James Deegan - John Carr

‘If I’m going to tell the PM, I need to be sure.’

‘I’ve spoken to them myself,’ said Palmer. ‘They’re a hundred per cent certain. Meat is meat. No meat, no bodies.’

Meat is meat.

Justin Nicholls winced, Charlotte Morgan’s face entering his mind.

‘How did they get off?’

‘The Spanish are working on that,’ said Palmer. ‘The target boat might have slowed for a few seconds and…’

‘A sea transfer?’

‘Looks that way.’

Nicholls nodded. ‘Okay. Let me know immediately if there’s any developments, Alec.’

‘Of course.’

Nicholls ended the call.

‘Mr Nicholls?’ said a waiting aide. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’

She took him down through the back of the house and outside to the garden.

On the other side of the large, bowling green lawn, on a wooden bench pressed against the tall, brick wall, and under the shade of a large buddleia alive with butterflies, sat the Prime Minister, Penelope Morgan.

She was ashen-faced but holding it together.

She always had been a tough cookie, Nicholls thought.

Next to her was Sir Peter Smith, the grey-haired Cabinet Secretary.

Smith stood up and pulled a garden chair out and round in front of the bench.

The two men shook hands, Justin leaned down and kissed Penelope on the cheek, and then he and Smith sat down.

‘Is she dead, Justin?’ said Penelope.

‘No,’ said Nicholls.

‘How do you know? The boat… On the beach at Ceuta… ’

‘I’ve just had word. The Spanish say there was only one terrorist left on board when it went ashore, and he got off just before it went up.’

‘How can they be sure?’

‘Trust me,’ said Nicholls. ‘They’re sure.’

‘It was all about her, wasn’t it?’ said the Prime Minister.

‘It does look that way,’ said Nicholls, gravely. ‘The cruise liner at Málaga seems to have been a diversion. The main target was the beach at Puerto Banús.’

‘You mean Charlie was the main target?’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholls. ‘She and two of her friends were taken aboard a yacht – some sort of super-fast, millionaire’s plaything which had been stolen and the owner killed. The Spanish eventually got a chopper next to it and followed it all the way to Ceuta, where, as you know…’

Sir Peter Smith cleared his throat. ‘So if Charlotte and her friends were on the boat when it left Marbella, but not on the boat when it exploded, how did they get off?’

‘They must have had another boat waiting somewhere. You slow down, push them off into the water, and then haul them into the new boat… Not pleasant, but perfectly survivable. Clever, really.’

‘So where is she now?’ said Penelope Morgan.

Nicholls shrugged apologetically. ‘I assume they landed somewhere on the North African coast. We’re working on it.’

‘No word from the… from the men who took her?’

‘Not yet. But that’s the one thing to hold on to. Look, Penny, there’s no point in kidnapping the daughter of the British Prime Minister just to kill her.’

‘What happened to Eddie?’ said Penelope Morgan.

‘Her boyfriend? I’m afraid…’

Morgan looked down, her hands clasped together tightly.

‘He was a lovely young man,’ she said. ‘Paddy and I had high hopes of him. I must speak to his parents. They lost another son two years ago on a motorbike. How awful.’

‘I’m sorry.’

There was another, heavier silence.

Nicholls looked up at the mortar fence protruding six feet above the weathered brick wall.

He felt a pang of nostalgia for the old days, when the worst threat they had faced was a few angry Irishmen and their home-made fertiliser bombs. That had been bad, but manageable. He wasn’t sure the new enemy was going to be so easy to contain, much less defeat, unless the playing field changed dramatically – and the rules with it.

Penelope Morgan cleared her throat. ‘Why didn’t we know about this?’ she said.

Justin Nicholls was silent.

‘It’s a major failure of intelligence, Justin.’

Nicholls looked down at his feet for a moment.

The scale and nature of the threat they faced meant that it was impossible to stop every attack, but he knew that she was right.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There will have to be a full enquiry. But, for now, let’s worry about finding her and getting her back alive.’

The Prime Minister winced.

Sir Peter Smith stood up. ‘I have a couple of things to do ahead of the COBRA meeting. Will you be attending, Justin?’

‘No. C will be there, though.’

Smith nodded, said his goodbyes, and walked off into No. 10.

Penelope Morgan watched him go, and then looked up at the early evening sky above; it was a perfect blue, with a single fluffy cloud hanging overhead.

‘Gorgeous,’ she said, absently. ‘I remember my mother telling me that I was going to be Prime Minister one day. You know what she was like.’

Justin nodded and smiled, despite the situation.

‘We were down by the stables,’ said Penelope. ‘She said to me, “You’ll be the Prime Minister one day. Ten years at the Bar, then fifteen years of politics, then you mark my words, my girl, you’ll be the head honcho!” And here I am. I achieved her dream. Would have made her proud.’ She sniffed, fighting her emotions. ‘But I wish to God I’d married Dicky Coates and become a bloody farmer’s wife. When was the last time anyone kidnapped a farmer’s daughter?’

Nicholls said nothing.

The air was filled with late evening birdsong, and the muted sounds of London traffic.

Somewhere inside No. 10, a phone was ringing off the hook.

He said, ‘Have you told Paddy and the other kids yet?’

‘Paddy’s in the States on business,’ said Penelope Morgan. ‘He’s cutting it short and flying back tonight. Sophie was at her boyfriend’s house and is on her way up to town. Joff’s upstairs in the flat. He’s in a terrible state. It’s his big sister.’

She looked at Nicholls.

‘One thing does occur to me, Justin,’ she said. ‘How did they know where Charlotte was?’

‘Yes, that has occurred to us, too,’ he said, drily. ‘It’s something else we don’t yet know. We’ll look at the airlines and the hotel and all that, but someone probably told someone they shouldn’t have. It’s usually loose lips.’

Morgan nodded.

She thought for a moment.

Then she said, ‘I’ll stop at nothing to get them back, Justin. Whatever it takes. She comes home. They all come home. Is that clear?’

‘Well, we’ll…’

‘I’m serious. Never mind the courts. Those girls are in this position because I am who I am. And there’s no point being who I am if you can’t use what little power you have.’

Nicholls nodded.

Perhaps the rules had changed.

33.

FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES south, at 20:00hrs local time, John Carr was sitting in an interview room in the main Policía Nacional station in Marbella.

He was nursing a few bumps and bruises, and a split lip, and looking across a grey melamine table at a pair of Spanish detectives.

They’d just come back to the room after a while spent checking out his story.

Now the older of the two pushed a sweaty, Clingfilm-wrapped cheese-and-tomato roll across the table, along with a Styrofoam cup of weak Lipton’s tea, the yellow tag showing that the bag was still in it.

‘I’m formally telling you now that you are no longer a suspect,’ said the younger man, Inspector-Jefe Javier de Padilla. He spoke in Spanish, since Carr was fluent – he’d spent a lot of time in South America on Regimental operations targeted against the coke barons of Colombia and Mexico.