A Delicate Truth (23 page)

Sorry how? Sorry to hear his voice slither
out of control and feel the colour surge to his face? Not sorry at all. His dander was
up at last, and so it should be. Suki would be cheering him on. So would Em. And the
sight of this fellow Jay Crispin, smugly nodding away with his pretty head of wavy hair,
would have infuriated them quite as much as it was starting to infuriate
him
.

‘Plus I’m the villain of the
piece,’ Crispin suggested nobly, in
the tone of a man assembling
the case against him. ‘I’m the bad guy who set the whole thing up, hired a
bunch of cheap mercs, conned Langley and our own Special Forces into providing
support-in-aid and presided over one of the great operational fuck-ups of all time. That
right? Plus I delegated the job to a useless field commander who lost his rag and let
his men shoot the hell out of an innocent mother and her child. Does that about cover
it, or is there anything else I did that I haven’t mentioned?’

‘Now look here, I didn’t say
any
of that –’

‘No, Kit, you don’t have to. Jeb
said it, and you believe it. You don’t have to sweeten it. I’ve lived with
it for three years, and I can live with it for another three’ – all without a hint
of self-pity, or none that reached Kit’s ear. ‘And Jeb’s not the only
one, to be fair on him. In my line of country we get ’em all: chaps with
post-traumatic stress disorder, real or imagined, resentment about gratuities, pensions,
fantasizing about themselves, reinventing their life stories, and rushing to a lawyer if
they’re not muzzled in time. But this little bastard is in a class of his own,
believe you me.’ A forbearing sigh, another sad shake of the head. ‘Done
great
work in his day, Jeb, none better. Which only makes it worse.
Plausible as the day is long. Heart-breaking letters to his MP, the Ministry of Defence,
you name it.
The poison dwarf
, we call him at head office. Well, never
mind.’ Another sigh, this one near silent. ‘And you’re absolutely sure
the meeting was coincidence? He didn’t track you down somehow?’

‘Pure coincidence,’ Kit
insisted, with more certainty than he was beginning to feel.

‘Did your local newspaper or radio
down in Cornwall announce that Sir Christopher and Lady Probyn would be gracing the
platform, by any chance?’

‘May have done.’

‘Maybe that’s your
clue.’

‘No way,’ Kit retorted adamantly.
‘Jeb didn’t know my name until he showed up at the Fayre and put two and two
together’ – glad to keep up the indignation.

‘So no pictures of you
anywhere?’

‘None that came
our
way. And
if there had been, Mrs Marlow would have told us. Our housekeeper,’ he declared
stoutly. And for extra certainty: ‘And if she
did
miss something, the
whole village would be telling her.’

The waiter wanted to know whether they would
like the same again. Kit said he wouldn’t. Crispin said they would and Kit
didn’t argue.

‘Want to hear something about our line
of work at all, Kit?’ Crispin asked, when they were alone again.

‘Not sure I should, really. Not my
business.’

‘Well, I think you should. You did a
great job in the Foreign Office, no question. You worked your backside off for the
Queen, earned your pension and your K. But as a first-rate civil servant you were an
enabler
– all right, a bloody good one. You were never a
player
.
Not what we might call a hunter-gatherer in the corporate jungle. Were you? Admit
it.’

‘Don’t think I know where
you’re leading,’ Kit growled.

‘I’m talking
incentive
,’ Crispin explained patiently. ‘I’m talking about
what drives the average Joe Bloggs to get out of bed in the morning: money, filthy
lucre, dosh. And in my business – never yours – who gets a piece of the cake when an
operation is as successful as
Wildlife
was. And the sort of resentments that
are aroused. To the point where chaps like Jeb think they’re owed half the Bank of
England.’

‘You seem to have forgotten that Jeb
was
army
,’ Kit broke in hotly. ‘
British
army. He also had
a bit of a
thing
about bounty-hunters, as he happened to inform me during our
time together. Tolerated them, but that was as much as he could manage. He was proud of
being the Queen’s soldier, and that was enough
for him. Made the
very point, I’m afraid. Sorry about that’ – getting hotter still.

Crispin was gently nodding to himself, like
a man whose worst fears have been confirmed.

