Conspiracy

by Adrian Wills

  Fletcher handed Okeke his rifle and called for van Dijk and Dobson to join them. He made them stand in a line facing the boy and had them check their weapons while he tore open a field dressing from a pocket on the arm of his jacket. He placed the absorbent pad over the boy’s eyes and tied the bandage off around the back of his head. The boy tensed as a spreading stain appeared in his lap.

  ‘I’m sorry, laddie,’ said Fletcher, a lump catching in his throat.

  What the hell was he doing?

  ‘What the fuck is this, boss?’ asked Okeke, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  Fletcher stood and straightened his jacket. He cleared his throat and looked his men in the eye. ‘You’re all heroes today,’ he said. ‘I’ve watched you fight with dignity and honour, passion and courage to overcome extraordinary odds, and I’m proud to say you were under my command. Our battle will soon be over and in a few hours you’ll be sharing a beer and a laugh about the day you faced down terror and won. Challenger tanks are gathering outside, and in a few minutes, we’ll be leaving this house. But first I have one last request.’

  Fletcher paused to let the impact of his words sink in.

  ‘The family who lived in this house were bomb-makers and armourers, propping up Saddam’s sick regime even when he’d fallen. I have no doubt they have been responsible for countless deaths and injuries of British and American soldiers. We’ll never know how many widows they made, nor how many men have lost limbs and body parts because of what they did here in the shadows, only that we’ve stopped them causing further bloodshed. Most of the family is dead. Only the boy survives. But don’t be deceived by his youth. He saw his father die, and he saw his mother die. He will grow up seeking vengeance for what happened here today. If we allow him to live, every soldier in every regiment here in Iraq will be at risk, now and in the future. So although this is the hardest order I will ever issue, I don’t deliver it lightly. The boy must be put to rest with his family, and in a moment I will ask each of you to take aim and share the collective responsibility for his execution. Is that clear?’

  The three soldiers blinked in disbelief. Fletcher could hardly believe it himself. It’s not what he’d signed up for, ordering the deaths of women and children. It was vile.

  ‘Take aim,’ he ordered.

  The soldiers raised their rifles.

  Outside the roar of tank engines loomed closer.

  ‘Fire!’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Present day

  The Maglite dimmed as if the batteries were about to give up. Blake gave the torch three sharp taps and the light brightened, illuminating Fletcher’s face, slack with a faraway sadness.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘I’m not a monster. You don’t know what it was like.’

  Blake knew full well what it was like being in the heat of battle with your back against the wall and everything turning to shit. He’d lost count of the number of times death had looked him in the eye and asked which way he was going to jump, when he thought he was living the last moments of his life among rocket blasts and shrapnel and bullets flying around his ears. If Fletcher was looking for sympathy, he was appealing to the wrong guy, because Blake couldn’t imagine any scenario, no matter how hopeless, where he could have ordered the execution of a woman and her child.

  ‘You could have been a hero,’ said Blake. ‘To survive against those odds and to lead your patrol to safety without a single injury, let alone a fatality, was something special. Lesser men would have crumbled under the pressure.’

  Fletcher gave a hollow laugh. ‘And still no medals and no heroes’ homecoming parade.’

  ‘But a fast-track officer promotion and a soft job running your own training school. Not bad for an NCO who should be serving time for murder. So what happened next?’

  Fletcher shrugged and stroked his beard. ‘Rumours about what had happened started flying around the base and the guys began to get jittery. So the captain confessed everything to the regimental CO, which I thought was a bloody stupid idea at the time, but as it turned out was a fucking masterstroke.’

  ‘He told him everything?’ asked Blake.

  ‘Every last detail, but it was a calculated risk. He knew the CO was no idiot and that if the details of what had happened became public, every British soldier in Iraq would have become an immediate target for reprisal attacks. The CO wasn’t prepared to have that on his conscience, so we were quietly sent home on the next flight back to Brize Norton and everything was hushed up.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘They still made us sweat it out in custody in Colchester for the best part of a week while they decided what to do with us. But eventually we were freed with no charges to answer and the promise of a posting out of the way with salaries and pensions intact. There was just one condition: we were never to mention we’d ever served in Iraq to anyone.’

  Blake couldn’t believe how easy he made it all sound. ‘And so they let you all walk away scott free?’

  ‘Not exactly. We’ve been stuck here ever since, in the arse end of nowhere. Out of sight and out of mind.’

  ‘And the captain?’

  ‘Gently manoeuvred out of the army.’

  ‘And never held to account for what he’d done? Why?’

  ‘Like I said, they couldn’t afford for it to become public knowledge, especially as it turned out his father was a high court judge with an interest in human rights abuse cases. Can you imagine?’

  ‘And so you all got away with it.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Fletcher scoffed. ‘We’ve been paying for what we did ever since.’

  Blake raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not much of a punishment, is it? You ordered the execution of an unarmed woman and her young son and the captain shot a young girl for a trivial misdemeanour. I’m not sure I could live with myself if that had been me.’

  ‘I regret it every single day,’ said Fletcher. ‘But you have no idea of the pressure we were under. We’d been under constant fire for the best part of two-and-a-half hours and nobody expected we were going to walk out of that house alive. We got caught up in a moment of madness.’

