The Convenience of Lies (23 page)

He
asked Benwick what led to his rescue of Ruby.

‘I
kept getting the gypsy’s warning from upstairs at Scotland Yard. You’re treading on toes, back off. It was Operation Kid Glove all over again so I guess I snapped.’

He
put a tracking device in Gillespie’s car, followed him to a house in Clapham in south London then kicked the door in.

‘Ruby
was locked in a bedroom, windows boarded over. I carried her out, shouting and screaming and we drove away. Everyone heard about it - my bosses, the spooks, Gillespie, Inglis. They all knew I’d not be going quietly, not after this.’

‘I
still don’t understand,’ McCall said. ‘Why risk your entire career on this one point of principle? You could’ve leaked the cover-up to the newspapers or an MP.’

‘Sorry,
I don’t have much faith in either and if I left Ruby where she was, she’d not get out of there alive.’

‘You’re
not saying they’d kill her, surely to God?’

‘She
knew their faces so her abusers had everything to lose,’ Benwick said. ‘I’d already picked up a rumour of one kid being disappeared forever and he wasn’t the first, either.’

‘Are
you serious… this is what would’ve happened to Ruby?’

‘Just
imagine what was at stake, the enormity of what these men were gambling.’

‘But
murder - ’

‘We’re
getting deep in now, McCall. Try to fix it in your head that governments and spy agencies are no more monolithic than huge corporations. There are factions and power groups fighting for influence in the shadows, all with ambitions and agendas of their own… just like your friend, Vickers.’

‘OK,
I understand all that but who are the people who would’ve killed Ruby?’

‘The
same guys who’re following us to make damn sure their man gets in to Downing Street and his dirty little secret doesn’t get out.’

Thirty-Seven

Next morning, alone and crossing the Humber Bridge on a bus from Barton to Hull, McCall felt no clearer about Benwick’s motives, still less his long term intentions. This unease wasn’t misplaced. He’d seen Benwick turn a car into a bomb to demolish two buildings for them to escape the men tracking them. He carried a gun and Vickers linked him - maliciously or not - to the assassination of a Canadian weapons scientist working for Iraq.

He
could almost be playing out a Dirty Harry fantasy - the solitary good cop fighting bad guys in a corrupted world. But Benwick’s sensational allegation - of police conspiring to ignore the abuse of children by high-ranking paedophiles so MI5 could honey trap a rising politician - was partly implied in Malky Hoare’s notes.

But
if Benwick had established where Ruby was being held, why didn’t he call his bosses’ bluff and raid the premises with fellow officers to arrest the kidnappers? The cops and spooks wouldn’t want their dirty washing - or themselves - hung out to dry in court and would’ve backed off. But inexplicably, he chose to rescue Ruby himself. Maybe his schizophrenic life in S.O.10 had left him on the unstable side of reality.

As
if to demonstrate this, he’d then tried to blow up a high security British arms factory with a female accomplice who’d probably been killed. So now he was on the run, fearing for his life. There had to be another narrative behind the story McCall was being offered.

*

The swelling on Benwick’s sprained ankle was easing. It still gave pain if he put his full weight on it but with rest, another two days should see it right.

He
lay on his bunk in the little flat where McCall had left him, unseen by people in the street below. McCall would bring food and newspapers when he returned from Hull docks. But his priority mission was to gather the intelligence on which Benwick’s end game depended.

He
didn’t doubt McCall would come back. The hack in him was too intrigued, had too much invested not to see the affair through to the death. Benwick also detected signs of Stockholm Syndrome in him, an affinity with the ultimate aims of his captor making him all the more amenable as a result.

Besides,
McCall seemed no stranger to the moral ambiguities imposed on those who preferred the riskier fringes of life rather than the ordeals by Garden Centre or Shopping Mall which were the penalties of a settled existence.

Benwick
fixed his gaze on a small patch of damp on the ceiling, brown like a monk’s cowl, and emptied his mind of all irrelevant thoughts. This was his training taking over, the ability to endure solitary confinement or hours of interrogation, focusing on a single physical feature in the cell where they would try to break him, thinking nothing, saying nothing.

In
such a meditative, Zen-like state, a disciplined man can disappear deep into himself and out-manoeuvre his torturers in the end.

But
the sudden, insistent ringing of a mobile phone broke his concentration. It came from inside McCall’s overnight bag. Benwick hadn’t realised he’d been daft enough to bring a mobile with him. They can be tracked and its user traced. He pressed the on button but stayed silent. The caller assumed McCall had answered.

‘Listen
matey, your location is known so the jig’s nearly up. You’re up to your bloody armpits in the solids this time but I’m told the authorities might go easy provided you get out now and co-operate about your travelling companion.’