‘Oh dear. Oh Jeb. Oh boy. He actually
said
that, did he? God-a-mercy!’ He collected himself. ‘The
Queen’s soldier doesn’t hold with mercenaries, but wants a mega-slice of the
bounty-hunters’ cake? I love it. Well done, Jeb. Hypocrisy hits new depths. And
when he doesn’t get what he wants, he turns round and shits all over
Ethical’s doorstep. What a two-faced little’ – but for reasons of delicacy
he preferred to leave the sentence unfinished.

And again Kit refused to be deterred:

‘Now look here, all that’s
beside the point. I haven’t got my answer, have I? Nor has Suzanna.’

‘To
what
, exactly, old
boy?’ Crispin asked, still struggling to overcome whatever demons were assailing
him.

‘The answer I came for, damn it. Yes
or no? Forget rewards, bounty, all that stuff. Total red herring. My question is, one:
was the operation bloodless or was it not? Was
anybody killed
? And if so, who
were they? Never mind about innocent or guilty:
were they killed?
And
two
’ – no longer quite the master of his arithmetic, but persisting
nonetheless – ‘was a
woman
killed? And was her
child
killed? Or
any
child, for that matter? Suzanna has a right to know. So’ve I. And
we both need to know what to tell our daughter, because Emily was there too. At the
Fayre. Heard him. Heard things that she shouldn’t have done. From Jeb. Not her
fault that she heard them but she did. I’m not sure how much, but enough.’
And as a mitigating afterthought, because his parting words to Emily at the railway
station still shamed him: ‘Earwigging, probably. I don’t blame her.
She’s a doctor. She’s observant. She needs to know things. Part of her
job.’

Crispin appeared surprised, even a little
hurt, to discover that
such questions should still be out there on the
table. But he elected to answer them anyway:

‘Let’s just take a look at
your
case first, Kit, shall we?’ he suggested kindly.
‘D’you honestly think the dear old FO would have given you that posting –
that
honour
– if there’d been blood all over the Rock? Not to mention
Punter
singing his heart out to his interrogators at an undisclosed
location?’

‘Could have done,’ Kit said
obstinately, ignoring the outsider’s hated use of
FO
. ‘To keep me
quiet. Get me out of the firing line. Stop me from blabbing. The Foreign Office has done
worse things in its time. Suzanna thinks they could, anyway. So do I.’

‘Then watch my lips.’

From under furrowed brows, Kit was doing
just that.

‘Kit. There was zero – repeat: zero –
loss of life. Want me to say it again? Not
one
drop of blood, not
anyone’s. No dead babies, no dead mothers. Convinced now? Or do I have to ask the
concierge to bring a Bible?’

The walk from the Connaught to Pall Mall on
that balmy spring evening was for Kit less a pleasure than a sad celebration. Jeb, poor
fellow, was obviously very damaged goods indeed. Kit’s heart went out to him: a
former comrade, a brave ex-soldier who had given in to feelings of avarice and
injustice. Well, he’d known a better man than that, a man to respect, a man to
follow. Should their paths happen to cross again – which God forbid, but should they –
he would not withhold the hand of friendship. As to their chance meeting at
Bailey’s Fayre, he had no time for Crispin’s base suspicions. It was sheer
coincidence, and that was that. The greatest actor on earth couldn’t have faked
that ravaged face as it stared up at him from the tailgate of the van. Jeb might be
psychotic, he
might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder
or any of the other big words we throw around so easily these days. But to Kit he would
remain the Jeb who had led him to the high point of his career, and nothing was ever
going to take that away, period.

And it was with this determinedly honed
formulation in his head that he stepped into a side street and called Suzanna, a thing
he had been dying to do, but also in some indefinable way dreading, ever since he had
left the Connaught.

‘Things are
really
good,
Suki’ – picking his words carefully because, as Emily had unkindly pointed out,
Suzanna was if anything more security conscious than he was. ‘We’re dealing
with a very sick chap who’s tragically lost his way in life and can’t tell
truth from fiction, okay?’ He tried again. ‘Nobody – repeat:
nobody
– got hurt in the accident. Suki? Are you there?’

