Orkney Twilight (23 page)

No answer. He stepped over to the window, opened it, the red underbelly of the clouds announcing the sun’s return from its brief dip below the horizon, the passing of the storm. And when he turned to face her again, he had his skew-whiff smile in place.

‘Good name that, the Watcher,’ he said. ‘Suits him.’

She studied his expression sceptically.

‘Maybe I should tell you about the Watcher,’ he continued. ‘So then you’ll know to steer clear.’

‘Go on then, tell me.’

‘The Watcher does odd jobs for Intelligence.’

‘Intelligence?’

God, she had thought of lots of possibilities, but Intelligence wasn’t one of them.

‘Keep your voice down. I don’t want your mate waking up.’

‘The Watcher works for Intelligence?’

‘On an arm’s-length basis. He used to be a security clearance fact-checker. But he had a nasty habit of finding out more than Intelligence needed to know. So they moved him down a notch or two. Put him on a contract basis. And then a very occasional contract basis. Only use him when they are up to something really dodgy and want to deny any knowledge. A floater.’

‘Floater?’

‘Somebody they can cut loose quickly. A middleman. Intelligence set him up to hire the blokes who carry out the dirty work. He’s the one who makes sure orders are carried out. And cops it if they aren’t.’

He walked over to the kitchen door, opened it. A damp gust muscled in, carrying the mews of distant seagulls. He stood on the threshold, surveying the courtyard, lingering for a moment before he shut the door again and returned inside. His face clouded.

‘Not good news that he’s involved in this,’ he said. ‘Not great that Intelligence have put him on my tail. They must know that he’s got it in for me, that he has his own reasons for wanting me out of the way. Typical manoeuvre, letting loose a nutter with a gun and a grudge. Muddies the waters a bit, makes it less obvious that it’s them that are after me.’

‘Intelligence is after you?’

He shrugged. She took that as a yes. And almost smiled, nearly gave away her relief to hear Jim confirm that the Watcher was after him not her. Nothing to do with her trespassing at Greenham after all.

‘But why? Why is Intelligence after you? Aren’t you on the same side as Intelligence? Doesn’t your lot work with them?’

He snorted with exasperation. ‘You’re so bloody green sometimes. It worries me. You have to wise up. Of course we’re on the same fucking side as Intelligence, but that doesn’t mean we fall in with everything they bloody do. Doesn’t mean we just say yes sir, no sir, three bloody bags full sir. This isn’t some happy-clappy fairy tale. We’re not in sodding Wonderland. We’re not all sitting round at one big bloody tea party. Pass your cup, why don’t you, duchess. Here, have one of my fucking jammy dodgers. It doesn’t work like that. Everybody is out to protect their own slice of the cake. Their seat at the table. You have to watch your back in this game. You can’t afford to trust anybody. Not even the people you think are on your side.’

The cawing of the crow back on its chimney-top perch broke his flow.

‘Especially not the people you think are on your side,’ he added.

She scowled, trying to fathom what was going on. ‘But I thought Intelligence was only interested in Russian spies. I still don’t see why they are after you.’

‘Intelligence is branching out,’ he said. ‘The spooks have territorial ambitions. They’re expanding their reach, finding new ways to keep themselves employed.’

‘Why?’

‘They can see the writing on the wall; they know the Cold War can’t last forever. And the miners’ strike has meant they’ve been given the wink from the top, the blind eye to their methods, the political licence to expand their remit on domestic subversives.’ He glowered at her knowingly. ‘And they are moving pretty bloody quickly. So you and your mates had better watch it.’

‘But do they know anything about domestic…’ She stopped herself from saying subversives. She was beginning to sound like a member of the security forces.

‘Intelligence? Know about domestic subversives?’ Jim spluttered. ‘All they really know about is their bloody Whitehall dining clubs and their embassy dinners. Intelligence is run by a bunch of bloody public school boys. They haven’t learned anything over the years. They still think a posh education is a guarantee of reliability. Still can’t quite bring themselves to trust the hoi polloi. Although, of course, the ones they contract to do the dirty work – the arm’s-length floaters like the Watcher, the quickly disowned night-trawlers and shit fixers – they’re from a different class altogether. They’re all from the scummier end of the spectrum. Riff-raff. And worse.’

