The Outsiders

by Gerald Seymour

  The older man knew. ‘The poor relations, the crowd across the river, he could have been one of theirs. Five years ago, I think. They had no local co-operation in Budapest – hadn’t asked for it. They didn’t deign to tell us what they were doing and were burned. Fully deserved to be. Best I can do.’

  The message went on its last journey, from south of the river to north, a rider attached: ‘We would not want to intrude on private – well-justified – grief.’

  ‘Caroline, you deserve a sight of this.’ The deputy director general had come from his inner office and held the sheets of paper over Caro Watson’s desk. ‘You were a part of it, as I recall, the Damian Fenby business.’

  He let the sheets fall. She clicked on her screensaver and could not answer him. She had been a broken reed when – her hair dry – she had received the call from the hotel front desk and gone down. There had been policemen with long faces. She had been driven to the hospital and had identified the body before its transfer to the morgue. Then she had roused the Thames House night-duty staffer, and had started to choke through the detail on her phone, encrypted. She believed that some in the office regarded it as a duty of care to continue to employ her but she was of precious little use to her colleagues. The first two years had been pitiful and her effectiveness at little above zero; the third year had been an improvement. For the last two years she had been a woman with a set, humourless face and moods to match. She did her work with almost manic intensity and allowed no colleague close to her – except one. The opportunities for her to have ‘quality time’ with Winnie Monks were rare. She found her old boss once every six weeks on the bench at the back of the gardens. Now she read at speed, and the knot tightened.

  He said, ‘I’ve just come off the phone to Winnie. They’re going to do their business up in the north tomorrow or the morning after. She doesn’t need to be there. She’s driving back tonight. You’ll see her here late this evening. We’re sorting out your travel schedule and you’ll fulfil the rendezvous agreed to. You’ll have a two-man escort and your safety is of paramount importance to us. It may be that false information’s been thrown at us or that we’re confronting a breakthrough that has – so far – eluded us. I don’t want to sound like a scratched gramophone record, but there won’t be an army of the SRI at your shoulder. I hope they’ll remain in blissful ignorance of your short spell in that God-forsaken country. Why you? I don’t think, Caroline, that anyone in this building – with the sole exception of Winnie – is better equipped to hear what the boy has to say.’

  He was gone. She heard the door to the inner office close. Her hands shook, and she could barely restrain them.

  The gratitude expressed for the tray of tea and biscuits was sincere.

  They were not founding directors of a firm of chartered surveyors, lawyers or tax accountants. Known to all in their limited and highly specialised trade as Snapper and Loy, they were a photographic surveillance partnership. They were much in demand and their time was bid for at priority auctions by Thames House and Anti-terrorist Command. The elderly lady accepted their thanks and backed out of the front bedroom they now occupied.

  The older man’s name was on a score of files, but in the trade he was known as Snapper. He sat on a hard chair with an upright back, and the curtains were drawn across the bay window in front of him. He’d borrowed a card table from the house owner and his main camera lay on it. His preference was for the Canon model, EOS 5D Digital, with an 80–400ml lens attached. His tripod was extended but not used, and 8×40 Swarovski binoculars hung on his chest. He dunked a biscuit in his tea and nibbled it, but his eyes never left the front door across the street. The ‘plot’ was a suburban 1930s pebbledash semi-detached home, and the ‘subject’ was a thirty-two-year-old mathematics lecturer. Snapper was a big man, not obese but overweight, and he was used to supplies of tea and biscuits; quite often cakes were made for him in a downstairs kitchen. Snapper did not exercise. He did not spend days and nights in farm ditches and undergrowth, fighting hypothermia and aggressive dogs. His employers were the Metropolitan Police Service, and he had the rank of detective constable. When he was in demand and hired out to Five, the MPS made a good profit. At heart he was a policeman, with their culture and disciplines. His eyes were only off the ‘plot’ when he briefly catnapped. Then Loy did the watch.