Oh Christ, she’s crying. She’s
not. Suki never cries.

‘Suki, darling, there was
no
accident
. None plural. It’s
all right
. No
child
left
behind. Or mother. Our friend from the Fayre is
deluded
. He’s a poor,
brave chap, he’s got mental problems, he’s got money problems, and
he’s all muddled up in his head. I’ve had it straight from the top
man.’

‘Kit?’

‘What is it, darling? Tell me. Please.
Suzanna?’

‘I’m all right, Kit. I was just
a bit tired and low. I’m better now.’

Still not weeping? Suki? Not on your life.
Not old Suki. Never. He had been intending to call Emily next, but on reflection: best
give it a rest till tomorrow.

In his club, it was the watering hour. Old
buddies greeted him, bought him a jar, he bought one back. Kidneys and bacon at the long
table, coffee and port in the library to make a proper night
of it.
The lift out of service, but he negotiated the four flights with ease and groped his way
down the long corridor to his bedroom without knocking over any bloody fire
extinguishers. But he had to run his hand up and down the wall to find the light switch
that kept eluding him, and while he was groping he noticed there was a lot of fresh air
in the room. Had the previous occupant, in flagrant contradiction of club rules, been
smoking and left the window open to conceal the evidence? If so, Kit was minded to write
a stiff letter to the secretary.

And when eventually he did find the switch,
and put on the light, there on a Rexine-covered armchair beneath the open window,
wearing a smart dark-blue blazer with a triangle of white handkerchief in the top
pocket, sat Jeb.

The brown A4 envelope landed face upwards
on the doormat of Toby Bell’s flat in Islington at twenty past three on a Saturday
morning, shortly after his return from a rewarding but stressful tour at the British
Embassy in Beirut. Immediately on security alert, he grabbed a hand torch from his
bedside and tiptoed warily along the corridor to the sound of softly retreating
footsteps down the stairs and the closing of the front door.

The envelope was of the thick, oily variety,
and unfranked. The words
PRIVATE
&
CONFIDENTIAL
were
written in large inked capitals in the top-left corner. The address
T. Bell,
Esquire, Flat 2
, was done in a cursive, English-looking hand he didn’t
recognize. The back flap was double sealed with sticky tape, the torn-off ends of which
were folded round to the front. No sender’s name was offered, and if the
antiquated
Esquire
, spelt out in full, was intended to reassure him, it had the
opposite effect. The contents of the envelope appeared to be flat – so technically a
letter, not a package. But Toby knew from his training that devices don’t have to
be bulky to blow your hands off.

There was no great mystery about how a
letter could be delivered to his first-floor flat at such an hour. At weekends the front
door to the house was often left unlocked all night. Steeling himself, he picked up the
envelope and, holding it at arm’s length, took it to the kitchen. After examining
it under the overhead light, he cut into the side of it with a kitchen knife and
discovered a second envelope addressed in the same hand:
ATTENTION OF T.
BELL, ESQ
. ONLY
.

This interior envelope too was sealed with
sticky tape. Inside it were two tightly written sheets of headed blue notepaper,
undated.

As from:
The
Manor,
St
Pirran,
Bodmin,
Cornwall

My dear Bell,

Forgive this cloak-and-dagger
missive, and the furtive manner of its delivery. My researches inform me that
three years ago you were Private Secretary to a certain junior minister. If I
tell you that we have a mutual acquaintance by the name of Paul, you will guess
the nature of my concern and appreciate why I am not at liberty to expand in
writing.

The situation in which I find
myself is so acute that I have no option but to appeal to your natural human
instincts and solicit your complete discretion. I am asking you for a personal
meeting at your earliest possible convenience, here in the obscurity of North
Cornwall rather than in London, on any day of your choosing. No prior warning,
whether by email, telephone or the public post, is necessary, or
advisable.

Our house is presently under
renovation, but we have ample room to accommodate you. I am delivering this at
the start of the weekend in the hope that it may expedite your visit.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher (Kit)
Probyn.

PS Sketch map and How to Reach
Us attached. C.P.

PPS Obtained your address from a
former colleague under a pretext. C.P.