Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller)

by Adrian Magson

  ‘What did you want to tell me?’

  She dropped her cigarette and turned to face him. ‘OK, this is going to sound crazy, right. But the other night, when Clare left . . . I had a feeling she was building up to something.’ She turned and started walking again, then turned back immediately. ‘When Melrose came in—’

  ‘Melrose?’

  ‘Yes, the Russian or Pole or whatever he was. He was admitted through the back door. I mean, literally, the back door. Like a delivery of new equipment. What the hell was that all about? I knew something strange was happening. Anyway, he was ranting and raving in his sleep – I mean, really shouting, like the worst kind of fever. But none of us could understand him, which didn’t help. One of the auxiliaries is married to a guy from over that way and she thought he might have been Ukrainian. Then Clare told me he was asking for water.’ She took out another cigarette and lit up. ‘Sorry – filthy habit, I know, but if you worked in there, you’d . . . Anyway, she told me he wanted a drink of water, so I assumed she understood the language. She denied it, and said she just knew what water was in Russian from school. Varda or something similar.’

  She had understood a lot more than that, thought Harry. But he didn’t tell Casey. ‘Was that all?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t say anything else about him. But she seemed different after that. Like she’d had this kick of energy go through her . . . like a light being switched on.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘No, not really. Some get back into it quite quickly, others need something to jolt them. But Clare had been . . . well, you know how she was: like a living corpse, poor thing. Anyway, suddenly she began to sit up and talk more, taking an interest, asking questions. She hadn’t done that before. It was slow, of course, but getting there.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  She shrugged. ‘Weird stuff, mostly. About the layout of the hospital, where the staff entrance was, was the place covered by CCTV, that sort of thing. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because I figured showing any interest in her surroundings was better than none. Before that, she’d just lain there, barely moving.’

  Harry nodded. Clare hadn’t said much the last time he’d seen her, beyond telling him where to go in two precise words. Even then, Casey had mentioned that she would only get well if she wanted to. At the time, it had not been an encouraging sign.

  ‘Did she ever say where she might go – what her plans were after leaving hospital?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Some patients don’t. They keep it inside until they’re ready. Some don’t ever let on where they come from, like they can’t bear to talk about it in case they don’t make it, I suppose. But if she was starting to think about going home, that was good, right? She wasn’t near ready for it, though. I tried to tell her, but I don’t think it got through.’

  ‘What about Melrose? Did she say anything else about him?’

  ‘No. She buttoned right up after that first bit about water. I assumed she felt sorry for him because he couldn’t speak English. But thinking about it now, I wonder if something happened the evening she left.’

  Harry stopped walking. ‘Why would you think that?’

  Casey tossed the cigarette into the gutter, as if she were unconvinced about the need for it. ‘He’d been shouting again, although only Clare could hear him properly, being just across the corridor. I popped in to see her before going off duty, and she seemed confused.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, she was pulling at the top sheet, folding and re-folding it, and asked me where her clothes were. She hadn’t done that before, but we try to make patients feel safe – a sense of having their things close by – so I told her, in the wardrobe, where they’d always been. It wasn’t a secret and I thought it might help calm her down. She couldn’t have her blouse, though, which had been thrown away; it was covered in blood.’

  Harry remembered all too well, but didn’t say so. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’d got her a spare T-shirt – we have an odds-and-ends cupboard for emergencies like that. I told her everything was in the wardrobe and she seemed to calm down a little after that. But that’s not unusual; it doesn’t take much to change their moods. I was going to recommend a sedative because I thought she was going stir-crazy, like some patients do – especially from the military. In the end, though, I didn’t. I doubt she would have taken it, anyway.’ She looked up at him. ‘That was the last time I saw her. Or the new guard.’

  Harry held his breath. ‘A new guard?’

