Witch Hunt

Tuesday 2 June

Everyone in the Collator’s Office had what might be termed a “clerical mind.” Which is to say that they were scrupulous in their filing. They were, in fact, a kind of pre-information technology production line, feeding data into the central computer. This was their purpose in the Collator’s Office. It was up to the computer to decide whether some news item or other might be important. The computer was capable of taking a petrol station holdup in Kelso, the abduction of a girl in Doncaster, and the finding of a body in rural Wales, and making of them a pattern.

But most of the time it didn’t. Most of the time it just sat wherever it sat, a glutton’s bottomless stomach, ingesting story after story, item after item, without excreting anything in return. A lot of false roads were taken, a lot of palpable nonsense spewed up by the computer. And occasionally a nugget of truth, but not often. No, not very often.

There were times when Collator’s Assistant Jack Constant thought that the only things keeping him sane were the editions of French newspapers which he brought into work with him. Constant thought he’d plumbed the depths of boredom and futility during his yearlong stint as clerical assistant in the office of Her Majesty’s Collector of Taxes. He’d spent the year sending out demands and reminders and final notices, noting payments and passing the nonpayers on to his boss. A year of ledgers, producing in him a ledger mentality. But then computerization had “saved” him by taking over his most onerous tasks, and a series of shuffles between departments had seen him dropped finally into the Collator’s Office. The pit.

“So how goes the Font of All Knowledge?” asked Cynthia Crockett, a fellow CA. Each day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes after the lunch break, she asked this question with the same quizzical smile. Maybe she thought it was funny.

“Foak knows,” replied Constant, FOAK being the Font of All Knowledge, the central computer. Another CA, Jim Wilson, had another name for it. He called it the Fat Controller or, when in a bad temper, even the Fat Bastard. He’d once come into work wearing a T-shirt printed with the legend WHO’S THAT FAT BASTARD? Mr. Grayson, the office head, had summoned him into the inner sanctum for a quiet, disciplined word about dress code.

Afterwards, Wilson had not been mollified. “Wants us wearing suits and bloody ties. I mean, it’s not like we’re dealing with the public, is it? We never see anyone. Nobody except old Grayskull himself.”

But he hadn’t worn the T-shirt again.

Constant suffered his colleagues, even “old Grayskull” of the shiny head and tweed-knit ties, drifting towards his pension. Mr. Grayson’s wife packed him exactly two salmon sandwiches, one apple, and one small chocolate biscuit for his lunch every day. Yvette would never do that. It would be a fresh baguette and some Camembert, maybe with pickles or a small salad with vinaigrette. The French took their food seriously, and Yvette, Constant’s girlfriend, was French. She lived in Le Mans, which meant that they met only for holidays and occasional frantic weekends (trips barely sustainable on a CA’s salary, not when his phone bill was so big). Yvette was still studying, but would soon come to England for good. She’d get a job as French assistant in some school. They would be together.

Meantime, he had his newspapers. Usually Le Monde but occasionally one of the others. He read them to improve his French, and also because Yvette didn’t seem so far away while he was reading. So, whenever a break was due, Jack would reach into his desk drawer and bring out his French newspaper, something to digest with the unspeakable coffee.

He read the snippet of news again. It was squeezed onto the front page below a much longer story about forest fires in the Mediterranean. A boat had sunk in the Channel, barely twenty kilometers from its home port of Calais. There were no survivors. Four sailors dead. The story jogged Jack Constant’s memory. He’d filed a story earlier in the day, something about a boat sinking off the south coast of England. Coincidence? He wondered if he should mention it to someone. He looked up from the paper and saw that Mr. Grayson had appeared from his inner sanctum. He was looking around as though bewildered to find himself there. He saw Constant looking at him and decided to approach for a conversation. Another day, someone else would suffer. Past the computer screens and the brown file cases and the newspaper cuttings and the printouts and the fax sheets he came. Past the clack of keyboards and the sizzle of disk memories. Towards Jack Constant.

“Jack.”

Constant confirmed this with a nod.

“Everything quiet?”

“Quiet as it gets, sir.”

Grayson nodded seriously. “Good.” His breath smelled of salmon. With a sad half-smile, he began to turn away.

Why not? thought Constant. It might pep the old bugger up a bit. “Oh, sir?” he said. “I’ve got a story here might be of interest.”

Mr. Grayson seemed to doubt this. To be honest, Constant was doubting it, too.

Wednesday 3 June

In the service, there was always someone above you. But the information ladder could splinter — a missing rung. The information ladder depended on people like Jack Constant reporting something to someone like Mr. Grayson. And it depended on Grayson’s instinct or “nose,” his ability to weed out what was interesting from what really was mere coincidence. The information was then passed up the ladder to his superior, who might make further inquiries before either filing the piece or passing it on to someone more senior yet.

These were lofty heights now. Working from his own small office, Grayson had never met his superior’s superior. He’d once received an inquiry from that person. The inquiry had been dealt with as a priority. Mr. Grayson’s office had never had to deal with inquiries from yet higher officials.

The item, the bare comparison of two sinkings on a single night, was passed quickly from rung to rung until it reached an office somewhere in central London where a twenty-five-year-old man, only two years older than Jack Constant himself, read it. He was humming an aria and chewing a pencil and had his legs stretched out in front of him, one foot crossed over the other. He had pushed his seat out from his desk to facilitate this, his legs being too long to stretch beneath the desk itself. There was a wall immediately in front of the desk, with memos and postcards and fire instructions pinned to it.

He read the item through three times. Spotted in Le Monde of all places. Either somebody was on the ball or this man... what was the name, Grayson? Yes, this man Grayson ran a tight ship. Poor metaphor under the circumstances. The item had grown unwieldy by now, attached as it was to notes from the various offices through which it had passed. But though unwieldy, it was also irritatingly flimsy, constructed from thin sheets of fax paper. It had been faxed (standard practice) by the last office to see it. The real thing would turn up here eventually, but the fax was supposed to save valuable time. Michael Barclay did not like faxes. For a start, no matter how often the Engineering Section explained it to him, he couldn’t see how they were safe from a tap. Tap into a fax line with your own fax, and you’d get a copy of anything sent to the original machine. Codes could be decoded, scramblers unscrambled. As he’d told his colleagues from Engineering, “If you can make something, you can unmake it.” To prove his point, he’d rigged up his own interception device. It had worked, just, proving his point if nothing else. After all, Government Communications made a living from information intercepts, as did the listening posts dotted around the UK. If anything, there was an intelligence overload these days. Too much information to assimilate.

Assimilate? There was too much to sift, never mind taking any of it in. Which was why this little story interested him. It was a fluke that it had come this far. The image that popped into his head was of a particular sperm breaching an egg. A fluke. This fluke called life: those very words were printed on a memo above his desk.

Well, this particular fluke did have its curiosity aspect. It would bear investigation. There was only one thing for it. Barclay would have to show it to his superior.

Michael Barclay did not think of himself as a spy. Nor would he even say he belonged to the secret service or the security service — though he’d agree security was at the root of much of his work. If pressed, he might nod towards the word “Intelligence.” He liked the word. It meant knowing a lot. And “Intelligence” meant knowing at least as much as and preferably more than anyone else. This was the problem with the word “spy.” It belonged to the old days, the Cold War days and before. Breaking and entering, sleeping with the enemy, microfilm and microphones in ties and tunnels under embassies.

These days, there was no black and white: everyone spied on everyone else. This was no revelation; it had always been the case, but it was more open now. More open and more closed. Spy satellites were toys only the very rich and paranoid could play with. The spying community had grown larger, all-encompassing, but it had also grown smaller, forming itself into an elite. All change.

He’d actually used the word “paranoid” in one of his selection board interviews. A calculated risk. If the service didn’t want to think of itself as paranoid, it would have to recruit those who suspected it of paranoia. Well, he’d passed the exams and the tests and the interviews. He’d passed the initiation and the regular assessments. He’d begun his own slow crawl up the ladder. And he’d seen that the world was changing.

No spies anymore. Now there were only the technicians. Take telemetry for example. Who the hell knew what all that garble of information meant? Who knew how to ungarble it? Only the technicians. Machines might talk to machines, but it took a wonderful human mind to listen in and comprehend. Barclay had done his bit. He’d studied electronic engineering. He’d been a dab hand with a few microchips and LEDs ever since his early teens, when he’d constructed his own digital clock. At sixteen he’d been building loudspeakers and amplifiers. And at seventeen he’d bugged the girls’ showers at his school.

At university he’d been “noticed”: that was the way they’d phrased it. His work on long-range surveillance had been noticed. His grasp of geostationary satellite technology had been noticed. His special project on miniaturization had been noticed. Fortunately, nobody noticed that he’d cribbed a lot of the project from early R&D done by Japanese hi-fi companies. A career path lay ahead of him, full of interest and variety and opportunities for further learning. A career in Intelligence.

Michael Barclay, Intelligence Technician. Except that he’d ended up here instead.

