The Convenience of Lies (24 page)

Thirty-Nine

Benwick was still method-acting his role as an operational DCI with Special Branch when he gave Charlie his orders after toast and coffee early next day.

‘Don’t
be moving your bowels at noon. That’s when we’ll be coming to your office.’

‘You
can rely on me, but what happens after that?

‘We’ll
still have work for you,’ Benwick said. ‘Now drop us in town and go to the docks like this is a normal, boring day.’

They
watched Charlie drive off then found a café. Benwick wore a donkey jacket over his suit and gave McCall enough money to buy himself a complete new outfit.

‘Make
yourself look like a detective sergeant, get a decent haircut then dump your old clothes in a charity shop.’

‘What
will you be doing?’

‘I’ve
got things to see to and phone calls to make so I’ll meet you outside the Maritime Museum in three hours, no later.’

*

They walked to the King George Dock in a chill wind coming off the sea. McCall sensed the imminent end of whatever Benwick had been planning for weeks, maybe months.

McCall
no longer had the benefit of time. He couldn’t be anything less than direct, to provoke a reaction and maybe find out how the illusionist was doing his tricks.

‘What’s
all that fanny about the spooks and Charlie’s envelope yesterday?’

‘I
need him out of the way tonight in case anyone starts asking questions and he comes over all talkative.’

‘Do
you con everyone like you’ve conned Charlie?’

‘What
you’re really asking is if I’ve I conned you.’

‘Possibly,
but libel lawyers will tell you it’s unwise to ever think you know the true motivation of anyone.’

‘I
agree. I’m always intrigued by people’s reasoning.’

‘So
what’s yours for throwing away your career and maybe even your liberty?’

‘It’s
inevitable that we takes sides in this world, McCall, reach our own conclusions about what’s right and what’s wrong and if we’ve a chance to influence the course of events, then some of us take it.’

‘Whatever
the dangers and even if it means lying to people?’

‘Factors
you must have considered when carrying out all those missions for Vickers.’

‘Deceit
is sometimes required for a greater good.’

‘Ah,
so there was a higher purpose in what you did for Queen and country?’

‘Patriotism
always sounds like a scoundrel’s defence but for all its faults, there are aspects of life in the old place which are still worth defending.’

‘That’s
the gospel according to Saint Roly,’ Benwick said. ‘But the same can be said of some newer countries, surely?’

‘To
explain that, you’ll need to spell out what events you’re trying to influence.’

He
didn’t reply at once. Huge container lorries pounded by and seagulls called and cried in the moist air. Yet McCall could almost hear Benwick’s actuarial brain calculating risk and probability.

‘Bearing
in mind what we’re about to do, you’ve a right to know,’ he said. ‘But wait till we’re safe out of here. Then, follow my lead and let me do the spieling.’

Beyond
the dock gates, soldiers patrolled in pairs, scanning the faces of all who passed, assault rifles cradled and ready.

Benwick
got back in character and McCall’s mouth went a little dryer.

*

Charlie was in his office as instructed, looking even more inflated now he’d gained entry to the magic circle. He brought them weak tea in plastic beakers from a machine in the corridor outside and was anxious to give his sit-rep.

‘Nothing
obviously suspicious so far,’ he said. ‘The loading of the Arta is more or less complete and everything seems set for her to leave tomorrow morning as scheduled.’

‘Good,
now I’d like you to take us aboard,’ Benwick said. ‘I want to see the captain.’

‘Right,
can do. Who shall I say you are?’

‘Special
Branch, of course. We’ve had him checked via London and he’s definitely not the Provo’s snout.’

The
MV Arta was a five-thousand tonne general cargo vessel registered in Zagreb and chartered by the Jordanian National Line for this massive arms run.

Its
two deck cranes loomed above a black and red hull and the long rake of freight wagons on the quay which had transported so lethal a load across England.

Charlie
led Benwick and McCall up to the bridge and introduced them to the captain. He was a prematurely grey, leathery-faced Croat who’d not shaved for days. His English was limited so he mistakenly thought his paperwork was being inspected again. Benwick didn’t disabuse him.

He
shuffled through a stack of end-user certificates confirming all the munitions were bound for Jordan. Charlie wanted to stay around but Benwick reminded him of the need to keep vigilant - from his office, not the ship.

Benwick
turned to the captain with a knowing smile and opened his briefcase. From where he stood, McCall glimpsed an unopened bottle of Scotch and a blue plastic thermos flask. The reason for one was readily understood - and Benwick took it out. The captain found three glasses and the first of many fraternal toasts were made.

McCall
wondered what Benwick’s next move would be. He soon gestured at his guts with a look of constipated pain. The captain understood and Benwick went below - with his briefcase.

McCall
didn’t need telling what he now had to do. He refilled his host’s glass and began a diverting conversation about Croatia’s suffering in the endless bloody history of the Balkans.

