Spare Me the Truth: An explosive, high octane thriller (The Dan Forrester series)

by CJ Carver

  Jenny withdrew a piece of paper from her pocket and read out a poem. Aimee fidgeted. Dan kept an eye on Mausoleum Man. When she’d finished reading, Jenny held out her hands to Dan and Aimee. Normally they’d hold hands as they walked out of the cemetery, but this time Dan turned away. She took Aimee’s hand, lifting her chin once more and looking dead ahead. He fell in beside her. He said quietly, ‘Since we’re being so honest with one another, who’s the man you rang from our landline last Friday?’ He added the time and then recited the mobile number.

  ‘Aimee,’ Jenny said, ‘do you want to run ahead? Show us the way out?’

  ‘No.’ Dan stopped Aimee. He’d seen Mausoleum Man leave the railings. He was walking behind them. Tailing them. He wanted Aimee kept close.

  ‘What, you need your daughter to adjudicate?’ Jenny’s tone was uncharacteristically acidic and this time he let his temper flare.

  ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I want to keep her safe. There are things going on that might put her at risk.’

  Jenny stopped in her tracks. Turned to face him. ‘Please, not again, Dan.’ She sounded weary.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your paranoia.’

  He decided not to mention Mausoleum Man, who had also paused. When they began to approach Fulham Road, Mausoleum Man brought out his phone.

  Dan leaned over to Jenny. He spoke softly, so Aimee wouldn’t hear. He said, ‘Who rang you?’

  ‘Bernard.’ The word was spoken with a sigh, as though she was exhausted.

  He blinked. ‘You’ve been talking to my old employer about me?’

  ‘He kept in touch after your breakdown. Not much, just the occasional call to make sure you were OK.’

  ‘Who’s Cedric?’

  ‘Who?’ Jenny glanced at him, the tiny kink between her eyes indicating she was genuinely puzzled, but he wasn’t taken in by it any more. His wife was a champion liar.

  He shrugged as though it didn’t matter, aware that Aimee was watching them warily. As they passed the chapel, nearing the exit, Dan glanced back to see if Mausoleum Man was following. He’d stopped.

  Dan didn’t see the other men until they stepped on to Fulham Road.

  One was standing on the opposite pavement, beneath a plane tree. The other stood to the right, at a bus stop. Both were looking straight at him. They didn’t look away when he looked back.

  ‘Aimee, Jenny. Step behind me.’

  Something in his tone made them do as he asked without questioning.

  The buzzing through his body increased. He considered turning around and walking back through the cemetery, but then a vehicle began to approach, began to slow down.

  A blue van.

  A small blue panel van.

  What felt like a bolt of electricity ran through his body.

  Automatically he looked at the number plate. Although nobody had been able to identify the van that had run Luke down, the witness had said the van was blue . . .

  The two men were checking the street. Eyeing the cars driving past, the smattering of pedestrians.

  They were lookouts.

  ‘Daddy?’ Aimee said at the same time as Jenny said, ‘Dan? Is everything all right?’

  The van pulled up five yards away, next to the pavement. Close enough but not too close to be threatening. The passenger door opened and a blue suede high-heeled shoe appeared below a shapely leg.

  For a second his heart faltered and even though he knew it wasn’t possible, he longed for it to be Stella.

  ‘Dan,’ the woman called as she climbed out of the van. Savannah. The driver of the van opened his door and climbed out as well. Ellis.

  His old work colleagues.

  ‘Join us?’ Savannah said.

  ‘Who are the guys?’ Dan nodded at the lookouts.

  ‘Safekeeping.’

  He arched his eyebrows.

  Savannah said, ‘They’ll keep an eye on Jenny and Aimee until you get back to them. That OK with you, Jenny? You remember Greg and Jonathan, don’t you?’

  Jenny gave a curt nod.

  Dan’s gaze was locked on Savannah even though he spoke to Jenny and Aimee. ‘I have to go.’

  Aimee’s voice trembled. ‘But what about ice skating? You promised!’

  ‘It’s work, sorry.’

