The Heirs of Owain Glyndwr (35 page)

76

Ben suddenly brought his
fist crashing down on the arm of his chair.

‘You deceived her,' he almost shouted, pushing himself up violently out of the chair. ‘You betrayed her.'

‘It wasn't like that,' Finch replied quietly.

‘Oh, really? How was it then?'

Finch was silent for some time.

‘I love Arianwen,' he replied. ‘I always have, and I always will.'

Ben's emotions, personal and professional, were in turmoil. He struggled to control himself.

‘For God's sake, man. You were an undercover police officer, keeping surveillance on anyone and everyone who came into the
Tywysog
. That included Arianwen. Yet you led her on, you married her, and you fathered a child by her. But when she was arrested and tried, you were nowhere to be seen. You betrayed her completely.'

‘It wasn't like that.'

‘Well, what
was
it like?'

‘I know how it looks,' Finch replied. ‘That's why I am here now. If you will let me explain…'

‘What explanation can there possibly be?' Ben interrupted.

Barratt walked across to Ben and put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Let him speak, Ben,' he said.

Ben reluctantly held himself in check and made himself sit down again.

‘Arianwen took me completely by surprise,' Finch said. ‘I wasn't expecting her, and I wasn't ready for her. You think about a lot of things when you are planning an undercover assignment, but falling in love is not one of them. She came into the shop one afternoon, not long after I arrived in Caernarfon. And I know this is going to sound daft, but it really was love at first sight. She was in one of those Indian-style shirts with a shawl and sandals as usual, and she had that long, black hair going just the slightest bit grey around the edges, and those soft blue eyes. She looked at me, and I looked at her, and that was it. I fell in love with her, and I have loved her ever since.'

Despite his anger, Ben understood what Finch was saying all too well. He had travelled some distance down the same path himself, and he could not honestly condemn Finch for that. He thought he sensed Barratt's eyes on him. He cast around for something to say.

‘But that must have been against every rule of undercover work,' he protested. ‘Why didn't you tell someone in London and get yourself pulled out?'

Finch nodded.

‘I know. I should have. But you have to understand, Mr Schroeder, I had no concrete reason to suspect Caradog of anything when it started. I knew early on that he and Dai Bach were nationalists, of course. As I said, they made no secret of it. They recruited me to the nationalist cause, up to a point. I went on rallies with them, and I helped with political campaigns for Plaid Cymru, but that was all legal and above board. I had no idea of the lengths they were prepared to go to, and I'm not even sure when they turned that corner. It wasn't until long after Arianwen and I were married. By then, I suppose, they thought I was safe, or at least that I was hooked in, now that I was a member of the family.'

‘They were right about that,' Barratt said, ‘weren't they?'

‘Yes. There came a point when it was probably too late, I suppose. Even then, I could have said something. I came up with crazy ideas to extract myself from the situation. I even thought of spiriting Arianwen and Harri to London in the dead of night, removing all trace of my cover.'

‘But that wouldn't have worked, would it?' Ben said. ‘Not by then. You were in too deep. And you would have had to separate Arianwen from Caradog.'

‘Yes,' Finch agreed. ‘And by then, there was another reason. After Tryweryn, Welsh nationalism moved up the Special Branch agenda rather quickly. After four years or more of sending monthly reports to London which no one even read, hearing nothing back from them, suddenly I was the centre of attention. They made me send reports every week instead of every month, and there were constant questions, constant requests for more information. And, of course, once the date of the Investiture was announced in 1967, it all went mad. Actually, we knew the date before anyone else. The Queen had agreed to the date of 1 July 1969 three months before the public announcement. They kept it quiet until arrangements could be put in place.'

‘Arrangements for what?' Barratt asked.

‘For surveillance, for putting security procedures in place. Special Branch was feeling the heat from MI5 by then. Obviously, they knew they might have a serious problem. There was bound to be trouble, and those who wanted to cause trouble had a long time to plan it. MI5 wanted constant surveillance on anyone we knew of who might think about taking action.'

‘So from that point on, you had to stay in place,' Barratt observed. ‘You had no choice.'

