Deception

by Adrian Magson

  He had forgotten to issue the required warning, but that was just a technicality.

  The twin probes hit Pike in the chest, the charge of electricity to his nervous system taking his legs out from under him and dropping him like a sack of cement. He lay trembling on the path, one foot kicking uncontrollably, the bayonet clutched in frozen fingers.

  ‘He’d have filleted you with that.’

  The voice belonged to a big Londoner named Wallace. He was one of two Royal Military Police sergeants on standby in case Pike got lucky, and responsible for taking him in when Harry gave the nod. Wallace had been playing backstop in the lane by the BMW. He looked disappointed that the fun was over before he could join in. His partner, Collins, whom Harry had automatically thought of as Gromit, was covering the front door in case Pike tried to go that way.

  After he’d disengaged the Taser probes, Wallace bent and prised the bayonet from Pike’s grip. He flipped it twice, tested the blade and hissed sharply. ‘I could shave with this.’ He gave Harry a sideways look. ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’

  His tone meant, you’ve probably shot people before, so why not now?

  ‘I didn’t want to start the day on a bad note.’ Harry bent and checked Pike for vital signs. It wouldn’t look good if he died on them. When he was sure the man was breathing steadily and showing signs of rallying, he gave Wallace the OK to take him to the nearest A&E for a check-up.

  ‘That’ll be King’s College,’ the MP replied. ‘Are you sure you want to bother? He looks OK to me. We’ve been told to get him to Colchester.’

  ‘I know. I want to take a look inside first. Wait for me at the hospital.’ He packed up the Taser and walked through to the front of the house where Gromit was lounging against a lamppost looking bored. He nodded moodily when he saw Harry and went round to join his colleague. Harry walked back up the stairs and found the door to Pike’s room open. The interior was surprisingly neat, with the bed made, blankets folded and everything in military order. Some habits died hard. A coffee table held a tidy pile of magazines and newspapers, and the only attempt at disorder was the sink drainer, which held three flattened pizza boxes and two empty soda bottles. An overhead cupboard held crockery, glasses and an unopened bottle of wine.

  He took a look round, but it was clear that Pike had been on his way out and wasn’t coming back. If there had been anything of value, he wouldn’t have left the door open.

  As Harry reached his car, his phone rang. It was Ballatyne.

  ‘Any joy?’

  ‘We’ve got him. The MPs are taking him to King’s College, Denmark Hill, for a check-up, then on to the Military Detention Centre, Colchester.’

  ‘What’s to check? Did one of the redcaps help him down the stairs?’ Ballatyne’s tone was as dry as dust.

  ‘I had to use the Taser.’

  ‘You really don’t mess, do you? OK, be at Langham Place Starbucks tomorrow at ten. Gordon Cullum will be there with the rest of the information.’ The phone went dead.

  FIVE

  The young doctor who checked out Corporal Pike treated Harry and Sergeant Wallace to the kind of look he probably reserved for axe-murderers and Saturday night deviants. He ran an expert eye over the patient, with pointed attention to where the Taser darts had entered his skin, then nodded. ‘He’s OK. He looks undernourished, but if he’s been hiding from you lot, I’m not surprised. Where are you taking him?’

  ‘Off your hands,’ said Harry. ‘Can we use a side room for a few minutes?’

  The doctor pointed along the corridor. ‘First on the left. Don’t take too long – we might need it for real-life problems.’ He hurried away without a backward glance, white coat-tails flying, while Wallace helped Pike to his feet and walked him along the corridor.

  ‘Mind telling us where you were going, Corporal?’ Harry asked, emptying out Pike’s bag once they were in the room. Pike sprawled on the examination table, eyes on the opposite wall. As Harry suspected, the bag contained a change of underwear and socks, two T-shirts, a pair of trainers and a slim washbag. Nothing in the side pockets and nothing under the baseboard.

  ‘You’ve no right going through that,’ Pike muttered without looking at him. ‘It’s private.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And a private is what you’re going to be as soon as they bust you for going AWOL, theft of military equipment and assault with a deadly weapon. Where were you going?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that.’

