The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  Adam Hopcraft, the government chief scientific officer, listened with aloof interest, his hands thrust into the pockets of a lightweight cardigan worn under his jacket. He made notes, he nodded at his colleagues’ opinions and he sucked air through his teeth with only the mildest disdain while gazing up at the plaster frieze of hawthorn trees. For a full hour he kept his own counsel. Then Temple turned to him. ‘Well, what do you make of it now, Adam? Can you really deny that we have a crisis on our hands? One that threatens to engulf the entire water supply of the country?’

  ‘I agree that it seems alarming, prime minister, and I must say I have been impressed with the contributions made so far. The point remains that, while we may not yet be able to contain the algae, we can deal with it effectively with ultrafine filtration. We have flown scores of these plants from the United States. More are on order and we believe that we can cope.’

  ‘I wish I could have your confidence,’ said Temple, turning away.

  ‘And there is another point,’ persisted Hopcraft. ‘At this stage I do not think it’s wise to ignore where this thing has come from. I suggest we consider two possibilities. The first is that the algae has been with us for longer than we appreciate; that it has bloomed with the rising temperatures of spring, having spread unnoticed through the course of last year and maybe even before that. There are four thousand species of marine red algae; algae spores can travel great distances on the wind.’

  ‘None of that makes any difference to the nature of the threat,’ said Temple. ‘We are where we are. We have to respond to give the public confidence.’

  ‘Quite so, prime minister, but it may be wise to allow for the possibility that this algae has not spread through any malign agency, but is either the result of climate change and global travel – a combination of the two perhaps – or has been released by accident from one of our own environmental laboratories. Such algae are being studied at the Marine Environmental Research Station at Ashmere Holt and also by the biological weapons people at the MoD.’

  ‘As I understand it, Adam, the genome is different to anything we’ve seen before.’

  ‘Well, that is true, prime minister and . . .’

  Temple turned to Christine Shoemaker. ‘Would you sketch out the analysis you’ve been doing in the past couple of days?’ She began speaking immediately so that few heard Hopcraft add that organisms adapt and evolve, and that this freshwater red algae might be a variant of an algae being studied at the Ashmere Holt lab.

  Shoemaker, in black trousers and an olive-green jacket, and a new hairstyle that Cannon thought made her look like a cosmetics saleswoman, took them through a list of questions, her head arcing through 180 degrees to engage those sitting at the end of the conference table. First, was it possible for a group to infect the water supply with samples of algae? The answer to this was most certainly yes. Reservoirs in Britain were easily accessible. Second, had this kind of attack been considered by terror groups? Yes, there was a lot of evidence to say that at least two groups under surveillance had researched the possibility of harming the water supply. Third, was it within the capability of such groups to mount an attack? Yes, she reported that MI5’s scientific officers had concluded that once samples had been obtained and possibly modified it would take nothing more than a good-sized garden pond for the algae to multiply in sufficient quantities.

  ‘Is work being done to connect the occurrence of TRA with the movements of any of the individuals you are watching?’ asked Temple.

  ‘I was going to touch on that, prime minister,’ she said crisply, ‘but you will appreciate the security aspects of this matter.’

  He squeezed his eyes together with understanding.

  ‘But we may expect some arrests over the next few days under terror legislation,’ she added, ‘which will allow us to thoroughly examine premises in the Midlands area that may be the source of this attack. But I do emphasise to those present the highly sensitive nature of this information: nothing of the police operation should pass from this room.’

  By degrees, the slight possibility of the water supply being poisoned by terrorists became first a probability, then by the end of the meeting a near certainty. Cannon watched Hopcraft make interventions to try to regain a sense of proportion and scientific reason but nobody listened and, before long, tea was being served in the Great Hall. Temple had got what he wanted; not a decision or a new course of action, but an orthodoxy, which had been implanted and would be played back to him for as long as needed.

  Cannon went to the room on the north-east corner of the house where the younger sister of the beheaded Lady Jane Grey, Lady Mary, had been imprisoned for marrying without the Queen’s consent, a billet that he always seemed to be consigned. He sat on the edge of his bed and phoned two political editors at Bryant Maclean’s newspapers to talk about the algae crisis meeting. As he expected, both asked him about the possibility of a snap election. He explained that the prime minister was keeping his options open and that he would make his decision on the merits of the case – a vacuous pomposity, if ever there were one – without allowing such things as red algae to play any part in his thinking. These untruths told, he swung his legs onto the bed, closed his eyes and thought of the young woman locked up in the room for two long years at the pleasure of Her Majesty, Elizabeth I.

  Kilmartin left the constituency home of Sidney Hale MP disappointed. Hale was not the same person who had engineered David Eyam’s second appearance at the Intelligence and Security Committee to establish the existence of Deep Truth. A union man, a left-wing diehard with thirty years of bare-knuckle politics behind him, Hale had suffered a series of small strokes during the winter. He kept his illness secret but it was obvious he could not continue as an MP. He had welcomed Kilmartin warmly at the little house on the outskirts of Rugby and offered him a drink, but Kilmartin saw that the proceedings of the ISC all but eluded him: Hale couldn’t remember the circumstances of Eyam’s second appearance, what had preceeded it, who else was involved, or why he had been so taken up with the subject. Meetings from his early years were still clear, but more recent events were blurred. He told Kilmartin with a smile that these days he could barely keep awake, which wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage in Parliament.

