A Sentimental Traitor (31 page)

‘His real name?’

‘I don’t know. We just know him as Wendy.’

‘Any friends here?’

‘None in particular.’

‘So where does he live?’

‘Live? I don’t know. But not too far, I’d guess. Seems to me he usually walks here – you know, coat, brolly when it’s raining.’

Harry pressed his old friend, but got nothing more. ‘I don’t know anything else, Harry. And I don’t want you coming back here and turning this place upside down.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You always used to. Everywhere you went.’

‘With you covering my tail against the bad guys.’

The other man smiled once more, mischievously. ‘When I was covering your tail, I was the bad guy.’

There were others apart from Harry who were intent on causing chaos. Emily Keane was back from Brussels. Her shadow job had little enough to detain her there during the summer,
so she was back amongst her old haunts and staying with friends. She was walking back alone past Battersea Park late one night – nothing too threatening, even after dark, and nothing she
hadn’t done before. There were usually plenty of people around, and Emily was young and immortal. Yet there were also stretches of the way that were less well lit, full of trees, shadows.

She never saw who attacked her. They came from behind, grabbed her, flashed a blade. She had no chance of defending herself. She had time for nothing but a single piercing scream before it was
cut short by a savage blow to the head and she fell to the ground.

Harry’s screwdriver was missing. He needed it to fix a loose shelf he’d discovered while sorting through the books, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Then he
remembered. The broken car window. It was parked a little way down the street. He sauntered past the sculpture gallery; from within his lair the proprietor waved, but to Harry’s mind the
greeting was not as it once was. But nothing in his life was. Perhaps it was merely his imagination, and his depression, but small slights had begun to take on a painful significance. He knew that
Oscar, his chairman and longtime friend, would be celebrating his sixtieth soon, and yet he hadn’t received an invitation. Would he ever now? And the invitation that had gone out from party
headquarters to all former MPs following the last election – what was called the ‘End up a Peer Show’ – had definitely passed him by, as one verminous gossip columnist had
taken protracted delight in pointing out. The world was turning its back on him. Scarcely surprising that Jemma wouldn’t let him into her bed. He felt like a leper, and despite his best
efforts to do otherwise, he blamed her a little for that, too, a mood not helped when he found yet another ticket taped to his windscreen. He ripped it off and dropped it in the gutter.

Yet his screwdriver, at least, was reliable. There it was, staring at him from the front seat. He climbed in and retrieved it, and was checking the glove compartment to see if he had left
anything else behind when there was a sharp rap on the window. He groaned. It was Arkwright, along with three other officers. He wound down the window.

No foreplay.

‘Henry Marmaduke Maltravers-Jones, I am arresting you—’

‘What, for a sodding parking ticket?’

‘—on suspicion of a serious assault . . .’

‘Dear God,’ he whispered to himself in bewilderment, ‘not again . . .’

The Interview Room. The tapes winding their slow way towards his entrapment.

‘Where were you last night between midnight and two a.m.?’

‘At home.’

‘Can anyone corroborate that?’

‘No.’

Another evidence bag. ‘Is this your T-shirt, Mr Jones?’

Oh, damn. ‘Yes.’

‘It was found at the scene of a serious assault last night on Emily Keane. Can you explain that?’

‘It was stolen from my car a couple of nights ago. Someone broke into it.’

The tape would catch every drop of disbelief. ‘They broke into your car – to steal a T-shirt.’

‘My client isn’t required to speculate,’ van Buren interrupted.

‘Very well, did you report the break-in to the police?’

‘No.’

The tape recorded the rustling noise of van Buren shifting in discomfort.

‘Where was your car broken into?’

‘Outside my home.’

‘In Mayfair.’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting. Fascinating, in fact. Because we found fragments of window glass at the scene of the assault in Battersea. We’ll want to compare them to the broken window in your
car.’

‘You can’t. I replaced it.’

‘Which body shop?’

‘I did it myself.’

‘Yourself?’ The recorder noted a sharp rise in intonation as incredulity bounced back and forth between Arkwright and his colleague. More uncomfortable rustling from van Buren.
‘I think this time, Mr Jones, that even a novice nun would have trouble believing you. Miss Keane won’t be able to withdraw the charges this time, you know. They’re too serious. A
knife slash across the back of her hand, down to the bone. We’re talking grievous bodily harm here, with intent. Do you know what that means?’

‘No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me, Detective Sergeant.’

‘Anything up to life.’

‘Don’t threaten my client, Detective Sergeant,’ van Buren snapped.

