Dead Man Walking

A Novel by

Michael Rolls

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Dedicated to the memory of my dear wife

Veronica Rolls

15th April 1943 to 23rd January 2018

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Dead Man Walking

Chapter One. .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... ..2

Chapter Two. .. .... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... . ... .... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... . ... .... .... .... .... .... .... ...6

Chapter Three..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....12

Chapter Four – Two Weeks Later... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ...........18

Chapter Five.... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... ..28

Chapter Six... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .....32

Chapter Seven. ... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ...46

Chapter Eight. ... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..........65

Chapter Nine... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ...83

Chapter Ten. .... .... .. .. .... .... ..... .... .. .. .... .... .... ..... ... .... .... .. .. .... .... ..... .... ... . .... .... ..... .... ... . .... .... .86

Epilogue. ... .... .. .. .... ... . .... .... .... .... . ... .... .. .. .... ... ..... .... .... .... .. .. .... ... . .... .... .... .... . ... .... .. .. .... ...87

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Chapter One

Yesterday I saw a dead man; a dead man walking. I tried to catch up with him, but lost him in the crowds that were thronging Oxford Street.

Hazel tugged at my hand.

“David, what’s the sudden hurry?”

“I’ve just seen Graham Crawford.”

“Graham? Don’t be stupid, David – Graham’s dead – he’s been dead for two years!”

“I saw him, I tell you!”

I was getting agitated.

“David – calm down – it can’t have been him, just somebody who looks like him.”

I shook my head.

“No, I’m sure, I tell you – it was him –I’d know him anywhere!”

I looked around despairingly, but there was no sign of the man that I had seen, the man who should have been dead but who, I was now convinced, was very much alive. We were passing a Starbuck’s coffee shop and Hazel practically frog-marched me inside and plonked herself down at the first free table.

“I’ll have a cappuccino, and you’d better have something with a low caffeine content!”

I suppose wives can make that sort of comment as and when they wish, but I was still convinced that I knew what I had seen, but in the manner of husbands the world over, I did as I was told.

I brought the coffees back to our table and sat down opposite my wife.

“Look, love – I know it’s weird, but I am sure that it was Graham – I saw his scar.”

That caused Hazel to furrow her brow as she thought over what I had just said. Graham had been my best friend; both of us ex-Army, he had been lucky to survive a shrapnel wound in Iraq, a wound which had left him with a very noticeable scar running from the outer edge of his left eyebrow all the way down to the angle of his jaw. Six feet three tall, he had been tall enough to stand out amongst those immediately around him for me to catch sight of that distinguishing scar. It hadn’t been the only damage that he had suffered from the roadside bomb, although it was the most noticeable – he also walked with a bit of a limp – not much of one, and hardly noticeable if you didn’t know about it, but I did know about it and I had noticed it. The totality of his wounds – there were others – had led to him being invalided out of the Army in two thousand and nine as a twenty-nine year old captain. My own Army service had been much less distinguished, and much less traumatic. I had served for five years on a short service commission, leaving as a lieutenant. My job had been in Intelligence, using my Russian language skills to examine and report upon what we could glean about the Russian Army and its intentions and capabilities from a variety of sources, ranging from radio traffic intercepts to Russian newspapers. In two thousand and eight, my initial five years had been up and I had decided that it was time to try something different, as at the time it had seemed that Russia was going nowhere, whilst the ‘in’ field was China. That, of course, was well before Putin started to flex his muscles over the Ukraine. Perhaps I should have stayed. As it was, the ‘something else’ was to join my father in running his string of estate agents throughout the Home Counties and, when he had retired the previous October, to take over from him.

Hazel wasn’t convinced, and in no mood to give in.

“Look, how far away was the man that you saw?”

“About twenty yards, perhaps a bit more.”

She looked out of the coffee shop window, with her gaze finally alighting on something outside.

“Right,” she said, “that lamppost across the street is about twenty yards away. I couldn’t identify a scar like Graham’s at that distance – how could you?”

I looked at the landmark that she had seized on. Not surprisingly, there were people milling around it, but one particular person – a woman of about forty or so dressed in a flowing summer dress in honour of the warmth of the day, and waiting to cross the road, caught my eye.

“See the woman in the summery dress? Is she wearing a wrist watch?”

Hazel had walked into a trap – her distance eyesight isn’t great, and she has to wear spectacles for driving, but is too vain to wear them when just walking around. She screwed up her eyes as she tried to answer my question, and then clearly took a chance.

“Yes!” she said. I shook my head.

“It’s not a wrist watch – it’s a heavy bracelet, one of those with lots of little charms hanging off it. I tell you, at that distance I could see a scar such as Graham’s.”

I was treated to a ‘humph’ of frustration.

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“OK, if it was Graham – but it couldn’t be – you could see his scar, but it wasn’t Graham because he is dead, dead for two years.”

I knew full well that I had achieved as much agreement as was likely to be the case, but just dropping the discussion didn’t mean that I had in any way changed my mind over what – or rather whom – I had seen, but Hazel hadn’t quite finished.

“David,” she said fiercely, “you must not tell Kathleen what you think that you saw!”

I shook my head; Kathleen was, as far as anyone had known before this day, Graham’s widow.

“No, of course not. I need to know what is going on and I have no intention of saying anything to Kathleen.”

With that, Hazel appeared to be mollified, but as far as I was concerned there was a mystery, a mystery I needed to solve.

I cast my mind back two years, to the sixth of September, two thousand and fourteen. It had started out as just another day, but ended as anything but. Graham and I had met by the merest chance; in December two thousand and nine, I had been standing in for the manager, absent through illness, of our Guildford branch when Graham, accompanied by his wife and then six year old daughter Julia, had walked in to the shop looking for a suitable property somewhere in southern Surrey. In the course of conversation, he had mentioned that he had recently left the Army, and things had just blossomed from then on. I had managed to find them somewhere that they liked and we, and our wives, had soon become firm friends. Graham had used his Army gratuity, his savings, some money that Kathleen had managed to save, and even then they had had to borrow from their respective parents to afford a deposit. It had angered me to see how little the country had valued Graham’s time and injury in its service, but I had never expressed such a thought to him (although I am pretty sure that Hazel and Kathleen had discussed the matter). I had, in fact, early in our friendship, offered him a job with our company, but he had assured me that he had already made arrangements for gainful employment. That gainful employment was as a Queen’s Messenger, that tiny corps of ex-officers who travel the world on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, hand delivering diplomatic documents to embassies. It is a diminishing role, but still a vital one. Even in these days of highly encrypted electronic communications, there is sometimes the need to transport an actual original paper document to, or from, an Embassy. Graham made no secret of the fact that the head of the relevant part of the FCO was a long-time friend of his father and it was he who had suggested the role to Graham when a vacancy had fortuitously occurred –an outstanding example of the old saying ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. It was scarcely a full time occupation; on average Graham was only away from home about two days a week, but he found it enjoyable and Kathleen, his wife, was only too pleased to see him performing an important function after the Army, the first love of his life, had become denied to him, potentially leaving him in limbo. The salary wasn’t all that great, but when added to his pension and to what Kathleen earned as a secondary school teacher, it meant that they were financially reasonably comfortable.

As far as Kathleen had been concerned, that comfort had increased after Graham’s assumed death; he had taken out, with the financial help of his father, a very substantial life insurance policy, which had enabled Kathleen to pay off the mortgage and repay the parents of them both for their earlier help.

The sixth of September had been a Saturday and I was lounging around at home when the phone rang. I was nearest to it, so picked it up.

“David Larter.”

“David, it’s Graham – can you do me a favour, please?”

“I will if I can – what is it?”

“I’ve just had a call from the office – apparently there is some sort of flap going on and they need me to take some stuff for them. Trouble is – the car’s battery is flat; one of us left a door not properly closed and the interior light has flattened the battery. I need to get to Farnborough as quickly as possible – could you give me a lift, please?”

“Of course – I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.”

We lived fairly near each other, the Crawfords in Worplesdon, whist we lived in Burpham, only five miles or so away, so I was actually with Graham in a bit under the quarter of an hour that I had promised. I was surprised when he had asked to be taken to Farnborough; normally he flew by scheduled airlines – British Airways whenever possible. Obviously, he was never normally at liberty to divulge just where he was going on any of his trips, but on this occasion he was muttering about having his weekend disrupted when only twenty-four hours previously, apparently, he had been told that there would be nothing for him until at least into the following week. Part of his moan was that instead of settling into a business class seat on an airliner, he would be travelling on some small RAF transport aircraft, although he didn’t go so far as to say where to.

When we arrived at Farnborough’s huge airfield, I followed Graham’s directions to a hangar a good mile or so from the main entrance and which we had only reached after he had shown some sort of pass to an RAF

corporal manning an entrance barrier. Once I had dropped Graham off I returned through the same barrier, 5

watched carefully all the way by the gateman. As I was leaving, I heard the sound of an aircraft landing, and twisting my neck round to bring the runway into view, I saw a small twin engine propeller driven aircraft, bearing RAF markings, touch down. I subsequently learned that it was called a Super King Air and was mostly used by the RAF as a trainer, but also for occasional passenger transport. At the time, however, I was in blissful ignorance of such facts. It was, I assumed, the aircraft of which Graham had moaned, and by the time that I had left the airfield entirely, I could see that it was already airborne again and climbing away –

certainly no time was being wasted in getting Graham to wherever it was that he was headed.

On the evening news that night there was a report that a Royal Air Force aircraft was missing. Even then I didn’t twig, but early the next morning, Sunday, we had a phone call from Kathleen. She had just been visited by two RAF officers and the local priest; the aircraft that was missing was the one on which Graham had been travelling. Wreckage, but no bodies, had been found in the Channel and it was feared that there was no possibility of any survivors being found.

We drove over to her post haste, arriving half an hour or so before her parents who had to come up from Portsmouth, followed a couple of hours later by Graham’s parents from Hereford.

The story slowly unfolded. Apparently the aircraft had flown from Farnborough to Paris, landing at Charles de Gaulle airport and taking off again some four hours later. Over the channel all contact had been lost and the initial assumption – later proved to be correct – was that it had been destroyed by a bomb, yet another terrorist outrage. The official death toll was four, three RAF personnel and Graham, who was described as a civil servant. What caused deep resentment in the UK press was the fact that somehow a terrorist could have got to a British military aircraft which was supposed to be under guard by the French authorities.

I relived that day in my mind, starting me to wonder if I could have been wrong- was it possible that it wasn’t Graham that I had seen, but someone who just looked like him? No, the more I thought it over, the more certain I became. The man that I had seen in Oxford Street was Graham Crawford. But how? No bodies had ever been recovered from the wreck of the Super King Air, the grim assumption being that the explosion and subsequent descent into the sea had torn the bodies apart. There was only one logical conclusion to be reached. Despite his name appearing on the official passenger list, Graham had not been on board when the aircraft exploded. But in that case, why on earth hadn’t he come forward at the time? What could it have been that would have caused him to disappear, leaving his wife and daughter in such anguish?

Whatever it was, it must somehow have occurred in Paris, but I could see no way that I could find out anything. For a start – who could I talk to? Graham was officially dead; trying to convince anyone otherwise was going to be very difficult.

I wondered about talking to Graham’s father. Like Graham and myself, Lawrence Crawford had been an Army officer, but unlike us he had stayed in the force until retiring as a Major-General. During his time in the Army he had seen action as a company commander in the Falklands, and as a battalion commander in the first Iraq war. Unlike him, I had never fired a weapon in anger during my Army career, never, in fact even seen an enemy soldier. I felt that Lawrence was the last person likely to fall to pieces if I advanced my theory to him. The problem would be getting a chance to talk to him. It was hardly something to raise over the phone, but how could I contact him without Hazel going ballistic at my upsetting – as she saw it – a family member to no good end. I could hardly go waltzing off to Hereford out of the blue.

In fact, I need not have worried. Just two days later Kathleen phoned, inviting us to a sort of family get-together in that her parents and Graham’s were coming to celebrate Julia’s thirteenth birthday. The actual party was on the Saturday – just four days later. We accepted, of course, and I determined that I would somehow get Lawrence on his own and tell him what I had seen.

In the event, it proved easier than I suppose that I had any reason to expect. Rather than drive back to Hereford, even though, in honour of the age of the principal, the party officially broke up at just after five, so that Julia could go on to her best friend who lived only a couple of streets way, Lawrence and Maria happily accepted Hazel’s offer of a bed for the night.

When we all got back to our place, after a light meal and some trivial gossip, I managed to persuade the wives to go up to bed whilst Lawrence and I had a nightcap.

Once the women were safely out of the way, Lawrence looked at me quizzically.

“What’s up, David? You’re clearly dying to talk to me without anyone else around, so now you’ve got me to yourself, out with it!"

I took a deep breath; I had wondered just how to broach the subject, but there was really only one way.

“Last Saturday Hazel and I were in Oxford Street – and I saw Graham.”

Lawrence looked at me steadily, then slowly placed his glass on the small table beside his chair.

“You’re absolutely sure that it was Graham?”

I nodded my head, relieved that he hadn’t simply gone into denial mode.

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“Yes,” I said, “he was in front of me, about twenty yards away, his back to me, but then he turned to his left and I could see him clearly in profile – and I could see his scar.”

Lawrence looked at me thoughtfully.

“Well, Graham’s scar was pretty distinctive. If it was him, that means that he couldn’t have been on board the plan when it blew up – but in that case, why didn’t he come forward at the time?”

I shrugged helplessly.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, assuming that it isn’t some remarkable coincidence and that there is really somebody out there who looks exactly like Graham right down to the scar on his face, we need to know just what is going on.”

He took up his glass again and swallowed the remnants. I automatically refilled it and he nodded his thanks.

“Look, I don’t know how much you know of Graham’s job?”

“Well, I know that he was a Queen’s Messenger and that it didn’t take up all his time, but that he enjoyed what he did – the chance for a bit of travel and the satisfaction that he was doing something worthwhile for his country – I know that was important to him.”

Lawrence nodded again.

“Yes, that’s true as far as it goes – but he did rather more for the country than that description would suggest.”

I was intrigued as Lawrence continued.

“You see, delivering messages, which after all is what the job of being a Queen’s Messenger is all about, is pretty low grade stuff, really. Obviously, messengers have to be totally trustworthy and all that, but just nipping across to somewhere, dropping off a package, occasionally bringing something back – that wasn’t really enough for somebody like Graham. OK, he accepted that he could no longer be an active service soldier, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do something more to help out the country.”

He had my total attention. Clearly there had been more to Graham than I had realised.

“You may know that, in effect, I arranged for him to be offered the job? An old boys network sort of thing?”

“Yes, Graham was very open about that.”

“Good. Well, the way it came about was that a contact of mine in the Ministry of Defence – I still keep in touch with some of the old crowd and they with me – came to me to ask if I thought that Graham would be suitable for a job they needed taking on. Can’t go into much detail, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you will understand.”

I nodded once more. I had, after all, been in Army Intelligence which, despite the wisecrackers, is not an oxymoron, but is the home of some very bright people indeed. Lawrence continued.

“The long and the short of it is that in addition to his out in the open job as a glorified messenger boy, Graham was also a contact for undercover agents that we have throughout the world. His beat was just Europe – there other folk doing similar jobs in other parts of the world, although by no means are they all Queen’s Messengers. I know that they exist – but that’s all I know. Graham was the only one I actually knew as a person. Now, nobody said anything at the time for pretty obvious reasons, but I learned from his immediate boss – chap I’ve known for years, George Manson, there he did wonder if blowing up of that plane wasn’t an act of random terrorism, but a deliberate attempt to assassinate Graham. Up until this evening I had assumed that there had actually been an attempt then it was successful – and if it was an attempt on his life and he realised the fact, then it does offer a possible explanation for him not having come forward after the crash. It is interesting that no terrorist group has ever claimed credit for the bomb – you would expect some bunch of ragheads to be trumpeting their success had that been the case.”

This all came as a major shock to me, What Lawrence was suggesting made some sort of sense – perhaps having cheated death once, Graham felt that he had used up all the luck available to him. There was also the thought that if those wanting him dead had another try, this time his family might be in the line of fire. I was slowly beginning to see some sense in all of this. But what now? Was Graham still in danger? Did the fact that he had been walking in Oxford Street a week ago mean that he felt that he was now out of danger, or was it a chance sighting of a man on the run? As I considered it, another thought struck me. Had Graham seen me? He had, after all disappeared within seconds of my sighting of him; perhaps he was taking evasive action. He need have no worry about me ever knowingly betraying him, but might he not worry that I would tell someone that I had seen him – as indeed I had? I looked at Lawrence and realised that his second glass of cognac was empty, as was my first. I refilled both glasses.

“So,” I asked, “what, if anything, should we do? In fact, what can we do?”

Lawrence slowly shook his head.

“Damned if I know, David, damned if I know. However, there is one thing that I can do, I can, very cautiously, have a word with my contact and see what, if anything, he might be willing to divulge. I’ll have to go very cautiously – there is always the chance that he and his people really do think that Graham is dead 7

and would be happy to keep it that way to avoid any potential embarrassment for the section, the ministry, or even the government, God help us!”

This was all getting way beyond me. I thought of refilling out now nearly empty glasses yet again but decided against it unless Lawrence insisted. I felt that we had both had enough alcohol to ensure a bit of a headache in the morning and ratchetting it up didn’t seem the best of ideas.

I changed tack.

“How much of all this does Maria know?”

“Nothing. I love her dearly, but I can’t be sure that that she wouldn’t, totally without malice nor intention, say too much in the wrong company, should such wrong company exist in our possible circle, which I very much doubt, but far better to be safe than sorry.”

The next morning Lawrence and Maria took their leave and as their car disappeared at the start of their journey back to Hereford, Hazel turned to me, her expression one of curiosity.

“What were you and Lawrence talking about after you sent Maria and me to bed? It was a bit obvious, at least to me, that you wanted to get Lawrence on his own for some reason – so come on, what was it all about?”

I had been rather dreading this moment. Hazel knows me too well for me ever to attempt to pull the wool over her eyes, and I made no attempt to do so now.

“Let’s go back inside and I’ll tell you.”

So we did and I did. At first she was annoyed that I had raised the possibility of Graham still being alive with his father, but as I completed the tale, she began to come round to my point of view – that I had seen Graham and that there was quite possibly a good reason for him effectively being in hiding. Ever the practical one, it was Hazel who made the next point.

“So, if Graham really is still alive, what happens to Kathleen? She’s not a widow anymore. As far as I know, she’s not seeing anybody, but suppose that she does? And, what about the insurance money that she had been paid? It would have to be paid back, and she might have a hard time convincing people that she really thought that Graham was dead and that this wasn’t all some insurance scam.”

It was a point, or rather two points, that hadn’t occurred to me, particularly the bit about the insurance money. If it came to it, I didn’t know if Kathleen would be able to pay the money back. I imagined the sort of scenarios that the unsympathetic might come up – even that Graham had planted the bomb on the aircraft and then done a vanishing act and that Kathleen was in on it. Totally wrong, of course, but somebody might quite well come up with it.

It made me more determined than ever to somehow get to the bottom of all this.

Chapter Two

It was four days later, the following Thursday, before I heard from Lawrence again, and it was by phone.

“David Larter.”

“David, it’s Lawrence. How would you be fixed to come up to London tomorrow? There’s a man that I would like you to meet.”

“I can make it – should I bring Hazel?”

“Probably better if you didn’t. This chap is not over happy at talking to the two of this; he might call the meeting off altogether if I try to increase the numbers.”

“OK. Where do you want to meet?”

“If you get to Oxford Circus and walk down Regent Street headed north, you’ll find it crossed by Margaret Street. Turn right at that point and half way along Margaret Street before it reaches Great Titchfield Street, there is a Chinese restaurant, the Golden Wok. We’ll meet there at one o’clock and have lunch with my contact. Don’t be late.”

“OK, see you there.”

I rang off, wondering how I was going to persuade Hazel that I needed to meet Lawrence and his contact by myself, without wifely assistance. It wasn’t easy, but in the end she agreed to stay home whilst I, in her somewhat scathing terminology, ‘played at being a secret agent’.

The next day I duly found the ‘Golden Wok’ and entered a small, dimly lit restaurant. Although it was one o’clock it was a dull day outside – not much of an advert for the English summer – and heavy potted plants at the window onto the street helped to reduce the level of illumination considerably.

Through the gloom I saw that Lawrence was already present, seated at a table that had a second occupant.

Both sort of half rose as I approached, then sank back onto their seats in that oddly English style of greeting.

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Lawrence spoke first.

“David, this is George Manson. I won’t elaborate on what he does for a living other than to say that he and Graham were work colleagues.”

I reached across the table and shook Manson’s proffered hand. His grasp was somewhat limp, fitting in well with his slight frame, thinning grey hair and a light grey suit. Even his tie was a dull, understated affair with dark green and brown stripes. He looked to be one of those men who might be anywhere between fifty and seventy, but probably nearer the latter than the former. He didn’t say anything, simply nodded an acknowledgement to me as his grey eyes ran over me. Like the rest of him, they were grey, but unlike the rest of him there was a sparkle to them, a suggestion that it would be unwise to underestimate George Manson in any way. It was only then I realised that we were the only diners in the establishment and as that sank in, a small Chinese man came over to our table. He smiled, first at Manson, then at Lawrence and myself.

“I trust everything is to your satisfaction, Mr. Manson?”

“Very much so, Mr. Chang. Thank you for all the trouble that you have gone to.”

“No trouble at all, Mr. Manson, always happy to help.”

It was then, as I twisted slightly to follow the little Chinaman’s progress back towards the rear of the restaurant, that I saw that the sign at the door read, from where I sat, ‘Open’. If the sign read ‘Open’ inside the place, from the street it must read ‘Closed’, which doubtless explained why we were sitting in solitary splendour.

“Useful chap, Chang.” They were the first words that I had heard Manson utter; his voice blended well with the rest of him, slightly low pitched, quiet and something of a monotone. He continued in much the same vein.

“I use this place from time to time. It normally only opens in the evenings for dinners, so nobody who knows the area is surprised to see the ‘Closed’ sign up, and anyone who doesn’t know the area scarcely matters.

Now, about Graham.”

He turned his attention to me.

“Mr. Larter, are you absolutely certain that it was Graham Crawford that you saw?”

Had I actually had any doubts in the past, the way this meeting was being conducted would have dispelled them instantly.

“Yes – one hundred percent. Graham and I have known each other for some years. He, and our wives, are very close – only last week Hazel – my wife – and I were at Kathleen’s to celebrate Julia’s thirteenth birthday. I’d know Graham anywhere.”

He nodded slowly – I got the impression he seldom, if ever, acted in haste – and pursed his lips before continuing.

“As you know, Graham was a Queen’s Messenger. As Lawrence “ he nodded towards him, “was also aware, Graham also undertook duties beyond the norm for a Queen’s Messenger. He undertook that work for the department involved, which isn’t exactly mine, but one with which we interact; it entailed the debriefing of agents who, for one reason or another, were either unable to contact their normal handler, or were concerned that their normal handler had gone over to the other side. That all sounds very dramatic, for which I apologise. Mostly it was very mundane; a handler taken ill, involved in a motor accident – that sort of thing.

‘Going over to the other side’ was very, very rare, but the belief by an agent that it might have happened was far less rare. Understandably, they tend to be somewhat on the paranoid side.

“Now, Graham’s trip immediately before the aeroplane disaster was out of the ordinary in that instead of having the time to fly by a normal passenger aircraft, the urgency of the papers which had to be taken to Paris resulted in the RAF being required to lay on a special flight for him.”

He turned to me.

“I understand that you actually delivered Graham to Farnborough, Mr. Larter?”

“Yes, that’s right. I delivered him and as I was leaving him I saw a small RAF plane land, and by the time I was leaving by Farnborough’s main gate, I actually saw it take off again.”

“Yes, and we know that he got to Pairs without any difficulty, because he delivered the documents that had been entrusted to him on time and to the right person. Up until you saw him last week, nobody saw Graham again and it was assumed that he was in the aircraft when it took off to return to Farnborough. Sadly, and as we all know only too well, it never got there.”

Lawrence interceded.

“What actually happened in Paris – are you at liberty to tell us?”

“Oh yes. Graham was met at Charles de Gaulle airport by an Assistant Secretary from the Embassy, together with an Embassy driver. The Assistant Secretary ensured that Graham’s passage through the airport was not hindered in any way – what he was carrying was, of course, protected under diplomatic immunity – and the 9

driver took them both to the Embassy. Once there, Graham delivered the documents to the intended recipient, and he was driven back to the airport, again accompanied by the Assistant Secretary.”

I listened to this intently; I knew that despite the somewhat downbeat title, an Assistant Secretary in the Civil Service was a pretty senior position. Clearly Graham’s mission had been seen as important. Manson continued his tale.

“This is where it gets very confusing. Until you, Mr. Larter, saw Graham last week, we were all under the impression that he had boarded the RAF plane and been lost over the Channel with the others. Obviously, for you to have seen him alive and apparently well, he clearly didn’t board the plane. What puzzles me is why, and how. The RAF crew were there purely to ferry Graham, first to Paris, then back to Farnborough, so why did they take off without him? The flight plan that they had submitted was never changed; as far as the airport authorities were concerned the aircraft arrived with four people on board and left with four people on board.

“The mystery thickens. At no time from being met at the airport until he disappeared from the view of the Assistant Secretary who had accompanied him, was Graham on his own whilst in Paris. He was met, he was in the car, he was in the Embassy, then he was back in the car. I don’t know if either of you are familiar with the non-commercial element of Charles de Gaulle airport?”

We shook our heads in unison.

“Well, for VIP flights and the like there is a quite separate arrangement with the people involved being ferried from their aircraft to a separate VIP arrivals entrance – which is also the VIP departure exit – so that they come nowhere near the main concourses of the airport. That, of course, is the route that Graham took.

Once he left that area he would have been ferried by an airport mini-bus or the like to his aircraft. At that point, of course, he would have left the sight of the official who had accompanied him.

“Now, how did the bomb get on board the aircraft? The most probable answer is that it was somehow smuggled aboard whilst the aircraft was being refuelled – this was accomplished by a fuel bowser going to the aircraft, not by the aircraft having to move anywhere. Now this was a military aircraft and the military are, understandably, pretty touchy over who has access to their machines. We know that one member of the crew – the co-pilot, a Flight Lieutenant Morris – stayed with the aircraft whilst it was being refuelled, but that once he was satisfied that the procedure had been completed satisfactorily, he left the aircraft and joined his colleagues in the VIP lounge area to await Graham’s return. Once they knew that he was on his way, they returned to the aircraft and prepared it for take-off. They didn’t stay in the lounge until Graham actually arrived – we have that from the official who accompanied him. So, Graham arrives at the VIP lounge, says goodbye to the official, walks out of the door to the waiting mini-bus – and effectively vanishes for two years.”

Lawrence and I looked at each other in bewilderment, The more that we heard from Manson, the more bizarre everything seemed, and there was one awful possibility forming itself at the back of my mind, a possibility which I refused to believe, but which I knew full well others might see as a logical explanation.

Manson’s next words confirmed my concern.

“Now, we don’t know how Graham persuaded the RAF crew to take off without him, but I am afraid that there is one possibility that we have to consider, and that is the why – the possible ‘why’ being that Graham knew that there was a bomb aboard the aircraft so had no intention of boarding it.”

Lawrence’s reaction was predictable – and he only beat me to it by milliseconds.

“Never. Graham would never be involved in anything like that – it’s absolutely unthinkable.”

Manson remained calm.

“I’m sorry, Lawrence, and I understand how you must feel, but I am sure that you must appreciated that it is a possible theory that must be explored.”

Lawrence was clearly far from happy at what had been said, but I had to agree with what Manson was saying. Not for a moment would I believe that my friend would have been party to a terrorist outrage. There must be another explanation – but what? I realised at that point that there was one, possibly vital, question that I did not believe had ever been asked, but I was unwilling to voice it in front of Manson. It would have to wait until Lawrence and I were alone.

Lawrence was clearly thinking hard, not allowing his reluctance to accept that Graham would have indulged in any wrong doing to make him freeze.

“So, what about that mini-bus driver? Do we know anything about him? Do we have his story?”

For the first time Manson looked a little uneasy.

“The driver’s name was Alain Clerc, and he has never been interviewed. He was involved in a road traffic accident later that day and died without being able to talk about anything at all.”

Lawrence and I were both incredulous; I beat Lawrence to the punch.

10

“But surely that must stink to high heaven! A man involved in the last moments of that aircraft’s stay at Charles de Gaulle before it blows up in mid-air and a potential witness of the utmost importance, and we are expected to believe his getting killed in a road traffic accident only hours later, is a coincidence? I don’t buy it!”

Manson nodded his head gravely.

“I share your sentiments, Mr. Larter, but the Paris police were able to come up with nothing to suggest that it was anything but a coincidence, although personally I have to wonder. Apparently Clerc was crossing the street outside his apartment when he was hit by a car which failed to stop. My own view, for what it is worth, is that the man was somehow involved in planting a bomb aboard the aircraft, that he didn’t work alone, and that whoever he was working with or for silenced him.

“However, like it or not, Clerc is dead and in consequence we can learn nothing from the man. Now that we know Graham to be alive, it is essential that we find him and try and get to the bottom of this whole affair.”

I had an uneasy feeling that, should Manson manage to find Graham it would not be to my friend’s advantage. I could well imagine the temptation to take the line of least resistance and set Graham up as in some way involved in the bombing. But why would Graham want to be involved in such an outrage? And why had he not boarded that plane, and how had he persuaded the RAF aircrew to leave without him?

Manson shook his head slowly, clearly thinking through the ramifications of what he had just said; then he almost shook himself as he straightened up in his chair.

“Lawrence, I must thank you and Mr. Larter for bringing all this to my notice. Please now leave the matter in my hands.”

He rose to his feet; clearly our meeting was at an end. As he so, the small Chinaman, Chang, hurried across.

“I trust all is well, Mr. Manson?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Chang. As ever, it has been most helpful of you to let us use your establishment for our meeting.”

And with that, the three of us left the Golden Wok. Manson went one way, Lawrence and I went in the opposite direction.

Once we were safely out of Manson’s hearing, I turned to Lawrence.

“Lawrence, do you know if Graham told Kathleen how long he was going to be away on that last trip?”

He furrowed his brow in concentration.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “now that you ask, when the news first came though that it was Graham’s plane that had gone down, Kathleen expressed surprise as well as shock. I’m sure that she wasn’t expecting him back that day.” He kept on thinking, and then he suddenly snapped his fingers. “Got it! It was one of those things that people often say when they are trying to come to terms with a tragedy. She was sitting on the settee in their living room and she said something on the lines of ‘But he won’t see Julia’s school play – he promised that he would do his very best to be back in time for it.’ Then she started crying again and I thought no more of the remark at the time – but Julia’s play wasn’t until the following week. She couldn’t have been expecting him back the same day!”

So, whatever had happened, it looked as though Graham had not expected to return to England that day, even if his aircraft was set up to enable him to achieve just that. That set me to thinking further, but walking along the street was no place for a serious discussion.

“Lawrence – I think that I need a drink, a sit down and a think – how about you?”

“Me too – look, there’s a pub just across the road. Let’s try it.”

A few minutes later we were seated at a table in the corner of a surprisingly quiet pub, nursing our respective drinks, a Scotch and water for Lawrence, a pint of bitter for me.

“Look,” I said, “we couldn’t understand why that aircraft would have returned – or attempted to – without Graham on board, but thinking it over, it’s easy. Try this as an idea. Graham leaves the Assistant Secretary in the VIP lounge and is driven to the aircraft. He tells the mini-bus driver to wait, gets into the aircraft, and shows the crew an order he has just received telling him to remain in Paris for another job and to send to aircraft back without him, but because the job is highly sensitive, to tell the crew not to alter the flight plan so that his remaining behind won’t be generally known. How’s that sound? They are RAF officers, used to receiving orders without any explanation – if it looks genuine, they would obey it. Then Graham has the mini-bus take him away, either back to the VIP enclosure, or to somewhere else in the airport.”

Lawrence pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in concentration.

“Yes,” he said slowly, dragging the word out as though it had multiple syllables, “yes, I can see that working. However, that still leaves the question of why Graham would have done it.”

We both hit upon a probable reason simultaneously.

11

“Suppose,” Lawrence said thoughtfully, “just suppose, that Graham didn’t come up with the idea himself, but that he received the order from somebody unknown to us and was just passing on the part of it which affected the RAF blokes?”

I nodded my head.

“That makes even better sense than Graham dreaming up something himself. But from whom could such an order have come?”

We looked at each other uneasily. There was one obvious answer.

“Manson?” I queried.

Lawrence looked decidedly worried.

“Well, Manson is the man who arranges the details of the Queen Messengers’ journeys, but I don’t know who decides what they carry – probably a number of people in various departments – certainly not Manson. I must admit that I don’t know the real details – Graham only gave a sort of rough outline when he told me what the job entailed. I do hope that Manson isn’t on the wrong side in this – I’ve known the man for years –

he served with me in the Falklands, and I would have said that he was totally trustworthy, but now?”

He left the question hanging in mid-air.

I had another thought.

“Surely, if Graham had received an order, instead of inventing one, that civil servant with him would have known about it? Who was he, by the way, and do we know what his story was?”

Lawrence frowned as the logic of what I had just said stuck home.

“His name’s Alistair Duggan. Manson mentioned him when I spoke to him to set up today’s meeting.

According to Manson, all Duggan saw was Graham leave the VIP lounge – because of the layout he didn’t even see Graham get into the mini-bus.”

The more I thought matters over, the more confused I became. Nothing seemed to make any sense at all; I could not believe that Graham would indulge in anything the slightest bit ‘iffy’, never mind terrorism – it just

‘didn’t compute’ as they say. I decided that a second drink was needed, plus some food and was tucking into deep fried scampi and chips in a basket – Hazel would have had a fit, but I decided that desperate situations called for desperate remedies. Lawrence settled for a second Scotch and a sandwich, but then, he was older, although probably just as desperate!

We finished our respective refreshments, but without coming up with any bright ideas, and went to catch our respective trains back home.

Once safely home, I recounted the days happenings to Hazel, who was as puzzled by it all as I was.

“This is just weird,” she exclaimed, “I can’t get my head round it at all. That RAF crew – surely they must have been expecting to bring Graham back with them, or why not take off straight away after depositing him?”

I had to admit that I hadn’t thought of that precise point and, as far as I was aware, neither had Lawrence.

“Told you I should have been there,” she replied triumphantly, but then her mood changed to a more sombre note.

“But what is going to happen to Kathleen and Julia? And are you and Lawrence going to tell her that Graham is still alive?”

I was, at least, pleased that Hazel now believed me, that I hadn’t imagined seeing Graham, but I shook my head.

“Until we know a bit more about what is going on I think it would be cruel to go to her at this stage. Suppose Graham realises that I saw him and, for whatever reason, does an even more complete vanishing trick, then what?”

Hazel nodded her head in reluctant agreement – nothing good could be achieved by telling Kathleen at this stage.

I began to wonder, not for the first time, if indeed Graham had realised that I had seen him and if so, what he would do in consequence. If only I had been able to catch up with him that day!

“If only there was some way that we could contact him, some way to let him know that we are here for him and want to help.” Hazel mused.

It was then that I had an idea, one that probably had very little chance of success, but was surely worth trying. Like me, Graham was a reader of the Times newspaper, a paper which even in this day of social media still carried personal messages of the ‘KK need to have your help GG’ type of thing. Graham had often perused those pages as some of the messages were intriguing and he would put an interpretation, sometimes salacious, on them without, of course, having the slightest idea whether his interpretation was anywhere near to the mark. It was very long odds, but it was worth trying. I explained my idea to Hazel who, like me, doubted that it would succeed, but agreed that anything, no matter how remote its chance of success, was worth trying.

12

“If Graham does still read the personal columns, it needs to be something that will catch his attention” Hazel offered.

I agreed and spent ages trying to think of something that would catch our friend’s attention without alarming him – for, of course, we had no way of knowing why he had done his disappearing act – after all, it might have been prompted by fear. Finally, I came up with something that I felt would intrigue Graham enough to perhaps provoke a response.

‘DL 55680437 to GC 54493443 OK?’

The initials were, of course, those of myself and Graham. The numerals were our respective service numbers. Graham might not recognise mine, but he would certainly recognise his – it is something no serviceman ever forgets. I arranged for the message to run in the personal columns of the Times for two weeks – if Graham hadn’t responded in some way by then, it was just about certain that he never would.

In the event, and after perusing the paper anxiously every day, it only took five of my fourteen insertions for a reply:-

‘GC to DL. Yes’

I immediately had a new message inserted which was very simple – DL to GK followed by my mobile phone number. Another anxious wait ensued, and then on the evening of the third day, my mobile rang. The caller ID display just said ‘number withheld’ which usually meant that somebody wanted to sell me double glazing or the like.

“David Larter.”

I heard what sounded like a recorded message, reciting a phone number – again a mobile – and went on to say ‘phone this number within twenty-four hours and prove who you are’. Then there was silence. I looked at Hazel in puzzlement.

“How do I prove who I am over the phone?” I demanded. She started to shrug helplessly, then changed her mine.

“It’s obvious – refer to something that only you and Graham would both know about.”

I wracked my brain for something which would fit what was being asked – then I had it. No good referring to Graham’s facial scar – you only had to see him once to know about that, but what few people would know was that the roadside bomb had not only left him with the one scar- a piece of shrapnel had penetrated his body armour with just enough remaining energy to leave him with a scar in shape of a star just under his sternum – but I felt that I would need more than that. Whilst Graham knew that I was aware of that scar, I doubted that I was alone – for a start Kathleen obviously knew about it, and Julia as well, as would anybody else who had ever seen him in swimming trunks or the like. I needed something in addition and I felt that I had it – I had a birthmark, vaguely resembling the head of a horse, on my right thigh, about half way down to the kneecap. It was only small, about one and a half inches long, and I knew that Graham had seen it in the past when we had gone on a joint family holiday about four years ago we had shared a large villa on Corfu, a villa with its own swimming pool, a pool which we had all used extensively; it was Graham who had actually remarked upon my birthmark on one occasion, likening it to a horse’s head – something which hadn’t occurred to me before.

Full of trepidation, I dialled the number and heard the recorded voice demand my message.

“GC star scar DL horse’s head mark”

I put the phone down again, hoping for an instant response, but it wasn’t forthcoming. I had to wait a further two days before the next communication. It was, again, a recorded message over the phone.

“Come to the animal house at nineteen hundred hours tomorrow. Come alone.”

Hazel and I looked at each other in confusion, then the penny dropped.

“We used to have an occasional beer together at The Bear pub. That’s what must be meant."

Hazel, as before, was unhappy at being left out of things, but the instruction was quite clear – ‘come alone’.

That next evening, I drove into the Bear’s small car park and got out of the car, locking it behind me, and entered the pub. It was unchanged since Graham and I had last had a convivial beer together, perhaps three years or so ago, just the single bar, with a long bar counter running virtually the whole length of the building on one side, with a series of open booths on the other. The toilets were at the far end, which gave me a good excuse to walk the entire length of the bar, checking to see if Graham had already arrived. Not to any great surprise, he hadn’t. He would presumably be somewhere where he could have seen me arrive, to make sure that I really was alone. I visited the gents’ toilet, which was empty, then returned to the bar proper and ordered a diet Coke. I had no idea how long I might have to wait and had no desire to fall foul of any breathalyser wielding policeman.

It was exactly seven o’clock; all I could do was wait, and wait I did; I waited, and waited, and waited.

Finally, after an hour and three-quarters, I decided that there was no point in waiting any longer, so I left the pub, got into my car and drove home.

13

Hazel was agog to hear what had happened and was, if anything, even more deflated by the fact that nothing had.

“It must have been a test,” I told her. “I’m sure Graham set it up to see if he could trust me, to see if I really would come alone. Hopefully, he is now convinced, but the next move is clearly up to him.”

On that very unsatisfactory note, we went to bed, wondering what the morrow would bring.

Chapter Three

In the event, the morrow brought nothing, nothing at all. It was another three days before the next stage in the saga occurred.

It was evening; we had finished our dinner, done the washing up, and had settled down in the lounge when the doorbell rang. I got up and made my way to the door; we have a spyhole in the door and from force of habit I gave it a quick glance; there was a man outside, but he was standing so close to the door that his features were in a dense shadow, caused by the overhead light, which would normally illuminate a visitor, effectively being behind him. Nevertheless, I flung the door open wide and Graham stepped over the threshold.

We looked at each other for a moment – a moment that seemed to hang suspended in time almost for ever –

then embraced in a fierce bear hug.

At last I stepped back and looked my friend up and down.. He had lost weight over the last two years and his face had acquired a haunted look that had never been there before.

“Come in,” I said hoarsely, “come in and for God’s sake, tell us what is going on!”

I ushered him into the lounge, where Hazel, after a gasp of incredulity, also hugged him fiercely.

At last we were all seated and Graham had a large Scotch in his hand. He took a sip, nodded his approval –

as well he might, it was my favourite Glenmorangie – and looked from one to the other of us.

“It’s difficult to know where to begin,” he started off diffidently, “ but I owe you both the full story so that you will understand what has been going on and why, to all intents and purposes, I am in hiding from some of the very people that I should be able to trust.

“It all started six months before the plane crash in which I was supposed to have died – and in which those poor RAF buggers did die through no fault of their own. As you know, I was a Queen’s Messenger. I found the job pretty humdrum – really just a glorified delivery boy – but the opportunity to travel around a bit was welcome. Quite often I would fly into somewhere – I only covered Europe, by the way – and had to leave straight away, but sometimes there was the opportunity for a bit of a stop-over, of which I took full advantage. Up until that last trip I had always flown on scheduled airlines, British Airways whenever possible – which was most of the time – but occasionally other carriers. Always travelled business class, which was a bit more comfortable than economy, especially when you are my height – the extra legroom was a blessing.

