Gregory's Game, page 17
‘You want to bring him in?’
Tess was surprised. ‘For formal questioning? Any particular reason why I should?’
‘Only that something’s evidently pissed you off. I’m assuming it’s either Alec Friedman or Professor Marsh or both. If it would make you feel better, haul them both in.’
There was general laughter and even Tess joined in, feeling herself relax for the first time since she had been to see the Professor.
‘They’re both holding back,’ she said as the laughter subsided. ‘I’m just not sure why.’
FORTY-THREE
The weekend passed with frustrating slowness and by Monday morning, with no new information and no contact from anyone, Tess was determined she was going to have another crack at finding out. Alec, she decided, might well hold the key to some of this and her first impulse was to go and harass him on the Monday morning. Reason and a busy schedule put that on hold. She’d wait until she finished for the day, spring a visit on him that evening, sit on his bloody sofa and refuse to go until she got some answers – though knowing Alec and Naomi, she thought ruefully, they’d be just as likely to ignore her and bugger off to bed as they would be accommodating.
She spent an hour fielding calls from Kat Marsh’s relatives, from the press, wanting updates post press conference, then helped man the general phone lines for a while, reassuring members of the public that kidnapping wasn’t usually something that went viral; thanking those who just felt they had to call to send good wishes to Katherine Marsh’s family, and note down the few new sightings that had come in about Nathan Crow. Most seemed to be the ‘certain I saw him on the telly, at the end of our road, in the pub on Saturday night’ routine that were rarely worth the time it took to write them down, but all had to be checked out, just in case.
At midday Tess willingly surrendered her place on the phones. She understood why DCI Branch insisted they all take a turn with the routine stuff; it kept everyone grounded, everyone involved and gave staff who might otherwise suffer from banality overload a break, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
On Monday afternoon, Naomi went to do her usual stint at the advice centre. She was busy, as usual, and not entirely surprised when the centre manager put his head around the door and asked if she could squeeze another client in before she went.
‘I know you’re meant to be going, but …’
‘No, it’s OK; give Alec a call for me will you? Tell him I’ll be a bit late.’
She heard voices out in the hallway and then the door open and close once more.
‘Hello, Naomi,’ a familiar voice said.
‘Gregory? What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Seemed like the easiest way of getting to see you at short notice. I didn’t want to come back to the flat.’
‘So you’re my extra appointment instead.’ She wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or pleased, but that was often her response to Gregory. ‘I’ll give you twenty minutes. That’s it.’
‘Right you are. So, what do you have to tell me?’
‘What makes you think I’ve got anything?’
Gregory said nothing. He just waited.
‘And what do you have? Are you any closer to finding them?’ Naomi demanded.
‘So far, no. We have a few leads and a network of people out looking. We’ll get there.’
‘You think they’re still alive?’
‘As I said before, I think they’ll be kept alive. Yes.’
‘Alec knows you came to see me.’
‘Your taxi driver friend saw me when you opened the door. I was surprised he didn’t come to check on me.’
‘I’m glad he didn’t.’
‘I wouldn’t have hurt him. But Napoleon there must have reassured him. Tail wagging like a bloody jack hammer.’
‘I sometimes think that dog has no taste.’ She could hear him now, his tail beating a steady rhythm on the lino. ‘Tess Fuller came to talk to Alec. They’ve made a link between the kidnapping and Clay and the Gilligan and Hayes kidnapping, or at least she thinks there may be one. My guess is she was fishing. My other guess is they don’t know a damn thing about a damn thing.’
‘Right,’ Gregory said. ‘She mention what she thought the link might be?’
Naomi shook her head. ‘No. Look, what probably happened is this. Someone did some digging into Prof Marsh’s background, probably looking for Nathan Crow too. Clay’s name came up, so they dug into Clay’s record. That was bound to lead them to Gilligan and Hayes; Clay used them on occasion, I believe …’
‘And opposed cases they brought on other occasions. So yes, there’d have been a paper trail.’
