Country of the Blind (18 page)

She looked across at Parlabane, his profile composed and determined as he held the wheel and fixed his eyes upon the road, occasionally glancing down at the speedometer. He had maintained a steady thirty until reaching the motorway, and once upon it stuck rigidly to the fluctuating limits despite the inviting emptiness of the highways. She had wondered for a while whether he compensated for his repertoire of recklessness by being the world's most boring driver, then remembered the importance of avoiding the attentions of the law. If people with major police connections were going to be out looking for her, it probably wouldn't help to have some traffic cop say her description matched the passenger of a guy he booked for speeding the other night. Hey, here's his name and address.

There was a cool reality about her situation now, a feeling that it was actually happening, made less frightening by the sense that it was now something she was doing, rather than something that was being done to her. It was the travelling that did it. The discussions, the devices, the revelations had all been enclosed in the cocoon of that absurdly twee flat, just words and stories about 97

events going on elsewhere. In there it was disturbing, certainly, but somehow removed; like she could go to bed, get up tomorrow, walk out the front door and get on with her life, while all that nastiness happened to someone else. But the moment she took action was the moment she accepted it, the moment she became part of it, and when she left the flat, the feeling that her old life was gone hit her hard in that first breath of cold wind as they emerged from the close into the back court.

The grass underfoot; the steam of his breath in the half-light; the sudden, stupidly startling noise of water down a drainpipe above them; the smell of the old Sirocco's interior.

This was not a dream.

He had slung her bag in the boot and then opened the passenger door for her, pushing the seat forward and telling her to lie along the back, out of sight. Once they were well clear of her neighbourhood he had stopped the car and allowed her to move up front. The radio had been burbling away since they drove off, but she had barely been aware of the songs, jingles and ads, as it wasn't on loud enough to compete for attention with the raging current-affairs debate going on inside her head.

Parlabane turned the volume up, obviously recognising a cheaply dramatic burst of brass as heralding a news bulletin.

". . . with Graham Forbes.

"The main story tonight, of course, the brutal and bloody escape of the four men accused of murdering Roland Voss, during which two police officers and a driver were killed. Thomas McInnes, his son Paul, Robert Hannah. . . "

Nicole turned to Parlabane. He said nothing, his face poker-set, only a small swallow in his throat betraying any reaction. The radio newscaster's smooth tones were replaced by a highland accent speaking over a crackly phone line from nearer the scene.

"The men were being transported from Edinburgh to Peterhead Prison, where, ironically, they were being taken for security reasons. Details are sketchy at this stage, but it is believed that their prison bus went out of control and turned on its side near the village of Strathgair, after colliding with an abandoned car. Police believe that the four men took advantage of the accident to overpower their armed guards, stealing their weapons before making their escape. It is suspected that one officer may have died from injuries sustained during the crash, but police say that the bodies of the second officer and the driver were found handcuffed to the bus, having been shot through the head in a manner chillingly similar to the murders of Roland Voss's bodyguards on Sunday.

"It is believed the fugitives are now in possession of several firearms, and police are warning the public that these men are extremely dangerous and 98

must not be approached at any cost. With discovery of the escape coming at such a late hour, officers have been sent door-to-door in the surrounding area to warn local residents who may have gone to bed before the news broke."

"Reaction to the escape has been extreme," rejoined the newsreader, "from police and government officials still shell-shocked by Sunday night's atrocities. There have been calls for the army to be brought in to hunt the men down, and a pledge from Scottish Secretary Alastair Dalgleish that no resource shall be spared in bringing the four to justice."

"I will be insisting on a full inquiry into how this atrocity was allowed to happen," began a rasping, upper-class voice, the sound of film winding in press cameras wheezing loudly in the background. "But for now the priority is the apprehension of these. . .
animals
," the voice spat. "For that is all they are. And like animals they will be hunted down - by all means available and by all means necessary."

