Stella Rimington: Dead Line

He entered the vestry apprehensively, confident the intruders would be long gone but worried about the destruction they might have left behind. So he was surprised to find the room untouched – the collection box (kept empty now) in its proper place, the cassocks hanging on their hooks; even the Communion articles sat on the dresser apparently unmolested.

Still anxious, he went cautiously through into the choir, dreading what he might find. But no, the altar stood unharmed, its white marble shining in a shaft of sunlight, and the delicately carved wooden pulpit seemed undamaged. He looked up and saw to his relief that the stained glass window in the chancel still had all its panes. Willoughby looked around, mystified, searching for signs of an intruder. There were none.

Yet there was a smell in the air, faint at first, then stronger as he moved down the centre aisle to the front of the church. Something pungent. Fish? No, more like meat. But Smithfield’s days as a meat market were over. It was being converted into smart apartments. And this was meat gone off. Ugh. The odour intensified as he examined the pews on either side of the aisle, all pristine, the kneelers neatly hanging on the backs of the wooden benches, hymnals in the low racks on every row.

Puzzled, he walked down to the front door of the church. Lifting the heavy iron bar that secured the massive oak door from inside, he swung it open, letting light flood into the nave. It was as he turned away, blinking from the sudden harsh sunlight, that he saw something odd. It was next to the large wooden box (a vestment chest originally, he’d always supposed) in which the extra hymn books were stored. Two or three times a year – at Christmas, or for the memorial service of a local dignitary – the church was filled to capacity, and then these spare books were pressed into service. But now they lay in a higgledy-piggledy heap on the ash-coloured paving stones.

He walked cautiously over to the pile, wrinkling his nose at the smell, which was almost overpowering now. In front of the box he hesitated; for the first time cold fingers of fear touched his spine. Trust in the Lord he told himself, as with both hands he slowly lifted the heavy oak lid.

He found himself looking at a young man’s face – a white face, an English face perhaps, in its twenties, with thinnish blond hair combed straight back. It would have been a conventional, perfectly usual sort of face, except that the eyes bulged like a gruesome parrot’s, and the mouth was set in a rictus of agony, lips stretched wide and tight over the teeth. The tendons of the throat strained against the skin of the neck like tautened cords. There was no question: he was dead.

As Willoughby stepped back, horrified and frightened, he saw that the man’s legs had been bent at the knee, presumably to cram him into the chest. The knees were pressed together, drawn up almost to the chin, held by a cat’s cradle of rope that encircled his throat, then passed down his back and around his legs again. The man had been trussed like a chicken, though since both his hands were gripping one end of the rope, it looked as if he had trussed himself. If that were so, who had put him in the box?

In her fourth-floor office at Thames House, in the counter espionage branch, Liz was telling Peggy Kinsolving about yesterday’s experiences at the Old Bailey.

‘Gosh, thank goodness it was you, not me,’ said Peggy, shuddering. Peggy had also played a key role in the investigation that had brought Neil Armitage into court.

It had been over a year since the young desk officer had transferred from MI6 to MI5. After leaving Oxford with a good 2:1 in English and vague scholarly ambitions, Peggy had taken a job in a private library in Manchester. There, with few visitors using the library, she had been free to pursue her own researches, which was what she had thought she wanted to do. But the solitary days and evenings soon began to pall and when, quite by chance, she had learned of a job as a researcher in a specialised government department in London, she had applied. At the age of twenty-four, still with the round spectacles and freckles that had made her family call her Bobbity Bookworm, Peggy had found herself working for MI6.

Peggy was a girl who thought for herself. She had seen enough of life to take no one at face value. But for Liz she felt something like… she had to admit it to herself something like hero-worship. Or was it heroine-worship? No, that didn’t sound quite right. Liz was something Peggy would have liked to be. Whatever happened, she always seemed to know what to do. Liz didn’t have to keep pushing her spectacles back up her nose whenever she got excited; she didn’t wear spectacles. Liz was cool. But Peggy knew that Liz needed her, relied on her – and that was enough.

Peggy had applied to transfer to MI5 after working with Liz on a particularly sensitive case – a mole in the intelligence services – and though MI6 were not best pleased, MI5 had welcomed her with open arms. Studying her junior’s eager face, Liz realised that Peggy now felt completely at ease in Thames House. She’s one of us, she thought.

‘When will we hear the verdict?’ asked Peggy.

Liz looked at her watch. ‘Any moment now, I should think.’

As if on cue, Charles Wetherby poked his head through the open door. Smiling at Peggy, he said to Liz, ‘Armitage has got twelve years.’

‘Quite right, too,’ said Peggy with conviction.

‘I suppose he’ll serve about half, won’t he?’ asked Liz.

‘Yes. He’ll be retirement age by the time he gets out. How did it go in the Cabinet Office yesterday?’

‘I was just writing it up. We had a guest appearance by Sir Nicholas Pomfret. Apparently there’s something hot off the press from Six.’

Wetherby nodded. ‘So I gather. I’ve just had a call from Geoffrey Fane. He’s coming across in half an hour. I’d like you there.’

Liz raised an eyebrow. Fane was one of Wetherby’s counterparts at MI6, a complicated, intelligent and tricky man, primarily a Middle East specialist, but with a wideranging brief covering MI6’s operations in the UK. She’d worked with him before and had come to realise that it was safest either not to sup with Geoffrey Fane at all or to do so with a long spoon.

Now Liz said, ‘Why’s he talking to us about this? Shouldn’t it go to protective security?’

‘Let’s wait and see what he has to say,’ said Wetherby calmly. ‘You know the PM’s pinning a lot on this conference. God knows what happens if it fails. I think the Middle East is in what the Americans call the Last Chance Saloon.’

‘There were two men from Grosvenor at the meeting.’

‘Was Andy Bokus one of them?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Head of station. They call him Bokus the Bruiser,’ said Wetherby with a smile.

‘He had a sidekick with him, a guy called Brookhaven. He seemed rather nice.’

‘Don’t know him. See you shortly.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Liz. She paused a beat before asking, ‘Is Fane coming on his own?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

She shrugged. ‘He sent Bruno Mackay to the Cabinet Office meeting.’

Wetherby grimaced, then gave a wry smile. ‘No, it’s just Fane, thank God. He’s hard enough to pin down without Mackay muddying the waters. See you in a bit, then.’

He went off down the corridor and Peggy left to return to her desk in the open-plan office.

What a relief to have Charles back in charge, Liz thought. Charles Wetherby, formerly director of counter terrorism, had spent several months earlier in the year on compassionate leave, looking after his two boys when his wife was thought to be dying from an incurable blood disease. At the same time, Liz had been transferred to the counter espionage branch, working for the dreadful Brian Ackers, a long-time Cold War warrior who couldn’t get it into his head that the relationship with Russia had changed. Liz had had to manage Brian Ackers and Geoffrey Fane as well. That Irish business! She still shuddered at the thought. If Charles hadn’t come back at the last minute it could have been the end of her. It was bad enough as it was. Anyway, Charles had taken Ackers’s place, since his wife seemed to have turned another corner. It wasn’t clear how ill she was – Charles never spoke about it.