The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  When he opened the door Gruppo was standing there with her hard little face turned up with a look of inquiry.

  ‘The prime minister’s ready for you,’ she said.

  Kilmartin regarded her. ‘I am afraid I have to go.’

  ‘But you can’t. He’s coming now.’

  ‘I will be happy to explain to him in a letter.’

  He moved past her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It would be totally unacceptable for you to leave now.’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of subjecting myself to this kind of interrogation, and nor am I content to allow my movements to be watched.’ Wondering if he was overplaying the indignation, he began to walk down the corridor. Gruppo skittered after him but soon he was taking the stairs down to the ground floor. At the bottom, he ran slap into Temple.

  ‘Peter says he has to go,’ piped Gruppo from behind him. ‘I explained that you’ve set aside time for him.’

  ‘Going, Peter? But you’ve only just arrived. And I do need a word with you.’

  Prime minister, if I may . . . Look, I don’t take kindly to the sort of treatment I just received. I won’t tolerate it again.’

  ‘Tolerate what, Peter?’

  ‘Being given the third degree by Christine Shoemaker and her little gang; I didn’t sign up for that. I’m more than happy for them to take over this work but I must ask that the surveillance on me is lifted immediately.’

  ‘I don’t know what they said to you but clearly they have overstepped the mark. Look, come and have a drink. I’ve got half an hour and I want to ask your advice on all this.’

  Kilmartin was happy to go along with the fiction that Temple was ignorant of what had happened. He almost suspected that the prime minister had been given some kind of a nod, possibly a call from Shoemaker’s cell phone, or had even listened to the whole thing himself. Kilmartin allowed himself to be led to a room that Temple used as a study, where they sat in armchairs facing each other.

  ‘These are very difficult times, Peter. I’ve just been talking to the president and we were reflecting that the pace of events seems to quicken every day. You know, it is only from this job that you have true perspective of the world. It’s enough to give you vertigo.’ This commonplace of statesmen over, he appraised Kilmartin. ‘I’m sorry that you were irritated by Christine and her colleagues but I want you to know that we are all working for the same thing – stability and the security of the state. They plainly misunderstood my instructions, but you do see that Eyam could make a lot of mischief at this moment?’

  Kilmartin nodded. There was nothing for him to say. Both looked round the room.

  ‘I love this place, you know,’ continued Temple. ‘It has bestowed immeasurable benefits on British public life. Chequers gives the prime minister breathing space. It allows decisions to be made more rationally.’ He stopped. ‘You know that when Winston stayed here after he lost the forty-five election he wrote Finis in the visitors’ book?’

  ‘No, how interesting,’ said Kilmartin, wondering why it was that prime ministers felt able to refer to Churchill by his first name. Perhaps the job conferred retrospective familiarity with greatness: a club where people referred to each other by first names.

  ‘But it wasn’t finis,’ continued Temple. ‘Winston came back in fifty-one. I plan to come back too.’ He stopped, got up and went to his desk where he aligned a leather blotter and a book. ‘This business about Eyam: what do you think he wants? What’s your opinion, Peter?’

  ‘Motive is always difficult to read,’ he replied. ‘We make a rational assumption about someone’s behaviour based on what we would, or would not, do in the same circumstances, ignoring the otherness of the other. We consider only influences that make us what we are and impose those beliefs on them. It is the classic mistake of intelligence analysis.’

  ‘Which Eyam never made; he was very good at that job, though I know he hated the JIC.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say is he may not mean anyone any harm.’

  ‘Yes, that’s one argument I’ve heard today, but you don’t agree with that, do you? You think that we haven’t worked out what his intentions are because we’re not seeing things from his point of view. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Perhaps. But certainly that is the right approach.’

  Temple returned to his chair and pressed his fingertips together. ‘I want you to continue to look at this, Peter. Find out about his friends – plug in and see what you can discover. See how organised they are.’

  Kilmartin began shaking his head. ‘In the circumstances, I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because I’m not prepared to work under the constant supervision and monitoring of the Security Service, or anyone else that may be involved, like Ferris.’

  ‘That was all a misunderstanding.’

