Deep Shelter (37 page)

“His possessions?”

They were in a bag waiting on the desk. Belsey grabbed the bag. Someone slid the custody book towards him for signing and Belsey tore the page out. He started towards the cell.

“No one in or out, no matter who they say they are. Open it.”

The custody officer unlocked Monroe’s cell and backed away. The journalist was standing, red-eyed and unshaven. He’d eschewed the rubber mattress and placed himself as far as possible from an iron bucket in the corner.

“Let’s go,” Belsey said.

“What’s happening?”

“Follow me and don’t say anything.”

They left the cell. Belsey steered Monroe through front reception, past the open-mouthed Sergeant to his car. Monroe blinked at the daylight.

“I need a lawyer,” he said.

“You need Amnesty International, Tom. The intelligence services are on their way. Get in.”

They climbed into Belsey’s Skoda as a fleet of more lustrous cars appeared. Belsey tore past. He was halfway down Mortlake Road before Monroe had the passenger door closed.

TRAFFIC WAS SOLID UP AHEAD, THE ROAD NARROWED TO
one channel by Transport Police. Belsey tried to see if they were pulling vehicles over. It didn’t look promising. Belsey turned the car around.

“You’re covered in blood,” Monroe said.

“Someone shot me.”

Kew Bridge now had an Armed Response Vehicle parked at one end, a police Transit van at the other. Belsey braked, turned again. It seemed they were trapped in a peninsula of south-west London. He saw signs pointing to Kew Retail Park. It seemed as good an option as any. Crowd cover, at least. Maybe pick up a bargain. He swerved towards it.

“You know you’re all over the news,” Monroe said.

“I know. I’m shot and I’m all over the news and now I’m trapped in Kew. Why the fuck is that?”

Belsey swung into the retail park: T.K. Maxx, M&S, Next; each occupied its own monumental grey box. T.K. Maxx had the crowds. Belsey parked up close enough to be hidden, but not too far from the exit back to the main road. He kept the engine running.

“The article, about you—they took the photos off my computer,” Monroe said.

“I figured that.”

“Well you didn’t figure this: the IT department had someone visit them two months ago, warning them that they might receive classified intelligence, and to pass on anything that looked remotely suspicious. Sure enough, someone began sending emails a week later, saying they had information about an event in 1983. The sender used the name Michael Forrester. The same thing happened at other papers apparently. Mr. Forrester was firing emails to anyone he could get an address for, only they were all diverted straight to MI6.”

“What were these emails saying?”

“I don’t know. But apparently a man using the name Michael Forrester went into Wood Street police station ten days ago saying he needed police protection. Did you hear about this?”

“No.”

“I spoke to the DI there. This individual thought his life was under threat. Some jobsworth at Wood Street notified the intelligence services and the police were told to place him under arrest. So he fled. Around that time he sends another batch of emails. Only now he’s Ferryman. He’s been gagged from the start, Nick. You see? Duncan found something. He passed it on. Now our Ferryman has put all press on standby. He wants them to watch you, where you go. He says something is about to happen.”

“Great. And why are we in Kew?”

Monroe pointed through the back windscreen. Rising above the retail outlets was a long modern building.

“To see what’s been declassified.”

“What is that?”

“The National Archives. The date, you see. Now. It’s 2013.”

“I remember.”

“The exercise was 1983, thirty years ago. Duncan Powell tracked declassification dates. Government material is kept out of the public domain for thirty years. Then, unless someone raises objections, it’s released. Duncan would track dates, ascertain what made it into the light of day and what had been held back. He called it gap hunting. At the beginning of the year a tranche of new files was released. That was around the time he got in touch with his publisher. So I thought maybe he’d found something in the archives.”

“And was there anything there?”

“I never got the chance to find out. Your colleagues picked me up as soon as I crossed the river.”

Belsey handed him the last page from the case notes.

“Read this. It’s the final session Michael Easton had with his therapist.”

Monroe read it out loud: “Even government secrets have their own seasons—they will surface when it is time. In his dreams or someone else’s. In slips of the tongue.”

