‘Why were they helping her so much?’
‘Because she was the best agent they ever had. She was stealing personal data on U.K. citizens, so Goldcastle could shape the perfect candidate.’
‘All this just to get someone elected?’ asked Stella.
Gale answered, ‘If you get a candidate elected, they’ll do anything for you: shape policy, give tax breaks, open doors. You’ll be in a sphere of influence for the next four years. Maybe longer.’
‘How does her affair with Hawkes fit into all this?’
‘Let’s be real here. She wasn’t sleeping with Nigel Hawkes for his sexual prowess. Goldcastle had her do it.’
‘She was being paid to sleep with him?’
He mumbled to himself, ‘Jesus... If they knew I was telling you all this.’ He considered the phrasing. ‘She was being paid to protect their investment.’
‘Their investment?’
‘Of course. Goldcastle were done with Simon Ali a long time ago. They were going to back Nigel Hawkes in the General Election in six months.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Maybe there was something Goldcastle wanted that Ali wasn’t willing to give them. These people don’t think like you or I do, Stella. I’ve been around politicians my entire life. They will say and do anything for just a little bit more power.’
‘But backing Hawkes would mean...’
He nodded. ‘Getting rid of Simon Ali. Now you’re getting it.’
Stella asked, ‘If Abbie was such a good agent for Goldcastle why would they want rid of her?’
Gale answered, ‘I’m not sure we’ll ever find out the answer to that.’
‘Your car has been traced to Moreton House on Sunday night around the time Abbie died. There’s other evidence of American involvement in this too.’
Gale rubbed his forehead. He’d had a pounding stress headache all day. ‘I wasn’t at Moreton House on Sunday night. I let someone use my car. An ally.’
‘Who?’
‘Goran Lipski.’
‘That’s your defence? You loaned your car to a disgraced GCHQ operative, who, so far, is the only person with forensic evidence that implicates him in Abbie’s murder?’
‘You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you,’ Gale said. ‘Lipski wasn’t what they said he was. GCHQ cultivated that profile over ten long years. Inventing stories about blackmail, and subterfuge.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Stella asked.
‘He needed cover for what he was really involved in. Almost single-handedly he created a division of internal affairs for GCHQ. The first of its kind. If your country has a hero in this day and age, Goran Lipski would be a candidate. His cover of being fired for corruption gave him cover to work with the dirtiest rogue agents in the field. Agents who were highly skilled, extremely motivated and with secrets to hide. Lipski was as brave as they come. He couldn’t even tell his own family the truth. He wasn’t fired in disgrace: he never left GCHQ.’
‘That’s one hell of a secret to keep.’
Gale nodded. ‘The only man who knew Lipski was still active was Trevor Billington-Smith. Otherwise, Lipski was a ghost.’
Stella asked, ‘So how do Abbie and Malik figure with Lipski?’
‘If anyone was going to figure out what Abbie was up to in GCHQ it was Lipski. And that’s what happened. Lipski tracked her down, and she spilled her guts to him. She told him about a credible threat her agent in the field had discovered.’
‘Malik,’ said Stella.
‘Exactly. There was a threat against a U.S. target and Malik couldn’t get anyone to listen. So Lipski came to me to see if I could get the White House to delay Secretary Snow’s visit. Without any explanation, CIA, NSA, everyone refused. So using Malik’s intel, Lipski tracked down the bombing cell himself. On Sunday night he told me the threat was imminent and he had to get Abbie Bishop out.’
Stella said, ‘I don’t understand. Why did he think she was in danger?’
‘I never found out. But something happened earlier that night with Lipski and Abbie. Something that made him fear for her life, literally within the hour. So I sent my car for him, which he took to Moreton House. By the time he got there she was dead already. A few hours later Lipski was taken out before he could stop the bombers.’ He backed away from the gate. ‘I don’t plan on ending up like Lipski and Bishop.’
