by HRF Keating
‘I’m not the one to say you were wrong,’ John replied, easing his foot a little from the gas pedal. ‘You often enough get irritated with me for not reacting to things in your fiery manner, so when for once you take the long view then I can only say “Well done”.’
‘Thank you, kind sir.’
She fell silent, thoughts unravelling themselves little by little.
Yes, Malcolm’s cheerful acceptance of what had happened to him, of Graham’s death too, is one spark of brightness. One spark in a world seemingly darker and darker under clouds of doubt and dismay. Look at me. If the people who put Malcolm where he is are still there, untouched, what about the people supposedly in my own sights? At any time now they, too, are likely to make demands, backed up by the threat of using that CA 534 to cut huge destructive swathes through all the countryside. And what am I doing, what can I really do, to stop them?
Into her mind then there popped, incongruously, a fragment of a schooldays camp-fire chant:
One man went to mow
Went to mow a meadow.
One man and his dog
Went to mow a meadow.
Oh, yes, she thought. But it’s not with a dog that the man’s gone to mow. It’s with that small box of ultra-destructive CA 534. Or — or, if it’s a different man, a different man with a different cause, it could be just one man and his bomb.
Chapter Nine
In the morning, lying in bed for a last few snatched minutes, Harriet found herself full of doubts about the next move in her investigation. She stopped the wild sweep of thoughts racing through her head, and began again. Now she found there was something. It might be the merest wisp of a hope, but it was there.
Didn’t I learn only yesterday afternoon something about an organisation as absurd and perhaps as ambitious as India’s Way? All right, a good deal more absurd. But, if what John’s just been saying has any substance to it, then even as ridiculous an organisation as — as waggy old WAGI could somehow be behind that break-in. They could have just as many impossible ambitions as India’s Way. So could this be, just possibly, the tiny glim of fire that lights a fuse running to where the gunpowder barrel’s hidden?
So, yes. Yes, I’m going to get hold of, not John’s Aunty Beryl, but WAGI’s Number One. What did John call her? Yes, I’m going to have a word, perhaps a very useful word, with frighteningly ferocious Miss Gwendoline Tritton. John went on to say to me, sitting in the car going up to London, that Gwendoline Tritton was hardly worth thinking about. That she was no more than some sort of elderly madwoman, and the organisation she heads was, John’s word, tinpot?
All right, John made light of her. Wasn’t his ‘frighteningly ferocious’ a distinct put-down? Even a typically male put-down? And, sensible though John is, aren’t there times when the not-sensible approach pays off? The leap in the dark? Hasn’t it done so more than once in my time as a detective?
OK, there may be better lines to explore. Professor Wichmann, nice old boy though he seemed, told me nothing that clearly put him out of account, and pretty Christopher Alexander, since his instant dismissal from Heronsgate House, has become, really, more likely to be the person who, perhaps unwittingly, tipped off those men who fought and bullied their way to that insecure security cabinet.
But, wait. Wait. What about Christopher’s newly-acquired girlfriend, Maggie, the white-smiling marathon runner? Didn’t Tim say she had been a member of WAGI? If so, Gwendoline Tritton could possibly have learnt through Maggie something she’d found out, in some way or another, from her new boyfriend. It could have been where Dr Lennox had locked away the CA 534. If so, Gwendoline Tritton might well have seen its potential as a weapon to enable tinpot WAGI to threaten even the Government.
She threw back the duvet.
*
Out of the house before the post had come, with its dreaded new batch of not-to-be-read condolence letters, dismissing all thoughts of that ominous single word ‘Traitor’, Harriet, by the time she reached her office at HQ, had decided on as cautious an approach to Gwendoline Tritton as John himself might have used in some intricate negotiation at mighty Majestic Insurance. From Birchester’s electoral roll she found where Miss Tritton lived, but set off first for her nearest police station. After all, hadn’t the lady been fined for her part in burning that field of GM maize? So she must be, in the old phrase, known to the police.
