The Sleep of the Dead

by Tom Bradby

  About the Book

  The brutal murder of Sarah Ford and the disappearance of her six-year-old daughter, Alice, shattered the rural serenity of Julia Havilland’s childhood. But these are not the only scars that have resolutely refused to heal. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Mitchell Havilland sacrificed himself on a Falklands hillside in an act of characteristic – but baffling – heroism. When Julia comes home from China fifteen years later, it is to a place of ghosts.

  Whilst she awaits the outcome of the enquiry that seems destined to end her short but spectacular career in military intelligence, Julia is drawn back across the landscape of the past, to find that it is not just the tortured image of her much-loved father that returns to haunt her. Everything she has ever believed in and lived for has suddenly been called into question, and unless she confronts her demons, she will not survive. For there have been other deaths, and the dead will not sleep…

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Tom Bradby

  Copyright

  THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD

  Tom Bradby

  For Claudia, Jack, Louisa and Sam

  ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.’

  Henry VI, Part 3

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Still training under the world’s greatest agent and editor, Mark Lucas and Bill Scott-Kerr.

  Would be going nowhere in any field of life without Claudia.

  PROLOGUE

  THE AIR WAS still. A light wind brushed the leaves of the trees, but it was not strong enough to reach Julia on the path. She walked slowly, glancing at the mud on the toes of her black church shoes and thinking she ought to have changed them. The entrance to the common had been muddy, but here the ground was firm. The branches overhead thickened and the path darkened. It was like a tunnel. The river murmured beside her. Julia watched her feet, one placed in front of the other.

  Rounding the corner, she saw the body, Sarah’s head resting on the ground next to the stream, her long black hair trailing into the water. With an effort of will, Julia moved closer.

  Sarah’s face was pale, her lips pursed as if offering a kiss. There was no grimace of agony, no sign of distress, but her body was twisted awkwardly, the way she’d fallen. There was nothing to suggest life, no connection with the infuriating, arrogant, vivacious beauty Julia had seen leaving church only a few minutes ago.

  Sarah’s hands clasped her stomach and Julia saw the blood there. It was flowing. She thought it was still flowing and the movement jolted her. She turned, but did not run. She listened and looked, trying to catch focus, but there was no sound or movement, the common unnaturally still and silent.

  And then Julia ran and the blood in her head and the thump of her heart and the sound of her lungs blocked out everything but her fear.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE VOICE WAS confident, slow and very English. ‘This is Captain Benson once again. We’re about to begin our descent into London and we’ve made up some time en route, so we should have you on the ground a few minutes ahead of schedule. It’s ten in the morning local time, cloudy, with better weather on the way tonight and tomorrow.’

  As she listened, Julia leant forward and picked up Sergeant Balfour’s book, which had fallen from his lap while he slept. He didn’t thank her.

  ‘To our regular customers and to anyone flying with us for the first time, thank you for choosing British Airways. We do value your custom and hope you’ll fly with us again … Cabin crew prepare for landing, please.’

  Julia stretched her back, pulled the seat up straight and fastened her seat-belt.

  Sergeant Balfour was holding the book in his right hand. It was a Frederick Forsyth thriller about Russia and she could see from his marker that he’d almost finished it. It had been a long flight.

  ‘Sergeant Balfour?’

  He turned his head, without making eye-contact or speaking.

  ‘You know, I wish you wouldn’t talk so much,’ she said.

  He turned away. His expression, in so far as she could discern it, suggested that he believed humour was not a luxury she could afford.

  Julia looked straight ahead. The family to her right contained two sleepy children. They had been heavily drugged throughout the flight and sat with dazed expressions and weary eyes. The younger moaned quietly, the elder was still wearing earphones for an in-flight entertainment system that had now been switched off. Julia tried to imagine what life for a western family was like in Beijing, but it only served to remind her of how narrow her own experience had been.

  There had been dead-letter drops, covert meetings and the shaking hand of a pale, frightened agent, one walk on the Great Wall, the condescending detachment of the military brigadier who had first received the approach and did not want his role as attaché compromised, and the vague hostility of most of the embassy staff.

  And the video of the execution, delivered two days ago in a brown paper parcel to the man at the front gate and addressed to her, Captain Julia Havilland, Army Intelligence Corps.

  Cover blown, mission ended.

  To her left, London appeared through the clouds, but Julia did not want to lean across Balfour to get a better view. It was eight months since she had left the base in England for Beijing, but almost three years since she’d had time to go home and visit her mother. Ashford had plucked her from Ireland before her time was up and dispatched her straight to Beijing.

  Total success had led to total failure.

  And now, disgrace.

  Julia tried to find a way back to the body of thought that had been forming in her mind during the long flight – an alternative to the dead ends that awaited her – but could not. The impact of the wheels on the tarmac and the Boeing’s brief bounce interrupted her and she felt a momentary thrill at the thought of real television, Sunday newspapers, afternoon tea, Marmite, bookshops, green fields, civility and a warm log fire.

