A Sentimental Traitor

by Dobbs, Michael

  He came back into the room, wrapped in his bathrobe, towelling his hair with clumsy care as he still found it difficult to raise his arms above his head. She waved a file at him.

  ‘What did you do with this in the end, Harry?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘The Speedbird file. The one with all the interviews I conducted.’

  The crash. It had been so long since he’d even thought about it. Too many distractions. He coughed apologetically. ‘I was going to read through it, but . . .’

  ‘You mean you didn’t?’

  ‘Never got round to opening it. Sorry.’

  ‘Well, someone has.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  She flicked through the papers with her thumb. ‘The papers are in exactly the opposite order I left them.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘As sure as I am that you’re not wearing underwear.’

  He hurriedly readjusted the bathrobe.

  ‘It’s as if someone has taken them all out, gone through them meticulously . . .’

  ‘Copied them, even?’

  ‘Then replaced them. Except back to front.’

  ‘But who?’

  ‘The men who beat you up, maybe?’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘To find out what we know.’

  ‘Sod all!’

  ‘Perhaps more than we realize, Harry.’

  He looked at her. ‘You are beautiful,’ he said, putting emphasis on every word.

  ‘If that’s why you had a shower, Jones, forget it!’

  He came and sat down beside her on the floor, put an arm around her, wincing with the effort, and not in any way that was predatory. It seemed more a gesture of protection.

  ‘What’s wrong, Harry?’

  ‘My life. The disaster it’s become. It’s all happened since the crash.’

  ‘And . . .’

  ‘Because of the crash.’

  ‘I don’t understand, what’s your connection?’

  ‘What’s our connection, Jem. You’ve been on the receiving end, too, remember?’

  She shivered. ‘But all we’ve done is ask a few questions.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And it’s not over, is it?’ She rested her head on his shoulder and could feel the tension inside. ‘You scared, Harry?’

  ‘Not for myself. What the hell can they do to me they haven’t already done? But I’m scared for you, Jem. I never had any intention of getting you involved.’

  ‘All this – for a few wee questions?’

  He was silent for a few moments. ‘It’s my fault. I’m so sorry.’

  She looked up, a new fire burning in her eyes. ‘They did all that to us – just for asking?’

  ‘Forgive me?’

  ‘Harry, you know I’m Church of Scotland, prayers with the little ones and butter wouldn’t melt in Miss Laing’s mouth. But I am so incredibly fucking furious!’

  ‘Please, tell me what I should do, Jem.’

  ‘Why, you idiot, ask a few bloody more.’

  Shaking a tree to discover who is hiding in it is a dangerous undertaking. You have no idea who or what might fall upon you. But Harry was determined. The Speedbird crash seemed to mark the start of it all, so he turned to the man who had become the acknowledged source of authority about it. McDeath. Harry tracked him down to his office in Brussels.

  ‘Harry, you’re a fortunate man. Just clearing my desk for the summer. Away for a couple of months. Grandchildren. A little sailing. Putting greens.’

  ‘Sounds arduous.’

  ‘Nothing more to keep me here once all the birds have flown.’

  ‘It’s early July, Hamish.’

  ‘Few days’ time, this place’ll be like the Sahara. Watering holes closed, nothing left but bait for the buzzards. We’re all exhausted – why, sometimes we have to work a four-day week.’ He chuckled. It had been a good year for him, no point in denying it.

  ‘Hamish, I was wondering if you could give me a bit of a steer,’ Harry said. ‘On Speedbird.’

  Harry had hoped it might prompt some spontaneous revelation; he got nothing but silence.

  ‘I’ve heard mutterings that the case isn’t dead and buried, that’s it’s not going to end with Ghazi. Still a few ghosts to exorcize,’ he continued.

  ‘Is that so? I’ve heard nothing. Where did you hear that from?’

  ‘Oh, in dark, dusty corners. Even heard a whisper that there could be a Russian connection.’

  ‘Russian? Connection? With what?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Pity. You might like to ask around a bit, Hamish. Check the story out. If there’s anything in it, I hope I’ll be the first to know.’

  ‘You know I’ve done a deal with the Devil, Harry, in the form of my editor. He owns not only my soul but every scrap of story.’

  ‘Of course. But you know my interest in this, and if you find anything that’s new, particularly about any Russian interest, I hope you’ll remember where you first heard it . . .’

  Harry had been hoping for some reaction, some fresh and unexplained disaster in his life that might peel off another layer of the mystery, but when it arrived it seemed so inconsequential as to be no more than a gnat bite. A couple of days after his conversation with McDeath, he discovered his car had been broken into. It was out in the street, residents’ parking bay, beneath a lamp, but that hadn’t saved him. A rear window had been smashed, lots of broken glass, but with no other damage, nothing of any value ripped off or ripped out, apart from an old T-shirt that had been lying on the back seat. The car had been parked there for several days – Harry wasn’t doing much driving, petrol was too expensive for his budget – and he couldn’t even be sure when the break-in had taken place. The damage was superficial, the loss of a T-shirt scarcely worth reporting to the police, and it seemed so obvious that it was vandals, although a clapped-out Volvo was so much less interesting than almost any other vehicle on the street, and they hadn’t even bothered opening the glove compartment to see if there was a satnav or some other item of value in there. Truly tedious stuff. He decided to repair the damage himself rather than paying the ridiculous excess that his insurance company would charge him, and he spent an afternoon sweeping out the glass and replacing it with a window bought from a car knacker’s yard.

