As was his custom, Cannon left the Underground at Embankment and walked along the Thames towards Whitehall with a cup of coffee, his laptop bag over his shoulder. By the time he passed through the Downing Street gates, now absurdly defended against the menace of toxic red algae by soldiers, he had been stopped four times and searched once. He got to the Communications Centre half an hour late to find Dawn Gruppo reading something on his desk. ‘Can I help you?’ he demanded from the far side of the room.
Gruppo turned without apology or the slightest trace of guilt. ‘Did you get the message about the seven thirty meeting?’ she asked. ‘Your phone isn’t on. I have been trying to call you.’
‘No – what meeting?’
‘The situational summary: they’ve been in for over half an hour.’
‘Come again?’
‘It’s an update: election, TRA contingency planning, disruptive elements plus lines to take.’
‘Surely it’s my job to decide the LTT?’
‘Yes, but we need the prime minister’s views – even you will concede that.’
‘Lyme can do it.’
‘He wants you there for the last part of the meeting with Christine and Mr Ferris.’ She left and collided with Lyme at the door. Cannon didn’t miss the look she gave Lyme, nor the idiotic expression on Lyme’s face, but he pretended to be engrossed with the newspaper front pages and the overnight summary of political websites.
‘So,’ he said without looking up. ‘What did you learn?’
‘The things I do for you, Philip – it was like going to bed with a colony of fruit-eating bats.’
‘You didn’t have to sleep with her. Just take her for a drink was all I said.’
‘I had no option,’ said Lyme rather helplessly. ‘And I must say she is by a long stretch the most filthy-minded woman I have ever met. I mean interestingly so.’
‘Spare me the details,’ said Cannon.
‘But she did tell me something. JT is going to call the election tonight or early tomorrow morning. He’s in a lather about the Eyam business.’
‘She said that?’
‘Why’s that such a big deal?’
Cannon didn’t answer but left for the prime minister’s sitting room with the newspapers and summaries under his arm.
If asked about the meetings he had attended in Downing Street and Chequers over the past five or six days, Cannon would have confessed that they all merged into one in his mind. On every occasion he seemed to walk into the room when Jamie Ferris was speaking, and this time was no exception. But the atmosphere had become tense. Temple had dropped all pretence of civility and snapped at Cannon to sit down.
‘We have a line into the woman,’ said Ferris after looking up at Cannon, ‘and an offer was put to her through Oliver Mermagen. We have also got a trace on her phone. It appears that soon after seeing Mermagen she went to the London offices of her law firm in the City. She has agreed to make a call to Eyam at eleven. We can’t guarantee that she will use her mobile, but if she does we will very soon afterwards have a location for Eyam. We will also be tapping into the law firm’s telecommunications and applying voice recognition so that her call, even if made on a landline, will very likely be traced.’
‘And if this does not work as you envisage,’ asked Temple, ‘what do you plan?’
‘Clearly she can be arrested and that will be put into effect soon after eleven. The building is now being watched.’
‘But it still leaves Eyam free.’
‘Yes, but we believe him to be very ill. Some drugs packaging was found at the apartment where Kate Lockhart was staying, and we have since contacted St Mary’s Paddington where the drugs were dispensed. Apparently he collapsed in the street and was taken there by ambulance and was treated under the name of Daniel H. Duval, the alias he used to flee France. CCTV footage from the A&E reception shows him looking very frail. He was joined by Kate Lockhart and they saw the doctor together. And this is the important thing: Eyam’s got cancer. We’ve interviewed the doctor who says he was in a bad way. He wanted to admit him immediately but Eyam said he needed drugs to get through the next few days. Eyam left St Mary’s later that afternoon with Lockhart and they hailed a cab.’
‘And you still have a source on the inside, is that right?’
‘We’ve heard from her twice – we’ve got the documents she was carrying and their plans – so we are in good shape. We know that the Bell Ringers intend to hold a press conference of some sort in the near future. We’ve established that this will probably take place tomorrow at the Hertford Hotel in central London. The hotel conference centre has been booked for a twenty-four-hour period from nine o’clock tomorrow morning. A five-thousand-pound deposit was paid from one of the bank accounts that we have been monitoring. It goes without saying that that press conference will not go ahead.’
