Authors: Henry Porter

Tags: #Fiction - Espionage

The Dying Light (5 page)

BOOK: The Dying Light

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She stood the open frame on the bedside table and slid down into the bed to watch the footage of the riots that had been violently put down the year before. Suddenly it occurred to her that she was guilty of ignoring Eyam’s less attractive side - in particular his love of exercise of power. For some time before that dinner in New York she’d noticed him becoming colder, more removed and, she had to admit, objectionably pleased with his own opinions. Doubt made almost every personality acceptable to Kate. But as he rose higher and higher, Eyam had lost the ability to express the slightest worry about himself or his decisions. She had to confess that he had become a little boring. ‘You were a little bit of a prig,’ she said to the room.

Eventually she slept. The following day she stayed in bed late watching the rooks plummet into the trees on the other side of the rocky spur, on which High Castle - complete with Norman fortress, square and church - stands like an Italian hill town. It was a fine and private place to do her grieving for David Eyam.

The Prime Minister’s Spy

Peter Kilmartin was certainly surprised. He arrived at Number Ten at nine forty-five p.m. on Monday evening, having been summoned five hours before, and was shown into the Cabinet Room by a brisk young woman who introduced herself as Jean. Temple was sitting at the prime minister’s place on the curved table in front of the fireplace, reading with his hand clutching his forehead. The cabinet secretary, Gus Herbert, stood back holding a red leather folder to his chest, while his free hand toyed with a signet ring. Temple looked up and removed the glasses that were so rarely seen in public. ‘Ah, Peter, good of you to come so quickly. I’ll be with you in a second.’

Kilmartin and Herbert exchanged nods then both looked out through the two uncurtained windows at the end of the room. The dense drizzle of the last few days seemed to hang in the glare of the security lights. Some way off in the building there was a muffled whine of drilling, which Jean had explained to Kilmartin was caused by cabling work that could only been done at night.

He looked down at Temple and not for the first time wondered at his extraordinary rise. They’d met a dozen years before when Temple was a junior minister in the foreign office, at a time in his career when he was patronised by officials and had the reputation as a lightweight - a shameless flatterer and seeker of advice. They hit it off because Temple possessed that rare ability in government to listen properly. For his part Kilmartin, who was by no means a natural politician, found that he could influence policy decisions without using his elbows. The combination of his knowledge of foreign affairs and the Secret Intelligence Service and Temple’s patience proved very successful for a while and, as each Cabinet reshuffle came along and Temple kept climbing through the ranks, eventually to head two of the great ministries of state, they kept in touch with Christmas cards and the occasional lunch. Temple’s manner and his eerie calm never changed and to anyone who listened he would confess his astonishment that he and his worn armchair had travelled so far. Not many did listen. His colleagues still saw him as a quaint and amiable nobody, a bit of an oddball. No threat. But when he was invited to form a government he displayed a rare political savagery, sacking several allies and bringing about an iron discipline in the ranks of his party. He was likened to President Harry Truman. One commentator reminded her readers that the haberdasher from Lamar, Missouri, had dropped two atomic bombs just five months into his presidency. After Temple’s narrow win at the polls, a victory fraught with allegations of ballot rigging, recounts and general dismay with the performance of a new electronic voting system, that same writer suggested that the only doubtful part of the phrase ‘elected dictatorship’ was the word elected. But Temple stammered his apologies and produced a famous display of nervous blinking when the matter was raised in a TV interview, and somehow people forgave him, or at any rate forgot. In the long slump there were other things to worry about.

Temple pushed his chair back with a little cough, handed the file to the cabinet secretary and said, ‘Yes, that should do the trick.’ Herbert picked up the file and left the room with an opaque Mandarin nod in Kilmartin’s direction.

‘How good of you to come up from the country, Peter. How are you and the boys coping - Jay and Ralph, isn’t it?’

It was a year and half since Helen’s death and the boys, though grown up and with jobs, had suffered dreadfully. They were just about over the worst.

‘Thanks, they’re doing fine, prime minister. I’m amazed you remember their names.’

‘One of my very few gifts. And the famous Kilmartin vegetable garden, which I notice now takes precedence over the problems of Central Asia?’

Kilmartin smiled but didn’t rise to the bait.

‘I hear the new garden is beautiful. You’ve moved in with your sister, haven’t you?’

‘That’s right - though in fact it is the other way. She came to live with me.’

‘Good, good,’ he said absently and let out a sigh. ‘I expect you’ve read we’ve got a real problem with this blessed toxic red algae in the reservoirs. Our scientists have no idea where it came from or how it’s spreading. People talk about bio-terrorism, migrating waterfowl, global warming. Nobody knows. It’s the sort of thing that can turn an election. Events!’ he said with exasperation and the smile lines moved into perfect parentheses. ‘But that’s not why I asked you to see me.’ He coughed and took a step to the fireplace and rested his hand on the mantelpiece. Temple was over six foot tall but managed to appear much shorter to the public. Kilmartin glanced up at the portrait of William Pitt the Younger above him. He’d read somewhere that on Temple’s order Pitt had replaced the painting of Robert Walpole, the first man to occupy Number Ten as prime minister and the longest-serving prime minister in British history, because he somehow felt closer to Pitt than any other of his predecessors.

‘I heard you were down at High Castle for David Eyam’s inquest.’

Kilmartin couldn’t have been more surprised. He’d come with a dozen excuses not to go to the Caucasus as special envoy or back to Kazakhstan. ‘My word, you’ve got good sources, prime minister.’

‘Well, one hears things. I wondered if you had any special reason for attending.’

‘He was a friend and I happened to be in the town - the house I bought is not far from High Castle - so I thought I’d pop in.’

