The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  ‘I heard you were down at High Castle for David Eyam’s inquest.’

  Kilmartin couldn’t have been more surprised. He’d come with a dozen excuses not to go to the Caucasus as special envoy or back to Kazakhstan. ‘My word, you’ve got good sources, prime minister.’

  ‘Well, one hears things. I wondered if you had any special reason for attending.’

  ‘He was a friend and I happened to be in the town – the house I bought is not far from High Castle – so I thought I’d pop in.’

  ‘Tragic business; there’s not a day that goes by without my missing him.’ Temple paused and rubbed his upper lip. ‘He really had such a grasp of the issues – and a most agile mind. That kind of clarity is unique in my experience.’ He looked at the portrait above him. ‘You know what Pitt’s tutor used to say about him? “He seemed never to learn but merely to recollect.” That was Eyam. I valued his advice, just as I do yours, Peter.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, prime minister. Is this what you wanted to see me for?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. As you know, I was very fond of David but there were difficulties at the end of his time here.’ He paused. ‘You know what I’m referring to?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I was away abroad at the time – Turkey – and then looking after Helen.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter: all water under the bridge. But I wonder if you could keep an eye on all this for me.’

  ‘What? I mean how?’

  ‘I’m anxious that neither the violent circumstances of his death nor the facts of his departure from government become a matter of speculation. There will be a great temptation to cause mischief by linking it all to the death of poor Christopher Holmes, who was head of the JIC before David Eyam, as you know. We do not want any mischief at this stage.’ Mischief was a word the prime minister used to describe everything from anti-social behaviour to terrorism.

  ‘I haven’t seen a word to that effect in the newspapers,’ said Kilmartin.

  ‘Of course we could have held the Eyam inquest in camera,’ continued Temple, ‘but I took the view, and the home secretary agreed with me, that it would give rise to speculation.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had that kind of discretion in the proceedings of a coroner’s court, prime minister, but let me say I think you took the right decision.’

  ‘Did you see Eyam a lot? Were you a close friend?’

  ‘Very little over the past few years, but I liked him.’

  ‘Did you know he was in Colombia?’

  Kilmartin shook his head.

  ‘Nor did we, and that bothers me, Peter.’

  ‘Well, he can’t trouble anyone now.’

  ‘Of course you’re right. But, look, I want you to keep your ear to the ground on this. Let me know if there is going to be any silliness. It would be bad for the country to be distracted by a lot of daft conspiracy theories in the run up to an election. People must feel able to trust government, not just my government but any British government: the procedures, the checks and balances, the good intentions of those who hold power, their fundamental respect for the constitution. People must know that we are trustworthy.’

  ‘Quite. Do you want me to actively pursue this, or simply tell you anything I hear?’

  ‘Yes, tell me, or tell Christine Shoemaker, the deputy director of the Security Service: you know her?’ Kilmartin nodded, remembering the blonde northerner with a down-turned mouth, who had all but sidelined the director of MI5, Charles Foster-King, because of her relationships with Temple and the home secretary, Derek Glenny. ‘Good. Contact her if I am unavailable; otherwise telephone my private secretary and come in for a chat. Do a bit of digging around. Put your ear to the ground. Find out what’s being said. Would that be all right, Peter? Do say if it isn’t.’

  ‘Of course, prime minister: I’m happy to help if I can, though I’m pretty sure that there is nothing much to discover.’

  ‘Still, I would be grateful.’

  Kilmartin nodded. Unless he was very much mistaken he had just been appointed the prime minister’s personal intelligence officer.

  The bells were being rung open rather than half-muffled, as is usual for the dead. And when the peal fell suddenly into the cold, bright Tuesday morning the people in High Castle’s Market Square glanced towards the church, eyes freshening, as though spring was being announced, or someone had decided that life itself should be celebrated. Kate paused. Above her, a camera in a black hemisphere fixed to the side of a building watched everything in the square yet, like the woman who had followed her on the short walk from the hotel, it almost certainly missed the striking beauty of the moment.

