The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  ‘And they know your phone number, so it’s reasonable to suppose that they’re monitoring your calls.’

  ‘You think so?’ said Kilmartin with puzzled innocence.

  ‘Oh come on, Peter, you don’t have to play the spook with me. They’re onto you. They know you met the Lockhart woman at a church where Eyam addressed his troops an hour later. They know about the Bell Ringers. They know the churches where they met. They have their names; they’ve got their photographs; they know how many people are involved. They’ve sprayed them with chemical dyes. And . . . they’ve got someone on the inside.’

  Kilmartin did not let his expression change. ‘Who?’

  ‘A woman: I don’t know her name. They’ve only just got their hooks into her.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  Cannon took a sip of his beer and thought. ‘I had lunch in the House of Commons today,’ he said eventually. ‘It was before the PM’s statement on the emergency powers. On the walls of that dining room are portraits of Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke and John Wilkes, three heroes of English democracy and as it happens three heroes of mine. They reminded me that they stood for the things I stand for – or did before I took this job.’ He drank some more. ‘I looked round the room and realised there wasn’t one politician there who had the slightest doubt about these emergency powers. And I was right – not one of them spoke in the chamber. Not one, and yet there is absolutely no need for these powers. They are being used to impress the public and give Temple a lift in the polls. And maybe they will be used against Eyam.’

  ‘I wondered about that.’

  ‘They call it function creep.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard the phrase.’

  ‘You saw the documents and CCTV on the web?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin. Kate Lockhart had warned him earlier and he was worried about Mary MacCullum.

  ‘Well, here’s the news. The men coming out of that building where the lawyer was attacked and robbed were at Chequers over the weekend. I saw them there and I am pretty sure they work for Jamie Ferris at OIS. They may have had something to do with Russell’s murder.’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ Kilmartin said, keeping a check on his surprise. ‘It does seem extraordinary that they were at Chequers. You know another two people were killed last night in a car crash?’

  ‘An accident, yes. I heard about it, but Temple wouldn’t have had anything to do with that. I know the man.’

  ‘So do I, but we are talking about two men here, aren’t we? John Temple and Eden White. What was it that Webster said? “A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil; he fashions all sins on him and the blows are never heard.”’

  ‘And Eden White is the devil.’

  ‘Let us say they help each other. There is an exchange from the coffers of corporate and political power that benefits both of them.’

  ‘Still, Temple couldn’t have known about this. He wouldn’t be that stupid.’

  ‘And he didn’t know about the death of Sir Christopher Holmes, the late head of the JIC, and his wife either, but it happened just the same.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the evidence but it is believed the inquest was fixed. A pathology report about injuries by the couple sustained before the fire wasn’t presented.’ He looked at Cannon. ‘When’s he going to call the election, Philip?’

  Cannon was still shaking his head but he answered without hesitation. ‘Wednesday – sometime during the morning.’

  Kilmartin placed his drink deliberately in the centre of the table and studied him for a moment. ‘Tell me something. Do you believe in what we are doing?’

  ‘In as much as I know about it, yes. But everything is against you. The emergency powers mean that they can arrest anyone and detain them; the fact that they know the names of everyone in Eyam’s group; the surveillance in London, which is now the most comprehensive in the world and includes facial recognition technology that will be primed by the ID card photographs of all the members of Eyam’s group. And I haven’t even begun on David Eyam – the man who faked his own death to escape paedophile charges; the millionaire who dodged paying death duties on his father’s fortune and has used it to finance an operation to destabilise an elected leader at a moment of grave national crisis. Do you need me to go on? To answer your question, no, you don’t stand a chance.’

  ‘But you believe Eyam is right?’

  Cannon gave a reluctant shrug.

  ‘Then you have to delay Temple on Wednesday. We need the entire morning.’

  Cannon pressed his hands together in prayer and touched the tip of his nose. ‘If you really believe it’s necessary, I’ll try. But the best I can do is eleven thirty, maybe midday.’

