The Madness of July (7 page)

‘And so a sequence of events began,’ said Paul, like a solicitor obliged to take a client through an unhappy story. ‘Rapidly.’

Having stood on the other side of the door from the dead man for a few minutes, Denbigh, according to Gwilym, had gone into a kind of trance as a way of preserving his mental balance, but even in his torment he had recognized the origin of the dark blue passport that was making a little tent where it had fallen on the floor.

‘When I made my call to Special Branch they asked for any information I had,’ said Gwilym. ‘Well, all I had – apart from a corpse at my feet – was an American passport. So I read out the details, naturally. Osterley asked me to stay on the line and I waited. Disappeared for a good five minutes, then he gave me the third degree. Name and passport number that was recognized, national security, blah, blah, blah. The works. Stand by your beds; stay dumb. Well, what else could I do? I was in it up to my neck if I did anything else.

‘There was panic. Imagine us. Denbigh was as white as the corpse. He was guarding the door like Horatio on the bridge and I was shaking. Apart from his aunt, he said he had never seen one,’ he said, with a theatrical hand gesture in gesticulation at the memory of the body. ‘Great-aunt, actually.’

Denbigh had asked him a clerk’s question, Gwilym said. ‘He wondered if it helped– made a difference – that he was American.’

Happy to have a procedural problem to explain, Gwilym had recovered his fluency. ‘I understood how his mind was working, trying to find a way out. We all know about deaths in the House. Denbigh was hoping it might be easier with a foreign corpse. ’Tisn’t, of course. Makes no difference. Worse, if anything.’

His listeners understood, but allowed him to tell his story without interruption, explaining a difficulty that was well-known, but kept quiet. The parliamentary authorities had more than the usual dislike of dead bodies, because their building was still – technically and anachronistically – a royal palace, with one irritating consequence. The royal coroner was responsible for investigating sudden deaths on all such premises, medieval-style. Complicated, and a cause of public fascination. A legal horror show always best avoided.

Flemyng knew that, as a consequence, no deaths occurred in parliamentary precincts. They were not allowed: custom, and therefore fact. Whenever they did take place, they were officially denied. Gwilym had known the junior minister who had dropped dead in the middle of a speech, toppling to the floor like a stone obelisk, and was said to have expired in hospital some hours later. At least three members in his time, who had succumbed in different parts of the House to various kinds of sexual acrobatics, were said to have died safely outside the precincts, usually in the ambulance that took them away. A benign hypocrisy descended at life’s end.

‘I think that’s why Denbigh got on to me first, not the serjeant-at-arms and the rest of them. He was hoping that it might be dealt with at once. Awfully quickly. He didn’t think it through at all.’

Gwilym was wearing his hangdog look. ‘Well, it was dealt with, but by the wrong people. My fault. Sorry.’

He told of his instruction from Osterley, speaking from Cannon Row police station only a couple of hundred yards away. ‘You know Special Branch, how they work.’ Flemyng dipped his head. ‘I was instructed to wait for some workmen. Workmen!’

‘They were in dark blue overalls and I realized on the spot where they must have come from. They walked like an undertaker’s burial party, very downbeat, and there was one in a dark suit. That was Osterley. He’d summoned up a team from you- know-where.’ He jerked his head.

Paul said, unnecessarily, ‘Security Service.’

‘Of course,’ said Gwilym, ‘I realized then I was losing control of all this. What would the House authorities say? I didn’t dare to think. But I’m afraid it was all because of the big mistake I made at the beginning. Or was it a mistake, Paul? I don’t know.’ Paul nodded, a signal to continue.

He took them through his encounter with the emergency squad, which he said he immediately recognized as the kind of team with which you would hope never to have any dealings. Gwilym said the most unpleasant moment for him was when he’d realized one of the men was a doctor, because he began some preliminary poking around with the body, got out a thermometer. Osterley, the besuited officer, took Gwilym aside. They stepped on to the terrace a few yards away. Osterley expressed his gratitude for his discretion and for the call. He asked if anyone else had appeared, and, by Gwilym’s account, looked him in the eye in a deliberately unsettling manner.

‘I’m afraid I began to burble about the royal coroner.’

‘What did he say?’ Flemyng asked.

