The Bell Ringers (49 page)

‘Nothing – the police say they don't know anything about it. It turns out that there was a fire and the bodies were burned pretty badly.'

‘Then how did they know who was travelling in the car? I was told an ID card was found.'

‘I guess they knew before the accident,' said Miff simply.

‘What about the phones they were carrying?'

‘There was nothing . . .'

‘How important was the package?'

‘Important, but he says you can get by without it.'

‘Tell him that Promises – he'll know who I mean – offered us a deal. They're worried and they are about to get extremely nasty.' She hung up and investigated the phone Eyam had given her. There were twenty-four numbers and the same number of email addresses. She wrote a list on a notepad, which excluded Chris Mooney and Alice Scudamore and then sent each address an email. The email would be encrypted, but she kept the message short: ‘Contact by return & let me know you're OK. Wait for instructions on delivery at the end of afternoon. Keep away from CCTV and stay off the streets.'

The first replies came back. Some returned blank emails with just the word ‘bell ringer' written in the subject bar. Others expressed various degrees of concern about surveillance and the emergency powers. She answered none of these but ticked off the names on her list. After half an hour, two had failed to reply – Penny Whitehead and Diana Kidd. Figuring that Whitehead was the calmer of the two, she called her.

‘Did you get the email?' she said when Whitehead answered.

‘Yes, I haven't had time to answer. Diana Kidd has been arrested. I was with her. We travelled together. She's got the package with her.'

‘Shit! When did this happen? Where are you?'

‘Twenty minutes ago – she got out of the car to buy some coffee.
I don't know what happened but I saw her being led to a police van so I followed in the car. The van must have gone to the underground car park off Park Lane because I didn't see it in the traffic after that.'

‘She's got her phone with her?'

‘I assume so, yes.'

‘Damn.' The only consolation was that Diana Kidd's phone, like the others, had just one number on it. However that number belonged to the phone in Kate's possession – now the hub of the whole operation, which would mean she could be tracked and all her messages intercepted and decoded.

‘Hold on, I've got it,' said Whitehead. ‘She left the bloody thing on charge in the car.'

‘Thank God,' said Kate. ‘Has she got the documents with her?'

She's wearing them. They're in her clothes. I didn't ask where. God knows if they have dared to search her.'

‘OK, you'll hear from me later. Now lose yourself, Penny. Just try to keep it together until this afternoon.'

She called Eyam's phone and insisted Miff wake him and tell him about Diana Kidd's package.

He came on. His voice was weak. ‘We can't go on losing material like this.'

‘How essential is it?'

‘Letters signed by Temple, and a note of a meeting three years ago, in which the Americans – the director of national intelligence – were formally told of the system.'

‘And you let Diana Kidd carry these? You're crazy. We're going to have to try to get hold of them.'

‘You can't – forget them. We've got copies that will be published on the web.'

‘You said that having the original documents counted for everything. Tony Swift and Chris Mooney died because of that belief. Put Miff on,' she demanded, rising from the table with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder. She paid and stepped into the street. ‘I need a car that looks official,' she said to Miff. ‘Black, dark-blue, silver – like a government car. And I want you to find a suit and tie, Miff, and lose the stud in your ear. Pick me up outside the Eagle's Nest pub off the Earls
Court Road in an hour and a half. Got that? Good. Don't discuss it with Eyam. Just do what I say. OK?'

Miff answered in the affirmative several times.

‘Have you got a car?'

‘I'm looking at it.'

She noted down the registration number and hung up. Then she used the other phone to call Kilmartin.

‘Give me some names of serving female officers with MI5,' she said to him.

‘What age?'

‘Mine.'

‘There's Christine Shoemaker. She's a little older than you.'

‘Too senior.'

Kilmartin was silent, then suggested a woman named Alison Vesty who was in her early forties and had been seconded to MI6 in Lahore, which was where Kilmartin had met her. ‘As far as I know she is still there,' he said.

