Extortion, that’s what I’d call that,’ said Danny.
Up and out of his corner; a heavy weight who’d take a day to reach the centre of the ring, the Brother Grimm made his way slowly to the bar. ‘I’m not buying am I,’ he said, leaning a chunky forearm on the counter.
‘It’s all clean?’ Nick casually asked, checking the Mossberg thoroughly, examining the chamber and magazine for signs of wear or damage.
‘You know me, I don’t do second-hand shit, everything’s top notch,’ claimed the Brother Grimm, scattering a pile of take-away cartons stacked in a tower on the bar. Floating through the air, motes of dust swirled in the cracks of street light filtering through gaps in the plywood sheets over the windows.
‘Traceable?’ Nick wanted to know.
‘Sure, like Lord Lucan.’
‘I’ll take it,’ decided Nick, knowing that he was paying at least three times what everything cost, though it was hard to tell how much of it had been stolen.
Coming round the bar, Danny started to bag up the equipment as Nick counted out the cash into the Brother Grimm’s hand, his wrist and fingers loaded with chunky gold bracelets and Sovereign rings.
‘Good doing business with you gents,’ the Brother Grimm, announced heading for the corridor, stopping to shake a cigarette machine, its cracked glass covered by a deep stain of soot.
‘If anything’s not up to spec we expect a refund,’ Danny called after him.
‘Sure…sure…whatever,’ echoed back to them.
After stowing their kit in the boot of Danny’s new motor Nick climbed in, rubbing his eyes as Danny explained that his sister did after all mind about his constant borrowing of her Peugeot, minded very much actually.
‘Plates are clean, engine tuned until it sings,’ Danny explained, as Nick sat beside him in a gleaming metallic red BMW M3 Coupé, its interior and leather seats in complimentary black.
Determined not to ask how or where he’d got it, Nick simply said, ‘Very nice, Danny.’
Not seeming to have considered ‘nice’ as a viable option Danny just smiled and drove, the night cold and bright, Danny pushing the BMW
as though practising for a front place on the grid. ‘It’s part of his routine,’ he disclosed, as the Chemical Brother’s Galvanize broke free on the CD player.
‘He never misses a session?’
‘Ruin his reputation wouldn’t it.’
‘I suppose it would,’ said Nick. He lowered the volume and Danny didn’t object.
Through rifts in dark cloud snatches of a high brilliant moon made the streets appear immaculate, strangely clean. They drove on in silence squaring up for what was ahead. Nick, his eyes closed, was on the drive out of Moscow with the little accountant and Foula, hearing rapid fire and seeing the roadblock again, rough images pasted together to form a graphic close-up; the provenance of nightmares, knowledge as bitter as bile.
‘This is it and it’s a complete dump,’ announced Danny, nudging Nick.
The Eagle and Child stood alone, a Victorian pub marooned in a sea of Seventies industrial units where houses once stood. A patched-up local on a corner, it was the type of place you saw in moody horror films; cobbled streets, barrel organs, a noisy pub and fog. On one side of its faded brickwork loomed grey cold stores, on the other, workshops that no one could let.
‘How do you want to play this?’ asked Danny, parking behind a builder’s skip buckled by fire. ‘Soft, hard, take it as it comes?’ he wondered, silencing his CD, the steady throb of live music seeping from the pub.
‘Hard,’ said Nick, taking in the front of the pub, his sweep picking up a top of the range Mercedes. ‘Definitely hard,’ he announced.
Out of holdalls in the boot, Nick and Danny selected individual pieces of kit before setting off towards the Eagle & Child. Stopping at the Mercedes, Danny squatted at a rear wheel removed the dust cap and inserted a thin steel wire to deflate the tyre, doing the same with a front wheel. Beneath the thrash of guitars a dog started to bark, before the music increased on the wind blotting out everything else. A poster at the door offered WHITE KNUCKLE RIDE. ONE NITE ONLY. TWO SUPPORTS. BE EARLY.