Scorpius Read online

  SCORPIUS

  John Gardner

  This book is dedicated to

  Alexis & John,

  Simon & Miranda

  CONTENTS

  1 The Longest Mile

  2 The Floater

  3 The Crossroads Incident

  4 Avante Carte

  5 The Meek Shall Inherit

  6 Two of a Kind

  7 Mr Hathaway & Company

  8 The Blood of the Fathers

  9 The Pick-Up

  10 Go Find the Devils

  11 Call Me Harry

  12 Death-Name

  13 Scatter

  14 Lures and Smart Cards

  15 Being Young and Foolish

  16 Welcome Night Music

  17 The Prayer Hall

  18 Meet Mrs Scorpius

  19 Why Not Tonight?

  20 The Past is a Bucket of Ashes

  21 Deadly Legacy

  22 The Last Enemy

  By John Gardner

  Author biography

  Copyright

  1

  THE LONGEST MILE

  At exactly ten minutes after midnight the girl stepped from the train, pausing for a moment, surprised at the newspaper poster in front of the closed kiosk: PRIME MINISTER CALLS GENERAL ELECTION – JUNE 11th. Now she knew why they had been given the orders, and why she had, instinctively, refused to stay.

  It was not until she got outside the main concourse of Waterloo Station that she realised it was raining. Badly in need of help she went back into the station, trying three public telephones before finding one that was not vandalised. She dialled the 376 Chelsea number and waited as the ringing tone went on and on, reading the graffiti with only a small part of her mind – scrawled telephone numbers next to girls’ names offering unspecified services; the occasional morsel of crude wit. At last, knowing the call was not going to be answered, she replaced the receiver. He was out, or away from London. She thought she would faint, or cry. He would never have lectured her. He would have understood and helped – advised. But now there was only one option. Home.

  And home was the last place she wanted to go, but there was no really safe alternative.

  There were no taxis, and the rain had turned into a fine drizzle: par for the course in May. Thank God it was not far to walk. The longest mile. What made her think of that? A song – ‘The longest mile is the last mile home’.

  She threaded her way down from the station into York Road, then over onto Westminster Bridge. Crossing to the far side she saw that County Hall was still illuminated, looking more like a luxury riverside hotel than a battleground for the capital’s politics. Traffic and pedestrians were sparse now. Three cabs went by with their signs switched off. Odd, she thought, that in London as soon as it rained cabs seemed to be either heading home, or were occupied by very small people.

  She reached the far end of the bridge and turned right into Victoria Embankment. Across the road, behind her, Big Ben rose triumphant, while the sinister black statue of Boadicea in her war chariot loomed over her right shoulder, a dark blotch against the sky.

  The apartment was less than ten minutes’ walk away, and she now wondered how her parents would take the unexpected arrival. That part of her which remained stubborn revolted against returning home. There would be the inevitable recriminations, but, as they had tried every trick in the book to get her back, they would at least show some relief and happiness. Her problem was having to admit that they had been right all along.

  As she turned onto Victoria Embankment, she became suddenly alert. For a moment she realised that her guard had been down during the walk across the bridge. People were looking for her. That was as certain as night followed day. So far she had taken precautions. They would have people at Paddington Station, for that was her most likely place of arrival. The journey had taken several hours longer than necessary, changing trains and taking a bus so that her entrance to London had been Waterloo and not Paddington. But they would also be watching the building in which her parents lived, she had no doubt about that.

  Just as all this crossed her mind, two figures stepped from the shadows into the pool of light thrown across her from the street lamps.

  ‘What we got ’ere, then?’ The first one to speak had a drunken slur in his voice. She wrapped the thin white raincoat around her as though it afforded some kind of protection against them.

  As they came near, she realised these were not the type to have been sent after her. This pair wore jeans, bomber jackets studded and hung with chains, while their hair was spiked and dyed – one red and orange, the other pink and blue.

  ‘Well, you on your own, darlin’?’ asked the larger of the pair.

  She took a step back, one hand going out to the wall behind her. Somewhere, she knew, there was an opening, with steps leading down to the little mooring platform used during the summer for the tourist pleasure boats that plied up and down the Thames.

  It was irrational, but there was hope she could escape that way.

  ‘Come on, darlin’. No need to be scared of us.’ Their voices were similar, both of them ragged with drink.

  ‘Nice girl like you wouldn’t refuse a couple of beautiful fellas like us, would you?’

  Slowly they moved nearer. She even thought she could smell the drink on their breath. Almost safe and this had to happen – muggers, or worse.

  The latter thought was immediately confirmed.

  ‘’Course, you’d have a lie down with us, wouldn’t you?’ The wolfish grin was clear in the diffused light.

  The other one gave an unpleasant drunken giggle. ‘She’ll lie down, even if we has to ’old ’er down.’

  As they lurched forward, she found the gap in the wall. She turned, almost falling down the steps towards the river, one hand clutching her tote bag, with its strap around her shoulder, terror like a bright light in her head which seemed to make breathing difficult and caused her stomach to churn in a butterfly roll.

