Thunder in the Blood (26 page)

‘Why?’ I said at last. ‘Why did they do it?’

‘Is that a serious question?’

‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘if you don’t mind me asking.’

‘Not at all.’ He offered me a thin smile. ‘It’s your head, too, as it happens.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. They’ll get round to writing to you sooner or later.’ He paused. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘before I forget.’

He took a buff envelope from his pocket and gave it to me. I opened it. Inside, made out in my name, was a cheque for £4516.98.

‘What’s that for?’ I said.

‘Your American expenses. It’s a guess, I’m afraid, but it should help.’

‘It’s more than enough,’ I said. ‘What about the receipts?’

‘Submit them as usual.’

‘And what about the difference?’

I looked at him. Mentally, I’d calculated my American expenses at just under four thousand pounds. That included hotels, hire car, air tickets and one or two extras.

Stollmann shrugged again. ‘Put it down to wear and tear,’ he said grimly. ‘Call it combat fatigue.’

He signalled the waiter and ordered beans on toast. When they arrived he dribbled a large X of Brown Sauce across the top while I finished telling him most of what had happened in the States. In between mouthfuls, he drank more coffee, listening in silence while I described events in Dallas. When I got to the bit about Peter Devlin, he nodded, mopping his plate with a slice of white bread.

‘You talk to him at all?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Priddy mention him?’

‘No. Refused to discuss it.’

‘But you tried?’

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘Of course.’

I hesitated, awaiting more questions, but Stollmann pushed his plate carefully to one side and told me to go on. When I finally got to the end of it, he was studying the menu.

I looked at him a moment. A great deal of stress and a bad case of jet lag weren’t doing much for my temper.

‘So you’re out on your own?’ I said drily. ‘Free agent?’

‘Hardly.’

‘No?’

He gazed at me a moment, not answering. Then he glanced round, signalling the waiter for the bill, reaching for his wallet.

‘Let’s walk,’ he said.

We left the café and stood at the kerbside a moment. The last of the weekend traffic was swirling down Kingsway and there were little squads of cinema-goers bustling towards Leicester Square and the Tottenham Court Road. I glanced at Stollmann. He was hunched inside his thin, black raincoat. One corner of his mouth was still smudged with brown sauce.

We walked south, along the Strand, then down by Charing Cross Station. On the Embankment, the shadows hid a ragged line of cardboard boxes. There were bodies inside, already asleep, huddled in newspapers. We climbed the steps to the pedestrian bridge beside the railway line that crosses the Thames. The water was black beneath us, the trains clattering past.

Half-way across the bridge, Stollmann stopped. Turning his back on the railway, he leaned against the parapet, his elbows on the top, gazing out at the lights downstream. A tramp asked for money. Stollmann gave him a pound. The man lurched off, muttering to himself. It was a cold, raw night, the cloud mostly gone, a bitter wind off the river.

‘You’ll have gathered most of it,’ Stollmann said at last, ‘if I’m any judge.’

‘You mean Priddy?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ I nodded. It all seemed logical enough. Priddy had doubtless
been encouraging exports into Iraq. Stuff that should never have got through. Thus the Dallas links with Peter Devlin and Beckermann.

‘We’re on to him?’ I said. ‘Priddy’s under investigation? Is that what we’re saying?’

Stollmann looked at me a moment. ‘We?’ he said bleakly.

I gazed at him, beginning at last to understand. MI5 had been off-limits to the politicians for years, one of the few government agencies they couldn’t control. Now, it seemed, they were putting the record straight. Starting with Stollmann.

‘Is that why they’ve sacked you,’ I said, ‘for going after Priddy?’

‘Effectively,’ he nodded, ‘yes.’

‘For asking the wrong questions? Upsetting our masters?’

‘Yes.’

‘No backing? No authority?’

Stollmann said nothing for a moment. A woman with a cello case walked past.

‘I come from Customs and Excise,’ he said at length. ‘Wrong pedigree. No chums. In this game, it pays to have chums.’

I nodded again, remembering the day I’d trailed Stollmann to the Westminster Baths, the image of him still fresh in my mind, the stiff, driven figure, forcing his way up and down the pool. Stollmann had made no friends at Curzon House. He was too serious, too diligent, too stern. He was looking at me now. His eyes were very black.

‘As a matter of interest,’ I said, ‘what do you think about the other thing?’

‘Other thing?’