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’ Her face scrunched up. ‘Pleeeease?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  Jenny looked at Dan and then at Savannah. She didn’t say anything. Her face was sad. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

  She sounded as though it was forever.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Savannah sat in the middle of the front seat, flanked by Ellis driving on one side and Dan on the other.

  Savannah said, ‘Greg and Jonathan will stay with Jenny and Aimee until we call them off.’

  Anxiety nipped his belly. ‘Who are your guys protecting my family from?’

  ‘It’s just a precaution.’ She turned her head to look at him. Her expression was as bright and alert as a cat on the hunt. ‘They’re not at risk. But we thought you might not come with us unless we played it like that.’

  True. The fact that Jenny knew Greg and Jonathan and had been happy to have them around, had convinced him it was OK to leave his wife and daughter with them.

  Ellis slipped through an amber light as they drove through South Kensington, around the pedestrian precinct lined with cafés and flower stalls, and past the huge facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  Dan looked at Savannah, ‘I thought you were in Brussels working with NATO.’

  She laughed. ‘Is that what Joe told you?’

  ‘And that Ellis moved to work with Customs.’

  Ellis rolled his eyes. ‘Typical Joe, winding me up. Just because I brought that carpet back from Afghanistan without declaring it.’

  ‘And I hate Brussels,’ Savannah added, pulling a face. ‘Apart from Vincent’s, of course, which serves the best steak on the planet.’

  Which made Joe a champion liar too. He wondered what else his old buddy had hidden from him.

  They joined Brompton Road, passing Harrods and turning right at the next set of traffic lights, towards Hyde Park Corner. Dan resisted the urge to ask where they were going. They would either tell him, or he’d find out when they got there, but he had the sneaking suspicion the journey wasn’t going to last much longer.

  ‘Sorry about the vehicle,’ Savannah said. ‘Can you believe we had to go out and hire it? We were told by those-who-know-best to use every psychological trick to make sure you came with us.’

  It had worked, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

  ‘Do you work where I think you work?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Yup.’ Her eyes twinkled at him. ‘Where you used to work too.’

  ‘Thames House North?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘In the Immigration Department?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Ellis chuckled. ‘I mean we deal with a lot of people who come from overseas, if that’s what you mean.’

  It wasn’t, but Dan fell quiet. They were now driving through the depths of Mayfair, and when Ellis parked three streets from DCA & Co., Dan wasn’t surprised. He followed them across the pavement and down some steps to a basement door with no number or nameplate. Savannah knocked. The door was opened by an upright, middle-aged man in dark trousers, white shirt and a waistcoat. He looked like a waiter.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ he greeted Ellis. ‘Ma’am.’ This to Savannah.

  ‘Hi, Mick,’ Savannah said. ‘You remember Dan?’

  ‘Of course.’ He inclined his head before opening the door for them.

  Inside was an intimate private bar. There were booths and armchairs and sporting photographs on the walls – motorsport as well as horse racing and golf. The room was empty. Not particularly surprising, Dan thought, considering it was 11.30 on Sunday morning.

  ‘This is the Gray Room,’ Savannah told Dan. ‘We can talk privately here without anyone listening in.’ She stepped lightly across the ro
om, leading Dan to a booth with more sporting pictures. No windows. A man sat on the right side of the booth. ‘This is Bernard.’

  Dan studied him with interest. Fifties, sparse grey hair neatly trimmed; pale, soft-looking skin; nicely cut jacket; blue tie. He looked very smart for a Sunday, making Dan wonder if he’d been to church.

  ‘Bernard Gilpin,’ the man introduced himself. He held Dan’s eyes as though waiting for a reaction but Dan didn’t recognise him. He did, however, know the name. Bernard Gilpin was the head of the Security Service, reporting directly to the Home Secretary. He was the DG, the Director General of MI5.

  Bernard said, ‘Welcome back.’

  Dan didn’t know how to respond, so he kept quiet. His heart was thudding, his senses tingling.

  ‘Please, do sit down.’

  Dan slid into the booth.

