Secrets Read online

  ‘Rained in the night, though. Get you wet, did it?’

  ‘Not so you’d notice.’

  The man came closer, noting with interest Bud’s shelter; a bender created from living saplings, pulled down towards the ground, roofed with polythene, camouflaged with leaf and branch. It was invisible even from a few feet away. The man had hazel eyes, Bud noted, and short, grey hair, and he was older than Bud first thought. Though he moved like a younger man, Bud reckoned the stranger had another twenty years under his belt compared to him.

  ‘Mind if I sit?’

  Bud shrugged and the stranger settled himself on the ground. The two men eyed one another.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Bud asked.

  ‘Probably nothing. Came here to speak to Annie, then I noticed she’d got company and I wondered why.’

  Bud frowned and the other man shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Not you. Took me a while to find you, which is why I thought you’d be the man to talk to. You’ve found the best position, of course. Dug in. Been here a few days, I reckon.’

  Bud said nothing and it seemed the man expected nothing else.

  ‘I’m guessing Nathan set you to watch. Clay wouldn’t care about Bob and Annie can take care of herself, so I figure the target is that husband of hers and that got me thinking. Who would threaten Bob Taylor? And if you were the enemy, well it really would be a case of overkill. It wouldn’t take all of you lot to take him out. One would do, when he walked those two dogs of his. Not a difficult target, Bob Taylor. An easy hit. Apart from the fact that Annie’s here, of course. So I figured, not a hit squad, maybe a protection detail.’

  Bud said nothing; again, he got the impression that this man expected nothing anyway.

  ‘So I got to thinking again. Who would be such a threat that not even having Annie in the house could be enough? But also a threat she didn’t want him to know was there? Annie likes her secrets as much as the next girl, and Bob Taylor is a good man, not a man to make enemies of his own. So—’

  ‘So that got you thinking again,’ Bud said, wondering where this was going. The other man might be a deal older, but Bud had been around long enough to know that should it come to a straight fight, he would not be at the advantage. He comforted himself with the thought that if this man had wanted him dead, he’d got close enough to have done the job before Bud had even been aware of him. Then he dismissed that as being any kind of comfort. Even a relative kind.

  The man smiled. ‘That got me thinking,’ he confirmed. ‘If Nathan put the protection in place, then he must be taking this very seriously, but at the same time, he’s made no attempt to move Bob Taylor to a place of safety, which means he either can’t or does not want to make use of his usual contacts and resources and, with the possible exception of yourself, he’s had to draft in, shall we say, less experienced operatives than he’d like to use on a protection detail. So that makes me think he’s protecting Bob Taylor from someone close. Close to Nathan and Annie, that is.’

  Bud tensed as the stranger put his hand into the pocket of his jacket. He noted the flicker of amusement cross the other’s face as he withdrew a tobacco tin, opened it and began to prepare a smoke.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘I gave up,’ Bud said.

  ‘Wise.’ Gregory lit the roll up and slid the tin back into his pocket. ‘You ever meet a man called Edward Chambers?’

  ‘Why should I tell you anything?’

  ‘No reason. He and Clay went way back, then Edward crossed him and the two parted company. At the time, Clay let it go, or, more accurately, put the matter on ice. Edward could still be of occasional use and Clay knew exactly what pressure to apply. Then Edward died and Clay realized that some of the skeletons Edward had reason to keep in their closets, were making their way out. Edward was a gatekeeper, a collator, if you like. Such people hold a great many secrets in their care.’

  ‘And you are telling me this, because?’

  Gregory smoked in silence, then removed the tin from his pocket again, nipped out what was left of his roll up and replaced the stub in the tin.

  ‘Tell Nathan that Gregory came here. That he is willing to help, should Nathan require it. That’s all.’