He didn’t need to knock at Joyce Parry’s door. It was kept wide open. There was some argument in the office as to why. Was it to keep an eye on them? Or to show solidarity with them? Or to show them how hard she worked? Most of the theories bubbled to the surface on Friday evenings in the Bull by the Horns, the frankly dreadful pub across the road from the office block. The Bull was a 1960s creation which looked no better for its 1980s refitting. In the ’80s, refitting had meant a lot of fake wood, eccentric ornaments, and books by the yard. The effect was kitsch Edwardian Steptoe and Son, with sad beer and sad graffiti in the gents’. But on the occasional Friday night, they managed somehow to turn the Bull into a cozy local, full of laughter and color. It was amazing what a few drinks could do.

Joyce Parry’s door was closed.

Unexpected refusal at first hurdle. Barclay, who had rolled the fax sheets into a scroll the better to brandish them, now tapped the scroll against his chin. Well, no matter. She was in conference perhaps. Or out of the office. (That was one thing: when Mrs. Parry wasn’t at home, her office door stayed firmly locked.) Barclay might do a little work meantime, so he could present her with not only the original item but with his notes and additions. Yes, why not show he was willing?

John Greenleaf had the feeling that somewhere in the world, every second of the day, someone was having a laugh at his expense. It stood to reason, didn’t it? He’d seen it happen with jokes. You made up a joke, told it to someone in a pub, and three months later while on holiday in Ecuador, some native told the joke back to you. Because all it took was one person to tell two or three people, and for them to tell their friends. Like chain letters, or was it chain mail? All it took was that first person, that someone who might say: “I know a man called Greenleaf. Guess who he works for? Special Branch! Greenleaf of the Branch!” Three months later they were laughing about it in Ecuador.

Inspector John Greenleaf, ex-Met and now — but for how long? — working for Special Branch. So what? There were plenty of butchers called Lamb. It shouldn’t bother him. He knows Greenleaf is a nice name, women keep telling him so. But he can’t shift the memory of last weekend out of his mind. Doyle’s party. If you could call twenty men, two hundred pints of beer, and a stripper a “party.” Greenleaf had debated skipping it altogether, then had decided he’d only get a slagging from Doyle if he didn’t go. So along he went, along to a gym and boxing school in the East End. That was typical of Hardman Doyle, who fancied himself with the fists. Raw animal smell to the place, and the beer piled high on a trestle table. No food: a curry house was booked for afterwards. There had been five or six of them in front of the table, and others spread out across the gym. Some were puffing on the parallel bars or half-vaulting the horse. Two took wild swings at punching bags. And the five or six of them in front of the table... They all muttered their greetings as he arrived, but he’d heard the words that preceded him:

“—eenleaf of the Branch, geddit?”

He got it. Nothing was said. Doyle, his smile that of a used-car salesman, slapped him on the back and handed over a can of beer.

“Glad you could make it, John. Party’s been a bit lackluster without you.” Doyle took another can from the table, shook it mightily, veins bulging above both eyes, then tapped the shoulder of some unsuspecting guest.

“Here you go, Dave.”

“Cheers, Doyle.”

Doyle winked at Greenleaf and waited for Dave to unhook the pull tab...

And Greenleaf, Greenleaf of the Branch, he laughed as hard as any of them, and drank as much, and whistled at the stripper, and ate lime chutney with his madras... And felt nothing. As he feels nothing now.

New Scotland Yard... Special Branch... this is supposed to be Big Time for a copper. But Greenleaf has noticed something curious. He has noticed the truth of the saying “It takes a thief to catch a thief.” Some of his present colleagues don’t seem so different from the villains they pull in. As narrow-minded as terrorists, as devious as smugglers. Doyle was a good example, though effective at his job. He just didn’t mind cutting corners. Doyle refused to see the world in black and white, as a sharply defined Us and Them, while Greenleaf did. For him there were the good guys and then there were the enemy. The enemy was out there and was not to be suffered. If it was useful as an informant, then fine, use it. But don’t reward it afterwards. Don’t let it slink away. Lock it up.

“John?”

“Sir?”

“My office.”

Oh hell, now what? His last big job had been putting together a report on aspects of security at the forthcoming London summit. It had taken him a fortnight, working weekends and nights. He’d been proud of the finished result, but no one had commented on it — yet. Now here was the Old Man himself, the Chief, the Boss, here was Commander Bill Trilling, summoning him into the office which smelled perpetually of peppermint.

“Sit down, John. Mint?”

“No thanks, sir.”

Trilling took out a sweet and slipped it into his mouth. It was seven months since he’d given up smoking and he was up to four packs of mints a day. His teeth were in ruins and he’d gained half a stone — half a stone he could ill afford. Seated in his chair, with its high armrests, he looked as though it would take a crowbar to get him out again. There was a sheet of paper on the notoriously tidy desk in front of him but no sign of Greenleaf’s report. He picked up the paper.

“Bit of a job for you, John. May be something or nothing. A sinking off Folkestone. We’ve been asked to look into it. Happened a couple of days ago. Can’t say I saw anything about it.”

It was well known that Trilling only ever looked at two newspapers, the Financial Times and the Sporting Life. He was a betting man, sometimes putting his money on a surefire stock or share, sometimes a horse or dog. Nobody really knew how successful he was, since he didn’t share information, even when goaded by Doyle.

“I think I read about it in my paper, sir.”

“Did you? Good, well...” Trilling handed over the sheet. “Report back when you’ve got anything.”

“How far do I take it, sir?”

“As far as a day trip to Folkestone. Better liaise with Doyle.”

“Doyle, sir?”

“I’ve put him onto the French end.” Greenleaf looked puzzled. “Didn’t I say? Another boat sank the same night off Calais. We’re to look for a connection. Doyle speaks passable French apparently.”

A day out in Calais for Doyle, an afternoon in Folkestone for Greenleaf. Typical.

“As I say, liaise with Doyle. You might even consider traveling down together. But see what you can do by telephone first. We don’t want expensive outings on office time if we can avoid it, not with them counting how many paper clips we use. Like the man says, John, value for money. Maybe you should write a letter rather than use the phone.”

The Commander was smiling. This was how people knew he’d made a joke.

Thursday 4 June

His first “liaison” with Doyle was at eleven the next morning.

“Bring your chair over,” Doyle said, thereby seizing the initiative: the meeting would take place at Doyle’s desk, in Doyle’s territory. Greenleaf lifted his heavy metal-framed chair with both hands, first resting his notes on the seat of the chair itself. But as he was placing it in front of Doyle’s desk, the notes slewed floorwards. Doyle affected not to notice. His own notes, Greenleaf noticed, were neatly word processed: not because he’d labored hard, but because he had a “close friend” in the typing pool. No doubt she’d ignored more important work this morning so she could prepare these sheets for Doyle. It all looked efficient, a single paper clip holding the whole lot together. Doyle now slid the paper clip from the corner of the sheets and let it fall to the floor. He spread the sheets in front of him.

“Right,” he said, “what have you got?”

“A small touring boat,” Greenleaf said from memory. “Must have sunk about two miles off the coast, just south of Folkestone. There was an automatic alarm system on board which alerted the coast guard. The system only operates in two situations: when set off by a crew member or when it’s exposed to water. No sign of the boat itself, just some debris and oil and the two bodies.”

“Postmortems?”

“I’m waiting for the reports.”

“What time did all this happen?”

“The alarm went off at three-twenty-seven.”

“The French boat sank around three,” Doyle added. “So who was on board?”

“Two men. George Crane and Brian Perch.”

“Crane and Perch?” Greenleaf nodded, and Doyle produced a gust of laughter. “Were they out fishing?”

“Not fishing. If anything, the boat was a pleasure cruiser. You know, a sort of motorized yacht. I don’t know much about sailing, but that’s what they tell me.”

“So what were they doing out at that time of night?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Where had they been?”

Greenleaf shook his head. “Crane’s widow didn’t even know he was taking the boat out. He told her he was going for a drive. He suffered from insomnia, she says. All Perch’s family know is that he was doing a job for Crane. The boat’s mooring is along the coast from Folkestone, a place called Sandgate.”

“But the boat itself was nearer Folkestone when it went down?”

“Other side of Folkestone from Sandgate.”

Doyle tapped his fingers against the edge of the desk. His suit looked crumpled but comfortable. Greenleaf, on the other hand, felt as if he was wearing a restraint of some kind. Time to buy a new jacket or start a diet. “What did Crane do?” Doyle asked.

“Had his own building firm.”

Doyle stopped tapping and reached into his jacket, scratching slowly. “Figures with a name like that. Do you know why the boat sank?”

“They’re going to try to recover it this afternoon, for what it’s worth.”

Doyle brought his hand out of his jacket. “I can tell you what they’ll find.”

“What?”

Doyle smiled and looked down at the sheets spread across the desk in front of him. Eventually he looked up. “They’re a bit quicker off the mark than us across the Channel. They haven’t quite got the boat up yet, but the postmortem’s been done. I spoke to the pathologiste this morning.” He smiled again. Greenleaf hated him for the way he’d dropped the French pronunciation into his speech. “Docteur Lagarde had some interesting things to say. Incidentally, they reckon there were four on board the vessel. It was a fishing boat, registered in Calais.”

“So what does the doctor say?”

Doyle smiled at Greenleaf’s impatience. “Well, for a start, the bodies suffered some puncture wounds.”

“What sort?”

