Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 (22 page)

There was truth in what he said. Magnus slid the gun back into its hiding place and replaced the book on top of the pile.

‘You still haven’t told me what you were in for.’

Jeb took a sip of his drink. Magnus thought he was going to refuse again, but he met his eyes and asked, ‘What if I say I’m in for murdering the woman I loved?’

‘It depends on circumstances, I suppose.’

‘And what if I tell you a bundle of lies?’

‘I’ll have to trust my own judgement on that.’

Jeb’s stare was level. ‘I thought I could leave all this in Pentonville, but it’s on me like skin. If it’s going to come out, maybe it’s better I tell you than someone else.’

‘I’ll be gone soon. I’ll keep it to myself.’

‘If you don’t, you know I’ll find you.’ Jeb looked up towards the far corner of the room. His hair had grown out of the suede head he had worn in prison and was twisting into loose curls that gave his face a softer appearance. ‘I said that I was innocent. That’s not strictly true. I’m not a sex offender and I didn’t do what they put me away for, but I deserved to go down.’ Jeb’s defensiveness was still there, but it had flipped to an insistence on his guilt. ‘My trial was all over the papers, it was three years ago, but a lot of people still remember’ – he paused and corrected himself – ‘remembered, my face. There were two photographs that they used, one of me in uniform, smiling like every mother’s dream. It was taken by a photographer for a local paper on a school outreach visit, not long after I completed training. My hair’s long in the other one.’ He touched his curls. ‘And I’ve got a scruffy beard, like a tramp that’s not had any attention from the Salvation Army in quite a while. There’s a stupid expression on my face, as if I’d just sucked up an exceptionally long joint, which is exactly what I’d done.’ Jeb came to a stop, as if he could see the photographs in front of him.

Magnus said, ‘You don’t sound like ideal police material.’

‘I was superb police material. Perfect for what they wanted at any rate.’

‘Which was?’

‘Being a lying bastard.’ Jeb knocked back the last of the whisky in his glass and freshened it with more from the bottle. ‘I was an undercover police officer. Serpico, that was me, all cock and beard.’

Magnus took the bottle and poured himself another measure. A memory stirred. A documentary about police officers who had formed relationships with some of the women they were meant to be keeping under surveillance. One of them had had a wife elsewhere, a legitimate family.

He said, ‘Were you married?’

Jeb gave a tight smile that hid his teeth. ‘No, but you’re on the right lines. My job was to infiltrate a group of environmental activists. I had to immerse myself in the organisation, dress like them, talk like them, act like them. I thought I was James Bond, though Bond wouldn’t be seen dead in the grungy crap I wore undercover.’

It fitted with Jeb’s shape-shifting personality, his swing from prison inmate to keen-eyed strategist. Magnus tried to keep his voice light. ‘No nightclubs and casinos then?’

‘No, but there were beautiful women. The main difficulty of infiltrating a network is that you come from nowhere and have to get people to accept you straight away. The easiest way to do that is to become involved with someone already on the scene, usually a woman.’ Jeb made a face. ‘If I’m honest it was always a woman.’

‘You did it more than once?’ Magnus had pulled on different personalities for his routines, but he had shed them when he came off stage. He tried to imagine how it would be to target a woman because of who and what she knew; to live with her and make love to her as someone else. ‘Didn’t you feel like a whore?’

Jeb put a hand over the candle flame and a shadow hand appeared huge and black on the wall. He took it away and looked at Magnus.

‘I was a police officer, an undercover police officer.’

‘And you could switch it on and off?’ Magnus disliked the echo of the Kirk in his own voice, the black-suited minister passing judgement from the pulpit. ‘Have sex with some girl and then report back on what she was up to?’

Jeb shrugged. ‘Like I said, I thought I was James Bond. These people were talking about bombing laboratories, assassinating scientists, setting free animals that had been infected with deadly strains of viruses.’ There was warmth in his voice now. ‘Fuck, for all we know it was someone like them who set off this whole bloody disaster.’ He realised that he was close to shouting and looked at the door. The house was still, but he lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I was flattered to be chosen. Our handlers made us feel special. We were in the know. Of course we didn’t know the half of it. They targeted us the same way they taught us to target the people we were surveilling.’

