The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Oh, Steph! Under normal circumstances I’d take huge pleasure in knocking you around the court, but unfortunately I can’t. Something’s come up.’

  ‘Something to your taste? In a skirt?’

  ‘Sadly not. Family problems.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s probably nothing. But I need to make sure.’

  ‘Sounds intriguing.’ She was canny enough not to press for details.

  ‘But later in the week perhaps?’ Sam checked. ‘Or maybe a lunch?’

  ‘You’re joking! Don’t get time for a sandwich these days. But I could face a curry one evening. Midweek, say?’

  ‘You mean Gerry’ll give you time off?’

  ‘I told you. He’s away.’ The flatness in her voice made him wonder for a moment if ‘away’ meant her new man had walked out on her.

  ‘A curry would be great,’ he told her. ‘Give you a ring in a couple of days?’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it. Might even challenge you to a vindaloo.’

  ‘No chance,’ he growled. ‘You know my preferences. A flaming arsehole cramps my style with the boys.’

  Stephanie laughed. ‘You’re so disgusting, you could be a copper. See you later in the week.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He knew that in many ways Stephanie was precisely the sort of woman he ought to pick as a partner. She was clever, witty and level-headed. Their minds sparred beautifully, but they’d never clicked physically. For a woman she was on the stocky side and he liked them more girlish. Gerry, her new man and an Armed Response Team officer, was the right size for her. Six foot two with the build of a bouncer.

  Sam grabbed his mobile phone and his wallet. He went through the routine of monitoring the security camera, then let himself out of the flat. Down in the underground garage he noticed some of the light bulbs had failed, casting dark shadows amongst the line-up of German-made cars. He made a mental note to get the caretaker to fix them, then drove up the ramp and over Kew Bridge, heading for the M3 motorway.

  He had no clear plan for the day, apart from the need to visit his sister. Beryl, married to a naval scientist and well settled in an estate outside Portsmouth, was the custodian of all their father’s paperwork. It would be an uncomfortable meeting, the first since their mother’s funeral five years ago.

  The traffic was heavy heading for the coast, families making the most of one of the few sunny weekends of that bleak, wet summer. He turned off the motorway and took the Meon valley road through the Hampshire countryside, passing rain-flattened wheat fields and the lush green parks of old mansions.

  His father had been serving on a diesel boat in the year of his birth, a Porpoise class submarine based in Gosport. Away at sea for months at a time, he’d missed his son’s coming into the world, an absence his wife had never forgiven him for.

  Fareham where they’d lived was an overspill town for Portsmouth. Sam found his way easily at first, driving through the housing estates as if on autopilot. But when he entered his old road it all looked different. The houses had been upgraded with B&Q doors and coach-lamp porch lights. To identify his old home he had to check the house numbers. It was odd seeing it again. Everything looked smaller than he’d remembered. Staring up at the window of his one-time bedroom, he shivered as he remembered the chill there’d been in that house when his father wasn’t there.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find. Today’s residents of the estate were not from his time. They all looked so young. Not much more than teenagers but with small children snapping at their heels. His own mother, one of the last of her generation to move, had left ten years ago for her sister’s in Southsea. There was nothing to see here, and what there was, he didn’t want to look at.

  He switched on again and drove down the road, then took the A32 north for a few miles before turning onto the high down that overlooked Portsmouth. His sister’s husband worked in a windswept Admiralty research centre perched on the ridge. Sam had met him a few times. The quiet type. Beryl liked her men docile.

  Four years older than Sam, Beryl lived with Jim and their two girls in a modern house of dark brick. He found his way to their village and through the estate, passing homes with tricycles and speedboats in their drives. Outside number 12 Magnolia Close a teenager’s bike lay on the lawn and a trug full of weeds blocked the path. The front door was open. Sam switched off and got out. As he stepped over the basket a figure emerged from the house wearing gardening gloves.

  ‘Well, bless my soul!’

  Thinning fair hair brushed back, metal-framed glasses and a long thin nose, Beryl’s husband was shorter than Sam. He wore old cords and a blue check shirt.

