Adrian Magson - Deception

‘Were you approached by anyone while you were away?’

No reaction. Harry wondered about Pike’s background. The slip of paper hadn’t said, but it was obvious the NCO was no idiot. At a guess he’d been to university or technical college, maybe even through industry, before joining the army. His voice and speech were middle class, even if his language wasn’t.

‘How did you support yourself for the last three months? Did you have help?’

Still nothing.

‘Man like you, you’d be a valuable commodity to some people. . all the knowledge you’ve got in your head. We know there’s a market out there, and buyers. If you spoke to anyone, you really don’t want us finding out later on. It would help your case if you said so now. Who approached you?’

‘Nobody approached me, so leave me alone.’ Pike spoke through clenched teeth. He was clearly hiding something. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to talk about it here.

Harry took out a card and slid it into Pike’s hand. It carried his name and a telephone number. ‘Please yourself. My name’s Harry. If you change your mind and want to talk, get them to give me a call.’

Harry walked outside and took a short cut through the hospital car park towards the road where he’d left his car, his thoughts on what Pike could have been doing in Clapham. The man had been virtually home and dry, if what Ballatyne had said was true. All he had to do was horse-trade some information in return for a new identity and a new life, away from whatever had driven him to go AWOL in the first place. So, with no family ties and no baggage, why had he come back?

Then a thought struck him. Baggage. Pike’s room had been clean. After five days cooped up in a single room, wouldn’t there have been some rubbish?

He stepped back as a grey estate car drifted down the street and swung into the visitors’ car park right in front of him. The two men inside gave him a steady look as they passed. They wore the air of two individuals going about their duty, rather than visiting the sick, and Harry pegged them as police.

He watched them go, then dialled Ballatyne’s number.

‘Are you having me shadowed?’

‘Not me. I don’t have the personnel. Why?’

‘No reason. Must be getting paranoid.’ He rang off feeling mildly embarrassed. This job was already starting to get to him.

The street in Clapham where Pike had been staying was quiet, with only an occasional vehicle and a scattering of pedestrians. Harry found a space and climbed out of the car. As he approached the house, he passed a woman putting out a pile of bound newspapers on the front step. It was the same woman he’d seen looking over the fence at the rear while waiting for Pike to emerge. She looked the confrontational kind, and he wasn’t disappointed.

‘I saw you earlier,’ she said, brushing back a stray lock of hair. ‘You were out back with that chap. You know we’ve got Neighbourhood Watch in the street?’ She blinked furiously and he wondered at the fragile state of mind which allowed her to face a total stranger like this.

‘Glad to hear it,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Do you have a bin collection, too?’

‘Of course, we do,’ she muttered. ‘Cheeky bugger. You think we’re a third world country or something?’

Mad, he thought. Beyond seeing danger. ‘When do they come? The bin men?’

‘Tomorrow.’ She moved back to her front door. ‘It’s papers today. School collection. I should call the police!’

He thanked her and smiled, which finally seemed to unnerve her, and she disappeared inside, slamming the door.

He walked up the steps to Pike’s house and pressed the cleanest button.

‘Yeah?’ A male smoker’s voice, dry as sandpaper.

‘Tenant come to see the empty flat on three. The agent’s parking his car.’

A buzzer sounded and Harry pushed the door, thankful for people who probably didn’t even know there was a Neighbourhood Watch. He climbed the stairs and stopped outside No. 11. It was still open.

He stepped inside and saw that the scavengers had beaten him to it. The coffee table had gone, the magazines and newspapers tossed on the floor, and the blankets had been turned inside out. He opened the overhead cupboard. No bottle of wine.

He checked the window, which overlooked a corner of the rear garden. It explained why Pike had been surprised to see him. What it didn’t explain was why he’d come out armed and ready for a fight.

The place was clean, he already knew that, but he had another look, anyway. Then he closed the door and went back downstairs. Turned right at the bottom and walked down a short passageway to a rear door, and out to the service alley. Two bins were out ready for collection. They contained standard household rubbish: bottles, pre-packed food bags, supermarket packaging and other discards. Nothing indicating a bachelor lifestyle in hiding. Alongside them were two plastic bags, one secured with a wire tie. He opened the first one, which contained vegetable peelings, a hair conditioner bottle, coffee grounds and a craft magazine. Quilting and sewing. Definitely not Pike’s rubbish, then, unless he had a secret hobby. And he was no cook; he’d preferred his food ready made and full of fat.

The second bag held a scrunched kitchen roll, an old T-shirt with a torn sleeve, an empty milk carton and two crushed beer cans. . and three flattened pizza cartons.

And down at the bottom, a torn ticket stub from Eurostar, Brussels to London.

He thought about letting Ballatyne put his people on to it, but that would take too long. He rang Rik Ferris and read out the ticket number. ‘Find out who it was issued to and where from, can you?’

‘Thank God for that,’ breathed Rik. ‘I’m going stir crazy, my shoulder’s itching and my mum’s driving me nuts with all the phone calls. I was just about to go out and stab some car tyres.’

‘You want a tab?’ Sergeant Wallace held out a cigarette packet to Corporal Pike, who was huddled in the rear seat of their unmarked Vauxhall Vectra, staring out of the window. They were on the A12 heading north-east and had just got police clearance to filter through a two-lane accident. The delay meant other traffic was getting through in bursts, and they were surrounded by open road.

‘I don’t smoke.’ It was the first thing Pike had said since leaving the hospital, in spite of Wallace and his colleague’s attempts to start up a conversation. Neither of them enjoyed taking in men who’d gone AWOL; their stories were usually far from straightforward, and certainly too complex for snap judgements, even by hardened military policemen. But they tried to keep things civil.

‘You saw the Green Slime off,’ said Collins, using the derogatory term for members of the Intelligence Corps. ‘Tate, I mean. Put a right dent in his day.’ He grinned in the rear-view mirror, received a look of contempt in return. He shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

‘What makes you think he’s Intelligence?’ said Wallace, snapping his lighter and drawing in a lungful of smoke.

Collins looked surprised. ‘What makes you think he’s not?’

‘You didn’t see him use the Taser.’ Wallace spoke quietly, although there was little chance their prisoner couldn’t hear what he was saying. ‘Faced with a bayonet sharp enough to cut my old lady’s rock cake, he left it to the last second, then bam. If he was really I–Corps he would’ve got sliced and diced. Or panicked and shot the poor bastard.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t know what he is, but it’s not army intelligence.’

Collins sniffed and checked his rear-view mirror as they passed a junction. Pike was lolling against the side window, eyes closed. The road behind was clear. Then a silver-grey Mercedes estate joined the carriageway and slid up fast on the outside lane. Two up, he noted automatically. Business types, probably, lucky gits. Nice car with lots of muscle. Better than this heap of overdriven crap they were forced to use.