Skydancer (12 page)

Now he was back in the very place where his real
love-affair with Mary had begun – and where its end had first been signalled.

Could Mary have taken the Skydancer blueprints in revenge, desperate to hurt him? It would be so unlike her, yet was it really impossible?

Rising, he closed the glass door to the balcony, shutting out the sound of the sea, and began to unpack his suitcase. There was much to do the following day; he had to try to sleep.

In London the following morning, John Black looked at the date on his newspaper to remind himself it was Wednesday. It was the third day of his investigation and he still had no clear leads. He was glad to see that the newspapers were turning cold on the story, with no fresh revelations to keep them going.

His first cigarette of the day came before breakfast, and the second immediately afterwards, while he finished his coffee. That done, he set off for Reading – not far from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. It was easy driving out of London at that time of day. As he sped westwards and saw thousands of commuters jammed on the eastbound carriageway, trying to get in to the capital, he was relieved to be heading the other way.

He drove directly to the main police station in Reading, where he had arranged to meet the local Special Branch man. Tom McQuade was an old mate; Black knew he would get help there. This part of Britain was a focal point for anti-nuclear activists, what with the Aldermaston complex and the Greenham Common cruise missile base as well.

‘Well, you old poacher, what are you after this time?' McQuade asked suspiciously as they greeted one
another. His voice bore the merest trace of an Ulster accent.

‘What, me? On the scrounge? Whatever gave you that idea, Tom?' Black countered with a smirk.

Though good friends, there had always been a certain reserve in their relationship. To some extent MI5 and the Special Branch were rivals as well as collaborators.

With the door of McQuade's cramped office firmly closed, John Black lit up another cigarette and slumped in a chair.

‘Got a little problem with Polaris, have we?' McQuade needled.

John Black explained the circumstances of his visit. He wanted information on the activities of one woman in particular. At the mention of her name, McQuade smiled wryly and reached for the drawer of a filing cabinet. Extracting a green folder, he opened it and browsed through the pages it contained.

‘Ye . . . es,' he mused, ‘we seem to know the name of Belinda Joyce quite well.'

Without letting go of the file, for fear perhaps of losing the power over John Black that its information gave him, the Special Branch officer began to explain.

‘Quite a successful little operation this one,' he said, tapping the folder. ‘Young woman detective on the force here – quite a star. Jenny Ward – good operator. A few months ago Jenny turned herself into a radical feminist, at my request. She signed up with a women's militant anti-nuclear group locally, and penetrated their organisation pretty thoroughly. Usual set-up; you know the form. Lesbians most of them. Not our Jenny though – I can vouch for that personally!' he concluded with a grin.

‘Tch, tch. Man of your age, you ought to know
better!'John Black chuckled indulgently.

‘Well now,' McQuade continued, smiling with self-satisfaction, ‘our Jenny made a very interesting discovery. The group in question is called ATSA – stands for Action To Stop Annihilation. And one of the leading lights turned out to be none other than the wife of one of Aldermaston's most senior and respected scientists, Belinda Joyce. Quite a prize for ATSA. Make quite a fuss of her, they do.'

‘Now then, there's an element in the group that I would call basically anarchist, a bit of a throwback to the 1960s. And one woman who fits into that category is called Helene Venner. Definitely a dyke, she is,' McQuade added, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

‘We don't know much about Venner. She doesn't seem to be on record anywhere, but she's certainly one of the prime movers in ATSA. It was she who recruited Belinda Joyce. There's a craft co-operative in one of the villages – trendy-lefty sort of place where they make pots and country furniture. That's where they met. They both work there.

‘Well, at one of ATSA's evening meetings which Jenny Ward attended, Helene Venner came up with a plan which was a bit of a stunner. She wanted Belinda Joyce to get hold of some of her old man's secret plans for the new Polaris warheads, and hand them over so that Venner could get them published in some left-wing newspaper. She argued that with the weapon's secrets made public, they'd become useless, and they could successfully campaign for the missiles to be scrapped.'

