Dead And Buried

Forty-eight

‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long, Bob,’ Amanda Dennis said, ‘but I wanted to preserve security. Our internal monitoring is reviewed at regular intervals. If I had broken the sequence it would have been noticed.’

‘Won’t it be noticed now?’

‘No, because when it was done I patched in and put a copy on to my computer. The period you want to look at is here.’ She moved her mouse and clicked: within a few seconds, the entrance hall of the Surrey safe-house appeared on her monitor.

As Skinner and Shannon watched, they saw the big figure of Winston Chalmers move quickly and jerkily across the screen, greeting two men. ‘Pause there,’ the DCC instructed, leaning closer. One of the newcomers was instantly recognisable: Piers Frame, immaculate in a single-breasted suit that was probably Savile Row. The other presented a complete contrast: he was stocky, shorter than his companion, and he wore a three-quarter-length country coat, with a hood, pulled forward so that it was hiding his face.

‘Either it’s raining inside,’ said Shannon, ‘or he doesn’t want to be recognised.’

‘Indeed,’ Skinner murmured, ‘and I wonder why that is. He obviously knew he’d be under surveillance in there; maybe he’s the guy who was going to take Hassett into the woods and put one in the back of his head, and maybe he was sensitive about it.’ He felt the inspector shudder beside him. ‘But maybe there’s a better reason. Go on, Amanda.’

Dennis hit the play icon and the recording resumed, showing Frame and the hooded stranger waiting in the hall, until Chalmers reappeared, with a second minder, escorting Miles Hassett. ‘Can you slow it here?’ Skinner asked. With another click, the playback went into slow motion. As they watched, the traitor seemed to draw back, startled, as he saw Frame and his companion.

‘No sound?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Dennis replied. ‘Not that it would have done any good. Winston told me that they didn’t say anything when they met. The other fellow didn’t speak at all.’

‘Bugger.’

‘Wait a minute, though. Let me roll on.’

She resumed playback at the normal speed. They watched as Hassett stepped forward and allowed himself to be escorted from the building. Once again, the hall was empty. And then the scene changed, to feed from another source, outside, overlooking the car park to the side of the building. The area was poorly lit, but the camera was light-enhancing, and the figures were still recognisable. As Frame opened the driver’s door of the waiting car, he turned to Hassett, and spoke; to their surprise, the newly released prisoner seemed to laugh. Then he stepped into the vehicle, not into the back as a prisoner would have done, but into the front.

It was the third man who opened one of the rear doors. As he bent to slide inside, his hood seemed to slip further forward, obscuring his vision. With an irritable gesture he threw it back, giving the camera a brief, but clear view of his face. Without being asked, Dennis reversed the recording and froze on his image. He looked much older than his MI6 companions, from another generation, but from the evidence of his furtive expression, of the same world.

‘Now who the hell is that?’ Skinner murmured. ‘He doesn’t look like SIS muscle, that’s for sure.’

‘He isn’t, Bob,’ Amanda Dennis told him. ‘Very far from it indeed. That’s Ormond Hassett MP, Miles’s daddy.’

‘Jeez! What the hell is all that about?’

‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. The best I can come up with is that the DG of Six has decided that the best thing to do with Miles is to release him into his father’s care, with instructions that he disappears into the family business, to live out a long and boring life.’

‘But why would Ormond be taken to pick him up? He thinks his son’s a civil servant, remember.’

‘Clearly, he knows different now. Could it be that Frame decided that Miles wouldn’t go with him unless there was someone there that he could trust?’

‘How big a surprise did he get when he saw who it was? Take another look at the playback and you’ll see: about a second’s worth, that was all.’ He focused on Dennis. ‘Who knows about this, Amanda, apart from Winston and his team and the three of us?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Good. Keep it that way, while I’m thinking about what all this means. Don’t tell anybody, anybody at all. Can you live with that?’

She gazed back at him. ‘Remember what happened to Sean, Bob? He’s dead because of all this; I can live with it, no problem.’

‘Of course you can,’ he said quietly. He paused, then went on: ‘I’m going to need everything there is on Ormond Hassett. We’d better take a look at him. While you’re finding that, I need something else from you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A car. DI Shannon and I are going up to Derbyshire.’