  ‘Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I think about those kids almost every day, and what they might have become. Doctors maybe. Engineers? Teachers? But their parents chose their own path. It was a twist of fate that we ended up at their house on that day. The boy’s death was an accident, but his father had a loaded weapon and would have killed us all. We had no choice.’

  ‘You had a choice,’ said Blake, ‘but you chose wrong.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘I agree the captain put you in a difficult position, but don’t try to tell me you were only following orders.’

  ‘He was the senior officer. He gave me no alternative.’

  The torch flickered, dimmed and returned to full power. ‘So what happened to Hopkins?’ asked Blake, nodding at the stiff body at his feet.

  ‘He couldn’t keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘And so you killed him too?’

  ‘It was unavoidable. He’d already demanded money from the captain once before, threatening to go to the press. The captain felt he owed him, and made the payment to help him out, but when Hopkins tried to pull the same stunt again, he gave us no choice. We knew he couldn’t be trusted anymore.’

  ‘So you called him the night he disappeared?’

  ‘I told him I had the money and asked him to meet me on the moor. He was so desperate, he didn’t doubt me for one second.’

  ‘And you drove him here to kill him?’

  ‘I didn’t want to have to do it, but as I said, he left us no choice,’ said Fletcher, showing no emotion.

  ‘On the captain’s orders?’

  ‘We discussed it, yes, and agreed it was the only course of action.’

  ‘And you returned to the school pretending nothing had happened, letting his wif
e imagine the worse, but leaving her with the hope that he might still be found alive.’

  ‘That marriage was as good as over,’ said Fletcher. ‘Hopkins saw to that himself.’

  ‘Do you ever imagine what it’s going to be like for his kids growing up without a father?’

  ‘He brought this on himself. All he had to do was keep his head down and mouth shut, but that was beyond him.’

  ‘And his wallet your men found on the moor? I suppose you had that planted for my benefit?’

  ‘I hadn’t planned on it until you arrived asking awkward questions. I’d hoped it would lead you to the conclusion Hopkins had brought himself up here to die.’

  ‘And you almost had me fooled,’ said Blake. ‘Tell me about Tony Okeke. What happened to him?’

  ‘He refused the offer the rest of us took. The alternative was an honourable discharge, which he accepted and later started working for the captain.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Close protection duties.’

  Blake squinted at Fletcher in the dim light. ‘Why would the captain need a close protection detail?’

  Fletcher laughed. ‘You really are in the dark, aren’t you?’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘What’s the point? You’re about to die.’ Fletcher aimed his gun at Blake’s head.

  ‘I’m intrigued to know. At least satisfy my curiosity.’

  ‘The captain was the only one of us who emerged from this mess with his life on track.

  ‘You sound bitter,’ said Blake.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be? After he left the army, he picked up a plumb job in the city and later bagged himself a seat in Parliament.’

  Blake’s mind was racing. ‘As an MP?’

  ‘Well, actually he’s a Government minister now. You might know him better as the Right Honourable Member for Henley-on-Thames.’

  The cogs turned slowly in Blake’s brain. He did his best to steer clear of politics, but even he knew the identity of the Henley MP. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he hissed as the dawning realisation struck him. ‘Are you saying the captain is Henry Bowater?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Fletcher with a smirk. ‘The Home Secretary.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Blake couldn’t remember much of the impression he’d formed of Henry Bowater when he’d reunited the politician with his daughter in the underground car park on the banks of the Thames a few days before. It hadn’t seemed important to take much notice of the guy at the time. Bowater’s face was familiar from pictures he’d seen on the news, and Blake recalled he was sharp-suited, tall and sleek. He stood with his shoulders back and chest puffed out, and had a firm, assured handshake. A man who exuded power and influence. But what Blake remembered most clearly were Jenni’s words of fear.

  When she’d called him a monster and threatened to take her own life, Blake had put it down to teenage angst. All teenagers had a difficult relationship with their parents, didn’t they? But now he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d let her down, dismissing her cry for help when maybe she’d needed him most.

  Blake shuddered. ‘You’ve been protecting Bowater all this time,’ he said, as Fletcher took a step closer. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘You might as well have been locked up in Colchester for the last ten years,’ said Blake. ‘You’re not free.’

  ‘This isn’t about me. What’s done is done. Turn around and get on your knees.’

  ‘Meanwhile Bowater’s been getting fat on expensive Westminster lunches, climbing the greasy pole while you and your men have been banished out here with nothing but old age and your pensions to look forward to. It doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘Shut up and kneel down.’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d seen enough death for one lifetime.’

  ‘What’s one more body?’

  ‘You think you can trust Bowater?’ Blake watched Fletcher’s trigger finger closely. ‘He’s already had Hopkins taken out. What’s to say you’re not next?’

  ‘Hopkins stepped out of line. He had to be eliminated.’

  ‘What if your trust in him is misplaced?’

