Secrets (28 page)

‘It could be a twin, of course,' he said, allowing his thoughts to surface. ‘It could even be mischief-making. Look, a list of names and payments, by the look of it on this page. We'd have to cross reference with records for the time, always supposing we can figure out what colony it was created for, but it could represent payoffs. It could have been intended to replace something in the Legacy Files and at the same time implicate officials, or police or … well suggest someone was taking bribes.'

‘In which case, why stamp it?' Tom indicated the red ‘W'. ‘That suggests it was destined for destruction.'

‘A double bluff?'

‘Maybe. We'd need to know the context to be able to cross reference the names. Then it would be an archive job. That could take weeks.'

‘True. My question is, why did Mrs Chambers want to get rid of it now?'

‘Why keep it in the first place?'

‘I don't know,' Tariq admitted.

‘You could ask her?'

‘I could, but I've been told I can't.'

Tom laughed, disbelieving. ‘And who told you that?'

‘Who do you think?'

‘Then go over his head. He's just a consultant these days.'

‘Officially, he's just a consultant. Unofficially I can't go over his head because there is no one over his head. At least no one that would talk to the likes of me and thee.'

‘So?'

‘So we put the damn thing away and pack up for the night,' Tariq said. ‘I like to think I have a life outside of work. Illusory as that idea might be.'

Tom was already on his feet and glancing at his watch. ‘You mean we get to finish at the proper time?' he said. ‘I'll go for that.'

Tariq laughed. ‘Tom,' he said. ‘Call me paranoid, but I think we should just keep quiet about this one for now. Until I know what to do with it.'

His assistant and friend raised an eyebrow. ‘Who would I tell?' he asked. ‘What would I tell? We don't know anything worth a damn.'

True, Tariq thought. But he had a feeling, one he'd had before and learnt not to ignore. One thing Clay had taught him was to take notice of his intuition. To trust it and just now it was telling him that this was not something he was going to like; that it meant trouble with a capital T.'

‘You going to talk to him about it?'

Tariq shrugged. ‘And tell him what?' he said. ‘Nothing he doesn't already know.'

‘How come?'

‘Because, Tom, he will have seen it already, examined it before it ever got to me. You didn't read to the end of it. There's another list and I'll let you guess who's on it, not under his proper name, of course, but I'm familiar with several of his aliases.'

‘Clay,' Tom said and suddenly, Tariq thought, he looked very pale.

A
lec had called Naomi to let her know they were leaving just after four. It was a journey of about an hour and then Molly to drop off. ‘Should be with you a little after six,' he said. ‘It's been an interesting day.'

‘Hmm,' she said. ‘Mine too. We'll swap stories, later.'

Intrigued, Alec signed off and started the car. ‘All set?'

‘I am, yes.'

‘What book did you choose in the end?'

‘Oh, a volume of poetry, ‘Molly said. ‘W.B. Yeats, collected works. It doesn't have everything, of course, but it will do.'

‘And the postcard inside?'

‘Was just a book mark, Alec. You are so suspicious.'

‘Can you blame me? Molly, why would someone bug Joseph's place?'

‘As Adam suggested, so someone could hear what the likes of us might say about him. What we might find.'

‘And do you think there was anything to find?'

She shrugged. ‘How would I know?'

Alec gave up. ‘We should report it to the police,' he said grumpily.

‘Report what? That Joseph's house had been bugged? Joseph being a person of interest to more than one government department.'

‘A fact you failed to tell me.'

‘One I'd have thought you'd have worked out for yourself. Anyway, by the time the police did anything, the bugs would have been gone.'

‘You can't know that.'

‘Can't I? Alec, look, what will be will be. For me, probably for Adam, but you and Naomi can still walk away from this and I think you should.'

‘And that little speech about contamination by association?'

‘Maybe overstated the mark a little.'

‘You really think that?'

‘I really don't know. Alec, you'll have to forgive an old woman. I don't know what events have been set in motion and I don't actually know what I've precipitated either. I could, perhaps, have been guilty of a misjudgement.'