It
was Roly Vickers - the devious spook asset who’d back-scratched with McCall over the years and still had him on tap. He could yet wreck everything. Benwick thought hard but kept quiet.

‘McCall?
Are you still there? Say something - ’

Benwick
switched off the phone. He cursed McCall’s stupidity and weighed up the options. Vickers could be spinning another FUD to jack up the pressure. They would only have a general fix so weren’t yet ready to move in or set up an observation post. But Benwick couldn’t gamble on unknowns at this stage. Everything would have to be brought forward. His anger at this turn of events needed to be harnessed and channelled.

He
put on his donkey jacket and cap and left the flat, head down to avoid eye contact with passers-by. Ahead was the main road leading to the towering slash of concrete and steel that was the Humber Bridge in the morning mist.

He
waited by the slip road near the south-side roundabout, thumb out to flag a ride. A truck from Leicester slowed down. Benwick opened the passenger door, deliberately asking the driver for a lift to Manchester.

‘Sorry,
mate. Wrong direction, I’m heading home.’

The
lorry moved off with McCall’s mobile stuffed behind the seating. Its electronic scent would now lead Roly’s friends by the nose to the east midlands, if only for a day or so. It would buy Benwick a few more hours in which to regroup and change tack.

*

The King George Dock in Hull was a clamorous, chaotic spread of warehouses, fuel dumps and shipping offices beneath a low, dishwater sky liable to turn nasty. All was noise - the thunk and clank of cars driving up the ramps of ferries, grating containers being craned onto lorries, seagulls shrieking, men shouting and all this against the pulsing throb of diesel engines of ships coming, ships going.

McCall
knew Benwick’s wish list but he’d a public phone box to find first. Benwick had insisted he carry nothing to help the authorities identify him if he ran into trouble.

‘If
they find you, they find me,’ he said. ‘That’s not a chance I can take.’

So
McCall had no wallet, driver’s licence, credit cards - and no mobile. He dialled a number from a kiosk. A man answered and McCall asked if Ronnie was there.

‘No,
he’s out playing. His Mum’s just gone to the shop. Who wants him?’

‘Just
a friend. We met at the golf club when we were watching the trains leaving the gunpowder factory.’

‘That
sounds about right. Loves the railways, does Ronnie.’

‘Are
you his Dad?’

‘No,
the next-door neighbour. I’m just unblocking their sink.’

‘Not
a nice job.’

‘No,
but it gives me something to do till I can get back to work.’

‘What
do you do?’

‘I’m
a loco driver but they say I’m suffering from stress.’

‘You
don’t sound it.’

‘I’m
not but they say I hit a woman on the track a few nights ago so I must be.’

‘Well,
you’d know if you had, wouldn’t you?’

‘That’s
right and no mistake and I know I didn’t.’

‘Where
was this supposed to have happened?’

‘Five
or six miles out from the gunpowder factory.’

‘That
wasn’t the train going to Hull that young Ronnie and I watched, was it?’

‘Probably
was but I’ve been ordered to say nothing about anything so sorry, but you’ll have to call again to talk to the lad.’

Some
days, a hack can dig in the dark for no reward. Other times, he gets lucky. The weapons factory, a train guarded by soldiers, a body on the line - these had to be part of Benwick’s bigger picture.

The
figure young Ronnie saw struck by the shunter might have looked male but wasn’t. It could only have been Benwick’s accomplice, Emily Jane Boland - the phoney pensioner whose theatrical disguises McCall took from the golf club hotel.

If
he was right, it was her body that’d been taken from the factory complex and placed near the main line to fake an accident or a suicide. Even as a corpse, the mysterious lady had been required to continue acting. But who had the motive, capability and nerve to cover up what happened on that, the oddest of nights?

*

It was looking up and suddenly being confronted by troops pointing automatic rifles at him which spun McCall back to Africa. If only for that instant, he wasn’t on a wet quayside any more but in that desolate kraal again, blood on his shoes and ice in his heart.

High
in the fierce blue sky, the blackest of birds circled the disarrayed limbs and flops of purple-blue offal far below. The silence, the emptiness, the desperate futility of it all swept through him like a gale of despair - and then of fear.

The
crowbar men might return before his contact, the priest. McCall could yet lie amid those they’d already dealt with, bellies unzipped and darkening the sand.

The
mind’s instinctive defence to such threat took over. It’s called de-realisation - the ears hear nothing, the eyes see nothing and the body shuts down to try and save itself. Without knowing how, McCall found himself cowering in the cesspit, his seat in the stalls when the massacre began. But that was then, this was now.