  ‘Hello, Jim.’

  ‘Nice to see you, Sam.’ Jim Butterworth pulled off a glove and reached out his hand. His voice had a touch of Hampshire about it. ‘What a surprise!’

  ‘Beryl didn’t mention I rang?’

  ‘No. Must’ve slipped her mind,’ Jim said charitably.

  ‘Well, I was in the area so I thought I’d try my luck. High time and all that . . .’

  ‘Absolutely. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. Just fine. And you?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Rubbing along. Come on in.’

  Sam’s sister emerged from the hall. She’d put on weight but it had done little to soften the pinched, disapproving expression she’d inherited from her mother. She wore green shorts, revealing pasty legs that had lost their once decent shape.

  ‘Well . . .’ she grunted. ‘So there you are.’

  They made no attempt to embrace and went into the kitchen. The children were summoned to say hello to this uncle they’d seldom seen. Two girls, aged twelve and fourteen, both quite pretty, studied him with idle curiosity.

  ‘Still no wife in tow?’ Beryl enquired, peering theatrically towards the door. ‘You would have invited us to the wedding . . .’

  ‘I imagine I might have done. No. I’m not married.’

  Sam didn’t want them probing into his life. He’d come here for one reason only.

  ‘So . . . to what do we owe this pleasure?’ Beryl asked, perching her hands on her ample hips. She had the same wiry hair as Sam, but it had been cut short in a style like a teacosy.

  ‘As I said, I was just in the area,’ Sam explained uncomfortably. He couldn’t broach the subject in front of the girls.

  ‘Oh no you weren’t.’ She turned to the sink to fill a kettle. ‘Dropping in isn’t your style. You’re after something. I take it you’d like some coffee now you’re here?’

  ‘That’d be nice. Thanks.’

  The girls took it as their cue to go back to whatever they were doing. Sam gave them a smile.

  ‘So? How’s things?’ Beryl asked when she’d plugged in the kettle.

  ‘Not bad. Not bad.’

  ‘Your work still all hush-hush?’ She tried to make it sound inconsequential, but he knew that she was rather in awe of what he did.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Travel a lot, do you?’ Jim chipped in.

  ‘Now and then.’

  ‘Nice for you.’

  Beryl put custard creams on the kitchen table and they all sat round it. There was silence for a few moments.

  ‘Come on Sam. Spit it out,’ Beryl told him. They watched him expectantly.

  ‘It’s to do with our father.’

  Beryl blanched. ‘Our father? But he’s been dead nearly thirty years.’

  Sam stood up and crossed to the kitchen door, checking that the girls weren’t in earshot. Then he closed it.

  ‘Something odd’s come up,’ he told them, sitting down again and keeping his voice low. ‘Bit of a bombshell. And it’s highly confidential. Not the sort of thing to be talked about with children or friends.’

  ‘Sam! Don’t be so mysterious. What’s happened?’

  ‘Well . . . the Russians are claiming he spied for them.’

  Jim and Beryl’s mouths sagged and their eyes became saucers. Neither of the
m spoke.

  ‘A former Soviet military intelligence officer who’s defected to the United States has handed over a list of people they recruited back in the 1970s,’ Sam explained. ‘And Dad’s name was on it.’

  Beryl covered her mouth. Jim was the first to speak.

  ‘Lordy . . .’

  ‘No,’ Beryl reasoned, shaking her head. ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Sam told her. ‘It’s a mistake. Has to be.’

  ‘Whatever our father was, he wasn’t a spy,’ she went on heavily. ‘He lived for the Navy. Put it above everything else. Particularly his own damned family,’ she stressed, her voice rising in pitch. ‘He went to sea, came home, patted his beloved little boy on the head, ignored his wife and daughter, bedded a handful of women he wasn’t married to, then went to sea again.’

  Sam closed his eyes at this familiar litany of complaint. ‘You’ve only got our mother’s word for the other women,’ he told her defensively.

  ‘And when did she ever lie?’

  Sam groaned inwardly. His conversations with Beryl always went this way.

