The Third Attempt - a story of a coup d'état in Britain

[James G]

Jun 30, 2020 8:43:57 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

   Well things are progressing slowly. Clarke is dead and wondering now if he ran when he did because he suspected Patrick or because he recognised Baxter and why he was there and the drunk and Patrick just happened to be useful barriers while he tried to get away. 

  They haven't looked into the other sudden death yet but suspect they will when one of the two living people on Clarke's list has a sudden accident.

  So the Tories have taken a shift towards the centre here rather than remained Thatcherite as they did under Cameron - albeit he made a few attempts to disguise that until he got into power.

  I assume the basis of BORM is that North is confident he will be able to manipulate or simply fabricate 'public opinion' to get whatever demands he wants through.  Guessing also that the heated meeting that Williams attended was deliberated so long and stressful to either keep him away from something else on the agenda or to delay his attendance at the BORM meeting.

  Steve

Yeah, there is some major stuff coming but it took me some time to get there.
I regretted afterwards killing off Clarke but, later on, that part of the storyline continues.
A third name on that particular list does come to MI-5's attention upon discovery of their death.
The government I envisioned was sort-of Cameron and (as it turned out: I couldn't see into the future) a bit like May's too. This government has economic ties with Russia though, something I should have further expanded upon.
BORM is the lead public movement for Lord North's scheme. He manipulates opinion, fabricates lies and kills protentional opponents.
As to that meeting, no. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Now... there will be near the end of the story something like that he is kept away from but with that there, I'm struggling to remember my thinking!

[James G]

Chapter Twenty – Mission: Failure
Cosham, Portsmouth – November 30th 2013


This afternoon’s mission was going just as all of them had gone for Baxter: successful. The planning had been spot on and there had been no untoward surprises that would threaten its conclusion. Very soon, he would be finished with what he had to do here inside this house down on the South Coast and could get away.

He’d entered the house in suburban Cosham, on the northern outskirts of the city of Portsmouth, via the back door. Baxter had a skeleton key with him designed for this particular lock and so entered the house with ease. The ground floor of the shared house had been crossed and Baxter had gone up onto the first floor. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom here in this three storey building, with another bedroom above him. He’d stayed on the first floor though because that was where he had work today.

This was an old house that had recently had much work done to it. Baxter knew that years ago a family would have lived here before someone had brought it as a buy-to-let purchase. The loft had been converted into another, larger bedroom and then the house rented out through a letting agent to individual, single tenants. These were low-paid workers who might as well have lived alone apart from the shared kitchen and bathroom. During that internal remodelling, the building’s electrical wiring had been replaced and the infrastructure to that relocated from a sensible location on the ground floor up to a cupboard in the hallway on the first floor. It was before that cupboard that he crouched now, hard at work.

Baxter had recently spent a little bit of time learning how to do this. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but with a bit of basic knowledge and a malicious intent, it could be done. His aim was to cause an overloading of the electrical circles here in the house so that the usage of multiple electrical appliances at once could cause the system to become dangerously overloaded. In conjunction with his intent to soon go back downstairs, do other work to the wiring around household appliances down there before turning them on, Baxter was soon about to commit a major piece of arson here.

He could hear noises above him. That bedroom in what was once the loft contained to people who, by the sounds of it, were having passionate sex up there this afternoon. There were grunts, groans and the excessive creaking of a bed. He’d watched one of those people doing that arrive only ten minutes ago and before that had carefully made sure that the other person up there, the young male tenant with the name of Paul Plummer who rented the bedroom, hadn’t left. Every other week, he could greet the man who came to visit him for a few hours on the Saturday afternoon at the front door and go upstairs with him to do as what they were doing now. The two of them never met anywhere else but here and were never together for very long.

There were lots of reasons behind this, primarily because the elder visitor was a married man and a locally-known famous face: the MP Clive Valance.

The continuation of the noises told Baxter that he still had plenty of time to do what he was. He’d come to look at this electrical system earlier in the week and taken away a short video recording that he’d made of it for reference. Yet, this was all still something new to him and was nowhere as easy as he’d expected it to be. There was the worry in his mind of it all going wrong and also the ever-present danger that he might accidently electrocute himself.

He was rushing despite knowing that he had time to spare.

The opening of the door on the landing above him made him jump. It came all of a sudden: without any warning. He momentarily froze before his mind commanded his body to move backwards as fast as possible.

“Give me a second, will you? Jesus…”

Baxter was trying to scamper backwards into the shadows as light from the bedroom door upstairs lit the hallway. There was nowhere for him to hide though and he also realised that the electrical cupboard was open.

Before he could think of what to do, there was movement on the stairs to follow the spoken remark. He knew at once that it was the young tenant and within seconds the twenty-something lad was going to come face to face with him.

Baxter silently swore before beginning to stand up.

Plummer reached the hallway on which Baxter was standing very quickly. He clearly wasn’t paying enough attention to his surroundings and almost ran straight into the intruder into his home. He stopped his brisk walk down towards the bathroom just in time to understand that someone was here who shouldn’t have been.

“Who the hell are you?”

There was a fear in the young man’s voice. He had a towel wrapped around his face and wore nothing else. Plummer was as helpless as a baby and sounded just like one too.

Baxter had had just enough time to pull out his gun before being confronted as he was. He chose to say nothing and instead directed the barrel of that towards Plummer’s face before pulling the trigger.

There was no silencer attached to the gun because Baxter hadn’t come here with the intention of using it unless he faced an extreme emergency as he was now. There was an almighty BANG that at once set about echoing throughout the empty hallways and the stairs.

Baxter had stepped back as he’d fired because he knew that his gunshot was going to make an almighty mess out of Plummer, yet he had still felt his partially-covered face being hit by fragments. This would be blood, brain tissue and tiny bits of skull bone. He’d shot Plummer with a high-powered 9mm automatic pistol from the distance of a few feet and that wasn’t going to bring about a pleasant experience. He was thus left covered with bits of the young man.

There was a near-overwhelming Baxter urge to wipe his face, but Baxter didn’t have time for that. The mission had gone wrong yet it still had to be completed. The real target was still upstairs and would have in no doubt heard the shot and realised that danger was fast coming his way. There wouldn’t be anything that Valance would be able to do about that, but Baxter wanted to be up there before he tried to do something.

The mission orders were not for Baxter to kill him in the manner of which he set out to do as he raced up the stairs two at a time towards him, but there was nothing else to be done. He would shoot him like he’d shot his young, secret lover and then get out of here as fast as he could.

Seconds before he reached the top of the stairs, Baxter heard an almighty crash that almost rivalled that of his gunshot moments before. He realised that something big had been through across the open doorway. Whatever it was – furniture, maybe? – it was blocking much of the daylight that had lit the top of the stairs.

Baxter swung his pistol towards the doorway as he reached the top of the stairs. He kept his attention focused ahead of him though also quickly looked down to see wood and clothes blocking his entrance into the bedroom. Valance had clearly used what must have been a lot of strength to push over his young lover’s wardrobe so that he had a little more time to live.

“Show yourself. I mean you no harm.” Baxter, of course, meant Valance immense harm. He didn’t suspect that the man would believe him; he spoke so that his target would stop what he was doing and thus unwillingly give Baxter more time to get at him.

No vocal response came, but there was another noise. There was another crash and this one sounded like a lot of glass being broken. Baxter attempted to get his footing right so he could step over the destroyed wardrobe while his mind tried to dismiss the crazy idea as to what Plummer was doing inside the bedroom ahead.

He told himself that there was no way his suspicion was correct…

… Clive Valance wouldn’t have jumped out of a three storey window!

*

Baxter still couldn’t get his head around the idea of what had occurred when he reached the car that Liz was sitting in. She started to drive away the moment that he’d closed the door and before he’d even sat down properly. The result of this was that he whacked the side of his head against the window – this one didn’t break – before he could reply to her urgent question of ‘what happened’.

“They caught me in the house unawares and I had to shoot Plummer.”

“Not Valance?”

“I never got the chance, Liz.”

“What happened to him then?

“He jumped out of the window two storey’s up!”

“Could he have survived that?”

“I don’t think so; I took a look at him.” After Valance had done what he had, Baxter had shot out of the house to see what he become of the man before the neighbours started showing up. “He was dead.”

“That’s good news at least. It’s not the way we wanted things, but it’ll still do for now.”

Baxter opted to say nothing in reply. Liz appeared happy enough as she drove the car towards the A3(M) motorway, but he wasn’t. He considered today’s mission to have been a failure no matter the end result had been that the target Valance had lost his life.





Chapter Twenty–One – The Other Woman
Cosham, Portsmouth – December 1st 2013


Jane Snyder knew that this was going to be a fantastic story.

Everything that she’d found out so far was set to make sure that when this was written, her story would be talked about and get her noticed. If she was lucky enough, she might even get away from the career low point that was The Daily Express.

She was currently standing outside the Queen Alexandra Hospital in north Portsmouth. There were other journalists here too; all of them were waiting in the rain for a statement to be made by the hospital concerning a patient of theirs. Checking her watch, she saw that it was just coming up to ten o’clock. Any minute now, one of the Queen Alexandra’s senior administration people (someone who had been making anonymous statements to the media since yesterday) would be coming out. Jane had spoken to that man on the phone and had already quoted him – as ‘a senior hospital source’ – commenting upon the patient inside. The man had given her and others some good information; this had been much better than what the media had been able to get from Hampshire Constabulary.

What was soon to be said would only form a minor part of the story Jane was soon to write, yet it would be needed for overall balance.

When the hospital administrator walked out of the main entrance, he was flanked by two civilian security guards. There had been several attempts by the media to enter the Queen Alexandra, and the guards had been deployed inside the doors along with a trio of police officers outside them too. Both sets of security people parted like the Red Sea before the well-dressed man who approached the media throng.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for waiting patiently. I have a short statement to make and, unfortunately, will not be able to answer any of your questions.

A thirty-nine year-old man was admitted to the Queen Alexandra yesterday afternoon after being brought here by South Coast Ambulance Services. He had fallen from a window three stories high in a suburban property not far from the hospital itself.

It was subsequently confirmed that this man was Clive Valance, a resident of Alverstock in Gosport. Mister Valance is a Member of Parliament and a noted local citizen.

He suffered multiple injuries from his fall. For privacy reasons, I cannot go into details, but I am allowed to inform you that he had grave internal injuries as well as breakages and fractures to several bones. He is currently unconscious and members of his family are with him.

With assistance from Hampshire Constabulary, a second person was found within the house from where Mister Valance fell by South Coast Ambulance Services. This man had sadly passed away from injuries that he sustained. I cannot comment further on that matter and would request that you in future direct any media enquires with regard to him to Hampshire Constabulary.

Mister Valance himself is in a serious condition and needs further medical attention. I urge members of the media to please refrain from attempting to enter the Queen Alexandra, trying to talk to staff from here and harassing people who they suspect of being relatives of Mister Valance.

That is all that I have to say… thank you.”

Nothing at all that she didn’t already know had been said and Jane was annoyed at having to wait around for such a statement, but that was all part of her job. As she finished scribbling up her notes of what had been said, she couldn’t help but smile to herself at the admonishment delivered to the media. The man was a right fool: didn’t he think that one of her colleagues would later allude to his behaviour after they had no more use for him?

Jane pushed her notepad back into her bag and then dropped her pen in there too. She had finished here and was now planning to go into Portsmouth proper to the headquarters of the police in the city. There was another press conference there in an hour – one which would probably be less informative than this one, she reflected – and she had to go find a taxi. As she turned away from the hospital entrance, journalists all around her were departing too and she bumped into one of them.

“Hello, Jane.”

“Oh…”

“How are you?” It was Lisa Williams: the other woman.

*

For sixteen years – half their lives – the two of them had been friends. They’d met on their second day at university and been near inseparable since. First through their three years at Imperial College London, then their careers, their marriages and their children they’d stayed firm friends. Their husbands had become as close as they were because Jane and Lisa shared such a close bond. They’d said that Lisa’s son and Jane’s daughter would end up getting married.

Then they’d fallen out.

Jane’s husband was a good man, but had flaws like everyone. Michael’s was that he couldn’t keep his flies done up. She’d long ago just got over it and ignored it: Michael was a great father and husband otherwise. Then, Michael had gone and jumped into bed with Lisa over the New Year. Lisa had confessed at once to her friend (but not her husband) and they’d both tried to pretend that it hadn’t happened. Jane had never had Michael go to bed with someone that she’d known before and the fact that Lisa had been his latest conquest had irked her. She had been secretly furious at Lisa for doing such a thing: Lisa knew what Michael was like and shouldn’t have put herself in a situation where she’d allowed him to do that with her.

Lisa’s birthday had fallen in late April and the four of them had got together as they usually did. The two betrayers had given no signs away to suggest that they’d both done what they had and Jane was certain that John had no idea of what his wife and friend had got up to. Jane had spent that whole night angry though. She hadn’t liked seeing the two of them seated opposite each other in the restaurant and had to suppress her boiling rage.

Her best friend had betrayed her and every time she looked at her, Jane could picture Lisa having sex with Michael.

John had been the innocent one in this situation and Jane hadn’t wanted to hurt him. The two of them had never been close but he was a nice enough guy. Moreover, he practically saved the life of Jane and Michael’s daughter Emily when the youngster was very young. The then three years-old Emily had almost drowned when the four adults and two children had all taken a holiday together in Crete. John, then working a political researcher for an MP as Michael was, had given her mouth-to-mouth and restarted her breathing.

After that, Jane could never imagine even doing anything small to upset John because her daughter was still alive because of him.

Jane had decided to move on from Lisa. She hadn’t caused any drama – just ended their friendship. She had refused to take her former friend’s calls, stopped meeting her for coffee and then left The Daily Telegraph. Though he hadn’t said anything, Michael had known why this had occurred. On the other hand, as far as she knew, Lisa’s husband was only passingly aware that his wife and Jane were no longer friends.

Not since May had Jane spoke to Lisa… until today.

*

“You’re looking good, Jane. Have you lost weight?” Jane hadn’t responded to Lisa’s first question and Lisa had followed it up with another one.

“No, not really.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Are you going down to Southsea – to the police station there?”

“I guess.”

“How are you getting there? Knowing you, I bet you don’t have your car with you.” Lisa wasn’t letting up. “I have mine with me. Come on, I’ll give you a lift down there. Getting a taxi down from here won’t be easy: it isn’t like London here.”

“Erm…” Lisa’s behaviour had thrown Jane.

“Come on, I’m parked not far from here. It’s a two minute walk, if that.”

Jane wasn’t strong enough to resist.

Lisa was now driving a year-old silver Mercedes. Jane cast an admiring glance over it as she got into it and wondered how much it had cost Lisa and John.

“I like the car, Lisa.”

“John got it for me.”

“How is he doing?”

“He’s okay.”

Jane noticed how quickly things had turned. A few minutes ago, she hadn’t been able to shut Lisa up; now the other woman was killing off conversation starters. She couldn’t not talk though as they headed into Portsmouth and the Central Police Station where they both were going to have to go for work purposes.

“What do you think of this whole thing with Valance?” Jane thought that she’d be best talking about work.

“There’s more to it than him falling out of a window.”

“Yes, I know.” Michael had told her some really interesting gossip that he’d picked up about the grievously-wounded MP.

“The young guy in the house was shot in the face wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. The police found condoms and… stuff there; they were lovers.”

“Michael told me…” Jane noticed how the mention of her husband’s name caused Lisa to stiffen a little so she stopped herself mid-sentence.

“He said what, sorry?” Lisa recovered very quickly.

“He told me that the security services think Valance jumped out of the window because whoever killed his boyfriend was there to kill him. He landed in a bush otherwise he’d be dead.”

“How does he know that?”

“You know him, he has friends everywhere.”

A pregnant silence followed this remark. Lisa didn’t have a reply and Jane had run out of things to say. It was talk of Michael that caused this.

After a few minutes, when they got stuck in a little bit of mid-morning traffic along the M-275 that lead into the city, Jane thought of a way to move the conversation on again: “What do you think the police will have to say? Will we get anything more than that near nonsense back at the hospital?”

“No, they’ll say as little as possible. If it’s right what you say, with the security services being involved, then the police will say very little indeed.”

“Did you ever meet Valance?”

“No, Jane, I didn’t. Did you?”

“Once. He knows my editor from university – Exeter, I think – and we briefly met. He was not a nice man. Tribal politician through and through, who thought any Conservatives were ‘Servants of Satan’ – that’s the term I think he used.”

“John said something similar about him when I asked.”

“Did you know about his previous on-the-record remarks about homosexuals?” Jane had read through some of these comments that Valance had made over the past few years concerning homosexuals and gay marriage. None of it was nice and it was all quite ironic, in a sad way.

“I did.” Lisa gave a firm nod. “You’ll put them in your story, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course. I know you will too.”

“If he ever gets out of the hospital, his career is over.”

“That’s a given, Lisa.”

“Yes, John will be happy – he never liked him.”

Again, the conversation came to a halt. This time, Jane didn’t try to think of anything more to add. Instead she looked out of the window towards the urban landscape of the city as they entered it via the motorway. Portsmouth Harbour was over on Lisa’s side; Jane’s view was just of buildings.

She wasn’t concentrating on them nor any longer about the story with Valance. Her thoughts instead were about being with Lisa and talking with her again after so long. She was pleasantly surprised that it hadn’t been as terrible as she feared.

Maybe they could be friends again…?





Chapter Twenty–Two – Hidden Agenda
Downing Street, Central London – December 3rd 2013


Today should have been a great day, yet it had been the opposite. Like all days that started out going good and then went bad, what had caused all of the problems that Lauren had to deal with had come so unexpectedly that no one in the PM’s office could have expected it.

Lauren’s job was to anticipate these things though: that was what Daniel said though after he finished shouting.

*

The stressful day had been brought about by revelations that emerged today concerning Joanne Miller. The Home Secretary was going to be accused by The Times tomorrow of personal financial misconduct that amounted to public fraud. A Government-friendly source at the newspaper had tipped off Downing Street at lunchtime that another journalist there was in the final stages of completing a front page story on this. It had been kept hush-hush for a long time, and he’d only just cottoned on to it.

His lead was firm though.

Home Secretary Miller had been a high-profile businesswoman before entering Government. Before she’d become an MP, she made a lot of money in the property market. She had her own eponymous company and had maintained control of it while in the House of Commons and also when serving on the Opposition Front Bench. There had always been negative comment on this and only one year before she entered Government – and since then too – her husband had been in control of her valuable, nationwide business empire. The Home Secretary was one of the richest members of the Cabinet.

The Times was alleging that she’d subverted her company accounts with regard to local business rates as well as VAT payments. From what Downing Street’s sources could gather, there was evidence to this that had been verified by a leading tax legal firm from The City.

When the news hit Downing Street through Daniel, he had informed the PM. In turn, the PM had spoken to Miller: she had denied everything. The Home Secretary had apparently no knowledge of any wrongdoing and stated she was ready to sue should anything be alleged against her.

In a quick working conference with Daniel, Lauren had been set to work. The Times wasn’t the type of newspaper to make wild, unsubstantiated allegations – especially against a Cabinet member. The journalist who was on the story was a clever professional too; Tim Allen was a well-respected figure. Lauren had agreed with her boss that there had to be something to the story and they would have to work fast to try to kill it before it became a scandal that could threaten the Government and, more importantly, the PM himself.

Just as they’d feared, the story wasn’t rubbish.

As the afternoon wore on, Lauren had been able to get enough information to understand that The Times was onto something with Miller. The legal firm in The City had an executive board member who was a personal friend of Daniel’s and that executive had quickly come back to Lauren with what he could find. Tim Allen was working with one of the senior partners at the legal firm to make sure that his story about Miller had all the necessary legal details for not only publishing, but enough to stand up to legal scrutiny too. Lauren had understood that by telling her this, the executive was breaking confidentially, yet the man was talking to her because she worked for Daniel and thus the PM.

The executive would expect the favour to be one day returned.

The Home Secretary had a Special Adviser by the name of Peter Grant. He and Lauren had worked together within the Conservative Party for top officials over the years and it was he who had called Lauren this afternoon first before she could reach him. Like her, he was always thinking of job security and had a loyalty to no one. In public he was loyal to Miller, but in private he was out for himself and had no intention of ever being tied to a dead horse.

According to Grant, he had overheard Miller talking to her husband on her mobile phone straight after she’d spoken with the PM. She’d made this call from the toilets within the Home Office and been whispering, yet Grant had been able to listen in to some of that. Miller had made remarks such as ‘we are busted’, ‘we are going to go to jail’, ‘get rid of everything’. Clearly what Grant had overheard would be enough for a court case, but it was plenty for Lauren.

The Home Secretary was guilty of what The Times was going to accuse her of and that was a big problem.

A further, longer meeting took place in Downing Street after Lauren had spoken with Grant. Daniel took Lauren into see the PM and that meeting was attended too by Rachel Gallagher from CCHQ. Once Lauren had reported what she’d been able to find out in the short space of time that she’d been looking into it, the discussion at once moved to what to do. Gallagher as the representative of the wider Conservative Party made it clear that she believed that Miller would have to resign from her position as Home Secretary and probably as an MP too. Once The Times ran their story, there would be intense interest from other sections of the media. There would be an immense hostile reaction from the public too, let alone and investigation by HM Revenue & Customs. Miller could not serve as Home Secretary and even as an MP afterwards because she’d cause the Conservative Party immense damage by remaining.

Daniel had agreed with Gallagher. He told the PM that Miller had to be made to resign at once and if she refused, she would have to be fired. If the PM tried to stand by her, his credibility would suffer and he would long be linked with her actions as they would drag on and on through the media and maybe into the courts too. Furthermore, Daniel recommended that the PM act firm and fast. He should waste no time and get rid of Miller today; the longer it took, the worse things would get.

Lauren’s opinion had not been sought during this meeting. She would have said what both Gallagher and Daniel had though: the Home Secretary needed to be forced to resign.

*

The BBC’s Newsnight was currently on the television in Lauren’s office. She was here gone half ten at night with Kenny Timmons standing over in the corner against the wall. Her indispensable aide had had a busy evening liaising with the media on Lauren’s behalf. She had been delivering ‘anonymous’ quotes from a ‘senior Government official’ all evening to the various newspapers and television news outlets and her aide had made sure that her name wasn’t to be mentioned in any of those.

The titles had been run and then the headlines, while Newsnight had now turned to their main story of the night: the resignation of Joanne Miller, the (former) Home Secretary.

Lauren listened to the show’s presenter as he covered the statements issued by Miller and then the PM’s office. He went onto explain the basics of the now-modified story that The Times was to run tomorrow. She caught his offhand remark at how Downing Street had been ‘quick to move to separate itself’ from Miller and allowed herself a smile. She was glad that her hard work had paid off and those watching the programme like she was would understand that the PM wanted nothing to do with Miller now that she was toxic.

Newsnight moved on to camera footage of Miller leaving the Home Office and then this building when she’d come to be personally dismissed by the PM. There was other footage from outside the Miller family home in her Northamptonshire constituency as those reporters there had sought to talk to her husband. He’d given them nothing but ‘no comment’ and closed the front door that he’d unwisely opened to them.

Not far from where Lauren was, she knew that Daniel was in with the PM in the latter’s office. They wouldn’t be watching television like she was but rather meeting with other Cabinet members and Conservative Party officials as they tried to find a replacement for the departed Miller. She could think of a few names that they would be considering, but she didn’t know who they would select as the new Home Secretary.

Over there they could all be glum. Lauren wasn’t though, despite her terrible day. She believed that the PM and Daniel should be as glad as she was that Joanne Miller was gone. Notwithstanding the scandal that had brought her down – one in fact which they’d worked hard to stop becoming a full-blown scandal – Miller’s departure was a good thing. Many media people had openly speculated that she was a PM-in-waiting should a crisis or scandal cause the PM to fall from office. Until today, Miller had had her supporters in the House of Commons too among her colleagues for her eventually taking such a position.

Should things have gone that way, people like Lauren and Daniel would have been forced out of here. That wasn’t going to happen now: Miller was gone and Lauren remained.

This brought a sly smile to Lauren’s lips. She wished that she, and not Tim Allen from The Times, had brought Miller down. Then another thought struck her and it was one that wiped away that smile.

She remembered that the friendly source that they had at The Times, the other journalist who’d tipped off Downing Street as to what was coming, had mentioned that someone had been feeding Tim Allen what he had. Whoever that was had kept their identity carefully hidden. Someone out there had been able to topple a senior Cabinet member and hadn’t done it for altruist reasons.

That nameless person had some sort of hidden political agenda that clearly wasn’t favourable to the Government.





Chapter Twenty–Three – Special Project
Near Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire – December 4th 2013


Lord North was certain that there were no secretly-placed recording devices placed within his home. He had it swept daily by members of his trusted security personnel, many of whom had experience in placing electronic devices beforehand in their careers in the police or intelligence services. They would go over the whole of his house looking for anything that would have been inserted to broadcast or record the humdrum and irrelevant conversations that took place inside.

