Keep Calm (27 page)

“So Adam can be sacrificed?”

“When things settle down, sooner rather than later, your daughter and the kids will be flown quietly out of the UK. She has a policy from the company that covers him when he's traveling abroad in case of an accident. We'll honor it to the letter, and she'll be well looked after.”

“And he'll be dead?”

Heaton chuckled, rolled his cigar in his hand and smelled it.

“Are you wearing a wire, Gordon?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you need everything spelled out for you?”

“We're talking about my son-in-law.”

“Whom you can't stand. Who embarrassed the hell out of his wife. Remember? You were all for this when he was just going to do a small turn in prison, weren't you? When he'd have been destroyed and she'd be back here in London? Now that it's worse than that, you've found your line in the sand. Is that what you're telling me? Because I'm sorry, the game has changed. The stakes have been raised and you are seated at the table, Gordon, whether you like it or not. You don't get to pull back. You don't get to just cash in and walk away, not now. Neither of us does.” He finished putting everything back in place and gave Gordon a moment to resign himself to the circumstances.

“You were on the phone with the former boyfriend two hours ago. Your mobile to his mobile. He's with them. He has your granddaughter. Where are they?”

Gordon was stunned. The tentacles these people had were as long-reaching and quick to react as he feared. The resources Heaton was dealing with were infinite.

“We're all-in here, Gordon. Deep. Do not even think about going wobbly. It's nowhere near close to smart.” Gordon finally nodded. He knew Heaton was right. He had no choice.

“Royal Tunbridge Wells. His family has got a mill house on the Pillgar Riverway, about ten miles east.”

“Where is it?”

“Somewhere on the Derry Road … Kate and the kids. They need to be golden.”

“Yes. Good. Golden. That's a boy. You have my word. Stay firm, Gordon. It's all going to work out.”

 

ON THE HUNT
■
5

As Georgia billowed through the back halls of Number 11 into Number 10 with a dust cloud of assistants and secretaries, on her way from an education meeting into the Cabinet Room to be brought once again up to running speed on the investigation, she saw an elderly man sitting in the waiting area. The image froze her to the spot. It was her father.

Harry Turnbull was seventy-eight, as nice, sweet, and calm of an old gentleman as could be. Georgia and her father mutually adored each other. The walls of his chemist shop were papered with stories and magazine photos in a shrine to her career. Her mother had died when she was only six, her father having never remarried. He busied his life raising his three children, Georgia and her two brothers, running his shop in Finchley, playing with his grandchildren, watching sports with his pals, going to church every Sunday, and religiously smoking one cheap cigar every single day. He wasn't one to ever bother his busy daughter. He never needed a favor, never wanted in or around any of the canyons of power and glory that his daughter regularly played in. He had never once in all her career ever dropped by unannounced.

The fact that he was there at Number 10, obviously waiting for her, could only be more bad news. She could see Jack Early and his team of blondes hovering over him, getting him a coffee, obviously trying to let him know how busy the acting PM was. She went straight over to her father. They'd only talked once in the last few days: the night of the bombing she had called to let him and the family know she was okay. Her father spoke only of his pain for Roland and his family. He wanted to know if he could help in any way. That was Harry, to a tee.

“Daddy, how are you?”

“I'm well, love. I need to see you.”

Early interjected. He wanted the chancellor to know Mr. Harry had been well taken care of but told of the full schedule. Georgia thanked him and put the parade to the Cabinet Room on pause. She excused herself and escorted her father into Lassiter's office. She closed the door.

“This is where you're working out of now?”

“Yes, Daddy, for the time being.”

“It's nice. I've only been in here once, for Roland's birthday a few years back, to have cake.”

“I remember. It was a beautiful morning. He was thrilled you were here.”

“Is he going to make it?”

“I hope so, Daddy. I so hope so.”

They stood for a moment. Harry looked around, not thrilled about getting to the heart of the matter that brought him over.

