Ian Rankin - Witch Hunt

“I got it last night,” Doyle said proudly. “Went back to the house. There weren’t many snaps to choose from. We had to crop that one as it was.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Here’s the original.”

Elder studied the photo. It showed Christine Jones and a female friend posing on a beach. Christine was wearing a one-piece swimsuit, her friend a very brief bikini.

“Mmm,” said Elder. He looked up at Doyle, who was looking at the photo, then he glanced towards Greenleaf, who smiled. Yes, they both had their ideas as to why Doyle had chosen this particular photograph.

“And,” added Greenleaf meaningfully, “there are extra men on guard inside one-nineteen.”

“Not inside the other buildings?”

“We couldn’t stretch to it.”

“No way,” said Doyle, retrieving the picture. “We’re like india-rubber men as it is.”

Greenleaf was rummaging in the bag again. “We thought these might come in handy.” He lifted a walkie-talkie out of the bag and handed it to Elder. It was heavier than it looked. “They’ve not got much range, but...” Another walkie-talkie was handed to Doyle. When Greenleaf lifted out the third, the bag was empty. He crumpled it and stuffed it into his pocket.

“Not exactly unobtrusive,” commented Elder.

“True,” said Doyle. “Carry one of these and every bugger knows what your game is.”

Greenleaf said nothing but looked slighted. Elder guessed the walkie-talkies had been his idea. “I’m sure they’ll be invaluable,” Elder said.

“Here they come,” said Doyle. Which was, in a sense, true. Cordons had been hastily erected, traffic stopped. Uniformed policemen were suddenly in greater evidence than ever. Motorbikes arrived with their indicators flashing, the drivers had a word with someone, then they turned and headed back the way they’d come.

“Yes,” said Doyle, “here they come.”

The three men stood well out of the way as they watched the delegations arrive. Doyle was not impressed. “Why do they need all these cars and all this razzamatazz? Be a lot cheaper if they just flew the big cheeses in — first-class, natch — and had them all sit around a table. Look at all these bloody hangers-on.”

“I believe,” said Elder, smiling, “the term is ‘aides.’”

“Hangers-on,” Doyle insisted.

One car deposited the Home Secretary and his private secretary. Jonathan Barker fastened a button on his suit jacket as he emerged, smiling for the cameras. A gust caught the parting in his hair, and he swept the stray locks back into place. He glanced towards where Elder and the others stood, and frowned slightly, bowing his head so the newsmen wouldn’t catch the look.

“‘Shagger’ Barker we call him,” said Doyle from the side of his mouth. Elder laughed, quite loudly, further discomfiting the Home Secretary. The private secretary scowled openly at the trio as he followed his minister into the building.

“Why ‘Shagger’?”

Doyle shrugged. “He just looks the type, doesn’t he?”

“He was happily married until a couple of months ago.”

“Yeah, to his secretary. Says a lot about him, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?”

When the last delegation had entered the Conference Centre, Greenleaf expelled a long whistle of air between his teeth.

“The collective sigh of relief,” said Elder. The police and other security people all looked a bit easier now that everyone was safely inside.

“To think,” said Greenleaf, “we’re going to be doing this at least twice a day for the rest of the week.”

“Well, let’s hope we are,” said Elder. “I’d rather breathe a sigh of relief than a gasp of panic.”

Doyle chuckled. “I wish I could say clever things like that.”

“I take that as a compliment, Doyle, coming from the man who invented ‘Shagger’ Barker.”

Doyle made a little bow. “Now what?” he asked.

“Victoria Street,” said Elder. “Fun’s over here. Let’s see how security’s shaping up.”

Witch had been in the Victoria area since daybreak. Just after midnight, she’d stolen a car. It was her second car theft of the night, her first being a four-year-old Peugeot 305. For the second, she wanted something similar — fast but unshowy — and finally settled on a three-year-old Alfa Romeo. She’d gone outside London to accomplish this. A car stolen in London and then driven around London could be spotted by police. A car stolen in East Croydon and driven around central London might not. She had brought the first car, the Peugeot, back into the city and parked it on the corner of her chosen cul-de-sac off the King’s Road. Then she’d returned to East Croydon by the late train, a train full of drunk commuters and even drunker youths, and found the Alfa Romeo. Back in London, she had driven one particular route three times, with slight detours and amendments, memorizing the final chosen route until she felt she could drive it blindfolded.

Then she’d slept for an hour or two in an all-night car park, slouched in the front seat of the Alfa, awaking to a tingling feeling in her gut, a feeling that told her it was time. Time to put theory into practice. Time for the final day.

She’d watched the various entourages arrive at the Conference Centre, headphones clamped to her head. Her personal hi-fi’s radio news told her that the morning session would be short. Yes, because they were going to lunch at Buckingham Palace; she’d read that in one of the briefs prepared by the Dutchman.

The Dutchman was another unreliable factor, now that Elder had his hands on him. That was why she was here early, just to check what extra security precautions they’d taken.

As the sleek black cars had arrived, while she was listening to her radio, she’d been watching Dominic Elder. No chance of his spotting her of course. She was just one of a crowd who had stopped on their way to work to watch, from behind the metal barriers, the famous people arriving. She’d tucked herself in between two large men. And she watched Elder, watched him talking to two other men — they looked like police to her, probably Special Branch, MI5’s dogsbodies. One of them made a big show of the fact that he was armed. The other was quiet, almost sleepy in comparison. Elder looked tired and alert at the same time. Like her, he wouldn’t have been getting much sleep recently. Like her, he’d been waiting for this day. Beneath the shabby suit he would be carrying his own gun, the Browning. It was typical of him to buy British. Typical of him to keep faith with something which had failed him before...

She’d watched for a few moments and she’d looked up occasionally to spot the marksmen, armed only with binoculars thus far, as they examined the scene from their lofty heights. Then she drifted away. Her car was parked outside a mansion block in a street behind Westminster Cathedral, tickets on the windshield showing she’d paid for three hours’ parking. Three hours was the limit. She’d toyed with the idea of breaking into another car and taking a resident’s parking permit to stick on the Alfa’s windscreen. But any traffic warden worth the name would pause to compare license plate details.

She was playing a cassette on her personal hi-fi: an Ohm mantra repeated over the sound of a human heartbeat. It calmed her as she walked back to the car, got into it, and rummaged beneath the passenger seat for her civil service satchel and a green Harrods carrier bag. She glanced around her before opening the satchel and peering inside, seeming happy with what she found there. Her own choice of pistol was an Italian-made Beretta 9-millimeter 92F, a link to her days in Bologna as a member of Croix Jaune. She’d first handled a Beretta during the Gibson kidnapping. Christ, she’d been the only one of them who knew how to handle a gun. She’d practically had to teach them. Still, despite the clumsy trap laid for them, they’d all managed to escape with the ransom money. It had come in useful, that money...