"Thank you, sir," Charlie said.
The keen statement. "In for longer, the reports more regular."
"Please give my best regards to Mrs Furniss, and to the girls."
"Of course I will. They'll be glad to know I've seen you."
He wondered whether the boy had been more than a friend to his daughters, either of them. They'd been very close, down in the country, and when his brood were all in London and the boy was their guest. It had been in London, three years before, in their little drawing room, the boy on his first trip from California and away from his mother, that Mattie had told Charlie Eshraq, as straight and as baldly as he could, what had happened to his sister and his father and his uncle.
He had never seen the boy cry since then. Bottled it all up, of course. "When do you go, dear boy?"
"Pretty soon."
"You'll telephone me, at home, before you go?"
"Yes."
"You'll go steadily?"
"Yes."
The rain dribbled over Mattie's face, and caught at his trimmed and silver moustache and darkened the front of his shirt. The boy's face was a blur in front of him and masked by the fullness of his beard.
"If anything happened to you, while you're away, Harriet and I, and the girls, we'd be . . ." Mattie squeezed the boy's shoulders.
"Why should it, sir?"
They parted.
He walked home. Mattie felt dirtied because he encouraged the folly of the boy, and yet he did not know how he could have dissuaded him. And he had the thick bulk of the envelope in his pocket, and the boy had said that he would be going in lor longer, and that the reports would be more regular. He thought that in a decent world Matthew Cedric Furniss would deserve to be flailed alive.
He fervently hoped that Harriet would still be up and waiting for him. He needed to talk to her, play a record, and be warmed and wanted. He had never in three years seen the boy cry, and the boy had murdered two Revolutionary Guards and planned to go back in again with his present in a plastic bag. The boy was talking about stand-off and armour-piercing.
He was talking about war, dammit, and the boy was no less than a son to him.
Mattie said an abbreviated prayer for Charlie Eshraq as he crossed at the traffic lights outside his London flat. And if the boy had bedded his daughters then good luck to him.
He was soaked. His face ran with water. His sodden trousers were clinging to his shins and his shoes squelched. When he looked up he saw the light behind the curtain welcoming him.
There could be as many as 50,000 persons addicted to heroin inside the United Kingdom.
On that night one of them, Lucy Barnes, had failed to compensate for the increased purity of the dose with which she injected herself. Alone, in a coma and on a stinking mattress, she choked to death on her own vomit.
2
The detective had led the way up to the attic. During that day he had become familiar enough, as familiar as he wanted to be, with the cramped space under the slope of the roof. He cased back against a wall, brushing against the peeling paper.
Below him the stairway protested at the weight of the two that followed him. The local detective thought it understandable that the Secretary of State would have his own man from Protection with him. The bodyguard would have lived long enough in the Secretary of State's pocket to have become a part of the retinue, almost family. He understood that the Secretary of State needed a face to trust. The Secretary of State emerged into the attic, white dust and cobwebs on the collar of his black overcoat. The detective had taken to the furthest corner, he left the centre ground to the Secretary of State and his bodyguard. He had seen them all. The ones on the breadline, and the most powerful in the land. They all came bowed and subdued to witness the place, the stinking corner, where their child had died. Usually the mothers came too. He knew that some would be aggressive, some would be broken, some crippled with shame. Their child, their future, blown away by a hypodermic syringe. The room was pitifully bare, and even more confused than when the police had first been alerted by the ambulance team because his squad had turned the place over and ransacked every inch of it. The mattress had been taken apart. The girl's clothes had been put into a black plastic sack after examination. Her papers were collected into a cellophane bag which would go to his office for further examination.
The bodyguard stood at the top of the stairway. He gave the sign with his eyes, he told the local man to get on with his talk. The Secretary of State was known to the policeman only through the television in his living room and the photographs in the newspapers that he never seemed to find time to read but which were kept for lighting the fire before he went to work. The Secretary of State was not a pretty sight, looked like a man who had been kicked hard in the testicles an hour before. He could stand, but the colour was gone from his face.
He'd done well, the local man, he had had the name, alerted the Metropolitan, and now had the parent where the parent wanted to be, and all this before the rat-pack had wind of the excitement. Drily he thought to himself, if nothing else went right on this one then getting the Secretary of State into and out of this crap heap before the photographers pitched up was good going. He took the lead from the bodyguard.
"Lucy had been living here for several weeks, sir, at least she was here for a month. Only known means of support, the Social Security. Preliminary post mortem indicates that she was a serious victim of addiction - we don't regard users as criminals, sir, we tend to refer to them as victims. Her wrist veins have been used, no good anymore, and her thigh and shin veins have also been used. She had taken to using the smaller veins in her feet as an injection route. I am assuming that you were aware that she was addicted, sir - I mean, it must have been pretty obvious, obvious that is if you were still in touch with your daughter . . . "
The Secretary of State had his head down, made no response. Just like all the rest of them, feeling it a duty to get some feel of where their child had died. Christ, the room stank.
