The Company of Saints (19 page)

The rally was timed for seven o'clock that night. All day the crowds had been pouring into London. Banners were waved, songs sung, slogans chanted. There were women with children in arms, couples pushing prams, stalwarts who had marched from the Midlands and the north. Members of all political parties, trade unionists, nuns and atheists side by side with grandparents and teenage boys and girls. Impressive, he had to admit. But mistaken. How mistaken to think you could buy off the bloody Bear by dropping your fists and showing him a noble example.

MacNeil had his eye on some of those who organized behind the scenes. They didn't call attention to themselves. They didn't get arrested or sent to jail. They were what he called the paper workers. They set up the protests and let the faithful take the consequences. Always last in the street and first on the telephone to the media.

He had decided to go to the Albert Hall himself that evening. A bird's eye view was available to him, high above the platform. His men were positioned up there too, where they could watch for anything unexpected in the crowd.

The crowd opened the rally by singing the ‘Anthem to Peace'. Even MacNeil was impressed by the volume and sincerity of that hymn to human survival. Then the speeches began. Two were comparatively short. They congratulated the ordinary men and women who had gathered in London and whose example had made such an impression outside Britain. They introduced the Anglican priest. There was long and sustained applause for him and some cheering. He was very popular. Down in the crowd, close to the rostrum, a group of boys and girls were leading the clapping. They raised their arms high and beat their hands together above their heads. A young man in jeans and sweatshirt with the emblem of a dove printed on his chest shouted louder and clapped harder than anyone. The good minister smiled and waved his arms, trying to get the crowd to settle. Banners were unfurled. The white dove on a deep blue background, olive branch in its beak, waved and danced in the auditorium. Slogans undulated on their placards as they were waved triumphantly in the air.

‘Isn't he marvellous?' the girl next to the young man in the noisiest group shouted to him, and he shouted back, ‘Yes, look at his face. It's shining!' He leaped up and opened a banner with the letters painted in red: ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers'.

He was less than twelve feet from the smiling priest who was trying to hush his supporters. He furled his banner loosely and drew the gun out of his cowboy boot. Behind the shelter of the banner he slipped the safety catch, then opened the banner again and took aim behind it through a slit which gave him a clear view of his target. He waited until there was a final roar of affection, then fired four shots in succession. The bullets had a secondary explosive charge which caused enormous damage upon impact with the human body. The priest fell like someone dropping off a cliff, arms outstretched and mouth agape in shock. He was dead even before anyone on the platform reached him. The man who was called ‘Ireland' had joined the scrambling, hysterical crowd in a stampede towards the exits. He had vanished before MacNeil and his men had got down into the body of the hall.

‘It's like a nightmare,' Davina said. She was watching the television news. Humphrey, Tim Johnson, other members of the staff were gathered round the set. Everyone had been recalled. Colin Lomax was in the background keeping himself apart from them. He had been called round to Anne's Yard for a private briefing. There was nothing private about it now. Hundreds had been injured in the panic that followed the assassination. Some were seriously hurt. Earnest commentators came and went, giving their views; eye witnesses reported, some so harrowed that they broke down and cried.

‘Well,' Humphrey remarked, ‘at least it's over, that's one thing. We've been biting our nails waiting for it to happen here. And without being callous, it could have been worse.'

Davina turned on him angrily. ‘Worse? Good God, that man dead and all those poor devils injured! I don't know what you'd call worse!'

‘A head of state murdered.' Humphrey was unmoved by her reproof. ‘Supposing they'd picked on the German President instead … or the Queen's birthday parade? We've got to be realistic. It could have been much worse for us.' He hunched up his thin body and stared at the television screen.

‘I'm waiting for the first report from MacNeil,' Davina said. ‘But so far whoever did it got clear. Naturally enough in that crowd.'

