The Dying Light (58 page)
Two policemen with automatic weapons stood on the steps of the entrance, sheltering from the rain. She passed between them, then turned to follow their gaze across the street to a small group of people who, despite the security, had managed to assemble on the other side of the road beneath the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey. Slightly detached from the group was a tall figure in a dark-green anorak. His hood was up but she was almost certain that this was Sean Nock and beside him was her mother and a very large figure whose face was obscured by an umbrella. At least that had gone to plan.
At that moment an ambulance, with lights flashing but no siren on, drifted to a halt on the westbound lane of St Margaret’s Street and blocked her view. A policeman approached the driver’s window and the ambulance lingered. She had to be sure it was Nock so she made some show of arranging her coat, at the same time aware of the churning in her stomach and the unusual dryness in her mouth. Telling Nock to come had admittedly been a risk, which was why she hadn’t consulted Eyam or Kilmartin, yet she was sure not just of his attraction to her but also of Nock’s troubled decency. The ambulance was waved on and moved towards an opening on the black metal barrier that separated Old Palace Yard from the traffic, and she looked once more at the group, but didn’t see him again. She turned and climbed the remainder of the steps to the gothic doorway, where another policeman gave her directions to Central Lobby.
There were no cameras; no one was watching. She walked the length of St Stephen’s Hall, quickly removing the reading glasses and the woolly hat, then unfastening the grip and shaking out her hair. Passing through the Central Lobby - the intersection of the two main axes of Barry’s masterly hybrid of religious and secular architecture - she turned once to see if the woman with Eyam’s book was following, but saw no one. The screens in the lobby told her that a debate on Britain’s fish stocks was in progress in the Chamber of the House of Commons and that the Joint Committee on Human Rights was already in session.
But there was little sign of activity in the wide, tiled Victorian thoroughfares. A feeling of evacuation, or maybe obsolescence, pervaded and for a second she was struck by the hopelessness of bringing Eyam’s bits of paper to the site of the near-extinct cult of democracy. They might as well be lighting candles in a Tibetan monastery for all that the world outside cared. But outside there were real threats that seemed all the closer now she approached her destination.
She went through some swing doors and reached a desk where an usher directed her to the first door in the corridor on her right. A little beyond the committee room was a lavatory, which Kate entered. She tore off the coat and maternity smock, stuffed the back support into a flip-top bin, then removed the make-up with some moistened wipes and splashed her face with cold water. Having run a comb through her hair and straightened her jacket and shirt, she checked herself in the mirror and returned to the procedural calm of the corridor. A murmur of voices came from inside Committee Room Five. She cracked open the door and felt a tug from inside. An usher’s face appeared with a finger to his lips. He pointed to a place in the public benches. She sat down, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, willing her heart to stop pounding and her head to clear.
She looked up. The panelled room was large, with a high ceiling and several chandeliers that were switched on because the storm meant that little daylight came through the windows on her left. The fourteen members of the committee sat on three sides of a square with the chairman, a thin-faced man in his mid-forties called Nick Redpath, and the committee staff occupying most of the middle. In front of them were a table and three chairs from which witnesses gave evidence. At the moment there was just one - a woman in a vivid orange top was answering a question on something that she had just read out.
All Kate’s misgivings came to the fore. She had abandoned any idea of seeing Eyam in Committee Room Five, and without the documents it would be impossible to claim the committee’s ear before the election was called. The committee itself seemed hardly the liveliest of bodies: the atmosphere in the room was inert, and it was clear that things were slowly grinding to a halt. The MPs wanted to be away to the constituencies and the peers were resigned to their enforced holiday. But for the bird-like energy of the chairman, who pecked at the evidence, invited observations and generally tried to keep everyone on their toes, the hearing might simply have expired. From the remarks offered from different sides Kate tried to gauge those who might be her opponents when she came to speak. She noticed an elderly woman studying her hard with animated, shrewd eyes. Kate craned her head to see Baroness Somers printed on a nameplate. The woman wagged a finger at a clerk, spoke to him and handed him a note, while gesturing in Kate’s direction. ‘Lady Somers wants to know if you are Miss Koh,’ he said when he arrived at her side.
