Queen's Witness: A Mystery Where Three Worlds Collide in Violence

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Part I: The Body

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From The National Chronicle, 3 November:

Remains of Body Found in House Fire

The remains of a human body were found yesterday morning by police searching the incinerated premises of a house that had caught fire in Dalkeith Road, Glasgow. The cause of the fire is unknown at this stage but a spokeswoman for Glasgow City Police said that the remains were those of a David Mortimer, 46, who worked as a hotel inspector for the Scottish Tourist Board.

Neighbours said that the fire had started sometime after 2.00 am and swept through the house in seconds. Adjoining houses were evacuated by police, who were early on the scene, but the fire service managed to contain the flames and prevent damage to other properties.

Mr Mortimer lived alone and police have appealed for next of kin to come forward.

The fire was finally brought under control at about 4.30 am, with neighbours being allowed back into their homes at 6.00 am. Police said foul play was not suspected. [Caledonian News Agency.]

***

Four throaty Rolls Royce RB211 turbines screamed past, too close for comfort, lifting at the last moment from the cold wet runway. Above them in the sleety night, Matthew Kent could just make out the crimson-and-gold livery of a GulfAir Boeing as she rose and was swallowed by the snow clouds. Someone was shouting at him but he had his gloved hands over his ears – he didn’t know which was worse, the metallic keening of the plane, or the bitter cold. He’d been stuck on this godforsaken outfield of Heathrow for thirty-six hours straight, jockeying for position in the freezing mud with a hundred-and-twenty other journalists from the world’s press, ever since this hostage situation had exploded into life. His feet in his boots were dead blocks of ice, he couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers, melted sleet dripped from his nose and chin, his cheeks hurt, his plastic identity tag had got snagged in the zip of his jerkin so he couldn’t close it properly, and his thermos was empty. Wind whipped pellets of sleet into his eyes, like gunshot. Tonight, right now as a matter of fact, he was missing a re-run of Grand Hotel on TV. He’d had better days.

"Matt! Matt! Look!" The voice of Kelvin Clarke, chief photographer on The National Chronicle, the paper they both worked for, finally broke through to him, and his eyes followed his colleague’s outstretched arm. At a glance he took in what was happening and his first instinct was to wipe the sleet from his watch face and inspect the time: 1.03 am.

Bu-gger! he growled.

Two hundred yards away, like a beached whale, was the grey-and-white fuselage of a Tupolev aircraft, Aeroflot flight 568, St Petersburg to New York, forced down the previous day by Chechen terrorists with 184 passengers and crew on board. Negotiations had been going on non-stop and Matt, as crime correspondent of TheChronicle, had been here since the day before yesterday – no break for sleep or a shave – and so had Clarke. Part of the Heathrow perimeter airfield had been cordoned off for the media. But no light or flashlights were allowed, even at night. Especially at night. Clarke wasn’t having a good day either.

So far, one moving staircase had been brought up to the aircraft, water had been taken on board, and a woman who’d had a heart attack had been taken off. Then the stairway had been removed. Other than that: zilch. For the press, no news was bad news.

But now, where Clarke pointed, where he had his camera aimed, directly behind the Tupolev, and a further two hundred yards deeper into the sleet, equipment was being put in place, white vans were being slowly, quietly formed up in a straight line, where they couldn’t be seen from the plane. Was this the start of the end game?

‘It’s a bit too soon to be playing John Wayne, don’t you think?’ growled Matt to no one in particular. ‘I thought the whole thing with hostages was to play it slow.’

‘Maybe there’s been a breakthrough,’ said a voice in the dark. ‘Maybe they’ve surrendered.’

‘Not the Chechens,’ said someone else. ‘It could mean that negotiations have broken down and that the Home Secretary wants to send a message to other terrorists. That Britain is no soft touch.’

‘And if the plane blows up, it’s only Russians inside.’ Matt wasn’t a big fan of the Home Secretary. ‘Perfect politics – a no-lose situation.’

Here, said Clarke, have this. He passed across his spare camera with a zoom lens.

Matt closed one eye and held the camera to his other. Yes, the magnification was considerable. Men in black and wearing woolen helmets were getting out of the vans. Armed men.

Bu-gger! Matt whispered a second time, into the sleet. Only he heard. A hundred and twenty pairs of eyes strained in the darkness, all focused on the white vans and the men.

Matt kept watching. About two hours before, Heathrow’s main runways had been re-opened – after more than a day when nothing had landed or taken off, radiating chaos across the world. Despite the ungodly hour, long-haul flights, whose passengers had been sleeping in the terminals, were now taxiing out to the runway, and leaving. Not many, because the hostage crisis had played havoc with pilots’ body rhythms, but a few.

Once the white vans had lined up, nothing else appeared to happen for another half an hour. The attention of the journalists began to wander. A whisky flask was passed around. An American woman with a CBNN identity tag stamped around, trying to get her circulation going. She wore a long coat and a Russian fur hat. Passing Matt she said, ‘Must be even colder up where you are.’