*

It took Benwick several moments to adjust to the gloom below deck. All was quiet save for a generator keeping essential services going. The engine noise would be deafening down there when they set sail next day.

He
found the loo and locked himself in a nauseous metal box stinking of diesel, piss and shit. Breathing in wasn’t pleasant. He gripped a small torch between his teeth, opened his brief case then took out the thermos. With the top unscrewed, he began to set the timing mechanism inside.

As
he did, a crewman speaking Serbo Croat thumped the cubicle door. He was most likely demanding to know how long he’d have to wait. Benwick answered in Russian and said he needed another minute. The man left.

Benwick
screwed the cap back onto the flask then flushed the loo. He checked that no other seamen were on the walkway outside. Then he made for a door leading through the bulkhead to the hold on the other side.

The
weatherproof steel hatches above were already clamped in place and it was dark.

But
in the torchlight, he could see scores of wooden pallets containing bombs, missiles, explosives, stacked at least fifteen feet high.

Benwick
reached into a tight space between the crates and the ship’s curved sides. He placed the thermos in one packed with anti-tank missiles. Each contained highly inflammable rocket propellant. Within the next twenty-four hours, just how inflammable would become exceedingly apparent.

He
mounted the metal steps back up to the bridge. He’d been away barely four minutes. The hooch was making the captain less morose and he wanted them to stay to eat with him. Benwick apologised and said they were already late but would have one last drink to toast the enduring friendship between their two nations.

*

McCall and Benwick hurried across the greasy steel rails where the emptied freight wagons waited to be shunted away. They headed towards the dock gates. It was drizzling steadily, enough to drain the colour out of everywhere and everything. All seemed grey - the sea, the sky and the drab brick buildings around the quay.

Through
it strode Benwick, aka DCI Richfield of Special Branch, his face energised with that saboteur’s smile again. But for what reason? Nothing McCall witnessed him doing on the ship warranted any such apparent satisfaction. The weaponry’s end-user certificates couldn’t have thrown up anything new. Whatever action Benwick took must have been in the few minutes he was away at the loo.

Of
more immediate concern to McCall was where they were going now and what would happen next. The initial buzz of covering whatever this story was from the inside was giving way to nagging worry. He was starting to feel strung along, used for reasons as unclear as the mystery Benwick kept promising to reveal but still hadn’t.

McCall’s
eye was caught by a group of four or five men emerging from the portable cabins used as offices and mess rooms by the dock’s security team. They began running towards the MV Arta. And there was Pinkie Aldridge, trying to keep up.

‘Christ,
we’ve been rumbled,’ McCall said. ‘Look who’s got to Charlie.’

Right
at the front was Roly Vickers. He stopped to dragoon two patrolling squaddies to join his advance towards the ship.

‘We
can still make it,’ Benwick said. ‘And don’t forget, Vickers has about as much legal authority here as we do.’

Without
quickening his pace, Benwick led the way onto the busy road beyond the port gates to a pub called The Sportsman. The bar was crowded with seafarers and dockworkers. Sitting in the corner was the stocky Russian they’d stayed with in Leeds and who’d driven them to the safe house in Barton.

He
looked up, saw Benwick then left his beer. Not a word was spoken. They followed him out to a nearby street where he’d parked his Volvo. He opened the tailgate and Benwick gestured to McCall to climb in and lie under the blankets as before. But something didn’t feel right this time.

‘I’m
not doing this,’ McCall said. ‘I’ve taken too much on trust. I want to know what the hell I’m involved in and where it’s all leading.’

‘You’ll
know everything soon enough. Don’t waste time, we’ve got to move.’

‘No,
I’ve had enough of being kept in the dark.’

The
Russian’s arms dropped by his sides, fingers twitching. Benwick fixed his eyes on McCall’s. He took a very deep breath and the faint outline of the Makarov became visible beneath his tightened jacket.

‘I’ve
enjoyed your company till now,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t get in the car, we’ll kill you where you stand.’

Forty

Coming
downstairs to prepare breakfast, Hester could still smell the sage she had burned to purify the cottage sitting room the night before. She’d wanted to create an atmosphere without stress or anxiety for Lexie to envision her spiritual, mental and even cellular being with greater clarity and thereby connect to nature and the cosmos. By this, she might also come to understand the healing power of positive thinking and surrender to other dimensions beyond those which are scientifically proven.

This
was Hester as shaman, ministering to Lexie in these early days of her uncertain journey towards recovery. But the move to Staithe End and life by the sea was already having benefits, not least for Ruby. This was in contrast to Garth Hall which had begun to show its darker face to hypersensitive Hester.

Its
many rooms and narrow landings had come to appear sunless and oppressive, inexplicably lacking that sense of enfolding welcome she’d previously known.

