Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘They’ve needed to speak to me,’ said Parnell, guardedly again.

‘They got anything positive? Suspects?’

‘If they have, they haven’t told me,’ Parnell said evasively.

‘They must have said something!’

‘They haven’t,’ insisted Parnell. ‘Nothing that’s given me any reason to think they’re anywhere close to an arrest. Anywhere close to understanding it.’ Not understanding it was joining the long litany of cliches, he thought. Parnell said: ‘What about you, Dwight? You’re engaging yourself in everything: what do you think about Rebecca’s murder and French flight numbers? You managed to find a connecting thread?’

Parnell waited expectantly for Newton to say he didn’t understand, but instead he said: ‘Maybe I could see something if I knew all that was going on… if I had an overview…’

The remark rang like a bell in Parnell’s mind. ‘You spoken to the FBI yet?’

Newton answered the internal telephone at once, identified himself but contributed nothing to the exchange before putting the instrument down. He said: ‘Sorry. Something’s come up. Will you excuse me?’

He’d leave the office, Parnell decided. But he wouldn’t excuse Newton from anything.

‘Which personnel files?’ demanded Newton.

‘He didn’t specify,’ said Wayne Denny. ‘His name’s Pullinger. A counsel for the FBI. He said he hoped their agents would be allowed access to the personnel records without needing a court order. Baldwin says it might give a misleading impression if we insisted, but that he wants himself and myself to be present.’

‘Go back and tell Pullinger that,’ decided Newton. ‘If he objects, then ask for a court order – that’ll be them creating a problem, not us.’

T he interview was geared for psychological pressure. There’d been a considerable input from the FBI’s profiling division at their Quantico training facility in Virginia, from which both Howard Dingley and David Benton were graduates, and the pressure was imposed even before the encounter began, by inviting Harry Johnson to the Bureau’s Washington field office – not by their going out to McLean – and advising the security chief to be accompanied by counsel, an obvious implication that he’d need legal protection.

Johnson arrived – in a sharply pressed suit, not his Dubette security uniform – with two lawyers, the company attorney, Peter Baldwin, and William Clarkson, whom the agents recognized from Dubette’s huddled legal group at the press conference. Clarkson, a quick-talking, fidgeting man, immediately challenged Dingley’s request to record the questioning, which Dingley countered by insisting it was as much to protect his client as it was to establish a verbatim record. A duplicate tape, as well as a transcript, would obviously be made available.

‘I don’t mind,’ intervened Johnson. ‘Let’s get it all down, hear what we’ve got to say to each other. Why not?’

‘Thank you,’ said David Benton, activating the machine.

‘It’s good of you to come. We appreciate it,’ added Dingley, at once seizing Johnson’s overconfident belief that he could handle whatever he was about to face, even on alien Bureau territory.

‘Anything to help,’ said Johnson.

‘You’ve probably got more experience of this sort of thing than us,’ flattered Benton.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Johnson, too quickly.

‘You were with Metro DC police before joining Dubette, weren’t you?’ said Benton.

Johnson’s face tightened, almost imperceptibly. ‘Uniform, never detective. Certainly not murder or terrorism.’

‘Don’t remember your telling us that you were with Metro DC police department when we first spoke,’ remarked Dingley. ‘We didn’t know that until we went through Dubette’s employment files.’

‘Don’t remember your asking,’ came back Johnson, truculently.

‘Maybe we didn’t,’ Benton appeared to accept. ‘Our oversight.’

‘What’s the importance of my client having been with Metro DC police?’ demanded Clarkson, sharply.

Benton’s frown was almost overemphasized. ‘The two arresting officers were from Metro DC…’ He looked at the security man. ‘I guess you already knew them, didn’t you, Mr Johnson?’

‘I’m not sure,’ doubted Johnson, quickly. ‘I left…’

‘… in ’96,’ finished Benton, more quickly. ‘Peter Bellamy and Helen Montgomery were at that time both serving in the Metro DC police department.’

‘Were they?’ said Johnson and stopped. There was a wariness now, the overconfidence wavering.

‘Yes,’ said Dingley and stopped.

The windows were double-glazed, preventing any outside traffic noise. There was none from any inner corridors, either, just the faintest sigh from the air-conditioning.

Clarkson broke the impasse. ‘Is this meeting over?’

‘No,’ said Benton. ‘We weren’t sure your client had completed his answer.’

Johnson was looking at the flickering light of the recording machine. ‘I had.’

‘I’m surprised, Mr Johnson, that you didn’t know Officers Bellamy and Montgomery,’ pressed Benton.

‘I was in administration in ’95 and ’96.’

‘Where were they?’ asked Dingley.

‘Outside uniform…’ started Johnson, stopping at appearing to know. ‘They must have been,’ resumed the man, again. ‘They’d have had to be, wouldn’t they, for me not to be able to remember if I knew them or not?’

‘We don’t ask questions to answer them ourselves,’ said Benton. ‘Is Metro DC police division that big? There’s shared communal facilities, surely? Canteen, recreational areas, stuff like that…?’

‘I’ve told you, I didn’t know every single person in Metro DC. Officers Bellamy and Montgomery I didn’t call to mind when they came to Dubette. After they came to Dubette, I remembered seeing them around, in the department.’

‘What’s the purpose of this questioning?’ asked Clarkson. ‘Are you regarding my client as being criminally connected with what you are investigating? In which case…’

‘We are not at this stage regarding or treating Mr Johnson as anything other than an essential witness in an ongoing murder and terrorist-linked investigation,’ broke in Dingley, formerly and with the same interruption preventing whatever closedown threat the lawyer might have intended.

‘It would be unfortunate if we strayed away from the reason for this meeting,’ warned Benton. ‘Things appear to be becoming confused, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid, things that are already confused becoming more confused.’

‘I think that’s an excellent precaution,’ said Johnson’s lawyer. ‘I’m also approaching the time when I am going seriously to query the point of a lot of this questioning, if it continues in the way it has so far done.’ During the exchanges, Johnson smiled and straightened in his seat, his confidence visibly returning.

‘I’m very sorry it went off course,’ apologized Dingley. ‘Our mistake. So, we’ve established, Mr Johnson, that although you worked for the same police department over an overlapping period, you never knew Officers Bellamy or Montgomery?’

‘Not as people I hung out with. Nineteen sixty-nine is a long time ago. We certainly weren’t friends.’

‘You left – retired from – Metro DC prematurely, didn’t you, Mr Johnson?’ asked Benton.

‘Again, what’s the relevance of that question?’ said Clarkson.

‘Establishing the reliability and credibility of witnesses in a forthcoming criminal prosecution,’ said Benton. ‘Our prosecutors don’t like courtroom challenges that could have been anticipated…’ He nodded towards the recording apparatus. ‘Now there it is, unequivocally on tape.’