The Bell Ringers (50 page)

‘Are we talking about the same person?' he asked incredulously. ‘The woman hasn't stopped moaning and crying since she got here. She didn't say anything about working for the government.'

Kate shook her head. ‘She's very good at her job. She has been in deep
cover for nearly a year. Of course she isn't going to say anything in front of all the others you've got here.'

‘The Security Service is processing the detainees individually. She could have told them.'

She placed her hands on her hips and squared up to Grimes. ‘Look, I know you're doing a difficult job here but let me just tell you that half an hour ago I was with the home secretary and the prime minister. If you won't let her go I will have to phone Downing Street and put you onto them. To be frank, Chief Inspector, this will not look good for you.' She could see the doubt in his eyes. ‘Effect this woman's release immediately because it is going to happen sooner or later.'

He picked up the phone without looking at her and spoke: ‘Bring Diana Kidd to the gate.'

She nodded.

‘Follow me, Miss Vesty.'

They went down the steps of the cabin and turned left towards a gate in the cage. She had a better view of the compound now. There was much more noise than she had realised, mostly made by a dozen or so young people who were demanding to know why they were being held without charge. One was shouting, ‘Hey . . . Be . . . us . . . Cor . . . Pus' in an endless chant; and a man with blonde dreadlocks was being restrained by two policemen after he'd charged the gate. Another went to help him and was unceremoniously knocked to the ground. Others stood, or sat hunched on the makeshift beds, in mute bewilderment. She recognised no one. Then she saw a man in a suit approach a dumpy figure sitting on a plastic garden chair with her back to the gate. It was Mrs Kidd. She looked up when he spoke to her, then rose rather unsteadily. Kate could see the hope and terror in her demeanour. Without turning, she beckoned discreetly with her left hand to Miff, whom she hoped was looking in his wing mirror. The reverse lights went on and the car began to creep back towards her.

‘The trouble with these emergency powers is no one knows what to do with these people,' said Grimes conversationally. ‘They say we're to let them go in a day or two. No one knows. You wonder what the point is. Bang 'em up I say – better than this limbo.'

‘You're doing a vital job,' said Kate. ‘How many are you expecting?'

‘Anything up to a thousand: that's what we've been told.'

‘All in Hotel Papa?'

‘Until the other holding areas are sorted out. Remember, we've only had twenty-four hours' notice.'

‘I'll tell Downing Street you're managing well.' As she said it she noticed a man step from the row of cabins in the middle of the compound and look with interest in their direction. She instantly recognised Halliday from the police station in High Castle. In the light she couldn't tell if he had noticed her, but something had certainly caught his attention. He remained staring in her direction as Diana Kidd and her escort neared the gate. At this point Kidd recognised Kate and a look of gormless joy flooded her features. Kate said and did nothing as the buzzer sounded and the gate rolled back.

‘Thank you,' blurted Kidd. ‘Thank you.'

‘Make your way to the car now,' said Kate without looking at her. ‘We've got a lot to do.'

On cue Miff reversed the car right up to them, hopped out and went to open the doors on the left side. A chauffeur might have waited to close the doors for his passengers, but Miff sensed something in Kate's manner and returned to the driving seat, leaving them open.

‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,' said Kate, taking Mrs Kidd's arm.

There was a shout from inside the compound. Kate glanced back and saw the man running towards the gate. Then she simply shrugged at Grimes, pushed Diana Kidd into the rear seat and climbed into the front. Miff's Jaguar launched forward with a squeal of tyres and shot the hundred yards to the barrier, but just then the two police vans came from another part of the car park and moved into their lane. ‘Can you get ahead of them?' shouted Kate. In her wing mirror she saw the man run up to Grimes, gesticulating.

‘We don't need to,' replied Miff. He was right. The barrier was raised for them and he stuck so close to the second vehicle that the Jaguar slipped through before it fell.

Kate turned round to Diana Kidd and shouted, ‘Have you still got the documents?'

