Experiment With Destiny

by Carr, Stephen

  “The Stirling Arms?” John nodded enthusiastically.

  “That’s the one. I got the impression she and the landlord were…” He grinned toothlessly. “Well, you know. It was just the way she talked about him, when she first arrived.” Heggie would not tell him anything, even if he went back to see him. There had to be another lead, another contact, another clue. “I figured she had to leave the pub in a hurry. Things went wrong, maybe. Such a shame. A woman like her.”

  “What time are the other lodge…tenants back? I take it they’re out?” he glanced at the door, as if expecting someone to step through and prove him wrong. “Perhaps one of them might know what she was doing in London?”

  “Oh, I doubt that. I really do.” John’s face wrinkled. “You’re welcome to hang around and ask, for sure, but she never hardly spoke to any of them. Just a hello and goodbye. I never got much more out of her, and I’m her landlord…was. They’ll all be down the pub right now. A Sunday tradition. I’d be there too, if it wasn’t for my legs.” He placed his weathered hands against his trousers, as if to emphasise his point. “I can’t get around too well these days. Arthritis.” Steven decided against staying and waiting for the lodgers to return. John was probably right. They would know less than he did about the secret life of Corporal Eleanor Gusso.

  “Would it be okay if I took a quick look at her…room? Just to get a feel for the sort of person she was.” It was worth a try, Steven considered. He was fast running out of options, short of ringing up Elton himself.

  “Like I said, the police took all her stuff yesterday.” John shrugged. “There’s nothing left to see. I’ve stripped the bed and…” He sighed. “Well, no harm, I guess. Put your mind at rest, if nothing else.” John pushed himself wearily to his feet, wincing. “You reporters, eh?” he led the way back into the dark hall. “I’ll not come up, if you don’t mind. Room three, left at the top of the stairs, next to the bathroom. It’s not locked.”

  “Thanks.” Steven began to ascend, the boards creaking loudly beneath his shoes.

  “Will you have a cup of tea…or maybe a whisky, while you wait for the others?” John made his way further along the hall.

  “No thanks. I’ll be fine. I’ll just take a quick peek and I’ll be off.”

  “As you wish.”

  Eleanor’s room was dark, damp and bare. Its gaudy floral patterned walls bore the deepening stains of mildew and there were patches of spores on the yellowing net curtains of the window, which overlooked the street and the river beyond. The curtains were gold and red, originally, but they had seen better days and were in dire need of a wash. The carpet, the same paisley pattern, was equally threadbare as the one downstairs. There was a metal-framed bed, the mattress slightly soiled, and a large wardrobe. Its door refused to close properly. There was a chest of drawers with a freestanding mirror on top, and an armchair, the pre-packed self-assembly type he was familiar with. Steven could not picture Eleanor living here. Even though he did not know her, this room, this house, her landlord, all seemed totally incongruous with the person he imagined her to be. Eleanor Gusso had either fallen on very hard times or she was trying very hard to remain anonymous, unseen. Steven suspected it was a case of the latter.

  So why go to all this trouble to disappear, then take a trip to London to take part in a presentation ceremony? Steven edged around the room, checking the drawers, cupboard and even beneath the mattress. If the answer ever was in this room it was not here now, he admitted to himself. There was nothing left to indicate Eleanor had been living here until just three days ago. Whoever had come to collect her belongings yesterday had been thorough.

  Steven sat on the corner of the bed. His mind’s eye conjured the harrowing images of Friday evening’s roadside scene. Three bodies lay on the cold tarmac, each shrouded in a blanket. As far as the outside world was concerned they were waste dwellers, criminal exiles who had cruelly taken away the life of a city bus driver. Nobody was interested in their story.

  One of those bodies was that of charity worker Eleanor Gusso, once a corporal in the feared and revered Special Air Service. It had taken Steven the best part of two days to find that out, but he still did not have the hard evidence to prove it. The identities of the other two bodies remained a mystery. Who they were and what they were doing in a Eurostate car with Eleanor, he was no closer to finding out than he was when he stood beside their lifeless bodies on Friday. Steven had failed to make them live again through the pages of the newspaper, he had failed to unearth and retell their stories. His investigative skills had let them down.