  At the door Hale stood pathetically stooped and fumbled a handshake, but then a gleam of the old light appeared in his eyes. ‘The man you need is the fellow from Carlisle. Good sort even though he’s on the government benches.’

  Home beckoned. He set off cross-country towards Herefordshire. With a clear road he’d make it before dark, but ten minutes into the journey he received a call from Dawn Gruppo, who said that Temple wished to see him at Chequers that evening. He made excuses but Gruppo said that the matter was of the utmost urgency. He gave her his car registration number for the security gate at Chequers, took down directions because she told him that it would not come up on the satellite navigation system and drove south towards the Chiltern Hills.

  Within a few hundred yards of the track leading to Dove Cottage, a silver BMW fell in behind the Bristol. It must have been waiting in a gateway at the bottom of the hill. She saw two men in her mirror and immediately put her foot down. The BMW did not keep pace with her; either the Bristol was now fitted with a tracker or the BMW’s satnav told the driver that there was a long straight track ahead of them and there was nowhere for her to go, unless she decided on the suicidal option of turning left at a hairpin bend and climbing a steep incline through some woods. It was the road she had mistaken for the approach to Dove Cottage a couple of nights before. She took her foot off the accelerator before the bend so her brake lights didn’t show. With a solid, antique agility the Bristol took the corner well, indeed a bit tighter than she anticipated because the rear wheel ploughed up the bank sending a shower of earth into the air. She rose through the woods with surprising speed, the light and shadow of the trees strobing in her left field, and reached the top of the hill, at which point the tarmac road hooked right and peter
ed out into a track where several rusting pieces of farm machinery were parked. She spun the car round with a handbrake turn to face the direction she’d come and, with all the anger of the last few days metabolising to aggression, she raced forward to the top of the hill to see the BMW coming towards her.

  The instructor of Evasive Driving Skills For New Intelligence Officers would certainly have disapproved of her next course of action, which was to aim the Bristol at the BMW. She did so knowing that hers was the much heavier vehicle and the revamped V-8 engine would probably protect her from the impact of a head-on collision. But this was not to be. As she ran down the hill at a mere forty mph, the nerves of the BMW’s driver faltered and he adjusted his line to take in a strip of grass and the edge of the ditch. As the cars approached each other his front wheel slipped into the ditch and before she knew it the Bristol had barged past, scraping the length of his vehicle and causing his back wheel to follow the front. The Bristol received one or two knocks and some paint damage but nothing more. She glanced in the mirror and saw two men scramble out of the car, which had come to rest at an angle. It made her let out a peal of laughter, the first in God knows how long, and it lightened her whole being.

  In High Castle she parked in a side street and walked up to the square, where she knew that the CCTV cameras would pick her up but doubted anyone was watching. Anyway the coverage of the town centre was by no means total and she reckoned she could do what she needed without being seen. In an alley off the square she bought some new underwear, then visited an estate agent and asked about the local property market. Seemingly satisfied with the manager’s answers she took a card and said that Paul Spring would be in touch the following week.

  The next shop was a newsagent, where she carried a brown padded envelope and a newspaper to the counter and asked for some postage stamps.

  The man looked up from his laptop and smiled when she approached.

  ‘Rossy must have sold you that scarf,’ he said.

  ‘This?’ she said, lifting the end of the scarf. ‘I bought it in the square last week.’

  ‘Yeah, from Ross Iyer: hope you didn’t pay over the odds for it?’ He grinned.

  ‘I hope not too, but I like it so . . .’ her eyes moved to the screen in front of him. ‘What’s that you’re doing there?’

  ‘I deal in coins,’ he said, turning the laptop towards her. ‘I make more money from that than running the shop now. I wonder why I bother any longer.’

  He showed her a page of coins struck at the time of Alexander the Great. He was bidding on one recently found in Macedonia. She was in no hurry so she listened. Besides, an idea had occurred to her as she looked down at the computer, which would require her to get to know this man a little better. He was in his mid-thirties with an unsuccessful goatee beard and black hair brushed back. There was a tattooed star on his earlobe. They talked for a while and he lit a cigarette. ‘It’s my shop,’ he said, ‘and I’ll smoke where I damned well like. Screw them.’ He flicked the spent match neatly through the open door.

  ‘Quite right,’ she said.

  ‘I recognised you from the newspapers,’ he said. ‘Seemed like they were clutching at straws.’

  ‘They were.’

  ‘I knew Hugh Russell. Everyone did. He was a good man. He acted for Rossy once. Hope they catch the bastard.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He rose from his stool and offered her his hand. ‘Hi, Nick Parker.’

  There was no one in the shop; they talked on for a few minutes until she looked at him steadily and said, ‘I am having a bit of trouble – it’s my computer – and I was looking for a place where I could upload something to the web.’

