Hidden Faces

I

Sally watched how her fingers trembled a little as she toyed with her cup, waiting for the Brussels flight to be called. Some coffee had spilled into the saucer and it dripped across the table from the bottom of the cup as she lifted it to her mouth. The coffee was sweet and dark and strong, and its hotness filled her mouth. It took a bit off the edge of her tension. She shivered, though the airport cafeteria was hot and airless. All around her, voices prattled gaily in that melodic, aggressive way the Italians speak. Rome. Monday morning. Mild and sunny, only a little chill in the air outside.

She had slept badly, and her face was pale, the skin drawn tightly across her cheeks. The morning had come like a relief, the sheet damp and twisted around her. The hours of darkness had tormented her with all the questions, all the doubts. But she knew she had made a mistake; even as she had left the flat in the Rue de Commerce with the silent tears on her cheeks she had known.

But it had taken a headline on the front page of one of the Rome dailies to make her turn back, back to the man she should never have left. The job, the money, the security meant nothing now.

The paper had been lying on her table at breakfast at the Hotel Vittoria in the Piazza Mastai where she had booked in only the night before. For a moment the headline had meant nothing to her. Then she realised. GIRL (11) GUNNED DOWN AT EURO-AIRPORT. And in smaller type. GUNMAN SHOT DEAD BY SECURITY POLICE.

Du Maurier felt the heat of the sun through the glass. The warmth seemed such a deceit when outside it was cold and raw. He was down to his shirt sleeves and he screwed up his eyes against the brightness that streamed in the window of his office across the desk. In front of him lay Lapointe’s statement, typed and signed. The boys in the commercial branch had already begun going through the suitcase full of manilla folders. He had put in his request to start extradition proceedings to bring Jansen back from the Bahamas. That might prove difficult. At least the examining magistrate, Judge Markelbach, was sympathetic for once. But a man like Jansen would be difficult to convict, especially with friends in high places. And doubtless the old woman would have a few strings she could pull. How much, he wondered again, did she really know about it all? How much control had she really had over her son, over Lapointe? She was something of an enigma.

The phone rang and he snatched the receiver, anxious for some distraction. ‘There is a young lady here to see you, Inspector. A Mademoiselle Sally Robertson.’

‘Send her in.’ He leaned back in his chair to light a cigarette and wait for the knock on his door. ‘Come in.’

She came in, pale and hesitant, the cold winter air still clinging to her clothes. Du Maurier stood up and indicated the seat at the other side of his desk. ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle. I am happy to see you again. Please sit.’ Sally sat gingerly on the chair opposite the old policeman and looked at his weary, kindly face. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I,’ she began self-consciously. ‘I only heard this morning about Tania. I’ve come straight from the airport.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve just come from Rome. The child... is she, will she...?’

‘It’s still in the balance,’ du Maurier said. ‘I’m expecting a call any time.’

She nodded. ‘I tried to phone Neil Bannerman from the airport. He’s not at the flat or his office. Do you know where he is?’

Du Maurier smiled sadly. ‘I’m afraid, Mademoiselle, that you have missed him. He took the ten o’clock flight to London this morning.’ The phone rang and he lifted it quickly. She watched him closely. The droop of his shoulders. ‘When?’ he said, his voice thick with emotion. And she feared the worst.

London was blowy, a light rain carried in the wind, encapsulating spots of city smut. And the wind blew in Sally’s face as she hurried down Fleet Street from the tube station. Past the rising glass windows of the Daily Express.

There was a quiet desperation in her now, a disturbing sense of disorientation. Perhaps, she was thinking, she was only compounding her original mistake. There was a dreadful hopelessness about her pursuit of this man she might love half-way across Europe. How would he react? What if he did not want her? Why had she ever gone in the first place? And then there was the child. She felt an ache inside her.

After leaving du Maurier’s office she had taken a taxi back to the airport in time for the two o’clock flight to London. The city seemed strange to her, alien after the months in Brussels. She felt nothing in common with the people she passed in the street and they barely seemed to notice her passing.

She found the Post’s London office at the bottom end of the street, a grey sandstone Victorian building rising into the late afternoon sky from its grim basement to its bright, yellow-lit windows at the top.

Heads in the newsroom turned as she came in and looked helplessly about her for a familiar face. ‘Can I help you?’ a young man at the nearest desk asked.

‘I...’ she broke to catch her breath. ‘I was looking for Neil Bannerman.’