The shell of aggression Jeb had worn in jail was fractured. For the first time since Magnus had known him he looked sorry for himself.

‘We were encouraged to identify vulnerable people in the movement. Cherry fitted the profile. She was a single mum struggling to make ends meet. Her passion for animals had tipped into radicalism and she’d joined a group who thought people involved in animal testing were akin to the Nazis. She was also gorgeous: big eyes, lots of red hair, petite. She looked like a Disney princess, but there was a bit of steel in Cherry. I liked that from the start. She was also unstable. I spotted that at the start too, but I thought I could handle it.’ Jeb took another sip of his drink. ‘I was arrogant enough to think I could make it into an asset.’

Magnus said, ‘When did she find out you were a policeman?’

Jeb gave a sad half-smile. ‘When I told her. These operations don’t just last for a couple of weeks, a few months, they stretch on for years.’ He shook his head. ‘I should never have chosen a woman with a child. Cherry had episodes. She may have been schizophrenic, but she was too mistrustful of doctors and hospitals – they were Nazis too – to get a diagnosis. Her daughter was called Happy. She was one when I met her, three when I decided I couldn’t stand it any more. It was partly down to her that I came out. She was a little sweetheart. Happy by name, Happy by nature. Cherry and I were squatting in a tower block that was due for demolition. It was a dump and Cherry insisted on a flat on the fifteenth floor, even though the lifts weren’t working, because fifteen was her lucky number and she could keep a lookout on who was coming from up there. She thought people were spying on her.’ He gave a small smile. ‘What did they used to say? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you? It was squalor, but Happy didn’t mind. Who knows how she would have turned out, but she was the most even-natured child I ever met.’

Jeb had made no effort to check up on Cherry and Happy after the escape from Pentonville. Magnus looked into the blackness beyond the window and thought how strange it was that he could still feel saddened by the deaths of two people he had never met.

‘You said it was partly Happy that made you come clean. What were the other reasons?’

Jeb took another sip of his drink. He rubbed his cast gently with his fingertips as if to soothe the itching flesh beneath it.

‘No one ever gave a direct order, but I began to realise that our handlers wanted us to do more than surveillance. The group I was with were disorganised. They were full of big talk, but they lacked leadership. I’m not saying they weren’t committed or that they would never have done any harm. I learned the truth of that to my cost. What I mean is that they hadn’t done any real damage yet. There was a power gap and one likely lad in line to fill it, a guy called Andy Cruikshank. He was a nasty piece of work. Cherry genuinely cared about animals, Andy just wanted a cause. It wouldn’t have mattered what it was, home rule, nuclear disarmament, anti-capitalism: Andy would have found a way to turn the fight violent. As far as I was concerned he was our man. Remove Andy and all you had was a bunch of hippies dicking around, but my instructions were to cultivate him, become his right-hand man, see how far he would go. That included making suggestions for possible moves if his imagination failed him.’

‘They were turning you into an agent provocateur?’

Jeb nodded. ‘Spot on. I tried to kid myself, but eventually I decided that the only way out was to tell Cherry the truth. I think I was genuinely in love with her by then. I certainly loved Happy. I wanted to keep them so badly that I convinced myself that everything would be okay if I could just find the courage to tell Cherry everything.’ Unshed tears gleamed in Jeb’s eyes. ‘I had it all worked out. I’d get a dishonourable discharge and sell my flat. I’d bought at a good time and once I’d paid off what I owed on the mortgage there would have been enough left over for a good deposit on somewhere in Wales. I’d taken Cherry and Happy camping there once and they’d loved it. We could have had our own animals, nothing big, a few chickens, a dog, maybe a goat or two, Cherry would have been in her element. And maybe there would have been enough space for her to get properly well.’ Jeb wiped a hand across his eyes and lifted his drink to his mouth. ‘So I told her what I was and what I’d done and as soon as I had, I knew it was the worst mistake of my life. Worse even than getting involved with undercover, because at least that had introduced me to her and Happy.

