Time of Lies Page 16

  Kathy knew her Patrick. With stakes so high, Patrick would never depend only on fine words and hand-waving. He would have organised something else, something which would rock Zack to his core.

  Voilà, a photograph, a black and white glossy as if from a star’s portfolio. Kathy and Zack had to do a triple take. It wasn’t Richard Deshaye and it wasn’t Zack; it was an ingenious fusion of the two – Zack with leaner cheeks, straightened hair and Deshaye’s eyebrows.

  ‘From the pricey end of the Witness Protection Programme,’ Patrick declared. ‘Cosmetic surgery. The chance not to look like your brother. To have your own face, for the first time since you were fifteen months old.’

  Zack said, ‘I’m overwhelmed, how could I not be? Both of us. You want me to hide away for up to six months, to train and be ready to impersonate my brother, and then the two of us make new lives in another country. I’m blown away that you think I could carry it off. I do get that lives could be at stake, more lives than I can imagine. You’re giving us the long weekend to think about it – we’ll need it, for sure.’

  On the Shard’s glass skin the moon rose a quarter of an inch. Patrick ended the silence with, ‘Of course you would choose your own look, this is just a first go. Pin it up in the kitchen and see what you think in the morning.’

  Maybe the consummate professional would defeat the rats in the morning.

  28

  London, Friday 22 May 2020 (evening)

  The traffic heading west for the holiday weekend had been in full spate since mid-afternoon and yet, gone half past nine, it had only partly abated. Zack and Kathy’s journey home was scratchy and temperamental. Zigzagging cyclists, fluorescent or black, didn’t help. Glancing sideways at Zack, she saw he was in the other world into which she had catapulted him, staring at his possible Richard Deshaye face.

  Zack lowered the passenger window to exhale a big vape. ‘If we say yes...’

  ‘If you say yes,’ said Kathy.

  ‘If we say yes’ Zack kissed her on the cheek. ‘He says he’s discussed with you some help on Cairstine.’

  ‘Because it was going to come up anyway if we moved to Washington. Apparently there’s a retired nurse who could visit. She’s trusted, she used to work at Faslane. As it happens, her name’s Meghan.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘It is a bit freaky, but the point is she’s a mental health specialist. I mean, I guess it’s not surprising Faslane has them, with all those three-month tours away from family and friends.’

  ‘With hydrogen bombs to make up for it.’

  ‘Cairstine’s explosions will be nothing to her then!’ They both laughed.

  Uncharacteristically, Kathy poured out some expletives. Behind them a police car had switched on its flashing lights. Kathy was doing twenty miles an hour and left plenty of room for the car to pass. Instead of overtaking the police car flashed its headlights. As Kathy pulled over they both started at an unfamiliar chirp inside the car. Patrick had given Zack a clean phone, to call at some point over the weekend with his ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It was vibrating next to the hand brake. Zack took the call as the car came to a halt. Within seconds, without Zack saying anything more than ‘Hello’, Kathy knew that something was badly wrong.

  Zack looked up. ‘Patrick. Something bad has happened. He wouldn’t say what. He’s asking us to follow the police.’

  The words from the officer through Kathy’s lowered window were the same. They set off in convoy towards Wandsworth.

  ‘How did the police know where we were?’ Zack mused.

  That was simple enough: the new phone. What bothered Kathy more was what bad thing could have happened, and why would the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence be so early in the loop on it?

  The descending clouds they had watched from the Shard unleashed a spattering of rain, a down payment on what would come within the hour. Kathy could have sworn their route was circuitous, but it was night in Wandsworth, a part of London neither of them knew. One Shell station with a 24-hour shop could look like another. Somewhere they turned into an office park. Lit by street lighting were offices on three sides – a six-storey 1960s concrete flat-roof, a more recent eight-storey building with sloping tiles and finally a recent twelve-storey development complete with a half-hearted atrium. They parked behind their escort on the fourth side.

