Final Account (18 page)

They walked down to Stumps, under the museum, and made their way to the bar, where Burgess ordered a pint of McEwan's lager and Banks a pint of bitter. It wasn't Theakston's, but it would have to do.

As it was a warm day, they took their drinks outside and found a free table. There was a broad, tiled area between the museum-library complex and the buses roaring by on The Headrow, and pedestrians hurried back and forth, some heading for the Court Centre or the Town Hall and some taking short-cuts to Calverley Street and the Civic Hall. A group of people stood playing chess with oversize figures on a board drawn on the tiles. Scaffolding covered the front of one of the nineteenth-century buildings across The Headrow, Banks noticed. Another renovation.

Banks felt both puzzled and apprehensive at Burgess's arrival on the scene. The last time they had locked horns was over the killing of a policeman at an anti-government demonstration in Eastvale back in the Thatcher era.

Burgess had fitted in just fine back then. An East Ender, son of a barrow boy, he had fought his way up from the bottom with a fierce mixture of ego, ambition, cunning and a total disregard for the rules most people played by. He also felt no sympathy for those who had been unable to do likewise. Now, at about Banks's age, he was a Detective Superintendent working for a Scotland Yard department that was not quite Special Branch and not quite MI5, but close enough to both to give Banks the willies.

In a period when a fully functioning human heart was regarded as a severe disability, he had been one of the new, golden breed of working-class Conservatives, up there in the firmament of the new Britain alongside the bright young things in the City, the insider
traders and their like. Cops and criminals: it didn't seem to make a lot of difference, as long as you were successful. But then, it never did to some people.

Nobody could gainsay Burgess's abilities—intelligence and physical courage being foremost among them—but “The end justifies the means” could have been written just for him. The “end” was some vague sort of loyalty to whatever the people in power wanted done for the preservation of order, as long as the people in power weren't liberals or socialists, of course; and as for the “means,” the sky was the limit.

Maybe he had changed, Banks wondered. After all the recent inquiries and commissions, a policeman could surely no longer walk into a pub, pick up the first group of Irish people he saw and throw them in jail as terrorists, could he? Or walk down Brixton Road and arrest the first black person he saw running? According to the public-relations people, today's policeman was a cross between Santa Claus and a hotel manager.

On the other hand, perhaps that was only according to the PR people: truth in advertising,
caveat emptor
and the rest. Besides, if there was one thing not likely to make the slightest impression on Burgess's obsidian consciousness, it was political correctness.

Banks lit a cigarette and held out his lighter as Burgess fired up one of his Tom Thumb cigars. He was still in good shape, though filling out a bit around the belly. He had a square jaw and slightly crooked teeth. His black, slicked-back hair was turning silver at the temples and sideboards, and the bags under his seen-it-all grey eyes looked as if they had taken on a bit more weight since Banks had last seen him. About six feet tall, casually dressed in a black leather jacket, open-neck shirt and grey cords, he was still handsome enough to turn the heads of a few thirtyish women, and had a reputation as something of a rake. It wasn't entirely unfounded, Banks had discovered the last time they worked together.

Banks reached for his pint. “To what do I owe the honour?” he asked. He had never dignified Burgess with the “sir” his rank demanded, and he was damned if he was about to start now.

Burgess swigged some lager, swished it around his mouth and swallowed.

“Well?” said Banks. “Enough bloody theatrics, for Christ's sake.”

“I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said I'd missed you?”

“Get on with it.”

“Right. Thought not. Ever heard of a place called St Corona?”

“Of course. It's a Caribbean island, been in the news a bit lately.”

“Clever boy. That's the one. Population about four point eight million. Area about seven thousand square miles. Chief resources: bauxite, limestone, aluminium, sugar cane, plus various fruits and spices, fish and a bit of gold, silver and nickel. A lot of tourism, too, or there used to be.”

“So you've been studying
Whitaker's Almanac,
” said Banks. “Now what the bloody hell is this all about?”