" . . . We cannot yet be certain of the cause of death, not in exact terms, that will come later when Pathology have had their full whack, but the first indicators are, sir, that she took a rather pure dose. What she took was just too much for her system. That causes a coma, and then vomiting. Blocked windpipe does the rest - I'm sorry, sir."
The Secretary of State's voice was a flat monotone. "I've an old chum, medic in London. I talked to him right at the beginning. I said, 'Whose child becomes an addict?' He said,
'Your kid.' He said, 'No one worries when the addict is that nice kiddie from next door, but by Heavens they worry when it's the nice kiddie upstairs.' We thought that we had done everything for her. She went to the best schools, when she went onto heroin we sent her to the best withdrawal clinic.
Just a waste of money. We cut her allowance, so she sold everything we'd ever given her. She moved out, then came back and stole from us. Can you imagine that, officer, stealing from her own parents . . . of course, you can imagine it, you are accustomed to the misery caused by this addiction. The last thing we did was have the Ministry's own security system in our own house changed. I mean that's coming to something, isn't it, when the Secretary of State for Defence has to have his own alarm system changed because his own daughter might want to break in . . . Her mother will want to know, can't hide much from her mother, would she have been in pain?"
"Coma first, sir. No pain." The detective was past shock, past sympathy, and way past apportioning blame. He could be matter of fact. "She had the stuff. It's if she hadn't had the stuff that she would have been in pain."
"How much would it have been costing her?"
"From what we've seen, anything between a hundred and two hundred a week - when it's got that bad."
The local detective wondered how the politician would survive it. He wondered whether he would shut himself away from public life once the storm blew, the headlines tomorrow and the Coroner's Court reporting. Whether he would carry on as if his public and priv
ate lives were separate compartments. He wondered if the pursuit of his public life could have so damaged a private life that a lone, lost child took to a syringe for companionship, for love.
The Secretary of State had a good grip on himself, his voice was clear. Nothing staccato, nothing choked. "A colleague of mine said recently, 'This abuse brings hardened criminals and indulgent users together in a combination that is potentially lethal for good order and civilised values - the price of ultimate failure is unthinkable.' That was before Lucy had her problem, I didn't take much notice of it then. What are you doing about it, officer, this lethal combination?"
The local detective swallowed his first thoughts. Not the moment to spit out his gripes about resources and priorities, and bans on overtime payment which meant that most of his squad clocked off on the dot of office hours. He said, "Gather what evidence we can, sir, try and move our investigation on from there."
"Do you have children, officer?"
"Yes, sir."
"What age?"
"About half your Lucy's age, sir."
"Could it happen to them, what happened to her?"
"As long as the stuff's coming in, sir, flooding in like it is
- yes, sir."
"What would you want done, officer, if she had been yours?"
"I'd want to get to the fuckers . . . excuse me, sir . . . to the people who made the stuff available to your Lucy."
"You'll do what you can?"
"Bluntly, sir, that's not a lot. Yes, we will."
The bodyguard had flicked his fingers, a small gesture close to the seam of his trousers. The local man had the message.
He moved around and behind the Secretary of State, to the head of the staircase. The bodyguard was already warily descending. There was music playing on a lower floor. The detective had had one session with the other residents of this terraced house, and he would have another later that afternoon when he had got himself shot of the big man. He hadn't been heavy with them, the others in the squat, not once he had discovered who Lucy Barnes' father was. Counter productive, he would have said, to have leaned too hard on them right now. He wanted their help, he needed all they could give him.
From the top of the staircase he looked back. The Secretary of State was staring down at the mattress, and the bag of clothes, and the junk litter that might the previous week have been important to a nineteen-year-old girl.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"What does he think I'm going to do about it?"
The bodyguard shrugged.
Two, three minutes later, they heard the creaking of the stairs. The detective thought he saw a redness at the eyes that were distorted by the Secretary of State's rimless spectacles.
On the pavement the Secretary of State paused beside his car. The chauffeur was holding open the back door. "Thank you again, officer. I am not a complete fool, by the way. I understand the very real difficulties that you face in your work. I can promise you one thing. I will, quite shamelessly, use every vestige of my authority and influence to ensure the apprehension and prosecution of those responsible for Lucy's death. Good day to you."
He ducked down into the car. The bodyguard closed the door on him, and slipped into the front passenger seat.
The detective saw the Secretary of State lift from a briefcase a portable telephone, and the car was gone, heading away last.
He went back upstairs. In a confined space he preferred to work alone. Half an hour later, under newspapers, under a loosened floor board, a long way back in a cavity, he found Lucy's diary.
"This is a great deal better, Mattie. Much more what I've been looking for."
"I'm gratified."
"I'll explain to you my assessment of Iran theatre . . . "
Mattie studied the ceiling light. It was not so much an impertinence, more an attempt to avert his eyes so that the impatience could be better disguised.
