Dead in the Water (30 page)

Night has fallen and it has stopped raining as they are driven across to Customs and Immigration in the terminal building, steam rising from shallow pools of standing water on the concrete apron.

“
So, where do we go from here, friends?” asks Terry.

“
I’ve got to sort my passport out. And Jeremy’s going to London.”

“
Not from here, I’m not.” There are only half a dozen international flights a week. And none of them direct to anywhere in Europe. Jeremy is unhappy about leaving Rachel to sort out the business with her passport; and she has at least agreed to accompany him to Brasilia, where there’s a British Embassy. As he stands in the queue to buy tickets, looking over to the café, where Terry is getting the three of them some food, he wonders if their paths will cross again. The days ahead are going to be a rather empty without Terry’s acerbic humour.

“
Stand still and open eyes wide please, ” says the young woman at the
TAM
desk, after Jeremy has tendered his credit card. A light on the iris recognition machine illuminates briefly. “Again please.” Annoyed, he stands, looking straight ahead at the lens. “It says no funds. No credit. Sorry Señor Peters.”

“
You got a flight to catch.”

“
I’m going nowhere, Terry. It’s going take me at least ––”

“
If it’s so bloody urgent, then you’ve got to get out of here tonight.”

“
I told you. The bloody credit card’s fucked. I haven’t even got my own clothes. We need to talk money, Terry. Rachel and I are going to have to find somewhere to stay tonight. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to ask to borrow a couple of hundred.”

Terry is looking at the Departures notice board. “The last flight out of this God forsaken shithole is in less than an hour. You stop over in Brasilia, get a flight to London tomorrow. Rachel presents herself at the British Embassy, they sort out the passport and she follows on. I thought that was the idea.”

“
And how the hell am I to pay for this?”

“
Cash.” Terry delves into the satchel and pulls out the brown envelope that Peters gave him in Caracas.

“
I can’t take that.”

“
Don’t argue. I’ve more than enough to pay for the fuel we used, and refill the tank. I’ll have enough left over to rent an office here for a few weeks and get started. I’ve got the
Duck
.” Rachel looks irritated. She dislikes people making decisions for her. “It’s a loan. OK?”

“
I’ll pay you back when I get to the Consulate,” says Rachel.

“
Sure,” says Terry.

“
Why are you doing this?” asks Jeremy.

“
You did me a favour. This is better than Caracas.”

“
You said anarchy was good for business.”

“
Not if the fuckers shoot you first.”

“
Promise me it’s a loan, Terry.”

“
You make me laugh, you do. Too fucking right it’s a loan. Go and buy the fucking tickets – or do you want me to do that for you as well?”

“
We’ll be in touch,” says Jeremy.

“
Better had be.” Terry smiles, and walks away.

He is not one for long goodbyes.

54
North London

The street in Wood Green is easy to find – a row of shabby terraces, graffiti and slogans in Arabic script on the pavements – but he has to work out by a process of deduction which is Number 15; there are no markings on the door itself to identify it. He rings the bell. A short Middle Eastern looking, woman wearing a red and gold scarf around her head, opens the door. She looks startled by the presence of a stranger, says nothing.

“
Number 15?” asks Mark. “Is John Lacey here?” The sound of the name seems to frighten her. “John Lacey? Does he live here? I thought he lived here.” She shuts the door. Does she think he’s a bailiff, or from the police? He knocks on the door again. There’s a hushed argument in a language he doesn’t recognise.

He waits maybe a couple of minutes. As he steps back, intending to knock on one of the windows, a boy appears behind him. “My dad sent me.” The boy’s aggressive North London accent takes him by surprise. With wispy unshaved hair on his upper lip and an accusing stare, his face is that of a fifteen year old, though in height he looks no more than ten. “Who you lookin’ for?”

“
John Lacey. I’m a friend of his.”

“
Where you from?”

“
I’m a friend of John’s. He said to call by.”

The boy looks expectantly. Mark gives him a twenty pound note. He takes it, making no pretence of smiling, considers it, makes a barely perceptible nod of his head and gestures to Mark to follow him. They walk to the end of the street, then down a back alley, through a high gate and into what might have once been a garden, but is now a small yard, concreted over and cluttered with junk. The boy unlocks the back door; and they are into a small hallway with an uncarpeted staircase, at the top of which there’s a landing, no more than a metre square, a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a window which would look over the junkyard if it didn’t have cardboard stuck over the glass with parcel tape.

“
Here,” says the boy. He looks up at Mark, knocks on the door and then runs down the stairs, as if he has just lit a fuse.

“
Yeah,” comes a voice from inside.

“
John?”

“
No response.

“
Mark Boyd. I’m sorry I’m late.”

The sound of a bolt sliding back, a key turning in a heavy lock. The door opens. There’s no bulb in the small hallway. In the moment that neither of them speak, Mark snatches at the possibility that the figure silhouetted against light coming from the room at the end of the hall could be Stephen. There’s no confusing the voice, however. “Go through,” says John Lacey, shutting the door, locking and bolting it before joining him in the narrow kitchen. He seems almost amused by Mark’s evident discomfort at the mess. The cracked green lino could have been here since the fifties; two wooden chairs stand on opposite sides of a small wooden table, its white and black marble-effect plasticised top stained with cigarette burns. The sink is filled with unwashed dishes, hairy mould growing on stains of gravy and egg yolk; empty wine and beer bottles on the floor; tea bags piled in a biscuit tin lid.

“
I don’t live here,” says John, but it’s not an apology.

“
My son’s missing,” says Mark. “Stephen Boyd. Cathy Barnes at
One World
thought you might know where he is.”

