(1995) By Any Name (15 page)

Trying not to think how he’d react if the trip around the town proved as fruitless as the combing of the flat, he returned downstairs and slung thermal blankets, ropes, and sleeping bags into one of the rucksacks. He also selected an ice pick with particularly lethal points. He considered packing a kerosene cooker, but decided it was too bulky to carry. He raided the cupboards in the hall and kitchen and packed tinned food and slabs of chocolate and Kendal cake. He found plastic bags, and matches already packed into a watertight container. He took rolls of plastic sheeting, a tin-opener, a can for heating water, a tin mug and a bowl.

When he tried to quantify what he was doing, he couldn’t. But without a past history, instinct was all he had. He was learning to trust it. So far it had kept him alive when several people he had come into contact with were dead. And he hoped it would continue to keep him alive long enough for him to fathom the mystery of who he was.

He packed the food supplies into one rucksack, everything else into the other and left them at the top of the stairs. Then he changed out of the leathers and wandered from room to room. The flat was quiet, still, ominously silent, and he sensed that thick veil clouding his memory again. More strongly than ever he wanted to reach out and tear it down.

He stood in the doorway of the living room, closed his eyes and imagined time tumbling backwards.

There had been voices in this room, women’s as well as men’s, laughter… friendship? Or an exercise in terrorist training?

Turning his back, he stepped over the rucksacks and walked to the two bedrooms at the end of the passage. There was a window in the right hand wall of the first one that looked out over the car park of an office next door. He examined the back wall. It was papered with wood-chip paper and painted with white emulsion. Somehow he knew the paper covered a partition.

Sure enough, when he tapped it with his knuckles it resounded hollowly. It was made of plasterboard he had seen being nailed on to a timber framework and he also knew that behind it lay a doorway that led into an adjoining house that faced the street behind St Michael Street. A house with high-ceilinged rooms and long passages. A house, where there had been a coal-fired range that had heated radiators, a house with green carpets and comfortable, old furniture…

The veil fell, denser and more impenetrable than ever. He went into the living room and opened the cupboard that held the DVD’s. They were stored in labelled boxes but one might conceal a home-made disc, one that possibly held a clue… He piled them in front of the TV, turned down the sound and began to slot disc after disc in the machine.

The first batch were all comedy; Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Monty Python. Then came an assortment of action films with muscle-bound Hollywood heroes doing ridiculous things that must have stretched the skills of their stunt doubles to breaking point.

He smiled, remembering convulsive laughter, then that maddeningly familiar masculine voice again.

“Someone should tell them what it’s really like.”

Someone should tell them? Who was the someone? He buried his face in his hands, wondering if he’d ever remember.

Head down, hood up against the elements, Elizabeth battled her way to the crossroads, where she waited for a green light. She’d followed John’s directions, and found everything just as he’d described. Although it was the tail end of a dismal Monday afternoon, there were several people around. She avoided making eye contact. It wasn’t difficult. Everyone seemed intent on their own business.

She found Boots. Picking up a basket she headed straight for the hair dyes and the peroxide John had asked for. She stopped at a rack of tights and knee high socks and bought two pairs of each in the thickest denier she could find. Then on impulse she bought herself face-cream, a skeleton make-up kit, and the smallest bottle of her favourite perfume that they had in stock. She didn’t know why she bought them. Maybe something to do with clinging to a semblance of normality, and wanting to look her best even in this bizarre situation.

A young couple were hovering at the jewellery counter when she joined the queue at the checkout.

They appeared to be taking a long time to choose an item from the limited range on offer. The man, in particular, appeared to be more interested in the other customers than the display. Resisting the temptation to pull her hood down even further over her head, she totalled the cost of the contents of her basket. John had given her fifty pounds, but he hadn’t expected her to spend any of it on herself. Fortunately everything came to just under twenty. She handed two notes over, took the change and the carrier bag the assistant handed her and left the store.

