Название: The Rhythm Section
Автор: Mark Burnell
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780007397556
isbn:
Watching and watched? Stephanie travelled through time, scrolling up and down the pages of the diary. She traced Smith’s first entry into the journal.
Jul 22 | Spoke to Beth Marriot, widow of NE027 captain – turned down request for an interview. Contacted by ‘friend’ who wants to help. Will deliver information. |
Jul 25 | Contact of 22nd left package this morning. Incredible – clearly a crank! Signed Smith. Question – how did he find me? How did he know? |
Stephanie proceeded slowly, assembling the bare bones of Proctor’s information. From the abbreviated notes in the diary, she saw how his initial opinion of Smith was gradually undermined. Each entry seemed to nudge him a little further along Smith’s path. The other contacts – the relatives and friends of the dead – made fewer and fewer appearances in the log until, on November 30, they ceased altogether, apart from Proctor’s first contact with Stephanie in mid-December. In passing, she saw two familiar names – Bradfield and Qadiq – which brought her back to the central questions: who killed Proctor? Why? And what about her? If Proctor’s flat had been under surveillance, the killer would have known that she was living there. Perhaps his murder had been more impulsive than that.
One of the disks had ‘Smith’ scrawled across the label in green felt-tip. Stephanie placed it into the computer. There were only three files on the disk. One of them detailed Smith’s version of the story, as told to Proctor.
Smith had become aware of Caesar – the name he, or maybe someone else, had ascribed to the alleged bomber of NE027 – when he had access to knowledge of an MI5 surveillance operation. It wasn’t clear whether Smith was actually part of the surveillance team detailed to watch Caesar, or whether he was running the operation, or whether he had no part in it but had, one way or the other, learned of its existence. Stephanie supposed the obfuscation was deliberate. It was clear that Smith had questioned the suitability of such an operation, only to be rebuffed by a higher authority. He claimed that SIS were aware of Caesar’s presence in London, as were factions within Scotland Yard. He also claimed that Caesar was currently masquerading as a student at Imperial College at the University of London, and he had even noted the course he was taking: a Postgraduate Study in Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology.
Smith’s outrage, Proctor noted, had felt genuine. And justified. Here was a man who had placed a bomb on an aircraft full of innocents – who had murdered them all – and who was now walking around London, as a free man, in the full knowledge of those agencies whose job it was to hunt such people and bring them to justice. Worse still, he was passing himself off as a student, living off government-funded grants paid for by the British taxpayer. Proctor, it seemed, had been persuaded of Smith’s integrity simply by the tone of his voice, since the two men never actually met.
During another conversation, Smith had warned Proctor to be careful about those with whom he spoke. Questions to the police, for instance, would inevitably be referred upwards and, sooner or later, someone on the inside would see his name. A direct approach to MI5 or SIS would obviously be swatted aside, in the first instance, and who could say what the longer-term consequences of such an action might be? The inference was clear. Tread cautiously, stay in the shadows, whisper it softly.
I am lying in bed, fully-clothed beneath the sheets, blankets and orange bedspread. The wall-mounted heater is on and radiating a pathetic amount of warmth. I am shivering but it has nothing to do with the fact that I am cold.
It is ten-to-midnight. There is a prostitute in the room to my left. She’s been intermittently busy since half-past-eight this evening. The headboard of her bed smacks the wall between us when she’s earning. I’m surprised she doesn’t break it since the partition is so thin I can hear nearly everything that is said between her and her clients. Those sad exchanges; the insincere teases and the lies. The whispers and moans of encouragement, the grunts and groans of faked release, I know her vocabulary in all its depressing entirety. I am her.
As for my shaking frame, who can say? It’s shock, certainly, and it was only a matter of time before I succumbed to it. Frankly, I’m surprised I lasted this long. But is there also something else?
Every time I close my eyes, I see Proctor, twisted and torn, drained, quite literally, of life. Or I see him as a kind man, someone who didn’t deserve to die, someone quite unlike me. All day, I was ruled by reason and protected from emotion. But now I am too tired to resist. An overwhelming sadness rises up within me and threatens to drown me. I think of his injuries and the sickening process that created them. And the fact that but for a cruel coincidence of timing – a coincidence born of my brutal behaviour – I would have been there when Proctor’s killer called. And either the two of us, as a team, would have survived, which is a jewel to add to my treasure-chest of guilt, or I would have gone the same way as him
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