Confirm or Deny (Gaffney and Tipper Mysteries Book 2)

by Graham Ison

“Just the bare bones. I didn’t even give him the names; he didn’t want to know. I told him it was an army officer, and what I presumed to be an ‘illegal’. He just asked me to keep him informed. It’s usual.”

  Gaffney was disconcerted. The Director-General had said nothing about Carfax being told. And the fact that he had not been given the names of Armitage and Dickson made no difference. If he was the leak, all he would have had to tell his KGB masters was that someone who was in contact with an army officer was about to be compromised. That would have been sufficient; they would have known who it was. But Carfax had been in the Security Service for years; must be close to retirement. Not that that made any difference, of course. The Russians were nothing if not patient – it was the peasant in them, thought Gaffney – and they’d been known to let a sleeper sleep for years before activating him, perhaps for just one job – or three!

  “When did you tell John Carfax?”

  “The day that your people were going to make the arrest, just as I was leaving for Teddington.”

  “The day you thought that they were going to make the arrest; it was only an assumption that it would be the Thursday.”

  “It had been a Thursday before, and Armitage had received a card. Yes, the day we thought it would all happen.”

  “So you told Carfax that day?” Hodder nodded. “Why then? Why not earlier?”

  “I judged that to be the best time. It would have hit the Press very quickly; these things always do. It wouldn’t have done for my master not to know. If I’d told him earlier, he might have forgotten.”

  “Forgotten?” Tipper sounded incredulous. “You’re about to arrest a spy, and he might have forgotten?”

  “He does have rather a lot on his plate…”

  “Or did you perhaps think that he might have been the leak? This, as you reminded me, was the third occasion.” Gaffney spoke softly. He knew from long, hard experience that you never got anything out of an interrogation if you browbeat your subject. He had once been paid a great compliment by a Hungarian whom he had interviewed years previously. “Mr Gaffney,” he had said, “I have been interrogated by the Gestapo, and by the Hungarian Secret Police, but I have told you more than any of them. D’you know why? Because you are a gentleman.”

  “No,” said Hodder. “I didn’t think he was the leak. At least, not him specifically.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It had happened twice before, John. I had this unnerving feeling that it might happen a third time. I don’t know why, but I just did. I wasn’t prepared to take chances. I kept more of it to myself than ever before; the need-to-know principle. It’s bloody awful—” He stopped and stared into space, and Gaffney noticed how ashen his face was; he was a man clearly under a great deal of strain. “You suddenly realize that you’re no longer trusting the people you work with. You start looking over your shoulder, and wondering. You start casting your mind back. I’ve conducted my own soul-searching post-mortems ever since those two other jobs – going back over them again and again in my mind. Each time wondering who I’d told – who’d perhaps got something about him that would make me mistrust him. You can understand that surely? It must be the same in your profession. Those trials you had in the seventies – the corruption; you must know what it’s like?” He looked at Tipper. “You particularly.”

  “It happens,” said Tipper unsympathetically.

  “John.” He looked back at Gaffney. “You must know what I mean.”

  Gaffney nodded. “Yes, Geoffrey, I know what you mean.” He drew him back to the main topic of their conversation. “Was there anyone else – anyone at all – who you told about this particular operation; never mind the others?”

  Hodder stared moodily at his feet. It was silent in the room, but the wailing of a police car’s siren rose above the hum of the Victoria Street traffic far below. Eventually he looked up. “No, John, absolutely no one at all.”

  “What about the watchers? They obviously knew.” It was Tipper, harsh and realistic, who posed the question. Gaffney realized just how shrewd a detective Harry Tipper was. He just sat there, a bland expression on his face, and then suddenly he posed a question that went straight under Hodder’s guard. Except that this time it had no effect, because there was no answer.

  “I thought of that, too,” said Hodder. The expression on his face had not changed. “But it was a different team each time.”

  Tipper was not prepared to let go. “But they could have talked.”

  Hodder looked suitably scandalized. “They wouldn’t,” he said.

