The Bell Ringers (8 page)

‘What he said chimed with me,' he said. ‘It was as if he knew about our problems.'

‘Oh, what are they?' Kate asked.

Mooney looked around the group. ‘There's a campaign of harassment and intimidation against anyone who knew David.'

‘Really!' said Mrs Kidd. ‘She doesn't want to hear about that. And anyway we've got no proof.'

‘Why do you think you were stopped this morning?'

‘I parked in the wrong place. It was all my silly fault.'

‘How do you account for that van in the square?' asked a strikingly pretty woman in her late twenties who introduced herself as Alice Scudamore.

‘Security for the minister and all those important people: we live in an age of terrorism and assassination, dear. Look at what happened to David.'

‘No, they were filming us,' said Alice Scudamore. ‘They weren't protecting anyone! The important people had gone. They were filming us, not from above but
head on
so they could get everyone's face.'

‘Well, who's to say?' said Mrs Kidd with an apologetic smile to Kate. ‘We mustn't bore her, must we? Hugh Russell says Miss Lockhart is a high-powered lawyer from New York. She doesn't want to hear about our little gripes. Did you like the service? The readings were beautiful, weren't they?'

‘And you saw the police drone,' said Mooney aggressively.

‘No.'

‘You don't notice them because they don't make a sound. We see a lot of them in this town. It was over the square. This one was larger than usual. You know what the police use them for?'

‘Surveillance.'

‘More than that,' said Mooney. ‘They mark targets with smart water – crowds and that sort of thing. It's like being pissed on by a bat. The marker chemical stays on you for weeks. They were marking people in the square, as well as photographing them from the van.'

‘You say that's proof?' said Mrs Kidd.

A short man with wiry black hair and intense black eyes leaned into the group conspiratorially and raised a finger from the rim of the wine glass. ‘Evan Thomas is the name, Miss Lockhart. When are you going to get the message, Diana? We're being persecuted because we knew David.'

‘Can that really be true?' asked Kate evenly. ‘Haven't the authorities got better things to do these days?'

‘Precisely. That's I exactly what I say,' said Diana Kidd.

The man straightened to her. ‘There's too much evidence for it to be
a coincidence. I mean, look at us. We're ordinary people and we're being hounded as though we were some kind of terror cell.'

A voice came from behind Kate and a hand was placed on her shoulder. ‘Well, the day
is
looking up – Kate Koh!'

She turned to see Oliver Mermagen, a contemporary from Oxford.

‘You were ignoring me?' He leaned forward to kiss her on both cheeks.

‘I didn't see you,' she said. ‘And my name is Lockhart now, Oliver.'

‘Yes, of course: is the lucky man here?'

‘No,' she said.

‘What a pity,' he said and then looked at the group around her. ‘I wonder if I can borrow our Kate. I won't keep her long.'

She was steered into the middle of the room. ‘I don't remember you being very close to David,' she said.

‘Haven't lost your bite, have you? If you want to know, we became friends after Oxford. We used to have dinner quite often together in London. Of course I didn't see him much when he moved down here to the sticks.'

‘If you saw David you must know about the illness he had last year; it was quite serious apparently.'

‘I heard nothing about that,' said Mermagen.

He went on to tell her that he ran a PR and lobbying business, which seemed a plausible setting for Mermagen's talents. At Oxford he was always panhandling the room for new connections. Eyam gave him the name ‘Promises' because of his technique of promising someone what he thought they wanted, whether it was his to give or not. Little seemed to have touched Mermagen. His face had flattened and spread outwards and the eyes had become two feverish dots in an expanse of greyish white flesh. Eyam had always said Mermagen reminded him of a Dover sole.

‘You must at least know why David came here,' she said.

His eyes glided across her face. ‘My word, you have been out of it. David fell from grace big time. Everyone knows that. Easy enough when you get to the very top.'

‘How?'

‘I don't know the details.'

‘You didn't talk to him to find out what happened?'