Nevertheless, Lord North still held his meeting with Michael Snyder today out in the gardens. What the two of them were talking about was too sensitive to risk that his security had missed something or that someone he ‘trusted’ was attempting to overhear what they were saying.

His home came with extensive grounds that Lord North employed people to maintain. None of those were working on this cold winter morning and he could see none of his security people anywhere near the path through the manicured lawns that he led Snyder along as he requested a briefing on the progress of their ‘special project’.

“Bring me up to date, Michael, will you? Start with what Baxter has been doing; I’m interested in what happened in Portsmouth.”

“Baxter had a little bit of bad luck there. His orders were to get rid of Clive Valance in the way that the majority of those who have been targeted have been: to make the assassination look like anything but an assassination. From what Kevin Nye told me, an arson attempt was made at a house that Valance was visiting.

Valance was supposed to die in the fire along with his much younger male lover. Baxter found himself confronted by the younger man instead and so made the decision to… well… kill that unfortunate person as well as Valance with immediate effect.

He shot the young man and then attempted to do the same to Valance.”

“So Valance didn’t jump out of that window as the news said he did?”

“Oh, no, Edward, he did. Baxter was going to shoot him, but Valance chose to escape by leaping from a great height.

Baxter sent his apologies via Kevin, yet… the actual circumstances might have worked even better to our favour. Yes, there is a police investigation – and one by the security services too – into what happened, one which they have no evidence to guide them, but that consists of no danger to us or our aims.

The focus of attention is on Valance and his double life. Several tabloids have created wild conspiracy theories…”

“I assume you mean The Sun and The Daily Star?” Lord North didn’t read such newspapers of course, yet he’d heard about what they’d printed with regard to the comatose Portsmouth MP – and been forced into laughter.

“Yes, that is the case there. Apart from those, other mentions in the media have been of his double standards concerning homosexuality. His political career is effectively over and he no longer poses any vocal danger to what we are doing.”

“Michael, do you still stand by your earlier view that we could have got him out of the way by just revealing his secretive sexual behaviour?”

“I do, but…” Snyder didn’t finish what he was saying here. Lord North had chastised him for questioning his employer before and clearly didn’t fancy more of that. Such behaviour then had been admirable, even if wrong. To refuse to speak up again wasn’t another case of the former.

“Let’s move on from that, shall we? Valance is finished.

So, Baxter had a stroke of misfortune but it all turned out well in the end: good news indeed. He is still actively out on the hunt?”

Lord North worried over Baxter.

The man was going up and down the country killing people without stopping. Should he be caught, all of them were going to be in a lot of trouble… to say the least.

“He is. I liaise with Kevin and Liz on a regular basis, but I try not to concern myself with every detail. They tell me that Baxter has no qualms about what he is doing and remains firmly committed to his mission. He asks no questions and expresses no dissatisfaction. They can’t point to any failings on his behalf.”

Back in October, when they were here too, Snyder had unnecessarily ‘sold’ Baxter to him. Lord North winced in annoyance at how he was doing it again. Snyder was an exceptionally effective employee, but he had his negative points.

He moved onwards: “And the other side of things – politically. How is everything there?”

“As you know, Edward, the B.O.R.M hasn’t stricken out with as much success as we hoped. Valance would have been a very clear vocal opponent of it, but he was only going to be one of many political figures who are opposed to everything that the campaign stands for. Friendly media coverage has been assured in places, yet it is never going to capture the public imagination.”

“That was never my intention, Michael.” He’d explained this all before. “What they call ‘baby steps’ is what I wanted with that. We had to get it moving, then we’ll use it effectively.”

“I see.” But, he clearly didn’t.

“We have accumulated all of that evidence that we have on political figures: the former Home Secretary is a case in point. With Miller, we had her resign. That occurred faster than I wished it to and so I want you to bring the B.O.R.M into the matter.”

“How so, Edward?”

“She hasn’t resigned her Parliamentary seat, just her Cabinet post. Part of the manifesto for the B.O.R.M concerns what the Americans call ‘Recall elections’. We’ll publicise that and use it against her.”

“She won’t resign her seat in the Commons.”

“Good.” Lord North gave what he knew would appear to Snyder to be a devilish grin. “The more she stays stubborn, the harder we can turn the screws against her. The B.O.R.M should call for her resignation and that will hopefully bring out local support for that in her constituency.”

“Ah…” Now, Snyder was understanding him.

“And as I said, we have all that other information collected. I’ve had people investigating many politicians all year. They have got hold of a lot of information on many, varied public figures. Let us start releasing it.”

“Tim Allen is eager for more.”

“Mister Allen is a valuable asset, I agree. However, let us work with other journalists too.”

“I will see to that when I get back to London, Edward.”

“Excellent. You’ve done well cultivating people, now it is time to put all that early hard work to use.” Like an obedient child, Snyder needed praise and Lord North had no issue in giving it because he wanted Snyder to do his bidding with as much gusto as possible.

“I have an idea I’d like to bring up concerning this…”

Lord North had thought that they were done, but, alas…: “Yes?”

“We should bring Williams into some of this. He can help a lot.”

“I can agree with that, Michael. It is time for him to start taking a more active role in matters. You’ve done well with him too, I must say.”

“Thank you.” The appreciation for the praise sounded as genuine as possible despite Lord North knowing that his employee was an accomplished and effective liar. “John will not allow himself to be played like a puppet, but I have the measure of him. I know which buttons to push there.

He craves the media attention. What better way to bring it, I suggest, than have him at the forefront of denouncing corruption among his colleagues? He personally despises such a thing and wouldn’t need much of a push to do it.”

“Figure out a way to do that, Michael, so he doesn’t realise it’s all come from you. I want you two to remain as close as possible, but from what I know of him,” Lord North only knew Williams a little, “he’s temperamental. He won’t like to be forced into things.”

“That’s exactly my point, Edward. He is the best man to do something like this because his reputation as nobody’s fool is well known.”

“What I mean,” Lord North was struggling to get his point across to Snyder here, despite not usually having that problem with him or anyone else, “is that I have more plans for him. I want him to get a bigger public profile, yet I do not want him to be damaged by the media in the eyes of the public. You have enemies in the media, Michael, and they could turn against him too.”

“We can deal with any threats to him though.”

“Yes, we can, but let us not move ahead of ourselves here. Use him sparingly and carefully. When the time comes, we want him positioned perfectly.”

“I will do as you wish.”

Their conversation ended there and both continued walking onwards through the grounds of Lord North’s country estate. He had no idea what Snyder was thinking after all that had been said, though Lord North was happy enough with all that they had talked about. His vision was still on perfect tracks to becoming a reality and though his principle employee in making that happen had his own ideas, Snyder was ready to accept that his employer knew better.

Therefore everything was right in Lord North’s world at the moment.





Chapter Twenty–Four – Hit List
Thames House, Central London – December 6th 2013


It was not the done thing for intelligence officers to bring cases to their superiors and ask to work them. They were supposed to be assigned investigations, not create their own. Harriet knew this and understood the reasoning. Yet, she and Patrick had agreed that their actions on this were more than necessary.

Moreover, they could argue that what they wanted to look into on behalf of the Security Services could be considered to be already part of the stalled YOUNG investigation.

When the two of them went into see Jamie Trent this lunchtime, she wouldn’t have ever dreamed that it would have come about by something she’d read in the paper first thing this morning.

*

Harriet hadn’t woken up this morning in her own bed.

After her third date in less than a week with Martin, she’d accepted his offer to go back to his house with him and spend the night there. With today (a Thursday) being her day off – Harriet had to work Sundays to do a five day week –, she had told herself that she could sleep there and go home early in the morning rather than having to worry about work.

Of course, she and Martin had done more things than just sleep when together in his flat.

Martin had woken her up when he’d got up for work at seven. He’d had to get to Scotland Yard from his place in Isleworth for Nine and, politely, ushered Harriet out before then. She hadn’t taken offense because he was a likeable guy who had treated her well and clearly had a busy work schedule.

Being dressed in the clothes that she’d worn the night before and having to travel in them wasn’t something that Harriet had been happy with, yet she had no choice in the matter after making the choice on that the night before. Martin had called her a cab to take her across to Hounslow East tube station and she’d kissed him goodbye… they’d promised to meet again on Friday night.

Harriet had crossed London with the morning commuters as she made her way home. She’d seen the smile on her face in various reflections of windows and hadn’t been ashamed of herself. She was a grown woman who was unattached and there was nothing wrong in what she’d done with Martin. It had been an evening and a night of fun; she hoped to do it again, though next time with a little bit of forward-thinking of what would happen the next day.

Crossing beneath London, Harriet had soon got to Liverpool Street. There was a little bit of a wait to get a train (they were of course more frequent running into London than out in the mornings) and she got herself a newspaper. She wasn’t an avid reader, but when she did, she would more often than not get The Independent because of its lack of political slant to its stories.

London to Chelmsford had a journey time of just over half an hour. Harriet was a fast reader but she was never going to get through the whole of the newspaper in that short space of time. If the particular story that had made her suddenly take a sharp intake of breath when the realisation hit her had been further inside, she might never have seen any significance in a very short piece written about the ‘accidental death’ of a woman named Gloria Quinn the evening before.

*

“Tell me who Gloria Quinn is then?” Trent clearly had no recollection of the name despite Harriet and Patrick handing him a progress report containing the woman’s name on Monday.

“She is… sorry, was, the head Press Officer for the Socialist Workers Party. Quinn was someone that Detective Sergeant Mark Clarke had shared information about to that email address that we had no luck running down.”

“She was killed when she was knocked off her bicycle last night in Southall.” Harriet quickly followed up Patrick’s comment as she was eager to get the urgency of this across.

“I remember now.” Trent’s tic kicked in as he spoke and Harriet’s stare was drawn to it no matter how much she tried to avert her eyes from his jerking arm. “There were four names, yes? One of them was an M.P who died of natural causes, the second was Christopher Young, the third was Gloria Quinn and the fourth was…?”

“Mohammed Salem.”

“He is the leader of the Muslim Association of Britain, Chief. Harriet and I believe that what we originally looked at was a Hit List that Clarke had in his possession. We believe that it is necessary to put protective surveillance upon Mister Salem at once.”

“Hold on both of you.” Trent didn’t raise his voice, but it was clear from his firm tone that he wanted both Harriet and Patrick to stop what they were saying.

She realised at once that they two of them had been so caught up in the moment that they had failed to properly plan out how they would talk Trent through what they had.

“I must interject here. I don’t think that you have a ‘hit list’, as you call it. You have four names on an intercepted email and a certain link between one of them to Mark Clarke. Yet, we know that Clarke didn’t kill Christopher Young because, as the evidence you brought me showed, he was at work in Scotland Yard when that murder occurred. He was involved in that man’s death, but it cannot be said he was directly responsible for it in any way.

Now, with Gloria Quinn, from what you are saying, the Met. Police are not yet even investigating her death as a murder. Before you can link her to Clarke and the suspected ‘hit list’, you’d need to find evidence – maybe circumstantial evidence – that she was actually deliberately murdered.

I move onto the M.P.: Roger Mayfield. I recall that the V.I.P Security Investigations Desk looked into his death after his heart attack last month and they found nothing at all to suggest that there was anything suspicious there.

I cannot agree with either of you, Harriet, Patrick, that what you have is a ‘hit list’.”

Hearing it all summed up like this, put an immediate dampener on Harriet. She at once saw the sense that Trent was saying. He was perfectly correct in his judgement that they had nothing concrete to offer him. As if she had been pricked with a pin, she felt a deflation in her.

Patrick appeared to be of the opposite persuasion: “Jamie, we need to look at what happened last night out in Southall. Quinn was a minor figure compared to Young, Mayfield and Salem; she has none of their public image. Nevertheless, her name is on the list that we know Clarke sent out in that email along with basic personal details about her and the others. Three of those people are now dead: in one instance we have evidence that points to a conspiracy to kill him.

Young is murdered and now Quinn dies… then there is Mayfield too.

I’d like permission for me and Harriet to go up to Southall and work with the police there. Moreover, I’d like to have another look taken at the heart attack that apparently killed Mayfield.

I really do think that this is necessary.”

Patrick was really nice guy. He was laid back and friendly. Harriet knew that he was a serious professional spook though with many years of experience. She had never heard him speak like this before and caught a glimpse of the fixed look of determination in his face as he for all intents and purposes demanded of their superior that the two of them greatly expand the YOUNG investigation.

“Is there anything new on the inquiry into Clarke’s murder?”

“There’s nothing there. Gloucestershire Police still have no idea of any further movements on his part after we missed him in Tewkesbury that night, and no clue as to who killed him and dumped him in the River Severn.”

Harriet wished that she had something more to give Trent on this, but there was nothing. Clarke had been a ghost when out in Gloucestershire. She reckoned that her superior was asking this because he was titling towards doing what Patrick had asked and wanted an incentive to change his mind a little.

“I need something here, Patrick.”

“I understand that, Chief.” Patrick had relaxed some and lessened his tone. He fidgeted uneasily in his chair opposite his superior and beside Harriet.

“The investigation into Mayfield’s death was carried out by your colleagues. Should I request that it be reopened, moreover that I involve you two in that, such an action will ruffle a lot of feathers.

I cannot do that based on an email with four names within it.” Trent was firm with this statement, but Harriet detected an opportunity.

“Can we look into Quinn’s death? If we can bring you evidence that she was murdered, especially in the same sort of manner as Young was…”

“As if someone tried to make it look like it was accident when it wasn’t…”

“Yes, like that, then can we go back to Mayfield?” Patrick had interrupted her as he clarified what she was saying and Harriet continued on from there. “Then we will have something to work with, won’t we? You’ll be able to go to upstairs with that, yes?”

Trent said nothing for a moment though his arm jolted as it rested in his lap. Harriet tried to mentally will him into accepting what he was saying.

“I’ll contact Special Branch and they can lead an inquiry into Quinn. I’ll request that Inspector who has been on the Clarke investigation. You two will unofficially aid his investigation, then come back to me with what you find.”

Subconsciously, Harriet let out a sigh of relief.

“There is still Mister Salem in Bradford, Chief…” Patrick hadn’t forgotten about the fourth name on the Hit List.

“West Yorkshire Police should be contacted – you do it – and asked to assess his personal security. For now, let’s concentrate on Quinn, shall we?”

*

When they came out of the meeting with Trent, Harriet and Patrick spoke at her desk.

The two of them agreed that the meeting with their superior hadn’t gone as well as they had wanted it to, but it could have gone worse. Trent, Patrick said, was hesitant to act on speculation and also didn’t want to question what another Desk had done with regards to the deceased Mayfield. Harriet let her colleague know that she could understand such a reaction, but still expressed her frustration that they couldn’t act as they wished.

Still, they had been given instructions on what to do.

Harriet had rushed back from Chelmsford after racing inside her flat to get changed; she’d driven back to London as fast as possible rather than take the train again. She was still officially not working today either. Patrick said that he would go out to Southall – Harriet reflected at that point that she had been in nearby Isleworth last night when Gloria Quinn had died – to talk to the police there this afternoon. He suggested that she stay here at Thames House and talk by telephone to West Yorkshire Special Branch. Moreover, seeing as Trent had brought up Clarke’s demise, she should also again contact Gloucestershire Constabulary and harass them for any titbit of information they might have forgot to tell the Security Service about.

Afterwards, Patrick left for Scotland Yard and from there he told Harriet he would be off to Southall.

*


Later in the day, Harriet had a long telephone conversation with Patrick after he’d spent the afternoon ‘out in the field’ while she’d been busy making other calls.

He was with Inspector Lavelle in Southall – who passed onto Harriet a simple ‘Hello’ through Patrick – looking at what had happened there. The evening beforehand, a car had been stolen from a council housing estate and then used to smash into Gloria Quinn when she was out riding her bicycle through the suburban district. The dead woman apparently did this every evening as she rode home from her work in Central London. On her last journey, the car had hit her from behind and sent her into the side of a parked lorry beside a main road. There was low-quality CCTV footage of the incident and the Met. Police had later found the stolen car afire within a deserted industrial estate in nearby Ealing.

There had been a few witnesses to the ‘accident’ that had occurred and an ambulance had been quickly called. Gloria Quinn had suffered major head and brain trauma during the incident though and had been dead by the time paramedics had got to her, let alone taken her as they had to Ealing Hospital.

Initial police thinking had been that the car had been stolen by teenage joy-riders and had struck her by accident; that had been what Harriet had read this morning in The Independent. The arrival of Inspector Lavelle and a Special Branch colleague of his in Southall, complete with ‘a man from a Government department’, had changed that. They had reminded the police of one of the statements from the various witnesses that had contradicted the others. In that, it was stated that the car had purposely struck the cyclist. Furthermore, that particular stretch of road where it had occurred seemed to have the worse CCTV coverage in all of Southall.

The latter matter was quickly not seen to be a mere coincidence.

Patrick was working with Inspector Lavelle to talk again to that particular witness, get access to other CCTV cameras that might have caught the incident and also get access to the burnt-out car.

Everything that he said furthered their mutual earlier suspicion that the death of Gloria Quinn was certainly linked to the YOUNG investigation.

She reported back to Patrick what she had been doing. Gloucestershire Constabulary still had nothing at all on Clarke. They couldn’t point to where he’d been staying, any more movements of his than they already knew nor any clues as to who had killed him. In a conversation she’d had with a Superintendent of the West Yorkshire Police, she hadn’t had much luck there despite them confirming who she was and who she worked for. The senior policeman in Wakefield informed her that as a high-profile figure, the public spokesman of a large organisation such as the MOB, Mohammed Salem’s safety was something that they monitored. He had his home in Bradford fitted with a panic button that linked to his local police station and they had a community liaison officer who had infrequent contact with him. There was no direct threat to him that they knew and what did the Security Service want them to do: put an armed guard on his person?

Harriet had been forced to hold her temper over the phone at that comment. She realised that cooperation with the West Yorkshire Police would have to be based on something more that she gave them than what she’d been told over the phone was ‘just a hunch, not proper police work’.

*

Later, after she’d finished with her phone calls for the day, Harriet set about going home for the second time today. She planned to meet with Patrick tomorrow and talk over what they had. She expected that they both might go out to Southall if any new developments occurred there overnight.

In addition, she wondered over whether she’d see Martin again tomorrow when doing that…

Meanwhile, as she started her journey home, her mind pondered over the Hit List that they’d stumbled upon. She wondered what the link was between those four people – three of whom were now dead of various causes – that made an unknown person want their deaths. Her foremost consideration was solving that mystery, though she also worried over Mohammed Salem up in Bradford: a man she’d never met and who had no clue that his name was besides those of three others who had very recently departed this world.

[stevep]

   James G ,

   Well things are developing.  Hariet and Patrick are on the case again and it sounds like the initial police investigation into Mayfield's death, which by the sound of included members of their organisation failed to question that he died in bed from an heart attack but with the light on in the middle of the night.  Mind you it might depend on where the light switch is in the bedroom.

  Also North seems to have slipped up in revealing the Home Secretary's corruption as its revealed someone is at work behind the screens and alerted the people in the PM's office.  They may be every bit as corrupt as him but their now feeling threatened themselves which means another group realising they have an enemy.

  I also wonder about the exact health status of Valence.  Its clear that someone was trying to murder him and killed his lover.  Hence even if he's in no condition to talk the police might be seeking to lure someone in to finish the job.  As such he could be dead or actually somewhere else.

  Hopefully the Williams's don't get too deeply involved as they both seem to be decent people.  That North has plans for John Williams don't bode well for him, even if it might mean what looks like good career progress for him.

  Sounds like North is already thinking of Baxter as a problem and probably of arranging an 'accident' for him.  Rather surprised me he didn't plan that from the start.

  Anyway a complex story getting even more so.  As you said in your reply that you wrote it several years back its not surprising that you can't remember everything you planned and why.  Still a very interesting plot.

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 1, 2020 9:52:16 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

   Well things are developing.  Hariet and Patrick are on the case again and it sounds like the initial police investigation into Mayfield's death, which by the sound of included members of their organisation failed to question that he died in bed from an heart attack but with the light on in the middle of the night.  Mind you it might depend on where the light switch is in the bedroom.

  Also North seems to have slipped up in revealing the Home Secretary's corruption as its revealed someone is at work behind the screens and alerted the people in the PM's office.  They may be every bit as corrupt as him but their now feeling threatened themselves which means another group realising they have an enemy.

  I also wonder about the exact health status of Valence.  Its clear that someone was trying to murder him and killed his lover.  Hence even if he's in no condition to talk the police might be seeking to lure someone in to finish the job.  As such he could be dead or actually somewhere else.

  Hopefully the Williams's don't get too deeply involved as they both seem to be decent people.  That North has plans for John Williams don't bode well for him, even if it might mean what looks like good career progress for him.

  Sounds like North is already thinking of Baxter as a problem and probably of arranging an 'accident' for him.  Rather surprised me he didn't plan that from the start.

  Anyway a complex story getting even more so.  As you said in your reply that you wrote it several years back its not surprising that you can't remember everything you planned and why.  Still a very interesting plot.

  Steve

To those who looked at the death of Mayfield at the start, everything looked 'okay'. It wasn't but - as in one of the updates below - there are people who don't want to admit they are wrong because they are stubborn / their careers are at stake / they are just being idiots.
Lord North already has political enemies, yet, he isn't suspecting people to have some idea of his schemes. Far too often, he is being too clever for his own good.
IIRC, that is the end of it with Valance. A by-election for Valance's seat would have favoured the overall plan but he's been disgraced in public and that will do for second best.
Williams is clueless to everything. Lord North has this intention of having him as a 'clean figure' at the end of it all.
Baxter will pose a real problem for Lord North come the end of the story!
Those dates with the updates are exactly when I wrote them. Most of it was done in the wee hours of the morning one winter.

[James G]

Chapter Twenty–Five – Exclusive
Sawston, Cambridgeshire – December 8th 2013


Four different Sunday newspapers ran today with EXCLUSIVE stories.

The journalist behind one of the stories rang Williams this afternoon for comment: “Mister Williams, this is Craig Atkinson from The Sunday Times. How are you this afternoon? Are you free to talk?”

The voice on the other end was friendly enough and Williams could recall who it belonged to. Atkinson was a serious journalist with a lot of friends in influential places. He knew his business and not to call MPs on a Sunday afternoon unless it was something important.

“Hi, Craig. Yes, I’m okay – yourself?”

“To be honest, John, I’m a little bit under the weather: it’s always the way this time of year.” Atkinson let out a sigh that Williams could detect over the phone. “I wanted to talk to you and get a comment concerning Tony Foster.

You read my story today in the Times, didn’t you?”

“I certainly did read it.”

Atkinson’s front page story in The Sunday Times concerned a Parliamentary colleague of Williams’. Tony Foster was the Lib–Dem MP from the neighbouring constituency of Cambridge: he represented the city itself in the House of Commons. The Sunday Times was alleging that an extraordinary amount of personal financial corruption had been undertaken by Foster as he enriched himself while supposedly serving his constituents. Atkinson’s story had linked him to ‘local, shady underworld figures’ and ‘five-figure kickbacks to them’. The substance of the story was that before he’d been elected to Parliament at the last General Election, Foster had used his position within Cambridge City Council to influence the granting of public services contracts to those who were paying him to send work their way. Moreover, he had been trying, with a little less success, to do so since he’d been in Westminster.

The Sunday Times had documents, intercepted emails, transcripts from phone calls and witness statements of this corruption that Foster had been involved with going back over the past nine years. One of the semi-criminal businessmen that he’d been involved with had boasted to an undercover colleague of Atkinson’s about his links with Foster, while Atkinson had also secured the cooperation of a wannabe whistle-blower: a civil servant from Cambridge Council who had tried to inform her superiors before of what Foster was up to, and after meeting no success with that, had gone to The Sunday Times.

“Foster represents a constituency right next-door to yours, Mister Williams. Can I get a comment from you on your reaction to his actions?”

“Well…” Williams wanted to say a lot – he was personally outraged by the scale of what Foster had been up to – but he didn’t want to go over the top with an initial reaction that probably would make it into print. “These allegations against Foster are shocking. I am aghast at what it appears he has been up to.

My colleague clearly has a lot of questions to answer for his behaviour. His constituents will, rightly, be very upset by what it appears he has been doing after they elected him to represent them.

To enrich oneself while making a pretence of serving the public, and enriching himself at their expense too, is inexcusable. Fraud and misrepresentation are not the duties of elected politicians and those that act in such a manner deserve no leniency.”

Williams knew that he could have put that better in writing or if he’d had time to fully construct what he was saying, yet he said what he thought. However, he did manage to insert into his comments carefully-selected wording that made it clear that these were only unproved (in a court of law) accusations – he had no intention of later being sued.

“What do you think should happen now?”

