Secrets (20 page)

‘I want to start upstairs,' Molly said.

‘Gilligan's office,' Barnes told her.

They all trooped up the final flight of stairs. No disabled access, Alec noted wryly.

‘Toilets off to the right,' Barnes said, ‘and Gilligan's office to the left.' He opened the door and stood back to let Alec and Molly inside. For a couple of minutes, Molly stood just inside the door and just looked. She had the attitude, Alec realized, of an officer first attending a crime scene. He could hear his old boss telling him, just stand and look, Alec. And don't forget the ground beneath your feet. Just because everyone else might have clod-hopped over it, doesn't mean there isn't something they might have missed.

Barnes stood uncomfortably in the doorway, watching as Molly eventually moved into the room.

‘OK to touch things?' Alec asked, thinking he ought to check before she did.

‘Yes, just watch out for the fingerprint powder, Mrs Chambers. It's a sod to wash out of clothes.'

Molly nodded. She was looking at Gilligan's desk. An ugly, heavy affair, with carved panels and a green leather top. There were a few papers in a wooden in-tray and a small, rather pretty art deco clock with an enamelled dial. A brass pen tray filled with very ordinary biro pens and a blotter that suggested Gilligan might have written with something a little less ordinary. Molly moved around the desk and opened the drawers. Alec came to stand beside her.

Molly removed the top drawer, felt beneath it and then riffled through the contents. Alec glanced at Barnes, who was watching her intently. Molly had that effect on people, Alec thought.

‘Office stationery,' Molly said. ‘Headed notepaper and compliment slips. Cheap, though, don't you think?'

Alec felt the texture of the paper. She was right, he thought, it was pretty ordinary. What had she been expecting? ‘Expensive-looking envelopes, though.'

‘True,' Molly said.

‘Maybe they just want to make a good first impression. They reckoned no one would take notice of cheap notepaper if it came in a fancy envelope.'

She replaced the drawer and opened the next. Checked beneath it as she had done before. A cashbox containing two ten pound notes and a handful of coins. A stack of receipts for petrol and one for a cheap mobile phone. Alec leafed through them, found another two for mobile phones.

The third drawer was empty but for a woollen scarf and a pair of gloves, a scatter of coins and paperclips and the sort of debris that, in Alec's experience, was found at the bottom of any office drawer.

Molly moved on to the filing cabinet, riffling though but with little apparent focus.

‘Anything of interest in the folders?' Alec asked.

‘Not that I know about. They've been checked over, but left in situ. There's someone from the Home Office coming to take a look, and they stipulated we leave them where they are, which is why they are still here and not in some evidence box, gracing some poor PCs desk right now.'

Molly flicked through the folders, glancing now and then at the contents, but making no comment. Finally, she slid the drawer closed and stood back.

‘Your man from the Home Office will find nothing,' she declared. ‘He's being sent just to make it all look official. Anything important will already have gone.'

‘What do you mean?' Barnes asked her.

‘I mean this place will already have been cleaned out. That will have happened, at the latest, as soon as Gilligan and Hayes had been positively identified, but my guess would be it had already been given the once over by whoever put them in that van.'

Barnes shifted uncomfortably. ‘You can't know that,' he said.

‘Can't know it, but I can guess.' Molly sighed. ‘Right, let's take a look downstairs.'

They returned to the reception area and then to the office previously occupied by Hayes. There, Molly repeated her search, but Alec could see that this was the same performance as she had given at the storage locker. ‘There'll be nothing here of interest,' she said. ‘I'll make a bet that half the files are missing and what's left is just fragments of what should be there. There'll be nothing left that's of any use to anyone; it will all be gone.'

‘What exactly did Gilligan and Hayes do?' Alec asked.

Molly shrugged. ‘Whatever paid best and for whatever master could offer them the most profit,' she said. ‘Gilligan was an expert in international law and Hayes specialized in bringing cases of abuse against government bodies on behalf of individuals.'

‘Some sort of human rights lawyer,' Barnes suggested.

