by Jack Gatland
Because when they did, he was totally screwed.
12
Bipartisanship
Charles Baker sat at a small table in the Members Terrace of the Houses of Parliament, eating an early lunch before the noon sessions began when Will Harrison, a face of thunder joined him.
‘What do you have?’ Charles asked between mouthfuls, ignoring his companion’s expression. Will, turning on his iPad glanced at a page of written notes.
‘Well, I think—‘
‘Please, for the love of God tell me you don’t have the notes on that,’ Baker pointed at the iPad with his fork. ‘We said paper only, remember?’
‘These are just notes,’ Will replied. ‘Nothing more.’
Charles stared at his advisor with the look of a man who desperately wanted to believe in them, but just couldn’t. ’So, go on then. What do we have?’
‘Someone’s taking a shot at you,’ Will started. ‘I’ve ensured that our assets are on the case.’
‘Not my bloody assets,’ Charles muttered. ‘If I find that they were involved in the murder—‘
‘She wasn’t exactly our greatest ally here, Charles,’ Will waved for a server, ‘It’s not a bad thing that she’s gone.’
‘There’ll be a bloody investigation!’
‘And my men will fix this!’ Will caught himself from raising his voice too much. Charles looked across the terrace dining area at Julia Roxbury, the Lib Dem MP for Christ knows where and faked a smile as she looked up.
‘They don’t need to,’ he said through smile-gritted teeth. ‘I’ve fixed it. I’ve arranged for DI Walsh to lead the investigation.’
‘Why the ever-living fu—‘ Will caught himself, forcing his tone quieter. ‘Why would you do that, sir?’
‘Because I want the murderer found and I want this removed off my table,’ Charles snapped. ‘We had her ruined! Nobody was going to believe her word!’
‘We didn’t kill her,’ Will replied. ‘No command was given.’
‘And therefore Walsh will find whoever did it, and it won’t fall on us,’ Charles repeated. Will shifted in his seat.
‘Have you lost faith in me?’ he asked. Charles placed his cutlery down, glaring at his advisor.
‘Let me turn this around onto you,’ he snapped again. ‘Do you have faith in yourself? In your team? Because currently, I’m not seeing it. I might not have liked the Last Chance bloody Saloon, and they might have made my life a living hell, but they still saved my life and got me out of a decades long servitude agreement, so currently I feel a kinship for them. And if one of your men attacked Monroe—‘
‘Any order I gave was given by you,’ Will replied carefully. ‘It’s not my fault if you were too vague to give the specifics.’
Charles stared at Will for a moment, open-mouthed.
‘You little shit,’ he eventually hissed. ‘It was you?’
‘I just pass your wishes on,’ Will replied. He went to continue, but movement at the entrance to the terrace distracted him.
’And the charity case cometh,’ he muttered to himself as a woman holding a box file hurried over to them. She was in her late forties, with dyed blonde hair pulled back severely. She’d never mastered the art of makeup, and so her attempt was minimal, with a base foundation, lipstick and a deep blue eyeliner plastered on so strong that she looked more like a stage performer than a civil servant. She was overweight but not incredibly so and fidgeted with her wedding ring once she’d placed the box file on a convenient chair.
‘Laurie,’ Charles said with genuine delight. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘Very well, thank you,’ Laurie Hooper replied, still standing awkwardly. ‘I mean, it’s different to when I worked for your wife, but I’m grateful for the opportunity.’
‘Talking of opportunities, I hear you met some other MPs,’ Will said, looking up at her. Laurie flushed, twisting her wedding band even harder.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she half whispered. Will smiled.
‘I heard you were in The Horse and Guard pub in Chelsea two nights ago with Malcolm Gladwell.’ He noted Charles stop eating at this.
Laurie paled.
‘Um, yes,’ she replied. ‘He asked me for a drink, to see how I was settling in.’
‘And you didn’t think that was suspicious? That a rival MP invited you out?’
‘He’s a Conservative too,’ Laurie argued. ‘That’s not a rival.’
‘Depends on the job you’re going for,’ Charles muttered.
