The Convenience of Lies (25 page)

Forty-One

‘What do you believe in, McCall?’

‘Far
less than I did years ago.’

‘Why
do you think that is?’

‘How
much time have you got?’

‘Put
like that, not a lot,’ Benwick said. ‘Best leave it for another day.’

McCall
wasn’t convinced there would be one. They were drinking coffee in the cabin of a thirty-foot motor cruiser off the East Anglian coast, keeping the MV Arta in view but from distance.

When
it came to it, McCall had clambered into the silent Russian’s Volvo as ordered. From then on, he felt like their hostage - and a readily disposable one, too.

He
recalled the old Soviet proverb the less you know, the better you sleep. But McCall already had enough on Benwick to put him behind bars - not that he ever would, even if offered a deal by the police over his own criminal involvement. But Benwick wasn’t to know that.

They
sat across a table from each other. Neither was dressed for sailing. They wore the same suit and tie disguises - slept-in and crumpled now - in which they’d conned Charlie Aldridge. Only the Russian, in a roll-neck sweater and thick navy jacket, looked like a seafarer and held their course at the wheel.

Whatever
might yet play out in the unfolding drama of Benwick’s secret life, McCall blamed himself for getting too close. He’d always taken risks on stories but based on facts he could establish, people he could judge.

This
time, he’d been cut off by the tide of his own personal connection to Ruby. He should have quit long before. He’d enough exclusive material and pictures then for a colour supplement spread about the kidnapping and her amazing artistic talents. But his curiosity won out. And everyone knew what that did for the cat.

After
McCall and Benwick hid in the back of the Volvo, the Russian had driven them the fifteen miles or so up the coast to Bridlington and the motor cruiser he’d hired. All three slept aboard on Friday night, anchored out in the bay. Escape wasn’t an option. They set sail next day to arrive astern of the Arta just after she left Hull to begin her long voyage to Aqaba.

A
North Sea fog took a while to clear as both vessels progressed by the wolds of Lincolnshire then the landmark stump of Boston’s parish church, towering above the pan-flat fields. Glossy grey seals lay like river-rolled stones on the mud banks of The Wash and abov them, deckled clouds of wading birds yawed between their marshy feeding grounds.

Then
came the coast of north Norfolk. And somewhere amid its dunes and misty pine woods would be Staithe End - McCall’s own little corner of Arcadia where he had adored the woman who would never truly be his.

This
much he’d always known in his heart and in his head. Here was what the shrink in Oxford would’ve called cognitive dissonance had McCall stayed long enough to have his ills given names.

For
now, he stared back through time, back into all he held in amber for when his days lengthened into night. And he saw again how once she had been - that quizzical turn of her head, a glance half hidden behind wheaten hair, those eyes… conspiring, promising, treacherous.

But
the one who willed him such memories, the one he lay with all those years ago, was no more. Life and circumstance take from us all. What he loved was but a ghost from an irretrievable past. We cannot return, only ever drift further away.

*

‘We’ll be parting company, soon,’ Benwick said. ‘I know you’ve got a lot of questions and I’ll be straight with you where I can but don’t expect answers to everything. OK?’

McCall
held Benwick’s unsmiling gaze, unsure if he’d just been offered the equivalent of a condemned man’s last meal. The sea looked very cold, very deep.

‘I
hardly know where to begin. Each day is crazier than the last with you.’

‘Because
we live in times of unprecedented corruption and intrigue, McCall. Even wicked old Harry Lime would find it hard to believe so we’ve no choice but to fight dirty and fight hard.’

‘Who’s
“we”?’

‘No
comment.’

‘OK,
tell me what you were doing inside the weapons factory.’

‘Trying
to plant an explosive device in one of the underground arms dumps.’

‘There’s
honest, if nothing else,’ McCall said. ‘Why were you doing that?’

‘Because
they hadn’t taken notice of any of the warnings they’d been given.’

‘What
were you warning them about and why?’

‘The
warnings were given to those who develop or sell missiles and equipment to Saddam Hussein, the maniac who’s building up a chemical and nuclear capability to threaten the whole Middle East.’

‘But
the Arta’s cargo is not for Iraq, it’s for Jordan… a western ally.’

‘The
end user paperwork is bullshit. The arms are for Saddam and the British government knows that Jordan is Iraq’s back door because that’s how Saddam gets hold of all his weaponry, whatever the international bans against him.’

‘And
what did our government do about it?’

‘The
answer is heading south at about ten knots,’ Benwick said.

‘But
it’s carrying no nuclear weapons, surely?’

‘Not
as such but Saddam’s slowly putting the means together to make and deliver them. This piece of kit from here, that piece of kit from there, labelled yarn or agricultural implements by the complicit governments and the arms dealers whose only god is profit.’

‘So
the British are by-passing the sanctions on Iraq?’

‘Wise
up, McCall. Billions are being made so there isn’t a man or a politician alive who’s beyond bribing or who’s unwilling to turn a blind eye for a decent kick-back.’

Benwick
said Saddam spent thirty five billion dollars on weaponry in the 1980s. The munitions on the Arta alone were worth almost five hundred million.

‘If
the Brits don’t supply Saddam just because the West suddenly doesn’t like him anymore, you can bet your life that others will so we just do it through quieter channels.’

‘Let’s
go back a bit. What happened to the woman you were with at the factory?’

