The Bell Ringers (41 page)

‘Christ,' said Lyme. ‘Have you got any idea what's in that act? There are enough powers to dismantle democracy overnight.'

‘Who said we live in a democracy?' muttered the other deputy.

‘But not all those powers have to be used,' said Cannon. ‘You'd both better look at the act this morning. There's a digest on the government website.'

Lyme snorted contempt. ‘Glenny will take anything he can get. He's a total fascist.'

‘It's our job to persuade the media otherwise. Our line is that this course of action is proportionate to the crisis the country faces.'

‘But if these new American filters neutralise the algae and make the water safe, what's the problem?' asked Lyme. ‘Where's the crisis? Haven't we got enough real problems without inventing another?'

The same thought had occurred to Cannon in the middle of the night but he said nothing and instead swivelled in his chair to face his secretary, who had just arrived, and told her to arrange a meeting of press officers from all the government departments concerned with the water crisis at ten o'clock. Then his phone vibrated with an incoming email. He read it, drained the last of his coffee and made for the door.

‘What a bitch of a day this is going to be,' said Lyme to no one in particular.

‘It may get a lot worse,' said Cannon, who suddenly veered from his course and bent down to Lyme, whom he trusted and liked despite the ceaseless stream of complaint and sarcasm. ‘David Eyam has come back from the dead,' he whispered, ‘and it looks like he's going to cause trouble.' He straightened and looked down at Lyme's stunned expression. ‘Keep it to yourself, boyo. Don't even think of telling the others, OK?' Lyme nodded. ‘Right, I'll see you at ten.'

*

Temple had taken a chair at the far end of the Cabinet table. In front of him was a Thermos jug of coffee and basket of pastries. Christine Shoemaker had just arrived with a folder of papers under her arm and a young male bag carrier from MI5, who pulled out a chair for her. Jamie Ferris sat at the table with one other man. At the far end of the room was the home secretary Derek Glenny, who was staring out of one of two windows with his fists planted at his hips.

He had just said something about the early spring and Temple was nodding with his automatic smile. His eyes moved to Cannon and he gestured to a seat next to Ferris. Cannon sat down but didn't draw up his chair to the table, a conscious but oblique signal that he did not want to be there and considered the Cabinet Room a hallowed space that should be barred to the likes of Jamie Ferris and baskets of Danish.

‘The director of the Security Service again sends his apologies,' said Glenny without turning. ‘I sometimes wonder what we employ him for.'

‘But we have Christine here,' said Temple brightly, ‘and Mr Foster-King has a lot on his plate at the moment. I understand we will see him at the Security Council meeting in an hour.' As usual, Temple was crisp in appearance and unruffled in manner. At some stage in the last twelve hours he had managed to acquire a haircut. His skin had a moisturised sheen, which, like his whitened smile, Cannon put down to June's ministrations. He remembered the title of June Temple's next book –
Love in the Middle Years
– and wondered how his successors would handle its publication.

‘Good,' said Temple, taking a last look at the front-page newspaper photograph of himself at the Chequers reservoir. ‘We have half an hour so let's get on with it. Christine, where are we?'

‘David Eyam is going to be a problem,' she replied. ‘Last night a farm with extensive outbuildings was located in Wales – we believe that Eyam has been there for at least the last five days. The farm belongs to a company which is ultimately owned by Eyam's late father's holdings. We are not sure at this stage how many people are helping him, but by midday we should have an exact list of names. About a dozen people we've been watching have all vanished over the last twenty-four hours. None of the standard means of remote surveillance – ID card
verifications, email or internet usage, credit card use, phone activity or the ANPR recording of the movement of vehicles registered to the subjects – has picked up anything. This is extremely unusual and it leads us to believe that all these individuals are involved in some kind of operation and have consciously dipped below the state's radar. Some of them will test positive for tracer chemicals released by drone at Eyam's funeral last week, but that is a pretty haphazard means of ID-ing people.'