And known she was.
‘Gwendoline Tritton,’ DI Weston, in charge of the CID there, said, eyes lifted to heaven. ‘That woman.’
He listed then, for Harriet’s benefit, a whole catalogue of crimes. None had been so serious as to lead any of the magistrates she had appeared before to impose a prison sentence. But time and again she had been fined, for public order offences, for obstruction, for breaches of the Queen’s Peace. Once she had even been charged with being in possession of a firearm without a licence, though that had turned out to be no more than a replica handgun acquired for protection against burglars. Nor were her activities on behalf of Women Against Genetic Interference the only reason for her defiance of civil authority. Over the years, it appeared, she had belonged to various organisations devoted to every sort of protest, very often at the head of them.
‘All those fines were no skin off her nose,’ DI Weston added. ‘She’s one rich lady. Sole remaining heir from the pre-plastic days when Birchester firms supplied half the world with leather goods.’
‘That’s interesting.’
‘Bear it in mind if you’re going to interview her. It makes her a bloody awkward cuss.’
Or, Harriet registered, in John’s rather more literary terms, frighteningly ferocious.
*
Arriving, by appointment, at The Willows in Pargeter Avenue, one of the few remaining respectable streets in the run-down Meads area, Harriet found at the door, not a maid in uniform, but Miss Gwendoline Tritton herself, the sole inhabitant, it appeared, of the whole big house. Awkwardly tall, in her late seventies, very probably a full eighty, she stood squarely at the large, heavily carved front door, feet in stout, faded blue trainers rooted to the mat. A long, rough woollen skirt in a pattern of large orange and yellow squares hid much of her legs, but what could be seen of them were stockingless, sturdy as little tree-trunks, and as gnarled. Above the skirt came a jacket of dull green wool, fastened all the way up to the neck by small knobby, leather-covered buttons. And, above the jacket, her deeply wrinkled face, partly masked by a pair of heavy-rimmed spectacles, was dominated by a considerable pointed nose.
Before she had said even a word, Harriet was visited by an image of a brown female blackbird, vigorously attacking the earth of an autumn flowerbed, aggressive beak flicking away to left and right every concealing red or brown leaf.
‘Detective Superintendent Martens, I suppose,’ she said at last, her high-pitched voice penetrating most likely all the way to the far side of the wide road beyond.
‘Yes. It’s good of you to see me at such short notice.’
‘You had better come in. I’ve no intention of discussing my affairs out in public.’
Harriet followed her then into a large ground-floor drawing room. Although office, she thought, might be a better description. True, at the far end there were three or four armchairs round the empty fireplace, with between them small tables on which, in more distant days, delicate teacups might have rested. But otherwise the room was occupied by a long, bare-wood trestle table, covered from end to end with piles of leaflets in different bright, attention-seeking colours, boxes of stationery, piles of newspaper cuttings held down by a variety of unorthodox paperweights, and a whole heap of saved copies of the Birchester Chronicle. Nearby stood a computer workstation, printer ready beside it.
And up against the walls were two rows of tall, old wooden filing cabinets. With all the swiftness of a bungee jumper’s elastic cord, they sent Harriet’s thoughts back to the dented top drawer of Dr Lennox’s smart silvery-grey security cabinet.
As soon as they had entered
, Gwendoline Tritton had swung round to prevent Harriet going further in.
‘So,’ she said, ‘to what do I owe the honour of a visit from a senior officer of the Greater Birchester Police? Not, I imagine, to a request for a contribution to your Benevolent Fund, that convenient fiction for the more overt sort of bribe.’
‘No,’ Harriet replied, registering that hostilities had clearly commenced, ‘this is more of a personal matter.’
‘Personal, I suppose, to me.’
Two long, bony fingers tapped emphatically on the top button of the green jacket.
‘Yes, to you,’ Harriet conceded.