A tipsy youth bumped into the table and spilled some of Burgess's lager. The youth stopped to apologize, but the look Burgess gave him sent him stumbling off into the bright afternoon sunlight before he could get the words out.

“Fucking lager lout,” Burgess muttered, wiping the beer off the table-top with a handkerchief. “Gone to the dogs, this country. Where was I? Oh, yes. St Corona. Imports just about everything you need to live, including the machinery to make it. Lots of television sets, radios, fridges, washing machines.” He paused and whistled between his teeth as a young redhead in a mini-skirt walked by. “Now
that's
not bad,” he said. “Which reminds me, have you rogered that young redhead in Eastvale yet? You know, the psychologist.” He flicked the stub of his cigar towards the gutter; it hit the wall just above with a shower of sparks.

Burgess meant Jenny Fuller, as he knew damn well. Banks managed a smile, remembering what happened the last time those two met. “St Corona,” he said. “You were saying?”

Burgess pouted. “You're no fun. Know who the president is?”

“What is this, bloody ‘Mastermind'? Martin Churchill. Now, if you've got something to tell me, get it off your chest and let me go home. It's been a long day.”

“Back to that lovely wife of yours, eh? Sandra, isn't it? All right, all right. St Corona is a republic, and you're right, Martin Churchill is president for life. Good name for the job, don't you think?”

“I've read about him.”

“Yes, well, the poor sod's a bit beleaguered these days, what with the opposition parties raking up the muck and the independence and liberation movements going from strength to strength.” He sighed. “I don't know. It seems people just don't believe in a good old benevolent dictatorship any more.”

“Benevolent, my arse,” said Banks. “He's been bleeding the country dry for ten years and now they're closing in on him. What am I supposed to do, cry?”

Burgess glared at Banks through squinting eyes. “Still the bloody pinko, huh? Still the limp-wristed, knee-jerking liberal?” He sighed. “Somehow, Banks, I hadn't expected you to change. That's partly why I'm here. Anyway, whatever you or I might think about it, the powers that be decided it was a good idea to have a stable government in that part of the world, someone we could trust. Of course, it doesn't seem quite so important now, with the Russkies swapping their rusty old atomic warheads for turnips, but other threats exist. Anyway, Britain, France, Canada, the States and a few others pumped millions into St Corona over the years, so you can estimate how important it is to us.”

Banks listened intently. There could be no rushing Burgess; he would get where he was going in his own sweet time.

“Churchill's finished,” Burgess went on with a sweeping hand gesture. “It's just a matter of time. Weeks … months. He knows it. We know it. The only thing now is for him to get out alive with his family while he still can and take up life in exile.”

“And he wants to come here?”

Burgess looked around at the chess players and The Headrow. “Well, I don't think he's got the north of England in mind specifically, but you're on the right track. Maybe a nice little retirement villa in Devon or Cornwall, the English Riviera. Somewhere where the weather's nice. Cultivate his herbaceous borders. Live out his days in the contemplation of nature. Prepare himself for the life hereafter. Make his peace with the Almighty. That kind of thing. Somewhere he won't do any more harm.”

Burgess lit another little cigar and spat out a flake of loose tobacco. “The Yanks have said no, but then they've got a good record of turning their backs on their mates. The French are dithering and jabbering and waving their arms about, as usual. They'd probably sneak him in the back door like the good little hypocrites they are, if they had any real incentive left. And the Canadians … well, they're just too fucking moral for their own good. The bottom line, Banks, is that there's a lot of pressure on our government to take him in, as quietly as possible, of course.”

“Sneak him in the back door, you mean, like the hypocritical French?”

“If you like.”

“His human rights record is appalling,” Banks said. “The infant mortality rate in St Corona is over fifteen per cent, for a start. Life expectancy isn't much more than fifty for a man and sixty for a woman.”

“Oh, dear, dear. You've been reading
The Guardian
again, haven't you, Banks?”

“And other papers. The story's the same.”