The Sirocco coasted on into the night, the lights of Glasgow fading behind. Parlabane said nothing, his face still stone-set, Nicole guessing at the babbling frenzy of calculation, projection and conjecture going on behind those locked and focused eyes.

She stared ahead at the dotted white lines being gobbled up by the car, emotional voices echoing through her head, the hum of the engine and the burr of tyres on tarmac somehow silenced by their own constancy. Someone tried to kill you today.

He's dead. Aw hen, aw pet.

Like animals they will be hunted down.

Scum four must die.

All the boys are innocent.

99

II

This is Iron Age,

Steel blue Medusa eyes,

If I could scratch a name,

That would outlive hers,

That would make me feel that I belong here,

To everything and not a fraction,

To everything and not an age.

- Billy Franks,
Age

SIX

Of course, he
had
to go.

There really was no choice in the matter, and the sadly ironic thing was that it had been Voss who saw to that. He had them by the balls, there was no denying it, demanding that they fall on their swords or he would run them through.

Some might say that they were biting the hand that fed them, but that would be to make the same mistake as the deluded and arrogant Dutch fool. Men like Voss, intoxicated by the self-made mythology of their own success, seemed to think that they were beneficently visiting prosperity upon a country, the choice of which nation to honour in their gift. They believed they were the engine of their own achievements, and that the era, location and political climate were incidental, a painted landscape in the background of their magnificent portrait.

In truth they were merely actors. There were roles that needed to be played, but it was up to men like himself to decide who should play them. "The part of the arch-conservative media tycoon will tonight be performed by a stand-in, as Mr Roland Voss is indisposed."

It was
we
who had made
him
, thought Alastair Dalgleish bitterly, still smarting from the stinging gauntlet-lash of betrayal. He winced at the fiery taste as he sipped at his whisky and stood, staring from the window of his study, the chair at his desk uncomfortable during such moments of agitated reflection. The brown liquid glinted tauntingly in the crystal glass, its volume militantly refusing to deplete itself no matter how many drops he braced himself to swallow. And it was nothing to do with it being early morning; the stuff was undrinkable night and day. Damn the image-makers. He longed for the soothing cool of a nice, long G&T.

We made him.

There was a limited amount of success to go round. A finite number of major roles. Voss didn't take, Voss didn't demand, Voss didn't earn. Voss was given. Voss was
allowed
. They didn't need
him
, they just needed someone to fill the role, perform a function. Someone.

Anyone.

103

Voss thought that his editorial support of the Conservatives was what ensured him special consideration, allowed him to expand his media interests so unhindered. What he failed to understand was that those newspapers were going to be saying very much what the Party wanted them to, whoever owned them, as that was always going to be a condition of being green-lighted to buy them. What Voss's monstrous ego had obscured from his view was simply that if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else. The arrogance of the man.

That was what had really upset them. If it had simply been greed it would have been different. Wanting an even bigger slice of the pie when you've already vomited from over-eating was ideologically understandable. Perhaps a compromise could have been reached, some sop to acknowledge that the rattle of Voss's sabre had been heard and duly noted.

But it hadn't been about money, business or politics. It had been about power. Voss had known exactly the consequences of what he was asking them to do; not only for themselves, but for the party. For the two of them it was electoral poison - in the highly unlikely event that their constituency branches didn't deselect them anyway. And far worse, the poison would be all the more bitter as the lethal draught was transmuted from the elixir that was ready to revive the party in the polls.

If they did not comply, Voss would destroy them anyway. His revelations would demand their resignations from the cabinet, amid a scandal that would be the coup de grace for the government's scarred and wounded credibility. Damage limitation was a negligible concept; even a repeat of the Scott spin tactics would be futile. "They acted in good faith" wasn't going to cut it on this one. And there would be no finite period of penitence on the backbenches before rising phoenix-like into the cabinet again. They would not be forgiven for the devastation caused.

Things had changed since the glorious Thatcher era. The free-spirited philosophy of "anything goes" that came with a massive majority was but a cherished and distant memory. And it was nothing to do with Nolan. In the Conservative Party in the Nineties, there was only one rule on "standards in public life": don't get caught.

