‘Public Order Act, Peter. Military Aid for the Civil Power.’
‘You mean the Army.’
‘Discreetly, of course. As low profile as possible. But you need it, and frankly I need it, too. To show that these guys are nothing less than extremists. Fighting their own.’
‘The Army on the streets of London? For PR purposes?’
‘It’s a PR war we’re fighting, Peter, and we’re losing it. The stakes don’t come any higher than this, for either of us. There’s a war going on in this city and there’ll be no sympathy for those who come second. I’m not going to lose this one, I’m going to fight it with everything I’ve got.’
‘But the Army …?’
‘I would understand if you feel obliged to resign. That would be a pity. Not what I want, you understand. Awkward timing for you, handing over to someone new just at the point when the police are about to be handed massive new resources. Chucking in the towel just when you’re about to win the fight.’
Bendall, seated on the arm of the sofa, was hovering above the Commissioner’s head, crowding him. And squeezing the constitution. For under the Military Aid to the Civil Power provisions, responsibility lay firmly in the hands of the Police Commissioner to write to the Home Office requesting the support of the armed forces. The law was clear, Bendall needed the Commissioner’s consent if the Army was to be involved. And yet nothing was clear. If Jevons refused and resigned, Bendall would simply make sure his replacement did anything that was required. If Jevons didn’t resign but fought his corner and refused to summon the Army, the blame for any further outrages would fall like rocks upon his shoulders. They would drag him off in disgrace. And yet, if he did what Bendall asked, the capital’s police force would be showered with gifts throughout the next fiscal, indeed right up to his retirement. The coppers’ copper, they would call him, the Commissioner who took care of his own. Bendall had made it so easy for him, and at the same time so impossible. He couldn’t quite work out whether he was being blackmailed or bribed.
He sat there, twisting his signet ring until, eventually, he let forth an extended sigh. He desperately wanted to get out of this room. ‘I’ll sign an appropriate request as soon as I get back to my office, Prime Minister.’
‘Not necessary. I think you’ll find my private secretary has a draft waiting downstairs in the Cabinet Room.’
Jevons rose wearily to his feet, his eyes glazed, unfocused, like a man not wishing to catch sight of his own reflection. ‘I hope you will understand if I don’t attend your press conference this afternoon, Prime Minister. I feel very slightly violated.’
He left the room, not bothering with the pleasantries of farewell.
As soon as the door had closed, Bendall crossed the room to turn off the music. He hated the mindless head-banging crap, but it had its uses. The taping system he had set up to record the conversations in his office would one day provide a unique historic archive, a record to be studied by future generations, the mortar that would cement his place in the memories of the nation.
But there would always be some conversations he wouldn’t wish to have analysed too closely, even at the risk of having those future generations question his obscure and apparently appalling taste in music.
What the hell. When he retired he’d get a new concert hall on the South Bank named after him. That should do the trick.
FOURTEEN
The phone seemed to baffle them. Everything else at the meeting of COBRA that followed on the heels of Payne’s arrest had gone well. No more prevarication and indecision, the Army was coming and Bendall felt back in control.
But they couldn’t explain the mobile phone. It had been in Payne’s possession when they arrested him and, in spite of an exhaustive search of his home and workplace that had left both in disarray, there was as yet no other substantive evidence. It was a pay-as-you-go model, bought across the counter for cash along with fifty pounds’ worth of call vouchers. No contract, no credit-card slip, nothing to trace, and both Payne’s distraught wife and furious work colleagues confirmed that he had taken to carrying it with him at all times. Charlie at the gallery, with his empire strangled in the blue-and-white bunting of crime scene tape, had made several lurid suggestions as to what might be done with the phone, but the police decided that this would not help their investigation. They needed Freddie Payne intact, at least for the time being.
The curious thing about the phone was that it had never been used. No call had been made from it, neither had any been received. Yet it was switched on and fully charged even when they arrested him.