  ‘Yes. Big bloke, not like ours. Looked like he could chew barbed wire. He arrived the same time as Melrose.’ She shivered. ‘He gave me the creeps. It was obvious he was there to look after Melrose, though. He never spoke to the other guards and used to sit inside Melrose’s room most of time, except when he went on a break.’

  Harry relaxed. If what Ballatyne had said was correct, he wasn’t surprised that extra security had been placed on Tobinskiy’s room. It made absolute sense to keep unwanted visitors away from their secret charge, if they didn’t want news of his presence leaking out to the press. Like giving him a very British name while he was there; it was a simple precaution. Then Casey drove a truck through his reasoning.

  ‘What I didn’t understand was why he left early that particular evening.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I’d been asked to stand in on another unit after my normal shift, and was just leaving when I saw him getting into a car down the road. When I went in the next morning, I found everything was in chaos. They said he’d left before his replacement came on, leaving a gap in security.’

  FOURTEEN

  Intelligence analyst Keith Maine strode north along Whitehall through the lunchtime crowd, enjoying the brush of cool air and the sounds of conversation going on around him. After the stuffiness of his office and the stack of reports he’d been checking all morning, it was good to escape and stretch his legs. His destination was a mile and a quarter from his shared office in Thames House, the home of MI5, near Lambeth Bridge, and he’d so far covered the ground at a pleasing clip, not bad going for someone approaching retirement.

  Taller than most and smartly dressed in a grey suit, crisp, white shirt and burgundy tie, his quick, almost military gait automatically opened up a channel before him. He ignored the official buildings on either side: the Treasury, Foreign and Commonwealth, Ministry of Defence – all seen far too often to now make any impression – and made his way up the eastern side of Trafalgar Square, avoiding the souvenir stalls and their boiling clutch of tourists and sightseers, side-stepping a trio of elderly Japanese ladies arguing over a street map.

  Veering off into St Martin’s Lane, he eventually turned left into the shadowy confines of Cecil Court, a narrow pedestrian cut-through lined with bookstores and specialist collectors’ shops. The light here was soothing, funnelled down between the high buildings on either side, and he paused to scan a trestle table layered with second-hand books. Familiar titles most of them, but none that attracted him. For Maine, looking was part of the pleasure of this place; his private retreat from the everyday tensions and scuttlebutt of the security services.

  An amateur collector of first editions in his spare time, he was here today on a rare mission. A phone call from a friend had alerted him to the discovery of a very reasonably priced thriller that had just come onto the market. He’d immediately put in a bid and was now here to collect his purchase, an indulgence his single status allowed.

  The shop he sought was at the far end, close to where the passage spilled out into the noise and rush of Charing Cross Road. Beyond it lay Leicester Square, the tourist trap and hunting ground for chuggers, the aggressively cheerful but pushy charity fund-raisers. He stepped inside the shop. Breathed the atmosphere with appreciation and a feeling of comfort. The walls were lined with solid bookshelves, the sheen of the polished wood reflecting their years, each one crammed with hardbacks. The floor consisted of roughened, bare
oak boards, echoing with the hollow sound he loved and would have paid good money for at home, had he been able to afford it. But that, he reflected, had ever been the way. The cost of looking after his mother until her death twelve months ago had eaten up most of his civil service salary, leaving just enough for the occasional book purchase if the price was right. Everything else took a poor third place. He preferred not to think about the one time he’d allowed his indulgence to colour his judgement, and betrayal was such a harsh word. At the time, selling what he’d considered already outdated information had not seemed such a bad thing . . . and as his conscience kept reminding him, it had been to an ally, so where was the harm?

  He shook the unwelcome thoughts away as he crossed the shop floor. The bookseller was seated behind the counter at the far end, beneath a frosted window. He was scowling at a laptop and muttering under his breath. He wore a check shirt stretched across a broad chest, with a build unlike any bookshop owner Maine had ever met. There were no other customers, but Maine could hear the ripping sound of packaging tape being used down a flight of wooden stairs to his left.