It
was as if all the benign ghosts of Garth had been overwhelmed by the inrush of those evil influences which always attended McCall’s work but now laid siege to his home.

She
still worried about his safety and hated leaving the old house locked and silent and her garden to run wild. But his absence at such a threatening time suggested a selfish lack of concern about Lexie’s well being and did him no credit.

Lexie
and Ruby had to be her primary responsibility now. They had need of her whilst McCall appeared to have need of no one.

*

By late that Saturday morning, the weather improved enough for Hester to suggest making a fire on the beach to cook the sea trout she’d bought from a fisherman’s shed on the harbour. They took overcoats and scarves and set up a coloured plastic windbreak around them. Hester and Lexie gathered driftwood from the wrack line and Ruby ran up and down from the water’s edge, carrying big pebbles to make a hearth.

‘I
don’t think we’ve seen her as content as this before,’ Lexie said.

‘We’re
giving her back her childhood, that’s why.’

‘She’s
not wetting her bed anymore and even the cat’s settled in nicely.’

‘I
know. And doesn’t Ruby seem fascinated by the sea? That’s all she’s drawing now.’

‘Which
is why I need to say something to you, Hester.’

‘What’s
that, honey?’

‘Look,
if it doesn’t work out for me, I want you to take care of Ruby… properly, I mean… legally become her guardian.’

‘Of
course, if that’s what you want but you mustn’t give in to negative thoughts.’

‘We
have to, same as we’ve got to sort out her schooling and a doctor and a dentist.’

‘Around
here, in Norfolk?’

‘Yes,
because once my place in Bristol is sold, I’ll set up a trust fund for her with some of my profit and all of Etta’s money.’

Hester
was very tempted to ask where - and if - McCall fitted into her plan. But Lexie had said all she wanted to and it was best left there. They lapsed into silence. Each recognised the improbable mother-daughter bond developing between them, nurtured by more than just the warmth of a shared bed.

Ruby
asked if she could light the fire and managed to do it with the third match. She clapped her hands and added more small branches then some pinecones and dried-out pieces of salty grey wood.

After
this, she helped Hester wrap three trout in separate sheets of silver foil with lemon juice and herbs, ready to place in the embers when the fire got hot.

Lexie
watched them contentedly, lying back on a softly rising sand dune where they’d made camp. She shielded her eyes from the late autumn sun which broke on the waves in countless crystal shards whenever the restless clouds blew apart. How normal it all seemed, how natural and timeless. She could almost forget something was wrong, someone was missing.

Far
out to sea, container ships, trawlers, yachts, cruisers, all inched their way across the watery arc of the world. Whoever would know that in the depths beneath, mammoths once roamed and men had hunted across a land long since drowned and lost to sight?

The
sun caught the twin white derricks of a cargo vessel steaming south. Lexie paid it no more attention than any of the others. Their fish were nearly ready. Ruby spooned out salad onto paper plates then filled their glasses with homemade elderflower cordial.

‘Come
on, let’s eat,’ Hester said. ‘And let us drink to those we have loved.’

*

Lexie went upstairs early that evening, exhausted by the trek to the salt marshes she insisted they made after their al fresco lunch. Ruby was already in bed with Ludo on guard by her feet. Hester sat alone before the dying fire, unable to stop going over the implications of Lexie’s offer if she lost out to her disease.

She’d
already committed herself to look after Ruby. She was genuinely fond of the child. The abuse she’d suffered so saddened and appalled Hester that the urge to protect her from any more harm was palpable. But being legally responsible for her upbringing imposed obligations she might not always be able to meet, however much she might want to.

What
if she had to return to the States? She had relations in Oregon and friends in California and beyond. How would Ruby react to even a holiday in such distant places? More immediately, Hester was just about nearer seventy than sixty. Who would care for Ruby when she no longer could?

These
were questions in search of answers. But she must hold to the still calm centre of her inner self. She pulled on a waterproof coat and walking boots then headed out under the night sky with a sleeping bag.

Being
in the littoral peace of Staithe End was getting her circadian rhythms back in balance. After the disorientating menace she’d endured in recent weeks, she needed them re-set in tune with the oscillations of the tides. Benevolent nature would do the rest then she might return to the path she was meant to travel, wherever it led.

For
now, she lay on the dunes amid the spiky tufts of marram grass and stared at the hierophany of the heavens which came and went between the ruffling clouds. At such times, she remembered what Einstein said about a spirit being manifest in the laws of the universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man.

Was
that who or what we called God? But what purpose did our feeble, eye-blink of existence serve? How could we explain our role in a harmony of parts so complex that no one had yet to fully comprehend it - and may never do so?

Not
for the first time, Hester was asking herself about matters of divinity to which she still had no adequate responses.

But
at last this spark of life lit from the dust of stars slept - slept with the sound of the sea in her ears and her old hippie mind blown yet again by the sacrality of it all.