  ‘No, you don’t. But it’ll help if you do. You have a wallet?’

  Pike reached round and took out a thin leather wallet, handed it over. It contained a Visa credit card, driving licence, a family group photo and a mix of sterling and euro banknotes to the tune of £300. On the back of the photo was a telephone number.

  ‘If I rang this, who would answer?’

  ‘Nobody. It’s discontinued.’

  Harry handed his mobile and the photo to Sergeant Wallace, who dialled the number. After a short wait he looked up and shook his head. ‘Unobtainable.’ He returned the phone and photo.

  ‘We know you’ve been overseas for a while, Neville. Can I call you Neville?’

  Pike shrugged. ‘Break your neck.’

  ‘You were in Sydney, then Thailand, we know that. Where else?’

  ‘Helmand. That do you? Now fuck off and leave me in peace.’ He lay back and stared at the ceiling.

  Harry drew up a chair and sat alongside him. Wallace stood the other side, tall and imposing. The silence lengthened, broken only by the pink of the heating system and the squeak of shoes on tiles along the corridor outside. Pike ignored both men, but a strong pulse was beating in his throat.

  ‘Were you approached by anyone while you were away?’

  No reaction. Harry wondered about Pike’s background. The slip of paper hadn’t said, but it was obvious the NCO was no idiot. At a guess he’d been to university or technical college, maybe even through industry, before joining the army. His voice and speech were middle class, even if his language wasn’t.

  ‘How did you support yourself for the last three months? Did you have help?’

  Still nothing.

  ‘Man like you, you’d be a valuable commodity to some people . . . all the knowledge you’ve got in your head. We know there’s a market out there, and buyers. If you spoke to anyone, you really don’t want us finding out later on. It would help your case if you said so now. Who approached you?’

  ‘Nobody approached me, so leave me alone.’ Pike spoke through clenched teeth. He was clearly hiding something. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to talk about it here.

  Harry took out a card and slid it into Pike’s hand. It carried his name and a telephone number. ‘Please yourself. My name’s Harry. If you change your mind and want to talk, get them to give me a call.’

  Harry walked outside and took a short cut through the hospital car park towards the road where he’d left his car, his thoughts on what Pike could have been doing in Clapham. The man had been virtually home and dry, if what Ballatyne had said was true. All he had to do was horse-trade some information in return for a new identity and a new life, away from whatever had driven him to go AWOL in the first place. So, with no family ties and no baggage, why had he come back?

  Then a thought struck him. Baggage. Pike’s room had been clean. After five days cooped up in a single room, wouldn’t there have been some rubbish?

  He stepped back as a grey estate car drifted down the street and swung into the visitors’ car park right in front of him. The two men inside gave him a steady look as they passed. They wore the air of two individuals going about their duty, rather than visiting the sick, and Harry pegged them as police.

  He watched them go, then dialled Ballatyne’s number.

  ‘Are you having me shadowed?’

  ‘Not me. I don’t have the personnel. Why?’

  ‘No reason. Must be getting paranoid.’ He rang off feeling mildly embarrassed. This job was alread
y starting to get to him.

  The street in Clapham where Pike had been staying was quiet, with only an occasional vehicle and a scattering of pedestrians. Harry found a space and climbed out of the car. As he approached the house, he passed a woman putting out a pile of bound newspapers on the front step. It was the same woman he’d seen looking over the fence at the rear while waiting for Pike to emerge. She looked the confrontational kind, and he wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘I saw you earlier,’ she said, brushing back a stray lock of hair. ‘You were out back with that chap. You know we’ve got Neighbourhood Watch in the street?’ She blinked furiously and he wondered at the fragile state of mind which allowed her to face a total stranger like this.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Do you have a bin collection, too?’

  ‘Of course, we do,’ she muttered. ‘Cheeky bugger. You think we’re a third world country or something?’

  Mad, he thought. Beyond seeing danger. ‘When do they come? The bin men?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ She moved back to her front door. ‘It’s papers today. School collection. I should call the police!’

  He thanked her and smiled, which finally seemed to unnerve her, and she disappeared inside, slamming the door.