A smile was called for and he gave it his best shot. One of the incidental problems of being six foot three (‘and a half’, as his niece insisted) was the height jokes. ‘Yes,’ he replied genially, ‘the sleet’s turned to snow up here.’

The press enclosure, which journalists had christened ‘the gulag’, was away from the terminals, next to a service road. It cleverly gave them a good view of any action that might take place, at the same time quarantining them from the public and the negotiating nerve centre back in the airport proper. Government press officers ferried between the two.

Matt watched as a big jumbo manoeuvred away from the British Airways Terminal. After being shunted back from the gate, the plane trundled forward under its own steam, and approached the vicinity of the Tupolev. With nothing better to do, he focused Clarke’s zoom lens on the 747. Where was this one off to, he wondered – India, Los Angeles, Jo’burg? He found the line of windows and ran his gaze from front to back, trying to see if the passengers gave him any clue. Reaching the back of the plane, he started again at the front. Odd. The lights were on in the plane’s main cabin, but through the lens Matt could see no passengers. He ran the zoom lens from front to back a third time. Yes, he was right. The plane was empty. Was it being flown out deliberately empty, because all the airline’s planes were now in the wrong place? Or was it some part of a plan in connection with the hijack?

Matt nudged Clarke, stooped and put his mouth next to the photographer’s ear. Their breath mingled in the eerie light. Can you see any passengers on that BA jet?

Clarke, a squat, dark-haired man, glanced briefly up at Matt, frowned, then aimed his camera at the 747. He played with the lens. No doubt he had even more magnification with his main camera than Matt did with the spare he’d been lent. After a few moments, Clarke turned back to him. He shook his head.

Something’s about to happen, Matt said. What a bitch!

The BA plane was now nearly abreast of the Aeroflot flight. Another plane was about two hundred yards behind and the noise level was once more close to uncomfortable. The wing lights of the 747 picked out the sleet, like so many fireflies phosphorescing for a moment, then fading.

As Matt watched, two ungainly vehicles broke free from the chain of white vans behind the Tupolev and trundled forward.

Camouflage, breathed Matt.

Clarke took his face away from his camera. What?

The noise from the BA plane – it’s camouflage, disguising any sounds those trucks might make, as they get close to the Aeroflot plane.

He could now make out what they were. Small, flat-bed trucks with zig-zag extensions, the kind that lift up, enabling municipal workmen to clean or repair overhead street lights. Atop each, on a small platform, were two men in black.

The BA jet was now slowly rolling past the Aeroflot plane, and turning on to the runway.  Its place was taken by another BA jet, this time an Airbus. As it growled along the taxi-way, Matt could again see that the main cabin lights were on, but that the plane had no passengers. But you needed a zoom lens to be certain. The Chechens inside the Aeroflot Tupolev would almost certainly never guess.

The noise was now more than uncomfortable. The trucks, meanwhile, had stopped behind the tail of the Aeroflot with their extensions beginning to reach up and out, over the back half of the fuselage, high above it.

The 747 opened its throttle on the runway, as the pilot tested the engines and prepared to commit the plane to take-off. A third BA jet was pulling up behind the second, which had now drawn abreast of the Tupolev but about fifty yards beyond.

There was a steady, high-pitched metallic wailing from all three planes. The ground throbbed.

One of the trucks had its extension arched right over the Tupolev and, so far as Matt could see, the platform had come to a stop just above the doorway that opened from the main fuselage on to the wing. The other truck was not so much extended, with its platform just above the doorway at the very back of the plane, on the opposite side.

The roar of the 747’s engines deepened as it began to accelerate on the runway. Matt wanted to cover his ears again, so painful was the noise, but instead he held the camera to his eye, the zoom glued to the Tupolev. As the 747 picked up speed, as the howl of its engines rolled across the outfield, about thirty men in black ran from the white vans in a direct straight line behind the Aeroflot plane. When they reached the Tupolev, they crouched down and crawled under the aircraft, some grouped under the forward doors, others under the wings, still more at the rear. Courtesy of the zoom, Matt could see that they were all wearing masks – gas masks.

The second BA plane – the Airbus – turned on to the runway, with the third aircraft right up behind it, almost level with the Tupolev. A fourth plane was arriving down the taxi-way. The noise still hurt Matt’s ears.

Suddenly, he noticed that the men on the platforms were hanging off them, upside down, their feet held by a rail that seemed specially built for the purpose. The men’s heads and arms were just inches above the doorways.

An attack was imminent – that much was clear. But how were they going to get into the Tupolev? Did the doors open from the outside? Surely not.

The Airbus was now on the runway and the third plane – a Boeing 757 – was alongside the Aeroflot. A second Airbus was two hundred yards further back. The whine and the growl and the shriek of the engines filled the night, held down by the low cloud, and seemed to scrape inside Matt’s ears, unravelling down the bone of his jaw and making his teeth ache. Still, he used his hands to keep the zoom focused on the Tupolev. The pilot of the first Airbus opened his throttle and the tone of the engines rose still further and then deepened as he engaged full power. At exactly the same time, as if choreographed in some vast ballet, the 757 eased forward slowly, the pitch of its engines also rising.

