Uncommon Enemy (2 page)

The word made him hungry.

The policeman beckoned conspiratorially. ‘Sit and eat it in reception if you like. Watch ’em all come in. More interesting than sitting here.’

They sat on a bench against the wall in reception. The clock showed twenty to nine. It was reassuring to know the time again, like a glimpse of headland to a sailor in a sea-mist. A man in
civilian clothes brought Charles a fried breakfast on a tray, with a mug of tea for the policeman. He wondered how long you had to be a guest of Her Majesty before you were provided with toothbrush
and paste.

The policeman looked at Charles’s breakfast. ‘Same as what we have, that is. Same kitchen.’

Charles, his mouth full, nodded his appreciation.

The outer door was banged open by two broad, squat men with shaven heads and no necks, both wearing jeans and leather jackets. One was black, the other possibly Turkish. Between them they
half-dragged, half-carried a pale young man in handcuffs, shoving him onto the other bench. One went to the desk while the other stood alongside their prisoner, still gripping his upper arm. The
young man’s features were thin, his expression resentful, almost bitter. It was easy to imagine him as vicious. The middle-aged burgher in Charles, reassured to see such robust enforcers of
the law, ceased worrying about toothpaste.

His policeman nudged him. ‘People say it’s a real education, watching what comes through here.’

Later the policeman took his tray away and left him alone. More prisoners were brought in, all young and generally cosmopolitan. One attractive young woman, who looked Eastern European, was
addressed with fatherly familiarity by the custody sergeant.

‘Seen you here before, haven’t I?’ he said as he took her details. ‘Not your first time, is it? And I told you before what I’m telling you now. Pack it in, stop it,
don’t do it any more. If you do you’ll keep getting arrested and one day you’ll find yourself in prison and you won’t like it. It’s no life, I’ll tell you that
for nothing. There’s lots of other things a girl like you can do. Go and do them.’

The handcuffed young man was processed as Charles had been, but with his captors watchful on either side of him. He struggled when first being searched but then sullenly cooperated until taken
down the corridor to the cells, when he began shouting until the cell door slammed shut on him. Then one of Charles’s arresting officers appeared, the taller one, a man of about thirty with
sandy hair and freckles, wearing a light grey suit. He looked reassuringly bureaucratic, Charles thought. He could deal with bureaucrats.

‘Searches are going well. They’ve nearly finished your flat. I don’t think the neighbours are aware.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Not much chance of neighbours poking their noses in at the Scottish house, I gather.’

Charles’s house on the north-west coast was yards from the sea, sheltered by a rocky outcrop at the edge of a bay facing the Summer Isles. His nearest neighbour was a modernised croft
across the bay, the holiday home of a well-known television journalist. Perhaps he would be accused of leaking to him next. There were half a dozen other dwellings scattered at intervals along the
unmade track leading to the bay.

‘They’ll know,’ he said. ‘They notice everything up there. So little happens.’

The house was white-walled, red-roofed, built in the 1970s, practical, spacious and almost weather-proof. He loved it for half the year, provided he could escape to London whenever he wanted. He
wasn’t lonely there – he had persuaded himself he never felt lonely – but recently he had been tempted to escape more often. He told himself that had to do with the book he was
writing rather than the place.

‘They let themselves in easy enough,’ continued the policeman. ‘It wasn’t locked, like you said. But they’ll use the spare keys to lock it when they
leave.’

‘There’s no need up there.’

‘Until it happens. You should lock it.’

‘I know.’

The policeman sat. ‘They’ve done your car, too. I’ve never seen one of those. 1968, isn’t it?’

They discussed his car. It struck him as he spoke that he might have chosen such a rare and idiosyncratic breed partly because it symbolised something of the very national culture that was now
disowning him. He obligingly went through what the Bristol cost to run, what he’d paid for it, what it was worth. They then considered whether the policeman should replace his Honda.

The policeman lowered his voice. ‘You know it’s going to take a while, all this? It’ll be this afternoon before we interview you. Are you sure you don’t want legal
representation? Your service would pay for it, they told us. They’ve got a list of lawyers they trust. Unless you’ve got your own?’

Charles had only ever used lawyers for conveyancing. He didn’t think he needed one now. He was confident that he had no case to answer, and a lawyer might only prolong the process by
arguing. ‘I’m happy to answer whatever you ask. If I think I would like legal advice, I’ll let you know.’