‘It’s my experience that at this stage of an investigation anything that can get followed up does. She mentioned speaking to DI Barnes – you remember him?’
‘Yes. And that led her back to Alec and Molly Chambers, I’m guessing.’
‘It did. Tess is annoyed, though, because a lot of the information she wants has been redacted. No one is telling her anything.’
‘Good,’ Gregory said simply.
‘Look, you do know this isn’t a pissing contest, don’t you? There’s a woman and kid out there, probably both scared half to death. Frankly I don’t give a damn who finds them. You don’t gain any prizes for game play, Gregory. Just for results. If you have anything, anything at all that might help the police—’
‘I don’t,’ he said shortly. ‘And I’m not losing sight of what’s at stake here. Believe me.’
Naomi said nothing. She wanted to believe him. ‘Do you think Marsh is involved?’ she asked, not sure where the question had come from.
‘Nothing to say he is, but nothing to say he’s not, either. But what motive would he have?’
‘None that I can think of.’
‘And that’s the problem. There’s no motive for this that any of us can think of. Marsh has been involved in nothing out of the ordinary for years. The only contact he has is Nathan and if someone is after Nathan there are more direct routes.’
‘So …’
‘So, I’ll give you a number to call if anything comes up from your end.’ She heard him tapping on a screen and a moment later heard her own phone receive a text.
‘Where’s Molly Chambers, by the way?’
‘Lord knows,’ Naomi said. ‘She’s taking a winter holiday.’
Gregory chuckled. ‘I only ask because her house has been empty for a few days and I wondered when she might be back. We’ve got a date at some posh restaurant she knows. I think she wants to chat about old times.’
‘I can imagine,’ Naomi said drily. ‘Right, you’ve had more than your twenty minutes and I’d best get off; my taxi will be here and George will be getting very suspicious if he sees you again.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Gregory said. ‘Just keep your ears open.’
The man in the dark suit had arrived mid afternoon and been ushered into Branch’s office. Jaz had seen them through the window as she’d passed. The man talking, Branch listening. He didn’t look happy, Jaz thought. She wondered who the man was; the suit looked expensive and he had an air about him of someone used to being in authority.
A little after four Branch and the stranger emerged and came over to where Jaz was working.
‘This is Charles Duncan,’ Branch said. ‘He’s going to give you his phone number and you’ll be responsible for copying him into anything you’ve turned up already and anything more you find out. You’ll fax over a full set of notes each afternoon after the end-of-day briefing.’
Jaz was temporarily thrown. ‘Do we even have a fax machine any more?’
Branch smiled. ‘Apparently there’s one in the storeroom, back of the front office. I’m sure you’ll cope.’
‘Can’t I fax from the computer?’
‘I’d prefer you to do it from the landline,’ Charles Duncan said.
Jaz nodded, not sure what else she could say.
Charles Duncan left soon after and Branch came back to Jaz’s desk.
‘Who the hell was that?’
‘He’s apparently from the Home Office,’ Branch said.
‘Which means?’
‘Which means you copy him into everything we have every day. Think you can handle it?’
‘What’s going on, Boss?’
‘That,’ he said heavily, ‘is apparently not for us to know. Oh and Jaz, this is your responsibility, you understand. I’ll deal with Susan, but you keep it to yourself otherwise. Any problems, you come to me. Got that?’
‘Sir.’
He returned to his office and Jaz could see that he was rattled – and annoyed. So, she thought, spooks in the past and now spooks in the present. What fun – I don’t think.
FORTY-FOUR
Evening visitors were rare. As autumn drew on, Naomi relished that sense of cosiness, closing the curtains, listening to the often strong wind off the sea and of settling snug and warm inside.
Tess arrived just before eight and neither Naomi nor Alec were particularly pleased but neither were they particularly surprised that she had come back for another shot at getting information. Naomi could hear, though, that she was upset and stressed and frustrated and she felt a modicum of sympathy for the other woman.