  Before the plane had come to a halt Julia stood up. ‘Come on, Balfour. We’re home.’

  The plane was half empty and the wait short. Two men in raincoats were standing by the aircraft as she stepped out.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said, half to them, half to Balfour.

  ‘Cut the crap, Havilland,’ Balfour said.

  ‘Sir, to you, Sergeant Balfour.’ He glowered at her. ‘Anyway, thanks again for the chat,’ she went on. ‘The journey really flew by.’

  Julia led the way and, with a hint of awkwardness, they followed, unable to impose the authority they possessed and reluctant to try. Her bag was the first off the carousel – she’d been checked in first – and they marched her straight down to the VIP exit.

  ‘I’m a VIP,’ she said, with a smile, to the man who examined her passport, but he did not respond, and tired of sarcasm – tired in general – she walked without further comment to the black Ford Es
cort that sat with its engine running in the car-park beyond.

  ‘Remember,’ Balfour said, as she was about to get into the back, ‘you must stay within reach of your home at all times.’

  ‘I’m not a child, Balfour.’

  ‘You’re lucky not to be confined to base.’

  ‘Or a criminal.’

  ‘That’s to be seen. Thanks for the trip.’

  Julia could not tell if this last comment was his own black humour or a misplaced attempt at genuine communication. She did not look back, ducking her head slightly to stare up at the clearing sky and the signs of a country that seemed more comforting and familiar than at any point she could remember. They passed a Shell garage and a row of billboards, advertising Peugeot at one end and BMW at the other.

  The driver did not ask her where to go and she did not attempt to talk to him. As the M4 gave way to the M25 and then the M3, she found her way back to the train of thought on the plane and could not tell whether its direction disconcerted her.

  She was returning home and, though she had had no choice in the matter, it felt a deliberate act.

  The journey passed quickly, the outside world rarely penetrating her thoughts, so that her arrival was sudden, finding her unprepared. The driver had stopped at the neck of the valley, awaiting instructions. Julia watched the smoke rising from the houses bunched around the church spire as scattered clouds drifted across the sky, shielding the sun. She felt the flutter of nerves in her stomach.

  A black Mercedes was parked outside the post office next to the green, but otherwise the village seemed deserted, a model replica without visitors. What struck her was its scale; smaller than in her mind’s eye, as if lives here were being lived in miniature. The houses, the breadth of the valley and the gradient of the surrounding hills seemed diminished, but after the concrete jungle that was modern Beijing, it was impossibly green. It was how she liked to remember home: in summer bloom, a mature riot of nature.

  As they came level with the Rose and Crown Julia was pulled from her reflections. ‘Sorry, you need to go right here,’ she said. The driver reversed up and turned down Woodpecker Lane.

  Alan Ford’s drive was empty behind the newly painted white gate and so was her own. As Julia got out, the soles of her boots sank into the thick gravel, and the sun burst through a patch of cloud, its warmth immediate. She took off her jacket and slung it over the bonnet of her old blue VW Golf parked close to the garage.

  Julia raised her hands in thanks to the driver as he reversed out of the drive on to the road then disappeared without acknowledgement. She glanced at the Golf. There was more rust around the wheel rims than she remembered.

  Her footsteps were noisy and regular as she approached, then climbed up on to the edge of the brick surround of the flower-bed that separated the drive from the garden. The house was called Rose Cottage and had been fashioned several centuries ago from mellow red brick. It had a slate roof and a single chimney with a weather-vane. The kitchen had been extended at the back and the entire length of the house was covered with vines and laburnum. From where Julia was standing, she could look down over the expanse of lawn in front to the field, which dipped then rose again to the edge of the wood that formed the boundary of Welham Common.

  Julia circuited the brick wall and stepped down on to the lawn. It was springy and a deep, verdant green. She took off her suede boots and socks and felt the dampness beneath her feet, the grass newly mown, the clippings piled in the corner by the garden shed.

  Inside her parents’ house, Aristotle was parked on the floor of the dining room. He didn’t stir himself, his mournful eyes fixed on her, his tail beating the floor in a lethargic tattoo. Eventually, he rolled half on to his back and she knelt and scratched his stomach, before bending down and kissing the side of his head. In the past, the house had always been noisy, but now it seemed unnaturally quiet.

  Upstairs, her room was crowded with the accumulated detritus of a frozen childhood: teddy bears, dolls, books, photograph albums, gymkhana rosettes, gymnastic medals, swimming certificates. It was warm in here, so she leant across to push open the window, looking out over the de la Rues’ garden next door and the colourful flower-bed that ran along the length of the house. Stiff from the journey, Julia crossed her legs and brought the palms of her hands down to her toes, stretching.

  She sat down on the cane chair at her desk and looked at the bulging bookshelves ahead. Her mother had tidied them so that each shelf roughly reflected a level of maturity, with the big picture books at the top. She reached up and took down Richard Scarry’s Great Big Air Book. It was dog-eared and some of the pages were loose so she turned them carefully, recalling her father sitting on the bed beside her here, with his back to the radiator. Julia read the words aloud, smiling: ‘“Aaaah-chooo!” sneezed Huckle. Huckle sneezed so hard he blew Little Sister out of bed. Oh, it must be windy today!’

