1990 (17 page)

The scheme had gathered a momentum of its own. Meetings had taken place, the plan been approved, typists called in, official-looking documents produced and appointments made. The lights in the Home Secretary's office were visible from Whitehall long after the surrounding windows had gone dark and he was still working when Delly Lomas delivered the completed papers, which he read with approval.

'Ingenious, Miss Lomas. I like it. A very efficient and circumstantial tissue of lies. Thorough. I like that.'

'Thank you, Home Secretary,' she replied, pleased.

He had pressed a buzzer and a man, wearing emphatically framed glasses on a narrow, intelligent face, came into the room from the waiting annexe.

'Sit down, Mr Griffith,' Dan Mellor met him sociably. 'Good of you to get here at such short notice. I'd like your advice.'

Ivor Griffith, Assistant General Secretary of the Metalturners Union, recognised the flattery, but was still impressed.

'I'll do what I can, Home Secretary.'

He was very much a career union man, with a good first in PPE, taken almost casually. He had moved fast and, at thirty-eight, was not sorry his hairline was receding slightly, as this made him look older.

'I know you will, lad. I've heard good reports of you,' Mellor declared and then sighed. 'Though I'm afraid this isn't going to be pleasant for any of us.'

He turned to introduce Delly Lomas. Griffith managed a smile, but, despite his position, experienced the fear felt by anyone when the PCD was involved. Dan Mellor gestured to the woman and sighed again. It was an expert handover of the dirty work to be done.

'It concerns your General Secretary's recent trip to America,' the Deputy Controller spoke formally, in the tones of a professional at work. 'Our surveillance people turned up some very disturbing facts. Wainwright's drinking, for example.'

'He never touches it,' Griffith exclaimed.

'Not in public. Privately, he's a bottle-a-day man,' she returned. 'Then there's the question of his expense and currency allowance. Not just this trip, but the last half-dozen. On a deep audit, there's clear evidence of evasion and fraud.'

'I don't believe it,' Ivor Griffith protested, vigorously. 'Somebody's making it up.'

The Deputy Controller studied him frigidly. 'I don't think you mean that, Mr Griffith,' her voice was icy. 'I do hope not.'

'No. I'm very sorry,' he stood up to apologise and remained standing.

'The lad's upset,' Mellor put in, benignly. 'I know I was.'

The woman picked up a folder from the Home Secretary's desk. 'There are details here of a bank account in the SwissLux Federation. As you know, it is an offence punishable by imprisonment for any British citizen to bank abroad - especially undisclosed sums of this magnitude.'

She opened the folder towards the trade unionist, but without actually bringing it close enough for him to read. He did not dare reach out for it.

'What are you going to do?' he asked, helplessly.

'That's what I want to talk to you about,' Mellor intervened. 'Thank you, Miss Lomas.'

Delly inclined her head and left, as the Home Secretary crossed to a drinks cabinet built into his bookcase and poured whisky into two glasses.

'Sit down, lad. Bit of a facer, isn't it?' He handed Griffith a drink. 'I've known Charlie Wainwright thirty-odd years. I blame myself, you know. I should have seen Charlie was working too hard. He had to crack.'

'He's in real trouble, though, isn't he?' Wainwright's assistant looked genuinely anxious.

'Unless we can get him out of it.'

'We?'

'Yes. I'll try and cover for him. Charlie's served his country too well to end like this. I'm going to plead ill-health for him,' the ex-miner resolved, generously. 'He might have to admit a few things, and, of course, resign as GenSec of the Metalturners.'

'He'll never do that. He's got five years to run,' the other pointed out. 'And the Executive will support him, right or wrong.'

'That's where you come in,' Mellor raised his glass in a half salute. 'Call an emergency meeting, but get around the individuals first. You know the drill. Use the corridors. Word here, a hint there. It's for Charlie's good.'

Griffith began to look almost enthusiastic. He was shrewder, brighter and less scrupulous than his boss, Charles Wainwright, but had been at pains to hide this superiority in the same mental cover as his intense ambition.

'I'll try,' he promised.

Mellor read him like a PCD handout. 'You'll do it, lad. Then you'll be Acting General Secretary for the rest of Charlie's term. And that's a nice, ripe plum for somebody your age.'

He refilled the other's glass, knowing that the bait of fulfilled ambition had been offered and accepted.

