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

[stevep]

   James G ,

  Well I see what you mean about some big bangs.  It sounds like the PM had a narrow escape.  The fact that such an advanced weapon was used is going to attract a lot of attention.  Wondering if this was something to do with those three American tourists entering Scotland a few days back?  Someone with access to high level military equipment is definitely involved.

  So Martin's in the loop in that something seems to be going on with an element somewhere in the security forces involved.  I think Harriet was a bit hard on him given the argument as I expect she's heard such language often enough before.  Wondering if he is Jewish or has Jewish ancestory given the strength of his reaction, although I doubt that would have any broader effects.

  In terms of Amy's 'fall' I'm wondering if that was her brother or Baxter trying to implicate him and also remove a dangerous loose end.  In which case he could have problems getting away given the police and other forces are so close.  Have to find out at the next post.

  I don't know if there's any relevance to the character who seemed to be focused on Liam at Kate's funeral.  Could be an undercover policeman watching if anything happens or something else.

  Anyway another excellent chapter. 

  I think there was one small typo.

Williams listened to his wife and Chloe talking. Lisa was asking Tim’s young wife about a rumour that he himself had heard, one which not turned out to be either false or not something that was going to happen yet. He had believed it when he had heard that the Mayor of London (a fellow Conservative) had been ready to leave their political party and become an ‘Independent with a BORM affiliation’: such was the current term. The man was a maverick politician and always would be. He liked to boast how a million people had voted him into office whereas MPs, even Cabinet members and the PM himself, could only say that twenty odd thousand people had put them into their seats in Parliament. Many ideas of the democracy that the BORM stood for were similar to his too.

  Think that not is an error as it seems to be contrary to the rest of the sentence?

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 13, 2020 10:17:45 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

  Well I see what you mean about some big bangs.  It sounds like the PM had a narrow escape.  The fact that such an advanced weapon was used is going to attract a lot of attention.  Wondering if this was something to do with those three American tourists entering Scotland a few days back?  Someone with access to high level military equipment is definitely involved.

  So Martin's in the loop in that something seems to be going on with an element somewhere in the security forces involved.  I think Harriet was a bit hard on him given the argument as I expect she's heard such language often enough before.  Wondering if he is Jewish or has Jewish ancestory given the strength of his reaction, although I doubt that would have any broader effects.

  In terms of Amy's 'fall' I'm wondering if that was her brother or Baxter trying to implicate him and also remove a dangerous loose end.  In which case he could have problems getting away given the police and other forces are so close.  Have to find out at the next post.

  I don't know if there's any relevance to the character who seemed to be focused on Liam at Kate's funeral.  Could be an undercover policeman watching if anything happens or something else.

  Anyway another excellent chapter. 

  I think there was one small typo.

Williams listened to his wife and Chloe talking. Lisa was asking Tim’s young wife about a rumour that he himself had heard, one which not turned out to be either false or not something that was going to happen yet. He had believed it when he had heard that the Mayor of London (a fellow Conservative) had been ready to leave their political party and become an ‘Independent with a BORM affiliation’: such was the current term. The man was a maverick politician and always would be. He liked to boast how a million people had voted him into office whereas MPs, even Cabinet members and the PM himself, could only say that twenty odd thousand people had put them into their seats in Parliament. Many ideas of the democracy that the BORM stood for were similar to his too.

  Think that not is an error as it seems to be contrary to the rest of the sentence?

  Steve

That is one of three. It was those 'tourists', yes. They will do #2 but not #3. Skill in high explosive use was needed and they were some of those electricians rushed to safety when the bomb went off. The targeting wasn't to kill the PM though: it was to create the right atmosphere for what else is coming.
IIRC, I wanted to add some friction to Martin & Harriet's relationship. I can't recall my exact thinking there. But he is in the loop and, like Harriet and Patrick, he isn't telling his bosses everything either as he keeps her secret.
That push was Kevin Nye. He isn't a nice guy. He's also a liar as we are about to discover.
I think the guy at the funeral was something I forgot to tidy up at the end of the story... there are several threads left loose unfortunately. The Americans are a big one.
Ah... yeah, that doesn't make sense. I'll give it a fix.

[James G]

Chapter Seventy – Truth & Lies, But Answers Nevertheless
Hereford, Herefordshire – February 12th 2014


It had taken just short of one hundred hours on his part for Kevin Nye to finally talk to them. This was Harriet’s fifth day out here in the West of England and only now could she hear him say anything past ‘no comment’. He had said such a thing countless times since Saturday afternoon as West Mercia Police questioned him with regard to what had happened to his sister and over his identity too. Harriet was aware that American police officers were allowed to wholly lie to their suspects and if that had been the case here in the UK, Nye could have been told that his sister had died so as to get him to open up more. Sticking to the law though, West Mercia Police had only hinted at such a thing: they had had no success there. Nye was a former policeman himself and knew all the tricks of the trade.

Yet, finally, this evening, he was going to talk and give what he himself described as an ‘honest account of everything’.

The West Mercia Police detectives left the interview room here in the police station inside Hereford and Harriet went inside following Martin. He introduced himself as from the Metropolitan Police and then Harriet by the usual description.

“A lady ‘from the Government’, eh?” Nye first gave a grin and then let out a little whistle in reaction to that.

There were four seats at the table in the middle of the interview room, but Harriet chose to stand against the back wall rather than sit with Martin and Nye. She watched as her boyfriend made a show of letting Nye see that he was unplugging the standard-issue recording device that rested on the edge of the wall; Nye kept his eyes on her instead. He was studying her, watching her intensely, but she didn’t falter under his stare. Rather she met it and looked back at the man she suspected of being a killer and possible traitor.

“If I know anything about people ‘from the Government’ – yes, spooks – you’ll still be recording this anyway.” Nye spoke with great confidence and he also spoke the truth. “But… we’ll just pretend that the little charade there means something; record away, I don’t care.”

Harriet remained observing Nye as he spoke boldly in an effort that she knew was a disguise to cover his fear. He sat with a firm upright posture and his arms crossed over his chest. His tone was laconic and each word spoken carefully. He wasn’t a good actor though; this was all another one of his deceptions. Nye knew what trouble he was in and that was why he had agreed to talk. It was supposed to be on his terms – Nye had insisted to the West Mercia Police that he would only talk to either ‘spooks or London Special Branch’ – but that again was to cover his worries over the mess that he’d got himself mixed up in.

Martin asked Nye as to what his name was; it wasn’t Kenneth Plant as he’d tried to maintain it was, was it?

“Kevin Lee Nye, born Sixteenth March Seventy–One in Drybrook, Gloucestershire.”

Following up from that, Martin asked Nye to confirm when he’d left the Metropolitan Police and also when and where he had apparently died. This was just simple fact-checking and background information to confirm what they already had on him.

“I retired end of November Two-O-Nine after twenty years with the Met. I then officially died last August, on the Sixth of that month.

I guess that you want to know the circumstances surrounding that, yes?

Well… let be honest and I won’t try to dress it up in anyway. If you look through the HOLMES national computer, you’ll come across a file on a man by the name of Luke King, a Southampton resident in his early Forties. He is listed there – the last time I had someone check – as a missing person. I killed him when the two of us were down in Jersey. He was not a nice guy at all and had a nasty habit of abusing kids, but I killed him because he matched me physically in almost every way… and I knew that no one would go looking for him too being the type of man that he was. I staged the boating accident there in the Channel Islands because I knew that Jersey Police are undermanned and the geographic difference from mainland England would make a difference.

The body sitting in a grave with a headstone containing my name is a filthy paedophile whose body was burned beyond recognition before being dumped into the sea. Don’t try to make me feel guilty over this either; I really don’t. I needed a body double and he fitted the bill perfectly.”

Harriet had been expecting a lot of things to be said, but she was still shocked at Nye’s casual admittance of murdering someone as he had. The whole incident was something that they had no idea of before he said it either.

Afterwards, Martin asked Nye what he had been doing since his ‘death’ in Jersey.

“I’ve killed some more people since then.” Again, Nye was terribly matter-of-fact in how he spoke. “I’ve lost count to be honest, but it’s quite a few in total. I’m guessing more than a dozen are dead at my hands. Do you want me to tell you who, when, where and how?”

Martin said that he would like Nye to give him those details and also the ‘why’ that he hadn’t offered to provide either.

“There was an M.P by the name of Roger Mayfield; he died in Norwich November First. I had acquired this gas-type spray and sprayed it into his face to give him a heart attack. He was the first one in the… series of killings that I did.

There was a guy called Chris Young who lived in Wandsworth – I stabbed him to death with a knife from his own kitchen.

I stabbed Marcus Bland in South-East London when he was out jogging early on morning soon after I killed Mayfield.

I shot a woman called Sonia Patel in Birmingham. Two other people – their names escape me – were with her and I shot them too, but she was who I was after.

My friend, and Amy’s boyfriend, was next. I killed Mark Clarke and dumped him in the River Severn because he posed a threat to me and what I was up to. I liked Mark, but I took his life anyway.

Up in Sheffield, I forced an old man called Dominic Hodges to hang himself in his garage.

Paul Plumber – the boyfriend of an M.P who jumped out of a window to save his life – was another one I killed in November too. He saw my face and I shot him while trying to kill Clive Valance.

Gloria Quinn was the first person I killed in December; I used a stolen car to knock her off her pushbike in West London.

A media executive named James Mortimer supposedly jumped off a building in Manchester; I pushed him instead.

In Surrey, later that month, I poisoned a military man – General Alexander Lynch – and then left his body in his car on a level-crossing for a freight train to hit it.

Days before Christmas, I kidnapped and then shot a member of the House of Lords; Amanda Vaughn was killed in Derbyshire.

Right before the New Year, I took someone else sailing like I’d done with King in Jersey. This guy was called Dale Usher and he died off the Devon coast in another so-called accident.”

Harriet was amazed at the continuing confession. Nye was rolling off names and saying when, where and how. The names Mayfield, Young, Clarke and Quinn were people that she had suspected him and his cohorts of killing, but to hear confirmation of that was something that she’d waited a long time for.

She wished that Patrick was here to hear this, especially when Nye spoke briefly of Bland and Plumber: the two other murders that he had linked to MATCH, but which she hadn’t been sure were connected to their investigation.

The other six names came as a sharp shock though. She recognised them from media reports, but before this very moment she hadn’t even considered that they had been killed by the same people who had murdered the others too.

Harriet had mentally counted fourteen (including the two Birmingham City Council workers), but Nye was carrying on.

“Terry Branch was killed up in North Wales early in January when I put a small bomb aboard his light aircraft and caused it to crash.

A man named Fred Taylor: I used the same method of killing Mayfield that I did with him on a train not long after Branch.

There was a girl called Adele Roberts, a pretty young thing, who lived near Marble Arch. I gave her a fatal dose of Class A drugs while pointing a gun at her head and she passed away after that.

On the Twentieth of last month, I pushed Brian Gibson down a flight of stairs in a car park in Stratford, near the Olympic Complex… and then I smashed his skull against a concrete stair-edge when the actual fall didn’t do the job well enough.

The last time I killed anyone was on the Twenty-Third. Gavin McFadden’s body is buried in a shallow grave outside Chepstow after I kidnapped him and shot him dead – such a killing was almost a repeat of what I did to that haughty woman Amanda Vaughn… though he didn’t cry and beg for his life like she did.

As I said, I tried to kill Clive Valance in Portsmouth. I also sought to kill Mohammed Salem in Bradford, but I didn’t like the visible police presence around him. In Oxford I was about to kill Gerry O’Dell, but someone else unconnected to me chose that same moment to make an attempt too.”

Martin told him that the number of murders that he had now confessed to had reached twenty, including the paedophile who he’d killed to cover his tracks. Harriet’s boyfriend again asked him why he’d done what he had.

“The lady here ‘from the Government’ should be able to tell you that, Inspector Lavelle. She should also know why I covered them up as I did to make them look not all like murders and set out to eliminate links between them as well.

All I can tell you is that I regret killing Mark. Him and Amy were… oh, no, saying they were ‘meant for each other’ isn’t right. But… still… I wish I hadn’t. She knew that I did it too and wouldn’t let go even when I kept saying that I didn’t.”

Nye was asked why he had tried to kill his sister too.

“I didn’t push her on purpose. She got me mad going on about him and I shoved her away, not realising that she had those ridiculous heels on and would trip. Still, that’s my fault.”

He looked very hurt, Harriet noticed, at what (as far as he claimed) he’d accidently done to his sister Amy Perry.

“What happens now?” Nye was talking again. “Are you going to start charging me with all of those murders? Because if you do…”

Nye didn’t finish what he was saying there and after a moment of silence, Martin told him that such a thing depended upon whether he was going to say why he had done so. What Martin didn’t ask, because Harriet had asked him not to, was to inquire after the whereabouts of the two other people they knew had been helping him carry out these killings.

“Please, c’mon! I’m not going to fall for that line. I interrogated murderers myself back when I was with the Met., Inspector Lavelle. You can’t fool me there. I have just confessed my guilt and we both know that you have this on tape, plus I’ll tell it all again to anyone else who asks.

Anyway, what happens to me next is probably what they like to call a ‘political decision’ that people like the young lady standing behind you – the people at Thames House that she works for, to be precise – to make, not you.”

Martin asked Nye if there was anything else that he would like to say before they returned him to the custody of West Mercia Police.

“Is my sister out of that coma yet? Can I see her?”

*

Harriet and Martin were both back in the bed-and-breakfast hotel later that evening where they’d been staying since Saturday. It was outside of Hereford, next to the A438 road that headed west towards Wales. Patrick had been staying here too with them when they waited for Nye to start talking, but he had left Monday night when the Security Service started recalling officers with terrorism experience back to London to address the Downing Street Bomb.

The two of them had separate rooms – because they were both here on official business – though they were back in his room now as they had been every night. Martin was currently in the shower before he would join her in bed for an ‘early night’ so they could celebrate their final success in getting Nye to talk. She couldn’t hear the running water from the rickety old shower due to the earphones she had in, but there was steam coming under the door that told her he was still in there.

Those earphones were plugged into her laptop and she listened once again to what Nye had confessed to. He had told them truth and lies, but answers nevertheless to many questions had been spoken of. The many doubts that she’d long held in her mind had been expelled back in that interview room and were again now as she listened to the recording that she’d uploaded onto her computer. The whole MATCH investigation hadn’t been the hot air that she’d once feared it was.

There had been someone committing those murders of public and semi-public figures that she’d been investigating since November… and doing so in an organised manner too.

However, she didn’t think that it had just been Nye on his own, not that he personally had committed them all as he had claimed. He hadn’t spoken of Neil Baxter or Liz Jackson – the former, embittered soldier and the retired spook from her own organisation – and was, in effect, claiming credit for things that she was certain Nye had joined those two in doing.

More importantly than that, she still, after all this time, didn’t have a ‘why’.

Out of the corner of her eye, Harriet saw the door to the bathroom opening and Martin walking back in. He dropped the towel that he had been wearing tied around his waist over a chair and got onto the bed. Harriet took out her earphones, moved the laptop onto the floor and started to undress so she could celebrate their partial success.

Tomorrow, she’d get back to the MATCH investigation and probably London too.





Chapter Seventy–One – Animal Association
Holland Park, West London – February 13th 2014


Jane sat in her dark kitchen up on a chair next to the breakfast sideboard. The sun would be coming up very soon outside, so she’d left the light off in here. An untouched cup of coffee, slowly going cold, was before her while she had her head in her hands.

She fought back the tears that wanted to flow freely.

Michael was coming down the stairs now. She heard her husband on his way down towards the kitchen when he was at the top because Michael had the childish habit of running up and down stairs whenever confronted with them. He raced down them now and jumped when he hit the ground floor.

Jane winced as she always did when Michael behaved so childish: one day he’d hurt himself doing that.

Breezing into the room, Michael had his usual morning question: “What’s for breakfast?”

She’s taken her head out of her hands and fixed a fake smile on her face just before he entered the kitchen, but Jane didn’t trust herself to speak for the fear that she’d give herself away. Instead of verbally replying, she just pointed over at the other side of the room where the table was. A bowl of cereal and a glass of milk rested there as her husband liked his morning meal to consist of even though he always questioned over such a thing like he was going to get a surprise.

Seemingly unperturbed, Michael went straight over there and sat down.

Jane stood up and walked over to the sink, cup in-hand. The coffee went down the drain and she started rinsing the cup out.

Her back was to Michael, but she could feel his eyes on her nonetheless. He usually woke up and wanted physical contact first thing – Michael was a very hormonal man – but she wasn’t in the mood for anything like that today and was determined to give him the necessary signs that such a thing wasn’t on the cards.

Michael had turned the kitchen light on when he’d come into the room and was over there tucking into the simple meal that she’d made him. Years ago, not long after they’d got married, the two of them had stayed over at his mother’s house and she’d witnessed him getting the same simple food in the morning from her then too.

He was Peter Pan!

After finishing with the empty cup, Jane rested it on the drainer and then left the kitchen. She managed to avoid eye contact with her husband and still hadn’t said a word to him. With other couples, Jane knew that such behaviour would be a sign of trouble in their marriage, but usually the two of them were fine being like this. Jane knew that she was never the most talkative of people early in the morning and Michael appeared to long ago have come to terms with that even if he wanted something else first thing.

Up the stairs she went, careful not to trip over the bottom of the dressing gown that was too long for her and she had still not got around to replacing with another one, and towards the bathroom. She couldn’t hear her daughter yet and was glad that the twelve year-old was still asleep and didn’t want her attention either. That just would be too much for her at the minute.

Jane needed a shower to clear her head a little and sort herself out some.

Under the warm water being propelled out of the power shower – Michael had had this installed late last year over her wishes: it was too violent for her liking – Jane tried to think about her current situation. She was seeking a way to get out of it, but she had been doing so since last Friday and was yet to have any luck.

Blackmail, she knew, was a crime. If someone else had tried to do the same thing as the American who called himself ‘Alex Storm’ (the fakest name she’d ever heard!) was doing, she could have gone straight to the police. Or she could have told Michael about it and he would have nipped the situation in the bud soonest. She couldn’t go to the police nor tell her husband though.

