Codename Omega Read online

  ‘And Leo?’ Nick prompted.

  ‘Leonora is in the hands of the law, and the law must take its course.’

  Nick leaned forward. ‘Do you mean that you’re just going to leave her to it?’

  Pascoe’s voice did not waver. ‘If Leonora has committed a crime, and confessed to that crime, then what do you expect me to do? She must pay the penalty.’

  ‘Even if the penalty is twenty years in jail, or the rest of her life in a cell in Broadmoor?’ Nick’s voice was beginning to crack at last.

  ‘If that is what the law decrees.’

  ‘But surely you’ll go and see her, make sure she has a good lawyer? Don’t you want to know why she did it?

  ‘It would be most improper for me to become involved in any way. The integrity of the service must not be compromised.’

  ‘So, you’re going to sit back here and let her go through all that on her own, without a single friend to help her?’

  ‘Leo knew how sensitive the mission was. She knew that if anything went wrong Triple S could not become involved. She was in a better position to judge than you. She has preserved her cover. It would be worse than pointless for me to break it.’

  Nick rose and his voice was thick and unsteady. ‘You sent her there! You gave her this job! It was you who brought her into the service in the first place; you who persuaded her to live so many different lives that in the end she couldn’t tell what was real and what was invention! And now you’re going to let her rot – to “preserve the integrity of the service!” What integrity?’

  Pascoe’s hands were gripping the edge of the desk. In the lamplight Nick could see that the knuckles were white.

  ‘At least let me go and see her,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Out of the question!’ For the first time Pascoe raised his voice. ‘You must see that any contact between you two is impossible. The police would immediately conclude that you were her accomplice.’

  ‘Perhaps I was!’ Nick was shouting now, his voice raw with unshed tears. ‘Perhaps we both were! At least I’m prepared to share the rap with her. And you – you love her too – for what it’s worth!’

  Pascoe’s voice was quiet again, icy calm. ‘I forbid you to contact Leonora in any way. That is an order.’

  ‘An order?’ Nick could feel his knees trembling. In spite of the years of hard training and harder experience, the shock was beginning to have its effect. He knew suddenly that if he did not get out within a minute or two he would break down completely. ‘All right! If that’s an order, then you can have my resignation!’ He put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, feeling for the warrant card which usually lay there. Then he remembered that on this mission he had carried neither that nor his gun. ‘You’ll have my letter tomorrow.’

  Pascoe’s voice stopped him half-way to the door.

  ‘Marriot! You will remember that, whether you are currently employed by the service or not, you are still bound by the undertakings that you gave when you joined. You have signed the Official Secrets Act’.

  Nick drew a deep breath. He knew when he was beaten. He walked to the door and closed it quietly behind him.

  Chapter Two

  ‘ACCUSED WOMEN ON HUNGER STRIKE’.

  The newspaper placard hit Nick like a blow in the stomach. He hunched his shoulders and ducked his neck into the collar of his jacket as he bought a copy, as if the news-vendor might accuse him of being responsible. The warm spell had come to an end and a cold rain spattered into his face as he turned into the Fulham Road and fumbled for his key.

  Walking into the flat, he was aware briefly that if Stone could see it now his distaste would be real and well-founded. The living room was littered with empty glasses, mugs rimmed with the gluey remnants of coffee and plates on which the remains of two of three half-eaten meals were congealing. Through the open door to the bedroom the unmade bed spilled onto the carpet to join the dirty shirts and underwear which lay where they had fallen. The place stank of sweat and stale whisky.

  Nick dropped into a chair, unwrapped the new bottle and reached for a glass. When he had swallowed a couple of gulps he opened the paper and found the report.