  Bernard glanced at Savannah and Ellis. He didn’t say anything, but Savannah said, ‘We’ll wait in the car.’

  After they’d left, Mick asked if they’d like coffee. ‘Black for you, sir,’ he said to Bernard. Then he turned to Dan saying, ‘Your usual, sir? White, no sugar?’

  Dan nodded, shifting slightly on his seat, uncomfortable that Mick knew him and how he liked his coffee, whereas he knew nothing about Mick. When Mick left, he said, ‘Did I come here a lot, or does Mick just have an exceptional memory?’

  ‘Both.’

  Bernard didn’t fill in the silence that followed. He seemed happy to sit and wait for their coffee without saying anything. It was, Dan thought, oddly refreshing in a world filled with people who, the second they sat down in a bar, brought out their phones. Bernard obviously liked having time to reflect, to think about things. Which was probably a good thing considering his job.

  Mick returned after only a couple of minutes and set down two large cups before leaving the room. Bernard took a sip of coffee. So did Dan. The coffee was good and strong, freshly ground.

  Bernard put down his cup. ‘Stuart Winter has told me you know about the amnesia drug.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that we paid for your rehabilitation.’

  Dan locked his gaze with Bernard’s. ‘Whose idea was it to erase my memories?’

  Bernard looked straight back. ‘Mine.’

  All at once, Dan understood.

  He closed his eyes briefly. ‘You wanted to stop a crazy man remembering crucial, top secret information.’

  Bernard nodded.

  ‘One hell of a way to do it.’ He was careful to keep his tone neutral.

  ‘You didn’t argue.’ Bernard took a sip of coffee and set his cup back in the saucer.

  ‘Who else knew, aside from Jenny?’

  ‘No one.’ Bernard took another sip of coffee. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve felt as though we’ve been going behind your back, but we were trying to keep you stable. We didn’t want to tip you back into the abyss.’

  The truth fluttered in his lungs like caged birds waiting to break free.

  ‘You told Dr Orvis your name was Cedric,’ Dan said.

  ‘I wanted to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Pretending to be a psychiatrist?’

  A look of amusement crossed Bernard’s face. ‘I’m not sure if I succeeded that well, but he seemed to appreciate the titbits of experimental medical information I dribbled his way. We’re looking at treating soldiers with the amnesia drug, you know. Could be invaluable. But in truth, I used the name because I wanted to stir things up a little.’

  Talk about an understatement.

  ‘So,’ said Bernard. ‘I expect you want to know about your past.’

  Another understatement.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. Just after you left university, you applied for a job with us on the Internet . . .’

  Dan listened to a sparse account of his Security Service CV. Where he’d worked – mostly London; what training he’d received – high-speed defensive driving, weapons, close hand-to-hand combat. And although Bernard filled in a few gaps, he said he couldn’t discuss anything in detail, and certainly not any past missions, because not only was everything confidential but Dan no longer worked for MI5.

  ‘I can, however, discuss your last job,’ Bernard added. ‘Which brings me to why you’re here today.’

  He pushed his coffee cup aside. Dan did the same.

  ‘Stella approached you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She wanted you to find Cedric.’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  Bernard nodded.

  They sat in silence for a minute or so, oddly companionable. Then Bernard said, ‘Cedric is a code name for a particular thorn in our side. An informant. A profiteer. The last job you did was with me and Stella. We were trying to find Cedric just before your son was killed. Just the three of us, on the quiet. But when you were hospitalised, Cedric went to ground. He vanished completely. When a year went by with no new intel we honestly began to believe you’d scared him into giving up his nefarious ways. We put Cedric’s file aside. Stella moved to DCA. Years passed.

  ‘We heard nothing about Cedric until recently, when something came up that alerted us that he’d resurfaced and –’

  ‘What something?’

  ‘– even though Stella was with DCA she agreed to work secretly with me again, to try to find him.’

  Bernard spoke straight over Dan as though he hadn’t been interrupted, compelling Dan to make a mental note not to interrupt again if he could help it.