He shook his head. ‘I'm afraid not. What about you?'

‘I didn't know anything was wrong. I've been in the States for nearly eight years, working at Calvert-Mayne in New York.'

Mermagen saluted the name with a nod. ‘So you weren't in touch at all. You two used to be so close. I mean, I'd have put money on you eventually getting together, but then you went off and found someone else. Who's this Lockhart?'

‘Charlie Lockhart: he was in the Foreign Office. He died nearly ten years ago.'

Mermagan did a good impression of recollection followed by regret. Charlie's face flashed in front of her. They were playing tennis with another couple from the embassy. Charlie missed a shot at the net and without warning doubled up in agony. When he straightened, his expression had changed for ever. That pain would last until his death from liver cancer nine months later at his family home on the Black Isle in Scotland.

She looked around the room. Mermagen couldn't tell her anything, or wouldn't. Through the glass of the Pineapple House she could see Darsh Darshan sitting on a garden bench. He was staring ahead with his arms clamped round his chest. Glenny's bodyguards stood at a distance.

‘I'm surprised Darsh wasn't arrested,' she said.

‘The home secretary was very understanding: he put it down to grief. Darsh was always a rather overwrought character.'

‘Surely you didn't know him at Oxford? It was just our crowd at New College that knew Darsh.'

‘Of course I did,' he said.

‘What did you think of the things he said in church – all that stuff about murder?'

‘Well, you know Darsh was virtually in love with David.'

‘But what did he mean?'

His eyes moved to the home secretary. ‘He was blaming them for David's fall and therefore his being in High Castle and therefore his being in Colombia when a bomb goes off and kills him instead of some bloody union leader or whatever – logic that is surely not worthy of the man who invented the Darshan Curve.'

‘What was David doing before he left government service, Oliver?'

‘He was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee; before that at COBRA – the Cabinet Office Briefing Room “A”, mostly to do with energy, I gather but I don't fly at that altitude so I do not know the details of his jobs. He darted about giving a lot of people the benefit of his laser mind. You did know that he was thought likely to become cabinet secretary one day. All he needed on his CV was a big department to run. There was talk of the Ministry of Defence.'

‘Darsh said he was
mortified
. What did he mean by that? It's an odd word to use – mortified.'

Mermagen pouted mystification and touched the handkerchief in his breast pocket. ‘Better ask him. By the way, how's your mother?'

‘My mother!' she said, astonished. ‘My mother's fine, thank you: why do you ask?'

‘Still playing golf?'

‘Yes, between bridge and running the Faculty of Advocates In Edinburgh.' She remembered her parents' excruciating visit to Oxford, her disruptive father smirking in the wake of his rigid wife. Perversely the only student her mother had taken to was Mermagen, who had ingratiated himself by pretending an interest in women's golf.

‘Can I ask
you
something?' Kate said. ‘Did anyone have a reason to kill Eyam? It was raised – well, hinted at – during the inquest.'

‘Kill David? What on earth for? Really, you've been watching too much American television, Kate. What an absurd idea.' His arm swung out towards a tray of canapés that was just about in range. ‘I must say, Ingrid's done David proud with these caterers. Are you coming to the dinner tonight? No, of course not. How could anyone know you'd be here?'

Kate began to look for an escape. ‘Who's giving the dinner?'

‘Ortelius. You know, Eden White, the head of Ortelius and much else besides.'

‘Eden White was a friend of David's? I don't believe it. The information systems creep? That Eden White?'

‘The same but be careful, my dear Kate. He's a partner of mine, and he's quite a power in the land – a friend of the prime minister's. Hardwired into the government. Immensely influential.'

‘Jesus, what's happened to this country? Eden White best friends with the prime minister.'

‘They were always friends. Same with Derek Glenny. They go way back. Pity you're not coming to the dinner for David.' He bent forward to allow his jacket to fall open and lifted a printed card from his inside pocket. He handed it to her. ‘Here are the names for the dinner. It's quite a gathering.'