“But I digress. As I guess that you know, I delivered documents that were too sensitive to be allowed to go in the usual diplomatic bag, nor sent in digital format, but which had to be accompanied in their original format by a living, breathing human being.”

So far nothing that Graham had said was new, and I waited impatiently for the story to develop. Graham must have sensed my mood, for he metaphorically shook himself and continued.

“My boss, I suppose you could call him, was a chap called George Manson. I say ‘suppose’ because in theory, the whole messenger service comes under the wing of an Under Secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, chap called Hugh Collyer. I only met Collyer twice – once when I was interviewed for the job and the second time a day before that fatal flight. For day to day matters, Manson was the man –

he arranged schedules, agreed to annual leave requests – all that sort of thing.

“As I say, the things that led up to that final day started six months earlier. I was on standby at the office –

normally only the permanent messengers pulled standby duty, but due to annual leave commitments, Manson asked if I would mind standing in, and I was happy to agree, especially as it was beyond my contracted hours so that it meant a bit more money.

“That day I was on duty from eight in the morning until eight at night when one of the other guys would take over, and it was about half past three that Manson come into the room – the officer on standby had a small suite, really, a lunge with tea making facilities and the like, and off it a small en suite bedroom. As I say, it was about three thirty and I was surprised to see Manson there. Although it was the first time that I had been on standby, I understood from the regulars that if anything did crop up, what normally happened was that Manson called on the internal phone to give you time to get your gear together and then you went to his 14

office to collect whatever it was that had to be delivered and, of course, you picked up the necessary travel documentation.

“Manson, who is normally the most unflappable of men, looked a bit perturbed and he asked if I minded him intruding – of course, I didn’t, anything to relieve the monotony. He sat himself down and frowned – a sort of perplexed frown, not a miserable or angry one.

“‘Graham,’ he said, I’ve just come from an unusual meeting with Mr. Collyer. He had a man with him whom I’ve never met before, a chap called Jones – and I have a feeling that Jones is in no way his real name. To be blunt, he had ‘spook’ written all over him.’ Jones – if that is his name, had an unusual request to make of the messenger service. He wanted someone to act as a sort of debriefing officer for various agents in various places – he didn’t call them agents, he referred to them as ‘members of his staff’, but again it was clear what they really must be. I told the two of them that I couldn’t see how the messenger service could help – after all, nobody knows from one day to the next where and when a messenger might be sent, so how could a messenger be expected to meet up with any of these ‘members of staff’. That’s when Collyer chipped in. As far as he was concerned, the messenger service was an ideal cover for what Jones needed – all that was required was for messengers to actually be sent to meet up with Jones’ member of staff, but also to take something to the requisite embassy as a cover. In fact, the messenger would have as his first priority the meeting with the agent, using the delivery of something – probably something very trivial – to the embassy to explain his journey. It was stressed that the number of times a messenger would be needed to perform such a task would probably be no more than perhaps three or four times a year, so it wouldn’t create a sudden, and suspicious, increase in messenger journeys.”

Graham broke off from his narrative and took a long pull on his drink.

“All this came as a bit of a surprise to me – I was the newest member of the team and here was Manson coming to me as though he needed somebody on whom to unburden. I said as much to him and he shook his head. ‘No, Graham, you underestimate yourself. Yes, you are new, but you have two big advantages for something like this. You are younger than the other members of the team and, to be honest, I feel that you are far more flexible as a result. Don’t get me wrong – the team members are all ideal messengers – totally reliable, but they are all pretty set in their ways, and I think that they would be a bit thrown by something like this. Jones is responsible for his ‘members of staff’ throughout Europe, which is also the area that you cover, so here is a good match there. So, will you take it on?’ I thought for a while and agreed – worst mistake that I have ever made in my whole life.

“I was called upon to do the first ‘debrief’ that Manson had talked about a month or so later. This time I had a normal delivery to make to the Embassy in Rome and had to meet up with a man referred to as ‘Luigi’. The embassy is in the Via Venti Settembre, a pretty palatial place, but after I had delivered my package, I met

‘Luigi’ in a bar of the Hotel Galileo, on the corner of Via Gaeta and Via Paestro, a short walk away from the embassy. It was a bit surreal; I had been told by Manson that I would need simply to listen to what Luigi had to say and perhaps receive a package from him and bring it back with me. In the event, all Luigi said was that he had no trust in ‘Cato’, whoever ‘Cato’ might be, and that I was to pass that message, together with a slim envelope which he handed to me, back to the office. I did as he asked and heard no more of the matter.

“I was called on to another debrief a month or so later, this time to Madrid. This was even lower key that the Rome exercise; again a bar near to the embassy and this time I was given an envelope with no verbal instruction at all – the envelope was marked ‘Jones’ and that was that.

“The next stage in the saga was the day before the plane crash. I arrived at the messenger suite at nine o’clock as usual and was surprised to be told by Manson that Collyer wished to see me, and would I please report to his office at ten that morning. I did so – it was in part of the building that I had never visited before

– I actually had to ask for directions – and got there a few minutes early. He had an outer office, manned by his secretary, a rather formidable looking lady of about fifty, who asked me to take a chair and wait, which I did. I only had to wait a minute or two before the intercom on her desk buzzed and she indicated that I was to go through the door behind her into Collyer’s actual office. His office was something of a surprise; in this day and age it looked like a throwback to the days of Queen Victoria. It was large, about twenty-four feet or so square, and panelled throughout in a dark wood, making it positively gloomy, despite the far wall being almost all window. Collyer’s desk was large and of the same dark wood as the panelling, and if you had said that it also went back to Queen Victoria’s days I would not have been at all surprised. The man himself, however, was not behind it. Tucked into a corner of that large office was a small conference table – well, small compared to the office as a whole, but it would still seat six people comfortably, not that anything like that number were present. No, there were just two men, Collyer himself, whom I had met at my interview, and another man, a man unknown to me. Collyer rose to greet me.

15

“ ‘Ah, Captain Crawford, thank you for coming’ he half turned to the second man, who had remained seated at the table, ‘Captain, let me introduce Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones has come to us looking for some help in a rather delicate matter – specifically your help. Please take a seat.’

“I duly sat and looked at the two men. As I said, I had met Collyer once before - at my interview. He was a tall, good looking sort of man, about fifty or so, perhaps a bit more, but he looked fit – no desk bound pallor nor middle aged spread. He was dressed as I somehow expected a very senior civil servant to be dressed, black jacket, ‘pepper and salt trousers’. A white handkerchief showed at the beast pocket of the jacket, a jacket worn over a spotless white shirt and with what looked like a regimental tie, although not one that I recognised, was displayed and kept under control by a tie clip that looked to be made of gold. He was broad-shouldered and a large, ‘square-cut’ head sat on those shoulders, a head crowned by a luxuriant mop of neatly combed hair, black with traces of grey at the temples. Heavy eye brows, again grey shot, perched above deep-set dark brown, almost black, eyes. Altogether, Hugh Collyer was a man who would make an immediate impression in just about any company.

“The same could not be said for Jones. A small, slightly built man, no more than five feet six or so tall, he wore a lightweight grey suit which matched thin, lank grey hair – and not much of it – combed across a highly domed and almost bald skull. His face somehow seemed to exude anonymity, so much so that if he hadn’t played so pivotal a part in what was to happen to me, I probably wouldn’t recognise him if I were to see him in the street today. As had Manson, when he had told me about the man, I instantly came to the conclusion that Jones was almost certainly not his real name and that he was so anonymous a figure that he just had to be a spook of some kind.

“It was Jones who carried the conversation forward. ‘Captain Crawford, what I am about to tell you must be seen as coming under the strictures of the Official Secrets Act, an act which I understand that you have signed,’ I nodded my head; his assumption was correct. ‘Very well. I have three members of staff in Paris, one of whom works in the Embassy itself as a senior diplomat attached directly to the staff of the Ambassador. The other two are, respectively, trade and cultural attachés. All three report directly to one of my immediate subordinates here at the FCO, who in turn presents to me a synopsis of their reports. My subordinate is responsible for all of Europe and Africa – it is immaterial to the point under discussion, but I have two other people of equivalent rank responsible, respectively, for the Americas, and Asia and Australasia. My Europe man and, therefore, I myself, have been concerned for some months now that information which should have been confined to my department has been leaked, leaked to a number of unauthorised individuals, including at least two members of the press. This has, in turn, led to embarrassing questions being raised with ministers regarding details of our relationship with France and with the EU, details that are not yet ready for general circulation – indeed details which may never be generally circulated because they may well be overtaken by other considerations.

“I must admit that by now my mind was in a complete whirl. What on earth all this had to do with me was totally beyond my ken, and what Jones was now saying didn’t agree with I had been told by Manson when I had first become involved with this aspect of the affair; Manson had said that Jones had told him that he was only responsible for Europe, but now the man was saying that his duties were world wide – perhaps he recently been promoted? However, Jones was far from finished.

“ ‘I have determined to set a trap in order to identify which of my staff is the one responsible for the leaks, and this is where you come in. When you next go to Paris I want you to deliver messages to the three individuals concerned. The messages are almost identical, but with subtle changes between them which will enable me to determine who is doing the leaking – always, assuming, of course, that the information is leaked. I have had the necessary documentation prepared and it will be made available to you once a Paris trip is next required of you.’

“I had to chip in at that point. ‘But all I ever do when I get to an embassy is deliver whatever it is to the Ambassador’s staff – if I go round the embassy looking for individuals, surely it will be so out of character as to raise suspicions?’ Jones didn’t falter. ‘I had thought of that, and I have already briefed the Ambassador personally.’ I shook my head – ‘It’s your decision, of course, but I still don’t see how something so out of the ordinary will fail to look odd.’ But Jones seemed happy, so I accepted the situation – it was, after all, nothing really to do with me how he set about his task.”

Graham paused for breath and I poured him another drink. All this was very interesting, but it still didn’t explain how he had escaped going down with that plane. He took a deep swallow from his glass, then he resumed his tale.

“The next day there was a panic on. Jones had expected that it would be at least a few days, quite probably a week or more, before I was next needed to go to Paris, but in the event, it was the very next day. Fortunately, Jones has already prepared the documents that I was to give to his three suspects. The delivery all went as Jones wanted; I gave each of the three people the envelopes with which I had been entrusted for them and, as 16

Jones had stipulated, got each of them to give me a signed receipt as evidence of safe delivery. The three people were the Under Secretary, who had met me at the airport, Alistair Duggan, the Cultural Attaché, a woman called Helen Warburton, and a Lieutenant-Colonel Sinclair, the Military Attaché. All three seemed a bit surprised at receiving something directly from me, rather than through their normal internal channels, but none of them expressed any sort of concern over the matter.

“It was a little later, whilst I was enjoying a cup of coffee and a biscuit in the Ambassador’s outer office when things became really unusual. The senior secretary, a woman whose name I never knew, had her desk arranged so that to get into the inner office, where the Ambassador was, you passed within inches of her desk. The phone on her desk buzzed, she picked it up, listened to whoever was on the other end, looked across at me, said something I didn’t catch into the phone and replaced it on its cradle, then looked at me again.

‘Captain Crawford, the Ambassador would like to see you for a few moments.’ I hurriedly put down my half finished coffee and half eaten biscuit, got up from my chair and walked to the door to the inner office. ‘Go right in,’ she urged me, so I did.

“The Ambassador’s office was rather like that in which I had seen Hugh Collyer just the previous day, but on a considerably larger scale. The Ambassador, Sir Giles McKay, rose from behind his huge desk and came to meet me.

‘Captain Crawford, do come in and take a seat.’ He ushered me to the further corner of the room where there was a group of four easy chairs arranged around a coffee table. One of the chairs was already occupied; to my surprise I already knew the occupant. It was Jones. He smiled at me. ‘Captain Crawford, nice to see you again so soon.’ Before I could reply, the Ambassador interjected. ‘Gentlemen, I believe that you have quite a bit to discuss, so I will leave you to it – I have a meeting to attend. If there is anything that you need, just ask my secretary in the outer office.’ And with that, he was gone, leaving Jones and myself alone together.

I was puzzled; I had assumed that my summons to the office of the Ambassador would be to receive something to take back with me, something to which the Ambassador wanted to lend special emphasis, but clearly that was not the case. My puzzlement was obviously clear to see, because Jones chuckled before speaking. ‘I can see that you are puzzled, Captain. Let me explain why you are here. Obviously your presence here in the Embassy is known to my three suspects. I needed to speak with you, but I did not want to risk those suspects being aware of the fact, hence the slight subterfuge – oh, and the Ambassador isn’t on his way to a meeting, despite what he has just said. He is practising plausible deniability – doesn’t want anybody thinking that he knew what we are up to, in case it is thought that he should have taken any action about it.’

“At last I was able to get a word in edgeways. ‘But what are we up to? As far as I am concerned, I have delivered the papers to your three suspects, plus delivering the normal case which was the reason, as I understand it, for all the panic to get me here so quickly – and how come you are here before me? I didn’t know that I was to come here until this morning.’ Jones looked back at me with a rather smug expression on his face. ‘You weren’t told of the need to come here until this morning because the papers that needed transporting weren’t finalised until the early hours. On the other hand, I had been appraised of the need to send somebody over to Paris at very short notice, and as I had already spoken with you, I got Manson to agree to send you rather than anybody else. I hadn’t expected to get a chance to put my plan into action so quickly, but I was happy to seize it and flew in late last night.

“I remained puzzled.’ But why did you want to meet with me? I’ve delivered the things you asked – so is there anything else?’ He nodded his head. ‘There is indeed. I want you to do another debrief like the one that you did in Rome. I have a man who is working in another embassy – you don’t need to know which – but enough to say that people there seem to becoming suspicious of him, so I can’t use his normal contact to meet with him – and he has got a message across that a face to face meeting is both urgent and important, so I want you to meet with him and receive a package from him, and take it back with you. Once you are back in the office, give it to Manson – he is expecting it and knows where it is to go. And, over and above that, I want you to take this case back with you. It is not terribly important, certainly not as important as the envelope that you will get my member of staff’ He used his foot to push a small briefcase, which I had not previously noticed, towards me.

“It all sounded straightforward enough, and sure enough, an hour later I was having a quiet drink in a small bar just off the Avenue Victor Hugo. As instructed I was sitting not at a table but on one of the bar stools with Jones briefcase at my feet. There was a man on the next stool who was busy reading a newspaper and paying me no attention whatsoever. After a few minutes he got up and turned to leave, bumping slightly into me as he did so. A muttered ‘Pardon, M’sieu’ and he was on his way, but concealed from the rest of the clientele – which in any case only numbered half a dozen or so, he had slipped an A4 size envelope onto the bar beside my hand. I gave him a few more minutes, then left in my turn, taking the envelope with me. I 17

attempted to put it into Jones briefcase once I was out of the bar, but it was locked, so I contented myself with doubling the envelope over and slipping it into my pocket. All very cloak and dagger, but I supposed that Jones and his people knew what they were dong – for I had absolutely no idea as to what this might all be about.

“I made my way back to the Embassy, where I was picked up by car and driven back to Charles de Gaulle airport for the return flight, still in the RAF aircraft which I was beginning to regard as being my personal airborne taxi – but there was a surprise waiting for me when I got there. The pilot, a Flight Lieutenant James, told me that he had received an order by radio to divert to RAF Leuchars in Scotland, not return to Farnborough as had been the original plan. I was taken aback – I could see no sense in the change and asked from whom the order had come, but other than it was through official RAF channels, James was as much in the dark as I was.

That left me in something of a quandary. I didn’t want to have to make my way back from Leuchars – which is a bit out in the wilds to say the least. Whilst I had never actually travelled from there at any time, I knew from other journeys from Scotland from time to time that I would almost certainly be looking at an overnight journey – perhaps eight or nine hours, something that I had no wish to contemplate. I explained this to James who was getting impatient, explaining that he had already received clearance to taxi and that if he didn’t start moving in a few minutes he would lose his slot and be at the mercy of the French civilian air traffic control people who seemed to take a delight in affording low priority to foreign military traffic. I made up my mind

– ‘Look.’ I said ‘I don’t need to go all the way to Leuchars and then have to make my way back down south.

I’ll go back to the VIP lounge and book a normal flight home.’ James looked a bit dubious, then made up his mind. ‘Right, sir, that’s what we’ll do.’ Then his number two, another Flight Lieutenant, chipped in. ‘We’ll have to advice Air Traffic of the changes, John.’ James shook his head impatiently. ‘No, that’ll hold us up –

we’ll advise of the changes after we get airborne’. It was then that I remembered the briefcase which, for its size, was surprisingly heavy. Jones had said that it wasn’t very important so I saw no need to lug it around with me and James readily agreed to see that it got back to the FCO once he had landed at Leuchars. With my mind set at rest I left the plane and took a shuttle bus back to the VIP lounge.

“Once there I set about booking a flight home, only to discover that the next flight was almost due to leave.

As a Queen’s Messenger I had a government credit card for use in emergencies and I decided that I was going to claim that this was an emergency – after all, I was carrying an important piece of information in the form of the envelope that I had been given by Jones’ man. However, much to my annoyance, for some reason the wretched card was rejected at the ticket desk. Luckily, I had enough cash on me to cover the ticket so that’s what I did – I paid in cash. It wasn’t until I actually landed at Heathrow that I realised that in her haste – and mine – the ticket clerk had got my name the wrong way round, putting me down as ‘Charles Graham’ with Graham as my surname, instead of ‘Graham Charles Crawford’.

“I was looking to join the queue for a taxi to get me back to central London – by then I was in no mood for public transport – when I saw people looking up at a TV screen in the concourse which was displaying s breaking news story - the loss of an RAF aircraft over the channel. I was stunned; somehow, I was sure that it was the aircraft that I should have been on, and some premonition told me that the loss of the aircraft wasn’t an accident. I started to wonder about the ways things had been suddenly changed around me, Jones’

sudden demand that I undertake a task not originally briefed. I also started to wonder about the heavy briefcase that I had been carrying around. I began to have a dreadful thought. Suppose that briefcase had contained a bomb? I know it sounds fanciful in the cold light of day, but everything about Jones somehow failed to ring true to me. Why the sudden changes of plan? Why his sudden appearance in Paris, something that hadn’t been mentioned only the previous day? There was something about the man that had caused me to view him with mistrust from the very first moment of meeting him and I now couldn’t shake off the belief that something was awfully, awfully wrong.

“I walked away from the main area of the concourse and settled down with a cup of coffee at one of the cafeterias. Was I, I asked myself, merely being totally and utterly paranoid? Totally and utterly stupid? It was then that my thoughts turned to the envelope that I was carrying. By rights, if the aircraft had been brought down deliberately, that envelope, together with the rest of the aircraft and those on board, should be at the bottom of the channel – but it wasn’t. As far as anybody knowing of its existence was concerned, that was precisely where it was. Officially, surely, it no longer existed. So, I assured myself, I was justified in going against everything that normally went with the job –I opened the envelope.

“It was dynamite. It demonstrated that there was a highly placed official at the Embassy acting in collusion with at least one senior person back in the UK, possibly two, in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who between them were passing information onto people who should not be getting it. There was one big problem; no names were used – just code names, both of the guilty parties and of those receiving the 18

information, so I had no idea to whom references were being made – and neither would anyone else unless they knew the real names behind the code names. So – now what?

“I was on the verge of calling Manson when a really bad thought struck me. Suppose he was one of the

‘possibly two’ people in the FCO? I already had Jones tagged as a possible suspect – he and Manson had a working relationship of some sort for Jones to have been able to piggy back what he wanted done onto the Queen’s Messenger service which clearly needed co-operation from Manson – or was it Manson? What about Collyer? After all, Manson was subordinate to Collyer and it was in Collyer’s office that I had first met Jones. Collyer could obviously simply instruct Manson to fall in with whatever it was that Jones needed the messenger service to do. Was I now in danger if it was realised that I had not gone down with the plane? And if I was in danger – what about Kathleen and Julia? Somebody, I was now convinced, had not wanted what I had been carrying to get back to the UK. If they became aware that I was still alive might they not assume that I had opened the envelope that I was carrying – as indeed I had? It was at that point that I decided that I would go into hiding rather than risk my family’s safety.”

Graham paused for breath and before he could continue, Hazel, ever practical, interjected.

“But where have you been living? What have you done for money?”

He shook his head ruefully.

“It hasn’t been easy – but I still have a small number of good friends from Army days and two of them have been putting me up – they run a small caravan park in Staines and have let me live in one of their units rent free in return for doing odd jobs around the place.”

“So they know that you’re not dead and have done all this time!”

“Yes, of course. I don’t know how I could have stayed out of everybody’s sight without them.”

“And money, what about money?”

“Don’t laugh – I’ve been running a market stall – a proper Del Boy set-up. It’s an offshoot of the caravan park and I took over the running of it to give Dave and Alan, my friends, more time off. All cash in hand stuff, their names, not mine, appear on any paper trail, so it’s worked a treat. It hasn’t been what one might call a high level income, but it’s been enough to keep the wolf from the door.”

I had listened to Graham’s tale with an increasing sense of unreality.

“But how long could you carry on like that? And what about Kathleen and Julia?”

Graham shook his head slowly.

“I honestly don’t know, David. I’ve had no problems in the last two years and I don’t know if I have been simply paranoid – but that paper was dangerous, the plane was bombed, the chaps on board were killed and I was expected to have been one of them. Nobody has come looking for me because nobody knew that I was alive to be looked for. I can’t tell you how worried I have been since I saw you in Oxford Street.”

“Oh yes, but what I didn’t know was if you had seen me. When nothing happened immediately I thought that perhaps you hadn’t – but then you put that notice in the paper and I realised that I needed to do something. I just hoped that I could contact you and Hazel without anybody else becoming aware that I had survived.”

It was my turn for a slow shake of the head.

“Your father knows and so does your old boss, Manson.”

Graham looked horror-stricken.

“Dad knows to keep quiet – but Manson? I have no way of knowing if he is one of those who may have tried to have me killed!”

I felt a cold, hard knot in the pit of my stomach; I felt positively nauseous. What had Lawrence and I perhaps done? Before I could speak, Graham did so.

“What did you actually tell him?”

“Lawrence and I met with him and I told him that I was convinced that I had seen you – that you weren’t dead after all.”

“Did he believe you?”

I nodded glumly.

“Yes, I’m sure that he did.”

Graham buried his head in his hands.

“Oh, my God – what do I do now? Have you said anything to anyone about setting up meeting me?”

“No – nobody other than the three of us here can possibly know of this – I haven’t even told your father.”

“Well, that’s something – look, I’m sorry, but I must disappear again – and don’t tell anybody that I have been here I beg of you.”

And with that he hurriedly took his leave of us, leaving me to ponder on whether I would ever see him again.

The whole episode now seemed like some awful dream, no, a nightmare, but one from which I could see no possibility of an awakening. Hazel was distraught, as indeed was I, that it looked as though in our eagerness to help we had only managed to increase the danger in which Graham found himself.

19

It was in sombre mood that we eventually went to bed that night.

Chapter Four – Two Weeks Later

Detective Chief Superintendent Jane Lawson (her ‘office’ surname – in private life it was Jane Oakes) lifted her phone as it rang; it was her PA, Detective Sergeant David Cross on the other end.

“What is it, Dave?”

“Boss, it’s a lady, a Mrs. Hazel Larter – says you’re related and that it is personnel. Should I put her on?”

“Oh, yes, that’s OK – she’s a cousin – hope she doesn’t want me to get off a speeding ticket or something –

yes, put her through, Dave.”

As she said the words, she wondered why Hazel would be phoning her at the office. They were second cousins, with Jane the older by four years, despite which they had been very best of friends in their later childhood and teenage years and had kept in touch ever since. Indeed, the Larters had been round for dinner with herself and Harry only about six weeks or so ago – something that the two couples did fairly regularly, alternating on whose turn it was to be the hosts.

“Hi, Hazel, what’s up?”

“Jane, I – no we – need your advice on something, No, we haven’t done anything that we shouldn’t – but it is something really weird and perhaps dangerous. Do you think that you and Harry could come round, or that we could come to you, whichever suits you two best?”

“What, tonight?”

“Yes please, if at all possible.”

Mentally, Jane reviewed what might be on the cards for either Harry or herself that evening and came up with a blank.

“Well, unless something blows up in the rest of the day, I’m clear, and I know that Harry is – in fact he’s taking a couple of days off to sort out the garage and paint the fences, so I’m sure that he will welcome any excuse to get away from the house – so how about we come to you?”

“That would be super – shall we give you dinner?”

“That would be even better – gets me out of doing the cooking!”

*********************

It was eight o’clock that evening. Hazel, muttering a prayer of thanks to Marks and Spencer’s, had served up a very enjoyable risotto accompanied by a reasonable Chianti. Jane and Harry had, as usual, tossed a coin to decide who would drive and who would drink, the result of the toss being that Jane was enjoying a third glass of wine whilst her husband spun out his single small glass for as long as possible.

All through the meal Jane had been uncomfortably aware that her host and hostess were anxious to tell her something, but at the same time feared to do so; their unease was positively palpable. At last the meal was over and it was time, she felt, to discover the true reason for the sudden invitation. She put down her glass, still half full, on the occasional table beside her chair – for they had left the dining table and were now seated in the lounge.

“OK, you guys – what’s up? This isn’t just a social evening, is it?”

David and Hazel looked at her, then at each other, then at her again, uneasiness screaming out of their body language. Finally, David broke the silence.

“Jane, it’s about that arson attack on that caravan site in Staines last week. We think that we know who that unidentified man might be.”

Jane’s interest was immediately piqued. It was, at the moment, an unsolved crime despite the best efforts of her Western Division CID officers. It had occurred at a caravan site; one of the units had been burnt to a shell and it was clearly a case of arson - it had positively reeked of paraffin when the SOCO officers had investigated the scene. Arson was bad enough – but this was much worse. Three corpses had been found amongst the embers of the unit. Two of the corpses had been identified almost at once; David Hughes, aged forty-five, and Alan Davis, also forty-five – had been the co-owners of the caravan site. The bodies had been too badly burnt for a formal identification, but the evidence of Hughes’ wife – Davis was unmarried, and their dental records, had been enough to determine who the men had been, But it was worse, much worse.

This was not only arson, but murder. Both men had been shot and had been dead before the flames had consumed them. The third man had also been shot – but to date he was unidentified. When questioned, Mrs.

Hughes had said that he had been introduced to her as Graham Brown, and that he had lived in the unit which had burned down for about two years, but extensive investigation had failed utterly to discover the existence of a Graham Brown who could have been the victim, and as a result he was currently regarded as 20

unidentified. All three had been killed in the same manner and by the same weapon – two shots in the head from a point two-two gun, just about certainly a pistol rather than a rifle, given the confined space in which the killings had occurred. The bullets, pure lead, had been too badly damaged to offer any chance of matching them to a specific weapon should one ever be identified as linked to the crime. However, three cartridge cases had been recovered and meant that the weapon must have been an automatic pistol – a revolver would have retained the empty cases, whereas an automatic would eject them, throwing them several feet away. The fact that only three had been found, whereas six shots had been fired, indicated that the shooter had probably tried to recover them all but had been only partially successful

“Who do you think that he might have been?”

It was still David who answered; his wife was looking unhappier almost by the minute.

“It was the names of the two men who have been identified that made us come to you, Jane. Their Christian names were Alan and David, right?”

Jane searched her memory for the relevant information and nodded.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, we have a friend – or I think that it may be that we had a friend – Graham Crawford. He was thought to have died in an aircraft crash two years ago – but he didn’t. He was staying in a caravan site run by two friends of his. We only knew their Christian names – but their names were Dave and Alan.”

Jane settled back in her chair and looked Larter squarely in the eyes.

“I think that you had better tell me what this is all about.”

**********************

So that is what I did. I told her everything that we knew about the mystery surrounding Graham Crawford, a friend I now feared to be dead despite his attempts to stay alive by vanishing from those who knew him. It took a long time, but Jane listened to me with rapt attention, and without interrupting even once. I had always regarded her as one of the brightest people that I had ever met, perhaps even the brightest, and the way that she absorbed my story, soaking it up as though her mind was a vast piece of blotting paper, was enormously impressive. Only when I had finally finished, my voice becoming hoarse from the length of my narration, did she speak again.

“So, why come to me?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“You are the head of Surrey’s CID. A crime has been committed in Surrey – a triple murder. If Hazel and I are right about what may be going on, this could have very wide ranging ramifications – who else should we turn to?”

Jane looked steadily at me for a minute or so before speaking.

“OK – makes sense – and if you can either confirm or disprove an identity for our third victim it could be of great help. So, describe Graham for me.”

“Well, he’s tall – six feet three.”

She interrupted.

“The pathologist reckons that our victim is between six feet two and six feet three, so that fits. He can’t be more accurate because the body is so badly damaged. Did he have any skeletal injuries that might still be evident?”

“He was badly injured by a roadside bomb – in fact, that was the reason for him being invalided out of the Army. He had some damage to his left leg that left him with a slight limp.”

Jane nodded and I felt more and more certain that Graham was, indeed, her third victim.

“Yes, the victim shows signs of fractures of the fibula and tibia, fractures that were healed but not perfectly and could be expected, according to the pathologist, to be capable of leaving a slight, but permanent, limp.

Now, I am afraid that it really does seem to be your friend, but I think that we need to be as sure as we possibly can be before talking to his family. Now, unfortunately, DNA can’t survive the sort of heat that those people were subjected to, so that’s no help. However, there are the dental records. Fortunately, we have a complete set of teeth so if we can get Graham’s – if indeed it is Graham – dental records we should be able to achieve a match or perhaps prove that it isn’t him. Do you know who his dentist is?”

“Yes, it’s the Morgan practice in Guildford.”

“Thanks – I’ll have someone check tomorrow.”

******************************

21

I was saddened, but not surprised, when the checking of dental records proved that the third body in the fire was, indeed, that of Graham. Jane Lawson had phoned me herself to pass on the bad news, and I, in turn, had passed it on to Hazel.

We were both devastated; it seemed certain that in proving that Graham had not gone down in that aircraft, we had merely facilitated his death two years later – and that if I had not seen him on that fateful day in London he would almost certainly still be alive.

I had no idea how the investigation into his death – and the deaths of his two friends – was going, but seeing that the only person, apart from Lawrence Crawford, Hazel and myself, who was aware that Graham had been alive was the man Manson at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I assumed that he must be involved in some way, perhaps even directly.

The immediate task, however, was to let Lawrence and Kathleen know what had happened. I spoke with Lawrence over the phone and he immediately left Hereford, bringing Maria with him and the two of them, plus Hazel and myself, broke the awful news to Hazel.

She was stunned, as well she might be,

“But why on earth didn’t you tell me that Graham was alive? Why didn’t he get in touch with me?”

It was Lawrence who answered.

“Graham was in fear of his life, Kathleen – and not only that, he was frightened that if whoever was after him discovered that he was still alive then they might also come after you and Julia.”

This was something that Lawrence and I had discussed before coming to see Kathleen. Now that it was known that Graham had not gone down in the Channel, and whoever had been responsible for that was obviously responsible for his murder, and the murder of his two friends, were Kathleen and Julia in danger?

We had no way of knowing and although we had raised our concern with the police – unashamedly using Hazel’s family connection with Jane Lawson – it was only too clear that there was little that they could do to ensure the safety of Graham’s widow and child should the killer or killers decide to strike again.

There was, however, a course of action which we could undertake ourselves, one which Kathleen reluctantly agreed to. She and Julia left that very day, going with Lawrence and Maria to Hereford; the Graham’s house was adequately large to accommodate two extra people and hopefully, it wouldn’t be for ever, but only until the police apprehended whoever was responsible for the three murders.

******************************

Jane Lawson had entrusted the initial investigation into the death of David Hughes, Alan Davis and, as it had now become known, Graham Crawford, to the Western Division, and the Divisional head of CID, Detective Superintendent Gillespie, had delegated it to DCI Clarke and his team. Following the identification of Graham Crawford, and what she had learned from the Larters, she had briefed both Gillespie and Clarke, both of whom had listened to her in mounting bewilderment. When she finally finished, it was Clarke who spoke first.

“So, ma’am, our victim number three is someone everybody thought died in a plane crash two years ago, who has been in hiding, fearing for his life, ever since. Within less than two weeks of his reappearance becoming known to the man he worked for in the Civil Service, this time he really is killed, and not in some accident, but quite plainly murdered, murdered along with two friends who had been hiding him for the last two years.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. Gillespie chipped in.

“One big problem, boss – what the Larters told you is simply hearsay – it wouldn’t stand up in court.”

Jane nodded.

“Agreed – so we have to sort it all out ourselves. Now, as far as I am concerned, a crime – a triple murder no less, has been committed in Surrey. That means that it is our baby, pure and simple. We have identified all three victims and it is reasonable to regard Crawford as the main target, the other two as collateral damage.

Crawford was a Civil Servant – so that’s where we start. Up to you at this stage, Skull, but don’t hesitate to call for help if you run into any logjams – I don’t suppose that the FCO people will want to see anything nasty come crawling out of the woodwork.”

Clarke, whose nickname of ‘Skull’ was a longstanding one, reflecting on his gaunt, almost cadaverous, frame, nodded his understanding. If what the Larters had been told and, in their turn, passed on, was anything like accurate, there seemed to be a potential minefield waiting in the near future.

It was six days later before Clarke, accompanied by Detective Sergeant Frank Engleton, interviewed George Manson. The man had proved difficult to pin down; the initial request to talk to him had been stymied because he had, according to the unhelpful secretary to whom Clarke had spoken, been away on official 22

business in Rome. Clarke had resisted the temptation to get heavy handed and simply bided his time, whilst making it very clear that he would interview Manson as soon as the man was back in the UK.

The interview took place in Manson’s office and the man was accompanied by a Civil Service lawyer, one Helena Wright, a stern faced woman of about fifty, dark hair pulled aggressively back, grey eyes glaring at the two detectives through heavy rimmed spectacles. It was she who spoke first,

“Chief Inspector, I want to make it perfectly clear that Mr. Manson is here of his own accord, simply to cooperate with you as far as he can.”

Clarke gave the woman an insincere smile.

“And I am very grateful to the two of you for sparing us the time to talk.”

He turned his attention to Manson.

“Mr. Manson, Earlier this month, you met with Major-General Lawrence Crawford and Mr. David Larter. I have heard from Mr. Larter his version of the gist of the meeting, but I would be grateful if you would give me your recollection of it.”

Manson frowned slightly before speaking.

“Well, Chief Inspector, it was quite bizarre. They told me that one of my staff, Graham Crawford, who had been reported as being killed in a plane crash over the Channel two years ago, was in fact alive – that Mr.

Larter had actually seen him in London.”

“What was your reaction?”

“Frankly, one of amazement. It seemed totally impossible, yet Mr. Larter, who apparently knew Captain Crawford very well, was absolutely adamant that there was no mistake, that it really was Crawford that he had seen.”

“Were you convinced that he was right?”

“To be honest, not totally. I could well understand General Crawford and Larter himself very much wanting it to be true – after all, he was the General’s son, Larter’s very good friend – so their reaction was totally understandable, but I did have my doubts.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I promised them that I would look into the matter and see if Crawford could be found.”

“And did you?”

“Well, I did let various colleagues know what I had been told and they may well have told others, so I have no real idea how many people learnt that Captain Crawford was alive, I’m afraid. As for ‘looking into’ it, well, we are hardly Scotland Yard. I did speak with Hugh Collyer, the Under Secretary with oversight of the Queen’s Messenger service and he agreed with me that it was hard to see what we could usefully do.”

“Did you not think of contacting the police?”

Manson shrugged his shoulders.

“On what grounds – someone who was reported to have died in a plane crash two years ago had been briefly seen in the streets of London? It’s far more likely that Mr. Larter was simply mistaken – that he saw a man with a strong resemblance to Crawford and that that, coupled with the fact that Crawford’s body had never been found, was enough to convince his that he had actually seen his friend; if you like, that he really had seen a dead man walking.”

Clarke knew that he was getting nowhere, but he wasn’t convinced by Manson’s bland responses. If he was so convinced that this was all a case of mistaken identity at the time, that was fair enough and quite understandable, but now that it was clear beyond any shadow of doubt that Crawford had not died in the plane crash, he should be more concerned. At the very least he should be concerned that his initial assumption that it was all a case of mistaken identity – if indeed that really had been his initial assumption –

was obviously in error.

“Yes, I understand what you are saying – but that was then. This is now. Now we know that Crawford was alive on that day and it is just about as sure as can be that it really was Crawford that Larter saw. So – what now from your perspective?”

“How do you mean, my perspective?”

“Come on, Mr. Manson. One of your colleagues, a man entrusted with ferrying confidential information on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, is assumed to have died in a plane crash – and not just an ordinary plane crash, but one caused by a bomb. Two years later we find that he didn’t die in that explosion because he wasn’t on board the plane when it happened. Now that begs a question. Why didn’t he come forward there and then?”

Manson shrugged again.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“What would he have been carrying on that trip? Was it anything that might have made him a target for some group or other?”

23

“I’m sorry, Chief Inspector - you clearly have no idea how the messenger service works. Neither I, nor the individual messenger, have any idea what is being carried. A department wants something delivered, something that needs to ferried by a messenger. The item, whatever it may be, goes into a locked briefcase and is then brought down to my office. I sign for it and give it to an on-duty messenger, who also signs for it.

I don’t have a key to that briefcase, neither does the messenger. The various departments who use the service have their own keys to their own cases and the embassies have the relevant keys entrusted to senior personnel who will unlock the case when it arrives and ensure that the contents are dealt with appropriately.”

Clarke seized on an obvious point.

“So every embassy must have every relevant key? So there are presumably dozens of them in existence?”

“Well, there are only eight departments of the FCO who have cases – so eight keys at each embassy. A department or section which doesn’t have its own case would have its documents or whatever carried in the case of a department which did have a case.”

“And what happens if a key is lost at an embassy?”

“A very rare occurrence and an absolute nuisance if and when it does happen. The case to which that key belongs is destroyed, a new one issued and every embassy that had a key for that case gets a new key and must destroy the old one. As you can imagine, a true nuisance – and it has only happened twice whilst I have been responsible for organising the service, the most recent occasion nearly seven years ago. The security of those cases and the keys to them is, as you can probably imagine taken very seriously.”

Clarke saw an immediate flaw.

“So, let me make sure that I have this right. When Captain Crawford went to France that last time he would have been carrying an official case, correct?”

Manson frowned.

“Well, of course.”

“So he got to the Paris embassy, delivered the case, which would have been unlocked by somebody there, yes?”

Manson nodded.

“And in the normal course of events he would have returned, bringing the case with him, either now empty, or perhaps with something that could make the return journey in it. You just said that it is fifteen years since a case had to be replaced because of a lost key – but what about the case Crawford was carrying? You must have assumed that it went down with the plane, surely?”

Manson smiled, an irritatingly superior type of smile.

“Ah, no, not in this case. It sometimes happens that the recipient embassy will hold onto the case for a short while because they have something which will ferrying in the near future but not right away, something that, for whatever reason, someone wants to be in the security of a messenger case, but not necessarily accompanied by an official messenger – it might come back in the normal diplomatic bag, or it might be brought back by a member of the embassy staff. As it happens, that is what occurred this time.”

“So what was the case that Crawford was entrusted with by Mr. Jones?”

Manson looked puzzled.

“Mr. Jones? Who is Mr. Jones?”

“According to what Larter was told by Crawford, he met a Mr. Jones twice, once here in Mr. Collyer’s office, and once in Paris in the Ambassador’s office. Also, Crawford said that you had met Jones and said that he seemed to be a spook.”

Manson looked pained.

“I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but I really don’t know what you – or to be more precise, Crawford – are on about. In a Ministry the size of the FCO I am sure that there must be quite a few people called Jones, both male and female, but none of them have anything to do with the messenger service. As for what Larter says that he was told by Crawford, that is hearsay – we have no idea how accurately Larter is relaying what he was told, nor how accurate what Crawford said may have been.”

Manson hesitated.

“Look, Chief Inspector, I am sorry to have to say this, but to my mind the most probable explanation of this sorry affair surely rests with Crawford himself. He was supposed to be on that plane – clearly, he wasn’t.

The plane blew up in mid-air – who had a better chance of planting a bomb on board than Crawford? Don’t forget, no terrorist group ever claimed responsibility – unusually coy of them if they were responsible. As for Crawford going into hiding and then being murdered – surely that again must be proof that in some way he is, or rather was, at the centre of all this.”

Clarke was frustrated. There was much in what Manson was saying, even though he didn’t believe a word of the denials. He hadn’t said anything to Manson, or his hatchet faced female colleague, about the letter that 24

Crawford had said that he had found, and it was a piece of information that he intended to keep to himself, at least for the present.

He decided that it was time to move on.

“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Manson, and for your thoughts, which I will most certainly bear in mind.

Now, I have also arranged to see Mr. Collyer – perhaps somebody could show me the way?”

Manson tried to conceal it, but Clarke picked up the slight easing of tension in the man, an indication of relief to some degree or other, and Clarke wondered if he had been thorough enough in his questioning of the man.

“Yes, of course, Chief Inspector.”

Manson pressed a button on his desk phone and a moment later the office door opened and a young woman entered. As Clarke and Engleton got to their feet, Manson spoke to the girl.

“Melanie, would you please escort these police officers to Mr. Collyer’s office – I believe that he is expecting them.”

“Yes, Mr. Manson.” She turned and smiled at Clarke and Engleton, “would you come with me, pleases, gentlemen?”

