The Company of Saints (13 page)

His pale green eyes gleamed at her as he rose to his feet. ‘It reads to me,' he said, ‘as if he didn't just sail close. He crossed the line. And I hope you'll appreciate what exposure could mean to your position, if your, er, friendship came out.'

Davina took a deep breath. ‘I appreciate it,' she said. ‘That's why I asked you to look into it. I'd also appreciate it if you treated this as confidential. Officially.'

He said angrily, ‘Of course – you really don't need to mention it.'

‘I'm sure I don't,' Davina said. ‘But what was an unofficial inquiry had better go on file as an official one. We must keep the records straight. On all of us. Thanks for your help.' She sat down and took up the telephone. He went out of the office, and she put the receiver back. She opened the file on Tony Walden and read it slowly. Then she put it aside and buzzed her secretary. ‘Get me Sir James White, will you?'

He listened while she explained briefly what Humphrey had found out.

‘It makes sense now,' he commented. ‘Not very nice for you, my dear, but not as nasty as it might have been. Quite simple in fact. What are you going to do about it?'

‘There's only one thing I can do,' she said flatly. ‘You're not surprised, are you? When did Humphrey tell you?' She heard the little chuckle on the other end.

‘Humphrey is entirely loyal. He never talks about the office when we meet. You mustn't have such a suspicious mind, Davina. I'm not surprised because I never trusted Walden in the first place. But I hope you're not too upset by it.'

Upset …? She said, ‘No, more disappointed. If he was going to be a shit, I'd rather he did it with style.'

Sir James White went into the garden to find his wife. She looked up from her book expectantly. ‘James? You've got that cat's-eaten-the-canary look on your face. What's up?'

‘Davina phoned,' he said. ‘Humphrey gave her the news about that nasty piece of work, Walden.'

Mary said sharply, ‘Poor girl. She doesn't have much luck with men. Such a pity she gave up that Major Lomax. He was an attractive man, I thought.'

‘You've got no business to think like that at your age,' he reproved her, smiling. ‘They were too much alike for it to work for long. But she's lucky to have got off lightly with a man like Walden. A really slippery customer. I thought so from the first.'

‘He's attractive too – in a different way, James. Not a clean-cut Englishman type, but very dynamic, full of sex appeal. You don't like him because you're prejudiced.'

Sir James smiled again. ‘And rightly, as it happens. I wonder what explanation he'll give Davina? If she lets him explain at all.…'

‘Stop gloating,' his wife said. She picked up her book. ‘I'm sorry for her. I'm sure she is in love with him. It's very bad luck.'

‘I'm sorry for her too, Mary, my dear. You know I'm very soft hearted underneath.'

She didn't look up at him. ‘You never felt anything but satisfaction when people made mistakes,' she said crisply. ‘And retirement hasn't made you any better. Now let me finish this chapter and I'll see about the tea.'

‘I'll do it,' he said. ‘I must congratulate Humphrey. He's a marvellous old truffle hound. He'll sniff out any dirt, however deep it's buried.'

He sent for his protégé, the young doctor. A brilliant psychiatrist with an extraordinary understanding of the human mind. He was a strange-looking creature, almost feminine, with tiny bones and a pale, translucent skin. It was hard to imagine him eating, sleeping, defecating, like other men. But he had taught his protector how to enlarge
his
special talent – the use and pursuit of power. The doctor had explained the technique as psychological sculpture. From the common clay of humanity, it was possible to form a man or a woman into a willing instrument, capable of doing anything on orders. It was a topic that moved the young man to faint excitement; he loved the exercise of power, and he regarded the human element with as little compunction as a cage of rats in his laboratory.

Watching him come into the room, his protector reflected that there were people who kept tarantulas as pets. It amused him to mock the Christian myth by calling the pitiless little fellow St Peter, the first of the Apostles, Keeper of the Kingdom's Keys. He called him St Peter and laughed out loud. The doctor managed a polite giggle.

‘Now, I have a problem for you. A real problem this time, not a simple matter like the others. We have a new target. A very important target.'