“Splinters of wood, metal, glass. Lagarde took a nine-incher out of some poor sod. Embedded itself in the stomach and punctured the heart.”

“Meaning there was force behind it?”

“Oh, yes, there was force all right. Upwards force. And burn marks, too. One of the bodies in particular was badly scorched.”

“An explosion,” Greenleaf commented.

“Absolutely.”

“Anything else?”

“Only what they found floating around in the surface oil. Hundred-dollar bills. Fifteen of them, not in very good nick. They got a couple of serial numbers. The Americans are checking.”

“Fifteen hundred dollars. What do you reckon, drugs?”

“Drugs or arms, but probably drugs.”

“You think the two boats met mid-Channel?”

“It’s an idea. There’s only one way to tell for sure. We need the PM results from Folkestone. Want me to give you a lift?”

“What?”

Doyle leaned down behind his desk and raised a bulging holdall high. “I’m off to Calais on the evening ferry. Spending the night there, do a bit of sniffing tomorrow, then hit the hypermarché before heading back. I got the nod from Trilling an hour ago.”

“The luck of the Irish.”

Doyle’s face darkened a little. What had he said? Ah, Doyle was very touchy about his name’s Irishness, was he? Got you, thought Greenleaf, got you!

When Doyle spoke, he was still subdued. “I’ve got to alter my headlights, dip them the right way, but after that, I’m ready to leave. So if you’re heading for Folkestone...”

“I’ll take my own car, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” said Doyle. He seemed to be staring at Greenleaf’s straining suit as he said it.

“I wish you’d come to me with this earlier, Michael.”

It wasn’t quite the opening line Michael Barclay had expected from his boss. Joyce Parry sat there, invulnerable behind thick-rimmed spectacles, his report held up in front of her. Having glanced at it for effect, she laid it back down and slipped off her glasses. They hung around her neck by a string, and she let them dangle against her chest. From time to time, they grazed the triple string of Ciro pearls resting just below her throat. Her throat, thought Barclay, was the oldest part of her, permanently lined and stretched. Her good legs, face, and hair might say early forties, but the neck gave the lie to this. Late forties, the neck said to Barclay.

“Sit down,” Joyce Parry’s mouth told him.

Barclay had always believed that he was attractive to women. To women and to men, actually. He had used his good looks and steady unblinking gaze to good effect both socially and professionally. He felt that he’d always got on well with Joyce Parry, being at his charming best in her office and at meetings where she was present. So much so in fact that someone had sent him an anonymous Valentine addressed: “To the creeping, slimy, boss-loving toad.” The card was pinned above his desk, its sender still a mystery.

Barclay didn’t mind it. He didn’t mind envy in the workplace. He didn’t mind that others thought he was getting on well with the boss. He’d always imagined that there was something special between Mrs. Parry and him. He might almost have called it a “special relationship.”

And now this.

“I really wish you’d shown me this earlier, Michael.” She used his first name softly, the sentence fading away, to show that she was disappointed in him. As he sat in front of her, his legs felt overlong and clumsy. He rested his hands on his knees, hiding them.

“I did try, but you were —”

“You should have tried later. Any news from Commander Trilling?”

“Just that he has two men working on it. One of them’s off to France, the other to Folkestone.”

“A bit too early for Special Branch,” she said. “You should have done some digging of your own first. You should have spoken to me first.” Now the endings of her sentences were like stabs at him. “You jumped the gun.” She nodded slowly towards him, letting this sink in, then wheeled her chair to the corner of her desk where it met with another in an L-shape. Her main desk was all paperwork, but on the side desk stood a computer, the screen angled just enough that no one sitting where Barclay was could see it. This large desk also hosted printer and modem, while in a far corner of the room sat a fax machine and document shredder. There were three telephones on the main desk. One of them rang just as she was accessing the computer. She pushed her chair back into place and, instead of lifting the receiver, hit one of the buttons.

“Mrs. Parry here,” she said, swiveling back to her computer screen.

A small female voice came from the telephone’s loudspeaker. “I checked the computer files —”

“I told you not to bother, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but I —”

“Mr. Elder belongs to the pre-microchip days. He believed in paper files.”

Sensible man, thought Barclay. Elder... the name was familiar. The voice was speaking again.

“Yes, well, I’ve got those files, too.”

“Good,” said Joyce Parry. “All I need to know is... no, on second thought, bring them in here.”

Once more she wheeled back, this time to cut the connection. Then forwards again, her fingers fast on the keyboard. Barclay knew that his superior had computer clearance far above his own. He knew too that he could beat the computer system, given time and the will. If he wanted to, he could access anything. If he wanted to.

“Ah, here we are,” said Joyce Parry. He studied her profile. Classically English, whatever that meant. The way she raised her chin as she read from the screen. A long straightish nose, thin lips, short well-kept hair, showing just a little gray. Gray eyes, too. She was one of those women who grow better looking as they get older. She pressed a few more keys, checked that the printer was on, then pressed two more keys. The laser printer began its quick, quiet work. She swiveled back to the main desk and handed the first sheet to him. He had to rise from his chair to take it. The paper was still warm from the machine.

There was a sudden tapping on the wide-open door. Parry signaled for the secretary to come in. She was carrying two bulging folders tied securely with what looked like shoelaces.

“Thanks, Angela, leave them on the desk.” Joyce Parry extracted two more sheets from the printer. Barclay tried to concentrate on the piece of paper he was holding, but it was difficult not to stare at those two files, the files of someone called Elder. The name definitely stirred a memory, but this wasn’t the time for reflection. Joyce Parry began untying the shoelaces while Barclay read from the laser-printed page.

The report was dated six years before, and had been filed originally by the CIA before being passed along “for information” to the British authorities. What Barclay now held was formed as a précis, as abridged by D. Elder.

“On 16 May,” he read, “a small fishing boat left the South Korean port of Pusan. Crew of six. Known and well liked in the port. No hint that the crew were involved in any illegal activities prior to this time, though most boatmen in the area regard smuggling as above the law anyway.

“On 17 May, debris and bodies (six) washed up on the island of Mishima, off the Japanese mainland. Earlier reported sighting of the boat near the Japanese coastal town of Susa. No reason why boat should have been in this area. Skipper/owner an experienced sailor. Scale of damage to vessel suggested an explosion rather than collision, grounding, etc. However, no report of anyone seeing or hearing a blast. (Southern-Asian ears and eyes not always fully functional. Remember, to them, pirates are still an occupational hazard rather than a 1930s Errol Flynn film.)”

Barclay smiled and started on the second sheet.

“Investigation undertaken by Japanese and South Korean authorities. No further evidence uncovered up to date of this report. However, there was talk in Pusan of a young woman who had been seen talking with the boat’s owner in a bar a few days prior to the final voyage. She is described as being tall with short dark hair, probably speaking English.

“From 18–20 May, International Conference for World Peace (ICWP) based at various locations in Hiroshima, Japan. Conference attended by 240 delegates from forty-six countries, supplemented by invited guests (e.g.: from Japanese universities, media) and then, to some events, general public. World media invited to attend. Four intelligence agents among those accepting. (See file no. CI/46377/J/DE.) Six keynote speeches given prominence during conference. Other activities included film shows, art exhibition, theater events, and concert by Music for Peace (the latter with its HQ in London, investigated 1984: see file no. UK/0/223660/L/JP).”

JP: Joyce Parry initials. Barclay was beginning to sense what this was all about. His hands grew clammy, sticking to the sheet as he read on.

“On closing day, 20 May, final keynote address was to be given by international peace activist Jerome Hassan (CI/ 38225/ USP/DG). However, Mr. Hassan was taken ill with suspected food poisoning and his speech (much abbreviated — Hassan was known to work by improvisation) was delivered by a colleague, Dr. Danielle Brecht.

“Mr. Hassan died in hospital on evening of 20 May, just as live telecast at closing concert was beaming messages by pop and film luminaries into Japan.

“Postmortem was carried out on morning of 21 May, with Mr. Hassan’s hotel (and over 100 diners from the previous day) keenly awaiting findings. Laboratory analysis showed atropine poisoning. (Atropine is an alkaline found in Deadly Nightshade. From the Greek atropos, ‘the Fate that cuts the thread of life.’)

“While still conscious, but thought to be delirious, Hassan spoke of a girl, a student probably. He spoke of her ‘beauty and generosity.’ Hotel staff when interviewed acknowledged that on the night of 19 May, a young woman had accompanied Mr. Hassan to his room. No one saw her leave, despite a twenty-four-hour reception area. Descriptions given varied. One assessed her height at nearly six foot, another at only five foot six. One said black hair, another brown. Hair was probably cropped short, and woman was fair-skinned, though tanned. European perhaps, or Asian. No one heard her speak. She had crossed the lobby with Mr. Hassan and entered the lift with him. She was dressed in black denims, light T-shirt, light-colored jacket. Mr. Hassan was carrying a plastic carrier bag weighed down with books. Reception staff got the impression the bag belonged to the woman.

“Woman has never been traced. Hassan’s previous sexual history questioned. (Widow not forthcoming.) As a footnote, woman’s entry to the country was clumsy, creating immediate suspicion. And her use of atropine, or at least the dosage used, was also clumsy, since it allowed the victim time to talk before dying. Pity is, he did not say anything useful.