‘Be wary of Gladwell,’ Will said carefully. ‘He’s a party man. Which means he has no loyalty to anyone.’
‘What did you talk about?’ Charles asked nonchalantly. Laurie shrugged.
‘Things,’ she replied quietly. ‘He was worried about you.’
Charles almost laughed at this. Malcolm Gladwell barely spoke to him, even though they’d once worked in the same department. Although to be fair, Charles preferred it that way.
‘Then he can come and speak to Mister Baker himself,’ Will snapped. ‘And remember that you’re a married woman, Mrs Hooper.’
Laurie flinched at this, as if slapped physically by Will’s words.
‘We’re just friends,’ she replied, her voice only a whisper.
‘There are no friends in Westminster,’ Charles mused, continuing to spear at his salad with his fork.
‘Was there anything you wanted, anyway?’ Will enquired mockingly. ‘Or did you just want to stand awkwardly over us?’
Without another word Laurie picked up the box, turned and stomped out of the terrace area. Charles looked at Will, currently basking in the point score.
‘Bad move,’ he said. ‘We need her.’
‘The only reason she’s still employed on your staff is guilt, and you know it,’ Will replied. Charles finished his salad, dabbing at his lips.
‘Loyalty is something I respect,’ he said.
‘As do I,’ Will said, rising from the table as he did so. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry for spoiling your brunch. I’ll keep you in the loop on what happens with the investigation.’
‘Do so,’ Charles rose from the table as well now. ‘And check into why Malcolm bloody Gladwell is taking Donna’s ex-PA out for drinks, yeah? Because it sure as hell wasn’t to give an orientation.’
Malcolm Gladwell wasn’t at Parliament for the noon meetings. He’d returned to his Page Street apartment, his stomach flip-flopping after the news of Kendis Taylor’s death had fed through, looking for something that could settle it. The iPad that he currently stared at had The Daily Mail’s cover, with the image of a man outside Brompton Cemetery, and he had to place it back down to stop his hand shaking.
What if they learned it was him?
Kendis had been found in Brompton Cemetery, and from what the news outlets said, she had found her way in after hours. Even the police weren’t sure how she managed this, but Gladwell knew.
She’d taken the key from him, after all.
He sat on his sofa, staring out of the window for the moment. He didn’t have a magnificent view, but in all fairness, he wasn’t really paying attention to it. She’d gone there to get answers and had only found death. And somewhere there was likely to be a Special Services report that not only showed her talking to him in a local park, but also visiting a pub near Brompton Cemetery with him the night before. As soon as the CCTV footage came out, they’d find a way to leak it.
He’d expected this, though. This was a power move and a war. So he’d spoken to a journalist? Everyone does in Westminster. And as to her being a terrorist? He never knew that when they met. Gladwell knew that the rumours of extremism were just that, created to throw doubt on her. They didn’t expect a murder hunt and a terrorist plot suddenly being thrown upon the British public.
He started visibly when his buzzer went. Walking to the door, he saw on the video screen a woman, watching around nervously. Allowing the downstairs to open with a click of a button, Gladwell walked to the door and opened
it. A moment later a visibly distressed Laurie Hooper entered sight, passing Gladwell as he moved aside, closing the door behind her.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Harrison knows we were together,’ Laurie whispered. ‘He said that you’re a party man. Which means you have no loyalty to me.’
‘Harrison is an overweight fool who’s one more Big Mac away from a coronary,’ Gladwell replied, forcing a smile. ‘And if we cross our fingers and hope really hard, it’ll happen soon.’
Laurie couldn’t help it. She laughed.
‘When will you tell me what really happened?’ she asked. ‘What Donna really said to you on her last day?’
‘When I’m a hundred percent convinced I’m right,’ Gladwell pulled Laurie into his arms, embracing her. ‘And then we’ll both gain revenge for her.’
Laurie looked up, her eyes wide and innocent. Gladwell almost wished that he had the same innocence, long washed away by the Thames under Westminster Bridge.