‘Oh, you’ve just missed him, love. He left about an hour ago to get the Glasgow train from Euston.’ A pause. ‘Stood you up, has he? I’m Tom, by the way. I mean, if you’re looking for a bit of entertainment tonight, I know a nice little restaurant...’ But she was gone, the door swinging behind her.

In the street below she had to wait nearly five minutes before she got a taxi. ‘Euston station,’ she told the driver. ‘Please hurry.’

‘Well I’ll do me best, Miss. But you picked the wrong time to try and get through London in a hurry. Bloody traffic. It’s diabolical at this time of day.’

It took over half an hour to get to the station, and she ran up the steps from the covered rank and across the concourse towards the barriers, searching frantically for the Glasgow sign. She grasped a porter’s arm. ‘The Glasgow train,’ she said breathlessly, ‘has it gone yet?’

‘Fraid so, Miss. About ten minutes ago. But there’s another one at quarter to six.’

She turned away, the weight of the case straining at her arm. She felt her disappointment bring tears to her eyes. And for a moment she wondered if it was not a sign, if she should give up and turn back to the life she had left only eight hours earlier.

II

The car bumped and shook its way across the rough, rutted mud track, its headlights picking out the grass verge and the blasted wood fence posts. In the distance the lights of the house twinkled erratically through the branches of tall, dark trees that swayed in the wind. It was a wild night.

Bannerman turned the wheels over a small humpbacked bridge across a narrow gushing stream and the track broadened a little and was lined with trees along the right side. He did not know what to expect, or what he was going to say to the old man, but he felt, somehow, that this time it really would be an end to it all. The car clattered over the cattle grid and pulled up on the asphalt courtyard.

He had left the train at Preston and hired the car at a garage not far from the station to drive the ten or twelve miles south west on the A59 and A565 to Armsdale House near the tiny Armsdale landfall. He switched off the lights and stepped out into the bluster that drove in from the west across the Irish Sea. But there was a warmth in the air, a mildness and a smell of rain.

The house itself was a big, stone, turreted affair, almost a small castle. It stood dark and impressive in its setting. The door was opened by a short, thick-set man with a crop of white, wiry hair. His face was tanned and leathery with age. He had a heavy tweed jacket on over a thick sweater and thick tweed trousers. He stared at Bannerman suspiciously and the reporter noticed his big working-man’s hands, hard-skinned and calloused. ‘Yes?’

‘I’ve come to see Lord Armsdale.’

‘And who’s wanting ’im?’

‘My name is Neil Bannerman. I’m the investigative reporter of the Edinburgh Post.’

There was a pause as the man considered this. ‘Does ’e expect you?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Then you’d better come and wait in the ’all and I’ll see if ’e’ll see you.’

Bannerman waited in the big hall, worn old flagstones beneath his feet, a staircase rising up to an unlit floor above. It was cold in here. He thought about Tania and felt guilty. Not knowing if she was alive or dead. He should have been there... A door opened on his left and a shaft of warm yellow light fell out at his feet. ‘In ’ere.’ The white-haired man beckoned. Bannerman went through the door and found himself in a large, cluttered living room filled with old, cumbersome articles of furniture. A sofa, two big old easy chairs, a writing desk, bookshelves, walls hung with old paintings. A cheery fire burned in a large stone fireplace and Lord Armsdale sat languidly by it in one of the easy chairs. He was pulling gently on the stem of a pipe and the eyes in his old narrow face twinkled sadly as they turned towards Bannerman.

‘Take a seat, Mr. Bannerman. Will you have tea?’

‘Thank you, no.’ Bannerman sank into the softness of the chair opposite the old man and felt strangely at home in this warm, friendly room. It was a lived-in place. Nothing pretentious or fancy. But comfortable. Lord Armsdale surveyed Bannerman shrewdly for some seconds.

‘Would I be right in thinking I know what you have come about?’

Bannerman nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘I think so.’

The old man looked beyond him towards the white-haired man who still stood at the open door. ‘That’ll be all, Arthur, thank you.’ The other turned reluctantly and pulled the door to behind him. Lord Armsdale went on puffing at his pipe, lost in a gentle euphoria of smoke and thought. At length he said, ‘He has been with me a long time. Arthur. Almost from the start. A good man. He carried my messages for me, found the men for the job. He trusted me implicitly, has always trusted me. In a way I suppose I have let him down as well. He’s always done everything for me. My chauffeur, my secretary, my housekeeper, my gardener. He worked in the mines when he was a boy. I wonder how he will manage without me. I think, perhaps, he needs me as much as I have needed him.’

