by Tony Park
They made love again after dinner and washed each other in a long, soapy bubble bath.
Later, with the lights off, he lay staring at the ceiling, one arm crooked behind his head, the other around her as she snuggled into him.
She ran her fingertips through the wiry hair on his chest. ‘Are you thinking about the inquiry?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Africa.’
25
Tom weighed the folded pair of jeans in his hand then tossed them aside. His bag was nearly full, in any case, and he already had a pair of lightweight tan trousers in there.
The clock radio on his bedside table was tuned to an FM music station and the news came on at the top of the hour. He stopped his packing to listen. The second item was a direct lift from the morning’s papers. The inquiry had ended the previous day and it was likely that Robert Greeves’s bodyguard would not face charges over the Minister for Defence Procurement’s abduction, but would ‘remain on suspension pending the outcome of a departmental disciplinary hearing’. The bastard DJ that followed the newsreader had even made a joke about it. Tom snorted. None of it mattered.
The result was predictable, but Tom had been more interested in some of the evidence that had been presented than in the outcome. The inquiry had been held in the Boothroyd Room, one of the committee rooms in Portcullis House, the modern administrative neighbour and handmaiden to the grand old Palace of Westminster.
The room was named after Betty Boothroyd, a former speaker of the House of Commons. There had been a bronze bust of the formidable-looking woman on Tom’s left as he had entered that first day. In front of him, through thick, bulletproof windows, was a view of the Thames that took in some office buildings, a quadrant of the London Eye and St Thomas’ hospital.
The committee members, drawn from both the major parties and the Liberal Democrats, sat at beech-coloured desks formed into a large U-shaped arrangement. The chairman sat at the bottom of the U, resting a folder of notes on a thick glass lectern. Behind him was a tapestry of country fields, though for some reason it was all in shades of blue. Tom took one of the few vacant seats in the front of several rows of cloth-covered seats reserved for members of the public. In this case, that obviously meant the press, as he noticed a flurry of note-taking as he entered.
Inside the U was a small table with a man and woman sitting at it. There were notebooks in front of them. They were the recorders, and their position was lowered so that their heads were barely at the same level as the desktops at which the committee members sat. A bizarre little piece of subservience, Tom thought.
Looking around, he saw four television cameras mounted on the walls. Even though the media’s cameras weren’t invited, the proceedings were being recorded. Edited excerpts would be released to the media at the end of each day’s session.
Over the first four days, before he had a chance to speak, Tom sat through the testimony of a string of police, forensic scientists, military people and ‘foreign office’ staffers whose names were suppressed from the public record. Spies, in other words. Tom had assumed that MI6 people would have accompanied the SAS task force, and he knew from what Shuttleworth had told Sannie that the SIS was playing a lead role in the ongoing hunt for the terrorists. There was nothing, however – perhaps deliberately, perhaps not – to indicate they were any closer to catching them.
Of particular interest to Tom was the senior civilian crime-scene investigator’s testimony. Her name was Rachel Rubens. She told the inquiry she and a male colleague had been flown to the old farmhouse in Mozambique on an Oryx helicopter – back-loaded on the same aircraft which had brought Major Fraser, the first of his men and the body of Bernard Joyce to Hoedspruit air force base.
The public inquiry was being presided over by a government member of parliament, Miles Jensen. He was young for a politician, in his late thirties, and ambitious. Tom assumed he saw the high-profile chairmanship as a chance to make his mark with the media. He was persistent to the point of rudeness in his questioning, but Tom had been done over by professionals – lawyers – in his days as a uniformed constable appearing in court cases.
Jensen had asked Rachel to tell them about the physical evidence in the villa relating to Robert Greeves and his tragic death.
‘There was a quantity of hair found in the bathroom, mostly on the floor, and some strands on a sheet of newspaper. It was black and grey in colour and subsequently matched positively to a DNA sample obtained from Mr Greeves’s home.’
‘And the sample was obtained how?’ Jensen queried.
‘From one of Mr Greeves’s hairbrushes in his London home. There was also blood and CSF in the bedroom where Mr Greeves was held captive, and four severed plastic cable ties.’
‘CSF?’
‘Sorry,’ Rachel said. ‘Cerebral spinal fluid. It’s what surrounds the brain, in the skull. There was CSF mixed in with the blood, which is typical for this type of wound.’
‘And these fluids, the plastic ties, were all subsequently matched to Mr Greeves?’
‘Yes. The blood and CSF were a positive match and there were skin cells and some blood on the plastic ties, which we surmised had been used to bind his wrists and ankles to the bed on which he lay. There were also strands of Mr Greeves’s hair in some of the bed springs, near where his head would have been.’
‘And the pattern of the bloodstains? What can you tell us about that?’
Rachel took a sip from a glass of water on the table in front of her. Tom noticed that she glanced quickly around the room, though by the time he turned his head to see if he could spot who she was looking for, or at, she was already looking back at Jensen. ‘It was consistent with the pattern resulting from a small-calibre gunshot to the head at close range – that is, where the blood has poured from the entry wound rather than been expelled via an exit wound.’