‘Good. Have you heard anything about this, Philip?’ asked Temple.
‘No, prime minister. Clearly I can’t ask journalists whether Eyam or anyone that might be representing him has been in touch.’
‘Quite so,’ said Temple. ‘What about these other people – the Bell Ringers?’
Christine Shoemaker looked at some papers. ‘I believe about forty have been detained under the emergency regulations.’ She went on to say that nothing had been found on any of the people and none was a member of the core group from the High Castle area. They were being processed but so far none of them had confessed their plans.
Cannon looked down at the newspapers in his lap and concentrated very hard: now was not the time to complain about the government using emergency regulations to arrest people who were not suspected of doing anything more than exercising their legitimate right to protest.
‘How long will they be in the holding area?’ asked Temple.
‘Initially for a period of thirty-six hours, which may be extended.’
Cannon coughed. ‘When I get questions about what these people are suspected of doing,’ he asked, ‘what line do I take?’
Temple looked annoyed. ‘You tell the media these are temporary measures; that the government is empowered by Parliament to act to protect the public in an emergency; and that any inconvenience to those held is regretted. We are simply guarding against all eventualities.’
‘But journalists may point out that the nearest outbreak of TRA is a hundred and fifty miles from London.’
‘As I said, all eventualities.’
‘What about the conditions of these holding areas? Where are they?’
‘We are not announcing their locations,’ said Shoemaker. ‘Obviously this is a first step and these people will be processed as quickly as possible. Facilities have been laid on – food, toilets, counselling et cetera.’
‘Counselling for what?’ murmured Cannon.
Temple looked down and pinched his septum. ‘If we don’t apprehend Eyam, when do we tell the public he is alive and being hunted for paedophile offences and faking his own death? And how do we then play his illness?’
Ferris glanced at Christine Shoemaker. ‘We will be guided by you, prime minister,’ she said. ‘As you know, we all felt that it was best to handle this as discreetly as possible, but clearly if he isn’t located and arrested after the call from Lockhart, we may need the public’s help to find him.’
Temple thought again. The room was silent. ‘Very well, let it be at one o’clock today. Ask the police to issue photographs and draw up a statement outlining the main offences Eyam is suspected of.’
‘This is going to cause a hell of a fuss,’ said Cannon.
‘If he is charged immediately, the press won’t be able to say anything under the sub judice rules.’
‘But the gap between issuing the release and Eyam being caught may lead to some very wild speculation.’ He held up two of the newspapers. ‘The coverage this morning is far from favourable – Bryant Maclean’s papers are openly challenging the decision to invoke the Civil Contingencies Act.’
‘Once the election is called, Maclean will come on side, which is why we need to do that as soon as possible.’
‘If I may, prime minister,’ said Cannon with his usual note of respectful disagreement. ‘We don’t want the accusation levelled at us that this is a shotgun wedding, particularly as you are going to the country on a record of calm, ordered government. I merely suggest that you separate the announcement about Eyam and calling the election.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Temple automatically.
Cannon was used to these apparent concessions. Temple had no intention of changing his mind. He liked high drama, and despite his reputation for stability, actually fed on the adrenalin of these situations. It was Eyam who’d once pointed out that Temple was like one of those respectable, unassuming middle-aged men who go into a casino and bet their house and business on a game of blackjack. ‘We will be watching the media very closely today,’ he said to Temple. ‘But if the location of these holding areas is discovered, it will be tricky for us. Maclean has run part of the email that was circulating yesterday about Eden White, and there is one article that speculates about the source behind it. And the pictures of the two individuals emerging from those offices in High Castle got some play too. If it is discovered that this solicitor acted for David Eyam, it will give greater impetus to the story. Journalists may begin to join up the dots.’
‘Not if Eyam is charged,’ said Ferris, who had been looking uncomfortable.
‘I’ll have a word with Maclean,’ said Temple, ‘and explain what we are doing and why we’re doing it. He won’t want his papers backing a paedophile.’
Nobody in the room except Cannon noticed the way the threat posed by Eyam to the government and that of red algae to the nation had been merged. State and government were for them one. Nor did they question that Number Ten’s responses to both were in effect the same. They had all gone too far down the road with John Temple for that kind of discrimination.