“See: WITCH file.

“Final footnote: Susa is c. fifty miles from Hiroshima.”

Barclay turned to the third and final sheet, expecting more. But all he read were edited newspaper reports of Jerome Hassan’s murder, mentioning poison and the mysterious young woman. A jealous lover was hinted at. He looked up and saw that Joyce Parry was immersed in the contents of one of the Elder files. He glanced through his own sheets again, quite liking Elder’s tone — the explanation of the word “atropine”; the mention of the final night’s rock concert; that nice late mention that Hassan was a married man.

“You see the coincidence,” Parry said without warning. She was looking at him now. “An assassin is dropped off on the Japanese mainland and then destroys the boat which landed her. Now, six years later, something similar occurs.”

Barclay considered this. “Special Branch are thinking more along the lines of drugs or arms.”

“Exactly. And that’s why I’d rather you hadn’t alerted them this early on. They may be off on half a dozen wild goose chases. Then, if we approach them with new information, they’ll wonder why we didn’t come up with it sooner. Do you see what I mean?” Her glasses glinted. Barclay was nodding.

“It makes us look bad.”

“It makes me look bad.” She wetted two fingers with the tip of her tongue and turned a page.

“What’s the Witch file?” Barclay asked.

But she was busy reading, too busy to answer. She seemed to be suppressing an occasional smile, as though reminiscing. Eventually she glanced up at him again.

“The Witch file doesn’t exist. It was an idea of Mr. Elder’s.”

“So what is Witch?”

She closed the file carefully, and thought for a moment before speaking. “I think it would be best if you asked Dominic Elder that, don’t you?”

Once a year, the fairground came to Cliftonville.

Cliftonville liked to think itself the genteel equivalent of next-door neighbor Margate. It attracted coach tours, retired people. The younger holidaymakers usually made for Margate. So did the weekenders, down from London for a spot of seaside mayhem. But Cliftonville was struggling with a different problem, a crisis of identity. Afternoon bingo and a deck chair in front of the promenade organist just weren’t enough. Candy floss and an arcade of one-armed bandits weren’t enough. Too much of the town lingered in the 1950s. Few wanted the squeal and glitter of the ’90s, yet without them the town would surely die, just as its clientele was dying.

If the town council had wanted to ask about survival, they might have consulted someone at the traveling fairground. It had changed, too. The rides had become a little more “daring” and more expensive. Barnaby’s Gun Stall was a good example. The original Barnaby (whose real name had been Eric) had used rifles which fired air-propelled corks at painted tins. But Barnaby had died in 1978. His brother Randolph had replaced the cork guns with proper pellet-firing rifles, using circular targets attached to silhouette human figures. But then Randolph had succumbed to alcohol and the charms of a woman who hated the fair, so his son Keith — the present Barnaby — had taken over. Nowadays the Gun Stall boasted serious entertainment in the form of an automatic-firing air gun rigged up to a compression pump. This machine gun could fire one hundred large-bore pellets every minute. You just had to keep your finger on the trigger. The young men paid their money gladly, just to feel the sheer exhilaration of that minute’s lethal action. Afterwards, the target would be brought forward. Keith still used cardboard circles marked off from the outer to the small black bull’s-eye, and attached to the heart of a human silhouette. The thing about the automatic was, it couldn’t be said to be accurate. If enough pellets hit the target, the cardboard was reduced to tatters. But more often than not, the kids missed, dazed by the recoil and the noise and the speed.

The more dazed they were, the more likely they were to come back for more. It was a living. And yet in other ways the fair was very much an old-fashioned place. It had its ghost train and its waltzers, though this evening the ghost train was closed. There were smells of spun sugar and diesel, and the scratchy sounds of the next-to-latest pop records. Onions, the roar of machinery, and three-balls-for-fifty-pee at the kiddie stalls.

Gypsy Rose Pellengro’s small caravan was still attached to her Volvo station wagon, as though she was thinking of heading off. On a board outside the caravan door were letters of thanks from grateful clients. These letters were looking rather frail, and none of them seemed to include the date on which it had been written. Beside them was a scrawled note announcing GYPSY ROSE BACK IN AN HOUR.

The two windows of the caravan were tightly closed and covered with thick net curtains. Inside, it was much like any holiday caravan. The small sink still held two unwashed plates, and on the table sat not a crystal ball but a portable black-and-white television, hooked up to the battery of the Volvo. The interior was lit by propane, the wall-mounted lamps roaring away. A woman was watching TV.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in, sir, please,” she called, rising to switch off the set. The door was pulled open and a man climbed into the caravan. He was so tall that he had to stoop to avoid the ceiling. He was quite young, very thin, and dark-skinned.

“How did you know it was a man?” he asked, taking in the scene around him.

“I saw you peering in through the window.”

The man smiled at this, and Gypsy Rose Pellengro laughed, showing the four gold teeth in her mouth. “What can I do for you, sir? Didn’t you see the notice outside?”

“Yes. But I really would like my fortune told.” He paused, stroking a thick black mustache, before adding meaningfully: “I think I have a lucky future ahead of me.”

Gypsy Rose nodded, not that she’d been in any doubt. “Then you’ve come to the right place,” she said. “I’m in the futures market myself. Would you like to sit down?”

“No, thank you, I’ll just leave this...” He reached inside his jacket and brought out a large brown envelope. As he made to place it on the table in front of the woman, she snatched at his wrist and turned his palm upwards.

“Yes,” she said, releasing it after a moment. “I can see you’ve been disappointed in love, but don’t worry. The right woman isn’t so very far away.”

He seemed scandalized that she had dared to touch him. He rubbed at his wrist, standing over her, his black pupils shadowed by his eyebrows. For a moment, violence was very close. But the woman just sat there with her old, stubborn look. Weary, too. There was nothing he could do to her that hadn’t already been done. So instead he turned and, muttering foreign sounds, pushed open the caravan door, slamming it shut behind him so hard that it bounced back open again. Now Gypsy Rose could see out onto the slow procession of fairground visitors, some of whom stared back.

Slowly, she rose from the table, closed and locked the door, and returned to her seat, switching on the television. From time to time she fingered the large brown envelope. Eventually, when enough time had passed, she got up and pulled her shawl around her. She left the lamps burning in the caravan but locked the door behind her when she left. The air was hot, the night sticky. She moved quickly, expertly, through the crowds, occasionally slipping between two stalls and behind the vans and lorries, picking her way over cables, looking behind her to see if anyone was following. Then back between two more stalls and into the crowd again. Her path seemed to lack coordination, so that at one point, she’d almost doubled back to her starting point before striking off in another direction. In all, she walked for nearly fifteen tiring minutes. Fifteen minutes for a journey of less than four hundred yards.

Darkness had fallen, and the atmosphere of the fair had grown darker and more restless, too. The children were home in bed, still excited and not asleep, but safe. Tough-speaking teenagers had taken over the fair now, swilling cheap beer from tins, stopping now and then for passionate kisses or to let off some shots at an unmoving target. Yells broke the nighttime air. No longer the sounds of fun but feral sounds, the sounds of trouble. Gypsy Rose remembered one leather-jacketed boy, cradled in a friend’s arms.

Jesus, missus, he’s been stabbed. He didn’t die, but it was touch-and-go.

Less than four hundred yards from her caravan was the ghost train. On the narrow set of tracks between the two double doors sat the parked carriages. The sign on the kiosk said simply CLOSED. Well, there wouldn’t have been many people using it at this time of night anyway. A chain prevented anyone gaining access to the wooden-slatted running boards in front of the ride. She lifted her skirt and stepped over the chain, winning a cheer and a wolf whistle from somewhere behind her. With a final glance over her shoulder, she pushed open one of the double doors, on which was painted the grinning face of the devil himself, and stepped inside.

She stood for a moment, her eyes adjusting to the newer darkness. The doors muffled much of the sound from outside. Eventually, she felt confident enough to walk on, moving past the spindly mechanisms of ghost and goblin, the wires and pulleys which lowered shreds of raffia onto young heads, the skeleton, at rest now, which would spring to its feet at the approach of a carriage.

It was all so cheap, so obvious. She couldn’t recall ever having been scared of the ghost train, even as a tot. Now she was moving farther into the cramped construction, off the rails, away from the papier-mâché Frankenstein and the strings that were supposed to be cobwebs, until she saw a glimmer of light behind a piece of black cloth. She made for the cloth and pulled it aside, stepping into the soft light of the tiny makeshift room.

The young woman who sat there sucking her thumb and humming to herself looked up. She sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking slightly, in her lap a small armless teddy bear, and spread out on the floor a tarot pack.

“He’s been,” Gypsy Rose said. She fished the envelope out from under her skirt. It was slightly creased from where she had climbed over the chain. “I didn’t open it,” she said.

The thumb slipped wetly out of the mouth. The young woman nodded, then arched back her neck and twisted it to one side slowly, mouth open wide, until a loud sound like breaking twigs was heard. She ran her fingers through her long black hair. There were two streaks of dyed white above her temples. She wasn’t sure about them. She thought they made her look mysterious but old. She didn’t want to look old.