  The bookseller looked up and murmured a greeting with a hint of a smile. Reaching out a hand, he slid a hardback volume across the counter, wrapped in paper.

  ‘I think you’ll be pleased with this.’

  Maine felt flattered by the recognition. But his excitement took precedence as his eyes settled on the book. It was a familiar feeling whenever something particularly special came his way. He picked it up, savouring the rustle of paper, the weight and texture, resisting the urge to sniff at the pages. Not unusually, he reflected that this precise moment, when taking hold of a book for the very first time, was better than sex.

  The Man with the Golden Gun wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, he knew that. But Fleming’s work still carried a solid value and showed no signs of diminishing.

  Minutes later, after the inspection and payment, and the obligatory exchange of small talk with the bookseller, who turned out to be the shop’s owner, he walked out with his purchase carefully wrapped and clutched under his arm.

  He paused to scan the table of seconds outside, reluctant to let the moment go. He wasn’t remotely interested in the items on display, but felt a small obligation, after what he had just acquired, to give a fleeting nod to the mundane before moving on for a spot of lunch. Maybe today he would take some wine to celebrate this acquisition – a nice Merlot, perhaps.

  Another customer was already browsing the titles. Neatly dressed, his tanned fingers were walking along the spines, flicking them aside one by one.

  ‘I’m surprised at you, Keith,’ murmured the man. ‘You’re looking positively smug.’

  Maine faltered, tempted to walk away but surprised at meeting anyone here who knew him. An office colleague, perhaps, who’d ventured this way. He turned, feeling a momentary twitch in his gut. Echoes of the voice came back to him from a long time ago, uncomfortably familiar. Nobody from the office, he was certain. Yet the face, in profile, was not one he recognised. A slim beard, tanned, weathered skin, heavy glasses and dressed in a lightweight summer suit, the man could have been anyone, passing time just like himself. Not foreign but from somewhere overseas, somewhere hot. And yet there was something disturbing in the stance and the smile. He felt his gut lurch.

  Surely to God . . .

  Then the man had taken him firmly by the elbow and was leading him away, chuckling aloud for the benefit of any chance onlookers, a parody of the easy intimacy of an old friend meeting another after a lengthy gap. In reality, he was speaking between clenched teeth, a steely warning tone to his voice that left no room for argument.

  ‘Now, don’t make a scene, there’s a good chap,’ he muttered. ‘Or I might have to hurt you. You do know who I am, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maine’s head was spinning. He didn’t know what to do. Felt a desperate urge to run, but knew that would be useless.

  ‘Good. Then you’ll know what I’m capable of. Shall we walk? Only I have an understandable aversion to staying in one place for too long. It’s my one weakness.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Maine’s voice was a strangled whisper as he felt himself propelled back along the passageway the way he’d come, powerful fingers digging into the soft flesh around his elbow, painfully massaging the nerves. This hadn’t been part of his lunchtime mission. How the hell had this man found him?

  ‘Don’t pretend to be so surprised.’ The newcomer steered him out into the flow of pedestrian traffic and across St Martin’s Lane, stepping through a line of plastic garbage bags at the kerb, one of them spilling a scattering of packaging into the gutter. ‘You knew I’d call on you one day. It’s the way things work in this business, remember? Favours made, always repaid. You had your favour, now it’s time to pay.’

  Maine felt sick as he was led down a narrow alley alongside a gym. With no other pedestrians around, he felt horribly vulnerable. He stopped suddenly, ripping his arm free, fear giving him strength. But his legs wouldn’t let him run.

  ‘What do you want, Paulton? You must be crazy coming back here!’ He cast around desperately, his earlier pleasure now gone, a man searching for a way out of a bad situation. Unfortunately, he saw neither police nor security men, although on reflection, he knew deep down that neither would have been of any help to him.