Then suddenly he looked at Bannerman as though coming out of a dream. ‘I have been expecting a visit such as this since I heard the news yesterday. I had no idea who it might be, but in a way I suppose I should have guessed it might be you. I have heard that you are very good.’ He paused again to take comfort in his pipe. ‘At the beginning I took a great many precautions, you know. I thought it was foolproof. But then, when it went wrong, the business of the child, I think I knew that it would end this way.

‘But please,’ he pointed the stem of his pipe at Bannerman, ‘do not get me wrong. I regret none of it, except that it has failed, that by my own actions I have endangered the Party, the Government I tried to save.’ He seemed without emotion, calm and relaxed. ‘Will the child live or die?’

‘She has a chance.’

‘Good, good. I’m glad. You must think me some kind of monster. I suppose history will condemn me as being a misguided old man. But you see, Mr. Bannerman, what are the lives of two or three people when compared with the justice and dignity that my Party is trying to bring to millions? Do we not place far too much importance on life itself, on the unbounded freedom of the individual at the expense of others less able to exploit the world about them?’

For the first time Bannerman felt compelled to speak. ‘If you deny the right of any one man to live, simply because he does not conform to your ideas of what is good for all, then you are denying the rights of all men, weak and strong, to the freedom of humanity. What gives you the right to play God?’

‘Ah, Mr. Bannerman, we all have our ideals. We would all like to achieve them at the snap of a finger. But one has to be realistic. Sacrifices must be made, the end has to justify the means.’

‘Even if that means usurping the principles of democracy, the right of people to choose? Even if it means murdering a mentally handicapped child whose only crime against your ideals has been to see her father shot to death by a man you hired?’

The old man sighed. ‘It is something we will disagree about. If I had time, I believe I could make you understand. But we have no time, and there would be little point to it. I have devoted my life to the Party, Mr. Bannerman. A Party which has done more to improve the lives of ordinary men and women in fifty years than was achieved in the previous five hundred. Do not think it did not pain me to do the things I did, but I could not let the work of a lifetime — this country’s only real hope for the future — be destroyed by a man devoured by greed and deceit. A man who deceived not only myself and my Party, but many millions of people in this land who saw in him the same qualities we all did. Qualities that could have made him great, qualities that could have brought so much to so many. Except that behind them lay a sickness and a corruption that made a nonsense of all the trust we placed in him.’ He had become agitated. He stood up and paced across the room to the window and looked out into the blackness beyond.

‘How did you find out?’ Bannerman asked. ‘About Gryffe’s involvement in the sale of arms?’

Lord Armsdale chuckled ironically. Bannerman could not see his face. ‘He came to me for help. I can still hardly believe his nerve, nor, I think, will I ever understand his motives. You can live, even to my age, and life still has its surprises, its mysteries.

‘He told me he was being blackmailed by a journalist in Brussels. Slater. At first he wouldn’t tell me why. But finally I got it out of him. He was desperate. Slater had taken him for nearly one hundred thousand pounds over a period of several months and was pushing for a final pay-off of another hundred thousand in a lump sum. Gryffe said he just didn’t have that kind of money available and he was worried that Slater was going to blow the whistle on him.

‘He degraded himself, Mr. Bannerman. Promised to do anything if I would help him, even resign his seat. He had obviously weighed up the advantages and disadvantages. He must have reckoned he could have continued to live in the style to which he had become accustomed by continuing his arms deals and his associations with the Jansen empire. Perhaps he even believed that after I had helped him he could hold onto his seat and his post at the Ministry, banking on my being unable to face the humiliation of exposing him to our colleagues. He had been my protégé, after all. Of all those he had taken in, I was the biggest fool. So I promised him half of his requirement and then set about destroying him before he could destroy my Party. I was not prepared to leave anything to chance.’

He stooped and opened a drawer in his writing desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers clipped together. ‘This,’ he held it up, ‘is, if you like, my full confession. I spent many hours composing it last night. I had hoped that perhaps I might not need to use it until after the election. Just ten more days. But, of course, that is not possible.’ He crossed the room and handed it to Bannerman. There were six foolscap pages closely typed. It was dated and signed. ‘The point that I make in it, Mr. Bannerman, the point that I would like to stress, is that the Government itself, and the Party, were in no way implicated or involved in this affair. The responsibility is mine and mine alone. Perhaps, perhaps it will salvage something. It is the last and only sacrifice I can make. Myself.’