What happened next took only seconds. Simultaneously, two of the Tupolev’s doors – one over the wings and one at the back – swung open. The one at the back threw out a ramp, which began to inflate. At this, the men hanging above the doors could be seen throwing things into the cabin. Matt counted to three, then watched as the men hanging upside down, reversed their position and abseiled down the side of the plane, using cable fixed to their platforms. They disappeared inside the plane. What looked like smoke, but what Matt realised must be tear gas or CS gas, began to billow from the fuselage.

Immediately, the rattle of automatic gunfire was heard, returned, and then it stopped. It was heard again, and stopped again. Shortly after, figures began to jump from the rear door of the plane on to the inflatable ramp. Some fell heavily but all were helped on their way, into the night, by other figures in black waiting under the fuselage. Many of the passengers were coughing and wiping their eyes, as the cold air eased the effects of whatever gas had been used.

Another burst of gunfire, accompanied this time by screaming and shouting. An ambulance raced across the tarmac and parked under the tail of the plane, facing back the way it had come. Matt now realised that the white vans drawn up in a straight line were all ambulances.

People were pouring from the rear door and the door above the wing. But then the door at the front of the plane opened, a figure leaned out and aimed its gun at the passengers on the wing. He fired. Matt saw three people hit but then the bullets must have pierced the skin of the wing where the fuel tanks were located, for flames appeared and quickly lit back, over the turbine.

A fire engine appeared out of the gloom but Matt was too busy watching the man at the front door who had himself now been shot and had fallen to the ground.

The back half of the plane was now alight but Matt could also see figures running from the opposite side of the plane. Doors must have been opened on that side too. People were rubbing their eyes and crying, some were too old or too pregnant to run, but there was no mistaking their urge to get as far away from the Aeroflot flight as quickly as possible.

Another burst of gunfire, rapidly returned. More figures disgorged from the rear door, as liquid flame started to drip from the wing. People suddenly began jumping from the forward door, even though there was no ramp. This was desperate, as Matt could see. One woman just fell, and stayed down. Presumably her legs were broken. But the desperation was soon explained as two explosions rocked the plane. One, in the centre of the fuselage, overwhelmed the noise of the surrounding aircraft, a low, loud boom that Matt felt before he heard. Some windows of the Tupolev exploded outward, others buckled, still more clouded over. Nanoseconds later, he watched as the flightdeck filled with a vivid yellow flame, followed by black smoke, and a second boom, shorter lived than the first but followed by the rain of broken glass and the wail of a siren.

In the gulag, no one spoke, at least not for a few seconds. Cameras whirred and clicked as fingers of flame edged through the shattered windows, the charred carcass of the Tupolev a smoking, dead dragon, crackling and hissing in the sleet.

Still with the zoom focused on the plane, Matt stamped his feet and tried to get the circulation going in his toes.

What a night, eh? said the woman in the Russian hat. Fantastic image. And in good time for Breakfast News.

Matt lowered the camera. The engine noise was at last beginning to abate and the Tupolev was being surrounded. I think we’d better find out how many were killed, don’t you? he replied gruffly. A plane is only a plane, however much it costs.

He wasn’t normally so ill-mannered.

He looked at his watch: 3.14 am. Yes, the woman was right, damn her. The raid was in good time for breakfast news. But he’d missed his own deadline by a couple of hours. However spectacular the image, however important this story, however many people had or hadn’t been killed or maimed, and despite the fact that he’d been here to observe it all, there’d be precious little left by the time his own newspaper, The National Chronicle, hit the streets tomorrow.

He stamped his feet again and growled at Clarke. Bu-gger!

***

From The Standard, 4 November.

Heathrow Hijack Ended in SAS Attack

Twelve Killed in Early Morning Assault

Rescue of 172 Branded a Success by Home Secretary

By our Home News staff

The Heathrow hijack was ended shortly after three o’clock this morning, when a crack team from the SAS regiment carried out a carefully planned assault on the Tupolev 9D aircraft, drawn up near the perimeter of London’s premier airport.

In the operation, which was directed personally by the Home Secretary, Edward Wyndham, assisted by the Commissioner of Police, Sir Martin Wheeler, twelve people were killed, all five terrorists responsible for the hijack, three crew, and four passengers. One hundred and seventy two passengers were rescued unhurt, though one woman broke both legs when she jumped from the forward exit without a ramp. She was taken to Hammersmith Hospital where she is reported to be in discomfort but no danger.

Two explosions largely destroyed the Tupolev aircraft, flight 568, en route from St Petersburg to New York. One explosion was caused when fuel tanks detonated, a second, when one of the terrorists pulled the pin of a grenade on the flight deck, killing himself and three of the crew.