Jane was used to having other people sort things out for her. She knew it wasn’t what a woman in the Twenty–First Century should be doing, but that was who she was. She didn’t like confrontation; she didn’t like drama. If someone else could help her, she would always take such offered aid. The world which she lived in was hard on her and there was always someone else there to help her. But, this time, she couldn’t think of anyone to save her from what she got herself mixed up in.

But she couldn’t sort this out for herself. Storm had a hold over her – one which the selfish Charlotte was also trying to use for her own ends too, much to Jane’s discomfort – and there was no light at the end of the tunnel that she could see and run towards.

When she came out of the shower, Jane quickly and partially dried herself of before going back into the bedroom to finish removing the wetness still on her before seeking out some clothes. She was working today and needed to look correct for that. The television was on in Emily’s bedroom and the pre-teen was disobeying her mother’s instruction not to have it on in the morning before school. Jane silently fumed at such insolence, but she would deal with that soon enough, just not yet.

As she chose an outfit, put it back, chose another one and then reconsidered the next one, Jane thought about Storm. He was a spook like Cole was. Charlotte thought she was a spy, but she wasn’t. Someone who was really in the intelligence business acted just like Storm and Cole did. Unlike Charlotte who wanted to use the blackmail that her fellow American was undertaking to get Jane to go back to bed with her again, Storm – the professional – acted serious and had a real purpose behind his own blackmail.

Over the past week, Jane had been thinking about Storm almost every waking moment. She knew that she had met him before and his name was Ian Something; he was some sort of Consular official at the American Embassy. At that diplomatic function when she’d first met Charlotte, he had been briefly introduced to her and his last name revealed for her to forget now. He hadn’t mentioned that first encounter when he’d started his blackmail, and she thought that he either couldn’t recall it himself or, conversely, was hoping she had forgotten. Jane was a good journalist though and failing to remember people wasn’t something she did; everyone semi-important or Important was a potential one-day source of information for her.

He hadn’t struck her as a spook then, but, of course, that was before she had met Cole and first spoke to him (when watching those dragons in London Zoo). In comparison to the dragons that she associated in her mind with Cole, Storm was an eagle; ever watchful and ready to pounce upon helpless prey.

Charlotte was a viper hiding in the long grass.

Jane pushed the irreverent thoughts of animal association from her mind and concentrated back on what Storm wanted from her as she finally found an outfit to wear. She started putting on the below-knee-length skirt and matching blouse on while she pondered over his demands from her that he said she’d have to give into if she didn’t want him to reveal to her husband what he knew about her.

The photo that Charlotte had showed her last Friday in Covent Garden came into Jane’s mind as she sat down at the dresser. As she picked up her hairbrush and looked into the mirror, she could see that again now as clear as day. It had been an image of her husband standing with another man she knew of but had yet to meet. Michael and that Neil Baxter character that Cole – was that even his real name either, she briefly asked herself – had got her to look into the whereabouts of had been walking through what appeared to be a wooded area together. They had looked like they were talking and the picture had been taken from some distance away, but still had enough clarity to show their faces. It hadn’t looked faked and she had known the significance of it.

Cole had given her information, which Jane had confirmed herself, that pointed to Baxter being involved in a serious of political murders nationwide over the past few months. For her husband to be with him, even in just one picture, was bad enough. There had been other pictures of them, dressed in slightly different clothes at other locations too, which Storm had showed her after Charlotte had brought her attention to the first one. Those later pictures hadn’t had the same shocking effect on her as the first one had though, nor the accusations that Storm had spoken of along with them as to what her husband and this suspected killer were up to.

Now brushing her messy hair, Jane thought about what Storm had said after he’d made those first accusations. He’d walked with her through Covent Garden, with Charlotte left behind and visibly annoyed at such a thing – she’d called Jane later to complain about that… and also propositioned her again too in an act which Jane knew probably wouldn’t have been what Storm would have wanted –, and made his blackmail pitch.

At first, Jane had thought that Storm was going to tell her that he would show Michael pictures, maybe a video, of her and Charlotte in bed together. Jane could have dealt with that. She wouldn’t have even had to bluff him by daring him to do such a thing. Michael had a filthy mind and such images, had they been used, would have had the complete opposite effect of outrage or anger in him: he would have liked such a thing!

But, alas, no, that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, Storm had a different method of blackmail. In return for slotting a memory stick into his home computer to suck out all the information from there as well as informing Storm of her husband’s movements and any details she could get from him of his political dealings, it wouldn’t be revealed to him how she was meeting with Cole and passing onto him – indirectly as she was – what he was up to. At first, Jane hadn’t understood. The pictures of him and Baxter, and what she knew about Baxter’s suspected activities from Cole, made sense of all that though. Storm had told her that he didn’t think that Michael would like his wife effectively spying on his activities and potentially getting him into trouble. Michael was engaged in treason, Storm had explained, and she was helping Cole look into that.

Jane was thus to truly spy on her husband (for Storm) while only indirectly doing it (for Cole) unless she wanted her husband to know of what she’d been doing.

Storm had clearly put some thought into this; he appeared to have found out much about her and Michael to allow him to get this to work. Michael wasn’t the type of man to want his wife doing something like this and wouldn’t forgive such a thing. He would leave her, Storm had said and she had silently agreed, if he was to find out.

Jane couldn’t be without Michael, no matter what his flaws were. She wasn’t strong enough to be on her own and needed him.

With her hair done, Jane went over to her handbag and took the memory stick out of her purse. She then went past her daughter’s closed bedroom door to the first-floor study. Michael almost never turned off his computer at night and she found it switched on. He was still downstairs, no doubt reading the morning newspaper they had delivered, and she had no fear about him coming upstairs. The memory stick went into the USB port, there was a whirl and a beep – just like every other morning she had done this – and then a red LED flashed on the portable device. Jane removed the memory stick and then walked back to the bedroom to put it into her purse.

This had taken less than a minute.

Next, Jane went to fix her make-up. Questions now entered her mind, ones that she’d had since Friday too.

She thought of how Michael had first put her in touch with a contact from the Security Service like Cole. Though it was indirect, she pondered over why he had allowed her to make contact with MI-5 if he was doing as Storm said he was and doing something that would make him a traitor.

It didn’t make sense…

… but it did too.

It suddenly hit her. She finally had an answer to this question. He had done so because with her talking to such people he could use her to keep an eye on any possible inquiry into his own activities. She had then crossed a line that he had drawn without telling her it was there to end up acting against him. He didn’t yet now this either but wouldn’t be happy and would leave her high-and-dry if or when he did.

Jane had just betrayed him, again, but it struck her now as she fixed her face that it was his fault.

He had done this, not her.

Cole was a dragon, Storm an eagle, Charlotte a viper (who had sent another text message to her that she’d read and left un-replied when she’d woken up), but what was her husband?

For a moment Jane stared into the glass reflection before it came to her: Michael was a chameleon. Her husband was a creature of many disguises whose true colours were now being shown. She was in this trouble that she was, being successfully blackmailed by one person as another tried to do that as well for their own sexual ends, because her husband sought to not reveal his true self.

Jane walked away from the mirror and stood in the middle of the room with her mouth open at her own stupidity. It had just struck her how she would get out of this!

She and Michael had to be finished. Cole could get lost – along with her story, sadly – and so too could Storm and Charlotte. She could say goodbye to them all and get out of this situation. It would mean for the first time in her life she would be on her own, and her daughter would have to grow up without a father, but Jane saw that it had to be done.

Jane walked towards the bedroom door. She would go down the stairs and into the kitchen and end her marriage here and now… and be free from all the stress and worry in an instant.





Chapter Seventy–Two – The Valentine’s Day Massacre
Downing Street, Central London – February 14th 2014


By doing her deceased friend’s job in his place, Lauren was now an unofficial member of the Cabinet. She wouldn’t listed in the minutes of the meeting, nor expected to add anything, but she was here. She sat against the rear wall, next to one of the doors, and listened to everything that was said. The PM had explained that she was to be an extra pair of eyes and ears for him to observe the senior members of the Government as they met.

Cabinet had convened at fifteen minutes past Twelve. There had been a delay of a quarter of an hour due to the vast increase in security around Downing Street and the general Whitehall area that had forced even Cabinet members to be held up. No one was taking any chances after the bomb attack on the Cabinet Office Building on Monday, especially as those behind such a crime had yet to be even identified let alone caught.

That terrorist outrage was the main subject of discussion for this meeting. The PM had called his senior minister’s together so they could hear a briefing from two other people that were here as guests like Lauren was. Bill Hunt and Thomas McDonald – the heads of MI-5 and MI-6 – spoke to the Cabinet on what they knew of the failed attempt to assassinate the PM… or rather, as Lauren realised, what they didn’t know.

There were no suspects that either organisation had identified for the killings of a total of thirteen people or indications of how such mysterious people had managed to get a bomb placed where they had and come so close to succeeding in their terrible intent. Home-grown, domestic terrorists following an Islamist or Irish Republican ideology hadn’t done such a thing Bill Hunt said, and Thomas McDonald from Vauxhall Cross couldn’t point to any nation state or international terrorist group planting that bomb either. In short – though after long-winded speeches – the national security services had nothing to provide the Cabinet with.

Acting under instructions, Lauren used her carefully-selected position to observe as many members of the Cabinet as she could when the two head spooks spoke. She watched their body language and looked for one whispering to another when everyone else’s attention was drawn elsewhere. There was nothing that she could pick up at first from the secretaries of state present though.

Even though he hadn’t had to, the PM had made it clear that he didn’t think any of his Cabinet had been behind the attempt on his life. This was the UK in the Twenty–First Century after all. Instead, he feared that some members of his Cabinet may be plotting in the aftermath to make political capital out of the bombing and especially what had happened in the aftermath.

Greg Stephenson and Ted Douglas (the Education Secretary) may have shown themselves up in the media eye, but there were others present who both Lauren and the PM suspected had achieved better luck with the media during the week. There was Colin Parsons who had been talking on and off the record with journalists about the ‘stern measures’ he had had the Home Office introduce to make sure that there ‘would not be another bombing in the heart of London’ as he tried to deflect criticism of him and his department over such an attack being able to so nearly succeed.

The Secretary of State for Justice, Beatrice Barton, had been in contact with news organisations too as she had vowed that the ‘full force of the law’ would be used to ‘avenge the deaths of those in Downing Street’. She saw herself as a PM herself one day and was the most senior female Cabinet minister after Joanne Miller had left the Home Office before Christmas; her words meant nothing but were designed to raise her profile.

Then there had been off-the-record comments by the Foreign Secretary (who also held the sinecure position of First Secretary of State) that he, Steve Moran, had been prepared to ‘step in’ and ‘take the reins of Government’ had the worst happened and the PM had been killed. He had denied these remarks made to a journalist from The Daily Mail when the PM had confronted him over this, but Lauren knew for certain that such comments had been said: she had heard a tape recording of him saying this.

The sharks in the Cabinet were circling around the PM as they believed that he had been (metaphorically) wounded by the attempt on his life.

Once those senior intelligence mandarins were finished with what they been saying, the PM took control of the Cabinet meeting. Lauren kept her eyes moving over the ministers here as he reaffirmed his position as first among equals and reminded everyone present that they served in the Cabinet at his behest. Douglas was informed that the PM was unhappy at what he had said on the radio on Monday afternoon and his comments then in the immediate aftermath of the bombing had been ill thought out and damaging to the Government. Douglas was further told that in future he needed to ‘think before he spoke’.

Lauren at that moment had her eyes on Parsons. The Home Secretary chose that opportunity when he thought everyone else’s attention was on Douglas or the PM as he berated the man. Parsons then moved his elbow slightly so it touched one of those belonging to Lord Evans. The Party Chair and Minister Without Portfolio was seated beside Parsons and reacted with the flash of a smile that Lauren reckoned had been for the benefit of Parsons. This happened very quickly, but she had seen it. The two of them were in league somehow over something…

The PM soon moved onto Stephenson. He let the Defence Secretary now that he was ‘mightily displeased’ with the media images of armed troops on London’s streets after the bombing. They had portrayed a negative image of the Government here in the UK and of British democracy worldwide. Parsons and Lord Evans gave nothing away as this went on and Lauren turned her attention to the Chancellor. She saw that Jeremy Jones was staring down at the long, oblong table which the Cabinet sat around. His attention was on none of what was going on. Something was up with him, but she didn’t know what it was.

This collection of people, all those to whom Lauren had paid attention to, and the other ministers too, were the rulers of her country. They were the top people in the Government and an old bunch of friends, colleagues, rivals and deadly enemies. There was much about them and how they interacted with each other that she already knew, but she was going to learn much more when she attended further Cabinet meetings in the future. The PM couldn’t have caught that seemingly connection between the Home Secretary and the Party Chair, nor did he appear to be paying too much attention to his key ally the Chancellor.

Lauren hadn’t wanted to take Daniel’s job, especially if it meant him being murdered first, but it was turning out to be an interesting time.

*

Later that afternoon, Lauren was called into the PM’s office. She noted the trio of SO1 officers at the door to that office where there would have been just one before Monday’s events. They all knew her by sight now, but they still checked her identification on her lanyard and ran their eyes over her body. These weren’t sexually-driven glances, she knew, but rather they were seeing if she had a weapon hidden on her person.

The paranoia here in Downing Street since Monday was getting out of hand.

When inside his office, Lauren was told that the Education Secretary was being called back to Downing Street. Douglas was down the road in the Commons, but the PM had requested Douglas return. She was told that he was going to be asked to resign from his position with immediate effect and the PM wanted her there when that happened. Daniel would have helped the PM make such a decision, she reflected, but that was when he not her had been the Chief-of-Staff; now the PM was making decisions like that on his own.

When Douglas arrived, he was shown in. Lauren had been asked to take a chair beside the PM’s desk while the Head of Government sat on one side and the Education Secretary on the other. The PM got straight to the matter and requested that Douglas resign from the Department for Education. Almost in an instant, as if he’d been expected such a thing, Douglas nodded and stated that he would do so at once. There was no talk of another role for him in the Government or any thanks for his service from the PM; instead he just did as was asked of him.

After Douglas had left, the PM told her that Beatrice Barton was on her way here too. He was in the middle of a Cabinet reshuffle and he was going to offer her a different role. Lauren knew that the PM had not met with any other senior Government ministers nor top-level Conservative officials over the past week to talk about this, so she knew that he was going ahead with this off his own back.

The media had not been pre-warned either in a series of leaks to shape public opinion either. This, she had at once realised, wasn’t going to end well.

Barton acted in direct contrast to how Douglas did. Lauren got the feeling that she had been aware that something like this was coming (through intuition or maybe something else…) and had been getting mad all afternoon in anticipation. She raised her voice to the PM and shouted down his offer of moving her across from the Ministry of Justice to the Department of Education. This was a demotion, she told the PM, and one she wouldn’t take. Barton told him too that she wouldn’t resign from the Government if the PM asked her to and he would have to fire her instead.

The former Justice Secretary left Downing Street a backbencher.

Seemingly unfazed, the PM had then brought other Cabinet members to Downing Street one-by-one all afternoon. Lauren was not allowed to leave his side while this was going on, though the PM eased a few of her worries by telling her that Jody Hurst was doing her job of briefing the media and reacting to what was going on before and after the Minsters came and went.

It wasn’t just those who held the position of a Secretary of State (that included the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer) that he invited to Downing Street to see him like naughty schoolboys before their headmaster. Several Ministers of State – second-rank people – were called into Downing Street. The PM had decided to completely rearrange his Cabinet with several top-level people moving sideways, while a few from the second-rank moved upwards into vacated positions too.

Stephenson became the new Business Secretary (technically a promotion rather than the demotion that Lauren had expected for him) while the man who had previously occupied that role at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills went to the Department for Work & Pensions. Into Stephenson’s old role at the MOD came one of those previously less-senior people; the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (CST), an ambitious young man who had been waiting to move upwards for some time.

Almost everyone was being moved around as the PM drastically altered the make-up of his Government.

Moments before the Chancellor was called in to the PM’s office, Lauren was let into a secret that explained why Jones had been as he had been earlier in the day. His wife Natasha had left him after first sticking with him after the revelation about his affair with that tragic young intern at the Treasury. The news had clearly not become public knowledge yet, but the PM was worried that it would very soon.

Jones was meant to be transferred from the Treasury to the Ministry of Justice as per the PM’s plan, but he at once thrown a spanner into the works. Speaking quietly and softly – so that Lauren had strained to hear him – and not meeting the gaze of his friend and ally the PM, Jones had asked that he be allowed to resign from the Cabinet. He wanted to go quietly and even said that he wished to soon leave his Parliamentary seat too. At first, both the PM by what he said and Lauren by what she’d been told, had believed that this was due to the personal troubles he was having. Jones set the two of them straight though; he was going because he was ‘disillusioned with politics’ and the PM in particular due to ‘the unwarranted and ill-considered advancement of his understudy’ (the CST).

The tone that he’d used in the delivery of his rebuke had been stunning; truth wasn’t often spoken in politics, but Jones had displayed his honest feelings without a hint of ego or self-importance, just bitterness.

Two other people who were called to see the PM and were told that he still wanted them to remain at their current departments: Parsons and Moran were staying at the Home Office and the FCO.

*

Lauren later joined Hurst in dealing with media’s reaction to the sudden Cabinet reshuffle. She’d known that there’d be hostile remarks made and negative comment pasted from some journalists to it all, especially ones who considered themselves on good terms with Downing Street. They would have had their noses put out of joint at not being briefed beforehand, she knew.

This feeling turned out to be an understatement.

The PM had really misjudged the mood of the media; a self-appointed body that had long ago proclaimed it spoke for the public whether the public liked it or not. The term ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’ quickly became widely-used on their airwaves and on the internet. The few ‘loyal’ journalists and commentators who didn’t run with this found themselves drowned out by the mass of negativity by the weight of others.

Lauren found herself disappointed in failing to effectively curtail this damage that was being done to her boss. She couldn’t halt the criticism that he faced for what he done, especially when the reshuffle was linked to Monday’s events. Journalists went for the throat and called the PM cowardly and not in control of himself nor the Government.

Then came the bombshell.

Jeremy Jones, the former Chancellor, gave a press conference in the grounds of the Houses of Parliament. He stood in the wind and the rain and sent his own February storm tearing up Whitehall. He at first informed the media that his wife had left him because he had ‘strayed from the marital bed’ and ‘pleaded for forgiveness’. Jones then moved to state that the PM was ‘acting like a semi-dictator’ and was ‘surrounding himself with yes-men’.