Later, when left alone again, he wanted to pee. He approached the custody sergeant, suggesting he return to his cell to do it so that no-one need escort him.

‘That’s a help. I see you’re getting the hang of this place.’

Someone closed the cell door on him while he was peeing into the steel bowl. He waited a while before pressing the red button on the wall, then waited a longer while for the peephole cover to
slide back.

‘What do you want?’

It was not the friendly farmer. ‘I was allowed to wait in reception. The custody sergeant let me sit on the bench. I came back here for a pee and someone closed the door.’

‘Told you could come out again, were you?’

‘I think it was understood. By the custody sergeant.’

The shutter slammed. This time the wait was long enough for Charles to sit on the bed and open
Jane Eyre
again. The first line was apt: there was indeed no possibility of taking a walk
that day. Eventually the keys rattled and the door opened.

‘All right, come on.’ The new policeman looked as morose as he sounded and there was now a different custody sergeant, taking details of another handcuffed youth while giving loud
instructions to someone behind him. The shift must have changed. When eventually he noticed Charles the sergeant jerked his thumb at him and turned to the surly policeman.

‘That your prisoner?’

‘Nothing to do with me. Says he’s allowed out, to sit over there.’

Anxious to maintain his privilege without appearing to assert it, Charles explained as compliantly as he could.

The sergeant cut him short. ‘All right, sit on that bench and don’t move.’

He read in the intervals between prisoners, glancing at the clock every few minutes. It was a continuing comfort to know the time. When the state deployed its apparatus against you, it owned you
and disposed of you as it pleased. The physical freedoms you took for granted, possessions that felt like part of yourself, being able to communicate with whom you chose, everything except life
itself, now depended upon decisions in which you had no say. But the state could not own time. It could deprive you of knowledge of it, temporarily, but ultimately time was on your side because the
state’s powers were limited by time. Simply knowing it, therefore, felt like a sliver of independence, almost of power, something to be cherished.

I
t was midday before the sandy-haired detective reappeared. ‘Ready for interview now.’

They took Charles to a small windowless room into which was crammed a table, four chairs and some ancient recording equipment. The other arresting officer, shorter with thinning hair and a brown
corduroy suit, was already there. They sat Charles on one side of the table and themselves on the other.

‘This is a recording machine,’ the policeman in corduroy said with solemn deliberation. ‘When I switch it on I shall state time, place and date and then each of us will give
his name and I will state that there is no-one else in the room. D’you understand?’

Charles nodded.

‘Do you also understand that you don’t have to say anything at all? You can say nothing. Although if you do say nothing your silence may be mentioned in court.’

‘Just answer our questions truthfully,’ said the one with the sandy hair, ‘but don’t do any more than answer. That’s what your lawyer would tell you if you had
one.’

Charles felt he was on stage, which in a sense he was. It was tempting to smile, but they might not like that.

The one in the corduroy suit switched on the machine, gave date, time and place and announced himself as Detective Inspector Steggles. The one with freckles identified himself as Detective
Sergeant Westfield. Charles gave his name and confirmed that there was no-one else in the room.

It was clear that they must have been shown his old MI6 file and that his arrest had been planned for some time. They went unhurriedly through his career, asking few questions but seeking
confirmation of his work against Russians, against apartheid South Africa, against Chinese and against terrorists until the point at which he had requested early retirement some years before.

‘Why did you want to leave MI6?’ asked Corduroy. ‘Still was MI6 then, wasn’t it? Fed up with the way things were going? Disaffected?’

Charles was happy to talk about that. ‘It was changing, though nothing like as much as it has since the merger with MI5 and GCHQ. I felt I’d done all the jobs I was going to enjoy.
There was nothing else in the service I particularly wanted to do.’

‘They didn’t offer you anything?’

‘They did, I could’ve gone on, could’ve had a posting. They were very good to me, very tolerant. They’d allowed me to lead an eccentric career, free of management. But
after the death of my mother, I could afford to retire on a half pension. And I wanted to write.’

‘Write what – journalism?’

‘Biographies – one, anyway. Walsingham. Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth the First’s spy master. I’d also planned a novel. Historical novel, sort of.’ He added that in
case they suspected a revealing novel about MI6. Otherwise, it was beginning to feel like
Desert Island Discs
without the music.