McCall
saw from the hard look in Benwick’s eyes that he wasn’t supposed to know the accomplice was female. Maybe because he did, the reply was blunt and factual.

‘She
was hit by a shunting engine on the site and killed then her body was dumped by a main line near the factory to make it look like a suicide or an accident.’

‘Who
was she?’

‘No
comment.’

‘Who
covered up her death?’

‘The
same team which picked up Malky Hoare pretending to be spooks and who’ve followed us right across the country and will kill me if they get half a chance.’

‘Yes,
but who are they?’

Benwick
stood up as if exasperated at so dumb a question. He went through to the Russian and cadged a cigarette. McCall didn’t know he smoked. When he came back, he kept looking at his watch. There was a nervous intensity about him which he’d not shown before.

‘Let
me mark your card very simply,’ Benwick said. ‘The British economy has been ramped up by huge overt and covert weapons deals under Margaret Thatcher. Behind her are the same money men, arms dealers, spies and business interests who brought her to power and who drive her foreign policy in line with America’s but telling the truth about this situation is a luxury our politicians can’t afford so they surround it in double speak and weasel words. If that fails, their lawyers deem it not in the public interest allowing them all to wash their hands in the blood of others.’

McCall
thought it a speech worthy of one of Hester’s hippie rants against the military industrial complex.

‘OK,
I hear all that,’ he said. ‘But who are the men who want to kill you?’

‘Ex-special
services, ex-spooks, hired hands doing the deniable dirty work for the suits in offices who profit from the deaths of thousands of people in places where they’ve never been and wouldn’t ever dare to go.’

‘What
else have you done to make them grumpy enough to want you dead?’

‘No
comment.’

‘Look,
you’re not some damn peacenik on a one-man crusade, you’re a cop - ’

‘
- was a cop.’

‘OK,
but there’s obviously an organisation with resources behind you, so who is it, who are you doing all this for?’

‘You’ve
asked me this already and the answer’s still no comment.’

‘As
you wish but we’re not going to get very far at this rate,’ McCall said. ‘Let’s try it another way. What’s all this got to do with the abduction of little Ruby?’

Benwick
checked that the Arta was still visible then threw the stub of his cigarette into the sea. An easterly wind was taking the tops off the swelling waves. There could be rain soon. McCall understood his dilemma. The kidnap of Ruby was only one conspiracy in a cellar full of others. He couldn’t shine light on one without McCall inevitably seeing the rest.

‘The
key to most of it is Inglis,’ he said.

‘Now
there’s a surprise.’

‘He’s
always been of interest to MI5. They talent-spotted him at Oxford and have kept a close eye on him every since.’

‘But
why?’

‘Because
he was a pony who could win the race, McCall. Politics is about backing winners and if your winner has a weakness, that’s to be exploited.’

‘And
Guy Inglis’s weakness was sexually abusing children?’

‘Exactly.’

‘That’s utterly wicked.’

‘Maybe
but great men aren’t necessarily good men. Just you wait, soon after Inglis makes his triumphant entry into Downing Street, some urbane gent will take him aside and get out a few pictures from Clapham, just so he remembers what the real party line is.’

‘And
what’s that?’

‘Doing
what the Yanks tell us and cutting any crap about disarmament or scaling back selling weapons to regimes we’re not supposed to do business with.’

‘And
Gillespie?’

‘The
spooks blackmail him on the same kiddie-fiddling rap as Inglis but at arm’s length, through Roly Vickers,’ Benwick said. ‘They’re happy for Gillespie to think he’s serving up little girls and boys for Inglis’s photographic sessions to screw favours for his union.’

‘And
if anything goes wrong, it’s a union conspiracy, not MI5’s?’

‘Neat,
isn’t it?’

‘So
why did you move against Gillespie and rescue Ruby when you did?’

‘Because
we’d got a bead on the Arta’s cargo and I was assigned to deal with it. But I wasn’t leaving Ruby in danger after I knew I’d have to disappear.’

Before
Benwick could be asked any of the obvious questions his last statement provoked, the Russian shouted for him. Something was coming in over the radio. Benwick scanned the Arta with binoculars and saw a thin curl of smoke rising from where the bridge met the deck.

Within
minutes, it became a billowing black cloud. Then a quick series of explosions ripped from the bridge to the bow in a rolling firestorm, vivid orange and crimson, till the ship looked like it was being hit by volley after volley of missiles.

McCall
grabbed Benwick’s arm and demanded to know what he’d hidden on the Arta.

‘Thermate,
the stuff they put in incendiary grenades. Does a decent job, doesn’t it?’

‘What
about the poor bloody crew? Those guys are gonna die.’

‘They’ll
get off but even if they don’t, do the maths, McCall. Six or seven dead against the thousands their cargo would’ve killed.’

‘Who
the hell are you to play God with anyone’s life?’

‘Even
Jesus Christ would agree the world’s a bit safer now that lot’s going to the bottom.’

‘And
that’s supposed to make me feel better about you duping me, is it?’

‘I
told you, they always get warnings to change their ways.’

‘Like
that Canadian scientist did?’

‘Especially
him. He was given two choices and he made the wrong one.’

‘And
what choices did the Arta’s crew have?’

‘Listen,
get it into your head, Saddam’s end game is mass murder and another fucking holocaust with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons. Do you understand?’