“
Did she?”

“
Steve’s done a lot of volunteer work.”

“
Yeah.”

“
We’re really worried about him.”

“
I don’t like you, Boyd. And I don’t like what you stand for.”

“
I know.”

“
You’re a fucking collaborationist, you know that.” He says the word as if Mark were working for an occupying army.

“
I do what I think is right. I know the government’s dragging its heels. It makes me angry too.”

“
Not angry enough though.”

“
I understand what you’re saying… Can we talk about Steve? You know him? You know who I’m talking about?”

“
Worked as a volunteer, yeah.”

“
Do you know where he is now?”

“
Problem is people don’t trust you, Boyd.”

“
I know things have slipped. I thought I could do more.” The acrid reek of stale nicotine and alcohol makes the small kitchen horribly claustrophobic.

“
Steve’s OK.”

“
You’ve seen him since Saturday?”

“
Yeah. He’s alright.”

“
I need to see him.”

“
He might not want to see you.”

“
Can you tell me how to get in touch with him?”

John leans forward, looks quizzically at Mark, smiles wryly. “You could be working for the police.”

“
I’m not.”

“
And how do I know that?”

“
You don’t. But I give you my word.”

“
I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tell Steve you want to see him. Then it’s his decision. Right.”

“
Thank you.” John gets up, goes to the fridge, gets out a bottle of beer. “You want one?”

“
Not for me thanks.”

John opens a bottle for himself. “Steve’s OK. Yeah. He’s alright. Sound.”

“
You knew Allan Hunter, didn’t you?” says Mark. John doesn’t respond. “I was with Suzie White earlier this evening. She told me Allan had been doing some work for Andrew Linden when he was arrested. This isn’t a trap, I promise you. I’m not working for the police. They’re tapping my phones. There is no way I am working for them. What the police and the security services are doing is madness. And, for what it’s worth, I think holding Allan Hunter under the Terrorism Act is worse than madness. I don’t know what’s going on any more. There’s something wrong.”

“
Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. There’s something wrong. Trouble is, Mark Boyd, I don’t know what it fucking is. And no, I don’t trust you.”

“
What’s the connection between Hunter’s arrest and Andrew Linden?”

John looks at him, expressionless, takes a drink of beer. “You tell me, Boyd.”

“
He’d been working at Andrew Linden’s house, drawing up plans. Next day he’s arrested under the Terrorism Act. So there’s a link, isn’t there. They must have thought he’d planted something at Linden’s house. A bomb. Bugs.”

“
Go on.”

“
The thing is… I was at Linden’s house the next day, the day after they arrested Allan Hunter. There were other people there as well. Government people. The police would have been swarming over that house if they’d thought for a moment that Hunter had ––”

“
So what are you saying?”

“
You knew Hunter.”

John’s face is poker deadpan.

“
Did you see Allan that week? Did he say anything to you?”

“
You have to ask yourself, don’t you, what’s a guy like Linden doing in a government that says it’s working to a ‘radical green agenda’?”

“
He’s changed. It’s got to be a broad coalition, that’s the only way you can get public consensus. Plenty of people on the right accuse him of selling out.”

“
He’s an operator, Boyd. He does what’s needed. What’s the phrase they use on the stock exchange? A spread of interests.”

“
But why arrest Allan Hunter?”

“
You tell me.”

“
Do you know?”

“
Do I know what?”

“
Why they arrested him.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“
You must have an idea. A theory.”

“
It’s my guess he saw something he shouldn’t have. Fingers in pies. That’s my guess.”

“
Like?

“
I don’t know.”

“
Like what?”

“
I told you, I don’t know,” says John, then stands up – a clear signal that Mark’s visit is at an end. “You got twenty quid?”

“
What?”

“
Your kid. Steve. If your phone’s being tapped, you won’t want him ringing you on it.”

“
I suppose not.”

“
Right then.” He opens a kitchen drawer, and for a chill moment Mark thinks he’s getting a knife. Instead, when he turns round he passes Mark a mobile phone. “Pay As You Go,” he explains. “I know the number. The police don’t. Right. I’ll tell Steve. He’ll contact you on that. I’ll get him to do it tonight. Trash it when you’re done. Twenty quid. That’s what it cost me.”

Mark can’t bear the thought of going back to his apartment – so he sits in the car, waiting and distractedly wondering whether there might be something in what John said. Linden could have left confidential government papers on a desk, or a computer running while he left the room. Did Hunter steal papers that could jeopardise security. It wouldn’t even have to be confidential papers. Names, private addresses, private phone numbers.

He turns on the radio to pass the time. The News carries stories of arrests at the storage depot of a hardwood importer, where a firebomb attack has been foiled. The police are confidently stating that it’s not
The Angels of Light
. His irritation at the idiocy of copy cat attacks spurs him to action. Drive around – at least he’ll know if he’s being watched and followed. After a couple of miles going nowhere, and nothing in the rear view mirror, his own actions the only thing that seems at all out of the ordinary, he finds another parking spot. Ten minutes becomes twenty; twenty drifts to fifty. He’s about to give up and head back to the flat when a text comes through on the twenty quid phone:

Where the hell did Stephen fall off the swings? Oh, God, where do memories go when you need them? It must have been bad; something he’d expect Mark to remember. There was that time he had concussion when he crashed into a tree on his skateboard. Nursery school? Primary School? It’ll have been in London, surely… Visiting George, Joanna’s brother. Of course. Hampstead Heath. Parliament Hill Fields. Oh brilliant, Stephen. You want me to go and lurk on Hampstead Heath near the children’s playground at one in the morning in the hope of meeting a good looking young man….