Tom tuned out from the image of the British Prime Minister on the widescreen plasma television monitor in the World ’s foyer, which was broadcasting a satellite news channel owned by the same man who controlled the newspaper in whose offices he was waiting. The receptionist looked up from her computer and nodded to him. ‘Michael’s off the phone now, Mr Carney. He’ll be down in a mo.’
Tom thanked her. He’d taken the Northern Line from King’s Cross to Bank and then switched to the Dock-lands Light Rail to get to the newspaper’s offices. Out of the window he saw a jumbled landscape. Shiny new offices and apartments jostled with face-lifted brick warehouses that had been reinvented as fashionable homes for wealthy incomers. Yet, sporadic remnants of the old Isle of Dogs held on. The last of its undeveloped, soot-blackened buildings waited, destined either for demolition or to be reborn out of the ashes of their grimy past. The planners might have breathed new life into the area, but they had stolen its soul.
The news crawler at the bottom of the television screen was repeating the only part of the PM’s press conference that Tom had paid attention to: PM confirms at least one of Robert Greeves’s abductors, killed in South Africa, was Muslim. Tom heard footsteps and looked over his shoulder. He recognised the thin, pasty-faced, red-haired reporter immediately.
‘Daniel Carney?’ asked Michael Fisher.
Tom nodded and held out his hand, but Fisher kept his by his sides. He looked Tom up and down, and Tom prayed that Fisher had never met the real Carney. He also hoped Fisher wouldn’t recognise him from the press conference he had attended with Greeves.
So far, there had been no photographs of Tom published in the newspapers, as his identity was being protected by a Defence Advisory notice, more commonly known as a D-notice, on the grounds that the terrorist gang which had abducted Greeves was still at large and Tom had been involved in the killing of some of their number. The restrictions were voluntarily complied with by the media, but Tom knew his name and identity would not be kept quiet for long, especially if, as he assumed, things went badly for him at the inquiry. The journalists knew his name, which was why he’d been pestered continually for an exclusive. The fact he hadn’t given one meant the media would show him no mercy when his name was released.
Tom had called Fisher from the train and their conversation had been brief. He’d already gathered from Fisher’s tone that he wouldn’t exactly be welcomed with open arms.
‘I know who you are, Carney,’ Fisher had said when Tom had called, masquerading as the freelance journalist. ‘You’re the bastard who did me out of a cracking story. Well, you won’t get much from the stripper now, will you?’ Tom had simply said he needed to talk to him about Precious Tambo’s death. He had offered to come to the World ’s offices and Fisher had agreed. Tom had no idea what he would find out, but it seemed that so far he was pulling off the charade.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ he said.
‘There’s an interview room down the corridor. Is room one free, Sally?’ Fisher asked the receptionist.
She checked her computer screen and said, ‘All yours, Michael. For the next twenty minutes at least.’
‘We won’t be longer than that.’
Fisher led Tom down a hallway off the main reception area. They stopped at a garishly painted red door and Tom followed the shorter man in. He took the new spiral-bound shorthand notebook out of his right suit pocket. From his left, Tom pulled the cheap audio cassette recorder he had bought in an electronics shop on the way. He hoped the props would back up his impersonation of a reporter. He knew Daniel Carney was a journalist because he had seen the man’s business card under Nick Roberts’s refrigerator. He recalled thinking that the card looked low-budget. It was the kind you could make up on an instant printing machine, the sort often found at major railway stations. Whoever Carney was, he probably wasn’t at the top of his game. Tom had wondered if Nick had been handed the card at a function Greeves had attended, or if he knew the reporter socially. Given that his name was in Precious’s diary, though, it was possible Nick had crossed paths with him at Club Minx.
‘You can put that away and all,’ Fisher said. ‘I don’t want anyone taping me.’
Tom nodded and slipped the cassette recorder back in his pocket. He left the notebook closed, on the table, sat down and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms.
