Gavin Lyall - The Crocus List

He reached to pour more wine; Maxim held his hand over his half-empty glass. The Lyttelton Buffet wasn't ideal for a secure conversation-the round white tables were bunched too close together-but they had chosen one in what passed for a corner of the shapeless room, and it was early enough for nobody to have taken a table next to them. And as George had predicted, nobody from the Cabinet Office would have been tempted south of the river by the rather tame chicken curry or the savoury pie, even with as much free pickle as he had piled on it.

"Harry, suppose I were to say to you that once or twice in the history of our noble police force, known to be the envy of all nations, there has been a crime which caused such a public outcry for a solution that somebody went out and found the likeliest culprit, fitted the evidence neatly around him-and everybody else lived happily ever after. Would you believe that?" •"1 would," Maxim said unemotionally.

"Then why can't you believe it works both ways? Here we have a public outcry, albeit silent, for no conspiracy. I don't give a damn what the papers say. Most people feel just the way we did last night"-he nodded at the DDCR -"'Just let it be some loony.' It's a comforting feeling; maybe it goes back to the idea that madmen are touched by God, so nobody's toblame for all this. Best of all, it should keep the Americans cool-God knows they've got their share of armed fruitcakes-and that's the most important thing for our Department. As for the Home Office and Security and the police, well, political assassins are something they're supposed to know about-ahead of the act. They'll happily settle for some lone nutter as well.

"Now, given that sort of pressure not to find a conspiracy, don't you think a conspiracy might just not be found?"

He sipped his wine and said, almost to himself: "It isn't corruption. Nobody gets anything for himself- except maybe a quiet life. It's just politicians, civil servants, police and all getting together to give the public what it wants. A rare and rather beautiful event, really. "

"How will they get over the Russian connection?" Maxim asked.

George shrugged. "I don't have to remind you that the AK-47 dates from 1947: how many millions, tens of millions, have they built since then? I doubt they know themselves, let alone where they've all got to. I don't subscribe to the theory that the Bravoes are all supermen, it's too big an organisation for that, but I doubt they'd send a man to kill the President with a Russian rifle, Russian grenade, Russian telephone numbers-and stupid enough to miss besides."

Maxim nodded. "But that doesn't prove he was working alone. The fact that he made himself unrecognisable-"

"Except for Russian weapons and telephone numbers. No face, no hands, but those. Personally, I would sooner destroy a couple of telephone numbers than blow off my head-and any serious intelligence organisation in the world agrees with me. They simply don't send people on missions which depend on suicide to protect their cover.

Some people take their L-pills, some don't. The point is, you can't be sure how people will behave at that final, very private, frontier crossing."

The DDCR looked suspiciously at the level in George's wine-glass.

"All right," Maxim said. "Then some fringe terrorist group, fanatical…"

"There is nothing we can prove. Not today. Perhaps not until somebody turns up the identity of the man at the Abbey. But the Steering Committeeis today. I just want to get you through that, and I want you to do it by telling them what youknow, and nothing else. Yes sir, No sir, and Don't know sir-remember that one particularly. Then we may be able to strike somedefacto deal: we don't push for a conspiracy, which we can't prove, if they go easy on the security aspect, at least as far as the Army's concerned. The Army," he repeated, playing to Maxim's weakness-or strength.

Maxim recognised that. He glanced at the DDCR, who said nothing. "If that's all, I think I'll walk back over the footbridge. Get a breath of fresh air." His face was calm and blank.

When he had gone, the DDCR made a grunting, sniffing noise and said: "Rather an interesting chap. Not sure I'd want an Army full of him, but…"

"Quite." George looked around at the small bar in one corner. "I think I'll have a spot of something to neutralise the coffee. For you? Not even a brandy? Yes, our Harry does try to do the Right Thing from time to time. Terrifying, isn't it?"

The conference room-one of many in the Cabinet Office on the corner of Downing Street-was an elegant reminder that the building had originally been designed by William Kent for the true lords of Whitehall, neither spiritual nor temporal, but Treasury. It was a quiet, unhurried room smelling of scorched dust from the recently tumed-on heating; high-ceilinged, with white-painted panelling above the carved chair rail, and Maxim was seated with his back to a tall grey marble fireplace.

Of the six others seated around the green baize table-top littered with files, diagrams and tea cups, he had met three before: Sir Anthony Sladen, rigid and refined as the surroundings, which were his home ground; the new Director-General of MI5, an academic lawyer with brief wartime experience of code-breaking who had been appointed to appease Parliament and, it seemed, enrage George Harbinger; and Sprague himself, radiating friendliness as fresh as the rosebud in his buttonhole.

"So you aren't any longer suggesting that Person X threw himself on the grenade, then, Major?" The Chairman, Admiral Kirkland, was lean and thin of neck, with a sharp aristocratic face that seemed fleshless under its loose skin.

"No, sir, I just mentioned it as a possibility. I thought he came forward further than I'd expected in the circumstances. "

"The circumstances?" The Admiral blinked, puzzled.

"I'd shot him."

"Ah, of course."

Because of the strict hierarchical placing, Maxim sat next across a corner of the table from the Assistant Commissioner from the Metropolitan Police, a manwho looked like a perfectly barbered gorilla, contrasting strongly with the well-bred faces around the table. He asked abruptly: "Have you shot many men before this?"

Admiral Kirkland said: "Good God," but let the question stand.

"Some." Maxim wondered whether to try and count back, then added a tentative inspiration: "And I've seen quite a number of people hit by small-arms fire in operational situations. If they're not moving already, they tend to crumple or stagger to keep their balance."

Had he tried to be too helpful? But the glances and feeling around the table had swung against the AC. Policemen, Maxim was coming to realise, were seen in Cabinet Office circles as co-existent but certainly not equal.

Admiral Kirkland said: "Quite. What I'd say from my own experience. Don't expect we'll ever clear that point up."

The AC opened his mouth for another question, then turned a page of Maxim's statement instead. "Now, halfway down page 2, you met the inspector in the East Cloister. Where had he come from?"

"I don't know. There's several…" Maxim checked himself in time. "He was a bit further up the Cloister, towards the Abbey." Several members glanced at the big ground plan of the Abbey buildings which lay in the middle of the table, speckled with tiny coloured markers and pencil tracks. Maxim had already charted his own movements on it.

"How far from you?"

"Six-no, more, eight or ten feet."

"What did he say?"

"I said to him-I can't remember the exact words, but-"

"Just go ahead," Admiral Kirkland assured him. "Give us the sense of it."

"I asked if anybody had come past him and he said No, and then he said the shooting had been inside. The Abbey."

"What did he do then?"