  Even if his pictures had been wiped by accident, even if Elton thought the second hand inquiries from a journalist were of no consequence, and even if Jerry was prepared to give him another few days to try to stand up the story, Steven knew in his heart he had run out of time. They, whoever they may be, were prepared to switch corpses in an effort to keep Eleanor’s death, and the deaths of two others, a secret. What other measures were they prepared to undertake to ensure that their secret remained so? Why did he care? Ego? He’d had ‘Exclusive by Steven Elan’ on the front pages numerous times. Principles? He had never tried to fool himself that he was a defender of democracy in the past. Ambition? Would International News Broadcasting really pay any attention if he did manage to break this story? It was beginning to dawn on him that his weekend had been pointless, expensive and unnecessarily stressful. What was Jerry going to say about his expenses claim when he failed to produce a story? All he had to show for his efforts was a couple of dodgy printouts and a medal.

  He pulled it from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. He was half tempted to leave it behind, walk away and forget about Eleanor and her secret. In the end he decided he should keep it as a memento, a reminder to prevent him pursuing further lost causes and wild goose chases. Perhaps he could post it to someone in Eurostate security, someone high up in the Politguard, to let them know he had rumbled them, or at least make them think he had. A small but significant victory. He stood and pushed it into his pocket…missing. He heard it drop to the floor and roll along the carpet. He dropped to his knees to try and recover it.

  That was when he found it.

  It didn’t register at first. It was something handy to prop up the chest of drawers where one of the corners had been chipped away. It was a thin book, an innocuous wedge of paper, a half-inch thickness of padding. It was a diary, Eleanor’s diary.

  He wasn’t even sure it was Eleanor’s diary, until he checked the final entry. Steven crouched on the threadbare carpet and held it open with trembling hands. He had to remind himself to breathe. The handwriting was neat, much neater than his own; regimented lines of blue ink, interspersed with doodles of flags, flowers and faces. He felt like an uninvited guest, a guilty voyeur as he scanned the pages. There were very few entries, sometimes weeks without so much as a mark. The bulk of the entries seemed concentrated in the period between January and May. The middle months were dotted with sporadic entries, a few lines here and there but mostly short sentences or single words, the occasional time or phone number. The entries became more prolific again from the start of October. Steven skipped through them until he reached Thursday, October 30, the day before she died. It was her last entry.

  It read: ‘This time tomorrow it will be all over. My punishment will be complete. My guess is that the torment will go on. It will never end, not while I live. At least they will leave me alone. I wish there was some way I could stop it, not go through with it, but it’s too late now. Even if I disappeared they would track me down. They always manage, somehow. Half of me still expects the assassin’s bullet, perhaps when they call for me at dawn, nobody around in the darkness to see my fate. At least that would be kinder than what those cruel fucks have planned. If I was brave enough I would save them the bother, but I’m scared to die now. I’m scared to let go of life, even though there’s less to live for now. Where next? Will I feel more positive for getting this shit out of the way, putting it behi
nd me? I’ll know by this time tomorrow.’

  There was nothing more. Steven turned back. Wednesday’s entry said ‘Washing! PM’. Tuesday was blank. Monday read: ‘Lunch with Gwen. 1pm, Casablanca.’ Saturday’s entry was scrawled across the gap into Sunday.

  ‘Only a few more days. It’s the waiting I can’t bare. I want to run away. Imagine if Heggie could hear me saying this. I’m not the person I was back then. My confidence is shot to pieces. I still can’t believe the bastards have got the gall to go through with this. What’s the point? Nobody’s going to be there. Why the fuss? It’s like they’re trying to justify it with all the bravery bullshit. Who are they trying to kid? It was a simple hit, a text book ambush. The poor bastard only had three unsuspecting bodyguards for fuck’s sake! That’s what makes the guilt worse, those three, and the two drivers. They were the innocent victims. Sometimes I see them in my dreams, screaming at me, wanting to know why. If only I could tell them. If only they could have seen the future. If only I had known. If only they’d plugged me first. If if if fucking if!!!! My whole life since that day has been IF. Fuck them. Maybe I’ll die before Friday.’

