by Tom Bradby
‘And finally, hard as it is, let us ponder the manner of his death. A terrible night that Adrian and I here remember too well. At the end of it, when our small section hung in the balance, Mitch put his own life on the line. Would I have done what he did?’ Alan shook his head. ‘Was what he did sane in the normal military sense? No. Does knowledge of the true nature of the individual he chose to save bring bleak and bitter irony? Yes. But it symbolizes the man Mitchell Havilland was. The decision to save Pascoe was a simple act. A wounded man cried for help and Mitch gave it. That was who he was. He knew no compromise. To live like him would be exhausting, but he was an inspiration. He is one still.’
Alan raised his glass. ‘So that’s enough. To Mitchell, still sadly missed, whose contribution to the lives of all who surrounded him demands to be remembered.’
‘Well said,’ Jasper de la Rue muttered.
Caroline’s head was bent.
That night, Julia knelt by the side of her bed, where she had always prayed as a child. She had been moved by Alan’s speech in the pub. She unhooked the latch at the front of the dolls’ house and opened the doors. It was a Georgian building that her father had made up from a design in a book. It had been intended as a Christmas surprise, but she had found the doors in the shed months before and had sneaked in periodically to monitor its progress.
It looked shabbier now than on the day she had opened it, but it was still a work of art. On the ground floor, the dining room had tiny wooden floorboards and wood panels. Her father had bought the chandelier, but the miniature paintings had been done by her mother. He had made the long dining-room table and chairs. Most of the kitchen had been bought from the shop, but he had built the wooden cupboards. Upstairs, almost everything had been fashioned by hand. Her mother had made the curtains, her father the bed and the Austrian wardrobe. The dolls had been lost, but the house was intact, a poignant reminder of a distant past.
Julia took out the grand piano from the living room, blew off the dust and held it up to the light. Some of the furniture needed repainting. She remembered the way Alice used to quietly lie on the floor here while Julia directed their games. Sometimes her father would come in and lie on the bed and Julia would tell him what all the dolls in the house were doing. She cherished these memories.
She lay down, put her hand under the bed and pulled out a red box. On top was a battered leather photograph frame, inside which was a smaller version of the picture downstairs, with her father smiling, and another of her mother and father sitting on the lawn with Socrates, the dog that had preceded Aristotle.
Julia looked at the photographs, then placed the frame carefully on the bed. The box was a mish-mash of memories, superstitiously kept. There was a card she had made for him, with silver glitter stuck to the words ‘Happy Birthday Daddy’. Most of it had fallen off. Inside, she’d written, ‘Daddy, I love you, Happy Birthday!’ and next to the words had drawn a picture of a girl smiling with her hands in the air in celebration.
She took out and turned over the letters she had written to him while he was heading south towards the Falklands and the war that followed. The letters looked well thumbed, as if he had read and reread her banal reflections on school and home life. She ended each one with, ‘Daddy, I love you, please come home safe.’
There were his letters back, full of cool, calm reassurance. The war was important, preparations were going well, he missed her and Mummy but this had to be done. He would be fine. Each letter ended ‘your loving Daddy’.
Julia looked at the frame and the letters set out on the bed and suddenly her shoulders began to shake. Then, her face creased and her eyes stung. She could not control it. She sobbed and shook, and felt a pain in her stomach as she climbed on to the bed and curled around the collection, hating herself for this display of weakness.
It was a long time before her face was dry.
Eventually, she pulled herself upright, put away the contents of the box and closed the doors of the dolls’ house.
She did not hear her mother come in.
Caroline sat down beside her. She placed a hand on her shoulder then an arm around her back and pulled Julia’s head on to her chest, holding it there, stroking her hair. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on, my girl. What’s wrong?’
Julia shook her head. It was many years since they had sat like this and she enjoyed her mother’s warmth, but she could not shake off the pervasive feeling of discomfort. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
CHAPTER TWO
MAC’S DESK WAS at the back. He looked up as Rigby came out, holding up a file.