The country was ‘in danger’ due to a ‘lack of democracy’, Jones finished by saying.

Never in her long political career working for politicians had Lauren been left so stunned. Jones had landed a terrible blow against the PM and it had come so very unexpectedly. She was lost at what to do in response… and the media ate it all up.





Chapter Seventy–Three – Friction
The London Docklands, East London – February 15th 2014


Lord North had to stop himself from dancing a little jig.

He was almost ecstatic with glee at how events were moving so fast and for his benefit at the moment. None of the previous little problems that had sprung up so unexpectedly with his special project mattered now because they were being drowned out by positive events elsewhere.

Everything was going good!

He sat inside a flat that he had a long-term lease on within the London Docklands doing something that he rarely did: watching television.

The wall-mounted plasma screen television was over on the far side of the room while he rested in the rocking chair that he had recently brought to go with this flat. The window was slightly ajar letting in some cold and refreshing air into the eighteenth floor luxury flat too and he was reasonably happy. Things would have been better had he had someone here with him to share his success, but there was no one.

Alas, nothing was ever perfect.

The television was tuned to BBC News 24. The channel provided twenty-four hour rolling news coverage unhindered by advertisements and only the short occasional dose of sports and so-called entertainment news for those with puny minds that lapped up such silly distractions. The political coverage on this channel was unrivalled except in some instances in a select few broadsheet newspapers. The print media couldn’t keep up-to-date like BBC News 24 could though and that was why he had been near glued to the screen since yesterday afternoon. He had taken a short, three-hour nap during the night and yawned now as he thought of how brief that had been, but he couldn’t drag himself away from the screen for any longer than that.

Too much was going on at the minute for him to miss it by doing inconsequential things such as getting a proper sleep, taking the time to have something to eat or meeting with people. He had thoroughly cleared his schedule so he could witness what he was seeing taking place through the television.

The British Government was coming apart.

So long had been spent on his part instigating the necessary moves to make this take place, though he knew in his heart that it hadn’t all been his doing. Other people, serving their own interests and without his interference or knowledge, had helped bring this situation about. He couldn’t have controlled their actions had he wanted to and that was something that he didn’t mind. He’d learnt through his long time in business and politics that ‘friction’ was the way of the world.

Friction, his step-father Zellerman had taught him, was when two objects – people in this case – rubbed up against each other and caused heat. How they would do so, when they would and what was the cause behind this was something that could rarely be predicted; neither could the firestorm that could be created by a clash of personalities. Such was the way of the world and those who would try to interfere where they had no place in doing so would often get burnt.

No, he had done well by stepping back in a few instances and letting others do his work for him without them having no knowledge of how he would benefit from such a thing.

Before him on the television, he was seeing that friction at work now.

The former Chancellor Jeremy Jones was on the screen. This was re-run of an interview that he had conducted this morning with the BBC and they were showing a condensed version of it again. The career politician had spoken at length earlier with a seasoned interviewer as to why he had done what he had the day before and not only quit the Government, but also launched a parting fusillade at the PM.

Lord North had ordered the death of the man’s former girlfriend (information had been gathered on their relationship when it was on-going last year) without a flicker of remorse then or even afterwards. He recalled Snyder first telling him about the young woman and only seeing an opportunity to use such a thing to achieve a quick gain. The original plan had been for the affair between the married Chancellor in his mid-Forties and the fresh-face twenty-three year-old intern to be exposed in the media to ruin the man. After their affair had later been broken off, Lord North had issued the instructions for her death and authorised a payment (a small, trifling sum) to someone in the know to relate the secret of their relationship to the media. Lord North hadn’t expected Jones to survive the media attention that brought him, but he had. Not a fatal blow, it had still been a set-back. He couldn’t have known how that would turn out though; until he saw Jones talking to the media yesterday he hadn’t realised how damaged the man had been by it all.

With reflection, what had taken place due to Jones’ personality, the friction there, had made things even better from Lord North’s point of view.

Jones was still on the screen and talking as he explained in detail why he had done as he had. Lord North had listened to the full interview with keen interest earlier so now in the shortened version, he had his eyes on the television, but his attention elsewhere. He was concentrating on the interviewer, Lloyd Page, and trying to remember the details of the intelligence file on the BBC employee that Snyder had long ago arranged to be constructed. Page was one of many, more than ninety people, who had once been on the list who had a potential to meet a fatal fate at the hands of those who worked for Lord North. He had never anticipated that the deaths of all of them would be needed though and many had actually attracted his attention (through intermediaries, of course) for blackmail, coercion or bribery.

With Page, there had never been a need to do anything about him. Unwittingly, he had done everything that Lord North needed him to do without any interference. When it came to criticising the Government, Page did that off his own back. In addition, Page had been instrumental in getting his co-workers to do so in commentary pieces for various aspects of the BBC news outlets on television, on the radio or even on their extensive internet news webpages. The man was an asset of the first order.

Alongside the damage that Jones was doing to the Government, Lord North had been watching as the PM’s administration came apart elsewhere.

There had been a wave of unfriendly coverage in response to the Valentine’s Day Massacre. Journalists hadn’t liked the total surprise that came with the Cabinet reshuffle; their editors had given them grief for not getting tipped off beforehand that such a thing was coming or who was moved from one Government department to another. With their bosses angry at them, they took their revenge out on the PM. Real and perceived failings of certain ministers in their previous roles were pointed out and blame was apportioned to the PM for at first keeping them in the Cabinet and then moving them to other roles.

Jones’ use of the term ‘semi-dictatorial’ had quickly become ‘dictatorial’ when talking about the PM. It had been leaked to the media that he had consulted no one, not even the new Chief Whip (Lord North had forced the former, effective one to resign), before he had acted. Of course that alone didn’t make him a dictator in any way, but the media were using the term and conjuring up in people’s mind images of foreign tyrants in relation to him.

One of the PM’s new appointments from yesterday had then decided to follow Jones’ lead from yesterday. Nicola Loughlin had been moved from the Department for Transport across to the Department for Health yesterday afternoon, but she had made a public announcement only this lunchtime resigning from that new role. Loughlin, a pathetic little figure, had decided to fight for feminism; she told the media that the sacking of Beatrice Barton the day before from the Ministry of Justice had been ‘typical of the chauvinistic attitude’ that the PM had. That criticism had come across well and Lord North thought that women voters might agree if how the media treated such remarks were presented the right way.

It had been another instance of friction.

Lord North had watched as the Leader of the Opposition had given a statement to journalists outside his West London townhouse. Mitchell Larson stated that the Labour Party would be moving to bring a motion in the House of Commons in the coming week calling for a vote of no confidence in the PM. He had further invited ‘Conservative M.P.s disaffected’ with the PM to vote ‘alongside their fellow Labour Members’. It was an interesting move on Larson’s part and something that had caused Lord North to consider acting against him. Of course, he wouldn’t be a candidate for any sort of direct action but there was still some information on the man that Snyder had had people acquire that could be of use should it be released to the media in the right way…

That thought of doing anything like that disappeared when the interview with Jones on the television screen came to an end and the news moved onto comments that BBC News 24 had from a colleague of Larson. The ‘Policy Review Coordinator’ from Labour – an influential backbench MP – spoke in criticism of not only the PM but Jones too. An old-school type figure, a true tribal politician, this MP had a lot of poison to pour. He widened his criticism even more so too to anyone but the Labour Party; the Independent BORM members in Parliament faced his harsh tongue as he linked them to the Conservative Party despite them recently leaving such an organisation. An eloquent speaker, the MP made sure that his views would be remembered as he sought to attract people to his own party.

He was a man on Lord North’s long list.

Lord North’s phone soon beeped with a message from Snyder and he quickly read that before going back to the television to see what else the day would bring.

His employee was asking him about the Home Secretary and had Lord North spoken to the man since yesterday. He didn’t like Snyder asking about Parsons even when he used a simple code to do so (just the man’s initials) because of the security threat of someone intercepting such an innocuous message. Many, many times Lord North had stressed to Snyder the importance of face-to-face meetings.

Lord North didn’t reply to the text because he would see Snyder tomorrow and talk then about how much further they could play the Home Secretary before they let him crash and burn.

Until then, there would certainly be more friction that he could sit here and enjoy unfolding as others did his bidding unwillingly.





Chapter Seventy–Four – Suicide
Basildon, Essex – February 17th 2014


There wasn’t any time for messing around. Baxter pushed the stun-gun into Keith Tyler’s throat as the man walked through his front door and before he could even open his mouth to question why someone else was in his house.

Baxter watched as the man’s eyes widened in shock and then as they slammed closed too as the rest of the man went limp.

The trigger to the electrical device had been released two seconds after being engaged, as so Baxter was able to safely grab hold of Tyler as he fell to the ground. The MP was heavier than he anticipated, but Baxter got hold of him. Liz, nervous as hell to be in here in Tyler’s Essex house, pushed the front door closed as Baxter dragged the man further into the hallway.

“Let’s move him fast.”

As expected, Liz did little to help. Baxter had to drag Tyler through his hallway and the kitchen and all that Liz did was open the door that connected the kitchen to the a-joining garage beneath the extra bedroom extension onto the semi-detached house.

How he missed Kevin!

Liz couldn’t keep her eyes of Tyler as Baxter dragged him into the garage and placed him down on the concrete next to the car parked in there. Baxter knew that she was worried that Tyler was going to regain consciousness any moment now. She had urged Baxter beforehand that he should use a stronger charge in the stun-gun. However, he had refused to do so because he was worried over doing internal damage to the target that could show up later in an autopsy. Baxter was sure that the man could be out of it for at least fifteen minutes, which was plenty of time.

The keys to the car that Tyler rarely used had already been pocketed by Baxter and he used them now to unlock the driver’s side door and open it. Tyler was to go inside there soon, but before that Baxter had to do something distasteful.

Liz was a bit of a prude and she averted her eyes as Baxter undid Tyler’s flies and removed the manhood inside. He had latex gloves on, but still found this unpleasant: he didn’t like touching someone else’s privates.

“Give me the needle, will you?”

Quickly and anxiously – Liz didn’t appear to be too far off physically shaking – she opened the leather pouch and took out the hypodermic needle. She removed the cap from the end and slid it carefully into Baxter’s waiting palm. He smiled reassuringly at her as she did so, though paid enough attention to make sure that she wasn’t going to accidently prick him with it.

Baxter had to keep hold of Tyler’s man-bits with one hand so he could use the needle with the other; Liz certainly wasn’t going to help with this. The needle point was then positioned over the location where he wanted it and he pierced the skin. He’d found the vein well enough and blood started filling the tube beneath the plunger. He watched the red liquid enter and when the time was right, pushed down hard to send that blood plus the chemicals inside the tube back into Tyler.

The needle was removed from Tyler just as started to convulse.

Liz nearly jumped backwards in fright, but Baxter had been reading enough medical textbooks in the past few months to expect something like this. Tyler’s arms were folded across his chest and his head held almost in a head-lock type position. He was worried about damage being done to Tyler’s skull or arms during a convulsion and had set about trying to stop any involuntary injuries occurring.

The convulsions stopped after a moment or two. Baxter waited until he was sure that it was safe enough to do so before taking Tyler’s head from out of the crook of his arm and then resting it in his lap. He set about putting Tyler back into his trousers and then doing up the man’s flies before checking at the man’s wrist then at his jugular to confirm that even though it was ever so faint, he still had a pulse. Making triple sure, Baxter rested an ear above the man’s chest where his heart was too and he could just about hear that pumping blood.

There were signs of life in Tyler.

Those chemicals from the needle had entered that vein beneath Tyler’s manhood and soon raced upwards to his heart and the brain too. There they went to work as Tyler slipped into an induced comatose state.

Baxter now moved the body of his latest target up and into the car. He sat Tyler upright though let his head droop down to one side. Those car keys went into the ignition, but Baxter didn’t start the car yet. Liz had gone to fetch what else they needed and handed Baxter the garden hose as well as the masking tape. He held one of Tyler’s hands – one that was still warm, but nonetheless limp – and placed the roll of tape in there.

He wanted fingerprints all over it for Essex Police to find.

One end of the garden hose was soon secured with the tape to the car’s rear exhaust pipe. Baxter turned the car’s ignition to get some power for the driver’s side window to be wound down an inch or two before turning it off again. The other end of the hose was then run down the side of the car and through that window: it wouldn’t hold in-place when he closed the door.

“Use the tape to stick it in place?”

Baxter nodded at Liz and her suggestion before going around the other side of the car and opening the door on the passenger side. He leaned across the unconscious Tyler and took hold of the roll of tape. He ripped off a bit of tape and then made sure that that piece had more fingerprints from Tyler on it.

Once he had finally secured the hose end, he started the ignition again to wind up the window ever so slightly more. He wanted to make sure that the vibration from the engine wouldn’t release it later, but that he also wasn’t cutting off the supply of carbon monoxide that would soon come in here. Everything looked okay though and so he finally turned the key all the way around so that the car was running.

Baxter closed the passenger door behind him.

Liz was by this point spreading the medicine bottles and the contents of some of them across the garage floor. These came from the cabinet in Tyler’s bathroom and were old medications for a variety of illness and ailments that him, his wife and children had taken in the past. Like many people, Tyler never threw his old medicines away as any good doctor would instruct a patient to do.

Even with little kids in the house, Tyler had kept all of these pills.

Kevin had been here in this house last year and looked in that medicine cabinet. He’d taken a picture of the bottles and the initial notion had been to have a mixture concocted that would mimic those chemicals being active pre-death inside Tyler’s stomach. Such had been Baxter’s idea until Kevin had shot him down with the theory that an autopsy wouldn’t show traces of the pills in either Tyler’s mouth, throat or stomach.

That had been a while ago now, but Baxter was still grateful for the knowledge for future reference. At one point, it had seemed like Tyler would never be directly targeted, but events that Baxter was unaware of had brought the original plan back into play and Tyler had been marked for assassination.

Nevertheless, the pills and bottles were spread across the garage floor to provide ‘evidence’ that a suicide had taken place and the pills (which Baxter knew would be impossible to force Tyler to take awake or unconscious) were an extra ‘clue’ for an investigator to point to a man about to take his own life.

The final stage of Tyler’s ‘suicide’ was now underway. Even though unconscious, he would breath in the carbon monoxide from the engine fuels of his car, a vehicle which Baxter had deliberately sabotaged with tools that were left lying around in the garage too. Only a terribly unfortunate accident could prevent this whole staged scene from looking like it was.

Baxter was sure that he had covered all the angles this time, even distracted as he was by external events.

He stood back and surveyed that scene now as Liz walked out of the garage and went back to the kitchen. The pills were there, Tyler’s fingerprints were over the garden hose and tape and the catalytic converter had been damaged so that pure engine fumes were going back into the car. The lone needle mark on his body was in a place where he was sure no one would look.

He was done and it was time to go.

*

The little cud-de-sac on which Tyler lived was quiet at this time of the evening and so Baxter and Liz walked straight out of his front door and down the road to the busier street beyond. He hadn’t been able to hear the running of the car’s engine as he left and Liz had muttered a negative to that when he asked her. They walked briskly and silently prayed that no one was looking out of a window from one of the many other houses and paying any attention to them.

Their car was parked two streets away and once inside, Liz at once started driving them away. She went across the middle of Basildon and towards the A13 main road. Grays, where their new base of operations was, was only a short drive along that road and he looked forward to getting back there.

“Where were his family again?”

Baxter looked across at Liz after she asked this question. He found it odd that she chose to ask this after the mission had ended. If it had been an issue, then he would have brought it up much earlier.

“They’re with his wife’s sister near Brighton – it’s the school half-term.” Baxter knew exactly where Tyler’s family were this week. Their husband and father had been meant to join them, but national political events had kept the Labour Party big-shot at home in his Essex constituency and within Baxter’s grasp.

“How long do you think before he is found?”

“Tomorrow at the earliest.” Baxter didn’t think that anyone would find Tyler before then. “Maybe the following day, Wednesday morning, but I doubt it. He’ll be missed and someone will come looking.”

By that point, Baxter was certain, the needle mark that had sent him into a deep coma would have faded and there’d be no trace of the true circumstances behind Tyler’s death.

As to why Tyler had just been killed as he was, Baxter didn’t ponder over that as Liz carried on driving after making no further comment. Snyder had given the order to him and Liz to do so, one which had been passed on from Lord North, and they had gone and done it. It had been a rush-job in many ways, but they had been preparing for it for a long time. Things could have gone wrong with it though nothing had.

For all intents and purposes, when Tyler was found, the scene would scream ‘suicide’.

Just outside Grays, as Liz prepared to come off the main road, Baxter turned on the car radio. He had gotten bored of staring aimlessly out of the window at the dark skies over the southern reaches of Essex and the Thames River that separated them from Kent. The big, lit-up Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the river, standing out in the distance, had been something that he’d seen too many times before to pay any attention to anymore. Liz hadn’t wanted any more conversation either so he sought a little distraction.

Since they’d moved down here away from St. Albans, Baxter had missed the radio station that he would listen to when up there in Hertfordshire. It was a local output that played an excellent mix of music from the 80s and 90s. He had listened to it when not working as a good distraction tool.

The radio in this car – an expensive rental – was top-of-the-range and he quickly searched for that station over the digital network. Liz let out a tut that he took to be one of annoyance as he leant across to do so, but he ignored her and was very quick in finding that station he wanted.

“…for more than three weeks now. Hertfordshire Constabulary have refused to comment upon remarks made from the family of the twenty year-old woman that she has not committed suicide or run off, but rather has been kidnapped.

In Welwyn Garden City, road-works are continuing to cause disruption on…”

Baxter waited for the news to end so that the music would come back on. Local news from St. Albans and the Hertfordshire area didn’t interest him anymore, though he would later tonight recall that first news story he’d only heard the tail-end of.

Then he would get mad.

[stevep]

   James G ,

  Some good chapter titles here.  When I saw the reference to the massacre I was initially assuming the 2nd attack had occurred.  However its possibly even more destructive for the government that the PM has an outbreak of insanity and a massive reshuffle like that without any warning, alienating so many people both in his party and the press and not listening to anyone. 