Jensen prompted her with a couple of other questions in answer to which she elaborated on the pattern on the floor of the room. It was gory stuff and Tom noticed a couple of pale, shocked faces among some of the politicians present. He wrote a word down on his notebook. Consistent.
‘Thank you, Ms Rubens. Unless there is anything else you think might be of interest to the inquiry, I would like to thank you for your presence and your testimony.’
‘There is one more thing,’ she said. From the way he looked up from his notes at her, Tom guessed that Jensen had not been expecting any additions. He had, however, invited her to elaborate. ‘The floor had been wiped.’
‘Wiped?’
‘Yes. The perpetrators had partially smeared the blood on the floor, wiping it with what we guessed was a rag, perhaps the size of a tea towel. Detective Sergeant Furey’s initial report concluded that Mr Greeves’s body had been dragged a short distance – about a metre – from where it fell, and was then wrapped in some sort of fabric. From fibres gathered at the scene we can say this was a wool and nylon mix blanket. While this is true, we also found evidence through a smearing pattern and other fibres – possibly from a tea towel – that the perpetrators had made some attempt to clean up the bloodstain, but perhaps gave up.’
‘You found no such “tea towel”, though?’ Jensen asked.
‘No. It was . . . well, we thought it was a bit odd.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, it wasn’t like a sponge or a wet towel or anything. If they were trying to clean it off the wall they couldn’t have done a worse job. All it did was spread it around, sort of smear the bloodstains.’
‘I see,’ Jensen said, in that way, Tom thought, that people do when they want to sound learned but really have no idea what to make of what they have just heard. ‘Perhaps our terrorists weren’t as professional as they seemed?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Chairman,’ Rachel shrugged.
Having been suspended and therefore not included in the follow-up investigations, this was all new to Tom. It seemed, on the face of it, that all the correct boxes had been checked. The villa had been sealed off and gone ove
r with a fine toothcomb; plaster casts had been made of footprints and tyre tracks where possible – not easy in the sand – and fingerprints lifted and cross-checked. The only prints that had been identified were Greeves’s and Bernard’s. The terrorists had apparently worn gloves the whole time, or wiped the place clean before they left.
Tom closed his suitcase and looked around the bedroom, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He patted the breast pocket of the single blazer he was taking – the navy blue one – and felt the passport and ticket folder. He had the case in one hand and a day pack with his carry-on stuff in the other. He kicked the bedroom door closed and walked down the stairs. Halfway down his cell phone started to ring, but as his hands were full he couldn’t reach it.
Downstairs, in the hallway, he took out the phone and it beeped, telling him he had a message. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ Sannie said on the recording. ‘I’m about ten minutes away. I still don’t know if this is such a good idea. Call me if you want me to keep driving.’
He thought about her, about the nights they had spent together. He’d invited her to stay at his place after the first day of the inquiry, but thankfully she’d gone back to her hotel first, to get some things. He’d arrived home to find Southwood Lane almost blocked by TV vans and unmarked newspaper cars. He’d slowed as he approached his home, then rammed his foot down on the accelerator as a couple of the vultures recognised him. Rather than give them the satisfaction of a car chase, he’d stopped at the tube station and made it onto a train before the first of the paparazzi had even found his car. He’d taken refuge, hating that he’d run from his own home, in Sannie’s hotel room. He couldn’t have risked going out again later in the evening in case they trailed him to Sannie, and he couldn’t not see her again.
She was what had kept him going as the case mounted against him, and he loved her for the way she was sticking by him. Even when she was giving the evidence that sealed his fate, he’d known by the quick glances she’d given him as he spoke that she would see him through this.
‘Inspector Van Rensburg.’ Jensen had paused to clear his voice. ‘Tell the inquiry, if you will, what Bernard Joyce said to you and Detective Sergeant Thomas Furey on the beach in Mozambique just before he took his own life.’
Sannie gave a précis of the statement that Tom had typed up from his notes, which had already been tendered to the inquiry as written evidence. Having it in writing wasn’t enough. Jensen was an astute enough media player to know that the press needed someone saying all this. Without Sannie’s account the words might not be available in the public domain until the full transcripts were released with the inquiry findings. That could be weeks away. The reporters who crammed the room had been biding their time, and not at all patiently, for this moment. Jensen, Tom reckoned, had probably tipped off a few, because it seemed there were more journalists in there at that moment than there had been since the opening session.
‘Yes, that was Mr Joyce reflecting on his own actions – his belief, which most of us would disagree with – that he could have done more to save Mr Greeves. But there was more, wasn’t there, Inspector?’
Tom saw her eyes shift to him and he prayed none of the reporters had been sharp enough to catch and understand it. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Jensen drew out, word by painful word, Bernard’s assertion that during his abduction he had cried out to Tom for help.
And, as Jensen had pointed out in his summation after Sannie had stood down, the record of evidence had already shown that Detective Sergeant Furey had slept soundly – after consuming alcohol, and entertaining the female manager of the luxury safari lodge in which he was quartered – and had apparently not heard Bernard Joyce’s call for help.
