East of the City (24 page)

‘I can’t wait.’

‘You can wait.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’ He started speaking again but I cut him off. ‘It isn’t just the photo.’ I rested my forearms on the table, interlaced my lingers and looked up at him. ‘Clive, I’m a whisker away from being done for Sebastian’s murder. I think I might need a lawyer.’

He laughed nervously. ‘You? Run that by me again.’

He wanted it to be a joke, but some lawyer’s instinct seemed to tell him straight away that it wasn’t. Or maybe it was just the look on my face. At that moment, admitting it out loud like that, after the night I’d had, I honestly felt like death. His nervous laughter faded. He sat down as I started to speak.

‘There’s this cop,’ I said, ‘Fielding,’ and then I cranked out the story, the whole stupid thing, starting with the hoax kidnap, then what Lee Chan had dug up on Mehmet. I told him about how I’d seen Nigel Chambers with Mehmet out at the airport, and how we’d found Nigel’s business card at the kennels. Clive interrupted a few times, getting the details straight, asking who Tubs was, stuf like that. When I told him about Fielding’s visit to my flat the day before, and the tapes, he cocked his head.

‘So what was on the tapes?’

‘Fires,’ I said.

His eyes narrowed. Please don’t tell me, he said, that you’re a pyromaniac.

‘Back when my parents died, I started making tapes.’

'Why?'

I shrugged. Clive waited.

‘Okay, I saw a shrink. You know, when my parents died I was there, I saw the fire. The shrink said I wasn’t facing up to something. Maybe the fire, I don’t know. I started taping fires off the TV.'

‘That helped?’

‘Not really?'

Until then Clive’d been pretty matter-of-fact, professional, but the news about the tapes, I think it shook him. He shifted in his chair. His look changed too, like he was thinking maybe I wasn’t quite the bloke he’d thought I was. I had an awful feeling that he was actually considering the possibility that I’d killed Sebastian Ward.

‘Then last night,’ I said, laying a hand on the photo, ‘this turns up.’

‘While you were trying to get your hands on Pike.’

‘Fielding was trying to stitch us up together. I had to speak to Pike.'

‘Had to?’ Clive clamped a hand to his forehead. ‘Ian, from what you’re saying, you are so far up shit creek it doesn’t matter. Have you been hearing yourself?' He got to his feet, and came round his desk, reciting a list of laws I’d managed to break out at Aston’s Kennels. I lost track somewhere around number five. ‘And now,’ he said, wrapping up, ‘now you come to a lawyer? Ian, you’re a bright boy. What in God’s name has been going through your head?’

‘It just seemed to happen, all right?’

Clive gave a choked sound. ‘If you end up in court, Ian, "just seemed to happen" isn’t going to impress anyone.’ He looked at the clock. ‘Speaking of which, Ottoman’s up in twenty minutes.’ He picked the folder off his desk, asking if I wanted to share a taxi.

I put a finger on the photo, Sebastian and Justine frozen. ‘What about this?’

Clive made a gesture, slipping something imaginary into his breast pocket. ‘Somewhere safe,’ he said, going to the door. ‘And if I was you, I’d think twice before showing it around.’

The taxi set us down across from the court with five minutes to spare. Clive had spent the ride studying his notes, preparing for the session ahead. But he was distracted, that was obvious. What I’d shown and told him had thrown a new light on Ottoman’s claim. The only problem was it was a murky light, and without digging deeper it was impossible to say which side it was going to help, us or Mehmet.

As we crossed the road, Clive said, ‘Any ideas on why you think Sebastian was murdered?'

‘Hundreds.’

‘Prime suspects?'

‘Dozens.’

‘You’re thinking maybe Mehmet, aren’t you.'

I said yes, that possibility had occurred to me. When Clive frowned, I asked what was on his mind.

‘Among other things?' He stepped up onto the pavement and paused by the revolving doors. ‘You’re in the witness seat tomorrow. If the Ottoman people get a whiff of what’s been going on with you these last few days, they’ll take your head off. What’s on my mind?’ He pushed the revolving door. ‘You, Ian. You’re on my mind.’

Inside, the security guard was waiting by the walk-through metal detector, so I buttoned my lip. There wasn’t much I could have said to defend myself to Clive anyway, I guess I just hadn’t thought how what I’d done might affect our case. That seemed to have been my problem right from the off, I just hadn't thought.