The kettle rattled on the stove. She lifted it hastily to stop it whistling and waking Tom, poured the water into her mug, left it to stew.

‘That’s why the Commander started our lot,’ Jim continued. ‘He used to work for Intelligence for a while. So he knows what they’re like. He could see the need for ordinary men on the ground, men who understood what was going on in their own backyard. Normal men. The Commander’s not stupid. Did Classics at Cambridge of course.’ He laughed. Sourly perhaps. ‘Latin. That’s what impressed him about me. I can read Latin. Suppose I have to thank the Jesuits for something. But he’s a practical man. Despite the education. He did a spell in the city before his stint with Intelligence. He’s quick at doing the sums, keeping a clear eye on the books. That’s what makes him a good manager of cops. Doesn’t lose the thread, doesn’t waste time on sentimentality; it costs too much. But of course he doesn’t like to see his investments undermined, his assets going to waste. All that training and experience. Doesn’t want his lot pushed out of the way by his one-time mates in Intelligence. So he tasked me with finding out what they are up to. Get the gen on Intelligence.’

He stared fixedly at the floor. The tick of the clock punctuated the silence; it had a backbeat she noticed now, an after-tick like the deadly murmur of a sticky heart-valve, a silent killer.

He shook his head wearily, his mouth a grim slash. ‘You think our lot is bad, you should see what Intelligence gets up to. There’s something a bit reckless about this outfit that’s operating on our turf. I don’t like their methods.’

Jesus, what was a bit reckless by Jim’s standards? Or was he was pulling the old trick; pointing at somebody else in order to distract from his own activities, sending her running in the wrong direction so he could nip out the back door and over the garden wall. She tried to pull together the information he had given her.

‘So Intelligence is involved in the miners’ strike in some way,’ she asserted. ‘And Intelligence is after you because—’

He didn’t let her finish her conjecture. ‘Intelligence tried to shove me out of the way. Ordered me to hand over the names of my contacts. I refused, but I knew they were shadowing me, watching the people I met. Targeting the people I knew. So I had to lie low. I guessed they wanted to use my contacts for their own ends. I thought they might try and plant somebody into my turf. But it’s backfired, because my contact decided to give me the dirt on them.’

His contact; that was Anne. So the manila envelope that Anne had handed to Jim must contain information about Intelligence. Their involvement in the miners’ strike. The Watcher was following Jim to try and retrieve the information, hand it back to Intelligence. She scratched the back of her neck. Agency rivalries, turf warfare, office politics. She wasn’t sure it all added up. What exactly was in the envelope that made Intelligence so keen to retrieve it? They must be doing something fairly dodgy if they were prepared to send the Watcher north to Orkney to track Jim and the envelope.

‘So Operation Asgard is a sort of secret services in-fight,’ she said.

His face darkened. She thought he was about to lose it. ‘I told you not to mention Operation Asgard.’

For a moment she was back at the Coney’s Tavern, Jim’s drunken declaration of doom, his finger jabbing in her face, telling her not to mention Operation Asgard again. She closed her eyes briefly, confused by Jim and his orders of silence that so often seemed to be mixed in with his dropped hints and revelations. She tried again to clarify. ‘This information on Intelligence you’ve picked up; you are going to hand it over to the Commander,’ she asserted.

He rubbed his mouth with the tips of his fingers, nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the mid-distance. Her mind kept churning. She pictured Jim at the Battery, the folded pages of
The Orkneyinga Saga
, the grid reference for the Ring of Brodgar. What was that all about? Was the Ring of Brodgar a meeting point? Or a drop-box perhaps. A place where he could leave the envelope for somebody else to collect so Jim didn’t have to hand the information over to the Commander himself? A courier who could slip past the Watcher’s surveillance undetected.

Jim cut in, interrupting her line of thought. ‘You have to keep on your toes in this game. Keep three moves ahead. If you want to stay alive, that is.’

The donkey’s nose nuzzled against the kitchen window. Jim picked up a hunk of bread from the counter, walked over, opened the window, fed the sodden beast. She stared at his back. Sensed his mind working overtime; fighting the fatigue. Sorting out his strategy perhaps. His next three moves.