Bannerman flipped through the sheets without looking at the old man. He did not want to feel any pity for him. He wanted only to feel contempt, disgust, to remember the child lying bleeding on the concourse at Zavantem. ‘I don’t think that is strictly true,’ he said. His voice was cold and hard. ‘The cover-up after the killings was too speedy for there not to have been a great deal of political haggling in the wings immediately the deaths became known. Diplomatic pressures on the Belgian authorities. And, of course, there was the SIS agent who shot at me in Flanders.’

The old man was silent for a very long time. ‘What I shall tell you is for your own information only. Not, you understand, for the record.’

‘I’ll make no guarantees.’

‘You make it very difficult for me, Mr. Bannerman.’

‘Then I shall write it as I see it. But if you can tell me something that will lend it a little understanding then tell me.’

The former Party Chairman made his way back to his chair and sank his thin, bony frame into its softness. He relit his pipe and said, ‘Gryffe was being investigated by MI5 on Government instructions. They had not fully uncovered his activities at the time of his death, but were on the brink of doing so. I knew nothing about this until afterwards. A day or so after the killings the Prime Minister called me to London. It is not unusual for the Party Leader to ask my advice. We have been good friends for many years and he had often consulted me, even after my retirement. He told me then, and asked me what he should do.

‘Of course, he did not know of my own involvement, and for my part I have told him nothing so as not to compromise him in any way. He told me of the investigations into Gryffe’s activities, their attempts to have the shootings played down as much as possible. He also told me they had put a man in the field in Belgium and that he had discovered about Gryffe’s arms company.

‘He was a man in a state of extreme shock, Mr. Bannerman. He saw quite clearly what it would mean if it ever got out. That is why he was worried about you, about your investigations. It was my suggestion that they try and frighten you off. Looking back, I suppose it was bad advice. It misfired rather badly, didn’t it?’

Bannerman remembered the nightmare of that flight across the dark, snow-covered fields, the chill of approaching death, the human mess in the mine crater. ‘Yes,’ he said. He folded the statement and slipped it into an inside pocket. He lit a cigar and stared without emotion at the old man. A frail old creature, a man destroyed by his own misguided philanthropy. And yet, he retained a certain dignity about him. Bannerman wished he could feel hate for the man, but it was not in him. The sad, watery eyes stared back.

‘I’ve done what I can,’ the old politician said suddenly. ‘But I don’t suppose it’s enough. You can never undo your mistakes. They will fall, won’t they? The Government.’

‘I imagine they will.’

His head dropped and he gazed at his hands resting in his lap. His pipe had gone out again. ‘I think...’ he said, but could not finish. When he looked up again Bannerman saw that there were large, silent tears running down his cheeks. ‘I... excuse me.’ He rose unsteadily, drawing a handkerchief out and wiping away his humiliation and shame. He rounded his chair and disappeared through a door behind it.

Bannerman closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He would go back to Edinburgh and tomorrow he would write a story that would destroy a Government. The irony lay in its injustice. He thought back on the last ten days. Slater, the child, Marie-Ange Piard. Gryffe, Jansen, Lapointe. Platt, the old woman, du Maurier. Sally. What did he know about any of them? And now the old man.

A single, loud report startled him and he sat forward in his chair in a moment of fright and confusion before he realised what it was. He rose and crossed slowly to the still open door through which the old man had passed a few minutes earlier. He found himself looking into a small ante-room. Lord Armsdale lay face down on the floor, a few feet away from an old oak cabinet. A huge pool of blood had spread outwards and soaked into the carpet. Bannerman could see brain tissue spattered across the floor and the lower drawers of the cabinet. The top half of the old man’s head was almost blown away and the revolver lay a few inches from his white, clenched hand.

He turned away and wanted to throw up, a hand against the wall to steady him. No matter how often you saw death you never got used to it.

The door from the hall flew open and the white-haired man ran in. He stopped as he saw Bannerman and then rushed across to the door and looked in. He spun round on Bannerman and the thought that Bannerman had done it was in his eyes, before he realised the truth. There was a strange choking noise in his throat and he turned suddenly and ran from the room.

Bannerman stood a minute longer before crossing the room and out into the hall. There were footsteps on the stair and he looked up to see the white-haired man coming down with a shotgun clutched tightly across his chest. He stopped when he saw that Bannerman had seen him. There was a madness in his eyes. ‘You killed him.’ His voice was taut and quiet. ‘Even if you didn’t pull the trigger you killed him. I... I’ve been with him longer than you’ve been alive. I loved that old man. I really loved him. I’ll kill you for it.’ He raised the shotgun.

