by Chris Petit
He used a call box on the edge of the heath. Round’s office said he was on holiday. Round’s phone at home was on answer. Collard slept in the car and woke with a stiff neck. On another grey morning he hung around the wet heath, waiting for Churton until he remembered it was Saturday. Churton, in the manner of his class, would be out of town for the weekend.
Turning up at Round’s house seemed too dangerous if the police were actively looking for him. But Round’s wife was a creature of habit, and if she was in town the weekly shop in Sainsbury’s at Nine Elms would be part of her Saturday routine.
Collard crossed the river at Blackfriars and parked where he could see the entrance to the store. He bought several newspapers to pass the time.
He was on the inside pages of most of the tabloids and featured in the Daily Telegraph and The Times, named as wanted by the police for questioning in connection with the shooting of a Syrian businessman in Frankfurt. There was no picture. The information read like it had been recycled from a formal statement. There was a reference to a business disagreement. Even Tranter would have laughed at the neatness of Collard being framed for murder.
Shoppers hurried against the damp, pushing crabwise trolleys, piled so high they looked like looters. Collard couldn’t remember when he had last done anything so ordinary.
He came to Stack’s paper last. Her story shocked him more than the one about him. It came out of nowhere. Her reason for being in Malta was forensic evidence that connected the suitcase containing the bomb with clothes traceable to a store on the island. The bomb had set off on its journey not from Frankfurt but Malta.
It was clear someone was feeding Stack generously. Her report was authoritative, right on the inside, an exclusive, and the first clear indication of a change of direction in the official investigation.
Her article rewrote all previous theories: speculation about the Frankfurt Connection, Nazir, Nick, penetrated terrorist cells, Barry’s airside activities, which day the bomb was supposed to go on the plane, switched bags and all the rest counted for nothing because of Stack’s latest contention.
Collard was at a loss to understand this extraordinary volte-face. Perhaps Stack would tell him the bomb being put on in Malta didn’t preclude Nazir’s involvement and nothing had significantly changed, but it didn’t read like that, more like the start of a whole new investigation.
The car park had filled up. It was mid-morning and the supermarket was at its busiest. At last he spotted Round’s wife, alone, collecting a trolley.
He contrived a meeting among the vegetables, hoping she hadn’t read the papers. He doubted it. She wasn’t the type to contemplate anything as dirty as newsprint. He needn’t have worried. She was vague and tranquillized and seemed to recognize him only from some strange self-imposed distance.
‘Where’s Ollie?’
Her blank look told him how estranged she had become. It took her a while to recollect Round was taking out one of their children from a boarding school in Wiltshire, near where they kept a second home. Collard had driven Nick to stay down there, in a house tucked under a hill with views across a valley.
He left Round’s wife lost in the aisle and returned to the car. He didn’t know what to make of Stack’s story. It made no sense to put a bomb on a plane in Malta to blow up one leaving London; why via Frankfurt? More logical to send it direct to London and even that seemed an awfully long way round.
Perhaps Stack could explain.
Every new version was like shuffling a pack of cards. The elements were recognizable and the same, the variety infinite. The only indisputable facts were the plane had left Heathrow and never landed and 46.5 seconds was the time it had taken to fall to earth. Collard stared at his watch.
Round’s place was near the two Donhead villages between Salisbury and Shaftesbury, deep in countryside fed by single-track lanes in which Collard got lost. The winter countryside was a saturated brown and at its least inviting. He eventually found the right village, parked and trudged back through the empty landscape. The light was falling when he took up a position in the trees on the hill behind the house. The child came outside and used a garden swing for ten minutes. Collard made out a television on in the room to the left of the front door. The rapid one-two of a shotgun firing in the distance startled him. It was a miserable afternoon.
Round came up behind him, and would have caught Collard had he not stopped to fire twice more at a fleeing bird. He was twenty yards away in the gloom, gun to shoulder, the shots echoing and the bird’s panicked flapping still audible. Collard threw himself to the ground and rolled down the hill to a rhododendron bush big enough to hide in.
Round passed within a few yards. He was preposterously dressed in plus fours and a Norfolk jacket. Unaware of being watched, he looked more like the timid schoolboy Collard remembered. Round would be nervous of the gun and squeamish about shooting but felt obliged to masquerade as the country gent.
Round took the child back after tea, leaving the house without bothering to turn off lights or lock up. Collard walked in, found the shotgun and a cartridge belt of shells, broke the barrel, loaded it and put the safety catch on. He had hardly picked up a gun in his life. It was heavier than expected, also easier and he was surprised how right it felt.
Round returned forty-five minutes later. Collard waited behind the front door and whacked him hard in the midriff with the gun stock. Round jack-knifed and scrabbled on the floor, fighting for breath.
He flinched when he saw who it was, put his hands up and begged Collard not to shoot.
Collard ordered him up. They sat at opposite ends of the big farmhouse kitchen table with the gun on the table, pointed at Round, too far away for him to snatch it.
