‘Do you know him?’ he asked.
‘Where did you get this?’ she demanded. She sounded brittle.
‘I took it.’
He felt her flinch. ‘You took it!’ It was an accusation.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘At David Wallis’s funeral.’
‘How come you were invited?’
‘I wasn’t.’ He could feel his heart beating and the blood draining from his face. Each time he asked a difficult question, he felt it might destroy the possibility of friendship with her. If that happened, he had now come to realize that something within him would die.
‘You were snooping.’
‘Yes.’ Her back was turned away again. ‘It’s my job.’
He spoke with a profound regret that he hoped she would see. As the room shrieked with her silence, he searched for the reflection of her face in the glass. It was washed out by the room lights and the black of the night. He had never known time pass so slowly. Finally, she turned round, walked very slowly back and sat down on the sofa.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s a part of your job. I have one question for you. Have you ever snooped on me?’
‘No. I would never snoop on you. Never.’
‘Even before you knew me?’ She paused. ‘Someone did.’
‘I promise you from the bottom of my heart that I have never snooped on you.’
She picked up the photograph that showed the man with the gold tiepin. ‘He’s aged. Sorry, that’s obvious. Hair greyer, though it was starting to go even then. Still got the moustache.’ She looked closer. ‘My God, even the tiepin. He called himself Jimmy. He claimed he was David’s uncle, even showed me a passport. Uncle Jimmy Vallely. I remember the date it was issued. August 1993. No doubt he had several.’
‘Yes, I’m sure he did. Thank you. I realize you’ve crossed a line.’
‘Time for you to go now.’
He stood up, and wondered whether to offer a handshake, give her a farewell kiss, or maybe put an arm round her. In the end he just nodded, collected his coat, and opened the door to let himself out.
‘By the way,’ her voice interrupted, ‘she’s a pretty girl, your forensic colleague.’
He looked back in astonishment that she had noticed and might even care. He heard himself saying, ‘It’s all right, I’m not to her taste.’ Descending in the lift, he almost did a jig.
As soon as he was out of the apartment block, Carne texted Poots:
Two sources say known as Jimmy, assume James. Surname beginning with B, maybe Br. Second source confirms he made appearances in Dublin early 1994. Check Foreign Office based at British embassy there ’93 to ’95.
At the same time Anne-Marie also sent a text – to the woman she knew as Jemima. ‘I wish to meet tomorrow. Expect to receive full progress report from you.’
At Thames House, Jemima Sheffield was less than surprised by the message. The conversation she had just listened in to showed an emerging collaboration between the policeman and the Minister that had not been factored in. She wondered if the Minister was playing some deeper game that had also not been factored in. The meeting would need careful handling.
CHAPTER 25
Post-election, Friday, 19 May
Early-morning joggers passed by, illuminated in bright streaks of sun. A slightly built, dark-haired woman elegantly stretching her legs reminded Carne of Anne-Marie reaching up to her kitchen cupboard. The image filled him with unease, even a sense of prurience. His phone buzzed. A one-word message from Billy: ‘Bingo’. Carne chucked the empty polystyrene cup into a waste bin, strode to the railings overlooking the river and dialled his number.
‘I’ve gone cross-eyed in the process,’ said Poots, ‘but I finally nailed him. Guess where.’
‘You tell me, Billy.’
‘Well, boss, in this wondrous age and all its friggin’ Facebooks, Twitters and other bollocks, there’s just one place the silly bugger was too vain not to reveal himself: Who’s Who. The old faithful. Got pen and paper?’
‘Yes, Billy, I’ve got pen and paper,’ replied Carne, iPhone in front of him.
‘Right. James Beresford Brooks. Foreign Office, 1976–2012. Postings include Dublin, 1992–1994. Immediately before that, Saudi Arabia, 1991–1992. Looking at the gaps, majority of his time seems to have been in London. And never got a top position in an embassy. Therefore . . .’
‘He’s a spook.’
‘He’s not parading it. Interests listed are gardening, bridge, church and flower arranging. In that order.’
