She had been impressed, but not overawed: thus, when Skinner had told her at the airport where they were going, after the initial shock had worn off, she had been sure she would take it in her stride.
Dottie had seen government offices before. She was a police officer and so she was used to crowd screening, and to being a part of it. But when a uniformed officer held the door of Thames House open for her, and she could see inside, she felt her legs turn to jelly. There was nothing special about it, nothing of the television version: the foyer could have been any one of dozens along Whitehall, but it had an aura, something that said, ‘Be careful here.’
Skinner walked straight to the reception desk. ‘We’re from Scotland,’ he announced. ‘The DG’s expecting us. Let his office know that we’ve arrived, please.’
The clerk picked up a telephone: there was a brief, quiet conversation. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said. ‘If you go through the barrier you’ll be met on the other side.’
‘Show Security your warrant card,’ the DCC told Shannon. ‘It’s like a boarding pass.’
Indeed the screening was almost identical to that which they had gone through earlier that morning. Just as their jackets were returned and as they were putting them on, a lift door opened and a figure emerged. Shannon could see the surprise in Skinner’s eyes as the slightly built, sober-suited man approached.
‘Bob,’ the man exclaimed, extending his hand. ‘Welcome to Thames House. It’s good to see you again, and to meet you, Inspector Shannon.’ He looked as dry as his voice; the skin was drawn so tightly across his lean features that it seemed about to crack. ‘Come with me. There are a couple of people waiting to meet you, and in view of the hour I’ve laid on a working lunch.’ He led the way into the lift, then, rather than press a button, entered a code into a pad in the instrument panel.
‘This is something of an honour, Evelyn,’ said Skinner, as the doors closed. ‘I didn’t expect to be welcomed by the director general himself.’ He turned to Shannon. ‘Inspector, this is Sir Evelyn Grey. He runs this place.’
‘It wasn’t just my usual excessive courtesy, Bob,’ the DG replied. ‘I was making a point to everyone on my floor, and to everyone who happened to be downstairs when you arrived.’
‘Your point being?’
‘That you are to be treated as a very important person while you are with us, and that your authority here comes directly from me.’
Skinner grinned. ‘Shucks, you’re embarrassing me,’ he joked.
‘I’ve never seen you embarrassed, Bob. I don’t think it’s possible.’
The lift came to a halt; the doors opened out on to a marble reception area, with a desk staffed by a dark- skinned woman. ‘We’ll be in conference room one, Jamelia,’ Grey told her. ‘Advise the other parties that we’re ready.’ He led the way along a corridor to the left until he reached a heavy panelled door: he opened it and led the way inside.
The working lunch lay on the conference table; it comprised croissants, filled with ham and cheese, on a large salver, and fruit, in a crystal bowl. Beside them sat a Thermos jug, on a tray, and five cups and saucers.
They had been in the room for less than a minute before the door opened again, and a man and a woman entered. He was lean, in his mid-thirties, and looked very fit, while she might have been ten years older. She was dressed in black, her face was pale and there were puffy bags under her eyes. ‘Hello, Amanda,’ said Skinner. ‘How are you?’
‘I’ve been better,’ she answered sharply. ‘I’ve just been to a cremation.’
The DCC knew without asking whose funeral it had been. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I wish it had turned out differently.’
‘Do you?’ she asked. ‘The information that was found on Sean’s body was crucial. If it hadn’t been, and the plot had succeeded, would you still be wishing that? There are casualties in our business, Bob. We all have to live with that.’
‘You two know each other, obviously,’ said Sir Evelyn, ‘but let me get the formalities over with. Inspector, you won’t have met Amanda Dennis, who is the head of our Serious Crime section, and neither of you will have met Piers Frame, the deputy DG of the Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘MI6?’ Shannon exclaimed. It was the first time she had spoken since she set foot in the building: Skinner’s sudden glare made her wish that she had kept her silence.
Frame gave her an urbane, indulgent smile. ‘That’s not our official title any longer, and this lot aren’t officially called MI5 either. But the media and the public ignore statute and continue to call us by our old names, so we go along with it . . . now that we’re out of the closet, so to speak.’