  ‘To be frank with you, I felt I was used to flush out information, prime minister. I prefer to work alone. I do not function effectively when second-guessed or monitored. It’s a matter of personality, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Peter. You’re your own man; you have no allegiances. That was why I took to you all those years ago when I was in the Foreign Office and no doubt making a hash of things.’ The false modesty allowed him to pause and make an astonishing statement. ‘It’s vital that I’m re-elected this year. Without me, without our policies, I truly believe that the nation will be less safe. I must see things through. Another term. That’s all.’

  Kilmartin did not say, ‘Après moi le déluge,’ but he very much felt like it.

  ‘I respected Eyam,’ continued Temple. ‘I’ve sat next to him in countless negotiations and watched that mind at work. Everyone who’s seen it at close quarters is in awe. His grasp of a problem is immediate: he thinks ahead, helping the other side to reach a more moderate position without them realising. If they proved less than cooperative, he was brutal, remorseless.’ Temple’s lips spread into a wide but humourless grin. ‘A mind like that deployed against the state represents a very considerable threat.’

  ‘Against the state, prime minister? I’m not sure you’re right about that. David loves this country. He’s quietly very patriotic.’

  ‘We think we know people, Peter. But we don’t. In this job you really see that. David was about to be charged with child pornography before he skipped the country. Did you know that?’

  Kilmartin shook his head but allowed no other reaction to this unbelievable revelation. ‘If he was about to be charged,’ he asked, ‘why would he come back? Why would he leave clues and hints that his death had been faked, instead of vanishing for ever?’

  Temple leaned forward with the drink cupped in his hands. ‘You are the best person to answer those questions. You’ve already had a lot of success: I expect you to have more.’

  Was Temple admitting he knew what he had said to Shoemaker half an hour before? ‘But I will not be your mechanical hare, prime minister. I won’t be pursued and watched while I do my job. If I have your agreement that all surveillance on me is suspended, and I put that in writing to you, I will continue. I hope you understand.’

  Temple’s eyes flinched then hardened, giving Kilmartin a sudden glimpse into the dismal vault that contained the prime minister’s soul. ‘Of course, if that’s what you want, Peter. Now go and find the otherness of the other for me.’

  ‘The Hawtrey Arms in Better Times’ was the caption of the framed black and white photograph of the hunt meeting outside the pub in 1910. Kilmartin idly examined it as he waited for a steak and new potatoes in the pub close to Chequers. A voice sounded behind him. He turned and recognised the prime minister’s chief spokesman, Philip Cannon. He was also looking at the photograph.

  ‘What did Virginia Woolf say about human beings changing for ever in December 1910?’ asked Cannon.

  ‘Exactly that, though I was never sure why 1910,’ said Kilmartin. ‘Do you want to join me?’ He’d met Cannon a few tim
es at Number Ten and had always thought of him as a decent sort, perhaps overwhelmed by the pressure of the job.

  ‘For a minute or two,’ said Cannon sitting down opposite him. ‘I’ve been here long enough as it is. Are you going to Chequers, or have you just been?’

  ‘On my way home. Thought I’d get a bite before I hit the road.’

  ‘I’m not going to ask you what you were seeing him about, but I’ve got a damned good idea.’

  Kilmartin smiled pleasantly but said nothing.

  ‘I’ve had ten calls, none of which I have answered,’ said Cannon, looking at the screen of his phone. ‘And more emails than I can count.’

  ‘I don’t envy you,’ said Kilmartin. ‘Is there a big dinner up there tonight?’

  ‘Not especially,’ replied Cannon. ‘A few cronies. He calls it a huddle. Trusties. No outsiders. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘No thanks – driving.’

  Cannon nodded. ‘I had the idea you were a fisherman, but maybe I’m imagining that.’

  ‘Very rarely: my brother occasionally invites me to the Dee.’

  ‘Lovely! Good spring fish, even these days of factory ships scooping up every living creature in the sea and salmon farms screwing up the stock.’

  ‘I believe so,’ said Kilmartin, ‘though I rarely lay a hand on one.’

