The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  ‘And was that the same for the bigger document?’

  ‘No, he gave that to me in an envelope and told me to put it in a safe.’

  ‘Was that at the same time?’

  ‘No – much later, in November maybe even December.’

  ‘So there was nothing to connect you with him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Then you’ve got little to worry about. Nobody knows about the will. Nobody has troubled you about these documents. Nobody has shown the slightest interest in your professional dealings with David Eyam. If you’ve read something by accident, well, that’s between you and me. I’m a lawyer: I understand how it goes. Look, I’ll come to your office now if that helps.’

  He gave her a stressed look. ‘No, no. That’s the point – I won’t be there. I forgot that I have something on until about five thirty – a meeting outside the office. Come after that.’

  ‘That’s fine. I want to see one or two people here.’

  Russell departed and she threaded her way to the Pineapple House in search of Darsh. But he had left his spot in the garden and was nowhere in sight. She was making her way back towards a group of people from Oxford days she hadn’t seen for twenty years when she turned slap into the path of Kilmartin.

  ‘Again!’ he said with a little ironic smile.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Mr Kilmartin, isn’t it? The inquest.’

  ‘But we’ve met before.’

  ‘Really? I’m sorry I don’t . . .’

  ‘That’s the trouble with our trade – our former trade, I should say. To be successful you must be forgettable. Southsea – about a dozen years ago, maybe a touch more, Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course. I was one of the course lecturers, though I wouldn’t expect you to remember. I never enjoyed doing them much, which showed, I expect.’

  ‘Emile!’

  ‘Yes, the name made me sound like some leftover from the Free French – it really is my middle name. My mother was French.’ He put his hand out. ‘Peter Emile Kilmartin.’

  ‘Targeting, recruiting and running agents – was that it?’

  ‘No, communications in the field, though God knows why. I was always rather bad at that.’

  ‘Yes, of course I remember you.’

  ‘And you were from Jakarta, recruited there by McBride, and you did quite a bit of work before you actually came back to the office for indoctrination. Very unusual. And they really wanted you to stay. A big future for you but then . . .’

  ‘My husband died and I took another direction. He was in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘But you enjoyed the work?’

  She nodded. ‘Christ, yes. It was such a bloody relief to find something to do. An embassy wife is like being a geisha without the money.’

  There was a silence, which he didn’t seem to mind. He looked around the room, she into the garden.

  ‘Were you trying to find someone?’ he asked at length.

  ‘Yes, Darsh – the Indian. I wanted to see he was OK. I guess everyone thought he was completely mad.’

  ‘He seemed fine when I talked to him.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Yes, David introduced us and he helped me with a rather arcane mathematics problem for a paper I was writing.’ He paused and looked round. ‘Anyway, it’s been a good turnout.’

  ‘It’s not a village fete,’ she said.

  Kilmartin did not miss the quiet vehemence. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. A stupid thing to say.’

  ‘You know, someone said exactly the same thing at my father’s funeral. I suppose there was nothing else to say. He killed himself, you know, and that leaves the average emotionally retarded Brit rather stuck for things to chat about at a funeral.’

  ‘You talk as if you no longer think of yourself as belonging here.’ He examined her through his large, round, steel-rimmed glasses. His blue and white spotted tie was a couple of centimetres adrift from the top button and his dark-blue suit was made of a heavy serviceable material, which had become shiny at certain points but was in no danger of wearing out: the all-purpose suit tailored – or rather built – for a lifetime. He would probably be buried in that suit wearing that same expression of tight-lipped craftiness.

  ‘I’ve been away a long time and I came back expecting things to be the same, but having spent nearly a week in this godforsaken backwater, I’m beginning to wonder if I made the right choice. Maybe it’s this town, but everyone seems so on edge – suspicious. People seem to be so out of sorts.’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, I’m being a bit of a bore, aren’t I? The funeral made me angry. It all seemed so bloodless and damned English. I wondered how many people there actually liked David Eyam.’

  ‘Oh, quite a few I should think. He was an exceptional person.’

  She nodded. ‘You were carrying seed catalogues at the inquest – that must have put me off the scent, though I did feel there was something familiar about you.’

  ‘Yes, I was. For the first time I have a good-sized garden to play with, plus a very good view, plus a good library and the time to think and . . . well . . . exist.’

  ‘You also had some kind of academic journal – Middle Eastern Archaeology or something?’

  ‘Spot on. You were noted by the office for your exceptional powers of observation and recall,’ he said. ‘But David wasn’t nearly so good.’

  ‘Eyam? Eyam wasn’t on the New Intake Course.’

  ‘We had a look at him the year before you, but then we decided he was not cut out for the life of an intelligence branch officer abroad, whereas you were a natural. They were very sorry to lose you.’

  ‘Eyam in SIS.’ She began shaking her head. ‘No, that can’t be true.’

  ‘He lasted no more than a matter of months and found the whole thing richly comic. Far too intelligent for the work.’

  ‘What’s that make us?’ she said quickly, still smarting from the news that Eyam had never told her he’d been recruited. Through the whole of their exchange his lips had barely moved, but now Kilmartin’s mouth spread into a sardonic smile and his eyes shone. ‘I think you know that I meant he was too cerebral.’ He took a sip of water from a tumbler.