Fisher looked at his watch. ‘Well? What have you got to say that’s so important?’
From Fisher’s comments over the phone, Tom realised that Precious had something to tell the media, and that a bidding war had been going on. ‘I’ve been told by the Old Bill that I can’t write anything about Ebony’s death.’
Fisher shrugged. ‘No shit, Sherlock. They’ve done the same to us, by slapping a D-notice on the story. Makes you wonder what else she was up to with Greeves, doesn’t it?’
Fisher was living up to his name, Tom thought, angling for information that he might have missed out on.
‘It’s why I’m here,’ Tom said, keeping his arms folded.
‘Well, I’ve got nothing to tell you, sunshine,’ Fisher said, leaning back and mirroring Tom’s body language. ‘So if you’ve got nothing else to say, you’d best be on your bike.’
‘I never got the whole story out of her,’ Tom said.
Fisher raised his eyebrows, then broke into a grin. ‘Do what? You outbid me by ten thousand quid and you didn’t get the bloody story? You’re fucking joking? Whose money was it?’ Fisher reeled off the names of a few newspapers, but Tom didn’t nod or shake his head to any of them.
‘All I got out of her was the same as what she gave you — enough to get us interested,’ Tom said.
‘What, that she’d been rogered by Greeves?’
Tom nodded.
‘Not bad in itself, but it wasn’t much good to us if she wasn’t going to let us publish her name and picture. She was a babe in the woods, thinking she’d get us to pay fifteen grand for an anonymous tip-off. I’m assuming you did get an agreement from her to go public with all the lurid details.’
‘Of course. The extra cash did the trick.’
Fisher nodded. ‘My editor wouldn’t risk it. Bleedin’ management’s watching the pennies these days. So, who bankrolled you?’
‘Can’t say until it gets a run, but at least we didn’t hand over the money before she disappeared. The coppers have been looking around the club, you know.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know. They were breathing down my neck at one point.’
‘Me too.’ Tom felt the barrier between them crumbling a little. Perhaps Fisher had finally accepted that the competition for Ebony’s story was over and neither man had won. ‘Funny about Greeves, though.’ Tom unfolded his arms and leaned forward a little, as if he was about to share something with Fisher. ‘Such a bloody ramrod-straight type, good family man and all.’
Fisher laughed out loud. ‘What do you mean? They’re always the worst offenders! Think about it. The straighter the public profile, the kinkier they are behind the scenes.’
Tom smiled and nodded. ‘True. Is that why your rag has been hounding him about Africa so much? Were you trying to shake him up, see if he’d been making a habit of bonking black women on his jaunts?’
Fisher relaxed a little as well, nodding as Tom spoke. ‘Yeah, well, once I got an inkling that you were going to outbid us with the slag, I thought I’d try and shake his tree, see what other rotten apples fell out. Oi, and watch what you’re calling a rag, sunshine. That’s offensive.’
As opposed to slag, Tom thought, but said nothing. ‘The other strippers at the club reckon you killed her.’
‘Silly bitches.’ Fisher shook his head. ‘Look, when I found out you’d scooped us I went down there and I was pretty angry. I tried splashing a few tenners around to see if some of the others would talk — or if they’d give me Ebony’s home number. I might have come across like your garden variety stalker, but the cops know I’m clean.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. I was in Africa when she was murdered, wasn’t I.’
‘You went for the Greeves thing?’
‘Yeah. What a fucking shambles that was. I’ve got a snout whose given me some good stuff about the bodyguard copper who went over with Greeves.’
Tom swallowed, but hoped he’d hidden his flush of alarm. ‘Such as?’
Fisher laughed. ‘You think I’d tell you? Let’s just say the boys from Hereford aren’t as secretive as they like to make out when they’ve got some dirt to sling at the coppers.’
That bastard Fraser, Tom thought. ‘So who do you reckon killed her?’
