Thunder in the Blood Page 7

  ‘Yeah. And me.’

  ‘What are they paying?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘More than you get now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘I told you. A lot.’

  There’s another silence. I can imagine Wesley brooding, that pose of his, head down, eyes half closed, a cigarette hanging from his long fingers. He doesn’t say a word. Aldridge picks up the conversation again. The size of his new salary remains a secret but it’s still party time, and he’s plainly sending out at least one invitation.

  ‘I want you on it, Wes,’ he says, ‘which is why I’m glad you’re here. I’ve told them I need to expand on the staff side. I’ve got it in writing. Five extra jobs.’

  ‘So what do I write about? MI5?’

  ‘Fuck off, Wes. You know what I’m saying.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Yeah. Listen, mate. I’m looking at an open cheque book. They want it sharper, more focused, more investigative. They want more aggression. They think there’s an appetite for it. They’ve identified new markets. It’s the big push, their word, not mine.’

  Another pause. Wesley grunts. The old game. Hard to please.

  ‘So what do I write about?’ he says again.

  ‘Up to you, mate. It’s a straight offer. Yes or no.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘And I’m not going to because you know the bloody answer already. If I didn’t think you were the best fucking weasel in the business, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So do me a favour. Yes or no.’

  ‘When do you go? Start? Whatever?’

  ‘In the New Year.’

  ‘Do they know upstairs?’

  ‘It’s irrelevant. Just tell me. Yes or no. No, and you’re on your own. New boss. New policy. New everything. Yes, and we’ll do something amazing.’

  ‘We just did. And you binned it.’

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then bollocks to you.’

  There’s a long pause here. I see them glaring at each other. Then Aldridge again. ‘OK, get your coat on and let’s go and have a bevvie.’ Final pause. ‘And turn that fucking thing off.’

  Wesley resigned from the paper the day after Aldridge himself announced his latest career move. A month later, early in 1988, he accepted a staff job on Defence Week. The magazine, then and now, is headquartered in Guildford, occupying two floors of a big new block between the High Street and the railway station. For nearly a year, Wesley commuted three or four times a week from his flat in Stoke Newington, waiting for the virus to make another move. When nothing happened, he moved south to Guildford, pleasantly surprised to be alive, putting down a deposit on the top half of a thirties semi on the Dorking Road. It was there, nearly four years later, that I first met him. By then, though, a great deal else had happened.

  First, I began to get somewhere with my private enquiries about the background to the Alloway story. I say that, not because I made any obviously spectacular advance (I didn’t), but because my superiors became extremely tetchy about my out-of-hours activities. In Whitehall, as any insider will tell you, you gauge your real progress by changes in the way that other people relate to you. With your immediate colleagues, it might be jealousy or (if your ship is sinking) a week or two of sympathetic amusement. With your superiors, it’s simple attention. The moment they take any notice of you, it’s time to ask yourself why.

  It was January 1988. I’d now been with MI5 for two whole years. The call, once again, was from Stollmann and this time he didn’t bother with the compliments.

  ‘You’ve been seeing Lawrence Priddy.’

  I remember looking at him, startled. I’d been at work barely five minutes. Stollmann had obviously been fretting a lot longer than that, his head down, his eyes on the pad on the desk.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because …’ I shrugged. ‘Is it any business of yours?’

  ‘Quite probably.’ He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  I looked at him for a moment or two. On these occasions, I find myself concentrating on the silliest detail. In this case, it was a particularly angry boil, half an inch above the collar of Stollmann’s shirt. Poor diet, I thought. Or stress.

  ‘He invited me out a couple of times,’ I said at last, ‘and I accepted.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s what you do if you’re in my position.’ I shrugged again. ‘Single girl, time to spare, glad of the odd change of scenery.’

  ‘You fancy him?’

  ‘Fancy him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. Not remotely. Not at all.’ I stared at Stollmann. ‘Why?’

  Stollmann said nothing, just carried on playing with his pen. Irritated at sounding so defensive, I refused to pick up the conversation, preferring silence to any more of his questions. The silence went on and on. Finally, he looked up and sat back in his chair. The next bit was unbelievable.

  ‘You slept with him,’ he said simply, ‘so either you fancied him, or you wanted something in exchange. I can’t imagine it was money, so…’ he shrugged, ‘what was it?’

  I stared at him. Gusts of anger came and went. Stollmann, as it happened, was right about Priddy. I had slept with him, though the experience wasn’t something I ever planned to repeat. In my defence, I was extremely drunk, though not drunk enough to forget the ghastlier parts.

  ‘How do you know?’ I said. ‘As a matter of interest?’

  Stollmann’s eyes were back on the pad. The pad, for once, was bare.

  ‘Maybe he told us.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Maybe he told somebody else.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, of course it does.’

  I thought for a moment about the other explanation, unvoiced by either of us. MI5 were routinely wiring targets all over the country. Anyone could ask for a phone tap, or something we referred to as a ‘device emplacement’, and there was a whole section of the service that was devoted to nothing else. They had bugs that could activate telephones, turning domestic receivers into listening microphones. Priddy had a phone by the bed. I’d seen it there next morning. I shuddered to think what kind of cassette Stollmann might have been sent, had they looped Priddy’s phone and listened in. The man had been extremely vocal, and the sound effects would have left little to Stollmann’s imagination. No wonder he was looking pensive.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what did he want to know?’

