The Convenience of Lies (16 page)

Hoare’s
note explained how he’d identified him as Ray Gillespie, an official of the Association of Federated Trades based at its headquarters in Birmingham. He’d also combed out Teddy Lamb, the veteran Fleet Street industrial correspondent who’d swum the union world’s unclean waters for years.

Teddy
said Gillespie was a nasty piece of goods, a Scot and black arts merchant who collected embarrassing information on friend and foe alike because no one ever knew when it might come in useful. I asked if he meant for blackmail and Teddy said that’s what it amounted to.

Gillespie
is an old Trotskyite with a network of informers in the union who feed him information, either from fear or reasons of self-advancement. Nothing is off limits as far as Gillespie is concerned. Teddy says he runs the union’s dirty tricks department under the guise of being a “communications officer.”

As
such, he wields power and influence for the leadership while they turn Nelson’s blind eye to what’s being done. I don’t know why Inglis pretended not to know him to me but I saw them leave Rules together in the same cab.

So
had Ruby drawn the face of Mr Ginger, the man who frightened her mother to death? McCall went down to the kitchen where Hester sat in the armchair by the Aga reading The Guardian.

He
decided not to mention the pictures he’d just seen. She and Lexie were distressed enough already. He just said he’d someone to meet in Ludlow. He hadn’t but the phone in The Feathers wouldn’t have a listening ear on it as he guessed his probably would by now. An hour later, he was back.

‘I’ll
be away tomorrow, Hester. You’ll take care of Lexie, won’t you?’

‘Sure,
I will. What’ll you be doing?’

‘Things
you’re better off not knowing.’

Twenty-Six

McCall left the train at Birmingham, crossed New Street and stopped every so often to look in shop windows - but only to glance at whoever might be behind him. This wasn’t paranoia. Paranoia was when you thought six people were following you but it was only four. But he’d been on bumpy stories in the past and sensed that same undercurrent of threat now, no less because he was in Britain.

He
was making for Digbeth, a one-time industrial district where most factories were now shut and workers queued for benefits in this, the fag end of Mrs Thatcher’s economic revolution.

Behind
a back street pub called The Old Wharf was a railway viaduct where small-time outfits still managed to trade from under its blue brick arches. A man with oily hands fitted tyres to a truck and a joiner’s workshop gave out the improbable scent of a pine forest from the baulks of Scandinavian timber being ripped to length on a circular saw.

The
next arch was fronted with cement blocks, a thick metal door and looked like a secure storage facility. A painted sign read Cyril Loader, Television Repairs. McCall had need of services Cyril didn’t advertise but for which a few anointed hacks - and other villains - paid him well.

He
pressed an intercom to be buzzed in. Cyril had an air of dyspeptic misfortune. No one else’s bowel was more irritable, their wife more like a robber’s dog. McCall got half a nod as Cyril fiddled inside the guts of a broken TV on a workbench. He lit a cigarette from his soldering iron and without preamble, said he’d got some of what McCall had asked for.

‘But
I’m not very happy about this job, not one little bit.’

‘Doesn’t
sound like you, Cyril. Is there a problem?’

‘Yeah,
there bloody well is because it’s a police mobile you’re after,’ Cyril said. ‘This all feels like it could come back and bite the bones of my arse.’

‘So
you’re saying you can’t get me a copy of the bill?’

Cyril
wiped his long nose on a rag and said it’d be madness to even try.

‘Straightforward
this number ain’t, my little ferret. But seeing as it’s you, I’ve figured out a bit of a compromise… it’ll cost you extra, though.’

‘I’d
never have guessed.’

‘Take
the piss all you want, McCall, but I’m running risks here, not a fucking charity.’

‘Easy,
Cyril. It’ll be fine.’

‘You’ll
be saying that when I’m banged up in Winson Green again, you sod.’

‘Just
tell me what you’ve got then we can do a deal.’

‘Hmm…
all right… well, my mate in the phone exchange was able to find out through his ways and means committee that this mobile was hardly ever used but it did call one particular land line quite a lot so that sort of stood out for him.’

‘And
where is this land line?’

‘That
dump up the M6, Manchester.’

‘And
I should be cheerful because - ’

‘
- I’ve got you a copy of the customer’s latest bill, name, address, the lot.’

‘There’s
handsome, Cyril. Thanks - now what about the rest of my wish list?’