The journalist gave a dazed smile. “He’s talking about the release of files. Where did you get this?”

“I borrowed it.”

Monroe read the entry again.

“He’s gone to the National Archives.”

“It certainly sounds like it.”

“No, he has. Look, this number at the bottom: DEFE then something like 1139.”

“What is it?”

“That’s a file reference. DEFE means defence-related material.”

Belsey started the car.

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?”

Monroe pulled the handbrake on.

“I’m not getting arrested again.”

“OK. I’m going there. I need to see what it was Duncan Powell found. I need to know where Easton is heading. Kirsty Craik might get in touch with you. Keep an eye on your phone.”

Monroe opened the passenger door and jumped out. Then he leaned back in.

“You’ll need a pass,” he said. “For the archives.”

“I’ve got police badge and a handgun,” Belsey said. “I think I’ll manage.”

BELSEY CUT THROUGH NEAT RESIDENTIAL STREETS. THE
National Archives appeared again, rising from stagnant ponds, the size of an airport. He drove right up to the glass doors. He unpacked another fentanyl lollipop and stuck it between his teeth and his gum. His mouth was dry. Belsey tested his pulse. It was there. He could afford up to three pints of blood. He checked the Webley, transferred it to his jacket and angled the rear-view mirror down: blood through his clothes, eyes pinned, jacket bulky with antique weaponry. This wasn’t a surreptitious look.

He got out of the car and stumbled. Sharpen up. He headed through the revolving glass doors into a reception. The young woman on the desk took one look at him and picked up the phone.

“I’m police,” he said. He followed signs for the reading room away from the anxious receptionist through a canteen. There were screens everywhere, it seemed: all showing BBC News—in reception, up on the canteen wall—all with his face on. Why did an archive need so many fucking TV screens?
Nationwide Hunt . . .

Past lockers, up stairs, breathing, calm.

The first floor had a public area with PC terminals and an enquiry desk before you got to security barriers into the reading room. The reading room was filled with men and women browsing yellowing tomes of officialdom. It shimmered on the other side of the barriers. Belsey blinked. His vision had known sharper days, splintering now into hallucinatory fragments. Posters advised on family research and local history. “Enquiries”: he headed for the sign. A small woman in a grey suit and a bald man with a brown beard took one look at him and pressed the alarm button.

“Wait,” Belsey said, pointlessly.

He reached for his badge, pulled the gun. Someone screamed. People turned, then a lot of amateur historians hit the floor.

An amber alarm light flashed. The National Archives—that would connect to more than just the garden-centre constabulary. He leaned over the enquiries counter.

“I’ve got an enquiry. I’m looking for this file.” He produced the case notes, tried a wave of the gun. The bearded man was holding up best. He checked the code and entered it into the computer.

“It was recently in use. Should be up here. You don’t need to hurt anyone.”

“I don’t intend to hurt anyone.”

The man led him through, past the security barrier. Guards watched the gun, hands raised; they looked as old as the files they were meant to be protecting. To one side were stacks of clear-fronted cabinets, like doors at a morgue. The bearded man checked their numbers, opened one and produced a small box.

“Where do you want it?”

“On the table.”

He put it down. It was a plain brown cardboard box the size of a telephone directory. Belsey picked it up with his free hand. It was light. He flipped the lid off. Inside was one tattered manila folder.
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE—TOP SECRET—ACID
. Official stamps overlaid one another. Then, diagonally across them: “Declassified 2013.” The next page was the front of the file itself.

MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT IN THE

EVENT OF NUCLEAR WAR

SITE 3 RESEARCH PROGRAMME

COMMAND CHAIN AND INITIATED

PERSONNEL

Belsey opened it. He stared at the yellow cardboard back of the folder. Nothing remained inside the sleeves apart from a piece of string and a corner of white paper. Someone had torn the whole thing out.

He closed the box and sat down. He placed the gun on the table, listened to the sirens approaching.

Sorry, Jemma. He would spend his life watching the torchlight disappear. Rewinding that evening and starting again. Almost 3:30 p.m., according to the clock on the reading room wall. She had another two and a half hours to live. And he could do nothing about it.