Tom was finished even before he took the stand, as he’d known he would be all along. It didn’t hurt any less, though, knowing the outcome. He reckoned he’d put on a brave face. He’d answered every question put to him fully and honestly, even as the words chipped away at any vestige of residual professional respect he might have held onto.
‘Did you take any illegal drugs that night, Detective Sergeant?’
‘I did not.’
It seemed to be the only positive thing he’d said during the preceding fifty minutes of his testimony.
‘I remind you, you are under oath, Detective Sergeant Furey.’
‘You don’t need to remind me of that.’ It was the closest he’d allowed himself to sarcasm or resentment of Jensen. He didn’t like the man – the way he fawned on the press, or the way he treated the SAS major, Fraser, like a little tin god to be bowed and scraped to – but Jensen was simply doing his job. His mission was to find a scapegoat and it had been all but done before the inquiry had opened.
Jensen had let the words slide. The media had already been leaked reports of the cocaine found in Tom’s room, and official statements from Pretoria and Scotland Yard had confirmed that no charges had been laid against him. Other evidence, including some of Sannie’s, had already established that Carla was crooked, and the media had come around to the idea that the drugs were part of a set-up. Not that it helped Tom, of course, who was being painted as at best gullible; at worst negligent in his duty to the point of criminality.
The truth, Tom thought, as he moved his bags to the doorstep and locked the front door, was where it usually sat – somewhere in between the best and worst of what people believed. He’d done a good job tracking and almost catching the terrorists – and Shuttleworth assured him this would come out in the findings, as the government needed something remotely positive to highlight – but he had been seduced, morally if not physically, by Carla. Whether or not she had drugged him, he had to admit he’d drunk alcohol, and this was against regulations – no matter what the quantity. And, although he had made it plain in his evidence that he did not have sex with her – the inference being he was too sedated to fuck her – he had let her into his room, with some intent to bed her.
Two men died as a result of his actions. He would have to live with the guilt he felt over Bernard’s death for the rest of his life; Bernard had made sure of that.
This was a good time for him to be leaving – late in the evening. The newspapers had passed their deadlines for the next morning, so there was little point in staking out his home at this time of day. There would be no fresh angles until the release of the inquiry’s final report and recommendations. This morning’s papers had summed up the highlights of the last day. DRUGGED, DRUNK BODYGUARD SLEPT THROUGH AIDE’S CRIES FOR HELP, read the headline above the fold on the newspaper that Tom tossed into the bin outside his house. He’d forwarded the mail to his cousin’s place in Kent and cancelled the papers. He didn’t know when he’d be back in England. Technically, he supposed he shouldn’t be leaving the country without telling Shuttleworth. His absence would be noted when the inquiry reconvened to hand down its judgement.
‘Fuck ’em,’ Tom said to himself. He saw the little red Ford Focus come round the corner and slow to a crawl as Sannie checked the house numbers. She’d never seen his home, but that didn’t matter now.
Sannie saw him, flashed her lights and waved through the arc of the slashing wiper blade. Tom ignored the drizzle and waved back. When she stopped he looked up and down the darkened street again, making sure there were no photographers lurking. Sannie said that her bags were in the boot, so he slung his on the back seat and got into the passenger’s seat. She leaned across and kissed him. She tasted like a promise of sunshine.
‘I was wondering if you’d be here. Did you get my message?’
He nodded. ‘I was still packing. Did you really think I wouldn’t want to leave?’
‘I don’t know. I think it’s the best thing for you.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘It’s because I’m not. It’s okay if you want some time out, to wait until the media storm blows over, but if you’re running away you might never be able to run far enough.’
‘I’m not running away.’ He buckled
his seatbelt and stared straight out the windscreen.
‘I know.’ She changed gear and pulled away from the kerb, then let her hand rest on his knee. ‘And that worries me too. I think you might be chasing something.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘I think you might be chasing a phantom.’
Tom’s airline seat was in economy, while Sannie’s return ticket was business class. She tried to get him upgraded at the check-in at Heathrow, but her section was full. ‘We can swap halfway through, if you like,’ she’d offered.
‘I’d better get used to economy from now on. No more business and first on the job for me.’ He’d paid for the ticket out of his savings and while he wasn’t short of money – he had enough to travel for six months if he wanted – there would be no more where that came from unless he eventually found a job of some sort. The pension he’d worked more than twenty years for was just a dream now.
While he couldn’t get an upgrade, Sannie was able to get him into the BA lounge, and Tom downed three beers to Sannie’s single gin and tonic. ‘It’ll get me through cattle class,’ he explained.
They sat together on a two-seater lounge and held hands in between sipping their drinks. ‘Tom, we haven’t even discussed where you’ll be staying.’
She’d offered to lend him a vehicle for his travels – the Land Rover Defender had sat virtually unused in her garage since Christo’s death – but they hadn’t had time to discuss any further details of his visit.
‘I was planning on getting a hotel room near the airport and coming out to see you the day after we arrive – to check out this vehicle of yours, if it’s still on offer,’ he said.
‘Of course you can still have the bloody truck, Tom. But I want you to come stay with me. For as long as you want. I’ve been thinking about it over the last twenty-four hours.’