‘Perhaps we should not pursue that analogy, Piers,’ Grey murmured. ‘It has more than one connotation.’ He looked at Shannon, as if he was taking pity on her and trying to welcome her into the fold. ‘The fact is, Inspector, the existence of the security and intelligence services is now publicly acknowledged, and even the locations of our headquarters are generally known, but much of the work we do remains covert for very obvious reasons.’
‘As does some of ours,’ Skinner pointed out. ‘But it’s better that people know where you are.’
‘Do you really think so?’ Frame’s tone made his disagreement plain.
The DCC stared back at him. ‘I don’t say things I don’t mean. Let’s say that a terrorist organisation had the resources to strike against your HQ building, but maybe not the wit to plan it too well. Would you rather that they went to the wrong place, one that wasn’t prepared for such an event, as Vauxhall Cross and Thames House are, and blew up hundreds of innocents?’
‘I don’t like our people being in the front line,’ said the man from across the river, frostily.
‘Or you don’t like being in the front line yourself? Actually, you’re not. Sir Evelyn’s identity might be known, and that of your boss, but the rest of you are still as anonymous as you ever were. You can go home at night to Bromley, or Wimbledon, or wherever the hell you live, to a street where not one of your neighbours, not even the bloke next door, the chap you share the odd amontillado with, has the faintest idea what your day job is. Not very long ago I shot a man, one of a bunch of very nasty people. In the country where he comes from, they live by vendetta. The media didn’t say that I pulled the trigger, but I was identified, thanks to a well-meaning idiot of a police colleague, as the leader of the operation. I’m not anonymous, mate: I’m a public figure and everybody knows where I live and where my kids live. My house has got geophones round it, put there to let me know as soon as an intruder sets foot in my garden. It has movement-activated floodlights and shatterproof film on all the windows. Right now, up in Edinburgh, my daughter is having malicious telephone calls and I cannot be one hundred per cent certain that they are not related to the operation I’ve just mentioned. I can’t dismiss that idea from my mind. What if that cell had a member we didn’t know about and didn’t catch? Try stepping into the real world, Mr Frame. Go public and share the paranoia with the rest of us.’
‘Bob, I didn’t know that,’ Grey exclaimed. ‘Can we do anything to help?’
‘I didn’t know myself until Alex told me on Saturday. It’s long odds against the two events being connected, but I have the matter in hand just in case.’ He smiled, then nodded towards the salver on the table. ‘Are those things just for show?’ he asked.
‘Far from it. Help yourself, sit down and let’s get started.’
The five each chose from the croissants and fruit, poured coffee, and took seats round the table, the police officers on Grey’s right, and his colleagues on his left. When they were all ready he looked at Skinner and Shannon. ‘Let me begin by summarising why we are here. A week ago, a group of what at first we thought were terrorists attempted an outrage in Scotland. It may have been dressed up as a kidnap for ransom, but within this room we are aware that it was an assassination attempt. Happily it was prevented, thanks to some very good work by your force, Bob, and by Amanda’s section, one of whom was killed, while working undercover during the operation.’
Skinner leaned towards Shannon. ‘The body in the van, Inspector,’ he said. ‘The supposed suicide.’ He looked at Grey. ‘Dottie doesn’t know all of this,’ he told him. ‘I thought it best not to brief her until we got here.’
‘I understand, and I agree with that decision. To continue, one thing that the media do not and must never know is that it was, for want of a better term, an inside job, an operation set up by individuals working within the intelligence community, with the idea that what they were proposing was in the national interest. One of them, a senior military intelligence officer, was shot dead at the scene. A second, the man who ran the operation on the ground, was killed by subsequent military action. Two others have been detained: Rudolph Sewell, my own deputy, and Miles Hassett, an SIS operative. Bob, you are here to determine, as far as you can, whether the conspiracy runs any deeper, and to root out anyone else who might be involved. You will then prepare a personal report to be submitted to the Prime Minister, through me, on your findings. When we spoke at the weekend, you asked for the assistance of one of my officers in helping you to open doors, as it were, within this building and as necessary