“Can you clarify what you mean there, Craig?” Williams had an inkling of what Atkinson meant, but was delaying for time so his mind could get the words right before they came out.

“In your opinion, Mister Williams, what do you believe should occur now?”

Williams noticed how Atkinson had practically just repeated his first question.

“I believe that the voters in Cambridge will be very unhappy with what they read about Tony Foster and his activities. It is up to him to explain the allegations made against him to them.

In addition, I suspect that his fellow members of Parliament will have some questions for him… so too might the police.”

“Is there anything else that you wished to add?”

“No, I think that will be enough for now.”

“I plan to follow up my story in the Times itself tomorrow rather than wait a week, Mister Williams.” Williams quickly realised what the man was saying; he wrote for The Sunday Times though wouldn’t be idle all week. “So, I will be using your remarks tomorrow. There may be a need for me to come back to you and clarify details…”

“You’re welcome too…”

“Thank you. I might also call again for comment if there are any further allegations to print against Tony Foster. As you can imagine, I’ve been getting calls all day giving me addition details on his activities.”

“Please do. Hopefully, by that time I will have had a further opportunity to examine them myself.”

“I hope to talk to you again soon, Mister Williams. Have a good day.”

“And you, Craig.”

After the call had ended, Williams, put his mobile phone back in his jacket pocket and walked back into the pub that he’d been inside before the call had come. Nathan was in there reading the newspaper that his father had left behind; the young Williams was focusing on the sports section at the rear of The Mail on Sunday.

“Was that mum?”

“No, it was a work call.”

“When are we off?”

“Soon.”

Seated back down with his son at the table, their dinners now suitably gone down some, Williams reflected on the conversation that he’d had with Atkinson. It had all been rather strange. The reason for the call had been normal enough, but not how it had gone towards the end. Atkinson had appeared to be rather interested in what Williams had to say.

He couldn’t understand why that was the case. The journalist from The Sunday Times had no need to explain his further plans at the end of their conversation like he had. Williams couldn’t comprehend why Atkinson had made those remarks about writing more and calling him back at some point soon when all he’d really given Atkinson was fluff.

Williams’ mind moved to the newspaper that his son was reading from. Just like Atkinson’s newspaper, the one Nathan held had a front page story making accusations against another MP. The representative from Edinburgh East – a safe Labour seat within the ‘solidly red’ belt in central Scotland – was facing allegations from The Mail on Sunday that he had been involved electoral fraud.

The Scottish MP had apparently worked with corrupt local party officials at the last election to falsify the results of postal voting. This, the story alleged, had been done on a grand scale so that more than a thousand votes had gone his way. What had struck Williams as odd when he’d read the story earlier in the day had been that there had no need for that fraud: the MP there would have won regardless. The Mail on Sunday was making a big deal out of this and while he was outraged like he had been with the story about Foster, Williams still felt that they were going over the top there.

Two more stories concerning MPs had made another pair of newspapers. The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph both had accusations being made against fellow Conservative colleagues of Williams from constituencies in Kent and Lincolnshire. With the former, The Observer alleged that the MP in question had hired both her brother and her son to work for her using public funds. They had done no work though, just drew a large salary from public accounts. The Sunday Telegraph was claiming that the other MP – a former Government junior minister – had involved himself last year in a deportation case against a suspected Russian criminal mafioso. They had evidence that pointed to the MP being paid to interject himself in the case so that the known smuggler and killer wouldn’t be returned to his native country for arrest there. A substantial sum of money had been passed to the MP to do so and the newspaper had one of the intermediaries involved in that transfer of cash as a witness.

It was quite amazing; Williams hadn’t known anything like it in a long time. For four different newspapers to have such different, but similar stories as their front page leads was a shock. Each was focusing on a different MP – from the three main political parties – involving themselves in corruption and being exposed for it. No hint had come before this morning in other sections of the media, nor in the Westminster rumour mill, of these coming accusations either.

He considered it very odd coincidence that all of these stories had broken today with there being no warning of them beforehand. Combined with Atkinson’s behaviour towards him, Williams was rather perplexed.

He knew something was going on, but couldn’t put his finger on it.





Chapter Twenty–Six – Contacts
The City, Central London – December 8th 2013


Jane Snyder’s editor turned her way and pointed a finger right at her: “Snyder, what have you got? You must have something for me?”

Nick Wilson put her right on the spot in front of her assembled colleagues from The Daily Express. Jane wasn’t sure what to say and thus kept her mouth shut.

“C’mon, speak up. You’re not going to let me, us, down, are you? You must have something that we can lead with for tomorrow morning. Every other ‘paper will have another corruption story about yet another blood-sucking, nauseating M.P. What do you have for me? Aren’t you our most-experienced political reporter on-staff?”

He’d stepped forwards and much closer to her; he’d also kept his finger extended so that she couldn’t forget that she was the focus of his attention. Jane couldn’t help him though: she had nothing to offer.

“I’m sorry, Nick, I just don’t have anything…”

“Jesus FUCKING Christ! What was the point in hiring you if it wasn’t for your husband’s connections? You’ve let me down, Snyder! In fact, you’ve let us all down.”

All around her, Jane’s colleagues were looking at the ground or up at the ceiling. There were another twenty-odd of them here in the newsroom as Nick tore into and belittled her.

She wanted to melt away into obscurity.

“Speak up, woman, will you?”

“Nick, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough. I’m disappointed in you, Snyder.” Finally, he moved his gaze off her and onto another journalist: “Paul…, what have you got? Don’t be a disappointment too, will you?”

Jane sunk back into the crowd. Nick had begun harassing another political reporter on-staff about why he too had failed to follow the lead set by other newspapers in coming up with a story for tomorrow about an MP that would bring in the readers.

Bearing witness to him turn on another didn’t make her happy. She was relieved that he’d left her alone now, but Paul didn’t deserve the tongue-lashing that he was getting no more than she had.

Nick was the worst boss that she’d ever worked for.

*

Not long after the impromptu staff meeting broke up, Jane escaped to the toilets. She was sure that Nick didn’t see her go and no one else seemed to be paying attention to her leaving the newsroom either. She just needed a few minutes alone.

Standing in front of the mirror, Jane was horrified at her reflection.

She looked terrible.

Back in the newsroom, Jane had almost burst into tears. Years of self-control learnt by terrible circumstances had stopped her from doing so. Nor would she allow herself to cry now.

I’m stronger than that.

There was nothing that a little make-up couldn’t fix. She leaned closer to the mirror after getting her cosmetics out of her bag and started to go to work. In a few minutes, she would look like her usual self.

Jane didn’t want any of her colleagues to see how badly Nick had got to her tonight.

*

Back at her desk, Jane tried to hide as much as possible behind her computer screen. She sunk down in her chair and made a deliberate effort to position herself that Nick, across in his office with the glass windows, couldn’t look out and see her. All around her, many other journalists were doing the same as she was.

No one here at The Daily Express had a front page story for tomorrow that Nick wanted. It wasn’t their fault; they just didn’t have the sources that others had.

Jane thought back to her editor’s comment about her husband. It had been pretty mean what he’d said – that he’d only hired her because of who her husband was – though she knew that it was a little bit true too. She had many years of experience and hard work behind her for other newspapers, with The Daily Telegraph especially, but it was her husband’s contacts that had allowed her to end up here after she’d walked out on her last job in the manner that she had.

She asked herself why he hadn’t given her any of his own tips recently for a story.

Jane picked up her phone and sent him a quick email; she knew that he’d pick it up on her phone. The message to her husband asked if he had anything new for her: was there any gossip he could send her way for her to use? Her other contacts, she told him, had dried up and she needed something from him.

She waited for him to write back and again took a look around the newsroom. People were trying to look busy in the hope that Nick wouldn’t turn on them like he had her and the others. This wasn’t the best working environment to be in when doing such a high-pressure job as theirs.

One day soon, she was going to get out of here!

“Ah!” Jane accidently spoke aloud when she received an email reply.

Her husband had sent her something from one of his contacts. It looked like something she could use…





Chapter Twenty–Seven – Letters
Norwich, Norfolk – December 9th 2013


Harriet mostly found that her work colleagues were people who she could get on with. Trent, while somewhat odd, was never a mean boss and neither was anyone around him. There was a pleasant atmosphere in the office at almost most times. On occasion, other Security Service officers might get a little stressed with their work, but that was it.

Harriet liked where she worked.

Thames House was a large building with many people working there though and she of course had never met all of them before. Since early this morning, one of those other nameless, faceless people who worked in her building had been with her and Patrick.

Harriet wasn’t enjoying the company of her fellow intelligence officer Kerrie Parks.

Parks wasn’t one to pull her punches; she’d made it clear that she wasn’t happy that Unusual Enquiries forcing her to reopen an investigation that VIP Security, of which she was second-in-command of, had conducted. She’d supervised two of her officers as they had briefly looked into Roger Mayfield’s death last month and been happy with the result of that. Her Desk had signed-off on the summary report that there was nothing suspicious with the heart attack that had taken his life nor the circumstances around that.

She was still content with the fact that her people had found nothing there to arouse the suspicion of the Security Service. The head of her Desk had been instructed to reopen the MAYFIELD file though by the Director-General himself – at the behest of Jamie Trent – after Harriet and Patrick had collected enough evidence late last week to prove that Gloria Quinn had been murdered like Christopher Young had been.

Thus, Parks was here in Norwich today with one of her officers from the original MAYFIELD enquiry along with Harriet and Patrick.

*

Harriet wanted to know why Mayfield had been killed.

She and the others had come to Norwich today for the purposes of looking for evidence that might have been missed – or ‘overlooked’ in the words of Parks and her underling – during the initial investigation into his death. That was not the case with Harriet; she was here to find something else.

It was the ‘why’ that would lead to the ‘who’ and thus an answer to the whole of the YOUNG investigation.

They had been to the house where Mayfield had lived with his wife and child. The widow and teenage daughter – the latter who had found her father’s body – were living since then with relatives in Nottinghamshire. At that house, there had been nothing there for the Security Service and senior Norfolk Constabulary people to find. Any possible evidence that they might have uncovered at the house had been contaminated by time and the amount of people who had been through that property. The initial attending ambulance crew, the police, Parks’ people and relatives collecting personal items had made that the case.

Nor had there been anything available from the coroner who had seen Mayfield’s body before the MP had been buried. He couldn’t give them anything to work with apart from his recollections and his files. A Home Office pathologist might have been called in to look at the body had Mayfield had not been buried for more than a month now, but he was in the ground and Harriet had been informed that digging up his body would cause an awful (metaphorical) stink.

As far as she was concerned, physical evidence like what Patrick hoped that they’d find, and which Parks kept repeating that they wouldn’t, wasn’t going to get Harriet her why nor her who. It wouldn’t be an inconsistency in a police record or images from a CCTV camera at a cash machine (as had been the case with Gloria Quinn) here in Norwich. No, she kept telling herself, with Mayfield it would be something different.

Her mind was racing all day looking for what she sought, but she couldn’t find what she needed.

*

Mayfield’s official and personal papers from his constituency office had been gone through by Parks’ people as well as the local and national Conservative Party organisations. Parks, here in Mayfield’s office with Harriet this afternoon, spoke down to Harriet for what seemed like the millionth time today as the younger woman sat at the deceased’s desk with them before her: “Don’t be foolish; there’s nothing there?”

Rather than give a reply that Parks’ statement deserved, Harriet held her tongue in check and just looked up and at the woman standing by the window. She tried to convey via her eyes and firmly fixed expression that she was annoyed.

It didn’t do her any good though.

“Miss Byrne, there’s nothing there to find. If there had been, my people would have already done so.

Can I be honest? You and Mister Collins are wasting your time here in Norwich. You should be focusing on finding out who killed Mark Clarke after you failed to nab him in Gloucestershire.

That is where answers lay, not here in this dead man’s office.”

Criticism poorly disguised as advice, Harriet had learnt today, was Parks all over. She understood why Trent had been so hesitant to have this case reopened as he at first had been if it was Parks the person that Unusual Inquires would have to deal with when it came to the death of Mayfield.

Again, Harriet said nothing. She instead kept looking through the documents, written reports, policy statements and letters that Mayfield had kept in his office. What Parks had said about Gloucestershire had reminded her of something that they’d found out when they’d first looked at Mark Clarke.

Something about a series of letters that Mayfield had received, which he’d gone to the police about…

Harriet soon found what she was looking for. She called Patrick into the inner office from where he was outside trying to solicit anything useful from Mayfield’s unhelpful secretary. Parks had demanded to know why Harriet was acting in such an urgent manner when ‘there was nothing here’, but Harriet had kept her focus on getting her colleague here before she revealed what she had.

Patrick could offer moral support and he also a lot of seniority with the Security Service that might assist in Parks’ giving Harriet some time to explain.

“Patrick, do you recall what Clarke sent to that unknown email addressee about Mayfield?”

“No, I’m sorry, I can’t. What was it?”

“It couldn’t have been anything important.” Parks spoke up again in dismissive tones; Harriet guessed that she was getting really worried now. She’d signed off on her subordinate’s work when they’d found nothing.

“He’d gone to the police about a pair of letters he’d received at his house.” Harriet ignored Parks. “They were from a soldier, weren’t they?”

“Oh yes, now I remember.” There was recognition evident on Patrick’s face and in his confident reply too.

“I have a letter here from Norwich Police concerning them, but the letters themselves aren’t here.”

The Chief Inspector from Norfolk Constabulary who was with them had also come into the small office that had once been Mayfield’s: “If he made a complaint of such a nature, then we’ll have records of that. We’ll also have a copy of any threatening letter if he brought them into us – it’s standard procedure.”

“People don’t get killed over threatening letters!” Parks wasn’t giving up.

“Kerrie, I fear that you may be wrong there.”

Harriet allowed herself a sly smile at Patrick’s tactful response to that. The absurdity of Parks’ statement was breath-taking, but right in step with her character.

“Let’s go look at these letters, shall we? Well… the copies anyway. We probably should talk to the officer who handled the complaint too. You never know just what we might dig up.”

For the first time today, Parks didn’t raise a complaint. Patrick had rightly humbled her and of that Harriet was immensely pleased.

She wondered what was in these mysteriously letters as they left Mayfield’s constituency office. Just how helpful might they be?





Chapter Twenty–Eight – In The Other Man’s Shoes
St. Albans, Hertfordshire – December 10th 2013


Baxter was tired after the long drive back from Torquay. He and Kevin had spelled each other during the drive down to Devon and back, yet the journey hadn’t been easy on the now very experienced assassin and his assistant. In Torquay they had been checking on intelligence that they had about where a future target of theirs planned to holiday over the coming Xmas period.

In a couple of weeks, Baxter would be back down there to eliminate a senior civil servant while the man spent time away with his family.

For now, Baxter was back at the house he had in St. Albans. He had a lease on a three-bedroom semi-detached house and he was currently upstairs within it. The master bedroom was lit tonight by the full moon outside because Baxter didn’t like to sleep with the curtains closed. He had always been a tad particular about that and didn’t care that others found it odd; he almost always slept alone.

Sleep had yet to come to Baxter, but he wasn’t frustrated about it. He knew that eventually he would drift off. While he lay here waiting for that, his mind was on the past.

He was thinking about his short time spent in Libya last year… and the future too.

***

The young Neil Baxter had joined the British Army aged sixteen. He’d gone straight from his East Sussex school into the uniformed service of his country after spending his teenage years as a Cadet. Like his father before him, Baxter had wanted nothing more than to serve his country.

The elder Baxter had been with the Parachute Regiment and such was the regiment that his son had joined too. It hadn’t been an easy achievement to be admitted into the illustrious Paras, but he had done it. There never had been a more determined young soldier than Baxter.

He saw the world while with the Paras. Baxter was deployed on training, peacekeeping and combat missions around the globe. He went to Northern Ireland, Germany, the Balkans, the Americas, the Far East and the Middle East. Baxter served with hundreds of many other Paras and made firm friends with countless comrades-in-arms. Baxter gained several promotions as he rose towards becoming a senior NCO. He started out as a plain old Private, then progressed upwards to the position of a Lance Corporal, a full Corporal, a standard Sergeant and then to a Colour Sergeant: the last achieved a relatively young age. His responsibilities as a senior NCO were large, but Baxter always enjoyed them. He’d never wanted to be a Rupert because he was at home with his fellow soldiers.

The Parachute Regiment maintained three battalions who were cross-trained in a wide variety of light infantry roles. Parachuting from aircraft was what the regiment was well-known for, but Baxter and his fellow Paras had always been employed as shock troops. They operated from assault helicopters, light vehicles and sometimes boats too. The regiment’s 1st Battalion had since 2006 been tasked to act as the ‘Special Forces Support Group’ (SFSG) – a four-company formation that were trained to act like American Rangers. When Baxter had joined this semi-commando unit, he had spent much time working with members of 22–SAS. Never a special forces soldier himself, he’d learnt a lot from that service especially during the Afghan War.

In the summer of 2012, a small detachment from the SAS had been deployed to Libya along with support from a platoon-sized force of SFSG personnel. Baxter and his fellow Paras had taken part in what was meant to be a low-key military deployment to protect British interests in Libya in the aftermath of the civil war and revolution there. They had been based at the British embassy in Tripoli and the idea had been for them to be on-call to back up the SAS should they find themselves in a pickle somewhere when on operation.

Within a month, such a situation had occurred.

A trio of junior diplomats from the Foreign Office had been snatched by Libyan guerrillas in the south of the country. The whole of the North African nation was in chaos since the end of the Gaddafi regime the previous year. Tribesmen who’d risen against the deposed brutal dictatorship still had their arms and were enjoying their freedom. They had little loyalty to the new government up in Tripoli and an eagerness to keep their new found way of life. Some rebel groups had links to terrorist groups too. The kidnapped diplomats had been put up for ransom to the British Government; the demand was an end to ‘Imperialist interference in Libyan internal affairs’. There had been a fear back in London though that the diplomats would be ‘traded’ to an Islamic terrorist group: that couldn’t be allowed.

The SAS were sent on a rescue mission after operatives with the Secret Intelligence Service had pinpointed where they were being held. Baxter and the SFSG also went along in with the special forces commandoes in a heli-borne operation that took them all deep into the Sahara desert near the border with Chad.

The operation had gone wrong though when the tribesmen/kidnappers hadn’t rolled over in the face of the British Army. They had fought back to defend themselves and their village (where the diplomats where) from what they regarded as an armed invasion by infidel foreigners. Libya was awash with arms and men who knew how to use them. One of the Lynx transport helicopters carrying Baxter’s fellow Paras had been hit by an RPG and had nearly destroyed; the men within it had barely escaped with their lives.

The whole village had fought back. Both officers with Baxter and his fellow Paras – the Captain and the Leftenant – had been hit by enemy bullets and wounded badly enough to keep them out of the action. As the most-senior soldier left on the scene with the Paras, Baxter had taken command in supporting the SAS. The orders were for the SFSG detachment to give them fire-support so they could complete their mission to rescue the Britons being held captive.

For more than twenty minutes on that dark night in Libya, Baxter had led his men in a highly-confused tactical situation as the SAS searched the village for the men they were there to rescue. Baxter witnessed many of his comrades shot and wounded, though he was always grateful that none of them lost their lives that night. The same could not be said for the Libyans that they encountered. The brave locals fought well, but never stood a realistic chance against trained Paras; they were shot down when they fought back.

When the SAS finally reached the diplomats, they’d found three bodies with bullet wounds to the backs of their heads; the kidnappers had decided to execute them rather than see them rescued. The mission had come to a quick end after that as Baxter had been alerted to the fact that the SAS were removing the bodies from the village and needed to be covered while doing so. More Libyans were gunned down during this extraction and as the entire, bloody British force flew away in their helicopters (minus one that they’d left behind for the news media that had arrived the next day).

Al-Jazeera had been on the scene the following morning and had broadcast from the village. They shot images of burning homes, crying children and dead locals. Seven so-called civilians (militants in reality) had lost their lives while another twenty plus had been injured. Images of the destroyed Lynx helicopter quickly made sure that initial reports of American troops being involved had been mistaken – especially when an aviation expert that Al-Jazeera contacted ran a simple internet search on the pictures of the tail of the Lynx and found in public records that it belonged to the Army Aviation Corps of the British Army.

Despite the SAS and Baxter’s SFSG detachment being tasked to Libya and having set themselves up pre-operation in Tripoli, they had conducted their failed rescue operation from a French military base in the northern reaches of Chad. It was to there where they had been extracted afterwards. Baxter had been with his wounded men when ‘very important people’ from the Government had arrived two days later.

The military operation had been conducted without regard to Libyan territorial sovereignty. The revolutionary government in Tripoli had been up in arms at Britain’s behaviour and so too had many other Arab nations – not to mention the U.N. There had been howls of protest at what London had gone done. In addition to this diplomatic drama, London considered the whole mission a failure because the three diplomats – middle-aged, family men whose identities had been released to the media – had failed to be rescued alive. They could have spun the story the right way had those men come out of Libya alive.

Both the SAS mission commander and his deputy had been killed: the only fatal British military casualties of the operation. In the diplomatic row that followed, Whitehall had decided to blame them for what had gone wrong to deflect blame from itself. This betrayal of dead uniformed servants of the country had come as a shock to everyone involved, but had been something that Government-friendly media contacts had gone along with. No fault was attached to the intelligence analysts who’d assured everyone that the tribesmen were few in number and lightly armed. Politicians who’d signed off on the mission had walked away from it all as fast as possible.

Moreover, Baxter had found himself another fall guy. The two SFSG officers had been badly hurt and the Government had left them alone – they’d come after him as the senior NCO there. He had later been called back to London and to the Ministry of Defence on Whitehall. There he had met with the Armed Forces Minister and the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff: the former an ambitious and fast rising politician named Roger Mayfield and the latter an Admiral from the Royal Navy who would soon afterwards retire and take a peerage.

During the short meeting, Baxter had been left dumbstruck. In his mind, the worst-case scenario had been that the MOD would try to give him a court-martial and he’d be accused of failing in his duty in the operation down in Libya. Such a thing had seemed impossible though because he’d done nothing wrong and was too junior. He hadn’t been that ‘lucky’ though. Instead, he’d found himself dismissed from the Army and his service career over. They had told him that they were to forcibly retire him. In theory such a move wasn’t something that either the politician nor the desk-man of an Admiral could do to a British Army Colour Sergeant. They couldn’t make him retire; he was a servant of the Crown.

Baxter had been blackmailed by the Armed Forces Minister though, with the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff as a silent accomplice. The media would be given his name and details of his personal life, he was told, and certain journalists would be induced to smear him. His aged, retired father would be drawn into the smear too. Unless Baxter opted to leave uniformed military service, he could expect both his name and that of his proud father to be dragged through the mud.

To his later regret, Baxter had folded under the pressure of it all and done their bidding so that the Government could later assure the media that the man responsible for the deaths of the diplomats and the dead innocent Libyan tribesmen was no longer part of the British Army.

***

Lying in his bed, Baxter thought now about Roger Mayfield. He’d had his well-deserved revenge against that man more than a month ago under instruction from Lord North. All along, he’d known that such a tasking hadn’t been accidental. Lord North was a man he respected, but not someone that Baxter had come to trust. He’d deliberately sent Baxter after the Armed Forces Minister on his first assignment because he knew how much Baxter hated the man who had destroyed him.

If he was honest, if he was in Lord North’s shoes and trying to get someone like Baxter to do his will, he would have done the same thing.

Away from the little bit of manipulation there with Mayfield, Baxter thought now about Lord North. He had spoken at length with the peer’s right-hand man – Snyder – about mutual interests in what they both wanted as an end game to what they were involved with, all the while being assured that Baxter’s wishes matched Lord North’s.

Baxter wanted to live in a just society and Lord North, through Snyder, had promised him that. Everything else politically wise had come down to that – what was fair wasn’t current, but could be should Baxter play apart in changing things. There were people who stood in the way of that idyllic future and they needed to be gotten rid of. It was sad that people had to die, some of them who actually, despite what Snyder had told him, were rather innocent sheep who lived among wolves. Yet, as Baxter had learnt first-hand, the world wasn’t perfect.

He could help make it so though.

Baxter’s trust issues with Lord North came about through what he saw as common sense. He was aware that he knew far too much. When this was all over and done with, once there were no more people that Lord North would point to and Baxter would kill, what would become of him? No matter what, he wasn’t going to be returning to the British Army. They hadn’t discussed that: it was something that had yet to come up. Baxter didn’t want to hear a lie told there though.

He reckoned he knew the fate that Lord North intended for him.

Baxter would be a worrisome lose end who would pose a real threat to Lord North and what came afterwards with the knowledge in his head. There was certainly an end planned for Baxter that wouldn’t mean him retiring to live happily ever after. He could forgive the man for that though; again, if he was in Lord North’s shoes, he’d do the same.