‘I had suddenly become indispensable. By then, I was not only supplying information to London myself; I was also coordinating information from other officers. If I had left then, I would have given the game away to Caradog and Dai Bach, and we would have lost them. Not only that, once my cover was blown, word would have spread and we would have lost every suspect we had. If I had revealed myself then, they would have gone underground and stayed there.'

He looked at Ben and Barratt in turn, holding up his hands.

‘I honestly believed that they had every intention of trying to kill the Queen and the Prince of Wales, or at least do incredible damage around them. I couldn't let that happen. What was I supposed to do?'

Ben stood and walked slowly to Barratt's desk. There was a long silence.

‘But after the arrest,' he said eventually, ‘you could at least have tried to help Arianwen, couldn't you? You could have distanced her from Caradog and Dai Bach in some way. Instead, you just ran away and abandoned her to her fate. And now she will spend a very long time in prison and Harri will grow up in a foster-home. I am having some trouble understanding how that squares with your loving her.'

Barratt reached out a hand and touched Ben's arm.

‘Before you go too far down that road, Ben,' he said, ‘there is something else you need to see.'

77

Barratt picked up the
large brown envelope which had been lying on his desk, and took out a thick document, which he handed to Ben.

‘This is the other thing DC Finch brought with him,' he said. ‘It is a very long sworn affidavit, almost 60 pages, which covers the whole history of his deployment in Caernarfon. And I understand that DC Finch would be prepared to give evidence to the Court of Appeal.'

The mention of the Court of Appeal set Ben's heart beating faster.

‘That is correct, Mr Schroeder,' Finch confirmed. ‘One of the things I deal with in the affidavit is what happened on the morning of the Investiture. I had kept Special Branch informed of the plans to plant the bomb up to the minute. I had to, just in case anything happened to me.'

‘So they knew exactly where to find Arianwen to arrest her?' Ben asked.

Finch exhaled heavily.

‘That wasn't the way I planned it. My first plan was to intervene and make the arrests before the bomb could even be moved. That was the safest thing to do. But my superiors wouldn't listen. They wanted to catch them red-handed. So then my plan was to drive Dai Bach to Bangor myself; drive back to the square in Caernarfon; and make an excuse for going somewhere else before Caradog and Dai Bach were arrested in possession of the bomb. If I couldn't make an excuse, I would be arrested with them. That's the way I wanted to handle it, and it could have been done. But…'

‘But…?'

‘But at the last moment, my superiors got nervous. As soon as the protest in the square ended, they whisked me away, and told me to leave Dai Bach to his own devices. They gave me no advance warning. Change of plan. Don't argue. Just do it.'

‘But that might have meant that he would call the whole thing off, or change the plan completely,' Ben said.

‘Exactly, Mr Schroeder. That's what I kept telling them. I didn't think Caradog would just give up, but it meant that we then had to try to keep them under observation without knowing what they were up to. Why do that when I could have followed every move? With the stakes being so high, I thought it was madness. But they wouldn't listen to me.'

‘So Dai Bach was telling the truth,' Ben said. ‘He was waiting for you outside the Castle Hotel, and you didn't show up.'

‘Yes. I thought he would hire a taxi. There are always taxis around in the square. I swear to you, it never occurred to me that he would involve Arianwen. I insisted from day one that they leave her completely out of it. I made it a condition of my joining them, and I was pretty clear about it, I can tell you. It never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that Dai Bach would involve her. If it had, I would have gone home and taken the car somewhere so that she couldn't have driven it.'

‘You must have been beside yourself when she was arrested,' Barratt said.

‘That would be an understatement,' Finch replied. ‘If I had seen Dai Bach that night, I would have killed him.'

‘So, what did happen to you after you were whisked away?' Barratt asked.

‘I was instructed to make myself scarce with immediate effect – do not pass go, do not collect £200 – and to remain out of circulation until otherwise ordered. So far, I have not been otherwise ordered.'

Ben looked at him in astonishment.

