The Sanction Read online

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t think it would be—’

  ‘That’s the problem, you didn’t bloody think.’ The finger jabbed again, this time the long fingernail grazing Mavers’s pallid skin. He tottered backwards, the overbearing, buffoon-like character Silva had talked to earlier reduced to a cowering wreck. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if you are ambassador material after all. I might have to reconsider my offer.’

  ‘Please, ma’am, give me another chance, I—’

  Silva eased away from the door. A security guard was coming down the corridor so she moved off towards the toilets. The guard disappeared inside the green room and moments later reappeared with Hope and Mavers. Mavers dabbed at his cheek with a tissue and scurried along a couple of paces behind Hope as she made for the gallery entrance. Silva followed.

  Outside a limo had drawn up. The director of the gallery waited on the pavement and shook Hope’s hand as a press photographer took pictures. Hope’s demeanour had changed and she was all white teeth and smiles for the camera. Silva thought about Fairchild’s words: appearance is everything in politics. He was right. Hope wasn’t what she seemed. Silva had seen a chink of what lay beneath the surface when she’d come face to face with her at the reception, and in the green room the mask had slipped completely.

  With the pictures done, Hope said goodbye to the director and sauntered towards her car. Mavers opened the door for her and she climbed in. More smiles and a wave, Hope exuding confidence, acting as if the election was in the bag. Slam dunk. Home run. Touchdown.

  Silva stepped to the side of the pavement and leaned against a wall as the car pulled away. Her nausea had returned with the realisation that this woman, this murderer, this… bitch, would be the next US president.

  Unless somebody could stop her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The evening in London hadn’t ended well. Eventually Sean emerged from the gallery, but he was on a high, unable to pick up on Silva’s mood. When they got back to his apartment he wanted to talk about Hope.

  ‘You saw her,’ he said. ‘Sensational. Just what the country needs – damn it, what the whole world needs.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Silva said as she slipped out of the black dress. ‘Sure she isn’t just a little bit too good to be true?’

  Sean eyed Silva as the dress fell to the floor, misreading her again. ‘This is a little bit too good to be true.’ He threw off his jacket. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  Silva reached for her jeans and motorbike leathers and began to pull them on. ‘Never when I’m driving, thanks.’

  ‘Rebecca? What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m leaving. I have to get back.’

  ‘For what?’

  Silva put on her jacket and reached for her helmet. She was cross at Sean for misleading her about the evening and angry with herself for allowing her guard to drop. ‘For the rest of my life, Sean, that’s what.’

  ‘I don’t…’ Sean paused before raising a hand and making a dismissive gesture. ‘Aw fuck it. Do what you want. I’m beyond caring any more.’

  Silva nodded and headed towards the door. She clicked it open and stood for a moment. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  * * *

  She arrived home in the early hours and spent a good chunk of Tuesday asleep in her bunk. She tried not to think about Karen Hope and Matthew Fairchild and Neil Milligan and Sean. Tried not to think about her mother. On Wednesday she returned to work and walked the streets. Pushed letters through flaps. Nodded to colleagues in the sorting office at the end of her round. Hung up her bag and went home and fed herself and lay on her bunk and read until she fell asleep.

  The next day she woke thinking this was it. Stuck on an endless wash cycle: soak, rinse, spin, repeat. Soak, rinse, spin, repeat. She remembered her mother’s exhortation in Tunisia: At some point you have to move on. There was sense in what she’d said, but it was almost as if her death prevented the very thing she’d told Silva to do. She doubted anybody else could understand, not even Itchy. He seemed to have escaped the worst of the psychological trauma of what happened in Afghanistan. Was that because his life was moving on? He had a girlfriend, a baby on the way, something to look forward to. What did Silva have? Perhaps it went deeper than that though. Itchy was happy-go-lucky, fatalistic. Things always worked out all right in the end; for Silva, raised by two headstrong parents who believed in their own ability to make a difference in the world, the powerlessness she’d experienced after Afghanistan had been debilitating. And now, with her mother dead, the feeling was almost overwhelming.