  ‘Well . . . whatever he did in his spare time, he wasn’t a spy and I intend to prove it,’ he told her, determined not to be sidetracked.

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Jim, his brow furrowing. ‘But how?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  Beryl’s complexion was turning a blotchy red and her eyes had become dark dots of anger. ‘I simply don’t believe it,’ she hissed.

  ‘No. Nor do I,’ said Sam.

  ‘No!’ she squealed. ‘You, Sam, you! That’s what I don’t believe. I do not understand how you can sit there and say we only have mother’s word for his womanising.’

  Jim rolled his eyes and passed a hand across his face.

  ‘You’re missing the point Beryl,’ Sam soothed.

  ‘Oh no I’m not. The man was a lecher. And after all these years you’re still defending him. That’s the point.’

  ‘Lecher is a bit over the top, Beryl. Anyway the charge is spying. And at this particular moment nothing else matters.’

  ‘Oh yes it does. The trouble with you is that you’re just like him,’ she countered. ‘One woman in your life has never been enough for you, has it?’

  ‘Bee . . .’ Jim’s pained expression said he’d heard far too many of these outbursts.

  ‘Look, forget about women,’ Sam growled. ‘I came here to warn you.’ He wanted to be gone from here. ‘The press may get on to you. If they do, say nothing about my work, understand? If anyone wants to know what it is I do, say it’s import-export.’

  ‘We understand, Sam,’ Jim assured him. ‘Don’t worry. We know the rules.’

  Sam took in a deep breath. ‘There is one other reason I came here.’

  ‘Ah. I knew it,’ Beryl snorted.

  ‘You’ve got some things of his. A tin box with old passports, service documents, driving licences and so on.’

  ‘Went years ago,’ Beryl snapped, her face scarlet.

  Her husband turned to her. ‘Isn’t it in the . . .?’

  ‘I said it’s gone,’ she yelled. ‘Chucked out. Mother kept it under her bed when she moved in with her sister. God knows why she hung on to it when she hated him so much.’

  ‘And after she died all those oddments came to you,’ Sam reminded her. ‘When did you throw them out, Beryl?’ He was losing patience.

  ‘I really don’t remember,’ she said vapidly. ‘We have clear-outs from time to time. Most families do.’

  She stressed the word to emphasise the abnormality of his single state.

  ‘That box was all that was left of him,’ Sam snapped.

  Jim half stood. ‘You know, I do have a feeling that . . .’

  Beryl cut him off with a slicing movement of her arm, but her husband persisted.

  ‘I am pretty sure that tin box is in the loft,’ he declared.

  ‘Well you must have put it there,’ Beryl charged. ‘Because I certainly didn’t.’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ Jim mumbled.

  Her pinprick eyes fixed Sam with loathing. ‘You are so disgustingly like him, you know. Particularly with that beard which doesn’t suit you at all. How long have you had that . . . that dreadful fuzz?’

  ‘A couple of years.’ Odd how he’d forgotten that his father had been bearded once. He’d been clean shaven in the wedding photo.

  ‘And this is typical, of course,’ Beryl added, her voice rising to a yell. ‘Your turning up like this. It’s only because you want something. Not to see us. Not because you’re interested in how your nieces are doing. Exactly like Dad. He really was a prize shit, you know.’

  Her husband sighed. ‘Leave it out, Bee, for God’s sake.’

  Sam held back, startled by his sister’s virulence. She was displaying signs of mental instability. Upstairs he heard a door slam and guessed it was the children shutting out a noise they’d come to hate.

  As tears filled her eyes, Jim put an arm round her shoulders and rocked her gently, grimacing an apology to Sam. ‘Bee . . .’ he cooed.

  ‘Oh, give him his damned tin box for heaven’s sake and then he can go,’ Beryl gulped.

  Jim stood up and beckoned Sam to follow him upstairs. On the upper landing he opened an airing cupboard and brought out a boat-hook which he used to pull down a ladder concealed above the hatch to the loft.

  ‘Shan’t be a mo,’ he said, handing Sam the hook. ‘Hold this, would you?’