  ‘Two women, each accused of separate murders, have gone on hunger strike while awaiting trial at the Risley Remand Centre on Merseyside. The women were named as Elizabeth Anne Walker, who is to be tried for the murder of sports goods rep Peter Stone in Liverpool ten days ago, and Margaret Mary Donelly, who is accused of the shooting of a security guard during the IRA attack on a Securicor van in the same city last month. Solicitors for the women said today that the hunger strike was intended to draw attention to the fact that they refuse to accept the jurisdiction of the English courts and wish to be regarded as “prisoners of conscience”. Donelly’s political affiliations are, of course, clear since she freely admits to membership of the IRA, but those of Elizabeth Walker are rather more obscure. It appears that she is a member of an extreme feminist group calling itself “The Daughters of Sunrise” but little is known about the organisation except that it is dedicated to the overthrow of the present social structure by violent means. The women began their fast last night and say that they will continue it until their “special status” is recognised.’

  Nick ran his hands over his face, becoming aware of a stubble of beard. When had he last shaved – two days ago, three? He could not remember, any more than he could remember when he had last eaten a proper meal. The last ten days had blurred into an indistinct recollection of getting drunk, sleeping, sobering up, starting to think and taking refuge in the bottle again, punctuated with spasmodic attempts to pull himself together. He had not sent in his letter of resignation, nor had he been into the office again. What Pascoe thought of the situation he neither knew nor cared.

  He thrust his fingers into his hair and tried to force himself to concentrate on the report, convinced that here he might find a clue to the questions which had tormented him since Stone’s death. He began to reread it but in spite of himself his mind wandered off into memories of Leonora, which inevitably meant memories of Stone as well. ‘Elizabeth Walker’, eh? They hadn’t broken her cover, then. He almost smiled at the thought of the field day the press would have if they knew who they were really dealing with. ‘Ex-Actress on Murder Charge’; ‘Mystery Star Accused of Shooting’. Although it was four years since she had made her only film she was still good for a photograph and a few lines in the gossip columns every time she attended a first night or dined out with a different man; and for those who remembered her previous stage career as a serious classical actress she was the occasion of many regretful sighs. Only half a dozen people in the world knew that Leonora Cavendish, stage name Leonora Carr, also known as Laura Cavendish, was an agent for Triple S; and, of those, fewer still knew the tragic story of how she had come to be one. [See A Woman Called Omega.]

  It was just over a year ago that Nick and Stone had had their first encounter with her, and she had kept them wrong-footed for days by constantly changing her name and appearance until she finally decided to trust them. Since then she had appeared and disappeared, comet-like, in their lives; sometimes assigned by Pascoe to work with them on a case; sometimes ringing up one or other of them with a suggestion that they might accompany her to a concert, or have dinner at her Chelsea flat, or go with her on one of her less conventional escapades which might include anything from test-driving a new sports car to diving on a wreck; sometimes, infuriatingly, incommunicado, in the country cottage to which they were never invited. They each knew that they were both in love with her, and knew too that, while their love was not reciprocated, neither was it totally unrequited. Oddly enough, instead of arousing jealousy the situation had created an extra bond between them; only they had developed a kind of delicacy about asking each other what their plans were for the evening, or what they had done the night before.

  Well, all that was over now. Nick reached for the whisky bottle, but then put it aside and instead got up and took a shower. He was
shaving when the phone rang.

  ‘Mr Marriot?’ The cool, impersonal tone of the girl at Control was instantly recognizable. ‘This is the Spartacus Health Club here. I have a message from Mr Pascoe. He would like to see you at the house in Hertfordshire.’

  ‘Tell Mr Pascoe…’ Nick began, then changed his mind and put the phone down. Bloody typical of Pascoe, he thought, to leave him to stew all this time and then calmly assume that he would be ready to return to duty when summoned. Well, Pascoe could get knotted!

