Witch Hunt

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Not much here we didn’t know already. When d’you think she’ll make the hit? Lunchtime?’

  Elder nodded. ‘That would be my guess. After this morning’s handshakes and champagne. The cars are supposed to leave for Buck House at noon, but I suppose it depends on how long the photo opportunity takes.’

  ‘They won’t keep Her Maj’ waiting,’ said Doyle knowledgeably.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Elder.

  ‘Speaking of photo opportunities...’ Greenleaf reached into the plastic carrier bag he was holding and came out with a xeroxed sheet. ‘We’ve had these distributed to everyone.’ On the sheet was a picture of Christine Jones and a description. The picture wasn’t terribly good.

  ‘I got it last night,’ Doyle said proudly. ‘Went back to the house. There weren’t many snaps to choose from. We had to crop that one as it was.’ He reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Here’s the original.’

  Elder studied the photo. It showed Christine Jones and a female friend posing on a beach. Christine was wearing a one-piece swimsuit, her friend a very brief bikini.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Elder. He looked up at Doyle, who was looking at the photo, then he glanced towards Greenleaf, who smiled. Yes, they both had their ideas as to why Doyle had chosen this particular photograph.

  ‘And,’ added Greenleaf meaningfully, ‘there are extra men on guard inside 1-19.’

  ‘Not inside the other buildings?’

  ‘We couldn’t stretch to it.’

  ‘No way,’ said Doyle, retrieving the picture. ‘We’re like india-rubber men as it is.’

  Greenleaf was rummaging in the bag again. ‘We thought these might come in handy.’ He lifted a walkie-talkie out of the bag and handed it to Elder. It was heavier than it looked. ‘They’ve not got much range, but ...’ Another walkie-talkie was handed to Doyle. When Greenleaf lifted out the third, the bag was empty. He crumpled it and stuffed it into his pocket.

  ‘Not exactly unobtrusive,’ commented Elder.

  ‘True,’ said Doyle. ‘Carry one of these and every bugger knows what your game is.’

  Greenleaf said nothing but looked slighted. Elder guessed the walkie-talkies had been his idea. ‘I’m sure they’ll be invaluable,’ Elder said.

  ‘Here they come,’ said Doyle. Which was, in a sense, true. Cordons had been hastily erected, traffic stopped. Uniformed policemen were suddenly in greater evidence than ever. Motorbikes arrived with their indicators flashing, the drivers had a word with someone, then they turned and headed back the way they’d come.

  ‘Yes,’ said Doyle, ‘here they come.’

  The three men stood well out of the way as they watched the delegations arrive. Doyle was not impressed. ‘Why do they need all these cars and all this razzmatazz? Be a lot cheaper if they just flew the big cheeses in - first class, natch - and had them all sit round a table. Look at all these bloody hangers-on.’

  ‘I believe,’ said Elder, smiling, ‘the term is aides.’

  ‘Hangers-on,’ Doyle insisted.

  One car deposited the Home Secretary and his private secretary. Jonathan Barker fastened a button on his suit jacket as he emerged, smiling for the cameras. A gust caught the parting in his hair, and he swept the stray locks back into place. He glanced towards where Elder and the others stood, and frowned slightly, bowing his head so the newsmen wouldn’t catch the look.

  ‘“Shagger” Barker we call him,’ said Doyle from the side of his mouth. Elder laughed, quite loudly, further discomfiting the Home Secretary. The private secretary scowled openly at the trio as he followed his minister into the building.

  ‘Why “Shagger”?’

  Doyle shrugged. ‘He just looks the type, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He was happily married until a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Yeah, to his secretary. Says a lot about him, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’

  When the last delegation had entered the Conference Centre, Greenleaf expelled a long whistle of air between his teeth.

  ‘The collective sigh of relief,’ said Elder. The police and other security people all looked a bit easier now that everyone was safely inside.

  ‘To think,’ said Greenleaf, ‘we’re going to be doing this at least twice a day for the rest of the week.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope we are,’ said Elder. ‘I’d rather breathe a sigh of relief than a gasp of panic.’