“You don't look well, Georgie. You look like it's taking a toll.”

“I'll be fine. I'm not going to lie to you, though. It's been a horrid week.”

“I know. I follow the news. Normally I don't, but this week I think it's all I can do.”

“Daddy, is there anything wrong? Anything I can help you with?”

“Some pills have gone missing, Georgie. At the shop.”

“Pills?”

Her heart sank like a lead balloon. She felt like a nine-year-old girl. A cloud of shame mushroomed around her body.

“Missing? As in stolen, Daddy? Is someone stealing from you? If that's true, it's horrible, and we can have a police detective…”

“I've put in cameras last month. The new manager, Byron, had the idea. I okayed it.” Her chest froze up now, worse than her feet had done before. She felt as if a giant rock were sitting on it, even though she was standing straight up.

“You've cameras? Inside the store?”

“And the back. The shelves. Twenty-four hours. It's you, Georgie; I knew it was you without the cameras. I'm very, very worried for you. These are incredibly strong pills.”

She didn't know what to say. She just wanted to cry but wouldn't allow herself to. The thought of letting him down, of her father seeing her in this light, was pure horror. She was caught. Revealed. Stripped bare.

Harry came closer, his eyes stern, concerned, sadly resigned to the truth. There was a new Georgia. Events, time, age, life, and too much responsibility had taken his baby away. This wounded woman with the wild hair had replaced her. She was a drug addict. He took her hands in his; they were as big and warm and friendly as they had always ever been.

“I know the pain you're in, love, but these are very strong pills you've got yourself on. They were fine for the two weeks when your body was broken and you needed calm to start the heal, but being on them now regularly, you'll not be yourself. You'll make very bad choices. You'll lose yourself, Georgie. I can make you that promise. You need to get some help, right away.” He gently brushed her busy bangs away from her face as tears cascaded down her cheeks. “I've told no one. I've no one to tell.”

“I love you, Daddy. I am so, so sorry.” She could barely look at her father, she was so embarrassed.

“Don't be sorry. Get help. Right away. That's what I've come for today—to look you in the eye, to tell you to reach out to someone. Right away.”

*   *   *

TWENTY MINUTES LATER
Georgia was in the meeting in the Cabinet Room that had been postponed for her sit-down with her father. She had washed up and had done her best to recompose. Darling, the COBRA reps, the home secretary, several cabinet members, and, of course, Steel and her minions were there to convey the latest on the hunt for Adam Tatum. There were developments, an embarrassing group of revelations.

Steel was the bearer of bad news. Georgia was just glad to see her face. She would have loved to be able to talk to her alone, tell her all about the private hell she was in, tell her how she'd let down her father, how she'd been caught red-handed stealing pills from his shop. She wondered if Steel would sympathize or if, instead, she would be forced by her convictions to turn the matter over to the DPG.

Georgia's mind went a thousand places in a fraction of a second. Telling Steel. Cleaning up. Getting free from those things for good. Admitting it all to the press. An inquiry. A scandal. A resignation. She had truly left the room, as badly as when she had fallen asleep and woken up again sure that she had just been in her bedroom upstairs. It was that dramatic of an exit. Steel's lips were moving but she wasn't hearing her. She nodded desperately, wanting everyone so badly to believe that she was in sync with them.

Steel sensed it. Instinctively saw the hidden cloud over Georgia's head. She felt the confusion, wanted to somehow lend a hand, to hold Georgia's arm all the way from across the room. She stopped, took a sip of water, was quiet for the longest time, pretended to be confused in her presentation. Darling finally broke the silence.

“Inspector Steel, can you please go on?”

“Yes, of course. I was just—I lost my train of thought. I don't know why … if it's all right with the chancellor, may I just quickly start over? From the top of the report? I'm so sorry. I'm having a long morning. Please forgive me, everyone.”

Georgia agreed, the men in the room grumbled softly, and Steel started from the top. Georgia knew clearly what she had done. She listened now to every word.

