Gagged & Bound (27 page)

‘I know. I’m sorry. But David deserves his holiday.’

‘I was joking, as you very well know. You’re beginning to look more human, Trish. Are you sure you don’t want any of this wine? It’s fantastic.’

‘Antony made me drink at least half a bottle at lunchtime. That’s more than enough for one day.’

‘OK. I’ll finish this and then leave you to sleep. You look as though you could do with a solid twelve hours.’

We’re all right, Trish thought, blowing him a kiss. We don’t have to put everything into words. It’s all still there. It can still work.

 

Roland Benting phoned at half past eleven on Saturday morning, just as Trish was getting properly stuck into the final edit of her penultimate opinion.

‘If you’ll give me your address, I can arrange for them to send a messenger to collect your tape,’ he said.

‘How will I know who they are? I mean, will the messenger have some kind of identification.’

‘That’s not how it works.’

‘I’m not sure I’d feel confident enough to hand over the evidence without some security. Couldn’t I take it to that green and yellow building on the river?’

He laughed. ‘That’s Six, not Five. What do you want, a password?’

Trish felt remarkably stupid, but she’d rather feel stupid than irresponsible.

‘I need to see this into the hands of someone trustworthy, identified by someone else I recognise.’

‘You mean me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m in Wiltshire,’ he said irritably. ‘I suppose I could try to
arrange for you to be seen in Millbank, where their offices are. Unless what you have is of instant importance, it would probably have to be Monday morning. Would that do you?’

‘Thank you,’ she said, dreading the thought of telling David she’d be late.

‘I’ll ring you back if I can manage to sort something out. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything. These people are a law unto themselves. They have to be.’

Trish was lying beside a sub-tropical pool, with palm fronds all around her, watching David frolicking in the water with his new friends. She’d been impressed with the ease of his assimilation into the group of three boys and two girls, and thoroughly amused to hear him telling them about the exploring game he’d invented. The pool was apparently the Amazon River, and half of them were to be a raiding party from one of Francis Drake’s ships in search of El Dorado. The others were to be indigenous inhabitants, hiding gold bars and secrets from them.

From where she was sitting, it looked as though he’d persuaded them to carry out all his plans. Every so often he would glance back at her, as though to make sure she was still there, but she’d never seen him enjoying himself with such abandon.

She was dressed in a plain black tankini in case she found the temptation of the water overmastering, but so far she’d resisted it. There was a small stack of paperback novels beside her long chair. None had caught her imagination yet. Instead, she’d been running through everything that had happened since Roland Benting had phoned back to say he had managed to arrange an appointment for her with the duty officer in Millbank at five thirty on Saturday.

‘Take your passport with you,’ had been his final instruction.

Hey ho, Valparaiso, Trish had sung to herself in a tension-busting attempt at frivolity.

She still wasn’t sure what she’d expected when she penetrated the big pale-grey building on the north bank of the Thames, but all she’d found was a conventional, slightly old-fashioned office. She’d had to show her passport to several different people, and walk through a metal detector, while her bag went through an X-ray machine. Not knowing enough about its likely effect on the audio tape, she’d insisted on handing that to the security officer separately from the rest. Then the uniformed woman had led her to a bank of lifts and accompanied her to the third floor, where she handed Trish over to another woman, in plain clothes.

In her early thirties, the woman had introduced herself as Margaret Cousins. Trish didn’t suppose that was really her name, but what did it matter? She escorted Trish to a small office with windows overlooking the river and invited her to sit down and explain what it was she had to hand over.

Trish told the story of her meeting with John Crayley and their discussion of the possibilities of adopted children ever being as happy as those brought up with their natural parents. She watched Margaret’s face but saw nothing beyond conventional courtesy.

‘And I wanted to know more, so I went to call on his adoptive mother.’

‘Why did you want to know more?’

‘For a book I’m thinking of writing. A companion to this one.’ Trish had taken the precaution of bringing with her the trade paperback edition of her book about children and crime.