‘But the prosecution told the court that you had gone on the run. There was supposed to be intelligence that you had fled to Ireland. There was even a veiled suggestion that you had been given sanctuary by the IRA.'

Finch scoffed.

‘Yes. I'd like to know what genius came up with that one. It was complete nonsense. They had a car waiting for me. I drove down to London immediately, and I have been in London ever since – keeping my head down, yes, but not in sanctuary and certainly not with the IRA. I'm amazed that anyone bought that story. How would I have had time to catch a ferry to Ireland, even from Holyhead, even if the ferries were running normally that day, which I doubt? Look, the first thing any police officer would do would be to put an alert out to all ports and airports. I would never have made it to Ireland – not that day, I assure you.'

78

‘And that's the key
to it, Ben,' Barratt said. ‘Someone decided to create the fiction that Trevor Hughes was a co-conspirator who had got away. That meant that they couldn't allow him to be arrested or put on trial. That's why they had to keep him under wraps.'

‘That's why they had to change course at the last moment,' Ben said, ‘even at the risk of endangering the public by allowing someone to move the bomb from Bangor all the way to Caernarfon. DC Finch's plan of arresting everyone before the bomb was moved was obviously far more sensible, but they couldn't do it. They couldn't let him be arrested with the others, so they couldn't have him driving the car.'

‘Exactly.'

‘They misled the court, Barratt,' Ben added quietly. ‘They deliberately misled the court.'

‘Yes,' Barratt agreed, ‘and the worst of it is, I am not sure that they could ever have allowed DC Finch to re-emerge under his real identity. If he hadn't come to us today, we might never have known.'

‘They couldn't let him come back now, certainly,' Ben said. ‘It would prove that the trial was conducted under false pretences.' He stopped abruptly, as another light came on in his mind.

‘And that means that some of the evidence… well, the invoices for the rental of the garage and the carrying case for the bomb…'

‘Fabrications,' Finch said. ‘I mean, I haven't seen them. I read about them in the papers while the trial was going on. But I definitely did not keep records like that. I did rent the garage in Bangor because I had to be in control; I had to be in a position to pull the plug at any time if I needed to. It was the only safe way to do it. But that was just a monthly agreement by word of mouth. There were no documents.'

‘Would you be prepared to give us a sample of your handwriting?' Ben asked.

‘Not a problem,' Finch replied.

‘All right,' Barratt said. ‘Let's think this through. The key question, as far as Arianwen is concerned, is the question of what, if anything, she knew. Her defence would not necessarily have succeeded, even if we could have called him to give evidence at the trial. Arianwen had the bomb in her car. You could argue that the jury would have convicted in any case.'

‘Yes,' Ben agreed. ‘But the test the Court of Appeal has to apply is: whether they can be sure that the verdict would have been the same even with his evidence; and I don't see how they can possibly be sure of that. Let's not have that discussion now. I don't want to risk contaminating his evidence.'

He turned back to DC Finch.

‘You will give evidence on Arianwen's behalf?'

‘Yes. It is the least I can do. I had always planned on coming forward if she was convicted. I hoped the jury might give her the benefit of the doubt, but now that she has been convicted, I will do anything I can.'

‘The Court is bound to criticise you for the way in which you handled the undercover operation,' Ben said. ‘You do understand that?'

‘My career as a police officer ended on the day I decided to commit myself to Arianwen,' Finch replied. ‘They would never have forgiven me for that, ever. I broke a cardinal rule of undercover work. But that is water under the bridge. It doesn't matter now. All that matters is helping Arianwen.'

‘How will we contact you?' Barratt asked.

‘I will keep in touch. I will contact you every few days,' Finch said. ‘There's a number inside that envelope in case you need it. Just don't give it to anyone else, please. I am close by in London. If you need to see me again, just ask.'

‘The Court of Appeal may want to look at the convictions of Caradog and Dai Bach too,' Ben said. ‘I will have to speak to Gareth.'

‘I will wait to hear from you when you've spoken to Gareth,' Barratt said. ‘Then I will arrange a conference with Arianwen, and we will start the ball rolling.'

‘I will make sure I see him this evening,' Ben said.