Fisher shrugged. ‘Who knows? Probably was some stalker. She was raped, from what I’ve heard. If I was really into conspiracy theories I’d say MI5 or Greeves’s bodyguard killed her to stop her from blabbing about the big man knobbing her, but Greeves’s first bodyguard was tortured and killed by the terrorists, wasn’t he?’
Tom nodded, though he didn’t know how Fisher knew about Nick, as the circumstances of his death hadn’t been publicly released. He started to worry that the reporter knew a lot more than he was letting on.
Fisher leaned forward until his palms were resting on the table, and stared into Tom’s eyes. ‘And his replacement protection officer, Detective Sergeant Tom Furey, currently on suspension pending an appearance at a parliamentary inquiry into the abduction and deaths of Robert Greeves and Bernard Joyce, is sitting in this room opposite me, isn’t he?’
Tom slumped back in his seat. ‘What gave it away? My picture hasn’t been in the press so far.’
Fisher smiled. ‘I paid that freelance photographer in South Africa to follow Greeves. The snapper said this prick of a security guard kept getting in his way. He emailed through the pictures of Greeves — nothing worthwhile — and pointed out the man who ruined the job for him.’
‘Me.’
‘You.’
Tom shrugged. He knew this could go very badly for him, impersonating Carney, but he sensed that the journalist wasn’t about to go running to Scotland Yard just yet. ‘What do you know about Carney?’
‘Nothing.’ Fisher held his hands out, palms up. ‘I’ve never seen or heard of him before, and no one here or anyone else I know has either.’
‘Unusual?’
‘Yes and no. You get a lot of people who wake up one morning and decide that as part of their midlife crisis they want to become journalists. There are plenty of dodgy correspondence schools advertising courses in travel writing and freelance journalism, no shortage of gullible punters who think it’s an easy ticket to fame and fortune.’
‘But he outbid you by offering Precious Tambo what… twenty-five thousand pounds?’
Fisher leaned back again. ‘Yeah. I wish I knew who he was stringing for. Not that any of the other newspapers would tell me. Maybe you could get a court order or something — force them to cough it up?’
‘Not me,’ Tom said.
‘Yeah, not you. What about those other jokers who questioned me — Morris and what’s his name?’
‘Burnett. Maybe. Did you tell them anything about the bidding war?’
Fisher shook his head. ‘None of their business.’
‘This Daniel Carney’s a suspect now. He could have been the last one to see Precious alive. It’s possible he was masquerading as a journalist — he might have found out what you were up to in the club.’
‘Not my job to catch killers, is it?’
Tom disliked Fisher, but he was right. It would be up to the police to find out who Daniel Carney was and who, if anyone, was bankrolling him. ‘Who told you Nick Roberts was dead?’
‘No way. I don’t reveal my sources,’ Fisher replied.
‘Your friends at Hereford?’
Fisher shook his head. ‘You won’t get that out of me. However, you might want to start thinking about what you can tell me that will make you look less like the sacrificial lamb you are most definitely going to be at the inquiry, Thomas.’
‘I found Carney’s card in Nick Roberts’s house, the night after he disappeared.’
Fisher bit his lower lip and refolded his arms. ‘You think this Carney might be one of the terrorists? Think he might have tailed your man Roberts to the club so they could ambush him there?’
Tom didn’t know. He felt as though he was running around in circles at the moment. ‘From what I’ve heard about Precious Tambo, she didn’t sound like the kind to keep company with Islamic jihadists.’
‘She was a stripper. Not many girls are in that line of work because of the job satisfaction. She needed money — and maybe the terrorists had plenty to spare. Also, she had dirt on Greeves, which could have brought his bodyguard into the trap. It wouldn’t have been kosher, but maybe she or the real Carney got in touch with Greeves’s people and the minister sent his henchman to suss her out.’
Tom was thinking along the same lines, but something didn’t add up. ‘Did you ever contact Greeves or his press secretary to put Precious’s allegations to him?’
