had that flight number in her bag: her job was to deal with samples coming in by air from overseas. And Dingley and Benton have accepted it, as far as I am aware.’
‘That’s not my impression.’
‘Impression?’ questioned Parnell, pointedly. ‘A second ago you told me they were building a definite case.’
‘We’re talking about company lawyers being with you for the next FBI interview,’ said Newton.
‘You were talking about company lawyers,’ contradicted Parnell. ‘I wasn’t. I’m going to see the Bureau guys again, with just my lawyer. And if I get the slightest indication of Dubette being compromised, I’ll stop the interview and tell you, immediately.’
‘I’m not sure that’s the attitude we welcome,’ said Newton.
‘It’s not an attitude,’ contradicted Parnell again. ‘It’s common-sense refusal to be panicked when there’s no reason nor cause to be panicked.’
‘I’ve got to see the board, up in New York.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ said Parnell, unsure why he was being told.
‘Which will have to include your refusal to co-operate.’
‘Dwight, don’t you think the FBI might imagine that I – and Dubette – have something to hide if I arrive next time surrounded by attorneys? I’m not refusing to co-operate. I’m refusing to let there be any wrongful suspicion… wrongful suspicion about me and wrongful suspicion about Dubette. Make sure you tell the board that, in those words.’
‘I’ll definitely make sure of that,’ said Newton, in an attempted threat that failed.
‘There’s nothing to hide,’ insisted Parnell once more. I haven’t, he thought. He increasingly wasn’t sure about Dwight Newton or Russell Benn.
When Parnell got back to his department, Kathy Richardson said Jackson had suggested ten the following morning. When he told Dingley, the FBI agent said: ‘You told him about fingerprints?’
‘He wants to know why.’
Eighteen
Richard Parnell was at Jackson’s office by eight thirty – and had to wait fifteen minutes for the lawyer’s arrival – wanting advice not so much for the meeting that was to come but for the uncertainties that appeared to be arising from those that had already taken place.
When Parnell finished, Jackson said: ‘What do you think you’re telling me?’
‘Let’s not go this route,’ protested Parnell. ‘From the moment we first met, in the middle of the night in a detention cell, I don’t know how many days or weeks ago, I’ve not known what the fuck I’m telling you or anyone else! It’s feelings, nuances, uncertainties: square things that don’t go into round holes. It’s all wrong. Rebecca’s dead, murdered, and something’s wrong and I’m not talking about her being killed or my getting accused of it.’
Jackson tried silently to pick his way through the jumbled declaration. ‘You think there is something to link Dubette with terrorism?’
‘Absolutely not. But there’s something.’
‘Something big enough – important enough – to have got Rebecca killed?’
‘Maybe. But this is another route we’ve travelled before!’
‘You got the slightest whisper – the slightest feeling, nuance, square uncertainty that won’t fit into a round hole – of proof?’
‘You mocking me?’
‘No,’ denied the lawyer, at once. ‘I’m trying to balance what you’re saying – suggesting – against what precious little else makes sense.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing,’ said the scar-faced man. ‘Maybe that’s the cleverness of the whole thing.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Parnell, exasperated by the too familiar protest.
‘It’s too clever to understand.’
‘I’ll accept that philosophy in experimental science. But not having stood at the graveside of someone who’s been murdered. Murder can’t be too clever to understand or solve!’
‘Sometimes it is,’ said Jackson, flatly.
‘This isn’t going to be one of those times.’
The lawyer shook his head. ‘Didn’t you tell me the FBI guys warned you against the way you’re thinking?’
‘Whoever set this whole thing up, did what they did, killed Rebecca like they did, has got to be punished… found, exposed and punished.’
‘Which is why we’re going where we are now, to try to achieve that,’ reminded Jackson. ‘Mine’s the legally protective presence. You’re the guy they’re going to be talking to. You don’t wander on about amorphous conspiracy theories without a single jot of evidence to substantiate them. You listen to the questions and you answer them as honestly – but most importantly, as succinctly – as you can. I don’t want you talking yourself into a different dead end from the one I’ve already got you out of.’
‘I’m not going to talk myself into anything,’ insisted Parnell.
‘That’s what I’m coming along to stop you doing. Why it’s essential that I do come along. And even more essential that you don’t, ever, think you can do things by yourself.’
‘I’ve already had that lecture!’
‘Have it again. Listen – really listen – to it again. You’re right about nuances and uncertainties. Don’t entangle yourself in them. Remember what I said about not representing losers.’
‘I’m not a loser,’ insisted Parnell. ‘Nor will I be. Ever.’ He’d probably come close, he acknowledged. But suddenly, now, he felt he could climb the mountains and swim the oceans again. It was a feeling he welcomed back.
It was a different, larger, room at the FBI field office, with easy chairs and plants with polished leaves instead of desk and stiff-backed-seat formality. Parnell thought he recognized the third waiting FBI man, but it wasn’t until Jackson made the reintroduction that he remembered Edwin Pullinger as the Bureau counsel from the court hearing and later, brief, anteroom hearing.
Parnell said at once: ‘How can I help you further? I didn’t get the impression I contributed much last time.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ agreed Benton.
‘You had any more thoughts about that airline flight number?’ asked Dingley.
It was a clever, almost hypnotic double act, Parnell finally recognized, each man so finely attuned that one could pick up upon the other to weave the loose ends that Jackson had warned about into a snare. ‘I thought we’d covered that?’
‘So did we,’ agreed Dingley. ‘But you know what? We can’t find any Dubette-destined way-bill on that flight out of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle for the last three months.’
‘Which leaves us with a problem,’ took up Benton. ‘What was Ms Lang doing with a number of a Paris to Washington DC flight that wasn’t carrying anything for Dubette? But was, it turns out, a flight that got cancelled four times in a row on the advice of anti-terrorist electronic intercepts?’
‘I don’t know,’ conceded Parnell, dry-throated, seeing the mountains grow higher, the oceans wider. ‘What I do know, and what I’ve already told you, is that Rebecca Lang was totally apolitical, had no connection, interest or association whatsoever with terrorism and that the only possible explanation is that it was planted in her bag, like paint from my car was used to make it look as if I was the one who forced her over the canyon edge.’ The FBI lawyer wasn’t taking part in the interrogation, Parnell realized.
‘That’s not quite my recollection,’ said Dingley. ‘My recollection is that the last time we talked you said it would have been a flight carrying a Dubette shipment from its Paris subsidiary.’
‘The last time we talked I said I thought it would have been carrying something for Dubette,’ rejected Parnell. ‘You’ve just told me it wasn’t. So, the next possible explanation is that it was planted.’
