Disorder (Sam Keddie thriller series Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter 8

South London 

‘What do you mean, “he’s disappeared”?’ Stirling’s words were accompanied by a fist slamming down on the leather of the car’s seats.

   He and Frears were in the back of the PM’s armour-plated Daimler, en route to an Islamic community centre in Camberwell where the Prime Minister was due to give a speech on multi-culturalism.

   Of course that was the plan. Right now he could barely concentrate.

   As he was leaving Downing Street, Stirling had politely excused another adviser, a Moslem peer who’d arranged the engagement, and asked Frears, who was in the building most weekdays, to join him in the back of the car.

   A short message sent from Frears to the PM’s BlackBerry – ‘Need to talk’ – had prompted the meeting. These get-togethers were becoming a little too frequent for Stirling’s liking. This was meant to be an invisible operation, one that Frears had assured him he would not need to be overly involved in. But recently Stirling had been seeing far too much of the former soldier. The Prime Minister was acutely aware that, to others, there was only so much he and Frears could be discussing in private – particularly given the other issues on his desk. People were bound to begin wondering what the hell was going on.

   ‘It’s like I said, Prime Minister,’ replied Frears, ‘my man talked to Keddie but was interrupted before he could get any sense of what the shrink knew.’

   ‘So he decided to burgle the man’s house and take the case notes.’

   ‘Keddie was harping on about confidentiality. It seemed the most sensible way to find out what Scott had talked about.’

   ‘But your man was disturbed before he could get the notes. And then Keddie called the police. And God knows what he told them.’

   ‘That’s why we stepped things up. Tried to confront him. Scare him into talking.’

   Stirling closed his eyes in disbelief. Was this really the operation he’d set in motion? A pack of wild dogs let loose on the streets of London. ‘But your thug let him get away.’

   ‘It was a public place, Prime Minister,’ said Frears, the exasperation showing in his voice. ‘We couldn’t afford to attack him in front of witnesses.’

   ‘And how can we now be sure he hasn’t told the police or a bloody journalist about what’s happened to him?’

   ‘The events cannot be linked in a coherent way. A deniable visit from us, a burglary, a possible aggravated mugging.’

   ‘What about what Scott told him?’

   ‘I doubt he’ll reveal that.’

   Stirling gave him a withering look. ‘Oh you do, do you? And what makes you so sure of that?’

   ‘Keddie made a big deal of client confidentiality. I don’t think he’d tell the police or a hack that Scott was a client of his.’

   ‘Believe me. When there’s money on offer, people will do all sorts of surprising things. As you yourself will attest.’

   Frears flushed and Stirling enjoyed the Guardsman’s discomfort. After leaving the army, Frears had failed to cash in on his notoriety and reverted to the world he knew best, earning his crust in the private sector, latterly in Nigeria. It was here he was involved in a disastrous attack on the camp of rebels who’d targeted an oil facility. The intelligence had been ropey and the event resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians. The Nigerians had covered it up, but Stirling knew the truth.

   ‘All I’m saying,’ hissed Stirling, ‘is that this has become bloody complicated. I thought it would end with Scott’s death, but it’s become more and more of a fucking mess.’

   ‘We’re tying up the loose ends, Prime Minister,’ said Frears.

   ‘And creating a few more in the process.’

   He paused, trying to make sense of it all.

   ‘Let’s now assume Keddie knows someone is after him,’ he said. ‘We cannot afford for him to start sniffing around. So just locate him. And when you do, find out what he knows and who, if anybody, he’s talked to.’

   ‘And what should we do with Keddie?’

   Stirling tensed in his seat. How dare Frears ask a question like that? The Prime Minister looked at the former soldier and spotted the faintest hint of amusement on his face. He’d embarrassed Frears and now the soldier was having his petty revenge.

   Turning away from Frears, he said: ‘Just make sure he keeps his fucking mouth shut.’