Hearing Diane’s voice in her head, Stella pushed for something clearer, more decisive. ‘Are you saying that certain members of the British intelligence community actively aided and abetted the Downing Street bombing plot?’ It was a broadsheet journalist’s ploy: asking for the headline you want.
Gale said, backing away. ‘This conversation is over. My advice to you? Don’t walk away from this.’
Given Gale’s tone, Stella was surprised at this.
He said, ‘I think you should run.’
‘If you don’t speak out, who will?’ She raised her voice as he got farther away. ‘If you talk to me I can protect you.’ Stella took one last shot. ‘Think of your family, Mr Gale.’
‘I am,’ he replied and kept walking inside.
His wife, having missed the exchange with Stella, passed him carrying yet more cases. Wherever the Gale family was going, it wasn’t just a holiday.
Stella got off the Tube at Bayswater and ran the rest of the way to the hotel. When she reached the room, all of Dan’s stuff was gone.
Rebecca’s warning had at least prepared her for it, but it still felt like a blow.
She called Dan.
After two rings he answered without a word.
Stella didn’t want to scream at him. She wanted him to see sense. ‘Dan? Where are you?’
He didn’t respond.
‘I know about you and Patterson,’ Stella said.
In the background she could hear the chirping and jingles of slot machines, and banal pop music. Someone next to him asked for a pint of lager.
‘There’s still time to do the right thing, Dan. Don’t let them win.’
She waited a moment for him to reply.
‘I’m sorry, Stel,’ he said, then hung up.
She looked around the room: he had at least been kind enough to leave behind the files from Rebecca’s memory stick – after making copies before he left, sending them to his Cloud system. She picked up her phone with the room key and headed back out. She was damned if Dan Leckie was going to screw up her story.
If she was going to write about Abbie Bishop’s death, she wanted to see where it happened for herself.
Stella got a taxi to Pimlico, dropping her at the start of Moreton Place. Having seen the police report she now wanted to check out PC Walker’s story.
As soon as she turned onto Moreton Place it felt exactly as Walker had described. Given the distance and vantage point he had when Abbie fell – taking into consideration it would have been as dark as it was now – Stella felt confident in Walker’s story. The street gently curved to the left, giving Walker on the right-hand side a clear view of the balcony.
As she got closer the depth of the balcony was what surprised her most. It was a good ten feet, and confirmation that no one would feasibly jump through a French window, then run another few steps before jumping over the edge. It wasn’t credible.
At the front door, a gold plate above the intercom said, ‘MORETON HOUSE.’
On a whim she tried the door. Locked.
She hit the buzzer for some of the other residents, getting no reply. Until the last one. What sounded like an Eastern European woman’s voice.
‘Yah?’ she said sounding put out.
Stella said, ‘Hi, is there any chance you could buzz me in, I live in...’ She then brushed her coat sleeve over the intercom, simulating a broken connection.
The intercom buzzed and the door unlocked.
As she climbed the stairs Stella waited for the sound of a door opening followed by an accusatory tone of, ‘You don’t live here.’
I
nstead, a woman wearing white cleaner’s overalls opened the door on the first landing. ‘You buzz?’ she asked.
Stella pointed upstairs. ‘Sorry, I forgot my key.’ She felt bad about lying – she couldn’t remember the last time she’d lied about anything – but she knew getting into the safe house could prove critical to the story.
The cleaner nodded, totally disinterested. It was her first day cleaning at that address, and had no idea who else lived in the building, let alone that she was cleaning two floors down from a GCHQ safe house, or that a crime had taken place three days ago. Stella had got lucky.
There was no police crime scene tape across the front door like in cop dramas. In fact, there was nothing to suggest anything untoward had taken place there at all.
On the off-chance she reached for the door handle. But before she could turn it the door opened from the other side.
Without a word, Rebecca pulled her in by the arm.
Stella was cast into a vaguely recognisable scene from the police forensics photos taken on Sunday night, except the furniture had been straightened, and there was no blood on the living room carpet.