Very willingly, Clarke thought to himself. ‘Melanie’ couldn’t have been more than in her early twenties, easily the youngest person that he had seen so far in the ministry and also the best looking, with long blonde hair cascading to her shoulders framing an attractive oval face. To business, he told himself sternly; she’s probably a female double oh seven, licenced to kill as well as to thrill!

She conducted the two policemen through a veritable rabbit warren of corridors before finally ushering the into a small office housing two desk with computer consoles, only one of which was currently occupied, by a formidable looking woman of perhaps fifty, who nevertheless treated the two of them to a big smile.

“Good morning, gentlemen – Mr. Collyer is expecting you.”

So saying, she rose to her feet and crossed to a door on the far side of the office, tapped on it, opened it and spoke.

“The two police officers, Mr. Collyer.”

Without waiting for a reply, she ushered the two of them through the door. Collyer’s office looked like a throwback to the days of Queen Victoria. It was large, about twenty-four feet or so square, and panelled throughout in a dark wood, making it positively gloomy, despite the far wall being almost all window. The desk was large and of the same dark wood as the panelling, but Collyer , however, was not behind it. Tucked into a corner of that large office was a conference table and Collyer guided them to it.

Clarke examined the man closely; Collyer was dressed in the traditional garb of a senior Civil Servant, black jacket, ‘pepper and salt trousers’. A white handkerchief showed at the beast pocket of the jacket, a jacket worn over a spotless white shirt and with what looked like a regimental tie, He was broad-shouldered and a large, ‘square-cut’ head sat on those shoulders, a head crowned by a luxuriant mop of neatly combed hair, black with traces of grey at the temples. Heavy eye brows, again grey shot, perched above deep-set dark brown, almost black, eyes. Not a man, once met, to be easily forgotten.

The three of them seated themselves at the table – unlike Manson, Collyer was unaccompanied.

“Now, gentlemen, how can I help you?”

Clarke went over much of the same ground that he had already covered with Manson and received much the same replies until, that is, Clarke mentioned the mysterious Mr. Jones.

“Ah, yes. I can see the quandary there. Manson is a good chap, does his job well and is totally reliable, but to be honest with you (a phrase that always set Clarke’s alarm bells ringing – it often preceded anything but honesty in his experience) he isn’t blessed with much imagination – not that imagination is really called for in his job. ‘Jones’ is a nom de guerre for one of my operatives. His real name, I am afraid, I am not at liberty to disclose and his present whereabouts are something of a mystery, even to me. His existence and his duties are covered by the Official Secrets Act and are one of the many elements of our never ending fight against terrorism. That, however, is by the bye. The specific question of Captain Crawford and his sad demise impinges on something else – although I can understand Jones using the Captain for some of his own tasks –

two birds with one stone sort of thing.

“The case that Captain Crawford took to Paris in such a hurry was nothing to do with Jones’ work but something totally separate” he paused and looked from one to the other, “officers, what I am about to tell you I am doing because I believe that it may well help you in your investigations, but I must emphasise that it is information covered by the Official Secrets Act. You may discuss it with your superiors if you feel it necessary. But it must not, must absolutely not,. get into the public domain.”

He stopped and Clarke, feeling that some response was needed, nodded his head.

“Understood, Mr. Collyer – you can rely on our discretion.”

25

“Right. Now, at the time of Captain Crawford’s urgent trip to Paris we, that is the British government and in particular the FCO, were acting as intermediaries between the Israeli government and elements of HAMAS, elements which were more inclined to listen to reason that the majority of that organisation. Negotiations were being conducted which, it was hoped, would bring an element of calm to the ongoing violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The document which Captain Crawford was ferrying was a draft agreement which, it was hoped, both sides would agree to; the draft contained an expression of goodwill on behalf of the UK to assist in the aftermath of the negotiations. That element had been signed by the Foreign Secretary, no less, which is why it had been prepared here rather that in the Embassy.

“That, of course, is why Captain Crawford wasn’t taking anything back with him – the document remained in Paris and was the subject of further discussions between the two parties. Now, and to my mind this is the crux of the matter, there were elements in both Israel and HAMAS who would not be happy at the terms of that document being implemented. Much of HAMAS is totally opposed to the very existence of Israel; any agreement would be total anathema to them. Similarly, as I am sure that you are aware, the Israel government relies upon the support of a fairly loose coalition of parties, some of which are extremely right wing – oh, and by right wing in an Israeli context, obviously I don’t mean neo-Nazis. No, these are extreme orthodox Jews totally committed to a Jewish state, a state ideally bereft of any non-believers. If the negotiations – for although I know of their existence, I am not privy to the actual terms - involved any surrender, as they would see it, of what they hold dear they would wish the negotiations to fail.

“Which brings us to the bomb on board that plane. I can’t help feeling that one or other of the two elements opposed to those negotiations somehow learned of their existence and felt that an act of violence might disrupt them –perhaps they even thought that Captain Crawford might be carrying some sort of signed agreement back to the UK, although that, of course, is pure surmise on my part.”

Clarke’s head was spinning; somehow he seemed to be in the midst of a diplomatic initiative which might, or might not, explain the bomb on the plane and, depending on what he had learned or assumed, might explain why Crawford had gone into hiding. None of it, however, explained his subsequent murder two years later.

“Thank you for being so frank with us, Mr. Collyer, but to be honest, I am now more perplexed than ever. I just don’t see how all this ties in with Crawford’s murder.”

In fact, Clarke was beginning to form a very plausible theory as to how ‘all this’ tied in with the murder of Graham Crawford, but it was not a theory that he intended to share with Collyer. He ploughed on.

“And then there is that Frenchman, Alain Clerc, who, according to what Larter tells us, Manson told him was the mini-bus driver who ferried Crawford from the VIP lounge at Charles de Gaulle and perhaps brought him back after Crawford obviously didn’t board the plane. Clerc is killed in a traffic accident later that day – and we are all supposed to assume it was an unrelated accident? A mere coincidence?”

Collyer looked grave.

“I share your incredulity, Chief Inspector, although I believe that it was indeed a coincidence as far as the timing was concerned. When we knew that aircraft had gone down we were, as I am sure that you can imagine, absolutely horrified. We were at once in touch with the French police who were adamant that Clerc was killed in an ordinary traffic accident, but we weren’t convinced, so we did some digging of our own, some digging which came to a rather different conclusion. Clerc was a member of a suspect group which, although not under the eyes of the French police, had been known to their military security services, the DGSE. Now try this for a coincidence. That day, not only Alain Clerc, but two other members of the group died. One, Gaston Lefevre, was knifed to death in a Paris back street as he made his way home from the market where he worked. The other, a young woman called Yvette du Toit, fell to her death from the balcony of her apartment. Nobody was ever arrested, or even interviewed, in connection with those three deaths, deaths which effectively paralysed the group which only had a dozen members or so, all of whom were arrested within the following week. We learnt about all this through the efforts of Jones and his agents and it is my surmise, although, of course, I have absolutely no proof to support it, that the DGSE had decided to move against the group – oh, they called themselves Les Chiens de Guerre – dogs of war, if you please - and assassinated those three as the driving force behind the group.”

“But would they really do that?”

“I’m sure that they would – remember Rainbow Warrior? The Greenpeace vessel that the DGSE sank back in nineteen eighty-five in Auckland Harbour? If the DGSE thought that the dogs of war could have a dangerous bite, I am sure that they would act first, not wait until the ‘hounds’ did something.”

Collyer paused for a moment before continuing.

“I suppose that it is just remotely possible that Clerc somehow smuggled a bomb aboard that RAF plane, but I regard the possibility as infinitesimal – and any way, why would he want to? From what he have learned about his group their intention was to embarrass the French government by acts of minor violence to show 26

that nowhere was safe. What would blowing up a British military plane achieve for him? No, I am just about one hundred percent sure that the death of Clerc on the day that plane went down really was a bizarre coincidence.”

Clarke was getting even more perplexed.

“I see your thinking, Mr. Collyer, and I am sure that you are correct and that we can discount any connection between Clerc and the bomb on board our aircraft. However, although it is good that we can avoid wasting time on worrying about Clerc, I am, as I am sure that you appreciated, only interested in the murders in Staines. From what we have learned so far, I am assuming that Crawford was the primary target and that Hughes and Davis were either unlucky enough to simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that they were killed because of what they knew about Crawford, or even if the killer simply thought that they knew something that could be dangerous. Now, I’m grateful to you for giving us so much background information about all this, but, I must ask you, do you have any idea who might have wanted Crawford dead?

I follow your explanation as to why the plane might have been bombed, but, having escaped death in the crash, why would Crawford go into hiding? And why should somebody kill him two years later? And why should he be killed within less than a month after his survival became known to your Mr. Manson?”

For the first time since the policeman had come into his office, Collyer looked just a trifle uncomfortable – it was only for a moment, but Clarke caught the fractional shift in the man’s body position and the minute flicker of doubt in his features, something that came and went in an instant, but there nevertheless.

Collyer regained his composure almost instantly, and shrugged his broad shoulders.

“There, Chief Inspector, you have me. I must confess that I have not the slightest idea what might be the answers to those questions.”

“And you can think of nothing in Captain Crawford’s professional life that could possibly be behind all this?”

Collyer shook his head.

“Absolutely not, Chief Inspector.”

“One thing, Mr. Collyer – clearly we need to speak to Mr. Jones as one of the last people to be involved with Captain Crawford before he disappeared.”

This was met with another shake of Collyer’s head.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible Chief Inspector.”

It was the turn of Clarke to frown.

“Why not?”

“Well, for a start he isn’t in the country at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, even I don’t know his precise present location. It is probably somewhere on mainland Europe, but Jones’ remit is world-wide and he may have needed to go further afield. More importantly, however, his work is highly sensitive and were I reveal to you, or for that matter to anybody else, what he is working on, I would be in breach of the Official Secrets Act, something which, as I am sure that you will understand, I am not prepared to countenance.”

Clarke was convinced that Collyer knew more than he was saying, and that his hiding behind the Official Secrets Act to deny the police access to Jones was a ploy to cover himself – but how to get at what was not being said? He said nothing more, simply looked at Collyer, his gaze totally neutral. Collyer simply sat there, unworried by the surveillance. There was nothing more to be gained, and Clarke decided to call it a day.

“Well, thank you for your help, Mr. Collyer, I don’t think that we need to bother you anymore.”

Was that just the slightest flicker of relief crossing the man’s features?

Once in their car, Clarke turned to his subordinate.

“Well, Frank, what do you reckon to all that?”

“Boss, I wouldn’t trust that Collyer guy as far as I could throw him. He knows more than he was telling.

Twice he gave himself away just a little – when you pointed out that soon after Manson learned that Crawford was alive, the man was murdered, and the second time when you said ta-ta – he was expecting more from us, but fuck knows what!”

“Yeah, that’s how I see it as well. Despite what I said, I reckon that we will be back to turn the screws on Collyer a bit more, but I want to talk to the boss first.”

************************

True to his word, Clarke had reported straight away to his immediate superior, Detective Superintendent Gillespie. He had heard Clarke out without comment, other to say that they needed to talk to the head of CID, DCS Jane Lawson.

Half an hour later, the two men were seated in her office; like Gillespie, she listened in silence as Clarke repeated his tale for the second time. When he had finished she pushed her chair back and stretched, wondering just where all this was taking the police in their hunt for a triple murderer.

27

“This,” she observed ruefully, “sounds like a right kettle of fish. I don’t like the sound of this man Collyer –

I’m sure that you’re right, Skull, and that he knows more than he is telling, and claiming that we can’t talk to this man Jones makes my antenna twitch. OK – first principles. Who benefits from the deaths? Hughes and Davis, and for that matter Crawford, don’t leave any fortunes behind them.”

She paused.

“There is one person who clearly benefits financially, of course – Mrs. Crawford. She received a large insurance pay-out two years ago when everyone though her husband died in that plane. Once it became know that Crawford was actually alive, the insurance company would surely have wanted its money back. Now that he is dead, even if it is two years late, as it were, they can’t ask for it back. What about her as a suspect?

Don’t suppose for a minute that she actually pulled the trigger and shot down three men, but might she have hired somebody?”

Clarke shook his head.

“I can’t see it, boss. I spoke with her immediately after Crawford’s body was identified and she was in a right state. In a way, her husband had been taken from her twice over. If she wasn’t genuine, she has to be just about the finest actress who ever drew breath.”

Jane considered Clarke’s response. The two of them knew each other well; Clarke had transferred to Surrey Police from the Thames Valley force as a Detective Sergeant some six years earlier, following finding his path to promotion in Thames Valley blocked by senior officers smarting over Clarke’s role in uncovering some corruption in their ranks. Some officers had been dismissed, some even gone to jail, but they had left friends behind them, friends to whom DS Clarke was a pariah. At the time Jane had been a very newly promote Detective Inspector and she and Clarke had worked well together. If the truth be told, she regarded him as a better detective that Gillespie, although as head of the Division, Gillespie was seldom involved in the front line of investigations and was perfectly competent in what he did. The man was only a few years away from retirement and one of Jane’s tasks would be, in due course, to find a replacement for him, and she had mentally pencilled in Clarke as that replacement, although taking him away from front line investigation would make it very difficult to replace him with somebody equally as good in that role.

That, however, was all for the future. The present presented a very intriguing case of triple murder to be solved, a triple murder in which one of the victims was very much a man of mystery. She looked at the DCI.

“So, Skull, what’s your next step?”

“Well, I intend to talk to the widow again, but really more to reassure her that we are doing all that we can to catch the murderer – I honestly can’t see her as suspect material. Beyond that, I’m stymied. I don’t trust what I’ve been told by Manson nor Collyer, but given the way Collyer is trying to wrap everything up under the cloak of the Official Secrets Act, it shouldn’t be too difficult for them to stonewall until the cows come home.”

“Skull, I share your frustration, but we’ve got to prise this open somehow.”

Clarke leant forward as a thought struck him.

“Boss, there is something – the tale that Larter told us is all hearsay, of course, and can’t stand up as evidence – but it is background, and from I’ve seen of the man he seems a straight arrow – I’d certainly believe anything that he told me over anything from Manson or Collyer. Now, one of the things that Larter recounted was that Crawford was convinced that the bomb on the plane had nothing to do with terrorists and that it had all to do with the information that was being leaked out of the Paris embassy. Now, according to Larter, Crawford had, at the behest of this man Jones, delivered similar, but slightly different, pieces of information to three people at the embassy, the Assistant Secretary and the cultural and military attachés. By doing that, Jones expected to pin down which, if any, of his three suspects was doing the leaking. We don’t know what came of all that – but there is one aspect of it which possible impinges on Crawford’s murder.

Again according to Larter, Crawford had been entrusted with a letter which, when he opened it after his escape from death, turned out to be a coded reference which identified, if only one knew who was meant by the code names, not only the Paris leak, but the fact that one, or possibly two, people in the FCO were also dirty. Now, we never found such a letter at the crime scene; hardly surprising, because if it had been there it would have been consumed by the flames, and anyway, we didn’t know to look for it.”

He frowned, clearly annoyed over something.

“Boss, I should have thought of all this before talking to Manson and Collyer. After all, if somebody is breaching the Official Secrets Act, that’s a criminal offence and if the FCO people had worked out who it might have been then they should have involved the police. Their course of action should have been to involve the Metropolitan Police – specifically, their Special Branch people. Can we find out if any such approach was ever made?”

Jane frowned thoughtfully.

28

“Well, no harm in asking, although if that was taken anywhere then it’s clearly out of our court. I’ve got a couple of contacts in the Met who would know that sort of thing – I’ll talk to them.”

“Thanks, boss.”

After her two colleagues had left her office, Jane thought long and hard about what she had been told. She agreed with Clarke in his disquiet over what Manson and Collyer had said to him. When senior officials seemed to be trying to sweep things under the carpet, she became unhappy, and this has had the signs of just such a sweeping operation. She wondered if she should discuss the matter with her immediate boss, Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) David Graham, but after considering the stage which the case had reached, decided that she wanted a bit more before taking it upstairs, although she realised that its potential to acquire political overtones meant that she couldn’t delay too long. She decided that it was time to talk to somebody at the Met, and reached for her phone.

*********************

The Metropolitan Police force is the largest in the UK, and in addition to its duty to police the capital it has a number of specialist units with wider remits, especially in the field of anti-terrorism and counter-intelligence.

Much of those areas of work fall within the purview of the Special Branch and Detective Chief Superintendent John Vian was one of the most senior officers in the branch. He was contemplating trying to get away early for once – he and his wife Cissy were looking to take in a visit to the theatre that evening –

when his phone rang; it was his secretary on the line.

“I’ve got a DCS Lawson from Surrey on the line, sir.”

“Oh, put her through, Margaret, put her through.”

The connection was made.

“Jane, how are you? And how’s Harry?”

“we’re fine, thanks – how are you and Cissy?”

“Couldn’t be better, I’m glad to say – so what can I do for you?”

John Vian had actually started his police career in Surrey, and at one time he and Jane had been young Detective Constables in the team headed by the long retired and in no way missed, then DI, later DCI Conway. They had both endured Conway’s never-ending nit-picking and ability to present every success as of his own making and any vestige of failure as totally down to the incompetence of the young DCs with whom he had been saddled. Vian had stuck it for a year, then moved to the Met, a move that he had never regretted. Jane, less sure of herself at the time, had stuck it out for a further year before being forever grateful to be transferred to the team of DI Inkerman, who had been her mentor as she rose up the ranks and had been her immediate predecessor as the head of Surrey CID.

Jane launched into a potted version of the Crawford case, ending up with querying whether the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had ever come to the Met as a result of their internal investigation. Vian heard her out in silence, then made his own contribution.

“Jane, this is very interesting. The quick answer is that, no, they didn’t come to us two years back, which obviously has two interpretations. Either they failed to find anything, or they did find something that they didn’t like and covered it up. Having come into contact with some of the people over there, including this chap Collyer, I’m inclined to suspect the latter is the case. Dirty linen in public is something that the FCO

desperately try to avoid. Now, on the face of it, we have no grounds for going in there over something like this – we really do have to wait to be asked, unfortunately – but now that Crawford is the victim of a murder, his FCO background has to be relevant. Your chap Clarke has probably got as far as anyone could with that lot, so not much more that can be done at the present – I suppose we can’t claim any terrorist links can we?

That might give our people some sort of entrée, but it’s pretty remote.”

“Not that I can see at this stage, John. Still, at least I now know that they either didn’t find anything or covered it up – but if they didn’t find anything, shouldn’t they have asked for your help anyway?”

“Only if they wanted to, I’m afraid. On the other hand, if we could somehow get a prime facie example of a wrong doing having occurred, then we could just go in off our own bat.”

“H’mm. Not easy to think of anything that fits that description in this instance. Still, thanks for your help, John, give Cissy my best.”

“Will do, same to Harry – ‘bye.”

********************************

Jane put down her phone and thought over what John Vian had told her. On the face of it, they hadn’t moved any closer to knowing what had gone on two years earlier, but at least they now knew that the FCO hadn’t involved the police, as they should have done if they had discovered any hint of illegal actions by any of their staff.

29

So – what next? It was time, she decided, to talk to the ACC, and fifteen minutes later she was in Graham’s office, outlining the essentials of the case. Her superior listened attentively. ACC Graham, like David Clarke, had moved to Surrey from the Thames Valley force – and he had moved for the same reason. A DCI at the time he had been the most senior officer of the small team, which had included Clarke, who had uncovered the corruption of several senior officers and although the stables had been cleaned, those senior officers had been remembered by their friends who had escaped stricture, friends who would put every obstacle that they could in the path of a DCI who had upset them.

Graham leant back in his chair, mulling over what he had just heard.

“Looks a bit of a bugger, Jane, Can’t see any way that we can weasel our way into the FCO other than what Skull has already achieved; if they want to keep us out, there’s no way that we can force our way in. Still, thanks for bringing me up to speed, and tell Skull that I share your frustrations.”

Jane returned to her own office, unaware, as was everyone else, that the case of the murdered Queen’s Messenger was about to take a new turn.

Chapter Five

Elizabeth Hughes, ‘Liz’ to all and sundry, felt far more than her forty-three years as she watched the demolition men toss what remained of the unit in which her husband and his friends had been murdered into their lorry. It had seemed to take forever before the police had agreed that they had learnt all that they could from the site and that she was cleared to have the burnt out skeleton removed and, hopefully, with it would disappear, at least to an extent, the awful happenings of the previous month when she had been awoken in the early hours to learn that she was now a widow. She had been visiting her sister in Bournemouth when the call had come through and even now she found it difficult to accept that Dave and his mate Alan Davis, tough, resourceful ex-soldiers had been killed, along with the man that they had introduced as a one-time officer in their unit, and whom they had told her was called Graham Brown. That was something really odd; the police had been able to find no trace of a Graham Brown, but had subsequently told her that the man’s real name was Graham Crawford.

Crawford had been living in that unit for just on two years, and Dave had made it clear that his presence was to remain a secret. Once she had been assured that there were no criminal elements to the man’s stay, Liz had quite happily gone along with what she had been asked. Indeed, on the occasions that the four of them had eaten together of an evening, she had found Graham Brown/Crawford a pleasant, entertaining man, with no trace of the superior attitude she had sometimes experienced from other officers when Dave had been a serving soldier.

But that was all gone, snatched away from her by some bastard with a gun. Now, she had the site to run, at least in the short term. Alan Davis had no living relatives, so he and Dave had agreed that in their wills each would leave their share to the other and after the second of them died, that the ownership would pass to Liz.

None of them had expected, not for the remotest twinkling of an eye, that those wills would come into force so soon.

Liz had made up her mind; running the place single-handed was too much of a burden and she had no desire to employ any staff to assist. Instead, she was going to sell up, and she had already made some tentative approaches to likely buyers, at least two of whom had shown interest. However, she could hardly expect the burnt out shell of unit number twelve to be a good selling point, hence the current exercise to raze it to the ground and have its ashes, both literal and metaphorical, taken far away.

The demolition men were locals, indeed the ‘leader of the gang’ was Derek Uttley, who lived in the next street to the caravan site and it was Derek who made the discovery.

“Hey, Liz, look at this!”

‘This’ was a metal box buried under the remnants of the unit’s floor, It was blackened with smoke but proved to be a small fireproof document safe, about the size of a normal briefcase in length and width, but considerably deeper and much heavier.

Liz looked at in perplexity. Judging by the amount of rubbish on top of it, it must originally have been underneath the unit – they stood about eighteen inches off their concrete plinths - and pushed well under, rendering it invisible to anybody unless they lay down on the ground to look.

She knew it didn’t belong to Dave nor Alan – it must have belonged to Graham Crawford, so she needed to let the police know about it.

*******************************

30

Jane was not amused.

“Why the hell wasn’t this found at the time by the SOCO people?” she demanded, to Clarke’s embarrassment. He shook his head.

“I don’t know boss. I’ve already had a word with them and the thing is that it was buried under a lot of stuff that had been dragged clear of the bodies – but it should have been found.”

Clarke and Gillespie had both been summoned to her office and had to share the focus of her anger. She drew a deep breath.

“OK, so what’s done is done – how are we getting on with opening it?”

“It’s in the workshop now,” Clarke replied, “it’s having to be drilled open – the locksmith we use couldn’t do anything – it has a key-pad lock, but the heat has damaged it, so even if we were to have the right combination – which given time would be inevitable - it wouldn’t do us any good. I’ve had a word with the bloke actually working on it and he reckoned he had about an hour’s work ahead of him,” he shot his jacket cuff to look at his wristwatch, “so if he’s right, I reckon he should be just about through.”

“Is there anyone with him?”

“Yes, boss, DS Engleton is looking over his shoulder so nobody can say any funny business might have occurred with the contents.”

Jane nodded her acceptance of the wisdom of Clarke’s precaution.

“Right, let me know the contents as soon as it is opened. That’s it for now.”

Clarke and Gillespie left their chief’s office unhappy at the way that the failure of the SOCO team to discover the box reflected badly on themselves.

“I don’t think that this has been our best day, Skull,” Gillespie observed as the headed back to their own offices. Clarke nodded in agreement.

“Why the fuck didn’t SOCO find it – a bloody great metal box right under their sodding noses, and they miss it!”

Responsible only at second remove, Gillespie could afford to be a little more phlegmatic.

“Well, it was pretty well buried under all that rubbish and it was well away from the bodies – just one of those things, I suppose.”

Alright for you, Clarke thought savagely, but I’m the poor sod with his face dripping in egg yolk. He was tempted to go over to the SOCO team and really rant and rave, but in the long term – what would that achieve? They knew that they had fouled up – what would rubbing their noses in it achieve?

His estimate of how long it would take to open the small safe was just about right; quarter of an hour later he was looking at the soot stained outer casing, a casing defaced by a piece about two inches square which had been subjected to many drill holes outlining the numeric pad of the lock so that when opened the area that had contained the lock would swing up with the lid proper. DS Frank Engleton had brought it, unopened, to Clarke’s office and the two detectives glared at it malevolently, fully aware of the fact that it had not been found during the first examination reflected badly on both of them.

“Ah well,” Clarke sighed, “let’s open the bloody thing and let’s hope that finding it is worth all the aggro.”

He swung the lid back and gazed at the contents, They comprised two heavyweight buff envelopes and a wad of banknotes.

“Right, Frank, got a camera handy?”

“My phone has a good camera, boss.”

“OK, photo it from every angle, print off the results and I’ll take the prints to the boss whilst you take the box over to forensics and get them to dust the inside of the case, the outside of the envelopes, and the cash for prints, and to do it toute suite, but don’t let them open those envelopes. As soon as they’ve done that, come back with the case.”

As his DS, having taken half a dozen pictures of the case and its contents, left the room, Clarke waited impatiently for the prints he wanted, but it took no more than ten minutes before Engleton returned and handed him the results of his photographic efforts. He studied them carefully to make sure that they covered every angle of the case, then nodded his satisfaction.

“OK, Frank, good work, Off to forensics with you.”

Clarke phoned through to DSi Gillespie and was invited to come straight along, The Superintendent looked closely at the pictures.

“H’mm, looks interesting. Frank coming back as soon as it has been dusted?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you might as well hang on here, then. Whilst we are waiting – what’s the latest on the other cases on your plate? Save having to brief me in the morning.”

It was over half an hour before Engleton returned: Clarke looked at him as he entered.

“So, all dusted for prints, Frank?”

31

“Yes – and I made sure that they only dusted the outside of the envelopes – they were a bit miffed at that, but I told them the contents weren’t for them to see as yet.”

Gillespie frowned in concentration before speaking.

“If this case has the nasty overtones which I am beginning to suspect that it might have, they may never see those contents.”

He had voiced the thoughts of his two subordinates; that there might be political ramifications in all this, ramifications which might mean that having anything to do with the case was possibly a less than ideal career move.

Gillespie glared at the box as if trying to subdue it into a state of non-threat, then shrugged his shoulders.

“Ah well, let’s see what is in those envelopes.”

He opened the case and extracted one of the envelopes, an envelope the thicker of the two therein by a considerable margin. Before touching either the case or its contents, he had donned a pair of latex gloves and indicted to the other two men to follow his example. The envelope flap was stuck firmly down; he opened his desk drawer, extracted a paper knife, and after carefully slicing the flap open, he tipped out the contents.

There a passport and a driving licence, both in the name of Graham Crawford, a chequebook for a joint account in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, a Lloyds Bank debit and credit card, the latter now out of date, and a bunch of keys. Gillespie looked through the chequebook.

“The last cheque was written a couple of weeks before the plane came down,” he observed, “where’s the money, by the way?”

Engleton handed over a sheet of paper.

“Forensics are still working on the notes, sir. As you can imagine, every note has multiple prints on it, so they are setting up a spreadsheet identifying as many as possible against the notes on which they appear.

Probably a total waste of time, but it has to be done.”

Gillespie nodded his agreement.

“Quite right – how much was there, by the way?”

“Just over a thousand pounds – one thousand and twenty-five to be exact. All used notes and a mix of fives, tens and twenties.”

Gillespie grunted.

“Looks as though Crawford was trying to save up to make some sort of nest egg – from what we’ve heard, can’t have been easy.” A thought struck him. “One of the keys on this bunch is obviously a car key. Did he have a car there?”

Clarke shook his head.

“No, sir, we checked that with Mrs. Hughes. She and her husband and Davis had a car each and on the rare occasions that Crawford wanted to go anywhere they let him borrow one of theirs. That key must belong to the car he used to own before he disappeared.”

Gillespie returned the items to the envelope.

“Right, when we’ve finished here that can go back to forensics for fingerprinting. At least we now have prints that we can be just about be certain belong to Crawford. Now, what’s in this one?”

He opened the second envelope in a similar manner to the first. It contained paper, a single sheet of type writing, a folded over, dog-eared manila envelope and several hand written sheets held together with a paper clip. He perused the type written sheet.

“Bloody Hell! This is the letter that Larter said Crawford told him about. And it’s gibberish - listen:-

‘From: A4

To: A1

Subject: Leakage

I can confirm that in Embassy 17 leaks can be traced to P3 and possibly to P5. In FCO F3 is involved and possible F7

Instructions requested.’

Gillespie laid the piece of paper back down on his desk.

“You can see why Crawford was worried. No idea how serious these leaks may have been, but if they caused the destruction of that plane and the deaths of its crew – and intended the death of Crawford as well, they must have been bloody serious.”

Clarke frowned in consternation.

“But who are all these ‘A1’ and the like? We’ve no way of knowing. And another thing – we know from what Larter said that this ‘Jones’ regarded the letter as top priority, but if it was Jones’ briefcase that contained the bomb, why give the letter to Crawford in the first place?”

It was Engleton who asked the next, obvious, question.

32

“Who was the letter supposed to be delivered to? It must be either to this ‘A1’ or somebody who would pass it on to him. Does the envelope give any clue?”

Gillespie picked up the rather crumpled envelope and flattened it out. It bore just the cryptic ‘A1’ on it; just that and nothing more.

“OK,” Clarke said, “we know that in the normal course of events Crawford was responsible to that creep Manson, so surely, unless he already knew who ‘A1’ was, he would have given that envelope to Manson –

and we know that Crawford didn’t know who ‘A1’ was, assuming that he told Larter the truth – and why should he lie?”

Gillespie turned his attention to the hand-written sheets.

“Perhaps these will tell us something.”

He thumbed slowly through them whilst the other two waited impatiently to learn what the missive had to tell them. Finally, Gillespie laid the sheets down again.

“They are Crawford’s story – at a quick go through, they back up what we have been told by Larter.”

“Could we use them as evidence?” Clarke asked him.

Gillespie frowned.

“I doubt it – no way to authenticate it to the level that a court would need to take it at face value – but at least we can be satisfied that Larter told us the truth about what he himself was told by Crawford.”

“So, where do we go now, sir?”

“Well, the first thing we do is to take it to the boss.”

*******************

Jane looked through the contents of Crawford’s fireproof case. She agreed with Gillespie that what they now had wasn’t going to be of much use in court, if indeed they ever managed to get some sort of a case to court, but again she agreed that it gave them further insight into what had been going on two years earlier. The logical next step was to go after Manson again, but she was sure that such a move with be met with obstruction from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials doing their best to hide behind the Official Secrets Act and ‘national security’. So, how to unlock that fortress of officialdom? First things first, however; she had to update ACC Graham and phoned through to his secretary, to receive an invitation to come as soon as she wished.

Five minutes later she was once more bringing her boss up to speed. He listened without comment until she had finished, then leant back in his chair, finger-tips steepled beneath his chin as he digested what he had been told. At last he spoke.

“H’mm, nasty one, Jane. Finding out what that letter is all about is almost certainly essential to the investigation, but I can see the FCO telling us to mind our own business, that it is purely an internal matter.

After all, the contents of that letter talk about ‘leaks’ but give no indication whatsoever how serious those leaks may be. I can see the official line claiming that whatever it is, it’s nothing serious – the equivalent of somebody nicking some office stationery, so nothing to involve us in looking into three murders in Surrey.

However, assuming that something about those leaks really were serious and worth blowing up and RAF

plane and two years later, when Crawford’s survival becomes known, worth carrying out a further three murders.”

Jane decided that it was time to advance a theory of her own.

“I don’t think that it is the leaks themselves that are the cause of all this, sir. I can’t imagine any leak of information that fits the facts. Suppose, just suppose, that the leaks were really, really bad – that they would put at risk the very lives of British agents abroad – say in Russia or the Middle East. None of this makes sense in that sort of scenario. The HAMAS-Israeli deal that was being brokered never came to anything as far as anyone can see – the situation there is just as bloody now as it was two years ago, so any attempted peace making didn’t work. So – what would be achieved by murdering Crawford now? No, I don’t think it is that at all – I think that it is to protect the identity of somebody, somebody very important to justify all this mayhem.”

Graham frowned thoughtfully.

“That certainly makes sense, Jane – but who might it be?”

“We need to know more about the setup at the FCO to even begin to have an idea, but I think that there is one possible candidate – that Under Secretary, Collyer. After all, he is at third level amongst the officials over there. Above him there is only the Deputy Permanent Secretary and the big panjandrum, the Permanent Secretary himself. From what Crawford writes in his - what can one call it? Almost a dying declaration, as though he knew his time might be limited – Collyer was ultimately responsible for the Queen’s Messenger Service, but that was only a small element of his responsibilities. There is this ‘Jones’ character – clearly some sort of spook, and equally clearly with some sort of tie-up to Collyer. I think that Jones actually works 33

for Collyer and between them they are highly involved in Britain’s, or rather more the FCO’s – collection of agents.”

Graham nodded.

“That certainly ties in with what we know – and if it is Collyer who fears being unmasked – would he have the balls to arrange for killings? More than that, would he have the contacts?”

“I think he already does, sir – Jones and his agents.”

Graham looked doubtful.

“Isn’t this all a bit too much James Bond?”

Jane shrugged.

“An Under Secretary earns something like a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year and gets a whopping pension when he retires, and when a man of that seniority – or, I suppose I should say, a man or woman of that seniority – retires, there are often plum jobs to be picked up to pad out that pension. Someone with shady moral values might well think that sort of money to be worth killing for – and to put himself into the position of losing all that if unmasked, he would have to have pretty shady moral values to start with. Get publicly disgraced, and all that vanishes in a puff of smoke.”

“OK, all that sounds feasible – but why should somebody in that sort of position get him, or her, self into such a position in the first place?”

Jane shrugged again.

“In this sort of situation, I’d be looking for one or more of money, blackmail, sex or ideology, and the likes of Kim Philby apart, ideologists are pretty thin on the ground. As far as Collyer is concerned, if he really is involved in all this, it must surely be the fear of blackmail – and it is just possible that finding that Crawford was still alive, he might just have felt that Crawford could be in a position to blackmail him.”

Graham sat back again, chewing gently on his lower lip.

“We are have to be going to be really, really sure of ourselves if we intend to try and go after a man like Collyer. Still, we must start somewhere. How much do we know about the man?”

“Not enough,” Jane admitted, “but Clarke and his team have started to do some deep digging on him.”

Graham nodded again; he and Clarke had been colleagues in the Thames Valley force, colleagues in a team which Graham, a DCI at the time, had led and which, by uncovering corruption by some senior officers, had made themselves very much persona non gratia to some of the remaining senior officers in Thames Valley, hence their move to Surrey.

“Good. Skull knows enough to be careful and if anyone can do a good job on that sort of thing, he’s as good as they come. Right, Jane, let me know if anything interesting comes up.”

Jane nodded her acquiescence and left for her own office; there was nothing more, at least for the moment, that she could contribute to the Crawford investigation. Rank had its privileges, but there were still times when she sorely missed getting involved at the grass roots, and a case like this, with its many ramifications was a particularly galling one to have to leave to other people. But one of the first things that Inkerman had drummed into her when she was first made head of divisional CID under him as overall head of CID, was the importance of delegation, the need to recognise that she couldn’t do everything herself and that trying to micro-manage her teams was a sure road to failure. She gave a sigh and turned to the inevitable pile of paperwork.

Chapter Six

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Hazel sighed gently in her sleep as she unconsciously wriggled, presumably into a more comfortable position, but I knew that for me sleep was just a distant memory. Yet again I went over the discussion that I had had with Lawrence Crawford the previous evening. We were staying in Hereford with the Crawfords, all four of them, Lawrence and Maria, Kathleen and Julia. We were there following a cri de couer from Maria to Hazel two days previously. She, and Lawrence, were very worried about both Kathleen and Julia, who had now been with them for nearly a fortnight since moving away from their own home after discovering that that Graham, who, they had thought had been dead for two years, and not perished in the destruction of the RAF aircraft, but had been hiding out in a caravan park in Staines, sheltered by friends from his Army days, only to be murdered, along with his friends. In effect Kathleen had lost her husband twice, Julia had suffered the same agony, in her case losing her father twice over.

34

Maria and Lawrence were most worried about Kathleen; she had gone into a deep, deep depression, a depression so deep that the Crawford family doctor had prescribed a course of Prozac for her, a powerful antidepressant, but one with potentially dangerous possibilities of addiction.

We had arrived the previous day, and both of us were shocked at the state in which we found Kathleen and, to a lesser extent, her daughter Julia. Kathleen must have lost a stone or more in weight – always slimly built, she now looked little better than a walking skeleton. Julia seemed to have suffered less physically than her mother, but, like Kathleen, was liable to suddenly burst into tears.

I did wonder if our arriving at Hereford was more likely to make things worse for Kathleen and Julia, but Maria had convinced Hazel that things were so bad that we could surely only help?

I had been concerned that Kathleen, and presumably Julia as well, would hold me responsible, in common with Lawrence, for keeping from them the fact that Graham hadn’t died in the bombing of the aircraft, but had survived, only to die, surely, because I had seen him that dreadful day in London and let people know about it. In the event, however, although she registered our arrival, Kathleen seemed to see us almost as uninvolved with everything that was crushing her down. Julia was more perceptive than her mother, and treated us with suspicious surliness, but at not yet thirteen years old was sufficiently in awe of adulthood not to reveal how much she resented me, as she surely did – and thankfully she seemed to harbour no such resentment against ‘Auntie Hazel’ as my wife did her best to comfort the distraught child.

Kathleen and Julia had been early to bed that night, and Hazel had gone up with them to do her best to provide comfort and support, leaving Lawrence and myself alone. We had dined well; despite all that was going on, Maria, a superb cook, had provided a succulent lamb casserole, redolent of delicate herbs, accompanied by sauté potatoes, themselves delicately flavoured above and beyond the norm, and thinly sliced green beans. Alone amongst us, Kathleen had scarcely consumed a mouthful; even Julia had made a reasonable fist of feeding herself. Wine had not been served, in recognition of Julia’s youth and Kathleen’s medication, but now that the ladies had retired, Lawrence dealt me an heroic measure of malt whisky and the two of us sat either side of the log fire in the small lounge, to which we had retired once we were on our own.

Lawrence swirled the amber liquid around in his glass as he stared morosely into the flames.

“You know, David,” he said softly, so softly that I needed to lean forward to catch his words, “if we hadn’t let people know that Graham was still alive, I can’t help thinking that he would still be alive – that you and I have more or less caused his death.”

His words precisely mirrored my own thoughts.

“Yes, that’s how I feel, Lawrence – I wish to hell that I hadn’t seen him that day.”

Lawrence took a small sip from his glass, then placed it on the occasional table beside his chair.

“What really puzzles me is the part George Manson may have played in this. Dammit, I’ve known the man for years – we served in the Falklands together – and until now I would have sworn that you could trust him with your life. Now, however, now I wonder. I know that the police have spoken with him, and indeed with his boss, Collyer, but they don’t seem to have come up with anything as a result. It’s not good enough, David. Somebody murdered my boy and I want them found and punished.”

There was nothing that I could usefully add to what Lawrence was saying. I understood his agony and frustration, but I could think of no way to help; his next words came as a complete surprise.

“David, I am going to talk with George Manson myself and see if I can’t find out just what, if anything, he knows. Now, I would like to have somebody with me to bear witness – would you be willing to come with me?”

I answered without any trace of hesitation.

“Of course, Lawrence – anything that I can do, I will, you must know that. When?”

“A couple of days’ time, if that is OK with you. Do you think that Hazel would be willing to stay here to help give Kathleen some support?”

“I’d have to speak with her, but I’m sure that she would.”

I did speak with my wife and she was totally supportive. She had already arranged to take a week off from her job in our local library and she had no trouble in adding on a couple of more days. I gave the manager of my Epsom branch, who was my most experienced manager and my effective deputy and told him that I would be out of touch for a couple of days but to ring me on my mobile in the unlikely event of something cropping up that he couldn’t deal with.

We intended to give Manson no warning of our intended visit; other than a telephone call to his office to ascertain that he was, indeed, working that day, we had done nothing that might forewarn him, so when, at just after eight two days later, Lawrence rang on the doorbell of a small mews cottage – which my practised eye immediately placed in the million pound plus bracket thanks to a very desirable location – it was answered by the man himself and his surprise to see us was clearly genuine.

35

“Lawrence, Mr. Larter! This is a surprise – to what do I owe the honour?”

It was Lawrence who replied.

“George, David and I were up in town on business and as we weren’t all that far away, it seemed impolite not to drop in and say hello.”

“Well, come in, both of you, come through.”

He led us into a living room that, whilst quite small, no more than perhaps thirteen feet by fifteen, nevertheless indicated that money had been spent on it. One wall was devoted to shelves housing expensive hi-fi equipment and a collection of vinyl discs and DVDs, together with a large plasma screen TV. The furniture – leather upholstered settee and matching armchairs, looked equally expensive. Manson waved us towards the armchairs.

