The Lucifer Network (10 page)

Sam followed him downstairs. Glancing into the kitchen, he saw the door to the back garden was open.

‘This way,' said Jim, leading him out through the front. He eased up the garage door weights and rummaged on a tool shelf next to the small, green Rover parked there. He took the box from Sam and squirted oil into the keyhole until the mechanism freed up.

‘There you are,' he said, handing it back.

Sam opened the lid to check it was the material he'd remembered.

‘Thanks, Jim.'

His sister's husband took his arm and hurried him back to the Mondeo.

‘Best you don't hang around,' he mumbled. ‘She's been having treatment, you know.'

‘I didn't. What for?'

‘Psycho-stuff. You know, counselling and so on. That sort of thing.'

‘Really. What brought this on?'

Jim shrugged and let out a sigh. ‘Dunno. Something to do with your father.'

‘But what?'

Jim pressed more firmly on his arm and urged him towards the car. ‘God knows! It's made her think all men have a bit of the beast in them. Fertilising females wherever they can find them. Even me!' he added, laughing at himself. ‘I mean, who'd be interested in Jim Butterworth apart from your sister Beryl?'

They'd reached the car. Jim opened the door for him, then held out his hand.

‘Bye, Sam.'

‘Thanks for your help, Jim.'

Beryl's husband turned back to the house, stooping to pick up the trug of weeds. ‘Cheerio,' he called, head down, avoiding Sam's look.

Sam watched him go inside and close the door. Then he got into the car and drove slowly away.

A mile or so outside the village he found a lay-by and stopped. For several minutes he watched a combine harvester working the neighbouring wheat field, finding its steady, relentless progress soothing.

He shook his head like a dog. Had his father really been the sexual predator Beryl described? Or just a man with an eye for a skirt living in a household of frigid females?

He didn't know. And that was the trouble. He knew so little about the man whose genes he carried. Had no idea whether he'd had it in his soul to be a lecher or a spy.

The deed box was on the seat beside him. He opened its lid. On top was his father's naval service record. Signed up in 1949, died in service 1971. A list of the vessels he'd served on. A record of one man's working life. Of his pride. Ending up with HMS
Retribution,
based at Faslane.

He delved deeper into the box and found a diary. The date on the cover was 1942. Sam frowned. His father had been eleven years old then. He opened it and discovered it belonged to his grandfather, also a submariner. He skim-read some paragraphs. Descriptions of being bored for long periods on wartime patrol. Nicknames of shipmates – Bunny. Tiger. Chips and Taff. Two years later, he remembered, the boat had been depth-charged and his grandfather consigned to the fishes.

Submarines and the men who lived and died on them. They'd been in his father's blood. It wasn't credible he could have betrayed them.

Sam sifted through the rest. He looked at the photos in two expired passports. The same determined chin as himself, the same thoughtful eyes. Then, lying loose in a corner of the box, something that surprised him. Two tickets for the ferry from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay on
the Isle of Bute. Date stamped the 21
^st
of May 1971, six weeks before his father died. Who had his companion been? Certainly not his wife. Sam's mother had told him time and again that she'd never been north of the border. Said it with pride in her voice, as if the very act of going to the place where her husband's submarine was based would be succumbing to his will.

Two tickets which his father had wanted to keep for the memories they bore – memories of a year when Russian military intelligence added his name to its list of foreign agents.

Were they significant? It was the only lead he had.

He checked the time. Just turning midday. He switched on the car radio to catch the news, wanting to know if word about his father had leaked. The headlines came. All about a nail bomb explosion in Southall. Sixteen people seriously injured, one elderly Sikh dead from heart failure.

‘Bastards!' he hissed. He hated terrorists.

All the main right-wing groups were infiltrated, Steph had told him. They could hardly fart without Special Branch knowing. So it was probably a loner. Hard to catch. He listened through the rest of the news, but there was no mention of a spy scandal.

He looked again at the Scottish ferry tickets, then pulled a road atlas from the pocket in the door and located Bute in the Firth of Clyde. The Wemyss Bay ferry terminal was on the Ayrshire coast about an hour west of Glasgow. Driving to Scotland would take the rest of the day, he realised. It'd make more sense to fly. He began to calculate how soon he could get there. Then his phone rang.

