No Tears for the Lost

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Riley rang Palmer and told him what had transpired, and that Henzigger was on his way to Colebrooke House.

‘I’ll take a look,’ he told her without hesitation. ‘He might not be there yet. Can you get hold of Mitcheson? We’ll need backup.’

Riley said she would and dialled Mitcheson’s number, knowing full well what Palmer meant by ‘backup’.

To her surprise, Mitcheson was on the Bayswater Road approaching Marble Arch. ‘I had a feeling you might need help,’ he said. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’

He was there within three, behind the wheel of a dark blue Land Cruiser. He was dressed in combat boots, slacks and a cotton windcheater.

‘My God,’ Riley said admiringly, as he turned the car towards west London. ‘What have you been doing — posing for a gay porn mag?’

He laughed. ‘I was actually getting ready for a night-time surveillance job. Fortunately, it’ll keep. What’s going on — and why were you in the Magic Kingdom?’ He was referring to the US Embassy.

She told him about the meeting with Weller and Portius, and how Henzigger had been running drugs with Myburghe’s help. Now, with Portius having mounted a watch on his activities, Henzigger was out of options and ready to kill Myburghe unless he got a route out of the country.

Colebrooke House was the only place Henzigger would go. She could feel it. Myburghe’s car being found along the Western Avenue was a definite pointer. Other than the M4, it was the main route out of London towards Gloucestershire. Henzigger must have followed Myburghe and hijacked him once he realised his plans were falling apart, and now he was planning the final curtain.

Once clear of the London traffic, the motorway was reasonably clear. The few hesitant motorists they encountered took one look at the charging Land Cruiser in their rear-view mirrors and moved out of the way.

Mitcheson jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate a steel box in the back. ‘I stopped off and brought some gear,’ he said. ‘I thought we might need it.’

Riley felt a sudden tug of concern. The ‘gear’ he was referring to most likely had triggers and made loud noises, and if they were stopped by police, would be enough to put them both away for a very long time. But she knew Mitcheson wasn’t overly bothered by such niceties. Like Frank Palmer, he took the pragmatist’s view that you used the right tools for the job. Unlike Palmer, though, she wasn’t sure how much control he would exercise in an all-round fight. She felt guilty for even thinking it, but hoped he could control it enough to keep casualties down to single figures.

‘Is it traceable?’

He gave a half smile in the glow from the dashboard display. ‘Not to me, it isn’t.’

While the road unwound beneath them, Riley filled in the gaps about Henzigger and Myburghe, and how the ambassador had been sucked into the world of drugs and ready money.

‘Only he can tell us,’ said Riley. ‘But I think he ran up huge gambling debts and realised there was only one way to settle them. Who would suspect a British Ambassador of helping clear the way for the occasional drugs shipment? It must have taken a while to reel him in, but it was worth it.’

‘Unless he was coerced,’ Mitcheson suggested. ‘It wouldn’t have taken much for his family to be threatened.’

Riley looked at him in the glow of passing lights. ‘You sound as if you’re making excuses for him.’

‘I know how they work.’ He let a few seconds go by, then asked, ‘What brought this to a head, anyway?’

‘I think Christian’s death tipped the balance. Myburghe had nothing left for them to hold over him. The girls were out of the way and his wife was no longer a factor.’ She remembered Henzigger’s word. ‘The leverage was gone.’

Mitcheson nodded. If the former diplomat had been operating under extreme pressure to do what he’d done, it made his actions at least understandable. Now, with that pressure gone, he was no longer the help Henzigger and his backers needed.

‘The DEA think Henzigger and his backers have been planning this for years,’ Riley continued. ‘He needed someone to make it happen at this end. Someone to help get the shipment through. He met Sir Kenneth and probably learned of his gambling debts. It was a weakness he could trade on.’

‘So the business with Christian was a bluff?’

‘To begin with. When he baulked, they picked Christian up and killed him. Whether intentionally or not, we’ll never know.’

Riley rested her head against the cool of the window. Somehow, two strands of Myburghe’s life and career had come together in an elaborate hoax; the letters and the fake bomb from Jacob Worth, a punishment for what the former Intelligence Officer had seen as the ambassador’s betrayal in a time of crisis; and the finger and ring from Henzigger and the people behind him, probably preceded by threats of exposure about his gambling debts to keep Sir Kenneth in line.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said finally, aware that she, too, was sounding as if she might be excusing Myburghe’s actions, ‘that the business with his wife and son was as clearcut as everyone thinks.’

Mitcheson turned to look at her. He was negotiating a sharp, plunging bend at the time. They made it with a whisper of leaves and a slight squeal of tyres.

‘What do you mean?’

She explained how rehearsed Lady Myburghe’s explanations had sounded about her husband’s gambling, and how readily she had disclosed such intimate details. ‘I suspect he deliberately cut himself off from his wife because he knew the kind of people he was dealing with. There wasn’t much he could do about his son without revealing what he was up to. His daughters were protected by being in London, but Christian wanted to be out in the big, wide world. In the end, Myburghe persuaded him to go abroad, probably convinced he’d be safer out there where nobody could find him. But his wife was a vulnerability he couldn’t control, so he did the only thing he could, which was to distance himself from her. It put her out of the picture.’

‘So she was party to it?’

‘She had to be, after all those years. She’d been through worse.’

‘He still did it,’ Mitcheson growled, his meaning clear. Whatever his reasons, Sir Kenneth had helped facilitate the importing of drugs to the UK, abandoning his principles, his honour and his loyalty, maybe even his soul. For money.

Riley couldn’t disagree. There was no escaping that what must have started out as an occasional harmless flutter all those years ago had eventually turned into something far worse than he could ever have imagined. The only way out was total disgrace — or coming to an arrangement. ‘Save some of the blame for Henzigger. He helped engineer this.’

‘How do you know?’

She told him about the failed drugs bust and Henzigger’s suspected part in it. ‘He and his suppliers lost everything. God knows what it cost them, but it was enough for them to put in extra insurance this time to make sure the next one didn’t go wrong.’

‘The Colombian grooms.’ Mitcheson nodded in agreement. ‘They killed Hilary.’

‘He must have known all about the schemes. He was the bodyguard your friend saw with Myburghe in Colombia. Sir Kenneth’s attempt at watching his own back.’

She shivered, recalling the terrible thing she had seen in the stable block. No man deserved to die like that. Thoughts of Colebrooke House made her wonder where Palmer was right now.

‘Can you make this thing go any faster?’

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