Being aware that Lord North planned to kill him when this was all done with didn’t make him angry nor frightened. Baxter had his own plans, which would be smarter than Lord North’s. He knew exactly the lay of the land when he’d got into this and had always anticipated finishing up and getting away with his life intact.

Until then, he would do Lord North’s bidding because the man’s goals were in general sync with his.

He would soon fall asleep untroubled.





Chapter Twenty–Nine – Total Recall
Downing Street, Central London – December 12th 2013


Lauren had lunch at her desk today.

There was a cafeteria across in the Cabinet Office that Downing Street staffers like her could use, but she didn’t fancy going over there at the minute because she knew that she wouldn’t be left alone. There would be too many people who would wish to disturb her lunch; here in the office she had her secretary rejecting all but the most urgent calls during Lauren’s thirty minute break.

She hadn’t fully stopped working though: Lauren was browsing through several newspapers that lay upon her desk. There might be something in one of them that had slipped under the radar of her, Daniel or their people within the PM’s staff before her. She didn’t think there would be, but earlier in the PM’s premiership, such a thing had happened. Issues and problems that might affect the PM and his Government needed to be addressed at once, though if they couldn’t, they should be acted upon as soon as they were spotted.

Lauren went through several newspapers as she ate. She was quickly bored by what she glanced over, even the few short articles in various publications that Kenny Timmons had felt the need to highlight for her by placing a cross in a luminous yellow felt pen through.

She stopped eating, with a mouthful of sandwich, when she saw something in one that her aide hadn’t seen fit to mark out for her attention.

There was an article on page sixteen of ‘The Daily Hate’ aka The Daily Mail. It was Frank Huntington’s usual political piece (he wrote on three days a week) it and took up about a third of the page. The headline was: When is enough enough?

Will there come a time when enough people stand up for what is right and say enough is enough? How long will we, as taxpayers, have to accept the abuse that is conducted by politicians who pretend to act in our interests, but instead serve their own?

The past weekend saw revelations in this newspaper’s Sunday title, and in many others too, concerning the personal corruption undertaken by MPs of various political affiliations.

The scale of such abuse is breath-taking.

Up and down the country, voters have been stunned by what their elected representatives have been getting up to. There has been a lack of suitable response from the parties involved: do these MPs have no shame?

I move to too the Government Chief Whip. Richard Hamilton made some disgusting remarks while being secretly recorded by the young woman that he was having an extra-marital affair with. Hamilton’s racist comments would disgrace anyone but himself.

Following the revelation of what he said, along with his affair, his only action is to threaten legal action against the Express. Where is his apology? Better yet, where is his shame?

These revelations have come on the back of those last week concerning the then Home Secretary, Joanne Miller. Missus Miller was quick to leave the Government, yet she still holds her Parliamentary seat. She has denied the allegations against her – which are a matter for the courts now – and also refused to apologise or even offer any regrets for what she and her husband are alleged to have done.

In her constituency, there have been many calls from locals there for her to resign as their Member of Parliament.

She has made it clear that she is going nowhere.

There is an expectation within Westminster that the other MPs named and shamed by the media this weekend intend to do the same as the MP from Corby.

Why can’t they be forced to leave Parliament? Does the House of Commons need such people to sit as lawmakers within it?

Only recently, the political pressure group the Bill of Rights Movement proposed that this country implement such mechanisms as they have across the Atlantic: recall elections. Brought to the attention of the British public in 2003 when the Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected following the ‘recall’ of the then California Governor, this would allow voters to dismiss an MP who fails them rather than wait until the next General Election.

If such a political action was brought into law in this country, voters across the country could rid themselves of MPs who failed to live up to their expectations or who were shown to be corrupt.

Yet… we would be very lucky indeed for our lawmakers in Parliament to bring into law such a possible course of action for voters to take. That would take a miracle for that to come about. The House of Commons as a whole has no intention of doing such a thing; they fear true democracy. There are some, a very few, who support the recall proposal by the Bill of Rights Movement, the MPs who fronted the pressure group’s launch, John Williams another, but those proponents of this democratic idea have been shouted down by their so-called colleagues.

I ask (in homage the Austrian-born, previous Governor of California) has it come to such a stage where there needs to be a near Total Recall of the vast majority of the MPs within Parliament?

Lauren read the article twice. There was a lot of in her to take notice of. She silently cursed Timmons for missing this – he was usually so good – and opened a desk draw to pull out her own highlighter. Going through the article for the third time, Lauren underlined several things. She’d nearly committed the damn thing to memory, but would want to come back to several things later and this would be a good way to jog her memory then.

His article covered nothing new at first glance, but that was deceptive.

Both Lauren and her boss Daniel had since Monday been looking into where the four reporters (each from a different newspaper) had got hold of the information that they had for their political corruption stories. This had come on the back of last week with the scandal surrounding Miller and the PM’s two key advisers had seen a pattern emerging where a nameless figure was out there trying to cause the Government damage. A Labour MP and one from the Lib-Dems had been caught up in this, but their focus was on why a Cabinet member and two Conservative MPs had been targeted for exposure in the nation press.

Those corruption allegations had been joined by that of the Government Chief Whip. Monday’s edition of The Daily Express had revelations about that MP’s private life and allegations that he’d made some nasty racist remarks, comments which had been secretly recorded and slipped to Jane Snyder at that newspaper. Lauren and Daniel knew who had given that journalist that story – her grubby little husband – but they had no idea where everything else had come from.

This was a growing concern.

Huntington’s commentary piece today had caused the reaction that it had in Lauren because of how the journalist had linked those recent scandals to Parliament. Though it often seemed of little importance, the PM remained a member of the House of Commons despite his position as Head of Government. The article that she had just read had called, in roundabout terms, for his removal as well as the majority of MPs who sat in Parliament. Huntington hadn’t phrased it in the most damaging of terms, but that was what he had implied.

The article was an attack on the PM and fellow members of his Government as well as all MPs: Huntington was suggesting that they were all tainted with the stench of corruption and needed to be gotten rid of.

Huntington was, in Lauren’s considered opinion, a right-wing buffoon. He’d written articles similar to this before that had, in a roundabout manner, called for the implementation of a wholly different form of government that wouldn’t involve what the country currently had. He had no ideas as to what this should be, but the general theme was always that there needed to be an authoritarian air to them and ‘someone to come to the rescue to sort things out’ or such like. Because he was an idiot, he could be ignored.

Not now though.

No today, he was writing about the BORM and their ‘true democracy’ rubbish.

Lauren had previously seen confidential Government polling on the issue of recall elections. When presented with the idea of such a thing, and having it explained to them in biased terms, many people were favourable to such an idea. It appealed to the man in the street to get rid of an MP at a whim. Those who had looked into this had other ideas though.

She was more than familiar with 2003 and California. It wasn’t just a simple case as Huntington had suggested. There was a complicated political and legal process to go through before a recall election would take place across in the States. However, the article that she’d just read made it appear that such a thing would be an easy and regular occurrence.

How would that work? That wasn’t something that could.

MPs would be getting recalled every week and in their place would come another who could face recall the next. It would be chaos! She could easily imagine it happening to the PM or another Cabinet member on a whim in their local constituencies. No country could be run that way.

Lauren quickly had an idea that she planned to float later to Daniel: they would need to use their media friends to explain to the public how unworkable such a lofty idea was. This would take up valuable time though and Lauren knew that her boss didn’t like to have his wasted: there was no choice here though.

In addition to the issue of the mystery surrounding who was leaking scandals to the media and this whole seductive (to the uninformed) recall issue, there was the mention made by Huntington’s piece about John Williams. His name kept cropping up in opposition to the Government. He was not coming after them directly, Lauren knew, but was making trouble from the side-lines.

Well, she told herself, we’ll do something about him too if he keeps this up…

[stevep]

Jul 1, 2020 15:54:48 GMT James G said:

Jul 1, 2020 9:52:16 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

   Well things are developing.  Hariet and Patrick are on the case again and it sounds like the initial police investigation into Mayfield's death, which by the sound of included members of their organisation failed to question that he died in bed from an heart attack but with the light on in the middle of the night.  Mind you it might depend on where the light switch is in the bedroom.

  Also North seems to have slipped up in revealing the Home Secretary's corruption as its revealed someone is at work behind the screens and alerted the people in the PM's office.  They may be every bit as corrupt as him but their now feeling threatened themselves which means another group realising they have an enemy.

  I also wonder about the exact health status of Valence.  Its clear that someone was trying to murder him and killed his lover.  Hence even if he's in no condition to talk the police might be seeking to lure someone in to finish the job.  As such he could be dead or actually somewhere else.

  Hopefully the Williams's don't get too deeply involved as they both seem to be decent people.  That North has plans for John Williams don't bode well for him, even if it might mean what looks like good career progress for him.

  Sounds like North is already thinking of Baxter as a problem and probably of arranging an 'accident' for him.  Rather surprised me he didn't plan that from the start.

  Anyway a complex story getting even more so.  As you said in your reply that you wrote it several years back its not surprising that you can't remember everything you planned and why.  Still a very interesting plot.

  Steve

To those who looked at the death of Mayfield at the start, everything looked 'okay'. It wasn't but - as in one of the updates below - there are people who don't want to admit they are wrong because they are stubborn / their careers are at stake / they are just being idiots.
Lord North already has political enemies, yet, he isn't suspecting people to have some idea of his schemes. Far too often, he is being too clever for his own good.
IIRC, that is the end of it with Valance. A by-election for Valance's seat would have favoured the overall plan but he's been disgraced in public and that will do for second best.
Williams is clueless to everything. Lord North has this intention of having him as a 'clean figure' at the end of it all.
Baxter will pose a real problem for Lord North come the end of the story!
Those dates with the updates are exactly when I wrote them. Most of it was done in the wee hours of the morning one winter.

  I see what you mean about this.  So many revaluations in such quick succession is setting off red flags in the PMs office and probably elsewhere as well.  Plus as he showed in the last chapter he isn't wise enough to take good advice.  It would have been far more effective to expose Valence rather than having him and his lover killed.

  I'm not surprised that Baxter realises his probable death if he doesn't take precautions.  Going to be interesting to see who acts 1st.  Of course one way he could make sure of his safety is to remove North but I don't know if he would consider that, at least not yet.

  Also see what you mean about Kerrie Parks being an idiot.  She's going to do more damage to her career with that attitude whether or not evidence is found that she's made a mistake.  I'm guessing that those letters will lead the team towards Baxter, although finding him will be more difficult.  Plus given that his links to North are via zombies will further complicate matters. 

  Williams is starting to realise something is up.  Also I think he's too honest to be left standing, let alone in any position of power if North was successful in his plans.

[James G]

Jul 2, 2020 9:56:13 GMT stevep said:

Jul 1, 2020 15:54:48 GMT James G said:

To those who looked at the death of Mayfield at the start, everything looked 'okay'. It wasn't but - as in one of the updates below - there are people who don't want to admit they are wrong because they are stubborn / their careers are at stake / they are just being idiots.
Lord North already has political enemies, yet, he isn't suspecting people to have some idea of his schemes. Far too often, he is being too clever for his own good.
IIRC, that is the end of it with Valance. A by-election for Valance's seat would have favoured the overall plan but he's been disgraced in public and that will do for second best.
Williams is clueless to everything. Lord North has this intention of having him as a 'clean figure' at the end of it all.
Baxter will pose a real problem for Lord North come the end of the story!
Those dates with the updates are exactly when I wrote them. Most of it was done in the wee hours of the morning one winter.

  I see what you mean about this.  So many revaluations in such quick succession is setting off red flags in the PMs office and probably elsewhere as well.  Plus as he showed in the last chapter he isn't wise enough to take good advice.  It would have been far more effective to expose Valence rather than having him and his lover killed.

  I'm not surprised that Baxter realises his probable death if he doesn't take precautions.  Going to be interesting to see who acts 1st.  Of course one way he could make sure of his safety is to remove North but I don't know if he would consider that, at least not yet.

  Also see what you mean about Kerrie Parks being an idiot.  She's going to do more damage to her career with that attitude whether or not evidence is found that she's made a mistake.  I'm guessing that those letters will lead the team towards Baxter, although finding him will be more difficult.  Plus given that his links to North are via zombies will further complicate matters. 

  Williams is starting to realise something is up.  Also I think he's too honest to be left standing, let alone in any position of power if North was successful in his plans.

Lord North has to have one heck of an ego to try something like this and he isn't going to listen much to the 'little people'.
Right at the end, when it is all said and done, Baxter vs. Lord North comes to a conclusion!
Parks and her investigation will be shown to be as flawed as it was.
Williams... we shall have to see.

[James G]

Chapter Thirty – Jumper
Manchester City Centre – December 13th 2013


Police Constable Phil Cobb listened to the radio report that there was a dead body in Piccadilly Gardens and turned to give his partner Julie a nod. She returned the silent comment with one of her own and then he answered the call with an acknowledgement that they would be attending at once.

The two officers from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were over on Liverpool Street when they first started moving and Cobb took them and their Vauxhall patrol car the short distance across the dark city centre. The small computer fitted to the patrol car said that it was just after six o’clock, he noticed when he glanced across it, and Cobb told himself that this was going to be a long morning.

With the city centre being empty of other cars and pedestrians alike at this time, he quickly crossed the middle of Manchester. Cobb drove them up Deansgate until he reached St. Mary’s Gate. He had the lights flashing but no siren on – Cobb had once lived in a small city centre flat here and so he wouldn’t put on the sirens and wake the sleeping unless it was necessary – as he took a right turn and then followed the road as it became Market Street. Following that road, he soon came across Piccadilly Gardens: the landscaped green space in the heart of the city around which much of the centre shopping district was located.

Julie told him to take a left turn and to go over to where the bus stops were. Cobb cut across the tram lines that were almost flush with the road itself, though he felt the bumps in doing so, and he drove over there. He saw several people gathered there and so he (only momentarily) hit the siren to alert them to his presence; the last thing he wanted to do was hit an unwary fellow Manchurian.

The people standing around turned out to be a mixed collection of locals. There were a few bus drivers, one of which had called 999, there along with people who were apparently on their way to work and who had been drawn to the crowd. As a young, but well-experienced policeman, Cobb knew that crowds would gather wherever there was anything to see time nor place notwithstanding. He and Julie cut through the crowd of a dozen or so people to get to this body…

What they found on the pavement right in front of a few shuttered shops was a horrible sight. They found what once had been a man there on the pavement.

Cobb at once wished that he hadn’t taken the call. The sight of this splattered body was certainly going to stay with him for a long time.

Julie said that there was an ambulance on the way and Cobb at once heard the sirens of that in the near distance. There would be nothing that the paramedics could do once they got here; they would be as useful as he was.

As the two GMP officers got to work in moving the people back from the blood and gore smeared on the ground, that bus driver who had alerted them all to the body on the ground stepped forward to identify himself as the man who had called 999. Cobb spoke to him just out of earshot of the other people and he had a quick story to tell.

At a quarter to six, the bus driver had pulled his empty vehicle into the bus stops here to wait to begin his route. He’d stepped out of his cab for a quick smoke and been standing around aimlessly as he did so next to his bus. Just as he’d finished his smoke, a shout had come from somewhere and he’d looked around, but not seen anything. Within seconds, apparently, he’d heard a thud, maybe a crunch, and also caught movement out of the corner of his eye: there was then a body on the ground. He pointed to the City Tower that loomed above him and Cobb now.

The bus driver said that the man had come off that building.

The City Tower was a thirty-storey building that rose above the city centre. It had been built in the Sixties, though had been refurbished in the past few years. Cobb knew that it was full of office space for many organisations. He looked up at it after he was told the bus driver’s story. Even though it was still dark, from what he could see of it now and what he knew of it too, it wouldn’t have been easy for someone to fall off or even jump from it. Moreover, who would have been up there at this time of the morning to come off it?

The mess that was the man on the ground clearly gave the impression that the bus driver had his facts straight. Cobb had seen the body of a ‘jumper’ before: he’d been on the scene of a drug-addicted young mother who’d come off a residential tower block down in Wythenshawe last year. That body had looked like this one did, one which was smashed to pieces.

When the ambulance arrived, it’s crew got quickly to work. They worked fast and frantically, but there was nothing that they could do to help the body of what had once been a man. Cobb gave them plenty of room nonetheless and then spoke to them after they had finished in their failed attempt.

In addition, into Piccadilly Gardens came several other police officers to join him and Julie. Another pair of patrol cars had turned up and the officers from both started to clear a wide area around where the body was. Cobb would see that this was going to cause much disruption as the morning rush hour approached, but there was nothing to do: this was a crime scene. Following on from his fellow junior officers, into Piccadilly Gardens also came senior officers: sergeants and detectives. Cobb’s shift was due to end at Eight, but he reckoned, because he had been the first officer on the scene, that he’d be needed for longer than that.

So much for his plan to get home soon and get some sleep after a busy night…

*

Cobb was still on scene gone Ten. By that point, the body was soon to be removed from Piccadilly Gardens. He was sitting in the back of a police car, with the door open and his legs on the ground outside as he had yet another cup of coffee. His excessive consumption of hot drinks this morning (from plastic disposable cups) was keeping him awake. His Sergeant had told him a while ago that he could go home, but Cobb had wanted to wait around. Julie had left, but Cobb felt that this was ‘his’ body. He wouldn’t go until the deceased man had been identified.

He had a strange feeling that he couldn’t leave it until it had a name to go with it. Only then, he believed, should he let his body become someone else’s. His fellow officers had been understanding; this sometimes happened with first responding officers and unidentified corpses.

When his Sergeant came back to him, Cobb was given the news that he’d been waiting for. The deceased man, who appeared to have jumped off the City Tower for as yet undetermined reasons, had been called James Mortimer. He lived down in Cheshire and worked at the BBC across at MediaCityUK in Salford: Mortimer was a news executive of some sort.

As to what he had been doing in the middle of Manchester, jumping off a building to his death at Six in the morning… there was no clue as to that yet. Cobb was told not to worry about that though and get home to sleep. Everything was in the hands of his fellow GMP detectives now.





Chapter Thirty–One – Questions
Thames House, Central London – December 14th 2013


Harriet didn’t mind working Saturdays. She was still relatively junior within the ranks of the Security Service and its National Security Directorate (NSD) and so her presence was required at the office today while more senior people had the whole weekend off.

She was working because she had an active X-File to work on too.

Because of the recent developments in the YOUNG investigation, the X-File had been greatly expanded. Trent, while still overseeing Unusual Enquires, was now directly supervising what was now called MATCH: the randomly-assigned name now given to what had grown from the initial YOUNG enquiry.

She, Patrick and Trent had been joined by two of Kerrie Parks’ people, though not the head of the VIP Security Desk. Harriet had been quietly informed by Patrick that Parks had been reassigned after repeated attempts to derail the MATCH investigation to deflect blame from the initial failure to see that there was much more to the death of Roger Mayfield. Further investigation in Norwich had determined that there had been many ‘irregularities’ there: little things had been overlooked including the death threats made against the Government Minister during the summer.

Those threats had come in the form of not only two letters that Mayfield had received addressed to him at his home in Norfolk, but also telephone calls and, to top that off, a personal visit to his constituency office too. The source of those threats came from someone whose MOD file that Harriet currently had on her desk.

She was looking at the official records of a retired soldier named Neil Baxter.

Only the personal intervention of the D-G had apparently managed to secure this file from MOD records. Harriet had been informed that they had refused to allow Trent to see the file when he’d requested it and also turned down the same request from the head of the NSD too; something that she’d never expected to hear.

Looking through it as she sat yawning at her desk this afternoon, Harriet couldn’t understand why. There was nothing secret within this record of his military service or anything that had been redacted. The man had not been anywhere near any secret projects and had minimal contact with the SAS. The file had been handed to Thames House too; Harriet and her colleagues were the last people to do anything silly like leak it to the media.

The only reason that she could understand for the MOD not wanting the Security Service to see Baxter’s military record were the circumstances surrounding his departure from the British Army. Such a thing was hardly touched upon within the file anyway.

Trent had had to inform her and the other intelligence officers working the MATCH investigation the details of that from what he knew personally.

What was in the service record wasn’t much.

There was only what Harriet would expect to see in the file of any former soldier. There was a portrait file of the man, biological details, training and assignment lists, a medical report and reviews written by officers under which he’d served during his career. One of the latter included something that Harriet hadn’t expected to see after hearing about the manner in which he had been forcibly retired.

There was a letter of commendation in the file from the Director of UK Special Forces. The Major-General who had written it (this was a post always assigned to British Army officers despite his command of certain Royal Navy and Royal Air Forces special forces trained detachments) had excelled himself at selling Baxter’s attributes and potential. During the conflict in Afghanistan – no one within the MOD or Government at-large called it a ‘war’ –, Baxter had attracted the attention of this senior officer by his conduct in combatting the Taliban. Only from a distance had this been observed, because Baxter hadn’t been tasked to work directly with either SAS or SBS units on the ground there.

Nevertheless, he had been described as being someone who would do well should be complete the training to join the SAS. That had never happened though due to events in Libya.

Harriet was no military expert, but from what she read of the mission report, Baxter had done nothing wrong there during the failed rescue mission of those diplomats. In contrast, Baxter’s military file contained a copy of the official post-mission report – one written by senior people at the MOD – that blamed him for the deaths of ‘innocent civilians’ there.

This paperwork, and from what Trent had told her, lead her to the conclusion that Baxter had been screwed over by his Government. She knew it… and so did he.

All of which led to his behaviour this year in relation to Mayfield.

From what the deceased MP had told Norfolk Constabulary, he had been concerned about Baxter. Mayfield had felt that the former soldier was stalking him a little and he had feared for his safety. Baxter had blamed the Armed Forces Minister for everything that had gone wrong with his life and had expressed a desire to get his revenge.

Putting this all together, Harriet could see that Baxter had a motive to kill Mayfield. He was a trained soldier and knew how to take a man’s life. Yet, neither she nor any of her colleagues on the MATCH investigation could see how he could have done it. There was no physical evidence linking him to Mayfield’s death and the MP was still officially deemed to have had a heart attack.

Moreover, as one of Parks’ people had pointed out, even if Baxter had killed Mayfield, why had he one and killed Christopher Young and Gloria Quinn too? Where was the man’s motive for the murder of each of them and what did either of them have to do with either Mayfield or Baxter himself?

With regard to both of those killings, there was only the suspicion that he’d gone and murdered them based on that email from Mark Clarke. Patrick had pointed out that the former soldier’s physical description matched that given by Young’s girlfriend and it could possibly be the same as that given of the man seeing driving the car that had knocked Quinn off her bicycle in Southall. There was CCTV camera footage from a cash machine that showed a car purposely smashing into Quinn and a witness there who had given a description of the car’s driver, but none of that was enough for Harriet to say that Baxter had definitely been involved in either of those deaths.

The question that they kept coming back to there with this X-File was the why.

As to Baxter himself, the Security Service had been trying to locate him since Monday. The MOD had supplied an address for him down in Sussex. She and Patrick had travelled to his house in the village of Hurst Green three days ago with the cover as civil servants from the MOD looking into his pension arrangements. They had brought with him the necessary documents and plausible excuse to meet with him and get him talking. Baxter hadn’t been at home though.

They’d soon found out that he’d left the country on October 24th and flown from Heathrow to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. He’d travelled more than four thousand miles into the heart of East Africa to take up a job with an international private security company. Harriet had afterwards seen the documentation that backed that up. Baxter had a role as a security consultant for ferries crossing Lake Victoria; he and other Westerners with military background were making sure that these weren’t targeted by pirates or terrorists.

This information put Baxter almost on the other side of the world before either of the three deaths that the MATCH investigation was focusing on had occurred. Further checks with the Border Force – an agency of the Home Office – showed that he had yet to return from Kenya. Checks on Baxter’s finances showed that his employer was paying him a reasonable monthly wage and that money hadn’t been touched, his UK debit card hadn’t been used since he’d left the country and Baxter had left his Sussex home in the care of a residential letting agent to be rented out while he was out of the country.

Harriet had agreed with both Patrick and Trent that it was quite a coincidence that the previously-unemployed Baxter had managed to secure himself a well-paid job out of the country a week before Mayfield was murdered. In their job, they were taught not to believe in coincidences.

But… what could they do? There was no Baxter for them to talk to.

Trent had spoken with their ‘sisters’ at the Secret Intelligence Service. With East Africa being the scene of several instances of international terrorism, MI-6 had some of their people based in Nairobi. They had promised to get confirmation that Baxter was actually in Africa; they had probed for a reason as to why Thames House was interested in the former soldier, but Trent had evaded those questions.

While thinking of all of this, Harriet had been staring at Baxter’s photograph within his MOD file. Letting her mind drift off for a moment, she realised that he was a rather attractive looking man who reminded her in many ways of her current boyfriend Martin Lavelle with his short, dark hair and his blue eyes.