Everyone except Temple rose. ‘Philip, could you stay for a moment?’ he said from his papers. The door closed. ‘We have been trying to get hold of Peter Kilmartin. You don’t have any idea where he is, do you?’
‘If he’s in touch, tell him I want to see him. There are suggestions that he was involved in the publication of those emails about Eyam’s appearance at the Joint Intelligence Committee.’
‘I seriously doubt it,’ said Cannon.
‘Still, I want to see him. There’s too much being published irresponsibly, randomly. It’s very destructive. We will have to look at this after the election. I’d like your thoughts on it all.’
‘That’s the disadvantage of a free press, prime minister.’
‘I sense the public is tired of it all. They don’t know who or what to believe. They want a single reliable account of these important issues. We’re going to have to put a lot of thought into this after the election.’
During the night a further elaboration of the plan to smuggle Eyam’s material into the Houses of Parliament had come to Kilmartin and on waking he put it to Carrie Middleton, who had appeared beside his bed with a cup of tea. The bedroom belonged to her son, who was away at university in Leeds, and all round the room were posters of rock stars and actresses. Kilmartin blinked at them, then put his glasses on.
‘Come into my room,’ she said. ‘You can sit down and talk to me while I put my face on.’ Kilmartin could not see that Carrie needed to add anything to what was already a miraculous complexion. She left while he took a quick shower and shaved, after which he put on his trousers and a shirt and followed the murmur of her voice barefoot.
He repeated his idea, while looking round the room – the best in the flat and decorated with Carrie’s eye for practicality and unfussy comfort. On one wall there was a collection of Victorian amateur watercolours, which she said, while thinking about his proposition, she inherited from her father who bought them at bric-a-brac stores and in markets during the fifties and sixties.
Returning to her right eye with a fine mascara brush, she smiled at her reflection in the mirror: ‘Yes, Peter, it may be possible if it looks the real thing. If you can guarantee that, I will do it for you, but you do realise I will be taking a risk?’
‘Yes, I do, Carrie, and I am sorry for asking, but it does seem quite a good idea.’
‘And you will make sure that young woman Mary MacCullum is all right?’
‘I will do my utmost. If we succeed, she should never have any trouble again. Now I really must make some telephone calls.’
She turned to him and composed her hands in the lap of her dressing gown. ‘People won’t thank you for ringing them at this hour. Besides, Peter, my help comes with a condition.’ She gave a coquettish little smile. For a moment he stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘A condition that will not be unpleasant,’ she added, then stood in the grey morning light, to his eyes glorious and effulgent and all that he had ever dreamed of while trying to concentrate on the kings of Assyria in the St James’s Library. She let her hand drop and the dressing gown fell open a little to reveal the librarian’s full white bust. ‘I was going to ask last night but then you looked so tired I thought it better that you had some rest.’ Without moving from the stool by her dressing table he drew her to him and said yes, indeed, the world could wait and so could his call to Kate Lockhart.
Kate entered the Italian sandwich and breakfast bar at eight thirty and ordered coffee while she read the papers. The radio was on in the background: through three new bulletins she heard reports of the emergency powers affecting London’s streets: commuters arriving in London by train were greeted by the sight of army patrols; there was an abnormally large police presence on streets. People were being stop-searched and asked to account for their movements. There were rumours of arrests but a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police would not confirm or deny them: he refused to be drawn on the subjects of holding areas or why the government felt it was necessary to detain people in London well away from the contaminated reservoirs or what intelligence the government was acting on. He did say, however, that the presence of the army on the street would be short-lived, and that the police would scale down their operation over the course of the week.
From the table at the back of the cafe from where she could watch the door, she called Eyam. Four previous attempts had failed and she was beginning to worry. But now Aristotle Miff answered and told her that Eyam was resting up at a place Freddie had found for him. Miff told her that he didn’t look too great – he was shaking when they picked him up in the street after his call early that morning, but he seemed better after taking the drugs and had eaten.
‘You’re the main man now,’ said Miff. ‘You gotta make it happen, he says. The whole thing rests on your shoulders. He told me to tell you.’
‘Thanks,’ she said unenthusiastically. ‘What about the package in the car wreck?’
‘Nothing – the police say they don’t know anything about it. It turns out that there was a fire and the bodies were burned pretty badly.’