  ‘You mean out of bed? When we weren’t being taped?’ Stollmann didn’t answer, just nodded. ‘Nothing. I told you. It was purely social.’

  ‘So what did you want to know?’

  ‘I…’ I hesitated, only too aware that the interview wasn’t about Priddy’s sex life at all, or mine, but something far closer to home. Lately, before Christmas, the top floor had been running checks on computer usage. I knew that because a colleague in the office had told me so. He’d been interested in county court judgements against his landlord, and they’d caught him poking around in DHSS files. Doubtless the checks extended to my computer terminal, too. Which explained a great deal about Stollmann’s interest in Priddy.

  ‘He gave me access codes,’ I said simply, ‘DTI codes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I asked for them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because …’ I shrugged, ‘I needed a little information.’

  ‘For Alloway?’

  ‘About Alloway. I’m a curious girl. I want to know things, find out things. I thought it was part of my job.’

  Stollmann nodded, his eyes still on the pad. Then he looked up. ‘And Priddy? What did he want in return?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Some stuff about Customs.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Whether or not they’re investigating
certain firms. About export orders. To Iraq.’

  ‘And did you get it for him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t get into their system.’

  ‘Did you try?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ I looked at him. ‘As you probably know.’

  Stollmann nodded and permitted himself a small, private smile, and I wondered again about the circumstances surrounding his transfer to MI5. He’d worked for Customs. He’d come to us. Had he preserved the old friendships? Were the channels in good working order? Could he still lift the phone and plug straight in? Or had he folded his tent and stolen away, leaving nothing behind but enemies?

  Stollmann got up and went to the window. In all our exchanges, something had been bothering me, something I’d never quite managed to define, but suddenly I knew what it was. Despite the frustrations of talking to the man – his brusqueness, the way he rationed out information in tiny little parcels, his sheer lack of response – I sensed he liked me. The evidence for this was, I admit, pretty sparse but it was definitely there. He was gauche, and wary, and anti-social to the point of near silence, but he did care. I knew it.

  ‘About Priddy,’ I began. ‘The least you owe me is a clue or two.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About how you found out.’

  I waited for an answer. He was still at the window, his hands in his pockets, staring out. The seat of his trousers was very shiny. At last he shrugged, part of some private dialogue, and turned back into the room. His face, like his desk, was quite empty.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, ‘but it wouldn’t be helpful.’

  The conversation, in any important sense, ended there. It left me more frustrated than ever, my usual ignorance compounded by the unanswered questions about my private life. MI5 was entitled to a great deal of my time and loyalty, but I drew the line at the bedroom door. Whatever I chose to do with Lawrence Priddy, or anyone else for that matter, was no concern of theirs.

  I thought about the conversation for a couple of days. Then I decided – at last – that playing the system was a waste of time. Stollmann, unchallenged, wouldn’t tell me anything. What the situation needed was a dollop or two of direct action. Time, in my father’s favourite phrase, to seize the initiative.

  Stollmann, I knew, left the office two or three times a week, always at half past twelve, always on foot, always carrying a plastic shopping bag. Quite where he went I hadn’t a clue, but my marks on the surveillance course had been way above average, and I saw every point in putting a little of that talent to practical use.

  The first lunchtime I staked out the Curzon Street entrance, he failed to appear. Next day, prompt at twelve-thirty, he pushed through the big plate-glass doors and walked briskly south, towards Green Park. I followed on the other side of the street, fifty yards behind, nicely buffered by half a dozen lunchtime strollers. The park itself was trickier, Stollmann picking up speed, a stiff black figure in the big green spaces, his head down, the beige Sainsbury’s carrier bag swinging at his side. I let the gap between us widen, knowing I couldn’t possibly lose him here, only quickening my step when he got to the Mall, pausing for a second or two before darting into a gap in the traffic. I followed, cheating death at the hands of passing cabbies, and spotted Stollmann heading for the bridge across the lake in St James’s Park. By now I was beginning to wonder exactly where he was headed. Beyond St James was Westminster and Whitehall. Both were plausible destinations for middle-ranking MI5 officers using their spare time for personal advantage, though in Stollmann’s case I somehow doubted it. Everything about the man told me that he was a genuine outsider: no chums, no alliances, no time for the barbed pleasantries that pass, in Curzon House, for conversation.

  We were in Victoria Street now, London at its busiest, an endless queue of buses and delivery vans, the air blue with exhaust fumes. Stollmann crossed the road. I was close behind him, invisible in a scrum of shoppers, watching him plunge into the maze of tiny streets behind Westminster Abbey where the wealthier politicians pitch their tents. For the first time, it occurred to me that I could have been wrong about Stollmann’s isolation. Maybe, after all, he had friends in high places, a top politician, someone hungry for the kind of information we’re paid to file away. Maybe he’d been brokering some deal on the side. Maybe that’s why he was so obsessed by Lawrence Priddy. I paused for a moment, wondering which address he’d knock at and whether or not I’d recognize the face at the door. Instead, at the end of Great Smith Street, Stollmann hurried across the road and disappeared into a large, civic-looking building. I hesitated a moment, fifty yards behind, one foot off the pavement. Over the entrance, it said ‘Public Baths’.