  As you say Nye is a liar.  Not quite sure why he's told the police so much as it supplies a lot of evidence that some detailed plot is under way, especially given what the security services know or suspect already.  It could be just ego on his part but seems to make little sense, especially since, as he should suspect he's given details on a number of murders that the authorities didn't know about or only suspected.  That he hasn't directly implicated North or any of the other people still exposes their operation to some degree.

  Jane has I think decided to tell her husband about the blackmail, with the expectation that he will leave her.  However she doesn't seem to realise that this will make her unpopular both with his employer and also the US spooks and that the former at least have already killed a number of people so her life expectancy will be slashed drastically.  Unless she's actually planning to kill him, which is the other possibility I considered but that would open many cans of worms.

  I get the feeling I know who that missing 20 year old is and that Liz was only partly lying when she claimed to have murdered her.  A bit double standards by Baxter given how many innocents he has killed but I can see it finally being the dam that breaks and brings a confrontation with his employers.

   One typo I think:

Jane pushed the irreverent thoughts of animal association from her mind and concentrated back on what Storm wanted from her as she finally found an outfit to wear. She started putting on the blow-knee-length skirt and matching blouse on while she pondered over his demands from her that he said she’d have to give into if she didn’t want him to reveal to her husband what he knew about her.

  Assume there's an 'e' missing and it should be below?

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 14, 2020 9:58:43 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

  Some good chapter titles here.  When I saw the reference to the massacre I was initially assuming the 2nd attack had occurred.  However its possibly even more destructive for the government that the PM has an outbreak of insanity and a massive reshuffle like that without any warning, alienating so many people both in his party and the press and not listening to anyone. 

  As you say Nye is a liar.  Not quite sure why he's told the police so much as it supplies a lot of evidence that some detailed plot is under way, especially given what the security services know or suspect already.  It could be just ego on his part but seems to make little sense, especially since, as he should suspect he's given details on a number of murders that the authorities didn't know about or only suspected.  That he hasn't directly implicated North or any of the other people still exposes their operation to some degree.

  Jane has I think decided to tell her husband about the blackmail, with the expectation that he will leave her.  However she doesn't seem to realise that this will make her unpopular both with his employer and also the US spooks and that the former at least have already killed a number of people so her life expectancy will be slashed drastically.  Unless she's actually planning to kill him, which is the other possibility I considered but that would open many cans of worms.

  I get the feeling I know who that missing 20 year old is and that Liz was only partly lying when she claimed to have murdered her.  A bit double standards by Baxter given how many innocents he has killed but I can see it finally being the dam that breaks and brings a confrontation with his employers.

   One typo I think:

Jane pushed the irreverent thoughts of animal association from her mind and concentrated back on what Storm wanted from her as she finally found an outfit to wear. She started putting on the blow-knee-length skirt and matching blouse on while she pondered over his demands from her that he said she’d have to give into if she didn’t want him to reveal to her husband what he knew about her.

  Assume there's an 'e' missing and it should be below?

  Steve

The PM has lost the plot! There will be some massacres though, coming up soon.
Kevin Nye has gone off the deep end. He shouldn't have been doing that but then he's already done a runner and gone off on his own. He'll send those investigating in wrong directions though.
Jane is going to walk without saying why. She's walking from him and from those spooks: upsetting everyone's plans.
Yep, the missing girl in St. Albans is the one whom Liz 'confessed' to killing then 'retracted' it. When Baxter gets bent out of shape, it is rather ironic. Like he has done, she did it for a reason though.
Typo: below-the-knee it is!

[James G]

Chapter Seventy–Five – The Crazed Man
Finchley, North London – February 18th 2014


Harriet came up to Finchley on the Tube and walked from West Finchley Underground Station across to Patrick’s house. It was a short afternoon stroll up to her colleague’s home and one that she had undertaken three times now within the past six days. There were more people about than when she last been here on Thursday and Sunday, but that had been when the schools were open and the weather worse than it was today.

No one paid any attention to her though, not as far as she could tell anyway.

Upon reaching Patrick’s house, Harriet came to a stop ten yards or so from the front garden of his suburban semi. She stood still in the street and looked towards her colleague’s house with its closed curtains even though it was gone Three. If she could see this, then Patrick’s neighbours would have too. He was drawing attention to himself by doing something like that.

But then, he’d been drawing attention to himself for the past week and was slipping deeper and deeper into paranoia so she could understand – if thinking like a crazy person, that was – why he could close those curtains.

He wouldn’t want anyone looking in at him as he sat at home alone, would he?

Harriet carried on walking until she reached the gate and then went through the waist-high wooden entrance and followed the pathway that cut across the grass either side that certainly needed a trim. Like she had done on previous visits, she admired the house that sat here in Finchley and wondered over how Patrick afforded such a place on his civil service salary. This wasn’t Chelsea, Kensington or anywhere truly expensive like that, but West Finchley wasn’t a cheap place to live either.

As she reached the front door and was about to knock on it to get the attention of the crazy man inside, it opened before her and her colleague stood there wearing his dressing gown and once-white now-greying socks. There was a worried look on his face and an urgent tone in his voice: “Get in quick before someone sees you!”

*

Harriet was brought upstairs into one of the bedrooms that Patrick had converted into a study. There were many books – what looked like reference books, not novels – stacked in a big bookcase against one wall with two separate computers and a giant television screen in here too alongside a pair of chairs. Harriet had only been in Patrick’s living room before and now saw a different side of him; downstairs was for showing visitors how apparently normal he was, while upstairs was the real him.

“Sit.” The firm instruction came with a finger pointed at one of the two chairs.

“Can we open a window?” Like it was downstairs, this room needed airing. Patrick clearly hadn’t left the house since last Wednesday when he’d been sent home from work and the house was far too stuffy for her liking with him having been inside, undressed and probably unbathed too, since then.

“I’d rather not.” Patrick shook his head as he answered and sat down himself in the other chair.

Harriet reckoned that nothing was going to allow him to be even partially exposed to the outside at the moment.

Uncomfortable in the silence that followed, and as she thought for what to say next, she briefly ran her eyes over the room to add to her first impressions. A bare, bright light-bulb hung from the ceiling and lit the room uneasily. The carpet hadn’t seen the attention of a hoover in a long time and there were empty plates and cups resting on a table beneath that window that Harriet desperately wanted to have opened.

DVD cases were thrown on the floor too and Harriet read some of the titles because she didn’t expect Patrick to be the type of man to easily distract himself with such things. Two titles she didn’t recognise struck her: Edge of Darkness and Callan. They appeared to be box-sets of television shows, though she had never heard of either and couldn’t imagine what they would be about.

“What have you got, Harriet, what have you got?” Patrick sat opposite her and spoke fast as he stared at her. She noticed him rubbing his hands together and then he smiled too; he was anticipating her giving him something to add to what he was convinced he already had.

“Not much, just what appears to be a lot of confirmations to Nye’s story.” Since last Wednesday when she had been in Hereford getting Nye’s confession (of sorts) and Patrick had been asked to leave Thames House and not come back into work until directly summoned to do so, Harriet had been busy working with various police forces nationwide. The crimes that Nye had insisted that he had carried out alone had taken place up and down the country. Bodies had been buried and files on the cases stored safety away. Policemen who had investigated the cases and witnesses who had previously had fresh memories had moved on with their lives since each instance. Crime scenes had been opened again to the public and thus contaminated.

Harriet had worked damn hard to get firm confirmation that all of those deaths that Nye spoke of had actually been murders committed how he said they had been.

She was about to start giving Patrick details of all of this hard work that she and Martin – plus his Special Branch colleagues – had done when Patrick’s face turned to an ugly grimace.

“No, what have you got for me on Colin Parsons?”

“There’s no connection between him and Nye… or Baxter and Jackson too.”

That had been all that he had wanted to know about when she’d come to see him before and on each occasion she had nothing to give him to feed his now well-developed conspiracy theory about that man then as she didn’t have anything this time too.

“But there must be evidence out there, Harriet!” He whined like a petulant child. “How can you miss it all? It all links back to him when you think about it.”

Patrick was up and on his feet and out of his chair. He stood over one of his computers and turned on the monitor. A picture of the Home Secretary – their nominal boss – filled the screen after a moment and Patrick appeared to be focusing his full attention on that image of a smiling, middle-aged man.

He’s losing his mind!

Harriet couldn’t sum up Patrick’s behaviour any more than that.

“Don’t you want to know what I found out in Manchester about Mortimer? Or from South Wales Police when they dug up that body of McFadden?”

She was here not to witness his recent craziness, but to share information with him.

“Can you tell me anything more about Usher?”

“Dale Usher?” She’d told him on Sunday everything that had been discovered about that man’s murder.

“Did you know that he went to Eton at the same time as Colin Parson’s elder brother?”

“Erm…” Harriet didn’t know what response Patrick wanted her to give to that.

“I found it out last night.” He was looking back at her now and tapped a finger gently atop of his computer screen; she assumed he was referring to something that he’d found out on the internet.

“I see…”

“No, you don’t ‘see’, Harriet.” He yawned as he spoke, like he’d been up all night, and had a patronising tone in his tired voice. “There’s another link to Nye’s victims with Parsons.

Looking into Dale Usher got me sent on ‘gardening leave’… well… to be honest… at his replacement within the Cabinet Office as head of building security there. I couldn’t find any connection between those two, but his predecessor is connected to the man who I know is behind this all.”

“Oh…” Again, Harriet was trying to understand what Patrick was saying.

“I think that Parsons provided a connection to Usher and also to Nye and his cohorts. He must not have wanted to go along with their plan to blow up that building, so they killed him and then paid off his replacement to allow them to plant that bomb.

If you think about it, Harriet, it makes sense.

No one wanted to listen though; the Security Service has forgotten its roots and doesn’t believe any more in people playing games like that.”

This time, Harriet said nothing in reply. She was now seeing why Patrick had been forced to take what he was calling gardening leave. He’d only just developed this latest attachment to his theory about who was behind the Downing Street Bomb, but he must have been making crazy accusations like that early last week when Jamie Trent had sent him home.

The man here with her was a man she respected. He was clever and he was a thinker. She’d always liked his natural suspicion and how he could link events together in his mind to see a pattern where others saw coincidences. This was crazy though!

“Did you find out where Nye is being held?” Patrick changed tack as he returned to his seat.

“He’s down at a detention centre near Gosport on the South Coast. It’s an ‘immigration removal’ centre that handles foreign nationals pre-deportation.” This was a very strange place for Nye to be held and Martin had had a hard time tracking him down there.

“That’s a Home Office facility, is it not?”

Rather than answer, Harriet nodded again because she could see just what Patrick was insinuating by that: Parsons and Nye were being linked again.

Patrick stood up once again and went over to his bookcase. She watched him as he seemed to be reading the titles on the edges of his books while looking for a particular one. She had no idea what he was looking for over there and while she waited, she thought about Nye.

Since he had confessed to all of those murders last week, he had refused to say anything else. His sister had remained in hospital and was no longer close to death, but Nye had remained detained on suspicion of attempted murder. He couldn’t be held indefinitely like that though, not even if such charges as terrorism had been brought against him as Martin had suggested that they might be.

She and her Special Branch boyfriend had afterwards returned to London and gone to see their respective superiors. Trent – her and Patrick’s Desk Head – had listened to her summary of events and taken her hastily-written report along with the recording that she’d made of Nye talking. Afterwards he’d told her how Patrick had ‘caused a scene’ when working with the Anti-Terrorist Directorate and Trent’s own directorate head had demanded that her colleague be sent home and removed from duties.

Harriet hadn’t been left alone the MATCH investigation just when the inquiry had broken wide open though. Instead, the following morning (after coming here that first time beforehand) she was informed that the enquiry that she had spent so long with running jointly with Patrick was being taken over by the head of the NSD himself. She was to remain running down Nye’s story – travelling the country and talking to people from police constabularies all over the place – but the mass killer that she had caught was to be dealt with in future by someone else.

It was a slap in the face and also embarrassing career-wise. She had been informed that the MATCH enquiry was now ‘politically sensitive’; other, senior people would be making decisions about it from now on while she became an underling with little input. In addition, she had been denied an attempt to talk to Nye again about all the inconsistences with his story that proved that he personally couldn’t have killed those people.

Patrick returned to his chair a third time and without any of his books either. He moved it closer to Harriet and spoke again though this time much quieter than before as if he was afraid of someone listening. “It’s Parsons: he has done all of this. He took a new Government job after Roger Mayfield died – Mayfield’s old job. That is where this all started.”

“To what end?” Harriet couldn’t help but ask this because she valiantly hoped that maybe he’d give her something to work with.

“Don’t you follow current events, Harriet?” He seemed as exasperated as she was, though for the opposite reason. “Pick up a ‘paper, turn on the news! You must have heard how the Government just about survived that vote in Parliament this morning, yes? Parsons engineered that… somehow.

That’s a set-back – a minor one – to him and his goal of…”

“What’s his ‘goal’, Patrick?” She wasn’t caught up in the moment or believing any of what Patrick suspected. Instead, she interrupted him because she wanted to hear the crazed man say it.

“He wants to be Prime Minister and, to do that, Colin Parsons is going to murder his way into Downing Street.”

He actually whispered this final summary – as it was – to her!

He has lost his mind!





Chapter Seventy–Six – Taking Sides
The Palace of Westminster, Central London – February 19th 2014


It seemed like everyone wanted Williams to take their side against another. He wanted a quiet life and always hoped that people could just get on with each other. Of course, that was never going to happen, but it didn’t stop him from sometimes idly day-dreaming of such a perfect world…

A gentle lap of his shoulder snapped Williams out of his thoughts and he turned his head to see a fellow MP, and friend of his, standing there next to him.

“Can I sit with you?” It was Susan Norton, a member of his committee and the woman who had left the Conservatives last week to join the BORM campaign.

“Please do.” He smiled back at her and she quickly sat down on a chair beside him here within the bar inside the Palace of Westminster. They were up high with a view over the South Bank from this spot. Williams had a cup of coffee before him and his newspaper in his lap while Susan had brought nothing distracting like that with her this morning.

“It’s good to see you, John.”

“Oh, and you, Susan.” Williams suspected that Susan had intentions for sitting with him that weren’t about her just be friendly, but that didn’t mean that he would be rude.

“You are off to P.M.Qs soon, yes?”

“I am indeed.” Prime Minister’s Questions was less than an hour away at noon and Williams would be there like he always was.

“I’ll miss sitting with you, John, and our whispered comments!” There it was; she was disguising the raising of the subject, but he saw right through it with ease.

She had sought him out to discuss her recent defection from their previous mutual political party to become an Independent. Today, she would be on the opposite side of the Commons Chamber over there with the Opposition and thus not alongside him as she usually was on the Government benches. Williams was sure that she would want to tell him why she had done such a thing and then extol the virtues of the BORM in the hope that he would follow her lead.

Williams would rather not have such a conversation and thus tried changing the subject: “The P.M. is really going to get it in the neck today. How do you think that he’ll fare?”

“Oh, he’ll put on a good show, but he knows – everyone knows – that he is finished and it’s just a matter of time before he is gone.”

“I’d have to agree with you there.” Williams gave the man a week before ‘the men in grey suits’ convinced the PM to resign and stand aside.

“Larson isn’t best poised himself if a snap election is called…”

“I assume that you are referring to what happened with Keith Tyler?” Susan nodded to him. “Yes, Tyler was rock for him. I always had much time for the man despite our political differences. He was… misguided, let us say, but a man of loyalty and principles: something rare nowadays.”

Susan said nothing in response to this and instead just stared at him. Only with this reaction did he realise the implications of what he had just said. While talking about someone else and not meaning to, he had suggested that those who were loyal were a rare thing in politics and something that he was against. He hadn’t meant this about Susan directly, but she was taking his off-hand remark as a personal insult.

Thinking more on it in the silence that followed, he reflected though how it was her fault. She had come here to try and get him to take sides in the split that was widening within the Conservative Party. She had wanted him to come along with her and the others; that was her intention of coming to talk to him.

“Anyway… I’ll be off.” She was standing up now. “I’ll talk to you again soon, John.”

Susan walked away presumably still smarting from his comment that she had taken far too personally.

Williams tried to get back into his ‘paper, but he was too distracted by his near-argument with Susan. He couldn’t concentrate on The Daily Telegraph as his mind kept turning to the BORM and the expectation that seemingly so many people had that he was soon to join that campaign. It appeared to be a widely held belief that all he needed to be was briefly talked to by a recent convert and he would jump ship like the rest of them. He could understand that because a lot of the things that the BORM stood for were in sync with his own. To not do so was obviously going to turn people against him as much as doing so would as well.

All he wanted to do was to stay out of such a thing.

A beep from Williams’ phone caught his attention and as he took it out of his pocket, he hoped that it wasn’t Steve texting him again. There had been a problem yesterday up at his South Cambridgeshire constituency office with a local resident who’d caused a scene. Williams had been here in London, not up there, so thankfully he hadn’t had to deal with that apparently frightful woman making a scene. He still hadn’t gotten all the details of what exactly had gone on there, but the woman in question had caused such a stir that the police had been called.

However, he knew that if her issue had been that serious, then he would know about it all by now – his people up there were very much on the ball.

It wasn’t Steve messaging him from his constituency, but rather his wife.

Williams let out an audible groan as he prepared to read the message from Lisa. There was no one close enough to him to take notice of him and he was glad of that because they would have seen the scowl that he knew he was now wearing.

Again, he feared that this would be about taking sides.

***

Last Thursday night, Jane Snyder had turned up at his and Lisa’s Knightsbridge flat complete with her daughter Emily. Williams had been home alone at the time and Michael’s wife had asked to come inside and talk with him; a request he’d at once granted. She had quickly gone on to explain how she and Michael had ‘fallen out irrecoverably’ and she had ‘left him… for good too’. Furthermore, she wanted to know if she could stay at their house in Sawston for ‘a week or two’ while she ‘sorted things out’.

That conversation had taken place within the flat’s kitchen, but Williams had been sure that Emily, left in the living room, had heard it all because she was a very bright and precocious child who he didn’t think missed much of the adult world around her. Jane was someone who he liked and someone who he had wanted to help if she was in need. He had agreed in principle, though a final decision on that would have had to include Lisa’s input.

During that wait for Lisa to come home from work, Williams had done what he regarded as a friend’s duty and texted Michael to tell him where his wife and daughter were and asked him if he wanted to talk about that situation. Jane’s husband had taken more than an hour to get back to him and, when he did, thanked Williams for the heads-up, but not said anything more. He hadn’t even turned up at the flat as Williams had thought that he might have done.