‘Then how did they know who was travelling in the car? I was told an ID card was found.’
‘I guess they knew before the accident,’ said Miff simply.
‘What about the phones they were carrying?’
‘There was nothing . . .’
‘How important was the package?’
‘Important, but he says you can get by without it.’
‘Tell him that Promises – he’ll know who I mean – offered us a deal. They’re worried and they are about to get extremely nasty.’ She hung up and investigated the phone Eyam had given her. There were twenty-four numbers and the same number of email addresses. She wrote a list on a notepad, which excluded Chris Mooney and Alice Scudamore and then sent each address an email. The email would be encrypted, but she kept the message short: ‘Contact by return & let me know you’re OK. Wait for instructions on delivery at the end of afternoon. Keep away from CCTV and stay off the streets.’
The first replies came back. Some returned blank emails with just the word ‘bell ringer’ written in the subject bar. Others expressed various degrees of concern about surveillance and the emergency powers. She answered none of these but ticked off the names on her list. After half an hour, two had failed to reply – Penny Whitehead and Diana Kidd. Figuring that Whitehead was the calmer of the two, she called her.
‘Did you get the email?’ she said when Whitehead answered.
‘Yes, I haven’t had time to answer. Diana Kidd has been arrested. I was with her. We travelled together. She’s got the package with her.’
‘Shit! When did this happen? Where are you?’
‘Twenty minutes ago – she got out of the car to buy some coffee. I don’t know what happened but I saw her being led to a police van so I followed in the car. The van must have gone to the underground car park off Park Lane because I didn’t see it in the traffic after that.’
‘She’s got her phone with her?’
‘I assume so, yes.’
‘Damn.’ The only consolation was that Diana Kidd’s phone, like the others, had just one number on it. However that number belonged to the phone in Kate’s possession – now the hub of the whole operation, which would mean she could be tracked and all her messages intercepted and decoded.
‘Hold on, I’ve got it,’ said Whitehead. ‘She left the bloody thing on charge in the car.’
‘Thank God,’ said Kate. ‘Has she got the documents with her?’
She’s wearing them. They’re in her clothes. I didn’t ask where. God knows if they have dared to search her.’
‘OK, you’ll hear from me later. Now lose yourself, Penny. Just try to keep it together until this afternoon.’
She called Eyam’s phone and insisted Miff wake him and tell him about Diana Kidd’s package.
He came on. His voice was weak. ‘We can’t go on losing material like this.’
‘How essential is it?’
‘Letters signed by Temple, and a note of a meeting three years ago, in which the Americans – the director of national intelligence – were formally told of the system.’
‘And you let Diana Kidd carry these? You’re crazy. We’re going to have to try to get hold of them.’
‘You can’t – forget them. We’ve got copies that will be published on the web.’
‘You said that having the original documents counted for everything. Tony Swift and Chris Mooney died because of that belief. Put Miff on,’ she demanded, rising from the table with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder. She paid and stepped into the street. ‘I need a car that looks official,’ she said to Miff. ‘Black, dark-blue, silver – like a government car. And I want you to find a suit and tie, Miff, and lose the stud in your ear. Pick me up outside the Eagle’s Nest pub off the Earls Court Road in an hour and a half. Got that? Good. Don’t discuss it with Eyam. Just do what I say. OK?’
Miff answered in the affirmative several times.
‘Have you got a car?’
‘I’m looking at it.’
She noted down the registration number and hung up. Then she used the other phone to call Kilmartin.
‘Give me some names of serving female officers with MI5,’ she said to him.
‘What age?’
‘Mine.’
‘There’s Christine Shoemaker. She’s a little older than you.’
‘Too senior.’
Kilmartin was silent, then suggested a woman named Alison Vesty who was in her early forties and had been seconded to MI6 in Lahore, which was where Kilmartin had met her. ‘As far as I know she is still there,’ he said.
‘OK, we need to think of a way of telling the police that this senior MI5 officer is going to take one of the people they’ve detained in the underground car park. From memory, there’s a car pound for towed cars in that car park and I suspect that is where they are being held. Call the car pound, speak to the senior officer and tell them that Vesty is arriving to take away a woman named Diana Kidd for interview.’
‘Sounds risky to me,’ said Kilmartin.