  His eyes narrowed with the last exhalation of the cigarette and he leaned down to extinguish it on the side of a metal waste bin.

  ‘Perhaps I could help,’ he said, working a knuckle in his eye.

  ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  ‘No worries; I’ve got to sit here for another hour anyway. What is it?’

  ‘A piece of film – a piece of CCTV footage, to be precise. You will see for yourself. It was taken outside Hugh Russell’s offices and, well, it could be very important for the investigation. I just want to make sure it’s somewhere safe.’

  ‘Jesus. That’s serious stuff. Have the police seen it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He gave her a sideways look. ‘But you don’t think they’re going to make use of it?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. But look, if you don’t want to do it, I’ll understand: you don’t know me. I’m a stranger.’

  ‘I wasn’t saying that. Anyway I know who you are and you look trustworthy to me. Have you got it with you?’

  ‘Nick,’ she said touching his sleeve. ‘This is very important. I can trust you with this?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, looking her straight in the eye. She gave him the DVD.

  ‘Right, I’ll put it up on my site – Uriconcoins.com – there are a couple of pieces of film up there already. Maybe it will help the number of hits I’m getting.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Are you sure about this? Let me pay you for your trouble. Would you accept some money?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Go on, I’d feel better about it.’ She handed him one hundred pounds in twenties, which he accepted graciously. ‘I was going to post the DVD in this envelope to my office in London. Could you do that for me once you’ve put it up?’ She addressed the envelope to herself at Calverts. ‘I just want to park the footage for the time being so no one sees it. Can I call you when I know what I want to do with it?’

  He gave her a card.

  ‘And it would be great if you didn’t tell anyone about this for the time being.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said and added, ‘No worries.’

  Cannon napped for half an hour, took a bath and emerged to catch sight of himself in a mirror. In the three years that he’d been in Downing Street, his hair had turned grey and thinned, he had lost all his muscle tone and become soft in the middle. He hardly recognised himself – this sad, tubby, out-of-condition liar. But it was the expression in his face as he stood there, one of grizzled habitual slyness, that shocked him most and he was suddenly seized by the fantasy of resigning and spending the summer on the chalk streams of southern England, getting fit and rising early to work on his book about Temple. Then his mobile phone rang. He was needed in the sitting room off the Great Hall as soon as possible.

  In the room with Temple were Eden White, Christine Shoemaker, Dawn Gruppo and Jamie Ferris. Something inside Cannon recoiled from them but he said hello as cheerfully as he could.

  ‘Close the door, Philip,’ said Temple. He was already changed for dinner and his manner was solemn – more Number Ten than Chequers. ‘Mr Ferris here has come across some remarkable information. Perhaps you would explain, Jamie.’

  Ferris was sitting at the writing table in a tan suit, a pale-blue shirt and striped tie: a neat, reassuring figure from the overlapping worlds of consultancy and intelligence. He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. ‘It appears that David Eyam staged his own death.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ said Cannon.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Ferris. ‘I think you were in the room when I went through the activity of various offshore accounts held in the Caribbean, so I won’t explain again.’

  ‘But all that ceased on the date of his death in January except for the use of a debit card.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ferris. ‘We have done a good deal of work and we believe we’ve found another, well-funded account which is still very much active and has been used many times since that date.’

  ‘Maybe someone else is spending the money?’

  Ferris shook his head. ‘No. You see we now know he faked his death – the whole thing was a carefully worked out plan. We’ve hard evidence which I am not at liberty to disclose to you.’

  Cannon sat back. ‘You are aware tha
t if this becomes public knowledge it will wipe everything else off the front page? The web will be a riot of speculation.’

  ‘That is why you are here, Philip,’ said Temple. ‘To advise us on how to handle this.’

  ‘There isn’t any way you can handle this! It’s a fucking nightmare because everyone is going to ask why he did it. How long have you known?’

  Ferris looked at Eden White, then at Temple before answering. In that moment it occurred to Cannon that Eden White’s presence in a room was almost insubstantial, like some kind of spectral manifestation. The most he’d ever heard him say were the few sentences in support of a snap election that morning. ‘We learned last night,’ said Ferris. ‘And things have become clearer today with a viewing of the evidence.’

  ‘Viewing,’ said Cannon. ‘Are you talking about that film from the inquest?’

  Ferris didn’t answer.

  ‘So what do you want me to do about it? Actually, more important is what the hell are you going to do about it?’ He looked round the room but the question was aimed at Temple.

  ‘Do is probably not an option at the moment since we don’t know where he is,’ said Christine Shoemaker. ‘He may be in France but we don’t know.’

  Cannon’s mind was spinning. ‘Does this have anything to do with the murder at his place in the country? A solicitor I think it was. How does that fit into the picture?’

  ‘There are many criminal aspects to this whole story,’ said Ferris. ‘The murder may indeed be one. We understood from the police that Eyam left the country to avoid charges over child pornography.’

  ‘I can believe many things of Eyam,’ said Cannon, ‘but not that.’