‘OK, we need to think of a way of telling the police that this senior MI5 officer is going to take one of the people they've detained in the underground car park. From memory, there's a car pound for towed cars in that car park and I suspect that is where they are being held. Call the car pound, speak to the senior officer and tell them that Vesty is arriving to take away a woman named Diana Kidd for interview.'

‘Sounds risky to me,' said Kilmartin.

‘Got any better suggestions?'

Kilmartin said no and offered several refinements.

At just past twelve thirty, Philip Cannon picked up the phone to a Chief Inspector Grimes, who asked if he could verify that Alison Vesty of the prime minister's private office would be attending a holding area known as Hotel Papa to interview Diana Kidd. When the officer asked if Vesty would be showing any identification Cannon briskly reminded him that members of the intelligence services did not go round flashing ID cards and special passes. Before giving the officer the registration number of the car she would be using he asked why the holding area
was called Hotel Papa. ‘Hyde Park – HP,' replied Chief Inspector Grimes.

Cannon returned to read the emailed press release about to go out from Scotland Yard, which described David Eyam as a serial paedophile who had not only faked his own death but had returned to take revenge on the government. He took some satisfaction from the story – which came from Gruppo via Lyme – that the deal offered to David Eyam had been ignored and his woman friend had made fools of MI5 by simply sending her phone to an office in the City where it lay at the security desk gently communicating with the nearest phone mast.

He rang Kilmartin about the decision to go public on David Eyam, as well as the news that Temple was threatening to call the general election that day.

Miff pulled up in a new Jaguar at one fifteen p.m. Kate climbed into the back and began wriggling out of her jeans to replace them with the suit trousers. Then she bent forward, efficiently pulled the shirt and sweater over her head and put on the crisp white shirt that had been folded at the bottom of her bag.

‘Jesus,' said Miff to the mirror. ‘I'm trying to drive here.'

‘Well keep your eyes on the road, Aristotle,' she said. ‘Anyway, why the hell are you called Aristotle?'

‘After Aristotle Onassis, – the shipping magnate. My mother hoped it would make me rich. Like a good luck charm, I suppose.'

‘Weird.'

‘I have to tell you something, Kate,' he said, twirling the wheel with one hand. ‘Your friend is all over the news, and you get a mention too. They're making a big thing of it, and it isn't pretty – child abuse, tax dodging, money laundering, faking his death. They're probably still going on about him.'

He turned on the radio. A reporter was reviewing Eyam's career as a ‘top-flight' civil servant and intelligence chief, a man who had only a week before been mourned at a funeral service attended by the home secretary, civil servants and those working for Eyam's sometime patron Eden White, a close ally of the prime minister's. ‘There is some mystery about the events in the quiet market town of High Castle, where a local
solicitor was recently murdered outside David Eyam's property. Police won't comment on this, or the fact that the town is now grieving the death of two men in a car accident that took place on Sunday night. One of the men worked as the coroner's clerk and officiated at the inquest held into Eyam's death, apparently in a bomb blast, just under two weeks ago.'

‘They may just have made a big mistake,' said Kate to the back of Miff's head. ‘There are too many unanswered questions.'

‘People will just remember the kiddie porn,' said Miff.

‘Not if I have anything to do with it,' she said and began to think herself into the role of Alison Vesty, who by Kilmartin's account was an uncompromising bitch. ‘So you shouldn't have too much difficulty,' he had said with a chuckle.

Twenty minutes later the Jaguar arrived at the top of the slip road leading to the vast underground car park. They were stopped and directed by armed policemen to the entrance at Marble Arch, five hundred yards away, where they fell in behind two police vans on a ramp that curved round to their left. The vans were waved through but an armed policeman moved to stand in their path. Another bent down to Miff. ‘We're expected,' he said. ‘I'm carrying Miss Vesty from the Emergency Committee in Downing Street.'

The policeman moved to Kate's window. ‘ID?' he asked.

‘Chief Inspector Grimes has been informed – he will check with Number Ten if you want. Look, I am in rather a hurry, officer.'

