He said, ‘Were you married?’
Jeb gave a tight smile that hid his teeth. ‘No, but you’re on the right lines. My job was to infiltrate a group of environmental activists. I had to immerse myself in the organisation, dress like them, talk like them, act like them. I thought I was James Bond, though Bond wouldn’t be seen dead in the grungy crap I wore undercover.’
It fitted with Jeb’s shape-shifting personality, his swing from prison inmate to keen-eyed strategist. Magnus tried to keep his voice light. ‘No nightclubs and casinos then?’
‘No, but there were beautiful women. The main difficulty of infiltrating a network is that you come from nowhere and have to get people to accept you straight away. The easiest way to do that is to become involved with someone already on the scene, usually a woman.’ Jeb made a face. ‘If I’m honest it was always a woman.’
‘You did it more than once?’ Magnus had pulled on different personalities for his routines, but he had shed them when he came off stage. He tried to imagine how it would be to target a woman because of who and what she knew; to live with her and make love to her as someone else. ‘Didn’t you feel like a whore?’
Jeb put a hand over the candle flame and a shadow hand appeared huge and black on the wall. He took it away and looked at Magnus.
‘I was a police officer, an undercover police officer.’
‘And you could switch it on and off?’ Magnus disliked the echo of the Kirk in his own voice, the black-suited minister passing judgement from the pulpit. ‘Have sex with some girl and then report back on what she was up to?’
Jeb shrugged. ‘Like I said, I thought I was James Bond. These people were talking about bombing laboratories, assassinating scientists, setting free animals that had been infected with deadly strains of viruses.’ There was warmth in his voice now. ‘Fuck, for all we know it was someone like them who set off this whole bloody disaster.’ He realised that he was close to shouting and looked at the door. The house was still, but he lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I was flattered to be chosen. Our handlers made us feel special. We were in the know. Of course we didn’t know the half of it. They targeted us the same way they taught us to target the people we were surveilling.’
The shell of aggression Jeb had worn in jail was fractured. For the first time since Magnus had known him he looked sorry for himself.
‘We were encouraged to identify vulnerable people in the movement. Cherry fitted the profile. She was a single mum struggling to make ends meet. Her passion for animals had tipped into radicalism and she’d joined a group who thought people involved in animal testing were akin to the Nazis. She was also gorgeous: big eyes, lots of red hair, petite. She looked like a Disney princess, but there was a bit of steel in Cherry. I liked that from the start. She was also unstable. I spotted that at the start too, but I thought I could handle it.’ Jeb took another sip of his drink. ‘I was arrogant enough to think I could make it into an asset.’
Magnus said, ‘When did she find out you were a policeman?’
Jeb gave a sad half-smile. ‘When I told her. These operations don’t just last for a couple of weeks, a few months, they stretch on for years.’ He shook his head. ‘I should never have chosen a woman with a child. Cherry had episodes. She may have been schizophrenic, but she was too mistrustful of doctors and hospitals — they were Nazis too — to get a diagnosis. Her daughter was called Happy. She was one when I met her, three when I decided I couldn’t stand it any more. It was partly down to her that I came out. She was a little sweetheart. Happy by name, Happy by nature. Cherry and I were squatting in a tower block that was due for demolition. It was a dump and Cherry insisted on a flat on the fifteenth floor, even though the lifts weren’t working, because fifteen was her lucky number and she could keep a lookout on who was coming from up there. She thought people were spying on her.’ He gave a small smile. ‘What did they used to say? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you? It was squalor, but Happy didn’t mind. Who knows how she would have turned out, but she was the most even-natured child I ever met.’
Jeb had made no effort to check up on Cherry and Happy after the escape from Pentonville. Magnus looked into the blackness beyond the window and thought how strange it was that he could still feel saddened by the deaths of two people he had never met.
‘You said it was partly Happy that made you come clean. What were the other reasons?’
Jeb took another sip of his drink. He rubbed his cast gently with his fingertips as if to soothe the itching flesh beneath it.
‘No one ever gave a direct order, but I began to realise that our handlers wanted us to do more than surveillance. The group I was with were disorganised. They were full of big talk, but they lacked leadership. I’m not saying they weren’t committed or that they would never have done any harm. I learned the truth of that to my cost. What I mean is that they hadn’t done any real damage yet. There was a power gap and one likely lad in line to fill it, a guy called Andy Cruikshank. He was a nasty piece of work. Cherry genuinely cared about animals, Andy just wanted a cause. It wouldn’t have mattered what it was, home rule, nuclear disarmament, anti-capitalism: Andy would have found a way to turn the fight violent. As far as I was concerned he was our man. Remove Andy and all you had was a bunch of hippies dicking around, but my instructions were to cultivate him, become his right-hand man, see how far he would go. That included making suggestions for possible moves if his imagination failed him.’
‘They were turning you into an agent provocateur?’
Jeb nodded. ‘Spot on. I tried to kid myself, but eventually I decided that the only way out was to tell Cherry the truth. I think I was genuinely in love with her by then. I certainly loved Happy. I wanted to keep them so badly that I convinced myself that everything would be okay if I could just find the courage to tell Cherry everything.’ Unshed tears gleamed in Jeb’s eyes. ‘I had it all worked out. I’d get a dishonourable discharge and sell my flat. I’d bought at a good time and once I’d paid off what I owed on the mortgage there would have been enough left over for a good deposit on somewhere in Wales. I’d taken Cherry and Happy camping there once and they’d loved it. We could have had our own animals, nothing big, a few chickens, a dog, maybe a goat or two, Cherry would have been in her element. And maybe there would have been enough space for her to get properly well.’ Jeb wiped a hand across his eyes and lifted his drink to his mouth. ‘So I told her what I was and what I’d done and as soon as I had, I knew it was the worst mistake of my life. Worse even than getting involved with undercover, because at least that had introduced me to her and Happy.
‘She started screaming before I was even finished. It was like a mask had been stripped from her face. All the sweetness and softness disappeared and all the pain came out. She looked ugly, like a witch from a children’s book. It sounds pathetic, Cherry was a small woman, a fraction of my size, but I was frightened. Then she stopped yelling and told me what she thought of me and my kind in a whisper that seemed to drive itself into my brain. It was like she was delivering a curse.
‘I know I shouted, because other people told me I did. I wanted to explain why I’d done it. I know I told her that I loved her. But she wouldn’t listen. Then she started shouting again, more than shouting, screaming. I’d waited until Happy was in bed, but she woke up and came through to find out what was going on. She wasn’t used to people arguing and she was frightened. I went to comfort her, but Cherry was screaming so loudly at me to leave that I was afraid that, allergic as our building was to authority, someone might call the police. That was the last thing I needed.