  They were following, their boots noisy and heavy on the broad steps. Then she smelled the water, and fear became panic. There was no escape. Not across the water, for she could not swim. There was no pleasure boat on which she might hide, only the short metal poles joined together with chains.

  They were almost on her and she turned again, determined to fight back if she could. Purity. Purity mattered. They all said so. Father Valentine said so. At all costs she must keep herself pure.

  She backed away, and the chain touched her behind the knees making her cry out, stumble and jump. In that moment she lost her balance, shoes slipping on the damp stone, legs caught for a moment in the dangling safety chain, so that she seemed to be held upside down. Then she fell, and the water was everywhere, black, filling her mouth, nostrils and clothes, the raincoat ballooning around her, the weight of her clothes and bag dragging her down. She could hear someone screaming, then realised it was herself coughing, choking and spluttering as she thrashed around, hands hitting the water, her body cloaked in terror.

  From a long way off she heard the voice of her old PE teacher, the sadistic one who had tried to teach her to swim by throwing her bodily into the pool. ‘Come on girl, don’t flap about! You’re like a pregnant pelican! Get control of yourself! Come on you stupid girl . . . girl . . . girl . . . girl . . . gir . . . !’

  The darkness took over. She felt a terrible, yet soothing, weakness. Panic gave way to a kind of serenity. She stopped struggling, as though overcome by an anaesthetic, and dropped into an endless sleep.

  2

  THE FLOATER

  M really had too much on his mind to see the man from Special Branch, and the loyal Miss Moneypenny knew it. Within the headquarters building which overlooks Regent’s Park they were going through a period of unpleasantly complicated and time-consum
ing housekeeping and housecleaning. The auditors had been in for a week, inconveniently taking up much-needed office space, checking and rechecking the accounts of each department, and severely cutting into the working time of a number of senior officers.

  The Audit was a serious disruption that took place every two or three years. Eventually the auditors would return from whence they came – under stones near The Long Water in Kensington Gardens, if you were to believe M – but that would not be the end of the business.

  In three months’ time the Audit would have been studied by a select number of people, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary who would put the figure of the Secret Vote before the Cabinet, and from there to the Treasury.

  The Secret Vote was M’s lifeblood – the financial allotment with which he had to run his Service: the hard cash to pay for everything, from the salaries of officers under his command to the funding of agents in the field, the satellite costs, research, and a hundred and one other items, right down to the paperclips and staplers here on the eighth floor where M had his suite of offices.

  The Audit was a time of strain, and now a further tension had been added by the announcement of a General Election. In less than a month, M would be working for the same masters in the Foreign Office – for governments come and go, but the mandarins of Whitehall go on for ever. Yet emphasis on the kind of work carried out by M’s Service might alter drastically should a government of a different political colour sweep into power. Changes of government, even possible changes, set the chief of the Secret Service’s mind on a knife-edge of anxiety. That very day he had a crammed diary, which included five top-level meetings and lunch – at Blades – with the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

  The officer from Special Branch had said it was urgent: M’s ears only. Moneypenny glanced at her watch and saw the policeman had already been kept waiting for nearly an hour. He had arrived, without warning, only ten minutes before M returned from lunch. Moneypenny took a deep breath and buzzed through on the inter-office line.

  ‘Yes?’ M growled.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten that Chief Superintendent Bailey’s still waiting, sir?’ She tried to sound brisk and efficient.

  ‘Who?’ M had lately taken to his old habit of side-stepping issues by feigning a sieve-like memory.

  ‘The officer from the Branch,’ Moneypenny tactfully reminded him.

  ‘Hasn’t got an appointment,’ M snapped back.

  ‘No, sir, but I put the memo from Head of the Branch on your desk before you got back from lunch. His request is rather pressing.’

  There was a pause. Moneypenny heard the crackle of paper as M read the memo.

  ‘Head of the Branch can’t get away himself, so he’s sent a lackey,’ M grumbled. ‘Why us? They usually bother our brethren in Five. Why doesn’t he trot over to Curzon Street, or wherever the Security Service hangs out these days?’

  Though Special Branch often work with MI5, at the latter’s request, they are not the overt mailed fist of the Security Service. They have even been known to turn down a request to assist Five, for they tread with care. They are answerable, not to some faceless men in Whitehall, but directly to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Rarely did the Branch make any approaches to the Secret Intelligence Service which was M’s fief.

  ‘No idea why us, sir. Just that Head of Branch wants you to see this officer PDQ.’

  M made a strange tch-tching sound. ‘Old-fashioned expression, Moneypenny – PDQ. Pretty Damned Quick, eh? What you say he was called?’

  ‘Bailey, sir. Chief Superintendent Bailey.’

  ‘Oh well.’ Another sigh. ‘Better wheel him up, then.’

  Bailey turned out to be a tall well-groomed man in his middle thirties. His suit was of a conservative, and expensive cut, and M could scarcely fail to notice that he wore the tie of a much admired Cambridge college. Bailey’s manner was pleasant enough. He could easily have passed for a young doctor or lawyer. Wouldn’t be out of place in Five, either, M thought.

  ‘We haven’t met, sir. My name’s Bailey.’ The police officer came straight to the point extending his hand. ‘The HOB sends his apologies, but he’s going to be tied up all day with the heads of A11 and C13.’

