Quintin Jardine - Dead And Buried

She looked at him for moments that seemed to stretch out, as if a scream, a denunciation was building up within her. But when it broke, it was quiet, a question. ‘Are you saying it was a mistake?’

‘Friendly fire? No, not in the sense you mean. Your brother made a choice he believed to be right for his country. Unfortunately, it brought him into conflict with me. I will live the rest of my life regretting that it happened, but it did. The way I rationalise it is that I believe, as he did, that it was something I had to do.’

‘I understand that,’ the woman told him. ‘I sense the same strength in you that was in Moses, although you’re very different men. But there’s one more thing I have to know, Bob. Why have you chosen to tell me this, when you didn’t have to? I think I realise that it’s not the sort of thing that’s ever going to be made public. So why have you come?’

He shrugged his shoulders, then straightened them, as if he had thought the gesture might convey indifference. ‘Because it would have been cowardly not to,’ he replied, ‘and also because, if things had been the other way round, it’s what my friend would have found a way to do.’

‘I’m sorry to call you up here again, James,’ said Russell Goddard.

‘Rector,’ Proud replied sincerely, ‘I wish I’d come up here more often over the years. What can I do for you?’

‘You can ease my conscience, James.’

‘About Claude Bothwell? You don’t have any need to reproach yourself there. You were the key to finding him.’

‘No, it’s not about Adolf, damn the swine. This is something else; it has to do with the murder of that awful man Starr.’

‘I beg your pardon.’ Proud gazed at him, taken completely aback.

‘There’s something I should have told you before, but I couldn’t believe that it was relevant. I was sure that there must be some explanation other than the most terrible one. Also, I was expecting to be asked about it by one of your people, but none of them ever called on me.’ The chief constable thought that he detected a note of criticism.

‘I’m an old man, James,’ Mr Goddard continued, ‘but I’ve retained most of my faculties. My vision is sharp, with glasses, and I’m remarkably fit for a man of my age. One of the ways I’ve achieved that is by remaining active. I go out on my bike during the day and sometimes I’ll even go out for a walk at night, when the television starts to bore me. I did so on the night of Starr’s death, at around ten thirty. I put on my coat and hat and I went out of the back door, for convenience. It’s easier to lock and unlock and not so heavy. I was just stepping into the lane when I saw a man. He was opening the door to Starr’s back garden. He didn’t see me at all, but I got a good look at him, and in the moonlight, I recognised him. I knew him because we were reacquainted at a school reunion last Easter. . one that you missed, incidentally.’ The rector smiled.

‘Who was it?’ Proud asked, as eager as a schoolboy.

‘It was young Nolan Weston, the surgeon.’

For once, the Scotsman , the Herald and the red-tops were united in their view on what was the lead story of the day. Their headlines trumpeted the appointment of Aileen de Marco, newly elected leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, as the country’s First Minister, the youngest person to hold the office, and the first woman. Their reporters reviewed her meteoric career, praising her skill and her courage; the few who referred to her private life reached the conclusion that it was exactly that. Their leader writers decreed, again with unprecedented unanimity, that her accession signalled the start of a new era for the country, in which the old stagnant political attitudes and structures would be swept aside.

Sir James Proud studied them all, his satisfaction growing with each favourable finding. He ended with the Herald , and was about to set it aside when a headline leaped at him from the foot of page one: ‘ MI5 Chief and MP Die in Chopper Crash. ’ Beneath it, there was a sub-head: ‘ Tories Face By-election Test .’ He folded the newspaper and read.

Downing Street confirmed last night that Sir Evelyn Grey, the director general of MI5, was one of three victims of a helicopter crash in Salisbury Plain. Ormond Hassett MP, the Conservative front-bench agriculture spokesman, also died when the craft went down and exploded on a flight from Surrey.

Sir Evelyn (64) had been head of the Security Service since 1989. He was regarded as one of the government’s most influential advisers, and as the most powerful figure in the British intelligence community.

Announcing his death, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman said, ‘The gap left by Evelyn Grey’s loss will be extremely hard to fill. The contribution which he has made to the national security cannot be overestimated.’

Mr Hassett (63) had been MP for the Spindrift constituency since 1979. A grain merchant, he spent most of his career on the back benches, until his appointment to the agriculture team in 2003. It is understood that he and Sir Evelyn had been attending adjacent seminars in Surrey and that the intelligence chief had offered him a lift home. The pilot of the aircraft, Mr Winston Chalmers (37), was also killed.

‘Now there’s a tragedy,’ the chief constable said aloud, sighing as he laid down the newspaper and turned to his in-tray.

Twenty minutes later, it was almost empty, when there was a knock on the door. ‘Come,’ he called out. It opened and his deputy entered. Proud beamed with pleasure as he rose from his chair. ‘Bob, welcome back. I wasn’t really expecting to see you again this year.’ He picked up the Scotsman . ‘I’ve just been reading about poor Evelyn Grey. Has that put your investigation on hold?’

Skinner stared at him blankly. ‘Sorry?’ he said.

‘The helicopter crash: he was killed yesterday, along with a Tory MP. Didn’t you know about it?’

The DCC recovered from his surprise, but not too quickly, he hoped. He replied with the literal truth: ‘No. Nobody told me. A helicopter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they say how Hassett came to be on board?’ The words were still echoing, when he realised that the chief had not named the dead parliamentarian.

It was a monumental gaffe: Proud knew that just as well as Skinner did. And then another possibility struck him. Had the slip been deliberate, even if only subconsciously? If so, it would make no difference, for the subject would never be raised by either of them again.

‘You look tired, my friend,’ said Proud Jimmy, as Skinner settled into the chair that faced across his desk. Then he corrected himself: ‘No, you look exhausted.’

‘I am. And, sweet Jesus, am I glad to be back.’

‘You’re finished in London?’

‘Yes, it’s all signed off: I’ve spent the last few days debriefing people, and being debriefed myself by some Americans.’

‘Americans?’

‘Yes, it went transatlantic. It was a very messy business, Jimmy: it showed me that I’d never really understood treachery before. I found out a lot about myself, too, and a lot about other people that I hadn’t really appreciated. As an example, I thought I knew Adam Arrow, but I didn’t, not at all. I saw this ultra-hard, ultra-efficient wee soldier, but really I was looking at a guy who had spent his life trying to live up to his dad, until it made him into someone else’s puppet. As another, I’ve always seen myself as a tough guy, but a moral one, yet Amanda Dennis was able to believe that another hard man would kill himself rather than face interrogation by me. That’s not what happened, but knowing me, she still accepted it without question. There’s one plus point, though. I found out that I can’t shoot someone dead in cold blood, not any more at any rate. The Americans gave me the okay to do that when I’d completed my mission in Delaware, but when it came to it, I declined. Maybe that was only because I actually liked the bastard I was supposed to terminate, but I hope not.’