‘Wesley Keogh’s little theory. The war that never was. All that.’

Stollmann frowned. ‘I think it’s a fantasy,’ he said at last, ‘and I think it’s irrelevant.’

‘So why did you give me the file in the first place?’

‘To get you to Dallas. Alongside Priddy.’

‘You knew he’d be there?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you knew Wesley was going?’

‘Yes. I’d seen the brief from Aldridge. I knew Wallace was the prime source. Wallace lived in Dallas. Sooner or later, Keogh would meet him. All I had to do was check the bookings.’

‘The airline bookings?’

‘Yes.’

‘Knowing you could send me, too? Using Wesley as cover? When Priddy was there?’

‘Yes.’

I stared down at the water. A tug had appeared beneath us, pushing hard against the flood tide. Behind, one by one, a string of barges.

I turned back to Stollmann. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you simply tell me? I could have gone to Dallas in any case, just for Priddy. I could have done the whole number on the man. No Wesley. No Gulf War. Just me and him.’ I paused. ‘So why dress it up?’

For the first time, Stollmann smiled. ‘You think that was for your benefit,’ he said grimly, ‘all the games about Keogh? You think that’s why they’ve—’

He broke off, his rage for once running away with him. He turned on his heel, beginning to walk again. I caught up with him, angry myself now, my head full of questions I should have asked far earlier. I grabbed his arm, a clumsy gesture, but effective. He stopped, shaking me off.

‘They?’ I said. ‘Who’re they?’

‘Who do you think?’

‘We talking about Five? Curzon House?’

He looked at me, saying nothing, a silence that affirmed my every word. He began to walk again, but I stood in front of him, knowing he’d have to stop, knowing that the very awkwardness of the scene would force him, in the end, to talk.

‘Why they’ve what?’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

He shook his head, his elbows back on the parapet. At the end of the bridge, where the steps dropped down to the South Bank, I could see another tramp heading our way. News of Stollmann’s largesse must have got around. Time was short.

‘You’re after Priddy,’ I said, ‘and they’ve stopped you. They’ve stopped you because they’re the masters now, they’re in charge.’ I paused. ‘Am I right?’

‘Masters?’ he asked. ‘Who?’

‘The politicians. HMG. People like Priddy.’ I bent close to him. ‘The spivs. Just tell me, am I right?’

Stollmann looked at me for a second or two. ‘Yes,’ he said softly.

I nodded, determined not to lose the initiative, determined to squeeze Stollmann dry while time and his own resentments allowed.

‘So they’ve seen through Wesley and Aldridge and Extec and all the rest of it. They’ve seen through all the smoke and mirrors, all your little alibis, and now they’ve dragged you off.’

‘Yes.’

‘Before it gets too awkward?’

‘Yes.’

‘For Priddy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Devlin senior?’

‘Yes.’

‘And one or two others?’

‘Of course.’

‘Because now even Five does their bidding?’

Stollmann nodded, looking away again. There was a long silence. Another train was on the way.

‘Exports,’ he said at last. ‘They think we’re part of the export drive. That’s the rationale. That’s the line they take. Every shoulder to the wheel. Including ours.’ He gazed downriver, towards St Paul’s and the fairy lights of the City of London. ‘There’s no one left in this country who isn’t trying to sell something,’ he said bitterly. ‘You know that?’

We walked to Waterloo Station. The bars were still open and I suggested a drink. Stollmann shook his head, his hands plunged deep inside his coat pockets, his eyes already scanning the departures board, looking for the next train home.

‘I’ve got a couple of interviews tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Pays to have a clear head.’

‘Interviews?’ I stared at him. ‘Already?’

‘Yes.’ He offered me his thin smile. ‘I was once an accountant, believe it or not. I think I might go back to it. There’s still lots of work around …’ the smile widened, ‘mainly in liquidations.’

I nodded, thinking again about the contents of the file this strange, solitary man had handed me, all those busy weeks ago.

‘You really think all the Gulf War stuff’s a fantasy?’ I said. ‘You really think that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’re blind,’ I said quietly. ‘All you see is Priddy and Devlin. The little guys. Trees in the wood.’

Stollmann stared at me. His voice was sharp again, a brief gust of anger. ‘
Little
guys?’

‘Yes. Wesley started the other end, with the big picture. That’s the way journalists work. Go for the big theory. The headline. Then set about proving it.’ I smiled, my hand on his arm. ‘Don’t believe me?’