  The previous significant entry dated back to Thursday, October 23: ‘I still can’t get my head around it. I called to see H today. We got on a bit better than usual. He gave me the old don’t feel guilty routine. Yes I was only doing my job. Yes I was only following orders. Yes I was a professional soldier. It still doesn’t help me to feel less guilty. It was me who aimed, me who pulled the trigger to take out the escort. It was me who aimed and me who pulled the trigger to take him out. All that de-briefing bollocks about legitimate targets. I call it treason. I still call it treason. I can’t believe they’re giving me a medal for it now, after all these years. After all these years of fucking guilt, fucking paranoia. The cheek of those cocksuckers!!!! Wondering when they’d come for me, bullet in the head, body vanishes, security risk eliminated’ Steven shuddered. ‘instead of which I get a fucking medal! We all get a medal. Six medals for treason. H knew. He won’t admit it. H knew before we went out there. All that only-the-tutor bollocks. Fucking wanker! He knew. Watching the fucking German bulletin with us, thinking textbook no doubt. Proud of his fucking murdering little whore Eleanor. RIP Renner. RIP Britain. Abafuckingmae. Why now? Why after all this time?’

  Steven felt the blood drain from his hands and the hairs on his neck prickle. His arms bristled with goosebumps. The panic began to rise from the sickened pit of his stomach and his chest began to labour for breath. At last he knew. He no longer wanted to know. He wished he had never stumbled across it. He wanted to turn back the clock, make sure he was anywhere but Western Avenue on the evening of Friday, October 31. For the first time in his life he knew the meaning of the word ‘terror’. It was a word he had used countless times but had never understood it, never even imagined the half of it, never grasped its significance…until now.

  It all seemed unreal. It wasn’t happening. He wasn’t crouched on the floor of some stranger’s house reading a diary that told him…that told him… He wanted to weep. He wanted to get up and walk away. He did not want to be a journalist any more. He wanted to live. More than anything, he wanted to live.

  His head began to spin. The woman who wrote the diary was now dead, an apparent accident. He remembered the pictures that had been removed from his computer, the bodies that had been switched for the mortuary. The black motorcycle. Be careful. Giles had asked Elton. A junior defence minister knew a journalist was asking questions about the identity of a woman who had been killed and then vanished, a woman who had been awarded a medal, a woman who had assassinated Sir James Irwin Renner on the instructions of her superiors. If they could kill a Prime Minister…

  Steven knew his only hope of survival was to get the story out before they could find him. He had to get back to Thomson House, and quickly. If the story was told it would be pointless killing him. The next edition of the Echo was not until 11am tomorrow. That would be too late. The Western Mail - they would be printing tonight. Fuck loyalties. If he told them… Steven Elan fumbled in his coat pocket for his mobile phone. Pulling it out, he began dialling. His fingers clumsily typed in several wrong numbers forcing him to redial several times before he finally got through.

  “Western Mail newsdesk.” His heart was pounding.

  “Hi, who’s that?” He did not recognise the voice.

  “Rhodri. Who’s that?” Rhodri Parry was, he remembered, one of the less senior news editors. Their paths had barely crossed. It was not a good start.

  “Steven Elan, Echo. Listen, I’ve got a story for you. A big one.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He heard the heavy sarcasm in Rhodri’s tone. “Pull the other one, it plays Jingle Bells!” Steven needed to convince him this was genuine, and fast.

  “No, seriously! You’ve got to listen to me. My life is in danger. There was a crash on Friday night and…you’d better take this down. You got a pen?”

  There was no answer.

  “Hello? Rhodri? Can you hear me?”

  There was no sound from his phone. He checked the display. It gave The Western Mail newsdesk number and the question ‘end call?’

