A Few Words for the Dead

by Guy Adams

  Try as he might, Shining also couldn’t get his head around why this was happening to him now. What had turned an ancient case into a weapon to attack him with? There had been questions about his part in the mission at the time but, as always, most of them had surrounded his reliability or veracity. Nobody had ever suggested that his involvement with Lucas Robie might be evidence that he was untrustworthy. Now, thirty years later, someone had sanctioned the time and effort to drag him out here and cross-examine him as if it were of vital importance.

  These days he wasn’t even close to secrets his government considered sensitive, and he was no threat to anyone. Which left only one possibility: this was a personal attack using the only thing someone could find as a viable ammunition against him.

  But who? A friend of Fratfield’s perhaps? Refusing to believe that the man had been a criminal?

  He flushed the toilet and stared through the frosted glass window at the darkening sky outside. He’s been here for hours, lost in his own reminiscences. He’d have to watch that, it was all too easy to go wandering in his own memories but someone was after him in the here and now.

  Not that he had a better plan at the moment than playing for time. The longer he strung this process out for, the longer he allowed his opponent to show their hand. The longer also, for someone to come to his aid. Not that there were many options for that – after all Toby and Tamar had problems of their own to contend with. Shining had been alone for so many years and it was amazing how quickly he’d come to rely on Toby since he’d been allocated to Section 37. Now, when he really needed him, he wasn’t even in the same country.

  TWENTY-ONE

  April had left the office in the frustrated hands of the security officer, who was still trying – but thus far failing – to crack open its secrets. She didn’t like doing so but was practical enough to think of the bigger picture. There were more important things at stake here than keeping an eye on August’s files and his collection of Pan Book of Horror paperbacks.

  She took up residence in the pizza restaurant across the road from the office, and began to make calls.

  ‘All-you-can-eat buffet?’ a singularly bored waiter asked her, staring out of the glass and into a world that didn’t involve corporate uniforms and upselling meetings.

  ‘Whatever,’ April replied, working her way through the wallet she’d stolen from the security officer.

  ‘Great,’ the waiter replied, rewarding her with an empty plate that clanged on the table like a mournful dinner gong. ‘Help yourself to the salad bar and drinks refills. Have a great lunch.’ The words were there, even if the emotion behind them was not.

  April all but ignored him until she noticed that the wallet had a hundred quid in it, at which point she ran to the buffet bar, filling her plate while keeping a watch on the office door through the window. It was hardly the first time she’d helped strip a man of his clothes before letting him buy her lunch.

  Within five minutes she was splattering her cheeks with Caesar salad dressing from an unreliable garlic bread stick and poking at crisp salad onions with a cautious fingernail.

  She was also thinking very hard about what she should do next.

  She tried to decide who she could trust to look into the security officer’s background. The answer was infuriatingly slow in coming. It was hard to trust anyone that worked in their business. She would certainly never class herself as trustworthy. She’d just have to take the risk. Propping up his driver’s licence on a glass shaker of chilli flakes, she rang an old friend in MI6 personnel.

  ‘Valerie, you craggy old slut, how’s tricks?’

  ‘Presuming you mean Ms DeMarco, I can put you through. Might I ask who’s calling?’

  God save us from switchboards, April thought, forking some pepperoni into her mouth. ‘April Shining. Another craggy old slut, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘I’ll see if she’s available.’

  April watched a group of kids in the street jumping up and down in front of Oman’s shop window. They were offering all sorts of exciting hand gestures to accompany their opinion of his wares. After a moment she was treated to the sight of Oman’s naked buttocks being pressed against the glass to form a white, hairy square. The kids laughed and ran away. April was pleased to see someone else shared her taste for frank expression in this modern world.

  ‘April?’

  ‘Hello, dear. I do hope I haven’t made whoever answered the phone cry. I may have been a tad salty in my language.’

  ‘I wondered why they were looking at me as if I’d just set fire to the stationery cupboard. Thanks for that.’

  ‘Always a pleasure. Now listen, my darling, I have to make this quick as I’m running out of credit,’ the most well-worn lie of the digital age, she supposed, ‘can you look into the file of a chap called Hamish Bernstein?’

  ‘Are you at a Glaswegian bar mitzvah?’

  ‘I’m in charge of the canapés. One has to fill one’s retirement somehow. I don’t need any saucy details, just an idea of which department he answers to.’

  There was the clattering of a keyboard on the other line that rather undercut Valerie’s feigned reluctance. ‘I can’t just dish out that sort of thing to anyone who calls, you know.’

  ‘I’m not anyone, sweetie, I’m me, you know I won’t go blabbing. Anyway, it’s not like I’m asking for his credit card number.’ I already have that, after all, she thought, fishing it out of the wallet.

  ‘He’s uniform,’ by which Valerie meant military, ‘currently seconded to Bertie’s lot over at Section 12. Seen action in lots of our more tasty foreign fields.’

  ‘Haven’t we all,’ April replied. ‘Thank you, dear, it’s much appreciated.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you intend to tell me why the interest?’