“Sit down,” she said. She nodded towards a low stool, the only seat in the room. Gypsy Rose sat down. The young woman gathered the tarot cards together carefully, edging them off the tarpaulin floor with long nails. She was wearing a long black skirt, tasseled at the hem, and a white open-necked blouse beneath a black waistcoat. She knew she looked mysterious. That was why she was playing with the tarot. She had rolled her sleeping bag into the shape of a log against the far wall. Having gathered up the cards and slipped them back into their box, she tossed the box over towards the sleeping bag and took the envelope from the older woman, slitting it open with one of her fingernails.

“Work,” she said, spilling the contents out onto the ground. There were sheets of typed paper, black-and-white five-by-eight photographs with notes written in pencil on their backs, and the money. The banknotes were held together with two paper rings. She slit them open and fanned the money in front of her. “I’ve got to go away again,” she said.

Gypsy Rose Pellengro, who had seemed mesmerized by the money, now began to protest.

“But I won’t be gone for long this time. A day or two. Will you still be here?”

“We pack up Sunday afternoon.”

“Headed where?”

“Brighton.” A pause. “You’ll take care, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said the young woman. “I’ll take care. I always take care.” She turned one of the photographs towards the woman. “What do you think?”

“He’s nice-looking,” said Gypsy Rose. “An Asian gentleman.”

“Asian, yes.”

“The man who made the delivery was Asian, too.”

Witch nodded, then read through the notes, taking her time. Gypsy Rose sat quite still, not wanting to disturb her, happy just to be there. She looked at the money again. Eventually, the young woman placed everything back in the envelope. She got up and lifted the tarot from where it lay, tossing it into Gypsy Rose Pellengro’s lap.

“Here,” she said, “take the cards.” There was a scream from outside. A girl’s scream. Maybe a fight was starting. It might be the first tonight; it wouldn’t be the last. “Now, Rosa, tell me. Tell me what you see. Tell me about my mother.”

Gypsy Rose stared at the tarot pack, unwilling to lift it. The young woman slipped her thumb into her mouth again and began to hum, rocking backwards and forwards with the teddy bear on her lap. Outside, someone was still screaming. Gypsy Rose touched the box, pushed its flap open with her thumb. Slowly, she eased out the cards.

Friday 5 June

Greenleaf was in the office early. He’d spent the previous late afternoon and evening in Folkestone, getting in the way, bothering people, not making any friends, but finally gathering all the information he needed, information he just couldn’t get by telephone alone. He’d spoken to George Crane’s widow, Brian Perch’s parents, Crane’s accountants, to people who knew the men, to other boatmen. He’d asked questions of the coast guard, the local police, forensics, and the pathologist. He’d been busy — so busy that he hadn’t left Folkestone until ten o’clock, arriving home in Edmonton at close on midnight, thanks to a jam on the M20 and the Blackwell Tunnel being closed. Shirley was pretending to be asleep with the bedside lamp off but still hot to the touch, and her book pushed under her pillow.

‘What time is it?” she’d muttered.

“Ten past ten.”

“Bloody liar.”

“Then stop trying to make me feel guilty.”

The hour was too late for an argument really. The neighbors had complained in the past. So they kept it jokey and low-key. Just.

He’d taken her toast and tea in bed this morning as penance, despite feeling dead on his feet. And the drive into work hadn’t helped. A car smash at Finsbury Park and a defunct bus holding everybody up between Oxford Street and Warren Street. There was nothing he could do about it except consult the A-Z for useless shortcuts and swear that he’d start traveling to work by tube. Good old public transport: a brisk morning walk to the bus stop, bus straight to Seven Sisters, and hop onto a Victoria Line tube, which would rush him to Victoria and the short final walk to his office. Good old public transport.

Only he’d tried the trip a few times and it didn’t work like that. From the half dozen crammed buses that glided past his stop without slowing, right to the crushed and sweaty tube compartment and the feeling that he would kill the next person who jammed their elbow into him... Good old public transport. London transportation. He’d stick to the car. At least in the car you had a choice. Stuck in a jam, you could park and wait it out in a café, or try another route. But stuck in a tunnel in a tube train... well, that was a tiny rehearsal for hell.

He thought of Doyle, dawdling over croissants and coffee at some French bar, making ready to stock up on cheap beer and duty free. Bastard. But Doyle was useful. Or rather, Greenleaf’s dislike of Doyle was useful: it goaded him. It made him want his work to be efficient, and that included his reports. Which was why he was here so early. He wanted to get his notes typed up into presentable shape, so he could hand them to Trilling before lunchtime.

Basically Doyle had been right. The pathologist noted burns, scorch marks, on both men. A razor-sharp section of plastic had almost taken off Crane’s head. And there were splinters and shards — of wood, glass, metal, Plexiglas — embedded in both bodies. Definite signs of an explosion.

“Somewhere beneath them,” the pathologist added. “Below decks. The two men were probably on deck at the time. The various angles of penetration are all consistent with a blast from below, sending the shrapnel upwards. For example, one splinter enters above the left knee and makes its way up the leg towards the groin, the exit wound appearing on the inside upper thigh.”

There were photographs to go with the doctor’s various graphic descriptions. What couldn’t be shown, and might possibly never be shown, was what had caused the explosion in the first place. That was all down to deduction and supposition. Greenleaf guessed that a bomb wouldn’t be too far out. One of those simple IRA jobs with timer attached. Messy though, blowing the whole caboodle up like that. Why not shoot the men and dump the bodies with weights attached? That way the bodies disappeared and the boat remained: a mystery, but without the certainty that murder had been done. Yes, a loud and messy way to enter the country. In trying to cover their tracks they’d left a calling card: no forwarding address, but a sure sign they’d been there.

And could now be anywhere, planning or doing anything, with a cache of drugs or of arms. It had to be a sizable haul to merit killing two men. Six if you included the French...

Well, so much for the doctor. The local police were on the ball, too. Inside George Crane’s jacket they’d discovered a wad of banknotes. £2,000 or thereabouts. The wad had been pierced by a chunk of metal, but the notes were still recognizable. More important, some of the serial numbers remained intact. Steeped in blood, but intact.

There were ways of checking these things, and Greenleaf knew all of them. He’d faxed details that evening to the Bank of England, and to the Counterfeit Currency Department inside New Scotland Yard, supplying photocopies of several of the cleaner notes. The photocopies weren’t great, but the serial numbers were the crucial thing anyway. The notes themselves he was careful not to handle, except with the use of polyethylene gloves and tweezers. After all, it was unlikely that Crane carried so much money around with him on every boating trip (unless he was planning to bribe some customs officials). It was much more likely that the money had been a payment made to him by whomever he’d transported from mid-Channel to the English coast.

As such, the notes might well boast the odd fingerprint. The corpse of George Crane had already been fingerprinted — on Greenleaf’s orders — so that the dead man’s prints could be eliminated. Somehow, Greenleaf didn’t think George Crane would have let Brian Perch near the money, but his body was being fingerprinted too. Best to be rigorous.

Perch was an employee, a no-questions-asked hired hand who would, as a fellow worker had put it, “go to the end of the earth” for Crane, so long as there was overtime in it. Why had Crane taken him along? For protection? Because he didn’t trust whomever he was carrying? Maybe just for company on the voyage out to mid-Channel? Whatever, Brian Perch didn’t really interest Greenleaf, while George Crane did.

The accountant to the building business wasn’t about to say that Crane’s company was in terminal trouble, but he agreed that times were hard and that the company was “overstretched financially.” Which meant there were bigger loan repayments than there were checks from satisfied and solvent customers. For example, a larger than usual contract had gone unfinished and unpaid when the company employing Crane’s firm had itself gone broke. Crane just managed to hold his head above water. Well, in the financial sense anyway. He still had the big house outside Folkestone with the swimming pool and sauna. He still had a Porsche. He still had his boat. But Greenleaf knew that often the more prosperous a man tried to look, the deeper he was sinking.

He’d considered an insurance scam. Take the boat out at dead of night and blow it up, then claim the money. But it didn’t add up. Why not just sell the boat? One reason might be that no one was buying. Okay, so why did he have to die, too? A miscalculation with the timer or the amount of explosives used? Possible. But Greenleaf still didn’t buy it. Why take someone else along? And besides, there was the French sinking to consider. It had to be tied in with the British sinking; too much of a coincidence otherwise.

Bringing him back to murder.

Crane’s wife didn’t know anything about anything. She knew nothing about her husband’s movements that night, nothing about his business affairs, nothing about any of his meetings. All she knew was that she should wear black and deserve sympathy. She seemed to find his questions in particularly bad taste. Crane’s secretary, when tracked down, had been no more forthcoming. No, no meetings with strangers. No sudden “appointments” out of the office which couldn’t be squared with his diary. No mysterious phone calls.

So what was Greenleaf left with? A man in debt, needing a few thousand (well, fifteen or so actually) to see him back on dry land. Personal financial affairs which had yet to be disentangled (it seemed Crane had been a bit naughty, stashing his cash in several accounts kept hidden from the prying taxman). A midnight boat trip which ends with him two grand in pocket but not in any position to spend it. It all came back to smuggling, didn’t it? Just as Doyle had said. Arms or dope or someone creeping back into the country unannounced. Well, hardly unannounced. Whatever it was, it had cost six lives so far, which was too high a price to pay, whatever the payoff.