The doctor said, ‘If you will tell me the name and the circumstances, I will do my best.' He listened, his head tilted to one side. After a time he said, ‘I understand. How long can you give me to find the solution to this problem?'

He liked subjecting the doctor to stress, just to see if anything could open the slightest chink. So far, he hadn't succeeded. Perhaps that was his fascination, he thought. He challenges me by always being right. ‘I can't give you any time,' he answered.

The doctor said simply, ‘Then I will start immediately, I don't think it will be too difficult – I shall look up the relevant records.'

‘Good. Will you ever disappoint me, do you think?'

‘I don't believe I will.'

He smiled and wagged his head. ‘But one day, perhaps …?' The smile disappeared. ‘This time it is vital that you succeed. Don't underestimate the challenge.'

‘I work best of all when the situation is impossible.'

Suddenly he was irritated by the pallid face and the inhuman confidence. Something will have to be done about you, he thought. When I don't need you any more. If you were as clever as you think you are, you'd know the crucial thing about human nature: it finds perfection impossible to forgive. He turned away and the doctor was dismissed.

The head of Special Branch was a small wiry Scotsman in his fifties called MacNeil. He had two hates in life, and he confided his feelings about them loudly and clearly that late June evening. ‘Bloody foreign VIPs and that bloody woman in Anne's Yard! As if I didn't
know
Hauser was going to be a top-security risk after what happened in Italy and France! What does she think I am? A bloody bobby just off the beat? Jesus Christ, I don't know why they ever gave women the bloody vote. She hammered on at me about a network of terrorists starting out on a campaign of political murder, lecturing me like a bloody schoolboy!'

His assistant and closest colleague was a taciturn man, an Englishman with the reputation for saying as little as possible. He didn't swear either. At first his superior's constant use of the word ‘bloody' irritated him. By this time, after six years, he didn't notice it. There was no better man at the job than Jim MacNeil.

‘She's paranoid,' he said when he'd calmed down. ‘Like all bloody women, they get a bit of muscle and they start imagining things – persecution mania. And now she's stirring up Downing Street about it. That's all we need!'

‘You don't think she's right, then?' said his assistant feebly.

MacNeil had been walking round his office; he was a pacer, unable to think on his arse, as he liked to say. He stopped and perched on the edge of his desk. ‘About the conspiracy? Looks like it to me. The Eyeties have shoved it under the rug – locked up some bloody kid and put the lid on it. The bloody French won't give anything away. Graham says we'll have it here next, and she could be right. And I've got three bloody VIPs to worry about in the next six months. Hauser, the Queen of Sweden on a state visit, for Christ's sake, and the Americans are fixing up for Bush to come in the autumn.'

‘That's apart from the royals,' his assistant remarked. His pipe had gone out.

‘Just don't start on that one.' MacNeil got up and started walking around again. ‘There's no way we can protect them. Hauser's arriving at Heathrow – there'll be a bloody guard of honour. The PM's going to meet him, then there's the drive to London and lunch at Downing Street. All closed cars, motorcade escort, that's not so bad. But a gala performance at the opera. That's going to be a bugger. Graham thinks Moscow's behind it.'

‘She would,' was the reply. ‘Paranoia, sir, like you said.'

‘Reds under the bloody beds again,' MacNeil muttered. ‘We've got enough of them here already. I told her I thought that was a bit far-fetched. She didn't like that. She's not used to being contradicted.'

‘What's your theory then?'

MacNeil shrugged. ‘Franklyn was a hard-liner, to the right of Reagan. Duvalier was a liberal leftist. I never believed that business about the brother-in-law being the target. Nobody kills bloody arms dealers. They're too busy buying from them. The political motive doesn't add up.'

‘The next one might give us the clue.'

MacNeil came to a halt. ‘So long as it isn't on our patch,' he said. ‘I'm going to look over the arrangements tomorrow morning and we'll call a conference for ten o'clock. Maybe we can get them to cancel the bloody opera.'

‘The Foreign Office?' his assistant queried, heavily sarcastic. ‘You'll be lucky sir.'

‘If they say no,' MacNeill stated, ‘I know just the person to go to. There's no love lost there. Come on, time we shut up shop.'