‘Collecting tiepins?’
‘What’s that?
‘Don’t worry, Billy. Address?’
‘Rectory Garden Cottage, Old Witham, Devizes, Wiltshire.’
‘A day out in the country for me, then.’
‘You get all the fun. What’s the news on the body?’
‘Definitely Joseph Kennedy. Clear ID.’
There was a pause on the end of the line. Carne could feel Poots calculating.
‘Messes up the theory, doesn’t it?’
‘How’s that, Billy?’
‘Joseph Kennedy was alive a few days ago. David Wallis’s been dead for well over twenty years. So there’s at least one of the Gang of Four David Wallis didn’t make disappear.’
‘Precisely,’ agreed Carne. ‘Meaning the score was three–one.’
‘Four–one, boss, now Joseph’s dead. Wonder if it’s the same scorer – or they had to buy a new striker.’
‘Nice one, Billy,’ said Carne. ‘I keep meaning to ask. Why the hell did you never make Chief Constable?’
‘Too busy doing police work, boss,’ replied Poots.
Heading west out of London, Carne’s eye was caught by aircraft floating over Windsor Castle as they carved through the easterly breeze into Heathrow dazzled in the midday sun. Giant birds of prey diving to consume the concreted earth. Once past Reading, the skies cleared of metal, and rolling fields of corn alternated with clumps of woods. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as the final movement of the Trout Quintet sprinted. The warm rush of sounds and light did not distract long.
He needed a witness to murders, both past and present, who was alive, not dead. As he entered the county of Wiltshire, he was sanguine about the prospects of finding one who might like to help.
Old Witham lay a couple of miles down a narrow, twisting lane that descended into the depths of a darkened beech wood before rising to a narrow plateau. The first sighting of its church’s squat tower brought Carne to a halt. He left his car on a verge and walked into the village, alongside neatly cut strips of grass and a succession of immaculately kept, nondescript houses of uncertain architecture. Their rectangular flowerbeds, front doors adorned by decorative glass and carriage lamps hanging in modest porches spelt out a comfortable middle England for retirees who shared one colour only. Not quite the Lord’s waiting room, he reflected, but certainly the front parlour.
Fifty yards from the church, he passed a Georgian rectory, composed of weathered red brick and precisely symmetrical wood-paned windows, and almost missed a thin wooden sign pointing down a path to Rectory Garden Cottage. He looked around the still lifeless lane and headed down it, reaching a narrow gate marked ‘private’. He released the latch and the path narrowed from the encroachment of sprawling hedge and bramble. After a few more yards, it gave way to lawn and what seemed the back of a broad, single-storey, modern house. By it a figure, wearing, despite the warming sun, a floppy grey rain hat and waterproof jacket, was bent down over a flowerbed. As he appeared from the bushes, the figure rose to reveal a severe-looking woman, steely hair matching the hat and leathery voice the coat.
‘Who are you?’ she barked. ‘Do I know you?’
‘I’m looking for Mr Beresford Brooks.’
‘You won’t find him here. Try the church.’ She bent down again to attend to her flowers.
‘Thank you, Mrs Brooks. I’ll track him down there.’
She
raised her head, lowered her nose and peered at him over her glasses. ‘Don’t make any assumptions about that, young man.’
Carne beat a retreat, unsure whether she was referring to her marital state or the whereabouts of her husband. He could see why James Beresford Brooks might not spend too much time at his home.
A lychgate, its small wooden roof giving off a faint smell of recent varnishing, opened onto a smoothly tarmacked path leading to the church porch. Gravestones, several covered with small jars of commemorative flowers, dotted the weedless, closely mown lawn along with discrete gatherings of daffodils allowed to grow wild. This was a place well cared for. As he rounded the transept, the land fell away into a sharp escarpment, revealing a sun-soaked valley of fields and trees stretching into the far distance. At its furthest end, a chimney trailed faint wisps of smoke, foretelling a town that must lie beyond. Carne stopped to soak in the view, admiring a beauty and eternity that befitted the dead.