‘A cautionary tale, gentlemen. An officer with everything going for her – father a war hero, first woman to win the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, top flight Intelligence Corps recruit, glittering career, all gone …’
Mac stared at Rigby, until he saw him lowering the file in Sanderson’s direction. ‘I’ll take that one, sir,’ he said.
Rigby looked at him. ‘It’s not a public auction, Macintosh.’
‘Sanderson’s stacked.’
Rigby looked at Sanderson, whose narrow face betrayed no interest in the case.
‘What about the Wren file?’ Rigby asked, moving to Mac’s side of the office.
‘Done. Just typing it up.’ Mac flicked the file shut. It wasn’t anywhere near ready.
‘And were the breasts fondled?’
Sanderson snorted. Mac tried to smile. ‘I believe they were.’
Rigby frowned. Mac knew his own attempts to join in with the bar-room culture were half-hearted and unconvincing.
‘Hang the culprit,’ Rigby said.
He placed the file on Mac’s desk, his intense eyes resting on his face. ‘You don’t know Julia Havilland, do you, Macintosh? She must be about your age.’
Mac frowned and looked at Rigby. ‘No, but the case sounds interesting. A change from bloody sexual harassment.’
Rigby’s face lost its suspicion. He put down the file and ran his fat hand over the bald patch on the dome of his head. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but don’t go easy on her just ’cos she’s pretty. Registry prepared the file, so they’ll want hard copies of everything when you’re done. She’s at home with her mother, so you need to monitor her, make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.’
‘Her CO doesn’t want it dealt with in-house?’
‘He might do, but he’s not going to get his way. She went on the rampage inside a bloody embassy, so it’s tough shit if he does.’
Rigby turned away, then changed his mind. ‘By the way, you’ll need to liaise with Jones. Know him?’ Mac shook his head. ‘Our man at the Ministry of Defence. He keeps the top brass up to date on sensitive cases and they’ll be taking an interest in this one, so keep me informed of your progress.’ Rigby hesitated, the bluster gone. ‘Be careful with this one, Macintosh. There will be a lot of interest.’
He retreated to his office and shut the door, the blind banging against the glass panel. Sanderson glanced back at Mac with a look that might have been anything from gratitude to hostility. No one else was present.
Mac stood up and walked through the swing doors and across the stairwell to the toilets. As he urinated, he looked down on the empty square outside. Sheila, the office secretary, was walking up from the gate with a cup of coffee and a chocolate brownie in her hand. Mac found himself trying to remember if Julia had ever phoned him at the office and, if so, who had taken the call.
He got some coffee from the machine and returned to his desk, flicking open the buff-coloured file as he sat down. He glanced around the room. Rigby was bent over his desk, Sanderson was on the telephone, Wellar had disappeared. Sheila would still be having a cigarette at the bottom of the stairs.
Mac stared at the passport-style picture stapled to the front sheet. It was an old photograph, because her lustrous, wavy dark hair was longer now than depicted here, but the image displayed the exact perfection of her face, the neatness of her nos
e and the elegant curve of her cheeks. One corner of her mouth was pulled upwards in a sardonic smile.
Mac remembered her body, its litheness, and he wished he had not experienced it.
The code on top of the file was E4111468.SIB.W. SIB stood for Special Investigations Branch, and W for Woolwich – or headquarters. He typed the numbers on his keyboard to pull up the matching computer files, but continued to read from the printouts inside the folder. The photograph had been attached to a CV, which he turned over, confident it could tell him nothing he didn’t already know. Beneath it was a closely typed sheet from Julia’s commanding officer. It was headed ‘Background: Captain Julia Havilland’. It said:
Julia Havilland came to the Intelligence Corps after becoming the first woman to win the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst six years ago. She scored very highly in psychological and intellectual tests and interviews and was given glowing references, including one by a serving officer who knew her family well, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Ford.
