Uncommon Enemy Read online

  ‘All right, come on.’ The new policeman looked as morose as he sounded and there was now a different custody sergeant, taking details of another handcuffed youth while giving loud instructions to someone behind him. The shift must have changed. When eventually he noticed Charles the sergeant jerked his thumb at him and turned to the surly policeman.

  ‘That your prisoner?’

  ‘Nothing to do with me. Says he’s allowed out, to sit over there.’

  Anxious to maintain his privilege without appearing to assert it, Charles explained as compliantly as he could.

  The sergeant cut him short. ‘All right, sit on that bench and don’t move.’

  He read in the intervals between prisoners, glancing at the clock every few minutes. It was a continuing comfort to know the time. When the state deployed its apparatus against you, it owned you and disposed of you as it pleased. The physical freedoms you took for granted, possessions that felt like part of yourself, being able to communicate with whom you chose, everything except life itself, now depended upon decisions in which you had no say. But the state could not own time. It could deprive you of knowledge of it, temporarily, but ultimately time was on your side because the state’s powers were limited by time. Simply knowing it, therefore, felt like a sliver of independence, almost of power, something to be cherished.

  2

  It was midday before the sandy-haired detective reappeared. ‘Ready for interview now.’

  They took Charles to a small windowless room into which was crammed a table, four chairs and some ancient recording equipment. The other arresting officer, shorter with thinning hair and a brown corduroy suit, was already there. They sat Charles on one side of the table and themselves on the other.

  ‘This is a recording machine,’ the policeman in corduroy said with solemn deliberation. ‘When I switch it on I shall state time, place and date and then each of us will give his name and I will state that there is no-one else in the room. D’you understand?’

  Charles nodded.

  ‘Do you also understand that you don’t have to say anything at all? You can say nothing. Although if you do say nothing your silence may be mentioned in court.’

  ‘Just answer our questions truthfully,’ said the one with the sandy hair, ‘but don’t do any more than answer. That’s what your lawyer would tell you if you had one.’

  Charles felt he was on stage, which in a sense he was. It was tempting to smile, but they might not like that.

  The one in the corduroy suit switched on the machine, gave date, time and place and announced himself as Detective Inspector Steggles. The one with freckles identified himself as Detective Sergeant Westfield. Charles gave his name and confirmed that there was no-one else in the room.

  It was clear that they must have been shown his old MI6 file and that his arrest had been planned for some time. They went unhurriedly through his career, asking few questions but seeking confirmation of his work against Russians, against apartheid South Africa, against Chinese and against terrorists until the point at which he had requested early retirement some years before.

  ‘Why did you want to leave MI6?’ asked Corduroy. ‘Still was MI6 then, wasn’t it? Fed up with the way things were going? Disaffected?’

  Charles was happy to talk about that. ‘It was changing, though nothing like as much as it has since the merger with MI5 and GCHQ. I felt I’d done all the jobs I was going to enjoy. There was nothing else in the service I particularly wanted to do.’

  ‘They didn’t offer you anything?’

  ‘They did, I could’ve gone on, could’ve had a posting. They were very good to me, very tolerant. They’d allowed me to lead an eccentric career, free of management. But after the death of my mother, I could afford to retire on a half pension. And I wanted to write.’

  ‘Write what – journalism?’

  ‘Biographies – one, anyway. Walsingham. Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth the First’s spy master. I’d also planned a novel. Historical novel, sort of.’ He added that in case they suspected a revealing novel about MI6. Otherwise, it was beginning to feel like Desert Island Discs without the music.

  ‘But you do journalism, don’t you?’

  ‘A bit of freelance book reviewing.’

  ‘You know journalists?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘You know James Wytham?’

  He remembered the name from the Sunday paper articles based on leaked documents. ‘No.’