  A11 is better known as the Diplomatic Protection Group, bodyguards to politicians and royalty – visiting or permanent. C13 is the police Anti-Terrorist Squad which has strong links with MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, as well as C7, their own Technical Support Branch, and D11, the ‘Blue Berets’, Scotland Yard’s firearms department, within which a squad of elite specialists is always at the ready for a serious incident.

  ‘Bit pushed now the PM’s gone to the country, sir.’ Bailey smiled.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ M did not smile. ‘Not your usual happy hunting ground, this, is it, Chief Super?’

  ‘Not normal, sir. No. But it’s a bit special. The HOB thought it best to approach you personally.’

  M paused, looking up at the younger man, his face betraying nothing. At last he waved towards a chair.

  Bailey sat.

  ‘Come on, then,’ M said quietly. ‘Haven’t got all day, either of us. What’s it about?’

  Bailey cleared his throat. Even experienced police officers do not always throw off the habit, born of giving evidence in many courtrooms. ‘Early this morning we got what, when I was a young copper, we called a “floater”.’

  ‘Body recovered from water,’ M murmured.

  ‘Exactly, sir. Picked up by the River Patrol near Cleopatra’s Needle. No press release as yet, but we’ve been on the case all morning. VIP. The Head of Branch himself broke it to the family. It’s a young woman, sir. Twenty-three years of age. Miss Emma Dupré, daughter of Mr and Mrs Peter Dupré.’

  ‘The financier? Merchant banker?’ M’s eyes flashed, as though interest was only just aroused.

  Bailey nodded. ‘The same, sir. Chairman of Gomme-Keogh. Impeccable merchant bank, beyond reproach. I understand that the Foreign Office sometimes borrow their very senior people for special audits.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, they do.’ M wondered if this young man knew that a member of the Gomme-Keogh Board was in the building at this very moment, working on the Audit. ‘Suicide?’ he asked – his face blank – not even the most experienced interrogator or police observer could have divined what might be going on in his mind.

  ‘Don’t think so, sir. They’ve carried out a post-mortem. Death by drowning. The body wasn’t long in the water – six, seven hours at the most. Appears accidental. I’ve seen the report. But there are one or two interesting things. The girl was recently weaned off heroin. Within the last couple of months, according to family friends, if you see what I mean. We haven’t taken it up with her mother and father yet.’

  M nodded, waiting for the police officer to go on.

  ‘You heard of a religious group – bit cranky – calling themselves the Meek Ones, sir?’

  ‘Vaguely, yes. Like the Moonies, eh?’

  ‘Not really. They have a religious philosophy, but that’s very different to sects like the Moonies. For instance, the Meek Ones got her off drugs – the deceased, I mean – there’s little doubt about that. They put a premium on morality. Won’t have people living together within their community. They have to go through a form of marriage, followed by a Register Office ceremony. Very big on old values, but they do have some exceptionally strange ideas once you get out of the moral area.’

  ‘Look, Chief Super, what’s this got to do with me and my Service? Funny religious groups aren’t much in our line.’

  Bailey raised his head, mouth opening for a second, closing and then opening to speak. ‘The young woman, sir. Miss Dupré. We found at least two strange items on her. She was pulled out of the Thames still clutching one of these tote bags that girls carry around, filled with everything from a Filofax to the kitchen sink. It was a good one – the bag – zipped tight, and no water damage.’

  ‘And you found
the “odd” items in the bag?’

  The Branch man nodded. ‘The Filofax, for instance. All the pages of addresses and telephone numbers had been removed, except for one – a telephone number scrawled across a page of this current week. My impression is that it was noted down from memory. One digit’s been crossed out and the correct one inserted in its place.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The number belongs to one of your officers, sir.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘A Commander Bond, sir. Commander James Bond.’

  ‘Ah.’ M’s mind ran through a number of possible permutations. ‘Bond is out of London at the moment.’ He paused. ‘I can get him back if you want to speak to him. If you think he can help you with your enquiries – as they say in the press.’

  ‘He could very well be of help, sir. Though we do have a couple of other things as well. For instance, I believe Lord Shrivenham – also of Gomme-Keogh – is working in this building, on a temporary basis. I’d like a word with him.’ He saw M’s eyebrows twitch slightly. ‘You see his daughter – the Honourable Trilby Shrivenham – was one of Miss Dupré’s close friends. She has had similar drug problems, and she’s also a member of the Meek Ones. I gather Lord Shrivenham’s rather cut up about it.’

  ‘You want to see Shrivenham here? On these premises?’ M asked, his agile mind already working on how he could possibly be of assistance to Basil Shrivenham. Some little favour might be useful when it came to the Secret Vote.

  ‘I’d rather like to have a word with Commander Bond first.’ Bailey’s face was blank. ‘Depending on what he has to say, there’s another matter we might have to talk about – with Lord Shrivenham present.’

  M nodded, reaching out to pick up the telephone. ‘Moneypenny, get Bond back to London in double-quick time, would you? And let me have his ETA as soon as you know it. I’ll wait in the office until he arrives. Even if it means being here until the wee small hours.’