Rebecca chained and locked the door. ‘I thought you’d come here,’ she said, making her way to the living room. She had a laptop and two cups of tea set out on the table.
Rebecca held out her hand. ‘Phone.’
Stella passed it to her. The battery was already removed from the handset.
Rebecca pulled out the SIM card tray and carefully peeled off what looked like a contact lens attached to it. ‘I needed to know where you were. So I put a tracker on it at the bookshop. Pretty easy on these old BlackBerrys.’
Stella remembered now how Rebecca had held onto her phone for an inordinate length of time.
Rebecca said, ‘Smart move keeping the battery out. They’re monitoring mobile activity around Moreton House. There’s a lot of people looking for you.’
Stella moved towards the French window to get a better look at the balcony. ‘You were right about Dan,’ she said. ‘He’s been playing me this whole time.’
Rebecca said, ‘Better you find out from me.’
‘What are you doing here? I thought this would all be sealed off.’
‘GCHQ still needs a safe house in London. They’ll sell this place and move on elsewhere now its location has leaked to the press. For now it saves me staying in a hotel.’
‘I found Jonathan Gale. He’s about to leave town by the looks of it.’
‘I don’t blame him.’ Rebecca pulled up a tab on her laptop.
Stella took a seat next to her. After a few seconds of Rebecca typing Stella remembered where she’d seen the unique screen set up before: the screenshots used in Novak’s NSA story.
‘Is that ECHELON?’ Stella asked.
‘Not exactly,’ said Rebecca. ‘ECHELON can only be accessed on-site. This is GCHQ internal records. It runs off the same design.’ Rebecca pulled up the files on Goran Lipski. ‘Every two years, every GCHQ officer is polygraphed. Out of a staff of thousands, the only one to fail in recent years was Goran Lipski. Except my boss in GTE, Alexander Mackintosh, had found fault with the findings, enough to raise an official complaint, accusing Lipski of, quote, “faking his lies”. Trevor Billington-Smith might be the face of GCHQ, but he’s a political animal. Mackintosh is the brains. He figured out what Lipski was up to.’
‘What was he up to?’ asked Stella.
‘Creating a one-man internal affairs department nobody knew existed. Except for Mackintosh. It was called Ghost Division.’
Stella said to herself, ‘Gale was right about Lipski.’
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Rebecca clicked quickly through some documents attached to Lipski’s records. ‘His death has already been classed as “Unsolved and Classified”. Now he’s gone and Ghost Division has been shut down before it had barely begun.’
Stella said, ‘I have a record of phone calls between Lipski and the bombing cell, including on Sunday night, hours before Lipski was killed.’
Rebecca could see it now. ‘He’d infiltrated the cell.’
‘And on Sunday night, Lipski found out something about Abbie. Something that made him fear for her life. But he didn’t get here in time.’ Stella took out the police report from her bag. ‘Which would explain the traces of her blood on his clothes.’
Rebecca spread the photos out on the table. ‘He must have been the one who found her laptop.’
‘So where is it now?’ asked Stella.
Rebecca said, ‘Whoever killed Lipski must have got it already.’
Stella picked up a few of the photos and looked through them as she moved around the flat.
The place had been cleaned spotlessly: no trace of bloodstains on the cream carpet at the French window. Hollywood movies made jumping through windows look like punching through tracing paper. In reality, the force required to jump through any window, let alone a thick French window, was immense and would knock most people unconscious.
Stella read the file then looked out at the balcony. ‘Abbie was five foot six, barely one hundred pounds. I don’t buy she managed to jump through this herself.’
Stella came back and dropped the photos down on the coffee table. The one on top showed deep lacerations on Abbie’s face, and also up the underside of her forearms – a defensive wound as she went through the window.
Stella said, ‘We already know the autopsy report was faked. I can at least prove that much. The photo still helps.’
‘What photo?’ asked Rebecca.
