Dead End

Eighteen

Richard Parnell was at Jackson’s office by eight thirty – and had to wait fifteen minutes for the lawyer’s arrival – wanting advice not so much for the meeting that was to come but for the uncertainties that appeared to be arising from those that had already taken place.

When Parnell finished, Jackson said: ‘What do you think you’re telling me?’

‘Let’s not go this route,’ protested Parnell. ‘From the moment we first met, in the middle of the night in a detention cell, I don’t know how many days or weeks ago, I’ve not known what the fuck I’m telling you or anyone else! It’s feelings, nuances, uncertainties: square things that don’t go into round holes. It’s all wrong. Rebecca’s dead, murdered, and something’s wrong and I’m not talking about her being killed or my getting accused of it.’

Jackson tried silently to pick his way through the jumbled declaration. ‘You think there is something to link Dubette with terrorism?’

‘Absolutely not. But there’s something.’

‘Something big enough – important enough – to have got Rebecca killed?’

‘Maybe. But this is another route we’ve travelled before!’

‘You got the slightest whisper – the slightest feeling, nuance, square uncertainty that won’t fit into a round hole – of proof?’

‘You mocking me?’

‘No,’ denied the lawyer, at once. ‘I’m trying to balance what you’re saying – suggesting – against what precious little else makes sense.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing,’ said the scar-faced man. ‘Maybe that’s the cleverness of the whole thing.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Parnell, exasperated by the too familiar protest.

‘It’s too clever to understand.’

‘I’ll accept that philosophy in experimental science. But not having stood at the graveside of someone who’s been murdered. Murder can’t be too clever to understand or solve!’

‘Sometimes it is,’ said Jackson, flatly.

‘This isn’t going to be one of those times.’

The lawyer shook his head. ‘Didn’t you tell me the FBI guys warned you against the way you’re thinking?’

‘Whoever set this whole thing up, did what they did, killed Rebecca like they did, has got to be punished… found, exposed and punished.’

‘Which is why we’re going where we are now, to try to achieve that,’ reminded Jackson. ‘Mine’s the legally protective presence. You’re the guy they’re going to be talking to. You don’t wander on about amorphous conspiracy theories without a single jot of evidence to substantiate them. You listen to the questions and you answer them as honestly – but most importantly, as succinctly – as you can. I don’t want you talking yourself into a different dead end from the one I’ve already got you out of.’

‘I’m not going to talk myself into anything,’ insisted Parnell.

‘That’s what I’m coming along to stop you doing. Why it’s essential that I do come along. And even more essential that you don’t, ever, think you can do things by yourself.’

‘I’ve already had that lecture!’

‘Have it again. Listen – really listen – to it again. You’re right about nuances and uncertainties. Don’t entangle yourself in them. Remember what I said about not representing losers.’

‘I’m not a loser,’ insisted Parnell. ‘Nor will I be. Ever.’ He’d probably come close, he acknowledged. But suddenly, now, he felt he could climb the mountains and swim the oceans again. It was a feeling he welcomed back.

It was a different, larger, room at the FBI field office, with easy chairs and plants with polished leaves instead of desk and stiff-backed-seat formality. Parnell thought he recognized the third waiting FBI man, but it wasn’t until Jackson made the reintroduction that he remembered Edwin Pullinger as the Bureau counsel from the court hearing and later, brief, anteroom hearing.

Parnell said at once: ‘How can I help you further? I didn’t get the impression I contributed much last time.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ agreed Benton.

‘You had any more thoughts about that airline flight number?’ asked Dingley.

It was a clever, almost hypnotic double act, Parnell finally recognized, each man so finely attuned that one could pick up upon the other to weave the loose ends that Jackson had warned about into a snare. ‘I thought we’d covered that?’

‘So did we,’ agreed Dingley. ‘But you know what? We can’t find any Dubette-destined way-bill on that flight out of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle for the last three months.’

‘Which leaves us with a problem,’ took up Benton. ‘What was Ms Lang doing with a number of a Paris to Washington DC flight that wasn’t carrying anything for Dubette? But was, it turns out, a flight that got cancelled four times in a row on the advice of anti-terrorist electronic intercepts?’