  He shinned up the ladder and reached up to the rafters, fumbling for a light switch. Then he hoisted himself into the roof space, emerging half a minute later with a black metal deed box. He turned it over to show the initials on the lid. T.P.P. – Trevor Patrick Packer.

  Sam took it from him. There was a key in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn.

  ‘I’ll drench that in WD40,’ Jim told him, gingerly descending. He patted his hands to shake off the dust, then pushed the sliding ladder back into the cavity. ‘It’s in the garage.’

  Sam followed him downstairs. Glancing into the kitchen, he saw the door to the back garden was open.

  ‘This way,’ said Jim, leading him out through the front. He eased up the garage door weights and rummaged on a tool shelf next to the small, green Rover parked there. He took the box from Sam and squirted oil into the keyhole until the mechanism freed up.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, handing it back.

  Sam opened the lid to check it was the material he’d remembered.

  ‘Thanks, Jim.’

  His sister’s husband took his arm and hurried him back to the Mondeo.

  ‘Best you don’t hang around,’ he mumbled. ‘She’s been having treatment, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t. What for?’

  ‘Psycho-stuff. You know, counselling and so on. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Really. What brought this on?’

  Jim shrugged and let out a sigh. ‘Dunno. Something to do with your father.’

  ‘But what?’

  Jim pressed more firmly on his arm and urged him towards the car. ‘God knows! It’s made her think all men have a bit of the beast in them. Fertilising females wherever they can find them. Even me!’ he added, laughing at himself. ‘I mean, who’d be interested in Jim Butterworth apart from your sister Beryl?’

  They’d reached the car. Jim opened the door for him, then held out his hand.

  ‘Bye, Sam.’

  ‘Thanks for your help, Jim.’

  Beryl’s husband turned back to the house, stooping to pick up the trug of weeds. ‘Cheerio,’ he called, head down, avoiding Sam’s look.

  Sam watched him go inside and close the door. Then he got into the car and drove slowly away.

  A mile or so outside the village he found a lay-by and stopped. For several minutes he watched a combine harvester working the neighbouring wheat field, finding its steady, relentless progress soothing.

  He shook his head like a dog. Had his father really been the sexual predator Beryl
described? Or just a man with an eye for a skirt living in a household of frigid females?

  He didn’t know. And that was the trouble. He knew so little about the man whose genes he carried. Had no idea whether he’d had it in his soul to be a lecher or a spy.

  The deed box was on the seat beside him. He opened its lid. On top was his father’s naval service record. Signed up in 1949, died in service 1971. A list of the vessels he’d served on. A record of one man’s working life. Of his pride. Ending up with HMS Retribution, based at Faslane.

  He delved deeper into the box and found a diary. The date on the cover was 1942. Sam frowned. His father had been eleven years old then. He opened it and discovered it belonged to his grandfather, also a submariner. He skim-read some paragraphs. Descriptions of being bored for long periods on wartime patrol. Nicknames of shipmates – Bunny. Tiger. Chips and Taff. Two years later, he remembered, the boat had been depth-charged and his grandfather consigned to the fishes.

  Submarines and the men who lived and died on them. They’d been in his father’s blood. It wasn’t credible he could have betrayed them.

  Sam sifted through the rest. He looked at the photos in two expired passports. The same determined chin as himself, the same thoughtful eyes. Then, lying loose in a corner of the box, something that surprised him. Two tickets for the ferry from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. Date stamped the 21st of May 1971, six weeks before his father died. Who had his companion been? Certainly not his wife. Sam’s mother had told him time and again that she’d never been north of the border. Said it with pride in her voice, as if the very act of going to the place where her husband’s submarine was based would be succumbing to his will.

  Two tickets which his father had wanted to keep for the memories they bore – memories of a year when Russian military intelligence added his name to its list of foreign agents.

  Were they significant? It was the only lead he had.

  He checked the time. Just turning midday. He switched on the car radio to catch the news, wanting to know if word about his father had leaked. The headlines came. All about a nail bomb explosion in Southall. Sixteen people seriously injured, one elderly Sikh dead from heart failure.