‘She started screaming before I was even finished. It was like a mask had been stripped from her face. All the sweetness and softness disappeared and all the pain came out. She looked ugly, like a witch from a children’s book. It sounds pathetic, Cherry was a small woman, a fraction of my size, but I was frightened. Then she stopped yelling and told me what she thought of me and my kind in a whisper that seemed to drive itself into my brain. It was like she was delivering a curse.

‘I know I shouted, because other people told me I did. I wanted to explain why I’d done it. I know I told her that I loved her. But she wouldn’t listen. Then she started shouting again, more than shouting, screaming. I’d waited until Happy was in bed, but she woke up and came through to find out what was going on. She wasn’t used to people arguing and she was frightened. I went to comfort her, but Cherry was screaming so loudly at me to leave that I was afraid that, allergic as our building was to authority, someone might call the police. That was the last thing I needed.

‘I went into the bedroom and started to pack my things, though why I would want to take any of that crap is beyond me. I should have walked out as soon as she shouted at me to go, then someone might have seen me. I would have had an alibi.

‘Somebody started banging on the door to the flat. Cherry was still shouting at me to leave and screaming that I would never see her or Happy again. I should have ignored whoever was at the door, but I think I wanted someone else to shout at. I opened it and there was Andy Cruikshank. He had a squat a few floors below us. Cherry must have phoned him on her mobile when I went into the bedroom. He should have been the last person I wanted to see, but I was delighted. I punched him in the face. Then I heard Happy screaming. She had been crying before, but this was a different kind of scream, a shout of real terror. It was me she was calling for.’

Jeb’s voice shifted. His eyes gleamed sad and distant in the candlelight.

‘I ran through to the sitting room. Cherry was standing on a chair on the balcony. I yelled for her to stop, but she didn’t look round, just took a step up on to the safety barrier and pushed herself into the air with Happy in her arms. She wasn’t my child, but I loved her. I saw her face looking over Cherry’s shoulder an instant before she jumped. Happy knew what was about to happen and she was terrified. If I had been quicker I could have saved her. I knew Cherry was desperate and hurting, but I stopped to hit Andy Cruikshank. That was all the time it took to kill her.’

The tears were running down Jeb’s face now. He lifted a hand and wiped them away.

Magnus kept his voice soft. ‘It’s tragic, but I don’t see how Cherry’s suicide would result in your going to jail. She killed herself and Happy, not you.’

‘Cruikshank told the police that I had pushed them both over the balcony. Cherry had told him I was a police spy. He blamed me for her death and he wanted to see me damned. The few people in the building who would speak to the police said they’d heard a man shouting and Cherry screaming that he would never see his child again. Someone even claimed to have seen me do it. It didn’t matter that he was a junkie who had seen a spaceship land on the local play park the week before, he was treated as a credible witness. As for my bosses, as far as they were concerned I was on my own. They maintained they had already decided I was going rogue and were about to pull me. They pretended to think I’d killed Cherry and Happy too. The best they would offer me was a guarantee of vulnerable prisoner status in return for not revealing details of our operation. If I spoke out they would throw me into the general population. I didn’t care much about what happened to me by then, but being a policeman in prison who had spied on his girlfriend and then killed her and her child? I knew enough to know I wouldn’t survive that.’ He looked at the floor. ‘I was a coward.’

Magnus said, ‘What about Cherry’s medical records? Didn’t they show she might be suicidal?’

Jeb’s eyes met his. ‘I already told you. She wouldn’t go to the doctor. Even I didn’t realise how far gone she was. If I had I would never have told her the truth.’ Jeb stared at the ceiling. ‘Andy Cruikshank was a star witness. All that fire and hatred made him seem righteous. I was a proven liar and he was a man of principle. Other witnesses for the Crown were a ramshackle lot. Junkies, hippies, the usual losers who end up in these squats, but Andy was good. He wore a suit and tie to court and he repeated his version of what had happened over and bloody over, until even I almost believed it.’