The Convenience of Lies (14 page)

Twenty-Three

Ruby always took refuge in the virtual reality of her imagination. Here, she could see what those without her gifts could not. Just occasionally, she allowed herself a part in the lives of others - never more so than when Hester drove into the service area behind Café Leila.

Her
camper van looked like a gaudy fairground ride, painted with exploding stars, psychedelic swirls and a unicorn flying over the silver VW badge on the bonnet. Hester was no less exotic herself - untamed barley-twist hair, strings of beads, sweeping kaftan and slippers of gold. Ruby was captivated.

‘Hi,
honey,’ Hester said. ‘So you must be Ruby but they never told me you were such a pretty little girl.’

‘You
speak in a funny way.’

‘I
know I do but that’s because I come from the other side of the world.’

‘Do
all the people there have old faces?’

‘Only
when they’re very wise and have learnt magic powers.’

‘My
Mum could do magic but she’s dead now.’

Hester
tried not to be taken aback by the child’s matter-of-fact voice or the unemotional eyes which hardly blinked. Nature didn’t allow Ruby to be nuanced. Something was, or it was not. That was how she called it. In all her innocence, Ruby couldn’t tell a lie - social or otherwise - still less, spot when she was being spun one.

Leila
brought toast and coffee to their table. McCall poured and Lexie set about mending fences with Hester.

‘I’m
afraid I’ve been overwhelmed by some tragic events,’ Lexie said. ‘I’m really thankful for you helping me like this.’

‘Please,
it’s fine. Only Ruby’s important here.’

Ruby
continued to stare at Hester, fascinated by the sparkling rings on her fingers, the
silver
triangles dangling from her ears. Hester unhooked the clasp of an emerald brooch and said it was for Ruby. She took it as a princess might a gift from a visiting dignitary and pinned it to her denim overalls.

‘Now
listen, honey,’ Hester said. ‘I’ve come to London because I need your help.’

‘Well,
you’re silly because I don’t go to school anymore because I’m backward and naughty and I don’t think right.’

‘Whoever
says that is so wrong,’ Hester said. ‘You know all about the unicorn who lives by the reservoir, don’t you?’

‘In
the yellow castle. Yes, he’s mine and not anyone else’s.’

‘I
know, but he’s ten years old now just like you and that’s the age when all unicorns have to leave the castles where they were born and move to new ones.’

‘No,
he won’t want to do that because he likes living near me.’

‘But
the castle that’s been chosen for him is so much nicer.’

‘Nicer
than the yellow castle?’

‘Sure
is, sweetheart, and that’s not all… you can live nearby when he goes.’

Lexie
joined in at this point with feigned surprise and delight.

‘Wouldn’t
that be lovely, Ruby? Can I come and live there as well, Hester?’

‘Of
course you can. We can all live together and then Ruby can visit her unicorn any
time
she wants.’

Leila
smiled her approval of the plan.

‘Go
with them, special one,’ she said. ‘Go where you will be cared for.’

Ruby,
ever literal and trusting, asked how the unicorn would know where the new castle was and how to get there.

‘Because
you and I will go across to him right now and we’ll tell him.’

Ruby
considered this for another moment before replying.

‘You
mustn’t step on a crack on the way or you’ll have to come back here and start all over again because those are the rules.’

Lexie
and McCall stood at the café window watching them cross the road. Each of the adults felt uneasy about tricking Ruby but the alternative would have been worse.

‘Looks
like she’s taken to Hester in her own way,’ Lexie said. ‘That’s a first.’

‘She’s
probably never met a grown-up who believes in unicorns before.’

‘True
enough, but please God she gets to trust her enough to say what’s happened.’

*

McCall left the keys to Etta’s flat with the Linden House caretaker after the last of her furniture was taken away by a housing charity. Hester was already heading towards the Welsh borders with Lexie and Ruby. Packed in the back of the van were all Ruby’s drawings, her pencils, art pads, bed, desk and clothes and the few family possessions Lexie wished to keep.