“Can I offer you anything to drink, Lawrence? Mr. Larter?”

Lawrence replied first.

“Well, it’s been a long day – a malt would go down very nicely.”

“Of course – Mr. Larter?”

“I’ll have the same if I may, please – and please, it’s David.”

“As you wish.”

He crossed to a drinks cabinet on the opposite wall to his audio equipment and in moments had handed cut glass tumblers containing generous helpings of malt whisky. After he did so, he seated himself on the settee; it, and the chairs, formed a ‘U’ shape and meant that each of us could comfortably see both of the others. As he did so, I took the opportunity to observe him closely. We had, of course, met in that Chinese restaurant, the Golden Wok where we had, I was now sure, made the fatal mistake of disclosing Graham’s continuing existence. He was a slim individual, no more than five feet six or seven or so tall. They grey suit he had worn at that previous meeting had been replaced by casual wear; pale brown corduroy trousers, a white roll neck sweater and pale brown moccasin style shoes. He looked from one to the other of use.

“Come on, Lawrence, this isn’t a casual call, is it?”

Lawrence shook his head.

“No, George, not really, not casual at all. Murder never is and my son has been murdered. Now – no beating about the bush. David and I met with you and told you that, contrary to what everybody believed, Graham did not go down in that aircraft crash but was alive and, as far as could be judged, well. A couple of weeks later he is dead for real, along with two friends who had been helping him. You and I have known each other for a long time – we fought in the Falklands together and until Graham was killed, I trusted you implicitly.

Now, however, I want to know if I can still trust you and if you have any idea why and how my boy was killed so soon after we told you that he was alive.”

If Manston was offended in any way by Lawrence’s bluntness, he gave no sign of it.

“Lawrence, I have been wracking my brains over this ever since we heard the dreadful news. As you probably know, I have been interviewed by the police, as has my boss, Hugh Collyer. After the three of us spoke at the Golden Wok I returned to the office and straight away informed Collyer of what I had learned from the two of you. I also told the other messengers that Graham was not, as we had all assumed up to that point, dead, but had actually been seen in London. As you can imagine everyone was very pleased, but also very mystified. Why had Graham not made his escape from death known to everyone? Why had he effectively gone into hiding? Now, I don’t know who those I told of his survival told about it in their turn.

Collyer would doubtless have passed the news on at some stage, and his secretary and his PA would obviously have known, so at least a dozen or so people would have known. But how one moves from news of Graham being alive to him being murdered shortly afterwards is totally beyond me. However, I do have one theory which, because it is so bizarre, I have not shared with anybody else to date. As I told you, Graham didn’t merely take messages back and forth. He also acted as a sort of intermediary for some of the agents, for want of a better word, that we have based around Europe – and all over the world, of course, but Graham’s area was just Europe. Now, this is the wildest surmise on my part and I have absolutely no evidence with which to back it up, but I do wonder if somehow during what one might term Graham’s additional duties, he somehow came to the attention of people with no love of Britain and, for whatever reason, saw something that Graham knew or had on him as a danger to them. That would explain the bomb on the plane and, if those same people learnt somehow that Graham was still alive, it might also explain his subsequent murder.”

I had been listening avidly to Manston’s words; I had also been studying his body language whilst he spoke.

Part of my training in military intelligence had included interrogation techniques and how to combat them and I was sure that Manston was not being totally open with us – that he was holding something back. I decided that it was time for me to chip in.

“Tell me, George, was Mr. Jones one of those who discovered that Graham was still alive?”

36

He took the question in his stride, or seemed to, but I had noticed the slightest flicker of unease, come and gone in a split second, at what I had said.

“Jones isn’t part of my section; although he has, as I am sure that Graham told you, one of those who ‘latches onto’ the service as it were, I have no formal interaction with him. Hugh Collyer may have told him, in fact, thinking about it, it would seem highly likely, but I don’t know from my own knowledge.”

It was a neat avoidance of being seen to have any real links with Jones who, from what Graham had told Hazel and me that night shortly before his murder, was the controller of agents whose duties might, or might not, bear close study. I wondered if Jones had been seen by the police.

“Do you know if the police interviewed Jones at all?”

Manson shook his head.

“I’m afraid that I have no idea – you’d have to ask them.”

“Not Jones himself?”

“David, I don’t think that you understand what is going on here. I am doing my best to help you and Lawrence, Lawrence because he is a friend of long standing, and yourself because he brought you with him.

That is all – I am no more privy to the police investigation than are you, and as I have said, Jones isn’t within my sphere of responsibility. Sorry, but there it is.”

In other words, I concluded, Manson has no intention of being seen as involved with Jones in any way. As for being unaware as to whether Jones had been seen by the police, or whether he had been one of those aware that Graham had survived the bombing of the plane – I didn’t believe him for an instant, and if he would lie about that, what else might be untrue?

I gave one of those half nods of the head that are assumed (not always accurately) to indicate that one accepts what one has been told – it was my turn to lie, although in my case by body language, not by the spoken word.

We exchanged a few more generalities, but effectively, that was that and we left Manson with mutual expressions of goodwill. We had come up to London by train and it was by train that we returned to Hereford. The presence of other people meant that we had no opportunity to talk about what Manson had told us until we were back at Lawrence’s house, although it was clear form his general demeanour that Lawrence, like myself, was less than convinced by the story that we had been told that evening. Once back in the house he lost no time in speaking his mind.

“George Manson was trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The idea that in a set-up like the FCO he wouldn’t know if Jones had been seen by the police, or if Jones actually knew that Graham was still alive is quite preposterous. I used to trust that man, but not anymore, I’m afraid. What did you make of it all?”

“Like you, I think that we may have been told some of the truth, but by no means all of it, and I think that a good bit of what we were told was a bare-faced lie.”

Lawrence nodded sadly; clearly to find that a man he had once trusted was now playing him false was not welcome. He sighed heavily.

“What do we do now, David? Indeed, what can we do?”

“I wonder if the police have spoken to Jones? For my money, he must be a pivotal figure in all of this.”

“I don’t suppose that we could approach Hazel’s cousin, could we? The Lawson girl?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so – at best she would politely tell us to leave it all to the police - at worst it might create a rift between Hazel and Jane.”

“I’m sure that you are right, but, dammit. I want to do something. I can’t just sit back and let whoever killed Graham get away with it, and given the difficulty the police always have trying to get involved with government departments unless those departments are willing to let them get involved, I am truly worried that the killer or killers will get away with it.”

I took a sip of my whisky, allowing the golden warmth of it to trickle over my tongue, down my throat and ultimately to my stomach, as I reviewed what we knew and what we suspected. We’d spoken with Manson and effectively got nowhere other than to reinforce our joint belief that there was something very fishy going on, I could see no way in which we could approach Manson’s boss, the Under Secretary Hugh Collyer, and the mysterious Jones might as well not exist for all the chance we had of getting to talk to him. I thought again about Manson – the costly ‘mews cottage’ in which he lived, the expensive furnishings, the audio and TV equipment, again far from cheap. A thought struck me.

“Tell me, Lawrence, how much do you actually know about George Manson?”

His brow furrowed as he thought.

“Well, as you know, we met in the Army. He was posted to our battalion in, let me see,” the brow increased its furrow, “yes, it would have been early nineteen eighty. That was Two Para, of course.|” He didn’t need to elaborate; like every soldier of my, and subsequent generations, the part played by the Second Battalion, the 37

Parachute Regiment, was a proud history, a proud history written in blood especially in the Falklands in nineteen eighty-two when its commanding officer, Lieutenant- Colonel ‘H’ Jones had been killed leading an assault on Argentinian positions as a result of which he had been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the nation’s highest award for bravery in combat. Lawrence continued.

“He came to us as a transfer – he had been in Military Intelligence, but grew weary, as he put it, of ‘counting fucking Russian paper column inches’.”

I could sympathise; twenty or so years later that would not have been a totally inaccurate, nor even unfair, description of my own role in military intelligence.

“He came to us as a lieutenant, and he came to my company – I was a captain and the company second in command at the time. I soon found him to be a fascinating character – a lot better read than most of us, but one of those folk who, despite you reckoning that they are your intellectual superior, never look down on you in any way – unlike some such, I am sorry to say. By the time we went into action in the Falklands, I had been promoted to Major and was the company commanding officer, and despite his relative inexperience, George had also been promoted and was now a captain and my number two. He did well in the Falklands –

indeed when ‘H; Jones led that charge, George was fairly hot on his heels and was himself slightly wounded

– nothing serious, he caught an almost spent ricochet in the thigh and was as right as nine pence in a month or so.

“However, the Falklands decided him that the life of an infantry soldier was not really for him and he resigned his commission in eighty-four, having sorted out a post in the civil service for himself. He was then thirty-two and reckoned that he ought to be able to rise fairly high in the service – good money, a good pension and no chance of getting his head blown off. We kept in touch on and off throughout the years, although until you and I met with him in the Golden Wok, apart from Christmas cards, it was three or four years since we had actually met. In fact, it was four years ago; George was a bit unhappy at the fact that he hadn’t been promoted as fast as he had originally hoped. The civil service job titles are all, it seems to me, a bit understated; George joined as an Executive Officer, which I suppose could mean just about anything, but in fact when you look at salary and responsibilities is about on a par with a captain in the Army. Now, here he was thirty-two years later and he had only advance to the grade of Senior Executive Officer, and although you could regard that as equal to being a Lieutenant-Colonel, he had hoped, indeed expected, by then to have been made up to Senior Principal – say like a full Colonel. Instead, at sixty years of age it was clear that there would be no further promotion for him, and although he was pretty comfortably placed, he was less than happy with his lot, reckoning that he had been held back by resentment from a number of folk senior to him whom he claimed that he had shown up over the years as less than as competent as their posts required.”

I interrupted Lawrence’s discourse.

“Do you know how much he earns?”

“I wondered that after we saw his house – whilst the girls were preparing the food I did a quick check on Google – marvellous resource, use it a lot – and I looked that the civil service pay structure and I reckon he’s on around forty-five thousand a year.”

“Do you know how long he has lived in that house?”

“Just over five years – to be honest, I think that he bought it expecting a further promotion and when that didn’t happen I wonder if he finds money a bit tight, even on forty-five grand.”

“I did wonder – if he bought five years ago then the prices had recovered from the financial crash – so he is unlikely to have picked it up cheap. I’ve been doing a bit of thinking and a bit of digging – he would have been lucky to get a place like that in the location that it is for less than a million and a half. Then when you look at what he has as furniture and fittings – they are all in the expensive to eye-watering range. Unless he started off with a fair amount of money, he does look to be enjoying a life style above his means. Did he inherit anything, do you know?”

Lawrence shook his head.

“Not that I know of – his parents were lovely people, both teachers – I met them a couple of times when George first joined the regiment. Tragically, they were both killed in an air crash not long afterwards and I remember George saying that all they had left behind them were debts – a sizable mortgage balance, that sort of thing.”

“So, I wonder if Manson has an alternative source of income, or if he is just very good at managing his finances?”

Lawrence had been looking less and less happy as our conversation progressed.

“You know, David, I really thought that I knew the man, but now – could he have been, in any way, responsible for Graham’s death?? I find it just about impossible to believe, but it does seem as if it is a possibility that needs to be considered.”

38

I pondered upon what we had been saying. History is full of examples of people who, frustrated at failing to achieve whatever it was that they felt was rightfully theirs, took extreme measures born of their frustration.

Could this be a similar case? Manson was, by all accounts, highly intelligent – and my own observations of the man agreed with such a view – could he have, effectively, gone off the rails? If he was, indeed, in any way involved in Graham’s death it was going to be awful for Lawrence – but if it was the case, I saw no way round that. Lawrence was one of the strongest – in terms of character – people that I have ever known. If anybody could cope with such a blow to what they held dear, then surely it was Major-General Lawrence Crawford (retired).

“If,” I ventured, “we assume that George was, in some way, involved in Graham’s murder, what can we do about it? We have no way to dig further into his background than we already have – you know the sort of thing – funny money appearing in his bank account, off shore accounts hidden away, that sort of thing. So, what can we do?”

Lawrence was silent for a long, long moment before he replied.

“I wonder,” he said, the words clearly being uttered reluctantly, “I wonder if the police know about his financial situation seeming at odds with what one would expect? If they don’t, surely we need to find a way of drawing it to their attention?”

We weren’t to know it, but about one hundred and fifty miles east of us, the police were ahead of us in their thinking and were already following that particular lead.

********************

Detective Constable Anna Harris pushed herself back from her desk, a frown crossing her face. Twenty-eight years old, she had been a member of DCI Clarke’s team for just over a year and had impressed with her ability to absorb information like a sponge. Tall, and slim to the point of being underweight, she was a live wire, never happy just sitting still and letting things come to her. On learning the bare bones of the murder investigation, she had spent some hours of her own time putting flesh on those bones; one thing that had intrigued her was the address on file for George Manson; a Londoner herself, she recognised it as being in an expensive area and some work on Google Maps and searching he websites of a variety of estate agents offering properties around that area, plus a quick check on the pay structure of the civil service rapidly made her suspicious and she was now voicing her suspicion to her immediate superior, DS Frank Engleton. She pointed to the screen where she laid out a collage of the area in which Manson lived, the cost of housing in that area, and Manson’s probable salary.

“Look at this, sarge – Manson probably earns about forty-five grand a year. He bought that place five years ago – there are several computer sites that enable you to check when and for how much properties have been sold for and although they obviously don’t give you the name of the buyer, as we know it was Manson that doesn’t matter. I’ve checked the electoral roll – he lives there by himself, no rich missus to help out. Unless he had other sources of income over and above his salary I don’t see how he can have afforded that place – it cost a million and a quarter. I’ve checked one of those mortgage repayment calculator sites – even if he only needed a mortgage of half the cost – after all, he must have had somewhere to sell to help fund the move, and perhaps some savings as well – his monthly payments must surely take just about all he earns.”

Engleton carefully studied Anna’s information and came to the same conclusion.

“Well done, Anna. I’ll tell the boss what you have found out; can’t help feeling that Mr. Manson deserves a closer looking into.”

Engleton wasted no time; half an hour later, convinced that his subordinates were right and that Manson needed a closer scrutiny, Clarke set in motion the paperwork needed to mount an investigation into the man’s financial affairs.

Whilst the wheels were turning – much too slowly to satisfy Anna Harris – she decided on an alternative course of action. Manson had bought his current house five years earlier, so where had he lived previously, and how much had that sale netted him?

She remembered that the criminal record check on Manson had come up with nothing criminal – but it had thrown up the fact that six years earlier he had been convicted of a speeding offence which had resulted in him having had three point put on his licence. Checking further into the depths of the police system came up with the address at which he had been living at that time. It was a more modest establishment that his current abode – a medium sized two bedroom flat in Wimbledon. Checking back on the electoral roll, she found that Manson had lived there for over twenty years and that when sold five years ago it had fetched six hundred thousand pounds. So, she thought glumly, it looked as though she might have jumped the gun in her analysis of Manson’s likely financial situation. She did some more calculations and became a little more encouraged

– even offsetting the sale price of his flat – and as he lived there for so long the mortgage had presumably 39

long been paid off – the outstanding balance would still need a pretty hefty mortgage. OK, not as crippling as she had first thought, but still on the eye-watering side of affordable, surely?

She updated Engleton on her latest findings and he frowned at the possible implications.

“You’ve done good work, Anna, but the first attempt didn’t go deep enough – it would have been even better if you had given me all this at the same time. Still I agree with you – Manson’s financial situation still looks dodgy.”

The answer took three days – and once the check on Manson’s bank accounts had been completed, that answer was embarrassingly straight forward.

“I don’t believe it,” Clarke seethed, “the bloody man won the bloody lottery! Nearly two million bloody quid! No wonder he decided to go up market; no wonder he isn’t struggling to pay some gobsmacking mortgage.”

Reluctantly, he made his way to his boss’s office and imparted the bad news. Gillespie sighed heavily.

“So, no funny finance for Mr. Mason, then? Sod it, I really thought that we were onto something there. Still, at least we now know a bit more about him and the overall search of his finances give him a clean bill of health, so that’s one potential red herring got rid of, Good work by young Harris, by the way, even if she did go off at half-cock a bit; I hope you haven’t been too hard on her for having to take two bites at the cherry?”

“No, boss – overall what she has done has helped us, not hindered us.”

Back in his own office, Clarke pondered this latest twist in the tale. Despite the fact that nothing untoward had been discovered in Manson’s finances, and despite that what had looked a promising line of enquiry had fizzled out in spectacular fashion, Clarke was still uneasy about the man. There was, he felt, something devious about George Manson; when he had interviewed the civil servant, Clarke had felt that was only being told what Manson wanted him to know, and that somehow what Manson had wanted him to know wasn’t the full story. He wondered if there was any way in which he could justify having another go at the man, to try and crack what he felt was a veneer of smug complacency over a hidden truth, a truth that must somehow bear upon the murder of Graham Crawford and his two friends.

It wasn’t just Manson, he reflected. He was also singularly unimpressed with the man’s boss – Collyer –

another smug sod, he told himself. And yet, could he really bring himself to believe that two office bound civil servants could really be involved in murder?

Manson, he reflected, wasn’t in need of money – and given his much greater salary, surely Collyer was not going to risk dirtying his hands in anything criminal? But then, he mused to himself, might it be more than just criminal? The tale that Crawford had spun to Larter, and which was repeated in the writings found in than fireproof case, told of presumed espionage. It wouldn’t be the first time that trusted civil servants had been found to be spies for the old Communist countries – but was such a game still on the table? The cold war was dead and buried in the form that had spawned Kim Philby and his ilk – but was there a replacement?

The more that he thought about, the more Clarke reinforced his original assumption – that Crawford’s death was somehow linked to dark deeds amongst diplomats and those who swam in their circle and that his two friends had died just for that reason – that they had been friends of the principal target.

Clarke had been a soldier. Joining the Army as a boy solder in nineteen ninety-four, aged seventeen, he had progressed thought the regular ranks until, in two thousand and five, by now a sergeant, he had been badly wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He had made a complete, but slow, recovery, and by the time that he was once more fully fit, he had decided that it was a time for a career change, As a result, he had now been a policeman for ten years and to have reached DCI rank in that relatively short time was a clear statement of his ability and commitment to the job. However, he was under no illusions. Like sportsmen only being as good as their last game, detectives were only as good as their last case. So far, that concept had worked in his favour, but this current case had all the earmarks of a ball breaker. The sort of case that, no matter how well you had done on others, would always be hanging around your neck like the ancient mariner’s albatross if it didn’t work out well.

*************************************

The man known as Jones pursed his lips, his brow furrowed in concentration as he read the E-mail which had just appeared on his I-Pad. As he digested the contents of the message, he was mildly irritated but, at least for the time being, he saw no cause for any stronger emotion, not that strong emotions were a normal characteristic of the man.

So the police had suddenly become interested in the late Captain Graham Crawford and, more interestingly, his recent demise, and as a result wanted to talk to himself, In principle Jones did his level best to avoid coming to the attention of any police force, whether British or foreign. The more official information existed about him, the more likely it was that such information, or elements of it, might come to the attention of people he had no wish to obtain such information.

40

He looked out of the window of the inexpensive apartment he was using, an apartment conveniently located in one of the quieter backstreets of Paris, the Rue Godot de Mauroy, and normally occupied by one of his agents. The apartment was within easy walking distance of the British Embassy, but far enough away to create an air of non-involvement with that grandiose building and the many who worked within it. The nearness was a convenience not so much for his agent, but for several members of the Embassy’s staff who had a dual function – an official one identified by job title, a plaque on the office door, that sort of thing, and an unacknowledged, yet hardly unofficial role which called for liaison with Jones’ agent on an occasional basis.

His Paris establishment was by no means unique; his job entailed him having similar set-ups in all the major European capitals and a number of others throughout much of the major nations of the world. Each one had an agent in place; a visit to any of them by Jones himself was an occasional event, something he only undertook as and when something beyond the competence and authority of the agent in place was called for.

This was just such an occasion – he had been in Paris for two days and expected to be leaving on the morrow, although that was dependent upon what happened today.

The fact that the Surrey police wished to speak with him was a nuisance; his current plans were to travel to Rome once his business in Paris was concluded. He knew that he could, if he so wished, insist of his immediate superior that the police be told that he was off limits, that talking to him, no matter what the reason, was not to be countenanced – the ‘national interest’ flag could so easily be waved in the faces of the plods – but would that be wise? Might it not be better, with whatever good grace he could muster, to pay a flying return visit to the UK and get the interview over and done with and avoid even the possibility of some sort of marker appearing against his name in a police file?

A man who never made a move without considering all the possible ramifications of that move, Jones decided to sleep on the matter. In the meantime he had a more immediate task to complete.

An hour and a half later, just as the Parisian sky was turning through mauve to deepest blue and finally to black, that task saw him in a small bar half a mile away, sharing a cheap brandy with one of his many contacts, in this case a man whose normal, understood capacity, was as a member of France’s Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure, more frequently referred to as the DGSE, the body which the French government entrusts with guarding the nation against external terrorist actions, a role which inevitably draws it into contact with internal terrorism, no matter what its official remit, which equally inevitably leads to occasional friction with the body which is formally charged with coping with internal threats, the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur or DCRI. .

Cooperation between governments in the fight against terrorism occurs at many levels and with many varying degrees of efficiency, effectiveness, and legality. The level at which Jones and his contact, Alain Basteareau, operated was well down in the murkier levels of legality, levels where, as far as their superiors were concerned, ‘plausible deniability’ was all.

Jones’ contact was, roughly speaking Jones’ equivalent within the DGSE and they had met to discuss a common problem. The fact that they were meeting in a public bar rather than an official office of any sort was a measure of just how ‘plausibly deniable’ their meeting, and anything resulting from it, needed to be.

The common problem was posed by one Emile Seurat, a French national who split his time between Paris and London and was a person of interest to the security services of both countries. He was, both countries were convinced, a terrorist, one who kept away from the limelight, one who, nevertheless, was a major player in obtaining arms and explosives to be used by other, expendable, people. Neither France nor Britain had managed to establish any proof of the man’s activities; they were, however, convinced by a variety of means, none of which would stand up in a court of law. No direct instructions had ever reached either Jones or Basteareau regarding Seurat, but both men knew full well what needed to be achieved.

“So, Alain, is Seurat still in the apartment?”

The Frenchman looked at his watch.

“As of twenty minutes ago, yes he was. I expect him to be leaving within the hour – my contacts expect him to meet up with somebody later today and Seurat’s paranoia will mean that he takes at least an hour, probably longer, to get from his apartment to the meeting place.”

“Do we know where the meeting is to take place?”

Basteareau nodded.

“A small bar in the Rue Bel Homme – it’s a backstreet in Montmartre, a few minutes’ walk away from the cathedral of Sacré-Cœur. Seurat is a regular there, sometimes meeting people, sometimes just socialising.

“Do you have a time?”

“I understand not earlier than eight this evening, but judging by his timekeeping in the past it may be a bit later.”

41

Jones considered what he had been told; he and Basteareau had a working agreement. Neither operated openly on the other’s patch but on occasion, as was the case here, it suited both of them to do just that. In this particular instance, Basteareau provided the information and set up the operation, but Jones, quite literally, would execute it. In doing so he would be repaying a debt – Basteareau had performed a similar function for Jones earlier that year.

“Do you have a picture?”

Instead of replying, Basteareau slipped an I-pad out of the briefcase which had been by his feet, turned it on, and after a few taps and swipes on the screen, pushed it across the table. Jones studied the display; it showed a short, one-way backstreet with a bar half way down on the left hand side as it would be seen by a driver going along the road. Jones studied for no more than a few seconds before shaking his head.

“Alain, come on! Even with an exact time, that location would be bloody awful – without an exact time it’s impossible. Sorry, but we need something better – something much better.”

Basteareau gave an inimitable Gallic shrug of his hefty shoulders.

“It’s all that we have at the moment – but it is not quite as bad as it looks. You see the building exactly opposite to the bar?”

“Of course.”

“The apartment on the upper storey is one of ours. For some months we have been aware of that bar being a meeting place for several people of interest to us, including Seurat, so we acquired a short term lease on that apartment. I have one of my people in there at this very moment, ready to say the word once Seurat arrives and once again when he leaves.”

“Ah, that sounds better. Where can I park myself whilst I wait?”

“You can either use the apartment itself, or there is another bar just round the corner. The apartment looks favourite – nine times out of ten Seurat comes out of the bar and turns left to go home, but occasionally he turns right and goes towards the park at the Square Louise Michel – he doesn’t actually go as far as the park, just doubles back at random to check if he is being followed. Similarly, he never goes straight back to his own place, always goes round the houses a bit to check for tails. If he turns left the bar is OK – he would actually pass you, but if he turns right you are quite a way behind him – you might not be able to catch up with him in a favourable location.”

Jones nodded his head.

“Right, the apartment it is. Make sure nobody else is there or anywhere nearby.”

“Of course.”

It was important to Jones that nobody, other than Basteareau himself, would be aware of his presence in the area. It was a point of near paranoia of his that he wanted to be seen by as few members of other nation’s security forces – and indeed under some circumstances even members of his own – as possible, and certainly in an exercise such as this it was absolutely imperative.

It was twenty past eight that evening. From his vantage point at the window in the apartment Jones had been keeping a close watch on the bar opposite for nearly an hour – he had deliberately arrived early, just in case Basteareau’s information was inaccurate and his target was early. In fact, it had been just a few minutes after eight before Seurat had arrived and now he was coming out. Jones waited just long enough to ascertain that the man had turned right – so just as well they had decided to use the apartment – and was strolling rather than hurrying.

Jones was out on the street in moments, just in time to see Seurat reach the end of the road, where it met the Boulevard Barbès and turn left – a sensible move as there was a no left turn at the end of the Rue Bel Homme, so anybody who might have been trying to use a vehicle to follow him would have been stymied.

The Boulevard Barbès was a long, straight road wide and attractive with threes to provide shade for pedestrians, and with a central reservation featuring cast iron railings, making it impossible to cross it other than at designated points. Ideal for Jones, who only had to keep his quarry in sight.

After several hundred yards Seurat turned into a road on the left, the Rue Christiani, which was a no entry road from the boulevard. As Seurat had been walking on the left hand pavement, against the flow of the traffic driving on the right, it would have been impossible for him to be shadowed by a vehicle. Another few hundred yards and he reached the confluence of two roads; again he swung left. Clearly he was effectively following a square route to eventually lead him back home, secure in the knowledge that he was not being followed. But he was wrong, he was being followed, and seeing a cluster of pedestrians up ahead, a group upon whom Seurat was closing quite rapidly. Jones increased his own pace, arriving just behind the Frenchman as he reached the group.

Afterwards, nobody could give any coherent account of what had happened. One moment the group – five men and four women, had been strolling slowly towards the pedestrian crossing, were in fact only a yard or two short of the pavement’s edge. The next moment two more men had joined the group about to cross the 42

road and one of them had stumbled and fallen, colliding with one of the women as he did so, causing her, in her turn, to stumble, this time into the road itself, causing a small delivery van to brake violently to avoid hitting her.

The man who had stumbled fell all the way to the ground; the woman recovered her footing and stepped back. When subsequently questioned, none of the group could give a meaningful description of the other man, the man who had simply turned away from the group and hurried away.

As he walked away, Jones took his mobile phone from his pocket – it was a pay as you go device, bought the previous day for this express purpose. There was just one number in its memory, the number of a similar phone which was in Basteareau’s pocket. When the Frenchman answered, Jones’ message was succinct.

“It’s done.”

He turned the phone off, and a few yards further on tossed it into a rubbish bin without breaking stride. Two hours later he was boarding his flight from Charles de Gaulle airport to Heathrow.

****************************

Henri Desgrange had been a pathologist for thirty years, but he had to admit that he had never before encountered anything quite like this.

“This man was clearly murdered, Capitaine, but the method is just about unique in my experience. His killer came up close behind him and stabbed him, but the weapon wasn’t any ordinary knife. I suppose you could best describe it as a needle, but again, a needle like no other that I have seen.”

He indicated the object of which he was speaking and Capitaine Jules Lecomte bent forward to examine it more closely. Like the pathologist, the murder weapon was something the like of which he had never seen before in his ten years’ experience in the Police Nationale. Ten years which had seen him rise through the ranks to Capitaine in the Parisian criminal investigation department, the Direction régionale de la Police Judiciaire de Paris – a rank which back in the days of the Sûreté had been that of Inspecteur as immortalised by Simeon’s Inspector Maigret and when compared to many other country’s forces – those of Great Britain, for example, ranked as a Chief Inspector. Now the rank had a different name, but the job remained the same

– the investigation of crime and, hopefully, the apprehension of criminals. The weapon gleamed with evil menace, a slim steel spike some seven inches long, but only an eighth of an inch in diameter, if even that. It was unadorned without any form of handle, but the resemblance to an over-sized needle was enhanced by the presence of a hole through its unpointed end, for all the world like the eye of an ordinary sewing needle enlarges many times over.

Lecomte turned his gaze to the pathologist.

“How deeply buried was it?”

“That’s the strange thing – as you can see, it has no sort of handle, nothing to provide a secure grip, yet the entire length of it was buried in the victim’s body, all but about a centimetre.”

“So how was it done?”

“I can only surmise – I have no physical evidence. The most likely explanation that I can think of is that it did have some sort of a handle, but that the handle was somehow designed to break away from the blade.

However it was done, the killer knew his stuff - the needle passed between two ribs and pierced the victim’s heart. Death would have been within seconds, a minute at the most.”

“Well, I don’t suppose many will mourn this man’s passing – Seurat was a nasty piece of work, suspected of all sorts of connections with terrorists, although nothing has ever been proved.”

They looked at each other, an unspoken but shared suspicion forming in their respective minds. Lecomte, although twenty years the junior of the two felt that it was his place to give voice to a denial of that unspoken suspicion.

“It must have been someone in his circle he fell out with; after all, he moved amongst some very dangerous people.”

“Yes, of course, I am sure that you are right,” replied the doctor emphatically. The very thought of the security forces taking such drastic action against a suspect, a suspect against which nothing had ever been proved was quite unthinkable. Quite unthinkable.

There had been a search of the immediate area in which Seurat had been killed and Lecomte realised that an odd item which had been gathered up and bagged simply because it was odd, now made good sense. It was a piece of hard plastic in the shape of a capital letter ‘O’, some five inches long and three front to back, big enough to slip one’s hand in so that it formed, for want of a better description, something like an object that might be used to tow something along. Nothing unusual in that – it could have been anything, except for the fact it had a small hole, which did not go all the way through, bored in at the mid-point of the length of the

‘front’ and a small, clearly spring loaded, knob emerged from the top where it would fall conveniently under 43

one’s thumb. Lecomte picked up the needle and inserted it into the hole in what he now felt was the handle to the weapon. A little fiddling and there was a click as something internal clearly engaged with the ‘eye’ of the needle, locking it firmly in place.

“That’s how it was done,” he exclaimed triumphantly, “and when you press the little knob,” he did so and needled fell away from the handle.

The doctor examined the two parts of the weapon.

“Someone with a really nasty mind came up with this thing,” he pronounced, “provided the killer knew where to strike success is just about guaranteed. The way that the needle is virtually embedded in the victim means that cause of death isn’t immediately obvious – in Seurat’s case his jacket had bellowed out over the end of the needle making it invisible until we removed his clothing. Also there would be scarcely any bleeding from so tiny a puncture, especially with the needle plugging the wound. Yes, a really nasty mind dreamed this thing up; it’s an assassin’s tool, pure and simple.”

Lecomte left the pathologist to complete his formal report for the examining magistrate with several unpleasant thoughts turning over in his mind. Despite what he had said out loud to Desgrange, he was unhappily aware that the security services contained some people to whom the thought of due process of the law was anathema if it got in the way of achieving a desired result, and in their eyes, removing Seurat from the scene was quite probably a highly desirable result.

Lecomte was a pragmatist; he fully accepted, albeit very reluctantly, that some agencies of the state could, if they were very careful, literally get away with murder, but in this instance he felt that it was incumbent upon him to at least do some checking before coming up against the inevitable brick wall. He reached for his internal phone and a couple of minutes later, in response to his call, Lieutenant Denise Rive entered his office, The Lieutenant – the equivalent of Inspector in many forces – was seen as a rising star in the department. Just twenty-nine years old, tall and slim, and endowed with the sort of figure that had old men sobbing over their lost youth, there was a rumour that she was having an affair with the examining magistrate, Maître Jacques Delacroix, Lecomte’s ultimate boss in the investigation. Be that as it may, Lecomte was impressed by the young woman’s ability and dedication to the job. He invited her to sit and went through what he learned so far about the murder of Seurat.

“So,” he concluded, “we need to be very, very careful about this, Denise, It has ‘assassination’ written all over it – but who was the assassin and who set him onto Seurat? To be honest with you, I have a very uncomfortable feeling about all this - that the man was killed by our own people as a pre-emptive strike against a known danger. If that is the case, there is not much that we can reasonably expect to achieve, but we can’t just ignore it, There is always the chance that I am wrong – that this was a criminal taken out by other criminals, but I would like to be sure, So, dig as deep as you can for me, please – and if you come up against anything that smells of the security services, don’t push it but come back to me – OK?”

Denis bobbed hr head in understanding.

“Right, chef, you’ve got it.”

**********************

It was three days before Rive came back to Lecomte to report on progress. During that period she had trawled every avenue open to her; her own informants had been the obvious first port of call, but she had also twisted arms amongst her colleagues to similarly lean on their contacts. One of her bargaining chips with other officers in the department was the unspoken rumour (in fact, a rumour totally without foundation) that she was the mistress of Maître Delacroix, a man with the ability to make or break the careers of aspiring detectives. The story that she had stitched together was worrying.

“Nobody has the slightest inkling that Seurat was killed by anyone in his own circle and it seems even more unlikely that any of the street gangs would be interested in him. The noise that is coming out of a variety of underworld mouths is that the only people really keen to see the man eliminated are our own security forces

– and to be blunt, that is how I see it as well. I have had a bit of discreet checking done to see if there was any trace of any known agents being around and that’s really interesting. One of Seurat’s crowd is a sort of double-double agent, She is ostensibly a keen supporter of one of the less aggressive anti-establishment groups, but she is also an informant for one of our people and in addition, feeds information to some of the people close to Seurat. What she doesn’t know is that our guy she talks to knows that she also feeds stuff indirectly to Seurat and company s feeds her with duff gen from time to time. Anyway, one of the things that she had found out, but had not passed on, because she thought that it was too dangerous, was that an apartment in the same road as the bar that Seurat frequented was on a short term lease and that it looked highly likely that it was being leased by the DGSE – not totally clear, but seems highly likely. What’s more, whereas there was a fairly constant presence in the apartment prior to Seurat’s death, it has been empty ever since. Add two and two together and I reckon that the DGSE had Seurat topped – and if that is the case, they 44

haven’t been as bright as they probably think. That bar was a meeting place, but that’s all it was. Seurat met a lot of people there from time to time, but although deals may have been made, bargains may have been struck, there was never anything physical there. We could have raided it until the cows came home, but never found a trace of anything illegal – not so much as a bullet, never mind a gun. Not so much as dodgy joint, never mind heroin or whatever. Now, this woman claims that the regulars had worked out that the apartment opposite was some kind of law enforcement stake out – so they were even more careful about ensuring that nothing incriminating could ever be found in the place. Now they had worked out that two men used the place – and they did it on a shift basis, one from eight in the morning until eight at night, one from eight at night until eight in the morning – I mean, how stupid could the DGSE have got? They practically sold tickets! Bit – and here’s the clincher to my mind. The day that Seurat was killed neither of the two regulars were seen – BUT – and it is a very big BUT - there was a third man there, somebody nobody had ever seen before, and that somebody was seen to leave the apartment very soon after – just a minute or so after - Seurat left the bar. At the time none of the regulars thought anything of it – they assumed it was some cop they hadn’t seen before deciding to tail Seurat for some reason. However, when they heard that Seurat had been killed, they all were sure that it was the unknown ‘cop’ who was the killer.”

Lecomte gnawed on his lower lip; this was exactly the scenario that he had been dreading. The group of people who had been waiting to cross the road when Seurat had been killed had all been interviewed extensively. All had agreed on one thing; as they had stopped at the kerb to await a gap in the traffic two men had come up behind them. One of the men had, of course, been Seurat; the other it soon transpired had simply melted away as they had all clustered round Seurat as he lay on the ground. That man, Lecomte was certain, was the assassin, but none of the group could give even the remotest resemblance of a description of him – all their attention had been riveted on Seurat as he breathed his last.

“Did they offer any description of the man?”

“Not really – remember, this was low level chat, not formal interview, so the various informants whose tales I’ve been stitching together weren’t very strong on that sort of thing. About the only description – if you can call it that – was that the guy wasn’t very tall, wasn’t very short – wearing a dark coat and a peaked cap – at that’s about it.”

Lecomte leaned back in his chair.

“Good work, Denise. Leave it with me now, OK?”

“Sure thing, chef.”

Reluctantly, Lecomte decided that it was now time to acquaint the examining magistrate with the progress that had been made. Delacroix listened to his report closely, and when he had finished shook his head in uncertainty.

“So, Capitaine, we truly have no leads to the identity of the killer other than an assumption that the DGSE

are involved – but, again, no proof of that.”

“That is so, m’sieu.”

The magistrate looked Lecomte in the eye.

“I can see no point in pursuing this investigation any further, Capitaine – you have satisfied me that none of this man Seurat’s criminal acquaintances are likely to have killed him, but the possibility that he has been murdered by an agency of the state in quite unacceptable. Clearly this must have been a crime linked in some way to his terrorist friends, even if no proof has been found.”

Lecomte decided that it would be pointless to argue – Delacroix’s mind was clearly made up, but the examining magistrate hadn’t finished.

“As that is obviously the case, I think that you should pass your case file over to the DGSE, Who knows? It may link in with one of their investigations at some time.”

Lecomte was tempted to remind Delacroix that the DGSE was responsible for dealing with external threats; there was no evidence that this case had any foreign overtones so it should surely be seen as falling within the purview of the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur or DCRI, but decided that he would be beating his head against a brick wall. He left his superior’s office with as good a grace as he could muster.

Once the detective had left his office, Delacroix lifted his phone to his secretary.

“Get me Basteareau of the DGSE, please.”

A few minutes later the man he wanted was on the other end of the line.

“Basteareau? Maître Delacroix. I have been reviewing the case of the death of the man Seurat; clearly the man had terrorist connections, so I have ordered the investigating officer, Capitaine Lecomte, to hand his file over to your department.”

No more was said, but both men knew full well what was implied, what was needed. A terrorist taken out of the picture with minimum fuss and bother, and no further investigation.

45

Back in his own office, Lecomte sat and quietly fumed. He was as sure as could be that the death of Seurat was down to the DGSE, but he had no way of proving a thing and the file was now not even staying with the criminal investigation department but was to be given over to the very body responsible, the DGSE. Not that there was much of any help in the file anyway. The post mortem report, the transcripts of the interviews with the people who had been on the scene, and of the few associates of Seurat who had been identified, none of whom had provided anything of any use whatsoever.

**********

DCI Clarke was a surprised man. He had received a message from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that Jones, who had been out of the country when Manson and Collyer had been interviewed, had now returned from abroad and was at his disposal.

Accordingly, later that day, and accompanied by DS Engleton, he faced the mystery man across a low table in the corner of a big conference room somewhere in the depths of the Victorian building. Clarke studied the man closely; Jones was rather below average height, perhaps five feet six inches or so, slim but by no means overly thin. He wore a lightweight grey suit which matched thin, lank grey hair combed across a highly domed and almost bald skull, even less hair, Clarke reflected, than he himself possessed. Jones’ face somehow seemed to exude anonymity – ‘once seen, never remembered’ Clarke thought to himself.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, Mr. Jones – we’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

“My time is yours, Chief Inspector, although to be honest, I am not sure just how much help I can be to you.”

“What I need to know, Mr. Jones, revolves around the unfortunate Captain Crawford. Can you shed any light on why he wasn’t aboard the RAF aircraft two years ago and why, having narrowly missed death in that way, he should go into hiding the moment he returned to the UK, only to be murdered last month?”

Jones shook his head slowly.

“I really have no idea, Chief Inspector. As I assume that you have already been told, Captain Crawford, in addition to his normal duties as a Queen’s Messenger, also performed some – I suppose you could call them courier duties – for me from time to time. As you can imagine, our concern two years ago centred on the destruction of that RAF aircraft and the loss of its crew and, as we thought at the time, Captain Crawford.

My assumption – in common, I feel with that of most people – was that it was a terrorist outrage and probably a random selection of target. The mystery surrounding Captain Crawford does call that assumption into question, but what alternative explanation there might be, I really cannot imagine.”

Clarke changed tack.

“Purely as routine, Mr. Jones, where were you on the twenty-fifth of March?”

Jones frowned.

“I presume that is the day Captain Crawford and his friends were murdered? I was in Paris, conferring with colleagues in the French security services, but further than that I am afraid that I am not at liberty to say – the matters under discussion related to the national security of both ourselves and the French.”

Clarke switched tactics again.

“According to what we have been told, when Captain Crawford reached Charles de Gaulle airport, he was carrying a briefcase which you gave him – can you confirm that?”

“Certainly, Chief Inspector, although once more I am not at liberty to divulge the contents of that briefcase.”

“Of course not – however, given what was to happen, one of the theories we have to examine is that the briefcase contained a bomb.”

For the first time Jones showed some emotion.

“Impossible! That briefcase was in my possession from the time its contents were placed within it and it was locked, until I handed it to Captain Crawford. I can assure you that there is no chance of that case having contained a bomb.”