‘Got any better suggestions?’
Kilmartin said no and offered several refinements.
At just past twelve thirty, Philip Cannon picked up the phone to a Chief Inspector Grimes, who asked if he could verify that Alison Vesty of the prime minister’s private office would be attending a holding area known as Hotel Papa to interview Diana Kidd. When the officer asked if Vesty would be showing any identification Cannon briskly reminded him that members of the intelligence services did not go round flashing ID cards and special passes. Before giving the officer the registration number of the car she would be using he asked why the holding area was called Hotel Papa. ‘Hyde Park – HP,’ replied Chief Inspector Grimes.
Cannon returned to read the emailed press release about to go out from Scotland Yard, which described David Eyam as a serial paedophile who had not only faked his own death but had returned to take revenge on the government. He took some satisfaction from the story – which came from Gruppo via Lyme – that the deal offered to David Eyam had been ignored and his woman friend had made fools of MI5 by simply sending her phone to an office in the City where it lay at the security desk gently communicating with the nearest phone mast.
He rang Kilmartin about the decision to go public on David Eyam, as well as the news that Temple was threatening to call the general election that day.
Miff pulled up in a new Jaguar at one fifteen p.m. Kate climbed into the back and began wriggling out of her jeans to replace them with the suit trousers. Then she bent forward, efficiently pulled the shirt and sweater over her head and put on the crisp white shirt that had been folded at the bottom of her bag.
‘Jesus,’ said Miff to the mirror. ‘I’m trying to drive here.’
‘Well keep your eyes on the road, Aristotle,’ she said. ‘Anyway, why the hell are you called Aristotle?’
‘After Aristotle Onassis, – the shipping magnate. My mother hoped it would make me rich. Like a good luck charm, I suppose.’
‘Weird.’
‘I have to tell you something, Kate,’ he said, twirling the wheel with one hand. ‘Your friend is all over the news, and you get a mention too. They’re making a big thing of it, and it isn’t pretty – child abuse, tax dodging, money laundering, faking his death. They’re probably still going on about him.’
He turned on the radio. A reporter was reviewing Eyam’s career as a ‘top-flight’ civil servant and intelligence chief, a man who had only a week before been mourned at a funeral service attended by the home secretary, civil servants and those working for Eyam’s sometime patron Eden White, a close ally of the prime minister’s. ‘There is some mystery about the events in the quiet market town of High Castle, where a local solicitor was recently murdered outside David Eyam’s property. Police won’t comment on this, or the fact that the town is now grieving the death of two men in a car accident that took place on Sunday night. One of the men worked as the coroner’s clerk and officiated at the inquest held into Eyam’s death, apparently in a bomb blast, just under two weeks ago.’
‘They may just have made a big mistake,’ said Kate to the back of Miff’s head. ‘There are too many unanswered questions.’
‘People will just remember the kiddie porn,’ said Miff.
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ she said and began to think herself into the role of Alison Vesty, who by Kilmartin’s account was an uncompromising bitch. ‘So you shouldn’t have too much difficulty,’ he had said with a chuckle.
Twenty minutes later the Jaguar arrived at the top of the slip road leading to the vast underground car park. They were stopped and directed by armed policemen to the entrance at Marble Arch, five hundred yards away, where they fell in behind two police vans on a ramp that curved round to their left. The vans were waved through but an armed policeman moved to stand in their path. Another bent down to Miff. ‘We’re expected,’ he said. ‘I’m carrying Miss Vesty from the Emergency Committee in Downing Street.’
The policeman moved to Kate’s window. ‘ID?’ he asked.
‘Chief Inspector Grimes has been informed – he will check with Number Ten if you want. Look, I am in rather a hurry, officer.’
He looked doubtful but walked to the front of the car, checked the plate against the number he had on his clipboard and returned to Miff’s window. ‘Go through the barrier, park up on the right, and walk to the office at the entrance to the holding area: they will help you.’
As the barrier rose, Miff shot off, causing the tyres to squeal on the shiny concrete. ‘Steady, Aristotle, don’t overdo it,’ she said.
