The Verdict (32 page)

I fell asleep during the Royal Wedding, missed the whole show. After breakfast we’d all sat down together to watch it. Aerial views of Westminster Abbey and the masses of people carpeting the pavements all the way up to Buckingham Palace filled the screen. I closed my eyes and promptly conked out.

I couldn’t help it. The week had caught up with me. I’d finally come down from the high of the court triumph and crashed.

I opened my eyes a few hours later, just in time to see Prince William driving his new bride out of the gates of Buckingham Palace in an open-top Aston Martin and speeding up the Mall. That was the coolest thing the Royal Family had done since they got rid of Oliver Cromwell.

The kids laughed at me, still dazed, yawning and rubbing my eyes, my hair all porcupined. They said I snored so loudly through the vows, they had to turn the volume up.

We went to the public street party in Battersea High Street. It was Karen’s idea. She wanted to give the kids a memory to go by, and spend a little time together as a family.

Half of Battersea had thought the same way. The street was full to capacity. Long tables and benches had been laid out in the middle of the road, and every seat taken. People were doubling up, sitting on each other. The pavements were overspilling with human traffic, proceeding slowly in either direction.

There was music in the air. A red double decker bus was parked at the top of the road and Capital Radio was broadcasting live from inside. On a big stage down the opposite end of the road, an eight-piece Cuban band was playing wild salsa. Cooked food was on sale at stalls – Jamaican, Thai, Chinese and Indian. And in-between the tables were tents hosting samba and rumba classes.

Ray and I got ourselves some rice and peas and curry goat from the Jamaican stall and ate as we watched Karen and Amy getting samba lessons. Amy was taking to the dance well, finding her steps and rhythm. She was graceful and briefly no longer a child. Like me, Karen wasn’t one of life’s natural dancers, and quietly gave up to watch our daughter from a corner.

A woman in a Union Jack T-shirt and leggings stepped into the tent. She had a riot of brown and blonde-tinged curls. She knew all the moves and was showing the others how it was done. One of the instructors stepped up behind her and they started dancing together, moving their hips in time, the man looking over his shoulder at his colleague and winking.

And just like that, I started thinking about Fabia.

If only we could find her –
I
could find her. Someone other than VJ
had
to have seen her at the dinner. But no one had come forward, no one had called me back – not the Hoffmann Trustees, not even the Silver Service temps. I was going to have to step up my game.

Ray nudged me in the ribs.

I snapped out of it. I’d been gawping at the woman in the tent, without seeing her, chasing my thoughts.

‘It’s not what you think, son,’ I said.

Ray frowned and made that cauliflower pattern with his brow.

‘What do I think?’

‘That I fancy her or something,’ I said, nodding at the woman, who was now sandwiched between two instructors and dancing with her hands in the air.

Ray looked at her and then back at me, quizzical and confused.

‘Wasn’t what I was thinking,’ he said. ‘I’ve been talking to you for the last five minutes.’

‘Oh…’ I said. I hadn’t heard him. ‘What did you say?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, sadly.

There was a large manila envelope waiting for me on the doormat, when we got back. Another Swayne delivery. He obviously hadn’t taken the day off.

It was a single sheet of paper with a black-and-white photograph run off on a printer whose ink was starting to run low. It showed a young woman in semi-profile, from the torso up, dressed in a beret and a white T-shirt, holding an automatic pistol in a double-handed grip.

I phoned Swayne.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘A recruitment poster for the Rhodesian police.’

‘So?’

‘That’s Beverley Wingrove.’

‘Is it?’

I looked again. The woman’s face hadn’t come out particularly well because of the poor resolution and poorer print quality. It could’ve been anyone. So I had to take his word for it.

‘The very same,’ he said. ‘I’ve dug up some interesting stuff on her.’

‘Like what?’

‘Not on the phone,’ he said.

‘Are you being bugged?’ I asked, sarcastically.

‘My battery’s running low,’ he said.

‘Where are you now?’

‘Looking at Michael Caine Towers.’