  She went off to work, collected the mail for the round and filled her postbag. She was keen to get moving, keen to stop thinking. Halfway through her shift she was shoving a bunch of mail into the letterbox of a little terraced house when she noticed the front door wasn’t quite closed. Whatever, she thought. Not her problem. But as she turned to go she remembered the old woman who lived there. She walked with a frame and always had a smile for Silva. Once, a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit had appeared. ‘Because, you know, you look like you could do with something sweet in your life,’ the woman had said.

  Now there was no tea, no smile, just the door ajar. Silva pushed and shouted ‘Hello.’ There was no reply. She walked into the hallway and peered into the living room. The old woman lay stretched out on the floor, her head crocked towards Silva, her eyes blinking.

  The ambulance came within ten minutes and Silva held the woman’s hand as they waited.

  ‘She’s fractured her hip, the old dear,’ the paramedic said as he closed the doors of the ambulance. ‘Nothing to worry about, but if you hadn’t found her…’ The paramedic pinched his nose and shook his head. ‘In this weather the smell doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  The ambulance drove away and Silva sat on the low wall outside the house. She pulled out her phone and called her father. Within ten seconds of him answering she was chiding herself for being concerned with his welfare.

  ‘You disappoint me, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘That woman murdered your mother to further her political ambitions, and yet you walked out on Matthew Fairchild. Ignorant and downright rude.’

  ‘Rude?’ Silva clenched the phone in her hand. ‘Dad, he wanted me to kill Karen Hope.’

  ‘Of course. What else are we supposed to do?’

  ‘Well, duh, phone the police like most normal people would?’

  ‘There’s no need to be flippant.’

  ‘I’m being sensible. This is something for the authorities. If the police aren’t good enough then look up a mate from your old boys’ network and speak to someone in the intelligence services.’

  ‘I’m not sure you understand the complexity of this. If it was that simple we’d have already called the spooks. You need to reconsider your decision, Rebecca. Matthew knows what he’s doing. He showed me the details of the operation and the plan is foolproof.’

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t bought into this mad scheme, Dad.’

  ‘Your mother trusted me with those files, Rebecca. I’m doing it for her. She was a decent woman and she deserved more. I let her down, I owe her, and this is my way of paying her back.’

  There it was, Silva thought. The sentence was as close to an admission as she was ever likely to hear that her father had never stopped loving her mother. In all the years they’d been separated he hadn’t once admitted the responsibility for the failure of their relationship might lie with him. Now he was saying he’d let her down. It was as if her death had softened him in some way, as if it had cracked open his hard exterior shell and revealed that he was, after all, human.

  ‘She wasn’t a pacifist, you know.’ He was talking again. ‘She abhorred war, but understood there was sometimes a need for action. This is one of those times. The Hopes killed your mother because of a lust for power and money. She would have understood the need to eliminate them.’

  Silva sighed. ‘Dad, I know you’re trying to do the right thing, but surely this isn’t
the way. Please tell me you’re not getting involved. Please tell me you’ll drop this.’

  ‘I’ll do what I want. It was good to see you the other day, Rebecca. We must do it again sometime.’

  Her father hung up and Silva remained sitting on the wall for a long time. When a neighbour came out from the next-door property and asked if she was OK, she stood, shrugged and walked off down the street to deliver the rest of the mail.

  * * *

  They were back in the office. Pension Man and the Boy Wonder. Two superheroes fighting a global terrorist network with Taher at its centre and the world on the brink of disaster. Something like that anyway.

  Over the past couple of days Holm had put a lot of thought into their next steps. Did they ignore the mysterious Twitter account and the clue that led to Ben Western? Holm was minded to do so. It was possible the information was bogus or the whole thing was a set-up designed to push him in the wrong direction. On the other hand the execution-style murder of Western – which it appeared to be – was rare enough to warrant another look. On a hunch Holm called a friend he’d once worked with in Special Branch. Special Branch was now renamed and reconfigured as Counter Terrorism Command, but his friend was still hanging in there.