Stella picked up a photo from the middle of the pile, showing the living room as the police found it on Sunday night. ‘There was a bottle of wine on the table and a smashed glass. That’s all.’
Rebecca snatched the photo from Stella’s hand.
Stella said, ‘The bottle looks barely touched by the looks of it. Which matches what I know from the first autopsy report: she was stone-cold sober.’
Rebecca stared at it, clearly troubled by something.
Stella said, ‘This isn’t new information to you, is it?’
‘I was told the police found two empty bottles of wine in the living room,’ Rebecca replied.
Stella showed her the other photos of the rest of the flat. ‘See for yourself. There was nothing else there. Were there any bottles in the kitchen bin?’
‘Nothing. It’s still got microwave meal packets from last week in it. And it’s not like someone finishes a bottle of wine then takes it all the way downstairs to dispose of it.’
Stella couldn’t understand what Rebecca’s concern was.
Their attention was broken by a sudden beeping from Rebecca’s computer.
She clicked to another open tab.
‘Shit,’ Rebecca said. She slammed her laptop shut and took it to the bedroom. ‘Get your things.’
Stella stood up. ‘What’s going on?’
Rebecca explained on the move, dashing from room to room. ‘The car that tried to drive you off Lambeth Bridge. I’ve been tracking it on the number plate recognition system. It just scanned the car about a quarter of a mile away. Judging by the gap between camera scans it must be going about fifty miles an hour.’
Stella gathered up the crime scene photos and bundled them into her bag.
Rebecca stood at the open front door. ‘Come on!’
The pair bolted downstairs, swinging themselves round the banister corners. Stella’s heart felt like it was beating somewhere in her throat, her legs turning to jelly on the marble stairs.
The moment they got outside they looked at each other.
‘What way?’ asked Stella.
‘It was coming from Piccadilly side,’ Rebecca said, setting off towards the far end of Moreton Place.
Stella ran to catch up. ‘Can’t we just hide down one of the basement staircases?’
Rebecca shouted back, ‘We can’t wait and hope. We need to move.’
Stella kept looking back, waiting
for the appearance of a black Audi travelling at speed, but nothing came.
As they got towards the end of Moreton Place, she started to hear the sound of a powerful car coming somewhere in front of them. She looked back again and saw a clear road.
‘We should go back,’ Stella said, breathless.
‘It’s too late,’ Rebecca replied. ‘We’d never outrun a car on this length of street. We need to get out into the open. A busy road.’
They were about to turn the corner onto Belgrave Road, when out of nowhere a black 4x4 screeched to a halt side-on, blocking the women’s path.
The driver shouted through the open passenger door, ‘Get in!’
It was Jonathan Gale.
Back near the safe house end, a black Audi came screeching onto Moreton Place, the driver going at a terrifying speed.
The women piled quickly into the back. Stella tried to get the door shut but Gale had already taken off. The momentum of the acceleration was enough to close the door.
Gale pulled out in front of a double decker bus that had to slam its brakes on and swerve across the opposite lane to avoid a collision. Stella and Rebecca hadn’t had time to get their seatbelts on, and ended up flung to one side of the backseats.
As they found open road, Gale said, ‘What did I tell you.’ His eyes were wide with terror catching sight of the women in the rear-view mirror. ‘Goldcastle.’
Stella watched the Audi quickly round the corner in pursuit, mounting the pavement to get past the bus.
Gale passed a black laptop case to the backseat. ‘This is what you’ve been looking for. Take it and get out of here,’ Gale struggled to cut a path through the night-time traffic of taxis and Deliveroo cyclists. ‘I’ll hold them off.’
The Audi was making up a lot of ground, making insane overtakes and driving down the centre of the road.
Stella reached forward and took the laptop case, holding it close against her chest.
Rebecca could barely believe the one thing she’d been trying so hard to find was now right beside her. She said to Stella, ‘No matter what happens, don’t let it go.’
Official Secrets Page 31