‘You mean by dumping that file in Gilligan's cabinet. What is that thing anyway?'

Molly sighed. ‘I suppose I thought I was still in the game,' she said. ‘Truth is, the game, like life, has moved on and I've failed to realize that.'

Alec felt a twinge of sympathy. She sounded so melancholy. He crushed the twinge ruthlessly. That was the way Molly got to people; the way she manipulated those around her. ‘The file, Molly? What was in the file?'

‘Oh you are such a bore, sometimes, Alec.'

‘It's been said before. But sometimes the world needs bores. Can you imagine a world made up of people like you?'

Molly laughed softly. ‘Hideous thought,' she said. ‘I don't think I could cope.'

‘So, the file?'

She seemed to be gathering her thoughts, then she said, ‘You know I grew up in Kenya?'

‘I knew that, yes.'

‘My father had a farm, but it was my mother and a farm manager who took care of the day to day operations. He worked for the government, the British Government as a local administrator. I like to think that he did a good job, that he was a fair man, but at that time, good and fair on either side didn't count for very much.'

‘You mean the Mau Mau thing?'

‘Thing!' Molly was outraged. ‘I'll have you know—'

‘OK, bad choice of words.' He slowed for a bend and frowned.

‘What's the matter?'

‘Brakes are a little spongy. Pads probably need changing or something. Anyway, you were saying?'

Molly looked long and hard at him and then, finally she said, ‘I was about fourteen or fifteen, I suppose, when it all started to happen. At first it was just the Kikuyu, one of the biggest tribal groups in the region. They wanted independence and were no longer prepared to wait for it. There had always been underground movements, secret societies and the like, but this one felt different right from the get go. It was intense, organized and quite, quite brutal.'

‘From what I've heard there was brutality on both sides.'

‘Oh, there was. I heard reports of people being burned alive, of the wives of two missionaries being kidnapped and forcibly circumcised, of people being forced to make the oath to join the Mau Mau at knifepoint. Damned if you do, damned if you don't and once you'd joined, then you had to kill, prove your loyalty by killing a white farmer or a member of his family.

‘Believe me, Alec, we were all afraid. Black and white. No one knew what would happen. The colonial old guard declared this was their land by right and wouldn't give it up without a fight and the Kikuyu and the rest said this land was their birthright and were equally immovable. It was not going to end well.'

‘So, what did your family do?'

‘Made sure we always had weapons to hand in case of attack. But the worst of it was, Alec, no one knew who to trust any more. People who'd lived and worked with us for years were suddenly people we were suspicious of. Would they suddenly turn on us? And my father, as the local bureaucrat, he was right at the forefront when orders came from London. Then the news came that the troops were being sent.'

‘That must have been a terrible time.'

‘Oh, it was. I've lived through worse, but that was the hardest in many ways because that place was my home. Home is a place where we hope to be safe, but nowhere was safe.'

‘It's going to rain,' Alec said, glancing at the sky. Hoping it would hold off until they got back. The road ahead was full of bends and tight curves and for a second time now, he'd felt the brakes were spongy, slow to respond.

‘The troops arrived that October and the arrests began. Schools were closed down, they arrested Jomo Kenyatta who was then President of the African Union. He disappeared for several weeks, held incommunicado somewhere in the hills. Rumours spread that the British had killed him. He lived, but many, many others were killed by British patrols. It was a bloody time.'

‘And what does this have to do with the file?'

‘With that particular file, not a great deal. The chain of which that file is a part was begun back then, though, in my father's study.

‘I first met Edward when I was seventeen. And he was a young man of twenty. He'd been sent to help my father, I didn't know what with at the time only that suddenly the farm had become the centre of operations for the British administrators in the area. My mother and I were told to leave, we'd be given an armed escort to the airfield and then we'd be going to spend a little time with her sister in South Africa. In the few days between Edward arriving and our departure, I got to know him. Though it was another eight years before we married.' She smiled. ‘He could have asked me right there and then and I'd have said yes. He was such a handsome young man, so kind too.'