  ‘I’ll settle for that,’ she said. ‘Was that time your only contact with him?’

  ‘No – we worked together on some issues, mostly to do with Central Asia: oil and gas, water, that sort of thing.’

  ‘At Downing Street?’

  He nodded. ‘But we were friendly in other arenas.’

  ‘So you know what happened – why he lost his job?’

  ‘I know very little. I’ve spent the better part of the last five years either looking after my late wife or abroad pursuing the national interest, or so I was persuaded. No, I have no idea what happened, but I’d like to find out. You were a good friend; you must know a lot more than I.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘What did you make of the inquest?’

  ‘I’d like to have heard a lot more about the bomb and who planted it. For a lawyer, it is a surprising process to watch – no real scrutiny of the evidence, no cross-examination of the witnesses, no jury.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, clearly there are grounds for suspicion that David was the target of that bomb.’

  ‘Would it be insensitive to say that you saw less than you wished of David?’

  ‘Would it be insensitive of me to say that you’re getting off the subject? Like you, I was abroad and we did lose touch. But it doesn’t seem to have mattered because I was close enough to be his main heir.’ She regretted this, but it would become public soon enough.

  His face had lost its humour. ‘Maybe we should meet.’

  ‘And talk about what?’

  ‘You’ll know. Contact me at St Antony’s College in Oxford. There is a secretary at the Middle East School who takes messages for me. You don’t have to be explicit – simply suggest a time and place and give your maiden name. I seem to rem
ember it’s Koh.’ He was in deadly earnest. ‘We will need to speak. I promise you that.’

  ‘Is all this intrigue really necessary?’

  ‘You’re not in the cosy world of an American law firm – there have been changes here that are about much more than mood and morale.’

  ‘American law firms aren’t cosy,’ she said. ‘But I agree; there’s certainly more surveillance than I thought possible in a free country.’

  ‘Of you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then we must talk. We don’t want a repetition of the Soeprapto business.’

  ‘Not only do you avoid talking about the one thing that wasn’t explored in the inquest but you make it plain that you’ve been reading my office file – only a very few people knew about the Soeprapto.’

  ‘I knew about the whole case. A classic example of an intelligence officer picking up a scrap of information at a social gathering – at a ladies’ tea party, I think, an accountant’s wife or some such. Soeprapto’s was unmasked, the bank collapsed but not before you ensured British interests were protected; no money was lost.’

  ‘A long time ago,’ she said.

  ‘But there was a postscript, wasn’t there? Which is why I’m digging this up. Soeprapto put out a contract on you from jail, which was taken up by a member of a Chinese gang, who came looking for you in London.’

  ‘Yeah, just after my husband Charlie’s funeral.’

  One evening she had noticed the young Chinese get off at her stop on the Underground and a day or two later saw him hanging about Queen’s Gate near her flat. She changed her routine and established she was being followed, then informed the police. The assassin was arrested in the lobby of her building with a gun. It was clear she would remain at risk in London and after nine months of being comforted by Eyam, she left SIS and accepted an offer from Sam Calvert, Ricky’s father, to join the family law firm in New York. She never told MI6 that she’d tipped off Ricky Calvert about Soeprapto’s banking fraud.

  ‘You’ve lost a lot of men in your life,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yep, but I can’t see why anyone would be interested in David now.’

  ‘You’re wrong. David’s legacy is bound to excite some interest. They will want to know whether it contains anything that’s a threat to national security. Shall we say early next week?’ He raised his eyebrows interrogatively then glanced at his watch. ‘Good. Now I must be getting along. I’ve got a train to catch.’

  He made straight for the door with an unambiguous intention to leave – no goodbyes, no nods to people he’d talked to. And then he was gone.

  7

  The Cut

  The Jubilee Rooms were being cleared so that they could be made ready for the Eyam dinner. She went up to her room, changed into a pair of jeans, sweater and a short leather jacket but kept what she now regarded as Eyam’s scarf. She briefly looked up Kilmartin on the web. A dozen entries appeared under his name, mostly in reference to a recently published book, The Town of Naram-Sin, a study of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian cities. Further down a brief item from a newspaper archive gave her the information she needed. Since leaving the Foreign Office, Peter Kilmartin had acted intermittently as the prime minister’s special envoy to central Asia and the Caucasus, spending much of that time in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, during which he had produced a book about Tashkent called Stone City. A number of diplomatic posts were listed, including first secretary to the Tehran Embassy and second secretary in Damascus and between them spells at the Foreign Office Research and Analysis Department. She felt reassured. Like McBride, Kilmartin seemed to be from the school of spy adventurers who went back to the days of the great game in Afghanistan. It was noted by newspaper clippings that Kilmartin spoke Farsi, Turkish, Uzbek and Tajik and had some Pashto. He had founded a small school outside Tashkent with private money.

