Woman of State

by Simon Berthon

  ‘Minister, that is an operational matter.’

  ‘Don’t try that with me, Jemima. For better or worse, I’m a Minister of the Crown. Whether or not it’s in my interest, I’m willing to go wherever this leads. There are now two dead bodies, one of them in the here and now. Don’t force me to make a public issue of this.’

  ‘I will see what I can do, Minister.’

  ‘No, Jemima, do better than that.’ Anne-Marie turned her bike round and gripped the handlebars. ‘And never forget that duty of care to me.’

  ‘Yes, Minister,’ replied Jemima.

  Anne-Marie mounted her bike. ‘Will I continue to have the pleasure of your occasional visits to my office?’

  ‘Perhaps that would now be inappropriate, Minister.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps it would.’

  ‘But I want you to know that I am on your side.’

  ‘What other side is there, Jemima?’

  Fuelled by adrenalin and suppressed fury, Anne-Marie headed for the park’s exit, forgetting that the path she was taking was barred to cyclists. When she realized, it could hardly have seemed more irrelevant.

  There was only one person in the world she could trust: herself. Now she had compromised that by confiding in others. Her destiny was slipping from her grasp. She stopped short of her apartment block and checked the text from Rob McNeil with the name and number of the investigating policeman. She would sleep on it but she knew already that in the morning she would ring the number. It would be the first step in wresting back her life.

  The uncovering of David Wallis’s body, the reappearance of Joseph Kennedy and her own elevation were no coincidence. They amounted to a perfect storm. Nothing had been erased. It was not going away after all.

  CHAPTER 22

  Post-election, Wednesday, 17 May

  She’s done well, thought Carne, looking up at the structure of shining dark veneers and tinted glass – elegance for high achievers, reflecting the gold sky and reddening sun. He rang the bell.

  ‘Hello?’ Just a whisper of Celtic tinge.

  ‘It’s DCI Carne.’

  She buzzed him in. ‘Come on up, eleventh floor.’ The security camera watched him enter.

  The curt phone call that morning had astonished him. She gave her name, address and a time, and then rang off without a further word. In a Google search, the most detailed piece was in Daily Mail online, headed by the group photograph of the new government’s women ministers. ‘LIONEL’S LOVELY FIRECRACKER’ was the headline. ‘Among Lionel’s new ladies she stands out for her petite charm and remarkable election night speech.’ Carne could see her attraction – vivacious with a glint in her eye. The article gave the bare bones of a career propelled by an outstanding law degree from Trinity College, Dublin; articles with Audax, an emerging left-leaning London law chambers; a speedy rise to partner and a spell making serious money. Then she set up Audax’s Human Rights Department, recruiting the eminent QC wife of a former prime minister to join them, a key political entrée.

  For a tabloid there was little about her personal life. Audax’s head of chambers, Kieron Carnegie, called her ‘a brilliant and attractive woman, but a solo operator who keeps herself to herself’. The paper claimed it had spoken to a former lover of Ms Gallagher who said that her commitment to her work ‘overrode any thoughts of marriage or even long-term relationships’.

  The question is, the article concluded, ‘can Anne-Marie Gallagher, Britain’s prettiest, and most mysterious, minister, make it a national hat-trick of women leaders?’

  There was a mirror in the lift. Carne checked himself, patting down his suit and pushing any stray hairs back into place. He was unaccountably nervous. You’re a policeman going to a routine interview with a potential witness, he told himself. Except that there was nothing routine about any of this. He was breaking every procedural rule in the book. He rang the bell of her flat, heard ‘Just a minute’ through the door and waited.

  ‘Sorry to keep you,’ she said. ‘I was out on my bike. Bit of a rushed change.’ Her eyes were sparkling from the exercise and what must have been a breakneck shower and throwing-on of old jeans and a light-blue blouse. Her feet were still bare. ‘As you can see,’ she continued.

  ‘I shouldn’t have been so punctual,’ replied Carne, frowning to hide his embarrassment.