‘You talk about remote surveillance,' said Temple. ‘Don't you have anyone on the ground keeping tabs on these people with their own eyes?'

‘You will understand that there are many calls on the Security Service's watchers, prime minister. Up to now we have tended to keep an eye on the group at High Castle intermittently, believing them to be disaffected but not ultimately a menace. We've been testing the water by placing intensive surveillance on an individual for a week or so then moving on, allowing the automatic monitoring and scrutiny systems to take over. But we do have someone on the inside.'

‘That's more like it.'

‘We expect to hear from her today. We believe that she, like the others, is due to collect a package that Eyam asked her to store for him.'

‘So you know what's in the package?'

‘No, because she has never looked inside it and we have only just managed to acquire this woman's services. She has been able to retrieve the package without raising suspicion, the same reason we have not heard from her over the last day.'

‘But you've got other names from her?'

‘Yes, and some important information about the coroner's clerk, Tony Swift, who is clearly responsible for orchestrating the fraud of David Eyam's death. He has gone missing too, but the coroner is now being interviewed.'

‘I thought we had control over the coroners' courts these days,' said Glenny, who had belatedly sat down and flung an arm around an adjacent chair.

‘We do,' said Shoemaker, ‘but I gather in this case it was thought prudent to give the coroner a free rein in a public hearing so that
there could be no suspicion that David Eyam was murdered on the instructions of the British government.'

‘You see,' said Temple to Cannon with a note of hurt. ‘We make a commitment to openness and transparency and people abuse it.'

Cannon grunted, not in agreement with Temple, but at his delusion.

‘Where are we on Kilmartin and the woman he was going to see?' asked Temple.

‘Yes, Kate Lockhart,' said Ferris with a glance to Shoemaker. ‘Eyam's friend and it now emerges sometime lover. Kilmartin has yet to be in touch but we know that he met her at a remote country church outside the village of Richard's Cross for twenty-five minutes yesterday.'

‘You observed this?'

‘No, a tracking device was fitted to his car when he was at Chequers. Previously we were relying on the Automatic Number Recognition camera network. We assume he gave a lift to her afterwards because she had not been seen at Eyam's cottage, and that they departed south together. The car did not stop until it reached London last night at ten.'

‘Where are they?'

Ferris frowned. ‘The car is in a car park in the Bayswater area. There is no record of Kilmartin having an address in London. The short answer is we don't know.'

‘What about his phone?' asked Glenny.

‘Switched off,' said Shoemaker.

‘And hers?'

‘Also switched off.'

‘Well, get hold of him somehow,' said Temple. ‘Let's have him in this afternoon after my statement to the House. Is there anything else I should know about?'

‘Mr White is planning to see the Lockhart woman if she can be tracked down,' said Ferris, who was discreetly consulting the screen of a smart phone beneath the Cabinet table.

‘He mentioned to me that Oliver Mermagen had made an approach,' said Temple. ‘He seems to think he can prevail on her in some way. Maybe she can be turned. It seems unlikely but I've no objections. If he does meet with her, presumably you can keep watch on her from that moment.'

‘Yes,' said Ferris, who had stopped scrolling through his emails and was reading one message intently.

‘Good, let me know if anything important happens.'

Cannon raised his hand from the Cabinet table. ‘What about the police, prime minister? Surely this is the time to bring them in. They can make arrests on the basis of everything that is known about Eyam and this man Swift, who is clearly guilty of distorting a public process.'

‘That is all in hand, Philip,' said Glenny. ‘The police will be making arrests.'

‘But surely there will be some kind of statement expected from the government?'

‘Not at this stage,' said Glenny.

Ferris put away his phone and pushed his chair back. ‘Prime minister, I wonder if I might . . .'

‘By all means do leave, Jamie; we've all got a lot to do.'