  They were a team. Loy – short for Aloysius – was smaller, younger by twenty years, and powerfully built. He carted the gear, went over garden fences, climbed ladders and was the pack-mule and the errand boy. The relationship between them was such that Loy could anticipate what was needed and have it ready.

  Their talents were many. Snapper could turn up at a front door in a utilities uniform and, once inside, could charm a resident into allowing their home to be used as a surveillance platform in the fight against terrorism. He could rustle up an image of decency and honesty to make that householder join the fight and not feel the risk of subsequent consequences. As a senior had once said, he’d ‘charm his way into a Rottweiler’s kennel, that one, and have it licking his face’. Loy never made a sound, never dirtied a carpet or took paint off a wall when shifting the kit, and was always punctiliously polite. He didn’t doze during the rare hours that Snapper slept, and was scrupulously tidy. When Snapper and Loy had left a surveillance job, many had mourned the loss of friends.

  The ‘subject’ had started, abruptly, to visit a mosque in the town. The word was that the elders at his previous place of worship had found him increasingly strident in his condemnation of the ‘Crusaders’ who sent their armies to the Middle East and the sub-continent; there was intelligence that the ‘plot’ was used for meetings. Snapper photographed – Loy logged each visitor and their car number plate – and was building a portfolio with the hand-held camera. He had the tripod ready but rarely used it: he reckoned a camera on a tripod made a photographer lazy, that it was more likely a ray of sunshine, a streetlight or a car’s headlights would catch a lens if it was tripod-mounted and reflect back from it. Little details mattered in his trade. There were five white families left in that Asian-dominated street, and among them Snapper had found the widow of a prison officer. He had done the chat while he was shown the scrapbook featuring her husband in uniform and the plastic-protected commendations for meritorious service. He would hang on in there until the next morning, or the one after, and would only slip away – with Loy loaded up – when the sledgehammer brigade and the search party turned up.

  The door across the street opened. Snapper stiffened, lifted the camera, did fast focus, captured the image of a visitor hugging the lecturer, then hurrying away. The ‘subject’ would likely do a minimum of twenty years and his children would be grown-up by the time he next walked down the street with them.

  Snapper and Loy had permitted only one visitor to their den in the front bedroom. They denied access to rubber-neckers, but they’d let her come. She’d acted the part of a health visitor, in a foghorn voice, at the front door. No way she would have made it over the back-garden fence off the rear entry. She’d cleared the biscuit plate. They thought she was gold-minted.

  ‘They come off the street and make it a red-letter day,’ Winnie said softly, from the back.

  ‘Yes, Boss,’ the chauffeur from the pool answered.

  ‘You can spend a year or two on a fishing expedition, identify the one who seems right, and find you’ve wasted your time. Then a Joe comes in off the street, and spills it all out.’

  ‘A bit beyond my horizons, Boss.’

  She was driven south, fast and smooth. Ninety miles an hour, outside lane. The car’s headlights ate the darkness of a November evening, and the wipers worked overtime.

  ‘I feel it in my water. It’s a fucking goer, this one. It’s got legs.’

  He didn’t answer her, concentrated on the road ahead.

  She remembered the body in the mortuary.

  Her secure phone rang, and she dragged it out of her pocket.

  ‘Is it good to speak? Secur
e?’ her chief asked.

  ‘Fine. Shoot.’

  ‘The DDG called you?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘I’ve been asked to clarify. Winnie, no offence.’

  ‘Why should there be?’

  ‘If it turns up right, if it’s evidence that points to murder . . .’

  ‘A long way down the road. If, yes.’

  ‘Everything would need to be done in a transparent and legal way. The intention would be for the gaining of a conviction at the Central Criminal Court. It would be done with circumspection and by the book.’

  ‘Of course, Chief.’

  ‘It needed saying.’

  ‘You know me, Chief. Sir William Blackstone, judge, 1753 to 1765: “Better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffers . . .” There won’t be anything – if it’s kosher – that you’d lose sleep over, Chief. Believe me.’