Alec laughed. ‘And tolerant,' he said.

Molly smiled in return. ‘That too. Boxes and boxes of files began to arrive and be sorted. Some were sent out to the airfield and eventually, I think, flown back to the UK. Many were burned and the ones due for burning were stamped with a ‘W'. They called them watch files. Some others, not stamped, simply had their contents burned and those files had other contents created to replace them. I learnt later that these were put back into the records, taken back to where they'd come from.'

‘The authorities covering their tracks?'

‘Yes.'

‘And your file?'

‘Ah, that was a strange one. One page did originate from that time. I remember my father directing it to be stamped and Edward questioning that decision. There was an almighty row. Edward, young though he was, never worried about facing anyone down. My father stood over him while he burned the file, except, of course, that he didn't. Later, much later, I realized that the argument had been staged, that my father agreed with Edward's decision, that the little show was put on for the benefit of another.'

‘Clay?' Alec guessed.

‘Clay,' Molly confirmed.

‘And what does Clay do now? He must have retired.'

‘I expect so,' she said. ‘I have lost touch with what he's doing.'

Alec glanced over at her. ‘Is that true, Molly?'

‘I've told you before, Alec. I do not lie.'

‘Of course you don't.'

He returned his attention to the road ahead. Signs promised a series of bends, that he remembered from the journey that morning. Tight bends at the top of a steep incline. The view of the valley had been wonderful that morning but now the rain had begun and was growing heavier by the second. Alec slowed, easing his foot off the accelerator. He glanced at the dashboard clock and decided that they were going to be later that he had estimated. He'd have to call Naomi when they got to Molly's house.

He touched the brake again, aware that they were approaching the zig zag bends far too fast. Nothing happened. He tried again.

‘Alec?'

‘Hang on, Molly. I can't get the brakes to work.'

‘Take your foot off the accelerator and then shift down through the gears,' she told him. She sounded oddly calm, Alec thought. He felt anything but. Panic rose and for a split second her words made no sense.

Then the sense of them broke through. ‘I know,' Alec mumbled, doing what she said with alacrity. The engine braking slowed them down, a little. Alec wrestled with the steering. The bends were tight and the road slick with rain. He pumped the brake again, but to no effect. Molly grabbed for the handbrake and wrenched it on. The car skidded, turned, Alec struggled to bring it back on line, but knew immediately that it was hopeless. He turned the wheel sharply as the car began to tilt, realized in that second that he'd made the move too late and then the world began to spin and then explode as the airbags deployed. He heard Molly scream as the car turned and tumbled off the road and down the side of the steep fall. Then the world went black and Alec knew nothing more.

T
he landlord of The Green Man tapped on Adam's door. ‘You've got someone downstairs looking for you,' he said. ‘Young man, says his name is Nathan Crow.'

Nathan? Adam felt a stab of shock which almost immediately gave way to pure curiosity.

He followed the landlord down and went through to the bar. It had emptied of funeral guests now, though the vicar was still there, chatting in the corner with a man and woman Adam had noticed earlier. They had the look of old friends, relaxed in one another's company, Adam thought.

Nathan sat alone at the bar, drink in hand. Adam wandered over to a table close to the window and waited for the younger man to join him.

‘Gustav Clay's blue-eyed boy,' he said.

‘Except that my eyes aren't blue,' Nathan argued. He took a seat opposite Adam. ‘Can I get you a drink?'

‘No, I think I've had enough for one day.'

Nathan nodded. ‘I asked the landlord to bring us some coffee,' he said. ‘I thought that might be a good idea.'

‘Because?'

‘Because we've got a lot to talk about. What's the food like here? I could be hungry.'

Adam studied him thoughtfully. Nathan was twenty-six or twenty-seven, Adam remembered, depending on which version of events you believed. He looked both younger and older. The eyes were unreadable; experienced and a little cold – and definitely not blue, but there was something very youthful about Nathan. Something almost innocent-looking that made it very hard to pin his age. ‘Did Clay send you?' he asked.