McCall
was about to follow on in the Morgan when Roly Vickers rang his mobile.

‘I’ve
dropped on something that’ll interest you,’ he said. ‘Can’t talk on this but come to my office as soon as you can.’

It
was best to sup with a long spoon when dealing with Vickers. He was McCall’s best-placed contact for sourcing sensitive information. But he always wanted paying in favours. Most times, money would’ve been a safer exchange.

McCall
left his car in the yard behind Linden House and took a cab to Gray’s Inn Road. Vickers, well into his seventies now, still ran his publishing business from rooms in an Edwardian mansion block in a street nearby.

His
premises were as precise as the man - floor to ceiling shelves of books on politics and world affairs, a desktop of tooled green leather neatly arranged with telephone, diary, blotter and notepad. And close by, a fireproof metal filing cabinet with a combination lock more commonly seen in a bank vault. Vickers had reason to take security seriously.

‘You’re
trying to set up an interview with a detective, aren’t you?’

‘Could
be.’

‘There’s
no could be about it. His name’s Benwick and he’s a detective inspector.’

‘OK,
I’m researching a piece about a missing kid and he was in charge.’

‘The
Ruby Ross case, I know. Anyway, Benwick’s supposed to be on leave, yes?’

‘That’s
what I was told. Why?’

‘Because
he’s not on his holidays.’

‘Where
is he, then?’

‘That’s
the twist. He’s folded his tent and cleared off.’

‘Why
- bedroom troubles, gambling debts?’

‘Neither.
Understand this - Benwick isn’t your average plod. It seems he was carrying when he went AWOL - a Makarov, Russian job for close-quarter work.’

‘He’s
armed? Christ. Has he had a breakdown or something?’

‘I
don’t have a white coat but a bit of sleuthing on your part might pay dividends.’

‘Where
do you suggest I start?’

‘Well,
while you were running round bloody Africa to no good purpose, some people were getting bumped off closer to home.’

‘Really?
Tell me more.’

‘A
Canadian scientist called Gerald Bull; he’d be of most interest. Ambushed and shot in the head outside his flat in Brussels last March.’

‘Why?
What had he been up to?’

‘Dig
and ye shall find, my son.’

‘But
what’s Benwick got to do with any of this?’

‘That’s
what we’d all like to know, McCall.’

‘I’ve
only met him once, on this Ruby story. But like you say, not a bog standard cop.’

‘And
he disappears, armed and dangerous on the day after she turns up again. I’d say these are all interesting connections. Anyway, let me know what you find out.’

McCall
knew it was pointless - bordering on insulting - to ask how Vickers knew any of this. But there would be a reason he was passing it on. There always was.

*

Hoare couldn’t sleep after being delivered back to his flat by the men with no names. Who would ever let their guard down again knowing each sound and move they made was being monitored?

He
needed time to think. He’d phone the office later and claim a migraine or worse. At first light, Hoare was dressed and walking the cold morning streets. The sun would soon burn through, birds start singing and all of London busy itself as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Yet his little world was falling apart just as he was getting back on his unsteady feet.

He
ordered a full English breakfast at his favoured café and sat where he’d a clear view of the door. His first cigarette brought a little calm.

A
crew of construction workers piled in from the building site opposite. They shouted orders for eggs, bacon and sausages and filled the place with noise and banter about their enviably uncomplicated lives. Hoare’s problem was simple, too - his abductors had him on toast.

Try
as he might, he couldn’t figure what game was being played around him. He knew only that he could be taken out of it without warning. He wasn’t even sure if he’d been caught up in a Special Branch operation or not.

If
Benwick really was a security risk and this was a spook job, why weren’t the funnies liaising with senior police to trace him? What was the point of complicating matters by blackmailing Hoare?

If
he’d still been a hack on the road, he would think a damn good story was being covered up. Maybe that was the way to go - don’t get mad, get even. Run the tale to earth then threaten to go public if the buggers put the squeeze on him again. He had the postcard from Benwick and his mobile number. That’d be a start to trace him, to find out what was really going on.