" . . . We are talking about the region's principal geopoliti-cal and military power, sitting astride the most important petroleum trade routes in the world. We are talking about the country with the potential for regaining its position as thirteenth in Gross National Product, with the largest army in Western Asia, with no foreign debt, with the capacity to blow over every other regime in the area . . . "
"I have specialised, Director General, in Iranian matters since 1968 - I have actually lived there."
"Yes, yes, Mattie. I know you are close to Iran. Short service commission in the Coldstream liaising with the Imperial army,
'65 to '67; Station Officer '75 to '78; Bahrain and Ankara after the Revolution. Give me the credit, Mattie, for being able to read a personal file. I know you were familiar with Iran before your entry to the Service, and that since entry you have specialised in that country. I know your file backwards and I'll tell you what I think: you're probably too close to your subject. My training is as a Kremlinologist, I'm a Cold War freak, and I should think you have a clearer view of how we should be targetting the Soviet Union and its satellites than I have. Just as I believe I have a clear idea of what's required from Iran. It's time we understood each other, Mattie . . . "
Mattie no longer stared at the ceiling. He looked straight ahead of him. He hadn't his pipe out of his pocket, he hadn't his matches on the mahogany table. He had his fists clenched.
He could not remember when he had last felt such anger.
"You're in a rut. That's why I've been brought in to run Century. There are too many of you in a rut, going through the motions, never questioning the value of material. I won't accept paper pushing . . . This is the best material you have supplied me with."
Mattie squinted his gaze across the table, across to his rewrite of Charlie Eshraq's report. Good, but not that good.
A useful start for something that would get better.
" . . . It's crude, but it's factual. In short it is the sort of material that crosses my desk all too infrequently. There are live valuable pieces of information. One, the movement of the 8th and 120th Battalions of the IRG 28th Sanandaj Division from Ahvaz to Saqqez, movement by night indicating that this was not simply a tactical readjustment, but more the reinforcing of a particular sector prior to using those Guards in a new push. The Iraqis would like to know that . . ."
"You'd pass that on to the Iraqis?" A hiss of surprise.
"I might. Good material earns favours . . . Two, the German engineer on his way to Hamadan, and at Hamadan is a missile development factory. Good stuff, stuff we can confront our friends in Bonn with, make them quite uncomfortable
. . .I've marked up all of what I consider to be relevant, five points in all. The training camp at Saleh-Abad north of Qom, that's useful. Fine stuff."
The Director General had carefully placed his pencil on the table. He upturned a glass and filled it with water from a crystal jug.
"And who is going to emerge as the power among the clerics, and how long the war is going on, and what is the state of disaffection amongst the population, am I to presume that is unimportant?"
"No, Mattie. Not unimportant, simply outside your brief.
Analysis is for diplomatic missions, and they're good at it. I trust there will be more of this."
"Yes."
"Who is the source?"
"I think I've got your drift, Director General."
"1 asked you, who is the source?"
"I will make sure that a greater flow of similar material reaches you."
The Director General smiled. The first time that Mattie had seen the flicker of the lines at the side of his mouth.
"Please yourself, Mattie, and have a good trip."
Charlie Eshraq was personal to Mattie, and would not be shared with anyone. He stood, turned and left the room.
Going down in the lift he wondered what the boy was making of his present. It was personal and private to Mattie that on his last journey inside Charlie had killed two men, and equally personal and private that on this journey he would kill another.
They had been colleagues since University, since the youth section of the Party, since sharing an office in the Research Division headquarters in Smith Square. They had entered Parliament at the same election, and the Cabinet in the same reshuffle. When their leader finally determined on retirement they would probably compete in the same dogfight for the top job. That time had not yet come, they were close friends.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, George."
Once the Home Secretary's assistant had brought in the coffee, placed it on the desk and left, they were alone. It was rare for two such men to meet without a phalanx of notetakers and agenda minders and appointment keepers. The Secretary of State sat exhausted in an easy chair, the plaster dust and the cobwebs still on his overcoat. "I want something done about this stinking trade."
"Of course you do, George."
The Secretary of State looked hard into the Home Secretary's face. "I know what you are up against, but I want them found and tried and I shall pray you get them convicted and sentenced to very long terms, every last one of the bastards that killed Lucy."
"Very understandable."
"My detective told me that we are stopping one kilo out of ten that comes in . . ."
"We have stepped up recruitment of both police drugs officers and Customs. We've put a huge resource at the disposal . . . "
The Secretary of State shook his head. "Please, not a Party Political, not between us. I've got to go back to Libby tonight, I've to tell her where her - our - daughter died, and then I shall have to leave her and put on a cheerful face for dinner, ironically enough with some bigwigs from Pakistan, from the heart of what I expect you know is the Golden Crescent. I don't think, and I mean this, I don't think Libby will survive lonight if I cannot give her your solemn promise that Lucy's killers will be found and brought to book."
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