Back on subject, she recalled how Patrick had showed this image to both Young’s girlfriend and well as the witness to Quinn’s death. Neither of those two people had been able to place him at the either murder scene, though each had pointedly refused to say that they were certain that he wasn’t the man that they’d seen either.

Just as the YOUNG investigation had been since it had first begun, the MATCH enquiry was going nowhere too. Harriet was still left with many more questions than she had answers.

How much had Baxter truly wanted to hurt Mayfield?

How had he wangled the job that he had taken?

If he had killed Mayfield, how had he done that?

What was the connection (if there was one) between him and Mark Clarke?

If he had killed Young and Quinn, what was his motive for those acts?

Where was the MATCH investigation going to go next should Baxter be innocent of all of this?

Harriet groaned in frustration at all of these questions because she knew that there were answers out there to them, but she was unable to locate them.





Chapter Thirty–Two – Danger
South Kensington, Central London – December 17th 2013


Williams had hoped that the birthday party that his wife had thrown for him wouldn’t attract that many people because it was a Tuesday night. Lisa wanted to make a big deal out of his fortieth, yet he would have quite happily done what their done recently for their wedding anniversary.

Lisa had made it clear that there was to be a party though.

Their favourite restaurant, the one down in South Kensington from where Lisa liked ordering food, had a large upstairs dining room that she’d hired out to host the event. She had arranged a guest list and sorted out the food and drink. His wife knew that he wouldn’t want any loud music and she’d made sure that that wasn’t present either.

Sitting down now with the invited guests as they all got ready to eat, Williams looked around at all of those present. He and Lisa had greeted them all personally when they arrived with smiles on each side, but he wanted to see them now when they were unaware of his gaze. There were more than a few people here that he wouldn’t have asked to attend had it been up to him rather than his wife.

Those attending his party were sat around three tables. Lisa had invited fifteen guests alongside the two of them and their son. At this table with him and his wife were his sister Claire, Claire’s husband as well as Michael and Jane Snyder. On the table over to the left, there were another six people: two more couples of friends of theirs along with Nathan and his cousin Grace, Claire’s daughter. Finally, on the third table were another three couples who both Williams and his wife knew from politics or the media. Within that group were Lisa’s friend Debbie Parsons and her husband Colin. Debbie was a civil servant and the head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) while Colin was the new Home Secretary.

Williams watched his fellow politician holding court over there. The political lightweight was telling a story and entertaining those seated with him while the man’s wife looked on approvingly.

Parsons had no idea that Williams was watching him with contempt.

The man shouldn’t have been here. Williams never had much time for Debbie Parsons anyway and was certain that she and Lisa weren’t that close since the ONS had moved out of London and to South Wales. As for Colin Parsons… Williams recalled with anger at the times when he had been before the Home Affairs Select Committee (when he’d served as the Home Office Minister for National Security) and given them fluff for answers. He’d only recently been promoted from outside of the Cabinet into one of the Great Offices of State despite being an incompetent fool. Parsons’ loyalty to the PM had made that happen, but the man was going to cause danger to his country now because he had no moral compass and not one iota of decency.

Williams was still directing unseen daggers with his eyes at the man when Lisa nudged him: “The wait is a bit long, isn’t it? I’m starving!”

Lisa was a little bit drunk and sounded quite keen to get some food into her. In contrast, Williams was of the opposite opinion. He didn’t think it had been that long before the last of the guests had ordered and he knew that the restaurant would want to bring out dinner for everyone at the same time. He also wasn’t even that hungry. Still, Lisa had said what she had and Williams was in a pleasant enough mood to humour her.

“It won’t be long; have some more wine.”

“I’ve had too much already!”

“There’s never enough wine, Lisa.” From across the table, Williams observed Jane give Lisa a wide smile as she made this remark. The two of them had recently made up – he was still in the dark as to why they had initially fallen out – and were seemingly back to being best friends again.

“I must agree with my wife there.” To add to his statement, Snyder took a big gulp of his own wine and then playfully moved one of his wife’s hands towards her own glass.

Williams gave the two of them a grin, but the returned his attention to looking around. He caught the eye of the husband of his constituency association chair; Steve raised two fingers to his mouth but Williams briefly shook his head. He could have done with the cigarette that his friend suggested, but he was keeping his word to Lisa that he had given up for good. There was a shoulder shrug from Steve who then whispered something to his wife before standing up and heading for the terrace that Williams knew the restaurant had outside. Steve’s wife Michelle then gave Williams an exasperated stare at her husband’s habit and so he smiled back at her.

Lisa had invited Michelle and Steve along as friends because she knew how important the former was to her husband. With the ever-present support of his local constituency association, Williams wouldn’t have a political career. Williams’ wife was good at that sort of stuff.

He looked around at some of the other people that she’d chosen to invite too.

There was Liam Kenyon over there with his latest girlfriend. He and Liam had been friends since university and while Williams had gone into politics, his former housemate from Bath had risen high within the international oil industry. Liam had worked all over the world, though was back in London now working in The City. Never one willing to settle down, Liam had ‘a new girlfriend every six months’ in Lisa’s words; something that wasn’t exactly true, but close enough. Later on, Williams would catch up and get a proper introduction to her. She’d been briefly introduced as a reporter (Williams had long ago realised that just like him, his male friends always seemed to be involved with journalists) named Kate Something-or-other.

In addition, on that table with Liam was Lisa’s editor from The Daily Telegraph.

Having his wife working at that newspaper made sure that Williams always had a good relationship with The Daily Telegraph. He knew many of the senior reporters there and no journalist there was going to write a negative story about him unless he deserved it. There was also a connection between Snyder and Lisa’s editor that Williams knew existed in some sort of dubious form, but details of which he had no idea.

There was a third MP here alongside Williams and Parsons. Lisa had invited along Susan Norton from Williams’ committee. The Conservative MP from Suffolk was becoming a useful ally of his in Westminster and Lisa had recently ran a featured article about her. She was a well-respected backbench MP with many friends in Parliament and someone with whom Williams worked well with. Soon enough, once he’d talked her into it, Williams planned to bring her into the BORM to help with the campaign’s progress into making it what he and Snyder agreed that it could be.

Williams took his mind off her as the waiters and waitresses started bringing out the food.

*

Later in the evening, Williams took a wander out onto the terrace where the smokers were. On his way he had passed Nathan chatting away to his cousin. The two of them had been standing pretty close to each other and Williams had been a tad disturbed by that image. Like he was at that age, he knew that his son was full of raging hormones. Grace was Nathan’s first cousin though; Williams would talk to his wife about that.

As expected, Steve was out there smoking what could easily have been his twentieth cigarette of the night. Williams had barely seen him inside and that hadn’t impressed Michelle at all.

“Are you having a good time, pal?”

“I am, thank you.”

“I bet you’re feeling old!” Steve gave a good natured laugh and blew out smoke; what Williams had come here to inhale. “I remember my fortieth…”

“I think I do too.”

“Oh, yes, you came, didn’t you? I’d forgotten about that.” He laughed for a second time and Williams wondered how much he’d had to drink.

“John, get yourself over here.”

“Hello, Liam.” Williams wandered over to where Liam – another smoker – was standing.

“You remember, Kate, don’t you?” Liam was all smiles.

“Happy birthday, Mister Williams.” Kate the journalist said the exact same thing that she had when they first met earlier in the evening.

“Thank you. It was nice of you to come along.”

Williams had only drunk two glasses of wine and had a full stomach. Unlike his wife, he hadn’t allowed the booze to get to him. He was perfectly aware of everything going on and how to behave around people… especially potentially unfriendly journalists.

“I’ve always wanted to come here and Liam,” she gave Williams’ friend a loving glance, “said that I had to come because it was your birthday.”

The gushing statement was uncomfortable. It was more than just a polite fib: the woman was telling a real lie.

“Liam knows all the best places to take a young lady.” Williams knew how to play along with a lie after his many years in politics. “Lisa didn’t say how long you two had been together…”

“Oh, a whole month now.”

Kate sounded like she was Nathan’s age.

“Lisa will be wondering where I am; I better get back in. Liam, hurry up and finish that and we’ll get back into the warmth.”

Williams was immensely worried about this woman. The first opportunity he got, he’d make sure that he got her last name from Lisa and then he’d talk to Snyder about her. There was something very wrong with her turning up here with his best friend and playing the gooey-eyed fool.

He smelled danger over the cigarette smoke.





Chapter Thirty–Three – A Bit Strange
Ashtead, near Leatherhead, Surrey – December 18th 2013


Forcing herself to refrain from just curling up in a ball and going to sleep somewhere, Jane kept focusing on the scene before her out here in Surrey this morning. She’d drunk far too much last night to be working today. Leaving here and going to somewhere dark and quiet to drift off wasn’t an option though, she had work to do.

The police were keeping the small crowd of reporters and curious locals back at least a hundred feet from the level crossing. They had run a line of reflective tape between lampposts, tree trunks and their vehicles to set up an exclusion zone that no one was allowed to get past. Surrey Police officers kept watch over this line as well as standing out on Woodfield Lane to turn back traffic and redirect them away too.

Jane could see a fire engine up ahead there where the road crossed the railway line. There was no sign of an ambulance there, but from what she’d been told, there had been no need for one when several 999 calls had requested the ambulance service at three o’clock this morning. She’d been home not long at that point though fast asleep rather that rushing out to this little suburban location in the vain hope of saving a life.

Up ahead there, a man had lost his life seven hours ago. Jane didn’t know the man who had passed away in the dramatic fashion that he had, yet she did feel rather sad for him and his friends and family. While she didn’t consider herself a sentimental person, the loss of a life was always terrible.

Information on what had occurred was still rather incomplete, yet Jane and the other members of the media here had a rough idea of what had happened. A civilian vehicle with one occupant inside had stopped on the level crossing and been hit by an oncoming freight train.

The reason for that was so far unknown, but the train had impacted the stationary vehicle while travelling at speed and smeared the remains of the vehicle all over the place. It was a train carrying a heavy load (apparently a mixture of sand, gravel, rocks and scrap metal on its way somewhere from somewhere else) coming from the South Coast in the general direction of the London area and had hit the car halted on the road just outside this railway station. The emergency services had responded, but there had been no hope for the driver of the vehicle. As to the train itself, it had fortunately managed to stay on the tracks and not derail. Its driver had been taken across to the nearby Epson General Hospital, though he was apparently not seriously hurt.

Jane could no sign of the train itself. She knew that freight trains, which usually travelled at night across the country’s rail network to avoid causing delays to passenger trains, were rather long and contained multiple carriages. She’d thought that she would have been able to see at least the rear of the train and so too had the camera crews here. Alas, it had travelled too far past the accident scene to be visible to her and the other media people.

There was a helicopter making much noise in the sky above and Jane guessed that it was getting those pictures for another media outlet.

“Jane…!”

Turning around, Jane saw Lisa Williams walking up towards her. “How are you this morning?”

“Hung-over!”

Lisa eased through the group of people here so that they could talk to each other without having to nearly shout. The helicopter above was very loud and other people here on the ground were talking to each other too.

“Lisa, I’m claiming this as an exclusive.”

“Witty, very witty, Jane.”

The two journalists stood next to each other with both now looking up ahead. Jane wondered why her friend had come out here this morning. Her semi-editorial role at her newspaper wouldn’t demand that she attend such a scene. In Jane’s opinion, Lisa should probably have been back in London covering the coming political reactions to this rather than standing out here in the cold looking at what little there was to see.

There would be a political reaction back in London, she knew, because of who the man who had been killed at this level crossing was reported to be.

Sitting within the car that had been struck by the train was a high-ranking British Army officer by the name of Leftenant-General Alexander Lynch. Jane had learnt that his position was that of ‘Commander, Land Forces’ and he was (in practise) the second most senior British Army officer in the country. Lynch had run day-to-day operations out at Army Headquarters in Andover and his responsibilities were apparently immense. Jane had of course heard of him before due to his media appearances when the British Army was in the news.

Now his car was wrecked up ahead and his body was waiting to be removed from there.

“How far away is Andover, Lisa?”

“A long way? A hundred miles maybe?”

“Then what was this General doing out here at Three in the morning?” Jane had been asking herself that question all morning and been waiting to ask it of someone else too.

“I have no idea. It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?” As Lisa said this, Jane watched as her friend gave a friendly nod to another journalist here. Jane recognised the man as a reporter from The Times. She couldn’t recall his name, but she guessed she was going to find out as he came over towards them.

“Jane, this is Matt Pickering from the Times.”

“Hi, nice to see you.” Jane took the offered hand and gave it a quick shake. She was jealous of Pickering and his warm-feeling gloves; she hadn’t brought hers out with her this morning.

“Matt, Jane was just asking me how far away Andover is from here. That’s over in Hampshire, yes?”

“It’s about sixty miles or so, ladies.” He gave them both a smile. “Around the M–Twenty–Five until you reach Junction Twelve and then down the M–Three. Are you planning on taking a drive down there?”

“No, Jane and I were just wondering what General Lynch was doing out here so far away from there.”

“He was on temporary leave. He has been ill – some sort of kidney complaint – for a while and thus away from Army Headquarters. He lives on base so… yes, you’re both correct, it’s a bit of a surprise that he’d end up out here.”

Jane noticed how Pickering was still talking about the deceased Lynch as if he was still alive. She remembered him now from a previous meeting; Pickering was the chief military correspondent with The Times and so it wasn’t that much of a surprise that he knew more about Lynch than either she or Lisa did. He was a bit of an odd fellow too sometimes confusing behaviour that ranged from the friendly and helpful to the rude and arrogant.

Today, Pickering was being nice.

“Do we think that he killed himself? That he drove onto the tracks there and waited for that train?” Jane wanted to keep the conversation going because she was convinced that talking was helping her to warm up a little and also taking her mind off her hang-over.

She was also just idly speculating.

“The police won’t say so, but I think so.”

“I’d have to agree too, Jane.”

Both Pickering and Lisa were in verbal agreement with here on her theory on what had happened here.

Jane tried to ponder over why Lynch might have done what he’d done. She considered that he might have been seriously ill and didn’t want that suffering to continue. Maybe he had problems at home or with his career…

But she didn’t know anything for sure apart from him to kill himself in such a manner, this far away from where he lived and worked, was actually more than a bit strange; it was weird… and therefore certainly newsworthy once she had something more than the zero she currently had to go on.





Chapter Thirty–Four – Brainstorming
St. Albans, Hertfordshire – December 19th 2013


Baroness Amanda Vaughn was proving more than a challenge for Baxter to get rid of. Snyder had made it clear to him, Kevin and Liz that he wanted the woman to be (in his words) ‘eliminated with great haste’, but the unawares Baroness wasn’t playing along. She was refusing to put herself in a situation where Baxter to take her life.

The instructions from Snyder weren’t helping either.

Out of all the people that he had stated that he wanted getting rid of, he had only been specific surrounding the circumstances of two of them: Roger Mayfield and Sonia Patel. As to everyone else on his ever-growing list, he left the method of murder up to Baxter and his two cohorts. Snyder was happy that as long as those targeted died – whether by suicide, a fatal accident, a murder committed in a random manner etc. – in a manner which wouldn’t raise too much suspicion.

The problem was that Baxter couldn’t see a way for any of those to work with the Baroness.

Standing here in their St. Albans base of operations, with their detailed file on the woman laid out before them on Liz’s desk, neither he nor Kevin and Liz could figure out how to get the mission done with her. They had details of her movements, plans of her house up in Derbyshire and the data from the tracking device attached to her car weeks ago.

The Baroness was a life peer in the House of Lords. She had a lifelong allegiance to the Conservative Party and had long been attached to the ‘centralist, modernist’ wing of the party. While never directly elected to any public office, the Baroness had held a variety of important public offices with all sorts of responsibilities. The PM had recently appointed her as a whip within the House of Lords and she was a key Downing Street ally in the upper chamber of Parliament.

“The woman is a damn workaholic!”

“Does she ever get a day of rest? Where she stops and does nothing?”

“If she did, we could make our move.”

“I can’t see how we’re going to do this, Liz.”

Baxter said nothing as Kevin and Liz went back over again the problems that the Baroness was causing them. They were here to brainstorm a solution to the issue with her, but all that they were managing to do was to go over old ground.

Kevin stepped away from the table and wandered over to his own desk. Baxter saw how Liz took no notice of him walking away and continued to stare down at the file that they had on their target. For his part, Kevin went and got his cigarettes. The former murder squad detective, whose business now was planning murders in a manner which that he wouldn’t be caught by his former comrades, then opened the window before lighting up.

Baxter didn’t have to wait long for the sparks to fly.

“Jesus, Kevin, do you have to smoke!” Liz practically screamed at the man.

“It helps me think.”

“No, smoking is a sign that you don’t think enough.”

The two of them had had this argument many times before. Liz was an ex-smoker herself – in Baxter’s experience they were always the most passionate anti-smoking Nazis – and just a whiff of cigarette smoke was enough to cause a reaction in her like nails being dragged across a chalkboard in most other people.

Baxter had no opinion on the issue and just wanted them all to focus on their mission: the Baroness.

“Kevin, Red, how do we get this woman?”

“All I can think of is that we go after her when she’s driving.” Liz was over by the other window and straining to open it. If Baxter had been in gentlemanly mood, he would have gone to help her; he wasn’t though. “She’s got that shiny new Jaguar that she likes to drive.”

“If we do something to it – cut the brake fuel lines or something like that – then Scotland Yard will have people all over it and see what’s been done.”

“We’d have to be more clever than that.” Liz was still angry at Kevin for feeding his habit.

“But it’s something to go with.” Baxter was starting to see some possibilities here and wanted to keep the train of thought going. “We know in real-time where she’s going and that has got to help us somehow.”

“You’re thinking that we shouldn’t be looking at where she is going, but how she is going there. Am I correct, Neil?”

“Yes, she likes driving down those country roads.” Liz cut in.

“So… we do something when she’s out alone at night in her car. But, what?”

After his remark, Kevin sat himself up on his desk with his legs swinging free for a moment. He took an immensely long puff as (presumably) his mind ticked over what they were talking about.

“I hope you’re not thinking of trying to run her car off the road, Kevin… far too dangerous.” There was concern in Liz’s voice at her own suggestion.

Baxter didn’t think that that was a good idea either.

“No, no… I’m thinking ‘Tonbridge’.”

“What’s that?” Liz gave Kevin a very quizzical look.

“Two Thousand and Six, Tonbridge in Kent. There was a well-planned armed robbery at a cash depot down there. My partner was seconded to the investigation: she supervised the family liaison effort with the family of the manager involved.

He was kidnapped the night of the raid when he was driving home from work. The armed robbers disguised themselves as police officers – uniforms, blue lights behind the front grill on their car – to get him to pull his car over before using him to get into the cash warehouse.”

“I see where you’re going with this now; I like it.”

“So,” Baxter begun to summarise what Kevin had sketched out, “we use that ruse to get her to stop her car somewhere quiet and lonely. We’ll need all the get-up, but it’s doable.

What do we do with her then?”

“Well… we… you know…” Despite everything, Kevin was still a policeman at heart and couldn’t actually put into words what everyone knew that they’d have to do once they got their hands on the Baroness.

“Something quick and quiet, I think; she’s an old lady.” Liz made reference to the Baroness’ advanced years (their target was sixty-three yet had a flash Jaguar – Baxter was amused at the irony) and her sympathy for the aged.

“Then we get rid of her.”

“I thought that’s what we were talking about.” Liz was confused at Kevin’s remark there; so too was Baxter.

“I’m thinking that we don’t leave her body to be found there. With the General the other night, Neil, you left it on those tracks for that train to hit it. You said you wanted the impact of the freight train to help get rid of the evidence, didn’t you?

Let’s do something similar here, but change tack a little.”

“How so?”

“We take her away with us and dispose of the corpse somewhere that it won’t be found for a little while. When the police come across the car, their first and most important action will be to find her. I think that we should leave no sign of her actual death there: make it a missing person’s enquiry. It cuts down on the media focus and also distracts them from looking for her killers.”

“A missing person,” Liz displayed positive signs of agreement with her smile towards (the still smoking) Kevin, “gets far less attention than a murder.”

“I like this. Let’s get doing it as soon as possible.”

Baxter was relieved. Their brainstorming, which had started out as frustration before moving to an argument, had suddenly given them an excellent plan of action to go along with. Liz’s final statement on the matter made it even better; he wished they’d thought of doing something like that with other missions too.

[James G]

Chapter Thirty–Five – Hot Air
Isleworth, West London – December 22nd 2013


Harriet wasn’t a prude, but she did believe that there was nothing wrong with a little bit of decency. Therefore, when she got out of Martin Lavelle’s bed and walked barefoot across the cold wooden floor in the bedroom on her way to the bathroom, she wore his dressing gown on the way. He’d seen her naked many a time, yet that had been they were in the midst of passion.

It was also pretty cold this morning in his flat too.

When she came back to the bedroom, Harriet put a smile on her face for Martin and then drooped the dressing own over a chair before jumping back into his bed. She got quickly under the covers and snuggled right up against him.

Harriet was five foot seven and of a slim build; she was almost petite in figure. Next to Martin, she was tiny in comparison. He’d told her that he’d played rugby in school and later at university and he still had the build for that. He had seven inches in height over her and twice the body mass. The policeman whose bed she shared needed to go to the gym more often than he did to firm up the muscles that he carried… yet he was still had a mightily impressive physique.

She was enjoying being with her hulking hunk.

“When are we going to get up?”

“Later, much later.” Harriet gave Martin a kiss on the upper arm after she answered his question.

“Do you want to do anything today?

“Apart from laying here with you?

“Apart from that, Harriet?”

“No, just this.”

Harriet didn’t really want to stay here in bed all day on her day off. She needed a shower, she needed some breakfast and she probably needed a little bit of winter sunshine too. Yet, she was prepared to stay here for as long as possible.

Silence came back to the both of them and Harriet let her eyes close. She wasn’t going to fall back asleep so had no great concern as she shut out the light in the bedroom. Her mind turned over her current situation as she remained quiet and unmoving.

In the few weeks that they’d been together, there was often silence between them. They had met each other due to their work, though they weren’t supposed to discuss much of their respective work with the other. There were other things that they had to talk about of course, as new lovers always do, but both Harriet and Martin were busy people who worked long hours and thus much of their lives revolved around being at work.

Harriet thought now how amusing this was. She had been in other relationships in the past few years, with other men, who she’d had to lie to about what she did for a living. Here she was with a man who knew that she worked at Thames House and not for DEFRA, but work matters were still off the table for discussion.

Nevertheless, that was how it was supposed to be officially, not how it actually was. The two of them had met because of the deceased Mark Clarke and Martin knew much about Harriet’s work to at first find him and then her failed efforts to solve the mystery of his death. He’d also been intimated involved in the investigation that she and Patrick had run into Gloria Quinn’s murder. As far as her colleagues, and his too, were concerned, their relationship – which they’d both officially declared according to the regulations at the Security Service and Special Branch – was purely personal and didn’t touch on any secrets.

She was allowed to talk about the MATCH inquiry with Martin when they were both working, though they had previously brought that into the bedroom too. Harriet regretted now doing that last night after they’d made love…

… though she wanted to talk further about those things now despite not being allowed.

Fuck it, she silently said to herself.

“Did you hear about the D-Notice with Roger Mayfield?”

“I did.” Martin let out a yawn and she felt his chest, which her head was now resting on, raise a little as he took a short intake of breath. “I’m guessing it’s linked to this MATCH investigation of yours, yes?”

“Clarke, Young, Quinn and Mayfield are all linked together. The media have no idea about that, but we had no issue the D-Notice because of what we had done up in Norwich with Mayfield.”

“That would be a job that I’d never want to do.”

“What job?”

“Not digging up a body after it’s been buried for more than a month, but… well, you know… cutting it up afterwards and looking inside.”

“We had professionals do that, Martin.”

“A horrible job – the thought of it gives me the creeps.”

Harriet thought for a second about what Martin was repulsed by. Before dawn on Wednesday morning, Roger Mayfield’s body had been removed from its grave in Norwich by a team of Home Office hired personnel. It had been transported down to a Security Service laboratory and a second post-mortem investigation undertaken upon the former MP’s corpse.

Despite the early morning removal of the body, the work to get it out of the ground and away from the cemetery where Mayfield’s remains had laid had attracted the attention of the media. BBC Radio Norfolk and several small independent media organisations in Norwich had been tipped off by someone on-site that his body was being taken away. Harriet’s superiors at Thames House had moved fast and made a request through the Press Association that no mention be made of this in the public domain.

A D-Notice – technically a ‘Defence Advisory Notice/05’ in this case – was a voluntary call to the media to not broadcast or publish anything with relation to the matter at hand. The Home Office had made this request on behalf of the Security Service, which the media could have refused to abide by should they have wished, due to the nature of the MATCH investigation. The knowledge that Mayfield’s body was being re-examined and speculation about why that was the case wasn’t something that Harriet or those working on the X-File wanted anyone else talking about.