He waited for the donkey to finish before he turned back to face her. ‘I should have guessed it was him,’ he said. ‘Should have known it was the Watcher when I saw that picture of my van in the local rag.’

She blinked, trying to grasp the relevance of the newspaper report, but Jim was moving on, not waiting for her to test the undercurrents.

‘We go back a long way,’ he continued. ‘Slimy piece of shit. He’s been after me for years. He disappears for a while. Goes off to do his dirty business elsewhere. Then he reappears again. Finds new ways to aggravate me.’

‘Why does the Watcher want to aggravate you?’

‘Long story,’ he said. He looked up at the clock.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Tell me. I’m not going to be able to go back to sleep now.’

Jim hesitated. And then he grinned. ‘Okay. Nothing like a good spook story for a stormy night.’

He paused again to collect his thoughts, check his lines were straight.

‘Tilbury,’ he said. ‘It all goes back to the docks. When I was there with Harry. Before I moved on to the Diggers. Back then, at Tilbury, it was all about the Soviets. We were watching the comings and goings from the Russian Embassy. Keeping an eye out for any diplomatic bags leaving Tilbury on the ships heading to the Baltic.’

He leaned back on the kitchen counter, his features relaxing. Enjoying, perhaps, the chance to talk about more distant dangers. Past enemies. The good old days with Harry.

‘Why did you have to watch out for the diplomatic bags?’

‘Everyone knows the diplomatic bags are a channel for the spooks. It’s an open secret. It’s part of the game. But there are rules – limits to what you can and can’t do. Harry and me, we were the tradesmen, the plumbers; our job was to make sure the system was running smoothly. Maintenance. No unexpected leaks. No overheating. That sort of thing. If we had any concerns, major problems, then we passed them on to Intelligence. So we were just doing our job.’

‘Why did you end up in a fight with the Watcher, then, if you were just doing your job?’

He gave her a withering look. ‘I was too good at my job. They didn’t appreciate my methods.’

She’d heard that line somewhere before. ‘What did you do?’

‘I nailed the Soviet spook. Intelligence knew there was an agent in the Russian Embassy, a handler, a middleman passing too much information back to Moscow. But they didn’t know exactly who it was.’

‘The third secretary,’ she said.

He looked momentarily nonplussed. ‘How did you know that?’

‘You told me.’

‘Well, anyway, it’s always the third secretary.’

‘That’s what you told me.’

‘When?’

‘Tilbury. When I was seven. I remember. You said it’s always the third secretary.’

He laughed. ‘It is.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the third secretary in an Embassy isn’t very important. Usually in charge of cultural affairs. Something like that. They don’t have anything to do except go to the theatre. Watch the ballet. Officially. So what are they doing with all that spare time?’

‘Spying?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Haven’t Intelligence worked that one out yet?’

‘Well, you can’t just point the finger.’ There was a slight huffiness to his tone.

‘You need some kind of lead, evidence to identify the agent. And I was the one who found it. I was mates with the grunts on the other side, the KGB bottom plodders, the ones that Intelligence couldn’t be bothered with because they thought they were too low down to know anything. But I went out drinking with them. God, those Russians can drink; it’s always straight to the hard stuff. That’s why I used to bring them back to our house – they were too much of a liability out on the town, running amok in the West End, lifting Levis to sell in Moscow. Anyway, it took a bit of time and a lot of vodka, but in the end they let something useful slip that pointed to the third secretary. Cultural attaché. Like I said, nothing to do but watch the ballet. So I passed the information on to the top brass on our side and they passed it on to Intelligence.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘It showed them up. Showed him up in particular. The Watcher. The agent in the Russian Embassy was his brief and he was going nowhere with it. He was trying to work his way back up the greasy pole, shorten the length of the rope that Intelligence had him dangling from. Make himself more of a permanent fixture. But I put paid to his plans because I nailed the identity of the Soviet agent before he had a chance to demonstrate his worth. That really pissed him off: shown up by some oik from the Force. He likes to think he’s smarter than a mere plod. He went to university after all. He has a degree.’

She briefly wondered whether he checked up on everybody’s academic qualifications.

‘So the Watcher kicked up a fuss with his bosses in Intelligence. He implied that I was too close to my KGB contacts. Insinuated that I was double-dealing.’