Most of these thoughts Greenleaf kept to himself. On paper, he stuck to the facts and the procedures followed. It still looked like a tidy bit of work, scrupulous and unstinting. He began to feel quite pleased with himself. He’d get it to Trilling before lunchtime. Definite. When would Doyle file his findings? Not before tomorrow. He was due back tomorrow morning. Say tomorrow afternoon then. Giving Greenleaf over a day clear, a day during which he’d be ahead of his nemesis. He breathed deeply and decided to pause for another cup of coffee.

When he got back from the machine, his phone was ringing. He almost spilled hot coffee all down his shirt as he lunged for the receiver.

“Yes? Greenleaf here.”

“John? Terry Willard at CC.”

“Morning, Terry.” Good. Terry Willard was one of Counterfeit Currency’s best workers. “What can you do for me?”

“You sound chirpy for a man who must’ve been in — where was it? — Folkestone? — till all hours last night. We’re not used to getting faxes after six.”

Greenleaf laughed and relaxed into his chair. “Just conscientious, Terry. So you’ve got some news, have you?”

“The notes aren’t counterfeit, I’m pretty sure of that.”

“Oh.” Greenleaf tried not to sound disappointed.

“Better than that, really,” said Willard. “I’ve already traced them.”

“What?” Greenleaf sat forward in his chair. “Terry, you’re a genius. Christ, it’s not even ten o’clock yet.”

“To be honest, it wasn’t the hardest work I’ve done. The computer picked the numbers out inside a couple of minutes. Those notes are ancient history. You probably wouldn’t have noticed that last night, the state most of them must have been in, but take it from me they are old banknotes. And they’ve been out of circulation for some time. We were beginning to doubt we’d ever see them again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re marked. The serial numbers are on record. They’re part of a kidnap payoff.”

“A kidnap?”

“Best part of five years ago. In Italy. A British businessman’s daughter was kidnapped by some gang... It’s a bit of a long story. Want me to send you over what I’ve got?”

“Christ, yes. A kidnap?” Greenleaf’s head was reeling. “Yes, send me what you’ve got. And Terry...?”

“Yes?”

“I owe you a beer.”

“No sweat.”

Commander Trilling showed no emotion as Greenleaf told his, or rather Willard’s, story. Greenleaf’s report was in front of Trilling, as was the file sent over from Willard, and he glanced at them from time to time as the Special Branch officer recapped.

“The father’s name is Gibson, sir. At the time, he was an executive with the Gironi chemicals company in Turin. The daughter, Christina, was in a private school near Genoa. She disappeared during a visit to an art gallery. She was missing two days before Mr. Gibson received a telephone call from the kidnappers.

“By that time the Italian police were already involved. They know that when a rich businessman’s daughter goes missing, there’s usually a ransom demand somewhere at the back of it. They’d set up telephone taps at the Gibson home and the Gironi headquarters before the first call came.”

Trilling crunched down hard on a mint and nodded.

“The problem was timing,” Greenleaf went on. “The gang telephoned on four occasions that first day, but never for more than eight seconds, not long enough for any tracing system to work. The first call merely stated that Christina had been kidnapped, the second identified the terrorist gang responsible, the third stated how much of a ransom was required, and the fourth was a plea from Christina herself.

“Another two days passed before the gang got in touch again.”

Trilling interrupted. “Was the caller male or female?”

“Male, sir.” Greenleaf had studied the case file well over the previous hour. He knew that he was leaving just enough out so that the Commander would ask him questions. He already knew the answers to those questions. It was an old trick which made you look not quite perfect but not too far off it either.

“And the gang?”

“La Croix Jaune: Yellow Cross. Nothing much about them in the files. Probably a splinter group from one of the other terrorist organizations. The name may be some obscure joke to do with the Red Brigade. They came on the scene in ’eighty-five and seemed to disappear again in ’eighty-eight. In fact, there are doubts they ever existed at all as a group. The name may just be a cover for two or three criminals working together. Two kidnaps and two armed bank robberies. They were never identified, let alone captured. The only time a bank camera caught them, they were masked.”

“You say two or three members?”

“That’s all Christina Gibson saw. They kept her blindfolded most of the time, and at others they were dressed in balaclavas and sunglasses. But she was fairly sure there were two men, one taller than the other, and one woman, as tall as the man but slimmer.”

Trilling nodded thoughtfully. “So what happened?”

“Mr. Gibson cooperated throughout with the police. It was an international effort by then, as far as these things go. Two Special Branch men were flown out to assist. Matt Duncan and Iain Campbell. The kidnappers —”

“Anyone else?”

“Sorry, sir?”

“The British contingent, did it include anyone else?”

“Not on record, sir.” Greenleaf frowned. This was the first question to have stumped him. But Trilling was smiling, nodding to himself.

“That means nothing,” he said quietly. “Go on.”

“Well, sir, the kidnappers wanted dollars, but we asked Mr. Gibson to persuade them to take sterling. He told them dollars would take some time, while he had the sterling to hand. They agreed. So we put together thirty grand’s worth of notes. The intention was to catch them cold, but there was a shoot-out and they got away. The girl was released, but the money had flown with the gang.”

“Clumsy.”

“Agreed. The Italians reckoned they wounded one of the gang, but nothing came of it. And the money disappeared, despite a check by all clearing banks. The notes on Crane’s body are the first to have surfaced.”

“Poor choice of word,” commented Trilling. “Still, good work, John.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Yes, very good work. So, what do we make of it?”

“Well, it links Crane to a terrorist group, which indicates arms smuggling rather than drugs.”

“All it links him to, John, is dirty money. You can buy dirty money for fivepence in the pound. It’s a cheap way of paying someone a large sum when you’re not bothered what happens to the person afterwards.” Trilling thought for a moment. “You know, I’m not at all sure that we’ve been given a level playing field here.”

“Sir?”

“It all smacks of the cloak-and-dagger brigade. Who did you say contacted us in the first place?”

Christ, what was his name? Barrow... Beardsley... Barkworth... “Barclay, sir.”

“Barclay. Never heard of him. But he’s one of Joyce Parry’s. I wonder what Joyce is playing at? I think I’d better have a word with her.”

He was about to pick up his receiver when there was a knock at the door. Greenleaf rubbed his stomach to stop it from rumbling. It was quarter to one, and so far today all he’d had was five cups of coffee.

“Come in.”

It was Trilling’s secretary. She was holding two sheets of paper, stapled together. “Mr. Doyle’s report, sir.”

“Thank you, Celia.” Trilling held out his hand, took the report and laid it on his desk, on top of Greenleaf’s own report. Greenleaf stared at the closely typed top sheet. He was oblivious to Celia’s smile, or the closing of the door after she left. He kept hearing her words: Mr. Doyle’s report... Mr. Doyle’s report. When Greenleaf looked up from the desk, he saw Commander Trilling studying him.

“Efficient, isn’t he?” Trilling mused.

“Very, sir. But how...?”

“Oh, quite simple really. Doyle requested a laptop computer. He’s taken it with him. Clever devices, they work on rechargeable batteries, you know. Sizable memory, too. I can never get used to the screens on them, but some people can.”

“So Doyle’s writing his report as he goes?”

“That’s it. Then he plugs the laptop into a modem, presses a few buttons, and his copy arrives at a computer here. All we have to do is run off a hard copy.” He patted Doyle’s report, then lifted it up. “Now, let’s see what he’s got to say for himself.” But instead of reading, he looked at Greenleaf over the paper. “If there’s a case to investigate, John, I want you and Doyle to work on it together. Understand? Together. Do you think you can manage that?”

“Of course, sir.”

Trilling continued to look at him. “Good,” he said, before turning his attention to the report.

Dominic Elder was a large man, larger than Barclay had expected. That surname, Elder, had put him on the wrong track. He’d expected a hunched, defeated figure, the sort who had been elders at his mother’s Presbyterian church. But Dominic Elder was large and fit and strong. He’d be about fifty, a year or two older than Joyce Parry. His face had been handsome once, but time had done things to it. He looked out of place in the garden of the pretty cottage, on his knees and planting out seedlings in a well-kept vegetable bed.

“Mr. Elder?” Barclay had driven slowly down the lane and had parked right outside the gate before ejecting Il Trovatore from the cassette player. But, even as he pushed open the gate, the man in the garden seemed not to acknowledge his presence.

“Mr. Elder?” Barclay repeated. “Dominic Elder?”

“That’s me, Mr. Barclay,” the figure said, rising stiffly to its feet and brushing soil from its hands. “Who did you expect to find?”

“There’s no number or name on the gate,” Barclay explained. “I wasn’t sure I had the right house.”

Elder looked around him slowly. “You may not have noticed,” he said in his quiet, deep voice, “but this is the only house there is.” He said it slowly, as if he were explaining something to a child. His eyes fixed on Barclay’s as he spoke. He was massaging his back with the knuckles of one hand. “I suppose you were recruited straight from university, yes?”