The
two soldiers who had him against a wall were Brits, rain running down their unsmiling faces and dripping from the muzzles of their guns.

‘Who
the fuck are you and what are you doing here?’

Thirty-Eight

McCall reached into his plastic carrier bag and took out a can of strong lager from a supermarket pack of six.

‘Want
a drink?’

‘Don’t
be funny, shit face. What’s your name?’

He
fumbled with the ring pull then took a slow swig to give himself time to think and retrieve his wits from Africa. His fake driving licence was in his mind’s eye and he was straining to remember the name of who he was supposed to be.

‘Are
you going to tell us or do we have to insert that can somewhere painful to help you remember?’

‘No,
sorry… Brian Sydenham.’

‘Good,
got any ID?’

‘All
my stuff was stolen the other night.’

‘Can’t
trust anyone these days. So what’s your business on the docks?’

‘I
like watching the boats.’

‘And
getting pissed, by the state of you.’

McCall
took another long drink and let some of it dribble down his unshaven chin and onto his donkey jacket. The second soldier joined in.

‘Nah,
he doesn’t drink much. Looks like he spills most of it.’

His
opposite put his face closer to McCall’s. He’d had a curry the previous night.

‘We’ve
been eye-balling you mooching around so I’ll ask you again, what you up to?’

‘I
said, I like the boats.’

‘You’re
pushing your luck, chum. Where do you live?’

McCall
knew this question was next and dreaded it. For the life of him, he couldn’t summon up the address on his moody licence.

‘I’m
just bumming around… don’t have a place at the moment.’

‘OK,
you’re coming with us while we check you out.’

‘I
can’t, I’ve got to be at the Sally Army hostel soon.’

‘Not
till we’ve given your story a spin then we’ll take it from there.’

‘But
I’ve done nothing wrong. You can’t arrest me.’

‘You’d
be fucking surprised what we can do, Brian. Now, get your arse in gear. A bit of a march might sober you up.’

*

McCall swore at himself for not going for the bus back to Barton when he’d the chance an hour before. He had seen everything he needed to by then - all except the soldiers spying on him. But he’d been too intrigued to leave. Benwick’s conspiracy was starting to emerge through the mist and drizzle.

Once
near the docks, McCall had found the café where dockers took breaks. He’d sat reading a paper and eavesdropping on their chat about the highly unusual consignment being loaded from the King George Dock. Then he got talking to a widower walking a dog on the jetty where his son was a crane driver.

This
was how he knew the train which left the weapons factory and supposedly hit and killed Benwick’s accomplice, had to be the one on the quayside - forty-two wagons tight packed with armour-piercing shells, anti-tank missiles, bombs, high explosives. The port authority claimed they carried only a general cargo of ironmongery like nuts, bolts and drainage pipes.

So
why the need for warning notices all around? Danger. Explosives. No smoking, lighters, matches or boots with metal heels or tips. The truth was, one stray spark and they’d run out of body bags.

McCall
got close enough to see crates labelled G.H.Q. Jordan Armed Forces, Planning and Organisation, Amman and others marked UK Military Explosives.

According
to what McCall overheard, five hundred tonnes of military hardware was being lowered into the MV Arta, a cargo ship newly arrived from Antwerp. It was due to leave for the Jordanian port of Aqaba on the Red Sea that coming Saturday. Benwick must have known about this shipment to a British ally in the Middle East.

Yet
he’d still tasked McCall to find out its sailing schedule, the name of the vessel’s agents - and to assess the general level of security. Through his own carelessness, he would now experience that at first hand.

*

‘As I see it, Brian, you either tell me why you’ve been snooping about the docks or we charge you under the Official Secrets Act.’

McCall
restrained the urge to corpse before the bacon-faced jobsworth across the desk. The plastic ID badge pinned to his lapel said he was Charles Aldridge, deputy security manager. The Dockers in the café called him Pinky. McCall saw how well it suited the officious little drone trying to put the frighteners on him.

‘I
like looking at the boats.’

‘Do
you know what I think, Brian?’

McCall
shrugged, knowing the range of Pinky’s intellectual skills would take a finely calibrated instrument to measure.

‘You’re
a PIRA man, that’s what… sent to case the docks for an attack.’

First
a spy, now a terrorist. It promised to be a hell of a court case. McCall tipped back his can of lager and barely suppressed a belch.

‘But
you’ve been expected. That’s why we’ve got soldiers guarding the train.’

Then
the door swung open. The man who strode in unannounced as if this were his office not Pinky’s, was Larry Benwick. He wore a well-cut city suit, white shirt, red tie bearing a crested Parachute Regiment motif and carried a metallic brief case.

