Red Station

FORTY-NINE

Paulton left Vauxhall Cross and made his way back towards his office. His cheeks were burning and he felt about as close to panic as he had ever been in his life. This had to be sorted out once and for all. What the bloody hell had Tate started? As for Bellingham, he’d completely lost the plot; suggesting wiping out an entire station was monstrous. Efficient, but monstrous.

Before reaching Thames House, he stopped and made a call from a secure mobile. ‘That person you dealt with,’ he said carefully, when a familiar male voice answered. ‘Did you check his place thoroughly for paperwork?’

‘Yeah, there was nothing, I told you. No names anywhere.’

‘Right. So you did.’ Paulton disconnected. He wasn’t reassured. Whelan had been a professional, no matter what his strange proclivities; he’d have kept some sort of note — it was in the nature of the man. But if there had been no papers, what about electronic records? Surely his man would have thought to check?

He pocketed his phone and continued to Thames House, mounting swiftly to his office. He stayed long enough to delve in his desk drawer, then told his secretary he was going out for an hour.

This was too important to leave to chance.

Outside, he walked for five minutes before flagging down a taxi. ‘Charing Cross,’ he told the driver, and sat sideways on to check he wasn’t being followed. At Charing Cross he left the cab and walked into the station, merging with the crowds. He entered the toilets, then came out again almost immediately and made his way back to the street, where he jumped on a bus heading east along the Strand. After five stops, when he was satisfied nobody was on his tail, he left the bus and took a cab heading west, avoiding conversation with the driver by hiding behind a discarded copy of Metro.

All the way, a barrage of questions jostled for attention: had his man made a thorough search of Whelan’s home? What if he’d skimped on the job? What if he’d been disturbed in his search and hadn’t got the nerve to admit it? If the police hadn’t found anything — and so far they would have had no reason, if all they suspected was a mugging — then the latest reports in the news would soon have them scouring the place with every piece of technology at their disposal.

He knew Whelan lived in a small flat in a rundown block not far from Victoria Station. He told the driver to circle the area twice. Time was ticking away but rushing in when he didn’t know the layout was a quick route to disaster.

Once he was satisfied there was no obvious police presence, he got the driver to drop him outside a pub and approached the block of flats on foot.

The foyer and stairwell were deserted, and smelled of damp paper and boiled milk. He hurried up the stairs and knocked lightly on Whelan’s door, one ear cocked for sounds from the other residents. When he was sure nobody was going to answer, he spent thirty seconds on the lock before slipping inside.

The interior was sombre, a cluttered display of dark antique furniture, burgundy cushions and heavy curtains. Paulton winced at the overdone opulence. It supported what he’d heard about Whelan’s lifestyle, which had led to the convenient method of his disposal. A tang of rich aftershave hung in the air, along with a slightly mildewed odour of trapped heat.

He did a quick walk-through first, to check there were no nasty surprises, then went through each room with the practised skill first learned in Belfast and perfected over several years operating in the field. It had been a long time since he’d needed to conduct a search, but it was something once learned, never forgotten.

It took him fifteen minutes to check all the obvious places, at the end of which he concluded that whatever Whelan’s personal failings, he had not lacked professional discretion. Other than the usual household paperwork and some notes about contacts and future projects, there was no mention of any past, present or ongoing security investigations. He was also satisfied that there were no hiding places in the fabric of the building or under the floors.

He returned to the living room. The furnishings included a small desk and filing cabinet, and had served as Whelan’s work place. He stared at them both, frustrated and relieved. Frustrated because the paperwork must exist and he hadn’t found it; relieved because if he couldn’t, it might mean nobody else would.

But that was a chance he couldn’t afford to take.

A computer sat on the desk. He switched it on. He didn’t have time for this, but he wasn’t about to walk away and ignore the main tool in Whelan’s working life. As soon as the machine was running, he took a small portable hard drive from his pocket and plugged it in. Then he copied the entire contents of the machine to the hard drive. As soon as that was done, he unplugged the drive and inserted a small memory stick in the USB port, and copied a file from the stick to the PC. Removing the stick, he switched off the screen and left the flat.

As he walked down the stairs to the street, the virus programme he’d left behind began eating its way into the belly of Whelan’s computer. According to the techs who had devised it, in less than three minutes, everything would be gone for good.

By the time he reached the end of the street and began looking for a taxi, he was breathing a lot easier.

End of the PC. End of the source. End of his worries.

Back in his office, he checked the portable hard drive for viruses and scanned the contents. Most were everyday work files, correspondence, expense sheets and lists of names, addresses and contact numbers or emails. The ephemera of a working computer. Three documents contained notes about the Essex shooting. Two of these looked like drafts, with random notations in small print. There were lots of question marks dotted about, and he wondered whether they were expressing doubts or whether the author had been leaving indicators for later additions or corrections. The third was clean copy ready for submission.

It mentioned Harry Tate by name.

Paulton breathed softly and read through the document twice. It was speculation. The kind which managed to skate round the facts of what had happened at the inlet that night without actually getting it a hundred per cent right. But it was still close enough to have the conspiracy nuts wetting themselves if they got their hands on it, and it had a name they could feed on. The firestorm would be all-consuming.

He checked the email files. There was nothing to show where the journalist had got his information, and no sign that he had been in touch with anyone else about the detail of his discovery. Thank God, he thought, for journalistic paranoia. After forty minutes, satisfied that Whelan had not disseminated the information further, Paulton left his office and went for a brief walk.

By the time he returned, the portable hard drive with its incriminating files lay at the bottom of the Thames.