The Ultimate Truth (27 page)

‘That’s right,’ Winston said.

Evie nudged me. ‘Do you understand a single word of all this?’

I smiled. ‘Sort of . . . but it kind of hurts my head trying to think about it.’

‘Probably best not to think about it then.’

I would have liked nothing more than to stop thinking about it. I was so tired now that I could barely stay awake, let alone think about anything. But there was no way I was giving in to
exhaustion just yet. I still had unfinished business with Winston.

‘So anyway,’ he continued, ‘while we were redoubling our efforts to prove that Bashir was an al-Thu’ban operative, his MI5 handler got himself involved in an idiotic
scandal, and MI5 made the
ridiculous
decision to stop using Bashir as an informant. Fortunately it didn’t make any fundamental difference to the situation. Bashir was still a double
agent, and he was still a potential triple agent. We assumed he was told by al-Thu’ban to lie low for a while and wait for MI5 to realise their mistake and take him back.’

‘So he left London and came to Barton,’ Grandad said.

‘And we continued with our investigations. Then the CIA started poking their damn noses in, and that changed everything. They had no idea what Bashir really was, or even what he was
pretending to be. They just thought he was a terrorist, or he
might
be a terrorist. If they’d got their hands on him they would have whisked him away to some hellhole and we’d
never have seen him again. On top of that, when MI5 found out about the CIA’s interest in Bashir, that got them interested in him again.’ Winston sighed. ‘So we
had
to step
in. And we had to do it quickly.’ He gazed around the room. ‘Hence this place.’ He looked back at us. ‘Bashir knew the CIA were after him, and that if he went back to MI5
they might give him up to the Americans, so we offered to keep him safe while we arranged a new life for him – relocation, a new identity, financial security, everything.’

‘And he fell for that?’ Grandad asked.

‘He’s arrogant. He thought he was taking us for a ride. Besides, we’re very good at what we do.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘We would have preferred
not
to have made a move so soon. It was far from ideal having to hide Bashir away from the CIA and MI5, and we knew it wouldn’t take them long to find
out that he hadn’t gone to Pakistan to look after his sick grandmother.’ Winston shrugged. ‘It was the best cover story we could come up with at such short notice.’

‘Why did Bashir’s parents go along with it?’ I asked.

‘They were protecting him.’

‘Do they know he’s a terrorist?’

Winston shook his head. ‘They think he’s a hero.’

‘Why?’

‘We told them he was a key witness for the prosecution in a gang-related murder case, and that because the defendant was a violent criminal with a history of witness-intimidation, Bashir
was being kept under police protection for his own safety until the case came to trial.’

‘No wonder Mrs Kamal was so frightened,’ I muttered.

‘We had to give them
some
explanation for the sudden disappearance of their son,’ Winston said. ‘It was a difficult situation. It became even more difficult when John
Ruddy hired Delaney & Co to find out what had happened to Bashir.’ He paused for a moment, looking at Grandad. ‘But as I’m sure you know, Mr Delaney, in our line of work you
don’t dwell on the negatives, you always look to turn the situation to your advantage.’

‘You’ve got what you needed now, haven’t you?’ Grandad said without hesitation. ‘You’ve got everything that’s just happened tonight on tape.’ He
looked around the room. ‘I’m assuming the CCTV cameras in here are hidden?’

‘They’re state of the art, incredibly good quality. I was wearing a button camera as back-up. We actually tried tricking Bashir into revealing himself before, but he didn’t go
for it. This time though . . .’ Winston glanced at me and Evie. ‘Well, you and your friends did everything for us really. Once we’d let Bashir see that your attempt to rescue him
was genuine, it was relatively easy to convince him that the CIA were on to us, and that we were about to hand him over to them.’

‘You used us,’ I said wearily. ‘You
wanted
Bashir to take your gun, you let him take it on purpose. You
let
him threaten Evie with it—’

‘It wasn’t loaded. She was never in any danger.’

‘She didn’t know that, did she?’ I snapped. ‘And what about the knife?’