Despite the twelve deaths, the Home Secretary, who interrupted a shooting holiday on his estate in Scotland, to direct the Heathrow operation, described the rescue as ‘a complete success. The SAS were magnificent,’ he said after the operation was concluded. ‘They had a job to do and they carried it out to perfection.’

Questioned about the deaths, and the fact that the assault was carried out only a day after the hijack was begun, Mr Wyndham said, ‘We had our reasons for acting when we did. One reason was that terrorists expect the authorities to spin out negotiations, thus at the least securing publicity for their cause. They were expecting us to spin out negotiations and so were only half-prepared when we stormed the aircraft. The surprise worked to our advantage.

‘I am of course deeply sorry that four passengers and three crew died in the attack, and we send our deepest condolences to their families. But three of the passengers were killed by the terrorists and incidents like this have to be seen in the long-term. Negotiating with these thugs for days on end offered no guarantee that the passengers would have been freed unharmed at the end. As it is, Britain has sent a message to the world, that we are no soft touch when it comes to hijacking.

‘The main result of the assault – the death of all the terrorists – also reinforces our policy of being as tough as possible where crime is concerned. I guarantee that, as a result of our operation this morning, hijacks are less likely to occur in the future, and much less likely to take place in the United Kingdom.’

Asked how the SAS actually got into the Tupolev, both Mr Wyndham and Sir Martin Wheeler refused to discuss operational details.

On other pages:

Chronology of the hijack: pages 2, 3, 4

Interviews with survivors: 5 and 6

‘Wyndham wins Again’: Leading article: 8

2

A beep sounded, then some whirrings and clicks, as the answer machine cleared its throat. Don Vito, wise-ass, dis is Kay. Listen, bigshot, unless you wanna sleep wit’ the fishes, you call. Ya’hear? Matt knew that Luca Brazzi rasp anywhere – Zita, his ten-year-old niece and also, bless her, his god daughter. Actually, uncle Matt, she went on, reverting to her non-Brazzi Dorset voice, I’ve got a question. I need help, and I need it bad. It’s a fancy crossword we’re doing at school. Designed to make us think laterally" – I mean, can you believe this gar-bage? The clue is, ‘No heavy fruit’ and it’s a film title, one word, nine characters. Please help, and save my life. After all, you are the film buff of the family, as well as the black sheep.’ She giggled, pleased with her joke. ‘Please call. Anna and mum and dad send huge love. We all miss you. Byyy!"

He didn’t feel like smiling but he did his best. As he always did when he thought of Zita. He scribbled a note to himself on a yellow Post-It and stuck it to the screen of his computer, where it wouldn’t be forgotten or lost. Zita was his favourite niece. Matt Kent came from a family of women – two sisters who both had two daughters. Though his mother had died, the men in the family were still easily outnumbered. Zita was movie mad and, for the moment anyway, wanted to be an actress. She had her stage name all ready: Kay Keaton.

Matt looked across at The National Chronicle’s newsroom. It was twenty-to-ten on the morning of a cold Monday in early November and for the moment there were fifty empty desks, making the place resemble some vast archaeological site, the work surfaces barely visible beneath a stratigraphy of books and pamphlets, old page proofs and sandwich wrappers. A young black man in a crisp denim shirt with button-down collar was sorting post into pigeon holes fixed against one wall. The travel editor, a heavily made-up forty-five-year-old with an impressive bust, was already playing with a brightly-coloured page layout on her computer screen. She waved. By the picture desk a bald photographer in a leather bomber jacket was stuffing small boxes of film into a bag, at the same time muttering into his mobile, wedged between his jaw and his shoulder. Phones rang. Matt could smell warm plastic from the foreign desk’s fax machine nearby, as it spewed out messages arriving from different time zones. He was rarely in the office early, and hadn’t been here at this time since – well, since he’d spent the night with the Fashion Editor downstairs, and … he didn’t want to think about the rest.

Another voice on the machine. Matt, it’s Chris Proudlock at Sotheby’s. Just to let you know that in our next sale of film stuff we have a self-portrait by Hitchcock, one of those drawings you said you wanted. I’ll put the details in the post.

No need to make a note this time, not if Proudlock was sending the material. Instead, Matt sighed and rested his forehead gently on the desk top. He found the cool surface soothing. Someone was scraping the inside of his skull with a bicycle chain. The previous night he had spent too long at a club in King’s Cross. An American singer who knew her Jerome Kern inside out and had a voice – broken yet undefeated – that travelled over unimaginable sadness to escape her lips. He hadn’t got home till three.

Another beep, another pause. Then, Mr Kent – I don’t know if you’ll remember me – it’s Stella Donaldson. A deep voice, cracked at the edges and ravaged by tobacco. You wrote about my boyfriend’s trial … oh, three years ago now. Tony Rafferty his name was. Something odd has happened. Creepy. A loose cough. Dangerous, even. It’s about that body, burned in a house in Glasgow. Could you phone me, please? Soon as possible. The voice croaked a number.