‘You could call him that.' Molly seemed amused. ‘But the way he dealt was more like those adverts you see. You know the ones, have you had an accident, no win no fee … except that Hayes always took his fee, win or not. If not in cash then in some other way. Not that he ever lost.' She paused for a moment and then said, ‘If you think of him as some sort of international ambulance chaser, you'd be closer to the mark.'

‘And your friend, Joseph Bern, was he in the same business?'

Molly frowned. ‘I like to think that Joseph also had a sense of honour,' she said. ‘That he used Gilligan and Hayes as a front, as a means to an end, but—' She shrugged. ‘Joseph was a survivor, and survivors tend to be pragmatic. He left the business maybe ten years ago, so I couldn't really say.'

‘But you seem to be aware of what kind of operation Gilligan and Hayes ran,' Barnes persisted.

‘Because sometimes even slime can be a good lubricant,' Molly said. ‘They had contacts and expertise and though Edward and I regarded them with the same distaste most people reserve for said slime, they could, on occasion, be useful. We referred people to Joseph from time to time and after Joseph retired we made occasional use of Gilligan and Hayes.'

‘For what kind of thing?' Barnes asked. ‘And those files, are they still here?'

Molly smiled at him, her expression indulgent. ‘What do you think?' she said. ‘How do you think I can be so certain that the place has already been searched? Now, I'd like my lunch and before that I need to use the bathroom. I take it that's allowed?'

Barnes frowned, but then nodded and Molly headed back up the stairs. Alec heard the stairs creak and then the door open and close.

‘Do you think she's right?' Barnes asked.

‘I'd bet on it. I'll also bet you'll get nothing useful out of her about what cases she did refer. Molly is used to keeping secrets. If you push she'll just clam up even tighter.'

Barnes wandered over to the window and looked down at the street as Alec had done earlier. Alec took the opportunity to call Naomi on her mobile. She and Liz were also about to go and have lunch. She sounded relaxed and happy, Alec thought as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. At least one of them was having a decent day.

Molly returned a moment or two later and they left, locking up carefully. Molly watched, hawklike, as Barnes set the alarm, and something about the tension in her body set alarm bells ringing in Alec's mind. Then she took his arm and squeezed it tight.

‘It's been nice seeing you, Alec, even if the circumstances are far from ideal,' Molly said.

‘Something is wrong, here,' Alec said, but Molly's fingers, digging deep into his flesh warned him that now was not the time and neither was the company. Feeling foolish, but somehow still in the older woman's thrall, even as he had been in childhood, Alec held his peace.

Oh, Edward, Molly thought as they drove away. I hope you can forgive me, but it's been long enough and I wanted that thing gone.

She felt guilty. Horribly guilty. That slim little folder had not been out of their possession since 1961 and now she felt so guilty, it was all she could do not to cry out to Barnes to turn back so she could retrieve it, hold it close again and in that way also hold Edward close again. She felt that she had betrayed a trust, despite the fact that everyone she had ever made promises to were now long gone. She was almost the last man standing.

I'm doing my best here, Molly told Edward. That place has already been picked clean. It's the safest place I can think of leaving it. Our home will be attacked again. We both know that, my darling and the next time I will not be so lucky.

The big surprise, Molly thought, was that Clay had not tried again already. She wondered who had persuaded him to stay his hand and how long their influence might last. She felt so terribly alone.

She would not cry, Molly instructed herself. Tears always lead to questions and beside they would do no good. Tears didn't even relieve her grief. She wondered if anything, death aside, ever would or could again.

Adam Carmodie had been away from home all day and so was the last of their disparate little group to hear of Joseph's death. A message had been left on his answer phone, asking him to call the hospice and of course, Adam knew at once that Joseph had gone.

‘Do we know when the funeral will be?' he asked, after the usual condolences had been exchanged.

‘Joseph had invitations printed out,' she said, somewhat to Adam's surprise. ‘He just left the date to be filled in. I think the vicar and he worked out all the arrangements a few weeks ago, so there'll be one in the post for you tomorrow.'

‘That was extraordinarily organized of him.' Adam found he was laughing. Unable to help himself. Actually, he thought, it wasn't extraordinary, not for Joseph; it was exactly the kind of provision Adam would have expected him to make. He realized, abruptly, that perhaps laughter might have been an inappropriate response.