They parked in a bay that was marked for visitors. ‘Turn the car around. Keep the engine running,’ she said. Inside the pocket of her bag she’d found a pass to the Mayne Building in New York – a plain white plastic security card held in a metal frame, which was attached to a loop of black string. She put this round her neck, straightened her shirt and climbed into the mild, fetid atmosphere of the car park.
Ahead of her was the car pound, a fenced-off area of two or three acres at the centre of the enormous single-level car park, which she remembered from years before when Charlie’s car had been impounded. It had been hastily – and badly – screened off by tarpaulins, stretched along the outside of the cage. Lights projected shadows of people onto the tarpaulins, people standing in groups, sitting or moving about slowly. Several notices declared that the car park was now a ‘designated area under the emergency regulations’. Mobile phones, photography and any form of communication with those being held under the Civil Contingencies Act were forbidden. The holding area should not be approached by unauthorised personnel, instructed the notice. Members of the public wishing to claim their cars were instructed to phone a number. All others were told to report to the office with identification ready. Lastly it warned that any attempt to interfere with the detainees or impede the authorities in the execution of their duties was an offence.
The car park PA system was playing music, and just now, without irony, an old number by Phil Collins – ‘Another Day in Paradise’. She kept walking. At each corner of the pen were police carrying semi-automatic weapons. Cameras had been trained along the line of the fence. Through a gap in the tarps she could see lines of people waiting under the notice that said ‘Processing’. Men and women were separated: each carried their outer garments and their shoes. The first step in a process of dehumanisation, thought Kate, is to force people to undress. A quick estimate told her that there were a couple of hundred people in the cage.
She reached two armed police officers standing outside the cabin. ‘I have an appointment,’ she said, walking past them and into the gaze of a camera. She mounted four steps into the cabin and opened the door. Three men in uniform were inside. One sat with a clipboard and a laptop in front of him. ‘Chief Inspector Grimes?’ she said to the oldest of the three.
‘Yes.’
‘Vesty from the Government Emergency Committee. You should have received a call from Downing Street.’
‘We did,’ said Grimes, ‘but it is not clear what you want.’
‘Call the main switchboard again and ask for this extension.’ She handed him a piece of paper.
‘I’m sure there won’t be any need; I’ve just talked to them.’
‘It is required,’ she said. ‘They will confirm everything again.’
The policeman picked up the phone and dialled the number. She prayed that Kilmartin’s contact would answer. He did because the policeman was then asked to describe her.
‘Right, that all appears to be in order,’ he said.
She glanced through the window to her left and saw the armed policemen move off into the car park, having circled Miff’s car. ‘You’re holding a woman named Diana Kidd. I am here to oversee her release and remove her.’
‘Take her away? I thought you were going to interview her here?’
‘No.’
‘But . . .’
‘We don’t have time for this. You have come near to destroying an operation being run at the highest level.’ She bent forward, splayed her hands on the desk and looked at him hard. ‘Can I have a word in private, Chief Inspector?’
He nodded to the two men, who got up and went through a door at the rear of the cabin. In the few seconds that it was open she glimpsed more of the compound. There were bedrolls, mattresses and a long table where she guessed food was served. A couple of bins overflowed with water bottles and the type of plastic foodbox she’d been given in jail. In the middle of the compound was a bank of toilets. On the far side was a row of four cabins.
‘Chief Inspector,’ she said when the door closed. ‘Diana Kidd is working for us. She is an important asset, vital to the government operation. We’ve taken months to infiltrate the core group. She should be out on the streets telling us what’s happening now. There are hundreds more of these people and we desperately need to know what they are planning.’
‘Are we talking about the same person?’ he asked incredulously. ‘The woman hasn’t stopped moaning and crying since she got here. She didn’t say anything about working for the government.’
Kate shook her head. ‘She’s very good at her job. She has been in deep cover for nearly a year. Of course she isn’t going to say anything in front of all the others you’ve got here.’
‘The Security Service is processing the detainees individually. She could have told them.’
She placed her hands on her hips and squared up to Grimes. ‘Look, I know you’re doing a difficult job here but let me just tell you that half an hour ago I was with the home secretary and the prime minister. If you won’t let her go I will have to phone Downing Street and put you onto them. To be frank, Chief Inspector, this will not look good for you.’ She could see the doubt in his eyes. ‘Effect this woman’s release immediately because it is going to happen sooner or later.’