  ‘It’s fine. Come on in.’ She crisply ushered him through the door into a sitting room with an unbroken spread of glass overlooking the Thames. The setting sun was now more clearly visible over the two giant fingers of the old Lots Road power station across the river, casting a glow that seemed to flood the whole horizon.

  He could not stop himself admiring it again. ‘It’s dazzling.’

  ‘Yes, I’m lucky,’ she said, liking his approval.

  ‘Lived here long?’ he asked, feeling stupid as he did.

  ‘I bought it when the block went up a couple of years ago.’ She flashed him a grin. ‘Mind you, a politician’s salary’s not great for the mortgage.’

  ‘So your election was unexpected?’

  ‘It seemed incredible.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She was sizing him up like a tailor fitting a new suit. ‘Drink?’

  In return he wanted to examine every inch of her but knew he must not. ‘Better not. I’m on duty. Aren’t I?’

  ‘Perhaps we should agree the rules of engagement.’

  He took a risk. ‘OK. In the meantime, I’ll have a glass of something.’ She smiled. He had done the right thing. ‘Whatever’s easy.’

  She walked through a door and returned with a bottle of white wine and two glasses. ‘I’ll join you,’ she said. ‘Just a glass, anyway. I don’t really drink.’

  She motioned him to a pale beige sofa, placed the wine glasses on a small square glass table in front of it and poured. He could not recall, imagine even, another politician like her. She was small, neat but not skinny, hints of auburn in the brown hair, highlights perhaps, which rested just below her nape. The top two buttons of her shirt were undone and, as she leant over, he allowed himself a glimpse of small breasts, starting a flutter in his heart. It was impossible not to compare any woman with Alice, the strong broad shoulders and long blonde hair hanging down over them. Yet, for the first time he could remember, the comparison seemed irrelevant. This was a woman who seemed so slight and fragile that you could carry her like a child. It was a ridiculous thought – she must be tough as teak to have risen so far.

  She finished pouring the wine and looked up, noticing him trying not to watch her. ‘So.’ She flopped into a matching seat placed at precise right angles to the sofa.

  ‘So,’ he repeated.

  ‘I asked for this meeting,’ she said. ‘What does that make it? On the record, off the record – official, unofficial?’

  ‘Off the record’s fine.’

  She liked his voice, mellow without being too deep, an aftertaste of accent she could not quite recognize. ‘OK.’

  ‘You made the contact. Why?’ he asked.

  She looked out at the river. ‘Not quite. Rob McNeil gave me your name and number. Let’s start with what led you to him.’

  ‘All right. Late on the Sunday night after the election,’ Carne began, ‘we received an anonymous call giving the precise location of a burial site. Two days later the same caller said check out a name: “David Vallely”. It turned out that he was a postgraduate student in Dublin who’d disappeared in 1994. Shortly afterwards I was visited in the mortuary by General Kenneth Bowman, the present GOC, Northern Ireland.’

  ‘How did he know?’ she asked.

  ‘He’d been told of the calls on the police confidential line.’

  ‘These people have no rules,’ she sighed.

  ‘No,’ agreed Carne. ‘Shortly after his visit the general rang to tell me it was his certain view that David Vallely was an alias and the real identity was David Wallis.’

  ‘How could he be so sure?’

  ‘I’ve never been f
ully clear about that, though I have my suspicions. But he was right. Within hours dental records proved it. He went on to say that Wallis’s sister was married to the new Prime Minister’s press secretary.’

  ‘That must have set wires buzzing.’

  ‘Yes.’ Carne grimaced. ‘The next part may, I fear, distress you. General Bowman asked to return to the mortuary for one final look at Wallis. I took the opportunity to have a further conversation with him. He told me that Wallis’s father had been a British soldier under his command, killed in the Falklands.’

  ‘I knew that. David told me,’ exclaimed Anne-Marie. She felt a wisp of victory. Something had been true.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not all. Bowman then said that David Wallis himself had followed his father into the same regiment. He had also been a British Army officer under his command.’