   Stirling pressed the intercom button on the door by his side, asking the driver to stop. This was totally against protocol but Stirling wanted Frears out of the car. The Daimler slowed to a halt on a street corner. A group of black teenagers who’d been watching the convoy fly by were now nudging each other. Good, thought Stirling. Frears will stick out like a sore thumb here.

   The car behind had stopped too and now the PM’s Daimler was surrounded by four policemen in suits.

   ‘That’ll be all, Frears,’ said Stirling, signalling to one of the officers to open the Guardsman’s door. ‘I don’t want to talk about this again unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

   Frears’ door was opened and he stepped out. Stirling pressed the intercom again and told the driver to move on.

   The Prime Minister turned to look at the Guardsman standing by the side of the road. The small posse of hooded teenagers were beginning to point; the man in a Gieves & Hawkes suit could not have been more out of place had he beamed down from an alien mothership.

   Stirling ran both hands through the dense curls of his hair. How could he be expected to deliver a speech on multi-fucking-culturalism when he had this hanging over him?

   What if Keddie had blabbed to a hack? Of course he could throw the weight of Downing Street’s comms team at the tale, discredit both the shrink and the journo, dismiss it all as the delusional fantasy of a clinically depressed man. God knows, other stories had been buried in similar ways. But what if this one refused to die? What if it sucked up oxygen, became a raging fire? Stirling felt his shirt cling to the sweat on his back.  

  Pull yourself together, he thought. This was what being PM was about. Juggling a load of balls at the same time. Unfortunately this particular ball happened to be on fire.

   He looked ahead through the plate glass, past the heads of his driver and a bodyguard to the streets in front. The road was clear. Police cars and motorbike outriders had carved a path through the London traffic. If only the problem in hand could be dealt with as simply.

Chapter 9

King’s Cross, London

The front page headline chilled Sam’s blood.

  
SCOTT ‘KILLED HIMSELF’

   The newspaper lay next to him on the bed. Sam had booked into a grimy bed & breakfast off the Euston Road, a place of paper-thin walls, dirty sheets and shared bathrooms. Perfect for a man who, for now, needed to disappear below the radar.

   The room was paid for from the wad of cash he’d withdrawn over the counter at his local bank, an amount he hoped would tide him over and remove the need for a visit to a cashpoint. A precaution, he had told himself at the time, though he could see he was already acting like a paranoid, hunted man.

   He wanted to ignore the newspaper, to throw it away, but he couldn’t. He re-read the article below the headline. 

   According to a police ‘source’ who’d been present at the autopsy, Scott had ‘allegedly’ overdosed on Co-proxamol. The suicide assertion might have been couched in careful language but Sam suspected the paper wouldn’t have dared talk of the presence of Co-proxamol had it not been true. He hoped to God Scott’s family had been told in advance and not read it first in this rag.

   As to why Scott might have done this, the journalist had no concrete theory but clearly enjoyed offering up his ideas. He mentioned Wendy Scott’s Motor Neurone Disease which had, according to ‘friends of the Scotts’, put unbearable strains on family life. He also mentioned the Minister’s ‘disappointment’ at being passed over for higher office in recent Cabinet re-shuffles, despite his close friendship with the PM.

   Sam cast the paper aside in disgust. Lives, as he knew all too well, were far more subtle and complicated, yet newspapers like this felt it was their God-given right to publish utterly poisonous bullshit and pass it off as fact.

   He turned to the other items on the bed, his case notes, hoping he’d find a better understanding of why Scott had ended his life – and why he was being pursued so intently.

   But as he re-read the notes, he realised that there was nothing in them that provided even the most meagre of leads. The main problem was Scott’s obvious caution, fuelled by paranoia, which meant he was determined to remain as opaque as possible. There was the mention of him having done ‘something terrible’ and of course his dream, the recalling of which produced such a physical reaction. Scott running through a high-walled maze, looking for Hank. The maze was sure to be a metaphor for his own state, a place from which he couldn’t escape. But who was Hank? Without more knowledge of the Minister, it was impossible to make any sense of it.