  He looked at his face in the mirror. His eyelids were puffy, his eyes bloodshot and his skin, where it was emerging from under the stubble, looked like the underbelly of a particularly unhealthy frog. He finished shaving and went into the kitchen. There was nothing in the fridge, and a search through the cupboards produced only an esoteric collection of items, none of which seemed to relate to the others in any gastronomically acceptable way. In the end he settled for a tin of beans and the remains of a Christmas cake which had been presented to him by a nice old lady whose cottage they had used for a surveillance job last December. Somewhat to his surprise, by the time he had finished them he felt a good deal better. Taking advantage of the improvement he put the whisky bottle out of sight behind the cake tin and set about clearing up the flat. When it was done he stood by an open window and looked out. The rain had stopped and a golden gash in the clouds was angling slanting beams of sunlight across the wet roofs. The air touching his face was cool and moist and smelt of wet tarmac and the Thames. He closed the window, went into the bedroom and pulled out the overnight bag which was always ready packed at the bottom of the wardrobe. Fifteen minutes later he was on the A41, heading north.

  The house in Hertfordshire was a Georgian building which had once been a farmhouse but had long ago lost all the land attached to it. It stood in a little copse of trees by a lane which wound its way across gently undulating country towards St Albans. Nick knew it well because it was often used as a safe house for ‘guests’ of Triple S who needed somewhere to stay out of the public eye. As he drove up to it the rose-red brick of the facade glowed in the warm light of the westering sun.

  The door was opened to him by Waller, Pascoe’s driver and bodyguard. He looked Nick over with an expression of impassive distaste and nodded towards a door.

  ‘In there.’

  Nick put down his bag and crossed towards the room which, in the house’s palmier days, had been known as the library. He knocked and went in.

  ‘You took your time!’

  Nick stopped dead. The room faced west and the figure by the window was only an outline against the setting sun but the voice was unmistakable. He reached out and gripped the back of a chair. Once or twice during the last few days, going out for food or a fresh supply of whisky, he had experienced the phenomenon of an apparently familiar figure, half glimpsed among the crowd – something about the carriage of a head, or the colour of hair which produced a brief illusion of recognition; but this was altogether different and he was suddenly afraid that he had been hitting the whisky bottle harder even than he had realized.

  His companion moved towards him, hiding concern under a show of amusement.

  ‘Hey, come on,’ said Stone, ‘you’re supposed to be pleased to see me!’

  Nick felt his face go numb as the blood drained away from it and his hands shook so that the chair creaked at its joints. Stone muttered, ‘Christ, Nick!’ and moved away to a side-table. Nick heard the clink of bottle and glass and then smelt brandy as it was held under his nose. He looked down at the hand that held the glass – strong, short-fingered, the back of it lightly flecked with golden hairs. It reminded him of the time they had worked together defusing a bomb, working from directions given over the radio by an expert fifty miles away, their four hands moving in such close coordination that they might have belonged to one person. He could feel the faint warmth given off by Stone’s body as he stood by his shoulder. This was no ghost. Slowly realization began to dawn.

  ‘Pascoe!’ Nick muttered between clenched teeth. ‘Bloody Pascoe!’

  He took the glass and raised it to his lips but the smell of it reminded him of his last conversation with his chief and he set it down again untouched. Slowly he turned and looked at Stone.

  ‘If you ever do this to me again you bloody well will be dead, because I’ll kill you myself! And then I’ll go after Pascoe.’

  The ice-blue eyes met his own with a glint of laughter.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea. Do it the other way round, and I’ll help you with Pascoe.’

  Suddenly they were both laughing and Nick reached out and gripped his arm.

  ‘When you’ve both quite finished disposing of my life…’ Pascoe said smoothly from the doorway.

  They turned to look at him.

  ‘You’re owed an explanation, Marriot,’ Pascoe said. ‘Let’s sit down, shall we?’

  It was the nearest he was likely to get to an apology, and Nick knew it. He looked from Pascoe to Stone.

  ‘Do you know what’s happening to Leo?’

  ‘Of course I know!’ Stone returned with some asperity.

  ‘OK!’ said Nick, his anger returning. ‘So, the whole thing was a fix. You know all about it. Presumably, Leo knows all about it. Why was I kept in the dark?’

  Pascoe moved over to the polished library table and sat down at the head of it. ‘Sit down and let me explain.’

  Torn between fury and curiosity Nick continued to stand gazing rebelliously from one to the other, until Stone put a warning hand behind his elbow and urged him towards the table.