Then
the doubts set it. What if the blackmailers called his bluff or leaked dirt on him to Private Eye or a diary column? He’d be rat-fucked to bankruptcy and never welcome in EC4 again.

By
his third coffee and fourth cigarette, he knew the least risky option was what he was planning before the watchers swooped - bail out from the police and take Guy Inglis’s offer of a PR job in Westminster. He’d then be jumping, not being pushed.

First,
he had to get away to write the fullest note of all that’d happened the previous evening and everything he could remember from the vanished Ruby Ross files.

This
time, he’d find a safer hiding place, maybe with a lawyer. McCall looked certain to get lifted soon. He considered warning him but thought better of it.

Hoare
was under surveillance by men who could see through walls and had powers he hardly knew existed. Any move which confirmed their suspicious could compromise him even further.

Only
number one was important now. McCall might come in useful later. This wasn’t about a lack of trust or friendship. It was about fear.

Twenty-Four

All Hester’s repressed maternal instincts to protect and nurture welled within her as she looked down on Ruby from a bedroom window at Garth. The child stood in the middle of the front lawn like a cherub in a churchyard, gazing into the next world.

Hester
had just answered the phone on the landing. It was McCall ringing from a call box to say he’d been delayed in London by something urgent. He sounded preoccupied.

It
wasn’t for Hester to be annoyed but she guessed Lexie might be. She’d wanted McCall there to help to unload the camper van and get Ruby settled in. In the event, he wasn’t needed. Far from spinning into a temper about her new surroundings, Ruby became almost serene at her first sight of Garth Hall.

This
didn’t surprise Hester. For her, the ghosts of the old place were gathering this strange little girl to themselves, fitting her into the continuum of all their stories. It’d happened to Hester.

Impossible
as it was to explain to the spiritually insensitive, she’d felt a presence, sensed an invitation to stay awhile, to rest and be content for Garth would still be there long after all who dwelled within had departed.

If
this defied logic, so did the cat’s bizarre reaction to Ruby. As she stepped from the van into the stable yard, Ludo - an anti social black tom once owned by Bea and Francis Wrenn - purred round Ruby’s bare legs and hadn’t left her side since.

‘How
amazing,’ Hester said. ‘He usually makes himself scarce when visitors come.’

‘My
sister always said that Ruby had a closer affinity to animals than people.’

‘Did
Ruby have lots of pets, then?’

‘Oh,
no. Etta was allergic to animals.’

They
watched Ruby and the cat walk the paths around Garth. Every ancient detail absorbed her - the great oak frame, bent with age, panels of narrow, hand-made bricks the colour of the Tudor rose and windows of imperfect medieval glass, glinting in the sun. Ruby recorded it all with a savant’s concentration, as if she were a camera on a tracking shot.

For
now, she stood unsmiling and motionless with the obedient Ludo sitting on the grass at her feet, looking up at Hester looking down on them.

Such
an unwavering stare, such a mysterious child. Where had she hidden so that even the police couldn’t find her? And to reappear in a tree - would the truth behind that ever come out?

Maybe
she’d inherited her mother’s gift for magic and illusion. How fortunate Ruby hadn’t lived at the time of Salem.

Then
Hester heard Lexie cry out from the next bedroom as if in pain. She turned from the window and went to see what was wrong.

*

The irony of Hoare’s ex-wife living in a three-bed semi known as The Haven wasn’t lost on McCall, waiting outside in his car. Hoare called it his sinkhole because it swallowed almost every dime he ever earned.

It
was close to the North Circular in an avenue indistinguishable from hundreds of others on this dreary edge of London - radiating corridors of identical brick boxes with bay windows, an apron of grass each, a cherry tree here, privet hedge there.

McCall
was running late and wished the former Mrs Hoare would hurry home. Yet again, he was putting the professional before the personal. But any guilt about not being at Garth faded against the tantalising steer from Vickers - that Benwick had gone AWOL with a gun and might be linked to an assassination in Belgium. How - and if - this connected to Ruby remained to be seen. But it made a good story even better.