  ‘Never met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But your friend Dave in Durham knows him, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He may do. They write for the same paper. Although David’s freelance, so he might not. Probably doesn’t go to the paper very much.’ Their calling him Dave was significant. That was what Rebecca called him and their use of it suggested either that they had talked to her – in which case she would surely have told him – or that his phone was tapped. That again suggested considerable preparation. He had spoken to her only once since arriving in London, when he had rung to thank her for putting him up. She had probably said something about Dave then – she usually did. Otherwise, they had talked about meeting when she came down on business.

  ‘Ever discussed James Wytham with Dave?’ continued Corduroy.

  ‘Not that I remember. I don’t know David very well. We’ve met only two or three times.’

  The recorder was humming slightly and they were both taking notes. Charles looked at Corduroy’s thinning brown hair. He had been in the army with someone called Steggles, but this man was surely too old to be Clifford’s son. Perhaps not. It was a discomforting thought, in more ways than one.

  Freckles looked up. ‘A couple of months ago the SIA got in touch and asked you to rejoin. How did that come about?’

  ‘They rang me. Jeremy Wheeler rang.’ It was the truth but not the whole truth. ‘He’s head of human resources, as it’s called now.’ They would know this, and more.

  ‘What did he say?’

  They waited, pens poised. Charles couldn’t see that this was of any particular relevance, unless to test his frankness and recall. ‘Well, there was a bit of gossip and catching up. We joined MI6 together.’ He remembered wincing at Jeremy’s all too familiar voice with its exaggerated articulation. ‘He said they had a job for me, something temporary they wanted help with.’

  ‘Your vetting’s been updated,’ Jeremy had practically bellowed. ‘Start as soon as you can get down here.’

  The sea had been a surly battleship grey that day, restless and choppy with countless white horses filling the bay. Charles would have enjoyed puncturing Jeremy’s assumption that he’d jump at the chance of returning, but for the conversation he’d had with the old chief, Matthew Abrahams, the day before.

  ‘Did Jeremy Wheeler say anything about the job?’ asked Freckles.

  ‘Only that it concerned something I’d been involved in years ago, which I took to be a case. I wouldn’t have expected him to say more on the phone.’

  ‘It was a case, wasn’t it? A case called Gladiator? But you didn’t know that when you spoke to him?’

  ‘It was, yes.’ He didn’t say whether or not he knew it and was careful not to show surprise that they had been briefed on Gladiator. What he needed to know was how deep that briefing went.

  ‘What else did you and Jeremy Wheeler discuss?’

  ‘Timings, how long it would take me to get down, that sort of thing.’ It had pleased him to irritate Jeremy – never difficult – by refusing to fly from Inverness and instead taking a couple of days to drive, staying the night in Durham.

  ‘Does Jeremy Wheeler know about the Gladiator case?’

  So it wasn’t Jeremy who’d briefed them, unless they were playing games with him. ‘No – well, I don’t know for sure. He certainly wouldn’t have when it was – when I was the case officer, years ago. I don’t know what access he’s had since. He was never very involved in casework. He’s generally done non-operational jobs.’

  Char
les was certain that Jeremy had not been on the indoctrination list for the case-file, but less certain as to whether that meant anything in the post-paper age. It was displeasing to think of Jeremy having access to it now, even to the less restricted volumes. He pictured Jeremy’s fleshy features, puffed with the self-importance of secret knowledge. Jeremy always gave the impression of hurrying on to something more important, yet he had never been known to do anything very much – no significant recruitments or cases well run, no headship of important stations, no productive cultivations of a liaison service, no key Action desk in Head Office, no eye for analysis or reflection. He had risen on relish for administrative detail, enthusiasm for process, an instinctive response to the magnetism of power and unabashed, unpremeditated flattery of those who had it. A lifelong talent for offending his peers and inferiors had done nothing to inhibit his career. None except those above him had ever taken him seriously. Alternately assertive, clumsy and contrite, he had been known as Mr Toad on the training course he and Charles had shared. Yet there he was, senior now. He would have access to Charles’s file and would know about his arrest, which was another displeasing thought.