  She put her feet on the bed, clearing a path among the teddy bears, then bent down and pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk, taking out an embossed leather box. It contained her father’s Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry the British army can bestow; it was cold to the touch, the braid above it smooth. Julia turned it over, running her fingers over the name: ‘Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell Havilland.’ She asked herself, as she had so many times, whether she could have performed the same act of heroism.

  She reached forward and took down a scrapbook from the shelves in front of her. It had a dark blue cover. Inside, she had posted newspaper articles and photographs. There was a picture of her father standing outside a sheep shed in Teal Inlet on the Falklands with members of his regimental support staff. On the opposite page, she had pasted a letter that one of his corporals, Wilkes, had written to her after the war:

  Your father was the best officer I ever served under. When he gave us the first briefing about going down south to fight, he assembled us on the parade ground and said, ‘Right, lads, this is it. This is what it’s all about. There’s millions of buggers that’d give their eye teeth to be in with a shout at this.’ He said there would be buckets of s*** and that he’d see us all right. You knew it was true.

  It’s a tragedy he didn’t make it.

  I’ve a load of memories. I remember in Germany we used to have to go and clean the OC’s office and one time I go in and there’s a bloke crawling on the floor, with kit all over the place. I say, ‘Are you taking the piss or something? You can’t do that in here,’ and he turns round and it’s the OC sorting his kit. ‘Sorry, sir,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry, Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Carry on.’ So I went on cleaning and there’s this wig on the floor. ‘What’s that?’ I ask. And he looks at me, all confused. ‘Wilkes,’ he says, ‘you never know when you may need a disguise.’

  Julia turned the pages, a smile lingering at the corner of her lips until she reached the photographs she had taken in 1984 on the trip to the site of his death with her mother. There was a picture of the craggy rocky outcrop beneath which he’d sheltered before that last charge and another of the machine-gun nest further up from where the fatal shots had been fired. The last picture was of his grave – a lonely white cross on a desolate hillside, bright as it reflected a few isolated rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds above.

  What would he think of her now?

  Julia reached down to the drawer that had contained the Victoria Cross and removed a small, dark, well-thumbed leather notebook – a war diary, given to her by Adrian Rouse. She leafed through the pages:

  Wed. 7 April. It could be war. Hard to believe it. After all that’s happened in Welham, it seems like God’s idea of a bad joke, but then maybe it’s what everyone needs.

  Word we’re going tomorrow. Southampton, then leave on Friday. Cops came to base today to talk to Alan again. Frustration all round with their efforts. Still not found man in leather jacket the old lady saw who seems obvious culprit. Asking everyone offensive questions. Especially fat psychologist. Alan generally silent. Still not certain
if he goes tomorrow, or stays. Mike H says Alan doesn’t see point of staying, because Alice is dead and everyone knows it. He’s being given a wide berth. None of the usual piss-taking, obviously. Mike H says good for him to get away.

  Alice is on everyone’s mind. Even the lads remember her and Sarah from events on the base. Sports day, etc. There’s gossip in the ranks, but dries up when an officer enters. Most gossip centres around S. Air of unreality all round. War or not? Nobody knows.

  Julia looked up at the shelves, tapping her fingers against the table-top, then returned to the page.

  More fired up in the afternoon. CO briefing on parade ground. Mitch says def off tomorrow unless w****** change their mind again. Not nec war, but should be prepared for any eventuality. Says not many soldiers get a chance like this. Quite inspiring. Made it sound like the world was going to be jealous not to be in on the action. Everyone more aggressive afterwards. At last, action, not speculation. Busy, now, much to do. Windproof smocks finally arrived. Can’t believe they’ve had this stuff sitting around at HQ UKLF. Probably trying to hold on to it for their skiing holidays. Mitch got on and said if they didn’t f****** release it, he’d go up and take it himself. As usual, emphasis on getting things done and no time for time-serving w******. He’ll never make General. Or maybe he will.

  Julia flicked forward, then paused again.

  19 May. It really is war. Helicopter containing members of D squadron SAS got an albatross stuck in its engine and crashed into sea: 22 dead.

  Sense of nervous readiness. Only problem is Alan and Danes again. Mitch too busy and preoccupied to notice any more – ‘time for them to b***** get on with it,’ but hope it will not be a problem. Actually, have noticed, Alan and Mitch hardly ever communicate directly. Mike H spoke to Danes and was told that Alan was an uptight w***** who knows nothing about tactics and couldn’t lead his men out of a paper bag. Trouble is, Mike H and Danes and Mitch are all of a type – gung-ho, no bullshit, break the door down, etc. Alan is competitive enough, just a bit more reserved. Less in-your-face. The men say he’s taciturn, but not surprising, given the circumstances. Think Danes may feel Alan should have stayed at home.