  Cannon looked morosely into his drink. Kilmartin thought he’d had one or two too many. ‘I’ve got a couple of days booked on the Spey in ten days’ time but I’m bloody well going to have to cancel.’ He sighed. ‘This time of year – there’s nothing better.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Work?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll try for May after the election.’ He stopped and took a long draft of his beer. ‘That’s a state secret so keep it to yourself, but I don’t see how he’s going to the country with this panic over red algae.’

  ‘I was reading about it.’

  Cannon grimaced, then his face clouded. ‘You are aware that we are strangely bound together, Peter?’

  ‘How so? Not on red algae, I hope.’

  ‘Eyam,’ he said, lowering his voice and talking at the table. ‘I assume you know Eyam is alive and that we’re looking for him. A lot depends on him being found and all that being wrapped up without too much fuss. It’s the sort of story that obsesses newspapers, even in their depleted, feckless state.’

  ‘More than red algae?’

  ‘Yes. What do you make of the Eyam business?’

  ‘Not easy to know, and I’m not sure we should be talking about it here.’

  ‘But you’re on the inside, Peter. JT trusts you; he likes you; respects you.’

  ‘No more than Christine or Jamie Ferris or Alec.’

  ‘So you’ve seen Shoemaker’s familiars. Did you know they’ve all worked for Eden White? Alec Smith still does.’

  ‘Smith – does he indeed? White is quite the éminence grise.’

  Cannon’s index finger followed the grain of the wood on the table-top. ‘You see, my problem is that I will obviously have to handle the Eyam story, but I have no bloody idea how. When I saw you come in it struck me that we might be able to help each other.’

  Kilmartin’s steak arrived. ‘What d’you have in mind?’ he asked when the waitress had gone.

  ‘I’d like you to give me heads-up when this thing is going to blow. JT thinks I can drop my trousers and perform without any bloody foreplay.’

  ‘He wants it all to come out?’

  ‘No, he knows it’s just something we’re going to have to deal with now that Eyam is—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin quickly and cut into the steak. ‘There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to give you much advance notice.’ He looked at Cannon and noticed that the bottom of one eye was bloodshot and that his ears were flushed. Cannon was in his forties and wasn’t wearing well. ‘It is, after all, a very novel situation.’

  ‘I’ll say. Now, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. I’d like to know of any developments you hear about in connection with Eyam – what that fellow Ferris is up to. And the election is interesting.’

  They exchanged cards. ‘Probably better if I ring Number Ten once in a while,’ said Kilmartin. ‘Cell phones can be unreliable.’

  Cannon rested his chin in his hand, pushing the flesh of one cheek up. ‘You’re not an assassin, are you, Kilmartin?’

  Kilmartin continued eating for a little while, then put down his knife and fork and wiped his mouth with the napkin. ‘No, I am not an assassin,’ he asserted quietly with a look that ought to have made Cannon apologise and change the subject.

  ‘I heard someone today say you can’t kill a man who’s already been declared dead. That worried me. And the murder of that lawyer at Eyam’s place made me wonder if this is all going to turn ugly. We need to protect the PM from that kind of madness. He’s basically a good man, the best prime minister we’ve got; the country needs him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin.

  ‘Forgive me for asking that, but you know what they say about governments these days – they are run either by gangsters or spooks.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard it said, though it seems a little on the simplistic side.’

  21

  Avalonia

  Just before six, she left Dove Cottage by the back door. It was still dark: the air was cold and there were little patches of frosted grass that whispered under her boots as she walked along the track away from the road. An old canvas knapsack she remembered once seeing in Eyam’s rooms in New College twenty years before was slung over one shoulder. In it she had packed two Ordnance Survey maps, a compass, the second edition of Geology of the Welsh Marches, Eyam’s waterproofs, a torch, a bottle of water, a flask of coffee and some hastily made sandwiches. She took with her a long hazel walking stick, found by the back door, and tucked in the pocket of the old suede jacket were a pair of binoculars.