  Doyle chuckled. ‘I wish I could say clever things like that.’

  ‘I take that as a compliment, Doyle, coming from the man who invented “Shagger” Barker.’

  Doyle made a little bow. ‘Now what?’ he asked.

  ‘Victoria Street,’ said Elder. ‘Fun’s over here. Let’s see how security’s shaping up.’

  Witch had been in the Victoria area since daybreak. Just after midnight, she’d stolen a car. It was her second car theft of the night, her first being a four-year-old Peugeot 305. For the second, she wanted something similar - fast but unshowy - and finally settled on a three-year-old Alfa Romeo. She’d gone outside London to accomplish this. A car stolen in London and then driven around London could be spotted by police. A car stolen in East Croydon and driven around central London might not. She had brought the first car, the Peugeot, back into the city and parked it on the corner of her chosen cul-de-sac off the King’s Road. Then she’d returned to East Croydon by the late train, a train full of drunk commuters and even drunker youths, and found the Alfa Romeo. Back in London, she had driven one particular route three times, with slight detours and amendments, memorising the final, chosen route until she felt she could drive it blindfolded. Then she’d slept for an hour or two in an all-night car park, slouched in the front seat of the Alfa, awaking to a tingling feeling in her gut, a feeling that told her it was time. Time to put theory into practice. Time for the final day.

  She’d watched the various entourages arrive at the Conference Centre, headphones clamped to her head. Her personal hi-fi’s radio news told her that the morning session would be short. Yes, because they were going to lunch at Buckingham Palace; she’d read that in one of the briefs prepared by the Dutchman.

  The Dutchman was another unreliable factor, now that Elder had his hands on him. That was why she was here early, just to check what extra security precautions they’d taken.

  As the sleek black cars had arrived, while she was listening to her radio, she’d been watching Dominic Elder. No chance of his spotting her of course. She was just one of a crowd who had stopped on their way to work to watch, from behind the metal barriers, the famous people arriving. She’d tucked herself in between two large men. And she watched Elder, watched him talking to two other men - they looked like police to her, probably Special Branch, MI5’s dogsbodies. One of them made a big show of the fact that he was armed. The other was quiet, almost sleepy in comparison. Elder looked tired and alert at the same time. Like her, he wouldn’t have been getting much sleep recently. Like her, he’d been waiting for this day. Beneath the shabby suit he would be carrying his own gun, the Browning. It was typical of him to buy British. Typical of him to keep faith with something which had failed him before ...

  She’d watched for a few moments, and she’d looked up occasionally to spot the marksmen, armed only with binoculars thus far, as they examined the scene from their lofty heights. Then she drifted away. Her car was parked outside a mansion block in a street behind Westminster Cathedral, tickets on the windshield showing she’d paid for three hours’ parking. Three hours was the limit. She’d toyed with the idea of breaking into another car and taking a resident’s parking permit to stick on the Alfa’s windscreen. But any traffic warden worth the name would pause to compare licence plate details.

  She was playing a cassette on her personal hi-fi: an Ohm mantra repeated over the sound of a human heartbeat. It calmed her as she walked back to the car, got into it, and rummaged beneath the passenger seat for her civil service satchel and a green Harrods carrier bag. She glanced around her before openin
g the satchel and peering inside, seeming happy with what she found there. Her own choice of pistol was an Italian-made Beretta nine-millimetre 92F, a link to her days in Bologna as a member of Croix Jaune. She’d first handled a Beretta during the Gibson kidnapping. Christ, she’d been the only one of them who knew how to handle a gun. She’d practically had to teach them. Still, despite the clumsy trap laid for them, they’d all managed to escape with the ransom money. It had come in useful, that money ...

  She slipped the gun out of her satchel and into her jacket. She’d stitched a special pocket into it, hanging loose from the jacket by two straps. It was funny how often the authorities would want to search your baggage, but not your clothes. She had a feeling this might be one of those days at the DTI.