Lisa had of course agreed to what Jane wanted – just as Williams thought that his wife would – and then they had put Michael’s wife and daughter up for the night before the Michael’s family and Lisa were to set off the next morning to go up to Cambridgeshire.

Williams had questioned his wife over what was going on between Michael and Jane. The Snyder’s had an odd marriage that was defined by the husband’s extensive cheating and the wife’s seemingly pretence that such a thing wasn’t constantly ongoing. Lisa had given him no answers to this and neither had she speculated on what Jane was going to do about her work, her daughter missing school or, even more importantly, her future too.

Jane and her daughter had been in Sawston since Friday after Lisa had taken the day off work to go up there with her. Williams had meanwhile stayed in London, but that had not meant that he had been able to stay out of the firestorm that was the breakdown of the Snyder’s marriage even though he had desperately tried to. Lisa had been in constant touch all weekend telling him of how Jane had repeatedly broken down into floods of tears with the distress; Emily had been affected too by her mother’s behaviour so she had been acting up.

Even after Lisa had come back to London to be in the city for work, she had been in constant phone contact with Jane. There had been more drama when Jane’s editor had told her that she faced losing her job if she didn’t come into work and then Michael had transferred the majority of the money out of their joint bank account.

Williams had even had a tiff with his wife when she wanted him to ‘sort Michael out’ concerning this movement of money and he had refused to interfere like that in other people’s business.

He hadn’t wanted to get involved; Williams hadn’t wanted to take sides there.

***

Thankfully, Lisa was this time not messaging him to inform him about more drama in the Snyder’s disintegrating marriage and asking him to go against his natural inclination to keep out of that. She was just telling him that she would be home late for dinner tonight because she was working on a story for work concerning something that Jane had been too even if they worked for different newspapers.

Williams wondered over whether Jane still worked for The Daily Express.

He messaged her back and said that he would be in touch later in the day to get a better idea about when he could expect to see her.

Checking his watch after he returned his phone to the pocket inside his suit jacket, Williams saw that it was now a quarter to Twelve. He had barely touched his coffee nor read his ‘paper because of the distractions from Susan and then his wife.

He got up and smiled at the waiter who came over to take away his cup before leaving the bar and making his way towards the Commons Chamber. As he did so, he wondered over what political drama the day would bring…





Chapter Seventy–Seven – She Was Here
Sawston, Cambridgeshire – February 20th 2014


Jane opened the door to the knocking on it along with a welcome for the takeaway deliveryman she expected to see: “That was very quick; I wasn’t expecting you to…”

She never finished what she was saying because it wasn’t someone bringing food standing outside the Williams’ house here in rural Cambridgeshire. No, instead, it was someone who she really didn’t want to see: Charlotte Swann.

“Hello, Jane.”

Jane closed the front door hard.

She stepped back away from it, deeper into the safety offered by this house that belonged to her friends, and away from the woman outside that had kicked off the chain of events that had, arguable, caused her to end her marriage.

Without wanting to, Jane started to take involuntary deep breaths. She felt a chill come across her and her body hairs – on her arms and maybe on the back of her neck too – started to stand on end. Charlotte was dangerous and she was here.

There came another two knocks on the front door, but Jane didn’t move to answer it. She remained standing where she was.

“Let me in, will you? We need to talk!” While she wasn’t shouting, Charlotte had raised her voice quite a bit so that Jane could hear her through the door almost as if she was here inside.

She said nothing in reply to this.

“I only need a few minutes of your time so that I can talk some sense into you, Jane.”

Again, Jane didn’t move nor say anything back.

There were a further few knocks on the door, but no calls for her to answer came after this.

Silence returned.

Jane forced herself to calm down. She took a deep breath and then exhaled excessively. Her eyes closed for a moment too as she tried to expel Charlotte from her mind.

A minute passed.

Jane was greatly relieved that there was nothing more from outside that door. She only now started to move and turned about on her heels before returning to the kitchen at the back of the house. Emily was upstairs in Nathan’s bedroom and on his computer there – so, hopefully, she shouldn’t have heard anything – and Jane was glad of that. She decided to get herself a cold glass of water to help her return to the calm state she had been in before Charlotte had turned up here of all places.

As she reached the kitchen, ready to wet her lips that had been dried out by the shock of who was at the front door, her eyes were drawn to the glass back door.

Charlotte stood on the other side of that door.

Jane was halted in her tracks and felt the bottom of her mouth fall open in shock at what she was seeing.

“C’mon, Jane; let me in!” Charlotte tapped on the glass as she spoke, then – in an almost unbelievable act of rudeness – she turned the outside handle on the door. Jane watched it turn on the inside, but the door was thankfully locked.

“Go away.” Jane didn’t mean to call out in response, but she did nonetheless; the words just fell out of her mouth. She went forwards into the kitchen as she spoke and to the door behind which Charlotte was. The key that sat in the lock was taken out and palmed as Jane walked back and away from it.

“Alex has been asking after you!” Charlotte wasn’t giving up. “He needs to talk to you too. You can’t just run away like you have.”

Jane went out of the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She entered the living room and drew the curtains so that should Charlotte appear at a window there, the American woman wouldn’t be able to look inside at her. Once that was done, she sat down in an armchair because she again felt all out of sorts just as she had been back in the hallway when Charlotte had first appeared.

Her phone was on the table next to where she sat and she picked it up. There was a new SIM card in there that she had replaced her old one with. The new card had cost her almost nothing and only a very few people had the number at the minute. She thought about calling the Chinese takeaway and telling them to cancel the delivery, but then remembered that they had said the food she had ordered would take an hour.

How silly she had been to go to the front door here ten minutes after making that call. Hopefully, Charlotte would be gone by the time that delivery came.

Holding the phone made her start to consider how Charlotte had tracked her down to Lisa and John’s house. She recalled the last time she saw Charlotte, back in Covent Garden when ‘Alex Storm’ had approached her with his blackmail. The woman who had just followed her almost halfway across the country had spoken of ‘putting an app’ on her phone to ‘track her movements’.

Jane didn’t know if such a thing would work if she’d changed her SIM card. She still had the same phone though… so such a thing could be possible, could it not?

Yet Charlotte was in Cambridgeshire and outside this house: a place where Jane had told no one else about from its owners that she would be.

The phone was placed back on that table.

There was no more knocking on doors or shouted remarks from outside. Jane reckoned that it had been at least five minutes since Charlotte had last made her presence felt physically, though she remained in Jane’s mind.

A question now came to her that concerned Charlotte, or more correctly, Alex Storm: what did those two Americans care about the treason committed by people in Britain against this country?

It didn’t make sense for Alex Storm – who she presumed worked for the CIA or one of those intelligence agencies with the fancy acronyms – to be interested in her husband. The man who had blackmailed her had spoken of Michael betraying his country, but why did he care?

She couldn’t understand such a thing and as she sat in the darkened room, waiting with baited breath for more of Charlotte’s worrying behaviour that would please any wannabe stalker, such ponderings over Alex Storm’s motivation there wouldn’t leave her.

It was rather odd…





Chapter Seventy–Eight – BOOM
Nutfield (near Reigate), Surrey – February 20th 2014


The missile system was called ‘ERYX’.

It was of French origin in manufacture, though this particular model and the launcher that housed it had been issued (legally) to the Turkish Army before being taken (illegally) from the warehouse where had been stored and then sold on the international black market. It was designed to take out tanks and armoured vehicles at close-range in support of infantry forces on the battlefield. The missile system was a guided weapon too making it perfect for such a use as it was about to put to.

Once the target was marked at being five hundred meters away, the spotter called out to the missile operator to shoot at it. Both being former military personnel, despite now being paid mercenaries, the language used was that of soldiers: “Gunner, target sighted at four hundred meters. Engage when ready.”

“Firing now.”

There was a BOOM, a small puff of smoke from the deliberately-designed ‘soft launch’ and then the ERYX missile shot out of its launcher and across the open field towards the road beyond. A trailing wire sent command guidance to the missile as it flew above the ground and closed-in on the slowly-moving target.

Then came the impact of the missile.

BOOM!

BOOM!

There was at once a terrible set of twin explosions when the ERYX slammed into the car that it had been directed against. That vehicle was a Jaguar XJ turning off the road into a driveway connecting to a house. The luxury saloon type car was instantly destroyed by these explosions. The first one was the armour-penetrating warhead fitted to the nosecone of the missile, while the second blast was that of the main high-explosive warhead going off. The vehicle’s armour was meant to stop a gun or bomb attack, but it stood no chance against a missile such as the ERYX.

After the fireball came the thick black smoke that surrounded the car and started climbing into the evening sky. In addition, there were soon screams from a woman who had been in the driveway where the car was hit and who had was left horribly injured by the blasts.

Meanwhile, the three men up in the field – the gunner, the spotter and a third standing ready with another missile in case something had gone wrong with the first – were on the move. They left that extra round behind along with the launcher and the tripod it had been resting upon as they sprinted away from the scene. There were some woods behind them where a car was waiting to take them away extremely fast and towards the nearby M23 motorway.

Inside that Jaguar that was now a gutted, burning wreck were now four dead people. One was a junior civil servant travelling with his superior so he could continue to brief that man on official business, while another two were police officers from the Metropolitan Police’s SO1 department serving as a bodyguard and driver for the fourth man…

… the First Secretary of State and Foreign Secretary, Steve Moran.





Chapter Seventy–Nine – Yet Another Bunker
Beneath the MOD Main Building, Central London – February 21st 2014


The briefer from the MOD had called this complex ‘Pindar’. He’d said something about that being a reference to an ancient Greek poet, but Lauren had zoned out at that because this was just ‘Yet Another Bunker’ as far as she was concerned.

“Yes, Mister President, I will pass on your condolences to those affected as soon as humanly possible.”

Here beneath the MOD Main Building on Whitehall, in the extensive underground communications facility, the PM was on the phone to Washington. Lauren could have listened-in better to the trans-Atlantic conversation by picking up another phone, though at the minute she chose not to. The American President was not a man to her particular taste and she’d had enough of listening to him already. He had already called once last night and then gone and spoke to the American media concerning the assassination of Steve Moran; that was more than enough of hearing him for her.

“And I thank you again for your sincere concern, Mister President.”

Hearing as she was only one side of the conversation, Lauren could tell how tired the PM was. He was repeating the term ‘Mister President’ almost each time he replied to something said over the connection and wasn’t aware that he was doing this. However, just as she had been, the PM had been awake all night after the news had arrived in Downing Street late yesterday that the Foreign Secretary had been killed when arriving home in his Surrey constituency.

To be honest, Steve Moran had been more than just ‘killed’: he had been assassinated in a spectacular fashion. She had been with the PM when the news had come through that his official Government car – a near identical one to which the PM regularly used – had been blasted to smithereens by a guided missile… and that those who had carried out the attack had escaped without detection.

“We have our security people working flat out on such an investigation. Yet, presently, they have truly little to go on.” While talking to the President – who was up late because it was Seven here in London and thus Two in the morning on the US East Coast – the PM was looking over at the spooks assembled here at the minute in the bunker.

Lauren knew that they wouldn’t be happy with the PM saying such things to the Americans. Those men had close relations with their counterparts across the Atlantic, but their PM was telling the US President that were currently failing to do their jobs.

“Of course, Mister President; I would welcome any support that your own intelligence services could give to us. Nevertheless, I would request that such cooperation go through the respective services heads here in Britain rather than directly through myself.”

Lauren turned to look at the people from MI-5 and MI-6 as the PM said that. She could see their gazes meet the PM and then each other as they thought about what ‘help’ they would get from American intelligence agencies. If she understood them right, MI-5 wouldn’t want US Intelligence personnel operating within Britain apart from under the strictest of supervision. With regards to MI-6, they wouldn’t also want the Americans stepping on their toes worldwide should they link the assassination in Surrey to foreign nationals.

The ‘support’ and ‘cooperation’ that the PM was talking to the American President about was going to be interesting.

One of those spooks was someone that Lauren continued to pay attention too rather than listen to the PM as he wound up his phone call with Washington. Wearing a smart blue suit and sporting a moustache that made him look like a porn star from a bad 1970s movie, Cliff Dunning had noticeably shuffled uncomfortably in his seat when the mention of assistance from the Americans was offered. He was now having a whispered conversation with Bill Hunt that Lauren wished she could overhear.

Those two MI-5 spooks – the Director-General and head of the National Security Directorate – were over of the far side of this conference room with other people from the intelligence community. Dunning though was a thoroughly different spook from the others. They all appeared to want to be professional spooks and nothing more, though Lauren knew that Dunning had political ambitions that he wasn’t one to hide. In her opinion he would never get anywhere in public office and, moreover, he wasn’t a very good spook either because he never appeared to have any answers to give.

When Baroness Vaughn had disappeared late last year, then was subsequently found murdered, Dunning had been in supervision of that inquiry and had come up with nothing at all. He was still running the investigation into the Downing Street Bomb: something else where there were no apparent leads as to who had been behind that. Since last night, he hadn’t been able to give any information – even speculation – as to who had blown up Steve Moran either.

Lauren didn’t think he even knew how to do his job!

“Right, that’s that out of the way.” The PM had put down the phone and Lauren swung her attention back to him as he spoke to all those assembled here. “I didn’t think that we would get any information from the Americans, but I thought it best to give that a try just in case.

Now… I asked for you to all be in attendance because yesterday’s events were significant, to say the least.

Bill, Thomas, Cliff – I want, I need, some information to work with on who was behind the murder of my colleague. I need to know who tried to kill me last week too.

You can’t leave me standing here in ignorance. Talk to me, Gentlemen, and give me something so I can move out of this bunker.”

The PM was putting a brave face on it all, but Lauren knew him well enough to know that the events of last Monday and then yesterday had really shaken him up. He was facing immense political pressure and added to this were the failed assassination attempt against him followed by the successful murder of his Foreign Secretary. Away from the confident tone that he had used when on the phone speaking trans-Atlantic, and the front that he was putting on now, he was scared. His wife and children were currently at Chequers, safe in his official country retreat, and Lauren had overheard him state that they were not to leave there under any circumstances.

It was him that he felt that forces unknown were out to kill though and that was why he hadn’t objected to the move down into this bunker. He could run the Government from here – on a temporary basis anyway – and stay here in an a-joining guest facility. Moreover, security was extremely tight.

The spooks had nothing to give the PM. McDonald (from the Secret Intelligence Service) said just what he had said after the Downing Street Bomb: this was not the work of agents of a foreign state or trans-national terrorist group. Bill Hunt echoed this and said that his organisation still remained without a lead to work with.

Dunning spoke up too. He stated that he had his best people out investigating yet there were no indications as to who was behind these attacks or how they had managed to get the detailed information that they had been working with to plant that bomb that blew apart part of the Cabinet Office and then hit Steve Moran’s car with a guided missile.

Lauren was getting bored with this routine of ignorance on the part of the spooks, while she guessed that the PM was probably getting angry over it all behind that calm mask that he maintained. A man in his position would want to know everything that he needed and would usually be given such knowledge. For the security services to say that they had nothing at with regards to such a serious matter was something that he wouldn’t like to hear.

He would also be worried over that because such lack of an understanding as to who was behind these events meant that they could possibly strike again.

She herself was quite shocked at what she was hearing. She wondered over what these people were up to. They had every resource at their disposal along with current political backing to do almost anything that they liked to trace and track down the perpetrators of such acts, yet they were (metaphorically) throwing their hands up in the air and saying that they had nothing.

“Nothing at all? How can that be?”

Lauren had almost forgotten about the Home Secretary. Parsons was speaking now over the speakerphone as he was in on this meeting by conferencing. He spoke harshly with a suspicious tone in his voice that was easily identifiable. Lauren had nothing but distaste for the man, but at this moment in time she had to agree with him – how could the spooks have nothing?

“Nonsense, Gentlemen, nonsense! Get your people out there cracking heads or whatever they do to earn a living!” Before a reply could be given to his first comments, Parsons attempted to verbally bully MI-5 and MI-6 into action. “The anti-terrorism legislation that has been pushed through Parliament in the past few years gives you people a whole wealth of official powers.

You can talk to or arrest anyone that you want.

You can listen to phone-calls or intercept emails at will.

You can search any car or house if it is suspected of being related to terrorism.

The Prime Minister wants you to give him the information that he needs and you are all lacking in this; change that at once.”

The bluster that came from the man over the phone connection was all talk as far as Lauren was concerned. A weak and pathetic individual, he was feeling powerful now because he was arguably the most senior British Cabinet member with the exception of the PM himself. He held one of the so-called Great Offices of State and had done so longer now (in a current sense) than anyone else.

Lauren waited for the PM to say something to neuter Parsons’ urging to the spooks, but none came. He just let the man get away with saying something like that even though the words from the Home Secretary almost called for illegal action on the part of the security services.

The PM had to get out of this bunker, she saw, because while below ground he was reminded constantly of his fears and thus people like Parsons could get away with making such demands of action.

[stevep]

   James G ,

   Well everything is unraveling for just about everybody.  Wasn't expecting Patrick's break-down at all.  That's definitely put pressure on Harriett as well.  Of course while he's shown clear paranoia and seems to be looking at the wrong culprit it doesn't mean he's wrong in terms of people in the security services being deeply involved in the conspiracy.

  Jane was a fool to think she could just walk away from such a mess.  Not sure whether Charlotte is simply a deranged stalker or the agency she works for has more suspicious aims.  Not surprised Michael seized all the money as that's perfectly in character for him.

  Susan was definitely thin skinned.  Apart from John not intending to refer to her at all what he said, about respecting people who stick by their principles could have been seen as a compliment as easily as an insult.  I'm also wondering what the US President is up to.

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 15, 2020 10:02:42 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

   Well everything is unraveling for just about everybody.  Wasn't expecting Patrick's break-down at all.  That's definitely put pressure on Harriett as well.  Of course while he's shown clear paranoia and seems to be looking at the wrong culprit it doesn't mean he's wrong in terms of people in the security services being deeply involved in the conspiracy.

  Jane was a fool to think she could just walk away from such a mess.  Not sure whether Charlotte is simply a deranged stalker or the agency she works for has more suspicious aims.  Not surprised Michael seized all the money as that's perfectly in character for him.