  Rising early and stealing a march on the day made her feel strong and optimistic, a mood heightened by the last of the Blue Mountain coffee. The route to the map reference, about eight miles north-east of Dove Cottage, followed the ridge behind the cottage then plummeted down an escarpment into a narrow valley where two small rivers met below a village. She reached the escarpment by the time the sun rose, and sat on an outcrop of limestone, scanning the path behind her with the binoculars. Nothing moved. Then she swept the landscape ahead of her, probing the blue haze for a small hill, which was marked on the map by a disused quarry. Once she had found it she set off again, her mind filled with the beauty and the unusual emptiness of the countryside, and the hope that she would see Eyam.

  As she drew near the quarry, moving cautiously along a sparsely wooded hillside, she began to focus on the note she had in her pocket. The map reference only provided a starting point. No destination was given, merely a direction that she had worked out by using a map in the Geology of the Welsh Marches, which showed the bands of different rock groups. She waited ten minutes then moved down to a lane, which passed by the quarry, and followed it until the entrance appeared on her left.

  The quarry was renowned for the fossils that had been laid down in the tropics as the Welsh and English landmass had crept north on the journey from a point sixty degrees south of the equator to its present position sixty degrees north. The message had said: ‘Leave from that which is named for the Silures and walk back through time to those that remember the Ordivices.’

  Having transferred these boundary lines to the Ordnance Survey map, she saw there was only one way she could walk to cut across all the different strata, and that was more or less in a westerly direction. The strata in the quarry dated to the age named after the Silures tribe – the Silurian, which from her reading of the night before she knew to have been about 420 million years ago. If she followed a line westwards along a stream the rocks became progressively older until she reached outcrops from the Ordovician period, 450–500 million years ago, named after t
he Ordovices tribe that had lived in North Wales. That was what the note meant by going back in time. Clearly whoever wrote it had drawn from the same source, for the book specified that in a little over an hour the amateur geologist could see examples of shale, sandstone, flags and limestone, and along the way pick up fossils of trilobites, though only usually their tails, which apparently shed as the animal grew. She stopped at the quarry but saw nothing except a fox darting among scrub and gorse bushes.

  After a tractor passed along the lane she left the quarry, found the stream and began to walk westwards, recalling the tedium of geography field trips at school. The air became cooler when she entered the gloom of a steep wooded valley that was more like the wilder Celtic fringes of Britain than Shropshire. The stream was in spate and where it had broken its banks and flooded the path she was forced to climb up and pick her way through the dripping undergrowth. The rational and lawyerly part of her character suggested that this whole adventure was ridiculous. As much as she was desperate to see Eyam and settle things, she was also aware that she should have listened to Turvey’s advice and returned to London. Instead she was running round the countryside with her little daypack like some love-sick Girl Guide.

  She stopped, leaned against a tree and lit a cigarette which she realised she didn’t want. At the moment she dropped it in the mud she heard a report above her as a stick gave under the weight of something or someone. The noise came from a patch of dense pine about fifty feet up. As she stared into the gloom she coldly reasoned with herself that if she were to be picked off by the same sniper who’d killed Russell, she wouldn’t have got this far. She waited, resisting the primeval fear of the forest. No sound came for thirty seconds, then a gentle rustling as whatever it was withdrew up the hillside towards a bluff of rock, which could just be seen above the treetops. She slid round the tree and moved to the water. The stream was swollen and the current strong, but on her side she could just see the bottom. She crouched and put one boot into the icy water, then the other, and stood. Water rose above her knees. Probing the bottom with her stick, she moved into the centre of the stream and felt the rocks and shingle shifting under her feet as though they were on a conveyor belt. Four more uncertain steps brought the water to her waist. She lunged forwards, seized hold of a bough, hauled herself to the bank and clambered onto dry land where she shook the weight of water from her boots. She turned and peered up into the trees. From the new vantage point she saw that two bulky figures had moved above the pine trees and were looking down at her. Their faces were in shadow but there was an intent about them that made her jump up and push through the undergrowth towards the disused rail track that she’d glimpsed once or twice over the last hundred yards. For some reason she remembered Eyam’s lines from the funeral – ‘And I’ll wait for you here, Sister, till we take the waters wide.’ And then she swore.