She read the note. ‘Indicate when you want to be called
if we are still
going ahead.
Where’s PK?’ Kate looked up and opened her hands in answer to the question about Kilmartin, but gave Somers an encouraging nod nevertheless.
if we are still
going ahead.
Where’s PK?’ Kate looked up and opened her hands in answer to the question about Kilmartin, but gave Somers an encouraging nod nevertheless.
The chairman saw all this and put a crooked finger in the parting of his hair where it remained for a few seconds while he considered his notes. He looked up at the witness. ‘Well, I think we have learned a great deal this morning from you, Ms Spicer, and I thank you for giving us the benefit of your knowledge.’ As the witness rose, his gaze moved to his right. ‘Lady Somers, I understand you are anxious for the committee to hear evidence on this subject from a Miss Koh, which you say is compelling. Is that correct?’ The committee members began to mutter amongst themselves and look with puzzlement at their papers.
‘Indeed,’ she said slowly. ‘I want to make a few remarks before we hear Ms Koh. Firstly, Mr Chairman, I thank you for your kindness and your trust. Over the course of the next hour or so you may have cause to regret both.’ She paused and looked at the faces round her, then she began to speak, by turns warning, beseeching, craving indulgence and playing to every conceivable vanity in the room until the point was reached when, seemingly at the end of her personal supply of oxygen, with her head sinking to her chest and her voice dwindling to a whisper, she reminded the committee that in these last moments as it was presently constituted it possessed a solemn obligation to the name, Joint Committee on Human Rights. ‘The JCHR is where the two Houses of this Parliament meet: we are joined in the defence of democracy. I would ask members to stay your hand, reserve judgement and listen as never before.’ Then she looked straight at Kate and gave a nod. Kate rose and walked to the witness table, leaving behind the dread and panic that she’d felt in the last few minutes. She sat down, folded her hands on the table and leapt into the void.
Ten minutes before, another speech had come to an end in Downing Street. The prime minister had talked without drawing breath about his vision and the merits of his government - the project, as he called it, to inaugurate an age of firm and fair government, where rights are a privilege accorded only in return for manifestations of responsibility. Cannon had heard it all before; indeed many of the phrases came from his own pen, though now it all seemed rather sinister. From the corner of his eye, he watched the hands of the clock moving gradually from ten thirty-five to ten forty. It was like holding his breath underwater. Then, exactly tweny minutes after Temple had launched into his homily, he allowed his eyes to drift from Cannon to the door, which opened without a knock. Dawn Gruppo came in and said that Buckingham Palace were postponing for half an hour. ‘They’re telling you who’s boss,’ she remarked.
‘Quite right,’ said Temple, slapping his knees lightly, ‘a little more time is just what we need, Philip.’
But the operation to delay Cannon and keep the document about TRA in the room was over. Smith came through the open door with two men. One said to Cannon, ‘We’d like you to come with us, sir.’
Cannon snorted a laugh and turned to Temple, shaking his head. ‘Special Branch? You surely can’t be serious, prime minister.’
But Temple had done his usual trick of removing himself from what was happening and was now skimming a paper just handed to him by Gruppo.
‘The computer has been secured, prime minister,’ said Smith. ‘Nothing has been sent from it or Mr Cannon’s telephone in the last forty-five minutes. We presume that he only has the hard copy because there is no trace of it on his home computer, which has been accessed remotely. There have been no outgoing calls from his home in that time either, or from his wife’s mobile.’
Temple nodded, then the Special Branch officer who had spoken moved to where Cannon was sitting. ‘We believe that you have in your possession certain classified documents that you plan to make public. This would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act. We also have reason to suspect that you were instrumental in the unlawful release of a woman held under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.’