  ‘Just wondering where to return his underwear. These boys will litter up the flat so.’ April hung up and rewarded herself with a mouthful of pizza and a fizzy drink with too many flavours, none of them real.

  ‘Bertie’ was Albert Fisher, a particularly unpopular man, mainly due to the fact that, having hopped from one desk to another over his career at Six, his main duty these days was to investigate security risks within British Intelligence itself. Gone were the cold war days when such things were a day-to-day concern, but his small section still monitored other officers for corruption or ‘acting against home interests’. What on earth did he want with August? Her brother was an incorrigible pain in many a Whitehall arse but he’d certainly never been accused of disloyal activities.

  April was positively livid as she hoovered up some jalapeno peppers.

  Next to her she noticed a table full of young mothers busily stuffing napkin-wrapped pizza slices into carrier bags. Between them, they looked they’d helped themselves to half of the buffet. That’s tea for the kids sorted, April thought, and why not? She folded a couple of slices into her own handbag for a mid-afternoon snack.

  Having stocked up, the table rose as one and dashed out of the door. The bored waiter appeared next to April, watching them go.

  ‘They didn’t pay,’ he said. The fact seemed to sicken him, but not quite enough to give chase. He seemed a bystander to his own job. April felt rather sorry for him.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement on the street outside. Bernstein was leaving the office.

  ‘How much did this table of joy cost?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll get your bill,’ he said, making no move to do so, still watching the retreating diners who had left without paying.

  ‘Sorry, no time, I really have to dash.’ She fished a twenty pound note out of Bernstein’s wallet. ‘That do?’

  ‘Too much,’ he said. ‘The buffet’s only—’

  ‘Then shove it in your pocket and pretend I did a runner too,’ she suggested, pushing the note into his hand and dashing out of the door.

  Bernstein was a little way up the street, heading in the direction of either the buses or the tube. She could only hope it
would be the latter – surreptitiously tailing someone on a bus was all but impossible unless you could disguise yourself as used chewing gum.

  As they both reached the top of the road, she was relieved to see Bernstein ignore the row of bus stops and make for the pedestrian crossing and the tube station beyond.

  April put on an extra burst of speed so that she was only a short distance behind him. She watched as he discovered his wallet was missing. He hesitated, clearly wondering if he should go back. Then, deciding – quite rightly – that it must have been lifted rather than dropped accidentally, he cursed, pulled out his Oyster Card and carried on his way. She let him mount the escalator before darting through the ticket barrier, peering over the escalator to see which of the two platforms he aimed for. Once he’d stepped out of sight onto the westbound platform, she went down the escalator after him, hanging back from the platform. She waited for the train to arrive, watched him board and then dashed over and climbed into the next carriage.

  Bernstein had clearly managed to break into the filing cabinets because under one arm he had a thick stack of cardboard files. He didn’t look at them as the train headed towards Turnpike Lane; instead he picked up a copy of the Metro newspaper and began to flick through it. April perched in a seat with her back to him, only keeping an eye on him as the train stopped for a station. As they approached Finsbury Park, he got to his feet and she hung back as the passengers dismounted, waiting for him to walk past her on the platform before jumping up and getting off just before the doors closed.

  Bernstein had wrapped the files in his copy of the Metro and made his way up the Seven Sisters road towards the park, April keeping a safe distance behind him.

  The park was quiet but for the odd determined cyclist and jogger, huffing great, white clouds of condensation before them in the cold air. They reminded April of ailing locomotives, desperately trying to push their load up one more hill. In order not to be seen, she allowed Bernstein as much space as she dared, hanging right back as he sat down on a bench, placing the wrapped folders next to him. How she loved to watch people who weren’t spies acting like spies. She just bet he had insisted on a code phrase.

  He sat there for a few moments, quite failing to appear in the least bit relaxed and then, when he apparently couldn’t take it any more, he jumped up and moved quickly back the way he had come, leaving the files on the bench. A drop then, she realised; he wasn’t here to meet anyone, just to make a delivery.

  She had little choice but to let him go, he wasn’t important – it was whoever was pulling the strings she wanted to see.

  It was cold, and April was struggling not to draw attention to herself by jogging on the spot, or beating her arms like an angry swan in an effort to keep her ailing circulation going. When you got to her age, there was only so much that could be achieved through the enthusiastic deployment of cardigans and scarves. She wondered if a cigarette would make her feel any warmer and decided, lacking the evidence to say either way, to give it a shot.

  It was another half an hour before Bernstein’s employer appeared, by which point April had seriously begun to consider climbing one of the trees in order to keep herself moving. When she saw who the man was, the flush of anger she felt all but undid her chill. It was Clive King, an ex-lover now deputy business secretary and a man that owed Section 37 considerable thanks after they had salvaged an important set of diplomatic talks with the South Korean government. What the hell was he doing being involved in this? He wasn’t part of the Intelligence community, had no links to Albert Fisher’s department… April was as baffled as she was livid. She decided the only way forward was to stroll over there and give him a clip around the ear.

  He sat down on the bench and was slipping the folders inside his coat when April dropped down next to him. She was only slightly mollified by the startled cry this brought from him.