‘With close on a quarter of a million in that march and three thousand inside the hall, nobody could stop a professional from getting away with it,' Johnson said. From his position in the background, Colin Lomax sized him up. He'd been briefly introduced. Foxy-faced, sharp as a tack. That was the new assistant Davina had mentioned. Lomax recognized the type, and didn't care for it much. He didn't think Davina would either. And then he wondered why that should concern him. It was none of his business what she felt about other men. He'd misjudged her badly once; she had a weakness he had never suspected. There was no other way he could account for Tony Walden. He looked at his watch. He was catching the plane at eight the next morning. He wanted his instructions and background information so he could get back to his flat. He didn't want to stay with this little group clustered round Davina, watching the same ugly scenes flashed on and off and hearing the same lugubrious commentaries. He came forward and lightly touched her arm. ‘Any chance we can finish my end of it?'

She had forgotten him for the moment. Venice, Paris, Warsaw, London. Nightmare was an understatement.

‘I haven't got all night to hang around,' he said curtly.

‘I'm sorry,' Davina said. ‘Tim'll come to your flat and bring the relevant stuff with him. He knows the set-up in Paris.'

Lomax felt like taking her by the shoulders and shaking her till her teeth rattled. ‘You asked me to do this,' he snapped. ‘You send in that ginger-headed bugger and the deal's off. I'm at 443 The Barbican, East!'

She smiled at him. ‘You haven't changed a bit, have you?'

‘Well, you have,' he said. ‘And I don't like it. You come or I don't go tomorrow. I mean it.'

‘I know you do,' she said. ‘You price yourself very high these days, Colin, but I need you. I'll get over to your flat as soon as I can.' She turned away from him and didn't see him leave.

There was nothing new from the Special Branch. No weapon had been found, no eye witnesses could help. MacNeil and his observers had seen nothing to alert them. They had spent hours sifting through the debris of torn banners and smashed placards that littered the hall. The only thing beyond dispute was that the killer had been close to the rostrum, because the gun that fired that calibre of bullet was a P32 and they weren't accurate beyond a range of thirty feet.

MacNeil sounded depressed and frustrated; the number of bloodies in his conversation on the phone were almost three to one of every other word. That was a sure sign of deadlock in an SB investigation. Davina packed up; the night staff came on duty and the rest dispersed homewards. It was nearly eleven o'clock.

She surprised Tim Johnson by asking for the file and briefing material for Lomax. ‘I'll take it round to him,' he offered. He was curious about the major. He'd heard rumours that he and the formidable Miss Graham had once been very close.

‘No thanks, Tim. I've brought him in on this and he's insisting that I stay with it.'

Johnson said, ‘That's a bit unreasonable, isn't it? You have got other priorities.'

‘He wouldn't agree otherwise.' Davina pulled on her jacket. He wasn't quick enough to help her into it. She didn't wait around for men to pay her little attentions. He felt that she didn't even expect them any more. ‘And unreasonable is exactly what he is. However, we need him – more than ever after this! So I'm going to do your job for you, if you don't mind.' She smiled slightly at him. ‘We used to work together. He was always a bit tricky. Good night. See you in the morning.'

He liked her for that. She had the knack of suddenly showing a human side. It caught him off guard more often than not. He really didn't expect to like her, but it was happening just the same.

Davina drove fast through the City. The streets were empty of traffic; it was quiet, almost eerie, with deserted streets and lightless windows. As if the war all those people were so determined to prevent had stolen up on them and she was a survivor, driving through a dead city to meet the only man left alive.

‘You've got a very nice flat,' she commented.

‘It does,' he answered. ‘I can run to baked beans if you haven't eaten.'

‘Just coffee, please.' Davina sat down and unlocked her briefcase. He went out and she heard a distant clatter from the kitchen. He always made a noise when he did the simplest domestic task. And a mess. Making a cup of tea left more debris than when she cooked them dinner. They had lived in Marylebone in a small rented flat, owned by the Service. Funny to remember how happy they had been for a time. And then not happy. This was a homely place. She wondered if he had a woman living with him. There was a big bowl of roses on the table. That surely answered her question.