  ‘Five years ago you were closing in on Cedric, breathing down his neck. You were so close to finding him . . .’ Bernard sighed. ‘It was Stella’s idea to bring you in and pretend your memory was returning, to draw him out.’

  ‘She wanted to use me as bait.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bernard’s eyes flicked to the door then back. ‘And I have to add that neither Stella nor I knew whether Cedric was a man or a woman. So don’t be deceived by the name.’

  Dan said, ‘Do Savannah and Ellis know this?’

  ‘No. Nobody does, except you and me. And I want it to stay that way.’

  Dan looked at him.

  Bernard put his hands on the table, the shadows beneath his eyes deepening and making him appear ten years older. ‘We had a suspicion Cedric might be one of our own.’

  Both men turned their heads when they heard voices. Dan checked his watch to see it was now past midday. People coming in for a drink.

  ‘Did Stella mention how Luke died?’ Bernard said.

  ‘She said . . .’ Dan took a deep breath. ‘That he didn’t die in a hit-and-run. Yes, he died in my arms, but he didn’t die on Brick Lane as I’d been told.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Dan opened and closed his mouth. ‘How did he die?’ His voice was hoarse.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Bernard said calmly.

  Dan felt the anger building in his chest and tried to push it away. ‘So how do you know he didn’t get killed in a hit-and-run?’

  ‘Because Caliber told us.’ He paused, as though he had all the time in the world. Dan had to resist the urge to reach across the table and put his hands around the man’s neck and squeeze the information out of him.

  Bernard said, ‘Caliber was the code name for one of your agents. Khaalid Rahim. You ran him.’

  Bernard went on to say that Khaalid came to England in a wave of refugees from Ethiopia in the 1980s. He’d survived civil war, droughts and famine, and arrived with no family and no money. Although he wasn’t a young man at thirty-five, he was a quick learner and was soon fluent in English. He started translating for clan members but before long he was fully employed as a teacher. He was a devout Muslim, and became a devoted family man with four children and seven grandchildren. He loved England and the opportunities it had given him, and even though it didn’t always make him popular, he was known for giving critics of his adopted country short shrift and terrorists that threatened his country even shorter shrift.

  ‘He walked into Ealing Police Station
six years ago,’ Bernard told Dan, ‘and told the duty sergeant that a hardline terrorist group linked to al-Qaida was recruiting and raising money in his community to buy a weapon that would ensure the insurgents won the civil war in Somalia.’

  Bernard leaned forward. ‘The fear in intelligence circles wasn’t just that they could return to this country on UK passports with the expertise and motivation to launch terror attacks; it was the thought of them getting their hands on the weapon that was being talked about. Code name GABRIEL.’

  Dan raised his eyebrows to appear mildly curious and try to cover the frisson that ran through him. The passports he’d discovered in Stella’s hidey-holes had shown the name Denise Anne Gabriel.

  ‘Gabriel,’ Bernard continued, ‘was in the prototype stage, top secret. QinetiQ developed it for us.’

  Dan knew that QinetiQ was a British company and one of the world’s leading defence technology and research experts.

  ‘One of their brightest young sparks had the idea for Gabriel and when QinetiQ brought it to us we immediately saw its potential. The British government funded Gabriel’s development in the strictest secrecy. We wanted to know how a bunch of Somali insurgents knew about it, so we got you to run Khaalid to try to get more information. It was Khaalid who gave us the name Cedric.’

  A low buzz of conversation rose. More people had obviously entered the bar.

  ‘We sent you undercover to meet with an illegal arms dealer, Besnik Kolcei, who had links to the Somalis. You were closing in on Cedric when Luke died.’

  Something in his tone made Dan stare. His mouth turned dry. ‘You think Cedric was responsible for my son’s death?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Bernard wouldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘What about Khaalid? Did he know how Luke died?’

  ‘We don’t know. Immediately after you were hospitalised, he was stabbed to death on his way home from the shops.’ He kept his gaze averted. ‘We suspect Cedric told Besnik that you and Khaalid were working for MI5.’