Under the heading
The Ortelius Dinner to Celebrate the life of David Lucas Eyam
were twenty names of politicians, business leaders and permanent secretaries. ‘Is it Eyam's life they've come all this way to celebrate,' she said, running down the list, ‘or his death?'

‘Now that's simply not fair, Kate,' said Mermagen. ‘In fact I think it is rather silly and disruptive of you.' His attention had switched to a group around Derek Glenny and before she could say anything more he had moved on, leaving her with the card. She looked to discard it somewhere but then slipped it into her jacket pocket.

The wake had become a party and all thought of David Eyam seemed to have left the Jubilee Rooms. She considered going up to her room but then noticed Hugh Russell take a drink and knock it back in one.

She went over to him. ‘I thought you weren't going to come.'

‘I wasn't, but I did just want to make sure that you were – eh – dropping in this afternoon.' His upper lip was beaded with sweat and the top of his cheeks flushed.

‘Has something happened?'

‘No, no. Everything's fine, but I want to get as much done as we can. I wasn't sure that I'd made that clear.'

‘Are you sure there's nothing wrong?' He looked down to the ground for a few moments. ‘Mr Russell, please tell me what has happened.'

His gaze rose to hers. ‘These papers should be in your possession. I perhaps underestimated their value to you earlier, which is the reason I came over. I really feel that you should take them as soon as possible.'

‘You read them.'

‘No.'

‘You glanced at them.'

He lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘No.'

‘Well, it doesn't matter. Just give them to me later. I'll come in after this.'

‘But you will need somewhere secure for them. I feel certain about that.'

‘Fine. I'll be there about five.' She felt they had said all they needed, then something occurred to her. ‘Tell me, did anyone know that you were acting for David Eyam?'

‘Nobody, apart from my secretary of the time, and she has left to work in Birmingham. Certainly no one knew the substance of his business. It was confidential, and David wanted a very discreet relationship.'

‘How many times did he come to your office?'

He thought for a second. ‘Never, once he had purchased Dove Cottage. We met at a pub and did business over a bite. He always gave me lunch at the Bugle, a pub about twelve miles from here. It has a rather good restaurant, though no one uses it for lunch. I lent him a laptop so he could write out the instructions for the will, then printed it out.'

‘Didn't he have his own computer?'

‘He said it was unreliable and kept on losing material.'

‘That doesn't sound like him.'

‘At any rate that was the arrangement.'

‘And was that the same for the bigger document?'

‘No, he gave that to me in an envelope and told me to put it in a safe.'

‘Was that at the same time?'

‘No – much later, in November maybe even December.'

‘So there was nothing to connect you with him?'

‘I don't think so. Why do you ask?'

‘Then you've got little to worry about. Nobody knows about the will. Nobody has troubled you about these documents. Nobody has shown the slightest interest in your professional dealings with David Eyam. If you've read something by accident, well, that's between you and me. I'm a lawyer: I understand how it goes. Look, I'll come to your office now if that helps.'

He gave her a stressed look. ‘No, no. That's the point – I won't be there. I forgot that I have something on until about five thirty – a meeting outside the office. Come after that.'

‘That's fine. I want to see one or two people here.'

Russell departed and she threaded her way to the Pineapple House in search of Darsh. But he had left his spot in the garden and was nowhere in sight. She was making her way back towards a group of people from Oxford days she hadn't seen for twenty years when she turned slap into the path of Kilmartin.

‘Again!' he said with a little ironic smile.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘It's Mr Kilmartin, isn't it? The inquest.'

‘But we've met before.'

‘Really? I'm sorry I don't . . .'

‘That's the trouble with our trade – our former trade, I should say. To be successful you must be forgettable. Southsea – about a dozen years ago, maybe a touch more, Intelligence Officers' New Entry Course. I was one of the course lecturers, though I wouldn't expect you to remember. I never enjoyed doing them much, which showed, I expect.'