Stollmann looked at me a moment longer, back under control. Then he shook his head, turning away, one eye on the big overhead clock.

‘Not a word,’ he said. ‘But good luck.’

24

Wesley stayed in hospital for the next month. I visited most days, spending an hour or so at his bedside, expecting always to find him better, the old Wesley, that extra-special mixture of earnestness, outrage and high camp.

His moods swung wildly. Sometimes, he’d barely bother to stay awake, just a face on the pillow, the ghost of a smile at this story or that, a grunted request for a different station on the bedside radio, or a cup of tea from the passing trolley. Other times, he’d be sitting up in bed, alert again, engaged, passing on bits and pieces of ward gossip, asking me questions about the States, what I’d made of Jake McGrath, of Grant Wallace, of Raoul Delahunty, whom he now referred to, in his brighter moments, as ‘my Dallas screw’. All this I ended up telling him three or four times, simple repetition, nothing added or embellished, and after a week or two I’d begun to suspect the worst.

I put the thought to Mark, his faithful boyfriend. We’d worked out a rota between us for visiting times. Sometimes we overlapped, sharing a table at the Towpath Coffee Shop in the new part of the hospital across the bridge, comparing notes.

‘He’s different,’ I said. ‘Something’s gone. Something’s missing.’

Mark was nodding. ‘I know. I’ve thought about it a lot. If he was a radio, you’d do something about it. You’d give him a shake, tune him in properly.’

‘Maybe it’s a lousy reception area.’ I smiled. ‘Have you thought of that?’

He said nothing for a moment or two. His patience, I knew, was wearing thin. Wesley had always pushed him to the limit and now was no different. Except the compensations had gone:
the laughter, the energy, the mischief in the man. Mark sipped at his cappuccino.

‘They’ll discharge him sooner or later,’ he said quietly. ‘He won’t be here for ever.’

‘I know.’

‘He wants me to look after him. He can’t stand buddying. Strangers. Charity. All that.’

‘So I gather.’

Mark looked away a moment. The more I got to know him, the more I liked him. He was quiet and kind and shy, not at all Wesley’s style, and the fact that he was HIV positive himself made the whole thing hideously complicated.

‘Could you cope?’ I said slowly. ‘Full time?’

He glanced across at me, wall-eyed. ‘No,’ he said at last.

I nodded, understanding the realities behind the muttered, one-word answer. The experience of everyday life in Victoria Ward had unnerved him, but the changes in Wesley had made it infinitely worse. Wesley had pitched his tent in the no man’s land between HIV and the last rites, and what Mark had seen so far had terrified him.

‘His brain’s going,’ he said, ‘I know it is. There’s stuff he can’t remember any more. Simple stuff. Places we’ve been. Things we’ve done. Music. Clubs. Even his mother’s second name. They passed on a message from her the other day. On the phone. He couldn’t work out who she was.’

He looked at me. His eyes were moist.

‘But there are other times,’ I put my hand over his, ‘when he’s back on form.’

‘I know. I know.’ He shook his head, fumbling for a Kleenex. ‘Believe me, I know.’

‘So he might get better … mightn’t he?’

‘That’s not what they say.’

‘Who?’

‘The doctors. The consultant. The one with the limp.’

‘You’ve talked to him?’ He nodded. I’d bumped into the consultant a number of times. He was a small, thin Indian with a withered leg and a permanently doleful expression, not one of life’s optimists. ‘What does he say?’

‘He says he’s got abcesses on the brain. Scars. You can see
them on the X-rays. He showed me. White marks, four or five of them, so…’ he shrugged, blowing his nose again, ‘I imagine that explains it.’

‘Are they permanent? These scars?’

‘Yes. So I’m told.’

‘No chance of getting better?’

‘Not short term.’

‘Long term?’

Mark glanced up at me, a strange look on his face, at once despairing and reproachful. ‘There
is
no long term,’ he said softly. ‘That’s the whole fucking point.’

I went home that afternoon, knowing exactly what I should do. Looking after Wesley would be a full-time occupation, no question, but two phone calls from the personnel department at Curzon House had already convinced me that time wouldn’t be a problem. MI5 was evidently confronting a major reorganization. Establishment costs were being slashed right across Whitehall. The woman in the personnel department had a word for it. She called it ‘downsizing’, and the way she used the word suggested that the loss of jobs – including mine – was simply a sensible piece of management reform.