He tried to light a cigarette and his arm felt like it was encased in metal. Belsey gave up. Through the windows around the side of the room he could see the day over halfway done, mid-afternoon ready to become late afternoon. It was Friday. Out in the world there would be that sweet, quiet relief that, no matter how awful it had been, things were over. The week was over.

He considered self-medicating. He knew what he’d get in custody: some disinterested duty medic with a couple of milligrams of morphine. If he was lucky. He watched the strange scene he’d created, people under desks praying, curled up like it was rest time, their work left open above them. Abandoned pencils scattered. Then he stopped. Every pencil was missing its eraser.

Belsey got unsteadily to his feet. He picked up a pencil, ran his thumb over the metal sleeve where the rubber should have been. He looked around. He wasn’t imagining it. There, in a neat pile on the guard’s desk, were the missing pink nodules. Alongside other confiscated items: bottles of water, a packet of mints, Tippex. Belsey walked over. The guard was nowhere to be seen. He lifted a sheet of regulations.

Restricted items: food and drink, blades, glue, any kind of eraser
.

The bearded man was watching him.

“Do you need something?” he asked.

“I need to know who had that file most recently. Who was the last person to request it?”

The man went back to his enquiries desk and tapped a key.

“A Dr. Joseph Green,” he said. “Had it out two days ago.”

BELSEY KEPT TO BACK ROADS, HEADING NORTH, TOWARDS
Highgate. Towards Windmill Drive. Fragments from the past four days coalesced in his damaged mind.

Michael came to London for him. Because he thought Joseph would help. That’s what he said
.

Hugh Hamilton saw Michael Easton on 17 April. That was four days after Easton’s return from travelling. But it was Joseph he was after.
Michael had read all of his work. He quoted from it. I’m sure Joseph loved that
. Belsey thought back to his own first meeting with the doctor. He saw Joseph studying
Military Heritage
through the plastic of the evidence bag. That would have been minutes after Easton had announced that he was done with therapy, that state secrets will find their own way out. That he had been spending time at Kew.

No one answered at the doctor’s house. The front door was open. Belsey walked through to the study. Joseph Green lay face down on the rug, one arm outstretched. He looked like he was trying to swim through his own blood. A very old hunting knife lay a foot from his outstretched hand.

He asks whether I believe in hell, whether killing can ever be justified, whether there is a limit to forgiveness
.

Asks if I’d forgive my own killer if I met them, before or after death
.

Belsey turned slowly. The doctor had armed himself. He’d come to their final meeting prepared. But the hunting knife was clean. He’d been moving around the desk when he was stabbed by something more effective. The desk was knocked crooked. There had been a struggle in which papers and books had fallen, a handprint where he had tried to support himself against the wall.

Belsey crouched and felt his neck. No pulse. But Belsey could hear breathing. He wasn’t the only living person in the room.

He eased himself up. There was someone behind the door. Belsey took the Webley out, then kicked the door hard into the body of the individual. It sprang back towards him.

“No!” Hamilton crouched. He held a leather briefcase in front of him as a shield. Belsey lowered the gun. “I just got here,” the disciple spluttered. “I don’t have anything to do with this. I just . . . I was told to come here.”

A voice in Hamilton’s hand said: “Could you repeat which service you require: police, fire or ambulance?”

“Hang up,” Belsey said. Hamilton killed the call. He glanced at the gun then Belsey’s blood-soaked sleeve. The call had connected. So they would be tracing it. Six-minute average response to a high-priority call in a dense urban area.

“You were told to come here?” Belsey said.

“My wife took a message—Joseph was ready to start participating again, to talk. I should come here immediately. But I think it was a . . . It wasn’t true. It was Michael. Michael who told me to come here.” His voice trailed off.

Belsey studied the body again. No blotches of lividity. Less than twenty minutes dead. Hamilton moved for the door.

“Stay there,” Belsey said. He turned the body just enough to see multiple stab wounds across the front of the torso then eased the corpse back. “Where was Joseph in November 1983?” he asked.