In the courtroom the usual faces were all there, the Ottoman barristers and solicitors in confab on the far side of the room. Down the front, Batri and his second, both wigged and gowned, were sharing a joke. Behind them one of Clive Wainwright’s junior colleagues was busy with a portable PC. It was meant to be for the trial transcript — as the court stenographer typed, the words appeared on the screens — but just now the young solicitor had hijacked it for a game of solitaire. He finished the game the instant he saw Clive. I was relieved to see that Fielding hadn’t come.

But Bill Tyler was there, sitting at the back, reading a paper. While Clive went for a word with Batri, I pulled up a chair beside Bill. He turned a page and kept reading.

‘How’s Action Man?’ he said.

I remarked that for a bloke just about to go into the witness seat, he seemed pretty relaxed.

He folded the paper and put it aside. ‘Long as they don’t shoot me, I figure I’ll be all right.' He cupped a hand against his cheek and dropped his voice. ‘Listen, I went round your place this morning, I had something for you.’ When I looked puzzled, he said, ‘From the lads. We got a bonus for not sending Mortlake’s ransom money up the spout. The lads wanted to cut you in.’

I felt ridiculously touched, and embarrassed too, a complete phoney.

‘You got three grand,’ he said.

‘I don’t want it. It’s their bonus, I didn’t do anything.’

‘What’s your problem? They cut you in. That’s it.’

Wainwright beckoned Bill down to the front for a final word before the judge arrived. Bill got to his feet, laying a hand on my shoulder.

‘Cash money, I gave the bag to your sister.'

He strolled down to the front, buttoning up his blazer, looking confident.

The judge arrived, settled himself on the bench, and Batri rose to get started with Bill. Clive came back to sit with me.

There was a quick run through of Bill’s army career, concluding with his entry into the SAS. Batri pointed out that there was a blank on Bill’s CV over this period. ‘For the obvious reasons, it would be fair to say,’ he added, ‘that security was a major preoccupation of Mr Tyler’s during this time.’ That got an approving nod from the judge and a bored look from Batri’s opposite number.

Batri went on to a brief question and answer about Bill Tyler’s move into civilian life, the special licences he retained, and the work undertaken by Tyler Associates relating to security. From beginning to end it only took five minutes; but when Batri sat down he’d established Bill as about as good an expert witness on security as you could possibly get. And the judge had already seen Bill’s report on the Ottoman hangar in Izmir. The young solicitor, Clive’s colleague, smiled at me behind Clive’s back.

Then the Ottoman barrister rose, clearing his throat. ‘Mr Tyler, would you say your career post-SAS has taught you anything?'

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Have you learnt anything in the past several years?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Yes, you might hope so, Mr Tyler. But my question was have you?’

Bill grinned crookedly. He’d done the expert witness bit before, he was used to the game. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have.’

‘And your work in the private sector, perhaps you could tell us a little about what it entails.’

‘Tyler Associates does mainly corporate work. A company wants its security arrangements looked at, maybe beefed up, they come to us. We do a plan for them, sometimes make some suggestions on the hardware — locks, alarms — and if they want we can offer them a service contract—’

‘For the alarm systems?'

‘Whatever they want. Sweeping a boardroom for bugs. Supplying security people for special occasions.’ Bill opened one hand. ‘Whatever they want.’

‘And if they want you to gather intelligence on another company?'

Bill shook his head. The barrister pointed at the microphones hanging from the ceiling.

‘No,’ Bill said. ‘We do security, period. Purely defensive systems.’

‘Mr Tyler, have you heard the expression, "attack is the best form of defence"?'

‘My lord,’ Batri said, rising. ‘My learned friend has been answered on the point.'

‘Quite,’ the judge said, agreeing. He circled a finger in the air. ‘Move on, please.’

Batri sat down. The other barrister leant forward on his lectern.

‘Since going into the private sector, Mr Tyler, would I be right in saying that the range of your work has expanded?'

‘The company’s growing.’

‘Has the range of your work expanded?'

‘Yes.’

‘And the tools of your trade. Electronics. Computers. Would it be correct to say that technological advances have changed your business profoundly?'

‘Yes.’

‘Over five or six years say, almost changed out of recognition.’ The barrister smiled and gestured to the stenographer, tapping away at her PC keyboard. ‘Much like here,’ he said. ‘Would that be right?'

‘You could say that.’

‘Do you say it, Mr Tyler?’

‘Yes.’