  ‘That’s Patrick’s car,’ pointed Kathy. Apart from a soft glow from the dashboard, the car was dark.

  The side where they had pulled up was a four-storey open roof car park of the same vintage as the 1960s office building, with more blue lights, police floodlights and forensic screens blocking the entrance. The low level fluorescent lighting showed few cars parked above them. Giant shadows were cast by a police floodlight on the roof level. The shadows moved as someone on the roof peered at them over the four-foot perimeter wall. As they got out of the car, a suited figure – Patrick – emerged from behind the screens and headed towards them. The lighting turned his hair into a silver halo. A uniformed officer made to follow but Patrick turned him back.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve got me again,’ he said, breathing heavily. He clasped their wrists, one each. ‘I’m even sorrier about the news. The Vigilance have got Alan – your neighbour. Got him and thrown him down from the car park. He died instantly.’

  Kathy let out a shriek and burst into tears, hugging Zack and pounding him with her fists. His own tears mingled with hers.

  Raindrops tapped a hundred questions on the windscreen. ‘Why don’t we sit in your car?’ Patrick suggested. ‘Terence can get us some teas from the petrol station.’

  ***

  They raided the glove compartment for Kleenex. Ten minutes later they had calmed down enough to sip hot tea from Styrofoam cups, Kathy and Zack sitting in the front of their own car and Patrick in the back, the scene a dark counterpoint to the three of them opening champagne on top of the world an hour before. When she surfaced, Kathy seemed unnaturally cold and brittle.

  Someone had to speak, so Zack did. ‘All my life I’ve been running from my brother and searching for a mission. Now I’ve got my mission.’

  ‘Not yet you haven’t,’ said Kathy, looking at Patrick. She was hoarse, so the words came out with painful slowness. ‘Both of us need to know how the permanent secretary of the MOD comes to know within minutes about a retired banker falling from a car park in Wandsworth? So fast that even his private secretary hasn’t a clue.’

  Silence lay between them for a minute. Zack’s expression turned from puzzled to concerned.

  ‘Kathy.’ Patrick paused, calm as always. ‘You seem to be wondering – why don’t you just spell out what you’re wondering?’

  She shook her head. Her throat was clamped tight, as if in a vice.

  ‘OK, well let me spit it out. Kathy may be suggesting that the only way I would have known so quickly about Alan’s death is if I had arranged it, in order to help both of you make up your minds. Kathy, is that fair?’

  Kathy nodded stiffly.

  ‘I understand the question. I even grasp the reason for asking it, mistaken though it is. The answer is simple enough. More or less from the day we started working on our embryonic operation, 102A Walsingham Road has been watched continuously, for your protection and ours. Kathy, you are sufficiently trained to appreciate that none of this is hostile – quite the opposite. With so significant a mission, making mistakes is simply not an option.’

  A second nod, slightly longer.

  ‘At 7.45pm tonight a car pulled up outside 104. It contained representatives of the Vigilance. After an altercation, Alan got into the car. Of course we were aware that he was not just a neighbour but a close friend, and that his image had been circulated by the Vigilance after the firebomb on Wednesday. About ten minutes before you and I, Kathy, set off for dinner the watchers asked me whether they should follow. I said yes.’

  ‘F
ollow, but not intervene,’ Kathy whispered.

  ‘Correct. As you see, the car park was nearly empty so the team could not follow in without being noticed. When they saw a body fall they contacted the police. By then we were in the Shard. I only caught up with developments on my way home. As soon as I knew, I asked them to find you to meet me here.’

  ‘Which happened within minutes because we were being tracked.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We took a circuitous route so that you could get here first.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘They’re bastards!’ exclaimed Zack. ‘We have to stop them.’

  Kathy sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she turned on the windscreen wipers and studied the figures moving round the forensic screen. ‘I need to see Alan’s body,’ she said. ‘Don’t lie to me, I can see it’s still there.’