‘But you do journalism, don’t you?’

‘A bit of freelance book reviewing.’

‘You know journalists?’

‘A few.’

‘You know James Wytham?’

He remembered the name from the Sunday paper articles based on leaked documents. ‘No.’

‘Never met him?’

‘No.’

‘But your friend Dave in Durham knows him, doesn’t he?’

‘He may do. They write for the same paper. Although David’s freelance, so he might not. Probably doesn’t go to the paper very much.’ Their calling him Dave was
significant. That was what Rebecca called him and their use of it suggested either that they had talked to her – in which case she would surely have told him – or that his phone was
tapped. That again suggested considerable preparation. He had spoken to her only once since arriving in London, when he had rung to thank her for putting him up. She had probably said something
about Dave then – she usually did. Otherwise, they had talked about meeting when she came down on business.

‘Ever discussed James Wytham with Dave?’ continued Corduroy.

‘Not that I remember. I don’t know David very well. We’ve met only two or three times.’

The recorder was humming slightly and they were both taking notes. Charles looked at Corduroy’s thinning brown hair. He had been in the army with someone called Steggles, but this man was
surely too old to be Clifford’s son. Perhaps not. It was a discomforting thought, in more ways than one.

Freckles looked up. ‘A couple of months ago the SIA got in touch and asked you to rejoin. How did that come about?’

‘They rang me. Jeremy Wheeler rang.’ It was the truth but not the whole truth. ‘He’s head of human resources, as it’s called now.’ They would know this, and
more.

‘What did he say?’

They waited, pens poised. Charles couldn’t see that this was of any particular relevance, unless to test his frankness and recall. ‘Well, there was a bit of gossip and catching up.
We joined MI6 together.’ He remembered wincing at Jeremy’s all too familiar voice with its exaggerated articulation. ‘He said they had a job for me, something temporary they
wanted help with.’

‘Your vetting’s been updated,’ Jeremy had practically bellowed. ‘Start as soon as you can get down here.’

The sea had been a surly battleship grey that day, restless and choppy with countless white horses filling the bay. Charles would have enjoyed puncturing Jeremy’s assumption that
he’d jump at the chance of returning, but for the conversation he’d had with the old chief, Matthew Abrahams, the day before.

‘Did Jeremy Wheeler say anything about the job?’ asked Freckles.

‘Only that it concerned something I’d been involved in years ago, which I took to be a case. I wouldn’t have expected him to say more on the phone.’

‘It was a case, wasn’t it? A case called Gladiator? But you didn’t know that when you spoke to him?’

‘It was, yes.’ He didn’t say whether or not he knew it and was careful not to show surprise that they had been briefed on Gladiator. What he needed to know was how deep that
briefing went.

‘What else did you and Jeremy Wheeler discuss?’

‘Timings, how long it would take me to get down, that sort of thing.’ It had pleased him to irritate Jeremy – never difficult – by refusing to fly from Inverness and
instead taking a couple of days to drive, staying the night in Durham.

‘Does Jeremy Wheeler know about the Gladiator case?’

So it wasn’t Jeremy who’d briefed them, unless they were playing games with him. ‘No – well, I don’t know for sure. He certainly wouldn’t have when it was
– when I was the case officer, years ago. I don’t know what access he’s had since. He was never very involved in casework. He’s generally done non-operational
jobs.’

Charles was certain that Jeremy had not been on the indoctrination list for the case-file, but less certain as to whether that meant anything in the post-paper age. It was displeasing to think
of Jeremy having access to it now, even to the less restricted volumes. He pictured Jeremy’s fleshy features, puffed with the self-importance of secret knowledge. Jeremy always gave the
impression of hurrying on to something more important, yet he had never been known to do anything very much – no significant recruitments or cases well run, no headship of important stations,
no productive cultivations of a liaison service, no key Action desk in Head Office, no eye for analysis or reflection. He had risen on relish for administrative detail, enthusiasm for process, an
instinctive response to the magnetism of power and unabashed, unpremeditated flattery of those who had it. A lifelong talent for offending his peers and inferiors had done nothing to inhibit his
career. None except those above him had ever taken him seriously. Alternately assertive, clumsy and contrite, he had been known as Mr Toad on the training course he and Charles had shared. Yet
there he was, senior now. He would have access to Charles’s file and would know about his arrest, which was another displeasing thought.