‘Yes,' she wailed. ‘They were searching people but they hadn't reached me. They're in the lining of my skirt.'

‘Good, hold tight.' The police vans turned left into a two-lane stretch of about 150 yards, which after a right-angle bend would divide into the entrance and exit slip roads. ‘They'll radio ahead to the armed police,' she shouted. ‘You are going to have to bloody well move.'

Miff needed no encouragement. Once they were in the brightly lit tunnel, he pulled out from behind the two vans and overtook them at astonishing speed. They rounded the bend but instead of going straight ahead he hooked right up the entry slip road, where he knew there was no barrier. As they came into the daylight they realised that the two armed officers they'd passed at the entrance twenty minutes earlier were running with their guns ready to cover the exit fifty yards away. Miff let out a whoop of joy, sped the wrong way through traffic lights, and spun the wheel left to join the traffic moving round Marble Arch. Kate glanced back and only then did it occur to her that Hotel Papa was almost directly beneath Speakers' Corner, the symbol of free expression in Britain.

The news that a middle-aged woman named Kidd had been sprung from Hotel Papa by Eyam's friend Kate Lockhart and a convicted criminal using a stolen car reached Number Ten about half an hour later. There was plenty of CCTV footage of the pair, but it was still not clear why the officer in charge had let the woman go without any proper authorisation. He maintained he had received a call from Downing Street and rang back to confirm the release, but could not say to whom he'd spoken.

Yes, thought Cannon, it would very soon be revealed that the policeman had been given a number in the Communications Centre. They might even link that to a call from Peter Kilmartin and someone somewhere might have a recording of the conversations, but they weren't going to do anything to him, not now that he had the ultimate protection tucked in his breast pocket – four sheets of A4 paper, which Lyme had got hold of from the Government Scientific Service and which had also been sent to the prime minister's private office in a secure bag an hour ago. Nobody would mess with him now, least of all John Temple.

But it was not Cannon's style to wave a gun in the air, and he looked
round his colleagues in the election strategy meeting with a mild air and waited.

If the election was going to be called that afternoon, the button had to be pushed now to enable Temple to go to the palace at five and return to Downing Street in time to make his announcement to the media outside Number Ten before the six o'clock news. Everything was ready – a miracle had been achieved by the party. The manifesto was on the presses and campaigning in the marginal seats had virtually begun. Temple could go any time he wanted.

Eventually the prime minister's gaze fell on Cannon. ‘So this afternoon it is,' he said.

‘Certainly, if you want the announcement of the general election to come a poor second on the news agenda, go ahead, prime minister.' He stopped and looked round the usual faces. ‘The David Eyam story will push you off the front page,' he continued. ‘All the TV channels are leading on it now. Even though it's an open secret that you are going to call the election, the Eyam story has huge momentum. More and more detail is being added at every bulletin and we're only a couple of hours into this thing.'

‘But Eyam is the enemy. We are his victims,' said Temple hopelessly. ‘He is attempting to distort the legitimate democratic process.'

Cannon blinked rapidly. ‘That's not the way it is being presented, prime minister. The main thrust of the coverage is that a practising paedophile was at the heart of government and had access to all the nation's secrets. An issue of competency is being raised, even though it is well over two years old. We have received a hundred calls from journalists in the last hour, and most are asking why a man who went to the trouble of staging his own death in such an elaborate fashion would bother to come back to certain imprisonment. It doesn't make sense and when a story doesn't add up like this it becomes an obsession. The media won't want to let it go, not even for you.'

‘As soon as Eyam is arrested that will all have to stop.'

‘But you can't say when that will be. Eyam's associate has just removed a suspect from beneath our noses. Why? Why did Kate Lockhart take that risk? We can make some educated guesses but we don't know.'

‘That woman,' snapped Temple, ‘is the pivot of the whole plot. This is the second time she has made a fool of us today.'