In my own opinion, she has been one of the most exceptional young officers I have ever encountered. She has a strong and transparent desire to prove worthy of her father’s name, but this has only translated into a devotion to work, a determination to get results, and a commitment to integrity and honesty in everything that she does.
After a period of initial training, she was sent to serve in Londonderry and Belfast in a junior capacity for two years. She then returned to headquarters in Ashford to work in an analytical role on Irish affairs. During this time, she had partial responsibility for liaising with the domestic intelligence service, MI5, and the Special Branch units of the Metropolitan Police and other police forces around the country. She briefed the Joint Intelligence Committee on two occasions and they made a point of noting that they were impressed by her performance.
After a brief posting to Russia and an even briefer one in the Balkans, she was retrieved and sent, by me, to be head of the JSG cell based in Bessbrooke barracks, in South Armagh, Northern Ireland. JSG stands for Joint Support Group, a unit that was formally the FRU – Forward Research Unit. This is one of our most sensitive and difficult posts for an officer of Captain Havilland’s level. She was responsible for finding, approaching and recruiting agents to provide information on the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. South Armagh is the heartland of that organization, where each member has close family links with the next. It is clannish and notoriously hard to penetrate. I am not at liberty to divulge specifics of our operations there, save to say that Captain Havilland achieved a quite extraordinary measure of success. She was brave, often venturing into IRA-controlled areas in plain clothes to research potential recruits, and seems to possess a particularly acute understanding of the psychology and motivation of a wide range of individuals.
For this reason, I chose to move her on suddenly almost exactly eight months ago. The military attaché in Beijing, Brigadier David Wright, had received what he believed to be an approach from a colonel in Chinese Military Intelligence. He had no idea whether the approach was genuine and anyway did not wish to compromise his position as attaché. Nor was he qualified to take the matter further. I could think of no one more capable of handling such a potentially complex and dangerous situation than Captain Havilland. Although I was reluctant to remove her from Ireland, I took the decision to dispatch her to Beijing along with one of the sergeants she was working with in South Armagh, Sergeant Blackstone, an experienced man with a faultless record, and another, Sergeant Jarrow, with whom she had previously worked in Russia and who had had considerable experience with 14 Intelligence Company, our street surveillance unit. Although both men were older, I had reason to believe, and still do, that they had the greatest respect for her.
I have not yet received a full debrief of what happened in China and am inclined to let the dust settle and tempers calm for a week or two before attempting to do so. In retrospect, I can see it was a mistake to send Captain Havilland directly from Ireland to China, without any sort of break, since I believe she has not had a holiday for almost three years. In my defence, I would only say that she was one of the most ambitious young officers I have ever encountered and she repeatedly indicated her willingness, indeed desire, to take on new challenges. I never saw or heard anything to suggest she was under pressure with which she was unable to cope. She always struck me as a young woman of exceptional tenacity and toughness.
I make no secret of the fact that, if this incident had not occurred in an embassy, I would, despite its severity, be trying to deal with it in-house. We are an unusual unit, with unusual work, and, quite simply, we cannot afford to lose officers of Captain Havilland’s calibre.
It was signed and dated. Mac turned it over. That was the Julia he knew.
Next was an incident report, typed on headed embassy paper. It had been written by the security officer and was full of barely suppressed outrage. Mac glanced over it. He would read it in detail later. He took in ‘video of agent’s execution … argument ensued … threatened subordinates with gun … barrel of pistol placed in Jarrow’s mouth’.
Mac was startled by the image of a Julia he could not imagine. He wondered where she had managed to get a pistol from.
Both the sergeants had given written depositions describing the train of events leading from the arrival of the video of their agent’s execution through to when they watched it together. The specifics of the argument that followed were not spelt out, though Sergeant Jarrow admitted that the pistol belonged to him and had been bought illegally from a Chinese street market.
