He needed somehow to communicate his appetite for further information to the anonymous sender. This first offering was just enough for a further, more precise paragraph in his Saturday diary.
The mystery of Quentin Deschevaux’s origins remains as elusive as ever. Perhaps one clue might be found in his association from 1993–97 with ‘International Personnel and Resource Management’, now known as IPRM. What new markets in what exotic territories was Deschevaux opening up?
His informant took note.
Three further envelopes arrived. They contained copies of internal company accounts and documents showing transactions between IPRM and companies in different countries. There were also copies of receipts. One chain showed a significant travel pattern of IPRM staff between Britain and the new former Soviet states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in the early 1990s. Another indicated frequent contact with Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and Tirana, the capital of Albania. A third chain showed a presence in west Africa from the mid-1990s to early 2000s, mainly in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Quine checked the state of those two countries over those years; both were being torn apart by civil wars. It allowed another Saturday diary story, which outlined IPRM’s ‘mystery contacts and activities in west Africa and behind the former Iron Curtain…’
A few weeks later, Quine received a game-changing letter. It gave a date, a time of deliberate precision – 4.53 p.m. – and a place, the first-floor bar of a pub in Kilburn. On the day, Quine checked his watch against Big Ben, travelled to the location in good time and mounted the pub stairs to its first floor. In front of him was a row of booths. He waited. A single, male face peered out from one of them. He went and sat down opposite it.
‘I’m Joseph Quine.’
‘Yes. You are.’
‘And may I ask who—’
‘No. Not yet.’
12
He was, Quine judged, in his early sixties, gaunt, sallow cheeks, dark grey hair neatly parted and brushed back, bulbous nose. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and plain tie. A walking stick was propped up against the table. He had a glass in front of him that appeared to contain a remnant of juice.
‘May I get you another?’ Quine asked.
‘Not yet.’ He peered out of the booth again. ‘You came alone.’
‘Yes.’
Quine smiled. The man noticed. ‘Something amusing you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Good.’ He pushed his glass towards Quine. ‘Just a pineapple juice.’
Quine headed towards the bar. Two old men in black jackets and cloth caps sat in the open area, toying with pints of Guinness. Quine ordered a pineapple juice and half a bitter, and returned to the booth.
‘Lively place,’ he said.
No reaction. Finally the man replied, ‘It’ll do.’ He sipped slowly, looked down at his juice with a hint of contempt, then up at Quine. ‘Stanley,’ he said, offering a weathered hand with nicotine-stained fingers.
Quine took it. ‘Good to meet you, Stanley.’
‘You got my letters.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d guessed you suspected that man. That’s why I wrote. And why you’re here. Correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Have you worked out what he was doing?’
‘I can make guesses.’
‘Just guesses?’
‘Guesses don’t make a story.’
‘You have a name. You have a company. You have a description of its business.’
‘It’s too vague.’
Stanley eased closer to Quine. ‘This goes no further than us. And stays that way.’
‘Of course.’
‘OK.’ Except for the occasional clink of glass, the bar remained as silent as death. Stanley visibly relaxed, as if he’d made a decision. ‘I was hired by International Personnel and Resource Management in 1994, two years after it was formed. I retired three years ago. A long time later than I should have done.’
Quine, instantly excited, raised only an eyebrow.
‘When I joined up,’ Stanley continued, ‘they were a small, specialist company. They provided security personnel for oligarchs and the like. Or governments that needed them. Initially they concentrated on former Soviet republics.’
‘Like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.’
‘Yes. Security personnel began to mean mercenaries too. They seemed to have contacts everywhere. There were three directors and shareholders. You know their names. Grainger an American, Schmidt a German, and Deschevaux. He said he’d once been in the army. I could believe it. I’d been a soldier myself, knew his type.’
‘Was he special forces?’ asked Quine.
‘May have been. I never knew.’
‘Were you?’
‘None of your business. He and I spent time together but never “conversed”. It was a hierarchy, he was the boss. There’s a four-letter word to describe him that begins with “c” and ends with “t”.’
‘You didn’t like him.’
‘I didn’t need to like him.’ Glancing at a man who had just entered the pub and made his way to a booth nearby, Stanley lowered his voice. ‘Move to the park?’
He slowly stood, grabbed his stick, and walked with a pronounced limp towards the stairs. Quine followed. Stanley descended them with surprising agility, exited the pub and set off without resuming the conversation. After a hundred yards he stopped abruptly, looked behind, then moved on. They cleared the Victorian streets of Queen’s Park and entered the park itself, settling on a bench. A coughing spasm interrupted him. Quine guessed it had been brought on by the burst of activity.
He gestured Quine to sit beside him and watched the passing mothers and toddlers. The cough subsided. ‘They started doing business in other parts of Europe,’ continued Stanley as if there had been no interruption, ‘and then Africa. That’s where I saw him close up. Getting it now?’
‘Sierra Leone and Liberia. Civil wars in both.’
‘Good for business. We were in Freetown in ’97.’
‘Who?’
‘Him. And me and another bloke as his number twos.’
‘Who was the other bloke?’
‘I won’t involve him.’