Barclay made a noncommittal gesture. He wasn’t sure where this was leading. He’d had a long drive, and an exasperating one. Road work, wrong turns, and trouble with the car’s third gear. It kept slipping back into neutral. On top of which it was eighty-two degrees, and he needed a drink.

“Yes,” Elder was saying, “straight from university. What did you study?”

“Electronics.”

“‘Oh, brave new world.’” Elder chuckled. “So they put you into surveillance first, did they?”

“Yes, but —”

“But it was routine and boring. You wanted out.”

Barclay shuffled his feet. Maybe Elder was astute, but then again maybe he’d learned all this from Joyce Parry. Barclay wasn’t impressed by tricks.

“And eventually you got your transfer.” Elder checked the dirt beneath his gardener’s fingernails. “What school did you go to?”

“I really don’t see what...” Barclay sighed. Losing his patience wouldn’t do any good. Besides, this man was an old friend of Mrs. Parry’s. It might pay to humor him. “It was a comprehensive,” he conceded. “I suppose that’s what you want to know.”

“Scottish?”

“I was born there.”

“But you moved away when you were young. The name’s right, but there’s not much of an accent left. Father in the armed forces?”

“RAF.”

Elder nodded. He checked his fingernails again, then stretched a hand out towards Barclay. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Barclay.”

Barclay thought about refusing the handshake but eventually gave in. Elder’s grip was a lot firmer than he’d expected. He did his best to squeeze back.

“A rough journey, eh?” Elder commented. “I was expecting you three-quarters of an hour ago, allowing for one stop at motorway services.”

“Road work,” Barclay explained. “And my gearbox is acting up.”

“Been to Wales before?” Elder was walking back towards the cottage. Barclay followed him.

“Only to Llandudno.”

“Strange choice.”

“It was a day trip. We were on holiday in Southport.”

“Strange choice. This was when you were younger?”

“Eleven or twelve, yes. Why do you say ‘strange’?”

“Most families with children would choose Blackpool or Morecambe. I’ve always thought Southport very... reserved. Was there much to do there?”

They were at the front door now. It was already open, and Elder wandered inside and along the narrow hall. “I don’t remember,” Barclay said. “Some would say there’s not a lot to do in rural Wales either.”

“They’d be right.” At the end of the hall, Elder entered the kitchen and stood in front of the sink, rinsing his hands. Barclay, who had followed, felt awkward standing in the doorway. “That’s why I’m here,” said Elder. “To enjoy my twilight years.”

“Twilight? But you’re only —”

“Fifty. Like I say, twilight. In our profession.”

Our. For the first time, Barclay felt a little of his hostility fall away.

“Take my advice, Mr. Barclay, set your sights on retirement at fifty. Maybe even forty-five. I know, it all seems a long way off. What are you... late twenties?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five, then. In a few more years, you’ll begin to notice things. You’ll notice your reactions slowing — almost imperceptibly, but with the proper equipment you can measure the decline. You’ll start to feel aches and pains, twinges. Try testing your memory, speed and accuracy of recall. Do it every six months or so and chart your decline.”

“Very comforting.”

Elder, drying his hands on a tea towel, shook his head. “Not comforting, no. But by being aware of your limitations, you may save your own life. More important still, you might just save other people’s. Think about it. Think about our profession. That’s all I’m saying.” He reached a hand behind his back and rubbed at it slowly, thoughtfully. “Tea? Or would you prefer a beer?”

“Something cold would be gratefully received.”

“I think I’ve some bottles in the fridge. We can take a couple into the living room. It’s cooler in there.”

Cooler and darker. There were windows only to the back and side of the cottage, and these were partly overgrown with ivy. The room was small and comfortable. It had a messy, lived-in look, like a favorite pullover. The walls were whitewashed stone, and against one stretched a series of chipboard and melamine bookcases, standing at crazy angles due to the weight of books pressing down on them over the years. On a low tile-topped table sat a range of bottles — gin, Pimm’s, whiskey, vodka — full or nearly full. Various knickknacks filled the window ledges and a few of the spare shelves. The room also contained TV, video, a hi-fi, half a wall of classical LPs, a sofa, and two armchairs. Elder made for one of these. Again, he made no motion, no gesture to help Barclay decide what to do. Should he opt for the other chair or the sofa? He decided on the chair, and sank slowly into it, looking around appreciatively at the room. Yes, comfortable. But dusty, too. There were edges of fluff where the carpet met a chair or a bookcase. There was a layer of dust on the video recorder, and another covering the front of the hi-fi.

Well, thought Barclay, let’s try playing him at his own game. He swallowed a mouthful of cold beer and said: “You’re not married, Mr. Elder?”

But Elder was nodding. He waved his left hand towards Barclay. There was a ring on his wedding finger. “Didn’t you notice? I suppose you’ve got computers to do that sort of thing for you.”

Barclay knew now what Joyce Parry had been getting at when she’d talked of Elder as though he were some dinosaur from the ancient past. He’d retired only two years ago, yet his ideas were Stone Age. Barclay had come across them before, these troglodytes who thought the Enigma code breaker was a bit too high-tech to deal with. They belonged to old spy novels, left unread in secondhand bookshops.

“A penny for them,” Elder said, startling Barclay.

“Oh, I was just wondering about your wife.”

“Why?”

“Curious, I suppose.”

“We’re separated. Have been for years. No plans for divorce. Funny, we get on fine when we’re not living together. We can meet for dinner or the theater.”

“And you still wear your ring.”

“No reason not to.”

Barclay noticed a small framed photograph on one of the shelves. He got up the better to study it. A young girl dressed in pale colors. A big gap-toothed grin and short black hair. It looked like an old photo. He waited for Elder to say something, but Elder was ignoring him.

“Your daughter?” Barclay offered.

Elder nodded. “Deceased.”

Barclay put the photograph back carefully. “I’m sorry,” he said. “How did she —”

“So,” Elder interrupted, “how’s Joyce Parry?”

“Fine.” Barclay sat down again.

“It was nice to hear from her. We haven’t really kept in touch.” A pause. “We should have. Have you worked it out yet?”

“Worked out what?”

Elder smiled. “Something we all used to wonder: whether she’s an iron fist in a velvet glove, or a velvet fist in an iron one.”

Barclay smiled back. “Both have the same effect, surely?”

“Not when the gloves are off.” Elder took another mouthful of beer. “So,” he said, sounding suddenly businesslike, “you’re here to tell me something.”

“Well, yes.”

“Something about Witch.”

“We don’t know that yet, even supposing Witch exists...”

“She exists.”

“She?”

“She, Mr. Barclay. One woman.”

“I thought it was a group.”

Elder shook his head. “That’s what the department thought at the time. It’s what Joyce believes to this day. It’s not a gang, Mr. Barclay, it’s an individual, an assassin.”

“And female?”

“Female.”

“Because of the Hiroshima murder?”

“No, not just that. Hiroshima was merely her entrance. And now something similar has happened?”

“Two boats, one either side of the Channel —”

“Yes, so Joyce said. One off Calais, the other near Folkestone...”

“The Cassandra Christa.”

“What?”

“The English boat, it was called the Cassandra Christa.”

“Cassandra... extraordinary.”

Barclay didn’t follow. “You know it?”

But Elder shook his head. “I meant the parallel. You didn’t have a classical education, Mr. Barclay?”

Barclay’s voice was as cold as his drink. “Apparently not.”

“Cassandra,” Elder was saying, “was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. The god Apollo endowed her with the gift of prophecy... but not of being believed.”

Barclay nodded slowly, smiling. “And you’re Cassandra, Mr. Elder?”

His eyes twinkled. “In the present case, yes, perhaps I am.” He paused. “Mr. Barclay, do you know why Joyce has sent you here?”

Barclay took a deep breath. “To be honest, off the record, no.”

“Me neither. I admit I’m intrigued. Are Special Branch investigating the sinkings?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll probably end up deciding it was an arms shipment. Believable scenario. Strange, if it is Witch...”

“Yes?”

“She’s a quick learner, Mr. Barclay. That’s why she’s survived so long. We haven’t seen hide or hair of her for a couple of years. I thought maybe she’d retired. Yet here she is, announcing herself loud and clear. You see, she didn’t use that particular trick again. She tends not to use the same trick twice, ever. She enters and leaves countries in different ways, using different disguises, different means of killing her victims. Now she seems to have returned to her original calling card. Why?”

“Maybe she’s run out of ideas, gone back to square one.”

“Maybe.”

“Mr. Elder, you say this group... you say she’s an assassin.”

“Yes.”

“For money, or for an ideal?”

“Both. Having an ideal costs money.”

“And what is her ideal?”

Elder shook his head. “If I knew that, I might have caught her by now.” He sat up suddenly. “There are two ways of doing this, the fast and the slow. I’d prefer the slow. Do you have any plans for the evening?”

“No.” This was a lie, but Barclay was intrigued.

“Then I’ll cook some supper. Come on.” He rose to his feet. “Let’s see what needs picking in the garden.”

The evening stayed balmy, and they were able to eat at a picnic table in the back garden. Apart from the immaculate vegetable plot, the garden itself had been left wild. But there was order in the wilderness. The phrase that sprang to Barclay’s mind was “the organization of chaos.”