“Then how do you suppose a bomb got on board the aircraft – because one most certainly did?”

“I really do not know. The French police investigated at the time and got nowhere; for what it is worth, my own opinion is that a terrorist got to the aircraft whilst it was at Charles de Gaulle airport and planted a device – almost certainly whilst the aircraft was being refuelled.”

“In other words, a random act of terrorism?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Clarke decided that it was time to change tack.

“Tell me, Mr. Jones, who is A1?” And A4?”

Jones sat very still; up until that moment, Clarke had categorised the man as ‘totally forgettable’, but the question had clearly struck a chord as Jones eyes narrowed slightly and the non-descript face suddenly acquired an air of menace.

“Why are you asking, Chief Inspector?”

Clarke returned stare for stare.

46

“Because I wish to know – the question is relevant to my investigation - so, who are they?”

“I am afraid that to answer your question would breach the terms of the Official Secrets Act, to which I am a signatory. However, I must ask you a question of my own – how have you come across the reference to A1

and A4?”

“Mr. Jones, I am investigating a triple murder. How I came across the reference to A1 and A4 is not something that I wish to disclose as to do so might prejudice my investigation. On the other hand, I am at a loss to understand why you feel that you can refuse to cooperate with me by claiming the Official Secrets Act. I am not willing to accept you refusal at face value; I am afraid that if you continue to refuse to answer then I will have to take the matter further.”

An expression which Clarke could only describe as a self-satisfied smirk crossed Jones’ face.

“I don’t think that such an approach would really be of any benefit to you, Chief Inspector. I can assure you that my superiors would take precisely the same view of the matter as myself.”

“I have no doubt that they would, Mr. Jones, which is why my next step would be to lay the matter before a judge in chambers to issue a writ requiring you to answer to him – or her, of course - under oath or be in contempt of court.”

Jones looked taken aback.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

It was Clarke’s turn to express self-satisfaction.

“Few people have, Mr. Jones, but if you study the Official Secrets Act really carefully, you will find that it makes specific provision for such a procedure, precisely to counteract anyone trying to use the Act as a blanket defence against complying with the law – and the law, of course, requires all citizens to assist the police in the investigation of a crime if such citizens have pertinent knowledge. I had a feeling that at some stage I would be faced with a smokescreen of the Official Secrets Act, so I have, in fact, already raised the matter with Surrey Police’s legal people – and they are quite clear on the matter. Of course, a judge might find in your favour, but the legal advice that I have received, given the facts of the case as we know them, is that a judge would be virtually certain to find in our favour, not yours. Now, do you really want to put the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the embarrassing position of being ordered by a judge to answer my question?”

Jones looked trapped; the inherent menace of a few moments ago had disappeared.

“Chief Inspector, I am sure that you will appreciate that this is an unexpected turn of events. I cannot comply with your request without first checking with my superiors; I will have an answer for you within twenty-four hours.”

“Very well, Mr. Jones – twenty-four hours, but no longer.”

As they drove back to the station, Engleton gave a quiet chuckle.

“You know, boss, I really enjoyed seeing the wind taken out of that smug bugger’s sails.”

Clarke gave a chuckle of his own.

“Me too, although I have a nasty feeling that whatever we get told probably won’t be ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ – still, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Clarke reported back to Gillespie on the stage his investigation had reached; he had cleared his intended course of action with his boss before going to see Jones and Gillespie in turn had taken it all the way up the line. It had been the Chief Constable himself who had given the final go ahead after being briefed by the force’s lawyers, so Clarke had no qualms about the process. The only likely problem was how much credence could be given to whatever he might eventually be told.

It was, in fact, just under the twenty-four hour deadline that Jones telephoned Clarke.

“Chief Inspector, I have been authorised by my superiors to answer your question. A4 was, as you may in any case have guessed, myself. AI is Mr. Collyer.”

“And the other code references?”

“P5 is a cypher clerk in the Paris embassy, After exhaustive investigation she was exonerated; similarly F7 is a clerical officer here in the FCO – again cleared of any involvement.”

“And the other two, P3 and F3?”

“Middle ranking officers in Paris and here respectively. Their names are not, I am afraid available to you and we have taken legal advice as to the strictures of the Official Secrets Act in withholding those names and that advice is that nothing short of an amendment to the Act – clearly impossible for such a purpose – would require giving them up. What I can tell you, however, is that the two officers concerned have been made aware of our knowledge of their activities. In effect, they have been ‘turned’ and now pass on information that we are perfectly happy to have ‘leaked’. I think that I should also give you a little more detail. The leaks 47

we are talking about here aren’t the sort of leaks that pose danger – even danger of death – to our agents in sensitive countries – far from it. These leaks concern political and financial matters – MPs who might be susceptible to bribery or blackmail – or even both. Intentions of the government to invest in something or other – the sort of things that, given prior knowledge, can be useful to organisations or individuals looking to profit from such prior knowledge.”

And with that Clarke had to be satisfied, not that satisfaction could faithfully describe his feelings over the matter. In effect, the mysterious message had got him nowhere. What, if anything, lay behind it that could have resulted in six deaths – the RAF crew, Crawford and his two friends?

He reported what he had been told to Gillespie.

“Frankly, boss, I don’t believe a word of it – I mean, financial information? How comes that’s coming out of the FCO? If true, it would surely be coming from the Treasury. No, I’m sure that there is much more behind all this than Jones admitted to.”

Gillespie nodded.

“Hate to have to admit it, but we’re stymied. No way we can get any further on that aspect – which still leaves us with three unsolved murders on our patch - so what’s next?”

Clarke had been thinking long and hard on just that question but had precious little to offer.

“All we can do, boss, is to trawl through everything again – but I’m convinced those killings were an assassination, a professional hit, and the hitman left nothing physical behind him. Finding those papers of Crawford’s was something of a bonus, but they don’t take us any further forward given the reaction from the FCO.”

Gillespie looked glum, as well he might, Clarke felt – he himself was unhappy at the lack of progress that he had been able to make.

Chapter Seven

I couldn’t sleep. It was three o’clock in the morning and I had woken over an hour earlier after going to bed just after eleven. Beside me, Hazel slumbered peacefully, her gentle breathing mocking my own wakefulness.

It was happening with sickening regularity; at least twice a week I would wake, my mind crushed by the guilt that I felt over Graham’s death. If only I had never seen him that day in London; if only I hadn’t thought of a ‘clever’ way to contact him; if only…………..

It was no good. I got out of bed, careful not to wake Hazel, slipped my feet into my slippers, donned my dressing gown and padded downstairs to the kitchen. I made myself a cup of tea and took it into the lounge to drink. I didn’t bother with the light – the curtains were open and there was enough light from the streetlamp on the opposite side of the road to enable me to make my way to an easy chair without stumbling over anything.

Once seated, I stared out of the window, not really seeing anything, my gaze wandering idly over our front garden, a garden just twenty-five feet deep, separated from the pavement by a four feet high brick wall. The wall, apart from where it was pierced by our two gates, a double in line with the garage, and a smaller gate in line with our front door, flanked both sides of the front garden and met the house wall and the garage wall, making a total enclosure of the garden, with no way from the front to the back other than going through either the garage – it had a back door – or the house itself. I never understood the thinking behind it – it meant, amongst other inconveniences, that the dustbin had to be taken through the garage on collection days, and when we had had grass at the front as well as the back, the mower had to make a similar trip – a fact that had led me to have the front grass dug up and replaced with gravel a couple of years earlier. Moving the mower through the garage had been a major irritation – the garage was only big enough for a single car, so normally one car was in the garage, the other in front of it. The mower was too big to get it past the car, so both cars had to be driven onto the road and parked there whilst the mowing was done, then moved back again. It led me to issuing an ultimatum. Regardless of how much Hazel liked the front grass, either it went or we moved - so the grass went, as apart from that inconvenience, the house suited us very well.

The house, the road, everything, was quiet at that hour of the morning, and the fact that I was simply sitting there idly meant that the faint sound from the back of the house, which under more normal circumstances I am sure that I would have missed, was crystal clear to me.

I recognised it at once. Someone had somehow forced the catch on the sliding doors of the conservatory and was now cautiously pushing them apart. A burglar!

I looked anxiously round for some sort of weapon – there was no telling if the intruder was armed, and if so with what. The lounge retained its original coal fireplace, although where the grate had once been there was 48

now an imitation, gas fired, log burning stove. Despite that, we had retained the old fire iron stand, and I picked up the poker, a substantial iron bar nearly three feet long, and crept to the lounge door.

The layout of our house was a little out of the ordinary; because the conservatory was a later addition to the original building, the stairs to the upper storey were reached via a right angle bend in the hallway which otherwise ran from front to back of the house. It meant that anyone coming from the conservatory to the staircase would have their back to the door into the dining room and I immediately crossed the hall, aware that the sound of the doors opening had just stopped. Scarcely daring to breath, I waited in the dining room in the darkness, the door open with me to one side of it.

I didn’t have long to wait; only seconds after I had positioned myself I was aware that somebody was passing the open door and about to climb the stairs where Hazel slept in blissful ignorance of the danger.

The hall was only a pace and a half wide; two paces and I brought the poker crashing down on the intruder. I aimed for his head, but he must have sensed my presence, for he started to turn towards me, with the result that the poker crashed onto his right shoulder, eliciting a cry of pain and causing him to drop something that he had been holding in his right hand.

He continued to turn towards me and, using the poker as if it were a sword, I thrust hard at his stomach, being rewarded with another cry of pain as he doubled over. I was about to lash out with a kick when I remembered just in time that I was only wearing soft slippers – I was likely to do more damage to my foot that to the intruder. Instead, I backed away to give myself room and swung the poker again, this time catching him at the base of his neck. He went down and I went down on top of him, knees first, into the middle of his back, driving out any remaining breath from his lungs.

“What’s happening?”

It was Hazel, always a light sleeper, at the top of the stairs.

“Hazel, we’ve got a burglar – call nine nine nine. Oh, and put the light on.”

Hazel was never one to panic; instead, she returned to the bedroom to use the phone on the bedside table.

Whilst she was doing so, I examined the intruder; half stunned from my attack, he nevertheless was beginning to try and force me off his back. I took the poker in both hands, one at each end, and pressed it just below the base of his skull, with enough pressure to make him realise how helpless he was.

“Lie still, you bastard, or I’ll break your fucking neck!”

So say, I increased the pressure a little and was rewarded with him stopping his struggles. However, I maintained the pressure; I didn’t intend to relax and be taken by surprise. Now what? I could scarcely stay kneeling on the man until the police arrived – it could be ages. I waited a minute or two, I suppose – it seemed far longer.

“Hazel, any joy?”

She returned to the top of the stairs.

“The police are on their way – I told them that we had a burglar in the house and were frightened for our lives.”

“Good. Now, I’ve got the bugger helpless at the moment, but I can hardly stay like this until the cops arrive.

Get some of the clothesline from the garage – be careful how you get past us – cut off two lengths, I want to tie his feet and hands.”

As Hazel edged past us to get to the garage, I increased the pressure on the poker again.

“Don’t do anything stupid and don’t give me an excuse to really hurt you, understand?”

There was no reply, but also there was no attempt to do anything silly. Hazel was back in just minutes.

“What do I do, David?”

“Tie his feet together – tie them tightly.”

I spoke again to my prisoner, once more increasing the pressure on the poker a little as I did so.

“Just lie still – you try and kick my wife and I swear to God I’ll kill you, understand?”

He lay still whilst Hazel tied his ankles together.

“Now,” I said, “I’m going to get off you and you are going to put your hands behind your back. I’ve still got the poker and I’ll use it again if you try anything.”

This was the worrying part; even with his feet tied together, the man was dangerous. I meant what I had said

– I wouldn’t hesitate to use the poker on him again if I had to, but I needed him to believe me, to believe that I wouldn’t baulk at hitting him again. Actions speak louder than words; as I rose to my feet, I lashed out again with the poker, this time hitting his left shoulder hard enough to truly hurt. To my surprise, he simply lay there and, for the first time, he spoke.

“I can’t move my arm – it’s broken.”

It wasn’t the words that surprised me – given the force that I had put into that first blow a broken collar bone seemed highly likely. It was the accent. The man sounded foreign; I am not very good at identifying accents, 49

but the man sounded to be French. He certainly wasn’t a local. Why on earth would a Frenchman – if such indeed he was – be trying to burgle a house in the depths of Surrey?

That, however, was beside the point. He might be unable to move his arm. On the other hand, despite his shackled ankles, he might be looking to somehow seize an advantage over us. Only one way to find out; I grabbed his right arm and pulled it – in no way gently – behind his back, causing a gasp and sob of pain. He wasn’t bluffing.

I pulled his other arm behind his back and tied his wrists together, ignoring his moans of very credible agony; then we settled down to await the arrival of the police.

It took another fifteen minutes before a marked police car arrived, blue lights flashing, siren sounding, to make sure that the neighbourhood was well and truly awakened from their slumbers.

Whilst we were waiting, I glanced across the hallway to see what the intruder had dropped when I had first hit him. What I saw made my blood run cold. It was an automatic pistol, one that I recognised thanks to an interest in weaponry from my school days. It was a Ruger Mark II, a point two-two rim fire pistol with a good reputation for reliability and accuracy. I left it where it lay – I had no intention of contaminating it with my finger prints.

The police presence proved to be two young uniformed constables, who looked, to be kind, a little out of their depth when they saw the intruder lying face down, hands and feet tied, and clearly in a lot of pain. The slightly less youthful of the two looked at the intruder, then at me.

“So, what has happened here then?”

I pointed to the recumbent man.

“He broke in here, armed with a pistol,” I pointed to the Ruger, still lying untouched on the carpet, “but luckily I hadn’t been able to sleep so was downstairs. I heard him breaking in and managed to overpower him.”

“How did you manage to achieve that, sir?”

I had an uneasy feeling that the ‘sir’ wasn’t exactly a sign of courtesy, nor of respect.

“I heard him break in, hid in the dining room,” I turned and indicated the open dining room door, “and when he started to mount the stairs, I hit him from behind.”

“So you attacked him, yes?”

I frowned; I was beginning to take a dislike to this young man.

“I took action to prevent him from going upstairs and murdering my wife with that pistol.”

Once again I pointed to the Ruger.

“But why should you think that he intended your wife any harm?”

“Why else would he be starting to ascend our stairs, armed with a handgun – which is, of course, illegal in this country – if he didn’t wish us harm? Don’t forget, it was only by chance that I was downstairs, only by chance that we weren’t both up there fast asleep, which would have been a reasonable assumption on his behalf?”

“Well, yes, I can understand that, sir – but from the look of this man you have subjected him to a very severe beating, Was that really necessary? Even if you thought that he wished you and your wife harm, there must be a proportionate response in matters such as this.”

He turned to his colleague.

“Dave, call for an ambulance, and better call dispatch and update them.”

He turned back to me.

“One thing, sir. That pistol – are you sure the intruder brought it with him? Are you sure that it isn’t your, for instance.”

I was seething at this arrogant young idiot and it was all that I could do to remain calm, well aware that losing my temper would not be a good idea. Clearly he was one of those whose first assumption was that self-defence equalled unnecessary force upon some poor misunderstood soul. I gritted my teeth.

“No, constable, it is not mine, nor does it belong to my wife. The man had it in his hand as he started up the stairs.”

Further questioning was interrupted by the return of his colleague.

“Ambulance is on its way and a CID man is coming out. They want me to go in the ambulance to make sure that he,” he indicated the prone intruder, “ doesn’t slip away or anything.”

The leading constable nodded his head.

“Right.”

Somehow the aggression seemed to have diminished and Hazel seized an opportunity.

“Look, officers, I’m getting cold standing here in my night things – I’m going upstairs to put some clothes on.”

50

Without giving either of the policemen a chance to reply she was gone, mounting the stairs rapidly, leaving we three men looking at each other.

“Look,” I said, anxious to further calm the waters, “can we go and sit down – and can I offer you a cup of tea or something?”

It was the constable called Dave who replied, getting his acceptance in before his colleague could perhaps decline.

“That would be great, sir.”

We all trooped into the kitchen – I could well understand them not wishing to let me out of their sight – and by the time the kettle had boiled and tea had been brewed, Hazel had rejoined us and we all sat on the kitchen stools awaiting events.

We had scarcely finished our drinks before the ambulance, blue lights flashing, pulled up outside and two paramedics hurried in as I opened the front door to them. They quickly examined the intruder, advised us that he needed to be taken to hospital straight away, and minutes later, accompanied by constable Dave, were carrying him out on a stretcher.

The ambulance couldn’t have been gone more than three or four minutes before an unmarked car replaced it and I answered the door once more. I was confronted by a tall black man, slim but in no way skinny, black hair cut close to his scalp, who introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Morton (Hazel later commented that he was ‘rather dishy’ and reminded her of Denzil Washington).

He took charge straight away, sending the young constable – whose name, I learned, was Halliday – off in his patrol car to whatever next task awaited him.

Morton looked closely at the pistol before carefully picking up by means of a pencil through the trigger guard and placing it in a plastic bag which he sealed. There was a patch on the bag upon which one could write and he did so, presumably entering the date, time and location or the like. That done, he suggested that we sit down somewhere comfortable and, whilst Hazel ushered him into the lounge, I went upstairs and dressed.

Once down again Morton looked at us quizzically.

“Mrs. Larter, Mr. Larter, can you think of any reason why a man with a gun should have broken into your house?”

Hazel shook her head and I was about to join in her expression of negation when a thought struck me.

“I was going to say no, sergeant, but I suppose there is one remote possibility.”

Both Morton and Hazel looked at me, Morton with interest, Hazel in surprise.

“It’s only just occurred to me, and I could be totally wrong – and if I am, I haven’t a clue why the man came here, but when he spoke he sounded French to me.” I looked at Hazel who furrowed her brow in concentration before speaking.

“Yes, he certainly had an accent, and it sounded French to me too.”

Morton looked at me expectantly.

“I don’t know if you are aware of the case, sergeant, but a month or so back there was a triple murder at a caravan park in Staines.”

I could see that I had his full attention.

“Yes, I know of the case, although I don’t have any involvement in it.”

“Well, one of the victims was a friend of ours – Graham Crawford. It seems, although nobody has actually said as much to us, that his death may be linked to events in France two years ago when an RAF aircraft, in which he was supposed to be a passenger but wasn’t, was sabotaged – brought down in the Channel by a bomb, killing the three man crew. Because we had known Graham well, we were interviewed by a DCI Clarke to get as much background as possible. We haven’t heard any more about the case, but I presume that it is still being worked on.”

Morton looked very thoughtful, very thoughtful indeed.

“Thank you for that, Mr. Larter. I’ll make sure that DCI Clarke is made aware of what has happened here tonight. Now, if I may, a few more details of just what did happen here tonight.”

I went through what had happened – my fortuitous insomnia, the sound of the conservatory doors opening, my attack on the intruder and my overpowering of him. Unlike PC Halliday, there was no indication of any disapproval over my actions from Morton.

“Right, thank you for that. Now, some practical issues. How did the intruder get in – obviously through your conservatory doors, but how did he get to the back of your house? I looked at the front of your house as I arrived and it is obvious that he couldn’t simply walk past your house to get to the back – that wall of yours makes that impossible – so he must have approached some other way. What does you house back onto?”

“All of this road backs onto a bit of rough ground. At this time of year it is pretty wet and muddy, especially at the moment after all the rain last week and yesterday.”

51

“Perhaps we could have a quick look – do you have a torch? If not, I’ve got one in the car.”

“No, that’s OK, there’s one in the kitchen – I’ll fetch it.”

Moments later the three of us were in the conservatory, looking out through the still open doors – Morton forbade actually going through the doors until he could have then examined in case they yielded any useful evidence – and he swept the torch right to left, its powerful beam illuminating the fence which enclosed our back garden. The fence was four and a half feet high, running between ourselves and both our neighbours, as well as closing off the back.

“We’ve all got fences in the road, mostly like ours, to keep out foxes, which are otherwise a damn nuisance around here.” I explained.

“Well, anyone reasonably agile could get over that fence without difficulty,” Morton observed, “so he might have come in from the rough ground, although I do wonder.”

It was Hazel who interjected.

“No, I don’t think that he came from the rough ground sergeant. As David said it’s pretty muddy out there and his shoes were clean. If they had been muddy I would have noticed as I tied his legs. Oh, and surely he would have left muddy footprints on the floor?”

I had turned the lights on in the conservatory as we had entered it and, sure enough, there was no trace of any footprint on the floor.

“So,” Morton mused, “next door on both sides don’t have the sort of enclosing wall at the front that you do –

it looks as though he must have walked past one of your neighbour’s houses into their back garden and shinned over the fence between you. Do you know what sort of surface your neighbours have at the back?”

“They’re like us – stone flags for ten feet or so to give somewhere dry to sit if the lawn gets wet.”

“So, he could have done as I suggest and in so doing his shoes would have stayed clean. Right. Well, I think that I have seen all I need to for now – I’ll get some of our scene of crime people down to have a look but I can’t imagine that there will be much to find of any significance outside. They’ll need to have a look inside as well, which I’m afraid will be a bit of a nuisance for you.”

He looked at his watch and in a reflex action I looked at my own; to my surprise it was gone six o’clock and daylight would soon be with us.

“Look, I really do need to have the house and garden looked over by our people – this is potentially a very serious crime – attempted murder, possession of a firearm and the like. I’m sorry that it is going to cause you inconvenience, but I will try and make sure that they complete their work today. In the meantime, would it be possible for you to leave the house, at least until this evening?”

“I suppose so – we’ll need to pack a few things and go to an hotel, perhaps stay overnight – but what about the conservatory doors? If they are left apart the house is wide open to anyone and if it rains any evidence will get washed away, surely?”

Morton chewed his lower lip in uncertainly.

“I take your point, Mr. Larter. I’ll have to get someone here to guard the place until the forensic people get here, then they can secure the house when they have finished. Now, one other thing – he must have had transport to get here; either he drove himself or somebody drove him. In the latter case, I’m sure any accomplice is long gone – the arrival of the patrol car will have seen to that – but if he drove himself, then his vehicle is somewhere around. I noticed that there are very few cars parked in the road here – all your houses have garages or parking areas in front of them. Would you mind having a look at those cars which are in the road and tell me if there are any you don’t recognise?”

All three of us went out onto the pavement and looked up and down the road. As Morton had observed all the houses in our short road – which is a cul-de-sac – had adequate parking facilities off road for at least one car and in most cases two. There were just four cars parked in the road and I recognised all of them.

“The Fiesta belongs to the Hammond’s daughter – she’s visiting for a couple of days and they already have two cars, so hers is parked in the road. That Mondeo – well you can see that it is in the road because the Drummond’s motorhome is in their drive. They normally have the car and the motorhome off the road, but they are probably packing the motorhome to go away for a while- it’s a bit difficult for them to get in and out of the motorhome when it is up against the house where it normally is – they are both retired and do this quite often. The Citroen is a stranger to me, but it has been here for four or five days; it’s outside the Lane’s house and sometimes right in front of their gate so it’s a visitor of some sort. The last one, the BMW is David Kilner’s – he sometimes leaves it in the road if he is making an early start, which presumably is the case today.” Morton looked thoughtful.

“Obviously we can rule out those vehicles; to be honest, I would have been very surprised if your intruder had actually parked here – he must have parked somewhere within reasonable walking distance, though. A bit later on this morning I’ll organise a search for his car.”

52

Within another half hour, things were organised. A uniformed constable arrived to guard the house prior to the arrival of the forensic team, we had arranged to spend the rest of the day and the night in an hotel and Morton had departed, promising to let us know as soon as his team had completed their work in our house.

I had one more task; I phoned Lawrence Crawford and brought him up to date on what had occurred. He was naturally horrified and, like myself, was sure that it was somehow tied into what had happened to Graham.

“I wonder if whoever is behind all this will try again,” he said. “Doesn’t make for peace of mind, not at all.”

To be honest, it was a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind, which was probably one of the reasons Lawrence had been a Major-General and I had been a Lieutenant. Could we expect another visitation now that this one had failed?

******************

It was three days later. Clarke reviewed the file in front of him.

“So, Frank, what do you reckon?”

Engleton shook his head.

“It’s crazy, boss. This French guy, whoever he is, was obviously sent to knock off the Larter’s, husband and wife. The only possible reason for such an attempt must surely be because someone, somewhere, is worried that they learned something from Crawford, something dangerous to whoever it is. If it’s bad enough to sanction a couple more murders, it must still be dangerous – isn’t it likely that there will be another attempt?”

“I hope not – they may not be so lucky if there is a next time.”

Clarke was frustrated, as were all his colleagues involved with the case. The man, currently being held on remand, refused to say anything of any import. He clearly understood English, but refused to speak it, resulting in all attempts to interview him having to use the services of an interpreter, and even then, all that had been got out of him was ‘no comment’, which Clarke was mildly surprised to find was the same in French as in English. When arrested he had been carrying no form of identification, no passport, no driving licence, no French identity card, nothing. He didn’t even have a wallet and apart from a set of keys and a few pounds in loose change, he was carrying nothing. In view of his assumed nationality, the French embassy had been informed of his arrest and had sent an official to speak with the man. The official had been no more successful in obtaining any useful information than had the police and he had left, shrugging his shoulders and declaring that as the man refused to cooperate in any way, the embassy washed its collective hands of him.

His car hand been found, parked some ten minutes’ walk away from the Larters house, but proved to have been stolen the previous day. It had been discovered by a policeman walking the nearby streets using the remote fob on the key ring the man had possessed until a vehicle had responded. Like the man himself, however, the car yielded nothing other than the opportunity to add car theft to the list of charges against the man. The only way that the police could be sure that the vehicle was, indeed, that used by their prisoner was because his fingerprints had been found in it, and if he hadn’t used it, how come he had its keys? Normally, car thieves rely on breaking into a vehicle and ‘hot wiring’ the ignition to start the engine, but in this case the thief had a bunch of keys, including that to the car itself. The rightful owner had been stupid. Loretta Haines, retired office worker, fifty-six years of age, had stopped outside a shop in one of Guildford’s no parking zones. Aware that she shouldn’t have done so, but ‘was only going to be a minute’ she had turned off the engine but left the keys in the ignition. As she had emerged from the shop it was to find that her car had disappeared. Clarke had wondered if the theft was in fact an arranged one, but even the most perfunctory look at Mrs. Haines and her background seemed to ridicule such a thought. But how had the Frenchman just happened to be in the right place at the right time – and where had the car – and its new driver – been overnight?

Obviously, the man must have other possessions – but where they might be remained a mystery. A trawl of nearby hotels and bed and breakfast premises, showing a picture of the man, had come up blank.

So, who was he, and where had he come from? Clarke was confident that he had enough evidence to secure a conviction, at the very least, for the illegal possession of a firearm and car theft. Attempted murder might not be so easy – although neither he nor any of his colleagues had any doubt over the matter, the Crown Prosecution Service were less sanguine. The man had been incapacitated by Larter; no shot had been fired, by Larter’s own testimony, no threat had been issued.

The pistol itself was a bit of a mystery. At first glance it was simply one of the most popular point two-two pistols made in America, a Ruger Mark II. This one, however, had a heavy barrel which incorporated an internal suppressor – the so called ‘silencer’ beloved of films and books. No firearm can be rendered truly silent, but the Frenchman’s weapon came as close as was practically possible. Had it been used in the Larter 53

house it was unlikely that the noise would have been heard in any of the nearby properties. And there was another thing. The weapon was a very special item, made specifically for American special forces for operations where as little noise as possible was a prerequisite. It was not available in the open market. How come a Frenchman had obtained one? Trying to leave no stone unturned, Clarke had contacted the American embassy and spoken with the military attaché, a Lieutenant-Colonel Grace who had been sympathetic and wanting to help, but unable to do so. By the very nature of the operations on which such a weapon might be needed, its use tended to be shrouded in a degree of secrecy. It was, the American admitted, that over the years that the weapon had been in use, it was highly likely that some might have ‘disappeared’ but he could offer no idea as to how one might have come into the possession of a French would-be assassin. Although he promised to do some more digging, just in case.

Clarke wondered if it was the weapon that had killed Crawford, Hughes and Davis. That had also been a point two-two, and although the bullets recovered from the bodies were too badly damaged to be able to be used for comparison purposes, three empty cartridge cases had been found at the scene and they might be able to be matched to the weapon the intruder had carried. However, on the balance of probability, it did seem likely that the weapon, and the man who had carried into the Larter’s house, had been involved in those three deaths – but how to prove it? If the cases could be matched to the pistol, that would be very good – but juries had a habit of being sceptical about forensic evidence these days – there had been too many instances of expert testimony being overturned after the event, sometimes long after the event.

It was three days later than his phone rang to herald a call that would, eventually, move things forward.

“Clarke.”

“Chief Inspector, it’s Harry Grace.”

“Colonel, nice to hear from you – got anything for me?”

“I think that I may have – it’s a pretty odd story, but it seems to offer a solution. I managed to have the serial number of that pistol checked. In two thousand and four it was issued to a Sergeant John Lewinski, a member of a special forces unit. Now, like your SAS, much that our special forces get involved in is classified, but one operation involving Lewinski became very public indeed. It was in two thousand and seven; a French patrol in Afghanistan was attacked by a superior force of Taliban fighters. They called for help. The nearest troops were American special forces about to go off on a mission of their own, flying in a Chinook helicopter. As you may know, the Chinook is a big beast, capable of carrying anything up to fifty or so soldiers, but this one only had fifteen special forces soldiers on board, so had plenty of spare room. It was diverted to pick up the French, with an Apache helicopter gunship for escort. They got to the site and whilst the Apache kept Taliban heads down, the Chinook landed to pick up the Frenchmen. It was an ambush.

Whilst the Apache was busy firing on the Taliban site identified by the French, a missile was fired from a second, unidentified site. It badly damaged the Chinook, causing several casualties, including two fatalities, a Corporal Harris and Sergeant Lewinski.

“It all got very messy after that. A second Chinook was dispatched to pick everyone up, the Apache hosed everything is sight, two RAF Tornados got involved, dropping bombs and strafing the Taliban positions. The final body count was thirty-nine dead Taliban fighters, with an unknown number of survivors escaping, two dead Americans, two dead Frenchmen and three Americans and two Frenchmen badly wounded. Now, from here on in it’s pure surmise on my part, but it’s the only thing that I can think of which fits the facts. I reckon that Lewinski was carrying that pistol – after all, no reason why he shouldn’t have been – and that one of the French soldiers saw it and took it off his body. No soldier can ever have enough firepower, and a pistol like the Ruger offered something that could be carried as a concealed back up – an ace in the hole, as we call it.

That would put the pistol in French hands; whether the man you have in custody was one of those soldiers, or whether the gun passed through other hands before getting into his, I have no way of knowing. However, there is one more thing. I suppose it was because the incident involved the forces of three nations, you, us and the French, the report of it is far more detailed than most that I have seen – and it includes the names of all the troops involved, including the Frenchmen, so I am E-mailing you a list of them – perhaps you can get somewhere with it.”

Clarke was intrigued by what he had been told by the American. It was long odds against anything coming from it, but at least it offered something, no matter how tenuous, to follow up on.

True to his word, just minutes later the E-mail promised by Grace arrived and Clarke studied it closely.

There were the names of twelve Frenchmen. Two of the names had been marked as killed in action, two more marked as wounded. Obviously, the dead men, and hopefully the two wounded ones, could be discounted, leaving eight ‘possibles’.

Their mystery man had, of course, been fingerprinted ; there was no match in the UK database and requests to the French authorities and to Interpol had also come up blank. He still continued to say nothing, despite repeated interviews and the certainty that he would receive at least a five year prison sentence for possession 54

of the pistol, even if nothing else. This latest avenue would need a lot of patient donkey work, and even then there was no guarantee that it would be successful, but it had to be done. He set Anna Harris, probably the brightest of his DC’s and one with a terrier like attitude to following trails, on the task. It took her four days, but at last she had a story to tell him.

“Boss, the French were very helpful. I spoke with a girl in the personnel department of their defence ministry and she was able to confirm that five of our eight are still in the Army and are accounted for, so they can’t possibly be our man. Of the other three, one is dead, killed in a flying accident during a training exercise three years ago, leaving just two, both of whom are no longer in the forces. They are Jules Mercier, who was a private at the time of the Afghanistan incident – he left the army in two thousand and nine, and Alain Basteareau, a sergeant at the time, who left the army just some ten months after the Afghanistan incident, in January two thousand and eight. Now, it could be that whoever lifted the Ruger passed it on to someone else, in which case we are just about stumped, but it might be that whoever took it kept it until he lost it at the Larter’s home. So it is quite possible that the man we have is either Mercier or Basteareau.”

“Well done, Anna. So, now we need to determine which – if indeed it is one of them. I guess that we had better make a formal request via the boss. I’ll take it to Mr. Gillespie, who’ll probably want to run it past the Chief Super.”

Clarke was correct in his assumption; an hour later Jane Lawson was being briefed on the progress that had been made.

“Well done to you all. Now I think that I can speed thinks up a bit. A formal request would have to go to the French Justice Ministry – and they aren’t noted for moving at the speed of light. However, I have a contact in the French police who may be able to help.”

After her two subordinates had left her office, Jane made a phone call, a call to France. Henri le Bon had been the equivalent of an Inspector in a British police force, when, a few years earlier, he had helped Jane by tracking down a couple on holiday in France, a couple unaware that their parents had been murdered. Jane and Henri had chatted over the phone subsequently, when she had telephoned him to express her gratitude for his help, and the chat had led to an invitation for her and her husband, Harry, to visit Henri and his wife, Eloise. Since then the two couples had holidayed as each other’s’ guests on several occasions, but more importantly, in the intervening time Henri had moved from his post in Perpignan and was now based in Paris and was now a Commissaire Divisionnaire, the equivalent of a Chief Superintendent in a British police force, in the Direction régionale de la Police Judiciaire de Paris, the element of the French Police Nationale which is responsible for policing Paris. She heard the phone at the other end ring – it was Henri’s private mobile, not an official phone.

“’Allo, Jane – to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Henri, I’m asking a favour.”

“If I can ‘elp, I will, you know that.”

“Thanks, Henri – I’m trying to trace two former French soldiers.”

“That should not be difficult – who are they?”

“Alain Basteareau and Jules Mercier.” Jane recited the dates of birth and the dates they left the army, information that Anna Harris had obtained. There was a pause at the other end.

“Jane, these names I do not know, but I will have them checked out and let you know – but tell me, why are the Surrey police interested in two Frenchmen?”

Jane had been expecting the question – it was inevitable and she had wondered how much she should say to a colleague from another force.

“Henri, we have arrested a man who seems to be French – I say ‘seems’ because apart from saying ‘no comment’ to everything that he has been asked, he hasn’t uttered a word in three days.”

“He has done something serious?”

“Caught red-handed in possession of a pistol having broken into a house with, we are certain, the intention of murdering the occupants.”

“Serious indeed – I will get back to you as soon as I can. Au’voir!”

“Au’voir, Henri!”

It was early the next morning that le Bon called back.

“Jane, I ‘ave news for you. You can forget Mercier. After leaving the army he went into business with his brother. They ‘ave a small antiques shop on the Rive Gauche and I had an officer check yesterday. Your Mercier is currently working in the shop. Basteareau is something a bit different. After he left the army he was recruited into the DGSE – that recruitment was probably why he left the army. What he does for them –

who knows? They play everything close to the chest. One thing I do know – we tracked down his home address and he is not there, and his wife either does not know where he is, or if she does know, she is not saying. I will E-mail his address and what else we have that might be useful – including his fingerprints.”

55

“Thank you, Henri, that is most helpful.”

“My pleasure, Jane – my best to Harry. Au’voir.”

“Give Eloise my best, au’voir Henri.”

Once she had finished the call to le Bon, Jane used her intercom to Cross.

“Dave, would you get DCI Clarke and DSi Gillespie to meet with me, preferably this morning – I’ve got news for them about their prisoner.”

“OK, boss.”

It was just over an hour later that the two detectives entered her office and took the chairs that she indicated.

“Right, guys. As promised, I’ve been on to my French contact. It is pretty certain that the man we have in custody is one Alain Basteareau, formerly in the French army, now an officer of their external intelligence organisation, the DGSE.”

Both of her colleagues looked perplexed; it was Clarke who spoke.

“So what was he doing breaking into a Surrey house in the middle of the night, apparently with murder on his mind?”

Jane shrugged her shoulders.

“At this point, Skull, I haven’t a clue – it’ll be up to you to squeeze it out of him. As you probably already know, the remit of the DGSE is to counter external threats to la belle France – I can’t see how the Larters fall into that category. I think, Skull, that now we are pretty certain who the man is, it is time to try and put pressure on him. This can’t be something out of the blue – there must be a reason for it and we need to find out what that reason is. How good is the information about him that Anna obtained from the French military?”

“Pretty good, boss. We have his dates of service, a photo, and his fingerprints should be obtainable now that we can’t be accused of just being on a fishing expedition. We also have an address for him, but it is the address he had when he left the army so it might not be up to date.”

“Was this the address? I got it today from my contact – and don’t worry about the fingerprints. Those came over as well.”

She passed over the E-mail with its attached picture of Basteareau’s fingerprints. Then she looked at her two officers.

“Why aren’t we charging Basteareau with the three murders in Staines?”

It was Clarke who answered.

“DSi Gillespie and I have thought about this, ma’am. The ballistics report is pretty definite – matching cases to an individual weapon is pretty conclusive – it’s ninety-five percent plus certain that those cases were fired from that gun, although it isn’t quite as clear cut as matching bullets to an individual weapon, but as you know, in this case the bullets are useless for comparison purposes – too badly mangled. The thing that worries us is that although we can therefore place the gun at the scene, we can’t place the man there. We know that Basteareau has had that pistol since two thousand and seven when he took it from the body of the American sergeant, but we can’t prove it – there were plenty of other men around, any one of whom could, in theory, have taken the gun. There is always the danger of the defence claiming that Basteareau only came into possession of the pistol after it was used to murder Crawford, Davis and Hughes – and given Basteareau’s background, I wouldn’t be surprised if the defence trotted out half a dozen Frogs swearing blind that they were all in their favourite bistro in Paris on the night of the murders. A jury would, hopefully, see it for what it was, but, well, you know what juries are like. I’ve got folk still trying at the moment to find some trace of Basteareau actually being in the UK on the relevant date, but so far we haven’t come up with anything.”

Jane nodded her head.

“OK, Skull – keep at it and let’s cross our fingers that something turns up.”

**************

Clarke did not rush his next interview with the prisoner. Beforehand, he, and his team, did a lot of groundwork into the life and times of Alain Basteareau, so when the interview finally took place, Clarke was able to put the Frenchman on the defensive from the word go. As he had explained to Lawson, he also had the ballistic report on the pistol matching the empty cartridge cases found at the scene of the Staines caravan park murders, but, again as he had told Lawson, he had already decided to keep that news to himself for the time being..

The Frenchman, accompanied by a solicitor, was seated in the small interview room when Clarke, accompanied by DS Engelton, walked into the room, flopped a slim folder onto the table, and seated himself.

Engelton sat down beside him and turned on the tape recorder. Engleton spoke to the microphone, identifying the time, date and place, and continued.

56

“Present are DCI Clarke, DS Engleton, M’sieu Alain Basteareau and Mr. Harold Marley, solicitor for M’sieu Basteareau.”

For the first time in the several interviews to which he had been subjected, the Frenchman looked uneasy.

Clarke treated him to a wolfish grin.

“Now, Alain, we both know that you really are Alain Basteareau and that there is no point in trying to deny it.”

He tapped the folder in front of him on the table.

“You see, Alain, we have received a lot of information regarding you from a variety of French sources. To summarise; you are Alain Basteareau, born on the third of October, nineteen seventy, in the city of Paris.

You are married to Cecile, formerly Laclanche. You married on the fourth of May nineteen ninety-five. You have no children. You joined the French army in nineteen eighty-nine and left in two thousand and eight, having reached the rank of sergeant. Now here’s an interesting thing. When we first sent your fingerprints to Interpol and the French Ministry of Justice, they told us that they had no match on record. However, we have since obtained, from a different source, the prints of one Alain Basteareau and, guess what? They match yours – the army file also says that in addition to your native tongue, you are also fluent in German and English – so you have understood everything which has been said to you from the moment of your arrest, which is why there is no interpreter with us this time. And, another thing; your army records show that you left to join the DGSE, yet when we checked with them, they said that they no longer had you on their books; that you left them ten months ago. You know what, Alain? I reckon that you are your own – your organisation has washed its hands of you!”

Basteareau remained silent throughout Clarke’s speech, but Clarke was convinced that the French army file was correct – and that Basteareau understood every word. Clarke resumed speaking.

“Now one thing is absolutely certain, Alain – you are going to prison. Now, when you were arrested you were in possession of a pistol – and you had that weapon illegally. In the UK the illegal possession of a handgun carries a mandatory five year prison sentence, no buts, no ifs, no maybes – a mandatory sentence.

Oh, and by the way, we even know how you came to obtain that pistol. You took it from the body of Sergeant John Lewinski of the American army on the fourteenth of July, two thousand and seven, when you were one of a small patrol of French soldiers rescued by the Americans from a Taliban ambush. So you rob the bodies of the dead in addition to your other achievements. Now, the five years for possession - that’s out of my hands, but possession of that weapon isn’t the only charge you might be facing. You broke into the Larter’s house – and one has to ask oneself why you might have done that. My believe – in fact the belief of everyone involved in this case – is that you broke in to murder them. That’s pretty obvious, and the penalty for attempted murder can be life imprisonment, but on average, the sentence is likely to be fourteen years.