   One over-riding, toxic thought kept spinning round Sam’s head. Had Scott, by the time he left, already decided to kill himself? And if so, what had prompted that decision? His interventions? No, uncomfortable though Sam felt about his brief time with Scott, he simply couldn’t accept that. What about the Government employee’s arrival – something that seemed to affect Scott’s mood more than anything else?

  Another thought cast a long shadow over the room. Had it really been suicide? Sam remembered the weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly, whose death, despite official findings, was still the subject of endless speculation on the web.

   Sam shook the thought from his head. Right now, he had to build on what he knew, rather than enter a world of supposition. If he was to have any hope of removing the threat that hung over him, he urgently needed answers. But who could he turn to?

   His eye drifted back to the newspaper. And it was then that he realised there was someone he could contact. Someone who, like him, would be seeking answers of their own.  

Chapter 10

Sussex 

The Scott family home was not hard to find. Mention of the farmhouse in Sussex had been in the media repeatedly. A quick surf in an internet café soon coughed up the relevant information.

   Just over an hour later, Sam’s train pulled into Haywards Heath, the town that was, according to the map he’d consulted at Victoria, nearest the Scotts’ hamlet. Outside the station, he gave his destination to a minicab driver.

   ‘You’re the sixth today,’ the man said. ‘Journalist, are you?’

   Sam climbed in the back. ‘No,’ he said, with a vehemence that surprised him. ‘I’m visiting family.’

   Fifteen minutes later, the cab was heading down a narrow lane towards the hamlet. As it came into view – a church, pub and cluster of old cottages – Sam realised that there was no need for further directions. Just ahead there were a number of large vans crowned with satellite dishes and, standing by them, a throng of reporters. Despite the PM’s plea for privacy, it was clear the media still considered Eleanor and her mother fair game.

   He now knew the location of the Scott house, but getting to it was still going to be a problem. He’d have to get past all the reporters and photographers, causing them excitement and drawing attention to himself in a way that was simply not sensible. Maybe, he thought, he could bypass the track and reach the house on foot across country.

   He asked the driver to stop outside a small terrace, paid, and then waited for the car to pull away, before moving at a pace back up the lane on the opposite side to the gathered press.

   Once past them, he crossed back over. A steep hedge bordered the edge of the lane, blocking his view of the landscape below. He needed a gap to get through if he was to stand any chance of reaching the Scotts’ house.

   A little further on there was a farm gate. Sam paused to plan his next move. Immediately ahead was a ploughed field, the ground large lumps of dried, cracked earth after several weeks without rain. The field dropped down to a small copse. There was no sign of the house but he could make out, just beyond the trees, a little smoke rising. It had to be a chimney.

   He vaulted the gate and began moving across the field. He suddenly felt exposed, despite being unaware of anyone watching him.

   It took a couple of minutes before he was at the edge of the copse. It was ringed by wooden posts linked by stretches of barbed wire. As he attempted to climb over it, his foot slid. He snagged his jeans and cursed under his breath.

   Sam moved on through the wood, stumbling over the uneven ground. The trees were still in leaf and the grey light of a sunless day was soon blocked out by the canopy above. He tripped over a fallen branch covered in vegetation and staggered forward, swearing again.

   Soon afterwards the light increased and he could see that he was coming to a clearing. This one wasn’t marked by a barbed wire fence. The woods simply ended, opening on to a stretch of lawn that ran alongside a gravel drive leading to a large stone farmhouse and a number of outbuildings. Outside the house were two vehicles – a people carrier and a Mini Cooper.

   Sam was sure that this was the Scott family home. He now had to consider his next move. Did he simply march up to the front door?

   His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a twig snapping underfoot. He was about to look behind when he heard a woman’s voice.

   ‘Move an inch and I’ll blow your bloody head off.’