  ‘I hope you have a bloody good explanation for all this?’ she demanded, refusing to grace him with a moment in which to recover. ‘After everything August has done for you lately, I can’t believe you’re involved in this absurd business.’

  He stared at her for a moment, regaining some of his composure. ‘Hello April,’ he said eventually. ‘Lovely to see you as always.’

  ‘Don’t give me that. Our days of being pleased to meet up on quiet park benches ended with the 1970s. Now, what’s going on?’

  King sighed. ‘Your brother’s in a great deal of trouble.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be freezing my particulars off out here if he wasn’t,’ she told him. ‘What’s your part in it?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re shouting at the wrong person,’ he smiled, ‘as always. He’s being investigated by a man called Fisher…’

  ‘Section 12, I know.’

  ‘Fisher came to me, expecting me to offer evidence against August following the Lufford Hall business. Naturally I couldn’t oblige. I had nothing but praise to heap on Section 37’s shoulders – and you wouldn’t believe how much vitriol that has caused in certain idiotic corners of the government. I told him there could be no question of August’s loyalty, or indeed, his importance to the security of our nation. I told him that we were damned lucky to have him and that we should count ourselves lucky that he was doing his job.’

  April softened. ‘That’s terribly sweet, if it’s true.’

  ‘Of course it’s true, April, you know me better than that. I’m not one of your two-faced lot, I’m just a politician. We’re paragons of virtue and trust by comparison. Fisher was… I don’t know how to describe it really, gleeful? He didn’t care what I said, he was utterly convinced that he would break August. He relished the idea so much. He quite wrong-footed me. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone so completely and utterly poisonous in his attitudes. He’s a serious threat, April, deadly serious…’

  ‘I can handle Fisher.’

  King shook his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, knowing you as I do, but I really don’t think you can. He hates August, I mean really… I know people bandy the word around, but the pleasure he was taking in his conviction that he would ruin your brother. What did August ever do to him? It was personal, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve even met. Which, considering the time they’ve both spent in service seems a feat in itself, but I’m sure there’s no personal axe to grind.’

  ‘You didn’t see what he was like. He means to destroy him, April, utterly destroy him. I did my best to ask around, see if I couldn’t pull a few strings to have the investigation stopped but I have no real influence, not in security. We pretend it’s the politicians that have the power but you and I both know that’s illusory when it comes to this sort of thing. I’m probably just another file somewhere in an MI6 office. So I decided to try something else…’

  ‘Bernstein?’

  ‘I know his father, he owed me a favour. Hamish is a career soldier, he does as he’s told, as long as you’re firm enough. Fisher had asked him to go through the Section 37 files. He wanted all the material he could find on Shining’s time in Germany in the early Eighties.’

  ‘He’d have had a job on. August doesn’t keep the old stuff in the office, he hasn’t got the space.’

  ‘Then he’s gone to Fisher empty-handed, good.’ King smiled. ‘A small victory, but you take what you can get.’

  April looked at the bundle of files on the bench. ‘So what are these?’

  ‘Take a look. I convinced Bernstein that, while he was there, he would be helping his country were he to select certain files and ensure they were removed from Shining’s office.’

  April opened the files and saw her own name. ‘They’re all about me?’

  ‘I didn’t want Fisher going after you next. I might not be able to help August but I could at least try and protect you.’

  April put her hand on King’s arm. ‘Oh, you silly darling, I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Fisher doesn’t care. I told you, the man’s a menace. He’d find som
ething to twist against you I’m sure.’

  ‘But he’s not interested in me, is he?’

  King shrugged. ‘He was interested in everything to do with August. He asked about you and Toby. Wanted to know what I knew about the both of you. I couldn’t help Toby…’

  ‘Nobody can at the moment,’ April admitted. She patted the files on her lap, looking out across the park. In the distance a jogger in a hoodie was pounding his way across the grass towards them, his trainers beating at the ground. Beyond him a woman wrestled with two large dogs, neither inclined to walk in the same direction. In the far distance a group of school kids were laughing and shoving at one another, cutting through the park as a shortcut home. Normal people, happy in their normal business.

  ‘It was kind of you to think of me,’ she said to King.

  King shifted in his seat, slightly embarrassed. ‘I often do,’ he admitted.

  She hugged his arm. ‘Now now, you’re a happily married man these days, don’t start digging all that up.’

  ‘Just because the world moved on doesn’t mean I don’t still have feelings for you,’ he said. ‘They may not be the same feelings they once were…’

  ‘Don’t spoil it, darling.’

  He laughed. ‘You know what I mean, you’re a great woman, April, and I’ll always have your back when I can.’

  ‘I can always depend on you, Clive, you gorgeous old sod.’

  King coughed and April felt something spatter on her face. ‘Clive!’ she said, reaching for her cheek. Then she turned to look at him. It hadn’t been a cough. There was a ragged hole where his left cheek had been, a thin trail of condensation rising from the small entry wound in the back of his skull. Her fingers touched the blood on her cheek even as she saw the spatter that had arced across her lap and the files her old friend had stolen in order to protect her. ‘Clive!’ she cried again, this time in shock and horror.