  ‘Midday,’ said Kilmartin as though he was driving a bargain.

  And then he felt one of two phones in his pocket vibrate with a message. He took it out and read the text from Kate Lockhart. ‘David collapsed. Call me.’

  He returned the phone to his pocket. She hadn’t used his second name, which was good. By now every computer at GCHQ in Cheltenham would be sifting the calls and text messages and emails for the name Eyam.

  ‘We’re glad of your help, Philip,’ he said. ‘You do understand this is an endgame of sorts. People will get hurt. You are certainly risking your job.’

  ‘Perhaps, but there are fish to catch and I have a book to write, and I won’t miss the British press . . . or June Temple.’

  Kilmartin nodded and began to rise. ‘You know to be circumspect if you call?’

  ‘Yes, there is one other thing. Bryant Maclean doesn’t want this election and he’ll be spitting tacks if Temple goes ahead without his blessing. That means he will take revenge because he can’t be seen to be letting people get away with defiance. Just a thought.’

  ‘A good one,’ said Kilmartin.

  28

  Night Moves

  Eyam was found slumped, but conscious, on a park bench in Kensington Gardens by a Spanish student. He was holding his phone. With his remaining energy, he asked the woman not to call an ambulance but to contact his friend whom he was trying to phone. She did both. He was taken to Accident and Emergency at St Mary’s, Paddington. Half an hour later Kate joined him in a curtained cubicle, where she sat watching his tormented sleep and the ceaseless movement of his hands across his torso. He woke fifteen minutes later and turned to her.

  ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘You passed out in the park.’

  ‘Damn!’ he said softly.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’

  ‘Miff and Freddie went to try to get access to Tony’s car. We need those packages. I decided to find my own way to your place – rather foolishly perhaps – taking a walk in the park.’

  A young nurse put her head round the curtain. ‘How are you feeling, Mr Duval?’ She looked at the notes. ‘It’s Daniel, isn’t it?’ She smiled at Kate and drew the curtain back. ‘You look better than when you came in. The doctor will be with you when the results from your blood test are back.’

  They waited for half an hour gazing on an average collection of London’s wrecked humanity; a hostile young woman who had been punched in the face, a taxi driver stabbed in the hand, a confused old man who was demanding tea and shouting that he hadn’t served in the army for eight years for this, and a large well-dressed Nigerian, whose English wife explained that he was a manic depressive who had been drinking solidly for the last twenty-four hours.

  The nurses spoke as though everyone was deaf. People came, wandered round and went – relatives, ambulance personnel, police officers, social workers, cleaners and porters.

  ‘I think we’d better go,’ said Eyam, but then a young Chinese man in jeans and a white coat arrived at Eyam’s side and began to examine him. He reeled off the treatment he had received over the past year for the cancer – the radiotherapy on his right side, the combination of drugs known as ABVD – Adriamycin Bleomycin Vinblastine Daca
rbazine, as Eyam insisted, and its side effects – nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite, and the chemotherapy he’d been given in Colombia.

  The doctor sat down and looked him in the face. ‘The level of your white blood cells is very low. You are likely suffering from an infection so I’ll prescribe antibiotics for that, but you should have injections of growth factor to stimulate the production of white blood cells.’ He paused to prod Eyam’s stomach. ‘To be honest, sir, I cannot tell whether you simply need general support or if the cancer has spread. That is my worry. I want to keep you tonight for observation and then you should have a scan and see a specialist tomorrow.’

  ‘No, I need you to get me through the next couple of days. It’s really very important.’

  ‘What can be so important that you risk total failure of your health, maybe even death?’

  ‘Trust me, this is vital. I want you to help me, doctor.’