  Meanwhile, Jemma was spending what little spare time she had in the frantic days leading up to the end of the school summer term in her local library consulting back copies of newspapers and current affairs magazines. Everything from October last. She could have done some of it at home, on the Internet, but since her attack she felt safer in public places like the library. She didn’t know what she was looking for, apart from something major to do with Brussels, or any link with Russia. It was a bit like firing a catapult at shooting stars. Apparently Russia and Brussels had reached agreement on the protection of peat bogs, but she didn’t think that was it. Progress was slow, at times seeming non-existent.

  Harry concentrated on his own enquiries. It was midweek and mid-afternoon when he walked into the Montreal, the gay pub where Jemma hadn’t made it past the door. It wasn’t particularly crowded, or particularly plush, a rather run-down Victorian drinking joint like so many others dotted around the capital. Yet as he stood at the bar and looked around, he began to notice the telltale signs of its interests that stretched rather wider than simply offering a choice of drink. The chalkboard advertising the quiz night later in the week also promoted a drag night at the coming weekend. The framed photos on the wall weren’t of old Victorian street scenes but entirely contemporary and artistic shots of men’s bodies, in close up, very muscular and eminently over-oiled. At the rear of the main room was a small stage, presumably for the weekend cabaret, with a multicoloured gay pride flag standing to attention in the corner. Two Japanese couples came in, sat at a table, dropped their bags, and looked around. Then, after a br
ief discussion and much nodding, they picked up their bags and left. It wasn’t their environment, they’d only wanted a drink.

  ‘Haven’t seen you here before,’ the barman said to Harry, smiling.

  ‘Haven’t been here before.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘A drink. A bottle of beer. Preferably something British without a slice of lime stuffed down its throat.’

  ‘You look like a Dog’s Bollocks man to me.’

  ‘Too hoppy I prefer a Silent Slasher.’

  The barman raised his eyebrows provocatively, recognizing he was likely to be beaten in any game of find-the-firkin. ‘Well, we don’t have either. Heineken do?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You looking for anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right. One straight Heineken coming up.’

  The barman scuttled around at the back of a refrigerator behind the bar. Above his head a screen was playing a recording of some Californian chat show, no sound, all teeth and tans.

  ‘You will let me know if there’s anything else, won’t you?’ the barman said, sliding Harry’s beer across to him.

  ‘There is something, actually.’

  ‘There often is.’

  Harry pulled from his pocket one of the photos he’d shown to Sloppy. ‘Recognize this man?’

  The barman’s smile faded like the light through a drawn curtain. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You haven’t even looked at it.’

  ‘And I’m not going to. What sort of creature do you think I am?’

  ‘Would this help?’ Harry produced a twenty-pound note and laid it on top of the photo.

  The eyes flashed angrily, the theatricality cast aside. ‘I suggest you enjoy your drink, sir, then leave. There’s nothing for you here, least of all a loose tongue.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  The barman turned his back. Harry rather admired him. He wouldn’t have expected such discretion in most other pubs in London. He sat at the bar, examining the fading head on his beer, wondering what to do next as the scattering of other drinkers cast curious eyes in his direction, only for the barman to warn them off with a firm shake of the head.

  Harry was getting near the end of his drink, his inspiration already gone, when he heard a voice from behind his shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Boss. Bit of a surprise to find you here.’

  Harry glanced into the mirror behind the bar and saw the reflection of a familiar face. ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’

  ‘No, I doubt that very much. Not Harry Jones.’

  ‘Troop Sergeant Barry Baldwin,’ Harry smiled in greeting.

  The other man slipped into the seat beside him. ‘Let me buy you another? For old times’ sake.’

  ‘If the barman will serve me.’

  ‘Suzie, same again,’ Baldwin instructed. The barman complied, but with a scowl of suspicion instead of a smile.

  ‘Long time, Boss.’

  ‘A lot of water.’

  ‘And a few bodies.’

  Baldwin had been the Sergeant in Harry’s sixteen-man troop in Northern Ireland. Good friend, exemplary soldier, until he’d got into an argument with some low form of swamp life from the Welsh Guards who somehow knew, and had made explicit jokes about Baldwin’s sexuality. Not good publicity in an Armagh bar. Baldwin resigned immediately.

  ‘I’m sorry to have let you down, Captain Jones,’ he had said.

  ‘You never did, Sergeant. Not once.’

  Even the rest of the troop weren’t having it. ‘But we always knew you were an old queen, right from the moment you joined,’ they’d protested. But it had done no good. Baldwin had gone. Until now. Not that he appeared to have changed so much. Still the same short cropped hair, all muscle and moustache.

  ‘So what brings you to our little citadel of sin?’ he asked.