  Susan was definitely thin skinned.  Apart from John not intending to refer to her at all what he said, about respecting people who stick by their principles could have been seen as a compliment as easily as an insult.  I'm also wondering what the US President is up to.

  Steve

I had Patrick snap off-screen: it would have been better to do it on-screen. Harriet is in trouble too. That wrong culprit is about to get a lot of blame!
The character of Jane, so weak, isn't someone I would write again: too weak. Charlotte isn't a spook per se but is working for the CIA.
The Susan-John friendship is an odd one, yes.
Mr President might or might not know much. But he isn't telling all he knows to Downing Street.

[James G]

Chapter Eighty – Bob, Jim and Rusty
Grays, Essex – February 23rd 2014


They’d said that they were Canadians; Baxter knew that the trio were most certainly not from that country but rather one just slightly south of Canada.

Bob, Jim and Rusty were all ex-soldiers. Baxter reckoned that they were special forces type guys too with extensive combat service behind them. They were professional mercenaries now doing ‘contract jobs’ all over the world and being paid handsomely for doing such work. They had told him almost nothing about themselves, but this was clear to see from his two weeks spent in their dubious company.

The trio were currently working around and underneath the aircraft here inside this warehouse. They were over on the far side, away from Baxter and Liz, and talking as they did what they were doing. Baxter could hear laughter and loud voices and guessed that Jim was telling jokes again. The short and stocky ‘Canadian’ who liked to wear turtleneck jumpers and was a fitness freak who had a sense of humour that Baxter didn’t share. His friends would crack up whenever he told one while Baxter could only grimace at the crudeness of them as Liz would meanwhile threaten to vomit.

Jim liked his sexual jokes about farm animals and unconscious teenage girls.

Rusty – that was the nickname that he used and Baxter had no idea of a given name – was a sidekick to Jim and often encouraged him to slip into further depths of verbal depravity. The man was someone that Baxter placed as from the American Mid-West no matter what his cover was. He was also a technically brilliant man who certainly knew a hell of a lot about explosives and how to best put them to use.

The third man who Baxter stood back observing as he worked was the serious and arrogant Bob. He was a physically intimidating man that towered above everyone else and came across as a semi-professional weightlifter. His biceps were the size of the average person’s thighs. He had a scar below his left cheek that Baxter reckoned was from a rifle-bayonet taken in close-quarters combat some time ago and somewhere far away.

When it came for Baxter to kill Bob, Jim and Rusty, it would be Bob who he would take care of first.

“What are you thinking about?”

Baxter turned his head to see Liz walking across towards him. He noticed the trainers that she wore instead of her usual heels. She had her hair tied back tight too and looked rather different from how he always saw her. There was seriousness to her that she was desperately trying hard to show to him.

“I’m thinking about how I am supposed to fly both of those aircraft.” The lie rolled easily off his tongue. “It is going to be quite a challenge, Red, to do that tonight.”

“Yes…” She was standing beside him now and he couldn’t detect any of her usual perfume either. “I agree with you there. But…, Neil, it’s not like you have to physically get inside them and fly each one with your hands on the wheels, is it? The computers will do all the work for you and you’ll just be there as the ‘man-in-the-loop’; that is what they call it, yes?” She had used the wrong term there, but Baxter understood what she meant.

He nodded at her because she was correct in what she was saying. These remotely-piloted vehicles didn’t need someone flying them in the traditional sense, but that didn’t mean that the job he would have to do with them would be easy in any way.

“You’re going to test one tonight with the new weight limits?”

“Yes, I will… it won’t be easy either.”

Baxter had recently come back inside the warehouse after being outside in the car park. He’d looked up at the evening sky and out westwards to see the skies there filling with clouds. The weather reports that he’d looked at online had said that there was a storm coming tonight and his own eyes had confirmed that. Into that weather he would be ‘flying’ one of the aircraft in the dark skies on a test run complete with the extra weight upon it. A large, external payload was being fitted to each aircraft and he needed to know that they would still fly as they were meant to when carrying that.

“Our overseas friends over there seem to know their business.” Liz spoke with a tone that at first appeared to Baxter’s ears to denote respect for them, but he quickly corrected this judgement as he realised she only admired their technical skills rather than the trio personally.

“I can’t wait until we are rid of them.” He was nearly counting down the minutes until they were dead.

“Jim was cracking jokes earlier about the people his bomb in London killed the other week.” Baxter was confident that they couldn’t be overheard at the minute, but still Liz had lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “He’s a nasty bastard and the world won’t mourn his passing.”

Liz could be extremely cold-hearted at times and Baxter was often disturbed by that, but not today though. In the back of his mind was his readiness to avenge what she had recently done but, again, not today.

He himself had been outraged and almost moved to physical violence on Thursday when he had driven Bob, Jim and Rusty away from the scene of their second mission here in Britain. Jim had been making jokes then too moments after they had eliminated that target in Surrey about the woman being caught up in that missile strike that they had undertaken and that Baxter had helped them flee from afterwards. He had mocked her screams as she’d lain terribly wounded and Baxter had later found out that she was the deceased target’s wife and mother of his children.

The woman was still in hospital and at death’s door.

Restraint had come to him at that point because of his own mission to guide and supply these people… that restraint had been stretched to the very limit though with Jim and his two fellow ‘Canadians’ who hadn’t admonished him.

“When are you going to do it?” Liz was talking again.

“Later tonight.” Baxter was relishing the coming reckoning. “I’ll do it exactly as we discussed and I’ll give you the warning first.”

“You’re going to make sure that the aircraft flies just as it is meant too first, yes?”

“Of course.” Wasn’t that obvious? “They will sweep the car-park first to make sure that it is good to use and we’ll run a test flight as soon as it is dark. The engine noise-dampeners are working already and substitute external stores should be fitted by then for the test weight. I’ll fly the thing around some, bring it back and then we’ll all get ourselves an early night.

Then these three get to meet their makers.”

“Good.”

She really sounded like she meant it.

Baxter reckoned that she wanted him to understand that she really wanted to see this trio of hired help dead. He could relate to that not only because he found them each distasteful, but due to such killings being part of his orders too: Bob, Jim and Rusty knew too much and had to be gotten rid of.

Dead men tell no tales.

However, she wasn’t exactly a good person either.

Baxter was now certain that she had taken the life of a true innocent last month when she had murdered the young Danielle Turner and hidden that girl’s body somewhere. Liz had lied to him in telling him that her ‘confession’ was nothing but a gag, but there was a missing persons enquiry going on up in Hertfordshire (he had checked up on that without her knowledge) and she had the motivation to do that too.

There would be a day of reckoning with the high and mighty Liz as well.





Chapter Eighty–One – Coward
Thames House, Central London – February 24th 2014


Harriet didn’t know the time, but she knew that it was long past Nine. She guessed that it was maybe a quarter, even twenty minutes, past and she was still outside Dunning’s office. Inwardly she fumed at the rudeness of the man in keeping her waiting while externally she tried her hardest to portray an image of calmness. The secretary to the chief of the NSD had her eyes on Harriet and she didn’t want to let that fussy woman know how angry she was at being kept waiting.

Sitting with her hands in her lap and her legs crossed, Harriet felt like a little schoolgirl called to wait for the headmaster. He was treating her like a child who he’d only deal with when he had the time.

Harriet waited and waited…

Finally, Dunning’s secretary spoke to her again: “You can go in now, Miss Byrne.” There had been no call or anything like from Dunning that Harriet had heard so, as she stood up and went to his office door, she was left assuming that he had told his secretary to have her wait until a certain time before Harriet was allowed to go into the internal office.

Once she entered Dunning’s office, she found him standing over by the window. He had a view of the Thames and a spacious office up on the fourth floor. He had his attention fixed on the South Bank and didn’t even turn his head when she entered. In addition, as he spoke to her, it was in an off-hand and disinterested manner: “Take a seat.”

He really was playing the role of a stern headmaster disappointed with a pupil.

Harriet sat down on the chair in front of his desk and swept her eyes over that. She’d been in here before and saw that once again Dunning had an extremely tidy desk. She wondered whether he ever did any work there because there was no sign that it was ever used apart from to have underlings sat before it about to be lectured to.

Dunning came away from the window and slid into his own chair on the other side. He fixed his gaze upon Harriet and she felt his eyes focusing not on her face but rather on her chest.

Again, just like all the previous times that she spent in his company, he was undressing her with his eyes. He was a creepy man and there were rumours abound within the Security Service of his lecherous behaviour towards young female employees. In any other civil service bureaucracy, action would be taken against someone like this, but Harriet knew that Thames House had its own set of rules.

“Miss Byrne,” his eyes came upwards to meet hers, “do you have your report with you?”

“Yes, I do.” She had placed the file folder in her lap when she had taken a seta rather than put it on his desk. Now it came up from there and she passed it across to him. Dunning didn’t even look at the title on the front cover and he just placed it atop the otherwise uncluttered desk.

“You have done excellent work, Miss Byrne.” It didn’t sound like a compliment at all. “You have managed to catch a serial killer and all the information that you have will be passed onwards to the relevant police authorities for them to deal with from now on. I am moving you, promoting you even, on the strength of this to a new assignment with extra duties and the perks that come with those.”

“I haven’t finished, Sir.” She spoke the first words that came to her as what Dunning said to her was only slowly sinking in.

“The MATCH inquiry is closed. A decision has been taken in Government circles to quietly prosecute Nye for a sample selection of his crimes and see to it that he serves out the rest of his days in prison somewhere.”

“But you can’t!” Now the outrage came to her and she couldn’t help but stand up at the thought of what was going to be done.

“Miss Byrne, please sit back down.” He was ever so calm in his instruction.

She did as she was told but couldn’t shake the anger that she had inside her: “Sir, this isn’t right!”

“The matter has been taken out of your hands… and out of mine too. As I said, the decision has been made at the highest level of Government as to how best to deal with Nye. You caught him and he has been stopped. There is no further evidence that point to his motives behind these killings or who he may have been committing such murders at the behest of. The resources of the Security Service are not infinite, Miss Byrne, not at all.”

“What about Neil Baxter?” Harriet was in no mood to just give up on all of this.

“Where did Mister Collins get his information from with regard to Neil Baxter? There is nothing in anything that you have given me that refers to this. You are treating such information as gospel, but I have documented evidence from our sisters across the river that Neil Baxter remains in employment within East Africa and not here in the U.K.

Do you know where your partner received this information from, Miss Byrne? Did he pass that on to you before he lost his mind and started acting like a crazy fool?”

“No.” Harriet almost spat the word out. Dunning was right on that point, no matter how much she didn’t like it.

“He has lost his mind… Collins, I mean. In my experience, one doesn’t go crazy overnight, but rather over a period of time. I can see no evidence that supports his assertion that this ex-soldier is here in Britain killing people and I must believe that Mister Collins created that theory inside his disturbed mind. Only later did you see his madness become apparent and soon enough, Miss Byrne, you will come to realise that your former partner is having immense emotional troubles.

Don’t fret over him; the Security Service has some good mental health people at hand that can help Mister Collins with his difficulties.”

Harriet squirmed in her seat as Dunning spoke of Patrick like this. He was right and he was wrong about Patrick. Patrick had slipped into paranoid delusions, but she was convinced that he had still been in command of his senses when he had led the MATCH inquiry to find out about Baxter… and Liz Jackson too.

She hadn’t told Dunning anything about Jackson. Harriet wished now that she hadn’t listened to Patrick when he had said that they should keep much of their MATCH investigation ‘off the books’ and not report everything that they found out. If she had put what she had on Jackson into the report that she had just given Dunning then she was sure that he wouldn’t be shelving the enquiry as he was.

It was damn frustrating.

She was a coward though. She told herself that she was giving in far too easy and that she needed to kick up more of a stink with Dunning. Sitting here not saying anything and thinking of her regrets would never allow her to get to the bottom of the MATCH investigation and see who was behind it all.

“Is there anything else that you would like to add, Miss Byrne? I have this feeling that maybe not everything necessary has been put into this file. Or, am I mistaken in such a notion?”

He was reading her mind!

Dunning had picked up the file folder – which he hadn’t read but spoke of as if he had – and holding it up for her to look at. There were twenty-three pages of typed notes and interview summaries in there, but nothing which pointed to that still elusive ‘why’ that she’d so long been searching for.

“No, there isn’t.” She could have kicked herself.

What could she do though? If she owned up, she faced the possible end of her career. Dunning was not the sort of man to forgive her lying beforehand in where she and Patrick had been and who they had been talking too. Jamie Trent couldn’t protect her from his superior Dunning and she hadn’t been with the Security Service long enough to be forgiven for such transgressions.

“I want you to spend the rest of the week with Unusual Inquiries. Your Desk Head has a few enquiries running led by other officers that need some minor help. He’ll assign you where he feels fit for the time being.

Meanwhile, Administration will be in touch. As I said, Miss Byrne, I am impressed by your work and your new duties – starting from next week – will reflect such faith that I have in your talents.

You are an asset to the Security Service and I’d hate to see the fate that has befallen your former partner come to you.

Dismissed.”

With the implied threat of termination came the request for her to leave his office. Harriet did as she was told and stood up. She took a parting glance at the file folder with the title of MATCH on the front of it just as Dunning placed it in a desk draw.

She thought that he might as well have been feeding it into a shredder.

The coward that she was allowed her to walk away from it and her boss without saying another word.





Chapter Eighty–Two – The Voice Of The Kremlin
Cambourne, Cambridgeshire – February 24th 2014


Williams held constituency surgeries on the second and fourth Mondays of every month unless that day fell on a Bank Holiday.

His local office where he would meet and greet local residents was located in the planned community of Cambourne, which lay in the western portion of his South Cambridgeshire Constituency. The surgery came with the job of being an MP where anyone who wished to talk with him about any issue that they had – from matters such as local rubbish collection to international geo-politics – would do so. He didn’t enjoy hosting such meetings and knew that many MPs did so only once a month (or even less), but it was part of keeping him in office.

Such meetings with constituents kept him grounded too.

The constituency office was just off the High Street in Cambourne and the front window now had a plywood board placed over it after the recent events here where someone had smashed it from the inside. Williams had spoken to an officer from the local rural police office who had told him that enquiries were continuing into that act of hooliganism, though they still didn’t know the identity of that woman who had attacked his office. There had been no further trouble afterwards, though Williams couldn’t help wondering who that American woman here in deepest Cambridgeshire had been.

Mrs McBride was currently seated inside Williams’ office. He had tuned her out when she had started talking, though kept his eyes meeting hers as she launched into another tirade of complaints that she wanted him to know about. She was an elderly woman from a nearby village (Orwell, if he remembered correctly) who wished to inform him of the current state of affairs there. Once a month, like clockwork, she would turn up to every other one of his surgeries and wait in line to be seen so she could talk at him for ten to fifteen minutes. He had long ago stopped listening to her because she repeated herself each time. However, he knew exactly the right noises to make and the best way to begin and end each conversation with her.

She was still talking, certainly taking longer than usual, and he was pondering over the correct moment to wrap this all up. However, she suddenly changed track from complaining about the traffic on the A1198 road, or whatever it was today, to something that he started listening to.

“There I was in your village, John, and I saw that woman again – the one I saw when I was up here the day before here visiting my former companion, old Missus Fisher.

The damn Yankee was in Sawston the next day after being here in Cambourne on the Wednesday. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her, but she was there in that lovely little village you and your family made your home.”

“Oh…” Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? “Did you tell anyone about – the police in Sawston would have been interested.”

“I would have, John, but their police office there was closed: Government cuts and all that. I told myself that I was seeing you today and that you would be interested.”

“I am, Missus McBride, I certainly am.”

“It’s been several years now since I’ve been actively been able to help out.” Mrs McBride had once been a keen local volunteer for the Conservative Party in South Cambridgeshire. “But you can always count on me, John. We’ve got to keep those socialists out and I’ve seen that President that Americans have got – he’s another socialist.”

Mrs McBride was an old-fashioned Tory and a xenophobe too. For her to link an American spotted in this part of Cambridgeshire with the dreaded ‘socialists’ from Labour and the Liberal-Democrats was a simple connection in her mind.

“Thank you, Ma’am. I am incredibly grateful. Do you want me to get someone to help you back to your car?” It was time for her to go now.

“Me? Help? No, thank you, John.” She was ever so independent. “I shall see you next month.”

She was up and out of her chair quickly for someone her age and then left his office. He smiled and gave her a little wave as she went out of the door and in came another constituent. This wasn’t one that he didn’t think that he had seen before and who no doubt had come here to gripe and want something done on his behalf.

This was going to be another long day.

*

In the early afternoon, Williams went to the pub with Steve. They caught up on constituency business over a pint and a light snack. His local association chair was on top of his game and alerted his MP as to everything that he would need to know including upcoming events in the constituency that he might like to attend. The new-build secondary school here in Cambourne was to open later in the year and Williams had long ago planned to be here as the ribbon-cutter for that event, but there were other things going on too in the area. Yet it was the school that they were talking about as they sat in the pub.

Steve wanted to make sure that Williams met the headmaster who had been appointed to that school long before it opened. The teachers that would be hired to staff it come September and the opening ceremony would all have the typical politics of schoolteachers, but headmasters were always different in their outlook. Steve was thinking of helping the soon-to-be headmaster prepare for political office in later years and was making the connection with the man early. He wanted Williams to help sound that man out. This didn’t appear to promise a lot of fun as far as Williams was concerned, yet he was saying to Steve that he would help out when his phone rang.

Williams excused himself for a moment and then answered the call that he saw was coming from his Westminster office: “Yes, Ellen.”

“Sorry, John, but this is rather important. You don’t know anywhere that might be showing Russia Today at the moment? You will want to see what they are running with at the moment.”

“You want me to watch ‘Russia Today’?” His secretary might as well have asked him if he fancied an enema this afternoon.

“It concerns the Home Secretary and honestly, John, you need to hear some of this coverage they’re presenting: it’s explosive.”

“Okay, I will. Bye.”

Williams ended the short call and then went back inside the pub here on the edges of Cambourne. Steve was where he’d left him at the table nearest the bar, but Williams went straight past him and directly to the bar. He had seen the television there over the bar earlier and noted that the sound was muted on it as rolling coverage from BBC News 24 was being shown. Alongside that news channel and Sky News, he knew that several million people up and down the country – many of them very misguided people – chose to watch Russia Today (RT) for rolling news. The coverage from that channel was terrible, but a very clever piece of state-funded propaganda that sought to twist the Western World’s opinion of political events.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes?” The barman came over at once.