  The doctor consulted his notepad and thought. ‘OK, it is lucky for you that I have some experience of this illness back home. I will do a deal with you, Mr Duval. There are three different types of drug that will need to be taken at strictly regular intervals during the day. But this is only a Band-Aid, Mr Duval. They won’t do you any good in the long term.’ He nodded vigorously to impress upon Eyam the seriousness of the situation. ‘I will also include a prescription for sleeping pills so that you get more than intermittent rest over the next two or three nights. These may help with the night sweats too. In return you must agree to come back here within the next forty-eight hours. Is that understood?’ He put out his hand to shake on the deal, then Eyam’s eyes closed.

  He beckoned Kate outside the cubicle. ‘Your friend is at the stage where he needs constant treatment and monitoring. Do you understand? The cancer will spread unchecked without chemotherapy and he may lose his life unnecessarily.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I don’t like doing this, but I know they’re pretty stretched up in Oncology. If you think you can look after him, I can just about agree to his discharge.’

  Twenty minutes later the drugs were brought up from the pharmacy and Eyam was wheeled to the hospital entrance where they picked up a cab.

  At her apartment she gave him the pills, put him to bed and left him to sleep. After an hour of pacing up and down the sitting room, she buzzed Kilmartin up.

  ‘How is he?’ said Kilmartin when he came through the door.

  ‘Not good.’

  Kilmartin grimaced. ‘This isn’t going well, is it?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I dislike the good-news, bad-news formula, but I have both. We’ve got a slot in the Joint Committee on Human Rights – that’s the committee that includes members of both houses. No one takes any notice of its reports of course, but it does have the power to accept the material and hear David in an open session.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The bad news is that they seem to have got an informant on the inside of Eyam’s little operation.’

  ‘They know everything?’

  ‘That’s about the sum of it, yes.’

  ‘God, we won’t last until Wednesday when Eyam’s in such poor shape.’

  At that moment the door opened and Eyam shuffled in. ‘I’m not dead yet,’ he said.

  She turned to him with a smile. ‘Make up your mind: that’s not what you were telling us last week.’

  ‘The first thing we need to do is to get this man a suit and haircut,’ said Kilmartin before embracing Eyam. ‘Welcome home, dear boy.’

  Kate was surprised by the delight flooding Kilmartin’s usually cagey expression. She dispensed more pills and gave Eyam a glass of barley water, an article of faith in her mother’s book of medical care, and stood by him with a matronly air while he swallowed the pills.

  Eyam sat down on the edge of the sofa. ‘You heard about the two killed last night?’ he said flatly. ‘That’s three deaths I’m responsible for. I have to make this work.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin. ‘It sounds brutal, but for the moment we’ve got to ignore them and keep going, eh?’

  ‘It’s not so easy. Tony was a good and dear friend and a wonderfully interesting person. We used to go walking together in the Pyrenees. He was a great naturalist too, you know: very good on plants and birds. Taught me a lot.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin. ‘Look, I’ve found you an assembly point.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They’ve got an informant, David. So I’ll keep this to myself for the time being, but I think I also have a means of getting your material into the House of Commons.’

  ‘How did you find out about her?’

  ‘You said her. So you knew?’

  ‘It’s Alice Scudamore: a beautiful and decent young woman put under intolerable pressure. Her sister is Mary MacCullum – the woman who helped me and was sent to jail.’ Kate glanced at Kilmartin, who was looking extremely concerned. ‘You see, Alice kept her married name after her divorce and because she always refused to give all her personal information to the National Identity Register, the government never made the connection. But when they did put it together they told her Mary would be sent to prison for another two years unless she worked for them.’

  ‘Did you know they were sisters?’

  ‘No, I never met Mary. Naturally, I saw her photograph in the papers but there was very little similarity except that they are both extraordinarily pretty. I didn’t know until Tony Swift told me last week, when he thought she was just about to go over. He was a natural at this game, much more than I ever will be. Anyway, he got her to return the documents I’d asked her to keep for me at the end of last week. He replaced the contents of the package: you see, no one knows what is in their envelopes because they are sealed. Tony told her a cock and bull story about what we planned to do – a press conference at a large hotel in central London. He had the wit to book the room in the name of the Bell Ringers.’ Eyam sighed. ‘Last night we had someone with her all the time – Andy Sessions, one of our best men – so we didn’t think she would be any danger to us. But clearly we were wrong. And now Tony’s been killed.’