‘I don’t know,’ conceded Parnell, dry-throated, seeing the mountains grow higher, the oceans wider. ‘What I do know, and what I’ve already told you, is that Rebecca Lang was totally apolitical, had no connection, interest or association whatsoever with terrorism and that the only possible explanation is that it was planted in her bag, like paint from my car was used to make it look as if I was the one who forced her over the canyon edge.’ The FBI lawyer wasn’t taking part in the interrogation, Parnell realized.

‘That’s not quite my recollection,’ said Dingley. ‘My recollection is that the last time we talked you said it would have been a flight carrying a Dubette shipment from its Paris subsidiary.’

‘The last time we talked I said I thought it would have been carrying something for Dubette,’ rejected Parnell. ‘You’ve just told me it wasn’t. So, the next possible explanation is that it was planted.’

‘What about your political views, Mr Parnell?’ asked Benton, abruptly.

Parnell laughed, genuinely amused. ‘I don’t have the right to vote in this country, which I’m sure you know. In England I voted for the Liberal Democrats, the smallest of the three English political parties. I have never been a member of any radical political movement or organization, am not a Muslim nor do I subscribe to any fanatical Islamic movement or jihads or suicide bombings…’ He looked at Jackson. ‘Anything I’ve left out?’

‘I don’t think so,’ frowned the lawyer, uncomfortably.

Benton said: ‘That wasn’t a question to be treated lightly.’

‘I wasn’t treating it lightly. I was treating it with the contempt it deserved.’ Parnell felt his lawyer’s warning pressure against his arm and recognized his returning confidence was tipping over into arrogance.

‘Did you have a key to the Bethesda house?’ asked Dingley, in one of his sudden directional changes.

‘No,’ said Parnell.

‘Did Ms Lang have a key to your apartment?’ asked Benton.

‘No.’

‘You moved back and forth, between the two?’ queried Dingley, rhetorically. ‘You were going to set up home together. Yet you didn’t have keys to each other’s homes?’

‘It never came up, as a problem. We’d have got around to it, when we started to live together – arriving and leaving at different times.’ He was making another bad impression, Parnell accepted. He had to correct it – correct it and try to discover what, if anything, they had learned. Find out why they were so obviously treating him with the suspicion that they were. Before either agent could speak, he said: ‘What about Bethesda?’

‘Sir?’ questioned Benton, in return.

‘Had it been entered, before you got there with Giorgio Falcone’s key?’

There was the familiar exchange of looks between the two men.

‘We think so,’ said Dingley.

‘Was it or wasn’t it?’ insisted Parnell, impatiently.

‘Looks that way,’ admitted Benton.

‘ How does it look that way?’ persisted Parnell.

‘Like I think I told you before, everything was very neat. Too neat,’ said Dingley.

‘Which brings us to our request,’ picked up Benton. ‘We need fingerprints… for elimination. Yours will be about the place, won’t they?’

‘My client’s not required to provide them, unless he agrees,’ intruded Jackson, at last.

‘Of course I agree,’ said Parnell, before the FBI group had a chance to reply. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Addressing the two agents, he said: ‘You think something was taken from Rebecca’s house?’

Benton gave another of his open-palmed gestures. ‘We’ve got no way of telling. We don’t know what was there in the first place.’

‘You’ve got more to be suspicious about than the fact that the house was too tidy,’ challenged Jackson. ‘That’s not even forensic. That’s soap-opera bullshit.’

Dingley smiled, bleakly. ‘Not quite, sir. There wasn’t an item of furniture, an article anywhere, that hadn’t been lifted, looked at, and replaced. But not exactly put back in the right place where it had been before it was shifted: just off-centre marks in the carpeting, that carpeting not properly re-secured where it had been lifted, to look beneath. Off-centre again where kitchen appliances had been replaced. Like I said, too neat – always too neat.’

‘Was Ms Lang particularly neat?’ asked Benton.

‘Not particularly,’ remembered Parnell. ‘She didn’t live in a mess but the house was lived in.’

‘Magazines, newspapers, wouldn’t have been carefully stacked and aligned? Books always in the shelves for the titles to be read, none with dust-cover flaps used as bookmarks?’ said Dingley.