“Sorry to bother you, but I don’t suppose you get Russia Today here, do you?” As he asked the question, he pointed at the soundless television.

“I think so.” The barman didn’t sound very confident in that. “We don’t get much call for that type of thing around here, though I will have a look for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I guess you’ll want some sound too?”

“Just a little, please.”

“Give me a minute.”

The barman left him though Steve came up to join him.

The channel was changed and then RT came up on the screen. The volume was then raised and Williams started listening to the voice of the West Country born presenter on what many people called ‘the voice of the Kremlin’ – the channel and its puppet-masters knew well enough that having a British journalist on their coverage would go down very well.

After two minutes of silence, Steve spoke up and broke the silence: “Oh shit.”

Williams at once grunted in agreement.

RT was running a story that Williams had been left stunned by.

The channel, out of the reach of UK Government censors, was reporting that Colin Parsons had been attempting to launch a coup d’état within the UK. The Home Secretary was apparently a ‘fascist’ with ‘a Hitler complex’, according to RT and the information that the channel had gotten from ‘disgraced British Intelligence figures’. He was reported to have ordered the killings of ‘twenty individuals’ across Britain and then ordered the ‘bombing of Downing Street’ and the ‘anti-tank missile attack on Steve Moran’. His aim, the channel concluded in a very unprofessional summary, was to ‘become a dictator’ and ‘re-establish the evils of the British Empire’.

This was what RT was broadcasting to the UK and the rest of the world… at least anyone who was watching anyway.

Before Steve and Williams could make any further comments, Williams’ phone started to ring again.





Chapter Eighty–Three – A Villainesque Character
Buckingham Palace, Central London – February 25th 2014


George Tate had asked if they could perhaps continue their conversation outside in the gardens. It was a pleasant afternoon despite the time of year, Tate had said, and he wondered if his guest would like to catch some sunshine and a little bit of fresh air too.

Lord North had at once agreed to the ‘suggestion’ though he had worried over who may have planted the bugs that Tate appeared to fear inside his office.

It may have been sunny, but there was a chill in the air that Lord North felt the moment that they came out of Buckingham Palace itself and into the gardens at the rear. He wished that he had brought a jacket with him, but that remained within his car and in the company of his driver. He would just have to deal with the uncomfortable coldness and how the conversation moved swiftly.

As the most senior member of the Royal Household, Tate could go anywhere within the palace and the grounds. Lord North watched as the man nodded at the specialist policemen who guarded the grounds of the Monarch’s London residence to allow them to pass unmolested during their walk. No words were exchanged until they were out in the open to where garden parties were usually held.

He’d been correct in his thinking when back inside; Tate was worried over someone, somewhere overhearing them.

“One is in agreement with you there, Edward. The Government is tottering on the edge of collapse and could fall at any moment. Yet to do as you suggest, my friend, is…”

Tate had picked back up on the conversation where they had left it when inside the building behind them. There was a great apprehension in his voice, but also something else that Lord North could detect: wonder.

“… a great risk for all involved.” Lord North finished off Tate’s sentence with what he hoped had been the conclusion to that. “You fear for the future of whom you serve, do you not, George? Her Majesty is meant to be above political matters, yet the Government serves in her name and at her pleasure.”

“It does.” Tate was not yet doing what Lord North wanted him to do – talking on behalf of the Monarch – but he appeared to be leaning that way. He just needed a push into action like the Government needed one to go over a cliff.

“This current Government is doing a terrible job. It is beset by scandals and disgrace. It cannot function to proper degree and has lost the ability to serve the British people. There is no respect for it and its members shame the country. The latest scandal, with this villainesque Parsons character, is just the latest terrible example of what has been going on for far too long.

I doubt that he is the only member of the ruling clique who exhibits such nefarious traits of self-interest that puts themselves first and the country last.”

Lord North knew that he was going a little over the top, but these were the final moments now where acting fast and decisively was what was needed after so long of being ever so careful and slow.

“Is it true what they say about the man, Edward?” Tate sounded like he wanted to believe the allegations being made against Parsons.

“It appears so.” Of course, it wasn’t.

“Her Majesty is more than displeased. Parsons is a Minister of the Crown, he is a Privy Councillor and someone that she has graciously met in person.”

“Steve Moran was just the same.”

“Moran was a man that Her Majesty had a fondness for.”

“And it appears that Parsons ordered his brutal murder.”

“All for personal gain too?” It was a rhetorical question; Tate was saying aloud what he had been thinking. The disgust in his voice was easy to hear.

Lord North took a moment to smile inwardly.

Tate was an amazingly easy man to manipulate. He appeared externally to be no one’s fool, but that was a façade that he put on. Underneath, he was soft and willing to believe that there was badness in everyone else apart from in the circles that he moved in. It had taken a lot of time and effort on the part of Lord North to get here, but he reckoned now that it might have taken half as much.

Tate wanted to believe the glaring lies in front of him.

“Her Majesty will not act against the wishes of the people. One assumes that you understand this notion, Edward?”

“Of course.”

Tate was trying to back-peddle, but he had already given himself away.

“Yet, she does believe that,” Lord North’s hand shook gentle as Tate took the plunge and it wasn’t due to the cold, “the time may be approaching where her constitutional duty is for her to intercede in matters.”

“Your advice will be of great benefit at such a moment, George.”

“One is only an adviser.” The arrogance of the man was astounding.

“George,” Lord North put on his best soothing voice, “I would not presume to suggest that you would over-step yourself and advise Her Majesty to act in contrary to the constitution.”

“Which she would not… nor would one suggest that she do so.”

“Exactly. My point, George, is that circumstances may come about where the fragility of the nation is imperilled and the only hope is the legal intervention of the Monarch.

The Government could soon fall and there is no Opposition that is in a true position to step in and take its place should the worst happen.”

“Her Majesty has expressed such an opinion herself, Edward.”

Without being able to halt such a reaction, Lord North took a sharp intake of breath at such a comment. Tate wasn’t a man to tell a lie such as that. The consequences of what he was saying there meant a lot of things…

One of which was that other, complicated aspects of his many plans had come to fruition there. It had never been his intention to topple just the Government, he had set out to discredit most of those who opposed it too so that there was no other choice but to replace them with outsiders.

Like everything else, that had paid off handsomely too.

“One must caution you there, Edward. These personal beliefs of Her Majesty are those that are not to be shared, even among trusted friends and those who share our fears.”

“I understand completely, George.”

“Her Majesty will be returning to the palace tonight and she is expecting an audience with the Prime Minister on Thursday here. One assumes that the man will make a performance of himself and try to explain away the failings of the Government. Yet, Edward, Her Majesty will not allow herself to be hoodwinked by him.”

Lord North was certain that Tate was taking of how he would advise the Monarch to not be ‘hoodwinked’, as he had put it, by the PM. They started walking again after stopping to talk and in the few moments of silence that followed, Lord North was comfortable in being the only one with the knowledge that there would be no usual Thursday afternoon briefing with the PM for Tate’s Queen to have.

“Shall we go back inside, Edward? One is feeling the cold.”

“That would be an excellent idea. As always, George, your wisdom is impeccable.”

“Flattery?” Tate whistled good-naturedly at that.

Meanwhile, Lord North again smiled to himself as he started walking back into Buckingham Palace with the Principle Private Secretary to the Sovereign. He had done a hell of a lot more than flatter the self-important man: he had made Tate his pet who was about to do his very bidding.

Tomorrow was the day for the final acts to take place and then for that bidding to be done.





Chapter Eighty–Four – Watching An Evil Man
Dorneywood, Buckinghamshire – February 25th 2014


Dorneywood was a country house and grounds that served as an official residence for members of the Government. It lay deep in rural Buckinghamshire and past occupants had included Deputy Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries and Home Secretaries. It was a rather modern residence compared to others such as Chequers or Chevening (down in Kent) and was used as a gift of the PM to whichever senior minister he wanted to assign it to for official functions for the time that minister was in office.

Parsons had moved in here only the other week, Lauren knew, and was still here because he remained Home Secretary despite the current scandal surrounding him.

She arrived on the estate in an official Government car after coming straight from Downing Street. The PM had finally retreated from his bunker and was back in No. 10, though with a great deal of security surrounding him. He had sent her here tonight to speak with Parsons about leaving here… and also his post.

There was seemingly an army of reporters and photographers outside the main gates to the estate. Traffic through the nearby village of Burnham had been a nightmare to get through due to the disruption all around Dorneywood as the media had assembled outside the estate waiting hopelessly for images or a comment from Parsons.

Lauren though that idiocy must have overtaken such people if they thought that he was going to show his face. He wouldn’t even take the PM’s calls and had retreated into somewhere that Lauren was aware was soon to be the first prison that the evil man would find himself in.

The policemen at the gates (Thames Valley Police had a large number of officers in attendance) were expecting her car and she was quickly allowed through after the road was cleared of the media. Hundreds of camera flashes were aimed at the car, but Lauren, who was always publicity shy, was relieved at the specially-tinted windows that made sure they would get nothing.

Up the driveway the car took Lauren before it pulled up right outside one of the main buildings. She was met outside by a Security Service officer and then led inside by one of the Home Secretary’s jailers.

This was going to be an interesting meeting…

*

“I’m not going to resign: it’s all lies!”

Parsons got up from his seat in one of the fashionable drawings rooms and marched towards Lauren shouting as he did so. His arms were raised in a threatening manner that she would have found worrying if it hadn’t been for the presence of the spook beside her who seemed to exude confidence in her with his physical size and confident demeanour.

No, like everything with Parsons, it was just his usual bluster backed up by nothing.

He stopped a few feet away from her and stood there in the middle of the room. He was huffing and puffing like he was about to blow the whole house down and his face was bright red. There might have even had been tears beforehand though she couldn’t be sure of that.

His breath also smelt of alcohol that she knew she would have found overwhelmingly sickening had she been any closer to him.

“Can I sit down, please, Colin?”

“Do what you want!” He shouted again, though turned away as he did so and went back to his seat.

Lauren turned briefly to the spook, who arched his eyebrows at her, before she went to the armchair perpendicular to his.

“I’ve been set up, Lauren. Someone has taken the time to frame me for things that I haven’t done!” He was ranting away, just as she’d been told that he had been continually doing since yesterday. “I wouldn’t kill anyone; I’m a family man for God’s sake! What they are saying about me is all a load of crap. Where would I get the money from to pay hit-men?

They are painting me as some sort of Francis Urquhart type figure!

Me and Roger Mayfield went way back; so did Steve Moran and me.

Who the hell are some of these people that they say I’ve killed? I’ve never heard of Usher or Quinn or Branch.

It’s not me, Lauren; I’m being set up here in one hell of a conspiracy that everyone seems to have fallen for.”

Lauren sat and looked at him. She had her hands together in her lap and tried to portray a calm image undisturbed by his shouting. This was just what she expected, though not what she was here for.

Unperturbed by her silence, Parsons continued: “It’s the craziest story that I have ever heard! Where’s the sense in me doing anything like this?

Of course, whoever would do this would get caught in the end and I’ve never been one to do anything stupid in my life!

Someone out there has put this all on me and is getting away with what they have done while all the attention is focused upon me! I’m a prisoner here, Lauren; the damn bulldogs – who forget that as Home Secretary that work for me – won’t let me leave.

They say that I can’t talk to my Debbie either!

You have got to help me, Lauren! You can’t help me by coming here to talk me into resigning, but rather by convincing the P.M that he needs my assistance in tracking down those responsible for what has gone on.

You see this, don’t you?”

Lauren could have laughed at the man. He was caught and the evidence against him was near overwhelming, yet he was trying to not only lie his way out of this, but drag her into it too. He was probably going to achieve his aim of bringing down the Government, though it wouldn’t end with the situation that he fancied with him the last man left standing.

Pushing aside for the moment the thoughts of a Labour-led Government soon coming to power following the disasters of recent months that had befallen the Conservative one she worked for, Lauren thought for a moment how this man had nearly killed her when he had ordered the planting of the bomb that had killed her friend Daniel Lincoln.

The grief of that would never leave her, but she had orders of what to do here from the PM: another innocent person Parsons had failed to kill.

“I brought this with me, Colin.” She had her handbag on the floor beneath her and she reached into it now for an envelope inside. That was quickly handed to Parsons, who snatched it away from her and tore it open.

Lauren watched his eyes move backwards and forwards across the single leaf of typed paper inside before he threw that to the floor followed by the envelope. She waited for the next explosion… one which came almost within an instant.

“He can’t fire two Home Secretaries one after the other? Your boss is a fucking idiot, Lauren! How can he believe all of these lies – has his mind turned to shit?”

“It’s done; the press release will go out within the hour.” She remained calm throughout his cursing. “I urge you to find yourself a solicitor, Colin.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lauren. No doubt I will be given ‘an accident’ or someone will force me to ‘commit suicide’ like they are saying that I did with those people that I did not have murdered.

Why would anyone believe those lies that are…”

“In case you don’t know, Colin,” Lauren interrupted him, “there were media reports from America earlier. U.S television is saying that their national intelligence services were monitoring the team of hit-men that you had on the pay-roll. That is just another confirmation of your guilt.”

Lauren had ignored his egotistic dreams of being some sort of martyr by telling him what had been on her mind on the drive up here.

An immense diplomatic row was now just beginning after the revelations coming from America about their CIA intelligence operatives watching but not acting against – or, better yet, warning the UK Government about – those mercenaries that had come over to Britain to set off the Downing Street Bomb and then kill the Foreign Secretary. The off-the-record statements from people who worked for the CIA on that issue had confirmed what Russia Today had been saying and matched with the ‘evidence’ of Parsons behaviour that the Russian Government had allowed their state-controlled television station to present to the world instead of doing it quietly between governments.

Parsons had forgotten to claim innocence for the actions of those men.

“It’s not me!” He stood up once again and as he did so, Lauren caught sight of the bulky spook standing over near the door moving forwards in case things got out of hand here. “I don’t know anything about American hit-men or British ones either! It is a lie!”

He didn’t come near her but instead went to a small drinks cabinet on the other side of the room. There was a bottle of whiskey in there that he took out and he pulled the cap off the top and let that fall noisily to the floor. The bottle was raised to his lips and then he tilted his head back as he took a gulp of the drink inside the bottle.

Lauren turned her attention to the spook standing in the middle of the room, but he did nothing to intercede: he just stood watching instead.

“When you go back to Downing Street, you can tell the P.M something from me. Maybe you might want to write this down; aren’t you nothing but a glorified secretary, Lauren?

Tell him: ‘Fuck you’. Just that, okay?”

He was back to cursing again. Lauren sighed at his choice of words and then at him as he took another mighty gulp of the drink in that bottle. He was wasting expensive alcohol – paid for by the taxpayer – as quite a bit of what he tried to swallow dripped away from his mouth and either onto his clothes or the wooded floor on which he stood.

Lauren stood up herself and left the room.

The next time that she expected to see Parsons would be television images of him leaving here with the police. She meanwhile had to get back to Downing Street to see the PM and try against what was certainly a forlorn hope to keep him in office.

Yet, tomorrow at PMQs, she silently told herself as she left, would probably be his last parting performance. That would come because of the cold-hearted, evil man that she had just left behind to drink himself into oblivion… if she was lucky.

[stevep]

   James G ,

  Well some dramatic effects here.  That the US President admits to knowing of three American hit-men but not warning the British government is opening a very large can of worms.  Especially since I assume the US is still refusing to help track them down.  That should make people question what the US is saying.  It also sounds, since their supporting North's lies, that the US government is also interested in destroying democracy in Britain.  That would fit in with what you had earlier where someone from the embassy was sent to watch their arrival.

  I'm wondering how Baxter is planning to kill three mercenaries without any risk? From the fact he's already decided which one to kill 1st it doesn't sound like there's going to be a dramatic 'accident' which will remove them all in one go.  That is going to be quite a challenge, especially since it sounds like he's planning to take out Liz and then possibly [and hopefully] North as well.  There's going to be a lot of shit hitting the fan although I suspect much of it will be covered up when the dust settles to avoid too much embarrassment for those in power.

  Pity that Harriet has been sidelined.  I fear she will be a victim of the cover up.  It also hints that whoever was hiding things for North is probably still going to end up still in a position of power. 

  I assume we're getting very close to the end?

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 16, 2020 9:45:08 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

  Well some dramatic effects here.  That the US President admits to knowing of three American hit-men but not warning the British government is opening a very large can of worms.  Especially since I assume the US is still refusing to help track them down.  That should make people question what the US is saying.  It also sounds, since their supporting North's lies, that the US government is also interested in destroying democracy in Britain.  That would fit in with what you had earlier where someone from the embassy was sent to watch their arrival.

  I'm wondering how Baxter is planning to kill three mercenaries without any risk? From the fact he's already decided which one to kill 1st it doesn't sound like there's going to be a dramatic 'accident' which will remove them all in one go.  That is going to be quite a challenge, especially since it sounds like he's planning to take out Liz and then possibly [and hopefully] North as well.  There's going to be a lot of shit hitting the fan although I suspect much of it will be covered up when the dust settles to avoid too much embarrassment for those in power.

  Pity that Harriet has been sidelined.  I fear she will be a victim of the cover up.  It also hints that whoever was hiding things for North is probably still going to end up still in a position of power. 

  I assume we're getting very close to the end?

  Steve

I just read through the latest updates again. Unless, I misunderstand what I wrote, I don't think it says that the US President knows what is going on: the real; truth or the false web being spun. Russia Today says he does... but, well, that's foreign propaganda.
Something certainly is up across the other side of the pond though. Whether POTUS has been told everything, had something held back or the CIA aren't fully aware of all that is going on is debateable. The PM in London will believe though that he's been let down. To those at Langley, they could be seeing something going on and decide it doesn't negatively affect US interests, might even boost them, and so make a decision based on that.

The trio of mercs die off-screen: again, it is something I should have done on-screen. He will go on a final kill spree after everything is done too.

Harriet is out of the game now. The cover-up is already well underway!

Yes, we are coming close to the end. I will post three more series of updates: it could be done in two but there is a reason why today's one is shorter: the big bang occurs.

