Thirty-seven
It was mid-morning, and so the coffee shop in Lothian Road was at its quietest. When Alex Skinner opened the door she saw that Neil McIlhenney and Stevie Steele, seated at a corner table, were its only customers. She smiled as she approached. ‘You guys do know, don’t you,’ she said, ‘that you’ve got CID stamped all over you?’ She took a seat and picked up the cappuccino that stood waiting for her. ‘Thanks, I needed this.’
‘Thanks for getting in touch,’ said McIlhenney. ‘We appreciate it.’
‘I appreciate you meeting me here and not marching into my office. Congratulations, by the way, on your promotion. My dad told me about it on Saturday night.’
‘Thanks,’ the superintendent replied. ‘It came as a complete surprise to me. I thought that Mario would get head of CID, and that maybe I’d go into his job, not wind up running the whole of the city.’
‘God help the villains, eh?’
‘That’s the idea. Now, Alex, what did you want to talk to us about?’
Her eyebrows came together slightly as she sipped her coffee. ‘It’s about these phone calls, this stake-out thing.’
‘We wanted to talk to you about that as well,’ Steele replied, ‘and specifically about that call last night.’
‘I want you to drop it,’ said Alex, abruptly.
‘Drop it?’
‘That’s right. I want you to stop the intercept on my calls, stop listening in.’
‘Why?’ Steele exclaimed, astonished.
‘It’s too intrusive. I have a life, guys, and I’m not going to have this character interfering with it any longer. I wish I’d never let my father talk me into going along with this.’
‘Alex,’ McIlhenney broke in, ‘what do you think your father would say if we did what you’re asking before we’ve caught this man? He’d go nuts; he’d crucify us.’
‘I’ll handle him, Neil. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not asking you to stop tapping my line, I’m telling you. If he was sat at this table, he’d be getting told the same thing.’
‘Ah, but would he do it?’
‘Yes, he would, as you know very well.’
‘You know who the caller is, Alex, don’t you?’ Steele’s question was quiet, contrasting with her increasingly vocal annoyance.
Instantly she was defensive. ‘I didn’t say that, and I didn’t mean to imply it either. I want to be able to phone my friends and share confidences and the odd bit of gossip, knowing that I have the privacy to do so and that every word isn’t being recorded.’
‘How many of us can be sure of that?’ McIlhenney murmured.
‘If you really mean that, Neil,’ she shot back, ‘then you’ve been moved out of Special Branch just in time.’
‘But you do know him, Alex,’ Steele persisted. ‘Don’t you? You recognised him from what he said last night.’
‘He said that I hurt him. Do you think I’ve had a tranquil love life, Stevie? Do you think I haven’t hurt a few blokes in my time? There was Andy Martin for a start: everyone knows I broke his bloody heart! Will you go up to Dundee and interview him if I don’t give you a list of potential candidates?’
‘If I thought that was him on the tape, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.’
‘You’ve heard the call, obviously. Did he say, “You hurt me, Alex, you bitch. . and I’m going to get you for it?” No, he did not. I tell you, guys, whoever he is, he’s been working up to saying that, and now he has he’ll creep away, back into my past where he should have stayed.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘You’re a good detective, Stevie,’ she replied, ‘and a good detective’s like a good lawyer. He never asks a question unless he knows the answer already. . or thinks he does. So let’s call it quits at that. Now let me you ask one. Suppose you were right, and I do know this boy, or suspect that I do. Did it occur to you that I might feel sufficiently guilty about what happened between us to want to protect him from a meeting in a small room with Neil and Mario McGuire or, worse still, with my dad?’
‘No, it didn’t, but now that you’ve laid it on the table, I can follow that line of thinking.’
‘Good, for that’s as much as I have to say to you about the matter.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ she said. ‘The phone tap stops now. If I ever find out that it hasn’t, you will find something out too. However good detectives you two might be, I’m an even better lawyer.’
McIlhenney stared at the door, long after it had closed behind her. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered at last, ‘isn’t she just like her old man?’
Thirty-eight
‘Bob,’ Sir Evelyn Grey protested, ‘you must realise that I am walking a tightrope. We have had a great scandal within a community which, for all the talk of openness and public accountability, still lives largely in darkness. Our natural inclination, mine included, was to bury it as deep as we can, but events precluded that. Nonetheless the facts must remain secret, for the good of the intelligence services, which do operate in the national interest, for all this spectacular lapse. My colleagues have to live with your involvement, but they are determined to protect their own interests.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Skinner demanded.
‘It means that once you reported that Hassett appeared to have told us everything he knew, I was forced to hand him over to his masters at Vauxhall Cross.’
‘For disposal?’
‘You don’t really want to know the answer to that question. To be truthful, neither do I. I’m sorry, my friend, but you know the way things are.’ Grey shot him a meaningful glance. ‘But, then, you’ve demonstrated that, haven’t you? There was no autopsy on the dead intelligence officer. They didn’t need one: they simply counted the bullet holes.’
‘That was different.’
‘No, Bob, it wasn’t, and you know it. If I may say so, it even handicapped the investigation on which you are now engaged. How do you intend to proceed, by the way?’
‘Carefully,’ Skinner replied. ‘I’m going to follow up Hassett’s information as far as I can. After that, there may be nothing. I may well report that there’s no evidence that the conspiracy went beyond the people we’ve identified already.’
‘Can I give Downing Street a progress report? You can imagine how anxious the PM is about all this.’
‘Are you going to tell him that you threw Hassett to the wolves?’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Then don’t tell him anything yet. Wait for my final report.’ Skinner turned and walked out of the director general’s room. Ignoring the lift, he trotted down two flights of stairs to the office that he and Shannon had been assigned. It was in Amanda Dennis’s Serious Crime section, since it offered a natural cover story to explain their presence in Thames House.
‘How are you doing on the houseboat?’ he asked the inspector, as he walked in.
‘I’ve eliminated most of them in that area, but I’m left with one that might fit the bill. It’s a converted Dutch barge called the Bulrush, and it’s on a pier just off Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea, as Hassett said. The mooring fees are paid by a man called Moses Archer.’
‘What?’
‘Moses Archer,’ Shannon repeated.
‘Do we know anything about him?’
‘Nothing, only that name.’
Skinner picked up the phone, looked for the button with ‘AD’ on the nametag alongside and pressed it. ‘Amanda, are you free?’
‘Yes. Do you want me to come along?’
‘I’ll come to you. If your people see you answering my call they may start wondering. That’s their job, remember: to wonder about everything.’ He hung up and walked along the short corridor that led to Dennis’s office.
‘What do you need?’ she asked.
‘Everything you can get me on a man called Moses Archer: bank accounts, criminal record, family background. Start with the Port Authority: he’s paying the mooring fee on the Bulrush; it’s a barge where Hassett’s meetings might have taken place. That’s priority, but I also think we should look at the CCTV tapes from the safe-house.’