No one had an explanation, but it did nothing to diminish the fresh sense of enthusiasm that permeated the COBRA meeting. One suspect had been arrested, the level of security raised significantly, there was a new impetus and a triumphal press conference to come – at which Bendall would choose his words carefully, of course, while Jumpers would stir it up behind the scenes. And if the media chose to speculate that Freddie Payne and his associates were involved in bombs and blackmail and extortion, that would be nothing less than the prerogative of a free and imaginative press. Dipwick was yesterday’s news. Everyone seemed content.
Except for Tom Goodfellowe.
As the meeting of COBRA broke up and the Prime Minister looked beyond the throng of officials and acolytes that surrounded him, the brow of Goodfellowe stood out like a fly struggling in thick custard.
‘Problems, Tom?’
‘No. No problems. Not really. Just … thoughts.’
‘Share them. Walk with me.’
So Goodfellowe had accompanied Bendall on the short walk back to Downing Street. Their path took them through Cockpit Passage which connected the Cabinet Office to Number Ten, where their footsteps echoed back from ancient brickwork of the old Tudor palace that had once stood on this spot. Beyond the mullioned window lay the remnants of King Harry’s old tennis courts, while in the dark vestibule that brought them back into Number Ten they were greeted by the unsmiling bust of Oliver Cromwell, who had chopped off the head of one of Henry’s inheritors, the ill-fated Charles. Westminster had always been a place of swings and roundabouts. And scaffolds.
‘It’s the phone,’ Goodfellowe began as a private secretary produced an electronic swipe card to allow them back into the Prime Ministerial lair. ‘I’ve been trying to figure out why it was never used.’
‘And?’
‘It was all powered up. So I think it must have been used. Probably frequently, and certainly regularly. To keep in contact.’
‘But no calls were ever logged …’
‘Because the calls were never answered. Perhaps only three or four rings, then cancelled. No record, no trace.’
‘Why?’
‘Security. A safety signal. To tell whoever was at the other end that everything was OK.’
‘But it’s not OK, is it? Not for Freddie Payne.’
‘That may not be such good news, either.’
‘You trying to spoil my day?’
‘If the phone was used as I think, then the others knew within a couple of hours that Payne had been arrested.’
‘Damn.’
‘Even if Payne begins to sing like the proverbial canary and leads us straight back to the aviary, we’ll find –’
‘Nothing but a pile of guano.’
‘Precisely.’
‘They made arrangements.’
‘They’re still one step ahead of us.’
They had reached the main staircase of Number Ten with its winding banister and collection of portraits of previous Prime Ministers that stretched back to the time of Robert Walpole, regarded as the first modern Prime Minister. He’d been condemned for corruption and kicked out of office. Most of his successors had been kicked out of office, too, over nearly three centuries. None of them ever seemed to know when their time was up. ‘Events, dear boy, events’ always got them in the end. The thought encouraged Goodfellowe to make a mental note, a promise to himself, that if he ever got to sta
nd where Bendall was standing, he would do things differently. He would instruct Sam to tell him when that moment to leave the scene had come. Goodfellowe would go timely into the night, not stay and haunt the place like a vampire. Yes, that’s what he’d do. If he ever got the chance.
‘But I don’t understand, Tom. Why on earth didn’t you suggest this to COBRA?’
‘Because if I’m right –’
‘Which I suspect you are.’
‘Then some of those at COBRA would be saying …’ He hesitated.
‘Come on, Tom, cough.’
‘Well, they’d be saying that we shouldn’t have pulled him in so quickly. That we should’ve had him followed. As they suggested.’
‘That I made a complete bollocks of it?’
Goodfellowe chose not to contradict.
From his position on the first step of the staircase, Bendall studied his helper. ‘You use your honesty a bit like a flame thrower at times, Tom. It’s one of your most attractive faults.’
Goodfellowe merely shrugged.