  She closed the satchel again and got out of the car, this time taking satchel and carrier bag with her. She had a little time to kill. She noticed as she passed that there were men hanging around outside some of the buildings on Victoria Street itself, and especially outside the DTI Headquarters. It was only to be expected. She walked to a small supermarket and bought two large fresh chickens, two packs of fresh sandwiches, and a catering-sized tin of cheap instant coffee, then retreated to Victoria Station and locked herself in a toilet cubicle, where she did what she had to do. An attendant knocked eventually and asked if everything was all right.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Witch called back. ‘Bad curry last night, that’s all.’

  The attendant chuckled and moved away. Witch flushed the toilet and came out. The attendant, a small brown-skinned woman, was waiting.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman said, ‘it’s just that you’ve got to be careful. We get all kinds coming in ... injecting themselves, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Witch, washing her hands. ‘Like you say, you’ve got to be careful.’

  She walked around the back of Victoria Street, to where her car was, and from there to the back entrance of 45 Victoria Street. There was a guard with a dog outside the door. The dog barked as she approached, rearing up on hind legs, causing the guard to rein it in on its leash.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told her.

  ‘I’ve some chickens here,’ she said.

  ‘That’ll be it then, not that he doesn’t get fed enough.’

  She walked past him. She wasn’t concerned, there was nothing for her to be concerned about. She was a government employee, she made this trip every day. Nothing to worry about. She entered the building and showed her security pass to the guard who stood in front of his desk. He looked at it a bit more carefully than usual, and thanked her.

  ‘I don’t often forget a pretty face,’ he said.

  ‘I usually come in the front way,’ she explained, ‘but it’s pandemonium out there.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  Witch slipped the pass back into her handbag. She had altered the name on Christine Jones’s card to Caroline James, knowing they would be on the lookout for poor starving Christine. She made to move past him.

  ‘Sorry, miss, I need to check all bags today.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s pandemonium in here too.’ He looked through her handbag first, then her official bag. ‘I’m on my own. They’ve sent my partner up the road to Number One.’

  ‘Really?’ She allowed herself a small smile.

  He was looking at her shopping.

  ‘Chicken’s on special offer at Safeway,’ she said.

  ‘Really? I like a bit of leg myself.’ And he gave her a wink, to which she responded with her most winning smile. He glanced towards the other items: it was obviously her turn to provide the office coffee, and lunch today consisted of nothing more than a sandwich.

  In her Harrods bag were some clothes, a pair of shoes.

  ‘Partying tonight, eh?’

  ‘That’s the plan,’ said Witch.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ the guard said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  She walked to the lifts, pressed the button and waited.

  The lift arrived. She got in and pressed the button for the third floor. On the way up, she did not blink. She just stared ahead, even when the lift stopped at the ground floor and some people got in. There were guards pacing the space outside the lifts. They did not look at her. She looked through them. Then the lift was ascending again. She got out at the third floor and made for the Conference Room. God, wouldn’t it just be her luck to bump into that slimeball from yesterday, Blishen, Mr Folded-arms? But she didn’t. She looked up and down the corridor, saw that no one was paying her any attention, and opened the door of the Conference Room.

  Inside, she worked quickly. She took out both chickens and reached inside them, where the plastic bags of giblets had been until she’d flushed them down the toilet in Victoria Station. Now the hollow chickens housed small soft packages wrapped in grey polythene and black tape. She dumped the chickens in the wastepaper bin, and reopened the packs of sandwiches, which she had closed herself using tiny strips of clear tape. Inside were thin coils of copper wire and small connectors, plus a tiny screw-driver. She joined the two packages by runs of wire, working quickly and calmly. She held one foot wedged up against the door, preventing anyone from opening it while she worked.

  At last she was satisfied. Time for a break, she thought. She lifted out the large tin of coffee and prised off its lid. The toilet at Victoria had taken a lot of punishment: giblets, sandwich fillings, and an awful lot of instant granules. The blonde wig inside the tin still smelled of bitter coffee. She shook it free of brown specks, then dumped the tin in the basket beside the chickens.