  ‘Jesus.’ The tiny moment of vindication was crushed. ‘Could you stop there for a minute?’ Anne-Marie rose from her chair, picked up her glass, looked away and drank. She walked over to the window. After a minute or so, she turned and offered Carne a refill. He refused with a wave of his hand, and she topped up her own glass. He could see that she had suffered a shock and stayed silent.

  ‘You’re saying that David Wallis was a British soldier.’

  ‘At one time, yes. Bowman said he left the army in early 1993.’

  ‘You’re one hundred per cent sure.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is no possible doubt that Vallely was an assumed name.’

  ‘No.’

  She allowed herself a deep sigh. The last vestige of hope, however irrational, had just died.

  ‘What sort of soldier was he?’

  ‘That’s sketchy. He spent some time in what has been described to me as “intelligence liaison”.’

  ‘Intelligence.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ He marvelled at her equilibrium, a reed standing firm against such a cruel buffeting. ‘OK, go on.’

  ‘I formed the impression,’ Carne continued, choosing his words carefully, ‘that General Bowman considered it would be unhelpful to investigate David Wallis’s life and death too deeply.’ He searched for any hint in her eyes. They remained locked on him, expressionless. ‘I disagree with that view. I believe that David Wallis’s killers should be brought to justice. And the key to explaining his disappearance is to understand what exactly he was doing in the years and, more specifically, the months leading up to it.’ His last sentence had a note of finality. It was her turn now.

  She flicked a straying lock of hair over an ear, and exhaled, disturbing the strands of her fringe. She stretched out one leg, clenching and relaxing the calf and hamstrings, and then the other. He was not sure whether she was buying time or merely reflecting. He tried not to follow the legs.

  ‘Do you believe I know something that will help you?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll know that better than me.’

  She rose again to her feet. He cursorily wondered if he had made a mistake and alarmed her.

  ‘We may come to that,’ she said, ‘but for now there is a more immediate matter.’ He felt a hit of relief – she was simply asserting her control of her agenda. ‘My reason for seeing you is another death. Shortly after the announcement of my appointment, I received a call from a man I had not seen for more than twenty years. He was a close friend of my family. My brother in particular. In his teens, he was a likeable and amusing boy. His name was Joseph Kennedy.’

  Carne, recalling Poots’s summary of the disappeared Gang of Four, almost choked on his drink.

  ‘He asked to see me, said it was urgent. He was dying and had something he needed to tell me. I was afraid. As he grew into manhood, he became harder. Perhaps foolishly, I agreed to meet him a few days later at a time and place he gave me.’

  She caught one last glance of the disappearing sun, and glared at him. ‘I arrived at the meeting place. It turned out to be a scruffy garage not far from here. He was hanging from the ceiling, a rope around his neck. Dead. I know that. I parted the hair that had fallen over his face and inspected his eyes. Very dead.’

  This time, it was she giving finality to her words. Carne tried to remind himself that on this night he must not be a police interrogator. Yet there was one obvious question. ‘Are you sure this man was Joseph Kennedy?’

  ‘Do you seriously think I would make a mistake like that?’

  He had irritated her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, meaning it. ‘It was a stupid question. Old habits. Bad habits.’

  She relaxed. ‘You’re forgiven. The real point – the reason I have decided to see you – comes next. Yes, I was shocked. I found it hard to decide a course of action. I couldn’t say silent, so I asked my driver to report my discovery to the police.’

  ‘That was the right thing to do,’ he said. She felt the warmth of a support she had not anticipated. It emboldened her.

  ‘Later that day,’ she continued, ‘my driver – he seems remarkably well connected – told me there must have been a case of mistaken identity as the dead man’s name was not Joseph Kennedy, but Brian Fitzgerald. And, further, he’d left a suicide note.’

  She walked over and waved the wine bottle in front of him. ‘Thanks,’ he said. She again refilled her own glass.

  ‘I am telling you,’ she said with clinical deliberation, ‘this man was not Brian Fitzgerald. And there was no suicide note.’ He felt her calculating whether, or how, to add something. ‘In his coat pocket there was an envelope containing a document. It would have meant something only to him and me. It told me there could be no possible doubt that this was Joseph.’ She finished abruptly, sat down and awaited him.

