(2013) Collateral Damage

by Colin Smith

  'I'm not saying you are a pusher,' said Fitchett, almost kindly.

  'I'm not all that interested.' He tapped the pistol. 'What about this?'

  'How many times do I have to tell you? I never knew about the bloody gun. I've never seen it before. If I'd have known I'd have thrown him out. You tell me his name was Colour or something and he was a terrorist. As far as I'm concerned his name was - is - Erich Galland and up until now I was always under the impression that he had something to do with the travel business and lived in Paris.'

  'Where in Paris?'

  'I don't know. Hotels.' The policeman sighed.

  Ruth thought she was doing bloody well. Let them have their pound of flesh on the dope and deny the gun. What a bastard Hans was leaving it there without telling her, but forget about that now. Just concentrate on denying the gun. Soon they would have to let her see a solicitor and then everything would be all right. Or nearly all right. There was still Father to face. Christ! He was going to be livid. The publicity would kill him. And her party would almost certainly ask her to resign from the central committee. They might even expel her. She didn't know whose anger she feared most. Theirs or her parents. Forget about that too. Stick to the dope. Nobody got anything more than a small fine for a couple of ounces of hash nowadays.

  It was almost midnight. They had come armed and with a search warrant at 6.30 that evening, just as she had finished washing her hair under the shower. It had taken them that long to get around to processing the film from the morning collection and even then if a Detective-Sergeant from the Branch, whose mind happened to be on Koller and his associates, had not chanced to wander into the photographic department it might have taken a couple of days for someone to spot the identity of the fair-haired man staring up at the camera. The terrorist had been right. She was not under very close surveillance. It was simply that they had a batch of newly issued video cameras to play with. It had only been installed twenty-four hours before. Had they had it sooner they would have seen Koller entering the flat and been able to nab him.

  Ruth had answered the door in a white towelling dressinggown, her wet hair tied into a towel, to find no one there. As she took a tentative step beyond the threshold she was grabbed by one of the two detectives standing either side of it. At the same time the other police, in the lead a uniformed dog-handler and his German Shepherd, charged into the flat. Two of them had drawn their revolvers and one of them, a nervous young man, but deadly on the range, came very close to putting a shot through the kitchen door, which slammed shut in the draught. At the tail of this posse came a policewoman who told Ruth to sit down in one of the kitchen chairs and stood there with her hand on her shoulder, almost as if she was comforting her, while the flat was searched. The dog sniffed around and then yawned and pissed over the sitting-room table. It took them about three minutes to find the dope hidden in a plastic bag under the mattress in her bedroom.

  'Never seen it before,' she said when they showed it to her, fiddling with the belt around her wrap. Once she had got over the shock she became very conscious of the fact that she was naked underneath, and the towel she had knotted around her head had come off so that the wet hair hung down the sides of her face like rats' tails. It took them a little longer to find the automatic where Koller had left it in the lavatory cistern. 'I suppose you've never seen this before either?' said the Detective Chief Inspector. That was the first time that evening she had occasion to think what a bastard Hans was, but all she said was: 'Can I have a cigarette?' 'I don't think we've got the sort you smoke,' leered the young detective who had almost put a shot through the door. He had recovered his nerve enough to be nasty. Fitchett scowled at him and gave her one of his own untipped Senior Service and lit it for her. He also allowed the policewoman to take her into the bedroom here she put on a faded pair of jeans and a sweater. He didn't intend to take any chances. Everything was going to be done by the book and more so. The head of the Branch had told him to make damn sure nobody was going to be able to scream 'police brutality' and had made it plain that the Commissioner himself was taking a keen personal interest in the case, as well he might with a peerage coming up. Her father was bound to raise hell even if he wasn't in that faction of the Cabinet who thought they were all fascist pigs.