Quine let it go. He would return to it later.
‘We were offered some locals by the client to help do the job.’
‘Job?’
‘You can read the history. Rebels were marching on the capital. The government needed help. Wanted us to take out the rebel leadership. They gave us ten of their “finest” – as they called them – to form a squad. It was an effing disaster. During one try we took a few prisoners and packed them in a basement. What do we do with them? He’s in charge.’
‘He?’
‘Who do you think?’
‘What did he do?’
‘Spoke to the leader of the “finest”.’
‘In what language?’
‘English.’
‘And you heard?’
‘Yep.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said, “We need to get rid of them. Take two of your boys.” Exact words. The leader picked out two and spoke to them in Krio.’
‘It’s a sort of pidgin English, isn’t it?’
‘There’s lots of different stuff in it. But yes, some English.’
‘Did you hear anything? Could you make out what the “leader” said?’
‘“Keeal” came through a couple of times. “Kill” I remember thinking. But I don’t know that for sure.’
‘Fine. We shouldn’t need that.’
‘No,’ said Stanley. He fished something out of his coat pocket. It was a single page of the Guardian’s foreign section from a few months earlier. Stanley pointed to a headline. ‘MASS GRAVE FOUND IN FREETOWN BASEMENT’. It described how more than twenty years after the civil war ended, twelve male skeletons had been found lying together, all with evidence of bullet holes in the skull. ‘Not now they’ve found the bodies,’ continued Stanley.
Quine r
ead the article twice, with a mounting surge of anger and exhilaration. He tried not to show it. ‘Your recollection is the only proof of Deschevaux’s involvement.’
‘Wrong. The leader, his two boys and Deschevaux himself went into the basement together. We heard shots. Over thirty, three for each to make sure. Then they came out. That bastard looked almost happy. Like he’d been having a good time.’
‘That could have been your imagination.’
‘Yes, could have. It wasn’t.’
‘And then?’
‘The rebels were overrunning the place. We got out of Freetown just in time. So did the President.’
‘Did you discuss the incident?’
‘Never with him. Not really with the other bloke either. What was there to say?’
‘Why are you telling me now?’
‘I told you. He’s a cunt. Now he’s lording it over the nation.’
‘Unless anyone on the ground remembers – and that may involve a difficult investigation – you and the other bloke are the only witnesses. You could be incriminating yourself. Knowing a murder was about to take place and failing to intervene.’
‘I’ll take that risk.’
‘If it comes to it, will you testify to all this in court?’ Stanley did not answer. Quine realized his mistake. ‘I’m sorry, I’m jumping ahead.’ A further silence fell. He looked down at Stanley’s right leg. ‘What happened?’
‘What happened is I shattered my leg making that bastard rich.’ He coughed again. ‘We were in Liberia after that. Effing landmine.’
‘That must have been tough.’
‘It happens. I heard he wanted rid of me, but the others persuaded him to find me a job. They retrained me, put me into accounts. I got into a habit of copying certain documents. Building my private file.’
‘Why? You’d have been sacked on the spot.’
‘Curiosity. I wanted to know everything I could about them. Then it was for leverage. Something to use against him. I don’t see myself as a nice person either.’
‘Are there any other illegalities you can prove are connected to IPRM?’
‘You don’t tend to spread the word when you’re doing jobs.’
‘Jobs?’
‘Hits. Assassinations. After the Wall fell, Russia and half of Europe was gangster land. Remember?’
‘I remember.’ Quine paused. ‘Did you ever do a job, Stanley?’
He ignored the question.
‘What about more recently at IPRM?’ asked Quine.
‘Try Mexico. A lot of drug cash and a lot of bodies.’
‘Where else?’
‘Every effing where else. Where there’s trouble in the world, IPRM’s there. And where isn’t there trouble? The British company’s just for show. The big money’s parcelled all over the globe. Shell companies, off-shore trusts, untrackable. Billions’ worth. Deschevaux’s still a main stakeholder. Though you won’t find it on any piece of paper connecting to him or IPRM.’ Another cough interrupted him. ‘Nothing’s provable. Except that we now have a mass grave in Sierra Leone.’
‘What do you really want out of this, Stanley?’
‘I want him.’
‘Just him?’ Stanley did not answer. ‘I need to ask,’ continued Quine, ‘do you want money too?’
He shifted uneasily. ‘I won’t refuse.’
‘It would have to be much further down the line. When I know what it all adds up to. Even then, I can’t be sure.’
‘I’ll have to trust you then.’ He rose without warning. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ and, stick in his right hand, he moved unevenly towards the gate. Quine remained on the bench.
A week later, there was a further letter with a time and place. It was a Victorian terrace in Tooting, South London, some single houses, others built as two flats with separate front doors. Quine rang the bell of the given number. Through frosted glass he saw a figure slowly descending the stairs. The door opened to reveal Stanley, wearing a white shirt, braces holding up striped black trousers, traces of whisky and tobacco on his breath. So much for the pineapple juice.
He led him upstairs to a tidy sitting room decorated in shades of fading browns. In one corner several boxes of files were neatly arranged.