  ‘Can I ask you some questions?’ Carne asked softly.

  ‘Can I trust you?’ she asked.

  ‘I believe I am a trustworthy person.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’ She searched for the words, moving an inch closer, her eyes piercing him. In what she now knew was a treacherous path ahead – one that could destroy her – she needed an irrevocable ally. A partner to help her reclaim her fate. The customary mutual suspicion between politicians and policemen made him an unlikely one. But they had one critical thing in common: they were both outsiders.

  She inspected him again. The dark-brown hair with hints of greying curls at the edges; the slightly long nose and face conveying a sorrowful yearning; the firm chin above broad shoulders. There was a gravity and straightforwardness in him. He was a decent man and an instinct – one she disliked in herself – told her she could lead him.

  ‘I mean, truly trust you,’ she continued. ‘I have to be sure that you’re on my side. That you will protect me.’ He looked away, seeking refuge in the gloaming of the darkening sky. ‘Wherever that takes you.’

  Carne eased himself up from the sofa and went to peer through the glass. He wanted the lights of the city to give him an answer, some sign at least. A police car rushed along the embankment, its lights flashing, its siren just audible through the thick pane. An ambulance followed in its wake. He turned round. She was sitting, her eyes devouring him in a silent plea. He felt he was making one of the most important choices of his life – perhaps the most. It would not be rational but a leap of faith. Faith did not lead to predictable outcomes.

  Who really was this woman he had known for no more than minutes? He recalled the newspaper profile. She had ‘come from nowhere’. A woman apparently without a past. The mere fact that she had been involved with Wallis might of itself seem suspicious. Not to mention her knowledge of Joseph Kennedy. Whose side, if any, had she really been on? Both then and, perhaps, now? He stopped himself. To begin thinking like that would mean he must now – instantly – turn his back on her and walk through the door of her flat. That he must lose any chance of a friendship – of coming to understand who she really was.

  ‘Yes.’ The word seemed to come out of his mouth before he had completed the internal debate. He stared at her, propelled by some reflex that was visc
eral and now irreversible. She breathed deeply again and closed her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Now ask me your questions.’

  He resumed his seat on the sofa, now at the end nearer her chair.

  ‘You mentioned Joseph Kennedy was a friend of your brother. Who is your brother?’

  ‘His name is – was, I mean – Martin McCartney.’ For the second time, Carne stifled his shock. ‘I was born Maire McCartney. Maire Anne McCartney to be precise. I reversed the names and changed my surname after David disappeared.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ He instantly regretted asking it. If, having come so far so quickly, he lost her by reaching too far, the error would be unforgivable.

  She fell silent. ‘Why do you ask?’ she finally replied.

  This was a test he must not fail. ‘Because, knowing it, how could I not ask?’ She did not answer – he had to give her more. ‘You must have thought about this when you started becoming a public figure. Former friends, acquaintances, family. Even more than twenty years later, someone would know you.’

  ‘I have no family.’ She was whispering.

  ‘But others?’

  ‘I had no friends left. I was living an isolated life in Dublin.’

  ‘Why isolated? A woman – a girl – like you . . .’

  ‘That’s not for now. But then David came. Like the sun bursting through clouds.’ She paused, seeming to look into his eyes with a plea he could not interpret. ‘And then he went. And I wanted to leave it all behind.’

  ‘But others might know you. Joseph Kennedy did.’

  ‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘Rob McNeil, too, though we only once met face to face. I suppose there may be one or two more. But so few.’ She sprang up and rounded on him. ‘And so what? I had every right to seek a new life. I was the victim. There was nothing illegal in changing a name, in wanting to get away, to be a new person. I have nothing to reproach myself for. Or for others to reproach me. I had reason.’

  ‘People will still ask,’ he said gently.

  ‘Let them. It doesn’t matter. I had reason,’ she repeated. There was a bitterness he had not suspected in her. He was struck by the absence of family photographs in the room. He should have noticed it before. ‘You spoke of your brother in the past.’