Holding the bag in front of her, she went into Woolworths and bought the tattoo transfers and a darning needle. Wondering what John intended to do with the latter, she paused for a moment to breathe in fresh air. She felt like a paroled prisoner as she revelled in the cool sensation of rain streaming into her eyes and mouth.

She saw a butcher’s sign further down the street and recollected John telling her about his favourite meal. Smoked salmon on rye, T bone steak, salad, onion rings and garlic bread. Putting her hand back in the pocket of the wax jacket she retrieved all the money she had left. It should be enough. She went not only to the butcher but also a baker, grocer and greengrocer. She bought one enormous T bone steak, salad, garlic, frozen smoked salmon, onion rings and French bread. But she had to make do with pumpernickel because she couldn’t find rye.

Time to go back? She touched her mouth with her fingers. Her lips were still sore from the plaster and gags. At best John was an unstable amnesiac, at worst a psychopathic murderer. Now was her chance to escape. There was a policeman standing on the corner talking to a group of young men. All she had to do was walk up to him and say, “I’m Elizabeth Santer. I know where John West is hiding.”

It would be so easy. The police would take John into custody and see that he got the help he needed from another doctor. She would be able to pick up the threads of her life again. Then she saw the board outside the newsagent’s.

NATIONWIDE POLICE HUNT FOR KILLER.

There was a rack of newspapers. A tabloid carried a photograph of Dave on its front page. If she went to the police would she end up dead like Dave? It was so bloody unfair. Dave had done nothing – nothing to deserve being killed.

‘You all right, Miss?’

She looked at the man standing in front of her.

‘Fine. Just faint for a moment.’ She clutched the folds of her wax jacket. ‘It’s the baby kicking.’

His eyes flickered briefly before he moved on.

Pulling the newspaper from the rack, she went into the shop and paid for it, barely listening to the assistant’s grumbling about thoughtless customers who took display stock instead of papers from the piles inside the door.

When she left the shop she retraced her steps along High Street and into Wheat Street, crossing the road by the Catholic Church. Two men sheltering in the doorway watched her as she rounded the corner into the lane. It was then she saw the name set high on a plaque on the wall, St Michael St. Damn John, even that hadn’t led anywhere.

‘Can I help you?’

A middle-aged man, wearing a raincoat over a business suit was climbing into a BMW parked alongside the flat.

‘No thank you,’ she pulled the hood down even further over her eyes.

‘This
is
private property.’

She noticed the sign that said PRIVATE

PARKING. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to walk through your car park.’ She backed towards the door of the flat.

‘Oh, you’re renting the flat.’ His tone was distinctly friendlier

‘Yes,’ she stammered, unable to think of another excuse as to why she should be there.

‘Sorry, we’re so out the way here I’ve become wary of strangers. Seeing burglars under the bed as it were. You a friend of Martin?’

‘Friend of a friend,’ she said quickly.

‘I haven’t seen him in months. But then that’s Martin. Here, there and everywhere, and never anywhere for more than ten minutes. Nice meeting you.’

‘And you, goodbye.’ She looked at the sign screwed beneath the names at the side of the building.

ACCOUNTANT. If only she’d had the courage to ask him a few questions.

She walked up to the door of the old bake-house. It didn’t look much from the outside, but she could imagine the advertisement in a holiday brochure.

AN IDEAL WEEKEND AND HOLIDAY

RETREAT FOR THE OUTWARD BOUND

ENTHUSIAST. Or was it a training centre for terrorists who wanted to exercise on the same terrain as the army’s Special Forces?

She rang the bell. For one panic-stricken moment she wondered if West had left, then it swung open.

She stepped inside. He was standing behind the door.

‘You were a long time.’ His voice was harsh, condemnatory.

‘I bought food as well the things on your list.’

‘There’s plenty of food in the freezer.’

‘Not smoked salmon, T bone steak, salad, onion rings and garlic bread. Your favourite meal, remember?’

‘You were talking to someone.’

‘A man in the car park. He works next door.’

‘You told him you were staying here.’