‘You
must be Charlie Aldridge,’ he said. ‘I’m Ed Richfield, Special Branch.’

Charlie
immediately stood up in deference to authority. McCall tried to hide his amazement - and immense relief - by swigging the remains of his lager. Benwick took a warrant card from his wallet so Charlie could see he was dealing with a detective chief inspector from London. They shook hands and Benwick’s jacket fell open as if by chance. And there was his Makarov, pouched in a black shoulder holster.

‘Hope
my sergeant’s not been causing you too much trouble.’

Benwick
and McCall exchange grins. Charlie’s face became even more pink, like the slapped arse he knew he’d made of himself.

‘OK,
we’ve not much time, Charlie. I’ve got to brief you but not here, some place where we’re not being clocked.’

‘Should
I go and get my boss?’

‘No,
on no account do that. My instructions are to talk only to you.’

Charlie
must have thought about asking why but rolled with the compliment. It would not be the last.

‘The
people above me rate you, Charlie… the funny people, do you understand?’

‘You
mean - ’

‘Yes,
them. A job’s going down here very soon and only guys we can trust can be brought into the loop. Are you with me, Charlie?’

‘Yes,
of course.’

A
good con man intuits his mark’s most unreachable desire then suckers them into a scheme by revealing a way it can be achieved. But as night follows day, there will be strings - and barbed wire - attached.

Charlie
hadn’t a moment’s doubt SB was recruiting him. And the more McCall witnessed Benwick’s acting, the greater his doubts over who really was on stage - Larry Benwick of S.O.10, Ed Richfield of Special Branch or even some as yet unknown third party.

‘I
take it you’ve got your car here, Charlie?’

‘Out
at the back, yes.’

‘Good,
and I’m told you still live alone.’

‘Since
my wife cleared off.’

‘Join
the club. OK, let’s make our way to your billet then we’ll talk there.’

*

Beneath Charlie’s desire to please was the discontent of a man who believed himself undervalued, never given the chance to shine to his full potential. It hadn’t been him who’d brought the undercover sergeant in for questioning. Those squaddies did that. He only acted on their information.

But
now, vindication. Two Special Branch officers - the arms and legs of MI5 - were drinking Scotch in his maisonette and discussing a covert operation for which he’d been hand-picked to play a role. Equally satisfying to Charlie was being right about the threat from the Provisional IRA.

‘The
Provos have a man working somewhere on the docks,’ Benwick said. ‘Trouble is, we don’t know if he’s a white collar asset or a docker so that’s why you mustn’t say a word about us or what you hear tonight to another living soul, whatever job they do around here. You understand, don’t you?’

‘Totally,
absolutely, on my life.’

‘We’d
rather it didn’t to come to that, Charlie.’

Charlie
cleared his throat and asked what was wanted of him.

‘Keep
an especially close watch on everybody and everything tomorrow. If we hit any trouble, we’ll need your contacts and local knowledge.’

‘What’s
the job we’re on?’

‘Right,
you obviously know what’s being unloaded from that train on the dock.’

‘Indeed,
all very secret is that so I had to be told.’

‘OK,
it’s not certain yet but we think the Provos are working on something nasty before the ship sails so we’ll have a little surprise waiting for them if they do.’

‘So
the SAS are here as well, then?’

‘You
wouldn’t see them even if I told you where to look, Charlie.’

‘And
is that all you want me to be, eyes and ears?’

‘No,
there’s something far more important.’

Benwick
reached inside his jacket for a sealed padded envelope.

‘If
the Provos haven’t shown by four tomorrow afternoon, the raid’s being put back twenty-four hours, according to our source. In that case, I need you to get down to London before eight and go to a pub in Soho called the John Snow. It’s in Broadwick Street and I want you to give this to a guy about my age and build, dark hair who’ll be sitting at the bar doing the Evening Standard crossword. Just say the rich man wants you to have this but don’t hang about, just leave.’

‘Why,
what’s in it?’

‘On
a need-to-know basis, it’s best you don’t but a lot’s riding on it, maybe even the lives of a few good men. Can we trust you to do this for us, Charlie?’

‘I’m
keen to help but why me for this part of the job?’

‘Because
certain people will be taking a closer look at you, watching how you handle yourself under our sort of pressure. I’m not a betting man but I’d put a few quid on you being in a different job in a few weeks from now.’

Too
damn right, McCall thought. He felt a twinge of pity for the gowk - but nothing more. Then again, if Charlie didn’t know what was going on, neither did McCall.

For
the moment, Charlie fixed them up with blankets and pillows to bed down in his sitting room. Morning would soon be upon them then they’d each discover how loudly God was laughing.