I, though, knew different. I’d listened to Stollmann. I’d heard the anger and the contempt in his voice. And I knew that the politicians, after decades of frustration, were finally in the saddle. Employees who didn’t toe the party line were out. MI5 had become simply another arm of Smith Square, an intelligence machine dedicated to buttressing the doubtful gains of thirteen troubled years.

I arrived back at Fulham to find a letter on the mat. The letter confirmed that my employment with MI5 was being terminated, effective at once. There was a consolatory message from my Group Controller, a new appointee whom I’d never met, and a separate sheet of paper detailed the arrangements the service had made for my redundancy payments. This money would not, I was assured, be subject to tax.

A few days later, back at Wesley’s bedside, I gave him the good news.

‘I’m a free woman,’ I said, ‘your future’s secure.’

He eyed me from the bed without enthusiasm. Sometimes, like now, he was as alert as ever, the old Wesley.

‘What future’s that?’ he said.

‘Convalescence. When they let you out.’

‘What about Mark?’

‘Mark’s been offered a play,’ I lied, ‘in Glasgow.’

Wesley said nothing, turning his face to the wall. He’d never been one for the normal rules of conversation – question, response – but since I’d come back from the States he’d developed a habit of lapsing into total silence. If he didn’t like what he heard, he simply ignored it. I leaned forward. The drugs he was taking gave his breath a sweet, slightly cheesy flavour.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I told him. ‘It’ll be good. You’ll need someone around for a bit. Plus we can try and make sense of…’ I smiled, ‘you know.’

‘What?’

‘The war. All that.’

Wesley’s face turned towards me on the pillow. One yellow eye opened. ‘Yeah?’ he said.

The morning before Wesley was due to leave hospital, late November, I arrived earlier than usual. The bus had fooled me by turning up on time and I had half an hour in hand. Because I was scrupulous about keeping to the visiting schedule we’d agreed, I waited downstairs, in the big entrance hall, sitting on a bench beside the staircase. I was still on the
Guardian
’s front page when someone stopped beside me. I glanced up. It was Derek Aldridge.

‘Long time,’ he said pleasantly, extending a hand, ‘no see.’

We went outside, into the thin winter sunshine. Aldridge had called by on his way to an interview at the British Forces Broadcasting studios, half a mile north, across the Grand Union Canal. He needed to be there by eleven. We began to walk.

‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘How is he?’

Aldridge said nothing for a moment, buttoning his coat. Only when we were climbing the steps to the canal bank did he answer my question.

‘Changed, hasn’t he?’ he said. ‘Changed a lot.’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Lost the sharpness. The edge.’

I looked at him. ‘It’s called AIDS,’ I said, ‘you may have heard.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just…’ He paused.

We were on the towpath now, beside the canal. There was a
narrowboat moored beside the further bank. Smoke curled from a stove-pipe chimney near the bow. Aldridge was still frowning, still hunting for the right word.

‘Sad?’ I suggested.

‘Sure, sure, but something else, too.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t pin it down, can’t put my finger on it. He was always so… bloody stroppy. Even that seems to have gone. He’s just… flat. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just a vacant space. I never thought I’d see it. Never. Not him. Not Wesley.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s as if he’s gone already. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ I said bleakly, ‘I do.’

There was a long silence. Gulls swooped over a neat row of council refuse trucks parked opposite. Aldridge, after another look at his watch, seemed in no hurry to move on.

‘What’s the interview about?’ I said idly.

Aldridge pulled a face. ‘The Saudis.’

‘What about the Saudis?’

‘There’s a big arms deal. You may have read about it. Al Yamamah. It’s huge. Really huge. We’ve delivered a couple of billion’s worth so far. There’s another ten billion to come.’

‘And?’

‘There may be a problem. Nobody really knows. The Saudis are making all the right noises, and we certainly did our bit in the Gulf, but the Americans have their noses in the trough, too.’ He paused. ‘These things are always trickier than they seem. As you may have gathered.’

He looked down at me a moment, smiling, an invitation to share my tiny secrets, but I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my back on the canal and leaned on the balustrade, looking across the road towards the hospital.

‘How are you and Extec?’ I said. ‘Friends again?’

Aldridge nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact.’

‘Didn’t pull their advertising in the end? Make life hard for you?’

‘No, not at all.’ He smiled again.
‘Au contraire.’

‘Business as usual?’