Cannon drew the document from his inside pocket and flourished it. ‘By all means have it - the more people who read it the better.’ He clambered to his feet and handed it to the officer, then looked at his watch. ‘A copy left the building by messenger an hour and a quarter ago, after I discovered that you’d blocked my phone. I imagine George Lyme is already answering questions on it.’
Temple’s eyes flashed at Gruppo. ‘Get Bryant Maclean on the phone: I want to speak to him personally.’ His gaze levelled at Cannon and he was about to say something when Jamie Ferris stormed into the room. ‘We’ve just started tracing two phones that we are now certain are being used by Peter Kilmartin and Kate Lockhart. Both are now switched off, but it is clear from the conversations over the last week that these two are at the centre of this conspiracy. We know they spent last night in the British Museum and understand that a number of packages were delivered to them during the night.’
‘In the British Museum?’ said Temple stupidly.
‘Kilmartin has contacts there.’
‘Where’s Eyam?’
‘We don’t know. Possibly with them. The phone we were monitoring is turned off also. Still, we now have a complete picture of all the people involved in the core group.’
‘What about the hotel conference centre?’
Ferris look perplexed. ‘The meeting began at nine thirty but the strange thing is that they’re actually talking about bell ringing. They’re listening to recordings and attending workshops. We can’t arrest hundreds of campanologists.’
Cannon smiled. Why didn’t they get it? Why didn’t they realise that Parliament had been Eyam’s target all along? He still didn’t give Kilmartin and Eyam much chance: Parliament would be all but useless to them once Temple had made his short journey up the Mall. Everything depended on what Temple decided to do in the next five minutes - leave for Buckingham Palace immediately or remain in Number Ten and try to sweet-talk Bryant Maclean into suppressing, or at any rate delaying, the two facts that TRA had come from a government laboratory and that the Civil Contingencies Act had been invoked unnecessarily. In the envelope sent to Maclean’s man, Cannon had included a few lines about those detained at Hotel Papa under the act.
There was only one logical choice for Temple. A few days ago Cannon would have unhesitatingly guided him to the right decision, but he was disinclined to help just now because he was being steered from the room by one of Alec Smith’s heavies. This time Temple would have to work it out for himself.
The skies had become even blacker outside Parliament and more light was required for the two automatic cameras that filmed the proceedings from above the chairman’s head and from the back of Committee Room Five. A technician switched on lamps either side of the cameras. A small red light on the camera in front told her that she was being filmed and that anyone who was looking for her needed only to glance at one of the many screens in the building.
As she gathered her thoughts a few people left from the public benches behind her, and the lone journalist at the press table by the window closed a notepad and slid from his chair.
‘I thank the committee for allowing me to give evidence,’ she said. ‘I want to start with a story. In every case I’ve ever handled as a lawyer in New York, there was always a story at its heart. However complicated or technical the issues appeared to be, the story was always about human nature, whether ambition, envy, lust for power, love of money or straightforward frailty. My story today contains many of these traits. It is about a civil servant who occupied some of the highest posts in government and was the trusted confidante of the prime minister.’ She stopped and looked around. ‘All those who knew or worked with this man prized his advice and penetrating intelligence. His career was brilliant; he was young and personable and had everything to look forward to. Then he learned about a secret programme known only to a few, which his conscience told him was an offence against the country’s traditions of liberty. Risking everything, he answered questions on this programme in a parliamentary committee very much like this one.’
She spoke clearly and simply. Her gaze swept the room, trying to engage the members of the committee, but was met mostly with blank stares. One or two were beginning to get restless. An MP named Jeff Turnbull leaned back in his chair with a liverish expression and asked, ‘Mr Chairman, why are we wasting valuable time listening to a story?’
‘Well, I am happy to listen to Ms Koh’s story,’ said a man with raffish sideburns and a bow tie who sat behind the nameplate for the Earl of Martingale. ‘But I would like to know what this secret is.’
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