Matt lifted his head. He used an old press release to wipe a semi-circle of hot coffee from the surface of his desk and stared at the paper cup steaming in front of him. He scribbled Donaldson and the number on another Post-It and stuck that to his computer screen. Meanwhile the machine had stopped and re-set itself. Three messages in all. If Matt Kent measured out his days in answer-phone messages, his wasn’t much of a life.

A phone rang across the office. Then another. Machines picked up. The news editor had appeared and was answering a phone even before he took off his raincoat. The assistant books editor was attempting to carry a dozen newly-delivered volumes from the book department’s pigeon hole, holding them wedged beneath her chin. Matt bent his head and puckered his lips, so he could sip his coffee where it was, on the desk top, without touching the cup. As he did so, his own phone rang, warbling directly into his ear and trembling the coffee. He jerked his head away from the cup and snatched at the receiver.

‘Yes?’ Not a bad Luca Brazzi impression of his own.

‘Matt?’

‘Yes.’

‘The editor will see you now.’

He grunted and replaced the phone. He didn’t have a headache exactly. It was not unlike the way his feet had felt inside his boots on the outfield at Heathrow: his brain was a block of something that had expanded when it froze, making it too big for its container. Standing, he picked up the paper cup with his finger and thumb. He took it with him, holding it at arm’s length as he negotiated the wasteland of the news room. Small craters where space had been cleared for work, between the debris of unread government reports and Internet print-outs, through a no-man’s-land of discarded layout pages, last year’s phone books, the shards of extinct pizza boxes.

Right at foreign, left at pictures, right at travel, straight on past Letters. The editor’s office was in a corner, by the windows that looked out on to St Paul’s, standing grey and fat above the sludge brown waters of the river. The editor’s office was little more than a glorified glass box really, lined with venetian blinds. Pulled firmly shut.

Before the editor’s office, however, there was a smaller one to be negotiated, occupied by two middle-aged women with serious hairstyles and self-confident nail-polish. Matt and his colleagues had often speculated that there must be, somewhere in the City or near Whitehall, a company with some such name as Praetorian PA’s. The editor’s secretaries – or PA’s, whatever they were called –  terrified him, and not only him.

Unaccountably, however, this morning Daphne flashed him a smile that would not have disgraced Rita Hayworth and said, ‘Go straight in.’

The editor’s door was open. He closed it behind him. Windows filled one of the walls in this room, giving a view north over the ever-changing roofs of Blackfriars, Ludgate Hill, the western approaches of the City. Framed photographs by the paper’s top cameramen filled another wall. A mass wedding of two thousand in Korea, a Russian submarine which had sunk and been raised from the bottom of the Arctic Sea, Princess Diana in one of her happier moments as a kindergarten teacher, the goal that put the England football team out of the World Cup. Two sofas were arranged in an L shape, around a low table where were displayed copies of all that morning’s daily papers.

‘Ah, right, have a seat.’ The editor was reading a newspaper, The Journal, the main opposition. She pointed. ‘See this?’ She turned the paper so he could see. ‘Better graphic than ours, clearer, more intelligent. We’re slipping in that department. It’s got to change.’

She folded the paper, threw it into the waste-paper bin, got up and walked around the desk. Barbara Fielding would not see thirty-five again but she still turned heads. She was wearing a black two-piece suit, over a white shirt. Black stockings. Her blonde hair twisted above her head like summer straw, held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. Several strands of hair had fallen down and Matt noticed that as she absently pushed them back up again, red polish had been chipped off two of her nails, in lines, like tulip petals.

She sat in an easy chair opposite Matt and crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up her thighs. I’ve seen you looking better, Matt.

He’d seen her looking better too but all he said was, Late night at the Peru.

You playing there, these days?

He shook his head. Not a good idea. I haven’t played in months, Barbara. You know that. For pity’s sake, it’s one of the reason’s I’m here, in this room, now.

She rattled a blue biro between her teeth. So much for small talk, eh? Always your weak point, Matt. You want to get down to business? Fine. She sat back in her seat and clasped her hands behind her head. A pose that showed her figure to the best advantage. "So, you’ve applied to be news editor. Why? The money?’

Matt swallowed some coffee. It was at last safe to drink. ‘That’s part of it. But I’m thirty-four, Barbara. I need a private life. I’ve been crime correspondent of this rag for too long. My wife left me – as you well know – I’ve no kids, I can’t remember when I last went to the theatre. The hijack at Heathrow was the last straw. Forty hours non-stop, rain, sleet, mud, chilblains – and for what? The story breaks an hour after our fucking deadline and by the time we can get into print the world has turned. I’ve had enough of the road, Barbara. It sucks. As I just told you, I haven’t played the piano in eighteen months, my fridge is full of milk with lumps in it, and – ’

‘You should have married me, when you had the chance.’ The editor smiled brightly.

‘How is husband number three?’

‘In Hong Kong.’

‘Bringing another vital television commercial to the world?’