He picked up the phone without looking at her and spoke: ‘Bring Diana Kidd to the gate.’
She nodded.
‘Follow me, Miss Vesty.’
They went down the steps of the cabin and turned left towards a gate in the cage. She had a better view of the compound now. There was much more noise than she had realised, mostly made by a dozen or so young people who were demanding to know why they were being held without charge. One was shouting, ‘Hey . . . Be . . . us . . . Cor . . . Pus’ in an endless chant; and a man with blonde dreadlocks was being restrained by two policemen after he’d charged the gate. Another went to help him and was unceremoniously knocked to the ground. Others stood, or sat hunched on the makeshift beds, in mute bewilderment. She recognised no one. Then she saw a man in a suit approach a dumpy figure sitting on a plastic garden chair with her back to the gate. It was Mrs Kidd. She looked up when he spoke to her, then rose rather unsteadily. Kate could see the hope and terror in her demeanour. Without turning, she beckoned discreetly with her left hand to Miff, whom she hoped was looking in his wing mirror. The reverse lights went on and the car began to creep back towards her.
‘The trouble with these emergency powers is no one knows what to do with these people,’ said Grimes conversationally. ‘They say we’re to let them go in a day or two. No one knows. You wonder what the point is. Bang ’em up I say – better than this limbo.’
‘You’re doing a vital job,’ said Kate. ‘How many are you expecting?’
‘Anything up to a thousand: that’s what we’ve been told.’
‘All in Hotel Papa?’
‘Until the other holding areas are sorted out. Remember, we’ve only had twenty-four hours’ notice.’
‘I’ll tell Downing Street you’re managing well.’ As she said it she noticed a man step from the row of cabins in the middle of the compound and look with interest in their direction. She instantly recognised Halliday from the police station in High Castle. In the light she couldn’t tell if he had noticed her, but something had certainly caught his attention. He remained staring in her direction as Diana Kidd and her escort neared the gate. At this point Kidd recognised Kate and a look of gormless joy flooded her features. Kate said and did nothing as the buzzer sounded and the gate rolled back.
‘Thank you,’ blurted Kidd. ‘Thank you.’
‘Make your way to the car now,’ said Kate without looking at her. ‘We’ve got a lot to do.’
On cue Miff reversed the car right up to them, hopped out and went to open the doors on the left side. A chauffeur might have waited to close the doors for his passengers, but Miff sensed something in Kate’s manner and returned to the driving seat, leaving them open.
‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ said Kate, taking Mrs Kidd’s arm.
There was a shout from inside the compound. Kate glanced back and saw the man running towards the gate. Then she simply shrugged at Grimes, pushed Diana Kidd into the rear seat and climbed into the front. Miff’s Jaguar launched forward with a squeal of tyres and shot the hundred yards to the barrier, but just then the two police vans came from another part of the car park and moved into their lane. ‘Can you get ahead of them?’ shouted Kate. In her wing mirror she saw the man run up to Grimes, gesticulating.
‘We don’t need to,’ replied Miff. He was right. The barrier was raised for them and he stuck so close to the second vehicle that the Jaguar slipped through before it fell.
Kate turned round to Diana Kidd and shouted, ‘Have you still got the documents?’
‘Yes,’ she wailed. ‘They were searching people but they hadn’t reached me. They’re in the lining of my skirt.’
‘Good, hold tight.’ The police vans turned left into a two-lane stretch of about 150 yards, which after a right-angle bend would divide into the entrance and exit slip roads. ‘They’ll radio ahead to the armed police,’ she shouted. ‘You are going to have to bloody well move.’
Miff needed no encouragement. Once they were in the brightly lit tunnel, he pulled out from behind the two vans and overtook them at astonishing speed. They rounded the bend but instead of going straight ahead he hooked right up the entry slip road, where he knew there was no barrier. As they came into the daylight they realised that the two armed officers they’d passed at the entrance twenty minutes earlier were running with their guns ready to cover the exit fifty yards away. Miff let out a whoop of joy, sped the wrong way through traffic lights, and spun the wheel left to join the traffic moving round Marble Arch. Kate glanced back and only then did it occur to her that Hotel Papa was almost directly beneath Speakers’ Corner, the symbol of free expression in Britain.