‘The one thing that strikes me about these killings,' Lomax said after he'd read through the reports, ‘is that there's no connection between the victims. Franklyn, okay, American, hard-liner. Some anti-nuclear freak might take a pot at him.' He glanced at her briefly. ‘But he wouldn't have the knowhow to blow up that launch and get himself out of the way, with a safe house lined up for him. That sounds like a pro to me. Point one. The next on the list is the exact opposite of Franklyn. Isabelle Duvalier, French Socialist Minister, women's rights, gay rights, the whole left-liberal bandwagon.

‘A massacre there, taking out the whole family. Again, a cold professional killing. No trace. Only possible witness left besides the staff is a student friend of the daughter, crashed out on sleeping pills upstairs.

‘Then we have Nikolaev. According to this, he's a Soviet hard-liner at heart, not too popular with Zerkhov, but a career man who's known to trim to the winds. He gets blown to bits by an anti-tank rocket. That, my dear Boss Lady, is Professional with a capital P. They seem to have got the killer that time, if your information is right. But nobody's passing any details. Next we have, immediately after the Soviet hawk, the Christian dove. One victim supports nuclear threat, the next is one of the founders of the Peace Movement. Those bullets are shit – you don't have a chance if one hits you. A competent marksman gets four of them in and disappears in the panic.

‘So what the hell is anyone to make of it? Where's the link between these four people that makes a very well-organized group set out to kill them, one by one? Nobody's claimed responsibility. No political advantage has accrued to anyone by these deaths. It doesn't make sense. It might, except that Nikolaev got it. That's blown the obvious answer to hell and gone.'

Davina's coffee was cold. She pushed the cup aside.

‘I was sure Borisov was behind it,' she said. ‘Even now I'm not quite prepared to give that up. Nikolaev wasn't an ally – he might just have used the other killings to cover an assassination of his own.'

Lomax gave her a mocking grin and shook his head. ‘That's not good enough,' he said. ‘Not up to the old Davina standard. If Borisov wanted to get rid of a Party enemy, he'd do it nice and quietly. This was a bloody public murder, and they haven't even tried to pretend that the Poles were responsible. You'll have to sharpen up. That's sloppy thinking.'

Davina said curtly, ‘Maybe if you were as tired as I am …' She stopped, angry because she had defended herself. He was right – it was sloppy thinking. Ignoring the obvious. The KGB had disposed of public men in Russia with a pinprick in the arm. They didn't need to fire a rocket at them. And yet.…

He watched the expressions changing on her face. She'd lost that guarded ‘I'm here on a professional basis' look. Tired, yes, unhappy. Depressed wasn't a word Lomax liked, but it seemed to fit her as she sat there, frowning, thinking in that incisive and unorthodox way he knew so well. He had needled her, which was unnecessary. But the urge to bring her down a notch was stronger than he reckoned. He hated her coolness and the efficient head-of-department aura that she wasn't even aware of now. He shouldn't have resented it, but he did. He'd goaded her into the sharp exchanges. They were a relief, and a reminder. He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. ‘If we could get to the girl in Italy,' he said.

Davina dismissed the suggestion. ‘We can't, Colin. Modena has got her sealed up. And she hasn't broken, or this last murder wouldn't have happened. Modena would have given us a lead once he knew it was more than Italian terrorists. That's what they're so cagey about. The Red Brigades and what happened to Moro have left a real scar.'

‘This student,' Lomax said after a minute, looking back over the file, ‘there's nothing to connect her with what happened. Except being lucky enough to get a sick headache on the night.'

‘I don't believe in that kind of luck,' Davina answered. ‘I said as much to SEDECE. The colonel disagreed. They've checked and double checked, but she's absolutely clean.'

He went on, ‘It says she's living with her aunt and attending school. No regular boyfriends, normal social contacts. No medical treatment after the first few days on sedatives following the murders. A lot of girls take a Valium if they have a row with the boyfriend.' He put the file aside. ‘But not this one. She wakes up in a house where her best friend and the rest of the family have been gunned down and within a fortnight she's back at her studies and going on as if nothing had happened.'

‘What's your plan of campaign?' Davina asked.

‘I'll know more when I've made contact with her.'