The Bell Ringers (31 page)

White let out a sigh.

‘I agree with Eden,' said Temple softly. ‘We're straying from the point. Which is, Christine?'

‘That he couldn't have done this alone,' she said. ‘He must have had help from many people. We're looking into the handling of the inquest, though we do not expect to have much before Monday. We realise he must have built a support network in the Caribbean and Colombia and here in the UK.' She stopped. ‘But to what end was this very complex, expensive plot hatched?'

‘Clearly he plans mischief of a very high order,' said Temple. ‘What do you think we should do, Philip?'

Cannon felt that they should be sitting in an office, not round a coffee table bearing daffodils, magazines and a book on British dog breeds. ‘Well,' he ventured. ‘You could head him off by going to one of the papers and telling the whole story. Once an arrest warrant has been issued a police inquiry can be announced and an international manhunt can begin – standard fare for the media.'

‘Yet this is more than a presentational issue,' said White, fingering the lapel of his suit. ‘More sensitive, more intricate, more connected.'

‘Connected? How so?' asked Cannon.

‘Mr White means that this is not simply a matter of someone on the run who has faked his own death,' said Gruppo, happy to act as tutor. ‘Eyam was one of us and because of the difficulties we had with him he could prove a very great danger to the state. There are grave implications.'

‘To the state?' said Cannon, shifting in the oval-backed chair. ‘How? He was no risk before he disappeared. Once that business with the Intelligence and Security Committee was over, no one heard from him. There were no leaks. He was the perfect civil servant – discreet to a fault.'

‘He was always a risk,' said Temple. ‘He is in possession of important state secrets and the fact that he staged his own death must mean he plans to reveal what he knows. That is where you come in. It will be important to have a strategy in place to deny, rebut and refute the allegations that he may make.'

‘If Eyam presented such a big threat, what was to stop him making these disclosures when we thought he was dead? Maybe he has no intention of saying or doing anything at all. Maybe he was just evading the police on the child porn.'

‘I wish we could believe that,' said Temple.

‘There's another point. If I am to go out there and deny allegations of a substantial kind I have to know what they are likely to be.'

‘It is in the nature of this problem that they are unknowable, Philip. We cannot anticipate in this affair,' said Temple. Someone put their head round the door behind Cannon. Temple nodded and rose. ‘A media strategy is what we need on this.'

Cannon wasn't having that. He rose quickly and followed Temple into the Great Hall where five men, none of whom he recognised, were waiting in a group. They carried laptops, briefcases and folders. There were also people from Number Ten who had just arrived. June Temple hovered.

‘A word, prime miniser?' Cannon said to Temple's back. ‘I can't develop a strategy for the unknowable. I've got to have an idea what I
will be defending and to know whether the allegations that are levelled at us – the government or whoever – are true.'

Temple didn't respond but gazed right through him. Then his eyes followed Eden White who had slipped out of the room and was passing behind Cannon.

‘And if this thing with Eyam is really big,' Cannon continued, ‘isn't it worth waiting until the autumn for an election?'

‘The election will be next month; nothing can change that. Eyam's appearance makes it imperative that we hold the election now.' He moved off to welcome the group without another word, leaving Cannon startled by the iciness in his manner. Without thinking he moved towards the door of the little sitting room. It was slightly ajar and he heard Ferris say: ‘Well, it's true that a man who has already been declared dead cannot be killed again.'

Instead of entering, Cannon went to his room to fetch his coat. He was going to have that pint, alone in a pub away from the house that Arthur and Ruth Lee had so generously given to the nation, because he wanted to phone his wife, to mull things over and consult what he gloomily regarded as the rump of his conscience.

After arriving at Chequers, Kilmartin was kept waiting for an hour sitting on a Jacobean chair in the Stone Hall beneath the portrait of an unidentified Edwardian woman. Scotch and water, a bowl of cashew nuts and magazines were brought to him on a tray by a member of the Chequers staff. It was hardly the atmosphere he expected. The place was quietly frantic. At least two meetings seemed to be in progress. Doors were opened and closed. People passed from room to room, nodding to him on the way. He stretched his legs and looked at the paintings. When he asked if he could see the Chequers library, he was told it was being used for a presentation.