‘Lovely place, isn’t it?’ The rich baritone voice burst the bubble and he turned round to see the weather-beaten, grinning face of a large man, perhaps in his early seventies, wearing a dark blazer over a twill shirt, dark red corduroys and a diagonally striped tie of reds and browns kept in perfect line by a gold tiepin. There was something porcine about the bridge and upturn of his prominent nose. Below, the broad chest was followed by a spreading girth, imposing rather than potbellied. A strong man. The picture of a boar flashed before Carne, down on all fours, foraging greedily for truffles in the forest.
‘Yes,’ replied Carne. ‘Good place to die.’
‘That sounds rather gloomy. Come in and see the church.’
Carne followed, wondering whether the tour would be preceded by any introductions. It was not. ‘We are pretty sure there was a Saxon church here though no one’s been able to match any of the foundations. Certainly there was a Norman building, replaced and expanded over the years in early English. And finally the spire in Victorian times. Not, unfortunately, an architectural gift to God.’ He stretched his mouth and cheeks to form a well-rehearsed smile. ‘As I’m sure you noticed on your way.’
‘I can’t pretend I’m an expert,’ said Carne.
‘Yes, I didn’t think it was an interest in English church vernacular that had brought you here.’ The smile fell away. ‘DCI Carne, I presume.’
‘Yes.’
‘James Beresford Brooks. I knew you were on your way of course.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘My dear chap, don’t be naïve.’ He stuck out his hand, restoring the smile. Carne shook it and was held by the warm grasp uncomfortably longer than courtesy demanded. ‘Usually known as Jimmy.’ The hand was removed, along with the smile. ‘Welcome to Old Witham Church.’ He paused and winked. ‘Where the bodies are buried. Do you like my flowers?’ He pointed to two overpowering arrangements each side of the aisle. ‘Marvellous time of year for chrysanths. Or course, we’re lucky down here – it’s like having a nursery garden in the wild. Nothing like the English seasons, is there, Mr Carne?’ The question was not put to elicit a reply. ‘But I don’t think flowers brought you here, either.’
‘No,’ said Carne.
‘In that case, I am all ears.’
‘I’m investigating the death of a former British soldier called David Wallis more than two decades ago and the much more recent death of a man called Joseph Kennedy, who was once suspected of being a senior member of an extremist IRA faction. I believe you may be able to assist me with my enquiries.’
‘Do you, now?’ The smile reappeared. ‘Shall we sit? And inside or out? Out I think, don’t you? Such a lovely day. And these walls might have ears, too. Eh?’ He led him out of the church to a bench, overlooking the valley.
‘You talk of places to die. Hitler once opined,’ said Brooks mellifluously, ‘that there was only one piece of music to die to: the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Of course, as far as we know, he was disappointed in that particular wish. As, indeed, in so many others. But, ever since I first saw it, I have thought that this is the outlook to die to. Who knows? When I am old one day, decrepit and diseased, I may walk out here one summer evening with a pistol and achieve precisely that.’ He looked down the valley and took a long breath of deep contentment. ‘Apologies, Mr Carne, your talk of death has set me on this wholly irrelevant train of thought.’
‘You knew David Wallis,’ stated Carne, telling himself not to be led down blind alleys.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You attended his funeral.’
‘Yes, indeed I did. But, my dear chap, you make a leap of logic. My attendance at David Wallis’s funeral does not mean that I actually knew him. I may instead have been representing others, a family perhaps, or an organization for which he worked, a charity, even, which believed it owed him this mark of respect.’
‘You knew him, Mr Brooks.’
‘Please, it’s Jimmy. And you’re Jonny, I believe.’
Brooks turned to him and patted him twice on the leg, then gently stroked it. Carne tried not to squirm. ‘Let us try another approach, Jonny. I am unfortunately still bound by the Official Secrets Act and therefore must be most careful with anything I say. After all, I would not wish you to charge me with breaking it. So why don’t you tell me everything you think you know and I will try to help you and put you on the right track where I can?’
Carne assumed some sort of trap was being laid. But, if he did not take the risk and accept the deal, the day was over and his journey pointless.