‘Hello.'

‘Simon Foster?'

He tensed. He'd only used that name in his dealings
with Harry Jackman. The voice was a woman's which he didn't recognise.

‘Who is this?'

‘Julie. Julie Jackman.' Her voice was strangely hoarse. Nervous, he guessed.

‘Oh. Hello.'

‘You're surprised to be hearing from me?'

‘I am rather. Where did you get this number from?'

‘You'll never believe this, but it was totally by accident. When you lent me your phone yesterday, I was pressing buttons trying to turn it off when the number of the phone came up on the display. And it just so happens I have a very good memory for numbers.'

Sam didn't believe in accidents like that. He'd slipped up. A security lapse.

‘Okay,' he said suspiciously. ‘So, what can I do for you?'

‘It's what I can do for you, really. There's been a letter. I thought you'd want to know.'

‘A letter? From your father?' He felt an adrenalin rush.

‘Yes. It arrived here in Woodbridge this morning. And it talks about red mercury.'

‘Does it now . . .' He struggled to contain his excitement. ‘Have you contacted Denise Corby?'

‘No.'

‘I think you should.'

‘Look. That woman got right up my nose yesterday. She came on like the Gestapo. I don't mind showing the letter to you – and please drop the pretence that you two don't work together.'

‘Never met her before yesterday,' he replied with total honesty.

‘Whatever . . . I won't have Denise Corby anywhere near me again.'

Sam knew the headquarters woman would blow a fuse if he acted on his own. And if he took up Julie's invitation, the investigation into his father's past would have to go on hold. But he was intensely keen to read that letter. And – it would mean getting another eyeful of Julie Jackman again, which he wouldn't object to at all.

‘Where are you?' he asked.

‘Woodbridge.'

‘Could you bring the letter to London?'

‘No. I promised to take Liam to the beach this afternoon.'

‘This letter could be very important, Julie.'

‘Liam's important too.'

He glanced at the dashboard clock. Twelve-fifteen. ‘Very well. I could be with you by four.'

‘Make it after six, could you? I won't be back until then.'

He recoiled. The nation's intelligence machinery was being put on hold so a seven-year-old could build a sand castle.

‘All right,' he agreed reluctantly. ‘Six o'clock it is.'

‘You on your own, right?'

‘Me on my own. Oh, one more question. Did the letter talk about anything else?'

Like a bungled coup in Bodanga.

‘No-o . . .' she answered hesitantly. ‘Not really. Just red mercury.'

He felt relieved. ‘See you at six, then.'

Sam clicked the phone back into its holder. The call had unsettled him. Even if he accepted her unlikely explanation about how she knew his number, there was something else.

Despite his insistence on anonymity yesterday, the damned girl knew his cover name.

IT WAS FIVE
minutes before six when he pulled up outside the converted sail loft by the river in Woodbridge. Shafts of sunlight broke through buttresses of cloud, giving a mellow tone to the building's dark red bricks and grey slate roof. Two S-Reg Range Rovers and an open-top BMW stood like trophies on the pea-shingle drive. The weekenders were in residence.

He tapped on the brass knocker for the ground floor flat at the left-hand end of the building. When Maeve Jackman opened the door, he felt awkward suddenly, like a spotty-faced youth on a first date.

‘Didn't expect to see
you
again so soon,' she said in wary greeting. ‘She's not back yet, but you can come in.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Jackman.'

‘Maeve. Do call me Maeve.' She wore pale cotton slacks, a grey sweatshirt printed with the slogan
GIVE THE NURSES THEIR DUE
and spoke with a soft southern Irish accent. ‘They're still at the beach, but shouldn't be long. Would you like a cup of tea?' She looked him up and down as if trying to decide his tastes. ‘Or there's some of Liam's pop. No beer, I'm afraid.'

‘Tea would be fine.' The weird feeling of being
nineteen again lingered – ‘Mum' checking him over while the girl fixed her hair.

