She knew when it was time to bend. ‘I’m leaving now,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go back the same way I came in, because I sort of wandered all over the place and it might take quite a long time, or are you going to give me a lift in your nice big van?’
She was escorted out.
Pacman went some of the way down the corridor after them, watching her as she just went on and on talking at them. The shirtsleeved PC went behind his desk again.
‘How did she get past you?’ Pacman asked him.
He got a look of fury back. ‘I don’t have a clue, chum. Maybe she didn’t come in this way.’
Pacman was going to say there wasn’t any other way but thought better of it. Something on the wall caught his eye. The intruder poster was still there, but over the photo of Heather Weston someone had neatly stuck a picture of the Base Commander.
Johnny looked at his keyboard and tapped in the old MI5 entry code. The screen went into a short electronic fussing fit and cleared to the familiar display, exactly as Finberg had said. It asked for his ID and he tapped in the well-used letters.
The options menu came up. This was the test. Was this just some clever-clever bit of software copying or was it what it appeared to be, a direct extension of the system? He went into the search, tapped in Heather Weston and the machine went all the way with him. Inside five seconds, there it was on the screen, the first, familiar listing. He went on, just as he would have done at the office, and the screen jumped neatly through all the hoops for him, coughed up all the traces without a murmur. He wanted to ask how? How is this possible? But that felt like a very big question. Half of him was relieved that life here wouldn’t be so different, wouldn’t be more demanding on investigative talents he wasn’t quite sure he had. The other half squirmed awkwardly further down his consciousness. He’d never been a natural letter opener, lens peeper, mike snooper but the simple justification of being a sanctioned part of the machinery of state had kept him happy. Everyone else on his course, the class of ’89, had smiled their way through the obligatory session on the new Security Service Act. He had read it right through, word for word, and even if it hadn’t done all that much to help, it was still there like a crutch propped in a corner of his mind.
It took an hour to be sure he had got everything he could get, to pull out into the light of day the usual desiccated story. Miss Heather Weston. Twenty-nine years and two months old. Only daughter of Gareth and Gabrielle Weston who had both given their occupations on her birth certificate as ‘writer’. Family moved from Hampshire to Yorkshire when she was eight. Both parents now dead. Healthy. Well educated. Once well off but now poor. Scraping a living working at some sort of home for tearaway kids. Owner of an old Citroën 2CV. Often in debt, despite her apparently simple way of life, but there was a reason for that and it came flying out of the screen. Heather Weston, normal, middle-class Heather Weston, had quite recently turned into some sort of persistent, unrepentant criminal. The list was extraordinary. He’d encountered plenty of villains around the fringe of the intelligence world, but for sheer intensity he had never seen a criminal record that was anything like this.
The bottom end of Heather Weston’s scale of wrongdoing had started with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. After that came criminal damage, breaking and entering and theft, followed by a group of associated offences, two breaches of bail conditions and three short spells inside for contempt of court. They were all in the last three years. The brief entries gave Johnny no real clue about the full nature of the offences but he copied the dates and details across to his own file for future checking.
The latest one, two months ago, was just a charge so far. A court date was looming. Grievous bodily harm: assault on a police officer.
He spent some more time simply gazing at her photo. Of course the picture couldn’t tell tales but that face sat oddly with her record. It was the face of someone who, he felt, would always think the best of anybody and by doing so would perhaps bring out that best. Irritated with himself, he dismissed that as fanciful. A microsecond after the shutter had clicked her face would have relaxed back to a more familiar expression and she would have looked every inch the violent slag she undoubtedly was.
But there was much more to it than that. Attached to the details of her little Citroën on the Swansea DVLC computer was a cross-referencing code that was very familiar. Special Branch had an interest in her. Any routine check by an ordinary police patrol on her vehicle would ring bells. Locations and dates would then be passed along the chain and that chain, he knew well, would end at MIS. He searched through again and spotted some of the same fingerprints elsewhere in her files. Someone was already trying to keep loose tabs on Miss Heather Weston and that gave her string of offences a political rather than a criminal hue. It had the smell of animal rights about it or something like that. The papers she had sent to the inquiry, the criminal damage charges, it would all tie in neatly with CN512. Someone having a go at research laboratories.
He was pleased with himself for that little bit of deduction but unsure where he could go next. At Thames House he would simply have gone down and checked out the physical file. Here he wasn’t sure how to proceed. He buzzed Sibley on the intercom.
‘It’s Johnny Kay, Ivor. I’ve got a lot on this Weston woman. Um, I don’t suppose we have access to files from Registry, do we?’
‘Sometimes.’ Sibley sounded distracted, only half concentrating. ‘But let’s not get into that yet. You’ve only got to get alongside her. Might not pay to know too much at this stage. Just find out where she goes, how you can meet her, that sort of thing. OK? If you can’t get anywhere and you want a phone tap, call Mo Wigley. Number’s in the directory. Tell him he can spend up to five hundred pounds but no more. He’s been billing a bit too high lately. I’d rather keep the cost down if you can.’
In the van, the older man got in the back with her. ‘Donny,’ he said to the new recruit as he went to get in the driving seat, ‘just go and check Gate Eighteen, will you?’
‘I checked it already, Sarge.’
‘Go and do it again, then.’
Heather felt a small twinge of alarm. ‘Please stay here,’ she called out, ‘I think your sergeant’s planning to assault me.’
Donny walked off, looking back unhappily.
‘I want you to tell me, right now, how you got in here.’ The Sergeant’s voice was thick with anger.
She pulled a notebook and a biro out of her pocket. ‘I’m going to write down our conversation verbatim,’ she said.
He reached over and pulled the biro from her hand. ‘Prisoner’s property,’ he said. He snapped it in half. ‘Whoops,’ he said, ‘broken prisoner’s property. Now, answer the question.’
‘You should get some counselling, you know,’ she said. ‘Deal with all that aggression. You’d be a much happier person. I simply exercised my right to walk down a public right of way.’ She kept her voice as level as possible, aware that this man could flip into irrational aggression as easily as a dog sniffing fear.
‘You know that’s bullshit. The path is closed.’
‘Not legally.’
His voice went up a little both in pitch and in volume. ‘Are you going to tell me how you got in?’
‘I have told you.’
‘Right,’ he said with a note of triumph, bringing a padlock out of his pocket, ‘I have to warn you in that case that this morning, while inspecting the gates, I found this padlock, clearly sawn through, and I am therefore arresting you on suspicion of causing criminal damage to Her Majesty’s property. Anything you say will be taken down in evidence and may be used against you in a court of law…’