‘Come
back in a couple of hours,’ he said. ‘I’ll have you a Sierra estate and I’ll leave an untraceable mobile in the glove compartment. I’ve also got you a moody driving licence but listen, you bastard, if you get collared; I hired that motor out in good faith. I’ll admit nothing. You understand?’

*

It was still quite warm for autumn. Office workers in short sleeves gathered on the piazza by the Association of Federated Trades headquarters not far from New Street Station, eating sandwiches and drinking bottled water.

McCall
found a bench opposite the AFT building - a steel and glass homage to the utilitarian brutalism of the sixties. He made sure the briefcase on his lap had the main entrance framed in the video camera concealed within it.

Black
bag jobs like this fouled up more often than not, however much care was taken. All he could do was wait and blend in with all the other strangers in the sunshine. He wondered what secrets they kept, what lies they told. McCall had knocked about with Malky Hoare off and on for years, drunk and sober. Yet behind all his Fleet Street bonhomie was a daughter denied.

That
wasn’t a secret, it was a disgrace. McCall now thought far less of the man who’d believed otherwise.

He
looked over at the AFT offices just as the revolving doors delivered his targets onto the piazza - Gillespie, the ginger-haired man with the strawberry birthmark from Ruby’s drawing, and another individual built like a boxer.

McCall
pretended to rummage in his briefcase to switch on the camera. He panned the case with them as they came towards him and walked through shot. Then he closed the lid and followed at a distance. Gillespie and his colleague headed towards the canal basin. All the waterside warehouses and old industrial structures alongside were being redeveloped as bars and restaurants for tourists.

They
entered a trattoria and sat at an upstairs table overlooking a berth for gaudily painted narrow boats which would once have transported coal or produce. Now, they were crewed by families on holiday or those who’d sold up their semis for a life on the water.

McCall
stood on the towpath with a stills camera, innocently firing off general views. But in between, he managed snatch shots of the AFT men laughing, wine glasses in hand. They were joined by a third male. McCall had enough images and should have quit while he was winning. But he went for one last close-up.

That
was when he saw an angry-looking Gillespie pointing at him from the restaurant window. McCall got the picture then vanished.

*

Of all the rooms in Garth Hall, Hester preferred the kitchen. This was the warm, practical heart of the house where the rhythm of its daily routine was the preparation, cooking and communal eating of food.

It
had a worn brick floor, beams and no modern units. Everything was stored in a housekeeper’s cupboard, scuffed from years of use and abuse by cooks and scullery maids, or in a dark oak dresser with shelves bending under the weight of a blue and white dinner service.

Only
in the late 1940s did an Aga replace the cast iron range which had served the house since the middle of Victoria’s reign. At least eight people could sit to the kitchen table - sycamore, pale from scrubbing and with plain, tapering legs. Hester and Lexie sat across it now, drinking red wine, with the remains of their lamb stew yet to be cleared away.

Ruby
was asleep and McCall preoccupied in his office. Lexie wanted to talk, needed some reassurance from another female before she went into hospital next day.

‘I’m
not certain Mac really appreciates what’s happening to me.’

‘That
can’t be right, Lexie. He cares a great deal but there’s so much going on in all our lives right now that I don’t think the poor guy knows which way to turn.’

‘I’ve
never been lucky for him, I’ve always brought him heartbreak.’

‘Maybe
once, long ago, but there’s a great love between you. Anyone can see that.’

‘I
sometimes wonder if some part of me always knew I was going to get ill.’

‘In
what way do you mean?’

‘Subconsciously,
I suppose. I willed him to come back into my life because I knew I could depend on him but I also knew somewhere in my heart that it wouldn’t last.’

‘Why
Lexie, why did you think that?’

‘It’s
not because I’m going to run off with anyone else at my age but because I was never meant to make old bones.’

‘I
won’t hear this, it’s so negative. You’ve got to make yourself believe that you’ll get through whatever the doctors decide is right to do for you.’

‘I
know but just say it turns out badly… what’s McCall going to do then?’

‘We
have to deal with what is in this life, not what might be.’

‘Maybe
I should bail out now… do what I’ve always done and run away.’

‘But
you’d be forgetting Ruby, wouldn’t you?’

‘No…
honestly, I’m not… but it’s just that everything suddenly feels so weird, as if I’m living in someone else’s life or they’re living in what’s left of mine.’

‘Because
you’re in shock, Lexie. You’ve had one piece of bad news after another and now you’ve got to have a big operation. It’s no wonder it’s all affecting you.’