A
pal at The Sunday Telegraph dug out a background piece on the murdered scientist, Gerald Bull, dated March 25 1990. Bull was obsessed with developing a super gun to launch a missile into space. The intelligence services of America and Israel hadn’t bitten. But Iraq’s maniac ruler, Saddam Hussein, had seen how he could dominate the Middle East with it. Bull’s gun could lob a dirty nuclear or chemical bomb into Israel or any other regional enemy. So far, so nasty.

McCall
now needed to pour enough hooch into Hoare till he coughed everything he knew about Benwick. But calls to his mobile, his flat and office, all went unanswered. Hoare’s ex might know where he was. When she eventually walked towards the gate of The Haven in her auxiliary nurse’s green uniform, she was weighed down with plastic bags of supermarket shopping.

She’d
a shift-worker’s tired face and was cruelly aged. McCall had once sat at the Hoares’ kitchen table, a net judge between her and him as they batted recriminations at each other over debts and burnt dinners and promises never kept. It could only ever be a contest without winners.

On
the doorstep now, she took a couple of seconds to remember who McCall was.

‘Malky’s
not here anymore,’ she said. ‘We’ve been divorced almost year.’

‘Yes,
I’d heard, but can I come in for a minute?’

‘The
place is a mess.’

McCall
said it didn’t matter. He followed her into a barely used sitting room, musty and stacked with cardboard boxes containing the spoils of Malky’s married life yet to be removed.

‘He’s
not answering his phones,’ McCall said. ‘And we need to speak on something quite urgent.’

‘He
was here a couple of days ago. He’s off work, not very well. Doesn’t look like he’s taking care of himself but he says he’s starting a new job soon.’

‘Is
he, really? Where at?’

‘With
some MP, doing his publicity at the next election.’

‘That’ll
be interesting. Which MP, did he say?’

‘He
might have done but they’re all the same to me.’

‘True
enough. So have you any idea where will I find Malky?’

‘There’s
a caravan I rent from a farmer. Malky said he needed some peace and quiet because he’s got to sort out something to do with this new job.’

‘And
where’s your caravan?’

She
wrote down an address in a village in the Oxfordshire countryside then said something which took him by surprise.

‘It’s
handy for me because our daughter lives nearby, just across the field, in fact.’

McCall
didn’t let on but in all the years he’d known Hoare, no mention had ever been made of him having a child.

‘How’s
she doing?’ McCall said.

‘As
well as anyone with her condition. But she seems happy enough… well, happier than me, anyway. I get the train across there most weekends if I’m not on duty.’

‘How
old is she now?’

‘Twenty-six
next birthday.’

‘It
can’t have been easy on you… or for Malky, I guess.’

‘No,
he took it hard, he couldn’t accept her, you see. Every father wants a perfect baby daughter, don’t they?’

‘Does
he visit, like you?’

‘Not
for years but then when he came this week, he asked me for a photograph of her.

I’ve
never worked him out, you know… shouldn’t have married him, I suppose.’

She
had that same vacant look of a woman caught in those grainy wartime newsreels of the blitz, a face glimpsed amid the ruins, bewildered, powerless, unable to comprehend what was happening around her.

*

‘Hester? It’s Mac again. I’m sorry but it’ll be a few more hours before I’m home.’

‘You’re
not still in London, are you?’

‘No,
but I’ve got to stop off to see a guy who’s really important to what I’m doing.’

‘OK,
but listen, Lexie isn’t too well. I think she should see a doctor tomorrow.’

‘Why?
What’s the trouble?’

‘Female
plumbing but try and get back before long.’

‘Yeah,
’course. Is Ruby all right?’

‘Sure,
she seems fine, drawing away in her new bedroom.’

‘Good.
I’ve got to go now. There’s a truck driver wanting to use the phone box.’