  He walked up the steps to Pike’s house and pressed the cleanest button.

  ‘Yeah?’ A male smoker’s voice, dry as sandpaper.

  ‘Tenant come to see the empty flat on three. The agent’s parking his car.’

  A buzzer sounded and Harry pushed the door, thankful for people who probably didn’t even know there was a Neighbourhood Watch. He climbed the stairs and stopped outside No. 11. It was still open.

  He stepped inside and saw that the scavengers had beaten him to it. The coffee table had gone, the magazines and newspapers tossed on the floor, and the blankets had been turned inside out. He opened the overhead cupboard. No bottle of wine.

  He checked the window, which overlooked a corner of the rear garden. It explained why Pike had been surprised to see him. What it didn’t explain was why he’d come out armed and ready for a fight.

  The place was clean, he already knew that, but he had another look, anyway. Then he closed the door and went back downstairs. Turned right at the bottom and walked down a short passageway to a rear door, and out to the service alley. Two bins were out ready for collection. They contained standard household rubbish: bottles, pre-packed food bags, supermarket packaging and other discards. Nothing indicating a bachelor lifestyle in hiding. Alongside them were two plastic bags, one secured with a wire tie. He opened the first one, which contained vegetable peelings, a hair conditioner bottle, coffee grounds and a craft magazine. Quilting and sewing. Definitely not Pike’s rubbish, then, unless he had a secret hobby. And he was no cook; he’d preferred his food ready made and full of fat.

  The second bag held a scrunched kitchen roll, an old T-shirt with a torn sleeve, an empty milk carton and two crushed beer cans . . . and three flattened pizza cartons.

  And down at the bottom, a torn ticket stub from Eurostar, Brussels to London.

  He thought about letting Ballatyne put his people on to it, but that would take too long. He rang Rik Ferris and read out the ticket number. ‘Find out who it was issued to and where from, can you?’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ breathed Rik. ‘I’m going stir crazy, my shoulder’s itching and my mum’s driving me nuts with all the phone calls. I was just about to go out and stab some car tyres.’

  SIX

  ‘You want a tab?’ Sergeant Wallace held out a cigarette packet to Corporal Pike, who was huddled in the rear seat of their unmarked Vauxhall Vectra, staring out of the window. They were on the A12 heading north-east and had just got police clearance to filter through a two-lane accident. The delay meant other traffic was getting through in bursts, and they were surrounded by open road.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’ It was the first thing Pike had said since leaving the hospital, in spite of Wallace and his colleague’s attempts to start up a conversation. Neither of them enjoyed taking in men who’d gone AWOL; their stories were usually far from straightforward, and certainly too complex for snap judgements, even by hardened military policemen. But they tried to keep things civil.

  ‘You saw the Green Slime off,’ said Collins, using the derogatory term for members of the Intelligence Corps. ‘Tate, I mean. Put a right dent in his day.’ He grinned in the rear-view mirror, received a look of contempt in return. He shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

  ‘What makes you think he’s Intelligence?’ said Wallace, snapping his lighter and drawing in a lungful of smoke.

  Collins looked surprised. ‘What makes you think he’s not?’

  ‘You didn’t see him use the Taser.’ Wallace spoke quietly, although there was little chance their prisoner couldn’t hear what he was saying. ‘Faced with a bayonet sharp enough to cut my old lady’s rock cake, he left it to the last second, then bam. If he was really I-Corps he would’ve got sliced and diced. Or panicked and shot the poor bastard.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t know what he is, but it’s not army intelligence.’

  Collins sniffed and checked his rear-view mirror as they passed a junction. Pike was lolling against the side window, eyes closed. The road behind was clear. Then a silver-grey Mercedes estate joined the carriageway and slid up fast on the outside lane. Two up, he noted automatically. Business types, probably, lucky gits. Nice car with lots of muscle. Better than this heap of overdriven crap they were forced to use.

  The Mercedes drew level with them and slowed.