  Bob Longworth and Holm went way back, even further than Holm and Palmer. They’d graduated from Hendon Police College at the same time and risen through the ranks. A few years ago, Holm had tried to persuade Longworth to move to JTAC, but he’d declined.

  ‘You know me, Stephen,’ he’d said. ‘Paperwork makes my head hurt. Pointless and expensive paperwork doubly so. I try and do as little of it as possible.’

  ‘Bob,’ Holm said when Longworth picked up. ‘A favour. Off the record, at least off my record. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Depends entirely on what it is,’ Longworth answered.

  An hour later Holm hand-delivered a note to Longworth at Scotland Yard and promised him payback in the form of a lunch. Longworth glanced down at the note.

  ‘Why can’t you route this through official channels?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been sidelined,’ Holm said. ‘After what happened in Tunisia I’m supposed to stay well clear of anything in this area.’

  ‘I’d heard something on the grapevine but didn’t believe it.’ Longworth looked pained. ‘Stephen Holm investigating bunny huggers?’

  ‘Now you can see why I don’t want Huxtable to know about this.’ Holm pointed at the piece of paper. ‘She’ll have my bollocks in a glass jar on her desk if she finds out.’

  ‘If she finds out I helped you go behind her back then mine’ll probably be floating in there too.’

  ‘So she’d better not find out, right?’ Holm patted Longworth on the shoulder. ‘For both our sakes.’

  Back in his office Holm made a call to Billie Cornish. The request was similar to the one he’d made to Longworth.

  ‘What do you want those for?’ Cornish asked. ‘You’re not keeping something from me, are you?’

  Holm said he wasn’t and that he’d let her know if anything came of it.

  A few hours later both requests had been granted and Holm had two sheets of paper on his desk. He skimmed through the information on both, not quite believing what he was reading.

  ‘OK,’ Javed said. ‘Are you going to enlighten me?’

  ‘Ballistic reports.’ Holm weighed the two pieces of paper. ‘One from the Met’s trip to Tunisia to investigate the cafe killings, the other from Cornish’s man-on-the-heath murder case. The bullet used to kill two of the victims in Tunisia was a nine millimetre hollow point fired from a Glock 19. Care to have a guess as to the weapon and ammunition in the Suffolk case?’

  ‘You’re fucking joking.’ Javed lunged for the two pieces of paper. He snatched them from Holm and peered down. ‘You’re telling me Taher killed Ben Western?’

  ‘To be precise I’m saying it is likely one of the guns used in the attack in Tunis was also used to kill Western, probably by Taher or an accomplice of his. Whatever, it looks like our mysterious Twitter account was on to something after all.’

  The evidence was so shocking that Holm suggested they adjourn for lunch. They grabbed a couple of baguettes from a sandwich bar and walked down Millbank to find a bench. They ate by the side of the Thames.

  ‘People will be talking, sir,’ Javed said, gesturing at a woman who walked past. ‘That’s Julie from Cyber Security. Once she gets back inside the gossip will be spreading like wildfire. You and me sharing a quiet moment by the river.’ Javed smiled. ‘If you like, I could put my hand on your knee to stir things a little more.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ Holm looked pointedly at his leg. If Javed so much as brushed a hand near it he’d floor him. ‘Let’s concentrate on Western.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Boats.’ Holm nodded at the river where a tourist cruise boat was passing. No doubt the guide was pointing out the MI5 building because heads were craned to the side. ‘Ships, to be precise.’

  ‘SeaPak?’

  ‘Of course.’ Holm took a bite of his baguette. ‘SeaPak are a container shipping company. According to Cornish they bring goods in and out of the UK via Rotterdam. It seems obvious to me that Western, as a manager at SeaPak, must have been killed because he stumbled across some kind of smuggling operation. Throw Taher into the mix and what do you think was being smuggled?’

  ‘I don’t know, guns?’

  ‘Guns, weapons, bombs, chemicals. Something else too: people.’

  ‘People? You mean trafficking?’