Martin knew all about this because as the senior Special Branch officer officially attached to the MATCH inquiry, he had been in-charge of the joint Met. Police / Norfolk Constabulary operation to ensure that Mayfield’s remains were safely moved down to be examined in London. Harriet had later handed him the report that the world-renowned pathologist contracted by the Security Service had written after the man had done his work.

Just as Harriet had been, he’d been disappointed that there had been nothing found. After all his effort, he’d wanted a pay-off of some sorts to that like Harriet had desired too.

All sorts of tests had been run and samples taken from Mayfield’s corpse. Everything had come up blank though; all evidence pointed to him suffering from heart failure on the night of November 1st. There was a family history of heart disease and the medical problems that the MP had had before had been well-documented by specialist doctors.

“Do you really think that someone gave him that heart attack?” After another short silence, Martin restarted the conversation.

“The coincidences are too great to suggest that it just happened as everyone was supposed to think.” Harriet thoroughly believed that the heart attack had been staged and someone had somehow murdered Mayfield.

“To what end?”

“To gain whatever they could by killing those others too – including Mark Clarke.”

“I have a… worry about all this, Harriet.”

“You not going to give me the ‘I am worried about where this all might go, Harriet, and the dangers to you’ speech, are you?”

“Hell no!” Martin sounded outraged at such a suggestion and Harriet suddenly felt bad for suggesting that he might be treating her like a child who needed protecting from herself.

“Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“No, say what you were going to say, please.” Harriet fought the urge to make a cooing, sympathetic noise to calm him down. She thought that such an action might bring about an argument that she really wouldn’t want to have.

“My worry isn’t really a worry, it’s a… oh, I don’t know, we’ll call it a worry.

What if the whole thing, from Clarke all the way to Mayfield, or backwards if we’re going by the timescale, turns out to be all hot air?”

“Then, I’d laugh so much that I’d cry!”

Harriet couldn’t help but smile to herself at that thought. It had occurred to her before and Patrick had said the same thing. There was still no clue to that elusive ‘why’ that she’d been searching for nor any sign that it was soon to be found.

The frustration of it all, combined with all of the dead-ends that they kept running into, was hard to deal with; she changed the subject.

“What days are you working this week?”

“Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Friday and Saturday. I’ve just got Boxing Day off. How about you?”

“Monday, Friday and Saturday.”

“How did you swing that?” Martin sounded a little outraged that Harriet had most of the week off. He sat up after she answered and her head came off his chest but she moved afterwards to keep close to his warm body.

“The Civil Service is very generous with days off around the festive period.”

“Technically, I’m a civil servant too, Harriet.”

Harriet looked up at him as he rested against the headboard: “Sometimes things can be so unfair.” She used an over-the-top sarcastic tone and smiled too as she replied.

“That’s it: next year I’m going to refuse to pay my taxes!”

“I’ve got to work New Year’s though.”

“That still doesn’t make it right.”

Harriet smiled again by way of reply. She thought for a moment about what he said. Martin was going to be working all through Christmas and not get to see his family up in Milton Keynes. She would be out in Chelmsford with hers and enjoying the (paid) time off.

“If I won’t get to see you for a while,” he sounded regretful as he spoke, “then we’d better do something today.”

“Will that involve me getting up?” Again, Harriet was playful with him. She’d had enough now of laying here doing nothing.

“Yes, it will… it certainly will.”

The two of them set about spending the rest of the day together.





Chapter Thirty–Six – The Briefcase
York, North Yorkshire – December 27th 2013


Lord North had been married for more than forty-two years to a wonderful woman. His marriage had brought him children and grandchildren. It was a generally happy union too. Yet, there were a few things that his wife couldn’t provide for him.

One of those select qualities was available to him through Samantha Arnold.

Samantha was half Lord North’s age. She was the widow of a former employee of his who had been killed in circumstances that would have brought unwelcome police attention to Lord North’s activities. As far as the man’s widow was concerned, her husband had suffered a tragic accident and his employer had decided to compensate her financially. In part exchange for that financial support, he required sexual favours from her on an infrequent basis.

As he had been the one to construct this relationship, Lord North was more than pleased with it; if Samantha wasn’t entirely happy, then that wasn’t of a great concern. He had given her a house to live in rent-free within York and he’d call on her once a fortnight or so to visit for a couple of hours. A regular sum of money was paid into her bank account through one of his companies and so she lived comfortably.

Lord North had business today in York and was on his way to visit her now so he could have a little of her company within her bedroom: after the past few days with his family over the Christmas period, he needed the release. He’d just come from a meeting with the MP representing the constituency of York Outer (the name for the Parliamentary region of the city’s suburbs) and was currently with Warren. Warren was his bodyguard/driver for the afternoon and a highly-capable fellow who had once served in the Royal Marines. He was driving his employer into the city when Lord North made a request of him: “Warren, can you stop somewhere before we get to Missus Arnold’s, please? I need a lighter: find me a little shop or something, will you?”

“At once, Sir.”

Lord North had a collection of fine, expensive lighters at home that he’d received as minor gifts over the years, but he never used any of them. He preferred the cheap, disposable kind for their ease of use. He only smoked intermediately, though he knew he would desire a nicotine injection after he’d enjoyed the pleasures that Samantha would give him.

Moments later, Warren brought the BMW to a stop outside a little corner shop just outside York’s famous city walls. He cut off the engine and Lord North spoke again to his dependable man as he reached for the door to climb out of the back seat: “Just give me a minute.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Lord North felt a chill of his exposed, bare head the moment that he stepped out of the warmth that was inside the car. He told himself that he didn’t want to hang around out here in the cold and it would be much warmer within the little shop ahead: into there his brisk pace quickly took him.

The counter was right inside and to the left and to there he at once went. There were only £20 notes inside his wallet and he felt a little embarrassed at paying for a lighter costing 79p with one of them, but he had no change on him. The young woman behind the counter didn’t refuse his only method of payment though and soon gave him back his change. Yet, he didn’t want those coins and so he dropped all of them into a plastic charity box that sat on the counter while keeping the banknotes.

Donating that money wasn’t out of benevolence but rather the wish not to have those troublesome coins on his person.

Once he came back out onto the road, Lord North was surprised to see the door to the rear of the BMW open. He quickly assured himself that he had closed it behind him and wondered why it was now open again. Then his attention was drawn to Warren as his employee was running fast along the pavement up ahead and away from him and the car.

What the devil was going on?

*

When Warren returned after a few minutes, there was sweat dropping off his forehead despite the extreme cold of the afternoon. The man was huffing and puffing from all of his physical activity and also wore a regretful look. All in all, he was a pitiful sight.

“What happened?”

“Sir, just after you got out, a little oik opened the door and snatched your briefcase. He ran off, I gave chase, but I lost the bugger.”

“The black briefcase!?”

“Yes, Sir, the one that you left on the back seat.”

Lord North couldn’t say anything in reply.

He had a feeling that he was going to faint and he knew that he needed to sit down. The car door was still open and he climbed inside as he ignored Warren for a moment and thought about the consequences – immediate and in the future – concerning the loss of that briefcase and, in particular, its contents.

The missing briefcase contained comprising photographs and documents that Lord North had just shown to the MP that he had paid a visit to. That had been the first stage of his attempt to blackmail the man into doing his bidding. Should someone else to see those, and possibly identify Lord North through his fingerprints on them and the case, then there would be far more trouble than Lord North could deal with. He needed that MP in his pocket and also to keep himself from being suspected of all of the things that he was currently up to.

The implications surrounding the loss of the briefcase were… chilling.

*

Lord North cancelled his liaison with Samantha and turned to recovering his stolen property. He spent the afternoon and early evening personally involved in this matter and did so from the back of the BMW using his mobile phone.

He considered both North and East Yorkshire to be his personal fiefdom; he thought of himself as a ‘political boss’ of old. He had no intention at all of accepting the loss of his personal possessions and all the danger that such a thing could put him and his plans in.

Not only were local politicians up here under his influence, but so too were many other people. Lord North had people working for him (directly or indirectly) who were on various sides of the law. He called on a Detective Inspector with the North Yorkshire Police and gave him what he had: what had happened, where and at what time along with Warren’s description of the thief. Several of his personal security people were instructed to contact any underworld figures that Lord North knew that they were in contact with to get back his briefcase too. To those he spoke to, he informed them that a briefcase contained important business documents of his had been stolen and a big, instant reward was being issued for its instant return. Another bodyguard came down to meet him and Warren as they remained within York and then Warren went off on a hunt through the city to hopefully spot the young thief himself.

There was urgency in all of this. Lord North knew that every second that his briefcase was away from him, the more of a chance that it would fall into the wrong hands. He was fraught with worry over someone else getting their hands on what was inside, thought his mind kept drifting off as he distracted himself with thoughts on what he was missing out on when away from Samantha.

Finally, just after Five, Lord North’s fears were somewhat eased. Four hours after it had been stolen, his briefcase had been recovered. The policeman that he’d called had been with a pair of off-duty and ‘agreeable’ (bribe-able) officers running down leads among local criminals. They’d known the type of people to bother and come up lucky.

A fourteen year-old tearaway with an extensive police record for theft, burglary and anti-social behaviour had been found to have Lord North’s briefcase on him. He fitted the description that Warren had given and the youngster had spent the afternoon first opening it and then disposing of the contents so he could try to sell the briefcase itself. Of course, he had been unable to find anyone willing to part with their hard-earned money for a briefcase that had been wrenched open and by doing this he had attracted the attention of the policemen acting in an unofficial role today.

The kid had been questioned about where he’d thrown the pictures and papers inside. He’d said that they’d gone into the River Ouse and been forced to take his questioners to that stretch of water. There was no sign there of what he been thrown away, but the fact that he’d willingly led the policemen to that point had been enough for them to believe him: the youngster wasn’t known as one with too many smarts.

When Lord North was brought back his briefcase and the tale of what exactly had happened to its contents, he had to arrange for the reward to be paid to the policemen who had brought it back. It wouldn’t have been the best idea to refuse to pay them and so he called one of his security people to meet with them and hand over two thousand pounds to the trio.

The money was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Everyone seemed happy with what the teenage thief had said about what had happened to the contents of the briefcase… everyone apart from Lord North himself. He believed what he’d been told, but he was worried that those pictures and documents hadn’t been as destroyed as everyone else thought they would be when they’d ended up in the river.

He would have to junk both of those planned killings, seeing both men live whom he’d wanted dead, just to be sure. As to that kid… this wasn’t the end of it with him.





Chapter Thirty–Seven – Money
Gatwick Airport, Sussex – December 31st 2013


Lauren had been waiting since the early summer to get some time off. She’d worked six, sometimes seven days a week since she’d gotten away for a long weekend in June. Throughout the intervening time, Lauren had consoled herself that once the usually quiet period between Christmas and New Year’s came, she could fly away for a few days to get a well-earned break from it all.

Last Friday, she’d flown out of the country from Gatwick direct to Tenerife. The Canary Islands had always been a favourite of hers, especially in the winter when the days were short and nights were long back in London. She’d been beside the pool and also had an apartment with fantastic views of the beach.

Lauren had been immensely happy.

Then the phone calls had started to come in from back in the UK. Those were international calls made to her phone – which she had to keep switched on – from not only the office, but colleagues of hers who were also away from their desks. Daniel had made one of those calls: her boss demanded that she fly back from Tenerife at once.

So here she was now, sitting on the airplane at Gatwick as she waited for it to taxi across to the terminal so Lauren and the other passengers aboard could de-plane.

Because she didn’t have any children of her own, Lauren knew that that was why she cringed inwardly every time the toddler a few rows behind her screamed. The little girl had started making her racket about half an hour ago and there was no hint that she was going to stop any time soon. Lauren had an immense headache now because of that horrible noise.

She needed to think about a solution but the screams from the child who wouldn’t be quieted wasn’t allowing her to do so.

*

The calls for Lauren to return to Downing Street from her holiday had concerned several unrelated matters that had recently taken place. Each had nothing to do with the other, yet because they had all occurred within a short space of time, they had the makings of a crisis that would have a detrimental effect upon the Government.

Lauren had been informed that on Saturday evening, Sir Thomas MacDonald, the Director-General of the Secret Intelligence Service, had contacted the Foreign Secretary with urgent news from his undercover personnel serving at the British Embassy in Moscow. They had several secret contacts with members of the Russian Government and had heard some news that could be of concern to Whitehall.

The Russian President had instructed his officials to prepare to approach the UK with a ‘re-negotiated agreement’ concerning the energy supplies that it transferred on a regular basis to Britain. There would be no renegotiation though: just a diktat issued by Moscow stating that prices for oil and natural gas could be increasing with immediate effect by twenty per cent above inflation. This would, Lauren knew, have immediate effects nationwide among ordinary people: i.e. voters. Families would see their domestic energy bills, fuel prices for their cars and costs for public transport go up unexpectedly. The Treasury wouldn’t be able to swallow the increase in price that the Russians were going to publicly demand and so that would have to be passed on to the British people.

Though her opinion on the matter hadn’t been important enough to warrant consideration, back when the Government and the Kremlin had made the initial deal, she’d foreseen something similar to this occurring. Once the Russian President had got the PM on the hook, he’d keep trying to get as much out of him as he could. The subsidised energy that the UK was getting, which the PM had agreed that the Government would buy to influence – read: buy – votes at the next election, was too good of a deal for politicians to pass up at the first instance. The Kremlin could never be trusted, she’d said then, and she’d now been proved right.

That news hadn’t been enough to demand her immediate presence back in London though. There were other issues too.

The billionaire Benjamin Russell, a self-made man with domestic and international business interests, had been regularly funding the Conservative Party since 2008 with six-figure donations to the national party. Russell’s money had all been above board and fully declared, and had helped out immensely with many local campaigns at the last election. In addition to helping the party with the last general election at the local level, he’d also given money to the PM’s private office so that it could function independently of not only the taxpayer, but the national party too.

Russell had informed the PM, in a curt email sent to Daniel, that he would no longer be providing any more money. There was no reason given for this action of his, though the media were asking for a comment from him after someone had tipped them off to this.

The third issue once again concerned money.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer had been on holiday like Lauren was, yet he had to return home too after what had been expected to be a low-level audit at the Treasury over the quiet Xmas period had turned up some worrying news. Lauren had yet to be informed of the exact details, but there had been accounting irregularities there concerning the nation’s finances. In short, the country was short… somewhere in the regions of tens of millions of pounds. As with the news of Russell’s donations, someone had anonymously tipped off the media as to this fact.

The return of people like Lauren to Downing Street from wherever they’d headed off to over the holidays had been necessary so that they could decide on what course of action to take with regard to all of these issues: in particular, how to handle the media fallout from it all.

Over the past few months, there had been multiple worrying signs from various sections of the media that Lauren had picked up on. There was much hostility being directed against politicians from across the country. The Government had faced the loss of the Home Secretary and the Chief Whip. The PM had come under criticism due to their actions and Lauren (along with Daniel and the others who worked directly for him) hadn’t been able to help much to stop that.

She still had some contacts in the media, but other ‘friends’ had slowly been cutting themselves off from Downing Street. This had the effect of less supporting articles and commentary pieces in newspapers, which would draw away public support for the Government.

It was the type of thing to keep her awake at night.

*

Lauren didn’t know what she would do when she got back to the office. All during the flight, her mind had been blank as to what course of action to suggest. It was the early afternoon now and Daniel was expecting her to be back in Downing Street within a few hours. He was calling in many senior people so they could all gather and talk about what they were going to do to limit the damage that had been done.

What really could be done though?






Chapter Thirty–Eight – Conspiracy Theories
Saffron Walden, Essex – January 1st 2014


Lisa had been insistent that her husband spend New Year’s Eve at home in Sawston like he had on the two days over Christmas. Williams had acquiesced to her demands, but he had gone out this morning for a work-related matter despite the general quietness that was New Year’s Day. He hadn’t gone far either: less than twenty minutes and eight miles down into nearby Essex.

The roads were nearly empty of other traffic and Williams soon reached his destination. He drove around the outskirts of the town of Saffron Walden until he reached a modest family home in the southern reaches of the town’s suburbs.

A retired MP and old friend of his lived here.

Adam Hutchinson had retired from the House of Commons at the last general election and settled back in his native Essex. The man whose house Williams was welcomed into this afternoon had ten years on his guest and also much greater experience of frontline politics than the current MP. Williams was here to tap into some of that experience as well as to gain a little counsel.

“Did you have a nice New Year’s, John? Sit, sit, make yourself at home.”

“I did, thank you.” Williams took a seat in an armchair in Hutchinson’s living room. “And yourself, Adam?”

“I miss Elaine.”

“So do I.”

Williams’ reply wasn’t one that he would have given if he’d put some thought into it, but it was the first thing that crossed his mind to say. Hutchinson’s wife had passed away early last year and the man had been a shadow of his former self since then. He spent far too much time here alone in his empty house without her. Williams had known the woman only a little, and she’d always been decent to him, yet Elaine had meant everything to her husband.

“Can I get you a drink? Coffee?” Hutchinson was still standing after Williams had taken his seat.

“Yes, please. You’re having one too?”

“I will. I had the kettle on already; I’ll just be a minute.”

Hutchinson left his guest alone while he went off to the kitchen. While he waited for his host to return, Williams looked around the room to fight off the boredom of being alone here in a house that wasn’t his own. He didn’t want to get his phone out and see if he’d had any missed calls, texts or emails because he wouldn’t want Hutchinson to walk back him and see him busy whereas he plainly wasn’t.

Therefore, Williams’ attention went to the state of the house now that Hutchinson was a widower. Williams noticed the dust everywhere and that the carpet needed a hovering. The air in the living room was stale. A pile of old newspapers was stacked in the corner and on one side of the stack there was damp there.

Hutchinson really did miss his wife.

There were pictures of the deceased Elaine over the unused fireplace. Williams counted nineteen of them, about half of which contained the two of them together. Williams found the presence of the other pictures, those that contained just her taken at various stages of her life, to be interesting as they were alongside the expected others.

He pondered over the state of his troubled friend…

“Here you go, John.” Hutchinson returned with a cup of coffee for his guest and then sat down on the sofa with a hot drink of his own.

Williams was grateful for the drink. He’d had far too many alcoholic drinks last night at home with Lisa and Nathan and coffee was always an excellent method of making him feel less hung-over than he was.

“So, my friend, what can I do for you today…?”

Hutchinson had been something of a mentor to Williams when the younger man had entered Parliament back in 2001. He’d had long service within the Conservative Party and been a junior minister before the disastrous general election of 1997. Hutchinson had shown Williams that there was still a place for patriotism and moral standards even within the Westminster Village where such things were frowned upon by others. Williams could hold true to his principles, he was taught, and still progress with his political career at the same time.

Williams had tried to keep Hutchinson in Parliament when Elaine had died back in February. He had made an attempt to persuade the man that he should remain as an MP despite the personal tragedy that he’d suffered. Alas, Hutchinson had refused and stood down. His seat had been unexpectedly won by the local Labour candidate in the subsequent by-election afterwards and this had been to the chagrin of many other Conservative MPs. Hutchinson had thus found that he’d had few friends left, yet hadn’t been that concerned because, as he’d explained to Williams, they could never have been true friends in the first place to be angry with him for doing what he had after his wife had departed this world.

This was Hutchinson: a troubled man, but someone who Williams had great respect for.

“Adam, I’m sure that you remember my friend Liam Kenyon.”

“Liam Kenyon… the oil broker? Yes, I do.”

“He’s recently become involved with a journalist called Catherine Parker from the Mail. She gives me the willies; I don’t like the idea of her being close to my oldest friend.”

Williams had previously discussed this with Snyder and been told not to worry about it.

“What secrets do you have John that he could tell her?” Hutchinson shrugged his shoulders and directed his eyes to the ceiling in a gesture that Williams thought that he was meant to interpret as one that he was being silly and worrying over nothing.

“There’s nothing that he can tell her.” And there wasn’t either, just as Snyder had said.

Hutchinson chose to say nothing in reply and instead took a long sip of his coffee. Williams copied the move and did the same while he fixed his gaze upon his friend. Last night when he had decided to come down here to Essex, and this morning during the short drive itself, he had held an internal two-way conversation with Hutchinson in his head. During that, he had put across his fears better than he just had and also Hutchinson had asked him questions that had allowed both of them to understand the matter further.

That was just imaginary though while this was real life.

“Adam,” Williams tried again, “I’m worried that someone has sent her to him to get some dirt on me. When she fines none, that doesn’t mean that she won’t publish something, does it? We both know what journalists are like.”

“Catherine Parker… you mean ‘Kate’, don’t you?”

“I guess so.” Williams’ curt answer to Hutchinson enquiry came from his annoyance that the man seemed to have changed the subject into irrelevances.

“John, you are aware that she used to have a ‘relationship’ – let’s call it that, shall we? – with your other friend Michael Snyder as well?”

“No, I didn’t know that.” He hadn’t too… but then Snyder had a terrible habit of sleeping around despite his marriage to the likeable Jane.

“Michael and you are still pretty close, aren’t you? I always thought of him as an adviser to you whether you were aware of it or not.” If his tone when he spoke of Snyder didn’t give it away, his history of clashes with the other man, made it clear that Hutchinson was still no fan of the other former MP.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Adam.”

“Perhaps, Michael constructed a situation where Kate and Liam are involved so that he could keep her friendly towards you.”

“Why on earth would he do that? Why would she play along?” Williams couldn’t see any sense in that.

“John, in case you don’t read the ‘papers, as you really should, you’re currently what they call a ‘coming man’. There are positive articles everywhere about you online and in print: journalists and commentators sing your praises. You have allies in Parliament who also don’t pass up the opportunity to say something good about you.

Michael is behind a lot of this, don’t you know? Back to your issue with Kate Parker, I’d assume that there’s something in it for her too. She doesn’t strike me as stupid, but neither did… well, that’s another matter…”

Hutchinson appeared to deliberately cut himself off from what he was about to say, but Williams mentally finished it: ‘but neither did you, until now’. That was what he thought Hutchinson had stopped himself from saying.

His host had that thought because it must have been clear to him that Williams had no real concept of what he was talking about until it was all laid out for him as it just had been. Hutchinson must have seen that he’d surprised Williams and been more than a little bit taken aback that the his guest hadn’t seen which way the wind was blowing with regard to his recent blossoming career prospects.

Williams told himself to put all that aside for the moment; later, when he was alone, he would turn his mind to all of what Hutchinson was saying about Snyder. For the meantime, he thought on what his host had said about Kate Parker.

It sounded like a crazed conspiracy theory. For Snyder to have co-opted a well-known journalist into getting into a relationship with Williams’ closest friend so that she would help construct friendly media coverage for Williams – without his knowledge too – sounded too fanciful to be true. Hutchinson, despite his troubles, was a clever and knowledgeable man and certainly believed this though.

“Why the hell would Michael do that?” Accidently, Williams verbalised his intended silent thought on this.

“Perhaps you’d better ask him that, John. He clearly is working for your interests without your knowledge. I’d thought that he was, and wondered why you could abide by such a thing, but now I know different.

You need to think about how you feel about this.”

Hutchinson’s final remark on the matter forced Williams to consider now what he hadn’t wanted to until later: Hutchinson’s other, longer-developed conspiracy theory about what Snyder was up to without Williams’ knowledge.





Chapter Thirty–Nine – A Dangerous Toy
Hawarden Airport, Flintshire, Wales – January 5th 2014


During his military career, Baxter had always noted the emphasis that the Parachute Regiment – the whole British Army in fact – put on conducting training for combat operations during the dark. Night-time was scary to many people, including other soldiers. The Paras had worked hard to rid their men of the irrational fear of darkness, yet at the same time making sure that when they met an enemy on the battlefield they were capable of exploiting the fear of those on the other side in such conditions.

It wasn’t only children that were frightened of the dark: grown men with weapons of war could also be scared to wander outside during the small hours too.

Baxter had never had any worries over the dark and had always appreciated how hard he’d been trained to fight outdoors at night when most people wanted to be safe inside and in the light. He was putting all of those years of teaching to work now…

Gaining access to Hawarden airport was child’s play. The little airport, located just across the Chester border inside the northern reaches of Wales, was surrounded by a fence and patrolled by civilian guards. The aviation companies Airbus UK and Marshall Aerospace had facilities on the grounds in addition to the private use of the airstrip. Therefore, the guards were a little bit serious in their protection of the facility from intruders: they ran regular patrols and had some good detection equipment.

Yet, what could they really do to stop a man like Baxter from getting inside when he really wanted too?

The factory where giant Airbus airliners were built nor the service centre for Marshall held no interest for Baxter after he cut an access for himself through the outer perimeter fence. Instead, he went directly for the civilian aviation portion of the airport where a range of private light aircraft were parked.