Behave yourself and you could be out in seven or eight – seven or eight years out of your life that you will never get back. Oh, and just between ourselves – we are digging around a lot – who knows what else we might find out about you?”

For the first time since his arrest, Basteareau said something other than ‘no comment’.

“I claim diplomatic immunity.”

Clarke laughed out loud.

“Come on, Alain – really? Are you forgetting that you have already been visited by a member of the French embassy staff? He washed his hands of you – and the embassy will find your claim of diplomatic immunity even more amusing, even more pathetic, than I do. You’re going to have to do much better than that, Alain.”

For the first time Marley, Basteareau’s solicitor spoke.

“Chief Inspector, I don’t think that my client’s claim of diplomatic immunity can really be dismissed in so cavalier a manner. At the very least his claim should be addressed to the French embassy.”

This time it was Marley who was treated to a wolfish grin from Clarke.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Marley, once we learned the true identity of your client we did, of course, contact the French embassy once more. They confirmed that Alain Basteareau has no standing within the French diplomatic service – here is their letter confirming that fact.”

Clarke extracted a single sheet of paper from his folder and passed it to the lawyer. Marley studied it carefully, then showed it to Basteareau, who barely glanced at it. Marley handed it back to Clarke.

“In the light of that letter, Chief Inspector, I accept that my client cannot claim diplomatic immunity.”

“Thank you, Mr. Marley.”

Clarke turned his attention back to Basteareau.

“Now, Alain, let’s review just what you facing here. One, illegal possession of a handgun. Two, breaking and entering, including criminal damage. Three, attempted murder. Oh, nearly forgot; four, theft of a car. Put all that little lot together, remembering that in this country sentences normally run concurrently rather than 57

consecutively, and it would have to be a very, very soft hearted judge who passed a sentence of less than twenty years. It gets worse, doesn’t it?”

Neither Basteareau nor his lawyer responded. Clarke decided that it was time for the next gambit.

“Alain, what puzzles me about all this is why? Why come over to England carrying an illegal weapon and why try to murder the Larters? What have they ever done to you? I’ve spoken with them – they’ve never heard of you. I showed them your photo – they’ve never seen you before in their lives – so why?”

Basteareau stared back at him. A bit over-weight, there was a trickle of sweat running down the Frenchman’s tubby face; he ran his tongue nervously over the small moustache adorning his upper lip. He remained silent, but Marley spoke.

“Chief Inspector, as you are aware, the information regarding my client’s identity which you have introduced into this interview is new to me. I think that in the circumstance, I need to confer with my client.”

“Of course, Mr. Marley – please take as long as you like. There will be a uniformed officer outside the door to this room. When you are ready to speak with us again, please let him know. Interview suspended at eleven forty-seven, DCI Clarke and DS Engleton are leaving the room.”

Clarke switched off the recorder and he and Engleton rose from their chairs and left the room.

It was nearly an hour before the two detectives were recalled. From the instant that they entered, it was clear that Basteareau and Marley could not have had an amicable discussion, Both men looked flushed and angry.

Marley spoke first.

“Chief Inspector, my client still refuses to confide in me, In view of this I do not see how I can be expected to prepare a credible defence for him; as a result I feel obliged to decline this case. Unless M. Basteareau can be persuaded to cooperate with another lawyer, it is difficult to see what he can offer in mitigation of the crimes of which he has been accused,”

Clarke shrugged his shoulders. Basteareau’s fate was in his own hands; if he wanted to play silly buggers, that was up to him. On the other hand, it was mortifying in the extreme to have so little from the man. He did, however, have another ace up his sleeve – the ballistics report matching the cartridge cases from the Staines murder scene to the pistol that Basteareau had been carrying when he had broken into the Larter’s house. That was something that he intended to hold back from Basteareau for the time being.

**************

Cecile Basteareau replaced the phone’s handset gently, refusing to give in to the desire to slam it back in place or, better still, hurl it across the room against the nearest wall. She had, she knew full well, just been lied to. Where was Alain? It was now nearly two weeks before he gone off on his latest assignment, an assignment which he had expected t last just three days, perhaps four. She had been taken aback when, five days earlier she had been visited by the police, asking if she knew of Alain’s whereabouts. She had said, in all honesty, that she did not know where he was – that he had left for work one morning and was still to return. She had explained that, as an officer of the DGSE – something the policeman had quite clearly already known, it was not at all unusual for him to be away for a few days at a time, and that the sensitive nature of much of his work meant that he scarcely ever told her any details.

In saying that, she had actually held something back. Alain had told her that he was going to England, but he had, of course, given no intimation as to why he was going over there.

After a further five days from the police visit she had decided to phone a number which Alain had given her, impressing upon her that it was only to be used in an emergency. It was, he had explained, a direct number to his immediate superior who would need to know immediately if, for example, Alain was involved in a traffic accident and couldn’t make contact himself. She had no idea of the name of the man at the other end of the line. Alain had told her to introduce herself when, and if, she ever needed to make the call, but not to expect that courtesy to be reciprocated.

The call had not gone as she had expected.

“This is Lucile Basteareau – Alain has been missing for nearly two weeks. Do you know if anything has happened to him?”

There was a long pause at the other end before a reply came.

“Mme. Basteareau, there must be some confusion here. Your husband resigned from the DGSE some ten months ago. I am afraid that we have no knowledge of his current whereabouts.”

And with that the line went dead.

Lucile did not believe what she had just heard. Within the last ten months Alain had carried out several assignments which had taken him away from home, although none of them had lasted more than two days, and when not on assignment had been going into his office every day. She had been lied to – but why? What on earth could have caused Alain’s boss to lie like that? Surely it meant that he was in some form of trouble, 58

and as he had told her that he was going to England, perhaps that was where he was – and where he was in trouble. She wondered who she could turn to to try and find out what was going on. Apart from the telephone number to his superior – which had proved worse than useless – Alain had never spoken of any works colleagues, perhaps not altogether surprising in view of the sensitive nature of much of his work. There was, however, one path possibly open to her, her brother Tomas. He was a policeman and a senior one; to be exact, he was a Capitaine in the Direction régionale de la Police Judiciaire de Paris, the police force responsible for Paris. If anyone could help, now that the DGSE had clearly washed its collective hands of Alain, surely it would be Tomas?

******************

Tomas Laclanche replaced his phone’s handset thoughtfully. At forty-six years of age, Laclanche did most things thoughtfully. His colleagues in the Direction régionale de la Police Judiciaire de Paris saw him as a man not given to flights of fancy, not given to extravagant hunches, but an officer who worked by the book and whose record was exemplary if not inspiring. Cecile was his sister, two years younger than himself and Laclanche and her husband Alain were, whilst not bosom buddies, easy with one another. Alain’s employment by the DGSE, after a reasonable army career, concerned Laclanche slightly – it was an organisation with a reputation for cutting corners, something that was an anathema to the policeman – but it was a concern that he had never expressed, neither to his sister nor to her spouse.

So, Alain had gone missing and the DGSE claimed that he had resigned ten months earlier? Laclanche didn’t believe a word of it. If that had happened he would have known – he and his wife had dined with the Basteareaus only just over a month earlier – such a change in life style could not possibly have gone unremarked upon. No, it stank. Laclanche had no idea just what Alain did for the DGSE but given the less than savoury reputation hanging over some of its activities, he had no wish to know. This had all the hallmarks of ‘credible denial’ about it – which probably meant that whatever had caused Alain to disappear was something that the DGSE had no wish to become public knowledge.

So, where was his brother-in-law? Cecile had said that he had mentioned going to England, so that was surely the first place to look. But how to do so? He thought hard about the matter. As he saw it, there were several possible explanations for Alain’s disappearance. He might simply have tired of Cecile and just left her – but that didn’t square with the reaction of the DGSE. He might be on some mission over there which had gone wrong – that would square with the reaction of the DGSE. He might have had some sort of accident, possible even a fatal one, but again, that didn’t explain what Cecile had been told when she had reported his disappearance. No, the second possibility was by far the most likely. So, how to find out?

The first step was delegation. Laclanche was a great believer in having tasks performed by the lowest ranking officer with the necessary competence – it freed up the time of senior officers, it gave the junior officers a sense of worth and above all, it was the most efficient use of expensive resources. He pondered over the abilities of his various subordinates, and ten minutes later was briefing Major Lucien Vendee, a fifty year old career officer whom Laclanche knew to be thorough in everything that he did, but a man lacking the drive needed to have risen beyond Major, a rank equivalent to a Sergeant in many police forces. Despite that lack of drive and personal ambition, Laclanche was confident that he could rely upon Vendee to do a good job.

Vendee listened with quiet attention as his boss outlined what he wanted him to do. The task was, to say the least, intriguing – for Laclanche had held nothing back, emphasising the fact that Basteareau was – or perhaps had been – a member of the DGSE; relations between the security force and the regular police where sometimes a little on the strained side and both men were sure that anything that threw the DGSE into a less than favourable light whilst resounding to the credit of the regular police would do them no harm.

After leaving his boss’ office, Vendee returned to his own desk in the open plan room which contained, beside himself, nine other detectives of varying rank, senior amongst who was Lieutenant Helene Dubois, a high flyer in the department and, at only twenty-eight years of age, already tipped for higher things. As a matter of courtesy, he informed her of the task that Laclanche had handed him, and the young woman was as intrigued as he was.

“Lucien, if you need any donkey work done, let me know – I’ve an intern who can help out if you need her.”

Vendee was a cautious soul; he wondered if the offer of help might come with any strings, but decided to adopt his most guileless expression.

“Thank you, Lieutenant – I’ll come to you if I need any help.”

As he made his way back to his desk, the young Lieutenant reflected on what he had told her. On the face of it, it seemed straightforward enough in concept – but actually achieving it was another matter. The UK had a population of over sixty million people – the missing Basteareau could be anywhere amongst them. Given the sometimes (but never admitted) clandestine work of his department, he might even be dead, victim of an 59

assignment that had gone dreadfully wrong. Still, that was for Vendee to track down; she returned her attention to the case currently top of her priority list – an argument amongst a group of immigrant workers which had turned violent, with one man dead and two more, and a woman, seriously injured and in hospital.

She was finalising her report; four arrests made already, with the three currently in hospital to be added to the number when they recovered from their injuries. She, and her small team, had cleared the matter u in a matter of hours, something which would look good in the report. When, she wondered, would there be an opportunity to step up? To get out from the unimaginative environment foster by Laclanche and to become a Capitaine herself?

*************************

DCI Clarke had been feeling for several days that there was some little thing inn his investigation that had been overlooked, but with the sheer volume of work that it had created for him and his team, whatever it was had somehow just bounced around in the back of his mind, always just out of reach – but today, as he enjoyed a cup of coffee at his desk, it suddenly came to him.

Basteareau had used a car to get to the Larters’ house, a car which had been found a few streets away. It had, or so the evidence would suggest, have been acquired by fortuitous theft from a careless female motorist who had left her keys in the ignition whilst just ‘nipping into a shop for a minute or two’ whilst stopped on a double yellow line. Pure luck for Basteareau! Really?

Why hadn’t he had that ‘theft’ followed up more closely at the time? One of his Detective Constables had interviewed the owner of the car, a Mrs. Loretta Haines, established these bare facts – and that was that. The more he thought about it, the more unhappy he became. What were the odds against such an event occurring? How many people in this day and age would leave a vehicle with the keys in the ignition, even for a minute? He decided that he had been remiss in not attaching more importance to the way in which Basteareau had acquired that car.

He called Anna Harris into his office.

“Anna, I’ve got a job for you – you remember how Basteareau stole that car?”

She nodded her head, blonde hair bobbing as she did so.

“Yes boss; some dozy woman left the keys in the ignition and he just helped himself.”

Clarke looked at her.

“OK, Constable – think about it. How likely a scenario does that seem to you?”

A frown crossed her face.

“Oh shit! She exclaimed. “Not bloody likely at all – I mean, what must the odds be for him to be right on the spot just at the right time?”

“That’s how I see it as well – and we never twigged at the time – too busy chasing up other elements. Dig into it, see what you can find, and come back to me as quickly as possible.”

Anna was back at her own desk in moments, her mind working overtime. How to get to the truth of the matter? Who had spoken to the Haines woman?

She looked at the case file – Loretta Haines had been interviewed by DC Bill Morgan, a detective for whom Anna did not have a very high regard. He was a time-server, nearly fifty years old, really more interesting in ensuring the maximum input to his pension than expending more energy on anything than was strictly necessary. She decided that there was no point in talking to Morgan – he would have done the minimum possible when interviewing Mrs. Haines and would resent being asked about it. She would be much better off ignoring what had gone before and starting afresh.

The first thing that she did was to have a quick look at Google Maps to identify the actual area in which the theft had taken place. It was as it had been described by Mrs. Haines in the report that Morgan had added to the file – a double yellow line area outside a row of shops. The next step was to drive there and get a feeling for the spot. The shop into which Mrs. Haines said that she had ‘nipped’ was a newsagents come small general store. Anna had no picture of Mrs. Haines, so there was no point in asking if the proprietor, or whoever was working inside, remembered the woman, but as she looked around she realised that on the other side of the street, just about directly opposite, there was a shop with a complicated looking CCTV device above its window. From where she stood, she could see that there were two cameras, mounted one above the other; one of them was static, but the other slowly panned round from right to left, reached the limit of its travel, then panned back the other way, a procedure which it clearly repeated ad nauseam.

She crossed the road; the shop was a jeweller’s and the window was protected by steel bars inside it.

Looking at what was on display, Anna could well understand the security measures. There were wrist watches ranging from a few hundred pounds in price to nearly ten thousand; brooches, necklaces and rings similarly displayed top of the range prices, all of them beyond the means of a Detective Constable’s salary.

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She pushed upon the door, then noticed the bell push with its embossed information plate ‘Pease ring and wait for the buzzer to sound’. She complied and was rewarded almost instantly with a muted electronic buzz.

She pushed the door open, not an overly easy task – its considerable weight was clearly another element of the security precautions.

A man came from behind a short island counter to greet her.

“Good morning, madam. May I help you?”

Anna produced her warrant card and brandished it.

“I do hope so. I am DC Harris, Surrey police. From across the street I saw your CCTV set-up and I wonder if it may have captured the theft of a car outside the newsagents a couple of weeks back. How far back does your CCTV coverage go?”

The man – he was about her own age and a personable character to look at, about six feet two, slimly built without being too thin, with a tanned face from which deep blue eyes looked at her appraisingly. Jet black hair cut reasonably short crowned a squarish head that looked too tough for your average shop assistant.

“Well, we record from those two cameras that you can see outside, and also two inside,” he waved to opposite corners of the shop’s interior, “and two covering the rear of the premises. We record onto DVD

discs, a fresh one every Monday morning, but we keep the old ones for a year before disposing of them.”

“That sounds pretty comprehensive to me.”

“I certainly hope so – we had a break-in some four years ago and the insurance company were most insistent about the level of security thereafter.”

“So, I would like to see your coverage for the fifth of the month.”

“No problem. We’ll need to go through to the office – if you’ll follow me?”

The man led her to the back of the shop through an unmarked door into a short passageway, to the left of which was another door. He pushed it open and indicated to Anna to preceded him.

The office contained a small, but clearly expensive, desk with an executive style chair behind it and two visitors’ chairs it front of it. The only window was high in the wall, was barred, and looked to be make of toughened glass, given its slight greenish tinge. Filing cabinets lined one wall, whilst in a corner there was a monitor screen which showed six pictures simultaneously. Looking at it, Anna could see that the views were as the man had described – two of the street outside, two of the shop’s interior, and two of a yard which must be at the rear of the premises. The monitor screen stood on a complicated looking grey box boasting a number of switches and what were clearly two slots for DVD discs. He opened a drawer below the table top and extracted a plastic case which proved to contain a single DVD disc.

“Right,” he said, “this is the week containing the fifth.”

He slid the disc into one of the slots, threw a couple of switched and the monitor screen went blank. Another switch thrown and it came back to life, this time showing the same six pictures but still, not moving.

“This is the recording of the fifth – what time are you interested in?”

“It was about two-thirty in the afternoon. The theft was reported at two thirty-seven, so ten minutes or so before then?”

“OK – and I’ll just show the camera view across the street.”

He manipulated the machine’s controls and the screen showed a moving picture, with the whole screen now devoted to this single view. Anna watched in fascination as the car theft was played out in front of her eyes.

“That’s exactly what I need,” she said excitedly, “I really need to take that disc away with me, I’m afraid.”

“That’s no problem, but first let me make a copy of it so that our records remain complete – I presume that you will want the original?”

“Please.”

“Oh, and unless you have a machine like this one, I’ll also make you a disc with just the street view on it – is that OK?”

“Very much so, thanks for all your help.”

Ten minutes later Anna was in possession of two DVD discs. One, the original from the security system, was in a sealed evidence bag which Anna had signed and dated and which she had had the man – he told her that his name was Dick Lewis – also signed to confirm the disc’s provenance. The other, as he had promised, was an ‘extract’ from the main disc showing just the view across the street so that it would play full screen on a normal DVD player.

As she was about to take her leave, Lewis looked at her quizzically.

“I wonder,” he said diffidently, “if you would like to have a drink with me sometime – or even dinner?”

Anna was about to refuse outright, then changed her mind. There was something about Dick Lewis that she found very attractive.

“Yes, I would like that – why don’t you give me a ring tomorrow and we’ll try and fix something up?”

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She took out one of her cards and scribbled her personal mobile number on the back. Lewis took it gratefully.

“Oh,” he said, “do I have to call you DC Harris?”

She grinned at him.

“It’s Anna.”

“Right, Anna – I’ll be in touch.”

As she drove away, Anna reflected on her conversation with the good looking Dick Lewis.

“What am I thinking about?” she asked herself, “Dating a jewellery salesman?”

Still, she admitted to herself, he was a very good looking jewellery salesman.

“Steady, girl” she continued in her silent monologue, “or you’ll find yourself suffering from weak knicker elastic syndrome!”

Three-quarters of an hour later she was treating DCI Clarke and DS Engleton to a viewing of the security camera content that she had watched in the shop.

“Mrs. Haines,” she announced triumphantly, “is a lying little cow! Just watch this.”

She pointed to the screen.

“That man walking towards to shop – that’s Basteareau and the time is two thirty-three. Now he stops a few yards away and waits.”

The picture rolled on.

“Now it’s two-thirty-five – he’s been waiting just on two minutes and here comes Haines in her car. She gets out – and she’s not ‘nipping’ as she described but a quite casual stroll in – and she passes within ten feet or so of Basteareau – and I think that she gives a slight nod to him.”

“Can’t be sure of that,” Engleton grunted.

“Perhaps not – but now look. The moment she’s inside the shop Basteareau steps into the road, gets in behind the wheel and drives off. He doesn’t even look inside to see that the keys are in the ignition – he knew that they were! And now, another minute and a half passes and out comes Haines – I wonder what she was able to buy in just two and a half minutes? I wonder if she actually bought anything? Still, her car is gone –

and look at her reaction – no ‘Oh my God where’s the car gone?’ No despairing look up and down the street in case it wasn’t exactly where she thought that it was. No, nothing. She just stands there for a minute or so, it’s now two thirty-seven, out comes her mobile and she reports her loss.”

Clarke leant back in his chair.

“Well done, Anna – we need to have another talk with Mrs. Haines. Frank, I think that you and Anna should have the honour, and I think that we should have her in here. Tell her that we have information about the theft of the car and we want to give her the opportunity to help us. That should worry her.”

Engleton nodded his head, giving a malicious grin as he did so.

“Wildo, boss.”

After the two of them left his office, Clarke leant further back in his chair, teetering on the edge of over-balancing, as he contemplated this new information. From what he had seen on the monitor, he was now convinced that Haines and Basteareau were in cahoots over the use of her car. Proving it, despite the apparently damning evidence of the CCTV footage might not be easy – more would almost certainly be needed, but the fact of the matter was incidental – the burning question, the question that had to answered was ‘why’? Why would an apparently respectable housewife get involved with helping the likes of Basteareau? How much, he asked himself, did they actually know about Loretta Haines? He mentally reviewed what DC Morgan’s report had said after he had spoken with the woman. It was, Clarke felt, a bit sketchy. Morgan had established that she was a widow, lived alone, and was retired – and that was about the lot. In view of what had now been learned, more was needed –a lot more. He decided to make Morgan work a bit harder for his pension.

Ten minutes later, the aging DC was looking unhappy as Clarke outlined what was needed, but realising that this was one time when anything half-hearted would come back to bite him on the arse, he decided that he would just have to make the best of what he saw as a bad job.

Quarter of an hour later he was on the telephone to the woman herself – Engleton and Harris had yet to descend upon her.

“Mrs. Haines? DC Morgan here – we spoke the other day about the theft of your car. Look, I’m really sorry to bother you, but as I think that you know, there is the chance that the man who stole your car will be charged with some serious offences. Now, if that happens, it is important that our file is as comprehensive as possible, and one thing that I didn’t ask – it didn’t seem relevant at the time – was where you worked.”

There was a short pause at the other end, but for once, Morgan had displayed just the right level of sympathy and bureaucratic need.

62

“Well, I don’t see how it really matters, Mr. Morgan, but I worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. When my husband died he had quite a lot of insurance so I was able to retire early.”

Morgan did his best to sound impressed.

“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office? Gosh, that sounds important.”

He left the gush hanging in the air, hoping that Haines would fill the silence; she duly obliged.

“Oh, I was just a secretary – but it was very interesting at times. I sometimes wish that I had stayed on.”

Satisfied with what he had learnt, Morgan thanked the woman profusely and rang off.

“Next step,” he told himself “who did she work with and for?”

It took nearly an hour to get an answer to that question, much of the time being shunted from one person to another at the FCO until, at last somebody in personnel (‘We call it Human Resources nowadays’) confirmed that, for the six years leading up to her early retirement, Mrs. Loretta Haines had been the personal secretary to Mr. Hugh Collyer.

That immediately set Morgan’s senses on high alert. He knew, of course, that Collyer had been interviewed in the still unsolved case of the murders in the Staines caravan park. Perhaps this would prove a link. He reported back to Clarke who, for once, was unreservedly pleased with what Morgan had found out. Now much would depend upon what Engleton and Harris could wring out of the woman.

*****************

Loretta Haines entered the interview room with a sense of unease, The call from that man Morgan had seemed reasonably straightforward, if somewhat unnecessary, but then, when all was said and done the police were just another bureaucracy, and she had a lot of experience in dealing with bureaucracies, each with their own ways of doing things. Even so, this seemed odd to her. The room was bland, impersonal, and the décor had clearly seen better days. The furnishings were sparse, a table about five foot long by three wide and four chairs, two on each side of the table’s length. The only item which seemed out of the ordinary was a DVD player, complete with a monitor, perhaps with a nineteen inch screen, which sat at one end of the table, arranged so that it could be viewed from all four chairs.

She was followed into the room by the two officers who had invited her to accompany them – a young woman who had introduced herself as Detective Constable Harris and a man, probably in his late thirties whom the girl had introduced as Detective Sergeant Engleton.

It was Engleton who invited Mrs. Haines to sit, but it was Harris who indicated the DVD player and started the ball rolling.

“Mrs. Haines, thank you for agreeing to come in and help us over this. What we are going to show you is some CCTV footage that actually shows your car being stolen.”

Anna was acutely aware that the Haines woman was beginning to get worried; she didn’t want the defensive shutters to some down too soon, perhaps a demand for a lawyer being made, so she continued in her most conciliatory tone.

“I do hope that you won’t find this upsetting, Mrs. Haines. I had my own car stolen once, and I know what a shock it can be – the feeling of outrage that somebody you don’t know, somebody that you have never met, could do this to you. However, it would be most helpful if you would view the footage with us.”

So saying, Anna started the video playing and gave a commentary as she did so.

“Now, you see that man coming towards the shop – I want you to really concentrate on him. Thankfully, this is a pretty good machine and his features are very clear. Now, have you ever seen that man before –or, for that matter since, your car was taken?”

Haines shook her head.

“No, never, never before, never since.”

“Thank you. Now let’s run the film a bit more. See, here you are arriving and parking on the double yellow line. Obviously you were only going to nip in and out – after all, it’s something every one of us has done at some time, isn’t it?”

Haines remained silent, her attention riveted on the image on the screen, which Anna had paused but now played again.

“Now, you walk right past the man - what, eight feet away? Ten perhaps? - and you nod to him. Do you see that, Mrs. Haines?”

The woman was now definitely worried; her body language conveyed that and that alone.

“Why did you nod to him, Mrs. Haines? It makes it look as though you knew him, but you’ve already said that you had never seen him before – so why the nod?”

Haines shook her head violently.

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“No, you’re mistaken. I suppose it does look as though I nodded my head, but if I did I was probably just looking down to see if there was any dog mess on the pavement – I’d just avoided some.”

That, thought Anna, was pretty quick thinking. This woman wasn’t going to be any sort of a pushover.

“Ok, Mrs. Haines – let’s look at a bit more film.”

The images moved until Anna pressed the ‘pause’ button.

“Now, Mrs, Haines – let’s just think about what we have seen now. The man walks across to the edge of the pavement, steps into the road, makes his way round to the driver’s door, gets in and just drives away.”

Haines frowned at the two police officers.

“Sorry, you’ve lost me – we already know that he stole my car.”

It was at this stage that Engleton spoke for the first time.

“We’ve lost you, Mrs. Haines? Don’t you see the significance of what you have just seen? The man – by the way, we know who he is, of course – simply walks to your car, gets in and drives off. He didn’t even look through the windows to see if the key was still in the ignition. The only possible reason for his behaviour is that he already knew that the key would be in the ignition and he knew that because you had communicated that fact to him – either by that nod of the head as you passed him, or by some previous arrangement, or perhaps both.”

Haines shook her head vigorously.

“No, you’re wrong. He must have realised that I hadn’t taken the key out…”

Engleton interrupted her, his voice scornful.

“Rubbish, Mrs. Haines. From where he was standing he could not possibly have seen whether or not you took your key out of the ignition. Loretta Haines, I am charging you with attempting to pervert the course of justice. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

Haines looked thunderstruck.

“You can’t do this – it’s ridiculous.”

“I can, Mrs Haines; indeed, I just have. You will be held in a cell here until a lawyer can be found to represent you. Do you have a lawyer you can call?”

She shook her head mutely.

“In that case the duty solicitor will be advised that you have been charged and will be with you as soon as possible.”

Engleton turned to Anna.

“DC Harris, will you please escort Mrs. Haines to the custody sergeant and see that she is processed.”

Clearly totally taken aback at the turn of events, Haines allowed Anna to lead her from the room and take her to the custody sergeant, the avuncular John Copes, a long time fixture at the station and a man who could be relied upon absolutely to do everything by the book. No opportunity for defence counsel to claim any irregularities in custodial proceedings when John Copes was on the case.

*********************

Lucien Vendee sat back in his chair and gave a long, heart felt sigh of satisfaction. Despite all the odds that he had felt must have been stacked against him, he had finally located Alain Basteareau. The man was in the custody of the Surrey Police, the force responsible for a population of around a million people to the south and west of London, where his search had started after two days of earlier frustration. His first port of call had been the Europol data base, but that had drawn a blank. Basteareau had committed no crime – or at least hadn’t been found out committing a crime (Vendee was sceptical about the ethics of the DGSE) in any of the countries subscribing to the European shared database. Vendee had, of course, made a preliminary enquiry of the DGSE, only to be met with the same stone wall of indifference that Mme. Basteareau had encountered, but to be fair, he had expected nothing else.

His second call had been to the world wide data base of Interpol, but again without result, so he had resorted to an alternative tactic. Checking airlines, ferry companies and Eurostar was tedious, even when taking Lieutenant Dubois up on her offer to use her intern to speed things up, and ultimately unsuccessful. Either Mme. Basteareau had been misinformed by her husband and he had not gone to England or, and more likely, he had travelled in a way to leave no trail, either on false papers and bank cards or by paying for everything in cash.

Frustrated by that method, Vendee had resorted to a third one. He had simply asked English police forces if they had heard of Basteareau, staring with the Metropolitan Police and working out from England’s capital.

He struck lucky at the third attempt – Surrey Police not only knew of the man – they had him in custody! He had explained that his attempt to find the man was rather more than a simple missing persons enquiry – the 64

man was a fairly senior law enforcement officer and his disappearance was a matter of some concern to the French authorities.

He reported back to Capitaine Laclanche, who thanked him for his efforts and pondered what he should do with the news. The fact that a DGSE officer – all right, according to the organisation itself, an ex-DGSE

officer - was being held by a British police force on serious charges was a potential embarrassment for the DGSE. Laclanche could live with that quite happily – there was little love lost between the regular police and those they saw as a cowboy organisation treating due process with scant respect and frequently breaking the law themselves. Should he tell Cecile straight away? Better not – the thing to do was to pass the news up the chain of command until somebody senior to himself decided either to bury it or to use it for political capital.

*************

The news that a French policeman had been trying to locate Alain Basteareau - and had succeeded - reached Clarke within a couple of hours and did nothing to improve his mood. As if things weren’t complicated enough. He had destroyed the man’s attempt to claim diplomatic immunity, but might this lead to another attempt to remove him from British jurisdiction? To be precise, from his jurisdiction? With resignation he passed the news up to Gillespie who in turn passed it on to DCS Lawson, who decided that the possible political implications warranted landing it on the plate of ACC Graham.

Graham considered what he had been told and frowned.

“Last thing we want is for this to get political, Jane.” He said, “Now the charges against the man – how good are they?”

“Firearm possession absolutely one hundred percent – no way that he can wriggle out of that one. Breaking and entry and criminal damage – the same. Attempted murder – not so strong. Larter was too good for him so he never had a chance to fire the weapon and neither of his presumed intended victims were hurt in any way. A defence brief would doubtless claim that it was an attempt to burgle and the Basteareau had the gun as a frightener with no intention of using it. Given the rest of the tale, I would hope that a jury would dismiss such a claim, but well, you know how unpredictable juries can be.”

“What about the theft of the car?”

“Well, as Haines was in cahoots with him, it wasn’t really theft at all – but it does give us the opportunity to do her as an accessory. Clarke is letting her stew in her own juice for the time being – the duty solicitor wants to get things moving but Clarke is stonewalling for the moment – and I think that he is right to do so.”

Graham thought for a moment or two, then glanced at his wristwatch, pushed his chair back and rose to his feet.

“Right, Jane –I’m meeting with the Deputy in a few minutes – more budget reductions to worry about, but I don’t think that we need take this any further up the ladder. I support what you and your people are doing.

The French embassy has already said the man can’t claim diplomatic immunity – so he’s just a foreign thug who made a balls-up – no need to worry about politics. He’s a thug so treat him as such.”

Jane had expected Graham to positively support her team’s efforts, but it was nice to have it confirmed. She returned to her office and passed the good news on to DSi Gillespie, who in turn let Clarke know.

“At last,” the DCI said to himself. He had deliberately held back on further questioning of Loretta Haines in case the higher echelons thought that there might be more than simple criminality to consider, but now he had the green light and he intended to make full use of the fact.

Half an hour later, accompanied once more by DS Engleton, he was in the interview room facing a clearly very worried Haines who was accompanied by the duty solicitor, the same Harold Marley who had washed his hands of Alain Basteareau in view of the Frenchman’s refusal to cooperate.

Engleton switched on the tape recorder, causing Haines to look more worried than ever.

Clarke simply sat there in silence for several minutes, a technique which he knew from past experience was very effective in ratchetting up the level of anxiety in somebody already displaying signs of nervousness. At length, however, he spoke.

“Mrs. Haines, as you know, you have been arrested and formally charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice in that you falsely reported the theft of you motor-car when in fact you had conspired with one Alain Basteareau to provide him with the vehicle to enable him to permit various illegal acts of a serious nature. Now, of itself, the charge against you is self-explanatory. However, given Basteareau’s subsequent actions I am also considering charging you with being an accessory to him before the fact – accessory to acts of possession of a firearm, breaking and entering, criminal damage and intent to cause bodily hard, possibly even with attempted murder.”

He paused, both for breath and for effect. Mrs. Haines looked scared out of her wits and Marley, clearly worried for his client, interceded.

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“Chief Inspector, I have spoken with my client at some length and, on her behalf, I would state categorically that she had no knowledge of M. Basteareau’s intended actions. She acted in a belief, a belief that she now realises was mistaken, that she was actually assisting an agent of Her Majesty’s government in the furtherance of his duty.”

It was music to Clarke’s ears. He had no real interest in pursuing this silly woman; what he wanted to pursue was just why a member of a French anti-terrorist organisation – even if an ex-member of that organisation as was now being claimed – had crossed the Channel intending to kill David and Hazel Larter.

“Please, tell me more,” he said. This time Haines spoke for herself. She started to speak, stopped, swallowed and took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths before she could continue.

“Chief Inspector, you must believe me. I had absolutely no idea what that man was going to do. I was asked by one of my former colleagues at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to help out in an emergency. I was told that it was important that an agent, who normally worked in France, could undertake a delicate mission in Britain without leaving any trace of his presence here. He needed a car and it had to be a car that couldn’t be traced back to the FCO in any way, hence the request to myself. I was only too happy to help; I was a bit reluctant to pretend that my car had been stolen, but it was explained to me that by doing so it would lend credibility to the affair.”

“Who was it who approached you with the request?”

“I don’t know if I am allowed to say – I did sign the Official Secrets Act, you know.”

“Mrs. Haines, let me be very clear with you. The Official Secrets Act is intended to do just that – protect government secrets. It is not there for criminals to hide behind, which is the case here. If you don’t tell me who it was, that adds obstructing the police in the performance of their duties to the charges to which you are making yourself liable.”

She looked, Clarke thought, like a rabbit caught in headlights. Finally, and clearly after some inner mental turmoil, she spoke.

“It was Mr. Manson.”

“Right, I will be speaking to Mr. Manson again in due course. Now, do you have any idea where M.

Basteareau was between taking your car and breaking into the Larter’s house some twelve hours or so later?”

“He was at my house – he just drove there and put the car away in the garage – you can get into the house from the garage and vice versa without having to go outside – there’s a connecting door into the utility room.

That was something else that Mr. Manson asked me to do.”

Clarke was careful to keep his face expressionless; up to now he had had no idea where the Frenchman had been, not what he might have been doing in those twelve hours – now the information had been handed to him on a plate.

“Right, thank you, Mrs. Haines. Now, as Basteareau has been in your house I will need to have our forensic people examine the house – I am sure that they will find evidence to support what you have told me. I think that it would be easiest if you left them to it but in the meantime I want you to go with the sergeant here and put down all that you have told me in the form of a written statement, then you can go home.”

“I can? What about the charges against me?”

“Well, provided that your written statement is satisfactory – that it covers everything that we have discussed, I will talk to the Crown Prosecution Service and recommend that you are given a caution but that no further action need be taken. Don’t forget – a police caution does count as a criminal record, but provided that the CPS agree with me, then that will be the end of the matter.”

Looking far happier than at any time earlier in the interview, Mrs. Haines positively scuttled from the room, with Engleton in close attendance.

Clarke turned to Marley.

“Thank you, Mr. Marley, for talking with Mrs. Haines – I am sure that she did what she did with the best of motives – that she was simply duped by the man Manson, who is now next on my list for a talking to.

Between the two of us, the CPS may even agree to dropping the idea of issuing a caution – I can’t see that any real purpose will be served by landing Mrs. Haines with a criminal record.”

Marley smiled at him.

“That would be best, Chief Inspector, if you can manage it – she was naïve, not malicious, in what she did.”

Clarke removed the two tapes of the interview from the recording machine, handing one to Marley and putting the other, duly annotated with the time, date and subject, in an evidence bag. The two men left the room and went their separate ways.

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Chapter Eight

It was two days later. Under the threat of being arrested in his office, George Manson had, very grudgingly, attended the police station to be interviewed. He was accompanied by the same FCO lawyer, Helena Wright, who had been with him when Clarke had spoken with the man at his office in the FCO, and it was clear that neither of them were amused in the slightest at being ‘dragged down here’ as Wright had put it.

Engleton turned on the recorder and started the proceedings by stating the time, date, place and the names of those present.

“Right, Mr. Manson. First, let me make clear that this is an interview under caution and at the end of the interview you may, or may not, be charged with having performed a criminal act.”

Wright immediately jumped in.

“Chief Inspector, this is ridiculous. What possible criminal act can you believe – and I assure you, believe mistakenly - that Mr. Manson had committed?”

“That will be become clear if you would be good enough to contain your impatience, Ms. Wright.”

Clarke thought wryly to himself that ‘Miss Wright’ would hardly apply to the stern faced FCO lawyer who looked as though she went through life wearing a permanent scowl of disapproval at everything that she saw.

He spoke again.

“Now, Mr. Manson, we have the sworn statement of Mrs. Haines that you asked her to provide a car for M.

Basteareau and also somewhere for him to stay until it was time for him to break into the Larter’s house and attempt to murder them. Why did you ask her to help Basteareau in such a way? To say the very least, it seems strange behaviour on the part of a senior civil servant, so why did you do it?”

Manson, as ever, seemed overly smug.

“I am sorry, Chief Inspector, but I was participating in an operation which is covered by the Official Secrets Act, and so I am unable to answer your question.”

“Very well, Mr. Manson; you leave me with no alternative. George Manson, I am arresting you on a charge of aiding and abetting one Alain Basteareau in the performance of various criminal acts. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

Manson and Wright both looked flabbergasted.

“You can’t do this,” the woman protested, “you have not a shred of evidence linking Mr. Manson to this man Basteareau, whoever he may be, and whatever he may have done.”

“On the contrary, Ms. Wright – we have ample evidence linking Mr. Manson’s actions with the resultant actions of the man Basteareau – and that is all I need. Mr. Manson does not have to have been physically in contact with Basteareau to facilitate his actions. Mrs. Haines testimony is all that I needed to provide the link.”

“The woman is mistaken,” Manson blustered, “I never asked her to do any of the things that you describe.”

Clarke pounced.

“Then why didn’t you say so earlier, Mr. Manson? A few minutes ago you simply said you wouldn’t answer my questions because, and I quote, ‘I was participating in an operation which is covered by the Official Secrets Act, and so I am unable to answer your question’. So which is it? If you now deny asking Mrs.

Haines to do what she did, that was all you had to say at the beginning. No need to mention an operation covered by the Official Secrets Act at all.”

Clarke paused, but Manson said nothing, so he continued.

“Now, we have undertaken a thorough forensic examination of Mrs. Haines house. We have recovered DNA samples that prove that not only did Basteareau use her car, he was also present in her house – so her story in that respect is confirmed beyond any doubt. Another thing that we discovered; at the time that she says you telephoned her, her telephone demonstrates that she did indeed receive a call. However, it wasn’t a call placed through the FCO switchboard, which is what one might expect, but from a pay as you go mobile – a favourite tool of those wanting to cover their tracks. Now, pay as you go mobiles can’t be linked to an owner, but they do still have a call record, and this mobile was used only the once and hasn’t been used since. What many people don’t realise, however, is that since the strengthening of surveillance powers in recent legislation, phone providers don’t only have to keep a record of calls made but also, in the case of mobiles, an approximation of the location from which each call was made – and that one call was made from the location of the FCO. Of course, it doesn’t tell us from which office the call was made – but it all mounts up, doesn’t it?”

Manson looked uneasy, as well he might. Clarke pressed on.

“So, Mr. Manson, bearing in mind that you are now under arrest, what do you have to say?”

Wright interceded.

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“Chief Inspector, as Mr. Manson’s legal representative, I feel that he and I need to talk.”

Clarke smiled – progress seemed likely.

“Of course, Ms. Wright. We will leave you alone – there is a uniformed officer outside the door; please let him know when you are ready for the interview to recommence.”

It was nearly half an hour later before the interview recommenced. As he entered the room, Clarke looked keenly at Manson. The man looked worried –as well he might - but it was Wright who spoke first.

“Chief Inspector, Mr. Manson continues to maintain that he had no knowledge whatsoever of the planned actions of the man Basteareau, but in view of the serious nature of those actions, he feels, after telephone consultation with his superiors, that he can, without prejudicing himself under the terms of the Official Secrets Act, pass out to you information which may be of help in your enquiries.”

That, thought Clarke, was quite a mouthful. Obviously the two of them had been very busy whilst he and Engleton had been out of the room, and he was anxious to hear what Manson had to say. The man himself straightened up a little in his chair, gave a nervous half cough and spoke, his tone conveying none of the earlier smugness.

“My section, Chief Inspector, is responsible for the Queen’s Messenger service. That means that we are frequently arranging transport, usually by scheduled airlines, at quite short notice, so we have a standing arrangement with several airlines that we can use to speed things up. Because of this, we also sometimes get asked to arrange transport at short notice for other FCO officials, and the actual processing of this is undertaken by Mr. Collyer’s secretary or myself, depending upon which of us is the less busy at the time of the request. As you know, until she retired a couple of years ago, Mrs. Haines was Mr. Collyer’s secretary, so she and I had a close working relationship.

“This was what prompted me to contact her when I had a somewhat unusual request from Mr. Jones. I know that you have spoken with him in the past, so you know of whom I speak. Mr. Jones is responsible for the work of a number of staff in UK embassies throughout the world – staff whose function it is to obtain information about the workings of foreign governments which is not openly available. This work is highly confidential and the details are only ever known to Jones and to whoever he reports – who may vary according to the matter in hand at any one time.

“Therefore, when Jones came to me needing to provide transport – a car – which could not be traced back to the FCO, although the request was unusual, I saw nothing actually wrong in it. Mrs. Haines, recently retired, was a trusted ex-colleague, so it seemed a good idea to approach her and ask for her cooperation, which she was perfectly happy to give. She was a bit surprised at the idea of reporting her car as stolen – that idea came from Jones himself, and I don’t honestly know why he thought it was necessary, but given the highly sensitive nature of his work, I felt that it was not incumbent upon me to enquire further.”