‘You brought a car?’ said Stanley.
‘Yes,’ replied Quine.
He nodded at the boxes. ‘This will take us a few sessions. They’ll give you a general picture of IPRM’s reach. A few clients are identifiable. Most are shells or cover names. I’ve included some crime scene photographs of men found shot or poisoned. There’s no proof – never will be. You can’t use them. There are receipts that put him, me and the other bloke in Sierra Leone at the right time. You can keep it all. It’s no use to me now.’
Quine paid three further visits to confirm points of detail with Stanley and, more importantly, to make a final judgement on his trustworthiness. In the third visit, he raised the most difficult questions of all.
‘Stanley, we have the information. It’s now about you. I have three things I need to ask you. You can be an anonymous source for the newspaper story. But our lawyers will need you to sign a sworn affidavit with your account of what happened in Freetown. Are you OK to do that?’
‘Yes, Joe, I am.’ By now they were on friendly terms.
‘Second. If Deschevaux sues for libel and it comes to trial, we’ll need you to be our witness in court.’
‘I know, you mentioned it. I’ve thought about it. The answer is yes.’
‘Third, will you handwrite me a personal letter promising me that you’ll turn up in court?’
Stanley smiled. ‘You don’t trust me?’
‘I do. But this isn’t just about me.’
‘OK, I’ll write you the letter.’
He fetched some paper and slowly wrote his address and the date at the top. ‘I’m not much of a writer, you give me the words.’ An hour later, it was done, rounded off by Stanley’s cramped but legible signature.
‘Actually, Stanley,’ said Quine, ‘there’s just one more question.’
‘Ask it then.’
‘It’s just this. Are you a well man?’
Stanley spluttered. ‘I may look and sound a wreck, but don’t you worry. I won’t be pegging out anytime soon.’
Four weeks later The Post published a front-page splash telling how Quentin Deschevaux MP had ordered the summary execution of twelve prisoners in a basement in Freetown. It was accompanied by a two-part profile in the paper’s feature section on the origins, activities and global expansion of IPRM. Quine had tried to explore Deschevaux’s past before he joined IPRM but every avenue ended in a cul-de-sac. The Post’s lawyers allowed him a small amount of speculation – including that he might at one time have had a military connection – but Deschevaux’s early years remained unexplained.
Deschevaux responded that the massacre story was a lie and sued both The Post and Quine personally. The Post’s in-house lawyer who, on the back of the documentation and affidavit from Stanley, had cleared Quine’s articles for publication took advice from a top libel QC. The QC had no doubts – they should fight and they would win.
Thirteen months later, the case came to court. Throughout the long months leading up to the trial, Quine kept in regular, fortnightly touch with Stanley. When he took the stand as The Post’s star witness, it had been ten days since their last meeting.
Stanley, dressed in a familiar dark suit, no doubt with the usual braces concealed inside the jacket, hobbled the two steps up to the box and turned to face the court. He caught Quine’s eye.
There was an impenetrability in his expression that gave Quine a sudden, ghastly premonition.
Something was wrong. Badly wrong.
13
‘I’ve examined the article,’ said Sandford, handing it over to Fowkes.
It was late afternoon, two days after their previous meeting. They sat in the Number 10 flat’s sitting room, Fowkes on an armchair, Sandford on the sofa. He did not offer to put the kettle
on. He had not set a specific time limit.
‘And?’ said Fowkes.
‘You don’t need to worry about it.’
‘What do you mean – not worry? A girl’s dead. A girl we knew.’
‘There is no evidence this severed hand comes from a girl we ever knew. Do you seriously think we had something to do with it?’
‘I told you. I remember what happened that evening. You appear not to.’
‘I remember bits of it. But you went on to describe stuff that’s just not credible.’
‘Robbie,’ said Fowkes quietly. ‘Do you think I’ve made this up?’
‘Not deliberately. Imagination can do strange things. Perhaps there was something you once witnessed, which grew in your mind and then this hand was found…’
‘How can you honestly believe I’d invent something like this?’ Fowkes coughed. ‘Can I have a glass of water? I’ve got a sore throat.’
Sandford rose and went into the kitchen. His eye was caught by the kitchen knives in their wooden block. A severed hand. Jesus. He ran the cold tap and filled a glass. Was Jed concealing a buried rage? Perhaps over the years he had learned to. He wished he knew what sort of person he had become. Or, perhaps, always had been.
He returned with a filled glass. ‘I may have Strepsils.’
‘It’s OK, thanks.’ Fowkes took a gulp of water, set the glass down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Right, I’ll try something else to jog your memory. You must remember Suzy suggesting you take a break, go away for a while?’
‘Of course.’ Sandford frowned.
‘Do you recall when that was?’
‘Roughly. 1991, November-ish. The year before the ’92 surprise victory.’
‘That’s right. But there’s another way of dating it. It was the Tuesday evening after the weekend I’m talking about. I phoned Suzy on the Sunday. Didn’t say what had happened, just that she needed to talk to you again. I knew you trusted her as she was the one who helped you find a way through the panic attacks—’
A Time to Lie Page 6