  “Oh? It was you who talked about looking over your shoulder and wondering who you could trust. Why wouldn’t they have talked?”

  Hodder looked stunned. “You’re right, of course.” It was as though he had to keep reminding himself of the sudden unacceptable infidelity of his own colleagues. “The only thing is that they are so busy that they rarely have time to talk to each other. They’re all over the place most of the time.”

  “But it’s possible. They don’t have to talk to each other, do they? It only needs one of them. One of them and a telephone, and it’s done.”

  Hodder shook his head, only now seeing, as if for the first time, the endless possibilities that were being opened up by the policeman’s ruthless probing. “I suppose so. But I still say it’s unlikely.”

  Gaffney reached out for the packet of cigars which rested on the side-table next to the DG’s letter. “Geoffrey,” he said. “It seems to me that you’re saying that no one else could have known.” Hodder continued to stare at the floor at a point somewhere between himself and Gaffney, but said nothing. “You’ve already admitted that you were careful to keep the whole story to yourself; that you told your team some details of the operation, but not all. You said that Carfax, even, was told only the outline, and that was on the day of Armitage’s arrest – and Dickson’s disappearance. Apart from the DG, the only other people to know, obviously, were the watchers, but you argue, not very convincingly I may say, against them being in a position to pass on that information. What you’re really saying, Geoffrey, is that you are the only person from whom the leak could have come.”

  There was now a discernible tension in the room. Hodder’s expression remained unchanged and still he stared at the floor. After what seemed an incredibly long time, he looked up at Gaffney, vacantly, as if not seeing him at all. “Yes,” he said eventually. He spoke softly. “It looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  Suddenly Tipper weighed in, hard. “Are you saying that you are the leak, the traitor, Mr Hodder? Are you admitting it?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well what are you saying?”

  Hodder dithered. “Well, I er – I suppose I’m saying that it looks bad.”

  “Yes!” Tipper agreed. “Mr Hodder,” he said pleasantly, “as Mr Gaffney told you, I have spent all my service in the hard world of crime, investigating criminals.” He injected loathing into the last word. “And a breach of the Official Secrets Act is just like any other breach of the criminal law. It’s crime.”

  “I know that.”

  “I also know that criminals come in all shapes and sizes. From the East End of London, as well as from the finest public schools in the country, but at the end of the day it comes down to one thing – greed. Greed or intellectual superiority, usually misplaced, and sometimes ideology; although there’s usually an element of greed in that, greed for power too.” He flicked an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve. “How much did the KGB pay you? Or what did they promise you?”

  Hodder was white-faced and aghast, his hands clenched around the wooden arms of his chair. “They didn’t. I mean, they haven’t – it’s not true.” He shot a despairing glance at Gaffney. “John, you must know that.”

  But Gaffney remained impassive, and Tipper carried on. “I don’t believe you, Mr Hodder, and I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Mr Gaffney and I; we’re going to put you under the microscope. We’re going to exami
ne your lifestyle, and everything you do or have done. We’ll look at your wife, your friends; everything about your social life. We’re going to examine your bank account with a fine-tooth comb, and we’re going to find out where every penny came from. And we’re going to discover what you spend, and where that comes from.” He leaned back in his chair. “We’re going to shake you until your teeth rattle, mister, and then we’re going to hang you out to dry.”

  Hodder was sweating now, and his fingers were intertwining; spasms of rapid nervousness. “It’s not me,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  *

  “What d’you think, Harry?” asked Gaffney. He had returned to the small interview room after conducting the distraught Hodder to the main entrance of the Yard, and had sat down again opposite Tipper.

  “Nah!” said Tipper scornfully. “He’s too bloody honest. A bent bastard would have said bugger-all and demanded his mouthpiece.” Gaffney wrinkled his nose. “I tell you what, guv’nor,” continued Tipper, “he wouldn’t have the guts to nick a packet of aspirin if he was out of his mind with a migraine. I don’t think he’s our man.” He watched the smoke from Gaffney’s cigar curling up towards the ceiling. “If he is, he’s a bloody good actor.”