He looked doubtful but walked to the front of the car, checked the plate against the number he had on his clipboard and returned to Miff's window. ‘Go through the barrier, park up on the right, and walk to the office at the entrance to the holding area: they will help you.'

As the barrier rose, Miff shot off, causing the tyres to squeal on the shiny concrete. ‘Steady, Aristotle, don't overdo it,' she said.

They parked in a bay that was marked for visitors. ‘Turn the car around. Keep the engine running,' she said. Inside the pocket of her bag she'd found a pass to the Mayne Building in New York – a plain white plastic security card held in a metal frame, which was attached to a loop of black string. She put this round her neck, straightened her shirt and climbed into the mild, fetid atmosphere of the car park.

Ahead of her was the car pound, a fenced-off area of two or three acres at the centre of the enormous single-level car park, which she remembered from years before when Charlie's car had been impounded. It had been hastily – and badly – screened off by tarpaulins, stretched along the outside of the cage. Lights projected shadows of people onto the tarpaulins, people standing in groups, sitting or moving about slowly. Several notices declared that the car park was now a ‘designated area under the emergency regulations'. Mobile phones, photography and any form of communication with those being held under the Civil Contingencies Act were forbidden. The holding area should not be approached by unauthorised personnel, instructed the notice. Members of the public wishing to claim their cars were instructed to phone a number. All others were told to report to the office with identification ready. Lastly it warned that any attempt to interfere with the detainees or impede the authorities in the execution of their duties was an offence.

The car park PA system was playing music, and just now, without irony, an old number by Phil Collins – ‘Another Day in Paradise'. She kept walking. At each corner of the pen were police carrying semi-automatic weapons. Cameras had been trained along the line of the fence. Through a gap in the tarps she could see lines of people waiting under the notice that said ‘Processing'. Men and women were separated: each carried their outer garments and their shoes. The first step in a process of dehumanisation, thought Kate, is to force people to undress. A quick estimate told her that there were a couple of hundred people in the cage.

She reached two armed police officers standing outside the cabin. ‘I have an appointment,' she said, walking past them and into the gaze of a camera. She mounted four steps into the cabin and opened the door. Three men in uniform were inside. One sat with a clipboard and a laptop in front of him. ‘Chief Inspector Grimes?' she said to the oldest of the three.

‘Yes.'

‘Vesty from the Government Emergency Committee. You should have received a call from Downing Street.'

‘We did,' said Grimes, ‘but it is not clear what you want.'

‘Call the main switchboard again and ask for this extension.' She handed him a piece of paper.

‘I'm sure there won't be any need; I've just talked to them.'

‘It is required,' she said. ‘They will confirm everything again.'

The policeman picked up the phone and dialled the number. She prayed that Kilmartin's contact would answer. He did because the policeman was then asked to describe her.

‘Right, that all appears to be in order,' he said.

She glanced through the window to her left and saw the armed policemen move off into the car park, having circled Miff's car. ‘You're holding a woman named Diana Kidd. I am here to oversee her release and remove her.'

‘Take her away? I thought you were going to interview her here?'

‘No.'

‘But . . .'

‘We don't have time for this. You have come near to destroying an operation being run at the highest level.' She bent forward, splayed her hands on the desk and looked at him hard. ‘Can I have a word in private, Chief Inspector?'

He nodded to the two men, who got up and went through a door at the rear of the cabin. In the few seconds that it was open she glimpsed more of the compound. There were bedrolls, mattresses and a long table where she guessed food was served. A couple of bins overflowed with water bottles and the type of plastic foodbox she'd been given in jail. In the middle of the compound was a bank of toilets. On the far side was a row of four cabins.

‘Chief Inspector,' she said when the door closed. ‘Diana Kidd is working for us. She is an important asset, vital to the government operation. We've taken months to infiltrate the core group. She should be out on the streets telling us what's happening now. There are hundreds more of these people and we desperately need to know what they are planning.'