  ‘Really? Why is that, Keith?’ Paulton feigned surprise. ‘Is it because I’m a black sheep in the intelligence community – a sordid little secret nobody wants to talk about?’ He cocked his head on one side and showed his teeth. But it wasn’t in a smile. ‘Or is it because I scare you shitless and you can’t face up to what you did and don’t want to be found out?’

  ‘No! I . . .’ Maine choked on the words. ‘What?’ The single word was all he could manage, a sign of resignation. ‘How did you know I would be here?’

  ‘I didn’t. But I know where you work, Keith.’ Paulton’s tone on the last few words was pseudo ghostly, the kind to frighten children. But this threat was very real.

  ‘You followed me?’

  ‘Of course. It’s one of the things I’ve always been particularly good at, even if I do say so myself. But then, operate in some of the nasty places I’ve been to in my time, and you need to be good at something. You really should check your back more often, though, Keith.’ He prodded Maine in the chest with a stiff finger, forcing him back against the wall of the building behind him. ‘Now, I want you to help me find somebody.’ Any feigned geniality had now gone, replaced by a harder tone.

  A dulled look. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Do you really expect me to explain that?’

  ‘Is it someone important, is that it? I’m not going to help you kill anyone.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’ Paulton’s voice was smooth, persuasive, but developing a harder edge. ‘Not that it would make much difference if I were. I need some information, that’s all; you have access to the files and I know you’ll get it for me. Just one person, that’s all I’m asking. Then I’ll be gone for good and never bother you again. Scouts’ honour.’ He smiled. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you – me out of your life forever?’

  ‘What will you do to this person?’

  ‘Like I said, don’t ask. That way, what you don’t know can’t come back and bite you on the arse.’ He gave a huff of impatience and his voice dropped as a door opened along the alleyway and a bag of rubbish was dropped outside. ‘Remember what I know about you, Keith. Five years ago you sold confidential weapons files to a French intelligence officer for hard cash.’

  Maine flinched. ‘I was tricked. I thought he was a journalist.’ It was a claim he’d always made, but right now it sounded even more hollow than ever.

  ‘Really? Was that what he told you? Boy, you were dumb. What was it he paid you – twenty-five grand? That must have bought you some nice little first editions.’ He applied more pressure until Maine cried out in pain. ‘Do you recall what happened to him, Keith?’

 
Pain etched Maine’s face. ‘No. I don’t. Why should I?’

  ‘He fell under a train in Norwood Junction. He should have stood back from the edge like they always tell you.’

  Maine looked horrified. ‘I didn’t know!’

  ‘Nor should you. That was my job, cleaning up the mess left by people like you. But you didn’t suffer, did you, Keith? Nobody found you out; there were no heavy knocks on your door at the dead of night. It stayed strictly between you and me, remember? Well, that was the favour; now it’s time to return it.’

  Maine was breathing heavily, his face ashen as the grim reality of what he’d done began to open up before him. The past few years since the Frenchman had disappeared had gradually absorbed the enormity of what he’d done. And the money had certainly helped. Now it was as if he’d been telescoped back to that time, with all the threat that had entailed. ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way, Keith, I don’t think your masters will like it, will they? They usually throw people in prison for what you did. It’s called selling secrets, you know. Some might call it treason . . . some of the old Eurosceptic die-hards, especially. They’d probably want to pull out your fingernails with pliers.’

  Maine looked alarmed. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘Actually, I would. Just one phone call.’ He snapped his fingers, making Maine jump.

  ‘But you’d be implicating yourself. I’d tell them everything – about how you tricked me and forced me to help you escape after that Georgian fiasco with Bellingham.’

  Paulton released his arm. It was a recognition that he was winning. Had already won. ‘You really think that would help?’ He waved a hand around them at the alleyway. ‘What are they going to do – make my life more difficult than it is? They don’t even know I’m in the country. I’d be gone before you finished dialling.’ He smiled easily, eyes ice-cold. ‘More to the point, you’d be dead before the week was out.’