Fisher shook his head. ‘No way. I was keeping this one close to my chest. Once I had the stripper signed up I was going to go to him at the last minute for comment — late in the afternoon of the day before we went to press.’
Tom shook his head at the tactic. It was gutter journalism — have a two-page spread of lurid allegations ready to go, and give the target no time to formulate a response. The last thing a tabloid such as the World wanted was a rational explanation for Greeves’s relationship with another woman or, worse, concrete evidence that the stripper was lying.
Fisher elaborated. ‘If I’d gone to him with what I had he could have come out with all guns firing, given something to everyone. You know, “Forgive me, people of Britain, I sinned once, but now my wife and family have forgiven me and are behind me.” That sort of crap.’
‘It’s a tough game,’ Tom said.
‘Yeah. You’re about to find that out the hard way. Give me something from the inside on this thing and I’ll go easy on you at the inquiry. I can make you look like a hero if I try hard enough.’
Tom pushed his seat back and stood up. He didn’t want to be in the same room as Fisher for a second longer, and he didn’t believe a word of what the man had just said.
‘I’ll call your superiors, tell them you were here under false pretences.’
Tom looked over his shoulder as he opened the door of the interview room. ‘Go ahead. I don’t think it’s going to make any difference to my future.’
Tom found a cafe near the newpaper’s offices and ordered a tea. He took out his notebook and pen and cell phone. He dialled Dan Morris’s number and the detective groaned when Tom told him who it was.
‘I need a favour,’ Tom said.
‘Well, you’re in no position to ask for one. I’m not going to let you drag me down with you. I’m hanging up now, Tom.’
‘Daniel Carney?’
‘What about him?’
Tom moved his tea away from his notebook and waited in silence.
‘I’m hanging up.’
Tom blew on the hot liquid and sipped it.
‘How do you know about him?’ Morris relented.
Tom smiled to himself. Fisher’s threat to tell his superiors about his unauthorised — illegal — investigation hadn’t fazed him at all. He’d meant what he’d said: nothing he did from here on in would make things worse. He had resigned himself to the fact that he would not survive the inquiry with his career intact. It was liberating, in a way, to be free of the rules and regulations that had for twenty-one years governed his life as a policeman. All that mattered now, all that might, possibly, keep him in the job was if he could find something the others had missed.
‘Tom? Answer me?’
‘Carney’s card was under Nick’s fridge — probably slipped off the door.’
‘Oh, right,’ Morris said.
Tom could almost hear the squeaky wheels turning in his colleague’s mind.
‘Well, you’re wasting your time there. I don’t think he exists,’ Morris said.
‘Really?’ Tom had already come to the same conclusion. It was hard to believe a freelancer who could command a budget of twenty-five thousand pounds from a newspaper would be unknown to other reporters in the industry. Also, the instant cards giving nothing but a cell number were a flimsy prop. Tom suspected the number was probably from a pre-paid SIM card.
‘The phone number was a pre-paid,’ Morris said. The confirmation brought no solace to Tom.
‘There are a load of Daniel Carneys in the phone book and we’ve just about got to the end of them, but nothing so far.’
‘Precious Tambo was raped, wasn’t she?’
‘Who told you that? I’m really going to hang up now, Tom. All the details of her death are being kept quiet.’
‘A reporter.’
Morris groaned again. ‘Bleeding hell. Goodbye, Tom.’
The phone went dead in his ear and Tom sipped some more of his tea.
Names. That was all he had. One didn’t exist, and the others, Nick Roberts, Precious Tambo and Robert Greeves — the ones who could give him the answers he needed — were all dead.
On the table was a copy of the Sun, which the last customer had spilled a latte on. Tom flipped through it as he thought about his next move. On page five he saw a headline that galvanised him into action.
SLAIN MINISTER’S FRIENDS TELL OF JANET’S GRIEF. GREEVES’S WIDOW PLANS TO SET UP CHARITY IN ROBERT’S HONOUR.