‘It may not be art, Matt, but it pays for the second Mercedes. And it means I’m free tonight.’

‘Look, is this a job interview or a seduction?’

‘Well, the job interview is over, because I’m not making you news editor – and don’t you dare sulk. It’s not because you’re not good enough. I know you’d be a bloody good news editor, Matt, and maybe next year – ’

‘Ohh!’

‘No … listen. Listen.’ She uncurled one arm and pointed to the paper in her waste basket. ‘The Journal is outselling the National Chronicle by twenty-eight thousand, and the gap is growing. While you are worried about the state of your milk, I’m under real pressure. If that twenty-eight gets much bigger – forty thou say – I’m on my way out. Running some free sheet in a town with a long name in north Wales. Which means this next year is crucial. A stand-up scrap. And, in my judgement – which is what counts around here for the moment – there are three or four people in this building who could make a decent news editor, but you’re the best crime correspondent this outfit has ever had and so you’re staying put.’

Matt shifted in his seat, but said nothing.

‘Matt. Matthew! Look me in the eye … come on.’

Barbara had brown eyes. The colour of very dark eggshells, as he’d told her once a hundred years ago. A pound to a penny she’d forgotten.

‘Newspapers change. Fleet Street is no more, the print unions are no more, hot metal is no more.’ She was leaning forward now. ‘But one thing doesn’t change. News sells newspapers. Hard news, disaster news, war news, rail crashes, plane crashes, arma-bloody-geddon. And exposé news most of all, which is what you are good at. So this paper needs you more than ever now. I need you more than ever now. We can only close the gap with The Journal by being better at news.’

Matt looked away. He’d heard this lecture before, a thousand times. It wasn’t the point, so far as he was concerned. He was tired of being crime correspondent. Furtive meetings with criminals or police in greasy spoons, endless evenings drinking triple Stolis in rough pubs, undercover visits to Her Majesty’s prisons, those overheated, foetid, sumps of humanity, sad places he hoped never to see the insides of again.

‘Hear me out, Matt. Please.’

He turned his head to face her. She was sitting upright, her breasts straining at her shirt. It was deliberate, as he recognised. They had once – god knows how long ago – been engaged and she knew full well the effect her figure had had on him. Still did.

"The truth is, Matt, that you have one important – vital – weakness as News Editor. Po-li-tics. In the next month, we’re going to find out if Edward Wyndham, is going to challenge Charles Nickerson for leadership of the Party. My money says that he will, especially after the Heathrow thing. If Wyndham wins – and whatever you feel about the Heathrow operation, it was popular – he’ll be Prime bloody Minister. However, and this is the important bit, he won’t have been elected PM. So what will happen? We’ll have a General Election, that’s what will happen. So he can be voted in in his own right. Therefore, in addition to the more personal reasons I gave you, I need a News Editor who’s familiar with domestic politics, who knows his or her way around Westminster and Whitehall – and you don’t fit that bill, Matt."

She was silent for a moment, looking at him, assessing how he was taking the news. She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, and pinned up a strand of fallen hair. It fell down again.

"Look, I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll give you a raise – a small one, don’t get too excited. In return, you stay on as crime corr for a year, and do your damnedest to bring in some bloody good stories. Yes, yes … that’s sounds desperate, and in a way, it is. I am that desperate, Matt. I – the paper – needs some good, old-fashioned scoops. Remember those? Expose some guilty men, find some documents no one wants published, prove some murderer didn’t do whatever he’s inside for. I don’t care really just so long as this paper makes the news, and doesn’t just report it. And … and then … if the gap with the Journal has closed a year from now, or very nearly, and if we’ve got a new government, and if I’m still here, I’ll make you news editor. You’ll only be thirty-five. How’s that?’

Matt finished his coffee and aimed the dead carton at the waste paper basket. ‘What about the poor sod you make news editor now? You going to tell him it’s only for a year?’

‘Who says it’s a him, and who knows what’ll happen between now and then? That’s the offer. Take it or leave it.’ She smiled again, rose and went back to her desk. She stood for a moment, her knuckles resting on the pale wood. ‘Oh, and I can throw in dinner tonight.’

Matt rose too and made for the door. As he opened it he turned. ‘Have I just been seduced?’

She smiled. ‘Tonight? Come to the flat at eight. I’ll show you what seduction is.’

Across from where he stood, Barbara looked a little unravelled at the edges, but she was still as beautiful as ever. The old basic instinct had not diminished over the years.

***

As Matt walked back to his desk, people were appearing in the wasteland. He nodded to Barney Chester, the wild-haired editor of ‘Special Projects’ – in effect the paper’s chief re-write man, and a superb stylist. Coming out of the men’s lavatory was Rollo Simpson, an ex-army type, reputed to have once been a colonel in the guards, but who was now defence correspondent. A hopeless writer, and a serious whisky man, he nonetheless was second to none when it came to getting scoops. Matt smiled at Judith Jepson, a failed opera singer who was the National Chronicle’s motoring correspondent and who bore an appropriate resemblance to the Michelin man. As he got close to his own desk, he realised his telephone was ringing. He made a dive for it, before the answer machine took over.