Kyle made a couple of stops, to discover the latest news on Wainwright, on his way to the office the following morning, then went straight to the archives room.

When Greaves found him, he was studying a diagram in a large medical book. It was a cross-section of the human skull, similar to that hanging in Gelbert's office at Mayfield.

'Ugh. Why was I born squeamish?' shuddered Tiny, who had had a large, late breakfast.

'This? It's only the inside of somebody's skull,' the columnist was airy. 'All the highways and byways for electroconvulsive therapy to trot down.'

'I'll stick to street maps,' promised the other. 'Whose skull?'

'Could be Wainwright's. And now that the PCD have picked him up, he'll change his mind about giving me an interview.'

'If you can find him,' Greaves cautioned.

'I can find him. Give this to Pearce, will you?' He took out a surveillance bug from his pocket.

The news editor dialled a number on the internal and Pearce appeared in the doorway a few minutes later. He handed Kyle a large envelope, then noticed the bug and groaned.

'Oh no. I'm beginning to look like a chappatti. Here are all the photos of Wainwright you asked for.'

Kyle inspected him, pointedly. 'Who told you to get your hair cut?'

'Nobody,' the young reporter muttered. 'I thought...'

Kyle indicated his own longer hair and scowled, 'Well, don't in future. Ask.'

By lunchtime, it was a
fait accompli
and the leading participants gathered in Doctor Gelbert's office at Mayfield to complete formalities.

Charles Wainwright, now dressed in a short-sleeved surgical tunic was sitting in front of Gelbert's desk, reading the dossier put together by Delly Lomas. The doctor himself sat behind the desk and Dan Mellor and Ivor Griffith waited by the window. Halloran was also ominously present.

Wainwright threw the dossier down on the desk. 'You don't need me to tell you this lot's a pack of bloody lies. Put together by experts,' he said, contemptuously.

'Isn't that your signature on the SwissLux bank account?' Mellor challenged smoothly.

'You know it isn't. It's the PCD forgery mob. All right, Dan,' the General Secretary of the Metalturners Union leant back in his chair, a big, angry man wielding authority. 'If you want a show trial, you've got one.'

He signalled to Griffith. 'Ivor, I want a full executive and delegate meeting of my union. I want fraternal subpoenas on all the union leaders who were with me on these trips where I'm supposed to have been a drunken expense fiddler.'

His assistant stood motionless, looking embarrassed and guilty.

'Go on. Get on with it,' Wainwright ordered.

'A meeting's already been held, Mr Wainwright.'

'At my instigation,' confirmed Mellor.

'You had my word on it, Dan,' Charles Wainwright stared at him, accusingly. 'I'd have kept my mouth shut. Are you going back on yours?'

'Words, Charlie. Don't be a simpleton,' the other sneered. 'I needed time to think. I want your resignation and a full recantation of past mistakes.'

'You can want for bloody ever,' Wainwright shouted. 'I'm going to get out of this fancy dress and thump on every union door in this country.'

He placed his hands on the desk to heave himself upright and Mark Gelbert nodded his head. One of Halloran's thick hands clamped down on the back of the trade union leader's neck, thumbing accurately and hard on the motor nerve centre. Charles Wainwright slumped forward.

'Sedation, Halloran,' the doctor instructed.

'What about after?' Mellor queried, suddenly wary.

'I know your problem, Home Secretary, and I assure you that it can be resolved quite easily.' As Halloran deftly wielded a hypodermic, Doctor Mark Gelbert's confidence was absolute.

For all the men in the room, Charles Wainwright no longer existed. He was now a patient at Mayfield.

As the Home Secretary and new Acting General Secretary of the Metalturners Union returned to town in chauffeur-driven cars, Herbert Skardon was smugly waving a handwritten note on Ministerial paper over his coffee tray at Delly Lomas.

'A rare document, Delly. We must have it framed.'

'Like Wainwright,' she responded, acidly.

'My dear Delly, a memo of commendation in the Home Secretary's own handwriting is nothing to be cynical about,' he observed, holding the scrap of paper at arm's length and admiring it, without the faintest sense of the ridiculous.

'We're only half way through and some instinct makes me itchy,' she cautioned, pursing her lips. 'Nichols said it might have been Kyle talking to Wainwright at the Leisure Centre.'