  Patrick sat up like a startled rabbit. ‘You don’t need to see the body, believe me.’

  ‘Someone needs to identify him. You can’t, and you won’t want the watchers coming out of the shadows.’ Kathy pushed the driver’s door open.

  Patrick reached out as if to stop her. ‘Of course, but see him in the morgue tomorrow. The police haven’t finished … you need some rest, Kathy, you’ve had so much to take in in one day.’

  Suddenly Kathy exploded. ‘I’m a naval officer, Patrick Smath! For once, stop telling me what I can do and let me tell you what I can do. I’ve seen a mother and baby drown in the Mediterranean as far from me as you are now. Zack, this doesn’t need you – one person is enough to identify.

  ***

  Patrick nodded, and the officer at the screen explained that a man had fallen from the roof onto the automatic ticket barrier, with extensive consequent damage to his internal organs. Kathy braced herself.

  The grey and pink checked pants were stained with blood. The front of the midriff had been gouged open and its contents disgorged, creating a cocktail of blood, urine and faeces. The ridges and ravines of the man’s face were largely untouched. The helpless eyes drew Kathy like silent beggars. She turned away to see Zack retching.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. Was the victim your neighbour, Alan Tinker?’

  Kathy nodded.

  The blue jacket bore the crest of a posh club as well as the regulation B. The rib cage had cracked under sharply angular wounds about two inches long. Next to the body the police were assembling parts representing about two-thirds of a black, metallic equilateral triangle – a Vigilance drone.

  The officer pointed to the fractured chest. ‘The ribs are cracked in two places from the drone being flown into the victim at speed. But the victim managed to strike back, hence the fragments.’

  Kathy’s organised self did the deductions. ‘Assuming this was on the top level of the car park, Alan would have collapsed. He was fit but in his seventies. His bones and his balance were brittle. So how did he get over a four-foot wall?’

  ‘With help,’ surmised the officer. ‘We’re searching for fingerprints or trace material.’

  When Zack had finished retching, he turned to Patrick. ‘I’m in,’ he said.

  PART THREE

  Stormstruck and split

  29

  Helsinki, Tuesday 26 May 2020

  Le Conseil des Ministres, prenant note avec satisfaction des progrès qui lui sont communiqués lors de l’établissement du Corps de Défense Européen, a approuvé les déploiements initiaux suivants, à effet immédiat:

  • un régiment d’infanterie à la Roumanie (Galat i);

  • un bataillon anti-char à la Lituanie (Paneve ž ys); et

  • un bataillon de parachutistes et un bataillon du génie à la France (Pas de Calais).

  The Council of Ministers, taking note with satisfaction of the progress reported to it in establishing the European Defence Corps, has approved the following initial deployments effective immediately:

  • one regiment of infantry to Romania (Galat i);

  • one anti-tank battalion to Lithuania (Paneve ž ys); and

  • one parachute battalion and one engineer battalion to France (Pas de Calais).

  30

  Brixham, Friday 29 May 2020

  The double bed is made for one and a half, but the wooden frame is sturdy and the sheets ironed. I grab a handful of duvet and inhale good housekeeping – freshness without chemicals, smoothness without hairs and no lumpiness from having been ripped out of plastic in the last twenty-four hours. The idea that others have been in the care of my hosts and were well looked after is comforting.

  The bedroom was also made for one and a half. The duvet’s overhang touches the walls of the room and the wardrobe is in the corridor. But the head of the bed presses against full-length sash windows. Through them, a trawler is making her way home, trailing seagulls like a bridal veil. The gulls are muted by double glazing.

  The house is like others in the row, tightly-packed, converted into holiday apartments overlooking Brixham harbour. But the wardrobe comes ready-stocked with size nine shoes with one-inch raised heels. The freezer has meals in Tupperware containers labelled by the day. Instead of a dining table there is a barbell, clips and three sets of weights in lavender and pink on a rubber mat: the friendly colours are unconvincing. On the small breakfast bar are instructions and a bag of powdered whey.

