The Dying Light (32 page)
In High Castle she parked in a side street and walked up to the square, where she knew that the CCTV cameras would pick her up but doubted anyone was watching. Anyway the coverage of the town centre was by no means total and she reckoned she could do what she needed without being seen. In an alley off the square she bought some new underwear, then visited an estate agent and asked about the local property market. Seemingly satisfied with the manager’s answers she took a card and said that Paul Spring would be in touch the following week.
The next shop was a newsagent, where she carried a brown padded envelope and a newspaper to the counter and asked for some postage stamps.
The man looked up from his laptop and smiled when she approached.
‘Rossy must have sold you that scarf,’ he said.
‘This?’ she said, lifting the end of the scarf. ‘I bought it in the square last week.’
‘Yeah, from Ross Iyer: hope you didn’t pay over the odds for it?’ He grinned.
‘I hope not too, but I like it so . . .’ her eyes moved to the screen in front of him. ‘What’s that you’re doing there?’
‘I deal in coins,’ he said, turning the laptop towards her. ‘I make more money from that than running the shop now. I wonder why I bother any longer.’
He showed her a page of coins struck at the time of Alexander the Great. He was bidding on one recently found in Macedonia. She was in no hurry so she listened. Besides, an idea had occurred to her as she looked down at the computer, which would require her to get to know this man a little better. He was in his mid-thirties with an unsuccessful goatee beard and black hair brushed back. There was a tattooed star on his earlobe. They talked for a while and he lit a cigarette. ‘It’s my shop,’ he said, ‘and I’ll smoke where I damned well like. Screw them.’ He flicked the spent match neatly through the open door.
‘Quite right,’ she said.
‘I recognised you from the newspapers,’ he said. ‘Seemed like they were clutching at straws.’
‘They were.’
‘I knew Hugh Russell. Everyone did. He was a good man. He acted for Rossy once. Hope they catch the bastard.’
‘Yes.’
He rose from his stool and offered her his hand. ‘Hi, Nick Parker.’
There was no one in the shop; they talked on for a few minutes until she looked at him steadily and said, ‘I am having a bit of trouble - it’s my computer - and I was looking for a place where I could upload something to the web.’
His eyes narrowed with the last exhalation of the cigarette and he leaned down to extinguish it on the side of a metal waste bin.
‘Perhaps I could help,’ he said, working a knuckle in his eye.
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘No worries; I’ve got to sit here for another hour anyway. What is it?’
‘A piece of film - a piece of CCTV footage, to be precise. You will see for yourself. It was taken outside Hugh Russell’s offices and, well, it could be very important for the investigation. I just want to make sure it’s somewhere safe.’
‘Jesus. That’s serious stuff. Have the police seen it?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He gave her a sideways look. ‘But you don’t think they’re going to make use of it?’
‘It’s hard to say. But look, if you don’t want to do it, I’ll understand: you don’t know me. I’m a stranger.’
‘I wasn’t saying that. Anyway I know who you are and you look trustworthy to me. Have you got it with you?’
‘Nick,’ she said touching his sleeve. ‘This is very important. I can trust you with this?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, looking her straight in the eye. She gave him the DVD.
‘Right, I’ll put it up on my site - Uriconcoins.com - there are a couple of pieces of film up there already. Maybe it will help the number of hits I’m getting.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Are you sure about this? Let me pay you for your trouble. Would you accept some money?’
He shook his head.
‘Go on, I’d feel better about it.’ She handed him one hundred pounds in twenties, which he accepted graciously. ‘I was going to post the DVD in this envelope to my office in London. Could you do that for me once you’ve put it up?’ She addressed the envelope to herself at Calverts. ‘I just want to park the footage for the time being so no one sees it. Can I call you when I know what I want to do with it?’
He gave her a card.
‘And it would be great if you didn’t tell anyone about this for the time being.’
‘No problem,’ he said and added, ‘No worries.’
Cannon napped for half an hour, took a bath and emerged to catch sight of himself in a mirror. In the three years that he’d been in Downing Street, his hair had turned grey and thinned, he had lost all his muscle tone and become soft in the middle. He hardly recognised himself - this sad, tubby, out-of-condition liar. But it was the expression in his face as he stood there, one of grizzled habitual slyness, that shocked him most and he was suddenly seized by the fantasy of resigning and spending the summer on the chalk streams of southern England, getting fit and rising early to work on his book about Temple. Then his mobile phone rang. He was needed in the sitting room off the Great Hall as soon as possible.
In the room with Temple were Eden White, Christine Shoemaker, Dawn Gruppo and Jamie Ferris. Something inside Cannon recoiled from them but he said hello as cheerfully as he could.
‘Close the door, Philip,’ said Temple. He was already changed for dinner and his manner was solemn - more Number Ten than Chequers. ‘Mr Ferris here has come across some remarkable information. Perhaps you would explain, Jamie.’
Ferris was sitting at the writing table in a tan suit, a pale-blue shirt and striped tie: a neat, reassuring figure from the overlapping worlds of consultancy and intelligence. He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. ‘It appears that David Eyam staged his own death.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ said Cannon.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Ferris. ‘I think you were in the room when I went through the activity of various offshore accounts held in the Caribbean, so I won’t explain again.’
‘But all that ceased on the date of his death in January except for the use of a debit card.’
‘Indeed,’ said Ferris. ‘We have done a good deal of work and we believe we’ve found another, well-funded account which is still very much active and has been used many times since that date.’
‘Maybe someone else is spending the money?’
Ferris shook his head. ‘No. You see we now know he faked his death - the whole thing was a carefully worked out plan. We’ve hard evidence which I am not at liberty to disclose to you.’
Cannon sat back. ‘You are aware that if this becomes public knowledge it will wipe everything else off the front page? The web will be a riot of speculation.’