Julia’s statement was the shortest: ‘I have read the statements of both Sergeant Jarrow and Sergeant Blackstone. I do not disagree with their description of the aforementioned events and see no reason to dispute it. I do not wish to state anything else at this time.’
Mac did not know if this statement reflected a brittle or defiant state of mind. As so often, she had given little away.
The last item in the file was a series of newspaper cuttings held together with a paperclip. The first was from The Times and its headline was ‘War Hero’s Daughter Wins Sword of Honour’. There was a similar article from the Daily Mail, with the catch-line: ‘I’ll make him proud, says war hero’s girl.’ There was a picture of Julia in uniform, holding the sword. She looked sombre, and Mac remembered her determination to resist the photographers’ attempts to make her smile.
He sat back in his chair, with his hands behind his head. He thought about the day of their graduation from Sandhurst and the interest Julia had attracted, but was soon recalling instead the night in the log cabin in Norway’s frozen north when he had gone briefly beyond the protective shield she had so carefully erected. He could still remember Julia’s arrival on the plane as they departed for that trip and the lull in conversation that had accompanied it.
Until the Arctic warfare training course, they had had nothing to do with the girls at Sandhurst, who shared separate facilities and formed their own companies and platoons, so Julia’s impact had perhaps been unsurprising. She was taller than the other women and carried her femininity easily.
Discipline during those two weeks had been more relaxed. Not a holiday, but the closest they ever came to it in training. Even Mac’s public-school-dominated platoon had managed to stop looking down their noses at him.
He had talked to Julia during the training, mostly in the evenings, over dinner, card games and whisky in front of the log fire in the communal hut, but she had never seemed to take much notice of him. She always seemed to be laughing at him. And then, when they had all got smashed on vodka, he had found himself being invited to go and have a cigarette outside – they were allowed to smoke in the hut but she had said, smiling, that she preferred it in the cold air. Mac had tramped through the snowdrifts, laughed and fought with her in the new powder, then gone back to her log cabin and made love to her in the moonlight.
He thought now of her small hard nipples, the curve of her spine when she threw her head back, and tried to
suppress a physical ache.
He drummed his fingers irritably against the table-top. Even though he flattered himself that he had built a friendship with Julia, he had never understood why, from that day to this, she had made no mention of the incident in the Norwegian hut. She had not been embarrassed by it. The next day, she had just smiled at him and, after a period of studied formality in which he had grown increasingly desperate, the sardonic smile had come again, accompanied by a frown, which indicated that the night they’d shared had been a gift and not a reason for further demands.
Mac thought of the file on his desk and the explosively violent incident it detailed. Not for the first time with Julia, he did not understand, but he wanted to.
Rigby burst out of the office and marched towards Wellar, holding up a buff-coloured file. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he demanded.
Wellar sat up straight. ‘I don’t understand, sir.’
Mac tried not to look at them. Wellar was the youngest and newest in the office and Rigby enjoyed humiliating him. Paying attention made it worse, because Rigby, with the mindset of a bully and the charm of a Rottweiler, liked to have an audience.
‘This piece of shit. Where’s the interview with the girl?’ Rigby demanded.
‘I thought I attached it, sir.’
‘Well, it isn’t here, is it?’ Rigby threw the file on the desk so that the contents spilled out on to Wellar’s lap. ‘Sort yourself out,’ he said, dismissively.
Before Rigby had got to his office, Mac stood up and patted Wellar’s shoulder. Rigby turned and saw him do it and Mac was glad that he had.
As he turned into Woodpecker Lane that night, Mac tried hard to suppress a sense of nervous excitement.
He had called Julia three times, but there had been no answer.
However, turning in at the gate, he wondered if he’d miscalculated and coming in person was, in fact, a mistake. Both cars were in the drive, but the house was in darkness, save for a sidelight in the living room. If they were in, Julia and her mother showed every sign of having gone up to bed.