  She was certain about this watcher, a slim woman in her mid-thirties wearing a tan trouser suit. She plainly had more training than practice in surveillance. There was no substitute for experience, as she had always been told by McBride, nominally second secretary (economic) at the embassy in Jakarta, but in reality MI6’s head of station. That was a lifetime ago, when she was married and living in a flat near the embassy, but Kate hadn’t lost the ability to read a street and spot the false moves of a bad actor. And this girl, as McBride would have said, wouldn’t cut the mustard in the Scunthorpe Repertory Theatre.

  Kate walked on to the stalls at the centre of Market Square. A police helicopter came noiselessly from the south then hovered high over the square sending a rhythmic thud around the walls of the castle. Twice it repositioned itself by falling away down the valley then nosing into the sharp westerly wind blowing across the Marches. Three civilian helicopters followed at a much lower altitude and landed on a piece of open ground beneath the escarpment of red sandstone, where their rotor blades turned and bounced in the wind. Then the official cars began to arrive, two accompanied by unmarked protection vehicles that sat just to the right of the rear bumper of the saloons and stuck to them like pilot fish. The cars swept into the square in a way that made heads turn, then followed Sheep Street to the Bailey Hotel, where their occupants were decanted into a room, which Kate learned had been laid on by Eyam’s stepmother for the mourners making the trip from London.

  She stopped at a stall selling wraps, shawls and scented candles to get a better look at her pursuer. The woman moved behind a stand of jams and pickles, then retreated to the line of market stalls at the top of the square. Why the hell was she being followed?

  Kate picked up a black and mauve scarf.

  ‘It’s Nepalese – silk and cashmere,’ said the stallholder, placing a rolled cigarette on a battered tobacco tin. ‘They call that colour damson. A pal of mine imports them from the village in Nepal where they’re made. But I got to admit they’re dear.’

  The scarf went well with the short dark grey herringbone jacket and black trousers she’d chosen for the funeral. She put it on and looked at herself in a smudged mirror that hung from the front of the stall, angling it slightly to see over her shoulder. The watcher had moved behind her and glanced twice in her direction. ‘Screw this,’ she said softly and turned and eyeballed the woman, who looked away.

  ‘The scarf?’ said the stallholder.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Kate said with a smile.

  ‘Looks terrific on you: just right for your dark colouring, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said and removed five twenties from her purse.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, wrapping the money carefully onto a fold of notes. ‘The place is crawling with filth.’

  ‘Filth?’ she said, smiling. ‘The police are here for the funeral.’

  ‘Who’s that for then?’

  ‘A friend of mine: he lived near here.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘Old, was he?’

  ‘Early forties.’

  ‘Life is short: art is long. Well known, was he?’

  ‘Not really, but he had many admirers. He was killed while abroad.’

  The man slapped his forehead. ‘I know, it’s the fellow that got blown up – the prime mi
nister’s man. He was on TV.’

  She smiled a full stop to the exchange and turned away.

  ‘Would you credit that?’ he said to her back. ‘Look at the way they’re treating that woman. I told you they was filth.’

  Beyond the stalls on the north side of the square four uniformed police were crowding round a middle-aged woman. One had taken hold of her upper arm. She wore a large black hat that made her seem top heavy. Her voice rose and the words, ‘I will not stand here’ then, ‘I won’t be treated . . .’ carried on the wind across the square. The woman wrenched her arm down, causing her handbag to fall to the ground and spew its contents. A policeman bent down to help but she brushed his hand away and swept everything back into the bag herself. It was at that moment that her hat fell off and rolled between the policemen’s feet. She made an undignified lunge and seized it, stood up and hit the chest of one of the officers with it.

  ‘That’s done it now,’ said the stallholder with a smirk. ‘Assault with a hat. I know that woman. She’s got something to do with the Assembly Rooms – arranges the programme and that. You can’t park there on market days. There’s a sign.’