They were important beats, too, words that Georgia needed to hear. They had uncovered something from the day of the blast, something that had somehow fallen through the cracks for a solid week now. Tatum's wife and his two children had gone to Heathrow just three hours after the bomb went off and suddenly booked flights to Chicago. Not Tatum himself, but his family. Even odder was the fact that they never made the flight.

“We figure that they were on the run, that someone had caught up with them at the airport.”

Darling wanted to know why this was coming to light a week later. Why wasn't this known in real time? The home secretary had the head of COBRA's liaison officer, Reginald Atwell, explain it off.

“We weren't aware of the ticket purchases until Tatum's image was distributed to the airport security staff. They never passed through customs or security, so a bell wouldn't have gone off along that line. Once his photo was circulated within the system, within hours he was recognized as being there at the airport last Friday, and in fact he is on the CCTV files, for some reason chasing his daughter through the terminal.”

Darling tried to cover tracks by reminding the chancellor how busy a Friday it had been, how thinly spread assets were making sure more bombs weren't going off, that major installations were secured. Steel had even more news. A fight on Paddington's concourse that Friday, an incident that was put down to a wild woman fueled by drug use on the atrium landing, was now seen to be somehow connected.

“How could it be connected?” Georgia was focused now, keyed in, thanks to Steel. Focused but confused.

“Tatum's daughter. The same girl that he chased through the airports. She's on the CCTV files. Talking to the French woman who had the drug meltdown. It matches with the files from Heathrow twenty minutes earlier. We know she was on the Express, ran from her father, came to Paddington, and then was caught in the middle of a strange scene once she disembarked. Then she disappeared. We've pieced it together in a sense that we feel someone was fast on the family's tail.”

“What has happened with the French woman, the drug addict?” Georgia winced as she said the words.

“She was taken to Transport Security for questioning and a checkup.”

“Then?”

“She was let go. We don't yet know why. Let go, with no record of a name or an address. It's being looked into, Madam Chancellor, but she's disappeared. I'm sorry, but that's all I have on that for right now.”

There was more, though. Steel opened another file.

“We have phone records now from a rented mobile Mrs. Tatum obtained from Heaton Global. The records were given to us by them.”

“Do they tell us anything?”

“While in London, she was speaking quite a bit to a former boyfriend, a man named Richard Lyle, a local. Grew up and lives in London. A music promoter of some kind. That's all that we have on him yet, but more is coming.”

“Do we think this Richard Lyle is somehow involved?”

“We don't know yet. This is all developing quickly. We do know that Mr. Lyle also made a call from his mobile to Tatum's father-in-law, Gordon Thompson, later that Friday evening from an area in Kent. Since then, he hasn't used the phone again. In fact it's gone offline.”

“Kent? Isn't that where the rental car was found? With the dead body?” Georgia was wide alert now, sitting straight up. A picture was emerging. She couldn't help but think it was about bloody time.

“Yes. Just outside of Kent. We're not sure yet what the connection is. Why Kent and, for that matter, where? His name hasn't yet come up on any property searches or hotel ledgers in that area. Once we get deeper into the who and what of Richard Lyle, we believe we'll have an answer. We're on that now and expect something very soon. I would say by early this evening we'll know exactly where they've holed up down there in Kent.”

 

ON THE RUN
■
6

It was late at night at the mill house. Everyone but Kate was comfortably asleep. Kate was wide awake. The silence scared her. Everything had gotten too quiet, the night air too flat. The wind on the back fields coming up the tiny river normally whipped past the old wooden mill house, giving it a familiar creak, but this night, for some reason, the wind had nothing to offer her as she lay next to her sleeping fugitive husband.

They had been there for four full days now. The first night, and even the nights after, she hadn't slept; no one really had. Richard and the kids, maybe, but not her, nor Adam. They had tried to talk about what had happened, but there was nothing worth saying. It was too much of a nightmare to make it real with too many words.