  Gregory rose and Bud watched as he moved off into the wood, within a few feet he had all but disappeared. Bud continued to watch until he was certain the other man had gone, the encounter leaving him with a deep feeling of unease. No, he acknowledged, as he realized that his breath was ragged and his heart rate fast enough to be almost normal. A feeling of fear.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tariq Nasir had worked in counterintelligence most of his adult life. Although no part of the intelligence service had ever advertised for a tea boy or general factotum, Tariq would be the first to admit that was where he had started out. As an assistant to the assistant of another very junior assistant. He’d never had a yen for field work; Tariq knew he just wasn’t cut out for it. He was definitely not the athletic type, inclined to be clumsy – a doofus, his father called it – and beside, Tariq knew he didn’t have that kind of nerve, but what he did have was a phenomenal memory and an eye for detail and a fascination with codes and patterns and the kind of random facts most people would dismiss.

  Tariq’s father drove a taxi. Tariq’s mother had been a teacher, back … wherever. He had never known her. Back wherever, Tariq’s father had been in service to a very important man and that man had secrets.

  That, in fact, was about the depth and breadth of Tariq’s knowledge of his family’s past. He had been five when they came to London. To damp streets and tall buildings and traffic and such a mix of people.

  Tariq had fallen in love at five years old and could not conceive of living anywhere else.

  The only other thing he knew was that their being here was because of a man called Gustav Clay, who had, his father said, saved their lives. Clay had been a peripheral figure in Tariq’s life all the way through his childhood, like some oft absent uncle, who turned up on birthdays and brought presents or sent him packets of foreign stamps for his burgeoning collection.

  Tariq’s father was a taxi driver, but he wanted more for his son. Not that either of them saw anything wrong with being a taxi driver; Ahmed had passed ‘the knowledge’ on his first attempt and was justifiably proud of that fact, but for Tariq …

  Besides, they both recognized that Tariq, though he had managed to pass his test, was a pretty lousy driver. Too easily distracted and with no fellow feeling for the engine. He now drove an automatic, so he didn’t have to remember when to change gear.

  And so, his father had spoken to Clay. Clay had ensured that Tariq made the right university choices and then, equipped with a joint First in political science and mathematics, Tariq had come to work for him. And had learnt that there was more to Clay than stamps and birthday gifts.

  Twenty years in the business, now, slowly working his way up, mentored and sponsored by a man who, though now retired, was seen as one of the Elder Statesmen of their closed little world, Tariq had prospered and he had thought that there were no more surprises possible that could make their way into his in tray. Until this one.

  Tariq spread the crime scene photos out across his desk, looking for anything that he might have missed already. He knew a great deal about Gilligan and Hayes. The department had dealings with them from time to time; sometimes adversarially, sometimes because they could discreetly make a problem go away.

  For the right fee.

  He liked neither man, didn’t know anyone that actually did, but it was still a shock to realize that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to kill them.

  His office door opened and Tariq did not need to look up to know who it was. Clay never knocked and anyway, once you’d been around him for a while, you could sense his presence as soon as he entered a building. Or so Tariq thought – he’d never actually dared ask if anyone else felt it.

  ‘Anything of interest?’ Clay sat down and settled himself comfortably.

 
; Tariq shook his head. ‘Puzzles,’ he said. ‘And no picture on the box.’

  Clay laughed softly and Tariq smiled at the older man. His eyes seemed blue, today. Not that pale steel grey that usually presaged a storm.

  ‘I have the post-mortem report,’ Tariq said. ‘The police are chasing it, so we’ll have to release something to them soon.’

  Clay nodded. He took the folder that Tariq proffered to him and skimmed through. ‘Cause of death. Asphyxia. Did they run out of air?’

  ‘The back of the van was sealed, but no. It wasn’t as simple as that. There was a valve going from the cab into the back. Forensic think that carbon dioxide must have been released into the rear. Just a trickle of it. They woke up from whatever drug they had been given, and they must have been drugged or someone would have heard them earlier and there are no reports, even though we have CCTV records of the van at junctions and lights and even in slow traffic. The best guess is that when the van was parked, the valve was switched on and from then on it was just a matter of time.’