He had rather old-fashioned notions about the English country house weekend, a sense, particularly at Chequers, that the affairs of state should be conducted at a more leisurely tempo with good conversation, wine and ideas – the big picture. Even in wartime the place had been maintained as an emblem of English civilisation. Hitler strutted before the inflamed skies at the Berghof while Churchill pottered in the Rose Garden in his siren suit. But Chequers in the twenty-first century had become a hive filled with the dreary hum of consultants and technocrats who knew nothing but work and targets and their own ambition. As he came through the front door, he had noticed a room on the left filled with young people working at screens. The security procedures at the gates and at some bollards, which rose automatically in the middle of the drive as he approached the house, had been unusually heavy.

He was on his guard and when Dawn Gruppo asked him to follow her to a large conference room, and with the certainty that the prime minister did not want to consult him on the politics of Tajikistan, he
girded himself as though for a difficult border crossing. In fact Temple did not want to talk to him at all. In the room, sitting in four adjacent seats on the far side of the table, were Andrew Fortune, a man who introduced himself as Ferris, Christine Shoemaker and another man of about forty who gave only his first name – Alec.

Producing a show of bonhomie, Andrew Fortune gestured him to a seat opposite them and offered him a drink, which Kilmartin declined.

‘JT will be along shortly,' Fortune said, ‘but he did just want us to have a word by way of preparation. Sorry to have kept you. Things are rather hectic.'

Kilmartin nodded amenably.

‘This is in the nature of catch-up. The prime minister has asked us to find out how things stand.'

‘In what way?' asked Kilmartin. What bloody amateurs they were. If they wanted to lull him into indiscretion they shouldn't arrange themselves like a board of inquiry; if they hoped to force some sort of confession from him, Chequers was not the place. What he read into this hastily convened interrogation was panic.

‘On the thing you came to see me about in my office last week.' Fortune grinned and looked down at some papers. ‘David Eyam and this woman who used to work for SIS – Lockhart.'

‘Yes,' said Kilmartin. ‘The prime minister asked me to keep an eye on things.'

‘And?' prompted Shoemaker.

‘This was only a week or so ago, as you know. I attended the inquest in High Castle.'

‘Indeed,' said Fortune. ‘Did you get anywhere with it all?'

‘As a matter of fact yes, I did. But what I have learned is for the prime minister's ears only.'

‘I think you'll find that we are in his confidence on these matters,' said Shoemaker briskly. She looked round to suggest they would hardly be there without Temple's blessing. ‘Would you mind telling us what you've discovered?'

Kilmartin looked at her. Of course they knew. He must assume that Murray Link had wetted his bed and sold to a higher bidder, forgetting that the information was not his to sell.

‘The film shown at the inquest didn't seem quite right to me,' he said. ‘I noticed a peculiar jump and one or two anomalies. Put together with the remarkable coincidence of the explosion being filmed, it did raise one's suspicions. As you know, initially the prime minister asked me to look into the matter and make sure that there was no suggestion of the British government assassinating Eyam. But my inquiries led me to believe that Eyam was alive. I thought it would be wise to have it checked since no one else seemed to have questioned its authenticity and I got in touch with Murray Link, formerly a technical support officer with the Secret Intelligence Service. He came back to me with the evidence that the film had been faked.'

‘Why didn't you tell us immediately?'

‘I wanted to make sure. I felt it would be useful to find out Eyam's motives and what sort of help he'd received.'

‘But this information was plainly very urgent,' said Shoemaker.

‘In what way urgent?' he asked innocently.

‘It must be obvious to you.'

‘Not really, though I do agree that it is sensational news, which is different: that is why I wanted to be sure of my facts. I don't know how much work you have done in the field Ms Shoemaker, but it is my practice to make sure something is as accurate as possible before making a report.'

‘When were you going to make that report?' asked Ferris.

‘Well, the summons to come here seemed to be a perfect opportunity.'

‘Not before?' said Ferris.

‘No,' said Kilmartin, drawing the DVD of Murray Link's analysis from his pocket and placing it in front of him. ‘You will find all you need here.' He had an idea what was coming next but wondered who would ask the question. Fortune? No. Fortune knew very well that Kilmartin remembered every detail of his adventure with Ali Mustafa Bey. Fortune did not want to be there. In the event it was Alec who spoke. Kilmartin guessed him to be a senior officer with the Security Service. A thinker and a planner, a man who didn't object to six weeks in a room asking the same questions over and over.