The nurse apparently didn't think so. She chuckled softly. ‘Oh, it was, so typical,' she said. ‘He was a lovely man. One we'll all miss.'

A lovely man, Adam thought as he lowered the receiver back on to its cradle. He supposed in many ways Joseph had been a lovely man. A good companion and, when it suited his purpose, a loyal friend. He had also been a fierce fighter and a ruthless decision maker and, perhaps, the bravest of them all. Brave or …

There had been many times when Adam, almost sick with fear, had wondered if Joseph was even capable of it.

He wandered through to his study and, guiltily, took the little red notebook from the desk drawer. He'd put it there the night he'd returned from the hospice and, quite deliberately, not looked at it since then. Slowly, he peeled off the elastic bands holding the notebook and its additional contents together and laid everything out on his desk. Leafing through the documents Joseph had given him was like taking a fragmentary but painful trip through Adam's own life; those parts of it that he had shared with Joseph Bern.

Other faces looked back at him across the years. The faces of the lost and disappeared. Images of massacre and mass graves. Notes scribbled on scraps of paper, on the backs of photographs, recording scraps of intelligence that might lead to other scraps and fragments that might lead to …

Adams picked up the notebook and fed the photographs and notes back inside, rebound it with the elastic bands and slid it back into the drawer.

‘I'll come to your funeral, Joseph. I'll come and say goodbye, but that's it. I have a life now.'

He flopped wearily down into the captain's chair set behind the desk. Before their meeting at the hospice, he had last set eyes on Joseph Bern some nine years before. Ironically, at the funeral of another friend.

Adam closed his eyes, recalling the winter day, snow piled on the neighbouring graves just so the ground could be broken and the coffin interred. It had occurred to him, then, to wonder at just how many of his erstwhile colleagues chose burial rather than cremation; though so many of them had bought their final resting place years before, in anticipation. He had mentioned this to Joseph. Typically, Joseph had taken time to think before making a response.

‘I hear you've retired,' Joseph said.

‘I have, yes.'

Joseph had been amused. ‘Is that possible?' he wondered.

‘I plan to find out. I'll let you know.'

‘It's because we don't know if we'll ever make it back,' Joseph said. ‘Most of us will finish in an unmarked grave in some godforsaken place. I think it is good to have a place in which to rest, even if all that remains of us is a headstone with just one date and perhaps a name.'

Adam remembered that he had laughed aloud, then, all eyes turned upon him, remembered where he was. ‘Even that would be a lie, Joseph Bern. Do you even remember what date you were born on? Or the name your poor mother gave you?'

‘Perhaps I never had a mother,' Joseph said. ‘Maybe I sprang into existence in my sixteenth year, fully formed and out for blood.'

Adam could not recall his reply. He suspected he hadn't bothered with one. What could he have said?

‘My name is Joseph Bern,' Adam said softly, recalling that bakingly hot day, just outside of Leopoldville, when Joseph had first stumbled into his life. Stumbled in and changed it utterly and, it had once seemed, forever.

Adam got up and poured himself a drink. He swallowed the whisky down without bothering to taste and then poured another. This he sipped slowly, sitting at his desk. It took a third before he finally opened his desk drawer again took out the file and, reluctantly, began to read.

It was 1992, and Adam had been setting up forward communications depots in advance of UN forces slowly moving up towards Sarajevo. He and a small team had worked their way through the mountains, and one day in mid-June were sitting in what was left of a shepherd's hut about three miles out from the city. Adam had a slightly confused memory of a mad, former RAF pilot flying them into Sarajevo airport under heavy fire but, at this distance in time, he could no longer be certain it was that particular trip he remembered or some other. It had almost become a standing joke that wherever you went in the world, you'd find a former RAF pilot.

The coms depots were a joke, Adam had decided. No sooner had they been placed than some other bugger blew them up, just in case the enemy could make use of them. The enemy on any given day being Serbs, Croats, Bosnian civilians, or local sheep, the fluid, ever shifting, daily uncertainties of this particular conflict making it hard to know even hour to hour where the lines were drawn.