John Black whistled softly. None of this appeared on Peter Joyce's security file. There had been an appalling failure of communication somewhere within the security services.

The scheme itself, though dangerous, sounded absurdly naive – and rather like putting the paper on Parliament Hill deliberately to be discovered.

‘And Mrs Joyce went along with all this?' he asked attentively.

‘Apparently not,' McQuade continued. ‘She got pretty annoyed at the ATSA meeting when all this was suggested. Obviously those behind the idea were depending on her to get hold of the plans for them, but she insisted it was a ludicrous idea. She claimed her husband never brought secret documents home, and she was in no position to ask him to do so. Apparently she flatly refused to take part in anything illegal.'

‘Hmm,' John Black mused, stroking his chin with a nicotine-stained hand. ‘This ATSA mob, do they discuss everything at these general meetings, or does the real action get decided by one or two individuals privately? I mean, could your girl Jenny have missed out on what was really being planned?'

‘It's possible, although they certainly make a show of being ever-so democratic – you know the sort of thing: insistence on a full-scale debate and then a vote to decide what to do, with the result that they hardly achieve anything in the end. But perhaps that Venner woman continued to work on Belinda Joyce over at their craft workshop.'

‘Your undercover girl hasn't tried to get a job there, then,' Black pressed.

‘Not exactly arty-crafty, our Jenny. Bit clumsy with her hands, you could say.'

‘Clumsy hands, eh?' John Black chuckled. ‘You want to watch that – she could do you an injury!'

McQuade smirked.

For nearly two hours the two men continued their conversation, with several other files being taken out of
the Special Branch man's cabinet, to be studied at length.

It was nearly half-past eleven by the time Black swung his vehicle into the visitors' car park outside the gates of Aldermaston. In the security office he proffered his pass, which identified him as an official from the Home Office.

‘Do you have an appointment with Mr Joyce?' asked the guard, checking through the messages list to see if this visitor was expected.

‘No. It's what you might call a surprise visit,' Black answered. ‘But if you put me through to him on the phone, I'm sure he'll be happy to see me.'

The guard dialled Peter Joyce's number, and spoke to his secretary. Then he put the phone down and looked up at Black coldly.

‘He's not here. Gone away for a few days.'

‘That's impossible!' Black was irritated. ‘Put me through to Mr Dogson, the head of security.'

Dogson was a man he had dealt with frequently in the past, and whom he had consulted when he was first assigned to this case. Reluctantly the guard dialled the new number, and then passed the phone across.

‘John Black here. Just arrived to talk to your Mr Joyce, only to be told that he's away for a few days. Know anything about it?'

Dogson did, and expressed astonishment that John Black did
not
. Peter Joyce's visit to America had been sanctioned at the highest level, he said, and that must have involved MI5, surely?

Black felt a hot flush colour his face, and he turned away from the guard so as not to be overheard.

‘But I'm in the middle of the investigation, for
God's sake,' he hissed into the phone. ‘How the hell can he be allowed to go swanning off to America for a few days?'

‘It's not – unrelated, shall we say?' Dogson answered mysteriously.

Black climbed back into his car and slammed the door angrily. He felt humiliated, and he hated that feeling more than anything else in life. It reminded him painfully of commencing his National Service, aged eighteen. He had been fat and breathless as a teenager, and had been thoroughly victimised during the start of his two years in the army.

He picked up the receiver of his radio-telephone, with its built-in encryption device that prevented his words from being deciphered if the call was intercepted. On the keypad he punched out the secret direct-line code to the office of the MI5 director, Dick Sproat. When a secretary answered, Black identified himself and insisted that he talk urgently to his boss.

‘Yes, John, what is it?' Sproat's voice crackled in his ear.

‘I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but I'm down here at Aldermaston and have just been told that Peter Joyce has left the country for a few days. Seems a bit odd when he's a central figure in my investigation. I gather you know something about it, sir.'

‘Oh,' Sproat grunted. ‘He, er . . . he'll be back in a day or two. You can talk to him then.'