'Nonsense. He's under full surveillance, visual, as well as electronic,' the PCD boss confirmed. 'He was in his office. Even Kyle can't be in two places at once.'

Delly Lomas shook her head, remembering the journalist's cloak-and-dagger performance with Tom Pearce at her flat. He could be in two places at once all right.

She prepared to work late again that night, re-checking all details, and decided to see that her chief did so, too. He seemed to think their responsibilities were over, although it was still possible for the whole plan to be sabotaged.

While she worried over Skardon's complacency, Charles Wainwright was lying unconscious on the operating bench at Mayfield. His short sideboards had already been shaved to allow the electrodes contact with the flesh at his temples. Halloran was standing by, carrying stopwatch and clipboard.

'As usual, Halloran. Selective application of calibrated ECT, at five second intervals,' Gelbert instructed. 'Ready?'

'Yes, sir,' the PCD officer clicked the watch. 'Now.'

The doctor pressed a switch and Wainwright's hands and feet twitched and jumped for precisely five seconds.

'Now,' Halloran said again and the ECT symptoms repeated.

'Now.'

Mark Gelbert moved from the cabinet to feel Wainwright's neck pulse. 'Excellent, excellent,' he said. 'Thank you, gentlemen.'

The patient was wheeled out and the doctor made his way to his private suite to eat a light but epicurean supper, accompanied by a bottle of chilled
Gewurtztraminer
.

By the time he had finished, the moon had risen, bathing the graceful old house in light and shining through the abutting woodland.

Kyle and Dave Brett did not need their torches as they covered the powerful motorbike with a camouflage sheet and cleared the wooden fence between the road and the perimeter of Mayfield's grounds.

Once in the shelter of the trees, Kyle stopped to check the contents of a knapsack and took out a tape-recorder, clipping a sonic calibrator to the side of it.

'You look like a fugitive from a jumble sale,' his partner grinned, but the journalist was unappreciative.

'Can you work one of these?' he asked, shortly.

'Recorder? Everybody can. They just can't write these days.' Dave Brett, thoroughly enjoying himself, flashed a light along the ground. The escapade took him back to his questionable boyhood, when he had spent a lot of night hours diving over walls and through windows and down alleys, during raids on small shops and, later, factories. Even the leatherings dished out by his old man had not stopped him because the risks and tension had been bigger attractions than the thieving itself.

Little had changed, he thought, with rueful amusement. Now he was deep in the illegal emigrant and black market rackets, as much to feel his skin creep as for any personal vendetta against the regime. It kept him alive. He inspected the sonic calibrator.

'What's that gadget?'

'It's to authenticate the voice-print,' Kyle explained. 'To prove it's Wainwright.'

'In we go then,' the agent was all for bounding forward.

'Hang on,' the journalist warned. 'There'll be a PCD hard case in there, called Halloran. He breaks legs.'

A case-opener, a small crowbar in hardened steel, slid down Brett's sleeve and into his hand. 'I was in Manchester when he was doing it. No bother.'

They came to a second fence, wired this time, and crouched beside it.

'Did you bring the photos of Wainwright?' asked Kyle.

'Only because you said so,' replied the other, looking baffled. 'I didn't know it was nostalgia week.'

'It isn't. Take these as well.' He gave Brett the envelope from Tom Pearce. 'Now listen. Gelbert uses ECT and one result is that your memory gets jogged loose from its moorings. That's why it's been banned in some countries for twenty years. Wainwright might not even recognise you. So you wander him down memory lane and pick up the bits he still remembers. If any.'

'Christ!' Brett had stopped smiling, and now looked genuinely shocked.

The newsman had attached two bulldog clips joined by copper wire to one of the fence wires, to circuit the alarm. Then, cutting the length between the clips, he held up the wire for his partner to start crawling through.

A silent breeze stirred the branches, covering the few scuffles they made while creeping through the shrubbery towards the new recuperative annexe.

This was a row of ten timber cottages, only one of which was lit. As they watched from the bushes, Halloran, wearing a white jacket and obviously on guard, paced the length of the chalets, bouncing a bunch of keys in the air. Reaching the end of the row, he stopped and leant patiently against the wall.

Brett slid away, gesturing to Kyle. The journalist stood, scraping his feet on the gravel, obtrusively, and the PCD officer came forward, alert, with a heavy cosh in one hand.