  Fitchett himself had all the physical equipment to make him appear a bullying, ham-fisted sort of man which was deceptive because, as his superiors had come to realise rather late in his career, he had an ice-sharp analytical mind that went some way beyond the native guile normally associated with successful policemen. He was in his early fifties, was at least a stone overweight, drank more whisky than his doctor advised and, when he was working or drinking, chain-smoked Senior Service which he lit with an old petrol lighter fitted with a wind shield. His face was a monument to his pleasures, being red and full of broken veins and teeth stained an awful yellow. He had been squeezing blackheads out of his nose since adolescence which, together with the gallons of spirit that had drained through his system, had turned the ruddiness of his face to the characteristic boozer's strawberry. He had a showy amount of nasal hair and, as with many intelligent men, his ears had also burst into foliage. His black hair, turning grey, was longer than one would expect to find in a man of his age and position. It partly covered his ears and a lock of it hung down over a high forehead. As if to compensate for this physiognomy he was fussy about his clothes and dressed like a successful lawyer in well-cut three-piece suits, for which he paid more than he could afford, and striped shirts. His accent was the diluted cockney of the South London lowermiddle class peppered with criminal argot, so that a car was always 'a motor', a bribe 'a drink', his boss 'the governor', and a gun 'a shooter'.

  Basically, Fitchett was a contented policeman and would have probably remained one if the cabinet minster's daughter had not become his case. The trouble was he didn't like interrogating a suspect, particularly a suspect he knew he had bang to rights, as if he was walking on egg-shells. What's more he didn't have the forty-eight hours the Terrorism Act said he did because his Governor had made it quite dear earlier, when he was summoned upstairs to the floor with carpets, that if a confession had not materialized by midnight he was to stop. 'After all, we don't want her saying she was deprived of her sleep or you dropped LSD in her coffee, do we?' the Commander had said. He was everything Fitchett wasn't. Lean, urbane, practically teetotal and not as clever.

  'But if we can keep her incommunicado for forty-eight hours Koller might come back to the flat,' Fitchett had objected.

  'You don't really believe that do you?'

  'No. I think he's scarpered. Apart from the shooter and her cannabis the place was dean. No shaving tackle; no clothes. Nothing. The gun makes me believe he's left the country. Didn't want to risk carrying it through airport security. We're checking out his known aliases with the lads at Heathrow and Gatwick now. But someone else from his mob might turn up. Someone we don't know about. It would be worth sitting on that gaff for as long as possible. Do the Funnies know?'

  It was a good question. MI5 would have wanted to play it Fitchett's way. Keep the arrest quiet for a day or two, post some men in and around the flat and see what turned up. If you don't go fishing you won't catch any fish.

  'No, I haven't informed the Security Service yet,' said the Commander, standing on his dignity. He prided himself on never using slang.

  I would have bet a thousand quid on that, thought Fitchett. But all he said was, 'Oh?'

  'Look, John,' said the Commander, fiddling with his pipe, 'you know there are special problems here.'

  'I know the law is supposed to be the same for everyone,' said Fitchett. He decided to play stupid. Make the gutless, arselicking bastard spell it out for him.

  'That's not the point,' said the Commander sharply, 'and you know it isn't. If we really had something on this girl I wouldn't hesitate to throw the works at her. But we don't. She's probably telling the truth when she says she didn't know who Koller was. I don't believe people
like him go around telling their sleeping partners what they do for a living. All we have on her is the gun, which she probably didn't know was there, a few drugs and the circumstantial evidence that she's a member of some tiny leftwing party. What does PERPP believe in anyway?'

  'They call themselves Ecological Marxists. You know, "Fair deal for Comrade Seal". That sort of thing.'

  'Do they really say that?'

  'Almost.'

  'Hmm. You know her father was a member of the CP up to 1939. One of those who saw the light when Stalin and Hitler carved up Poland.'

  'Yes, I've seen his file.'