‘Look,’ Tess said. ‘I’m sorry, but I need to know. What the hell is going on?’
‘And I told you. I don’t know.’
‘Alec, please.’
Silence filled the space between them. Outside the wind howled, flinging rain against the windows. Somewhere, Naomi, thought, Gregory and Nathan were searching. Somewhere a woman and a child were …
‘Alec,’ Naomi said.
He sighed. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
‘I don’t want any coffee,’ Tess said. ‘I don’t want platitudes or excuses or mealy mouthed crap. I want to know what you know and I’m going to sit here until someone tells me what the bloody hell is going on.’
‘What makes you think we know anything?’ Alec said.
‘You know a damned sight more than I do. OK, tell me about Gustav Clay. Start with that. When did he die and how and who shot his dogs?’
‘I don’t—’
‘Come off it, Alec. Remember I’ve spoken to one of the first responders, a young fire officer that everyone is now trying to fob off, tell him he didn’t see what he knows he did. Look, I’m all in favour of national security or whatever the latest excuse is, but I can’t do my job while everyone is keeping me in the dark.’
Alec sighed and sat back in his seat beside Naomi. She felt him making his decisions, the arguments, that were never really that ingrained anyway, dissolving and departing. She tucked up her feet on the settee and leaned into his shoulder. ‘He didn’t die in the gas explosion,’ she said. ‘He shot his own dogs, we think, and set the place to explode. The entrances were booby trapped with trip wires. The explosion was meant to kill others he knew would come looking for him.’
‘Who?’ Tess demanded. Her voice was shaking. ‘What others?’
‘Well, among them, Nathan Crow,’ Alec said. ‘Look, I can’t tell you a lot because I don’t know it all. Clay felt that Nathan Crow and Annie Raven had betrayed him. He was used to getting his own way, to being in control. In the end, he set a trap for Nathan and went after Annie in the worst way. He tried to kill her husband. Thankfully, they were ahead of him and someone got to Clay before he got to Bob Taylor. He died in Bob’s studio. But you won’t get anyone to verify any of this. The mess was cleaned up and that was that.’
‘I’m quite particular about who comes into my house these days,’ Tess said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Something Bob Taylor said. I guess that’s what he meant. So, this Gustav Clay. He was some sort of spy?’
‘More a spy master, I think,’ Alec said. ‘Though I’m not sure that does him justice. Someone described him as a spider, sitting at the heart of a worldwide web. He was everywhere and had been, I think, since the start of the Cold War. Maybe before.’
‘So, how does that fit in with the Marsh kidnapping and the murder of Anthony Palmer?’
‘Maybe it doesn’t,’ Alec suggested. ‘Maybe this is more personal. Maybe you’ve seen what you think is a connection and you’re pushing it because you’ve got nothing else?’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Tess said stubbornly. Then, ‘Maybe. I just don’t know. And after the Cold War?’
‘I think for some people it never ended,’ Naomi said. ‘It just shifted location. First to the Balkans and then to Africa and the Middle East, but from what I’ve been told, the greatest threat now is from franchise terrorism. That’s been the real game changer.’
‘Franchise? I don’t get that. And who told you?’
‘Franchise terrorism is exactly what it sounds like,’ Alec said. ‘If you bought a business franchise for, say, a coffee shop, then your shop would as far as possible be identical to the same franchise coffee shop down the road or in the next town. You’d operate in the same way, decorate your shop in the same way, use the same beans, same recipes, same packaging.
‘Franchise terrorists work in small groups. They are affiliated to the main organization, whatever that might be, trained, given the same instructions, the same manuals – the same packaging, if you like, but in the way that any individual coffee shop is an individual business opportunity, managed and organized independently, with its own staff and its own customers.’
‘Like the Al Qaeda cells everyone talks about. Yes, I get that.’
‘So far as I understand it, the intelligence community has had to change dramatically to keep up. Cold War intelligence was as much about the mutual bugging of embassies and keeping a lid on dissent as it was about spies. Surveillance was person based. Informants in your workplace or block of flats or in the café or on the bus.’