‘Then, let me say, I consider it outrageous that you should come here making inquiries about my personal circumstances. We have enough of a police state already in this country without officers badgering citizens in their own homes.’
‘Well, we do try to avoid that. But I confess I’m wondering to what extent this is your own home. Certainly, the room here has all the appearance of a business office.’
‘And what if it does? Cannot any private citizen conduct a business in her own house, if she’s so willing? I use this room as the headquarters of the organisation, Women Against Genetic Interference. I should suppose you, as a woman, would have more sympathy for such a cause than your average authoritarian police officer. You yourself, don’t forget, are a victim at every moment of the day of genetic interference of one sort or another.’
‘That is as may be,’ Harriet answered, ‘however, I am here, not as a woman, but as one of the authoritarian officers you seem to hold in such low esteem. And, as such, I have some questions I need to ask about your organisation.’
‘Then I must tell you that I refuse to answer.’ Tap, tap again from long fingers in the region of the breastbone. ‘Your presence here is utterly uncalled for. The sooner you leave the better.’
‘No. I am a police officer entitled to question any person whose activities may be of an illegal nature.’ For a tense moment Harriet and Gwendoline Tritton faced each other, each unwaveringly staring.
But it was Gwendoline Tritton who broke.
‘Very well,’ she said, as if merely exasperated. ‘I suppose, as you’re here, I may as well answer whatever impertinent questions you may want to put to me.’
‘Oh, they’re none of them very impertinent. It’s simply that I am currently the officer in the Greater Birchester force charged with making a survey of the security risks to the city in the wake of the Hasselburg tragedy. It has been brought to my attention that WAGI, although it is not, of course, a major terrorist organisation, has in recent years used on occasion violent methods to publicise its aims. There has not always been enough evidence for proceedings to be taken, but we have had some reason to believe that the intimidating phone messages some genetics scientists have received may have come from members of your organisation.’
Slow up, slow up. This damned woman has somehow caused me to say too much. Is all this about intimidating phone messages going too far?
Well, I’m committed to it, so carry on. Drawing in my horns, if I can.
‘Consequently, Miss Tritton, I need to know whether WAGI intends to continue these and similar activities. If so, they are likely, I scarcely need to point out to you, to hinder efforts to protect the citizens of Birchester from the slaughter brought about at Hasselburg.’
Gwendoline Tritton tossed her head.
‘Just as I thought,’ she said, ‘a police scheme to stop WAGI carrying out its wholly worthwhile aims by pretending other issues are involved. Absolutely outrageous.’
‘I think not. Let me give you an instance of what might happen. As you must know, we in the West are now threatened by al-Qaeda and its offshoot organisations targeting any large gathering like the EuroVin festival with the sole purpose of killing as great a number of innocent people as possible.’
‘More nonsense. We in the West, forsooth.’
Forsooth, Harriet thought. She really did say forsooth. What a dinosaur of a woman.
‘All that,’ Gwendoline Tritton steam-rollered on, ‘is nothing but politicians contriving that whatever it suits them to encourage, such as the manufacture of genetically harmful foods purely for profit, shall go on without hindrance. I shall certainly not take one single step to assist you in inquiries of this sort.’
‘Nevertheless, I require from you an assurance that WAGI’s current aims do not include the use or the threat of violence. The lives of hundreds, even thousands, of Birchester people may be at risk from your incidental activities.’
‘Incidental? Let me tell you WAGI’s aims are far from incidental. What we are attempting to do goes to the very heart of present-day society. It is time, it is more than time, that people realised that they are being subjected, women especially, to the most ruthless campaign of misdirection and plain lying there has ever been, just so as to keep the public in ignorance of what truly affects them.’
‘I won’t attempt to quarrel with that analysis, Miss Tritton, though perhaps I could. But I will ask, once more, whether your organisation’s attempts to inform the public of your concerns or, indeed, to change the situation, will involve any degree of violent activity?’
‘I cannot divulge our confidential decisions.’
She folded her arms across her leather-knobbed high-necked jacket.