‘May I?’ Margaret reached for the book, as one who had the right to anything brought into her building. ‘Thank you.’

She didn’t even open it, merely put it on the desk beside her.

‘Carry on.’

‘And I was surprised at the frankness with which she talked to me about him and the way she’d brought him up. Eventually it became clear to me she believed I was part of some positive vetting operation, even though I had explained that I am a barrister.’

‘Did she tell you what kind of vetting operation?’

‘No. But I assumed – since she clearly expected to be asked questions and was so cooperative in answering them – that it must be for a job he wanted, rather than for some kind of hostile investigation.’

‘Then why have you come to us? Wouldn’t the police have been more suitable?’ There was no sign of suspicion, just detached curiosity. Trish was impressed and tried to look just as detached when she said. ‘Possibly. But I have read too much in the last few years about corruption in the Met to be confident of finding a safe person to talk to there.’

The other woman raised her eyebrows in polite surprise, murmuring, ‘Corruption in the Metropolitan Police?’

‘Wasn’t it one of the commissioners who said publicly that he had a minority of officers who betrayed police operations to criminals?’

‘I see. And so you talked to a colleague of your own, knowing that he had had professional contact with us, hoping for an introduction?’

‘That’s right. It seemed the safest way.’ Trish remembered she was supposed to know nothing of MI5’s interest in John Crayley and tried to look innocent, as she added, ‘I assume you do still have an involvement with organised crime? I mean, in spite of all these reports about the new agency that’s taking over the main responsibility from the police and Customs and Excise.’

‘I don’t understand. What bearing does your interviewing this police officer’s mother have on organised crime?’ Margaret’s voice was still measured and her face pleasantly interested.

‘It was the name she gave me for his natural father.’ Trish put the tape on the table and laid Gillian’s letter open beside it. Margaret didn’t touch the letter herself, but she did read it. Trish was glad to see that even she hesitated for an instant after that. Then she looked up, the same smile just slightly widening her lips and crinkling the corners of her brown eyes.

‘I see. Thank you for the responsible attitude you have taken. I shall make sure that the information reaches the right people.’ She got to her feet, displaying a litheness at odds with her frumpy clothes and middle-aged hair style. ‘And now I’ll take you back to the lift.’

‘Don’t you want me to sign something?’ Trish asked, which made Margaret laugh.

‘The Official Secrets Act, you mean? I don’t think we need go that far. I’m sure you won’t turn this into a witty anecdote to entertain your next legal dinner.’

‘Why?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Why are you sure I won’t chatter about it?’

Margaret’s smile was more human now. ‘Your record speaks for itself.’

The uniformed guard was still waiting by the lift. Trish was handed over, feeling like a prisoner about to be exchanged at some foreign checkpoint. She looked all round the high-ceilinged hall and out towards the great well in the middle of the building, detesting the thought of anyone’s talking of her ‘record’ in a place like this.

Who had talked about her? she wondered now. And when? And why had the security services wanted to know anything about her?

‘You must try the flume, Trish,’ David’s excited voice broke into her uncomfortable thoughts and she dredged up a smile for him. He stood in front of her, dripping with water and grinning.
‘It’s brilliant. Come on. Leave those books. It’s really really warm, too. You’ll like it. Come on and join us.’

 

John Crayley sat in the pub with a half pint and a cheese roll, waiting for his controller. With the job in the bag, they shouldn’t have had to meet like this. It irritated him because he’d worked for years to be able to come and go openly into Millbank or even one of the outstations. The grimmest of those would be preferable to the performance required to meet out in the open.

A man slid onto the bench beside him. John didn’t need to look to recognise him. The smell of dry-cleaning fluid, shaving cream and something precisely personal was familiar enough after all these years, but he did look and found the expected sight of Martin Wight’s long face and flat grey eyes.

‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Not at all. The cheese is a bit old, but the bread’s fine.’

‘I picked ham.’

The silliness of it, John thought, hating the way the questions and answers had to be disguised. ‘Were you followed?’ ‘No, I wasn’t.’ ‘Glad to hear it.’