“But why,” Clarke enquired, “did you use a pay as you go mobile? Why not the ordinary office phone?”

“All our phone calls are logged, Chief Inspector – a security measure. Again, given the highly sensitive nature of Jones’ work, I felt it best not to use the office phone. I had recently purchased that mobile and as it happens, that was the first time that I used it. I didn’t like it – the virtual number pad on the screen I found very fiddly, so I haven’t used it since, although I probably will use it, despite not being truly happy with it, the next time I go on holiday.”

Clarke was dubious – highly dubious – about what he was being told, but it was a tale that would be difficult to disprove.

“Right, Mr. Manson. As you have now cooperated in answering my questions, we can forget the arrest – it’s not necessary any more, and you are free to go, although I may need to question you further at some time in the future, and depending upon anything further which may occur, it may still be necessary for you to be charged for aiding and abetting the man Basteareau . The next thing now, however, is that I need to talk to your Mr. Jones again. Where is he now?”

**************************

Jules Traille was an unhappy man, in fact, a very unhappy man. He was also a very embarrassed man. His task had been simple enough – break into the local mosque and see what he could fine. This particular mosque was, to all intents and purposes, clean of any involvement on Islamist terrorism, but as far as the DGSE were concerned, that was all the more reason to want to be sure. With no evidence to go on, there had been no chance of obtaining a warrant to permit a legal search, so Traille had been briefed to perform an illegal one.

It really should have been so simple. At two in the morning, long after everyone had left the building, Traille had broken in through a window in the back. Unfortunately, the intelligence that claimed that nobody stayed in the mosque overnight turned out to be horribly wrong. Within minutes he had been overpowered by two burly bearded men. Assuming the worst, that they were terrorists hiding out, Traille had fought desperately, 68

but to no avail. His martial skills were of a reasonable standard, but not good enough; the two Muslims were equally proficient and with odds of two to one, Traille was quickly secured, bound hand and foot. He feared the worst, certain that at best his corpse would be discovered in some alley, at worst that, after being tortured at length until he was begging for death, he would simply disappear, never to be heard of again. His surprise when his captors simply called the police was absolute. At no time had he dared to claim that he was what he truly was, an officer of the DGSE – to let the local Muslim community know that an arm of the state had sanctioned the illegal entry and search of a respectable mosque was simply not acceptable, so during his initial arrest he had said nothing, not a word.

Now, however, was a different matter. He was being interviewed by two senior officers of the local police, a Capitaine Lecomte, a sardonic looking individual of about forty years of age, and his number two, a Lieutenant Rive, an attractive young women, perhaps ten years or so younger than her boss. They were both looking at him in astonishment; it was Lecomte who spoke,

“So, let me make sure that I understand what you are saying, M’sieu Traille. Despite having no form of identification on you, and being caught red handed trying to burgle a mosque, you claim that you are actually an officer of the DGSE on an intelligence gathering mission because your superiors fear that the mosque’s good reputation may be a front for more sinister forces?”

Traille nodded eagerly.

“That’s right, mon Capitaine – all you have to do is to contact the local DGSE office and they will confirm what I am saying. Then you can let me go – we are, after all, all on the same side here, non?”

“When it comes to illegal entry into innocent premises, then I fear, M’sieu, that we are most definitely not on the same side. Now, I have a real problem here – if I release you, that means that it will obviously be without charge and word will soon get back to the local community, including the local Muslim community. So what is that going to look like? The locals are not fools – they will quickly put two and two together and assume –

rightly in this case – that you are an agent of the state, a state which is countenancing illegal activity against blameless people. That will really go down well for relations with the locals.”

Traille shifted uneasily in his chair; he knew only too well that to cause the sort of problems that the Capitaine was eluding to would sit very badly with his superiors and he could kiss goodbye to any promotion prospects that he might have, at the very least for the foreseeable future, possibly for ever – he might even find himself dismissed in disgrace.

“So what do you suggest, mon Capitaine?”

Lecomte shrugged his shoulders.

“To be honest with you, Traille, I don’t see that we have any alternative to charging you with breaking and entering and letting the law take its course. Perhaps the magistrate could be spoken to in private and be lenient when it comes to sentencing, but obviously he can’t be seen to be too lenient, or the suspicions of the locals will be confirmed in their eyes.”

It was at this point that Lieutenant Rive made her first contribution to the discussion.

“Perhaps, sir, we could arrange for M’sieu Traille to somehow escape from custody? It would have to be done very credibly to avoid the very problems that you have outlined, but with something of a smokescreen, some officers apparently injured by a desperate man fleeing justice?”

Traille listened uneasily; the stupid woman clearly had no idea of just how unrealistic such a pantomime would look, and how his superiors would view it. He wondered uneasily if he needed to play a trump card, a trump card that would be a feather in the collective caps of these two plods.

“Look,” he said, “I appreciate the problems that my capture presents for you – but believe me, they are even more of a problem for me. If I cause embarrassment to my superiors, then it will be the kiss of death to my career – if we really do go through the charade of a court case and perhaps imprisonment, then if it got out who I was, then in prison my life wouldn’t be worth a dud centime. Escape? Well, it would have to be very convincing, and again that would put me in bad with my superiors.”

He hesitated before continuing, only too well aware of the dangerous path that he was about to tread.

“Look,” he said, “I really do not need to be brought out in the open over this. OK, so it was an investigation that went wrong, but that’s not my fault – I was given false information and what I don’t know is if it was just an incompetent piece of work, or if there was something else involved.”

He was spinning a yarn; he was positive that it was just a sloppy piece of intelligence that had landed him in this hole, but there was no harm in adding a bit of embroidery for the benefit of these two clowns. As he had hoped, the two police officers were intrigued by his words.

“Go on,” said Lecomte, “we’re listening.”

“That’s all that I ask of you. Now, what I am about to tell you is highly classified, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t breathe a word of it – but these aren’t normal circumstances. You have an unsolved murder on your books – the killing of Emile Seurat, stabbed to death in broad daylight only a few minutes’

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walk away from the Cathedral of Sacré Coeur. Nobody had even been arrested, never mind charged, with what had all the trappings of an assassination. Well, it was an assassination and I know who the assassin was.”

Traille had the reaction that he had hoped for – the two police officers leant forward in their chairs, clearly eager to hear what else he had to say.

“Now,” he said, cautiously spinning out his tale. As I say, I know who killed Emile Seurat and I know why.

Both pieces of information are not for general public consumption, but if you can come up with a way of making the charge against me disappear, then the information is yours.”

Lecomte and Rive looked at each other and it was clear what was going through their minds. Solving the Seurat killing would resound to their credit, just as continuing not to solve it would represent a collective black mark. Once again it was Lecomte who spoke.

“One problem – we have just about exhausted any ideas as to who to do just that. Everything that we have come up with either gets the local Muslim community riled up, or it shows that you have some security background, or both.”

Traille smiled and played what he hoped would prove to be his trump card.

“When I was arrested, I refused to speak to the arresting officers. I certainly didn’t speak to the two thugs who grabbed me, so at the moment nobody here in the police station, and nobody out in the community actually has any idea who I am, right?”

Lecomte looked baffled, but Rive looked as though she was catching on – fast. Traille continued to reel her, and her boss, in.

“Now, as far as those two from the mosque are concerned, a burglar has been caught red-handed and is now in police custody. It was night time and the lighting inside the mosque in the area where I was caught leaves a lot to be desired, so they didn’t get a really good look at me, or at least, not at my face. Now, a station as busy as this one is, you must have a succession of criminals coming through your doors. Why not find one facing a more serious charge that just burglary and offer him the chance to plead guilty to breaking into the mosque, with a lighter sentence that he would otherwise be facing?”

Lecomte looked bewildered, but Traille was pleased to see that the woman was already on message.

“I don’t see how that could be done, even if we were to agree to it. We can’t just find someone willing to go along with such an idea – it’s crazy.”

Rive chipped in.

“Even if we could arrange it – just look at the hole that we would be digging for ourselves. Whoever took your place would have a story for the press that would ruin Capitaine Lecomte and myself – and no matter what blood-curdling threats we might make against him if he failed to keep his mouth shut, why would he believe us once it was all in place – even, perhaps after he served his time and then blew the story? Not just the Capitaine and myself would be ruined, but the entire department would be seen as a hotbed of corruption. No, it might work, but the odds of it blowing up in our faces are much too high. There is, however, an alternative.”

The two men fixed their gazes on her, Traille in hopeful expectation, Lecomte with a worried frown creasing his forehead.

“The easiest solution is for M’sieu Traille to just disappear into the system. At the moment nobody, apart from ourselves, actually know who he is. For all anybody else knows, unless they are in a position to examine our arrest records, any one of the men we currently have under lock and key might be the man who was caught breaking into the mosque.

“Now, one of those men is Michel Dominici, who is due to be picked up by officers from Marseille tomorrow to face charges down there of rape and attempted murder – crimes far more serious than breaking and entering. Suppose we tell the mosque that the man who broke in, the man their members apprehended and passed over to us, was in fact Dominici but that as he was wanted on far more serious crimes in Marseille, that is where he has been taken. They can even follow his eventual trial if they so wish. Once Dominici is off our hands, M’sieu Traille gives the information that he has and he slips quietly away. Oh, and of course, if he doesn’t give us the information that we want, or if it proves to be useless, then he goes to prison for the breaking and entering – because nobody apart from ourselves and whoever we tell at the mosque – and we only tell them after we have what we want – would know, because we won’t say anything to the officers from Marseille. They are coming to pick up Dominici, a rapist and attempted murderer and that’s who they will get.”

Lecomte’s frown deepened.

“But there is a big snag to that idea – Dominici is already in our custody, and was when the mosque was broken into. Once anyone knows that, they will understand straightaway that Dominici couldn’t be the man who broke into the mosque.”

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Rive was not put out.

“But, sir, who would have any interest in doing that? The mosque people have no entry to our records, so they will be none the wiser. Only people here could check on that – and if we don’t tell anybody what we are doing, then nobody will have any reason to check up.”

Lecomte’s frown lessened, but did not disappear completely.

“That might work,” he said thoughtfully, “and certainly catching whoever killed Seurat is far more important than solving a simple breaking and entering – a case that was handed to us on a plate anyway.”

He turned to Traille.

“Of course, you will have to remain here as our ‘guest’ until Dominici is safely taken off our hands, and I warn you now – if you are stringing us along, or if your information proves useless, then I will not only ensure that you go to gaol, but once there I will also make sure that other prisoners become aware that you are a government agent. Once that is known, I wouldn’t give much for your chances of finishing your sentence alive.”

The threat struck home with Traille with chilling force. He had taken Lecomte to be a pen-pusher, a play by the book man, but he was now convinced that the senior officer had a streak of determined ruthlessness that he must normally have kept well hidden. He could see by her reaction, a quickly hidden reaction, that Rive was equally surprised; this would appear to be a side to her boss that she had not been aware of in the past.

In the event, it took two days for it all to be accomplished. As Lecomte and Rive had expected, Dominici was taken away the next day by the officers form Marseille and nobody expressed any interest in Traille’s continued occupation of a cell; the station was far too busy for officers not directly concerned to worry about such matters.

Once Dominici was on his way, Traille was once more interviewed by Lecomte and Rive. It was Lecomte who opened the interview.

“Right, M’sieu, we have played our part in this charade, Now it is your turn.”

Traille hesitated, licking his lips nervously before beginning, only too aware of how much was riding on what he was about to say.

“You know the details of the murder, don’t you?”

“Of course we do, get on with it.”

“That bar in the Rue Bel Homme is a favourite with some of the local Muslims – some of them even drink alcohol there, despite their religion, although most stick to coffee or soft drinks – and there is a lot of talk about what they would like to see the world become – a universal caliphate – but it’s just about it - all talk.

None of the regulars are seen as of any great interest apart, of course, from Seurat. However, in view of the fact that Seurat was a regular there, and also because there had been occasional visits by more extreme men, we had been interested in the café for over a year. That was long enough to infiltrate it with one of our own, and it is thanks to that fact that we know who killed Seurat. We also took over a flat on the opposite side of the street to mount surveillance on the place. The thing is – the locals knew that we were interested in them and took measures to make sure that nothing too obviously threatening was even talked about there. They also undertook a little surveillance of their own. It isn’t only the security forces who can operate a camera, and they took a delight in photographing anyone using that flat – and on the day that Seurat was killed, that included his killer.”

Lecomte could contain himself no longer.

“So Seurat was killed by the DGSE and there is a picture of the man who did it!”

Traille shook his head.

“Yes, there is a picture, but no, Seurat was most definitely not killed by the DGSE.”

Lecomte looked thunderstruck.

“But you’ve just admitted that the DGSE had that flat and that the killer came from it.”

“Yes, it was our flat, but the killer wasn’t one of us. He was English.”

“English?” Neither Lecomte nor Rive made any attempt to hide their astonishment. “But why?”

“As I understand it – and I wasn’t directly involved, you understand - Seurat had committed some terrorist attacks in England, including a bomb attack which only failed to kill a number of people by the merest of chances. The Brits couldn’t find him, nor obtain any useful evidence against him, but there is a working relationship between some elements of British Intelligence and ourselves and it was this that caused my boss

– who I am not going to name – to let his contacts know that Seurat had returned to Paris. Obviously I don’t know exactly what transpired, but the end result was very clear. An Englishman came over to Paris, was allowed to use our flat in the Rue Bel Homme, waited for Seurat to put in an appearance, and when he left the bar, followed him and killed him. More than that, I can get you a picture of the Englishman.”

Lecomte’s frown was back.

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“So what good do you think that is to me? An Englishman, presumably now back in England with just a photo? That doesn’t cut it for me, Traille.”

Traille ran his tongue nervously over his lips. This was where things got really dangerous; had his boss, Alain Basteareau, not disappeared, and had the DGSE hierarchy not effectively disowned him by claiming that he had resigned from the organisation ten months earlier, he would not have dared to go down the seductive path which was now beckoning him. If he played his cards right, not only could he escape prison, but he would also be making a strong pitch to replace Basteareau in the pecking order. He had more to impart about the death of Emile Seurat, but he had to be very careful as to how he went about it. He took the plunge.

“I know more than just that he is English and more than just a photo. He is in the British security services and his name is Jones.”

Denise Rive gave a half laugh, half snort.

“Jones? That’s one of the most common British names that you can imagine – and if he’s one of their spooks, you can bet your last centime that it isn’t his real name.”

Lecomte chimed in.

“And if he is one of their spooks, he’ll disappear the moment we express an interest in him. Sorry, but I don’t think that you are giving us anything like enough to forget your little visit to the mosque.”

Traille was becoming desperate, but he still had at least one card to play.

“Look, we know that Jones came over to take out Seurat because of Seurat’s activities in the UK.”

In fact, that was a bare faced lie. Seurat had visited the UK on a couple of occasions but had never committed any acts of terrorism there – but there was no way that the two police officers could know that.

Traille’s story was plausible, and they swallowed it. Traille continued with his fairy story.

“Now, it shouldn’t be too hard to entice him over again – don’t forget he has contacts within the DGSE –

contacts that I’m not ready to name – and it wouldn’t be too difficult to feed him enough information to get him to come over here again – and once he is here, you can pounce.”

In all of this, Traille was depending heavily on the fact that he had worked with Basteareau on a number of occasions, and since the man’s disappearance had made a totally unauthorised examination of his –

presumably now ex-boss’ - computer and paperwork. He spoke the truth when he said that he could contact Jones – although whether he could really come up with some story that would bring the Englishman over might be another matter. He also had another advantage; neither of his interrogators realised than Jones, and before his disappearance, Basteareau, had effectively worked for each other, undertaking illegal tasks in a manner that conferred ‘plausible deniability’ to the respective organisations. Jones had carried out assassinations, amongst other tasks, in France; Basteareau had done the same in the UK. He didn’t need to spin Jones a tale of a terrorist in France plotting against the UK – all that was necessary was to convince Jones that France needed, once more, his particular talents. Only the disappearance of Basteareau possibly posed a problem. He and Jones were the two sides of the same coin; without Basteareau’s involvement in a request to the Englishman, would he accept any assignment, or would he shy away?

Lecomte and Rive looked at each other, uncertainty etched clear on both of their faces. What was being proposed was, to say the very least, highly unorthodox, and despite Traille’s bland assurances, they wondered how, even if Jones could be enticed over to France, they could find enough evidence to arrest him, and hopefully convict him.

At last, Lecomte finally shook his head.

“No,” he said slowly, “it all sounds very tempting, but it’s all too tenuous. Even if Jones comes to France, where is the evidence linking him to the killing of Emile Seurat? There is none. A picture of a man, the circumstantial placing of him near the scene of the crime – it would never stand up in court.”

It was time, Traille decided, for the final throw of the dice.

“Mon Capitaine, I can give you more evidence of Jones’ involvement in the murder of Seurat. I can provide you with an eye witness.”

“Why didn’t you say this before,” Rive demanded, “you seem to be very reluctant to tell all that you know, M’sieu Traille.”

Traille shrugged his shoulders in what he hoped would be a convincing demonstration of a man reaching, very reluctantly, a difficult decision.

“The eye witness, Lieutenant, is the man we have infiltrated into that group. It means that his usefulness in that task would be an end, which is why I was reluctant to mention this earlier, but he will be able to identify Jones and confirm that he followed Seurat and was within arm’s length of the man when he fell. He will also confirm seeing Jones throw something into a rubbish bin moments later.”

Lecomte leaned forward.

72

“That sounds more useful, M’sieu Traille – but given his undercover situation, why would you be willing to now lose his ability to keep tabs on the people who use that café?”

Traille repeated the shrug.

“He has been in position long enough now for us to be satisfied that those using the café on a regular basis pose no threat to la Belle France. Moving him out of that location will lose us nothing of any significance, whereas having a DGSE officer hauled up before the courts for breaking and entering would be a major embarrassment to the department.”

Lecomte made is decision.

“Very well, M’sieu, produce your eye witness and we will take it from there.”

“So I may leave?”

Lecomte gave a short bark of a laugh and shook his head.

“Certainly not. Not until your eye witness has been formally interviewed and his statement checked. In the meantime, I am afraid that you must continue to enjoy our hospitality.”

****************************

Cecile Basteareau looked at her brother in amazement.

“Tomas, this cannot be right! Alain is in prison? In England? What on earth is going on?”

Tomas Laclanche shifted uncomfortably in his chair. After passing the news of his brother-in-law’s incarceration up the line to his superiors, he had received agreement to let his sister know what had happened to him.

“Strictly speaking, Cecile, he isn’t in prison but being held in custody pending trial. He was caught breaking into a house, armed with a pistol and he may well be charged with attempted murder. At the very least, he will be going to prison for possessing the firearm – the Brits are very strict over the ownership of handguns.”

Cecile felt the world seeming to spin around her; her brother seemed to be somehow unreal, as though she was viewing him through a veil, and his words seemed to be coming from a great distance. She couldn’t believe what she was being told – her husband, a criminal? A criminal who would be going to jail in England?

Laclanche looked anxiously at his sister. All the colour had drained from her face, and he was fearful that she was about to faint. He had never really taken to his brother-in-law, having felt that a common soldier – as Basteareau had been when he and Cecile had married back in nineteen ninety-five when Cecile had still been a few weeks short of her twenty-third birthday – and that feeling had strengthened when Basteareau had left the army and joined the DGSE, an organisation that many policeman, of whom Laclanche was one, viewed with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. Now, he thought grimly, his worst fears about the man had been realised and his luckless sister would be saddled with the stigma of being married to a common criminal.

Like Cecile, he found the fact of Basteareau being in England and under arrest quite bizarre; what on earth had he been up to? More information had been gleaned from the Surrey police and it was clear that they felt that Basteareau might well have been involved in another crime, the murder of three men a couple of months earlier, one of whom had been involved in the mysterious crash of a Royal Air Force plane two years earlier.

Just what was his wretched brother-in-law involved in?

He looked across at Cecile, watching helplessly as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. At twenty-two and a young bride, she had been a pretty girl. At forty-four she had matured into a handsome women, one who dressed well, carried herself well, and if anything, looked younger that her years. Now she looked every one of them and more besides. He sat in silence, waiting for the tears to cease, which eventually they did. Cecile wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and took a deep, shuddering breath as she composed herself.

“Will I be able to see him, Tomas?” she queried nervously.

“I don’t see why not – I’m not exactly sure how the Brits do this sort of thing, but I can’t imagine that they would deny you the opportunity to visit him. If you like, I will get in touch with somebody over there and see what the score is and let you know.”

In his mind, Laclanche was already moving on; this, he felt, must surely be the end of the marriage? They had no children and he had never warmed to his brother-in-law, feeling that there had always been a dark side to the man, and what he was hearing from the UK convinced him that Cecile’s best course by far would be to divorce him, to cut the knot as quickly as possible. Surely she was still young enough to find somebody else, a man without Basteareau’s baggage?

************************

Anna Harris rubbed her eyes wearily. In common with the other DCs on Clarke’s team, she had been reviewing CCTV footage of passengers leaving the Eurostar platform at St. Pancras, hoping against hope to 73

catch sight of their suspect, the man Basteareau. Privately, she thought that the task was hopeless; they had no idea how, nor when, the Frenchman had come into England. Given what was assumed about his mission

– a cold blooded assassination of an innocent couple as they slept in their beds, it seemed logical to assume that he would want to spend only the minimum amount of time in England before making his escape. All possible legal means of entry had already been trawled for any trace of a bank card being used by Basteareau, but, as expected, nothing had come of it – it was hardly likely that a professional hitman, for that was what it really boiled down to, would be obliging enough to leave a paper trail for them to fin and follow, but it was a step that had to be followed.

Now, she had been staring at the monitor screen for what seemed like forever, but was, in fact, just over three hours and her eyes felt as though they were about to come out on stalks form her head. She had pressed the pause button whilst she rubbed her eyes; she blinked a few times to get them focussed again and started the footage rolling again.

At least the passengers were funnelled into a reasonably narrow frontage as they left the train; she watched a family of four, the parents clearly tired as they trudged towards the exit gate, the young boy, perhaps six or so years old tugging at his father’s hand whilst the little girl, still young enough to be in a push-chair was clearly bawling her head off –Anna was glad the images didn’t have a sound track.

Then she saw him; the father, trying to cope with his son’s tugging, whilst himself tugging a large suitcase on wheels turned awkwardly and as he did so came to virtual stop, causing the man behind him to break stride and, in the process, look straight up, whereas a moment before he had been looking down, almost at his feet, as though uncertain where to step. In reality, Anna was sure, he was trying to present as little as possible of his face to the security cameras.

“GOT HIM!” she yelled. Immediately her colleagues left their own desks and clustered around hers as she pointed triumphantly at the image, now frozen by the ‘pause’ button. Their target, thanks to the slight hiatus caused by the six year old in front of him, had been captured full face. Then it was a case of following his progress as he passed a number of further security cameras up to the point where he joined the queue at the cab rank and, after a wait of a few minutes, got into a taxi and was whisked away.

The image was of high quality; the name of the cab company and the registration number of the vehicle itself were easily readable, with the result that within minutes, Engleton, who had joined the scrum around Anna’s desk, was on the phone to the dispatcher of All-day Cabs. The news was good. Yes, the company log identified the driver who had been in the cab at that time and place. As it happened, he was on a day off and, after gentle prodding, his name and address were given up.

Another hour and, after reporting the good news to Clarke, Engleton and Harris were on their way to Wimbledon and to meet with Jim Field, the cab driver who had had Basteareau as a passenger. Field turned out to be an amiable man in his fifties, his address a modest, but clearly well looked after, semi-detached in a small cul-de-sac off the A3 just before it met the South Circular Road. They had been greeted at the door by Mrs. Field, a slim woman much of an age with her husband, who had ushered them into the sitting room, a cosy room with an imitation log fire providing warmth as well as a centre point to the room, with three two seater settees arranged in a U shape facing it.

Field invited them to sit and surveyed them quizzically.

“So, how can I help? It must be something important to bring you all the way up here at such short notice.”

It was Engleton who answered.

“It is indeed, Mr. Field and DC Harris here and I are most grateful to you for agreeing to see us so quickly. I can’t tell you much detail about what we are up to at the moment – it is an ongoing investigation – but we think that it is possible that you may be able to help us considerably.”

Clearly intrigued, Field leant forward and looked from one detective to the other.

“How can I help, then?”

“At eleven thirty-seven on the twenty-fourth of March you picked up a man from the cab rank at St. Pancras station and we have a photo of him and wonder if you recognise him.”

Field frowned uneasily.

“Gawd! That’s a bit of a while ago – I’ve picked up hundreds of fares since then.”

“The man was French,” Harris offered, a comment which elicited a rueful smile.

“That’s the Eurostar terminal, luv – half of ‘em are Froggies.”

Harris decided not to take umbrage at being addressed as ‘luv’ – far more important to try and keep this man on side if possible. Engleton stepped in, opening his briefcase and extracting four A4 size photos, which he laid on the table.

“Do you recognise any of these men, Mr. Field?”

74

One of the photos was of Basteareau, the other three of men who had a passing resemblance to him. Like the Frenchman, all three were a bit plump in the face and all three had moustaches. Field picked the pictures up one at a time, studying each one closely before laying it down again. He smiled triumphantly.

“Matter of fact, I do remember one of them – this one.”

He tapped the picture of Basteareau.

“Reason I remember him is he had only a small case with him – no bigger than your briefcase if as big – and he got me to drop him off about a mile away at a car hire place. Now that seemed odd – the best known companies all have desks in the station concourse, so he could more easily have hired there – and saved himself the fare I charged, and because they are all in sight of each other, the hire companies at the station tend to be a bit more keenly priced than normal – so all in all he wasted some money.”

“Do you know the name of the hire company, Mr. Field?”

“Oh yes – it’s Mercury Hire – quite a small set up – it’s really an offshoot of the garage next to it. I sometimes fill up at their diesel pump if I’m over that way.”

“Mr. Field, that is most helpful. Now, as I said earlier, I can’t really divulge much about an ongoing investigation, but if it comes to it, would you be willing to testify in court that you picked that man up at that time and dropped him off where you did?”

Field nodded slowly.

“You’re after someone nasty, aren’t you? In that case – yes, I’ll testify gladly.”

As they were so near to the hire company, they decided to go there before making their way back to the station, Engleton felt it necessary to warn Anna about getting too sanguine about the talk with Field.

“All too often, once in court, even the most positive of identifications can be torn about by defence counsel, but at least we are getting somewhere.”

Half an hour later, more progress had been made. Mercury Hire were able to confirm that on the day in question they had hired a Vauxhall Astra to a man who sounded like their quarry. Furthermore, because he had proffered a French driving licence they had photostated both the licence and the man’s passport. It was too much to hope that Basteareau would have used his own licence and passport – the documents with the hire papers bore the name Jean Dubois – almost as common as ‘John Smith’ in England – but the photo was, without a doubt, that of Basteareau himself.

**********************

I poured Jane a second glass of wine – as ever, she and Harry took it in turns to drive when they came for dinner, and tonight it was Harry’s turn to be chauffeur – and listened closely as she updated us on events.

She knew that our discretion would be absolute; that, and the fact that it was I who had effectively apprehended Basteareau in the first place, made her happy to discuss aspects of the case that she would never have divulged to ‘normal’ members of the public.

“So you see,” she continued, “I’m confident that we will get a conviction, that the jury will accept that the wretched man murdered Graham and his friends and intended to murder yourselves, but in all this, for the life of me, I cannot see what his motive can be. As far as we can ascertain he never met Graham and certainly never met Alan Davis, nor David Hughes, and again, he had never met either of you two – so why?

I can only assume that it is somehow tied up with that RAF plane being blown up and the fact that Graham was expected to be on it, but wasn’t – but that gets us no further forward. Putting Basteareau away will be good, but I can’t help feeling that he is only part of something, something that must surely have some elements here in England – but what?”

It was a puzzle to all of us. By rights, Graham should have gone down with that plane – it was only the fact that at the last minute it had received orders to fly to Leuchars – apparently, as it later transpired, to provide transport the next day for a very senior RAF officer - rather than return to Farnborough, and his understandable reluctance to have to get back from the north of Scotland to Surrey that had saved him. His then going into hiding had seemed – when he had first explained it to us – to be an over-reaction, but how right he had been was demonstrated all too horribly by his subsequent murder.

Now, with the introduction of this Frenchman, a man who had apparently been a member of their security services – so what was his, and their, connection with all this? – it had all reached a further stage of complication.

“It all seems so weird,” Jane continued, “I mean, if there was some sort of skulduggery going on at our Moscow Embassy, or in one of the Middle East countries, you could understand it – but France? I know there are quite a number of French politicians who aren’t over-enthusiastic about the UK, especially now that we have voted to leave the EU, but all this started before then, so that can’t really be anything to do with it, surely? And whatever it is – what would be important enough to somebody to order an RAF plane to be 75

blown up, and when Graham escaped that, to have his and his two friends murdered and to try and have you two murdered? It must be something really, really big.”

***********************

Richard Jones – for despite the immediate assumption many made upon learning his occupation that ‘Jones’

was a nom de guerre, Jones really was his surname – was a very worried man. The worry had started when he had learned that instead of accounting for the Larters, Basteareau had allowed himself to be overpowered by Larter, trussed hand and foot and handed over to the local plods like a Christmas present and was now being held in custody awaiting trial.

Jones’ worry was over what Basteareau might say to the authorities, especially if by revealing the extent to which Jones himself was involved in actions not strictly legal – and some instances most definitely illegal –

he might be bargaining for sympathetic treatment. Jones had no illusions; like himself, Basteareau saw his first, and by far his most important, priority to be protecting his own skin to the greatest possible degree.

Jones had a network of informants, built up over many years and they were in many places, both in the UK

and in various British embassies throughout much of the world, and it was one of those informants upon whom he was relying to be kept informed as to the Basteareau situation. Basteareau was being held at Coldingley Prison, near Bisley in Surrey. Coldingley was a Category C prison, holding men viewed as unsuitable to be trusted in an open prison environment, but who posed little risk to the public should they escape. It was also used, as with Basteareau, to house prisoners on remand and awaiting trial. Jones’

informant was a warder at the prison, a man who had once served in the army and who had come to Jones’

attention some years earlier when involved in a little private enterprise involving army stores somehow going walk about. At the time, Jones had been in a considerably less senior position and had been sent into the army base concerned to investigate some security lapses. Finding out what, the at the time, Corporal James Dudley was up to was pure coincidence – but Jones immediately recruited Dudley, on pain of being unmasked to the authorities, to his growing network of ‘useful’ contacts. In the succeeding years Dudley had left the army and joined the prison service and Jones had gone out of his way to make sure that Dudley realised that nothing had changed – he was still at Jones’ mercy if he failed to cooperate if ever asked. It wasn’t all that much of a coincidence that Basteareau was in a prison where one of Jones’ informants worked

– Jones had informants in all sorts of places, both high and low, including most of the prisons in the south of England and police forces throughout the country. His network, cultivated over many years, was very wide spread indeed.

Jones was not one to let the grass grow under his feet. The very day after he had learned where Basteareau was incarcerated, he met with Dudley at the Garibaldi pub in Knaphill, just a few miles away from the prison. When he arrived, it was to find Dudley already there, a nearly empty pint glass on the small table in front of him. Jones indicated the glass.

“Another?”

As he nodded the affirmative, the man swallowed nervously, as well he might. This was the first time that the two men had met face to face for several years and Dudley had an uneasy feeling that whatever the meeting was to be about, it would not be to his advantage.

Half an hour, and two more pints, later, he was in a state of near terror. What he was being required to do was way beyond his worst imaginings. In vain he had pointed out that he didn’t even work in the wing which housed remand prisoners; Jones simply brushed the objection aside, insisting that Dudley do as he required of him or face disclosure of his past wrong doings, a disclosure which would cost him his job and land him in prison – and as he would, by then, be an ex-prisoner officer, prison would not be a good place for him to be; once his former profession was known to his fellow inmates, his time inside could be guaranteed to be extremely unpleasant – he might not even reach the end of his sentence alive.

********************

Clarke looked at Gillespie in incredulity.

“Dead? Basteareau dead? But how the hell has that happened?”

Gillespie shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Right at the moment, nobody has a bloody clue. You know that at Coldingley the remand prisoners are keep apart from the rest of the inmates – includes eating separately although they use the same dining area as the adjoining wing, but the times are staggered. Lunchtime yesterday the fire alarms went off in the wing and the prisoners were assembled at various points under the eyes of the prison officers. Turned out to be a false alarm and after twenty minutes they all trooped back in to finish off what must, by then, have been pretty cold food. After the meal they trooped back to their cells – cells which, whilst the prisoners had been at 76

lunch would have been left open. And that, or so it seemed, was that. The thing is, however, when the morning wakeup call happened, Basteareau was didn’t respond, and when he was examined, he was found to be dead. Nobody is yet sure of the cause of death, but we’ll know more soon. First indications is that it may have been a heart attack, but that’s just on possibility. It may also have been some sort of poison.”

The Detective Superintendent eased his not inconsiderable bulk in his chair and frowned at his subordinate.

“So, Skull – where are we now?”

It was Clarke’s turn to shake his head in bewilderment.

“Search me, boss. With Basteareau dead and out of the picture, I reckon the trail regarding the plane bomb and the murders in Staines is pretty cold. We’re positive that he killed those three in Staines, but don’t know if he actually had anything to do with bringing down the plane, and now we never will.”

“Any other lines of enquiry?”

“Well, there is the man Jones that we need to talk to again – he seems to be out of the country yet again, but I’ve made it clear to Manson at the FCO – the man who arranged the car for Basteareau at the behest of Jones – that we need to talk to Jones again. There must be some sort of tie-up between the two of them, although I am damned if I can figure out what it might be. I mean, on the face of it we have some French bloke coming over to the UK and murdering three men in the caravan park in Staines, Then he presumably buggers off back to France, only to return a while later and try to kill the Larters – and we still haven’t the remotest idea why!”

Gillespie looked thoughtful and his forehead creased in a frown as he digested what Clarke had said.

“Surely, Skull, there must be some sort of tie up with what happened two years ago when that RAF plane went down? We know that as far as anyone knew right up to a few minutes before take-off that Crawford was going to be on board – but he wasn’t’, and until he surfaced a couple of months back nobody knew that he hadn’t been on board – and once that became relatively common knowledge, he was tracked down and murdered. There must be some sort of tie up.”

Clarke nodded his head in agreement with his boss.

“Absolutely – but we’ve no more idea what that tie up might be now than we had right at the beginning. It’s a nightmare, boss, a bloody nightmare.”

Gillespie looked anxious.

“Yes, it’s a nightmare, Skull – but it’s one we need to wake up from. Is there anything that you haven’t got that would help you? If so, just say the word!”

Clarke shrugged helplessly.

“I can’t think of anything, boss, but thanks for the offer.”

As Clarke left the Superintendent’s office, his mind was a whirl with this latest happening. He just couldn’t believe that the death of Basteareau was just an unlucky coincidence – he was already convinced that somehow, by somebody, the Frenchman had been murdered, murdered as the saying went ‘by person or persons unknown.’.

************************

Cecile Basteareau watched numbly through the apartment window as her brother got into his official car and was driven away. Tomas Laclanche had been as gentle as he could when breaking the news, but the stark, awful fact, was that Alain was dead, that he had died in an English prison whilst awaiting trial on charges of murder and attempted murder. The original news of his arrest had totally thrown her – and now this. She turned away from the window and sank into an easy chair, wondering what on earth to do next. She hadn’t worked for several years – Alain’s income had been easily sufficient for her to stay home and concentrate on being an exemplary housewife, but she had no idea if that would continue to be the case, but over and above what the future might hold for herself was the incredible situation that Alain had apparently created. How could he have done this to her?

Slowly, she rose from the chair and went into the small office – originally a third bedroom, but converted by Alain for his private use. Apart from occasionally running a vacuum cleaner over the carpet, she had hardly ever been in the room unless Alain was there – she had had no need to, nor much interest in its contents, but now she wanted to see if there was anything, anything at all, that could explain what was happening. At first listlessly, but then with increasing determination, she went through the room’s contents.

Whilst breaking the news of Alain’s death, Tomas had told her that the English police has officially requested permission to send officers over to search the apartment and Tomas had taken the opportunity – at variance with his strict official duty – to warn her of the fact, with the unspoken message that it would be as well if she were to carry out her own search before the Brits arrived.

77

Time seemed to have no meaning as she went through file after file, paper after paper, none of which proved to be anything but the most mundane of household records – income tax, property tax, bank statements, car insurance, house insurance, life insurance, it all seemed never ending.

She had left Alain’s computer until last, not knowing how much of its contents would be password protected, in which case she would be stumped – but then she realised that was not the case. In the top left hand drawer of the desk upon which the computer was sitting, there was a single sheet of paper and on it were written down in Alain’s untidy hand a series of what could only be passwords to files on the computer. Nervously, she sat down in front of it and switched it on. It took only a second or two to warm up and then a blank black screen appeared, blank, that is,, except for a small window demanding the first password; this at least she already knew and she slowly typed in ‘CB72AB70’. It was, she remembered with a sad smile, the initials and year of birth of them both – and as usual it had the desired effect; a new screen appeared, this one showing a number of icons for files and what were presumably websites. One icon in particular caught her attention. It represented a file folder and was titled ‘Cecile’. She clicked on it – it wasn’t password protected - and a message came up on the screen. She read it slowly, hardly able to believe its contents. Its contents were short and to the point.

‘Look in the thing you gave me for my birthday’.

Mystified, she went into the bedroom. The ‘thing’ that she had given her husband on his birthday was a box of his favourite small cigars. She lifted the lid; there were just five cigars left and they were lying on top of an envelope, an envelope of A5 size and quite bulky – clearly it contained several sheets of paper folded over. She drew them out, smoothed them down and looked at the top sheet.

‘My Darling Cecile’ she read, and her eyes instantly filled with tears, tears which she brushed angrily away,

‘the fact that you are reading this must mean that something very bad has happened – I may even be dead, although hopefully that is not the case.

‘As you know, I have for some years now been employed by the DGSE as a sort of trouble shooter, doing my best to resolve problems in a manner that ensures that they do not cause the government of the day any embarrassment – what is called ‘plausible deniability’ in the exalted circles of the service. To that end I, and many of my colleagues, have done things which, strictly speaking, can be viewed as illegal, but in every case we have acted under orders – no matter how indirectly given – and in the best interests of France.

‘One of the ways in which we have reinforced ‘plausible deniability’ is by cooperating with, and sometimes using, other agencies, agencies both French and foreign. I have an uneasy feeling that it is some aspect of just such a joint operation that may be the cause of you needing to read this message. The operation goes back some two years, when a senior operative of the British security services caused the destruction of a Royal Air Force aircraft over the Channel. I know this man well and he assured me that the operation was very much a case of sacrificing the few to save the many. Apparently one of the men on the plane was in the pay of a terrorist organisation and was carrying information which would trigger a very major terrorist incident on the British mainland. I did query of him as to why the man couldn’t simply be arrested when the aircraft landed, but was assured that to allow that to happen, with the expectation of the plot becoming public would be a disaster of unprecedented seriousness.

‘At that stage my involvement in the operation was minimal, limited to simply finding, at very short notice, some of the elements needed by the man; normally he would have sourced the items from his own resources, but the operation had needed to be undertaken at very short notice, catching him, and his normal supply line, on the hop.

‘In the event, although it was not realised at the time, the operation was a failure. Although the plane was brought down, the man who was the target was not on board, but that only became clear when he resurfaced earlier this year. At that point the British sought our assistance – ‘plausible deniability’ at work again – and we cooperated by removing the man for them. I was uneasy about this, but was over-ruled by my superiors. I did query as to why, if the man had survived, the terrorist atrocity had not occurred. Apparently the man, or so the story we got from the Brits claimed, panicked. Unsure of just who had been involved in bringing the plane down, and presumably worried that it might have been the people for whom he was working, he went into hiding. It was, apparently, only by him having a chance encounter with someone who knew him –

someone, of course, who had believed him to be dead – that his existence had once more come to light.

It was claimed by my British contact that the whole matter was getting more and more out of control and that it had become necessary to remove two more people. At the time we were heavily in the Brits’ debt over an operation that they had undertaken on our behalf to remove a very dangerous terrorist, so it was agreed that we would, once again, act on their behalf.

‘And that just about brings me up to date. I leave for England tomorrow and, as I said right at the beginning, the fact that you are now reading this must mean that something has gone wrong. That being the case, I have no doubt that the DGSE will do their utmost to distance themselves from me – they will probably claim that I 78

resigned from the service some time ago and whatever must have gone wrong is solely my own fault and nothing to do with any official French organisation, and certainly not the DGSE.

‘I fear that I may well have been betrayed by my British contact and it is time to give him a name. He is called Richard Jones – although I do not know for certain if that is his real name, I am reasonably sure that it is – and he ostensibly works from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Like everyone else you may try to turn to in an endeavour to obtain justice on my behalf, he will certainly deny any knowledge of me, but I have proof. Not on my computer, but safely tucked away in our bank safe deposit box, are photographs of him in my company and recordings that I have made of some of our conversations. Whatever you do, do not let this evidence fall into the hands of any official French body, not even your brother –

Tomas is an honourable man and I am sure that he would feel honour bound to hand it over to his superiors.

Such a course of action would undoubtedly lead to the evidence’s immediate disappearance.

‘Instead, I want you to contact an old friend of mine, Helmut Galland. Helmut is on the staff of the German magazine Der Spiegel which has a well-deserved reputation for uncovering scandal and corruption in official circles and something like this will be right up his street. Details of how to contact him are also in the safe deposit box.