‘I agree your terms. For now.’
‘For now? Whenever else did you have in mind?’
Carne ignored him. ‘In the autumn of 1993 David Wallis, using the alias Vallely, began a master’s at Trinity College, Dublin. At that time, you were based at the British embassy in Dublin. In mid-’94 David Wallis disappeared. Shortly after his disappearance, you visited his girlfriend, Maire McCartney. Wallis never told Ms McCartney that he was a former British soldier who had served under the present GOC, Northern Ireland, General Kenneth Bowman. You attended the funeral of David Wallis, where it was clear you knew General Bowman.’
‘How would that have been clear?’
Carne produced the photograph of Bowman with Brooks at the funeral. Brooks inspected it with a disdainful lack of curiosity. ‘I won’t embarrass you by asking how you come to possess this photograph, so do carry on.’
‘During the first half of 1994, four senior IRA men, all leading opponents of the ceasefire with the British that the IRA leadership was negotiating, disappeared. They were known to some as the Gang of Four. Their most prominent member was Martin McCartney, the brother of Maire McCartney, whom David Wallis was using subterfuge to cultivate. One of those four, Joseph Kennedy, recently resurfaced in London and died in suspicious circumstances. His death is the subject of an ongoing investigation. The obvious conclusion is that you were running David Wallis as an agent as a means of penetrating the McCartney family, Martin McCartney in particular, and gaining intelligence on the activities of the Gang of Four.’
‘Were this so, Jonny,’ said Brooks, ‘it sounds to me precisely the sort of legitimate operation you would expect a nation threatened by terrorism to mount.’
‘However,’ continued Carne, ‘engineering the disappearance of these men would not be either legal or legitimate. Nor would the murder of Joseph Kennedy.’
‘Oh, come, come!’
‘There may also be question marks about the safety of the operation which led to the killing of David Wallis.’
‘Oh, my dear, sweet man,’ exclaimed Brooks, ‘do you seriously think David Wallis was such a delicate flower!’
‘So you did know him.’ Carne felt it was the first blow he had landed.
‘Come with me, Jonny,’ said Brooks, putting his arm on his shoulder and squeezing. He rose and walked slowly among the gravestones, stopping every now and then to read the inscriptions. Boys and girls who had died in childhood in the reign of Victori
a. Young mothers in childbirth. More recently, longer-lived parents and grandparents in the age of Elizabeth II. The Ivy’s and Rose’s of old England, names of both people and plants. He picked up a pot of flowers, smelt their perfume, laid them down again, peered up at the sky and along the valley and released a sigh of contentment.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘what do you see here? What do you feel?’
‘Sadness,’ replied Carne.
‘Do you? I don’t. I feel a nation and a people at peace. The heart of England, of what we stand for. Of goodness, mutual respect, order. You may not approve, Jonny, but that is what I tried to work for. So did David Wallis. Perhaps, like these people, we should leave him in peace.’
Carne knew he had reached the end of a cul-de-sac. ‘All right. But in one matter, I will take up your offer to put me on the correct track.’
‘I am here only to help.’
‘Joseph Kennedy resurfaced. David Wallis’s body has been found. Where are the bodies of the other three that disappeared? Sean Black. Brendan O’Donnell. Martin McCartney.’
Brooks walked back to the bench, sat down and rested his eyes on the valley. Carne allowed a minute to pass before moving to join him. As he did so, Brooks rose and intercepted him. ‘I have some advice for you, Chief Inspector Carne. Do not waste your time searching. And let me give you an assurance. Everything was approved. At the very top. On both sides of the political spectrum.’
‘Who approved it, Mr Brooks?’
‘If I told you that, Mr Carne, I would have to kill you, wouldn’t I?
All humour in Brooks’s face had vanished. Carne watched him march down the path, through the lychgate and towards his house. He did not look back.
As Brooks emerged from the overgrown path into his back garden, the bent figure straightened to her feet, threw her gardening gloves to the ground and wiped her brow.
Woman of State Page 22