  ‘Thank you, Winnie.’

  The phone went back into her pocket. She remembered how they had zipped up the bag and the hearse had carried it to the airport, how she had fought with a British Airways manager, and with the aircraft’s pilot . . . She could remember nearly every minute of the funeral, and every word she had said every time she’d gone down to the parents and made the same promise that she would not rest until . . . Winnie Monks had never knowingly reneged on a promise.

  3

  ‘If you have to, get hold of his balls and squeeze.’

  ‘I get your drift, Boss.’

  ‘If he’s a busted flush, kick him – and give him another kick from me.’

  ‘Yes, Boss.’

  Looking down at her watch, Winnie Monks slapped Caro Watson’s shoulder boyishly. ‘Time you were on the move – and good fucking luck to you, kid.’

  There were a few service staff in Thames House during the long night hours – the canteen would do coffee and sell pre-wrapped sandwiches – but the faces of the two Afro-Caribbean staff had lit at the entry of the big lady with the booming voice, and there had been something across the cash desk that was close to a hug and the greeting a family might have used. Perhaps not even the director general, if he had come down here during the night, would have been offered egg, bacon and sausage, and while the smell had drifted from the kitchen, they had talked. Then they had eaten, pushed aside the plates, and the table had been covered with the text of a signal from Baku. Each word, each phrase and each sentence had been lifted from the page, weighed, considered and valued. A table had been occupied by technical staff on the other side of the canteen, some night-duty people had been in and gone, and a section head had called by in a dinner jacket and had read through a file over a glass of gassy water before heading home. Winnie Monks and Caro Watson had been hunched over their table. Winnie had said, ‘The trouble with this sort of caper is that you want to believe. You’re desperate to pick it up and run with it . . . and when you throw in the bit about the dummy in the lay-by, kicking the head and laughing, it rings so fucking true.’

  ‘You don’t want to hear the downside,’ Caro Watson had said. ‘I didn’t speak to the Tremlett woman. She had some function on, but a Royal Marine had sat in – sounded a good man. He’d done the first Gulf as a senior NCO. Hauled him out of his bed. Like getting blood from a stone, but the bottom line – which he finally conceded – was that he believed everything the kid had told them. A typical nerd, great at a keyboard and useless at any other interaction, who’d been wronged, nose severely out of joint. It’s copper-bottomed hatred, in the marine’s book . . .’

  They’d talked some more. If cash was involved, how high could Caro go? A down-payment and increments or a single sum? What if he asked for asylum?

  How high? ‘As low as you can get away with, Caro.’

  Down payment or one-off? ‘Let the hatred do the business, not greed.’

  Asylum? ‘In the short term, not even to be dangled . . . utterly vague. If he’s real, we’ll want him there.’

  She stood up and waved in the direction of the kitchen. ‘That was great, guys. There’s places for you in Heaven with the angels.’

  Laughter spilled back at her. It must have been for her. A CD player, out of sight, started to blast out calypso and two orange juices were presented. They toasted each other and nearly choked on the rum lacing it. Winnie whooped, and Caro giggled.

  ‘God speed, kid.’

  ‘Thanks, Boss. I’ll get hold of them and squeeze.’

  ‘Maybe twist a bit, too.’

  They went off down the corridor. Caro Watson lugged an overnight bag and had a laptop case slung off her shoulder. She wore jeans, a sweater, an anorak and good walking shoes. A beanie poked out of a pocket. That was all good because the boy would likely be frightened of a smartly dressed woman. Winnie had asked, and been assured, that her Russian was up to speed. The building seemed like a cathedral of silence and their footsteps an intrusion into its dignity.

  ‘Do you need a pep-talk, Caro?’

  ‘Actually, Boss, I’d resent that.’

  ‘Samuel Johnson – know who I mean?’

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘He wrote: ‘‘Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.’’ I don’t believe in turning the other cheek or all the forgiveness shit. It was a crime and we don’t lose sight of it.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Good girl. Wish it was me who was flying.’