The ground floor was an open-plan living area. There was a corner for toys, a tidy kitchen with a woodblock worktop and a wide, stainless steel hood over the stove.

‘You have a nice home,' Sam commented.

‘Oh yes. Can't complain. Swankier than the last place, although I miss the neighbours. There's no one here to talk to most of the time.'

‘Harry bought this place for you?'

‘That's right. My ex-husband was a bastard in some ways, Simon' – That use of his cover name again sent a
frisson
through him – ‘but Harry looked after us in his own way. Julie and I can live here as long as we want, but when we're dead it all goes to Liam. A good investment, Harry said. And I'm sure he was right. Money was the one aspect of human relationships that he understood.'

‘I can believe that.'

Much of the far wall of the open-plan was glass. A sliding patio door opened onto a lawn which extended to the water's edge. Sam crossed the hardwood floor to take in the view.

‘The grounds are communal,' Maeve Jackman told him, standing beside him. ‘We pay a service charge, then somebody comes and cuts the grass. Did it myself at the last place.'

The estuary glowed a golden olive green in the early evening light. Further downstream a fleet of dinghies was making slow progress upriver.

‘It is a lovely spot,' Maeve Jackman chattered, ‘although I'm not really one for the boats. Don't mind looking at them, just so long as I don't have to step into one of the things.'

She returned to the kitchen area, leaning against the work surface with her arms spread, as if defending her
territory. Her expression, when Sam turned to face her, was wary again. Her body which had probably once been as trim as her daughter's had lost its shape. As the kettle began to sing behind her, he noticed that the Mr Blobby wall clock above her head showed five minutes after six. Julie's tardiness was beginning to jar.

‘Harry's letter, Maeve,' he asked briskly, ‘I don't suppose you have it to hand?'

‘No I don't,' she answered firmly. ‘Julie has it somewhere safe. She wanted to show it to you herself. She won't be long.'

The kettle clicked. Maeve Jackman turned to make the tea and Sam settled on the flower-patterned sofa. The room was light and airy. The books on the shelves were few and mostly with bright covers, suggesting they were for the boy. A colour photo of Liam in a brown card frame, taken in a mass session at school, stood on top of the TV.

‘Good picture of the lad,' Sam commented as the boy's grandmother set a tea tray down on the coffee table, then sat in an armchair opposite him.

‘It's nice, isn't it? He's a bit of a handful, but we do our best for him, despite there being no man around.' She poured from a silver pot into bone china cups. ‘Fortunately he's in a home where there's two women who are well used to that situation.'

‘Liam's father . . .?'

‘Brendan. He was a useless so-and-so.' Her brow wrinkled contemptuously. ‘Long gone. And changed his name a few times since, I shouldn't wonder. Sugar?'

‘No thanks.'

‘A bad lot, that man was. The worst sort of Irishman, and that's saying something. Believe me. I come from the country myself so I know.'

‘He doesn't send Julie any money for Liam?'

‘That's a joke! He was gone the day after she told him she was going to have his baby. Not a word since.'

‘That must have shaken her up.'

‘It wasn't a good time for her, Simon, that's for sure.' She watched him sip at the tea. ‘Are you married?'

‘No. No woman'll have me, I'm afraid.'

She laughed politely. ‘That I don't believe. But you'll have your reasons, no doubt.'

Sam looked at his watch. Ten past six.

‘Don't fret. She'll not be long now because Liam'll be desperate for his tea. And anyway, you mustn't begrudge Julie her relaxation. Life hasn't done her too many favours, you know.'

‘I'm sure you're right.' He reined in his impatience. It was true that a few more minutes wouldn't matter.

Maeve Jackman leaned forward and lowered her voice, despite there just being the two of them there. ‘Between you and me, she's never had a man that didn't let her down. Doesn't stand up to them, that's the trouble. Tries too hard, you know what I mean? To my mind it's all because of Harry running off when she was a baby, though she won't admit it. Always makes out she didn't care that much about her daddy, but whenever he made one of his little visits to us, she was all over him. If he'd told her he wanted to step on her, she'd have lain on the floor and let him do it.'