No one in the crowd was remotely interested in them. They had their backs to the wall and were sitting next to the flashing, ringing slot machine so no one could eavesdrop. A skilled lipreader might work out what they were saying, but they took care of that with raised glasses and mouths full of food.

‘Who is Trish Maguire?’ Martin asked.

‘A barrister. Woman I met at dinner with a colleague in the Met. Caro Lyalt, in fact. Why?’

‘When?’

‘Couple of weeks ago. Less. She’s an expert on child-development issues and expressed interest in hearing about my background as an adoptee. Why?’

‘She’s been visiting your mother, who appears to have
believed she was one of us and has therefore bestowed upon Maguire a tape she secretly recorded of a conversation between herself and your real father.’

‘Oh, shit!’ John put down the cardboard-tasting roll and wiped his hands on an inadequate paper napkin.

‘Precisely.

‘What’s in the tape?’

‘An admission that you’ve been working for him throughout your career.’

John felt as if someone had stuck an icy skewer through one eye direct into his brain.

‘Which means,’ Martin said, ‘among many other things, that I can’t be seen to bring you in. The job will have to go to one of the others. And clearly not Lyalt, who must know a great deal more than she’s let on.’

‘Shit!’ he said again, with more violence. How many more women were going to threaten the life for which he’d worked so hard and risked so much?

He still didn’t know what it was that had made Stephanie suspect him. Her questions had become more and more intrusive and her denunciations of everything he was trying to conceal sharper and sharper, until he’d come to believe it couldn’t go on. But maybe he should have stuck it out. Would he have been able to keep her quiet if he had stayed with her? His jaw clicked painfully as he ground his teeth. Why couldn’t she have had the wit to hold her tongue?

‘Hey, hold up, old man.’ Martin joggled his elbow. ‘It’s not that bad. You’d have been due for a rest soon, so we’ll just bring it forward. Between us we can sort out a way to shift you up to Manchester or somewhere until the heat’s off and everyone’s stopped watching the two of us so closely.’

John kept his face blank, but his thoughts were churning round and round: bloody Caro Lyalt; bloody women. Why can’t they concentrate on their own affairs and keep their
sodding mouths shut? How the hell am I going to sort out this mess now?

 

On her way back to her office, Caro had to pass the Sam Lock incident room. For once the venetian blinds that lined its long internal windows were open and she could see in. A clutch of plain-clothes officers was huddled around one computer terminal. One shoved his hand up in a victory salute as a roar went up from the others. Caro muttered, looked for PC Greg Lane.

There was no sign of him, so she phoned round when she got back to her desk until she found him, then asked him to come up and see her.

‘Thanks,’ she said when he’d shut the door of her office. ‘I didn’t see you in the incident room as I walked past just now, but I wondered if you knew what they’ve found. They were clearly celebrating something.’

‘Yeah. They’re full of it. You know that evidence I told you about that was brought in last week, the note we think is from one of the most senior Slabbs to an underling? The scientific tests came back today and they’ve got Sam Lock’s fingerprints and DNA
and
Stephanie Taft’s on it. So there is a link between them, just like the bloke who brought it in told us there was.’

Clever old Trish, thought Caro, as she said aloud, ‘And what about the Slabbs? Any of their DNA?’

‘Not identified yet. But there are traces from at least three other people, all men. They’re being checked against the register now. We’re hoping there’ll be something from Jack or Johnnie Slabb. Then we’ll have them.’

Has anyone asked John Crayley for a DNA sample yet? Caro wondered. If not, Stephanie’s coup in getting hold of the note will be wasted.

‘You don’t happen to know what the note said, do you?’ she said.

‘No. They haven’t told me. Guv, I ought to go. I’m supposed to be out on house-to-house again.’

‘Sure. Off with you. As you go, could you take this down to the custody sergeant for me?’ She handed him a note about a suspect who’d been in his charge for fourteen hours already and would have to be interviewed one more time before they charged him or let him go. There had to be an excuse for having any uniformed constable up here in her office.