  ‘But she couldn’t have known he would be killed.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘However,’ murmured Kilmartin, ‘she could prove useful over the next day or two.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Eyam. ‘Have you got a drink, Sis? I mean a proper drink?’

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’ She heard her mother’s voice as she said it.

  ‘I’m feeling better.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, unconvinced. ‘I thought you were dead when I saw you on that bed in A and E.’

  ‘I needed sleep: that was all.’

  She uncorked a bottle of red wine. Eyam held the glass up to his nose but did not drink.

  ‘There is something we need to settle, David,’ said Kilmartin, shaking his head to the offer of a glass and sitting down. ‘If they don’t catch you before, they are going to destroy you with this paedophile accusation. I am beginning to think the only reason that they haven’t gone public on this and the story of your faked death is because they would prefer to get you out of the way quietly. But if you manage to start making your allegations they will hit you good and hard with it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You know what I am asking.’

  ‘Did I download images of children being abused?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it make any difference to your position if I said yes?’

  ‘Yes, on the grounds that you would not be the best person to appear in front of the committee. I have given personal guarantees as to your good character and reliability.’

  He looked into Kilmartin’s eyes. ‘No, of course I didn’t, Peter.’ There was silence.

  ‘Is there anything else illegal we should know about?’ asked Kate.

  Eyam shook his head. ‘I think you both have a rather exaggerated view of my activities.’

  ‘There were stories,’ said Kilmart
in.

  ‘The stories that circulated about me were intended to harm my reputation. Was there any truth to them? Well, yes there was, but I’ve never done anything that would shock your neighbours in Herefordshire, Peter. As anyone knows, eroticism is a declaration of an individual’s sovereignty.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s no proof,’ said Kate, seeing that Kilmartin was embarrassed, ‘because the hard drive no longer exists.’

  ‘They’ve almost certainly got records from the internet provider, or they may have accessed your hard drive remotely,’ said Kilmartin. ‘They will make the case stick if they want to – even now.’

  Eyam ran a hand through his hair and looked at them in turn. ‘Tony thought that they’d planted my DNA at the location of a crime. They had access to Dove Cottage. It would have been a simple matter to pick up a few hairs, as indeed they did when they were seeking to match my DNA in Colombia.’

  Kilmartin slapped his hand down on the table. ‘Let’s forget this. I’m sorry for raising it. There’s a lot to go over and I don’t think I should be here too long.’

  ‘The more important thing,’ said Kate, ‘is that someone has to replace Tony as the hub of this exercise.’

  ‘It’s got to be you,’ said Eyam. ‘We’ll swap phones – mine has got all the group’s numbers and email addresses on it.’

  She took it. ‘And encryption?’

  ‘Up to a point,’ he said.

  Kilmartin and Eyam began to talk about the dossier. She went into the bedroom to make two calls. The first was to her mother and lasted no more than a minute. Again she was grateful for her mother’s puzzled but brisk compliance. The second was to a cell phone number in the High Castle area. It lasted much longer and required all her skills of persuasion.

  *

  George Lyme was still out at the Security Council meeting when Cannon returned to his desk at nine thirty-five p.m. on that Monday evening. He sat down and scrolled through the emails in his inbox, occasionally firing off terse replies. After dealing with a dozen or so he came to one forwarded from the press officer at the Department of Health with a message written in the subject panel: ‘Read this viral’, then below in the email: ‘Philip, no idea where this comes from but it seems better-informed than usual. If all that stuff at the bottom is true, very damaging. Best Geoff.’ Below was the title Who is Eden White?