  ‘So you could get your hands on those bollocks, Boss?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  They crossed the central atrium and the night skies pressed down on the glass roof. The latest cutbacks had determined that the heating was lowered at night. Not even a rat, Winnie Monks thought, would come to Thames House for succour.

  At the back of the building there was a drive-in for the car pool. A vehicle was waiting, the engine ticking. Two men sat inside it, and a driver.

  Caro Watson walked briskly to the car, and the driver was out, had the boot and the rear door open. Winnie recalled that when the girl had been little more than a rookie at Thames House she’d had lovely hair. It had been her pride and joy. A week after the return from Budapest, and before the funeral, it had been cut short – not in a smart salon to create a gamine effect, the Audrey Hepburn look, but apparently with garden shears. It was tidier now, and better kept, but still had little style.

  The boot lid was slammed, and Caro Watson sank into the car.

  ‘Hold tight,’ Winnie Monks murmured, ‘and squeeze them till he squeaks.’

  It had been a horrid funeral. Some such occasions, where Winnie Monks came from in the upper valleys of South Wales, could be joyous with the beauty of the music. The parents had been fed with half-truths at best, lies at worst, and had not known that their son was involved in an arms procurement investigation, or the circumstances of his death. They had been told that he had been involved as a pedestrian in a motor accident, to explain the facial injuries. They would not have seen his body below the throat and noted that his right hand was severed at the wrist. One side of the church, in an Oxfordshire village within sight of the Chiltern hills, had been filled with local people, and the other by the load from London, a coachful. Winnie had read a lesson – Caro Watson had cried right through the service. The director, his deputy, his section leaders and every last one of the Graveyard Team had been there. Afterwards they had stayed a decent interval, then had boarded the coach again and left the village. Ten miles down the road the director had spoken to the driver and they’d pulled in at the next pub. That was where the wake had taken place and the drink was on the director’s credit card. They’d all been pissed when they’d got back to the building overlooking the Thames. Secrets had been guarded, and the inquest had been a formality, but a year later – on the anniversary – Winnie had returned to the village, laid her own flowers on a well-tended grave and called on the parents. She went back each year on that September day – had last been there less than two months before.

  She was seldo
m emotional, but when the gateman let the car out her prayers went with it. Then she set off for a lonely home. A new day had already started as she stood at the bus stop, and it would be a big one: either a crushing disappointment or a clenched-fist triumph . . .

  ‘Belt up, Ed – God, you can moan for Britain.’

  But Ed kept going. The retired second-hand Ford dealer from an Essex suburb had a captive audience and would milk the moment.

  ‘Leave it, Vera. Didn’t you hear them? They’re going to Marbella, first time. Don’t know one end of it from the other. I’m only being helpful.’

  ‘You’re miserable – and it’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It’s common good manners to share experience . . . What I’m saying to you both is that the Costa del Sol has changed in recent years. You want to be careful.’

  The flight had been delayed and the rain had come on heavily. On take-off, the buffeting of the wind as they’d clawed for altitude had frightened Posie – Jonno too, but he’d hidden his nerves. She’d caught his hand in hers.

  ‘Costa del Crime, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the old gangsters who were there when there wasn’t extradition. No, it’s the hooligan yobs who’ve flooded the place. Not just British – Poles, Albanians, Serbs, Moroccans, Irish. Any language you want to hear, you’ll get it on the Costa, and all looking for a fast buck. Plus the place is going down the drain so they have to hustle harder. What do they do if they can’t find punters to buy hash, or the white stuff? Stands to reason, they—’

  ‘Ed, you wouldn’t know a drug-dealer if he bit your bum. Leave them alone.’ The woman wore a contented smile.

  ‘If they can’t sell hash or cocaine, they have to mug and thieve to make ends meet. Stay on the inside of the pavement and always have your handbag, love, on the inside of you. Leave your main cash and your passport in the hotel safe. Don’t even think of using credit cards.’