Adrian Magson - No Tears for the Lost

He threw a pointed look at the helicopter clattering about overhead. Its searchlight beam was lighting up half the county as it checked the woods and fields for further bodies or runaways, and the noise of the rotors must have ecgoed for miles. No doubt the press corps of half the known world would soon be on its way in, opening up the sleepy area of Colebrooke to the glare of international scrutiny.

‘Bloody difficult to hide any of it at this rate,’ Weller said bluntly, and gave her a hard look. ‘But I decide what doesn’t get reported. Got it?’

‘Okay,’ said Riley. She was happy to let the tabloids and news crews fight over the stark headline details, just as long as she got to write up the full background story. She didn’t much like the idea of Weller having any kind of say in what got published, but that was a fight she’d leave to Donald Brask. The idea of a good argument with the establishment might be just the tonic he needed. ‘Can we go?’

Weller nodded. ‘Yeah, get lost. But stay available. And don’t plan any sudden long-haul flights. Otherwise we might wonder about whether you’re ever coming back.’

When they arrived at Palmer’s Saab by the maintenance workshop, he gave an exclamation of dismay and poked his finger through a neat hole in the rear window. There was a corresponding hole in one of the side windows.

‘That should entertain my insurance broker for a while,’ he grumbled, climbing behind the wheel. He winced as he did so, a hiss escaping from between compressed lips.

‘Do you want me to drive?’ Riley asked him. She had noticed he was holding himself oddly just before the police arrived, and discovered a long burn mark across his back, with a thin line of blood dots where the skin had broken. It had been a close call. After some resistance, she’d persuaded Palmer to let a police medic give him a quick check and put on some plasters to prevent his shirt sticking to his back, with a promise to go to a doctor later that day. Neither of them had mentioned how the burn had occurred.

‘I’m fine,’ he insisted, adjusting the seat until he was comfortable. ‘It’s only a flesh wound.’ He laughed, wincing as the movement brought a stab of pain. ‘Damn. I always wanted to say that without wimping out.’

They didn’t speak much on the way back to London. There didn’t seem to be much to say. In between adjusting his position to ease his back, Palmer kept an eye on Riley until she caught him doing it and told him to stop or she’d slap him. He smiled and did as he was told. Her spirited response was a good sign.

‘What happened at the stables?’ Riley asked, as they approached the end of the motorway near Chiswick. She’d been dying to ask ever since Palmer had walked back from the stable block. His mood had been clearly sombre. Mitcheson, encouraged by Palmer to leave before the police arrived, had already disappeared into the night. ‘All that shooting. You could hve been killed.’

‘I was lucky,’ he said shortly, then added, ‘If Mitcheson hadn’t been there…’ He rolled his head in place of a shrug, and she wondered what he wasn’t telling her.

‘He shot Henzigger, didn’t he?’

Palmer nodded.

‘Wasn’t there any other way?’

‘He did what he thought was right. He thought Henzigger was going to shoot me.’

Riley stared at him, trying to read his expression in the poor light. There was something in Palmer’s voice that didn’t sound right. ‘But you don’t think he was?’

‘I don’t know. He pulled the trigger but I was lucky. He missed.’

Riley knew instinctively that it was all she was going to get out of him. He wasn’t defending Mitcheson, but neither was he condemning him. She guessed it was all she could expect and was grateful for it.

After dropping her outside her flat, he drove away into the dawn with a promise to keep in touch.

They kept their heads down, urged by Weller to keep a low profile while the press furore grew like an insatiable monster, feeding on every scrap of information, real or imagined. Initial reports of an armed siege at a country house gave way to lurid accounts of fire-fights in the Royal Triangle and dead terrorists being carried off in body bags, then drug smugglers being tracked across three continents before being cornered in rural Gloucestershire in what was described as a co-ordinated undercover police operation.

Riley stayed busy working on the wider story, drafting and re-drafting words which she knew would be subjected to the closest scrutiny by Weller and his people, and even then might never see the light of day. Donald Brask, healthy once more and fired with enthusiasm, left his electronic hideaway to sit with her in her flat, helping her put together the story for maximum effect. In between, he made a series of phone calls, narrowing down the list of editors to be approached when — and if — they were given the green light.

‘What if they kill it?’ she said sombrely, meaning the Home Office. A momentary lull in activity had brought a faint deadening of optimism. The idea that she had deliberately not gone to press with the account of the shoot-out in Colebrooke House in favour of producing the wider story later kept disturbing her waking hours. If the authorities didn’t let her publish what she knew, she would be too late to do anything.

But Donald seemed impervious to doubt. ‘Trust me, sweetie,’ he told her, ‘they won’t kill it. They can’t. They might quibble over bits and pieces… a name here, a detail there. But they can’t stop this ball rolling, I promise. It’s already gone too far.’

When she saw the twinkle in his eye, Riley felt a knot of excitement in her gut. Donald was planning something. ‘What are you up to?’ she asked him.

He replied by placing a finger alongside his nose. ‘Building expectation, sweetie. Enough of this is in the public domain to have gained its own momentum. Even Weller must know that. The shootings, Myburghe’s alleged involvement, the Colombians. But the dots need joining together. Without that, it’s a series of random events. And that’s what you’re doing: joining up the dots.’ He smiled like a cat with a large bowl of cream. ‘I’m merely letting it be known in certain quarters that I have access to the full story, and that it will come out. And Donald Brask, sweetie, as everyone knows, never makes claims he cannot deliver.’

It wasn’t until the second week after the shootings that Weller put in an appearance. He was cheerfully open about the progress of the case.

‘The Americans are smarting a bit,’ he told her. ‘They don’t like admitting that one of their people went bad. Neither do we, but we don’t make such a song and dance about it. Myburghe was a blue-blood, and everyone knows they’re as mad as snakes, anyway.’

Mention of Myburghe reminded her of the funeral. Sir Kenneth’s ex-wife and two daughters had been captured on camera, attending a private service at Colebrooke village church. Pale and nervous, they had flitted briefly across the public consciousness, before disappearing behind a solid screen of friends and wider family. Starved of willing subjects, the press had soon discovered other targets for their attention in the shape of official releases in the UK and the US about new measures to tighten up accountability in government and state agencies, to ensure nothing like it happened again. Quite what it was that had happened, however, hadn’t yet been fully disclosed.

Weller watched the cat, which was circling Riley’s living room with its tail erect, eyeing the policeman with a cold, flat stare. ‘What’s his problem?’

‘I think he fancies you,’ said Riley. ‘Why haven’t Palmer and I been interviewed?’