Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

And I was to be the instrument. “Why don’t I just go to the police?” I asked.

He gave me a very small, very tight smile. “Because you would discover that the matter was beyond their competence.”

“Meaning HMG put it there?”

“Indeed.”

I thought of Harry Abbott; always so close to me, nudging me away from trouble like an escort ship taking a merchantman past a minefield. Except Abbott’s job, I suddenly realized, was to steer Bannister into the mines. “God, but you’re a slimy lot.” I stared at him. “Do you think Bannister murdered his wife?”

“I think it would be unscrupulous to make any conjecture.”

“If you want him dead,” I said brutally, “why don’t you use your thugs to do it? Or are you telling me that those chaps who used to disappear from my regiment went into monasteries?”

“Our thugs,” he said in a pained voice, “don’t have boats on Bannister’s lawn, nor the honour of Bannister’s acquaintance.”

“You could introduce them,” I said helpfully. “I thought Bannister was a friend of yours?”

“Rather more of Melissa’s, I think.” He did not look up at me as he spoke.

Poor sod, I thought. “Really? I never got that impression.” He tried to hide his relief, but couldn’t. “Not that they’re especially close, I think, but she has more time for a social life than I do.”

More time to slide in and out of bed, he meant. Both the Hon-John and I wore Melissa’s horns. “So HMG,” I said instead, “would be jolly grateful if I helped knock off Melissa’s friend Tony, and you’re telling me, in the slimiest and most roundabout manner possible, that the police will turn a blind eye.”

“You may put whatever construction you choose upon my words, Nick, and once again I entirely deny any imputation of a conspiracy to murder. All I am prepared to say, and that unofficially, is that we would like you to be helpful to a most important industrialist who could bring a great deal more investment and many more jobs to Britain.”

“Is that what Kassouli promised you if you turned a blind eye?

Jobs?”

That made him twitch. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick.”

“The man’s as mad as a hatter, John. He talks about unquiet souls.

He’s probably chatting to his daughter on a planchette board, or through some half-mad fucking spiritualist!”

“Was madness an occupational risk of hatters? I don’t know.” He looked at his watch. “Good Lord. Is that the time? And Nick?”

“John?”

“Not a word to the press, there’s a very good chap.” He paid and left me. I had gone to the Government for help, and I’d been abandoned. So I did the one thing they did not want me to do. I phoned Fleet Street.

The pub was dingy, smelly and, compared to the Devon pubs, expensive, but it was close to the newspaper offices which was why Micky Harding had suggested it. Harding had been one of the reporters who had marched every step of the Falklands with my battalion which, inevitably, had nicknamed him ‘Mouse’.

Mouse now brought four pints of ale to the table. Two for each of us. “You look bloody horrible, Nick.”

“Thank you.”

“Never thought I’d see you again.”

“You could have visited me in hospital.”

“Don’t be so fucking daft. I spent bloody hours outside your door, didn’t I? But you were being coy. What’s the matter? Do we wear the wrong perfume for you? Cheers.” He downed the best part of his first pint. “Saw your ugly face in the papers. Who beat you up?”

“Friend of Anthony Bannister’s. South African.”

“Well, well, well.” He looked at me with interest, sensing a story.

“But you can’t say that,” I said hastily, “because if you do I lose my boat.”

He closed his eyes, clicked his fingers irritably, then gave me a look of triumph. “ Sycorax , right?”

“Right.”

“Three bloody years and I haven’t forgotten.” I remembered how Micky prided himself on his memory. “God,” he went on, “but you were boring about that bloody boat. Still afloat, is it?”

“Only just.”

“How come you lose her if I say that you were beaten up by a mate of Bannister’s?”

“Because I need Bannister’s money to repair it.” Micky gave me a long and disbelieving look. “If I recall correctly, which I bloody well do, us taxpayers gave a hundred thousand quid to everyone who got badly wounded in the Falklands. Didn’t you qualify?”

“I got stitched up by a divorce lawyer.”

“Bloody hellfire. A hundred grand?”

“Damn nearly.”

“Jesus, mate. You need a bloody nanny, not a newspaper reporter.

So tell me all.”

I told him about Sycorax . I also told him about Bannister, Jill-Beth, Kassouli and the Honourable John. I told him everything. I told him how I had let myself be suckered into Kassouli’s house and how, as a result, I now had a problem. I wanted to head Kassouli off, not because I was on Bannister’s side, but because it was impossible to do nothing when so many jobs were threatened. It had become a matter of patriotism. Micky grimaced when I used the word. “So why don’t you just play shtum?” he asked. “Clearly the fucking Government’s happy for Bannister to get knocked over, the jobs get saved, and you keep your boat. What do you need me for?”

“Because there’s no proof that Bannister did kill his wife.”

“Oh. You want to be honourable as well, do you?” He said it in friendly mockery, then lit a cigarette and stared at the smoke-stained ceiling. He was a big man with a coarse tongue and a battered face and a mind like a suspicious weasel. He gave me an overwhelming impression of world-weariness; that he had seen everything, heard everything, and believed very little of any of it. Now he looked dubious. “It’s the word of a convict’s son versus the British Government and one of the world’s richest men?”

“That’s about it.”

“The VC will help, of course—” he thought about it some more—“but Kassouli will deny talking to you?”

“Utterly.”

“And the Government will say they never heard of you?”

“I’m sure.”

“Dodgy.” He went silent again for a few puffs of his cigarette.

“Do you think there’s a chance Bannister did it?”

“I haven’t the first idea, Mouse. That’s the whole point about a perfect murder. It’s so perfect you don’t even know if it was murder.”

“But if we say it was murder, Nick, or if we even bloody hint at it, Bannister will slap a bloody libel writ on us, won’t he?”

“Would he?”

“Of course he would. Worth hundreds of thousands, that libel.

Tax-free, too.” He shook his head. “It just can’t be proved that he murdered his wife, can it?”

“No.”

“It would be the perfect bloody murder.” He said it admiringly.

“And a damn sight cheaper than divorce.” He lit another cigarette.

“I want it. It’s a lovely little tale. A stinking rich Yank with a wog name, a murdering Brit bastard, a pusillanimous government, a copper-bottomed war hero, and a corpse with big tits. Just right for a scummy lowlife rag like mine. Cheers, Nick.”

“So can you help?” I felt the relief of a weight being lifted, the relief that I was no longer alone between the rock and a hard place. If the British Government would not take on Kassouli’s obsession, then the press certainly would. Kassouli’s threats would disappear in the face of publicity, for he would surely not dare acknowledge that he was trying to blackmail a government or plan revenge on the high seas. I would let the newspapers stir up the sludge and make a huge stench. The stench might even give Kassouli what he wanted; another enquiry into Nadeznha’s death. The stench would also release me from the whole mess. I had wanted help, and now I had it from the very people I’d been avoiding for over two years.