  She lifted the clothes and shoes from her bag, stripped and changed. With lipstick and the aid of a hand-mirror she turned her lips vermilion. Make-up is the beginning of disguise. She’d learnt that early in life at the fairground: she could be virgin or whore to order, twelve or sixteen, above or below the age of consent. She could smile and be unhappy; or weep while she was overjoyed. She’d been playing a game of dressing-up with her life until the Irishman had come ...

  She looked at herself now and blinked. A question had framed itself in her mind. Who am I? She shook it away as she brushed out her wig. She knew who she was. She knew what she was. And she knew why she was here.

  Wasn’t that more than most people knew?

  When she turned the Harrods bag inside out, it was just a plain white cloth bag with green handles. She placed her cassette recorder on the floor near the door, unplugging the headphones. The recorder came with its own built-in speaker, and, more unusually, included automatic rewind and repeat functions. Witch swapped her Ohm and Heartbeat cassette for another tape and switched the machine on.

  In the lower ground floor of the building, the guard was tuning his radio to something musical when there were steps on the stairwell. A man appeared. The guard knew him. He was from the police. The police were all over the place, on window-ledges and in corridors, patrolling the foyer and the main entrance. He half-expected to see one of them hiding beneath his desk. The policeman was waving something, a notice or leaflet. ‘Here, George,’ the policeman said, ‘has anyone given you one of these?’

  The guard slipped his spectacles back on. ‘What is it? No, nobody’s given me nothing.’

  ‘Typical,’ said the policeman. ‘If you want a job doing, do it yourself. Well, you can keep that one anyway.’

  A bell sounded once as the lift doors opened. A couple got out, a man in a pinstripe suit and a tall, big-boned woman.

  ‘Back in ten minutes,’ the man said.

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ said the guard. The policeman watched the couple leave.

  ‘Dirty sods couldn’t wait till knocking-off time, eh?’

  The guard was laughing as he turned his attention to the sheet of paper. He recognised the name, he’d been told to look out for it. But now there was a photo, too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘What’s up, George?’

  The guard tapped
the photo with a finger yellow from cigarettes smoked to the nub. ‘I think I’ve seen her this morning, about twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Christine Jones, that wasn’t the name on her pass. I’ve been on the lookout for Christine Jones.’

  The policeman was already slipping a radio out of his pocket. ‘This is Traynor,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘I’m in number 45. Suspect is inside the building. I repeat, suspect is inside the building.’

  There was silence, then crackle and a disembodied voice. ‘It’s Doyle here, Traynor. Secure all exits, and I mean all exits. Start searching the floors. We’re on our way.’

  Traynor made for the stairs then paused. ‘You heard him, George. No one in or out of here, okay? Anyone wants out, send them to the ground floor.’ He turned, then stopped again, turned back. ‘George, what was she wearing?’

  ‘Mmm ... blue jacket, dark blue ... white blouse, dark skirt.’

  ‘Right.’ This time Traynor started climbing the stairs. George switched his radio back on and began fiddling with the dial again. He looked out of the window, but the pinstripe man and lipstick woman had gone. Ah, Radio Two, he’d found it at last. Manuel and his Music of the Mountains, lovely. George settled back in his chair.

  Doyle and Greenleaf put together reinforcements and brought them into the building. They were both a little breathless, but ready for anything. The news had been circulated, more men would be on their way. ‘Any sign?’ Doyle asked Traynor.

  ‘Not yet. She’s dressed in a dark-coloured two-piece and white blouse, but then so are half the women in the place.’

  ‘Which floor was she headed for?’

  Traynor shook his head.

  ‘We’ve just got to be methodical,’ said Greenleaf.

  Doyle looked at him. ‘Methodical, right. How long have we got before the bigwigs go to lunch?’

  Greenleaf checked his watch. ‘Quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Right then,’ said Doyle, ‘we can afford to be methodical for about five minutes. After that, we start screaming and kicking down doors.’