“Well, you should know better than to believe all you read in the papers, shouldn't you?” Burgess looked around conspiratorially and lowered his voice. Nobody seemed in the least bit interested in them. Laughter and fragments of conversation filled the air. “Have you ever wondered,” he said, “why women always seem to have a higher life expectancy rate than men? Don't they have as many bad habits as we do? Maybe they just don't work as hard, don't suffer as much stress? Maybe it's all that slimming and aerobics, eh? Maybe there's something in it.

“Anyway, back to Mr Churchill's predicament. And this is classified, by the way. There are some people in power who want him here, who feel we owe him, and there are some who don't, who feel he's a low-life scumbag and deserves to die as slowly and painfully as possible.” As usual, Burgess liked to show off his American slang. He went to the States often, on “courses.”

“Oh, come off it,” said Banks. “If they want him here it's not out of any sense of duty, it's because he's got something they want, or because he's got something on them.”

Burgess scratched his cheek. “Cynic,” he said. “But you're partly right. He's not a nice man. As far as I can gather he's a glutton, a boor, a murderer and a rapist, sodomy preferred. But that's not the
issue at all. The problem is that we educated him, made him what he is. Eton and Cambridge. He read law there. Did you know that? He went through school and university with a lot of important people, Banks. Cabinet ministers, bankers, power brokers, back-room boys. You know how people can behave indiscreetly when they're young? Do things they wouldn't want to come back and haunt them when they're in the public eye? And we're talking about people who have the power to loosen the government purse strings now and then, whenever St Corona asks for more aid. And rumour has it that he's also got quite a nice little savings account that won't do our economy any harm at all.”

“Let me guess,” said Banks. “Laundered money?”

Burgess raised his eyebrows. “Well, of course. Which brings me to the murder of Keith Rothwell. You are senior field investigator, I understand?”

“Yes.”

“That's why I thought I'd better deal with you in person. I know you, Banks. You're still a pinko liberal, as you've proved time and time again. In fact, as soon as they told me you were on the case, I thought, ‘Oh, fuck we're in trouble.' You've no respect for the venerable institutions of government, or for the necessity of secrecy in some of their workings. You've got no respect for tradition and you don't give a toss about preserving the natural order of things. You probably don't even stand up for ‘God Save the Queen.' In short, you're a bloody bolshie troublemaker and a menace to national security.”

Banks smiled. “Thanks for the compliment,” he said. “But I wouldn't go quite
that
far.”

Burgess grinned. “Maybe I exaggerate. But you get my point?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good. That's why I'm going to tell you something very, very important and very, very secret, and I'm going to trust you with it. We've been keeping an eye on the St Corona situation, and anything that could possibly have to do with Martin Churchill gets flagged. Now, we just got a report from your Fraud Squad late yesterday evening that they found something on Keith Rothwell's computer that indicates he may have been laundering money for Martin Churchill. Lots of trips to the Channel Islands and the Caribbean. Some very dodgy bank accounts. Some very dodgy banks, too, for that matter. Anyway, there's a pattern and a time period that matches exactly the sort of thing we've been looking for. We've known this was going on for some time, but until now we hadn't a clue who was doing it. There's no proof it was Rothwell, yet—the Fraud Squad still has a lot of work to do, chasing down transactions and what have you—but if I'm right, then we're talking about a lot of money. Something in the region of thirty or forty million pounds over three or four years. Mostly money that was originally provided as aid by leading western nations. It's the same kind of thing Baby Doc did in Haiti.”

“And you think this might have something to do with Rothwell's murder?”

Burgess shook his head. “I don't really know, but the odds are that there's some kind of connection, don't you think? Especially considering the way he was killed. I mean, it was hardly a domestic, was it?”

“Possibly,” Banks agreed. “Do you have any leads on the killers?”

“No more than you. I'm only
suggesting
that Churchill might be behind them.”

“And if he is?”

“Watch your back.”

Banks thought about that for a moment. He wasn't sure who constituted the greatest threat to his exposed back, Churchill or Burgess. “I must say this is pretty quick work on your part,” he said.