Parnell shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘And?’ persisted Jackson.

This time Dingley looked back at the FBI lawyer, who nodded and said: ‘OK.’

Dingley said: ‘There wasn’t any personal mail. Forensics are thorough. Suggested we check the mail drop, for the Monday Ms Lang was found murdered. Mailman remembers three, one package bigger than the other two, which were ordinary letter size. There wasn’t any mail when we got there. Or any that our forensics guys could find.’

‘And?’ repeated Jackson.

Benton said to Parnell, ‘You ever write to Ms Lang? A note, a proper letter maybe?’

Parnell didn’t respond at once, thinking. ‘No,’ he said, almost surprised. ‘I never did – never had to, because we worked in the same place – not even a note. But why?’

‘There wasn’t a single personal letter in the house,’ said Dingley. ‘Utility bills, credit card receipts, all carefully filed. But not a single personal note, from anyone listed in the address book we found…’ He looked back again to Edwin Pullinger, for another permissive nod. ‘And the telephone answering equipment in Ms Lang’s machine was brand new. Hadn’t been utilized before, on any call.’

‘What’s the significance of that?’ demanded Parnell.

‘Answering-machine loops are used and rewound to be wiped and rewound and wiped again and again and again,’ said Dingley. ‘Our forensics guys can recover things from loops that are supposed to have been wiped, like they can with computer hard disks. Ms Lang’s loop had been taken, a new one put in its place.’

‘It was her call on my machine that saved me,’ remembered Parnell, softly.

‘Which brings us to another request,’ chimed in Benton.

Parnell stared at the man, refusing the ventriloquist’s-dummy role.

Finally Benton said: ‘Would you come to Bethesda, to the house, with us – look for anything you think might be wrong, anything that makes you curious… anything out of place…?’

Jackson said: ‘That’s a hell of an unusual request.’

‘This is a hell of an unusual case,’ said Pullinger, coming into the discussion for the first time. ‘You can refuse, of course.’

‘No!’ said Parnell, hurriedly. ‘Of course I’ll come: try to do whatever you want me to do. But I didn’t – don’t – know the house well – know where Rebecca kept things. What might be missing or what might not. Sure I stayed there, but it wasn’t my place, not with my things in it. I’ve told you, it was all too new. We hadn’t… we hadn’t got that far…’

‘We’d appreciate it,’ said Dingley.

‘Unannounced!’ insisted Jackson. ‘My client will not go to Ms Lang’s house as a media exhibit.’

‘The investigation is out of the hands of the DC Metro police,’ reminded Pullinger pointedly.

‘I’ve got to have your guarantee, Ed,’ insisted Jackson. ‘We pitch up to a media reception and blinding lights, we ain’t stopping the car. I’m not having my client publicly exposed or compromised in any way.’

‘We’ve no intention of publicly exposing or compromising your client in any way,’ retorted the other lawyer, stiffly.

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Jackson, unrepentant. ‘When we pull up, I still want to see the surroundings to Rebecca Lang’s house emptier than a Kansas prairie in December.’

It was going too fast and in the wrong direction, Parnell decided, with things still unresolved in his mind irrespective of everyone else’s uncertainties. ‘I still don’t understand the Air France flight number.’

‘As I told you, that’s our biggest problem, too,’ said Benton.

‘How’d you check that flight didn’t carry anything for Dubette in the last six months?’

‘Air France dispatch, here and in Paris,’ said Dingley. ‘We’re as thorough as our forensics people, in our own way.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Parnell, unconcerned at getting under the other man’s skin. ‘You double-check, with Dubette… with their security division, I guess?’

‘That’s who are responsible for the Dulles airport collection, security,’ agreed Benton.

‘That isn’t the answer to my question,’ said Parnell.

‘Dubette security have no record of any Dubette-addressed consignment on AF209 in the last six months,’ recited Dingley.

‘There is another inconsistency, here, Mr Parnell,’ said Benton. ‘One we were coming to. You told us that Ms Lang didn’t understand why she was being bypassed by something from Paris? But that, whatever it was, it hadn’t worked out in the laboratories at McLean, anyway?’