‘They’ve already pinned Nazir’s murder on me. Is there any reason why they shouldn’t add yours to the list?’
Round shook his head, uncomprehending.
‘I had no idea. Honestly.’
Round insisted he hadn’t known about any plot to kill Nazir. ‘The last thing I knew Churton was refusing to speak to you.’
‘It’s in the papers saying I’m wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting.’
Round hadn’t seen the papers. He had been taking his brat out for the day. He gave a weak smile, trying to make a joke of it.
The patina of wealth and a life of expensive food and fine wines usually gave Round a pampered sheen. His shirt collars were cut soft on the neck. Facing Collard, he looked like a man in collapse.
‘Are you taking the brat out tomorrow?’
Round thought better of lying and shook his head.
‘So it’s just us?’
Round nodded.
‘In your own words.’
Round tried to exploit what was left of their familiarity, insisting he had been used by Churton and Tranter. He looked up with a strange smirk, believing he could work his way off the hook.
Collard got up and swiped the butt of the gun against Round’s head. The force knocked Round out of his chair and when his face smashed into the flagstone floor his mouth bled. Collard watched the bubbles of blood and saliva form and burst as Round wept and he felt nothing.
Collard hauled him up and put him back on the chair. One of Round’s teeth lay on the floor. Collard picked it up and placed it on the table.
‘I thought you had died in the crash, so it didn’t matter.’
‘You saw a way of using that to get out of trouble. With me dead you could make up what you liked about me. You were up to your neck in those arms deals.’
Round nodded, so full of self-pity that Collard wanted to hit him again.
‘There was going to be an inquiry and I wasn’t sufficiently protected. They were already starting to go for me before the crash, saying I was going to be investigated for buying shares as a result of an inside tip-off. That was the start.’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course I bloody did!’ he snapped in an attempt at his old self. ‘We all did. Do you know
how expensive it is running the whole show?’
By that he meant three properties, heavily mortgaged, two cars, home help, private education, memberships of several gentleman’s clubs, the Hurlingham, a stable, two foreign holidays a year and all the other accoutrements of the successful middle classes. Without extraordinary wealth it was hard to meet all the bills without cutting what Round called the odd corner. This was done by insider dealing and an accountant who specialized in offshore investment.
‘It’s never enough.’
‘What happened when you learned I was still alive?’
‘I told Tranter. He came back later and said he had found a way to take care of it.’
‘So you shifted the responsibility on to Tranter?’
‘It was a nightmare. I was desperate and you were supposed to be dead.’
Tranter had run with Round’s idea but enlarged the frame to dump all the British government’s dubious dealings with Nazir onto Collard and pass it off as rogue private enterprise.
Evelyn’s equations were, as Round confirmed, evidence and Churton’s fingerprints were all over it. Churton had set up the Defence Equipment Finance Department for Tranter to run in 1982. Prior to that, International Military Services, a wholly government-owned company started in the 1970s to assist Royal Ordnance, had been chaired by Churton.
‘What did it do?’
‘One of its main functions was to arm the Shah of Iran.’
‘Which would have been perfectly legal then.’
‘And after the revolution when the Ayatollahs set up a series of secret arms deals with the United States it made sense for the Yanks to use us as a front. Churton already had the contacts.’
‘Including Sandy Beech and Nazir.’
Round nodded.
‘Then there’s no such thing as an independent arms dealer.’
‘No.’
‘When you took me to meet Joost Tranter that first time, what was that really about?’
‘We needed a company we could route orders through to the Middle East. With what was being offered we would have been foolish not to. It was a licence to print money and it was all authorized on a nod and a wink. We used Opticon and you were too busy with the domestic market to notice or care.’
Round gingerly fingered where his tooth had gone and said he couldn’t face prison. It would kill him. He stared at his tooth lying on the table.
‘I always was the pompous ass because I knew it got up people’s noses and they underestimated me. We never much liked each other from the start, did we?’
‘I’m not interested. Tell me about Churton.’
‘Any Iraq-related contracts went through Jordan, which was friendly and fronted the deal, and Churton sought to establish a country credit rather than a deal-by-deal credit. The idea was the bank set up a secret credit for Iraq of £275 million. Iraq was supposed to pay Jordan and Jordan pay us. If the Iraqis didn’t cough up, the deal was guaranteed by the ECGD. It was foolproof.’
‘And Iraq never paid, of course, and probably never intended to.’
‘No. It never paid Jordan as the trade was never supposed to have taken place. Anyway, Iraq wasn’t short of alternative offers.’
‘Did Churton negotiate with the Jordanians?’
‘He was behind it.’
‘For £275 million?’ Collard was still staggered by the size.
‘It was agreed in Amman in 1985.’
‘By Churton?’
‘Not personally. It was the Prime Minister’s son.’
After that both men sat in stunned silence: Round for admitting what he knew; Collard thinking about the recklessness of people who believed themselves exempt.
