Quintin Jardine - Dead And Buried

He glanced to his side, where Shannon and Amanda Dennis sat, then picked up a document and thrust it towards the director general. ‘Winston Chalmers isn’t nearly as tough as he looks, Evelyn. This is his statement, witnessed by Dottie; I had the whole story out of him in about two and a half seconds. He admitted to me that he strangled Sewell, on your orders, before I had a chance to interrogate him. He throttled him and then fixed it to look like suicide. If I’d chosen to see Sewell first, he’d have done it the day before. He also released Miles Hassett, again on your orders, into Piers Frame’s custody. As for Frame, he was astonished when you told him to pick up Hassett, but he didn’t question it, not until I did, not until I told him the truth. When you ordered Chalmers to release Hassett to Frame, we were meant to assume that he had asked you to turn him over to MI6. But that’s not how it was, Evelyn, was it?’ He glared at Grey. ‘Was it?’ he repeated.

‘As you know, it was not,’ the DG replied, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘I told Piers to go and get him, and to take Ormond with him so that Miles would know he was safe, that he wasn’t going to be driven off to a convenient hole in the ground somewhere. Piers thought he was being released into his father’s custody; given Ormond’s intelligence background that was entirely reasonable.’

‘Sure, but actually, he was just being released, to take care of the Titus Armstead problem, because by that time, you knew I would link him to his stepson, and through him, to you.’

Skinner looked around the room, the big upstairs apartment in the Surrey safe-house, the same one in which he and Shannon had interrogated Miles Hassett a few days earlier. ‘What do you think of your new accommodation, Evelyn? I hope you like it, because you’re going to be here for a bloody long time.’

Anger seemed to ooze from the Scot’s pores. ‘I haven’t hated many people in this life, but you’re high up in the group. Why? For many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that you played me, man, and you did it by using my weakest point, my inflated bloody ego. Why the hell should you have invited me to run this inquiry? Logically, I should have been a witness not an investigator, but no, you said you had to have me, and that the Prime Minister himself had backed your choice. I was hardly even flattered at the time; I believed you, took it as my due, until doubt crept in, and I went to see the Prime Minister, to discover that he had no knowledge of my involvement.’

His eyes blazed. ‘In fact, he had no knowledge of the conspiracy at all: he had been fed the official version, that it was a kidnap attempt, foiled at the last minute by his gallant forces. But once he knew what was happening, he opened all the doors for me, and he gave me access to the information I really needed, your own service record.

‘Evelyn, you’ve been hovering behind these guys for the last thirty years: when Josh Archer and Ormond Hassett were getting to know each other in Germany, you were their boss, the senior NATO intelligence officer out there. That’s when the three of you got together. When young Moses Archer needed referees on his Sandhurst application, who did it? You and Ormond, that’s who. Titus Armstead asked you both to do it, and you did. Anything for an old comrade’s son, and to oblige a CIA buddy as well. . and, who knows, the boy might prove useful in the future. You and Titus met in Germany too. All I have to do is run that tape some more and you’ll hear him admit that, and the rest. You and he have been pursuing your own agenda ever since.’

Skinner resumed his seat, facing the prisoner. ‘I knew all that before I went to America, and I had Piers Frame let you in on my plans. So you sent Miles to kill Titus. . but I warned him through Merle Gower that he would be coming. From the moment I left the PM’s room in the House of Commons you’ve all been under surveillance. Once I left Armstead with his video confession in the bag, I made a phone call and you were pulled in. The Americans are taking care of Titus, by the way: they set a team from the Dover air base on my signal and took him, and Miles Hassett’s body, away in a black van.’

He leaned across the table again, until the spymaster flinched. ‘You chose me to run your so-called investigation, Evelyn, because you thought you could control me. A soldier died in your plot after all, and you had Defence Intelligence to placate, so within your own community you had to be seen to do something. You planned to silence Sewell, and have Miles implicate him and name him as Bassam’s controller. Everything would have been closed off, and I’d have written a classic whitewash report for you to show to MoD and to take to the PM when you chose, to cover your arse.’

He looked at Shannon. ‘That’s what it was all about, Dottie, except for the part I’ve missed out: if Hassett had killed Armstead, he’d have been waiting for me to arrive, probably armed with part of the small arsenal that Titus kept in his cellar. That’s why I had to leave you in Washington.’ He gave a small involuntary shudder.

‘The irony of it all, Inspector, is that it wouldn’t have come to that, the whole thing would have worked, if only Miles hadn’t embroidered his carefully planned story by saying that he met Sewell on the Bulrush . Rudy was never there: it was Arrow he met, Arrow who gave him Bassam’s location, courtesy of his stepfather. I’d never have gone looking for a houseboat but for that slip. If I hadn’t, I’d never have found out who Moses Archer was, and I’d never have been led to Armstead, Ormond Hassett, and ultimately to the arch-traitor across the table there.’

‘And to what conclusion?’ Grey asked quietly. ‘As you said of Sewell and Miles at the beginning of all this, they can hardly try Ormond and me for all this, and we’re too important simply to disappear.’

‘Wrong,’ said Amanda Dennis, as she took a small-calibre pistol from the pocket of her grey jacket and shot him between the eyes.

Alex was at her desk, thinking about heading back to Gullane, when the phone rang. She had spent Sunday night there, and still did not feel quite ready to return to her flat. She had spent the morning giving Mario and Sammy Pye a formal statement, describing every stage and detail of her relationship with Willis Gannett. She had found parts of it embarrassing, but there had been the consolation that she was speaking to people she knew and could trust. Once she was finished, she had covered her bruises from the dressing-gown sash with cosmetic and had gone back to the office, blaming her brief absence on a sore throat, with the voice to back it up. No one related it to the stories in every Scottish newspaper about the arrest in Edinburgh of a suspected serial killer; only Mitch Laidlaw knew the truth and his discretion was absolute.

Work was the best therapy she knew. She was aware that it would not keep the horror at bay for ever, but the longer it did, the better she would be prepared to handle it. The worst thing for her was her father’s absence. He had always been there for her; she had never experienced missing him, and she found it a strange and disturbing experience.

She picked up the phone, and gave her standard office answer. ‘Hello, this is Alex.’

‘Hi.’ She recognised the voice at once: it was only a few days since she had heard it, recorded, on the phone. ‘It’s Raymond. I was wondering how you are?’

‘I’m fine, thanks. What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like to see you. Not for long, just a quick drink.’

‘When?’

‘Now, if you like: I’m downstairs in Saltire Court.’

As she thought about it, she realised that she was feeling a little guilty. She had suspected Raymond Weston; more than that, she had been ready to believe his guilt without question, something of which she was ashamed, personally and professionally. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m finishing a couple of things here: go across to the Shakespeare and I’ll join you in ten minutes.’