‘As opposed to the electronic chatter that everyone shouts about today.’
‘Well, that existed, there was just less of it. But this country has always been at the heart of monitoring. The Americans have had listening posts here for decades. The NSA can’t spy on its own citizens from US soil, so it’s done so from here. Anyway, the change to the franchise model meant that the intelligence service had to switch to a similar formation. It had to be mobile and independent and autonomous in its decision making, pretty much like the groups it is pursuing.’
‘Someone I knew said the Cold War experts were now seen as dinosaurs,’ Naomi said. ‘That the new generation are all mammals. Warm blooded and fluffy on the outside but still as dangerous. He reckons the mammals are doing their best to eliminate the dinosaurs.’
‘And Clay was?’
‘A dinosaur, I suppose,’ Naomi said. ‘But one with his claws so tightly dug in that anyone who came close to dislodging him would be ripped to shreds.’
FORTY-FIVE
Tess got a call early on the Tuesday morning. There had been a sighting of Nathan Crow that seemed worth following up. Vin arrived at her front door half an hour later and she finished her breakfast toast in his car. He’d brought coffee for both of them and a large flask of chai and a tiffin box of snacks and sweets for later. ‘Mum thought we might appreciate them. It’s quite a drive. I stayed over last night,’ he explained.
‘Not a great way to be spending Diwali,’ Tess said ruefully.
‘We all went to see the lights last night and everyone’s piling round for a meal later, so I won’t miss out. You’d be very welcome, you know.’
Tess smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I think I’d like that.’ It would be an opportunity to dress up and she knew from experience that the welcome would be warm and the food great. ‘Where are we going, anyway?’
‘Leeds, fortunately just the outskirts of.’
Tess groaned. ‘I always get bloody lost in Leeds.’
‘Which is why we have satnav.’
‘And we are going to see …?’
‘One Bernie Franks. Reckons Nathan Crow visited his pub.’
‘And we believe him, because …?’
‘Because he left something behind. Two photographs. The enterprising Mr Franks had them scanned and emailed to us. One was of the crime scene in Ian Marsh’s cottage.’
‘What? How? Did this Nathan Crow take it?’
Vin shook his head. ‘No, I doubt it. It’s a ringer for one of the crime-scene photos. Crow got hold of it somehow. We might have a leak; we might have a hacker. That’s one for internal affairs to sort.’
‘So, this Bernie Franks. He’s a pub landlord? Why would …?’
‘He owns a pub, there’s a difference. My tablet’s in the glove box. There’s a file on the desk top. I grabbed what I could before I came over. Bernie Franks is one of the old-fashioned “Hard Men”, from the looks of it. Armed robbery, intimidation, protection … Anyway, he’s semi-retired according to the locals. Keeps a few of his boys around for show; it’s rumoured he hires them out on an ad hoc basis. Takes a cut.’
‘So his word is good because …’
‘Well, apart from the photographs, precisely because he’s been around for a long time. He knows a lot, has seen people come and go, get locked up, get dead.’
‘And why would he shop Nathan Crow to us?’
Vin laughed. ‘I asked that too. The local DS I talked to reckons Franks will do anything for devilment. But it occurred to me—’
‘That Nathan Crow is too canny to have left anything behind by accident,’ Tess finished. ‘You think he arranged this with Bernie Franks?’
‘Um, don’t know what to think. About any of this, if I’m honest. I know you shouldn’t think like this, but you know what really gets to me? I don’t like any of them. I mean, you can usually empathize with the victims, with the families, even with the people you interview on the periphery of it, you know?’
Tess nodded.
‘But Ian Marsh, I mean the guy is so cold, somehow. It’s like he’s going through the motions. And that Crow guy – it’s like he’s superior, or thinks he is. Same with that photographer and her husband. It’s like they think they’re special, somehow, you know what I mean?’