The news that a middle-aged woman named Kidd had been sprung from Hotel Papa by Eyam’s friend Kate Lockhart and a convicted criminal using a stolen car reached Number Ten about half an hour later. There was plenty of CCTV footage of the pair, but it was still not clear why the officer in charge had let the woman go without any proper authorisation. He maintained he had received a call from Downing Street and rang back to confirm the release, but could not say to whom he’d spoken.
Yes, thought Cannon, it would very soon be revealed that the policeman had been given a number in the Communications Centre. They might even link that to a call from Peter Kilmartin and someone somewhere might have a recording of the conversations, but they weren’t going to do anything to him, not now that he had the ultimate protection tucked in his breast pocket – four sheets of A4 paper, which Lyme had got hold of from the Government Scientific Service and which had also been sent to the prime minister’s private office in a secure bag an hour ago. Nobody would mess with him now, least of all John Temple.
But it was not Cannon’s style to wave a gun in the air, and he looked round his colleagues in the election strategy meeting with a mild air and waited.
If the election was going to be called that afternoon, the button had to be pushed now to enable Temple to go to the palace at five and return to Downing Street in time to make his announcement to the media outside Number Ten before the six o’clock news. Everything was ready – a miracle had been achieved by the party. The manifesto was on the presses and campaigning in the marginal seats had virtually begun. Temple could go any time he wanted.
Eventually the prime minister’s gaze fell on Cannon. ‘So this afternoon it is,’ he said.
‘Certainly, if you want the announcement of the general election to come a poor second on the news agenda, go ahead, prime minister.’ He stopped and looked round the usual faces. ‘The David Eyam story will push you off the front page,’ he continued. ‘All the TV channels are leading on it now. Even though it’s an open secret that you are going to call the election, the Eyam story has huge momentum. More and more detail is being added at every bulletin and we’re only a couple of hours into this thing.’
‘But Eyam is the enemy. We are his victims,’ said Temple hopelessly. ‘He is attempting to distort the legitimate democratic process.’
Cannon blinked rapidly. ‘That’s not the way it is being presented, prime minister. The main thrust of the coverage is that a practising paedophile was at the heart of government and had access to all the nation’s secrets. An issue of competency is being raised, even though it is well over two years old. We have received a hundred calls from journalists in the last hour, and most are asking why a man who went to the trouble of staging his own death in such an elaborate fashion would bother to come back to certain imprisonment. It doesn’t make sense and when a story doesn’t add up like this it becomes an obsession. The media won’t want to let it go, not even for you.’
‘As soon as Eyam is arrested that will all have to stop.’
‘But you can’t say when that will be. Eyam’s associate has just removed a suspect from beneath our noses. Why? Why did Kate Lockhart take that risk? We can make some educated guesses but we don’t know.’
‘That woman,’ snapped Temple, ‘is the pivot of the whole plot. This is the second time she has made a fool of us today.’
‘Well, we did train her,’ said Cannon. ‘The point is that we haven’t been able to lay a hand on Eyam. We don’t know where he is. Intelligence led us to believe that there was going to be some sort of press conference in a hotel. That is beginning to look extremely unlikely. So far nothing has happened. In the last hour the St James’s Library has been raided by the police and Security Service in a manner that is now being condemned as oppressive. It’s like raiding the Women’s Institute. There are TV crews outside there now. Apparently police were acting on intelligence but clearly the information was wrong and now the great and good on the library’s board are going to cause hell about the oppressive behaviour. You’ve got the army on the streets, thousands of people being stopped and searched, scores being secretly held against their will and without legal representation.’ He stopped. ‘I respectfully submit that these are not auspicious circumstances in which to call an election where you are going to be arguing for continuation of calm, orderly government. Give the police time to arrest and charge Eyam, then call the election. Let this storm blow itself out in the media overnight.’ Cannon sat back, knowing he had used every reasonable argument. The only things left were the four sheets of paper in his pocket.
There was further discussion lasting ten minutes, in which Cannon took no part. At length Temple said he would consult further and asked Dawn Gruppo to be in touch with the palace and the office of the president of the European Council, who was due at Number Ten the next morning.
As they rose, Temple murmured to Cannon: ‘We’ve got to get the woman Lockhart – she’s clearly the key to it all.’