  ‘So, the rescuers had no chance of getting to them.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘And, assuming that they had previously been unconscious, do we know what knocked them out?’

  ‘Best guess so far is Xenon. It’s sometimes used as an anaesthetic, but it clears from the body pretty quickly.’

  ‘Expensive,’ Clay commented. He flicked through the rest of the report and Tariq could not shake the not unusual sensation that Clay knew all of this already and was just testing him.

  ‘And the file Molly Chambers so kindly deposited in their office?’ Clay sounded amused, but his eyes told Tariq something different. Clay was annoyed. Not angry, yet, but definitely vexed.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve gone through it, but I’m still not sure where it came from or what it’s supposed to tell us. I thought a visit to Mrs Chambers might—’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary.

  ‘If she thinks she knows what it was about. It might help me to contextualize,’ Tariq began, but he knew it was a profitless argument.

  Clay rose. ‘The chances are it’s nothing,’ he said. ‘We are none of us getting any younger, sometimes things that have no real importance suddenly seem desperately so. Molly was widowed not long ago. I wouldn’t want to, well you know—’

  Tariq nodded. ‘You knew the Chambers well,’ he ventured. ‘I’m puzzled. Why didn’t she just hand it over to you?’

  ‘Once, we were friends,’ he said. ‘Then we began to differ in our view of the world. Edward was an idealist; I am and have always been a pragmatist. We did not part on the best of terms and when he died and I sent my condolences, Molly made it plain that I would not be welcome at the funeral. It’s sad when old friends fall out, but there it is. I won’t have her upset, Tariq. As I said, we’re none of us getting any younger and if Molly is making her final years more comfortable by rewriting her past, then who am I to interfere.’

  He paused, patted his jacket pockets as though absent-minded. ‘I almost forgot. I have something of yours.’

  He laid a photograph down on the desk. ‘It was in Herbert Norris’s flat. I thought it best not to leave it there.’

  Tariq looked at the picture. He remembered it being taken. The tall, white man standing next to Tariq in the picture had been a friend of Herbert’s that Tariq had met only once or twice. Joseph something. Joseph Bern. They’d all had lunch together, by the river, had talked about everything and nothing and the sun had been shining.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? It was in Norris’s flat. You should be more careful.’

  ‘Careful of what? Herb was my friend.’

  Clay shook his head. ‘I told you long ago, Tariq, and this business with the Chambers should just reinforce that. There’s really no such thing as friends. Just people you might know for a while.’

  Tariq watched him leave and then gathered up the crime scene photographs and slid them into a drawer. There would be nothing in them that would help with this particular puzzle, he knew that now. It was all about that file. The picture of himself and Joseph Bern he slipped into his pocket, suddenly aware that his hands were shaking. The question was did Clay know that he was lying when he said that he had found nothing in that file?

  Tariq took a deep, uncertain breath. The answer to that one, he thought, was a definite yes. Clay always recognized a lie. The only real question was did Clay intend to do anything about it?

  TWENTY-NINE

  Joseph Bern’s funeral took place in a little churchyard in a village called Ember. It was a peaceful place, the Church of St Anne and the Virgin was suitably ancient and venerable and the birds sang over Joseph’s grave.

  Adam could not help but think how inappropriate it all was. He remembered their last, proper conversation and felt that the likes of Joseph Bern should be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Africa, or be lost beneath the bones of other fallen in some unnamed, undiscovered scene of carnage high in the Balkans. A churchyard in a pretty, quintessentially English village was so not Joseph. But it seemed the man had settled here, drank at the local pub, worshipped – worshipped, for Christ’s sake – in this church. Had made friends here.

  The outstretched branches of a copper beech shaded the mourners, a surprising number, Adam noted, though he recognized only five and knew only three by their proper names. He was surprised that there were still new burials happening in this little churchyard, his own parish church – not that he actually went to it – was full to capacity and no one had been interred there for the past twenty-odd years. But he noticed several new graves here, slotted in carefully between the older burials, noticed too that some of the family names on the eighteenth century headstones were echoed in those newly buried.