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t discuss anything else about the job?’ asked Corduroy.

  Charles genuinely struggled to recall. Jeremy had complained that it was difficult to get hold of Charles, taking it almost as a personal affront that there was no mobile phone signal in that part of Scotland. What made it worse was that the computer system introduced with the merger had created an electronic black hole into which many of the records of former staff had disappeared.

  ‘Inevitable when you get amateurs meddling with IT,’ Jeremy had said. ‘Last twitch of the old office. We’re much more up to date now – management, IT, everything.’

  ‘Spying?’

  Jeremy sighed. ‘You mustn’t take it amiss if I call you a Cold Warrior. I know you did other things as well but you’ll find it very different now – if I may say so, somewhat improved. In fact, beyond recognition from what you’re used to, all that endless diplomatic pussyfooting and faffing about with natural cover cases. You know we’ve got Nigel Measures in charge now, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought he was deputy chief.’

  ‘CEO, deputy CEO. We’ve got rid of all that chief nonsense. He’ll take over when Matthew Abrahams goes, which won’t be long now. He’s not been well. You know him of old, of course. D’you know NM?’

  ‘We go back a long way. I haven’t seen him for years.’

  ‘Moderniser to his fingertips. He’ll make big changes. Has done everywhere he’s been. Brilliant career, you have to admit, whichever side you’re on: Foreign Office, European Parliament. Wouldn’t surprise me if he went back to politics one day. How d’you know him? Didn’t serve with him when he was in the Foreign Office, did you?’

  ‘We knew each other at Oxford.’

  Jeremy had always disliked hearing that people had been to Oxford or Cambridge. ‘Might have guessed. Would he remember you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come to the front door at eight on Thursday morning. We start earlier than in your day. Got to keep up with the modern world. None of the old gentlemanly ten-till-six stuff that you’re used to.’

  ‘Ten o’clock. I’ll be there at ten.’

  ‘Too old office, Charles. You’re going to have to change.’

  The head of a seal had broken through the ruffled waters around the headland. It was still tempting to say he wouldn’t be there at all, that they could come to him if they wanted; but he knew he would go. ‘Ten o’clock,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Ten o’clock Friday. Not a minute before.’

  Charles realised he had been silent for a while and that the policemen were waiting. ‘No, I don’t think we discussed anything else about the job. We talked arrangements, he warned that I’d find much changed. He mentioned the change in leadership.’

  ‘Which hasn’t happened yet, has it? The old one hasn’t resigned, has he – Sir Matthew Abrahams? But he’s still unwell. He doesn’t come into the office now?’

  Charles smiled. ‘You’re well briefed.’

  They smiled back without comment. Freckles put down his pen and leaned back. ‘When did you first know that Gladiator going missing was the reason for your recall?’

  ‘I was briefed when I got down here by Nigel Measures.’ Again, it was true but not the whole truth, and thus a lie by omission. He recalled his late father’s dictum: the essence of a lie is the intent to deceive. There was no more to be said about that.

  ‘You’re well in with the SIA leadership, aren’t you, despite having left MI6 some years ago? You used to work for Sir Matthew?’

  ‘He was my boss, more than once.’

  ‘When you were running the Gladiator case.’

  It was a statement, not a question. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you also used to know Nigel Measures?’

  ‘Yes, though we’ve not been in regular contact since he went to Washington. After that he left the Foreign Office for Brussels. We’ve come across each other a few times since.’

  DS Westfield frowned. ‘But you knew him before that, didn’t you? At Oxford University, through his wife?’

  ‘I knew him and his wife, yes.’

  Corduroy nodded. ‘What about coffee before we get on to your visit to Durham?’

  After recording that they were having a break, they switched off the apparatus, stood and stretched. Freckles went for the coffees.

  ‘Lucky to get you in here, in Belgravia,’ said Corduroy. ‘Much better than the bloody pandemonium in somewhere like Wandsworth where we could have gone.’