  ‘No, I mean terrorists. Either UK citizens trying to return surreptitiously or foreign nationals ducking in under the radar.’ Holm took another bite, wiped some cream cheese from his chin. ‘Either way it means another trip to Suffolk.’

  ‘To see Billie Cornish?’

  ‘No, to visit Felixstowe and get the lowdown on SeaPak Containers.’ And, Holm thought, if they needed to liaise with Cornish while they were in Suffolk then there was no harm in that, was there?

  * * *

  Silva returned from work to find a black Range Rover standing at the gates to the marina. As she walked across, Fairchild got out.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said before shaking her head. ‘I spoke with my father earlier. I guess that’s why you’ve come.’

  ‘He suggested I have another try.’ Fairchild raised an eyebrow. ‘He said you had a stubborn streak.’

  ‘I’d need half a brain to do what you’re suggesting. You’re crazy to think I’d kill Karen Hope.’

  ‘Crazy? Possibly, but the circumstances dictate the response and in this case there is only one option.’ Fairchild watched a white motor boat speed upriver. ‘Let me try to persuade you again.’

  ‘Mr Fairchild, I told you before I don’t like games. I was up early and it’s been a long day. I want to have a shower and grab something to eat and veg out.’

  ‘Let’s make a deal, then. I’ll wait in my car while you have your shower, then I’ll take you for an early dinner. We’ll go over everything again and I’ll give you some additional material to examine at your leisure. If, after further reflection, you want to know more, then all well and good. If the answer is still no, I’ll accept it and you won’t hear from me again. Does that sound like a plan?’

  ‘It sounds crap.’

  ‘Rebecca. Do this for your father, OK? And if not him then your mother.’

  Silva sighed. One of Freddie’s dogs had slipped out through the gate. Fairchild bent to scratch the animal on the head.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  * * *

  They drove up late that afternoon, Holm having booked a room at a Travelodge outside Ipswich so they could get an early start the next day. When he’d called Cornish and told her they were coming he’d been surprised when she suggested he and Javed come round for dinner.

  ‘It would be good to catch up,’ she said. Holm’s heart skipped a beat but any hopes he had were immediately dashed as Cornish added: ‘We’d be delighted to
have you over.’

  After the call, Holm thought about the we’d be delighted bit. Cornish and her husband. Happy families. For a moment he was insanely jealous.

  Having dumped their kit at the hotel they headed for Cornish’s place. The single-storey modern house sat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the flat Suffolk countryside. Glass and steel and crisp white walls converged on a central tower that rose out of an atrium. To one side there was a paddock with several horses, to the other a large garden with a tennis court.

  ‘She’s done well,’ Javed said. ‘Or perhaps her husband has.’

  Holm grunted. He was beginning to regret having accepted Cornish’s invitation. The idea of sitting across the table from an ex-lover as Cornish made eyes at a man who was presumably younger than Holm, better looking, and with better prospects, was grating.

  A ring of the bell at the side of the porch brought a shout from inside and seconds later the door was swinging open. Cornish stood there with an open bottle of red in one hand and a smile on her face.

  ‘Come in, Stephen, Farakh.’ She made a sweeping gesture. Her mood had changed from the other day as if she’d cast aside a mask. ‘Great you could make it.’

  They stepped into a huge open-plan room, to one side a gleaming kitchen, to the other a dining area, beyond that several sofas arranged in a semicircle facing a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked fields.

  ‘Pleased to be here,’ Holm said. He took in the tasteful décor, the art prints on the walls, the high-end music system. Compared to his measly flat the place was unbridled luxury. ‘This is nice.’

  ‘Nice, boss?’ Javed said as Cornish stepped forward to greet them. ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘Glad someone likes it.’ Cornish shot Holm a look but smiled as well.

  They moved in and Holm glanced across to where a dining table had been set for four. Any notion that Cornish was single vanished. In a moment or two Mr Right would be striding out. Steely handshake. Beach-ready body. Blue eyes. Holm felt completely inadequate. From somewhere behind him a door clicked open. Footsteps on the tiled floor. He gritted his teeth and breathed in, determined to be magnanimous. Turned.