  ‘OK,’ he said again, dropping into a chair. ‘Leo didn’t shoot you, so presumably you jumped. Then what?’

  ‘I swam under the pier, hauled myself out the other side and Waller was waiting for me with a car and a change of clothes.’

  ‘Bloody marvellous!’ Nick gritted his teeth. ‘So, while I was sweating it out in the nick, you were comfortably tucked up in bed! So, tell me, why was I the only one who didn’t know what was going on?’

  ‘We needed a witness,’ Pascoe said. ‘We couldn’t produce a body for obvious reasons, and we thought it was unlikely that the police would charge Leonora simply because she was found with a gun in her hand. We had to have someone who would convince them that a murder had actually taken place.’

  ‘I still don’t see why I couldn’t be told,’ Nick protested.

  ‘We just didn’t think you were that good an actor,’ Stone told him.

  ‘All right, point taken,’ Nick agreed unwillingly. ‘But what about since then? Why couldn’t I be told when I got back to London?’

  ‘The police might have wanted to question you again,’ Pascoe pointed out reasonably. Though what they’d have got out of you, in the state you’ve been in the last ten days, is highly questionable, I should say.’

  Nick glowered at him. ‘You’ve had me watched!’

  ‘I’d hardly let you drop out of sight for that long after what had happened,’ Pascoe said mildly.

  ‘So, what’s magic about today?’ Nick demanded. ‘Why am I suddenly permitted to rejoin the land of the living?’

  ‘What is “magic” as you put it,’ Pascoe said, ‘is that we are now ready to proceed to the next phase of the operation.’

  ‘I still don’t know what the first phase was all about,’ Nick muttered.

  Pascoe leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his folded hands. ‘Let’s take it from the top, as Leo would say. About three months ago we started to hear rumours from various sources that the IRA were planning something big for this summer. We couldn’t find out any details, except that it was going to be in England, and it was going to be quote the biggest shock since the assassination of Lord Mountbatten unquote. For some time we couldn’t get a lead of any sort. Then the Merseyside police caught Margaret Donelly practically red-handed on that Securicor job. We’d heard that there was an IRA cell operating somewhere in the Liverpool area and we had picked up hints that the
ir main job was to prepare for this major coup, whatever it is, so this was obviously a real opportunity. The trouble was that preliminary psychiatrists’ reports suggested that Donelly was not the type who was going to break easily. However, we did discover that, as well as being a militant republican, she was also a militant feminist and it seemed to us that if we could get someone alongside her – another woman obviously – we might stand a better chance of learning something. We couldn’t afford to wait until after the trial, so it had to be while she was on remand. It had to be quick, and it had to be murder, because prisoners accused of murder are kept apart from the others at Risley, in the hospital section. Hence the rather melodramatic scene at the Pier Head.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ Nick put in, ‘how did the police get there so quickly?’

  ‘Oh, the police received an anonymous tip-off that a shipment of drugs was coming ashore in that area that night. They didn’t find any, of course, but it made sure that they were out in strength.’

  ‘I still can’t see,’ Stone put in, as if returning to a previously argued point, ‘why Donelly should trust anyone just because she happened to be accused of murder too.’

  ‘Well, there were various factors in our favour,’ Pascoe said. ‘Obviously, it had to be the right sort of murder – i.e. a politically motivated one. Hence the “Daughters of the Sunrise”.’

  ‘You mean they were a complete invention?’ Nick queried.

  ‘Oh, a total figment of the imagination,’ Pascoe agreed. ‘Leo thought of the name, actually.’

  ‘I might have guessed,’ Stone muttered, and Nick caught his eye and felt the first stirrings of a hitherto unrecognized joy.

  ‘What other factors?’ he asked Pascoe.

  ‘Well, obviously anyone in that position feels isolated, vulnerable – a woman more so than a man. Leo will have played upon their mutual dislike of the present government, indeed of all authority and on their hatred of the police and their contempt for men in general. That is her strongest card, given what we know about Donelly.’