  Collins glanced across, expecting to see the car cruise by, but the bonnet was now close alongside, keeping pace. He felt a jolt of alarm when the rear nearside passenger window slid down and he saw a face appear. ‘Hey, what the fuck’s this idiot playing at?’

  ‘Who?’ Wallace was fiddling with the radio. He looked round, squinting through the smoke from his cigarette.

  The first bang was shocking in its intensity, and Collins felt the back of his head showered with glass fragments. He ducked instinctively and felt the car wobble as his grip faltered. Wallace shouted something, but the words were lost in the sudden roar of road noise coming through the shattered rear door window and the increase in engine noise as Collins automatically hit the accelerator.

  Then Collins saw the blood. It was sprayed across the mirror, on the roof and even across the side of Wallace’s face. And something warm was trickling down the back of his neck. We’ve been hit! He whipped his head round to check the back.

  ‘Pike! You OK?’

  But Pike was slumped back, the side of his face gone and his one good eye staring up at the roof.

  Another two bangs very close. A car horn blared loudly and Collins realized it was him; he’d hit the button with a reflex action. Then the Mercedes surged away, leaving them behind, and Collins was fighting to hold on to the steering wheel as the shredded offside tyres began a terrifying whump-whump-whump, bits of rubber flew past the side windows and the air was filled with the screech of tortured wheel rims on tarmac.

  Seconds later, before Collins could slow down, the steering wheel was ripped from his grasp and the car began a lazy, unstoppable spin and roll, and everything blurred into in a sickening whirlwind of broken glass, gravel, ripped metal and the sickly smell of blood and spilled diesel.

  ‘Felicity calls you my International Man of Mystery.’ Jean Fleming helped Harry take off his jacket and hung it up. A tall and willowy redhead who ran an upmarket flower business just down the road from her Fulham flat, she accepted Harry’s unexplained absences with equanimity and never asked about where he had been. As the widow of an army officer killed in Iraq, she knew that questions rarely brought a true answer and never true peace of mind. She possessed an irreverent sense of humour and a throaty laugh which made Harry’s toes curl. Felicity was her business partner, a committed Sloane Ranger who knew everybody who was anybody and was vital to the business.

  ‘Well, I am,’ Harry agreed, ‘and
Felicity’s a romantic.’ He accepted the large glass of red wine Jean handed him, and the kiss that followed. Since his divorce, Jean was the nearest he’d come to a long-term relationship, although neither of them had made any moves towards taking it to another level. Jean teasingly introduced him as her occasional date or OD, which suited them both.

  She sat on a leather-covered footstool in front of him and chinked glasses. Her eyes were light brown, the gaze disconcertingly direct. ‘You look tired. What’ve you been up to, Charlie Brown?’

  He knew she didn’t want the fine print; she knew better than that. But she’d heard about the shooting in St James’s Park and Rik’s wounding, and had put two and two together. ‘Rik and I had to take someone overseas. It was a long flight and I’m glad to be back.’

  ‘Long? Iraq long or Afghanistan long?’ She knew Harry’s previous area of operations, if not the precise details, and she knew he was still connected with the intelligence community, albeit by a long cord. She was also perceptive, armed with a former military wife’s expertise at telling the difference between job tiredness and the slow wind-down from operational stress.

  ‘Iraq. Baghdad.’ Ballatyne would have had kittens hearing him admitting this to anyone, but he didn’t care. He smiled and took a sip of his wine, feeling himself relax. ‘Is this a Merlot? It’s very smooth and . . . let me see – fruity with a touch of blackberries.’

  ‘You are so full of bullshit, Harry Tate,’ Jean said with a laugh, and leaned forward for another kiss, bringing a faint smell of lemons. ‘It’s a Shiraz and you know as much about wine as you do about flower arranging, so don’t change the subject. I just like to know you’re OK, that’s all. How’s Rik?’

  ‘Trying to avoid his mother’s phone calls and getting stroppy, which is a good sign.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Is that something cooking?’ It reminded him that he hadn’t sat down to eat properly for a couple of days. The ration pack he’d been handed on the flight back from Baghdad had been uninspiring, and had found a good home in the stomach of the private contractor in the next seat.