‘Yes, plus some.’ The smile became a grin. ‘Rather encouraging, actually.’

I hesitated a moment wondering whether to pursue it, then
shrugged, deciding there was no point. The thing was history. What mattered now was Wesley.

‘Good,’ I said, offering him a bright smile of my own, ‘nice to hear someone’s making it.’

Wesley left hospital a couple of days later. He wore the clothes he’d arrived in, newly laundered, and they enveloped his shrunken frame. I’d brought my car over from Fulham, and I helped him out of the door and across the pavement to the kerbside. I’d packed enough clothes of my own to last at least a week. I’d no idea when I’d be back.

We drove south, across the river, out through Battersea and Wandsworth. The traffic on the A3 was light, the rush hour come and gone, and we were out of London within the hour. Just past the junction with the M25, Wesley spotted a sign by the roadside. It said ‘RHS Gardens, Wisley’. He nodded at it.

‘You mind?’ he said.

I pulled the car off the road, following the signs, glad to have found a response at last. So far, he’d said virtually nothing, sitting beside me, the roll-up on the dashboard unlit, the huge eyes staring ahead, unblinking.

We parked the car and began to walk. It was a lovely day again, but there was a cold wind from the east and I made Wesley wear my anorak. What should have looked absurd, didn’t. In fact, it fitted him rather well. We walked for maybe a quarter of a mile, very slowly, my arm through his. Then he sank on to one of the slatted wooden benches that line the path. His face was pale and sweaty and he was having trouble getting his breath, but he leaned away from me when I tried to zip up the anorak.

We sat in silence for a minute or two, gazing around. The gardens were magnificent, no one else to be seen, the huge trees ablaze with autumn. Down the bottom of a slight hill, I could see ducks on water, the sunlight splintering as one of them took off. I turned to Wesley, pointing it out. Tears were pouring down his face.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Please, tell me.’

‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’

‘Wesley?’

I reached across and touched his face. The flesh was ice cold. He didn’t move.

‘Favourite season, this,’ he said at last, ‘always was. Never understood why.’

‘Autumn?’

‘Yeah. Mists. Mellow fruitfulness. Decay…’ He sniffed. ‘Death.’ He looked at me. ‘That sound about right?’

I smiled, trying to comfort him. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, ‘and so are you.’

‘Bullshit. I’m dying. There’s nothing beautiful about that. It’s dull as fuck.’

‘You’re not dull.’

‘No, but dying is. Believe me.’

He lapsed into silence again. Then a squirrel hopped into sight, bobbing across the grass towards us. It stopped no more than a yard away, head up, tail arched, looking Wesley in the eye. Wesley studied it for a moment. Then he produced a coin from my anorak pocket and tossed it towards the squirrel. It was a new twenty-pence piece. It gleamed in the sunshine. The squirrel didn’t move.

‘It wants bread,’ I said, ‘something to eat. The idea is you feed it.’

Wesley was still watching the squirrel. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. Finally, for the first time that morning, he mustered the beginnings of a grin. It spread across his face, bringing it to life.

‘Bollocks,’ he said quietly. ‘Bet the little fucker’s on the take.’

When we got to Wesley’s flat, it had been redecorated. I stood in the lounge, astonished at the transformation. White walls. Sage for the skirting boards and the picture rails. Even a new pair of curtains, scarlet velvet lined in a glorious deep blue. Professional job. Tastefully done. I gazed round. It was even warm.

‘Who did all this,’ I said, ‘the tooth fairy?’

Wesley smiled. Physically, the journey had wrecked him, but he seemed much more cheerful. ‘Aldridge fixed it up,’ he said. ‘The last couple of weeks. He dropped by this morning, too. Switched on the heating. First thing.’

‘
Aldridge?
Why?’

‘Conscience. Plus he was embarrassed to bring his women here.
Appearances mean a lot to Derek. You probably noticed.’

‘So he got the decorators in?’

‘Yeah. Little surprise.’ He frowned, unsure about the final effect. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s nice. I’m amazed.’

‘So am I.’

He walked across the room, very slowly, an old, old man. Then he sank into the armchair beside the fireplace. I looked round, knowing something was missing.

‘Where’s Scourge?’ I said. ‘The cat?’

Wesley said nothing for a moment. When we’d flown to Dallas, he’d mentioned something about ‘arrangements’. I assumed, like me, that he’d put the animal into the local cattery. But now he shook his head.