  “Rhodri?” No sound. “Rhodri, can you hear me?” he shouted, to no avail. The line was dead. He redialled. The number was engaged. He tried a different number for the desk. That, too was engaged. He frantically tried several more numbers for the building. They all gave him an engaged tone. Impossible! They must be monitoring his calls. They must…

  Steven snatched the medal from the carpet nearby and pushed himself to his feet, almost losing his balance on his numb legs. He thrust the medal, together with his notepad and the diary, into his coat pocket and staggered awkwardly towards the door. He almost fell down the stairs but the feeling had returned to his legs by the time he reached the bottom. Without pausing to see where John was, he made straight for the door, turned the latch and was outside in the cold air. This was his only chance. He could not afford to blow it. His life, quite literally, could depend on what he did next.

  “Steven?” He froze. “Steven Elan, I believe.”

  It was not a Jaguar, it was a Mercedes Benz. But it was the same colour as the twisted wreck at the scene where it all began – black – and its Eurostate plate was only a few digits removed from EBM 162G. The man who had emerged from the shadows beneath the trees of the Taff Embankment was also wearing black, though not black motorcycle leathers as Steven might have expected. Chances were, Steven thought, the suspicious looking motorbike and its faceless rider was a completely unconnected detail of paranoia. He had good reason to be paranoid, he told himself as he listened to the soothing purr of the diesel engine as the Mercedes pulled away from the kerb. Had he paid more heed to those initial feelings he might not be trapped inside, utterly helpless, completely at their mercy. He remembered Eleanor’s words and wondered if he was about to receive the “bullet in the head” because of what he knew. They had the medal, they had the printouts and they had Eleanor’s diary. They had him. They needed nothing more to prevent their secret reaching another living soul.

  The man in black was thumbing through the pages of the diary. He had said nothing since gesturing for Steven to climb into the car and silently followed him inside. The rear seat, real leather, was in a compartment of its own, a soundproof tinted glass screen between them and the driver. Steven noted that the driver’s uniform was identical to that worn by the first body he had seen at the roadside on Friday. He wondered if the driver would hear the shot through the glass, or if, indeed, he would even care.

  Steven felt strangely calm, a morphine-like serenity, as if this was merely a bad dream. It was as though he accepted his fate, knew there was nothing he could do to change it and was ready to die. It was such a tragedy, he mused with an unseen smile, that nobody would ever know why. His story would never be told.

  “Interesting reading, I’m sure you’ll agree,” said the man, softly, closing the diary and gazing at the rows of terraced ho
mes as they turned into Penarth Road. “But best forgotten…” Their eyes met and Steven was impressed by the steeliness of his cold blue orbs. “…for everyone’s sake.” His voice was quiet, meticulous and monotone, yet it resonated with such perfect menace.

  “You won’t get away with this.” Steven’s threat sounded as hollow and pathetic as the words themselves. The man raised his eyebrows.

  “What won’t we get away with, Mr Elan?”

  “Killing me. You can’t make me disappear like you did Eleanor.” Steven knew deep down nothing could be further from the truth. “People will know. They’ll find out. They’ll ask questions and…”

  “Why on earth would we wish to kill you, Mr Elan?” The man’s tone laboured with mock surprise. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Because I’m a journalist. Because of what I’ve found out.” The man smiled.

  “Mr Elan, let me assure you we don’t go around killing people, or making them disappear, especially not journalists. You fulfil an extremely important function in our wonderful democratic society. Where would we be without the…fourth estate?”

  “So where are you taking me?” Steven wished he could disguise the desperation in his voice, fake the bravado he needed to maintain his dignity of his final moments.

  “Home. I believe you live in Ely?” Steven nodded morosely, refusing to believe him. “I thought you might appreciate a lift. It’s the least we can do to thank you for returning these items.” They were toying with him, but why? He felt a sudden surge of anger.

  “Look, stop fucking around! I know you’re not going to let me go. I could bring the lot of you down with what I know and there’s no way you’ll let me do that.” Steven was close to tears. “You lot don’t think twice when it comes to protecting your own.”

  “Mr Elan,” he hissed, the menace of his tone no longer subtle, “take my word it would be terrifyingly easy to make you, as you say, disappear. And let me assure you that very few people would ask questions and fewer still would bother to try and find answers. So don’t flatter yourself.” He settled back into the leather upholstery, his tone calmer. “We did not kill Eleanor and we will not be killing you. Eleanor’s death was a tragic accident. You should know that as you were there.”