  I gave him a minute or two to buy his ticket, then went into the reception area. Most public baths have a supply of spare bathing costumes, left by accident, and the Westminster Baths were no exception. For £1.30, I got a swimming ticket and a low-cut little number in electric blue.

  The changing rooms were busy, mostly secretaries. I wriggled into the one-piece and examined myself at the full-length mirror by the showers. The costume was at least a size too small and left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and I knew already that Stollmann, despite his efforts to play the monk, wasn’t blind. Once or twice I’d caught him looking at me in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with my professional skills. Within the security of his office, on home turf, that had meant very little, but meeting semi-naked in a public swimming pool was a very different proposition, and I sensed that if I wanted something even half-candid from him, then now was the time to try. That, at least, was the theory.

  The pool, like the changing rooms, was busy. I spotted Stollmann at once in the poolside lane, his head bobbing up and down as he fought to keep up with the rest of the action. He had an awkward breaststroke, more effort than grace, the long thin arms hauling the water past his body, his legs not quite coordinated with the rest of him. His hair was flattened against his skull and he had an odd expression on his face, a grimace, almost a snarl, pure determination. I watched him for a minute or two, wondering how long he kept it up, how many lengths he set himself, not quite sure how to play it. People who swim like Stollmann have a daily target and hate interruptions. Maybe, after all, this wasn’t such a good idea.

  In the end, still undecided, I plunged in, joining the swimmers in the lane next to Stollmann. I had a seaside childhood – Devon again – and I’ve been at home in the water for most of my life, and I caught up with him on my second length, slowing as I surged past. His body was a foot or two from mine, strangely vertical in the water, his arms chopping back, his breath coming in hard gasps, the big veins in his neck standing out with the effort he was making. We swam side by side for perhaps ten yards. Then he glanced sideways, frowning, and his eyes met mine. Unlike most of the other swimmers, neither of us were wearing goggles or bathing caps and I knew at once that he’d recognized me. For a second or two, his rhythm broke. Then we were at the end of the lane, the shallow end, my feet finding the bottom, my arms draping over the rope that divided us. Stollmann stopped. He had no option.

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes.’ I grinned, standing up now, brushing the hair out of my eyes, the water barely waist-deep.

  Stollmann said nothing. He was squatting on his haunches, trying to make room for the queue of swimmers coming up for the turn. I levered myself on to the edge of the pool, out of the way, and gestured for him to do the same. He looked up at me, plainly reluctant, and when I extended a hand, helping him out, I understood why. His back and shoulders were purpled with the burned-out remains of a savage attack of acne. Adolescence, for Eric Stollmann, must have been a misery.

  He sat beside me, his feet in the water, hopelessly vulnerable. His body was thin, what my mother would call ‘skinny’.

  ‘Nice style,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You.’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘You go
swimming a lot?’

  I looked at him a moment, knowing that I’d been right, knowing that for a few precious seconds I’d stolen the advantage.

  ‘I’m surprised you have to ask,’ I said lightly, ‘I’m surprised you don’t know already. All those sources of yours.’

  Stollmann stared at the water, then permitted himself a small, shamefaced smile.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ he said at last. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I moved a little closer, aware of other swimmers looking our way. ‘You mind telling me?’

  Stollmann shook his head. ‘Nothing to tell,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t.’

  ‘Then why don’t you trust me? Explain a bit more about Priddy? Why the interest? Why the tape? God knows, I might even be able to help instead of sitting on my backside all day. Or is that being naïve?’

  Stollmann studied me briefly and then looked away again, down the pool, towards the deep end. I have perfect recall of the next ten seconds because they’ve shaped my life ever since and changed it in ways too numerous to list. My dealings with Wesley, some way down the line, are one consequence. This book, oddly enough, is another. Stollmann was sitting on his hands now, the way kids do when they get cold.

  ‘We’re sending you to Northern Ireland,’ he said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Priddy, but it’s the closest you’ll get to active duty.’

  6

  I spent two years in and out of Northern Ireland. It’s not a part of my life that I can write about in any real detail, nor do I want to, but it was certainly a world away from the numbing routines of PO Box 500.

  Most of the time I was based in Belfast. In its own way, the place was as dense a puzzle as Curzon House, riddled with ambiguities and contradictions, but the people I worked with, mostly men, often army, couldn’t have been more different. The way you got on with it mattered there. With each other, you had to be straight. You had to be honest. And quite often you had to be very brave. The older hands, battle-tested, had a phrase for it. ‘Three parts tradecraft,’ they’d say, ‘to one part Jamieson’s.’ I never bothered with the whiskey, but the other bit they’d got about right. Unless you did your homework, unless you took a great deal of care about the small print, you’d quite possibly end up dead. In this respect, it’s wise not to rely too heavily on the media. Ireland was a dangerous place. A number of my ex-colleagues are buried there, way out of sight, not a single column inch to tell the tale.