It was just gone three in the morning on a moonless night and he had to carefully make his way there by staying low and away from where the security guards would be. He was dressed in camouflage clothing and wore a comfortable set of night vision goggles though and wasn’t going to be caught. At this time of the morning, when human reaction times were almost at zero, he didn’t have any problems.

Baxter couldn’t see the fascination that many people had with owning and flying their own aircraft. There were aircraft enthusiasts nationwide who loved nothing more than buzzing around in the sky with their expensive, dangerous toys. The smaller ones always looked like toys too; it was towards one of them his mission took him tonight.

The red-painted Cessna-150 single-engined, propeller-driven aircraft was parked just where it was meant to be.

Without any fuss, Baxter went up the aircraft and opened the door to the cabin. There was no lock on it nor any alarm fitted; he reflected that not many people had the capability to steal and aircraft.

Baxter removed his backpack once he’d done so and placed it on the pilot’s seat as he opened it to remove its contents. Out came some masking tape, a sharp cutting knife, a lightweight anti-personnel mine and an uncomplicated timer/control device.

Using the knife, Baxter cut away the fabric at the rear of the passenger seat: he worked using illumination from a penlight he held within his mouth. The mine (an illegal device that had long ago been manufactured in China and smuggled into this country) was then slotted in behind the seat so that it faced forward. He then attached the electronic device needed to make it work as he intended behind that before applying the tape so that it resealed the hole that he’d made. Under close inspection, the damage he’d caused to the seat would be revealed, but he was certain that no one was going to be poking around here tomorrow morning when this aircraft made its final flight.

The cabin door was then closed and Baxter withdrew from the aircraft parking area and back to where he’d entered the airport’s grounds. The actual mission hadn’t taken any more than a few minutes.

*

About an hour later, Baxter returned to the house that he and Nye had rented to the south of the airport. The former policeman was waiting for him inside the door to the three-bedroom semi-detached property that was located on the silent road that was St. Mary’s Way and confirmed that no one else was up and about to take notice of them.

Baxter went up to one of the bedrooms where he would spend the night. He reflected on the waste of money that this house had been. Liz had secured a three month lease on the furnished property a few weeks ago when she had pretended to be an agent for a company supplying contract workers to the Airbus facility that lay almost within spitting distance. After all of that, he and Nye would be here only one night and would afterwards work hard to make sure that they left no trace of their presence.

He had to sleep now, he told himself when he got into bed, for he had his mission to complete in the morning.

*

Before Eight that morning, both Baxter and Nye were sitting in chairs within the bedroom where Baxter had slept for a few hours. Each had a pair of binoculars, while Baxter also had in his possession a modified radio control device. This had been designed to aid the flight of large model aircraft (another toy), yet, with a little bit of work, it was now a deadly tool that he was going to use to kill someone with.

That ‘someone’ was currently out on the airfield to his north. Nye had eyes on the man and had reported not long ago that he’d climbed aboard his red aircraft and started to taxi towards the runaway. Baxter had visually confirmed this for himself and then ran his final checks on his device. He’d powered it up and established a firm radio signal link with the device that he’d left within that aircraft.

Now he had to wait for the aircraft to get airborne… so he could crash it.

Piloting the Cessna aircraft was Terry Branch, a man that Baxter had never met. He’d learnt a lot about him recently through surveillance of him. Branch was a former journalist who’d gone to work for a big public relations consultancy based in London. He was an ‘operator’ for them: his role was ‘out in the field’. Branch worked to protect the public image of clients that his company had and his speciality was using underhand means and smears to do this. He had good contacts with Westminster and often worked for politicians like he’d once been to try to fight off scandals that could bring them down.

Branch was a Liverpudlian who maintained a nice home across in Merseyside in addition to one down in West London. He had an interest in flying and had brought this Cessna – an aircraft more than forty years old – last summer to expand upon that. He had quickly mastered the art of flying and was quite competent in the air. Branch also liked to fly his beloved aircraft alone on a Sunday morning for a few hours above the rolling hills of northern Wales.

“He’s getting going, Neil.”

“Okay.”

“I’d say about a minute and he’d off the ground.”

“I got you, Kevin.”

The conversation between them was business-like at Baxter’s insistence because the both of them needed to concentrate. Nye had to make sure that the aircraft was suitably off the ground before Baxter denoted the explosives aboard.

Baxter kept his finger above the button that would serve as a trigger and also kept his eyes out on the airfield. He could see the aircraft well enough as it came his way, though Baxter didn’t have the same close-up view of it that Nye had with his binoculars.

Yet, that really didn’t matter.

There was less noise than Baxter expected. He’d thought that the approach of the little aircraft would be louder than it was… he’d never been an expert on these things and so just assumed that maybe the wind wasn’t blowing the right way.

“Here we go!”

Nye’s call brought his attention back.

Baxter watched the aircraft come off the ground and start to climb into the morning sky. He stood up without intending too and moved across the room closer to the window to get a better view; all while tensing his finger to push the button before him. He wanted that aircraft to get high enough off the ground but not too far so that it was out of view and possibly out of radio range.

“Do it, Neil!”

Baxter pushed the button as Nye shouted at him to do so. He flinched afterwards as expecting an explosion.

Nothing happened.

The aircraft was now lost from view as it had passed above them and off to the side. Baxter and Nye had been expecting both things though and so calmly set about leaving. If the mine hadn’t gone off behind the pilot, surely resulting in Branch crashing the aircraft into the ground in his death-throws, then their mission would be a failure. There was nothing that they could do about it now.

Anyway, Nye had a police radio scanner with him and would soon find out. For now, they had pack up and get going.

[stevep]

   James G ,

  Interesting and a few loose ends that potentially could start unwinding North's activities.  The lost papers that are likely destroyed but may turn up.  The failed blackmail as a result.  Another failure that means there's an aircraft with a bomb in it that might go off another time or be found.  People noticing the number of scandals and also possibly the number of 'accidental' deaths.  Plus John Williams is starting to ask questions, at least to himself, about how his career is picking off.

  Also I could see North, already upset by events being less than happy with this latest failure and resulting in a clash, at least with Baxter.  Your already hinted at an explosive end to their relationship and since Baxter's no fool I suspect at some point he will decide he would only be safe if North himself is dead.  Have to see how things develop.

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 4, 2020 10:59:02 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

  Interesting and a few loose ends that potentially could start unwinding North's activities.  The lost papers that are likely destroyed but may turn up.  The failed blackmail as a result.  Another failure that means there's an aircraft with a bomb in it that might go off another time or be found.  People noticing the number of scandals and also possibly the number of 'accidental' deaths.  Plus John Williams is starting to ask questions, at least to himself, about how his career is picking off.

  Also I could see North, already upset by events being less than happy with this latest failure and resulting in a clash, at least with Baxter.  Your already hinted at an explosive end to their relationship and since Baxter's no fool I suspect at some point he will decide he would only be safe if North himself is dead.  Have to see how things develop.

  Steve

More loose ends are going to start coming out and will need a tidy. The lost papers are no coincidence!
Lord North isn't about to give this up even if it goes awry in a few places. It is a mess but his plan is still proceeding.

[James G]

Chapter Forty – Dragons
London Zoo, Regent’s Park, London – January 6th 2014


Jane had been told to travel to the London Zoo and visit the enclosure where the Komodo Dragons could be seen. Mister Cole, her husband had told her this morning, would approach her when she got there at half past one.

The weather report earlier had said that rain was forecast for the early afternoon and so Jane had taken an umbrella with her when she left the offices of The Daily Express and travelled up to Camden Town underground station. She kept it in her handbag as she then strolled across Regent’s Park and into London Zoo; there were clear skies and no sign of that threatened rain.

As she searched for the place where she was to meet the source that Michael had set her up with, she pondered over how much her boss Nick Wilson had believed her when she said she had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. She reckoned that he’d probably thought that she was off to attend an interview elsewhere rather than actually working. As when she had before she’d spoken to him, she again pondered over whether she should have told him the truth about what she was up to.

He was too much of a demanding and interfering editor for that though. Nick would have wanted to know far too much about the extraordinarily little that she had on the current story that she was working on.

*

Just before Christmas, Nick had assigned her to look into the matter of the why the remains of the deceased former Armed Forces Minister Roger Mayfield had been dug up from his grave in Norwich. He’d still been pleased with her for the story that she’d done on Richard Hamilton – the Government Chief Whip before he’d been forced to resign –and handed to her the assignment of finding out what was going on with Mayfield as some sort of Christmas gift.

Jane hadn’t found it much of a gift. The D-Notice that the Home Office had issued with regard to the matter had only requested that the media not publish anything about Mayfield, not that they cease to investigate it for a future story. The problem was that there was nothing to look into. There had been no one that either Jane or anyone she spoke to at other newspapers could find out. No leads were available to them as to why Mayfield’s body had been taken out of the ground, who had exactly ordered that done and whether there were any results from any tests presumably carried out on the corpse.

Nick had moved onto new things and given her other assignments and she’d nearly forgotten the whole thing until she’d briefly spoke with her husband about it when they’d shared a bath together (a regular thing for them) on New Year’s Day morning. He’d been quite interested in the near-nothing that she had with the story and offered to help her out. Michael had said that he reckoned that only the Security Service would be going around digging up bodies of former MPs long after they’d died. Moreover, he’d told her, he had a contact within the Security Service.

Over the weekend just gone, Michael’s contact had given him the name of another Security Service employee that his wife could talk to; the Mister Cole who she was here to meet today.

*

“It’s not a pleasant day, is it?”

Jane briefly gave the man who’d suddenly appeared beside her a glance, but chose not to reply to what he said. She didn’t like the way that he smiled at her when she’d looked around to see who was trying to talk to her. She was too busy trying to work out whether the creatures before her were these ‘Komodo Dragons’ that Michael had spoken of or just some other large lizards; there was no time to humour some creepy man who wanted to approach women in zoos.

“You’re Missus Snyder, yes?”

Oh fuck, he’s not some creep after all.

Jane silently cursed at her own silliness, before turning back to face the man and replying: “You don’t look like a spy.”

“I’m not.”

“But you’re Mister Cole, aren’t you?”

Imagine if I’m wrong… how embarrassing.

“I’m an intelligence officer in the service of the Crown: spies are foreign agents.”

“Okay…” Jane wasn’t impressed by this patronising man.

“Do you like the dragons?”

“I guess so.”

“I do. As a boy, they were my favourite animals to read about, to dream about. My mother couldn’t get any toys depicting them, no matter how much I bugged her. In fact, I remember my father once bringing home a stuffed dragon that had a rider on the back. Do you know what I mean? Like something out of a fantasy film or such like.

That wasn’t a Komodo Dragon though. To a six year-old, such a distinction is particularly important.”

“I see.”

Jane took her cigarettes out of her bag and quickly lit one up. Cole had diverted his attention to the dragons on display while she tried to get a feel for the man. His irrelevancies had been annoying, but she guessed that he was trying to feel her out too.

Their ‘mating ritual’ had to continue though if this afternoon wasn’t going to be a waste of time.

“What can you tell me about Mayfield?”

“What do you want to know?”

“What happened?”

“With what?”

Jane had an urge to punch the man in the side of the face. He was still standing beside her though staring forwards at the dragons ahead and thus not speaking directly to her. Worse than that rudeness was his failure to answer her questions and instead giving his own.

“I’ve been told that you know why his body was dug up three weeks ago and taken away for some sort of examination.”

“Who told you that I knew such a thing?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mister Cole.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because I just can’t.” Jane wasn’t about to give Cole the name of Michael’s contact at Thames House; such things weren’t done.

“What else is there to talk about then?”

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t tell you about Mayfield if you won’t tell me what I want to know.”

Jane took a deep puff of her cigarette and considered how this meeting was going. Cole had yet to give her anything and was being deliberately obtuse in his own demands for information. She had been told that he was willing to talk to her, that he wouldn’t ask for anything too (not even money) and that she’d learn something here today.

Well… she’d been told wrong then and nothing now.

She remained silent and turned her gaze to the animals before her.

“The females fight before they let the males mate with them.” Cole was back to what appeared to be his favourite subject. “Did you know that the females don’t always need a male to reproduce? Do you remember Jurassic Park and the dinosaurs increasing in number? That was down to parthenogenesis. A few Komodo Dragons in captivity have been shown to reproduce without fertilization from a male.

A Virgin birth, if you’d call it such a thing.”

Jane made a groan in reply that she hoped would denote her lack of interest.

“So… you wanted to know about Mayfield, yes?”

“I did.” Finally…

“He was murdered. No one is sure how or why, but he was purposely killed and his death staged so that it looked like heart failure.

There are all sorts of little clues that point to this, though none of which stand out on their own, but need to be looked at together. His daughter – just a teenager – was the one who discovered the body the morning after he passed away: the bedroom light had been left on as if someone had been up in the night when he was found in his bed when he should have been asleep.

There were chemical traces from around his mouth recovered that point to some sort of ‘wet-wipe’ being used to clean his mouth area; no such item was recovered within his house, car or office.

His house alarm had been tampered with: someone had used a disarming code to it at some point before his death.

His medical condition was serious and life threatening, but not enough to kill him as it ‘apparently’ did. A very capable doctor has looked into what exactly he died from and believes that it wasn’t bad enough to have the fatal effect that the initial coroner said it did.”

Cole still hadn’t looked at her since that first creepy smile. His attention was on the dragons and when he’d said all that he had, he’d remained looking forward and talking seemingly absent-mindedly.

“Who could have done such a thing? And, why?”

“As I said, Missus Snyder, there is no ‘why’ that anyone yet knows.”

“What more can you tell me?” Jane asked him as she dropped her finished cigarette and stubbed it out on the ground.

“Smoking within the zoo grounds is not allowed; they’ll probably fine you. So, if I was you, I’d pick that butt up and drop it in a bin somewhere.

Mayfield’s name was on a ‘Hit List’ alongside two other semi-public figures who have recently died under sort of similar circumstances. Before you ask, no, I’m not going to tell you their names or anything about how they died.

In addition, and this you’ll really find interesting, this whole information is being closely held. The new Home Secretary is at the top of the pyramid, with regard to Mayfield. Downing Street knows truly little apart from the D-Notice request. I don’t know how you’ll interpret that, but I know how I do.”

“What do you mean?” She didn’t understand Cole’s point there.

“Go away and think about it; it’ll sink in later.”

“Is there anything else, Mister Cole?”

“What more do you want to know about Komodo Dragons?”

Jane didn’t give a reply to that and instead took her umbrella out of her bag: it was starting to rain.





Chapter Forty–One – Silence
Paddington Green Police Station, London – January 7th 2014


“I want you to listen to me Amy and what I have to say. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Amy’, do you? Missus Perry doesn’t easily role off the tongue and you weren’t a Missus for very long, were you? Where I come from, three months isn’t much of a marriage.

Anyway, back to what I was saying… Do you have a thing for coppers, Amy? Your father was one, so was your brother, your husband of ninety-five days and your on-off married boyfriend too.

I’m not a psychiatrist – thank God – but I find the whole thing that you have with male policemen a little bit disturbing. I guess that a crude person, take my colleague Inspector Lavelle here as an example of that, would make some comment about truncheons or such like.

What is it, Amy? What is it about male policemen that does it for you?

And, when do you want to start cutting out all the crap and telling us about Mark Clarke? I want to know what you and him talked about after he’d done a runner.

When you start telling me this, and stop lying to us, then things will go a lot easier for you. So, come on, start talking: the truth this time please, Amy, yes?”

Harriet stood behind the one-way mirror in the darkened passageway behind the interview room on the other side. The speakerphone here in the basement complex below Paddington Green Police Station allowed her to clearly hear what Martin’s colleague Ellie Lang was saying to the woman that the two Special Branch officers had arrested earlier today.

Lang pulled no punches and was a tough-talking lady. Harriet hadn’t been able to see before that that was the type of woman she was because Lang had come across as very sweet natured and softly spoken. She should have known better though. No woman was ever going to become a Chief Inspector within the ranks of the Met. Police being the shy and retiring type.

There came absolutely no response from Amy Perry.

The twenty-eight year-old woman from Hackney looked like she was holding back tears, but she was keeping her mouth firmly closed after Martin had earlier picked apart and destroyed the lies that she’d tried to first spin when they got her in here. There were no more demands that she be allowed a solicitor and she’d stopped denying that the mobile phone that they’d found up in her loft was hers.

In addition, she was no longer claiming that she hadn’t been in contact with Mark Clarke since he’d fled London in November and turned up dead not long afterwards out in Gloucestershire.

Amy Perry was just starring right ahead and, from what Harriet could determine from her posture, those tears were being held back behind a faked defiant stare.

Harriet let out a yawn when her eyes went to the clock mounted on the wall within the interview room. She saw that it was coming up to midnight now. That meant that she’d been here at Paddington Green for the past nine hours. It was late now and that had also been a long time; she could really do with a coffee to keep her alert.

Alone here in this observation point, Harriet wished that she had Patrick here to talk through her impressions of what she was witnessing and also the circumstances leading up to Amy Perry being arrested and taken here. He was taking some owed holiday because the MATCH investigation had come to a stall – before today – and so wasn’t here to offer his insight. Martin was in there with the woman who could potentially give them many answers and while she’d spoken to him on the several occasions that he’d left the interview room, those had been brief chats.

Harriet needed someone to bounce off her thoughts on the matter.

Amy Perry had been the girlfriend of Mark Clarke before ‘he had done a runner’, as Lang had so elegantly put it. She lived in a small flat in Hackney not far from where Clare had had his home in Walthamstow and worked as a secretary for a legal firm based in The City. Harriet knew that legal secretaries almost always had to have a law degree before any medium or big sided law firm would even consider hiring them, but Amy Perry worked for a big one despite only barely scraping together a few GCSEs before she’d left school at sixteen.

The ‘connections’ that her father and brother had, both of them being policemen, must have made that happen, she assumed. It was strange though.

Yet so too was much of what she knew about Amy Perry.

Back in mid-November, when Amy Perry had first come to the attention of those on the MATCH investigation (actually when it was still the YOUNG inquiry), she had seemed not very important. Martin’s people came across telephone contact between her and Clarke and after seeing some of the transcripts of text messages sent between them, it had been clear that they had been having an affair. Clarke was married, but that hadn’t stopped him seeing Amy Perry on a regular basis for what seemed like sexual liaisons at either her flat, in his car or in cheap hotels across London.

Physical and electronic surveillance had been put on her in case Clarke had tried to get in contact.

Then Clarke had turned up dead in the River Severn and nothing more had been done with Amy Perry.

That was until the mobile phone found on Clarke’s body had been finally ‘repaired’ by Harriet’s colleagues. That device had been recovered with Clarke’s body, though it had severe water damage and was also missing a SIM card. Nothing could be found out from it, the contents couldn’t be recovered, until some bright young chaps assigned to Thames House’s technical services office had done their magic. They had finally got information from it, despite it not having a SIM, and that had led them to calls made to only one number during the time Clarke had been using it – which had been during the period he’d been in Gloucestershire. It had been shown that the number he had called was assigned to another over-the-counter SIM card, using a different network provider too, and used in a phone active only in a certain area of Hackney.

Quickly, the phone had been narrowed down to Amy Perry’s address and her initial denials back last year that she hadn’t been in contact with him shown to be false.

When Martin had first called her at work earlier today telling him this and that he’d arrested Amy Perry, she had gathered that he’d assumed she would take note of what she’d said and wait for him to update her tomorrow or the day after. He appeared not to have thought that she would have wanted to come to Paddington Green and the underground portion of the building where terrorism suspects were usually held just on the basis of a pair of recovered phones.

She had come though because maybe some answers to the MATCH investigation could come from Amy Perry.

Since the whole inquiry had started, when the Security Service had been called in because of Clarke’s initial actions with the police national computer, the investigation had been going everywhere but nowhere at the same time. All it ever brought Harriet was questions, so many questions.

Even when she and Patrick had thought that they might be onto something with the soldier Baxter in December, they had soon been disappointed there when their ‘sisters’ at Six (the Secret Intelligence Service) had stated that an operative of theirs in Kenya had confirmed that Baxter was actually there in Africa and not here in the UK killing people. It had been the same with the pathologist who’d looked at Roger Mayfield’s body; he’d said that his suspicion was that someone had killed that MP, but he had no idea as to how that had been done.

All Harriet got with the MATCH investigation was frustration. Thus she had practically jumped at the chance to come here and hear what Amy Perry had to say.

The problem was that the woman on the other side of the glass was still keeping silent.

“C’mon, Amy, talk to me, will you? They say ‘the truth will set you free’. Well… Inspector Lavelle makes comments like that and he always knows what he’s talking about. Do you know how clever he is?

Earlier, when you were lying to him, you had no idea that he already had the truth to your lies discovered. So, when you do start talking again, remember not to bother lying because he’ll know whether its crap or not.

Maybe, you don’t want to talk when he’s here. Is it that? Shall I ask him to put his fingers in his ears – he can’t leave the room: that’s not allowed – but he can do that so he won’t hear what you have to say. We can have a girly-chat. You can tell me all about this thing for male coppers that you’ve got and then tell me about what you and Mark Clarke talked about when he was on the run.

Now, what do you have to say to that deal?”

Harriet listened in amazement to what Lang was saying to Amy Perry in that interview room. She was trying to break her and going about it in an interesting way. Martin’s colleague was still having no luck though because the woman whose resistance she was trying to shatter was keeping silent.

“I knew your brother, did you know that? Martin here didn’t, but I worked with him a few years ago. I remember hearing about his death and being a little upset at that news.

You brother was a nice guy. If I’m honest, and forgive me for this, he wasn’t the best of coppers, but that isn’t to detract from him as a person.

As to your dad and ex-husband… I’ve never met either of them. Do they know about you and Mark Clarke… your affair with him? I wonder what they’d think now about you, Amy, sleeping with a married, bent copper. They are going to be unhappy when they hear that, aren’t they? It’ll probably affect their careers; nothing official, of course, but people will doubt their judgement and integrity after they hear that you were involved with someone like Clarke.

The world is unfair like that.

What could your brother say if he was hear right now, Amy?”

Lang was relentless. Harriet almost felt sorry for Amy Perry as she suffered the tongue-lashing that Lang was giving her.

Martin had told her earlier that Lang, his superior at the Special Branch, had made her career out of getting confessions out of terrorism suspects. She’d had a lot of luck earlier in her career with Irish terrorists and had also given some advice on the subject to Six too on approaches to take with Islamic terrorists now in the modern era.

Harriet reflected that if she had something to hide and Lang wanted to know it, she wouldn’t be able to hold out for long. Certainly not locked down here in this basement complex and cut off from the world as Amy Perry was, even for this (relatively) short space of time.

The problem was, Harriet realised, was that Amy Perry was still showing no sign of cracking under the pressure. Her familial and sexual relationships with police officers, as well as working at a big solicitor’s office, gave her a little understanding of the situation that she was in. She probably knew that they couldn’t hold her like they would a terrorist and deny her access to a solicitor of her own.

If Amy Perry was clever (or maybe just as stubborn as she appeared) all she had to do was stay as silent as she was. Her silence was defeating Lang… and so too Harriet in her search for some answers to those questions that she’d had for months now.





Chapter Forty–Two – Importance
Downing Street, Central London – January 8th 2014


The PM called for Daniel to come into his private office at once, but Daniel wasn’t here today.

“He’s with his daughter,” Lauren informed the PM’s secretary, “she’s still very poorly.”

Within a minute, the secretary came back on the line: Lauren was to come to see the PM in Daniel’s place. She was told that it was of vital importance that she attended on the PM.

Lauren found that within the PM’s office along with the nation’s Head of Government were two other men: the Home Secretary and the Director-General of MI-5.

“How is Holly?”

“Sorry, Sir: ‘Holly’?” Lauren had no idea who the PM meant.

“Daniel’s daughter. She’s eight, isn’t she, and they think it might be leukaemia…?”

“To be perfectly honest, Sir, I’m unsure.”

A moment of uncomfortable silence followed Lauren’s embarrassing answer. She worked with Daniel almost 24/7 yet had forgotten the name of his seriously ill daughter. In contrast, there was the PM, the most important man in the country, remembering the little girl’s name, age and what was wrong with her.

“Shall we get back to what we were discussing?” The tall chief spook, Sir Williams ‘Bill’ Hunt, Lauren noticed as she looked his way following his comment, was standing over in the corner whereas everyone else (including her now) was seated on chairs around the low coffee table in the middle of the room. He sounded more than a little impatient with his remark.

“Oh, yes, of course. Carry on, please, Bill…”

“Thank you, Prime Minister. Now, as I was saying… Baroness Amanda Vaughn went missing near her home in Matlock – up in the Derbyshire Dales – on the evening of December Twenty-Second. She hasn’t been seen since she left her house and drove away for a few hours in what appears to have been a regular habit of hers.

Derbyshire Police found her car the next day about ten miles off, on what I’ve been told was a very lonely stretch of road, but there was no sign of her. They soon called in a pair of my field officers because their assumption was that she had been kidnapped and there might be a political motive to this.”