Consequently, they couldn't even
tell
the boss about the threat. Voss didn't really need what he was asking from them. The Dutchman wasn't the only one well-placed to carve out a share of the new market, and Dalgleish had wondered what impact it might have on the reputation of his newspaper group, given that its sales pitch was from a prominent kiosk on the moral high ground. Dalgleish of all people knew that Voss had always kept that aspect of his European interests conspicuously quiet. So what had enraged him was the realisation that Voss might not particu104

larly
want
what he was demanding of them. The realisation that
that
wasn't the issue. He just wanted the satisfaction of exercising power. Of arbitrarily deciding to destroy a career or bring down a government, as if they were gladiators whose life or death depended upon the whim that turned Caesar's thumb up or down.

Voss was merely amusing himself by playing a game, and the game was called God. He cared nothing for the real people whose lives were affected by his power-mongering and political masturbation. People like Michael Swan. People like Alastair Dalgleish.

So what did he think, that they were impotent little pawns on his board?

That they were his creatures, to do with as he pleased?

Yes, indeed, it was about power. And by God they had shown him the true meaning of the word.

It was rather a shame about the wife, of course, but the embarrassing little Eurotrash trollop did insist on following him around, always managing to make several hundred thousand pounds' worth of clothing look like mismatched items from a particularly insalubrious jumble sale. Unfortunately they didn't have a lot of time to play with, and there simply hadn't been an opportunity to get the bugger alone.

The bodyguards he felt no remorse about whatsoever. Bloody gorillas, the pair of them. Just because someone had taught them to walk upright when in public didn't mean they were actually sentient beings. He had always hated the way they still eyed him up when they knew exactly who he was, and had never forgiven them for the time they pinned him to a wall at that dinner in Paris, within six feet of about twenty bloody photographers. They claimed that he had approached Voss a little hastily and suggested that they feared he might be reaching for a weapon as he put his hand inside his jacket. He was actually reaching for a cheque made out to the charity Voss was hosting the dinner in aid of, having decided that if he was going to chuck money away on some bunch of foreign parasites, he might as well try and get a half-decent photo-op out of it.

Two years on, the "Mugger Dalgleish" tag was still following him around. From his town-house window he looked across the gardens of Drummond Place and considered with a smile that its concave terrace reminded him a little of Bath. However, the memory of the real thing served to sadden him once more, as thoughts of England always did while he was stuck up here. There was no getting away from it, he hated the place. Hated the whole bloody country. Getting back to London felt like coming up for air after any prolonged stay, an oasis after days in the parched desert of this remote and detached wasteland. Summer had been the worst, with so little parliamentary business to take him back south. An endless ordeal of flesh-pressing in shoddy 105

factories and smelly community centres, under perennially grey skies. Where the sun don't shine, indeed.

And what really stuck in the craw, what burnt and was as hard to swallow as the bloody whisky, was being thought of as
Scottish
, as one of them. He had never even been to the bloody place until about three years ago, and that was an overnight visit to the Scottish party conference as the token senior minister. He was an Englishman, through and through, and damn proud of it. His father, admittedly, had been a Scot, but for goodness' sake, no-one considered Portillo Spanish, did they?

But he had needed to be Scottish, or at least to put on a show of displaying his credentials, because of the ridiculous fuss made over the idea of an Englishman being Secretary of State for Scotland. And it
was
ridiculous. Who, for instance, was the last Welsh secretary who was actually bloody Welsh? Or Northern Ireland secretary who was from the province? In Dalgleish's opinion, it was precisely this sort of pandering and indulgence that was responsible for the party's poor showings north of the border - if you let a child have its way every time it whinges or whines about something, you end up with an indisciplined brat, don't you? He simply couldn't understand the inconsistency of it all. To put it bluntly, if you're not worried about whether having only ten MPs out of seventy-two constitutes a mandate to govern, why start getting mealy-mouthed about the nationality of the man in charge?