Provo. Gordon Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ where the talent-spotters had first picked her up, who’d drunk and talked with her and the others in the evenings, who’d taken her aside at the end and suggested that she might like to volunteer for Special Duties. But for her. Because at the end of the day she was worth it. And he couldn’t do it because she would recognize him; then she would realize and throw up her defences; then she wouldn’t admit what she needed to admit to herself. Then she would be lost for ever.

      Unofficial of course, nothing to go on the record.

      You . . . Nolan almost said to the man she had been about to kill . . . You were one of the men in the house on Beechwood Street.

      Philipa Walker left the flat and took the Northern Line to the Newspaper Library at Colindale. Something about a photograph, she had been aware. At least one photograph, possibly two. Not something about PinMan, something about herself.

      There were those who might have preferred to shrug off such a feeling, to let it slip away as if it had never existed. She herself did not subscribe to such a philosophy. If an item or detail existed she should face up to it even though she might not wish to. Control it, control herself, rather than allow things or events to control her.

      The first photograph was in the diary column of the Mail – she remembered the type around it and the position on the page. The second, following the same logic, was in the Sunday Times.

      She ordered the Mail for the years 1988 to 1990 – it was only possible to order three volumes at any one time – and settled down to wait in the microfiche section at the rear. The boxes of film were delivered to her ten minutes later. She inserted the ’88 cassette in the viewer and began her search. An hour and a half later she handed the boxes back and ordered the Mail for the three years beginning 1991. The photograph was in the Mail of April 1992. She recognized the page immediately – the headline and the layout triggering the subconscious layers of her memory. The picture spanned the middle two columns – the group at the restaurant table, the woman in the centre and the vague faces behind. When Walker had first seen it, it had been at the Press Association library and all the faces had been clearly defined. On microfiche, however, she could barely make out the faces of the two men behind the women. She noted the date of the newspaper, handed the cassettes back, and booked the Sunday Times beginning 1991.

      The woman seemed asleep, the reading-room porter thought. He gave her the boxes of microfiche and was startled by the way she suddenly appeared to wake. Almost like an animal.

      The story had been written before the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales. It was trailed on the front page of the main section of the newspaper and dealt with in full in the News Review. Its theme was the distinct sets of friends enjoyed by the couple and the way in which this represented a crossroads in their life together. Again, however, the faces in the photographs which accompanied the article were indistinct. She read through the piece once, then went to the pay phone on the landing outside the reading room, telephoned the Daily Mail and Sunday Times, and confirmed that back copies of the relevant dates of each were available. Then she collected her coat and bag, walked to the tube station, and caught the Northern Line to Chalk Farm.

      That evening she dined with Patrick Saunders at the White Tower restaurant in Percy Street. The relationship was developing as she had anticipated, indeed planned. In the almost twisted manner of the hunt, she even enjoyed it, enjoyed his company but also enjoyed the razor edge which came with the knowledge of why she was seeing him. As long as he was the key, as long as his source into the royal family was the one she needed. As long as she herself could access that source without Saunders or the source knowing.

      At eleven next morning she collected the back copy of the Mail, then went to a café two hundred yards away, ordered a cappuccino, and turned to the photograph on the diary page, ignoring the faces of the women at the table and concentrating on the taller of the two men standing behind them.

      An hour later she collected the copy of the Sunday Times, returned to St Katharine’s Dock, and ordered a Bloody Mary in the Thames Bar of the Tower Hotel. In the main, the article said, the Di and Charles camps were not compatible; the Prince thought his wife’s friends too frivolous, and the Princess considered her husband’s circle too serious, even boring. Only one person was welcomed in both camps. Major R.E.F. Fairfax of the Grenadier Guards, known to the royal couple as Roddy. Originally it had been the Princess of Wales who had welcomed Fairfax into her inner circle, the newspaper said. Charles, however, also thought highly of him, partly because he was a military man and had seen service in Northern Ireland, and had personally invited him to the royal home at Highgrove.

      Of course Fairfax was a military man. Walker looked again at the photographs in the two papers and the name in the Sunday Times, felt the ice spreading. Of course the bastard had seen service in Northern Ireland.

      Haslam had left Belfast ten days before, spending two days at Hereford and a further two checking airport security at Heathrow. He spent the night in London, left at 5.30 and liaised with the other men who would take part in the exercise at seven. At eight the three took the ferry to the island, enjoyed an hour-long breakfast, then caught the 10.30 return ferry as instructed.

      The watchers from Five were waiting. Men and women. Fat ones, thin ones. Some looking fit as hell and others as if they could barely make it to the bar to get another drink. Double-sided coats, different colours each side to confuse the targets, wigs, bags, all the works. Spot them a mile off if you were expecting them and knew what you were looking for. Never see them in a month of Sundays if you didn’t.

      The latest graduates from the Firm’s school at The Fort, SAS men playing the suspects they would tail in the end-of-course close-surveillance exercise.

      He stepped off the ferry and turned up Lime Street.

      ‘Charlie One Five. Green One.’ The first tail picked him up, the streets already coded. Dead letter drops and pickups, contact with another suspect – it was all in the day’s exercise.

      Haslam reached the top of the street and turned left.

      ‘Charlie One Five. Green Four.’ The first tail dropped back.

      ‘Charlie One Six. Green Five.’ The second picked Haslam up from the other side of the road. Surveillance teams in front and behind. Vehicles on stand-by.

      ‘One Six. Green Three.’ The bus stop was seventy yards ahead and the tail thirty yards behind. Haslam glanced back and saw the bus; as it passed him he slowed and allowed it to stop at the stop, then sprinted for it as it pulled away.

      ‘Charlie One Two. Blue Two.’ The woman who had been waiting at the stop took the third seat in, downstairs, and watched as he went up the stairs to the top deck. ‘Blue Three.’ . . . Silver Street. ‘Blue Four.’ . . . Rodney Street. ‘Blue Five.’ She called the stops as the bus passed them. One car staying behind, the others moving ahead, dropping tails where the target might leave the bus.

      This was their patch, Nolan thought; they’d practised on it and knew the streets backwards. Christ help them if the target decided to go AWOL, took the train to Bournemouth and got off at Southampton, left them spread like confetti over the south of England. She slid from the car and looked in the window of the tobacconist next to the bus stop.

      ‘Charlie One Three. Green Ten to Green Eleven.’ . . . The suspect on foot in Vesta Road going towards Queens Road.

      ‘Charlie Two One.’ The next tail in position. ‘Affirmative.’ The tail slid in behind Haslam.

      Bramshaw Road then Pembury Street, the railway line across the top and the footbridge to Marshall СКАЧАТЬ