  'Well, he's changed a lot since then, hasn't he? Compared to a lot of his Right Honourable colleagues in the Cabinet he's a true blue. As you know a lot of those gentlemen want to come down pretty hard on us. State within a state, secret police, that sort of baloney. They want to make us more accountable, discover what we and the intelligence services spend our money on etcetera. Of course there's always been a bunch in that lot who think people like us are nasty fascists adding up how many trade union trips they made to Prague in 1952 and drawing the wrong conclusions. Or the right ones, as the case may be. Her father happens, at the moment, to be on our side and we want to keep him that way.'

  Fitchett rubbed his hands on his pin-striped knees and briefly examined his hand-stitched Chelsea boots. It was a plausible tale but he knew it wasn't the truth or, at most, a very exaggerated version of it. There was no real threat in the Cabinet towards the Branch or the security services. The truth was that the girl's father was close to the PM and there was an Honours List coming up. The Commissioner knew he could rely on his old acolyte commanding Special Branch not to lose him the seat in the Lords he was anxious to retire to.

  'We could charge her with conspiracy to murder,' said Fitchett. 'Koller must have been living with her when he attacked the Palestinian. I don't think it would take much to get that out of her.'

  'No, not conspiracy. We haven't got enough to go on. And there's too much controversy over the conspiracy laws as it is. We've got to use it sparingly or we'll lose it altogether. We'd have a hell of a job proving that she knew about a murder attempt just because she was living with him.'

  'I think she'd break. She's tired now. She's no idea how we got on to her either. I think she could be made to believe that Koller tipped us off as a diversionary tactic while he made his run.' What Fitchett was really thinking was that she didn't know about the shooter and she felt betrayed. He could work on that. Make her angry. Then she'd talk. But he had no intention of confirming the Commander's suspicion that Koller hadn't told her about the Browning. He wasn't going to lose that charge as well.

  The Commander was thinking that life was difficult enough without bloody-minded people like Fitchett about. Why the hell did he have to be so difficult? What did it matter to him? He was due for retirement in a couple of years anyway, with little prospect of getting promotion before that. Not if he had anything to do with it.

  He fiddled with his pipe again. 'Hmm. I think the best thing we can do is charge her with possession of the gun and the drugs. The press will still have a field-day with the story and that will stir things up here if Koller has any other friends about the place. Somebody might panic and break cover and then we'll have them. Should we step up the surveillance on PERPP?'

  'I don't think so. As far as I can see they're a bunch of harmless wankers. Macrobiotic Marxists.'

  'What?'

  'A lot of them are vegetarians. They think roast beef and capitalism go together. They don't believe in terrorism either. They think it's elitist. They're waiting for the workers to rise. It's going to happen any day now. The girl's an exception. If they knew what she'd been up to they'd drum her out.'

  'All the more reason to believe she didn't know who Koller was.'

  'Not necessarily. I think she's a bit of a renegade - like her father.'

  'Well anyway, make those two charges and get her into the magistrate's court for a remand tomorrow. I'll see that the press are tipped off.'

  'What about bail? She's bound to apply for it.'

  The Commander had been waiting forth this one. 'Oh, no objection,' he said casually, 'as long as she surrenders her passport and reports to her local police twice a day. Of course, you'll have to make it clear to the court she's not Ulrike Meinhof. Just a silly little girl on the periphery of things.'

  'That's not going to look so good,' said Fitchett. 'Bigwig's daughter shacked up with a terrorist gets bail. They've got shoplifters awaiting trial six to a cell in Brixton.'

  'For God's sake, John, the girl's not going to run away and you know damn well she isn't. She might even lead us somewhere if we let her run around a bit.'

  That's bloody marvellous, thought Fitchett. First she's a poor little rich girl who doesn't know who she's going to bed with and now she's going to lead us somewhere. Make your bloody mind up. But he knew it was useless to continue the argument. He leaned over the Commander's desk, stubbed his cigarette out in a clean brass ash-tray. Their eyes met. 'Right,' said Fitchett, 'I'd better go and do my duty.'

  'Let me know when you've finished. I'll probably be at home. You've got my number?'

  'Yes,' said Fitchett. 'Yes, I've got your number.'