‘Then you would be denying him his sacrifice,’ Bannerman said. His voice sounded strange to him and he felt the fear crawl across his skin. ‘He made a mistake. A grave mistake, and he has taken the only honourable way out he can. Just as he had men killed to save his Party, so he has killed himself in his final sacrifice. His own words.’ The seconds seemed to drag forever. The other man stood tense, the gun still raised. ‘You’d better call the police,’ Bannerman said. It was now or never. He turned his back slowly and walked towards the door, all the time waiting for his body to be torn apart by the blast. His hand trembled on the cold metal handle.

And then it was over. He was outside, with the cold wind in his face and the door shut behind him. He let out a long breath and stood for a moment watching the dark swaying shapes of the trees. His feet crunched on the asphalt as he walked to the car.

III

Bannerman stood under a pool of lamplight on Preston station platform. It was almost deserted. One or two shadowy figures stood further down, staring out across the tracks. The sense of loneliness that had descended on him was crushing. Beyond the lights of the glass-roofed platforms, red and amber signal lights shone distantly in the darkness to the north, and to the west there was the far-off twinkling of street lamps. The world was shut up tight behind closed doors and drawn curtains except for a few weary travellers and the night workers.

From the south he heard the sound of the Glasgow train crossing the junctions where the lines divided, past the crumbling, blackened remains of industrial dereliction. The light from its window came brightly out of the darkness and the express ground to a clattering halt down the length of the platform. Other doors opened as Bannerman stepped forward and pulled open the nearest. He climbed up into the First Class corridor and walked down until he found an empty compartment. He threw his things into the rack and slumped into a seat facing north.

The train stood for only a minute before it began pulling silently away from the platform and gathering speed. Bannerman looked out across the empty receding platforms. Waiting rooms dark and locked up, the shutters pulled down on the news stand. A billboard poster flapped in the rush of air. Tonight’s headlines. The top half of the bill was obscured, but he saw the words, GIRL DIES, caught in a brief flash of light as they passed. The muscles of his chest seemed to contract for a moment, the pain of it forcing tears to his eyes, and when it had passed he was left only with the thought that he had not even phoned to see how she had been. She had died alone, and no-one cared.

The door of his compartment slid open, but he was only half aware of it. It was not until he became conscious of the figure still standing in the doorway that he turned to look. Sally smiled nervously. ‘Neil,’ she almost whispered. ‘I saw you on the platform...’ He stared at her blankly. His mind swam. He wanted to stand up, to take her and hold her. But it was as though he had lost all power of movement. Perhaps it was all a dream.

‘She’s dead,’ he heard himself say.

‘Who?’ Sally frowned.

‘Tania. I saw it on a billboard just a few minutes ago.’

Sally stood still for a moment then opened her shoulder bag and pulled out a rumpled copy of a London evening paper. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said. She held out the paper and Bannerman saw its headline. SEX ATTACK GIRL DIES. ‘It’s some London story,’ Sally said. ‘Tania’s going to be all right. I was with the police inspector, du Maurier, when they phoned from the hospital. The doctors said she was going to be okay.’

It was as though a dam had burst and all the poison was running out of him. He felt the return of hope and light and love so sweetly. He rose and held her hands and kissed her, and then he pulled her to him and held her so tightly it must have hurt her. But she didn’t mind. ‘I’m so sorry about everything,’ she whispered. ‘I had to come back. I... I had to give it a try.’

He stopped her. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s a bad way to start.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, I’m so glad.’ He kissed her again and then lifted her bag in and slid the door shut. She sat on the edge of her seat and looked up at him. ‘And did you get your story?’

Bannerman smiled wryly. ‘Oh, yes. I always get the story, don’t I?’ He hesitated and walked to the window and saw his own reflection staring back at him. ‘But it’s funny how it seems so unimportant now. Beside the life of a child, beside the chance to love again. After all,’ it was the last of his bitterness coming out, ‘it will only bring down a Government.’

He reached into his pocket for a pack of cigars and as he brought it out he saw that a small scrap of paper had floated to the floor, a scrap of paper that had remained undiscovered since it had been slipped into his pocket by a small, loving hand. He stooped to pick it up. It was folded over twice. He opened it out and saw three clumsily constructed words. LOVE YOU NEIL.