‘But, with respect, sir,' Black continued, his voice rising, ‘don't you think that as investigating officer I should have known about this?'

‘Normally, yes,' Sproat snapped back, ‘but this is not a normal case. Its secrecy classification is so high there are some things you don't need to know, and this is one of them.'

The line clicked, and a dialling tone returned. Sproat had hung up on him.

‘Bloody ridiculous!' Black exploded, as he snapped the receiver back into its rest. ‘It's like trying to fight a gorilla with one hand tied behind your back!'

To console himself while deciding his next move, he sought a pub for some lunch. He did not have far to drive, and pulled into the crowded car-park of a half-timbered roadhouse advertising bar food.

Following a couple of pints of bitter and a steak pie and chips, he felt reasonably more comforted. He had even positioned himself on a stool close to two young technicians from Aldermaston, so he could eavesdrop casually on their ill-informed speculation about the stolen nuclear secrets.

After relieving his bladder of most of the beer, he then returned to his car and took out his road atlas.

It took him some time to find the Joyces' house, which stood on the very edge of their village. Black stopped his car in the road a few yards from the gateway on to the drive, and he studied the building. It was an attractive red-brick house with a slate roof. A golden-yellow climbing rose covered a side wall, still bearing a few late blooms. In the garden stood a magnificent oak tree that had shed most of its leaves for the coming winter. The tree and the house might well be about the same age, he speculated; early nineteenth century perhaps.

‘Must be worth a bit,' he pondered suspiciously.

This part of Berkshire was prime commuter country. Could a government scientist afford to live here without earning a bit extra on the side? Of course, if they had bought the place some time ago, the price might have been more reasonable, he conceded.

Tom McQuade had said Belinda Joyce worked at a craft co-operative, but he did not know whether that
was just part-time. Black locked the car door and set off up the gravel drive to check if she was at home. An old, rusting Citroën 2cv stood outside the large garage, and some of the ground-floor windows were open. Through one of them he could hear the rumble of a washing-machine, and he saw the figure of a woman working in the kitchen.

Belinda Joyce looked startled when he introduced himself, but Black was used to that.

‘I'm enquiring into some problems to do with your husband's work, Mrs Joyce. It's a matter of national security. I'd like to come in and ask you some questions, if you don't mind.'

The woman was exactly as he had pictured her, dressed in faded grey jeans and an oversized hand-knitted sweater of an indeterminate ‘country' colour. Her oval face was framed by straight hair hanging down to her shoulders, brown hair that was streaked with grey and needed a wash. Her dark eyes showed an intelligent intensity, but radiated hostility when he asked to come inside. He had seen a thousand other women who looked like Belinda Joyce, middle-aged and losing their looks, women who had committed themselves fervently to a cause late in life and were now determined to change the world. He knew the way their minds worked and he did not like them much.

Lieutenant Robert Simpson was the supply officer on board HMS
Retribution
. He found it odd walking through the empty passageways of the submarine when half the crew were on shore leave. The lower-ratings' recreation area was almost deserted, and whole compartments of bunks had not been slept in that night. It reminded him uncomfortably of one summer during his
childhood, when he had had to spend the half-term holiday on his own at his boarding-school because his family had been abroad.

Today would be busy for Simpson; he had to complete his inventory of foodstocks and other supplies, and place orders for the rest of their voyage, allowing a generous reserve for emergencies. Known in naval jargon as the ‘Pusser' or Purser, his job was more like that of an hotel manager than a sailor.

In the galley the leading chef handed over his list of the most urgently needed food items, and asked Simpson how many of the officers would be at lunch that day. Simpson told him that six were on shore leave, but there would be two visitors on board.

As he headed back towards the middle of the submarine, where lay the control room and the officers' accommodation, he began to wonder about those visitors. At breakfast in the wardroom that morning, the captain had refused to be drawn on the purpose of their visit. Simpson had resented the look of cold dismissal in Carrington's eyes when he had asked. It was as if the captain did not consider him a real officer, and certainly not one who could be trusted with secrets.