‘But you weren't simply inspired by the notion that Mr Eyam's death had been elaborately faked?'

‘I am not sure about the word elaborate – there are clues he left in the film that give the lie to the whole exercise, which I find rather baffling.'

‘That's as maybe,' said Alec. ‘I am interested in what else you have taken upon yourself to investigate.'

‘I didn't take anything upon myself. I am still actively working for the prime minister, as he will confirm, and I view the assignment in a wide context.'

‘Which includes talking to convicted criminals?' said Alec.

‘If you mean Mary MacCullum, yes. But I'm afraid she told me nothing about Eyam and the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is obviously the key to this matter. Despite my reassurances she would not talk to me.'

‘But you made a second arrangement to rendezvous with her.'

‘No, I met her just once.'

‘Twice: the second time at St James's Library yesterday. Both of you were seen there.'

‘Coincidence. We were not there to meet, though I would have been happy to have talked to her and in public.'

Alec lifted the top sheet of a stapled document. ‘We have no report of you leaving the library.'

‘Oh really?' said Kilmartin. ‘Evidently I did leave because I am here with you.'

Alec did not look up for another minute. ‘You see,' he said at length, ‘we don't understand what you're doing.'

Kilmartin stared at him dully. Perhaps he did recognise him. There were so many like him in Britain's intelligence establishment; bureaucrats who commuted to the Home Counties each night, and drew a pathetic self-esteem from official secrecy and their ability to reach into other people's lives. The man was utterly average – brown hair with a little grey, parted on the left; small square glasses; an ordinary, passionless face, crimped into neat regular folds at the eyes and mouth. He knew Alec, though he had never seen him before.

‘I came here to see the prime minister and that is what I am going to do. If he is unavailable I will leave.'

‘Not just yet, if you don't mind,' Alec said. ‘We would like to ask you a few more questions.'

‘What is the wide context you speak of?' said Shoemaker.

‘Why?' asked Kilmartin.

‘What do you mean, why?'

‘
Why
did he do it?
Why
did he go to all this effort? What motivated him? Who else is involved and
why
? I believe I am beginning to have some success.'

‘In what way?' said Ferris.

Kilmartin's gaze settled on Ferris. ‘Are you allowed to hear this sort of thing?'

‘He is empowered,' said Shoemaker.

‘Who by? You? Is Mr Ferris a civil servant, or just some overpaid part-timer?'

Ferris grinned but Kilmartin saw him shift in his chair with discomfort.

‘Then I will ask the question,' said Alec. ‘In what way are you having success?'

‘That's between me and the prime minister. But, yes, I think I am beginning to get some understanding of this.'

Shoemaker was nipping at her cuff. She turned to Fortune and gave him what was clearly an unwelcome cue. Fortune cleared his throat. ‘Last week, Peter, when you came to see me you mentioned SPINDRIFT.'

‘As I recall, it was you who gave the name to me, Andrew. You see, I had never heard of SPINDRIFT before you mentioned it. As you know, I have spent a lot of time out of the country on various projects for the prime minister and have been rather out of touch.'

‘You told me that the prime minister had asked you to look specifically into that area, whereas the prime minister says he said no such thing.'

‘He asked me to dig around and find out what was being said. Those were his words. I made a note after our conversation, as I always do. It helps to remind us both of the mission. I usually send him a private memorandum so that he has the opportunity to correct, expand or refine the assignment, and this I did last week. He told me to keep my
ear to the ground and mentioned there would be an election this year and the undesirability of allowing conspiracy theories to breed. You can check for yourself: the memorandum is on record. At that stage no one – least of all the Security Service, it seems – questioned the authenticity of the film. That was my work, but since none of you asked to see the analysis in this DVD, or have even asked about the hidden messages discovered at the end of the film, I must conclude that you've already seen it. Either Murray Link came to you, or you got to him. To be frank, it makes no difference to me, but do please give me the credit for advancing this investigation to its current state. Now, if you have problems with what I have been doing, please take it up with the prime minister.'