He didn’t know what to make of Elder. Partly he thought the man intelligent, cautious, impressive; partly he thought him just another old service crank. The story he told seemed harshly at odds with the scenery surrounding them as they sat into the twilight and beyond.

“Hiroshima was the first,” Elder said, almost drowsily. “Except that it wasn’t. That sounds like a riddle, but I’ll explain it as I go along. I filed the report on the Hassan killing.”

“Yes, I read it.”

“But of course, I couldn’t know then... well, nobody could know about Witch. Then there were other incidents, other operations. Most of them terrorist-related. I like to imagine Witch as a pure terrorist.” He smiled. “I’m sure she isn’t, though.” He seemed to be drifting away. Barclay feared the man was about to fall asleep.

“And after Hassan?” he asked.

Elder stirred himself. “After Hassan... well, there was an Italian kidnapping. A British businessman, working for some chemical conglomerate. They took his daughter. I was sent over there to liaise with police. It was an utter farce. The gang got away, and with the ransom.”

“The daughter?”

“Oh, freed. But she’s been a nervous wreck ever since, poor child.”

“You said a gang: not Witch, then?”

“Not just Witch, no. Two men and a woman. You see, this was her training period, a term of probation on the one hand and learning on the other. She didn’t work alone in the early days.”

“And since?”

“Since?” Elder shrugged. “The problem is that there’s so little evidence. Seven armed robberies on the Continent... three assassinations. Many more assassination attempts, either foiled or botched. And always a woman mentioned afterwards, maybe just a passing note in somebody’s report, but always a woman, a tall young woman. The most extraordinary story involves a NATO General.” Elder toyed with his fork. “It was hushed-up at the time, for reasons you will appreciate. He was an American based in Europe, but had to fly out to... let’s just say Asia... as part of a very sensitive delegation. This general, however, had a taste for violent, forced sex. Oh, he was willing to pay. He’d made several pimps and madams very wealthy in his time. He was intrigued by stories of a very special prostitute. The rougher things got, the better she liked it. That was the story.” Elder paused and glanced around his garden, either appraising it or else playing for time, wondering how to phrase what came next. “He was discovered lying naked on a bed with his head severed from its body at the neck. The head had been placed between his legs. In effect, the corpse was giving itself a blow job.”

Now Elder looked towards Barclay. He was smiling.

“I never said Witch didn’t have a sense of humor,” he said. Then he rose from his chair and walked into the house.

Barclay found that his hand was shaking just a little as he picked up his glass. This was his third glass of wine, on top of two beers. His third and last glass, otherwise the trip back would be fraught. He looked at his watch. It was getting late. He’d have to start off in the next hour or so anyway. He still didn’t know what he was doing here. He was still intrigued.

Something exploded on the table. Looking around, he saw Elder standing just behind him. The man had approached in absolute silence. And on the table sat a fat document file, its flap open, spewing paper and glossy photographs across the tabletop.

“The Witch Report,” Elder said, sitting down again.

“I was told there wasn’t a file on Witch.”

“Joyce told you that? Well, here’s one I made earlier.” Elder slapped the file. “What I’ve been telling you so far are the facts, such as they are. This is the supposition. And it begins several years before the Hassan killing. It begins in 1982, when the Pope visited Scotland.” Elder was reaching into the file. He drew out three large black-and-white photographs. “There was another tourist in Edinburgh that summer. Wolf Bandorff.” Elder handed the photo over. It was a close-up of a crowd scene, picking out three or four people, focusing on two of them. A young couple. The man had a long thick mane of hair and wore circular spectacles. He was looking over the person in front of his shoulder. He looked to Barclay like a postgraduate student. Beside him was a girl with long straight black hair and dark eye makeup. In the ’60s, she might have passed for a model.

“You won’t have heard of Wolf,” Elder was saying. But he waited until Barclay had shaken his head. “No, thought not. He’ll be in some computer, and that excuses us our bad memories and failure to learn. He was a West German terrorist. I say “West” because this was in the days before glorious unification, and I say “was” because he’s currently serving a sentence in a maximum security prison outside Hanover. German intelligence tipped us off that he was in the UK. There were a few false starts before we found him in Edinburgh. As soon as he knew we were onto him, he disappeared, along with his girlfriend there. These photos are the slim prize for our time and effort.”

Barclay put the photographs down and waited for more. Elder dug into the file again and produced a single photograph of similar size. “The girlfriend was Wolf’s acolyte. You know what ‘acolyte’ means?”

“Someone who’s learning, isn’t it?”

Elder’s eyes seemed to sparkle in the disappearing light. The garden was illuminated now chiefly by lights from inside the cottage. “That’s right,” he said softly. “Someone who’s learning. In the early days, she attached herself to men, to the leaders of the various groups. That way she learned all the quicker, and gained power and influence, too. That way, she gained contacts.” Now he handed over the photograph. “This was taken just under four years ago, after the Hassan killing and the Italian kidnap. It was taken during Operation Warlock.”

Barclay looked up. “Warlock?”

“Named by someone with an interest in role-playing games. And not very apt, since we soon found we were dealing not with a man but with a woman, apparently working alone. If there’s any pattern to the way she works, I’d say she joins or puts together a group, then plans something with some financial reward — a bank robbery or kidnap or paid assassination. Then she uses her share to finance her... other activities. For example, the NATO General. No group ever claimed responsibility. There’s no information that any group wanted him dead specifically.”

“A feminist assassin,” mused Barclay.

“That may not be so far from the truth.”

“And this is her?” Barclay waved the photograph.

“I think so. Others aren’t convinced. I know Joyce thinks Witch is a group, and I know others think that, too. Sticking to facts, this picture was taken at a rally by the opposition leader in one of the least stable South American countries.”

It was another crowd picture, focusing on a young woman with a dark tanned face but bleached and cropped blond hair. Her cheeks were plump, her eyes small, her eyebrows almost nonexistent.

“We knew there was a plot to assassinate him. It would have been against everyone’s interests if such a plot had succeeded. There was concerted effort to stop the attempt taking place.”

“Operation Warlock.”

“Yes, Operation Warlock. After this rally and despite all our warnings, there was a motorcade. He died a few hours later. Poison. A pinprick was found on the back of his hand. Among those who “pressed the flesh,” so to speak, was a young supporter with bleached hair. Despite those distinctive looks, she was never seen again.”

Barclay turned the photo towards Elder, who nodded slowly back at him before sliding the Wolf Bandorff photo across the table.

“Look again, Mr. Barclay. Look at Wolf’s acolyte.”

“You think they’re the same person?”

“I’m sure of it.” Elder watched as Barclay compared the two photographs. “I see you’re not convinced.”

“I can’t really see any resemblance.”

Elder took the photos from him and stared at them. Barclay got the impression the older man had done this many times over the years. “No, maybe you’re right. The resemblance is below the skin. And the eyes of course. That look in the eyes... I know it’s her. It’s Witch.”

“Is that how she got her name? Operation Warlock?”

“Yes. From warlock to witch, once we knew the sex.”

“But there’s no proof it was the woman who killed the —”

“Not a shred of proof. I never said there was. Suppositions, Mr. Barclay.”

“Then we’re no further forwards really, are we?” Barclay was in a mood to wind things up. What had he learned here tonight? Stories, that’s all. Merely stories.

“Perhaps not,” Elder said ruefully. “You know best.”

“I didn’t mean —”

“No, no, I know what you meant, Mr. Barclay. You think this file represents the most tenuous speculation. Maybe you’re right.” He stared at Barclay. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, a symptom of the whole organization.”

There was silence between them, Elder still staring. Barclay had heard those words before. Suddenly he realized they were his words, the ones he’d used at his selection board.

“You,” he said. “You were on my interview panel, weren’t you?” Elder smiled, bowing his head a little. “You didn’t say a word the whole time, not one.”

“And that unsettled you,” Elder stated.

“Of course it did.”

“But it did not stop you making your little speech. And as you can see, I was listening.”

“I thought I knew your name. I wasn’t sure how.”

Elder had begun slotting the photos back in their proper places inside the file. Barclay realized suddenly just how much this file meant to Elder.

“Mr. Elder, could I take your report with me to look at?”

Elder considered this. “I don’t think so,” he said. “You’re not ready yet.” He rose and tucked the file beneath his arm. “You’ve got a long drive ahead. We’d better have some coffee. Come on, it’s too dark out here. Let’s go inside where it’s light.”

Over coffee, Elder would speak only of opera, of Il Trovatore, of performances seen and performances heard. Barclay tried consistently to bring the conversation back to Witch, but Elder was having none of it. Eventually, Barclay gave up. They moved from opera to the cricket season. And then it was time for Barclay to leave. He drove back to London in silence, wondering what was in Joyce Parry’s files on Elder. The word “acolyte” bounced around in his head. You’re not ready yet. Was Elder inviting him to... to what? To learn? He wasn’t sure.

He brightened when he remembered that this was Friday night. The weekend stretched ahead of him. He wondered if he’d be able to put Witch, Elder, and the American General out of his mind. Then he recalled that he himself had set these wheels in motion. He had noticed the original report on the sinkings. He had contacted Special Branch.

“What have I let myself in for?” he wondered as the overhead sodium arc came into view, the light emanating from London.