‘I want you now,’ he whispered, kissing her hard on the lips, feeling her melt into him as she complied.
She always complied.
Alexander Monroe had been having the strangest dream. He couldn’t remember it now, as he lay in a hospital bed with tubes attached to every part of his body, but he remembered snippets. A moment of incredible pain to his skull. A man he thought he’d never see returning into his office, but dressed like Declan. A teenager with a gun to his gangster father’s head. A paint grenade going off.
Much of this he knew were scenes from the day, his muddled, drug-addled brain trying to put them into some kind of organisation, but one moment, one scene from the dream was still clear, and certainly hadn’t happened. He was standing on a beach, facing Kendis Taylor. She was wearing a large, slightly oversized parka, zipped up tightly, and they were arguing. He couldn’t remember what on; that part of the dream had disappeared. All he remembered was Kendis saying that she was sorry, that this wasn’t her fault, the coat opening and a bomb vest being seen underneath—
And then he woke up in what was apparently an Adult Critical Care Unit, with Rosanna Marcos sitting on a chair beside him reading a magazine. Obviously, once she realised he was awake, the magazine was thrown to the side and a flurry of medical staff were around, prodding, poking, asking questions, shining torches into his eyes… Monroe believed it was then that he passed out again, but when he awoke the second time the room was quieter, with Doctor Marcos now taking his pulse while ignoring all the machines that told her the answer.
‘Does it match?’ he whispered with a smile. Doctor Marcos saw he’d woken and leaned closer to him.
‘Stay quiet,’ she said. ‘If they hear you’re awake again, they’ll start prodding and poking all over again.’
Monroe chuckled at this but stopped when a wave of pain slashed through his skull, like they had placed a metal band around it, set to constrict quickly.
‘How bad?’ he whispered, reaching up and feeling the bandaging around his head.
‘You’re battered, but you put up a good defence. Your head, however… You lost a lot of blood, Alex. And for a while we didn’t think you were coming back.’ She grabbed his hand, squeezing it.
‘I’m sorry…’ Monroe said, looking up at her. ‘…But do I know you?’
Doctor Marcos stepped back in horror, but her expression turned to anger as Monroe laughed again, a wheezing, sporadic one that started and stopped as the pain in his head slashed at him in intervals.
‘Oh, you little shit,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve been worried sick, and that’s what you do?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Monroe croaked. ‘It was too good an opportunity to miss.’
Doctor Marcos sat down beside Monroe again.
‘You know that with one pinch of these tubes going into you, I can ruin your day real fast, yes?’ she muttered. ‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘Someone kept ramming my head into a glass door, I think,’ Monroe replied. ‘Can I get a sip of water?’
Doctor Marcos passed a sippy cup over, holding it for Monroe as he took a small mouthful. ‘Do you remember who did this to you?’
‘That’s what we were going to ask,’ Billy said as he entered the room, a broad grin on his face. ‘Good to see you awake, Guv.’
Monroe smiled and was about to reply when the second man entered the room.
The man with the rimless glasses.
‘Good to see you awake, DCI Monroe,’ he said. ‘I’m DI Frost. I’ve been seconded to your unit.’
Monroe looked to Billy, wondering if this was some kind of hallucination.
‘It’s true, Guv,’ Billy replied. ‘The DCI who’s running the case is DCI Sutcliffe. You met him during that armed stand-off in Hurley. Frost here was working undercover for Pearce Associates during that case.’
‘Sutcliffe is working my case?’ Monroe was still confused.
‘No, sir,’ Frost stepped forward. ‘You’re one of two cases, this and the murder investigation on Kendis Taylor.’
‘Kendis is dead?’ Monroe looked to Doctor Marcos, who nodded. ‘How long have I been out?’
‘Only a couple of days,’ Billy replied. ‘But we need to find the man who did this to you. If you remember anything, it’d help, Guv.’
Monroe remembered everything. He remembered the man with the rimless glasses, who was now apparently called DI Frost, attacking him with a baton he kept up his sleeve. And, judging from a quickly taken glance at him now, moving to bar the door, Frost was about to attack again the moment Monroe spoke.