‘Finally, my darling, if this is indeed a letter from beyond the grave, I want you to know, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, that my pride on what I have done to protect our country from those who wish us harm, not matter where they may be, is second only to my love for you and to the happiness that you have brought me during our years together.

Your loving husband, Alain’

Cecile set the pages down and sobbed quietly, tears rolling down her cheeks until they had soaked the collar of the silk blouse that she was wearing. At last, she composed herself and returned the handwritten sheets to the envelope and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. The first thing that she must do, she determined, was to get the contents of that safe deposit box and hide them away from any prying eyes of officialdom.

Contacting the German journalist could wait for the moment.

That very day she was at the bank – the deposit box contained documents, such as their wills, that they wanted to have in a more secure location than just in the house, and both she and Alain had visited the bank from time to time to put things, or take things out of, the box, so she had no problem in gaining access. As her husband had said, the box now contained something new – a package with her name on it, and she left the bank with it in her bag. The next question was were to hide it? If the police were going to come and undertake a thorough search of the apartment, it needed to be somewhere else. Similarly, she had taken it from the deposit box because the police would almost certainly obtain permission to go through their bank account, and the bank would be bound to declare the existence of the box. She had, however, already thought of a solution to the problem, and her next port of call was to a small self-storage business where, in return for a year’s advance rental, she hired a small deposit box with a number pad lock, the access number of which she was able to set herself. The proprietor assured her that once she had set her personal number, only physically drilling the box open would allow unauthorised access to its contents, until, at the end of her rental period – which she could extend if she so wished – the number pad would reset itself to zero so that the box could be let to a new user, and she returned home in a slightly easier state of mind.

It was as well that she had taken the action that she had; the very next day two British police officers, a man and a woman, accompanied by a French officer from the local station arrived and went through the apartment with a fine toothcomb. They also got in touch with the bank and Cecile had to accompany them there to open the deposit box for them. The agreement that had been reached between the British and the French authorities was that the British officers could search the apartment, but could not take anything away with them. If they found anything suspicious it would be handed over to the French police for safe keeping and possible future action. In the event, they found nothing and after expressing their condolences to the widow, they went away empty handed. Or perhaps not quite.

***********************

The British officers had been a scene of crime specialist, not actually a police officer, but a civilian expert employed by the police, and a CID officer. The civilian was Dorothy Harrison, a fifty-two year old woman with a wealth of experience behind her. The CID officer was DS Engleton and it was he who, whilst Dorothy had been scrutinising everything in sight as though each and every dust mote might be the Holy Grail of criminal investigation, had taken advantage of the way the French police officer was being distracted, to download the files from Basteareau’s computer onto an external drive which was now safely hidden in his briefcase.

79

It was the next day before Engleton reported back to Clarke and, sworn to secrecy, one of the Information Technology experts was entrusted with the task of ploughing through Basteareau’s computer files.

It was another day later before the export, Ross Langdon, a tall, bespectacled civilian who had provided the IT department with a level of expertise that was the envy of many other organisations. He plonked himself down in the chair that Clarke indicated, pushed his spectacles back up his nose, and launched into his report as Clarke and Engleton leaned forward in eager anticipation.

“Well, Chief Inspector, M’sieu Basteareau was a very careful man, so I am afraid that his files are mostly mundane and deal with normal household activities. There is, however, one exception. Basteareau must have been pretty computer literate, or perhaps trusted somebody else who had the necessary skills, because there is a file buried way down under several layers of encryption which isn’t anything to do with household matters. My guess is that its contents are something that he didn’t trust to the official machines in his department, but something that he needed to keep well away from any official scrutiny.”

“So what does it say?”

“I don’t know – it’s in French and I don’t speak much French. I could have used a computer translation programme on it, but I was reluctant to do so on two counts. Firstly, those programmes aren’t totally reliable

– they sometimes translate colloquial phrases too literally, giving an inaccurate, or even a misleading, translation. Secondly, with that much encryption protecting it, it must have considerable importance, at least to Basteareau, and I don’t see that I need, or even want, to know what it says. You need somebody who is a fluent French speaking to translate it for you.”

“Thanks, Ross – I’ll find somebody to read it for us.”

********************

Capitaine Tomas Laclanche had the benefit of being a fluent French speaker. When it had been arranged for the two Brits to examine Basteareau’s apartment, Laclanche had managed to arrange for Major Vendee to be the French policeman to accompany them and Vendee, once the Brits had left, had returned to the apartment and confiscated Basteareau’s computer which had now been examined by the department’s IT people. Like Langdon back in Surrey, but twenty-four hours earlier, the heavily encrypted file had been discovered – and had already been deciphered.

Laclanche re-read the document and wondered uneasily what to do with it. Basteareau had clearly expected it to be either a ‘get out of jail’ card, or alternatively an attempt at revenge from beyond the grave. In the event, it now fell into the latter category. It outlined the work which he and Jones had undertaken on behalf of each other and identified the senior DGSE officer to whom Basteareau had been responsible. Laclanche shook his head sadly; clearly his late brother in law had grossly underestimated the level of deniability that the man he was attempting to implicate was able to employ. Basteareau must have written the document sometime in the past – it had proved impossible to put an accurate date to it – and Auguste Pinot, the man Basteareau had identified, was now the deputy director of the DGSE and a very dangerous man to cross. Laclanche considered his options. For the moment only he, and the IT specialist who had deciphered the document were aware of its dangerous contents, but could he expect that to remain the case? Vendee, he knew, was aware that there had been an encrypted message, but was unaware of its contents. He gnawed at his lower lip whilst he struggled with his dilemma. On the face of it, a senior, no, a very senior, DGSE officer had been implicated in a number of highly illegal acts, including, if Basteareau was to be believed, murder. His duty ought to be clear-cut; the allegations made in the document should be investigated – but what might be the results of any such investigation? Pinot was bound to deny everything – it would be his word against a document written by a man now dead, a man that the DGSE claimed to have left their employ some ten months earlier. The document had no means of being precisely dated – from the content, it was probably a couple of years old at least, but its age could not be truthfully verified – it might have been written much more recently and the file modified to make it look older.

The more than Laclanche thought about the matter, the unhappier he became. He knew full well that his superiors would dearly like to show up the DGSE in a bad light, but this potentially went far beyond a bit of inter-agency point scoring. The very thought of the ramifications of accusing the deputy director of the DGSE with being implicated in murders made him shudder. It was highly likely nothing could be proved, in which instance whoever made the accusations would be committing professional suicide. There were also the Brits to consider; when he had briefed Vendee before the little Major had met the British police officers, they had agreed that as Basteareau had died in British custody there would be no harm in letting the Brits have as much information as they wished. The stipulation – not of Laclanche’s making – that the Brits must take nothing away with them was a nuisance, but one that they had seen a way around – and the fact that the Detective Sergeant – what was his mane? Yes, Engleton, that was it, thought that he had downloaded the contents of Basteareau’s laptop without Vendee noticing just showed how much the little man had been 80

underestimated by the stupid Englishman. However, now that Laclanche knew what the encrypted file was about, he had no doubt that the Surrey police would also know. What would they do with that information?

Laclanche was a highly accomplished chess player, something that required the ability to rapidly assimilate future moves by an opponent and how to counter them. He applied that ability to his current situation and soon came to a conclusion that he regarded as offering the best way forward for himself. He would say nothing about the encrypted file. The IT officer who had brought it to him had returned to him Basteareau’s laptop and a paper print out of the file. Somehow, it would be necessary to ensure the IT officer said nothing about the file itself – how could that be ensured?

He decided that boldness was the best approach and dialled the IT department and asked to speak to the officer who had worked on the Basteareau laptop, Eloise Santerre, who answered moments later.

“Ah, M’selle Santerre, Capitaine Laclanche. I’ve been studying the file you prepared for me, and I need to know if it exists anywhere other than on Basteareau’s laptop and the print-out that you made for me?”

“But yes, mon Capitaine. We would never work on the original machine – we could be accused of having altered what was on it. I made a copy of the laptop’s drive. Normally we would hold that in the evidence store so that the two could only be compared after obtaining the necessary authority – if a case was coming to court, for example,”

“I quite understand – a most necessary precaution, obviously. However, in this case, having reviewed the file I am satisfied that it will never come to court – I presume that you have read it?”

The answer both surprised and pleased Laclanche.

“No, M’sieu – no need to, especially as it was quite a long document. We have a number of programmes which can examine an encrypted document and can usually identify the particular encryption programme that was used. That was the case in this instance, so I simply ran the recognition programme, then the decryption programme and printed out the file.”

“My word, M’selle, I never realised that your programmes are so clever – and how well you understand them. Now, as there is no court case involved, what happens to the duplicate of Basteareau’s drive?”

“Well, nothing, really – it will just sit in storage in case at some time it might be needed.”

“Oh, so it is safe?”

“But of course.”

“That is good to hear. Thank you for your efforts in this matter – I will let your department head know how helpful you have been.”

“Thank you, mon Capitaine, you are too kind.”

Laclanche replaced the handset, happier than he had expected to be over the matter. IN fact, he had no intention of mentioned her work to her superior – the less attention paid to the matter the better. So, it now seemed as though he was the only person aware of the contents of the file. He looked at the print-out as it lay on his desk. It was, he decided, too dangerous to fall into any other hands, but who knows what use it might be at some time in the future?

His office boasted a small safe – but his secretary had access to it, so that was not a suitable repository for something with such potential. He came to a decision and simply slipped it into his briefcase; later that day he would deposit it in the deposit bank that a private self-storage company held in his name – but not his real name; one can never be too careful. The question remained of Basteareau’s laptop, upon which the file still reposed. It had been signed into official care in Vendee’s name and so, Laclanche decided, it would remain.

However, its existence was a possible source of future embarrassment, but he decided on a simple solution.

Half an hour later, the simple solution had been implemented; the laptop had suffered an unfortunate accident in being dropped down the open well of the staircase. A fifteen metre fall onto hard tiles had ensured that no embarrassment could occur. When he broke the news, with an appropriate level of apology, to his sister, Cecile had been unperturbed; she had never used Alain’s machine so its permanent loss was no hardship. She even declined Tomas’ offer of a replacement machine - she had an I-pad which did all that she needed.

***********************

Clarke read through the decrypted file with growing unease. It told of an agreement between fairly senior operatives in the French and British security services whereby French agents undertook illegal operations in Britain and British agents returned the favour in France. There was not, however, anything explicit enough to put before a court of law, not enough, indeed, to make any arrests. The one really interesting aspect of the file was that it named a very senior member of the DGSE as being involved, probably at arm’s length, in authorising the actions of French operatives in the UK. Common sense dictated that there must surely be an equivalent senior British person involved – but it was surmise from effectively reading between the lines.

Who might it be? He had his suspicions; whereas the Frenchman, Auguste Pinot, was identified in the file as 81

a senior member of the DGSE, Clarke had a feeling that for the British end, one need look no further than the Foreign and Commonwealth, and what he was now beginning to believe in as an unholy trinity – Jones, Manson and Collyer. Surely Jones couldn’t be acting entirely off his own bat? Surely there must be someone more senior to give approval, even though that approval would almost certainly be tacit rather than too clear cut.

How to move all this forward? With Basteareau dead there could now be no trial for the murders of Crawford, Hughes and Davis, nor the attempted murders of the two Larters. Was there any point in pursuing those three deaths in any depth? On the other hand, the possible involvement of Jones in illegal actions in France definitely needed looking into in depth. He called DC Anna Harris into his office.

“Anna, another job for you. The stuff that DS Engleton brought back from Paris includes some references to an Auguste Pinot – see what you can find out about him, please.”

“Right away, boss”

Clarke let his eyes wander over the back view of Anna Harris as she departed his office. She was, he knew, twenty-eight years old, and had been in his team for a bit over a year now. She was, he felt sure, bound for early promotion – her ability to soak up information like a sponge and, more importantly quickly identify what of that information was important and what was not, was an invaluable asset to any detective and her seemingly boundless energy also worked in her favour. Her looks weren’t bad, either, he told himself – slim almost to emaciation was offset by a face that might have graced a model for cosmetics or the like, with unusual hazel coloured eyes and sleek black hair cut to frame her face. She reminded him of a slimmer, better looking Cilia Black in that late singer’s young days.

In less than thirty minutes she was back.

“Pinot is a big noise, boss,” she announced, “he’s the Deputy Director of the DGSE and has been for nearly four years. Before that he was an assistant director and before that he was in the army – made major before switching to the DGSE. He’s fifty in a couple of months, married with two teenage daughters. His wife has money – her father was a minister in a couple of governments back in the eighties and nineties. When he was in the army he was court martialled but acquitted on a charge of misappropriation of funds Altogether, quite a character.”

Clarke was impressed.

“Right, thanks for all that, Anna – do you know where he has been based?”

“Surprisingly, it appears that he has never left mainland France on duty; he’s always, both whilst in the army and the DGSE, been based in or near Paris.”

So, Clarke thought to himself, what now? He decided that a quick chat with his boss was called for – the international repercussions of going after a senior French official, should any worthwhile evidence against him come to light, needed careful consideration at well above DCI level.

***************

Cecile Basteareau was in a quandary. She had secreted Alain’s secrets where the police, or anyone else, couldn’t get them without her cooperation – a cooperation that she thought it very unlikely that she would ever be willing to give. She toyed with the idea of approaching Helmut Galland, the Die Spiegel journalist that Alain had mentioned in is note to her, but the more that she thought about it, the less she favoured the idea. She had looked at Die Spiegel on-line and was concerned at its style – it was a ‘without fear or favour’

type of publication and Tomas had, very regretfully, assured her that the British police had incontrovertible proof that Alain had committed three killings in England. Because Alain was now dead there could be no trial, which meant that what he had done was unlikely ever to be known other than to herself and some French and English police officers. If she went to Galland she could imagine Alain’s name featuring in a lurid article, an article that would ensure that Alan’s perceived crime would become known far and wide.

And anyway – was it really a crime? Strictly speaking, of course it was, but Alain had been an officer of France’s security services. Surely he had been acting under orders to remove some sort of threat against France’s interests? Probably the individuals had been terrorists of some sort, but perhaps the authorities had no proof against them, so Alain had been authorised to remove that threat – and given the nature of what he had had to do, and the nature of officialdom everywhere, it was only to be expected that his superiors would now want to wash their hands of him – after all, they were already lying by saying that he had resigned from the DGSE ten months ago, when nothing could be further from the truth. The more she thought about the matter, the more she was convinced that getting the media involved could only harm Alain’s memory and cause a lot of trouble for herself.

************************

82

On the other side of the Channel, Assistant Chief Constable Graham had gone through much the same thought processes as Cecile Basteareau, and had come to the same conclusion, although for different reasons.

Jane Lawson, after being appraised of what DCI Clarke an his team had uncovered, had initially wanted to pursue the matter with the French, but by the time that she had sat down and really thought things through she had come to the reluctant conclusion that it would be a bad idea. She could see endless obstacles being put in the way of any attempt by the Surrey police to undertake an investigation of a senior French official –

and to be fair, there was no evidence against the man, only the assumption that Basteareau was surely not operating without at least some sort of authority from his superiors. She explained her thinking to Graham who, after only a few moments contemplation, nodded in agreement.

“You’re right, Jane – it would be a nightmare and with little prospect of a successful conclusion. However, the man Basteareau himself – that’s a different matter. Anything new on his death?”

Jane frowned in consternation.

“His post mortem showed heart failure – but then everyone dies when their heart fails. What isn’t so clear is to why he suffered heart failure. OK, he was a bit overweight and the PM showed evidence of an unhealthy diet and the man was a smoker, but nothing to all that much of an excess. The doc is unhappy; he has a nasty feeling that Basteareau was helped on his way, but if that was the case, he can’t see how. There were no traces of any obvious drugs in his system, but given his links with the French security services, and the fact that we know that such services may have access to agents of chemical assassination, doc Hargreaves, who did the PM is worried that the signs in the corpse are somehow not quite right. He suspects that something with which he is not familiar, and which toxicology has failed to find, may have been used – but he has no proof. Over and above that –if Basteareau was helped on his way – how was it done? As a remand prisoner, he was in a cell by himself. The only people who could get to him would be members of the staff when he was in his cell, and other remand prisoners during meal times, exercise, or free association – remand prisoners don’t mix with the rest of the inmates. We’ve checked all the other remand prisoners – there were eighteen of them – and none of them have any association with Basteareau – hardly surprising, considering that he is a Frenchman. We’ve checked the staff – again nothing that we can find.”

“When did it happen?”

“Well, it looks as though he collapsed and died not long after there had been a fire alarm – which turned out to be false. Someone had smashed the glass on one of the corridor alarm point in the next wing – and nobody saw it happen.”

Graham shook his head in frustration.

“I suppose that it is tempting to just right the man off – good riddance to bad rubbish – but I can’t help feeling that his death looks as though it may have been very convenient for somebody – any ideas as to who?”

“Well, there is nothing that springs to mind, but I can’t help feeling that, no matter how tenuous, the fact that Basteareau murdered Crawford means that there must be some sort of tie-up back to that plane going down and Crawford hiding away for two years before he was killed, but what it might be, we just haven’t a clue.”

“Ah well, just keep your people digging Jane, at least for another few days, but we can’t keep running with this indefinitely. After all, you’ve solved the three murders – anything else has to be peripheral and a bonus.”

Jane left her superior’s office in an unhappy frame of mind. Yes, Crawford’s murder was solved, but what about Basteareau’s? She shared Dr. Hargreaves disquiet – that somehow there was something fishy about the Frenchman’s death.

It was time, she decided, to have what would possibly be one last go at the man Jones. From what Engleton had brought back from Paris, there was some sort of link there – the information was sketchy and, to a degree, ambivalent, but she was sure that there was something there.

The more she thought about it, however, the more she felt that the real answer probably lay in France, not in Surrey. Before she talked with her team members again, she decided to do a little freewheeling of her own.

Back in her office she once more phoned her Paris friend and contact, Henri le Bon.

It was a long and detailed conversation. Jane explained her suspicions that the actions of Basteareau in England might well have been mirrored by Jones in France. She emphasized the lack of anything specific, but asked le Bon if there was any trace of an Englishman being involved in some sort of action - possibly anti-terrorist action – in France.

There was a long silence at the other end whilst le Bon thought over what she had said. Finally, he responded.

“Jane, m’amie, I know of nothing offhand, but that doesn’t mean that there might not be something at a lower level of which I am currently unaware. Be assured, I will make enquiries and come back to you.”

The result of le Bon’s enquiries was that the next day Capitaine Lecomte found himself in the latter’s office going through what had been discovered about the murder of Emile Seurat and the fact that it seemed certain 83

to have been committed by an Englishman. He laid the photos of the man on his superior’s desk. Le Bon studied them closely, then opened the slim file which was also on the desk’s surface. He extracted the picture that Jane had E-mailed to him and slid it across the polished surface. The two men studied it, comparing it with the pictures that Lecomte had obtained. They looked at each other and le Bon voiced their mutual conclusion.

“It’s the same man!”

Lecomte drew a deep breath; at last he was looking at the possibility of real progress.

“I want this man, m’sieu – may I apply for a European Arrest Warrant?”

“Of course you can – start on it straightaway.”

No sooner had Lecomte left the room than le Bon was on the phone to Jane Lawson.

“Jane, we have a result. Your man Jones murdered an assumed, but not proven, terrorist quartermaster right here in Paris. We have an eye witness, we have photos. One of my officers is arranging for a European Arrest Warrant even as we speak. It looks as though you were right – the DGSE and some element of your own security service have been doing each other favours – highly illegal favours.”

Jane sat back in her chair, a satisfied smile playing across her features.

“Well done, Henri – we’ll do nothing at this end until your people are ready to implement the warrant.”

“Thank you, Jane – we will be as quick over it as ever we can. Au’voir, Jane.”

“Au’voir, Henri.”

Thereafter events moved swiftly and four days later Capitaine Lecomte, accompanied by Lieutenant Rive and DCI Clarke, called, without any prior warning, at Jones’ home in Woking, where he lived alone. Two hours later he was in a holding cell in Guildford whilst the formalities commenced. Before the morning was out, there was a heated meeting, chaired by ACC Graham, at which three representatives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office disputed Jones’ arrest. DCI Graham, as the arresting officer, DCS Jane Lawson, as head of CID, the two French officers and a representative of the Surrey police’s legal team were also there.

The FCO representatives were Helena Wright, the lawyer whom Clarke had already met when interviewing Manson in the recent past, a clerical officer presumably there to make an independent record of proceedings for the FCO who had been introduces as James Donaldson, and, rather to Clarke’s surprise, Hugh Collyer, the Under Secretary, who seemed a very big fish indeed to be involved with something like this, where Clarke had expected to see only legal representation from the FCO.

Helena Wright went on at considerable length, criticising the process, the way in which Jones had been arrested but as yet not interviewed with legal representation present, and finally ended by demanding that the whole matter be placed before the courts.

Graham was about to call on the police’s lawyer, Norman Harrod, when Collyer interceded.

“No.” he said; everyone looked at him as he turned to Wright.

“No, Helena. Now that we have heard the evidence that the French police have amassed against Jones, there is nothing to be gained by referring his case to the courts, and to do so would be extremely embarrassing, even damaging, for the FCO. No, I think that we must congratulate our French colleagues on their handling of the case, express our regret that an FCO employee should have so taken matters into his own hands in this way, and draw a line under this terrible affair.”

Clarke was dumbfounded. He had expected a long drawn out legal battle over the matter, with the FCO

digging in its heels; then it dawned on him. It had clearly been rehearsed. In no way would Wright and Collyer have come to this meeting without having previously agreed on a game plan. Wright’s protestations had been delivered in a convincing manner, but the more that he thought about it, the more Clarke was sure that it had been an act.

The meeting broke up and later that day Lecomte and Rive departed, taking Jones with them.

At about the same time that Jones was beginning his journey to France, Jane had Clarke and Gillespie in her office for a review of the situation.

“Well,” she said, “I am surprised at the way that the FCO caved in this morning – I thought that we were probably in for weeks, even months, of legal wrangling. Still, at least we have been saved all of that, thak goodness.”

Gillespie, who had not been present at the meeting but had now been fully briefed on its outcome, nodded his head in agreement.

“Me too, boss – but there is one thing that still bugs me over all of this. OK, we know that Basteareau murdered Crawford and his friends, and Basteareau is now conveniently dead. We know that Jones went over to France and committed murder as a favour to the DGSE. What I still don’t understand is why all this started the way that it did – with the brining down of that RAF in which Crawford was assumed to have been flying. Something on that plane wasn’t supposed to make it back to the UK – was it Crawford himself, or 84

was it something that he was carrying – that envelope that he had, or something in the actual bookcase, which we all believe contained the bomb which brought down the plane.”

Jane shrugged her shoulders.

“I share your frustration, Gordon, but I don’t see that there is anything that we can do about it. Crawford’s murderer was caught – the fact that he subsequently died in prison doesn’t really affect our case and Jones never was our case, not really, and now we can rely upon the French to take care of him. All in all, OK, there are loose threads in the overall situation, but I can’t see any way in which we can tie them up, nor is there any real point to our spending time and effort in trying to do so.”

Clarke could appreciate what Lawson was saying, but he still had a feeling of unease over the whole thing.

One particular element really irritated him, something that was like an itch that he couldn’t reach to scratch.

The way that he looked at it, three RAF officers had been murdered and nobody had any real idea as to who had been responsible, nor even why. Also, Basteareau’s death was just too convenient to sit happily with him.

He voiced his concerns tentatively.

“Boss, are we happy that noting needs to be done over investigating Basteareau’s death? Can’t say that I am at all unhappy that he is gone, but the doctor was less than convinced that it was natural causes, although he couldn’t actually rule out natural causes.”

“Well, Skull, unless and until we get a verdict that is other than natural causes, I’m happy to let it rest.”

Recognising Lawson’s determination, Clarke shrugged his own shoulders.

“OK, boss.”

“Right, thanks, guys, that’s it for now.”

Chapter Nine

Doctor John Hargreaves had something of a dilemma. The port mortem that he had carried out on the body of Alain Basteareau seemed to indicate a simple heart attack, but somehow, the dead man’s blood results didn’t seem quite right. Hargreaves, a pathologist with over thirty years’ experience, had conducted many, many post mortems and was fully aware that not every time would one be straightforward, but for the life of him, this one just didn’t sit happily and he couldn’t put his finger on why. There had been tiny traces of alcohol in the blood. Traces not of a high enough level to indicate that the man had been drinking – after all, alcohol wasn’t normally served to prison inmates – but odd all the same. Hargreaves knew that some people do have a tiny amount of residual alcohol in their bloodstreams – nowhere near enough to offer as a plea of innocence to a charge of drink driving, but there nevertheless. Also some foods contained tiny amounts of alcohol – fresh bread, for instance. Certainly, Basteareau’s stomach contents had shown that he had eaten bread shortly before death, so that was probably the cause of the trace reading, but even so, Hargreaves was in two minds.

Reluctantly, he decided that his unease wasn’t enough to warrant further time consuming – and expensive –

tests to seek for anything not already found. The police, and the French authorities, were looking for a death certificate, and he decided that he had prevaricated enough. He signed off Basteareau’s death as a heart attack from natural causes.

The news that Basteareau’s death had been signed off as being from natural causes strengthened Jane Lawson’s conviction that no more time should be spent pursuing the matter. It was time to move on and to close the book, although she was still unhappy that no motive had ever been found that truly explained the bombing of the RAF plane and the subsequent murders of Crawford and his friends.

“Can’t win them all,” she told herself resignedly.

*****************

Prison Officer James Dudley was a nervous man. Ever since, on pain of disclosure, he had obeyed the order of the man Jones and replaced the packet of Gauloise cigarettes in Basteareau’s cell with a seemingly identical pack, a pack which he had opened and from which he had removed three cigarettes so that the contents matched those of the pack that he had removed, he had worried.

His original assumption had been that the pack somehow contained some sort of message from Jones to Basteareau, but the Frenchman’s death soon after Dudley had made the switch had convinced him that in some way the substitute cigarette pack had contributed to the man’s death and that he, Dudley, was in danger of being linked to the substitution.

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Now, however, with several days having gone by – over a week, in fact, and nothing having happened to increase his concern, he began to relax. After all, although acting as a go-between between a prisoner and somebody on the outside was strictly against the rules, and, if discovered, would cost him his job, at least nobody had shown any interest in him after the death of the Frenchman.

He would have been less relaxed had he known that Jones had been arrested by the French police – might he finger Dudley for his part in Basteareau’s death. In the event, however, Jones was in enough trouble over his killing of Seurat – bringing up anything about Basteareau, especially as the man had been a member of the French security services, would only have made things worse for him.

*************************

We were having dinner with Jane and Harry and Jane had brought us up to speed over the investigation into the murder of Graham and his friends; I was in two minds. The news that the police were happy that Basteareau was the murderer, and that the man himself was no dead was some sort of closure – especially for his parents – but it still left unanswered the question as to just why it all happened, from the time that the plane upon which Graham was supposed to be travelling had been blown up, to Graham’s murder, to the attempted attack upon ourselves. Surely there must be some common thread, but if so it was a thread which had, to date, defied discovery. Jane was sympathetic over the question, but could offer no solution. The plane bombing was down to the French authorities and the Royal Air Force and now that Basteareau was dead there was no further line of enquiry left for the Surrey police to follow.

“Thanks, Jane,” I said, “I suppose that we will never really know why all this happened.”

I was aware that Jane was as frustrated by that aspect of the crimes as Hazel and I were, but clearly there was nothing more that she and her people were able to do.

*********************

Loretta Haines was a puzzled woman. The interest that the police had shown in her following her ill-advised loan of her car to the Frenchman Basteareau, was a thing of the past and they had advised her that they had no intention of pursuing her part in the affair any further, which was a relief. Now, however, she wondered if she should contact them. She had decided to undertake a thorough, a really, really thorough, clean of the house, something that, she admitted to herself, was an antidote to boredom and low level depression that came upon her from time to time. The death of her husband, who had been very well insured, had enabled her to retire early from the Civil Service; now, she recognised, the job she had been doing had been an interesting one and she had failed adequately to replace it now that was retired. She had just returned from a three day break in the Park Lane Hilton, where she had been pampered by the staff, had taken in a couple of musicals and dined out at a top class restaurant on her final night.

By contrast, returning to her bungalow a little way outside Guildford seemed something of a let-down, a let-down she had banished with furious activity with vacuum cleaner and cleaning materials. It was in the course of cleaning the guest bedroom that she had made her discovery. When the Frenchman, Basteareau, had stayed in her house for a few hours he had asked her permission, permission which she had readily granted, to stretch out on a bed for a little while. He had, he explained, been travelling overnight and would welcome even a brief nap.

The room had a loose carpet laid on top of parquet flooring, a carpet which left a parquet margin twelve inches wide all the way round. As she was vacuuming the carpet, she realised that there was a very slight, but just noticeable, bump about a foot and a half in from one edge of the carpet. Intrigued, she lifted the carpet and discovered that the cause of the bump was a slim manila file. She picked it up and opened it; it proved to contain four sheets of A4 paper, all covered in an untidy hand, quite apart from the poor handwriting, the pages were also in French. Oddly enough, whilst during her time in the FCO Mrs. Haines had become proficient in German, Italian and Russian, she had never bothered much with French – a bit of inverted snobbery because ‘everyone speaks French’. As a result, her fluency was little better than schoolgirl level; combining that with the scrawled handwriting dissuaded her from attempting to read the pages, but as she knew full well that they must have some connection with Basteareau, she quickly decided that her duty lay in handing them over to the police as quickly as possible. She had, very briefly, wondered if they should go to the FCO, but a moment’s reflection was enough to persuade her that it would be a poor choice of option.

When all was said and done, the Frenchman was a criminal – and criminals were the concern of the police, not the FCO. She reached for the phone.

*********************

It was the next day. Mrs. Haines’ discovery had been picked up within the hour following her phone call and the translation, neatly typed out, sat on Clarke’s desk. He had already read it and mulled over its contents and 86

now, having just replaced the handset of his phone, rose to his feet and made his way to Jane Lawson’s office. His phone call had been to Gillespie, who had told him to meet with him at the head of CID’s office.

Pre-warned, Jane looked up expectantly as the two men entered her office and seated themselves in the visitors’ chairs.

“So,” she greeted them, “what have we got?”

Clarke, who studied the document at length before conveying the gist of it to Gillespie, was the one who answered.

“It’s a bit of an eye-opener, boss. I’m assuming that the handwriting is that of Basteareau, but we’ll need to get a handwriting recognition expert to verify that. However, assuming that I am right, it’s a most interesting document. I imagine that Basteareau had it with him as a last resort – a ‘get out of jail’ card, but never got the chance to use it due to dying. It gives the details of a fraud, a pretty substantial one, involving the man Pinot in France and Collyer over here. Between them they were manipulating money transfers in the overseas aid programmes of Britain and France – and the way that they were doing it was to each use the other’s programme. They had a circle of contacts in countries receiving overseas aid and, for a cut in the profits, of course, those contacts were switching aid from France to a British account and vice versa. The whole scam has been worth millions over the last few years – according to Basteareau it started five years ago and it explains why what should have been Crawford’s plane was blown up. According to Basteareau, Pinot was under the impression that Crawford had evidence as to what was going on and ordered Basteareau to arrange for the bomb on the plane. The actual planting of the bomb was done by Jones, of course – that infamous briefcase that he gave to Crawford. The thing is, Pinot was wrong – Crawford had no idea what was going on and Basteareau says in the document that he didn’t know why Pinot had come to the conclusion that he had. Basteareau, however, even though he knew that Pinot was wrong in his assumption, went along with Pinot’s instruction to give himself a lever against the man should the need arise at any time.”

Jane’s brow furrowed in concentration.

“But why didn’t he use it when we arrested him?”

Clarke shrugged his shoulders.

“No idea, boss. I can only guess that he was waiting for what he would have regarded as the right time, but what that ‘right time’ might have been, I guess that we’ll never know, Perhaps the fact that it was squirreled away in Mrs. Haines house might have something to do with it, but again, we just don’t know.”

Jane leaned back in her chair as she thought through the ramifications of what they had learned.

“Well, one thing’s for certain – the next step is to talk with Mr. Graham.”

*************************

The Assistant Chief Constable listened intently as his three officers outlined what had been discovered.

David Graham was only too aware of the potential political fallout from the Basteareau document.

“Right,” he said briskly. “The first thing that we absolutely must do is verify that the document really was written by Basteareau – I know the content makes any other author just about beyond the bounds of possibility, but I’m sure that without such verification those it effectively accuses will claim that it is some sort of forgery, a fairy tale created by political enemies. They may, of course, well try to do that even if we can prove that Basteareau was the author. With Basteareau dead that course of action is probably a given, so ideally we need some form of verification of the content of the document, not just verification as to who wrote it. Any ideas on that front?”

Jane voiced a thought that had been bubbling gently away at the back of her mind.

“The French have Jones for murder. It’s clear that he and Basteareau worked together on a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ type of arrangement. At the moment, he is facing a long term inside a French prison. Now, Basteareau’s document makes it clear that he and Jones worked together, so it seems highly likely that Jones could provide the sort of verification that we need.”

“By why should he?” Graham queried.

“It would need cooperation from the French to offer him a lesser sentence – after all, in a way he was doing than a favour by getting rid of a terrorist quartermaster – a man who almost certainly supplied weapons for atrocities in France, and perhaps elsewhere. Something that would work in our favour is that Jones is being charged with a straightforward murder and is in the hands of the normal police – and my understanding is that the relationship between the police and the DGSE is often a bit frigid. The police would probably be quite happy to see a senior DGSE man brought down. And they ought to be pleased with us for handing him over without any quibbles, thanks to Collyer. I wonder if he would have been so obliging if he knew what we know now”

ACC Graham permitted himself a quiet smile. He had not met Collyer until chairing the meeting at which it had been agreed to hand Jones over to the French, but he had taken an instant dislike to the man – something about him just didn’t ring true. To hear that he was in corruption up to his neck was hardly a surprise.

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“Right,” he said. “We need to meet up with whoever is appropriate across the Channel and see if we can thrash something out between us – but first, before we do anything else, we must have these pages verified as having been written by Basteareau himself.”

Jane decided that it was time to make a suggestion.

“Sir, once the handwriting has been verified, at what level should we approach the French? Given Pinot’s high rank, a top level approach in the first instance would be sure to warn him as to what was going on and give him a chance to prepare some sort of defence.”

“So what would you suggest?”

“I have a contact in the Paris police, Henri le Bon. He is a Commissaire Divisionnaire, the equivalent of a Chief Super, in the Direction régionale de la Police Judiciaire de Paris. As such he is a position to know how far things have got over Jones and he isn’t going to broadcast anything to the DGSE.”

Graham steepled his fingers under his chin whilst he considered Jane’s suggestion. Finally, he lifted his head form his fingertips and gave a decisive nod.

“Right, Jane – that sounds just about the ideal level to start things off. Once the handwriting has been verified, go for it!”

Chapter Ten

A month had passed, a month in which much activity had taken place. Jane’s initial approach to Henri le Bon had been well received and had begun a series of meetings, consultations, and a lot of donkey work for both the French and the British police. Now the culmination had been reached; a meeting in the French equivalent of a judge’s chambers. The meeting was smaller than many which had previously taken place but this was, without any shadow of a doubt, the most important of them.

It was chaired by a judge, Maître Jacques Delacroix, who had been the examining magistrate in the Seurat murder right in the early days of events. The French police were represented by Henri le Bon and his boss, Contrôleur Général Marcel Fournier; ACC Graham and Jane Lawson were there for the Surrey police. The most important person there, however, in that everything that would follow the meeting depended upon him, was Richard Jones.

The meeting would last several hours, but much of what it would consider had already been investigated and agreed upon between a variety of interested parties, but the function of this meeting would be to tie everything up and to deliver an agreed, deliverable, plan of action.

Richard Jones looked around the room. It was, he knew, very much to his advantage to go along with these people. Originally he had been facing twenty years in a French prison for killing Emile Seurat; it was a killing over which his only regret was being caught. As far as he was concerned, Seurat was the enemy and a potentially very dangerous enemy. Jones saw his action in taking the man out as the act of a soldier, not a criminal. Seurat was not Jones’ only victim in the war against terrorism; three others had met their demise at his hands, all in France at the request of Basteareau. And then there was Basteareau himself. The doctored packet of cigarettes which had sparked the man’s heart attack had been an act of self-preservation, but also a delivering of justice. Jones had been horrified when, two years earlier, that RAF plane had been blown up and even more horrified when Basteareau had come to Britain and killed Crawford and his friends. He had taxed the man over the killings, to be met with a shrugged explanation that Crawford was a danger to Pinot and that the DGSE could not afford the scandal of a very senior member being accused of illegal activity.

Basteareau hadn’t put it quite that bluntly – he had painted Crawford himself as a danger, a claim that Jones had subsequently satisfied himself to be untrue – but only after the Staines murders, by which time it was much too late. The discovery had, however, convinced Jones that Basteareau had to be stopped; the man’s attempt on the Larters had come when Jones himself was out of the country and he had not been aware of what was going on until after Basteareau had been arrested. Again, by then it was too late, but at least this time Basteareau’s intended victims had survived. He had, of course, been aware that Basteareau was coming into the country – and had requested Manson to help out with a ‘clean’ car – but Basteareau had pitched him a false story about tracking down a contact of Seurat.

Jones was unaware that Basteareau had taped some of their meetings, tapes which Cecile Basteareau had hidden away in a self-storage facility and which, in fact would never again see the light of day –

Basteareau’s widow felt that to try and make them public would serve no useful purpose – after all, her husband was dead – and might constitute danger for herself. Similarly, Basteareau had been unaware that he wasn’t the only one with a tape recorder. Jones had taped his meeting with Basteareau when the Frenchman 88

had effectively admitted that he was fully aware of the fact that Pinot’s concerns about Crawford were groundless but had gone ahead with the murders anyway.

Jones had convinced the meeting of Pinot’s guilt – directly in the aid money fraud and indirectly in the murders. He had also convinced the meeting that Hugh Collyer was also guilty of misappropriating aid money. Given how the Assistant Secretary had callously thrown him to the French wolves over the European Arrest Warrant, setting in motion events which would lead to the man’s downfall and eventual imprisonment, gave Jones particular pleasure.

Maître Delacroix summed up what had been agreed.

“Right; we are agreed that the French police will arrest Pinot, the British police will arrest Collyer. In recognition of his assistance in bringing to an end a callous misappropriation of aid money intended by France and the United Kingdom to help relieve suffering in the Third World, and his having pleaded guilty, through an understandable, but nevertheless illegal, killing of a known terrorist, M’sieu Jones will serve a prison sentence of five years, three of which will be suspended. I think that is all, lady and gentlemen?”

Jane wondered if Jones was getting off too lightly, but the whole package was the thing and it was a case of take it as such or leave it, in which case Collyer and probably Pinot would get away with their crimes, and so she said nothing, simply joining the chorus of nodding heads round the table.

Epilogue

It was a somewhat muted dinner. In addition to Jane and Harry, we had been joined by Graham’s parents –

Lawrence and Maria had journeyed over from Hereford and would stay overnight with us and by Kathleen who had brought Julia with her, but the youngster was now in bed and, hopefully, asleep. Our current gathering was scarcely suitable to include a thirteen year old. Jane had gone through the whole story with us and whilst it was frustrating that Basteareau had escaped justice for the killing of six people, at least the man had died in custody, apparently of a heart attack (for Jones had left those at the Paris meeting in total ignorance of the fact that Basteareau’s heart attack had been chemically induced by the doctored cigarettes).

It was also gratifying to hear that two senior officials, one British, one French, would be spending a considerable amount of time in prison for effectively robbing people in the poorest parts of the world, especially as it had been Pinot’s erroneous belief that he could be damaged by information that Graham had which had sparked off the whole awful affair.

“That does stick in my craw,” Lawrence said unhappily, “this wretched man Pinot is really the cause of Graham’s death – and the deaths of the others – but all he’ll face is being imprisoned for embezzlement. His full crimes really ought to be made public and the man left to rot in prison for the rest of his life.”

Jane shook her head in sympathy.

“I agree with you, Lawrence, but with Basteareau dead, the French feel that they don’t really have a strong enough case to put before a jury.”

It wasn’t totally satisfactory, but we had to accept that it was the best that we could expect. At least Graham’s killer was dead and could do no more harm, and the unscrupulous Pinot would be where he, likewise, could do no more harm. Collyer, Pinot’s partner in crime would also see in the inside of a prison cell for a good long time, although none of us regarded him with the same loathing that we had for Pinot.

******************

It was three weeks later. Jane was at her desk when her phone rang. Dave Cross, her PA, filtered the calls to her office landline.

“I’ve got Commissaire le Bon on the phone, boss.”

“Put him through, please, Dave.”

“Jane – Henri. I have just received some news which I felt that I should share with you. There has been some unrest in La Santé Prison. Apparently it was quite violent for a while with several prion officers and prisoners injured, although, with one exception, none seriously. The exception is our old friend Auguste Pinot – he was found dead. Somebody had stabbed him with an improvised weapon made from a ground down toothbrush handle.”

Jane absorbed the news in silence for a moment before replying.

“Well, I can’t say that the world will be much worse off for his passing.. Thanks for letting me know.”

“My pleasure, Jane – I share your sentiment.”

Jane replaced the handset and thought over what she had just heard. It did sound rather convenient – bu then, that was up the French to look into. With a sigh she returned to the summary of crime statistics that she had been studying before the phone call.

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The End

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Table of Contents

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue