A Secret Worth Killing For. Simon Berthon

ranks. Pummelled by jostlers and backslappers, they paused to watch the Lambeth West declaration, knowing that victory there would surely see them into Downing Street. After the announcement of the result, they made to move on but were halted by the remarkable speech of their winning candidate.

      For a moment Anne-Marie thought of stopping there. But, almost despite herself, the words flowed on, an undercurrent of payback throbbing within her.

      ‘No human right has been more trampled,’ she resumed, ‘than the right to live our lawful lives unobserved in the privacy of our homes, our meeting places, with our friends, with our families.

      ‘Under the cloak of fear, of exaggerated threats from terrorists and other convenient enemies, technology – and a lust for control – has created the surveillance state.

      ‘I condemn that state.’

      She could hear the collective gasp around her. A single cough reverberated like a gunshot. In Festival Hall, the volume dropped again and the now Prime Minister in waiting watched on. In a few still-lit rooms in Whitehall, in two fortress buildings by the Thames, and on comfortable sofas in commuter belts, a network of men, and a few women, were taking note of this upstart lawyer just turned MP.

      ‘There must be no more snooping on the lives of tens of millions of innocent people by NSA, GCHQ, CIA, MI5, MI6 or any other sets of initials and numbers the faceless, unaccountable watchers choose to hide behind.

      ‘There must be no more dirty tricks, extraordinary renditions, unexplained disappearances.

      ‘Every citizen of this country is entitled to a life that is private, unviolated, and free.

      ‘I make you a promise. I will work to dismantle the surveillance state. Nothing will deter me from keeping that pledge.’

      For a few seconds, the Lambeth West election revellers remained stunned in a frozen silence. Then came the first ripples of applause, followed by waves of cheering and chanting. At Festival Hall, normal service was resumed, though raised eyebrows were exchanged amid mutterings of, ‘Did you see that?’

      Social media buzzed. The speech began to trend on Twitter; party workers posted it on Facebook and ‘likes’ mounted in their thousands. Anne-Marie had hit a nerve.

      But, as well as in the secretive recesses of Whitehall, other nerves were less favourably struck. Long-in-the-tooth politicians noted the rashness of her words. Patriotic support of the ‘vital work’ of the security services was a mantra – particularly if you wanted your own secrets to stay buried. One senior member of her party amused himself by wondering what skeletons might lurk in pretty little Anne-Marie Gallagher’s cupboard.

      Having stepped down from the platform, Anne-Marie found Margaret Wykeham alongside her, leaning in for a hug. ‘Your speech was wonderful. But take care.’ They locked eyes, two women in a stadium where the gladiators were still largely male. ‘Get some rest. It’s allowed, you know.’

      It was past 3 a.m. Small groups were setting off to join the Festival Hall throng, beckoning her to come with them. She realized that all she wanted was to be rid of them, to find silence to take in what had happened to her. She waved happily, leaning the side of her face against joined hands to indicate sleep. While other newly elected MPs and defeated candidates retired to their homes with loving wives, husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends, she left the arena alone.

      Melting into the night air and walking briskly to expel the fustiness of the crowd and the clamour, she cut through the side streets of low Victorian terraces towards the river, stopping occasionally to listen for pursuing steps. The further she walked, the more the sense of unreality took hold.

      Within half an hour she was entering her apartment block, one of five modernist buildings its architect called ‘pavilions’ overhanging the Thames – just one element in the massive new city within a city housing fifty thousand people. A new embassy row. A new haven for rich oligarchs when the going back home got rough. Thousands of pods of secluded anonymity. Her shield.

      She took the lift to the eleventh floor and entered the flat she had reserved two years before. Then, she had analysed the model in the sales suite and lined up the view she wanted. Now that imagined outlook lay before her in spectacular reality. It never ceased to take her breath away.

      She flicked on the television. Nearly 4 a.m. Counting had stopped for the night but her party was certain of an overall majority.

      She undressed, scrubbed her face and teeth, and changed into the comfort of her pyjamas. She walked to the swathe of glass revealing London and the river. To the right the Millennium Wheel was still alight and revolving on this long election night, catching its celebrating stragglers. Sweeping left came the tower of the House of Lords, the ugliness of Millbank, then, peeping through a tiny gap in the forest of concrete and brick, the face of Big Ben.

      She stared at these icons of the British state, the alien fortress she would soon inhabit. Below, apart from one lonely tug crawling slowly upstream, water gleamed emptily. A few cars flowed along the Embankment opposite, then an ambulance flashing its light. Their motion was silent and ghostly, deadened by the thickly insulated glass. She looked down on the river below and then right as the towpath resumed its curl towards Vauxhall.

      There she saw the figure.

      Stooping, long coat, dark brimmer hat concealing his forehead and upper face. He – it was a man for sure – lifted a cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger to his lips, puffed, and exhaled smoke that streaked into the night. He turned his head up and towards the window she was watching from. She caught a glimmer of chin and lip. There seemed something familiar about their contours. She felt she saw him start, as if he had seen an apparition. He threw the cigarette onto the path, turned on his heel, and shuffled away. It was his back view as he left, the brimmer raked at a hint of an angle over his neck, strands of hair falling beneath that made her shudder. A wraith dissolving into the blackness.

      The moment passed and she told herself to snap out of it. The transformative events of the past hours must have dislocated her. She repeated her calculation: any man with any interest in tracking her down these many years on was dead or disappeared.

      Cold logic dictated imaginings of coincidences.

CHAPTER 4

       Post-election, Saturday, 6 May

      The rutted lane snaked up the hillside and emerged into a broad flank of heather-dotted fields forming a shallow ascent to a flat summit. Grey drizzle cast a familiar gloom over Irish border country, a sullen response to the excitement at Westminster.

      Peering through the monotonous beat of his windscreen wipers, Detective Chief Inspector Jon Carne felt he was disappearing into a primordial soup. Finally he could make out the working party a couple of fields away. He turned right through a gate and pulled up beside a four-by-four in the gaudy gold of the province’s Police Service, its roof light flashing like an irrelevant lighthouse in a deserted sea of washed-out green.

      Stakes were being driven into the ground and a wire fence assembled. He watched the mallet head swish down like an executioner’s blade. The point of wood below broke smoothly into the soft squelch of earth. Inside the fence a temporary tarpaulin was being erected over the excavation site.

      A sergeant stood guard. ‘SOCO’s inside, sir,’ he said.

      Carne crossed the fence boundary and approached the area where the tarpaulin was rising.

      ‘Morning, sir,’ said the scene-of-crime officer.

      ‘Morning,’ replied Carne. ‘So how and why?’

      ‘We got a call on the confidential line last night. Couldn’t do anything till first light.’

      ‘Credentials?’

      ‘He gave a password. It was a genuine one, operating in the early ’90s.’

      ‘When did they stop using it?’