  Fitchett didn't give up easily. As the midnight deadline approached he was still trying to break Ruth. 'Do you realise,' he said, picking up the Browning in its polythene bag and drop ping it rather heavily on the table, 'that this gun was used in an attempt to murder somebody and that you could be charged with conspiracy to murder?'

  'No, I don't,' said Ruth, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. 'But if you're going to I think I ought to be allowed to see a solicitor.'

  Conspiracy to murder. How many years was that worth for a first offender - three, four, five? And prison was full of gays. She had a vision of beefy, dyke wardresses with rubber truncheons dragging her to a cell. Sod that bastard Hans. Why didn't she just tell fatso here everything she knew about him which, come to think of it, wasn't a great deal, and get out of this mess. She had loved him and he had exploited her. Inside she always knew that was what he was doing. Men always did. It wouldn't be like betraying the party. She was about to open her mouth to speak when Fitchett beat her to it. The time was five-past midnight. He was thoroughly pissed off. He wanted to go home.

  'You're lucky,' he said. 'I'm not going to throw the book at you. I'm going to charge you with unauthorized possession of a firearm, to wit one Browning automatic pistol, and being in possession of cannabis resin. I must caution you that you don't have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and used in evidence against you. Do you wish to make a statement?'

  'No. Not until I've seen a lawyer.'

  'That's your privilege. Smile nicely at the beak in the morning and perhaps you'll get bail. Who knows, your father might be in court.'

  He turned to the WPC. 'Let her make a phone call and then show her where she's spending the night.'

  'How am I going to find a lawyer this time of night?'

  'You're not. Call a friend. Get them to get you a lawyer first thing in the morning. Otherwise you can get legal aid when you get to court.'

  As the WPC led her out Fitchett said: 'Call your father. He's got to hear sometime. I twould be better coming from you.'

  The cabinet minister's daughter made a movement with her head that might have been a nod of assent.

  The Commander was right. Reporters packed the two press benches and a few late comers from Fleet Street had to sit among the general public. Ruth came on last, after the night's crop of blasé young prostitutes, still caked with last night's make-up, and unshaven drunk and disorderlies.

  When he gave evidence Fitchett named Koller as the person who owned the pistol and said that it was believed he had left the country. The fact that Ruth was allowed bail made it, as the policeman had predicted, an even better story. When their editors showed them the news agency copy several leader writers began to shape a
ngry paragraphs about the inequalities of the bail system. The fact that the girl departed the scene in her mother's MGB sports helped underline their case.

  Both the evening newspapers splashed on the story and accompanied it with pictures of Ruth, her father, and an old passport picture of Koller that bore little resemblance to the video camera photographs. The Assistant Commissioner had decided that if Koller had already left the country there was no point in circulating them and it might pay not to reveal how they knew Koller was staying at the girl's flat.

  Dove, standing by the entrance to the underground station, read the story with mounting incredulity. The bitch knew where Koller was and they had let her go. Let her go because she was a bloody cabinet minister's daughter. Well, that might just turn out to be her hard luck - and Koller's.

  10. A Country Call

  'Any society that produces such appalling secret policemen can't be all that bad,' said the cabinet minister over breakfast.

  Ruth had been taken to their country place where she was only required to report to the local constable once a week. At the same time, and after some deliberation, her father had decided not to ask the Home Secretary to have the very obvious Special Branch man watching his house removed. He had used up enough favours already.

  They were discussing the Branch man now. He was a thickset young fellow in an old red Cortina, cove they supposed, who was maddeningly indiscreet. Sometimes they saw him parked at the end of their drive but as soon as one of them approached he drove away. The landlord at the Bull had telephoned to say that he had been in asking questions about them and wanted to know if he should tell the police. They told him not to. Because of the Branch man's build they had nicknamed him 'Shoulders'; by the time Ruth had been in the house for three days he had become the nearest thing they had to a joke.

  'There's something wrong with any society that needs them,' answered Ruth, who was thinking of Fitchett and how he had looked as if he wanted to murder her.