Swayne meant the Belvedere tower in Chelsea Harbour. A high-rise block with a brass-coloured roof shaped like a witch’s hat. Michael Caine was said to live – or have lived – in the penthouse, hence its nickname. It was the centrepiece of an upscale apartment complex, with appended marina, where all manner of flashy boats were docked. A whole other world.

Swayne should have been waiting for me on the opposite side of the river, on Battersea Embankment, but he wasn’t. As I approached, I saw him standing outside a nearby block of flats called Archer House. He was talking to a black woman. She was about his age, with short grey hair, round glasses and a pair of long white earrings.

They were standing too close together to be strangers. I stopped to observe them. Swayne was smiling, laughing. And when he wasn’t, he was looking at the woman affectionately – and she at him. He was a completely different man, one briefly freed from the weight of all the bitterness and poison he carried on his back like a life-support system.

A moment later he left the woman, kissing her on the cheek, before he crossed the road and made for the embankment. She watched him go and then turned and walked through the gate into the building.

I gave it two minutes before I went to meet him.

He’d found himself a bench, taken off his jacket and undone two buttons on his shirt. He was gazing across the river at the Belvedere. On the grass verge behind him, a family of five was having a picnic.

‘I remember when that didn’t exist,’ Swayne said, pointing to the tower. I was now used to the absence of any kind of greeting – formal or familiar – from him when we met. ‘It used to be nothing but rubble, weeds, squatters and scummy water.’

‘You lived around here?’

‘Just across the road.’ He hitched his thumb over his shoulder. ‘We used to come here all the time.’

‘“We”…?’

‘My wife and daughter. Well… my
ex
-wife and daughter.’

I hadn’t picked him as the sentimental sort. Too disappointed in humanity. Yet here he was, literally back on memory lane.

‘My wife is from Zimbabwe,’ he said.

‘Not Rhodesia?’

‘Definitely not. She’s black.’

So, that’s who the woman was. I was surprised at how affectionate they still were towards each other. I wouldn’t have thought Swayne the type to have amicable break-ups – quite the opposite.

It also explained his interest in Beverley Wingrove.

‘What about your daughter?’ I asked.

‘We don’t talk,’ he said. ‘Kids grow up, that’s the trouble. They start out looking up to you, then they look through you, then they look down on you.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘Ten, twelve years ago. Can’t quite remember. Bright girl. Pretty too, full of life. Nothing like me. Thank God.’

I thought of Ray and how I’d upset him. And I remembered making Amy cry at the dinner table. All because my head was elsewhere, on the case, on VJ – on things that would soon pass. The idea of losing them, of someday telling a near-stranger a story similar to Swayne’s, made me shudder.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

‘But you’re not surprised?’

‘That you were an arsehole? No.’

Swayne laughed.

There was a smell of seawater in the air. The tide was low. The river had retreated over the bank, exposing drying green-brown sludge and dumped bricks and masonry, plus acres of rubbish, much of it bottles and cans.

‘Tell me about Beverley Wingrove.’

‘I recognised her name from years back,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t in the Rhodesian police, just modelled for the propaganda. But her husband – Oliver – was in the force. He was a captain in PATU – the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit.

‘In Rhodesia, as in South Africa, a “terrorist” was anyone black who’d taken up arms against the regime. PATU basically hunted them down and killed them where they found them. No mercy,’ he said.

He looked off into the distance, his expression grim.

‘I take it you were out there?’ I said.

‘I was, yeah,’ he said. ‘Forget what you think you know about Rhodesia, what liberal-peddled lies you’ve swallowed as truth. There was no right and wrong in that conflict, no good guys and bad guys. They were both right, and every bit as bad as each other. Just look at what’s happened there since. Who’s worse? Mugabe or Ian Smith?’

‘What were you doing?’

‘I’ve led what boring people call an “interesting and colourful life”,’ he said.

I knew he wasn’t going to cough up any more details.

‘And what’s this got to do with Vernon James?’

‘When Rhodesia turned into Zimbabwe, the Wingroves moved to South Africa, and then they came here in 1984. Oliver got a job at the South African Embassy. Security. His wife went into catering. When apartheid ended and Mandela was elected, there was a change of staff at the Embassy. The Wingroves stayed in London,’ he said. ‘Now, do you know what I mean by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?’