“Sorry, Bill, can I just interrupt here for a second?” Colin Parsons, a nauseating man whom Lauren personally despised, didn’t wait for a response to his question (re: demand). “Prime Minister, when Bill says that his people were looking at the notion that she had been taken for a ‘political motive’, he doesn’t mean a domestic motive, but rather an international one.

The fear was that she might have been taken by Islamic extremists because of her previous high-profile role as Chair of the joint Commons and Lords Intelligence and Security Committee.”

“Yes, that was exactly what I was about to say. Thank you, Home Secretary.”

Lauren looked across at Bill Hunt as he gave his reply to what the Home Secretary had said and caught a flash of ‘dagger-eyes’ that the former momentarily directed at the latter. Parsons was technically responsible for the work done at Thames House, though the spooks who worked there didn’t like that one bit. From what Lauren knew of them, and MI-6 down at Vauxhall Cross too, no professional intelligence officer wanted to have someone like Parsons acting as an overseer of their work.

She didn’t blame them.

“We kept the whole issue low-key, Prime Minister,” Bill Hunt continued, “and secured cooperation from the media as to not publish anything. We contacted our allies – the Americans, the French etc. – to see if they’d heard anything. I had my best anti-terrorism people take a deeper look at suspects who might be capable of pulling something like this off.

Then we waited… and waited.”

“Until this morning, yes, Bill?”

“You are correct, Prime Minister.” Bill Hunt had now come across to Lauren, Parsons and the PM and he finally took a seat among them. “Police officers in East Staffordshire discovered a body this morning just across the county line from Derbyshire. From what I’ve been told, the body that they found outside the village of Marchington is that of the missing Baroness.

Two children on their way to school came across the body in a thinly wooded area. My officers who responded state that it is their belief that the Baroness was killed not long after she had been snatched – she was shot to dead – and her body then hidden near Marchington. They’ve had a lot of bad weather up there recently and the feeling is that this may have uncovered her remains to be stumbled across as they were rather than remaining hidden as the suspicion is that they were meant to be.”

“This is… well… this is bad.”

Lauren made a deliberate effort not to make any reaction to what Parsons just said after Bill Hunt’s narrative. She wanted to laugh at the man. He had been invited to this meeting because he was important and so too was the matter at hand, but he appeared to be cursed with a constant nagging internal doubt that no one knew of his importance. Thus, he wanted to show off all the time that he was worthy of his role by making serious statements. This time, he had spoken too quickly and had ended up saying nothing but rubbish.

What a fool.

“Yes, Colin, it is.” The PM had his sardonic tone that Lauren had heard him use before on as he spoke briefly to his Home Secretary; he dropped that as he returned to Bill Hunt. “What is being done now?”

“Prime Minister, I have my best and brightest people on this right now and they’ll be working non-stop until we get to the bottom of this.

They are working with both Staffordshire and Derbyshire Police to oversee the civilian enquiry there. In addition, they are conducting close surveillance of and, in certain cases interviewing, terror suspects. Investigation will also be undertaken in the Baroness’ movements before she was kidnapped.”

“I’ll let you get back to that, Bill, and I’ll expect you to keep me updated. Colin, can you contact the chief constables in both Derby and…”

“Stafford, Prime Minister.”

“Yes, in Stafford too, thank you, Bill. Make sure, Colin, that they provide Bill’s people with every assistance that they need.”

“And the media, Prime Minister?”

“Keep them silent on this, will you? Thank you, gentlemen.” Both Bill Hunt and Parsons stood up at this point and Lauren did so too.

“Lauren, stay with me for a few moments, will you?”

Once the two men had gone and the door was closed behind them, and after Lauren sat back down, the PM turned to her and gave her something unexpected: an exasperated look.

“That bloody man! He’s a thorough and complete idiot, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The PM didn’t say anything for a moment afterwards. Lauren kept quiet herself. She suspected that the PM wanted more of her than to just complain about what an idiot Parsons was.

“Tell me, Lauren, what do you think of all of this?”

“I’m amazed, Sir.” She really was. “I had no idea that Baroness Vaughn had gone missing; Bill Hunt did quite a job of keeping the media quiet on the whole issue. I suppose with the Parliamentary session being suspended for the Christmas and New Year’s holiday she wasn’t missed that much and word didn’t get out that she’ll disappeared…”

“She’s someone who really will be missed, Lauren. You are aware of my plans for this year and all the new legislation that I intend to have passed? Amanda would have been of great value in helping that pass through the Lords with as little fuss as possible. It can be done without her, but she ran a tight ship there.

Whoever killed her, for whatever reason – did you notice how Bill had nothing concrete? – has really taken away someone of great importance to my Government.”





Chapter Forty–Three – An Alliance
Blackheath, South London – January 10th 2014


The ‘lunch date’ with his colleague had been arranged for half past One. Williams had given himself plenty of time to get across from Portcullis House down and into South London. A taxi was arranged to collect him from his building and once in that, it went across the river and along the Old Kent Road.

There was the usual Friday afternoon traffic – many people always tried to get a long weekend by leaving work early at the end of the week – but Williams had anticipated that with his timing. He read a newspaper, The Times, as the black taxi eased through the traffic as it headed for suburban Blackheath.

“Do you know where exactly this place is?”

“Sorry… I didn’t catch you?” Williams had been lost in his ‘paper and looked up when the taxi driver spoke. He saw that they were coming across Blackheath itself and towards the big church that stood high above the actual ‘village’ where he wanted to go.

“This restaurant that you wanted, Mister: do you know exactly where abouts it is?”

“No, I’m sorry. All I know is that it is new.”

Williams folded his newspaper up and stared forwards. The driver was seated there behind the Perspex glass and Williams reckoned that the man would have a confused look on his face like his tone had been too. The roughly-spoken taxi driver had slowed the vehicle down as they came off the famous old common and prepared to drop down into Blackheath Village itself. The area around here was no longer a village – it was now part of an urban sprawl that went all the way out as far as Kent – but the old name stuck. There were countless little restaurants and bars in the village and Williams knew that the one that he and the taxi driver were both looking for probably wouldn’t be easy to spot.

The traffic was denser down here in the village. Up on the common, which served as a major transport artery for much of south-east London, they had been moving faster. Here as the taxi went downhill, they crawled along at about twenty odd miles per hour. Williams was fine with that because it allowed him to keep his eyes peeled.

To his surprise, the taxi driver saw the restaurant first: “There it is!”

Williams looked to the left at first before turning his gaze to the right… and seeing a sign that read ‘Orange Sunday’.

“I’ll just pull up, mate.”

Quickly enough, the taxi stopped beside the kerb. Williams reached for his wallet while also reading the meter. He gave the driver £30 and told him to keep the change. In addition, Williams didn’t ask for receipt as he would usually do. He wasn’t going to claim this trip on parliamentary expenses because he wouldn’t truthfully be able to state that he was on official House of Commons business.

He was now out of the taxi and strolled across the pavement the short distance to the restaurant when Colin Parsons would be waiting inside for him.

*

Once Williams had got past one of Parsons’ security people – the officer from the Met. Police’s Specialist Protection branch (SO1) had reassured himself that the MP entering the restaurant wasn’t an assassin – he found the Home Secretary waiting for him and in a somewhat jovial mood.

Parsons welcomed Williams as if the two of them were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. He called over the waiter and insisted that Williams had a drink with him. Moreover, there was also a demand that Williams ‘open up’ to him and ‘talk through’ all that was on his mind.

Seated opposite the Home Secretary, Williams silently cursed Michael Snyder for all of this. It had been his insistence that Williams come here today to have a meeting between them; he’d set it all up but then, unexpectedly, dropped out at the last minute because something else had come up. Williams was certain that his friend was playing matchmaking games between him and Parsons… yet it was a game that he really didn’t want to play.

He really should have called off the lunch meeting too.

“I’ve always thought that two of us could have worked together better than we have in the past, don’t you agree, John?”

“Sorry…?” Just like when back in taxi, Williams’ mind had drifted off so that he hadn’t been able to fully catch what was said to him.

“I was saying, John, that the two of us should have worked better together in the past instead of clashing as we often did.”

“Oh, I see.” Purposely, Williams gave the most non-committal answer to that that he could.

“Working under Joanne, I often found myself constrained in what I was able to achieve as National Security Minister. Now, after assuming her role, after her… departure, let us call it that, I will be able to work much closely with your committee. I believe that we have many of the same goals, John, wouldn’t you agree?”

“How is Joanne? Have you spoken to her recently?” Again, Williams was careful in his choice of words: he didn’t answer Parsons’ question or agree with his point and also moved to change the subject.

“I was never close to Joanne, we could never get on. So… no, I haven’t. I honestly have no wish to either. After finding out what her and her husband had been up to when she was supposed to be representing her constituents, I was rather disgusted at her behaviour.”

Parsons took a sip of his wine – Williams had so far left his own glass untouched – after making this reply. Williams looked across at the Home Secretary and was then struck with a recognition of what the Home Secretary had just said.

Parsons had just repeated almost word-for-word a statement that he, Williams, had given to the media on the matter of Joanne Miller being exposed for corruption late last year! The man was stealing his words and passing them off as his own… to him too!

“I hope you’re hungry, John,” Parsons was ignorant to Williams’ silent outrage, “they do big meals here.”

“I am.” Williams was letting Parsons’ behaviour pass for now; he’d talk to Snyder about it later.

“They only opened just before Christmas and have been very busy ever since. You should see this place later tonight, say about Eight: rammed full.”

“When Michael told me that we were meeting in Blackheath today, I assumed…”

“No, Michael’s not been here before, not to my knowledge at least. He regularly dines up in the West End. Didn’t you know I have my London home right near here? Of course, with my constituency being all the way up in Cumbria, I need a London home and Blackheath is where I am.”

“I see…”

Williams cottoned-on to something that Parsons said there and it explained a few things. He had just learnt that Parsons had met with Snyder beforehand; for a meal, maybe on more than one occasion, in the West End. The two of them seemingly knew each other more than Williams had suspected.

“Can I go back to what I was saying before, John?” Williams gave a nod and Parsons continued: “Now that I am at Marsham Street, in the ‘Big Chair’, so to speak, I would like that the Home Office and your committee work better together. That is why I requested that Michael arrange for a little get-together between us. It is a shame that he was unable to make the meeting, but I guess that such a thing is a double-edged sword.

I see that you don’t understand what I mean; let me explain better.

We can… you and me, I mean, as those who are in charge of both, can make that happen. We barely know each other, but I want that to change. Let us draw a line under everything that has happened before. I am sure that we were both just posturing for respective bosses – Joanne for me and the media for you – when we clashed before.

There is so much that can be achieved if we could just work together instead of in opposition, don’t you think so, John?”

“There are some valid points, Colin, which you have raised there; all which need consideration.”

After making his (very short) reply, Williams silently congratulated himself on what exactly he’d said. There was nothing that Parsons had said that he could agree with, though it suited his purposes at the minute to not fall out with him here today.

He could certainly be speaking with Snyder later after all of this. Williams thought back to what Adam Hutchinson had told him on New Year’s Day and his friend’s suspicions of Snyder being up to something. Whatever it was, it clearly involved him trying to build an alliance between Williams and Parsons.

That was an alliance that Williams had no interest in being part of: not with this idiot anyway.





Chapter Forty–Four – A Hero
Oxford, Oxfordshire – January 11th 2014


The task was to follow the next target on their list around for a day so that they could get a good feel for the man. In this instance, unlike with the others, there was little background information on the man. In addition, Baxter – along with Liz and Kevin – felt that it was better to see things for themselves too away from the bland reports written by amateur private detectives.

The ‘lay of the land’ was best seen by eyes, not words on a page.

Kevin had been meant to come with Baxter and Liz up to Oxford today, but at the last minute it was decided that he should instead do some similar groundwork on yet another target. The two of them could handle this reconnaissance mission alone; it really didn’t need three people.

The target lived on the edges of the city, though the information that they had pointed to him spending almost every Saturday morning and afternoon within the city itself. With the two of them still not being exactly sure how and where they were to eliminate the man, as per their instructions, both Baxter and Liz saw fit to look for any opportunity that presented itself. Next Saturday was their chosen date to get rid of the man and he was supposed to be a man of regular habits apparently.

This morning, the target had come into the city centre along with his wife and young child. Baxter had read that the man had a three year-old daughter, but that hadn’t made much of an impression upon him until he actually saw the child.

The little family were wondering down one of the main shopping streets in the middle of Oxford. The child was out of her buggy and walking along with her father holding on of her hands; the mother was pushing the empty buggy. They made slow progress because the child couldn’t walk that fast.

Baxter struggled to maintain a pace with them as he tried to keep a distance of about twenty feet behind. The child was distracted by things she saw in the shop windows, things on the ground, other people walking along and anything and everything else. Baxter observed her father as he tried to keep her walking to wherever they were going as well as carry on a conversation with his wife.

He saw that Liz on the other side of the street was also appearing to being having difficulty in walking the slow speed that was required. She was watching the family too, though also Baxter. If there was a need for Baxter to drop out of close physical surveillance – for example if the target or his wife suddenly took notice of him (however unlikely that that was) – she would take over.

The knowledge that he was going to be the cause of that little girl growing up without a father was upsetting to Baxter.

It was a cold and wet day in Oxford, but there were still many people out shopping, or at least window-shopping, today. Baxter tried to maintain anonymity among the crowds and told himself that he was doing a good job. Neither the target or his wife should have any suspicion that anyone was following them as they went about their usual Saturday routine and they certainly weren’t looking around behind them at the man there.

The target and his family came to a stop at some traffic lights to cross the road. Baxter saw that they probably intended to go into the small shopping centre on the other side of the road. He swung his gaze quickly across the road at Liz and saw that she was heading that way too.

Everything was going perfectly to plan…

… before everything fell apart.

The scream came from nowhere. Baxter’s head turned left and then right, but he couldn’t immediately place where the woman’s scream came from. Instead, his eyes followed those of everyone else: people stared ahead.

Baxter still fought of himself as a soldier. He would have the most vivid dreams of being back in uniform and in combat too. Thus his reaction, he would later realise, had been automatic and due to all of those years of training. He charged forwards right towards the long-haired man who was covered in blood and holding that knife.

He couldn’t stop himself from doing it.

The man went down under his rugby tackle. As he crashed into the main, he was struck with a thought that came far too late for his liking: where was that knife exactly?

It was too late for that though. Baxter was atop of the man as they sprawled across the hard pavement. He was trying to pin the man down. Baxter tried to get the man’s arms across his chest and also keep him on the ground.

All the while that woman’s scream continued.

The man tried to bite him. Baxter faced growls and then attempted bites. The man’s hair, set in a ponytail fashion, hit him in the face… where those teeth couldn’t reach.

Is this nutter on something?

Baxter felt a sharp and sudden pain in his groin and it took all of his strength not to react to that. He was thinking a lot more clearly now and realised that hundreds of people must be looking at him – so much for remaining anonymous today! – but what else could he do? This crazed man had to be stopped.

“Hit him! Kick him!” Baxter heard the aggressive demands being made by a youngish-sounding man behind him, though he didn’t know what they were exactly about. He was too busy to do anything like that; it was taking all that he had to keep the man beneath him pinned down.

A fist came out of nowhere and landed in the face of the man on the ground. Then it was returned for a second time. Baxter thought that he heard the crunch of bone – maybe a nose breaking? – and then realised that he had assistance from someone else.

Following that pair of well-delivered punches, the struggles eased off a little bit. He now had a better grip of the man and he was sure that he had the situation under more control.

The problem was though, what was the situation that he’d intervened in?

“Someone call Nine-Nine-Nine!”

“Is she still alive?”

“Kill the weirdo bastard!”

“Call an ambulance!”

The earlier scream had come to a stop and instead Baxter now heard demands coming from the people who he could see all around him. There was a circle of people standing here around him and the man he still had pinned beneath him. That man now had a bloody face and was completely still.

Baxter hoped that he wasn’t dead while also still wondering just what the hell was going on here.

“You did well, mate. He stabbed that woman and was going for the kid too before you got him down!”

“You’re a hero!”

Baxter realised that the comments were now being directed towards him from faces among the still-growing crowd.

“Scumbag bastard!”

With this shout from someone else, Baxter witnessed a kick that was delivered to the side of the head of the man on the ground. There was a horrible crunch with that followed by a man’s shout of sudden pain; Baxter knew that kicking someone in the head was never a good idea.

“The police are coming!”

“Has someone called an ambulance?”

“There’s one coming with the coppers!”

“Let me get at him! Let me help you hold him down, mate?”

Baxter assumed that this voice belonged to someone trying to help. He turned to look at who was attempting to aid him and saw a muscle-bound teenager complete with a tank-top – in this weather! – moving in with his immense arms.

The youngster pushed one arm down over the throat of the man on the ground and Baxter moved slightly as that teenager pushed the other arm onto the man’s chest.

“What’s your name?”

“Neil.” Baxter answered without thinking.

“As they said,” the ‘they’ must have been the crowd, Baxter thought, “you’re a hero! You got him good. I’m Steve and I’m glad to meet you.”

Baxter had no answer for that. He was in shock at his own stupidity in giving away his name; he was also aware that this youngster, along with everyone else, was looking right at him.

There were sirens now. A wailing noise was what he could hear and it sounded like it was coming closer. People all around him were still talking, but Baxter was ignoring them as he tried desperately to think of what to do next.

There was a tug at his shoulder and Baxter looked that way. It was Liz. There was concern written all across her face. Baxter started to get up in reaction to this.

“Don’t worry, Neil, I got hold of him now.” The pride in the youngster’s voice at being given the ‘responsibility’ of holding down the knifeman was evident.

Baxter paid no more attention to him though: Liz was dragging him through the crowd and away.

*

Baxter had recovered his senses as he ran through the alleyway behind Liz.

The noise from her heels as they clattered off the pavement and echoed down the narrow passageway couldn’t distract him from silently repeating one thing over and over in his mind.

What did I just do?

What did I just do?

What did I just do?

When they reached their car, Liz started it up and started to pull away from where she’d parked it before he’d even finished closing his door. In here though, his sense was returned to him.

And Liz ‘helped’ with that too.

“Why did you do that?” She was short of breath, but there was incredulity and anger evident there.

“I didn’t see that I had any other choice.” Baxter didn’t give her an entirely honest answer because he was ashamed of the truth. He didn’t want to admit that he’d acted without thinking.

“It had nothing to do with us, Neil!”

“What happened?” He still didn’t know exactly what had gone on.

“That guy with the knife came from nowhere and went straight after our target. Or maybe he was aiming for the wife to start with. Either way, he stabbed her right in the chest then turned towards our man and the little kid.

Then you were on top of him.”

“I had to do something. I just couldn’t…”

“No, you could have just done nothing as I was going to do! Why get involved?” She was breathing almost normally now as she drove fast and out of the city centre, but Liz still had her angry tone. “Do you know how many people were taking pictures – maybe even filming! – with their phones? The police were coming too and you were just there in the middle of all of that.

What is wrong with you, Neil?”

At this point, the adrenaline noticeably wore off and Baxter started to feel an immense pain where he’d been kneed right in the crutch. He couldn’t answer her question – if there was an answer, he didn’t have one – because his hands went there and he tensed up in pain.

“There’s blood on your face. You’ll need to get that off.” Liz spoke again in a less angry tone after a minute or two of Baxter’s pain.

“Why did that happen?” Baxter was now starting to try to reflect on what just occurred.

“I’m guessing here, but someone tried to kill our man because of who he is.”

“Why?”

“Maybe for similar reasons that we were. Oh, he was taking a different approach, but for the same sort of reason.

By the way, we’re totally fucked!”

Baxter couldn’t respond to that. He was still hurting and Liz was so very correct in what she had just said too.

[stevep]

Jul 6, 2020 16:14:48 GMT James G said:

Jul 4, 2020 10:59:02 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

  Interesting and a few loose ends that potentially could start unwinding North's activities.  The lost papers that are likely destroyed but may turn up.  The failed blackmail as a result.  Another failure that means there's an aircraft with a bomb in it that might go off another time or be found.  People noticing the number of scandals and also possibly the number of 'accidental' deaths.  Plus John Williams is starting to ask questions, at least to himself, about how his career is picking off.

  Also I could see North, already upset by events being less than happy with this latest failure and resulting in a clash, at least with Baxter.  Your already hinted at an explosive end to their relationship and since Baxter's no fool I suspect at some point he will decide he would only be safe if North himself is dead.  Have to see how things develop.

  Steve

More loose ends are going to start coming out and will need a tidy. The lost papers are no coincidence!
Lord North isn't about to give this up even if it goes awry in a few places. It is a mess but his plan is still proceeding.

  People like him, self absorbed fanatics too often seek to double the anti when things start diverging from 'the plan' and increasingly unwilling to listen to any alternative advice.

[stevep]

   James G ,

   Interesting with Baxter.  While he's very bitter and wants revenge and is also a trained killer he's not really a cold blooded assassin so I was wondering if there would be stress on the continued killing of people, most of whom he had nothing against.  However an automatic reaction to a crisis like that, where his training and basic morality came out I wasn't expecting, but does sound like its in character for him.  Its going to cause a lot of problems with his relationship with North, both because the latter will be angry - also as well about the Baroness's body being found - and because he might really start questioning his current path. 

  The fact the hero disappeared immediately after the attack is going to cause a lot of speculation and if that many people took pictures then their going to be in the press and the secret services are going to recognise him.  Which will sink the idea he's working as a mercenary in E Africa and also raise questions on how [and who] deceived them.

  I also suspect that Amy Perry can tell a lot more as I doubt her relationship with Clarke was mainly sexual, if at all.  She wouldn't have kept contact with him after he went on the run and continued keeping quiet after his death otherwise.  Wondering if she was his prime contact with North - directly or indirectly - and is now worried that if she talks she won't have long to live.

  So someone else, apparently from the security services, is shaking Jane Snyder 's cage with some information.  Not sure if they suspect her husband is involved or simply leaking some info via her to see what reaction is causes.  I suspect her husband and John Williams are going to have a somewhat stormy meeting after John was dumped into that meeting with the new Home Secretary.

  A very complex plot so well written and so many other threads in the air as well. 

  Steve

 

[James G]

Jul 7, 2020 11:06:17 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

   Interesting with Baxter.  While he's very bitter and wants revenge and is also a trained killer he's not really a cold blooded assassin so I was wondering if there would be stress on the continued killing of people, most of whom he had nothing against.  However an automatic reaction to a crisis like that, where his training and basic morality came out I wasn't expecting, but does sound like its in character for him.  Its going to cause a lot of problems with his relationship with North, both because the latter will be angry - also as well about the Baroness's body being found - and because he might really start questioning his current path. 

  The fact the hero disappeared immediately after the attack is going to cause a lot of speculation and if that many people took pictures then their going to be in the press and the secret services are going to recognise him.  Which will sink the idea he's working as a mercenary in E Africa and also raise questions on how [and who] deceived them.

  I also suspect that Amy Perry can tell a lot more as I doubt her relationship with Clarke was mainly sexual, if at all.  She wouldn't have kept contact with him after he went on the run and continued keeping quiet after his death otherwise.  Wondering if she was his prime contact with North - directly or indirectly - and is now worried that if she talks she won't have long to live.

  So someone else, apparently from the security services, is shaking Jane Snyder 's cage with some information.  Not sure if they suspect her husband is involved or simply leaking some info via her to see what reaction is causes.  I suspect her husband and John Williams are going to have a somewhat stormy meeting after John was dumped into that meeting with the new Home Secretary.

  A very complex plot so well written and so many other threads in the air as well. 

  Steve

 

Baxter: yep, he did a natural reaction. There was some lunatic out there seeking O'Dell for recent horrible comments made and Baxter did what came naturally. As to him disappearing, that will be noticed by Harriet - well, her MI-5 co-worker - but maybe not by everyone else. I think I was thinking at the time about the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack. Remember all the attention given to one guy when he made himself available to the media? There were other people who intervened too. Okay, different situation here but that was what I went with. Yet, still, the two MI-5 agents and their X-File will go looking! That East Africa cover story is also poorly done and will be exposed.
Amy Perry: that is more of the dead Clarke storyline. Her connection was with him but she also has a brother - as said in that (one-way) interview and he is the connection coming up.
Jane: that meeting at the zoo was with Harriet's co-worker Patrick - using the Cole name - but was all a ploy. Snyder sent his wife on that mission, without her seeing the meaning, to get information on what he is aware that people in MI-5 are looking into. It isn't very clear and I had to check the why that happened but that is what it is all about. While Snyder will get his info, he cannot stop what happens afterwards with Jane following up... and getting deeper into seeing the conspiracy in another way too.
Williams: maybe I should have had him and Snyder fall out but they don't. Williams does push back though. Again, Snyder is playing games. The new Home Secretary, Parsons, is going to become more and more important as we go on.
As said, all a very complicated story.