  ‘I’m not afraid to kill you,’ said Fletcher, jabbing his gun angrily at Blake.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but just open your eyes for a minute, Lieutenant. Bowater is guilty of murder. He killed an innocent girl because she humiliated him. His hands are stained with blood, not yours. You’re an unwitting victim, but for some reason you continue to protect him.’

  ‘It was my patrol, my responsibility.’

  ‘Bowater outranked you and gave you a direct order. Tell me, do their faces still haunt you? I bet you see them every time you close your eyes. The guilt’s gnawing at your insides, isn’t it? Because you’re not an evil man. I can see that. You’re just another one of Bowater’s victims, brainwashed into believing you’re equally to blame for what happened in that house. You made a mistake, but you were under enormous pressure. Bowater was the senior officer. He bears sole responsibility.’

  ‘I wish it was true.’

  ‘I can help you.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Get me to Bowater and I’ll guarantee immunity against prosecution for you and your men,’ said Blake, winging it. It wasn’t a promise in his gift, but Fletcher didn’t need to know that. And besides Blake had a gun to his head. He had to think of something.

  Fletcher snorted a cynical laugh. ‘He’s untouchable.’

  ‘Just get me close to him. I’ll do the rest.’

  ‘How?’ said Fletcher, a frown crumpling his forehead.

  ‘I’ll make him confess everything.’

  Fletcher laughed again. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘You won’t even have to testify. I can arrange new identities and you can all disappear.’

  ‘And what about him?’ asked Fletcher, waving his gun at Hopkins’ body.

  ‘A small detail we can work out. Look, Bowater trusts you. Get me close enough to talk to him and I will get him to admit what he’s done.’

  ‘He’s not going to tell you anything.’

  ‘I’m an interrogator. I have a special set of skills for getting people to tell me what they don’t want anyone else to know.’

  ‘And if you fail, I’m a dead man. Why should I take that risk?’

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do. A chance to atone for your mistakes.’

  Fletcher’s breathing had become shallow and rapid, his lips pursed tightly shut.

  ‘This might be your only chance to do the right thing,’ said Blake, pressing his advantage. ‘Put the gun down and help me get to Bowater.’

  Fletcher hesitated. ‘I can’t,’ he stammered.

  ‘Then do it for that little girl and her brothers, even if you won’t do it for yourself.’

  Blake’s gaze was fixed on the gun, and the moment Fletcher lowered it, he pounced, swinging the Maglite with all his strength. Fletcher screamed in pain. As the gun flew across the cave, lost in the darkness, Blake flew at Fletcher, and the two men fell to the ground. As they grappled, Blake rolled Fletcher onto his stomach and wedged the torch under his throat, pulling hard with both hands, cutting off the oxygen to his brain. Fletcher tried in vain to buck Blake off his back, but Blake was resolute, gritting his teeth and keeping the pressure on Fletcher’s windpipe.

  The soldier’s resistance quickly evaporated as he struggled to draw breath, and eventually his thrashing ceased. As he reached the point of passing out, Blake released the pressure and grasped a handful of Fletcher’s hair, lifting his head.

  Fletcher groaned.

  ‘So, do we have a deal?’ Blake asked. ‘Can I trust you to get me to Bowater?’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  It was a little after three in the morning when Fletcher pulled into a small car park off a steep lane overlooking a wide sandy beach. The dark reflected the silvery rays of a bright, harvest moon hanging low over the horizon, and waves lapped gently on the shore with a rhythmic hi
ss. Fletcher pointed through the windscreen to an angular roof and a pair of chimneys silhouetted against the dark sky away to their left, beyond a rugged headland.

  ‘That’s where you’ll find Henry Bowater,’ he said. They were the first words he’d uttered in two hours.

  Blake sat forward in the passenger seat and followed Fletcher’s finger. The house was sitting amongst a wash of bracken swamping the higher ground and built so close to the edge of the cliff it looked like it might topple into the sea at any moment.

  ‘How can you be sure he’s home?’

  ‘I can’t, but it’s where he spends most of his weekends. It’s only a two-hour helo flight from London.’ Fletcher turned up the collar of his jacket and retrieved Blake’s Browning from the waistband of his trousers. He inspected the weapon briefly and handed it back.

  They’d stopped briefly at the training school before heading west, crossing the county border into Cornwall in silence, Fletcher insisting on driving. Their destination turned out to be the far south-west toe of the country, near Penzance where in the summer season the beaches were over-run with tourists and surfers drawn by the region’s natural beauty and endless sandy coves.

  ‘So how do we get to Bowater?’

  Fletcher crossed his arms over his chest as a wisp of cloud drifted across the moon, briefly dimming its brilliance. ‘With difficulty. He usually travels with his wife and daughter, plus he’ll have a team of close protection officers with him at all times.’

  ‘Including Tony Okeke?’

  ‘He rarely leaves his side. The house itself is virtually impenetrable. The grounds are covered by motion detectors and banks of CCTV cameras, and the only way in is along a private drive and through a set of electronic gates.’

  ‘Still confident you can get me to Bowater?’

  ‘Of course. But let’s grab a couple of hours sleep first and we can recce the house at first light. Why don’t you jump in the back and stretch out? I’ll stay up and keep a look out.’