That you, Matt? said a voice.

Yes – who’s this?

"Ridley, at the Yard. We’re announcing a major drugs bust. Shoot-out in Brixton, this very a.m. Heroin with a street value of thirteen mill, seven arrests. Got your attention? PC here at noon. You’re invited.’

I’ll be there. Anyone killed or injured? The news desk is bound to ask.

‘Nnno, no, Matt. This is the invitation to the PC, not the fucking PC itself. Let’s just say, blood was spilt. Clear? Now, bring a photographer if you want." He rang off.

Matt looked over to the news desk. The news editor – the current news editor, who was retiring at the end of the week – was surrounded by the paper’s political staff. Not a good moment to catch his attention.

How did it go with Head Girl?

Barbara, on being appointed editor of The National Chronicle, had been profiled in a trade magazine, where it had been revealed that, at her school, she had been head girl. Ever since then she had been known on the paper as Head Girl.

Matt transferred his gaze to the woman standing over him. His secretary, Elisabeth Salisbury, would never win a Miss World competition, or a Miss News Room competition come to that, but, by common consent, she did have the best legs on the paper and, fully aware of that fact, was never seen without a very short skirt. Today was no exception.

Beth! You hair’s blonde.

Co-rrect.

On Friday it was brown.

Co-rrect again. You a reporter or something? I’ve been to what is known in some quarters as a hair-dress-er. Do you like it?

Ask me later. I’m in shock. Was it expensive?

Why? You got cash to spare? She placed his post on the desk. "Stupid question. I said: how did it go with Barbarella?"

He was inspecting the top letter of the pile she had delivered. A press release. He threw it unopened into his waste bin, and then gave Beth the thumbs-down sign.

Bad luck, Beth replied. If you are depressed, you could always change your hairstyle. Lot’s of people do, you know.

"Thanks. But a bit drastic for me. I haven’t got that much to play with."

True, true. So, it’s back to crime. What’s on for today?

Matt nodded toward the phone. That was Ridley at the Yard. Drug bust. Blood on the carpet. Press conference at twelve. He looked at his watch. I have some calls to make, then a quick trip to the ICA for an exhibition on film stuff. I’ll go on to the Yard from there. I’ll be out all morning, back after lunch. He stood up. "Tell me, did the hairdresser dye all your hair blonde?"

She came up to him and poked the lapel of his corduroy jacket with a long, red fingernail. "Wouldn’t you like to know. Well, in your dreams, you Neanderthal. Not for all the air miles in the world, will you ever know the answer to that question."

3

‘Hello, this is Zita speaking. If you are calling between nine am and four pm, then I’m in school where the dreaded ayatollahs do not allow us to use mobile phones. But please, please leave a message – we have double maths every afternoon this term, so I’ll be gasping for a gossip by four – and I’ll call back the minute I escape. Here comes the beep.’

Matt looked out of the window as the taxi turned into Parliament Square. He had given Zita her mobile phone the previous Christmas with misgivings, and only because she insisted that all her friends already had them. But he had to admit the gadget had been a success, chiefly in that her parents could always find her and be reassured she was safe.

As the taxi turned into Petty Curie, he put on his Marlon Brando-Don Corleone voice. ‘Dis is Vito,’ he wheezed. ‘You don’t got no respect, Kay. No respect at all. Who you calling de black sheep? Christmas is seven weeks away. You wanna get presents big-time – you show some respect, eh? I need a visit and a big hug – now is that so difficult?’ He switched to his normal voice. ‘The answer to your puzzle is – are you ready? – Limelight. Yes, it’s true, your Godfather is a genius.’ He made a kissing sound and rang off.

The taxi was pulling up outside New Scotland Yard. He got out, paid and then, before going in, standing in the rain, made another call from the pavement. Yet another machine picked up. ‘Stella? It’s Matthew Kent, at The National Chronicle, returning your call. Sorry to miss you but here’s my mobile as well as the office number.’ He recited the number, then switched off his machine and went into the Yard.

The conference, as usual, was on the thirteenth floor, near the press department, in a room decorated in grey paint with a dark red line along the walls at waist height. Venetian blinds were drawn closed but still let in a lot of light. From previous visits, Matt knew that the windows looked out on to the concrete and glass cubes of Victoria Street, across roofs to Westminster Abbey and the spindly turrets of the Houses of Parliament, with the river beyond. A small stage was raised by about a foot at one end of the room, with a long table and five chairs. Coffee was laid out on a side table, where earlier arrivals were helping themselves.

There were about thirty souls in the room, including several rivals Matt knew well. Bruno Stern was his opposite number on The Journal, an older man, in his forties, bald and also wearing a corduroy jacket. He nodded and smiled. There was a woman from TheTimes, a brute from the Mail, notorious for his exaggerations, if not his inventions, and a thin, diffident man from the Guardian, who seemed in a world of his own. He sat at the far end of the front row of chairs, sipping his coffee and reading his own newspaper.