[James G]

Chapter Eighty–Five – Ready To Go
Grays, Essex – February 26th 2014


The pair of aircraft rolled out one after another through the shutter doors under their own power. Baxter sat at his terminal inside the warehouse and watched their progress on the computer screens in front of him. The flight programme that he was using was commercial technology and easy to use so he had no problem monitoring them as they moved forwards and into the car park outside.

The grove in the ground over which the aircraft rolled, where the shutter doors closed, caused each to suffer a jolt that Baxter couldn’t see on his screens through heard with his own ears. Both aircraft would only ever be used today so he didn’t have to worry about the damage that such an action would cause them but he hadn’t liked the sounds of that.

He was glad that he wasn’t going to have to bring them back to land here afterwards.

A third computer display showed a split-screen image from the cameras mounted in the noses of each aircraft and he watched that now as they went outside into the late morning sunshine. The car park had been cleared of any obstruction last week by the three Americans who now lay dead in the building’s basement and he himself had been out there not an hour ago himself to make sure that everything was clear. There was nothing in the way though that would hinder the progress of each aircraft. Not much ground was needed for the take-off of each, but they needed a clear run to get airborne.

Liz paced nervously up and down behind him as he sat at these banks of computers. She was worried about the explosive charges placed all around them, he guessed, but he wasn’t. They had been set by his own hands and there was no danger of them going off early. The process of ‘tidying up’ here, by destroying the evidence of guidance for those aircraft, would go off without a hitch later.

If there had been any danger, he wouldn’t have been sitting here so comfortably!

Baxter tried to ignore her as he watched the autopilot system line each aircraft up for take-off, but it was hard to do such a thing with Liz acting as she was. The woman hadn’t voiced any of her worries, but she didn’t need to. He’d seen her face after they had received the simple, one-word ‘go code’ earlier in the day from Snyder and her whole demeanour since had shown him that she was on edge.

He didn’t need her acting like this because he was under enough pressure as it was.

The aircraft would fly themselves away and towards their final destination. All he needed to do was to be ready to step in at any moment should anything go wrong and take over remote piloting. He was ready to do that, but had to be in the perfect frame of mind to do that should the moment arise. The courses that he’d taken in piloting aircraft remotely had included a class in acting in an environment of severe distraction, but he still needed calmness here.

“Are we ready to go?”

Liz whispered the question at him; an unnecessary question at that.

“Yes.” Baxter replied in an even tone and with a one-word answer to end such conversation because he didn’t want her to carry this on.

The aircraft were lining themselves up now. Baxter watched their physical progress as they did this and also the data feed as the computers in each ran all sorts of tests to check every functioning system aboard. No problems flagged up there; they were ready to go.

He checked the time and saw that he was running three minutes early until launch time. Everything was planned perfectly – maybe too perfectly, he had told himself earlier – for them to leave here at a precise moment that would get them to their final destination when they were meant to be.

Time seemed to slow down as he sat where he was. Liz had stopped pacing behind him and he waited for her to ask yet another unnecessary question. He would shoot that down like he had the previous one.

He kept telling himself that there was no need for dramatics. He didn’t need to increase the speed of his breathing or anything like that. There were no statements to be made or any further actions to be taken. Those aircraft were soon to be off and on their way. Up until the very last moment he could stop their progress with some simple actions… something that he really hoped he wouldn’t have to do because setting this all up again would be tricky to say the least.

Finally, without any drama, the time he was waiting for over. Baxter still didn’t have to do anything due to the auto-piloting programming, though his finger hovered over the button on the mouse that would bring things directly under his control should events cause him too.

The first aircraft started moving towards the improvised runaway leaving the other one waiting behind it. A warehouse that came with a large enough car park, which was suitable for the flight operations planned, had taken a long time to find, but this location had just enough room for that. The warehouse and a-joining grounds had long ago housed an international freighting operation and Baxter had seen signs of that here for the past few weeks in left-over office stationary, faded notices on walls and maps of the car park where eighteen-wheeled lorries had once been housed.

Measuring nineteen feet in length, with a wing-span of thirty-three feet and standing five feet off the ground, the Cherry-199X was an unmanned air vehicle built by a small aviation company in the North-East. Baxter had two of these aircraft being fed information from his computer though officially each had been destroyed in a fire at the end of last year in their Darlington warehouse. The Cherry-119X was designed for the aviation market for small-scale civilian surveillance duties. The Cherry design company had aimed to sell these aircraft to national police forces or energy companies for loitering reconnaissance duties due to their low speed and high endurance. A payload of surveillance equipment could be carried beneath each aircraft on automated flights lasting anything up to eight hours depending upon payload weight and weather conditions.

Today each Cherry-119X was carrying a different sort of payload from one envisioned by its designers and only due to fly for a short, one-way mission.

Baxter watched as the first aircraft started moving and quickly picking up speed as it started its run down the runaway. This had been done last night without any difficulties and quickly he saw that there was no problem again today. The aircraft came off the ground as its engine gave full power to get it up. Then the second aircraft started moving too.

“That was easy.” Liz sounded relived as if she hadn’t expected things to work out as simple as this.

Baxter chose not to reply and kept his attention on the two aircraft as they headed southwards first towards the river. Their initial climb soon came with a descent towards a lower altitude as they both overflew the Thames and headed towards Kent over on the other side. Soon they would be making a turn westwards… towards Central London.

His worries now were about whether weather conditions would cause problems and also over the special radar-resistant paint applied to each to stop anyone apart from him tracking them as they flew at sixty-five miles per hour only a hundred feet above the ground. They were heading towards a point twenty miles away, though that was in a straight line and not on the programmed flight-path. He was looping them around to the south on a journey that would add another fifteen miles in distance and they were flying through thicker air that low than they would be had they been up higher.

It was going to be a long journey for each aircraft and one that would take just over half an hour. The time now was twenty-five minutes to Twelve this Wednesday lunchtime.





Chapter Eighty–Six – Need
Portcullis House, Central London – February 26th 2014


The tap on the office door caught Williams by surprise. He put his lanyard back down on the desk and walked towards the door as he spoke: “Yes?”

“Sorry, John, it’s Michael. Can I come in?” The door opened as Snyder replied and Williams was greeted by the sight of his friend entering his inner office with an apprehensive look upon his face.

Ellen had called in sick this morning – today of all days! – and Snyder had thus got all the way here unannounced.

“Hi, Michael.” Williams tried to be as welcoming as possible as Snyder came further inside. “I’m sorry, but I really need to get across to the House; P.M.Qs starts on the hour and I want to be there.”

“I know.” Snyder found himself a seat without being bidden. “I need to talk to you though and it really can’t wait.”

“Okay…” Williams grimaced at the delay that was about to be imposed upon him. He sat up on the edge of his desk (to show Snyder that he couldn’t be here for too long) and prepared to listen. He knew that his friend was still separated from Jane and hoped that what was to be said about that wouldn’t take too long.

“You won’t know this yet, I’m sure, but a woman by the name of Charlotte Swann, an American journalist, was arrested up in Sawston a couple of hours ago.

Yes, in your little village. She’s the same woman who caused that scene at your local constituency office that I had to expend a lot of effort to keep out of the local media there.”

“What’s going on?” Williams moved uncomfortably where he sat and then stood up. This wasn’t exactly what he expected to hear from Snyder.

“She and my wife had been having some sort of affair before Jane left me. This Charlotte woman tracked Jane down to Cambridgeshire and tried to attack her in the street. She had a knife, John, a knife!

What kind of person does that?”

“Is Jane okay?” While worried about Jane Snyder, Williams’ mind was also turning over the possible media reaction when they got wind of this. The story could come out all wrong and implicate him in some way.

“She is fine. There is no need to worry about Jane.”

“And Emily?”

“That’s kid’s as tough as they come. Thankfully, she wasn’t there at the time.” Snyder smiled as he spoke of his daughter.

“Who is this Charlotte… what did you say her last name was again?”

“Charlotte Swann. She works for A.P based in Camden; an American reporter with a bit of a reputation too.”

Williams went over to the window and looked out briefly into the lunchtime sky. It was a bright day out there over the city, though he was thinking of Sawston and what Snyder was telling him had gone on there earlier when he’d been here catching up on paperwork to do with his committee.

The story that Snyder was telling him was awful. To think that someone would try to attack Jane like that… Snyder was saying that his wife had been having an affair with a woman too. She didn’t seem the type to do such a thing; Williams considered Snyder a serial cheater, but not his wife.

Maybe, he thought, that was why Jane had left him so unexpectedly as she had.

“What can be done?” Williams turned back towards his friend. “What should we do, Michael?”

“I think that we should go up to your little village.”

“Now?”

“Why wait?” The impatience in Snyder was readily apparent.

“I wanted to go across to the House.”

“Can’t you skip that just for today, John?” He was up and on his feet. “It is really important that you come with me.”

Williams looked at the time on his computer screen. It was a quarter to Twelve and he would struggle to make it on time for the start of PMQs even if he set off right this very second.

He would have to go downstairs and wait to be allowed through security at this end to get into the below-ground access route that would take him under Bridge Street, the road that lead up to Westminster Bridge and which separated Portcullis House from the Houses of Parliament. At the other end, even with his privileged access as an MP, he still would have to pass through another security checkpoint within the Palace of Westminster building before crossing through there to get to the Commons Chamber.

The security was extremely tight at the minute and that would hold him up the most.

Even if he went and actually ran, he wouldn’t get there for exactly Twelve and thus would end up standing at the back throughout PMQs. There would be no chance of being right in the thick of the action and being part of what he knew was going to be an historic occasion today.

He understood what Snyder was saying about him wanting them both to go up to Cambridgeshire at once. Of course things were going to be urgent with that; a woman being arrested for trying to attack Snyder’s wife while she was staying at Williams’ house was going to attract a lot of attention that the two of them could squash by being there in Sawston.

“We can get the Tube straight away and go to my office.” Snyder wasn’t waiting for an answer. “Then drive straight up there, John.

Please: I need you.”

Williams nodded and gave his friend the only reply he could after such a request: “Let me just get my coat.”

He was going to miss PMQs today… and was about to have his life saved by his friend too; someone who had almost moved heaven and earth to get him out of Westminster.





Chapter Eighty–Seven – Gone
Above Central London – February 26th 2014


Countless people either saw or heard the two little aircraft as they flew above London. From Dartford through Bexley, Eltham, Lewisham, Nunhead, Camberwell, Walworth and then in Lambeth they were spotted and heard despite the sky-blue paint applied to their fuselages and the noise-suppressors fitted to their engines.

The aircraft had to maintain an extremely low altitude to avoid detection from military authorities but had to stay away from any ground features – natural or manmade – that might interfere with their progress. People looked up at them in the sky and wondered what they were and what they were doing.

A few people with an interest in such things even knew what they were too.

After overflying South London, the pair of aircraft reached the river again at the Albert Embankment. Thames House on the other side was ahead of them, but they took a sharp turn to the north and then flew above Lambeth Bridge. A bus driver managed to prang the rear of a black taxi when he stopped paying attention to the road and looked up at the aircraft at the wrong moment. This could have been a lot worse, but there were thankfully no casualties caused despite the danger of both vehicles being on the bridge over the water.

Undisturbed by the drama that they had caused, the mindless aircraft had dropped down to an altitude of fifty feet above the river on their final approach to their target. An unexpected headwind drove into them as a gust of warm urban air blew in from the north, but their flight computers allowed them both to maintain course and speed even with this. Each Cherry-119X was a marvel of British engineering and such a thing was quickly dealt with.

Automatic arming tests were quickly run of the payload that each aircraft had attached beneath and the results of that came back positive. Both aircraft now set about their own destruction.

A computer-controlled climb was made by each as well as a gentle, lazy turn to the west. They were like guided missiles now zooming in on their target: the roof of a certain portion of the building on the left which had faced attack for the last time seventy years beforehand at the hands of the Nazis.

There was nothing standing in the way. London was a city at peace and there were no military installations nearby that could offer any defence of the target that the aircraft dove into as they exceeded their rated engine speed. In the last seconds of their existence, they continued to send back live video feeds of their final dives.

Off in Essex one man watched those video feeds, but so did another man in an office a little bit closer to the target out in Canary Wharf.

Both distant men held their breaths in the crucial moments pre-impact.

*

The explosions that soon rocked the Houses of Parliament went on for more than a minute. The time was exactly six minutes past Twelve when the live television broadcast of PMQs being shown on BBC Parliament went out, though the first explosion had taken place a few seconds beforehand.

The portion of the Palace of Westminster that was targeted by the two aircraft lay between the open areas of the Star Camber Court and the Commons Court. There was a roof over this part of the Parliamentary complex that was hardened with by the use of a ‘steel cap’ installed in the past few years to guard against a mortar attack or even the deliberate collision of a light aircraft. The first blast went off inside that roof structure as the first aircraft struck it and dove partially through it before the explosives that were being carried detonated there. Just like what was used against the Cabinet Building two weeks before, these explosives were thermobaric in nature with a tremendous blasting power.

Then the second aircraft, which had been trailing the first, went straight through the hole that had been torn into that roof and its own carried weapons went off too.

The resulting blasts could have been a lot more destructive had there been a bigger delay between aircraft. Much of the explosive power of the second wave of bombs carried by the obliterated aircraft was dissipated by the after-effects of the first. Yet, still, the damage done was immense.

The whole targeted section was destroyed.

Below that roof where the aircraft had flown into was the Commons Chamber. Members of the House of Commons were meeting there to listen to the PM and the questions that were to be asked of him. He was flanked by his ministers and the majority of his Parliamentary party. In the Commons Chamber too, on the Opposition benches, were his political opponents. No one had any warning of what was coming and the commotion going on inside due to shouted arguments – British democracy at its finest – when the first explosions went off above them was at first drowned out by their noise.

Of course, that didn’t last any longer than a second when all of the thermobaric bombs above them went off as they did and brought the building down on top of them.

An immense fireball followed the collapse of the building.

A total of six hundred and fourteen MPs had been within the Commons Chamber when the attack came from the skies. There were another twenty-three people there too (Parliamentary clerks and staff mainly) while a further one hundred and sixty-two people were in that section of the Houses of Parliament.

Each and every one of these people would lose their lives along with another eighty-four people caught up in the blasts and resulting fires that came afterwards.

Nearly nine hundred people were killed in this act of mass murder on an industrial scale.

The Government was gone. The Opposition was gone. The Commons Chamber was gone. British democracy, as it was, was gone too. Everything that a lot of people knew was gone.

[stevep]

Jul 16, 2020 16:17:49 GMT James G said:

Jul 16, 2020 9:45:08 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

  Well some dramatic effects here.  That the US President admits to knowing of three American hit-men but not warning the British government is opening a very large can of worms.  Especially since I assume the US is still refusing to help track them down.  That should make people question what the US is saying.  It also sounds, since their supporting North's lies, that the US government is also interested in destroying democracy in Britain.  That would fit in with what you had earlier where someone from the embassy was sent to watch their arrival.

  I'm wondering how Baxter is planning to kill three mercenaries without any risk? From the fact he's already decided which one to kill 1st it doesn't sound like there's going to be a dramatic 'accident' which will remove them all in one go.  That is going to be quite a challenge, especially since it sounds like he's planning to take out Liz and then possibly [and hopefully] North as well.  There's going to be a lot of shit hitting the fan although I suspect much of it will be covered up when the dust settles to avoid too much embarrassment for those in power.

  Pity that Harriet has been sidelined.  I fear she will be a victim of the cover up.  It also hints that whoever was hiding things for North is probably still going to end up still in a position of power. 

  I assume we're getting very close to the end?

  Steve

I just read through the latest updates again. Unless, I misunderstand what I wrote, I don't think it says that the US President knows what is going on: the real; truth or the false web being spun. Russia Today says he does... but, well, that's foreign propaganda.
Something certainly is up across the other side of the pond though. Whether POTUS has been told everything, had something held back or the CIA aren't fully aware of all that is going on is debateable. The PM in London will believe though that he's been let down. To those at Langley, they could be seeing something going on and decide it doesn't negatively affect US interests, might even boost them, and so make a decision based on that.

The trio of mercs die off-screen: again, it is something I should have done on-screen. He will go on a final kill spree after everything is done too.

Harriet is out of the game now. The cover-up is already well underway!

Yes, we are coming close to the end. I will post three more series of updates: it could be done in two but there is a reason why today's one is shorter: the big bang occurs.

  James G,

  OK thanks for clarifying.

[stevep]

   James G ,

   Shit I had a feeling that egomaniac fuck-head was planning a lot of destruction but didn't think even that sicko would go that far.  Guess what the target was as soon as Michael was so determined to get John away from PMQ.  I wonder if he will finally realise how much he's been manipulated.   Also I guess that most/all of those BORM defectors have somehow managed to not be in Parliament either.

  Even if Baxter kills North and exposes his activities this could be fatal to Britain.    We're in danger of being reduced to a 3rd world dictatorship even with North's impending death.

  Ironically the most experienced politician surviving is probably Parsons who is likely to be vindicated by the fact he clearly has nothing to do with this attack as he's basically under arrest.  Even if other evidence doesn't come out about the wider plot.

  Steve

[James G]

Jul 17, 2020 10:02:58 GMT stevep said:

   James G ,

   Shit I had a feeling that egomaniac fuck-head was planning a lot of destruction but didn't think even that sicko would go that far.  Guess what the target was as soon as Michael was so determined to get John away from PMQ.  I wonder if he will finally realise how much he's been manipulated.   Also I guess that most/all of those BORM defectors have somehow managed to not be in Parliament either.

  Even if Baxter kills North and exposes his activities this could be fatal to Britain.    We're in danger of being reduced to a 3rd world dictatorship even with North's impending death.

  Ironically the most experienced politician surviving is probably Parsons who is likely to be vindicated by the fact he clearly has nothing to do with this attack as he's basically under arrest.  Even if other evidence doesn't come out about the wider plot.

  Steve

I was inspired by Guy Fawkes for that attack. I think it must be at least thirty-five times a year where there is one time that so many of the country's leaders, almost all of them, are assured to be in one place at a known time. PMQs is broadcast live on TV too.
John will have no idea. A few of the BORM people were away though Lord North had supported their forming for a temporary political purpose.
Ah, what comes next will be unexpected by all! 'The plan' is going to meet an unexpected issue.
Alas, Parsons is still in the sticky stuff. There remains strong 'evidence' against him.