‘Well, we did train her,' said Cannon. ‘The point is that we haven't been able to lay a hand on Eyam. We don't know where he is. Intelligence led us to believe that there was going to be some sort of press conference in a hotel. That is beginning to look extremely unlikely. So far nothing has happened. In the last hour the St James's Library has been raided by the police and Security Service in a manner that is now being condemned as oppressive. It's like raiding the Women's Institute. There are TV crews outside there now. Apparently police were acting on intelligence but clearly the information was wrong and now the great and good on the library's board are going to cause hell about the oppressive behaviour. You've got the army on the streets, thousands of people being stopped and searched, scores being secretly held against their will and without legal representation.' He stopped. ‘I respectfully submit that these are not auspicious circumstances in which to call an election where you are going to be arguing for continuation of calm, orderly government. Give the police time to arrest and charge Eyam, then call the election. Let this storm blow itself out in the media overnight.' Cannon sat back, knowing he had used every reasonable argument. The only things left were the four sheets of paper in his pocket.

There was further discussion lasting ten minutes, in which Cannon took no part. At length Temple said he would consult further and asked Dawn Gruppo to be in touch with the palace and the office of the president of the European Council, who was due at Number Ten the next morning.

As they rose, Temple murmured to Cannon: ‘We've got to get the woman Lockhart – she's clearly the key to it all.'

Miff pulled up in a side street off the Edgware Road, and told Kate that he would find a safe place for Diana Kidd. Mrs Kidd was in no state to protest but sat in the back of the Jaguar dabbing at her chest and muttering that she never expected to be on the run from the police.

‘Tell David to save his strength for tomorrow and give him my love.'

Thus instructed, Miff went off with his unlikely cargo, while Kate made her way to Bloomsbury, where she took refuge in one of the dubious small hotels in the area. She told the man behind the reception of The Corinth that she would need the room for no more than four hours and would pay double the daily rate in cash provided she didn't have to show him an ID card. He was used to such arrangements and led her to a room at the back that smelled of stale smoke overlaid by sweet air freshener. He handed her the key and asked, with just the hint of a leer, if she expected to be joined by anyone. No, she replied, dropping her bag against a Dimplex radiator, which tolled like a bell: all she wanted was rest.

On the way she'd seen a newspaper billboard which read
Number Ten Child Porn Scandal
. She reached for the remote and turned on the little television that was perched high up on a shelf in the corner. After a few minutes watching BBC News, she swore and turned the set off. Outside it was beginning to rain again, and she wondered briefly what in God's name had persuaded her to think she could ever make a life in this damp little country. She picked up the hotel phone and dialled Eyam's number.

‘How're you feeling?' she asked.

‘Rough.'

She let her cheek sink into her hand. ‘Have you seen the news?'

‘Yes. At least it means they're less likely to take a pot at us.'

‘Don't be too sure.'

‘What is it, Kate?'

‘We don't stand a chance, do we? It's just ridiculous to think that the committee is going to hear you now. Whatever we say or do . . .' She stopped.

‘What?'

‘It doesn't matter,' she said.

‘I've had a lot of doubts along the way, you know. Last September I was wondering whether to give it all up and concentrate on my treatment. I was lying in the garden at the Dove, staring up at a peerless blue sky and I noticed hundreds, maybe thousands of swallows, fluttering high up like silver chaff. I watched for a bit then I noticed something else. It was a drone stationed over the valley, observing the Dove. How dare they? I thought. What bloody right do they have to do this? And that made up my mind.'

‘But if we don't pull this off we are all going to be arrested. I saw where they were holding people today. This is the beginning of something really sinister – utterly new in British life. It's in those circumstances that people are
disappeared
, and I am damn sure that even if you were arrested you'd never be allowed to speak in an open court. None of us would.'

‘There is a lot at stake. There always has been. But we have to try. We have to, Kate.'

‘You sound awful,' she said. ‘Let me put things together tonight. I'll have Kilmartin with me. We can do it.'

‘But you don't know the order of the papers. Each document illustrates a point. There is a logic to it all, an argument, a narrative.'