‘Threaten? But I’m doing my best to help him, Mr van Buren. To understand just how deep he’s landed himself in it this time.’

‘I’m being set up.’

‘By who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then why?’

‘I don’t know that, either.’

‘Let’s not waste any more time, shall we? You clearly had motive for this attack. And opportunity. Your DNA has been found at the scene. You don’t even have an alibi. How much
worse do you think it can get, Mr Jones?’

The tape recorded a silence, where there was no reply.

Arkwright smiled, thinly, no humour in it. ‘I think that wraps it up. Rather neatly, in fact.’

The tape couldn’t record the look that Harry gave to van Buren, or the shake of the head that the lawyer offered in return.

‘I’m sorry, Miss, you can’t bring coffee in here,’ the librarian said, bouncing on the toes of her polished shoes.

‘Then I’m the one who should be sorry,’ Jemma replied, putting the plastic cup carefully to one side. She’d been at it for hours, interrogating the Internet and rifling
through back copies of newspapers and periodicals. She needed the caffeine. It had been like a game of blind man’s buff, trusting to fortune that she would not only bump into something, but
recognize it when she did. The thirty-something librarian was still standing guard, officious, no ring, when Jemma’s phone jumped into life.

‘Jem, it’s me.’

She knew by Harry’s tone that something awful had happened.

‘I’ve been arrested. Emily again.’

The librarian was bouncing up and down once more, looking formidable and very cross; Jemma fled from her presence and into the corridor.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘At Charing Cross. Should move in here when they take my home away,’ he quipped, but it fell flat even before he’d delivered it. ‘You’re one of my two phone calls,
Jem.’

‘What, to tell me you’ll be a little late for that dinner you promised to cook?’

‘I don’t think I’ll be making dinner, Jem. Emily was attacked last night. Something pretty nasty. They think it was me.’

Only a moment of supreme self-restraint prevented Jemma from asking if they were right.

‘I’ve been charged. I’m up before the magistrate shortly. They want to remand me in custody.’

‘Oh, Harry . . .’

‘But can’t you see? This proves we’re right.’

‘About what exactly?’

‘How important this game is.’

‘I think we ought to stop, Harry.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’re so obviously bloody winning!’

She could hear another voice in the background, interrupting.

‘Jem, I’ve got to go. You’re right . . .’ He faded in a rustle of confusion before his voice came back. ‘Be careful, Jem. I’m sorry to have got you into
this.’

Then her phone went dead. She didn’t know whether to smash it against the wall or on the floor. Instead, she walked back in to the reference room. The librarian was waiting to intercept
her, a look of thunder on her face. Jemma decided to get in there first.

‘Sorry,’ she said, waving a finger at the phone. ‘My ex-boyfriend. Total loser.’

The librarian relaxed, nodding in understanding, and returned to her post behind the desk while Jemma went back to her labours.

Harry didn’t like cells. Had a deep aversion to them. It had started with his training at Hereford, where his SAS mentors had inflicted many kinds of indignities upon him,
in preparation for what was to follow, but, of course, it could never do that. He’d once even found himself inside a condemned cell in central Asia, listening to other prisoners being
executed, waiting his turn. It had put him off being locked up.

When they came to unlock his cell at Charing Cross, it was only for the stuffy pleasures of a white Securicor prison van, where he had his own tiny cell along with five other prisoners. And
when, after a short journey, he was in turn released from the van, it was only into the arms of further security officers who escorted him down to the cells beneath the court complex in Marylebone
Road.

‘Never expected to see you here, Mr Jones,’ one of the security officers muttered, leading him down. ‘I’m bloody sorry.’

Harry assumed the man was a former soldier. It made him feel worse.

Harry waited his turn, the sliding of doors like the clattering wheels of the tumbrel, the voices from beyond the cheering of the crowd. The prisoner before him returned to his cell in tears.
‘You bastard!’ he sobbed, raging eyes fastening on Harry, but Harry assumed it was a condemnation intended for the entire world, he didn’t take it personally. He was almost
relieved when at last the door to his cell was opened and he was led up the short set of steps to the dock.

The courtroom was new, laminated, none of the rich dark oak of traditional justice. It had replaced the old court complex at Horseferry Road, the site now sold off for luxury flats. Cuts.
Already the discolouration on the bar in front of him betrayed the presence of an army of sweaty palms. Van Buren was sitting in the seat beneath him, the Crown prosecutor a little farther away,
the district judge presiding over all beneath the royal coat of arms with its lion rampant. And it began.