Davina was in the bath when the telephone rang. She had spent a long tiring day, going from Scotland Yard to the Foreign Office and back to Anne's Yard. Conferences with Humphrey were followed by further meetings with MacNeil and his Special Branch experts. The atmosphere had been overtly hostile. She didn't mind the initial bristling of the male, but MacNeil infuriated her. The issues were so serious there was no time for male chauvinism. The afternoon at the Foreign Office had been politer but none the less adamant. It was impossible to cancel the gala evening at the opera without alerting the West German President to the threat of assassination. And there was no valid ground for that assumption but one terrorist attack in Venice and a multiple murder in France which had no proven political connection. The Special Branch would take the necessary precautions and, of course, if Miss Graham's theory could be substantiated by hard facts, then the matter would be reviewed. It was a typical stone-wall response, clothed in maddening courtesy.

Davina left Whitehall and, after an hour in her office going through the latest telexes, she packed up for the night and went home. Some friends had asked her to dinner and the cinema. But she felt too tired and strung up to enjoy anybody's company. She ran her bath and slipped into it. She tried to empty her mind of the day's anxieties. Perhaps she should look for a cottage outside London, somewhere with a garden where she could relax at weekends. When the telephone rang she answered it, wrapped in a towel, leaving wet marks on the carpet. It was a voice she hadn't heard for a very long time.

‘Davina? It's Mummy. How are you?'

She stammered when she answered. Her family had always had the power to knock the struts from under her, even over the phone. ‘I'm fine,' she said. ‘Fine. How are you?'

‘Well, mixed – not too good, I'm afraid. That's why I'm ringing you, Davina. Your father's had a stroke. I thought you'd better be told right away.'

‘Mummy – he's not dying …?' She felt her throat tighten, making the words difficult to say.

‘I rather think so,' Betty Graham said quietly. ‘Please forgive him, darling. Come down, will you?'

‘Oh, my God … of course I'll come. I'll be there as soon as I can!'

She dressed, threw a nightgown into a bag, and then rang the night operator to say where she could be found if she was needed. She drove out through London onto the M3. Her foot flattened onto the accelerator. ‘Please forgive him,' her mother had said. Forgive him for loving her sister Charlie best and letting her know it, even as a tiny child? Forgive the hurt and the lifelong sense of inferiority he had inflicted upon her. She blinked the tears back. He was dying – her father was dying, and there wasn't anything left to forgive with. That was what really made her cry.

Her mother came to meet her. They embraced and Davina could feel the tremor in her body. She looked much thinner than Davina remembered and her pretty, lined face was pinched and very white. ‘He's upstairs, darling,' she said. ‘He's had a lot of drugs – it was so painful.' Her mouth tightened for a moment, but she went on, Davina's arm round her shoulder. ‘Don't expect him to know you,' she said. ‘He's very dopy. The doctor wanted to move him to hospital. Intensive care, he said. But I made him tell me the truth.' She looked at her daughter; her blue eyes were full of tears. ‘He's paralysed – he'll never be able to do anything again. So I said, no, leave him at home. I did the right thing? Do you think I did the right thing?'

‘I know you did,' Davina answered, and when she went into the bedroom and saw her father, she repeated it. ‘Thank God you kept him at home. He'd have hated anything else.' She stood at the edge of the bed. It was almost impossible to recognize him.

Her mother stood beside her. ‘I can't get hold of Charlie,' she said. ‘I've been ringing her flat for hours.'

‘I thought she was here,' Davina said.

‘She's been in London for the past month. She comes down at weekends to be with Fergie. I'm so glad you came – I was worried when I couldn't get an answer from Charlie and I thought you mightn't come down.… He didn't mean to be unkind, Davina. He didn't realize he was being unfair. You do believe that, don't you?'

‘Of course I do,' Davina said gently. Poor mother, trying to excuse him and comfort me. She's been doing it for years. ‘Why don't you go and make some tea and sit down, Mum? I'll stay with him. Is the doctor coming again?'

‘I said I'd phone if there was any change. He was cross about the hospital. He said I wasn't giving him a chance.'