  The vicar had, in his service, spoken of a much travelled man who had finally found a place to settle and feel at home in. From some of his anecdotes, Adam gathered that the vicar had actually known Joseph quite well – or at least thought he had. Like the nurses in the hospice, he too referred to Joseph as Joe and it still sounded wrong in Adam’s ears. He had seen Molly flinch at the sound of it and realized that she too found it aberrant.

  He did not speak to Molly until they left the graveside. He’d exchanged a few words with the vicar and someone from the village had been round to all the strangers in their midst and invited them back to the wake at the local pub. Adam thought he might consider it, but he doubted anyone else would, with the possible exception of Molly and her carefully attendant escort. She came over and joined Adam beneath the copper beech, the younger man with her loitering where she had left him.

  ‘Too many funerals for my liking,’ she said.

  Her words reminded him of the last conversation he’d had with Joseph.

  ‘We’re getting older, Molly.’

  She harrumphed and Adam smiled. ‘I see Jenkins came and that man, Masters or whatever his name was,’ Adam commented.

  ‘And three other damned spooks,’ Molly agreed. ‘They probably wanted to make sure he was really dead. A thorn in everyone’s side was Joseph.’ She paused for breath and then said indignantly, ‘Did you hear what that man called him? Joe, for goodness sake. Joseph was never a Joe.’

  They turned and began to walk back towards the lych gate. Jenkins, Masters and the rest had already disappeared. Adam wondered what they’d actually come for, but then, it was tradition wasn’t it, that respects should be paid, even if those you’d actually known and worked with were mostly long gone. They were the last ones standing, Adam thought sadly. The legions of the lost trailing behind them back through all the years, back to when Molly and Adam and Joseph had been young. Young enough to still believe the world could be changed. ‘Are you going to the pub?’ he asked.

  ‘Damned right. Adam, this is Alec. The honorary nephew.’

  Adam shook his hand. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ he said. ‘You’re a Detective Inspector, I believe.�
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  ‘Not any more,’ Molly said fiercely. ‘He went and quit his job, didn’t he?’

  Adam met Alec’s resigned gaze and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Molly doesn’t approve,’ Alec said.

  ‘Of course not,’ Adam smiled. ‘Molly never quit at anything. I don’t think she knows how. Not even when she should.’

  ‘Well, that’s as maybe.’ Molly linked arms with the pair of them and they sauntered slowly towards the pub.

  The Green Man, Adam noted. Joseph would have liked that. ‘It was a good turn out,’ he said. ‘I never expected Joseph to settle down somewhere like this.’

  ‘It’s a very lovely little village,’ Alec said. ‘I think we could live somewhere like this.’

  ‘Alec and his wife are house hunting,’ Molly said. ‘Maybe you should bring her here, Alec. I mean there’ll be at least one house up for sale, won’t there?’

  Adam noted the edge to Molly’s voice and wondered what Alec had done to offend some Molly sensibility or other. ‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘I think that’s the trouble,’ Alec said. ‘I don’t think we really know. We’ve accepted an offer on our place and we’re living in a hotel at the moment.’

  ‘Been a pair of gypsies the last couple of months,’ Molly said. Adam got the impression she was almost envious of that.

  Alec found them a table in the already crowded lounge bar and went to fetch drinks. Molly watched as he ordered and stood chatting to one of the locals. ‘He’s a good boy,’ she said as though responding to Adam’s unspoken reprimand. ‘He knows me, knows I don’t mean any of it.’

  From Molly, that was quite an admission. Adam looked more closely at his old friend. Lines of strain showed around her mouth and eyes and her skin was pale, grey almost. She looked ill and tired. ‘What is it, Molly?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She turned her gaze from Alec and full on Adam. The face might show her age, he thought, but the eyes, oh they were still the same, Fierce and blue and so very much alive. With a sense of shock he realized that he was still just a little bit in love with her even after all these years.