‘Stuff the royal coroner. Or something to that effect,’ looking at Lucy. ‘Then his exact words were, “He’s the least of our worries. Don’t fret, we’re getting him off the premises anyway.”’ Gwilym said he recognized fret as a patronizing word.

‘By this stage, I’m afraid I had an odd feeling of familiarity with the corpse, though we’d never met. Sorry. You know what I mean. I felt that I was sort of on its – his – side, if you follow me.’ Flemyng nodded, to keep the flow going.

‘I realized that they were about to cart off the body. What could I do? Osterley told me that I wouldn’t have to worry about a fancy inquest. He then said that other people were on their way, and didn’t leave me in much doubt where they were coming from. He waved across the river.’ Flemyng managed not to smile. His old friends were in on it already. Paul was shaking his head again.

‘I’m afraid it gets worse,’ said Gwilym. Denbigh had taken the next bit badly, and had to be spoken to by Osterley in a manner that verged on the brutal. ‘The policeman told us not to worry. He – the body, the cadaver, call it what you will – would be found again, somewhere else. That’s when Denbigh protested, started to melt down really, and was told to shut up. I didn’t like Osterley’s ghoulish grin – it’s the only way to describe it – but you can see how stuck we were. Frankly, we were scared. And I knew that we had rather messed it up.’

Flemyng asked if the policeman had given any indication where this second coming might occur.

‘No,’ said Gwilym, miserably. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘we’re assuming natural causes. Surely?’ His eyes moved from Flemyng to Paul and back again.

Having pulled himself round in the course of his story, he now slumped back in the chair. ‘What could I do? They backed a bloody van, a black one, right up to the point where the passage gives on to Speaker’s Court, locked the door at the top of the stairs beyond the store-room, and before I knew it they’d wrapped it up – the body – and it was gone. They took all its… his things with them.’ He paused before the significant addendum: ‘And the piece of paper that came out of his pocket.

‘I’m sorry, Will. There was no name on it, but it’s so distinctive, your number, I’d always know it – the last four digits stick in the mind. I use battle dates as an aide-mémoire, you’ll remember. Just a trick. You’re Agincourt. I’m Trafalgar, as a matter of fact. Nice. Anyway, when Osterley produced the paper I knew immediately what was written on it. Bells rang in my head, and I told him it was the private number in your office. Apologies.’ His eyes were anxious, gleaming with the pathos of the moment.

‘You did the right thing,’ said Paul. ‘They’d have identified it in a few minutes anyway. Quite right to help out. The question is – why?’

He signalled to Gwilym, allowing him to rest for a moment. ‘I should tell you all that I have had a first account, on the phone, from Osterley. I want to go through some of it alone with you, Will, but there are a couple of things that we all need to know. This body will be rediscovered soon and normal procedures will kick in. The embassy will be informed by the police – not Osterley and Special Branch, but by whichever regular officers are called to the scene.’ He looked down at his desk, and Flemyng understood the profound discomfort that was gripping him. He saw fear. ‘From then on an investigation into the cause of death will continue.’

He added, ‘as normal,’ spoken in a near-whisper.

‘There are naturally some complicating factors…’ At this Gwilym snorted a laugh. He subsided. Paul went on, ‘You and I will discuss them on our own, Will.’

Lucy rose and nodded to them both. Gwilym slung his jacket on and opened the door for her, following her from the room, to leave Paul and Flemyng alone.

‘It’s nearly two o’clock,’ said Paul. ‘I’m getting a full briefing by three, much of which I assume I’ll be able to share with you. But I can tell you one or two things now, your ears only, ask you a couple of questions, and suggest what you and I might do next. There’s also the opera tonight, and I hope that I can make that work to our advantage. You’ll realize why when you get there.’ Flemyng was surprised, assuming it would have been scratched from the diary.

‘We don’t need to rehearse your past connections, Will. I’m not only talking about the phone number when I say that you can’t avoid this one.’ Paul prepared to start the story proper.

‘McKinley, Aidan. That’s the name on the passport. I’m going to tell you now why it caused alarms to sound. Osterley was off the mark like a shot. An Irish name so he was thinking bombs, naturally.’ Paul spread his arms. ‘Rang the bell to see if there was any current interest, and indeed there was, but of a quite different kind. I think you can forget any Irish connection.’ He poured two glasses of water from the jug on a side table and gave one to Flemyng. ‘You’ll get something stronger later.’