‘That is why you are here, Philip,’ said Temple. ‘To advise us on how to handle this.’
‘There isn’t any way you can handle this! It’s a fucking nightmare because everyone is going to ask why he did it. How long have you known?’
Ferris looked at Eden White, then at Temple before answering. In that moment it occurred to Cannon that Eden White’s presence in a room was almost insubstantial, like some kind of spectral manifestation. The most he’d ever heard him say were the few sentences in support of a snap election that morning. ‘We learned last night,’ said Ferris. ‘And things have become clearer today with a viewing of the evidence.’
‘Viewing,’ said Cannon. ‘Are you talking about that film from the inquest?’
Ferris didn’t answer.
‘So what do you want me to do about it? Actually, more important is what the hell are you going to do about it?’ He looked round the room but the question was aimed at Temple.
‘Do is probably not an option at the moment since we don’t know where he is,’ said Christine Shoemaker. ‘He may be in France but we don’t know.’
Cannon’s mind was spinning. ‘Does this have anything to do with the murder at his place in the country? A solicitor I think it was. How does that fit into the picture?’
‘There are many criminal aspects to this whole story,’ said Ferris. ‘The murder may indeed be one. We understood from the police that Eyam left the country to avoid charges over child pornography.’
‘I can believe many things of Eyam,’ said Cannon, ‘but not that.’
‘This is what we know to be the case,’ Ferris said. ‘And then there has been avoidance of death duties on his father’s estate. That is a criminal matter that the police will need to investigate.’
White let out a sigh.
‘I agree with Eden,’ said Temple softly. ‘We’re straying from the point. Which is, Christine?’
‘That he couldn’t have done this alone,’ she said. ‘He must have had help from many people. We’re looking into the handling of the inquest, though we do not expect to have much before Monday. We realise he must have built a support network in the Caribbean and Colombia and here in the UK.’ She stopped. ‘But to what end was this very complex, expensive plot hatched?’
‘Clearly he plans mischief of a very high order,’ said Temple. ‘What do you think we should do, Philip?’
Cannon felt that they should be sitting in an office, not round a coffee table bearing daffodils, magazines and a book on British dog breeds. ‘Well,’ he ventured. ‘You could head him off by going to one of the papers and telling the whole story. Once an arrest warrant has been issued a police inquiry can be announced and an international manhunt can begin - standard fare for the media.’
‘Yet this is more than a presentational issue,’ said White, fingering the lapel of his suit. ‘More sensitive, more intricate, more connected.’
‘Connected? How so?’ asked Cannon.
‘Mr White means that this is not simply a matter of someone on the run who has faked his own death,’ said Gruppo, happy to act as tutor. ‘Eyam was one of us and because of the difficulties we had with him he could prove a very great danger to the state. There are grave implications.’
‘To the state?’ said Cannon, shifting in the oval-backed chair. ‘How? He was no risk before he disappeared. Once that business with the Intelligence and Security Committee was over, no one heard from him. There were no leaks. He was the perfect civil servant - discreet to a fault.’
‘He was always a risk,’ said Temple. ‘He is in possession of important state secrets and the fact that he staged his own death must mean he plans to reveal what he knows. That is where you come in. It will be important to have a strategy in place to deny, rebut and refute the allegations that he may make.’
‘If Eyam presented such a big threat, what was to stop him making these disclosures when we thought he was dead? Maybe he has no intention of saying or doing anything at all. Maybe he was just evading the police on the child porn.’
‘I wish we could believe that,’ said Temple.
‘There’s another point. If I am to go out there and deny allegations of a substantial kind I have to know what they are likely to be.’
‘It is in the nature of this problem that they are unknowable, Philip. We cannot anticipate in this affair,’ said Temple. Someone put their head round the door behind Cannon. Temple nodded and rose. ‘A media strategy is what we need on this.’
Cannon wasn’t having that. He rose quickly and followed Temple into the Great Hall where five men, none of whom he recognised, were waiting in a group. They carried laptops, briefcases and folders. There were also people from Number Ten who had just arrived. June Temple hovered.
‘A word, prime miniser?’ Cannon said to Temple’s back. ‘I can’t develop a strategy for the unknowable. I’ve got to have an idea what I will be defending and to know whether the allegations that are levelled at us - the government or whoever - are true.’
Temple didn’t respond but gazed right through him. Then his eyes followed Eden White who had slipped out of the room and was passing behind Cannon.
‘And if this thing with Eyam is really big,’ Cannon continued, ‘isn’t it worth waiting until the autumn for an election?’
‘The election will be next month; nothing can change that. Eyam’s appearance makes it imperative that we hold the election now.’ He moved off to welcome the group without another word, leaving Cannon startled by the iciness in his manner. Without thinking he moved towards the door of the little sitting room. It was slightly ajar and he heard Ferris say: ‘Well, it’s true that a man who has already been declared dead cannot be killed again.’
Instead of entering, Cannon went to his room to fetch his coat. He was going to have that pint, alone in a pub away from the house that Arthur and Ruth Lee had so generously given to the nation, because he wanted to phone his wife, to mull things over and consult what he gloomily regarded as the rump of his conscience.
20
The Otherness of the Other
After arriving at Chequers, Kilmartin was kept waiting for an hour sitting on a Jacobean chair in the Stone Hall beneath the portrait of an unidentified Edwardian woman. Scotch and water, a bowl of cashew nuts and magazines were brought to him on a tray by a member of the Chequers staff. It was hardly the atmosphere he expected. The place was quietly frantic. At least two meetings seemed to be in progress. Doors were opened and closed. People passed from room to room, nodding to him on the way. He stretched his legs and looked at the paintings. When he asked if he could see the Chequers library, he was told it was being used for a presentation.
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