‘Yes. It was a public inquest into the apartheid regime, that happened during Mandela’s presidency.’

‘It wasn’t all public. Some hearings were done in secret. The sensitive stuff. Don’t forget that South Africa was a front in the Cold War. The CIA were out there. So were MI5, Mossad, you name it. Then there were the Commies on the other side. Russians and Cubans.

‘A few of the former South African secret police bigwigs agreed to testify in exchange for immunity. They had a hell of a story to tell.

‘One of them turned over these classified lists and files to the Commission. Dossiers on the old regime’s opponents. All anti-apartheid activists. Nothing out of the ordinary there. All governments keep files on people they don’t like. But these weren’t South African activists. They were Europeans and Americans. And they were all dead.

‘Someone high up in the old regime had authorised a death squad to take out their opposition abroad. Not the high-profile set, the public faces, the celebrity mouthpieces, but the people behind them. The wealthy backers, the accountants, the lawyers, the journalists. The death squad was called
Die Blanke Spoke
– ‘The White Ghosts’.

‘The Ghosts had a simple mandate. Search and destroy. But it could never look like murder. Too obvious.

‘The Commission’s supergrass spilled the names of the White Ghosts. One of them was Oliver Wingrove.’

‘Did he get extradited?’

‘No. Our government said there wasn’t enough proof.’

There was a row of houseboats in front of us, all beached now that the tide had gone out. On one, the bow had been transformed into a mini-garden, complete with a bench.

‘What’s this got to do with Vernon James?’ I repeated.

‘Fuck all, probably,’ he said. ‘Oliver Wingrove died of cancer in 2001.’

‘So why d’you bring me out here?’

‘It’s a theory you could use.’

‘A
theory
?’ I said, tetchily. ‘As in: Vernon James was set up by a bunch of – what? –
apartheid-era assassins
, who may or may not have even existed. And they used the Silver Service Agency as a front to infiltrate the hotel? Is that what you’re saying?’

He didn’t reply, or look at me.

‘You’re
billing
me for this bollocks, aren’t you?’

‘Something isn’t right about Silver Service.’

‘Really? You know I checked them out, right?’ I said. ‘They’re totally legit. They’re a limited listed company. They’ve being going sixteen years. They supply practically every four- and five-star hotel in London with staff. They’ve got a solid reputation. Just because the owner said something to you that provoked a guilt trip about your fucked-up marriage doesn’t mean she was involved in this. And these White Ghosts of yours? They’d be in their fifties and sixties now. A bunch of middle-aged men getting old.’

‘It was just a theory, Terry,’ Swayne said, wearily.

‘You got me out here on a
bank holiday
to tell me
that
. Were you bored?’

‘Were you?’ he asked.

‘I’m not paying for this crap, all right? It’s probably not even Beverley Wingrove in the poster.’

He didn’t reply. The light was starting to fade and the sky was taking on the hue of raging flames. People were coming back from the street party, swaying and singing, some still wearing masks.

I got up to go, angry as hell.

‘Shame about David Stratten, eh?’ Swayne said.

‘What about him?’

‘Didn’t you hear?’

‘No?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘When?’

‘Couple of days ago. It was in the
Standard
.’

That stunned me. I suddenly saw him again. Dodgy Dave who’d been ripped off by dodgier people impersonating tax officers.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘They’re not sure if it was suicide or an accident. He was pissed as a fart and jumped or fell in front of a Tube train in Tufnell Park in the afternoon.’

‘Poor sod,’ I said. I sort of meant it. What a horrible way to go.

‘There is one small problem,’ Swayne said.

‘What?’

‘Dave didn’t drink.’

I got home four hours later. It was dark. The kids were up, watching TV with Karen. I popped my head around the door and said hello, sheepishly. Ray looked at the floor, Amy smiled and Karen stared right at the screen, furious. They were watching the news, replaying the crowd cheering outside Buckingham Palace. I guess that was when William had kissed Kate.

I knew there’d be hell to pay for shooting off the way I had this afternoon.

I went to the bedroom to get changed. Karen came in moments later.