‘Well, yes, that was unfortunate,’ he said, without so much as a glance at Evie. ‘But it proved beyond doubt the kind of man that Bashir really is. And we have it all on
video.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s probably not enough on its own to convince MI5, but once they see everything else we have on him, it should seal the deal.’

‘Do you really think MI5 can get him to work as triple agent?’ Grandad asked.

‘There’s no guarantee of anything,’ Winston admitted. ‘But they’ve been trying to infiltrate this kind of terrorist group for years without success, so if they
can
turn Bashir, it’ll be a massive step forward.’ He looked at me. ‘Sometimes we have to make short-term sacrifices for the sake of potential long-term benefits. A life
risked today might save a thousand lives in years to come.’

‘You knew I’d come looking for Bashir tonight, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t
know
anything, Travis. I was just trying to maximise our opportunities. In an operation like this, you have to be prepared to deal with all kinds of
contingencies.’

‘Right,’ I said, looking him in the eye. ‘And what about my mum and dad? Were they just another
contingency
you had to deal with?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking confused. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘They knew you were here.’

He didn’t say anything, just carried on looking puzzled.

I said, ‘I don’t know how he did it, but Dad found out about this place. He found out you were here. He took surveillance photographs from across the road.’

‘He took photographs?’ Winston said.

‘He also knew that MI5 were interested in Bashir. That’s why he was driving down to London with Mum. They were going to see someone at MI5.’

Winston glanced at Grandad. ‘Did you know about this?’

Grandad ignored him, turning to me instead. ‘Go on, Travis.’

‘I think you knew where my parents were going that day,’ I said to Winston. ‘I think you tried to stop them. In fact, I think you
did
stop them.’

‘No,’ Winston said firmly, shaking his head. ‘We knew your parents had been hired to find Bashir, and I’m not denying that we had them checked out and were keeping half
an eye on them. But I can assure you that’s all there was to it. If they were meeting with MI5 that day, we certainly didn’t know about it.’

‘So why were you at their funeral?’ I asked him.

‘I told you. We were aware of your parents’ investigation and we wanted to find out if anyone else knew about it.’

‘But you just said you were only “keeping half an eye on them”.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You filmed their funeral with a hidden camera. That doesn’t sound like “keeping half an eye on them” to me.’

He just shrugged.

‘And you went to all the trouble of arranging a riot so you could search through their offices without anyone knowing. I mean, if they were of no real concern to you, what were you looking
for?’

‘Look,’ Winston said, beginning to get edgy. ‘I really don’t think—’

‘How did your van get damaged?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘The Mercedes van. It’s got a dent over the front-left wheel arch.’

‘So?’

‘There are flecks of yellow paint in the dent.’ I stared hard at him. ‘Mum’s car was yellow.’

He laughed quietly. ‘I’m sorry, Travis, but this is really getting a bit too much now. Just because one of our vehicles has a little scratch on it—’

‘How did you know that their car had spun off the road and hit a tree?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘When you were telling me about
your
parents’ car crash, you said, “They didn’t just
spin off he road
and hit a tree for no apparent reason, they crashed
because my father had been drinking.”’

He frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’

‘How did you know my parents’ car had
spun
off the road?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said dismissively. ‘I suppose I read it in the newspaper reports—’

‘No, you didn’t,’ I told him. ‘Earlier this evening I spent an hour on the Internet checking through every newspaper article about the crash I could find. Not one of them
mentions anything about the car spinning off the road.’

Winston shrugged. ‘I expect I probably got it from the police report then. We have contacts in the police, it’s not difficult to get hold of the official reports—’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘I think you know their car spun off the road because you were there at the time. You
saw
it spin off the road. You knew
they’d found out about the warehouse, you knew they were going to talk to someone at MI5, and you didn’t want that to happen. So you drove them off the road.’

‘No.’

‘You killed them.’

‘No, you’re wrong. I can
prove
you’re wrong.’ I stared at him.

He said, ‘I can show you something right now that will prove beyond doubt that neither myself nor my colleagues had anything to do with your parents’ death.’

I’d been so sure that I was right, and Winston seemed so confident of his proof that I wasn’t, that I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there, watching him as he got to his
feet and took a mobile from his pocket.