  ‘This man.’ Harry produced the photograph once more; Baldwin’s brow clouded.

  ‘It’s not because he’s gay or anything like that,’ Harry reassured him.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you just want a chat.’

  ‘Truth is, Barry, I want to break his bloody neck. He’s ruined Sloppy, cheated him out of everything. And because of that he’s done the same to me. I think he’s a very dangerous man.’

  ‘What, Wendy?’

  ‘You know him?’ Harry couldn’t keep the urgency from his voice.

  The other man pushed aside his beer, troubled, struggling with conflicting loyalties. ‘I’d rather not get involved.’

  ‘Barry, since when in your life did you not get involved?’

  Baldwin’s head sank, his eyes closed. When eventually he spoke, his voice was low, reluctant. ‘It’s Wendy Wilton.’

  ‘His real name?’

  ‘I don’t know. We just know him as Wendy.’

  ‘Any friends here?’

  ‘None in particular.’

  ‘So where does he live?’

  ‘Live? I don’t know. But not too far, I’d guess. Seems to me he usually walks here – you know, coat, brolly when it’s raining.’

  Harry pressed his old friend, but got nothing more. ‘I don’t know anything else, Harry. And I don’t want you coming back here and turning this place upside down.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You always used to. Everywhere you went.’

  ‘With you covering my tail against the bad guys.’

  The other man smiled once more, mischievously. ‘When I was covering your tail, I was the bad guy.’

  There were others apart from Harry who were intent on causing chaos. Emily Keane was back from Brussels. Her shadow job had little enough to detain her there during the summer, so she was back amongst her old haunts and staying with friends. She was walking back alone past Battersea Park late one night – nothing too threatening, even after dark, and nothing she hadn’t done before. There were usually plenty of people around, and Emily was young and immortal. Yet there were also stretches of the way that were less well lit, full of trees, shadows.

  She never saw who attacked her. They came from behind, grabbed her, flashed a blade. She had no chance of defending herself. She had time for nothing but a single piercing scream before it was cut short by a savage blow to the head and she fell to the ground.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Harry’s screwdriver was missing. He needed it to fix a loose shelf he’d discovered while sorting through the books, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Then he remembered. The broken car window. It was parked a little way down the street. He sauntered past the sculpture gallery; from within his lair the proprietor waved, but to Harry’s mind the greeting was not as it once was. But nothing in his life was. Perhaps it was merely his imagination, and his depression, but small slights had begun to take on a painful significance. He knew that Oscar, his chairman and longtime friend, would be celebrating his sixtieth soon, and yet he hadn’t received an invitation. Would he ever now? And the invitation that had gone out from party headquarters to all former MPs following the last election – what was called the ‘End up a Peer Show’ – had definitely passed him by, as one verminous gossip columnist had taken protracted delight in pointing out. The world was turning its back on him. Scarcely surprising that Jemma wouldn’t let him into her bed. He felt like a leper, and despite his best efforts to do otherwise, he blamed her a little for that, too, a mood not helped when he found yet another ticket taped to his windscreen. He ripped it off and dropped it in the gutter.

  Yet his screwdriver, at least, was reliable. There it was, staring at him from the front seat. He climbed in and retrieved it, and was checking the glove compartment to see if he had left anything else behind when there was a sharp rap on the window. He groaned. It was Arkwright, along with three other officers. He wound down the window.

  No foreplay.

  ‘Henry Marmaduke Maltravers-Jones, I am arresting you—’

  ‘What, for a sodding parking ticket?’

  ‘—on suspicion of a serio
us assault . . .’

  ‘Dear God,’ he whispered to himself in bewilderment, ‘not again . . .’

  The Interview Room. The tapes winding their slow way towards his entrapment.

  ‘Where were you last night between midnight and two a.m.?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Can anyone corroborate that?’

  ‘No.’

  Another evidence bag. ‘Is this your T-shirt, Mr Jones?’

  Oh, damn. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was found at the scene of a serious assault last night on Emily Keane. Can you explain that?’

  ‘It was stolen from my car a couple of nights ago. Someone broke into it.’

  The tape would catch every drop of disbelief. ‘They broke into your car – to steal a T-shirt.’

  ‘My client isn’t required to speculate,’ van Buren interrupted.

  ‘Very well, did you report the break-in to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  The tape recorded the rustling noise of van Buren shifting in discomfort.

  ‘Where was your car broken into?’

  ‘Outside my home.’

  ‘In Mayfair.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Interesting. Fascinating, in fact. Because we found fragments of window glass at the scene of the assault in Battersea. We’ll want to compare them to the broken window in your car.’

  ‘You can’t. I replaced it.’

  ‘Which body shop?’

  ‘I did it myself.’

  ‘Yourself?’ The recorder noted a sharp rise in intonation as incredulity bounced back and forth between Arkwright and his colleague. More uncomfortable rustling from van Buren. ‘I think this time, Mr Jones, that even a novice nun would have trouble believing you. Miss Keane won’t be able to withdraw the charges this time, you know. They’re too serious. A knife slash across the back of her hand, down to the bone. We’re talking grievous bodily harm here, with intent. Do you know what that means?’