  Kate recognised Diana Kidd from the inquest. Over the weekend she had toyed with the idea of calling the only Diana Kidd listed in the phone book to talk to her about Eyam, which was why she now returned her purse to the black shoulder bag, walked the thirty yards over to where Mrs Kidd was being questioned, and with a smile asked if there was anything she could do. When none of the officers replied she said, ‘Are you all right, Mrs Kidd? Perhaps these officers don’t know that you are attending David Eyam’s funeral.’ Then she turned to the policeman who had been hit with the hat. ‘I can vouch for Mrs Kidd.’

  ‘And you are . . . ?’ said a plainclothes officer in his thirties with razor burns on his neck.

  She gave her name.

  ‘Local?’

  ‘No, I’m from London. I’m staying at the Bailey Hotel for a few days. But I do know Mrs Kidd.’

  ‘Well, I am afraid she’s in some trouble.’

  ‘In what way? Surely she simply failed to observe the parking restrictions, an understandable error given she’s attending the funeral of a close friend?’

  ‘She struck a police officer. She failed to account for her intentions in a designated area and refused to let us search her bag.’

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t mean it, did you, Mrs Kidd?’ She touched her lightly on the arm. Diana Kidd shook her head and revolved the hat in her hand trying to compose herself. Kate suddenly had a sense of the universe of uncertainty in the woman.

  ‘If she agrees to park her car somewhere else, can you overlook the matter? You can see that she’s very upset.’

  Mrs Kidd stared at the ground and nodded pathetically.

  There was an older man in a short, grey coat, standing a little distance away – hands shoved into diagonal pockets below his ribcage, a gaze that contemplated the castle’s battlements and a manner that radiated contempt. Without looking at her he said, ‘Sergeant, you can let Mrs Kidd go.’

  The police moved back, allowing Mrs Kidd to pass to her car.

  Kate thanked him. ‘A designated area?’ she said incredulously. ‘Designated as what? By whom?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ said the officer. ‘We’re just here to ensure that everything passes without incident.’

  His eyes moved to her and scanned her face, trying to place her in the same way that Mrs Kidd had done during the inquest. ‘Got your ID?’ he asked.

  ‘My passport’s back at the hotel: will an American driver’s licence do?’ She did not move to open her bag.

  ‘Are you a UK resident?’

  ‘I am a British citizen. I have just come back from a long period in America.’

  ‘You will have to sort out an ID card to live here. Immigration should have notified you when you landed.’

  ‘I read the note,’ she said in a manner that gave no ground.

  He studied her hard and then waved a hand in front of him as though fanning smoke from his face.

  ‘Now, please move on, madam; we’ve got a job to do here.’

  ‘There was something else, which is why I came over.’ She turned and scanned the stalls. ‘You see that woman over there – the one in the trousers – I believe she was trying to steal from one of the market stalls.’

  He nodded and said to a uniformed officer, ‘Have a look into it, Mike.’

  Kate thanked him again, swept the circle of officers with one of her client smiles, turned and took a few paces. Then the wind came and tore the blossom from a line of almond trees along the top of the square and tossed it in the air like confetti, adding to the indecent surge of spirit in old provincial England.

  Later she perched on the arm of a bench on some open ground beside a churchyard smoking a cigarette and watching Eyam’s remains being transferred from a hearse through the side entrance into St Luke’s Parish Church. At first she turned away from the open door, as though there was something private about the operation, but then she forced herself to look on. Four pallbearers lowered the coffin, placed wreaths on top and at each end, straightened the velvet drape covering the trestle, bowed and retreated. The earthly remains of David Eyam – the mere fragments of a man – had come home and were at last being accorded respect. Shipped from Colombia in a battered aluminium box to Heathrow, there to be tested for cocaine, they had mistakenly been forwarded to the coroner’s office where the casket – if that was the word – remained like a container left behind by a catering company.