  “I think you’re probably right, but the field’s opening up already,” said Gaffney. “It was too much to hope that the only people who would be in on it were the five on Hodder’s team – and Hodder himself, of course. I should have realized that Carfax would be told, and that the watchers had to know… I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

  “And the Director-General,” said Tipper.

  Gaffney was learning not to discount his chief inspector’s quiet observations. “What about the DG?”

  “Might he be the leak? And another thing; when he gave you the list of the six on the team, why didn’t he think of Carfax and the watchers? One of two reasons: he’s already made up his mind who’s not under suspicion and ruled them out before they got to us, or he’s shielding someone. Perhaps he is bent.”

  Gaffney laughed. “You’re no respecter of persons, Harry. Are you really suggesting that the DG might be a KGB agent?”

  “It’s been suggested before, so I understand. Of course,” he continued in an offhand way, “I’m new to this Special Branch work, but…”

  “You’re talking about Sir Roger Hollis, I suppose?”

  “I suppose I am, sir,” said Tipper, smiling.

  “What you’re suggesting, Harry, is that the DG comes to the head of Special Branch and asks for help to uncover a KGB mole in his organization, well knowing that he himself is that mole.”

  “He didn’t come voluntarily, from what you said. He was forced into it by the Home Secretary. That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, true.” Gaffney reflected on that for a second or so. “Let’s take that a stage further then. A couple of jobs go wrong. The DG is duty-bound to report it to the Secretary of State. Then, on instructions, he asks us for help and we set up another similar operation.”

  “But he didn’t like the way you did it, sir. You said that he wanted to put his own hare on the run.”

  “You’re right, Harry – a double agent.”

  “Ample justification for it going wrong again. Suddenly his precious double agent goes bent – it’s happened before, if snouts are anything to go by – and he holds up his hands in amazement. ‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ he cries. Same result, but this time for a different reason. And he might just have instructed Hodder to keep it to himself, so that he could take all the blame when it did go pear-shaped.”

  “You’ve got a devious mind, Harry, but I think that’s stretching the imagination a bit far. Anyway, if the DG told him to keep it to himself, why didn’t Hodder say so, particularly when you were being nasty to him?”

  “Loyalty? Anyway, what other explanation is there, guv’nor? Christ, the bloody man admitted it. He sat here and said that no one else had the information he had. Even Mr Dobbs; he’s still pissed off about having to let Armitage out on bail, even though he now knows why.”

  Gaffney smiled. Detective Superintendent Terry Dobbs was indeed unhappy about the whole operation, and would be quite delighted at the prospect of an MIS officer being arrested, if for no better reason than fouling up his big job.

  “Well?” asked Tipper, “Where do we go from here, sir?”

  “We start what are known in the trade as in-depth enquiries. It’ll soon be an open secret that we’ve interviewed Hodder, I should think—”

  “D’you think so?”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway. We’ve got to start asking some direct questions some time. And I think we’d better start with the team. Find out if it’s true that Hodder told them little or nothing – and while we’re about it, Carfax, the watchers, and the DG. But the team first. I don’t want to put anyone on alert if I don’t have to. It’ll be interesting to see if they all support each other about what Hodder’s supposed to have told them or didn’t tell them.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?”

  “Misplaced sense of loyalty, perhaps. Hodder still can’t bring himself to believe that there’s a traitor in their midst. Trying to shield them, perhaps?”

  “From what, for God’s sake?” asked Tipper.

  “Savages like you, I should think,” said Gaffney.

  Chapter Eight

  Grenville Jackson emerged from the entrance leading to the steps of the gentlemen’s toilets and peered around the concourse of Waterloo Station. After a few moments of fruitless searching, he hurried across to Platform 15 and into the police office.

  “Hallo, mate,” said the constable behind the counter, “and what can we do for you this fine summer’s morning?”