Matt stood in line for the coffee, listening to some of the others complaining at how their stories had been mauled about that morning by late-night sub-editors they never met. He got some coffee from the urn and just had time to find a seat near the end of a row, in case the conference went on too long for his taste and he could make an easy escape, when Jake Ridley marched into the room and on to the stage. He was followed by two men in uniform and two in plain clothes. Ridley sat in the middle, flanked by the uniforms on one side, the suits on the other. Behind them was a coloured photograph of the Queen visiting the passing out parade at Hendon Police Training College.

Ridley was a tall thin man with long, lank hair. He spoke without standing and began without ceremony. "Good morning, thank you for coming.’ He had the flat, hard vowels of a northerner – Newcastle, as Matt knew. ‘Most of you know the tall man sitting next to me, in uniform. Derek Parsons, assistant commissioner (crime), effectively number three here at the Yard but the ranking officer in charge of crime. I mean, of course, combating crime.’ He grinned. ‘Next to him, my extreme right, your left, also in uniform, is someone you may not know – Trevor Ellis, liaison officer between the Yard and the Home Office. His role in this matter will be explained later on. On my immediate left is Detective Superintendent Jack Axelrod, head of the drugs squad, and to his left is Detective Chief Inspector Bill Sellars, operational head of the drugs squad. Bill’s going to kick off. Feel free to take photos at any stage.’

Sellars, a stocky man with a red face that looked as though it had just been scrubbed, could have been an advert for Brylcreem. His sandy-coloured hair was shiny from the cream he had plastered on and was fashioned into a wave that rolled above his forehead and which wild horses couldn’t move. He had thick fingers in which he gripped a manila folder. His suit was blue and he was sweating slightly.

‘This morning, shortly after five am, we – and I mean the Metropolitan Police drugs squad – raided three addresses in south London: Brixton, Streatham and Norwood.’ He had a deep voice, a hard, drinker’s rasp, that took Matt back to so many dour London pubs, swilling in beer and choking with smoke, where he’d been forced to meet police in the past. Sellars, Matt was sure, had come up the hard way. ‘We had been following in all nine people, seven men and two women, for the past four weeks, acting on information received. In the course of those raids, twenty-eight kilos of heroin were recovered, in fifty-six bags. I am advised that this amount of heroin, which is exceptionally pure, would be worth about thirteen million pounds sterling on the open market.

‘Of the nine people we have been following, two of them, both women, were not at the addresses this morning, though the other seven were. At Norwood and Streatham, the arrests took place without incident. In Brixton, however, one of the individuals had a gun and fired on our officers. Fire was returned briefly and the individual in question was hit in the leg. He is currently a patient at St Thomas’s Hospital, just across the river, where a bullet has been taken from his left thigh and his condition, I am told, is satisfactory, and he will be questioned later. Meanwhile, the other six have been arrested, are currently being held at West End Central Police Station where they are being questioned by colleagues. We expect to charge them all later today.’

Sellars, who had brought a cup of coffee with him into the room – in a proper china cup, not a carton – took a drink at this point. The thinness of the china, against the chunkiness of his fingers, looked almost comical. ‘We believe that the heroin came into Britain from north Africa, by ship, docking first in Belfast, then brought on to the mainland. Three of the men arrested are Moroccan, two are Tunisian, and two British. There may be an IRA link here too, and DS Axelrod will talk about that.’ He sat back.

Axelrod was much the same build as Sellars but without the shiny hair or thick fingers. He wore a sports jacket over a check shirt. He looked like a school teacher. ‘We understand that sixty kilos of heroin left North Africa and that the price of bringing this substance into Britain, via a customs officer sympathetic to the IRA, was two kilos of the drug, equivalent to about nine-hundred thousand pounds. Which of course they can use to buy arms, if the current cease-fire is ever broken. A customs official has been arrested in Belfast and is being interrogated as we speak. His name and other details will be given to you at the end of this press conference, along with details of all the others who have been arrested. Now, I understand that DI Ellis wants to say a few words.’

Ellis was small, very white, with fine blonde hair and eyelashes and a prominent Adam’s apple. ‘I don’t want to say much,’ he began. His eyes moved swiftly around the room, a mixture of nervousness and intelligence. He had no accent, so far as Matt could tell, and played with an expensive fountain pen. Matt felt pretty sure he was a graduate, a high-flying policemen a million miles from the brand of copper typified by Sellars and Axelrod. Ellis went on, ‘In fact, I just want to emphasise one point. As you know, the current Home Secretary, Edward Wyndham, has made tough, effective law enforcement a cornerstone of his period in office and in this case he has given the lead.’ Ellis had the – to Matt – irritating habit of opening and closing his pen as he spoke. ‘This has been a very expensive operation to run. Surveillance is never cheap but in this case we have had the