Collard forced Round to drink enough whisky to dull his reflexes. Then he made him write a full confession of everything he knew and told him to copy the finished document, which ran to several pages, twice more.
The documents would guarantee his safety and silence and, in exchange, Round would get him out of the country with £75,000 cash to disappear.
Round protested he couldn’t do it – Collard overestimated his powers and it was the weekend and he had no way of getting that kind of money at short notice.
‘You arranged for all those arms to be smuggled out. This is no different.’
‘How do I know you won’t make trouble from abroad?’
‘I only want to vanish and start again. The past is no longer of interest. In fact, be my guest. Say what you like about me once I’m gone. Blame me for all those things you were going to anyway and save your neck, on the condition we draw a line under this and Churton’s people let me be.’
He watched Round calculating, testing the strength of the lifeline.
‘All right,’ he finally said. ‘You have a deal.’
It took an hour to track down Joost Tranter. Collard listened carefully for any sign of duplicity and detected none. Round told Tranter that Collard had enough on all of them to make the situation non-negotiable.
Collard said, ‘I want Churton to deliver the money in person.’
Round sighed. ‘Don’t rub everyone’s noses in it.’
When Tranter next called they spoke for a long time. There had been trouble finding a pilot because of the weekend.
Collard realized how vulnerable his position was. Tranter knew where they were and Round’s confession was still retrievable.
When Round hung up he said they needed to go outside so he could fetch a road map from the car.
Collard covered Round while he fetched the map. Round found the page for East Anglia and pointed to a long, straight road in the Fens.
‘There’s a private airfield. Someone will fly you out after dark tomorrow evening. You will be taken to the Low Countries. After that you’re on your own.’
Collard stared at the map and tried to picture getting on the plane and leaving everything behind.
Round swallowed more whisky, saying his mouth hurt where his tooth was missing.
‘I’m sorry we’re in this mess.’
Collard had nothing to say to that. ‘Get me some envelopes and stamps.’
‘I’m not sure there are any stamps.’
Undone by the lack of a postage stamp, Collard thought. He was so tired he was having trouble thinking straight. He grew more concerned that the protracted negotiations had been Tranter stalling so he could organize a response.
Round came up with a sheet of stamps and envelopes. Collard made him lie on the floor while he wrote notes to Evelyn, Valerie Traherne and his solicitor, asking them to open the enclosed sealed envelope in the event of his death.
He wondered if they shouldn’t get out immediately but Round was too drunk to drive and Collard didn’t trust himself not to fall asleep at the wheel. He had the gun and if men came through the door he would manage a couple of shots first.
Round drank until he passed out at the kitchen table. Collard looked at the envelopes, wondering what kind of guarantee they would provide. His eyes closed and his head snapped back as he forced himself awake. It was three o’clock. Another seventeen hours and he would be gone. He got up and stuck his head under the kitchen tap and drank a pint of water. He turned out the kitchen lights as a precaution and sat in the dark and knew Sheehan was right. Nick was probably dead.
Round woke with a groan and said he was going to be sick. He threw up in the sink until nothing more came up and he was dry retching.
Collard watched, indifferent, calculating how long it would take Round to sober up enough to drive; perhaps three hours, meaning they could leave at first light. He would take Round with him for insurance, all the way to the airfield, posting the letters along the way, stopping to pick up the money from Churton. It was foolish to involve Churton but he wanted to see the man humiliated, for Nick’s sake as much as his own.
He ordered Round to make coffee and forced him to drink several mugs. Round became more lucid. Collard sensed the darkness outside beginning to lift.
Round talked, trying t
o establish complicity at Churton’s expense, saying Churton wasn’t what he pretended to be. All those upper-class mannerisms had been acquired not bred. A Rhodesian background had allowed him to fabricate his entry in Who’s Who, naming an elite school not attended.
Tiredness clawed at Collard’s eyes. He clung to the conversation in an effort to stay awake.
‘Why bother?’
He couldn’t see the point. It wasn’t as though class was the barrier it once had been. The old establishment had been elbowed aside in the charge led by Margaret Thatcher.
‘We laughed at her at first but not for long. She understood incentive and a blind eye were needed to get the country back on its feet. She fancied herself another Good Queen Bess with her loyal courtiers, building a new empire of money with her financial pirates and buccaneers like Churton who assumed the demeanour of the old guard, the better to stab it in the back.’
Round droned on. Collard switched off. He was back in Wales watching the river from Angleton’s old fishing hut. The winter rains had turned it fast and full. He remembered however much he tried to concentrate on one spot the rapid movement of water distracted his eye.
Collard came to on the floor. The side of his head felt like it was on fire. Round was standing over him, aiming the shotgun at him and making strange inarticulate noises in his throat, like he was trying to communicate but couldn’t. He was wild eyed and transformed. He had vomited again, this time down his front, and pissed his plus fours. For all his derangement, he looked pathetic and funny. There was very little Collard was sure of any more but he was certain Round didn’t have it in him to shoot anyone.