  “There’s a bloke locked in one of my cubicles, boss,” said Jackson. “Been there an hour, I reckon.”

  “Probably fallen asleep. Night duty copper more’an like,” said the PC and laughed. “Why don’t you open it up – see what’s happened?”

  “Huh!” said Jackson. “Last time I did that some bloke was injecting hisself. Got very nasty – very violent.”

  “Yeah righto, mate, hang on.” The policeman put his head round the doorway into the back office. “Fred, pop over to the gents’ with old Grenville here, will you? He’s got a bloke living in one of his cubicles. Probably have to get an eviction order, bleedin’ state of the law these days.”

  A heavily built constable emerged from the office, putting on his helmet. “Come on then, mate,” he said. “Let’s go and have a look at your lodger.”

  Together, they walked across the concourse and down the steps. “Which one is it?” asked the PC.

  “This one here, boss,” said Jackson, pointing out a cubicle with the door closed and the little sign showing red.

  The constable bent down and peered under the door. Standing up and replacing his helmet, he said, “Well there’s feet there all right, but his trousers aren’t round his ankles. I reckon he’s kipping. Open it up and we’ll have a look.”

  The attendant unlocked the door and stood back. The policeman pushed it open and gazed inside. Slumped on the lavatory seat was a man with a plastic bag over his head. The policeman lifted the man’s right arm and felt for a pulse. “You’ve got a dead ’un there, Grenville, my lad,” he said.

  Jackson looked over the policeman’s shoulder, his eyes rolling; the policeman spoke into his personal radio.

  Ten minutes later, the ambulance arrived, silently; there was no sense in rushing to pick up a dead body.

  Together, the body and the policeman went to St Thomas’s Hospital where the casualty officer carried out his examination in the back of the ambulance. “Dead on arrival,” he said. “You can take him straight to the mortuary.”

  The mortuary nurse, a businesslike woman in her midforties, stood in the center of the room with her hands on her hips. “Not another one?” she asked. “That’s the third this morning, and not half-past nine yet.” She walked across and peered at
the corpse. “Well at least he’s clean and tidy. The last one was in bits – fell under a train. Oh well, let’s get started. You the officer dealing, love?”

  The policeman nodded and got out his pocket book. The nurse looked at him acidly. “Well give me a hand,” she said.

  Reluctantly, the policeman laid his pocket book down, and he and the nurse started stripping the body. That complete, the two of them sat down at a small table next to the naked corpse and began the tedious task of listing the property; she for hospital records, he for police records, and subsequently the coroner.

  “Found a name yet?” asked the nurse.

  “Yes,” said the PC. He spread the contents of the body’s pockets out on the table. “On the cheque book.” He slid it over so that she could copy it. “Plus one wallet, leather, containing twenty-five pounds in Bank of England notes, one Access card, one bank cheque card, membership card for the AA, quantity of corres, two one-pound coins, fifty-five pence silver, fourpence bronze, one yellow metal wristwatch… Hallo? What’s that then?” He held up a laminated plastic card with a peculiar multi-colored device on it. He turned it over. On the back was an instruction requiring anyone who found it to hand it in to a police station; there was also a paragraph drawing attention to a section of the Official Secrets Act. “That’s a pass for a government office,” said the policeman. “Must be a civil servant.”

  “It comes to them all, love,” said the nurse. “No matter who they are.”

  *

  “What am I supposed to do with this, Sarge?”

  The British Transport Police sergeant took the plastic card, turned it over, and then laid it on his desk. “Dunno, mate,” he said. “Ring the Met – they’ll probably know.”

  The station officer at Kennington Lane police station wasn’t quite sure either. “I could tell you what to do if it was property found in the street,” he said, “but found on a stiff – that’s different. If I was you, mate, I’d try Special Branch at the Yard.”

  The sergeant on duty at Special Branch listened to the railway policeman’s story and made a few notes. “Describe the card,” he said, and made a few more notes. “And the name, what’s the name?” He wrote that down, too. “Hold on, mate, I’ll see what I can find out.”