‘That’s
about the God-awful size of it. Still, come on, let’s finish this bottle because tomorrow… who the hell knows?’

*

It is a fear of dying which wills us to stay alive.

Lexie
was about to be put to sleep by the medics who would cut the malignancy from her perfidious body. But she fought the anaesthetic, hated the idea of going under, of losing control.

That
same childhood nightmare stole up to haunt her once more, slowly suffocating beneath the dentist’s tight rubber mask when the gas went into her like a fog. But she slipped from this world again, an apparition in the deeper reaches of her own night. The past, the future - neither leaves the other in peace so it all bleeds into one. Then Lexie began to fall… fall to earth from wherein all her lovers rose up to kiss her one last time. Then they sank back as soon she must herself, calling in the darkness for her Daddy to stop what he was doing but hearing no word of reply.

Twenty-Seven

Hester rang the hospital next morning. The sister on Lexie’s ward said she’d come through the procedure well but wouldn’t be properly conscious for some hours.

‘She’s
essentially undergone emergency surgery,’ she said. ‘It’ll take her a while to recover.’

Hester
planned to drive over to Shrewsbury with Ruby to see her. She wanted McCall to go with them. But he looked preoccupied to the point of distraction.

‘I
can’t, Hester. I can’t even guarantee I’ll be back tonight or even tomorrow.’

‘Why?
What’s more important than being there for Lexie when she needs you?’

‘Ruby,
that’s what,’ McCall said. ‘Whatever happens, don’t let her out of your sight.’

‘You’re
worrying me, Mac. There’s still a threat to her, isn’t there?’

‘I’m
not sure but we can’t take the risk of thinking there isn’t.’

He
gave her his new mobile number but said she must only ever ring it from a pay phone, never from the landline at Garth Hall. Hester asked why - and why he’d left his own car in the garage.

‘Because
it’s safer for me to be under the radar till I know what’s really going on.’

‘So
where will you be?’

‘Up
north. I’ve got a fix on the missing detective.’

‘You’ll
take care of yourself, won’t you?’

*

Lexie was barely conscious when Lexie and Ruby arrived in her ward. They didn’t stay long and left flowers and fruit before driving the two miles into Shrewsbury. Ruby showed little or no understanding of her aunt’s serious condition.

Hester
parked by the river which slipped like a noose around the half-timbered town. Ruby’s eyes stayed fixed on all its ancient buildings, absorbing their form and line for later - but in silence. She rarely expressed an opinion. It was as if all her thoughts were written in invisible ink so no one else could read them.

Despite
this - maybe because of it - Hester felt it important to open her mind to new places and experiences, to give her freedom but in conditions of safety. She also wanted Ruby to look loved and cared for, not like the urchin she’d first seen.

‘Let’s
get you some nice new things, Ruby. What about a pretty dress and some shoes to go with it?’

Ruby
seemed not to care for anything she was shown, except dungarees and T-shirts. After an exhausting hour, Hester gave way and bought her whatever she chose.

They
set off along a narrow cobbled street for lunch in a café near a churchyard hemmed in by a row of crooked oak-framed houses. But Ruby kept looking behind them. The child’s hand tightened its grip on hers. Something like fear crossed Ruby’s face.

‘What
is it, my lovely? What’s wrong?’

Ruby
trembled slightly and pointed towards the people following them - window shoppers, an Asian woman with a baby, two pensioners linking arms, a man turning on his heel to go back the way he’d come.

‘There’s
no one to be afraid of, Ruby. Come on, I bet you’re hungry.’

‘No,
I want to draw in our room. I don’t like it here.’

*

McCall had a theory that only guilty men bought houses in cul-de-sacs to make it difficult for hacks to secretly film them. A strange vehicle parked in one for any length of time quickly got rumbled and safe passage out was never guaranteed.

True
to form, the house DI Benwick rang so often from his mobile was at the bottom of Boland Grove, a short U-shaped avenue of 1930s semis in the Fallowfield district of south Manchester. McCall parked at the top with a direct view down to number 9, the home of Adele and Gerard Green, according to his copy of their bill.

Long
stakeouts could be tedious and concentration hard to maintain. The long-term implications of Lexie’s illness kept coming back to him. For her, the enemy was already inside the gate.

He
forced himself to keep focus, to stay with Ruby’s story. The Greens’ bill showed that on the day Benwick vanished, someone from their house rang him once and a number in London three times. McCall rang this one himself. A female answered it and he asked if Mr Green was there.