  ‘I’m glad you did. There are a lot of formalities, aren’t there? As well as recording who comes and goes, all this sort of thing. ‘

  ‘We have to. PACE – Police and Criminal Evidence Act – lays it all down. If we don’t follow it to the letter it doesn’t count, gets thrown out.’

  Charles kept him going with questions but his mind was on the one they had asked – asked as if merely in confirmation – about his having known Nigel Measures at Oxford through Nigel’s wife. It was slightly but tellingly inaccurate. He knew Nigel because they had been in the same college, not through Sarah, whom they had each met independently. But ever since he had married Sarah, Nigel had given the impression to others that he had introduced Charles to her; that they had been rivals and that Charles had been worsted. Charles’s guilt in relation to Sarah meant that he rarely corrected the impression.

  ‘So did Mr Measures show signs of future greatness when you first knew him?’ continued Corduroy. ‘Was he destined for the top?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘Not obviously. But then nobody was.’

  If Nigel had briefed the police on him and Gladiator, there was certainly more to his arrest than its ostensible reason. And if the real reason was what Charles thought it must be, it was equally certain Nigel would not have briefed the police on it.

  Freckles returned with three plastic cups of coffee on a tin tray. ‘Okay with milk? Had to add it, couldn’t bring it. There’s sugar here, though.’

  ‘Milk’s fine, thanks.’

  ‘Not that it is milk. Continental muck, never been near a cow.’

  Charles stood to stretch his legs while drinking.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ said Corduroy, more tersely than before.

  Charles sat. Corduroy leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped. He had small, hard brown eyes. ‘You knew Rebecca Ashdown, with whom you stayed the night in Durham, from your time together in the old MI6, where she was a secretary? And she is married to or partner of the journalist, David Michael Horam, with whom she has a son?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re married. Her son is by her former husband, whom I never knew.’

  ‘When you knew her in MI6 she was single?’ Corduroy waited for Charles to answer in the affirmative, then spoke with obvious deliberation. ‘Would that relationship have been one that you would have described as having been, at any
time, close?’

  Charles had noticed before that questions they thought important or delicate were more convoluted and were often phrased in the passive voice, as if it conferred greater precision. ‘She was secretary to the instructors on my training course,’ he said. ‘We all got to know her well. She and I were then involved in a case together, which brought us personally close.’ Clandestinity breeds intimacy, he was tempted to add to spare them the trouble of asking, but he was curious to see how they would do it.

  Freckles took over, looking as if he were reluctantly intruding upon private grief. ‘Would it be true to say that it would not be incorrect to describe your relationship, at that moment in time, as an affair?’

  What constitutes an affair? he wanted to ask, but it was important to appear helpful, not to play clever-clogs, as Rebecca herself might have put it. ‘Yes, at one period it was an affair. It began in Southwold, in Suffolk.’ An unnecessary detail, which he thought they would like. ‘Then it evolved into a friendship, which has continued ever since.’

  ‘Are you intimate with her now?’

  ‘No. We have been occasionally. The last time was three or four years ago, after her marriage broke up and before she was involved with David Horam. Before she was living with him, anyway.’

  ‘Has she any other contacts within the SIA?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Most of the people she and I knew left before the merger. She works for a local radio station.’

  They wanted every detail of his visit to Durham – how it came about, why, how he got there, times of arrival and departure, who said what. They treated it as a crime scene – which, in their eyes, perhaps it was. He spared them a lyrical description of powering the old Bristol through the fast bends and swooping hills of the A832 highland road. Telling them he had reached Durham at about eight conveyed nothing of the wet and fretful rush-hour around Glasgow, worsened by inadequate wipers, a misted windscreen and a smell of petrol, which reinforced his prejudice that things got worse as you went south. A southerner by birth and upbringing, he now preferred the bigger country, farther horizons and fewer people of the north; so long as he could have his regular shot of London.