In his wallet was a laminated card with the phone numbers for Robert Greeves, his key staff members, and Greeves’s wife, Janet. There were numbers for the family homes in London, and in Bledlow Ridge, a village near West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. The newspaper story said Janet Greeves was at the family’s ‘secluded, upmarket rural retreat’. Tom thought she would have the answering machine on for the land-line but would have her cell phone turned on.
‘Hello?’ said the female voice.
‘Mrs Greeves?’
‘Who’s calling, please.’
Tom thought she was right to be cautious. She would have been hounded by hundreds of reporters so far.
‘Detective Sergeant Tom Furey, ma’am. I was with Mr Greeves, when
…’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am.’
‘I’ve read about you in the papers, Sergeant, though not by name. Is this an official call?’
She was frosty, dismissive. It was to be expected.
‘If you’ve seen the press reports, then you’ll know I’ve been suspended.’
‘Well, if you’re calling to apologise, it’s really not necessary. I’m sure you did everything you could have done.’
He’d expected more emotion. Perhaps anger, or if she was forgiving, empathy or pity for him at failing in the line of duty.
‘I’m sorry about the way things turned out, but I also have some questions for you which might help the investigation into your husband’s abduction and death.’
‘Yes, but you’re suspended, as you’ve just pointed out. I’ve told the investigating officers about Robert’s movements on the last few days before he left for Africa. There was nothing unusual. I understand if you’re trying to clear your name, but — ’
‘It’s not that. There are some sensitive matters that have come up, which I wanted to talk to you about in private. Perhaps it’s better if they’re not made part of the official record of investigation being undertaken by detectives Morris and Burnett.’
There was a pause on the end of the line.
‘I really should be going. I’m late for an appointment. Perhaps if you give me your number, I could — ’
‘It’s about the affair.’
Silence.
Tom waited. It always worked.
‘I meant what I said about being late. I’m going to be with my children this afternoon and this evening. I can see you at eleven, tomorrow, at the Bledlow Ridge house.’
Tom was wired. He felt truly alive for the first time since Bernard’s death. He’d pushed a button and Janet Greeves had responded. She knew about her husband’s infidelity — perhaps there had been more than one affair.
He hated having to wait until the next morning to see her.
Ideally, he would have played his trump card face to face. Now she’d have time to prepare herself for his questions, but he couldn’t do anything about that. He finished his tea, walked to the DLR station and made his way back to Highgate.
Once inside, in the warmth of his home, he went to the study at the top of the stairs and turned on his computer. He typed Robert Greeves and Africa in the internet search engine’s subject field. There were scores of hits, so he tried again, limiting it to news coverage and added Michael Fisher to the search words. This limited the hits to less than a page.
He clicked on Fisher’s last story for the World before Greeves’s ill-fated trip to meet with the South African defence minister. This was a critical piece about the ‘globe-trotting junior minister’s love affair with the dark continent and taxpayers’ money’. It showed a full-length photo of Greeves, manipulated so that he was wearing a pith helmet and Bombay bloomers, with a pair of oversize binoculars around his neck and a gin and tonic in one hand. The story listed the minister’s trips to Africa over the past three years.
As well as South Africa, the countries he had visited included Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana and Malawi. The last, Tom noted, Greeves was also reported to have visited four times on holiday, as well as the two ‘official’ visits listed in the chronology.
With its crystal-clear waters and colourful tropical fish, fresh-water Lake Malawi has proved far more attractive than Bognor Regis for Greeves during the past three parliamentary recesses, Fisher had written.
Tom made a note of the country on his pad and spent twenty minutes looking for information about it on the internet. He found a map and saw that the landlocked country was east of Zambia and northwest of Mozambique. It seemed to be largely made up of the lake which Fisher had referred to in the story.
He decided that when he picked Sannie up in the morning he’d ask her what she knew about Malawi.