‘Yes,’ said Parnell, glad he had not needed to be more direct.

‘That’s not the impression we’ve got from the people we’ve spoken to at Dubette so far,’ said Benton.

‘How not, specifically?’

‘Seems the French research wasn’t a failure after all. According to Mr Newton, it’s being incorporated into some of your existing products.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ But now he did, Parnell accepted.

‘You must have been mistaken.’ suggested Dingley.

‘Obviously,’ said Parnell, who knew he hadn’t been. ‘I hope that didn’t mislead you.’

‘It made us curious, along with everything else.’

‘I can understand that. I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult time…’ He let the apology trail.

‘We understand that,’ said Benton, in what sounded to Parnell like mockery.

It created something else for him to understand, too, decided Parnell. ‘What about Dubette security? And the Metro DC officers? You talked to them yet about knowing my car was damaged, before we went out into the lot?’

‘Only to the security chief, Harry Johnson, so far,’ said Dingley. ‘He told us he didn’t know anything about your car until you all got to it that morning. That he hadn’t had any conversation with the Metro DC guys about it. Wasn’t even sure what your car was.’

‘Looks like another mistaken impression,’ said Benton.

Parnell curbed the instinctive reply. Instead he said: ‘I guess it does.’

‘Why don’t we clear a few things up?’ unexpectedly suggested Barry Jackson. ‘We’re happy to provide fingerprints and come out to Bethesda. Why don’t we do both right away?’

‘I told you no media leak would come from here,’ said Dingley.

‘Is there any reason why we can’t do it right now?’ persisted Jackson.

‘No,’ said Dingley.

‘So?’ said the lawyer.

‘Let’s do it now,’ agreed Benton.

They’d driven to the FBI field office in Barry Jackson’s car, so they went in convoy to Rebecca Lang’s Bethesda clapboard, the most direct route to which was through Rock Creek Park past the gorge into which Rebecca’s car had plunged. When he realized the way the FBI agents were going, Jackson said: ‘You all right with this? I could use different roads.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Parnell. Despite washing his hands after being fingerprinted, his fingers still retained some of the blackness of the ink.

‘You could do better,’ said the lawyer.

‘What?’

‘An investigative technique – a courtroom technique – to catch people out is to make them lose their temper – speak without thinking. Which I’ve warned you about. You lost your temper back there.’

‘Why are they trying to catch me out – trick me!’ exploded Parnell.

‘You’re doing it again.’

‘Barry! Help me!’ How many times had he made that plea?

‘That’s what I’m trying to do. You heard what they said – a lot of things aren’t making up any sort of picture. Until it does, they’ve got to poke sticks into every bee’s nest. You’re not doing yourself any favours, snapping back. So stop it. Don’t take every question as a personal attack or accusation.’

‘That’s what it sounds like,’ said Parnell, petulantly.

‘That’s what it’s supposed to sound like. I just told you that, for Christ’s sake!’ The lawyer’s voice softened. ‘We’re getting close now. You sure you’re all right?’

Parnell did not immediately respond, recognizing the twisting, narrow roads, realizing – shocked – that he hadn’t properly until now fixed in his mind the precise location of the crash. He knew now, before they got to the fatal turn, what lay beyond. Suddenly there it was – the crumpled, supposedly protective barrier over which she’d been forced, the impact marks running almost its entire length, the final collapsed edge where the vehicle had mounted and then gone over the end, oil marks as black as death. And then they were past.

‘Oh fuck!’ said Parnell, in a breathless rush, not aware until that moment that he had actually been holding his breath, not knowing what he was going to confront.

‘OK?’

‘I think we should have gone the other way. Can you imagine…?’

‘No!’ stopped Jackson. ‘I don’t want you trying to imagine it, either. Leave it. Leave it if you can. You’ve got things to do – things to concentrate upon.’

‘You think they did it purposely, brought us this way?’

‘Maybe. Don’t let it get to you.’

‘How the fuck can I avoid that?’

‘By not letting it get to you.’

‘Don’t you start double-talking, like everyone else!’

‘That’s not double-talking. That’s straight-talking. You ready? We’re almost at the house.’

‘I hope I’m ready.’

‘So do I.’