Paul began to pace the length of the room. ‘The passport was clocked at Heathrow, early yesterday, Wednesday, because it popped up as one that caused us a little difficulty not long ago in Colombia, of all places, and was put on the watch list. Your old friends’ – he waved a hand towards the door, as if they might be gathering just outside – ‘were surprised it had turned up again. They didn’t expect that, so a decision was made on the spot not to challenge him but to find out where he went. They got help to put a scratch team together and saw him check into his hotel. The Lorimer, at the back of Harrods.’

Flemyng, knowing of the pressures on such operations, was surprised that they had taken the trouble. ‘Any more on him?’

‘Nothing yet. I’ll be better briefed later today. But you won’t be surprised to learn they couldn’t put a full surveillance team on him. Frustrating, but how could they justify a twenty-four-hour tail? An American posing no threat? We’re friends, after all.’

He put out his arms. ‘Same side.’

‘Now to the guts of it. This man, we’re all but certain, was operating for his government. Did he try to ring you? Your office will have a note, even if it was your private line.’

Flemyng met his eye. ‘I’ve been told of no call of that kind. What exactly do you want? Time to tell me, Paul.’

Instead, the cabinet secretary returned to his story and began to add pieces to the jigsaw, laying them down one by one. ‘There are things you need to know. First, that we are dealing here with an overdose of drugs. I’m told – it’s preliminary so I must be careful – that it looks that way, and there’s every chance that will be the finding at a post-mortem and an inquest. Not much doubt. I don’t want to sound callous, but that’s a relief. Second, I am positive that our two American guests at the opera tonight will know of it. It will certainly tell us something if they don’t. No more now, but if we assume that the embassy’s official channels learn in the next couple of hours that one of their citizens has expired in his hotel, which I am told is how it will happen, and then do a couple of basic checks, I can assure you that our visitors will come prepared. That’s the sort of people they are. Think carefully how you want to proceed.’

Flemyng looked out of the window towards the park, where two hours earlier he had dodged Lucy and made for his rendezvous. Paul Jenner’s story gave no clue to the operation that had caused that nervy summons and Sam Malachy’s warning about surveillance. Instead there was a hint of supplication in it. Flemyng wore the lopsided smile that in him always signalled excitement. ‘I think I know what you want. But we’ll come unstuck. You realize that?’

‘I’m betting we won’t,’ Paul said, ‘because we can’t afford to.’

He turned towards the books behind him, as if to search for something he had lost but gazed blindly at the shelves. ‘I’ll try to explain why. You need to be aware of something that I can’t yet describe to you in detail. Only half a dozen people in this whole jungle have the picture, and most of them only fragments. In all my time, I’ve never known anything like this. Deep, with not a trace on the surface.

‘I can tell you this much. There’s a negotiation going on with Washington right now that’s bloody sensitive beyond words.’ His face was hidden from Flemyng. ‘A big one.’

Turning back, he said, ‘We can’t afford trouble on that front. There is no evidence that this guy is connected to it, whoever he may be, but anything’ – he was almost growling – ‘anything that upsets this apple cart could be a disaster. Not just messy, I promise you. A nightmare. But no more of this now. I’ll have a word with you after the opera.’ He sat down, resting both his elbows on the desk, and finished, ‘Believe me.’

The exchange had swung increasingly fast between the two, the questions flowing from Flemyng and the answers from Paul. Now was the moment to switch. Flemyng wanted clarity. No misunderstanding.

‘I’m not going to ask, I’m going to tell. Forget the stuff about wanting my political brain. You know my past. And you know that Lucy knows, because of where she sits and the papers she sees from my old friends in the course of office business. You’re taking me back there, without telling anybody, aren’t you?’

Paul leaned back behind his desk, perfectly relaxed.

‘You want me to be a spy again.’

Paul smiled, and it was over.

5

Francesca searched for a card to send to Lucy. Another conversation so soon after the first might raise alarms; a note should do away with any awkwardness and be a natural progress for them both. In her office, she had a stack of cards showing operatic scenes, but didn’t want an image that might be thought to carry its own message. She shuffled through and discarded the broken heroes and mad lovers, with all their tears, choosing instead a painting of an Italian garden with a still pool at its centre, the cypress trees casting long, solid shadows on the water. The scene calmed her. She turned it over, and wrote.