And that meant that Doctor Marcos and Billy would suffer this time.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t remember anything after being drugged in a car. Doctor Marcos has been explaining what happened in Beachampton.’
‘You remember nothing?’ Frost moved closer, suspicious. Monroe shrugged.
‘Sorry, not a thing,’ he lied.
Watching him, Doctor Marcos nodded.
‘Short term amnesia is common in head trauma,’ she explained. ‘A few days of bed rest and I’m sure it’ll come back to him.’
‘Well, we’ll leave you alone now,’ Billy was still smiling. ‘It’s really great to see you awake.’ Monroe forced his own smile as Billy and Frost left the room, slowly turning his head, fighting the pain to look at Doctor Marcos.
‘I need to speak to Declan,’ he said. ‘I need to speak to him now.’
13
Tick Tick Tick
Declan stared up at The Horse and Guard pub, shaking back the fear that this could be the moment that ended his career, that had him named as some kind of extremist terrorist handler rather than the slightly more innocent, but no better explanation of a man and a woman having an illicit affair.
‘You want me to do this?’ Anjli, climbing out of the passenger side turned to ask. Declan shook his head.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s fine.’
It was a small pub, completely detached and at a corner of the Fulham Road and a gated entrance to a small cul-de-sac. To his back was a brick wall made of old, blackened bricks, as if built during Victorian times but recently renovated to fit the local aesthetics, easily eight feet high that ran the length of the red brick, six-storey apartment complex behind it. To his right, and further on from the complex was a church, now equally cleaned of the dirt and soot that came from a hundred years of pollution, its sandy coloured bricks gleaming in the sun and now converted into a very expensive house, with likely some kind of swimming pool or cinema or even both in the onetime crypt.
Looking back to the street in front of him, Declan saw it had two personalities; on the right-hand side of the cul-de-sac was a series of design studios, accountants and estate agents, the two-storey buildings above painted white, straight edged and well maintained, while the left-hand side, the side that held The Horse and Guard pub was built in a different style, the bricks stained, the corners rounded, and a ten-foot gap in between veterinary clinics, junk shops, beaut
y salons and the pub; blocked off with a tall fence, covered in the same black-painted style as the rest of the building, covered in posters that told of exciting televised sports and even more exciting food available inside. And at the front was a metal hatch that led to the beer cellar, one side open, as if waiting for a delivery.
Declan stared at the pub for another long minute.
‘Are you really sure that you don’t want me to do this?’ Anjli asked again. Declan smiled.
‘I’m good, I promise,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that there’s something, a half remembered moment…’ He stopped. ‘There was someone else there. Kendis seemed distracted. She was happy to sit and talk, and then I went to the toilet…’ he furrowed his brow as he tried to remember. ‘I think I went to the toilet, and when I came back she was different. Wanted to leave there and then. I thought at the time she just wanted to go somewhere quieter, but I’m now wondering if I missed something.’
‘Can you remember the person?’ Anjli asked. Declan shrugged.
‘There were a few people in there, and I wasn’t on a case,’ he admitted as he closed his driver’s door and, checking the traffic, crossed the road, heading towards the building. ‘Maybe the CCTV will show what happened.’
‘Maybe the CCTV will show you though,’ Anjli was walking to catch up with him now. ‘How do we explain that?’
Declan stopped. ‘At that point you arrest me,’ he replied, ‘as I’ll be a suspect at that point.’
‘Come on, Guv!’ Anjli protested, and Declan couldn’t help but smile. She only called him ‘Guv’ when she was trying to be official. ‘They can’t think you’re a terrorist!’
‘They can and they will,’ Declan retorted. ‘That’s why we need to finish this first.’
Declan stopped before entering though, looking back across the road, down towards the onetime church and the shops that faced it. Parked up on the pavement opposite the church and facing them was a black Ford Focus car, currently stopped on the single yellows that fronted the shops beside it. Inside, the shaven headed man that had been watching them now looked elsewhere, as if unaware that Declan was even staring at him.