The Bethesda cottage was secured by yellow police tape and there was an obvious police black and white parked outside, the driver and observer competing for boredom-of-the-year awards.

As they assembled from the two cars, Parnell said: ‘I thought Metro DC were off limits?’

‘They are,’ said Dingley. ‘They’re just here, by court order, to stop anyone who isn’t authorized going near the place.’

‘That’s going to piss them off.’

‘It can’t piss them off any more than they already are.’

‘So, how do you know they’re doing their job?’ demanded Jackson.

‘We got temporary – but inconspicuous – CCTV in every room. And external, in every direction. And a tap on the telephone.’

‘You didn’t tell us that,’ complained Jackson.

‘I’ve got all the court orders,’ said Pullinger.

‘We should have been told!’ insisted the other lawyer.

‘The house isn’t your jurisdiction,’ said Pullinger.

‘Ed, it’s our co-operation you’re asking for. You’re not doing a lot to encourage it,’ warned Jackson.

The three FBI men began to move off towards the house but Jackson didn’t move, keeping Parnell with him. Softly he said: ‘You want to go through with it?’

‘Don’t you think I should?’

‘I don’t think we should look as if we’re accepting it.’

‘Your call,’ said Parnell.

The others had stopped, about ten yards away. Pullinger shouted: ‘Is there a problem?’

‘We can’t hear you,’ Jackson yelled back.

There was a hesitation before the three men walked back. Pullinger said: ‘I asked if there was a problem?’

‘Yes,’ said Jackson. ‘We going to operate on level ground or we going to fuck about?’

‘You want me to say sorry?’ asked Pullinger.

‘I want you to do it right, like we’re doing it right.’

‘You’ve made your point. I’ve taken it,’ said Pullinger. ‘Shall we go on inside?’

Jackson held them for another moment or two before moving towards the house, bringing the rest with him. It was Dingley who opened the door, standing back for Parnell to go in first. The last time – when? he thought, unable to remember – had been with Rebecca, hurrying in ahead of him, carrying the lightest of the grocery shopping, him the packhorse behind, she talking as she always talked, butterflying from point to point, never properly, fully, finishing what she was saying before fluttering to something else, queen of her own castle, self-proclaimed queen of his, dropping the bags, gesturing where she wanted him to drop his, turning on lights, music, opening windows, hurrying him back to the car for what they hadn’t been able to bring in the first time. No, he thought suddenly, moving through the living room into the kitchen. Rebecca hadn’t been neat and tidy. Organized, certainly, written-out shopping lists for stores and markets listed in convenient order, but not like this, not as if the house had been made ready, prepared, for a prospective buyer. In quick recollection he looked into the double sink, then the empty dishwasher and finally to the coffee pot, opening it to confirm the filter chamber was clean.

‘What?’ asked Benton.

‘On the Sunday morning, when Rebecca came to pick me up,’ remembered Parnell. ‘I asked her if she wanted coffee, because I was just making some. She said she’d already had some. And juice. There’s no cups or glasses…’

‘And the coffee pot’s empty and clean,’ Dingley accepted.

Parnell led the way into the den, dominated by the television and music system and saw the regimented books and the orderly magazine arrangement and then up to the bedrooms – the bedroom he and Rebecca had occupied and loved in and partially discovered each other in first – and made himself look around it and open and close drawers, although he didn’t know now what for, and then he looked around the other two bedrooms, knowing even less what he was supposed to find out of place – or, rather, wrongly in place, before he retreated downstairs.

‘Well?’ demanded Dingley.

‘It’s an impression,’ said Parnell. ‘That’s all it can be.’

‘That’s all we’re asking for.’

‘No,’ said Parnell. ‘It’s not right. Doesn’t feel right. That’s all I can say. This doesn’t look, feel, like the house that Rebecca left that Sunday morning to pick me up…’ He stopped, at another recollection. ‘That’s why the coffee pot’s wrong… no cup in the washer. She was late, said we had a drive to get where we were going – she wouldn’t tell me where we were going – in time. It was in time to get a table, for lunch, although she wouldn’t tell me that, either. If she was late, in a hurry, she wouldn’t have cleared away, would she?’