  This flat is the meat in the sandwich. I’m told I have a support team who will use the triple-locked loft flat, although I won’t see them every day. Audrey, the housekeeper, is on the ground floor. She’s an energetic fifty-year-old who scoots up and down the stairs like an advertisement for Lucozade. I’m sure the surveillance she provides will give the eyes and ears in the loft a run for their money. Apparently the loft contents are ‘very whizzy’, with several of the flower-baskets on nearby lamp-posts ‘playing on our team’.

  I glance in the mirror in the shower room (large but no bath, digital scales to measure my progress towards another nine kilos). Next to the mirror four A4 faces have been Blu-tacked to stare back at me from laminated card. One is of Bob taken as if from a lens embedded in the shaving mirror at No 10. The other three are ‘as ifs’: the photo of me with Richard Deshaye’s eyebrows and two other digital imaginings of me with variations in surgery and hairstyle. I take off my Zack-ish curls and enter the pine-floored living room wig in hand. This morning was too much of a rush for a once-over with the Phillips clipper.

  Looking out onto the harbour is a squat, dumpy woman older than Audrey, in a feminist T-shirt, trousers and a well-worn gilet. She’s short, not more than five feet tops.

  ‘Mary Lee Gannon,’ she says, holding out her hand. ‘Tea?’

  A review of something experimental which a Lee Gannon had directed comes back to me dimly. While the kettle boils I venture that I had expected a ‘safe house’ either to be forty minutes’ walk from the nearest habitation or a terraced house in a nondescript suburb – a stone unfindable in a large wasteland or on a pebbly beach.

  ‘Really?’ Mary replies. ‘Do you watch spy fiction?’

  ‘Some,’ I respond cautiously.

  ‘Then enjoy your first homework,’ she says, tossing across the kitchen counter a TV script. It’s episode one of London Spy, Tom Rob Smith’s thriller spun off from a secret agent who died inside his own luggage. ‘Study the scene where Danny’s going to throw his phone into the Thames, also the dialogue from page twelve with Scottie. Then pick another section you like. We – or whoever is paying you – have taken over the church hall from eleven till three for the duration. Out the front door, right and then left, about five minutes’ walk. Look for the church tower. When they wrote the cheque for the hire fee, I expect the vicar absconded to Barbados.’

  ‘I’m still surprised to be in Brixham.’

  Mary’s eyes roll. ‘Because it’s full of here today, gone tomorrow holiday-makers. And this is retirement country. Which you’re
in because I’m retired. Fifteen minutes’ drive away in’ – Mary swivels, her index finger at the ready –‘some direction. I value my privacy. And you are with someone retired, because – so I’m informed – we may be working together for four days or four weeks or four months. Very strange. But let me tell you that in November, I’ll be with my grandchildren in New Zealand. If you haven’t done your big show by then, you’ll do it without me.’

  Mary puts down her empty mug and pivots a large behind off a kitchen stool. ‘This assignment’s crazy, but isn’t that what retirement’s for? You’re to learn to be your brother, but there’s no script. I don’t know what you are going to do as your brother – go on breakfast TV, chair the Cabinet or invade a small country? On that front the amount of help I have is one thing only – that you won’t have to be him for more than thirty minutes, and for anything beyond polite conversation the words will be given to you. But then they tell me, you’re not only his brother, but an actor, albeit one of whom we have never heard. Someone thought this might make our job easier.’

  I feel brusquely ruffled. ‘Well, it might.’

  ‘We’ll see. See you in the church hall in ninety minutes?’ With which she heaves herself out of my life, for now.

  As I finish my tea I’m thinking myself into Danny’s head. I trust that Mary will recognise my professionalism. Imagine trying to do what I’m going to do with someone who wasn’t an actor! We need to establish mutual respect, but it shouldn’t take us an hour (if that) to get out of the suburbs of technique and into the crevasses of Bob’s character.