  She had learned all this from the coroner’s clerk the night before when she’d taken refuge from the hotel in a pub called The Mercer’s Arms. Rather to her surprise he lumbered over from a table, saying he’d recognised her from the inquest, then introduced himself as Tony Swift. He seemed intelligent and pleasant enough and although she wondered whether he fancied his chances with her she let him buy her a drink.

  Between deliberated sips from a pint of Old Speckled Hen, he told her that it had taken over two weeks for anyone to realise that Eyam had been killed in the explosion. They might never have known for certain if the hotel room key hadn’t been found by construction workers near the spot where Eyam had fallen and matched with the room he’d occupied at the Hotel Atlantic until the day of the blast.

  ‘What about the hotel bill?’ said Kate. ‘Surely the hotel reported him missing?’

  ‘Why? To whom? There was no need. They had his credit card details and authorisation for payment. I checked with one of the managers. There was a small amount of luggage in his room and after a few days they just put it in store, thinking he would collect it: they assumed he’d gone on a boat trip up the coast.’

  A big man with a slow, amiable manner, Swift consumed a pie and chips while they talked, looking over his glasses to consider her questions. Why had he come to High Castle? What was he doing in Colombia? And how the hell had someone as smart and dedicated and charming as Eyam lost his job in government? The inquest had established the facts of Eyam’s death but the fall, the calamity that pitched him into Mrs Kidd’s exciting local arts scene was a mystery. Swift smiled at this but said he couldn’t help her on any of these things.

  The peal of bells was now abruptly replaced by the toll of a single bell. She stubbed the cigarette out, carried the butt to one of the waste-baskets, and walked to the main door where two policemen stood with weapons undisguised. A woman police officer searched her bag and patted her down and she was handed an order of service with Eyam’s photograph and dates on the cover. She took a place halfway up the aisle. About two dozen people had already found places: Diana Kidd was at the front, fanning herself with the order of service. Kate read the short appreciation on the inside cover, recording Eyam’s time at Oxford with all its honours and awards, his work in think tanks and the civil service – the Home Office, the Research and Analysis Department at the Foreign Office, Number Ten and finally the Joint Intelligence Committee. It possesse
d no more feeling than an entry in Who’s Who.

  No mention of his two years in High Castle. No salutes to his intellectual distinction, the range of his interests, his flair, his largely hidden physical prowess. No colour, no observation, no humour. David Eyam was being sent on his way without love.

  Just before noon there was a respectful rush of mourners and by the time the bell fell silent well over a hundred people filled the pews around her. The clearing of throats and murmurs ceased; people stopped nodding to each other as the presence of the coffin – of death – imposed an awkward hush on the congregation. In the front row was the actress Ingrid Eyam, David’s stepmother and next of kin, who Kate concluded would inherit the entire fortune left by David’s father a few months before. She had gone the whole distance with a fitted black two-piece suit and pillbox hat with a springy black mesh veil, from which peeked a dubious tragic beauty. Behind her the mourners fell into three distinct groups: the people from the centre of government, who included two permanent secretaries, the home secretary Derek Glenny, a large man in his fifties with male-pattern baldness and narrow eyes, and one or two political faces she recognised from reading the English newspapers; Eyam’s friends from Oxford, most of whom Kate knew; and about thirty locals who, with unconscious respect for hierarchy, placed themselves in the pews at the rear. Mrs Kidd disrupted the pattern and was now looking anxiously about her, wondering if she was in a reserved seat.

  The vicar moved from consulting some musicians in front of the altar to the centre of the aisle, and began to address the mourners. ‘This is not to be a sad occasion,’ he said with a distinct whistle in his voice. ‘David’s instructions were clear – we are to rejoice in life and the living of it. The music and readings are all his choice, apart from the passage from Cymbeline, which will be read by Ingrid Eyam, David’s stepmother.’