‘Not unless she was particularly fastidious,’ said Benton.

‘Rebecca wasn’t particularly fastidious,’ said Parnell.

‘Then no, she wouldn’t.’ agreed Dingley.

‘Where’s this all got us?’ demanded Jackson.

‘We don’t know, not yet,’ said Pullinger. ‘We’re looking forward to something we can understand that does get us somewhere.’

Once more it was pointlessly too late for Parnell to drive out to McLean. He telephoned from the apartment that he would be in the following morning before going out again to shop uninterestedly for essentials, bread and milk and packaged meals he could heat in seconds in the microwave. He also, just as uninterestedly, bought three litre-sized bottles of screw-topped red wine, which he thought was as much as he could carry. On his way back to the apartment he saw one man whom he thought might be watching him, but there wasn’t any longer a stomach lurch. Before he reached him the downtown bus arrived and the man got on it.

Back in the apartment Parnell unpacked and opened one of the bottles of wine, slumping with the glass between his cupped hands, reviewing the day. He hadn’t done well – he had, in fact, been stupid, losing his temper. Too late now, for self-recrimination. He’d got it wrong, again, and deserved Jackson’s rebuke, and next time he’d try to remember and behave better. He had little doubt there would be a next time: maybe even a time after that. Bethesda had disorientated him, although not in the way Jackson suggested the FBI agents had expected him to be disorientated. He hadn’t suddenly collapsed, said anything or done anything, on being somewhere where he’d been with Rebecca, to indicate any guilt or awareness of something he hadn’t told the investigators. The disorientation had actually been far deeper than any of them had imagined. On the near-wordless return to Washington, Parnell had confronted a truth he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself, let alone to anyone else. He didn’t think he’d loved Rebecca. He had feelings, of course – maybe, in time, he would even have come to love her, although that was the most scourging of uncertainties. But not that Sunday when he’d unthinkingly talked of their living together. And not now, not ever. So, he had a lie to live, pitied by the few who knew him here, as someone who’d lost a woman whom he’d planned to marry. How difficult, he wondered, would that be to live with? Something else he didn’t know, like so much else.

He jumped, startled, at the telephone, recognizing his mother’s voice as soon as he’d answered. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded at once.

‘You know. I told you. It’s all right.’

‘It’s not all right! I’ve been questioned. So have people at Cambridge.’

‘What!’ Some of Parnell’s wine spilled, with the urgency with which he came up out of his chair.

‘Two Americans. FBI, from the London embassy. They wanted to know if you were political. If you belonged to any organizations. That’s what they asked the people at Cambridge. I’ve had two calls, one from Alex Bell, your old tutor. Everyone here is worried about you.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about. It’s an unusual investigation.’

‘I want to come out.’

‘No,’ refused Parnell. ‘It’s not necessary and I don’t want you to.’ If he were a target, so would she be, he supposed.

‘Who’s looking after you?’

‘I’m looking after myself, very well.’

‘Why not come back? Quit and come back?’

‘That isn’t a question I thought I’d hear you ask. At this stage of the enquiry I doubt I’d be allowed to leave the country anyway. And I don’t want – or intend – to leave the country.’

‘There was an attempt to frame you once. How do you know it won’t happen again? Succeed this time?’

‘Because it won’t. I’ve got a good lawyer and I’m not going to be framed.’

‘I didn’t like being questioned as I was, as if you were still a suspect or in some way involved in terrorism.’

‘Is that what they talked about, terrorism?’

‘Of course it was! Asked about foreign countries you’d visited, how long you’d stayed there. That’s what they asked everyone else here, the same questions.’

‘I’m sorry. Call me back, with the names of everyone who was bothered. I’ll call them and apologize. And I’m sorry to you, too. I didn’t imagine it would come to that.’

‘They’re hysterical, about terrorism.’

‘Everybody is.’

‘Not everybody,’ she contradicted. ‘You want anything? Money?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You’ll tell me if you do.’

‘Yes,’ lied Parnell.

‘Call me. I want you to call me every day.’

‘Not every day, Mother. Often.’

‘I want your lawyer’s name and contact numbers. Just in case.’

‘Just in case of what?’

‘Just in case.’