He put the phone to his ear, waited a moment, then said, ‘It’s me. I need those files. Are they still in the ops room?’ He listened for a second, then spoke again. ‘No,
it’s all right, I’ll get them.’ He ended the call and put the phone away. ‘I’ll be two minutes,’ he said to me. ‘OK?’

I nodded, and he turned round and walked out of the room.

‘You should have talked to me, Travis,’ Grandad said quietly.

‘I tried to.’

‘You should have tried harder.’

I looked at him. ‘Sorry.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not your fault.’

We sank into silence then, all three of us just sitting there, staring at nothing, lost in our own little worlds.

I don’t know how long it was before it dawned on me that Winston wasn’t coming back. Five minutes, maybe. Perhaps a little longer. It wasn’t a gradual realisation, I just
suddenly knew that he wasn’t coming back. He’d tricked me. Tricked us all. There were no files. There was no proof of anything. He’d gone. They’d all gone. Him, Shaved Head,
Muscleman, the rest of them. They’d taken Bashir, got in their cars, and quietly driven away.

I turned to Grandad and saw that he knew it too.

‘Sorry, Trav,’ he said, annoyed with himself. ‘I should have guessed.’

‘What’s going on?’ Evie asked, yawning.

Grandad sighed. ‘I’ve been out of this game too long.’

We checked the rest of the warehouse before we left, just in case we were wrong about Winston, but there was no sign of life anywhere. And when we looked in the car park and
saw that the BMW and the Mercedes were no longer there, we knew there was no point in looking any further.

They’d definitely gone.

It was time for us to go too.

Grandad had left his car a couple of streets away. I didn’t really feel like talking, so I let Evie sit up front with Grandad while I sat in the back, and as we drove across town and then
on towards the Slade, I just closed my eyes and let myself drift away.

It didn’t take long to get to Evie’s flat.

As she thanked Grandad for the lift and got out of the car, I opened the back door and got out too.

‘I’ll walk you back to your flat,’ I said to her.

‘You don’t have to,’ she told me.

‘I want to.’

‘My flat’s just there,’ she said, grinning as she pointed at the building right in front of us. ‘I mean, if you
really
want to walk me the two metres to my door .
. .’

‘Well, I suppose not . . .’ I muttered, feeling kind of stupid.

She surprised me then by putting her arms round me and giving me a hug, and then she surprised me even more by giving me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Thanks for a great night out, Trav,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Give me a call sometime, OK?’

‘Yeah . . .’ I mumbled, watching her walk away. ‘Yeah, OK . . .’

‘She’s a nice girl,’ Grandad said as we drove away from the Slade.

‘Yeah.’

He waited a few seconds, then said, ‘How old is she? Fifteen, sixteen?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Does it matter?’

He glanced at me. ‘I was only asking. There’s no need to get funny about it.’

‘I wasn’t getting funny about anything.’

‘Well, that’s all right then.’

‘Yeah.’

We went quiet again then. It was a slightly awkward silence, but somehow it felt kind of OK. There was nothing too uncomfortable about it.

After a few minutes had passed, I said, ‘You weren’t fooled by the pillows under the duvet then?’

‘I might not be as sharp as I used to be,’ Grandad said wryly, ‘but I haven’t lost all my marbles yet.’

‘How did you know I’d gone to the warehouse?’

‘It wasn’t hard to guess. I mean, where else would you go?’ He glanced at me. ‘You didn’t clear the browsing history on your laptop either.’

‘So you knew I’d been checking out Sowton Lane on Google Earth.’

He nodded. ‘I saw all the other stuff you’d been looking at too – the newspaper reports about the crash.’

‘I had to find out, Grandad. If the newspapers didn’t say anything about Mum’s car spinning off the road, how did Winston know?’

‘He
could
have found out from the police report. It wouldn’t be that hard for him to get hold of a copy.’

‘Does the police report say the car spun off the road?’

‘I can’t remember. I’ll look at my copy when we get back.’

‘But even if Winston was telling the truth about that—’

‘I know,’ Grandad said. ‘It doesn’t mean he
wasn’t
there when the car went off the road.’