‘Tragic business; there’s not a day that goes by without my missing him.’ Temple paused and rubbed his upper lip. ‘He really had such a grasp of the issues - and a most agile mind. That kind of clarity is unique in my experience.’ He looked at the portrait above him. ‘You know what Pitt’s tutor used to say about him? “He seemed never to learn but merely to recollect.” That was Eyam. I valued his advice, just as I do yours, Peter.’

‘That’s very kind of you, prime minister. Is this what you wanted to see me for?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. As you know, I was very fond of David but there were difficulties at the end of his time here.’ He paused. ‘You know what I’m referring to?’

‘I’m afraid not. I was away abroad at the time - Turkey - and then looking after Helen.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter: all water under the bridge. But I wonder if you could keep an eye on all this for me.’

‘What? I mean how?’

‘I’m anxious that neither the violent circumstances of his death nor the facts of his departure from government become a matter of speculation. There will be a great temptation to cause mischief by linking it all to the death of poor Christopher Holmes, who was head of the JIC before David Eyam, as you know. We do not want any
mischief
at this stage.’ Mischief was a word the prime minister used to describe everything from anti-social behaviour to terrorism.

‘I haven’t seen a word to that effect in the newspapers,’ said Kilmartin.

‘Of course we could have held the Eyam inquest in camera,’ continued Temple, ‘but I took the view, and the home secretary agreed with me, that it would give rise to speculation.’

‘I didn’t know you had that kind of discretion in the proceedings of a coroner’s court, prime minister, but let me say I think you took the right decision.’

‘Did you see Eyam a lot? Were you a close friend?’

‘Very little over the past few years, but I liked him.’

‘Did you know he was in Colombia?’

Kilmartin shook his head.

‘Nor did we, and that bothers me, Peter.’

‘Well, he can’t trouble anyone now.’

‘Of course you’re right. But, look, I want you to keep your ear to the ground on this. Let me know if there is going to be any silliness. It would be bad for the country to be distracted by a lot of daft conspiracy theories in the run up to an election. People must feel able to trust government, not just my government but any British government: the procedures, the checks and balances, the good intentions of those who hold power, their fundamental respect for the constitution. People must know that we are trustworthy.’

‘Quite. Do you want me to actively pursue this, or simply tell you anything I hear?’

‘Yes, tell me, or tell Christine Shoemaker, the deputy director of the Security Service: you know her?’ Kilmartin nodded, remembering the blonde northerner with a down-turned mouth, who had all but sidelined the director of MI5, Charles Foster-King, because of her relationships with Temple and the home secretary, Derek Glenny. ‘Good. Contact her if I am unavailable; otherwise telephone my private secretary and come in for a chat. Do a bit of digging around. Put your ear to the ground. Find out what’s being said. Would that be all right, Peter? Do say if it isn’t.’

‘Of course, prime minister: I’m happy to help if I can, though I’m pretty sure that there is nothing much to discover.’

‘Still, I would be grateful.’

Kilmartin nodded. Unless he was very much mistaken he had just been appointed the prime minister’s personal intelligence officer.

The bells were being rung open rather than half-muffled, as is usual for the dead. And when the peal fell suddenly into the cold, bright Tuesday morning the people in High Castle’s Market Square glanced towards the church, eyes freshening, as though spring was being announced, or someone had decided that life itself should be celebrated. Kate paused. Above her, a camera in a black hemisphere fixed to the side of a building watched everything in the square yet, like the woman who had followed her on the short walk from the hotel, it almost certainly missed the striking beauty of the moment.

She was certain about this watcher, a slim woman in her mid-thirties wearing a tan trouser suit. She plainly had more training than practice in surveillance. There was no substitute for experience, as she had always been told by McBride, nominally second secretary (economic) at the embassy in Jakarta, but in reality MI6’s head of station. That was a lifetime ago, when she was married and living in a flat near the embassy, but Kate hadn’t lost the ability to read a street and spot the false moves of a bad actor. And this girl, as McBride would have said, wouldn’t cut the mustard in the Scunthorpe Repertory Theatre.

Kate walked on to the stalls at the centre of Market Square. A police helicopter came noiselessly from the south then hovered high over the square sending a rhythmic thud around the walls of the castle. Twice it repositioned itself by falling away down the valley then nosing into the sharp westerly wind blowing across the Marches. Three civilian helicopters followed at a much lower altitude and landed on a piece of open ground beneath the escarpment of red sandstone, where their rotor blades turned and bounced in the wind. Then the official cars began to arrive, two accompanied by unmarked protection vehicles that sat just to the right of the rear bumper of the saloons and stuck to them like pilot fish. The cars swept into the square in a way that made heads turn, then followed Sheep Street to the Bailey Hotel, where their occupants were decanted into a room, which Kate learned had been laid on by Eyam’s stepmother for the mourners making the trip from London.

She stopped at a stall selling wraps, shawls and scented candles to get a better look at her pursuer. The woman moved behind a stand of jams and pickles, then retreated to the line of market stalls at the top of the square. Why the hell was she being followed?

Kate picked up a black and mauve scarf.

‘It’s Nepalese - silk and cashmere,’ said the stallholder, placing a rolled cigarette on a battered tobacco tin. ‘They call that colour damson. A pal of mine imports them from the village in Nepal where they’re made. But I got to admit they’re dear.’

The scarf went well with the short dark grey herringbone jacket and black trousers she’d chosen for the funeral. She put it on and looked at herself in a smudged mirror that hung from the front of the stall, angling it slightly to see over her shoulder. The watcher had moved behind her and glanced twice in her direction. ‘Screw this,’ she said softly and turned and eyeballed the woman, who looked away.

‘The scarf?’ said the stallholder.

‘I’ll take it,’ Kate said with a smile.

‘Looks terrific on you: just right for your dark colouring, if you don’t mind me saying.’

BOOK: The Dying Light

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