But then her gaze wavered.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘perhaps in the circumstances I will tell you something of our future plans.’
Harriet felt a pulse of pleasure.
So, have I unexpectedly won my battle? Is this ferocious lady going to tell me what I have asked her to? And … And will that give me at least a hint, one way or the other, as to whether she is the background figure behind the break-in at Heronsgate House?
But at once a temperature-dropping thought. Can a woman like this really have used her wealth to hire thugs to make their way into Dr Lennox’s office and force open that security cabinet?
Miss Tritton went over now to the long trestle table running across the whole width of the big room. For a minute or so she vigorously nosed among the papers sprawled over its surface, looking all too like the rootling blackbird Harriet had compared her to.
Then, triumphantly, she lifted up one single sheet.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The draft for the Minutes of the meeting of the Council of WAGI held here on the evening of Tuesday last. A draft only, you understand. But, as it so happens, we were discussing our future plans and, as you will see, the conclusions we came to do not include any activity that even the police might construe as violent. Look, a new issue of our information pamphlet, WAGI Wags A Finger, letters to every Member of Parliament of whatever so-called political persuasion, and a meeting next month at the Little Theatre in Boreham.’
She thrust out the sheet.
Harriet took it, without haste, and read carefully through it. She had to acknowledge, as she finished, that it was every bit as baby-lamb innocent as Miss Tritton had claimed.
So where does this leave me? First of all, with no excuse to probe further into WAGI’s activities. And second, with no further evidence whatsoever that this play-acting outfit was behind the theft of the CA 534. Sensible John is almost certainly quite right. One of the times when the sideways jump lands me in the mire.
She scanned down the list of ‘Those Present’.
‘I see there were fifteen people at this meeting here. Do they constitute the whole membership of your Council?’
‘They do,’ Gwendoline Tritton said, on a note of triumph. ‘So you can rest assured, Detective Superintendent, that those are our voted-for future aims.’
Harriet noted again the date of the meeting. Last Tuesday evening, the night of the break-in. Doesn’t that, she asked herself, provide evidence, convincing if not infallible, that WAGI was not involved in the theft? If all its leading members were here at this house — and, look, ‘Meeting concluded at 12.35 a.m.’ — no one from the gabbling talk-shop can have been waiting out n
ear the Heronsgate Institute, as someone must have been, to be handed that small cardboard box Christopher Alexander described. A box that would, no doubt, have had to have been purchased with a considerable sum, half paid in advance, but half on delivery.
For a moment she tried to imagine Gwendoline Tritton — tall, eyes blinking behind big spectacles, beaky-nosed — waiting in the dark somewhere just beyond Heronsgate House, clutching a very fat bundle of used twenty-pound notes.
No, it wouldn’t do.
Still, better check those fifteen names. The list could, I suppose, be a total fake.
‘This is,’ she asked, ‘the draft copy of your Minutes?’
‘It is.’
‘So you must have the finished copy somewhere?’
‘Of course I do. Just because you all too evidently believe WAGI is a group run by a lot of silly old women, it doesn’t mean that we do not conduct our affairs in a thoroughly efficient manner. I see to that.’
I bet you do.
‘So could I see that final version?’
‘If you must.’
Gwendoline Tritton went, unhesitatingly, to one of the ancient wooden filing cabinets. From it she produced an impressively heavyweight Minutes Book.
It was, Harriet saw, examining it, an old-fashioned, leather-bound affair, its thick pages consecutively numbered. The Minutes for the last WAGI Council meeting had been entered, scrupulously handwritten in jet-black ink.
Nevertheless, she set the book down on a clear space on the long trestle table and carefully compared the entry to the draft copy.
Not a comma left out.
She set to then laboriously transferring to her notebook the whole of the list of ‘Those Present’. It would be a drag to contact each of them, but, since the loss of the CA 534 was being kept strictly secret still, it would not be a task she could pass on to a cluster of DCs.
