The Enemy Within (30 page)

‘This will reflect very badly on your record,' Perkins said. ‘Very badly indeed.'

Then he swivelled on his heel and marched off furiously down the corridor.

They were sitting at their table in the Drum and Monkey. The waiter had just served them their drinks – a pint of bitter, a half of bitter and a double vodka – and now they were free to talk.

Yet Woodend didn't seem as willing as usual to open up, Paniatowski thought. It was almost as if he had a burden on his mind which he was not quite ready to shed.

‘I've just been on to the psychiatric ward of Whitebridge General,' she said, to fill in the silence. ‘They're keeping Richard Quinn in for observation tonight, but they think he should be fit to be discharged in the morning.'

Rutter nodded. Woodend didn't even seem to have heard her.

‘I've called Dr Shastri as well,' Paniatowski continued. ‘She's cutting up what's left of Dexter Bryant's skull, as per regulations, but she's got a sneaking suspicion that it was the bullet which killed him.'

‘I'm sorry I had to tell so many lies,' Woodend said, coming out of his semi-trance.

‘Lies?' Rutter repeated. ‘Who exactly did you lie
to
?'

‘Pretty much everybody involved, starting with the pair of you,' Woodend said guiltily. ‘I told you Bryant wouldn't have a gun, but I knew he would. I took you in there under false pretences, Monika.'

‘It wouldn't have made any difference if I'd known the truth,” Paniatowski said. ‘I'd have gone in with you, anyway.'

‘An' I lied to Bryant. But maybe that doesn't count – because he
knew
I was lyin'.'

‘What exactly did you lie to him about?' Rutter asked.

‘I told him he'd be safe from MI5 if he confessed to the murders. That wasn't true at all. They'd never have let him stand trial – or even be charged with the murders. He was too valuable to them for that.'

‘Then what was the point of––?'

‘Worse still, they'd have sacrificed somebody else in order to save Bryant for themselves.'

‘Richard Quinn?'

‘That's right. Richard would have been tried and convicted, while Bryant was quietly whisked off to an interrogation centre.'

‘You think they'd actually have done that?'

‘I'm certain they would.'

‘But I don't see what MI5 would have got out of behaving in that way,' Rutter said.

‘Don't you?' Woodend asked. ‘Then I'll explain. As I see it, an espionage ring is no more than a piece of machinery – but it's a far more complex piece of machinery than the engine in my Wolseley. It takes years to build up, an' once you've tinkered with it – once you've altered the delicate balance – it'll be more years before it starts runnin' smoothly again. Are you startin' to get the point?'

‘Not really,' Rutter confessed.

‘If Bryant had been arrested, his controller would have been reluctant to dismantle the network, but he'd have done it anyway – because he would have thought he didn't have any choice. But what if Bryant
hadn't
been arrested? What if he'd only
disappeared
? Then his controller's facin' a real dilemma.'

‘His training tells him to shut down the network as soon as possible,' Rutter said.

‘But his survival instinct tells him there may be a perfectly harmless reason for Bryant's disappearance – and that if Bryant re-emerges a few days later to find he no longer has a network left to run, it's the controller's own neck which is going to be on the block,' Paniatowski added.

‘Now you're gettin' it,' Woodend said. ‘So for the moment, the controller does nothin'. And that's exactly what the security people want! By allowin' Richard to go on trial rather than his stepfather, MI5's buyin' itself time – time to find out what Bryant knows, time to organize a swoop on his network before it vanishes into thin air.'

‘So even if you'd got a written confession out of Bryant, it wouldn't have made any difference,' Paniatowski said.

‘That's right,' Woodend agreed. ‘The paperwork would simply have disappeared. An' however much I ranted an' raved about it, the people who matter – includin' our beloved Chief Constable – would have denied that it ever existed.'

‘But once Bryant was dead, he'd no longer be of any use to the security services, so there'd be no point in them denying he was responsible for the killings?' Rutter asked.

‘Exactly. An' the moment that became true, then even a
verbal
confession would become quite valuable. Especially a verbal confession delivered by a man who knew he was on the point of death, an' so had nothin' to lose by telling the truth in front of two police witnesses.'

The implications of what Woodend had said were having a disturbing effect on Rutter. ‘In other words, the only way Richard Quinn was ever going to avoid going down for the murders was through Bryant's death,' he said.

‘That's how I saw it.'

‘And so you persuaded him – you
cajoled
him – to kill himself!' Rutter said, outraged.

‘Did I?' Woodend asked.

‘That's certainly how it looks to me.'

Woodend turned to Paniatowski. ‘Is that how
you
see it, Monika?'

‘No sir, it isn't.'

‘Then you don't really need to hear what I've got to say next, so you might as well go an' get another round of drinks.'

‘The waiter can––'

‘I'd prefer it if you did it,' Woodend said firmly.

Paniatowski nodded, stood up, and walked over to the bar.

‘Do you remember the conversation we had at this table just yesterday?' Woodend asked Rutter. ‘The conversation about you an' Monika?'

‘Yes, but what's that––?'

‘I said you shouldn't go blamin' Elizabeth Driver for your troubles. I said that if you had a gun at your head, it was your own actions which had put it there.'

‘I'm not sure it's exactly––'

‘It
is
exactly the same. I'm no god. I'm not even an amateur puppet master. I didn't tell Dexter Bryant to become a spy. I didn't create the situation in which he couldn't win – whatever he did. He put the gun to his own head – an' he was the one who decided to pull the trigger.'