The night went badly. Kate was dropped off in a side street in west London by Freddie after Miff received a message on his laptop. The engine of the high-powered car bringing Eyam through the ANPR mesh that surrounded London had blown up after a chase through Hertford-shire involving two saloons. Eyam's driver, an associate of Eco Freddie's from Essex, had shaken off the pursuers at speeds of 130 mph but now the car couldn't travel above forty mph and they had abandoned it. The driver, navigator and Eyam were holed up in an agricultural shed ten miles north of St Albans. Freddie went off to collect Eyam while Kate, knowing that there could be no official record of her short-term let at the apartment block in Knightsbridge, simply hailed a cab and went home.

She now had three phones, the third having been provided by Eco Freddie to match the ones distributed among the group at the church. On waking at seven thirty a.m., she switched it on together with Kilmartin's phone and put her own phone on charge. She made coffee and listened to the BBC's
Today
radio programme while taking a bath. Much of the programme was devoted to the developing water crisis and the government's action. The coverage was linked to the speculation about a general election that had appeared over the weekend. Quoting
Downing Street sources, the BBC's political editor said it seemed unlikely that an election would be called when the government could not predict when the water crisis would be resolved. There was also a firm view from one of Temple's main supporters, Bryant Maclean, that an election would be easily won in the autumn.

Kate loaded the washing machine with her laundry and went down to a newsagent nearby to buy a newspaper and a packet of cigarettes. She strolled in the gardens behind the block of flats for a few minutes and then returned to the flat. It was just past nine when she heard one of the phones ringing as she put her key in the apartment door. The face of Eyam's phone was illuminated. She snatched it up and answered.

‘Tony's been killed,' said Eyam's voice.

‘Oh God! How?'

‘They were hit from behind by a truck loaded with sand last night. They didn't stand a chance.'

‘Christ, I'm sorry.'

Eyam tried to say something.

‘Don't,' she said.

‘Chris Mooney was with him. Tony took him because Chris was having doubts.'

‘Jesus! He had a family.'

‘The truck came from behind and flattened the car. There's a picture on the BBC website.'

‘Are you certain it was them?'

‘Yes, apparently Mooney had ID on him. It was found in the wreckage. The police were on his wife's doorstep this morning.'

‘And what about the package?'

‘They were on a stretch of road in Berkshire so they had made the collection. We must assume it's lost or destroyed.'

‘Where's the driver of the truck?'

‘Vanished. There were no witnesses. It happened in the early hours.' He paused. ‘The sand truck used to be notorious in the Balkans as a means of assassination. That's the type of country we're now living in,' he added bitterly.

‘How important are the documents in the package?' she asked.

‘Very. Freddie is going to try to get a look at the car. It was registered
in his company's name so he stands an even chance of being able to search it. We'll see.'

‘Are you OK?'

‘No,' replied Eyam. ‘But that's not important.'

‘Tony was your friend.'

‘Yes. I loved the man but we've got to continue. I am going to have to rely on you now. Are you making the arrangements we spoke of?'

‘I will do,' she said. ‘How did they track yours and Tony's car?'

‘I don't know, but I've got a good idea.'

‘And the others?'

‘They all arrived in London safely. Where are you?'

‘In my flat – it's a company let. Secure and anonymous.' She gave him the address.

‘I'll see you later. I have things to do.'

‘Are you going to be OK?' she asked, but Eyam had already gone.

She lit a cigarette and paced the flat for a few minutes, convinced that the sand truck – like the sniper's rifle that killed Hugh Russell – was not a means that the British government would employ. It was much more likely that the two killings were organised – if not carried out – by OIS, which was leeching information from the state's surveillance systems. The important part of the night's events was that the cars carrying Eyam and Swift had both been targeted. Eyam said he had an idea why that was, which must mean that he suspected that one of his group was a traitor. If there was an informant, he or she must have sent a message after the church meeting because only at that stage would it have been clear which cars Swift and Eyam were travelling in. A simple text with the two registration plates was all that was necessary. Somewhere along the route Eyam's car had been picked up by new ANPR cameras, whose position hadn't been put into the system his navigator had been using. Swift and Mooney, who did not have a navigator, must have been tagged from a very early stage in the evening.