‘No,
no one’s here.’

‘Is
that his office number or a private house?’

‘No,
Mr Green is not here today. Sorry, bye.’

Her
accent could have been east European, possibly Russian. This alone made McCall think back to the warning in Hoare’s aide memoir.

If the spooks felt justified in tapping my phone and bugging my flat to find DI Benwick in the name of national security then McCall is involved enough be a target, too. He has background knowledge of what’s happened and a connection to the missing girl through her auntie. I’m in enough trouble as it is or I’d tell him not to use his own phone anymore and get eyes put in the back of his head.

McCall wondered if the watchers were already watching him watching Benwick’s contacts - if they knew about them, that was. The documents Hoare lifted from Ruby’s case file must have an incriminating significance beyond her disappearance. But how did the spooks know Hoare had copies? And why did they burgle his flat when they’d a right of access to them through normal police liaison channels?

Yet
if McCall thought the situation sticky now, it would get worse. Hoare’s body must have been discovered. The police were bound to interview his ex-wife and she was equally certain to mention McCall’s visit. They would find his fingerprints - already on file from past misdemeanours - in the caravan.

He’d
also removed evidentially relevant pages from the notebook in which Hoare had obviously been writing. The cops might yet ask where they were, why they’d been taken and why he’d failed to notify anyone about the body. He’d have no choice but to go no comment and risk the suspicion that would cause.

He
looked up for a moment and saw an elderly woman with a walking stick, struggling with a bag of shopping as she entered Boland Grove. She leaned against a garden wall, as if exhausted. McCall went across to see if she needed help. It wasn’t only Greeks who bore gifts. She’d strength enough to smile and nod. He took her bag and she took his arm.

A
minute later, he was in her kitchen, two doors from where the Greens lived. The old lady slumped in an easy chair. He made her a cup of tea and fed her cat. It turned out she was widowed so had no one McCall could ring.

She
thanked him for his kindness and wanted him to stay awhile for hers was a life with few friends. By the time he left, McCall knew the Greens were on a walking holiday, had no children, that Mr Green was something to do with computers but was currently overseas on a project for his firm.

Mrs
Green called herself a legal executive and they drove a silvery-blue Rover car. Both were in their late thirties and had only lived at number 9 for six-months.

‘Short
dark hair, she has. Eton Crop we called it in my day,’ the old lady said. ‘Very private sort of soul, doesn’t go out of her way to make conversation but then, your neighbours don’t these days, do they?’

So
what was the connection between this seemingly blameless, provincial couple and a runaway detective being sought as a threat to the State? Like Evan said, we never truly know anyone… least of all, those we’re sure we do.

For
the moment, that didn’t matter. The only non-London number called from the Greens’ phone in the days before Benwick went AWOL was 0204 68288. McCall had rung it the previous night. It was the Blackhorse Hotel in Blackrod, a former mining town in Lancashire and - even more encouragingly - the place pictured on the front of Benwick’s cryptic postcard to Hoare.

Here
was the joy of McCall’s kind of hackery - digging about in the muck and litter at the side of the road then finally turning up a spraint left by the prey being pursued. McCall booked a room at the Blackhorse and now headed north.

*

For the life of her, Hester could not think who or what might have caused Ruby to be so frightened in Shrewsbury. But she was starting to recognise when it was wiser to retreat than fight. They drove back to Garth Hall. Ruby stared straight ahead during the entire journey. She refused any food and immediately went upstairs to draw some of the buildings her photographic mind had just registered.

Hester
busied herself in the kitchen. The phone in the hall rang and she silently prayed it wasn’t bad news about Lexie. She answered and a man with a regional accent she couldn’t place, asked if McCall was there.

‘No,
not right now. Who is this?’

‘Just
a friend,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to find out where he is for a job I’ve got for him but he’s not answering his mobile.’

‘He
could be anywhere. I’m only the housekeeper, he doesn’t tell me his plans.’

‘So
you’re all on your own in that rambling old place, are you?’

‘Sometimes
- so what?’

‘Don’t
take offence but it’s a bit creepy for a woman, isn’t it?’

‘Listen,
I’m a bit busy for this.’

‘All
those creaks and bumps in the night. Must almost scare you to death.’

‘Just
tell me your name and I’ll have him call you if he rings in.’

‘No,
don’t worry. You’ve got other things on your mind… better go and make sure all the doors are bolted, hadn’t you?’

Then
the man put the phone down.