‘And prior to joining the SAS — correct me if I’m wrong — you were in a specialist artillery unit?’

‘Correct.'

‘So the situation is, that your pre-SAS career had nothing to do with security, your SAS career is a blank as far as this court is concerned, and post-SAS you have only six years experience during which the nature of work has changed so much as to render the first few of those years, as regards security expertise, redundant.’

Bill puzzled that one out for a second. ‘You’re saying I don’t know my job?’

‘I’m pointing out that quite apart from the glaring if necessary lacuna in your CV, your security experience may be thinner than it looks.’

‘Excuse me,’ the judge said, squinting at the Ottoman barrister. ‘The details of Mr Tyler’s career in the SAS are covered by privilege,’ the judge went on. ‘The court accepts that privilege. It hardly seems fair or appropriate to be referring to Mr Tyler’s period of service with them as a lacuna.’

I whispered to Clive, ‘What’s a lacuna?’

‘Gap in the argument,’ he whispered back. ‘Missing link in the chain.'

‘Please desist,’ the judge told the Ottoman barrister, ‘from trying to score cheap points off an honourable record of service.’

Clive whispered to me, ‘Who needs Batri?’

A scribbled message went forward fom the Ottoman solicitors to the assisting barrister, who handed it on to his partner, the one who’d just got the dressing-down. This guy glanced at the message, then screwed it up and dropped it on the desk.

Ottoman’s team had obviously decided that the judge was so biased in Bill’s favour that more questions about experience, expertise and the usual guff just weren’t going to help them at all. Clive had a copy of Bill’s report in front of him, now he opened it. Up on his bench, the judge did the same.

‘The aircraft in question,’ the Ottoman barrister said, ‘was one of a fleet of twelve being run by Ottoman Air at the time. And you went out to Izmir, Mr Tyler, shortly after the plane was stolen?'

‘Straight away.’

‘Hours later?'

‘A few days,’ Bill said. ‘I flew out with the loss adjustor.’

‘Yes, tell us about that. The loss adjustor asked you to accompany him?'

‘Mr Mortlake arranged for me to go.’

‘With the loss adjustor?'

‘Yes.’

‘Rather odd, didn’t you think?' Before Bill could answer, the barrister went on, ‘I mean, Ottoman Air notified WardSure immediately the plane was stolen and WardSure notified the lead underwriter, the Mortlake Group. All well and proper so far. But then, in the normal course of things, wouldn’t the procedure have been for the Mortlake Group to send in a loss adjustor to make an initial assessment? Find out what had happened?'

‘The plane was stolen. Everyone knew what had happened.’

‘No they didn’t, Mr Tyler. Not the details. Not how it was stolen, for instance.’

Bill folded his arms, but didn’t say anything.

‘The Mortlake Group received the Ottoman claim, and they didn’t wait for the loss adjustor’s report, they sent you straight in. You hadn’t done any security work for Ottoman Air had you?'

‘No.’

‘You weren’t familiar with their security arrangements?’

'No.'

‘Then why did they send you?'

‘To see what went wrong. Give the loss adjustor a hand.’

'They didn’t trust him by himself?'

‘If they hadn’t trusted him,’ Bill said, ‘they wouldn’t have hired him. I went strictly to look at Ottoman’s security. To see what went wrong.’

The barrister joined his hands behind his back, swaying forward. ‘Precipitate, don’t you think?’

Bill hesitated. He knew this was building up to something but he couldn’t see what. He, answered a little warily. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Mr Tyler, when you flew to Izmir the circumstances surrounding the theft of Ottoman’s plane were as much a mystery to you as they were to the Mortlake Group. We know that, because the only man who could have enlightened you, the loss adjustor, the man whose report would give the detail necessary to decide if your advice was even needed, he was sitting beside you on the plane.’

‘I don’t see your point.’

‘Let me put it like this. How soon in the piece did it occur to you that the Mortlake Group was going to challenge Ottoman Air’s claim?’

Bill’s look hardened. ‘I’m not party to Mortlake’s decisions.’

‘Please answer the question, Mr Tyler.’

‘I don’t recall exactly.’ When the barrister stayed silent, waiting, Bill added, ‘I suppose it was when Allen Mortlake told me to do a full report.’

‘No earlier?’

Bill looked up to the judge. ‘Like I said, I’m not party to their decisions. What the underwriter does, that’s their business. I just do what they contract me for.’