  She left the hotel at six fifteen p.m. Instead of going by the square to Mortimer Street she strolled down to a seat overlooking a section of the town’s medieval wall and sat for ten minutes in the gathering dusk. She turned round a few times and listened hard but no one came. It was dark by the time she left the bench and entered The Cut, a passageway that ran between a confusion of old red brick buildings that she had happened upon while walking the town over the weekend. About halfway along she waited in the shadows for five minutes. A sodium light flickered at the far end. A dog barked but no one came. She set off again. Fifty yards on, she slipped into the deserted beer garden at the back of a pub called the White Hart, passed through an empty bar, then exited onto Mortimer Street about twenty yards below number six, the lawyers’ offices. There she waited again, as though she was meeting someone. The shops were mostly closed; a roar came from across the street as a youth pulled down a metal shutter on a store window. The lights inside a bank flickered, then were extinguished. There was little traffic, and only a few pedestrians were about.

  She walked to number six and pressed a bell above a brass plaque, which announced Russell, Spring & Company Solicitors, Notary Public, Commissioner of Oaths. No answer came from the reception. She pushed on the door. It opened and she found herself in a panelled hallway that was hung with horse racing scenes. She looked into the office on her left. At the receptionist’s desk, a computer screen was switched off and a note lay on the keyboard. A coat and a mackintosh were on the stand on the other side of the room. She returned to the hallway and listened for a second or two. There was no sound except the hum and ticking of the fluorescent tube that lit a passageway beyond the stairs. She called up to the first floor. ‘Mr Russell? I’m sorry I’m so late. Shall I come up?’

  No answer came. But then she heard the sound of a table being dragged across the floor.

  ‘Hello?’ she called out louder and began to climb the stairs.

  Another sound reached her – the unmistakable acceleration of the drawer of a metal filing cabinet being rammed shut. She came to a narrow landing where there was a delicate little table and a vase of dried flowers. ‘Mr Russell? Hugh?’ she said more quietly. ‘It’s me. I hope I’m not too late. I can come back tomorrow if you’d prefer.’

  Somewhere above her a light was on, but most of the floor was in the dark. There was a weight to the silence, an air of calculation in the building, which made her glance down the stairway to the empty hall. It was at that moment two bulky shapes appeared above her, silhouetted against the lights on the landing. In an instant, one leapt down and threw her against the wall with incredible force, aiming punches to her head and chest, but finding only her lower back. She was on the ground. She curled into a ball and held her head, somehow registering that the little table next to her had broken into pieces as she’d gone down. The man kicked her once, then ran down the stairs shouting for his companion to get out of the building. But this one wanted more. He dropped down beside her, straddled her and rained blows on her, striking the hands that were wrapped round the back of her head, and cursing when his fist connected with Charlie’s diamond engagement ring. He was frenzied. ‘You fucking bitch, you fucking cunt.’ She could feel his arousal through her clothes and realised he might very well kill her. She let go of her head and using all her might twisted beneath him. The torque of her body unbalanced him enough for her to scrabble in the dark for something – anything – to hit him with. A fragment of vase was in her hand and then the splintered leg of the little table, which was still attached to part of the table, but she nevertheless rammed it upwards towards the man’s face. She couldn’t tell where it hit but he cried out. He tried to grab the leg, then her neck with his big greedy hands, and at that point she knew she would be killed. But then she was aware of the first man thundering back up the stairs and bellowing: ‘Leave her. Get the fuck out! Now! Get out of the building – we’ve got what we came for!’

  Suddenly the weight of her assailant was gone and she understood that he had been hauled away by the other man. She rolled away from the wall and began to struggle to her feet, knowing she might have to figh
t for her life again. But they were crashing down the stairs and a second or two later the front door banged and they were gone. She got up. She felt no pain, just terrible sickness and fear swarming in her mind.

  No sound came from upstairs. She picked up her bag and took the stairs three at a time. The two men had come from a large office overlooking the street. The lights were still on and papers were strewn across the floor. In a glance she saw a small pale-green safe with its door open and a leg protruding from behind the desk.

  Hugh Russell was out cold. She ran her hand over his body, checking for injuries and found a small patch of damp blood at the back of his head. She reached for the phone, then thought better of it and crouched down to the safe. There were a few folders in the bottom, which contained title deeds, one or two share certificates and some letters written in an unsteady, elderly hand that was certainly not Eyam’s. The shelf was empty. She got up and looked around, then went over to the filing cabinet. There was nothing under Eyam’s name or her own. She returned to the desk and searched the papers on the floor.

  Russell began to groan. She moved to his side. He opened his eyes and raised one arm to shade them from the light. He didn’t know what – or who – had hit him. She helped him sit and examined the back of his head. ‘God that hurts,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you’ll need a couple of stitches. We’ll call the ambulance. Just take it easy.’

  He stared blankly at the safe. ‘So they’ve got everything?’

  ‘That’s where you kept David Eyam’s documents?’

  He nodded groggily. ‘Yes, I took them out of the envelope and left them in there ready for you.’ She noticed a key in the safe, still attached to a chain. They had torn it from his belt.

  ‘Was there anything in the filing cabinet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was written on the documents in the safe? I mean, who were they addressed to?’

  He tried to think. ‘No one – I took them out of the marked file to look over them this afternoon and then returned them to the safe when I came over to the hotel. All the other material addressed to you I gave you this morning.’