‘Doesn’t matter. We’re ready for the bastards.’ Bendall was bounding up the stairs now, taking them two at a time, shouting over his shoulder. ‘By tomorrow the country will understand that we live in a world that’s still bloody dangerous. Full of evil people trying to take advantage of us. That we’ve got to be prepared.’
‘Somehow I think that’s precisely the point Beaky has been trying to put across,’ Goodfellowe muttered – but not loud enough for the disappearing Bendall to hear.
Swinging his dead left leg, Scully kicked the blossom that had blown from the cherry trees in Battersea Park and been left piled high by the swirling wind. It scattered around him like unseasonal snowflakes.
‘What the bloody hell went wrong, Colonel?’
‘No idea, Skulls.’
‘They on to us?’
‘On to Freddie, that’s for sure.’
‘Shite.’
Scully bent to rub his leg. The others slowed, wishing neither to stop nor to leave him behind, knowing that either would embarrass him. His leg was getting worse. It was one of those days when wherever they looked they could see nothing but obstacles. Even the heavens joined in, clouds scudding overhead like pebbles being skimmed across grey water. The group fell into silence for several minutes.
‘It was Freddie. Must’ve been Freddie, something he did,’ Mary eventually insisted, wrapping her coat more firmly around her in the fading light. ‘It had to be Freddie’s fault, or they would’ve picked us all up.’
‘Picked me up, at least,’ Amadeus corrected. He had ensured that none of them knew how to contact the others, save for himself. A cut-off system, designed for disaster, for moments like this. ‘Look, if they come knocking on my door, don’t any of you hang around. You each do what you think is necessary. You know I won’t talk.’
‘Seems Freddie hasn’t either,’ Mary added with almost reluctant respect.
The rain had arrived. They scrambled for shelter in the lee of a refreshment kiosk that had already closed for the day. Scully brought up the rear.
‘Poor Freddie. One soldier down,’ McKenzie reflected.
‘And another Home Secretary down,’ Amadeus insisted. ‘By any measure we’re still well ahead. Oh, and revenge is sweet! Dipwick was the one who started all this. Now he’s gone.’
‘And Bendall has taken over,’ Mary reminded him.
‘Put himself right in the firing line.’
‘This is getting very personal, Peter.’
‘Yeah. Ain’t it just.’
Battersea Power Station stands on the south bank of the River Thames less than two miles upstream from the Houses of Parliament. Its brooding presence dominates that part of London, its stark, almost brutal industrial architecture exciting passion and prejudice in equal degrees. Like it, loathe it, the one thing you cannot possibly do is ignore it. To some it is like an immense alien spaceship that has come to earth and died, its four huge white brick chimneys reaching out desperately towards the stars; to others it provides all too earthly evidence that Man has completely lost his sense of proportion. Yet for all its aesthetic aggression, the power station has been more victim than aggressor. Since it opened in 1934 it has been the target of repeated attack – first by Goering’s Luftwaffe, then by subsidence into the underlying London clay, more devastatingly by environmentalists who claimed that the half-million tons of coal it burned every year were polluting the air from Essex all the way to the Urals. Finally it came under attack by developers who ripped out its soul along with every ounce of scrap machinery in their attempts to turn it into a theme park.
Yet ugliness on such a massive scale also entices. To the surprise of many tourists and astonishment of most Englishmen, the power station was embraced by the heritage lobby. It had, after all, been designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who also gave the nation its beloved red telephone boxes. The building was listed as an architectural treasure, Grade Two, which meant it must be preserved. But for what? In Florida the site would probably have been sold at immense profit to the Disney Corporation, in Barcelona or Berlin perhaps they might have commissioned some young artist to wrap it in cellophane, while in Paris they would have scratched their heads and wondered who on earth allowed the bloody thing to be built in the first place. But in London they simply held their breaths and grew red in the face. No one would decide, and the forty-acre site was turned into a battleground on which warfare raged between conservationists, developers, planners and local pressure groups. The result was twenty years of deadlock and depredation that had left it roofless, gutted, its immense and filthy red-brick walls surmounting a bare industrial wasteland, home for nothing but memories.