She
went back to the bathroom. Lexie’s sheets were soaking in the bath and needed transferring to the washing machine. Hester pulled the plug and watched the water drain away. It left a blood-red tidemark around the tub’s white enamel sides.

Only
after she’d made sure Lexie was still asleep did Hester wonder why McCall kept calling from phone boxes, not his mobile. Then Ruby distracted her with a pencil drawing of Garth.

It
was stunning in its precision and execution. Hester smiled with warmth and admiration and told her she was brilliant and talented - words Ruby had rarely heard before.

*

McCall located Mrs Hoare’s caravan early that evening. It had also known better days and was gradually turning a mottled, brownish-green beneath a line of sycamores on the far side of the farmhouse.

Lights
were coming on in cottages nearby and those on the low hills beyond. The damp scents of autumn hung in the air - decaying fruit, mist rising from the river, grey wood smoke layering out from the chimneys of sitting room fires, newly lit.

A
large, elegant house of Cotswold stone backed onto the far side of the caravan field.

It
had been a vicarage but was now a private care home.

The
caravan was in darkness. McCall swore to himself in frustration. Hoare could be anywhere. He might have hired a car or taken a taxi to a restaurant for supper. There was no point searching blind for him. He’d give it half an hour then leave a note.

McCall
rolled a joint and stood, eyes closed, just listening to the night closing in. Rooks cawed back to their roost in a stand of trees and a tractor mauled along an unseen lane. Someone began playing nursery rhymes on a piano in the big house across the field. McCall thought of Hoare’s daughter and the love he’d denied her. But why - and at what personal cost?

Still
he didn’t show. McCall walked to the caravan. The door wasn’t locked. That seemed odd. It took a moment to adjust to the interior gloom and a clinging, leftover smell of fried food.

He
put a match to the wick of a paraffin lamp on the table. By it was an empty bottle of Scotch, a large; spiral bound notebook and a Biro. McCall, no less a beggar or thief than any other hack, began reading. Sitting in the dim light, he was astounded by Hoare’s revelations and how they confirmed the heads-up from Roly Vickers.

According
to Hoare, DI Benwick was now being hunted as a threat to national security. The MP and possible future prime minister, Guy Inglis - who’d witnessed the recovery of Etta’s body - wanted a confidential back channel opened to the Ruby investigation. He’d even tempted Hoare with a PR job. But the spooks were blackmailing him over the stolen police documents and they, too, wanted to know where Ruby was.

And
tucked inside the notebook was the postcard Hoare said he’d received from Benwick. On the back was the most cryptic of quotes.

All
shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Hadn’t
Ruby sung something like this after McCall and Lexie got her back to the flat? There were so many coincidences. Hoare must have felt the same.

I can’t say how but the case of the little girl can only be part of a bigger affair and therefore, she could still be in danger. Benwick has to know more or why else has he vanished and why are the spooks leaning on me for information about him?

Still Hoare didn’t return. He’d have to leave him a message. Yet even as he wrote Dear Malky, the silence within the caravan was broken by the urgent ring tone of a mobile phone. McCall started out of his seat. It wasn’t his.

It
came from behind the curtained-off sleeping area. He found the phone on the floor and knelt to answer it. A man with a mature, cultured voice spoke without introducing himself.

‘Listen,
Hoare. You’re not at your desk or in your flat but don’t forget my warning the other night. You’d be well advised not to go on any travels before we talk again.’

McCall
might have ad-libbed a reply had he not stood up at that moment. But he did and saw Malky Hoare, face down on the upper bunk and lying on what looked in the half-light to be a black pillow and sheets.

He
reeled back as he realised this was blood, pints of it, soaked into the bedding. It looked like a murder scene but wasn’t. Hoare had succumbed to an alcoholic’s dreadful fate. The blood vessels in his gullet must have exploded.

McCall
suddenly had too much to take in to know what to do for the best. A complex situation had just become infinitely more so. He should ring the police or tell the farmer. But then he’d have to stay as a witness.