‘I was standing outside the door. What was I supposed to say? That I’d lost my way?’ When he didn’t answer, she continued. ‘He’s an accountant and he drove off after we spoke.’

John would have been more suspicious if he hadn’t heard a car pulling away just before he’d opened the door. He stepped back into the small hallway, allowing her to walk up the stairs ahead of him so he could stay behind and lock the doors.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in our groping around in the dark, now someone knows that the flat is occupied. But wait until I’ve pulled the blinds before you switch on the lights.’

She did as he asked, almost falling over the two bulky rucksacks propped outside the kitchen door.

She dumped her bags on the kitchen table. ‘Why have you brought those packs upstairs?’

‘Because we might need them later.’

She tried not to imagine why.

The minister who chaired the meeting in the Cabinet Office briefing room was short and overweight, with the fleshiness that comes from too much of everything

– food, good living and sensual pleasures the women who worked for him would rather not imagine. He took his seat at the head of the table. On his right sat personnel from the armed forces – most of them lean, hard and fit, in sharp contrast to the civil servants, senior police officers and Home Office officials sitting opposite them.

The minister wasted no time on preliminaries.

‘Anything to report, gentlemen?’

An embarrassed silence settled over the room.

‘I take it you are still looking for him.’

‘Every available man,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Heddingham answered smoothly.

‘What I fail to understand is how he escaped the cordon around that hospital.’ The minister’s brows beetled together and the civil servants squirmed nervously. When the minister was displeased, it made them uneasy – with good cause.

‘The man appears to have the security forces in this country, army as well as civilian,’ the minister emphasised, wishing to be considered nothing if not even-handed, ‘running around in circles.’

‘We’re looking into the possibility that he might be a terrorist,’ a brave Home Office official ventured.

‘The possibility?’ The minister lowered his voice.

‘The man was apprehended forty hours ago, and you’re telling me that we still don’t know who he is.

Have we made any progress at all with identification?’

‘I think I can be of assistance on that point, sir.’

‘Johnson, anti-terrorist squad,’ the minister’s PA whispered in his ear.

‘You’ve identified him, Johnson?’

‘Not exactly, but we’ve pin-pointed half-a dozen possible candidates.’

‘And?’ the minister pressed.

‘From the evaluation made by the army psychiatrist who interviewed this John West, we know he speaks English with no discernible accent, that he appears well-educated, possibly public school. But then so do many of the operatives of the international fundamentalist and extremist groups.’

‘Are you suggesting he’s an Islamic fundamentalist?’ the minister asked.

‘He could be working for them. The fundamentalist groups do occasionally employ mercenaries. Major Baker is an expert on Middle Eastern terrorist groups, so his ideas on that subject would be more relevant than any speculation on my part.’ Having neatly passed the buck, Johnson sat back and tried to make himself invisible.

‘Major Baker?’

‘The likelihood of a Middle East connection crossed our minds as soon as he was found, minister.’

‘I’m glad to hear something did,’ the minister interposed sarcastically.

‘But the situation may not be as simple as it initially appears. The IRA had many highly trained operatives. The cease-fire created the same problems for them that the cessation of hostilities in World War II did for members of the Resistance. After being trained in espionage, sabotage, undercover work and assassination they found it difficult to adapt to the monotony of civilian life. They continued to crave the excitement, the boost of adrenalin… ’

‘Is this going anywhere, Major Baker?’ the minister demanded coldly.

‘We’ve received confirmation from a reliable source that some of the former operatives of the IRA are now working for other terrorist organisations who are prepared to pay handsomely for men with their skills.’

‘So you think our man could be former IRA?’

‘It’s possible, sir.’

‘Could he have been sent to this country to sabotage the conference?’

‘Again, it’s possible, sir. World peace and a scaling down of armaments wouldn’t be in the interests of several arms producing and dealing nations. Including us and the French… ’

‘But you can’t be certain of anything at this point in time and you won’t be until we find our man. Can you imagine the lurid headlines if we don’t?

DELEGATES MURDERED IN LONDON

BLOODBATH. BRITAIN UNABLE TO