Apart, that is, from the occasional film crew who used this brutal backcloth for any number of productions, McKellen’s Richard III being by far the most memorable.
Thus far.
The most recent aspiring producer and location manager to turn up at the site were named Donnie and Mike. They were a little vague about the project they had in mind. They were also, in the opinion of Sammy McManus, the site supervisor, a rather odd couple, heavily into sunglasses and hats. They also both had thick designer stubble which served to hide the contours of their faces, but over the years he had grown used to the odd couples who floated around the film industry.
Sammy had enjoyed taking them around the site. It got lonely here on his own when the wind was blowing, with nothing to distract him but a garden of straggling geraniums, Oprah Winfrey and a small library of well-thumbed books centred around Shakespeare and Trollope (both Anthony and Joanna). Anyway, Oprah was putting on weight again.
So they had walked and smoked and talked about Charlton Athletic, about Sammy’s forthcoming holiday, and the local residents’ groups who couldn’t make up their minds whether they wanted the site to be a wonderland or a wasteland, and McKellen’s awesome pyrotechnics that had brought half of the fire crews in London rushing to the scene to extinguish a five-hundred-year-old fire.
‘So, Sammy, what’s with all the scaffolding around the chimneys?’
‘We’re just checking their stability. Routine structural check. Normally we do it with infrared scanners but the local planners want to have a look-see for themselves. If one of those bastards fell down it’d sound like Krakatoa. Won’t put you off, will it?’
‘Depends. How long’s it going to be like that?’
‘Couple of weeks, maybe. No more.’
‘I think that should be fine, don’t you, Mike?’
‘Sure. Sure, Donnie. I think that’ll be just fine.’
Success is its own deceiver. And, for a few days, Bendall found success knocking at his door. Londoners’ characteristic spirit of defiance in the face of adversity came forth and greeted the changes they saw around them with understanding and a measure of reluctant acquiescence.
It was the little things that some found most aggravating, like the disappearance of waste bins from many public places, and particular
ly from those corners near major Government buildings where the bins hadn’t been swept away in the earlier campaigns against the IRA. So London grew a little grubbier, and also a little slower. Many of the major routes through the City of London had been blocked to control access during that same IRA bombing campaign, and now that experience was translated to the City of Westminster. Parliament Square ground to a complete halt as plastic barriers filled with sand were manoeuvred into position. When the Square reopened, traffic could pass the House of Commons only by means of a single file and two separate chicanes. No would-be terrorist was going to make a quick getaway from this part of London, and in the circumstances it seemed a relatively minor inconvenience that no one else was going to make a quick getaway either. Londoners took it in their behobbled stride.
Indeed, there were some distinct advantages. The very obvious presence of armed policemen at major traffic intersections ensured an unusual degree of etiquette from motorists. Yellow boxes remained unblocked, no one ran a traffic light, even cyclists dug deep into their memory banks for ancient recollections of the Highway Code. Rush hour traffic actually moved. And if a few Londoners were disturbed by the presence of the Armoured Personnel Carriers tucked away behind Admiralty Arch, less than ten seconds from Trafalgar Square, they were in a minority. Most treated them as nothing more than a tourist attraction.
The next contact, when it came, consisted of another brief telephone call to the editor of the Telegraph. The security services who were monitoring the call timed it at less than twenty-two seconds and traced it to a little-used callbox in rural Hertfordshire. Inevitably the callbox was deserted by the time the local constabulary had arrived, and forensics produced nothing beyond the suggestion that it had been used sometime in the last four days for the purposes of unprotected sex and the rolling of a joint. Even the voice analysis told them nothing they didn’t already know, that the caller was probably in his forties and reasonably well educated – the conversation was too fragmentary to get a reliable regional trace, although it did suggest that he was under a measurable degree of strain.