that had been lifted by the police so many times. Beside the television was the shelf and cupboard unit that had never fitted together properly since the detectives had dismantled it for the first time thirty-two years before. Whatever the teachers and social workers had said of him, that he was a hooligan and a thug, his father had never criticized him, never raised a hand or a voice in anger to him. All he had been allowed to provide for the flat was a new cooker and fridge for the kitchen, the fancy electric fire with lit artificial coal, and the widescreen television. In turn, he hadn't allowed his father to visit him on remand, for the same reason that the Princess had not been permitted to come to Brixton, or to sit in the public gallery at the trial. They talked about the programmes on the TV, and the new striker from the Cameroons just signed by Arsenal up the road in Highbury, and the weather, and the girls' babies; mostly he listened and his father talked.
When it was time for him to be moving, he said, 'I thought I might call in at St Matthew's, Dad – thought I might do that.'
They were on the walkway. Over his father's shoulder was the looming mass of Attlee House and he could see the boarded-up window where the Cruncher had been a kid. He kissed his father and hurried away.
The diplomat's signal moved electronically to the Secret Intelligence Service building on the south bank of the Thames river. The name, Duncan Dubbs, and the address, 48 River Mansions, Narrow Street, London E14, were fed into their computers. They failed to register a trace. The Sarajevo signal was recopied and passed back over the river to Thames House, home of the Security Service.
He asked for Matron.
'What name is it, please?' the receptionist asked curtly.
'Packer, Albert Packer.'
The receptionist was new. He hadn't seen her before and his name meant nothing to her. 'Do you have an appointment?'
'I just called by.'
'I know she's rather busy this afternoon.'
'Just tell her that Albert Packer's here. Thank you.'
From the outside it was a depressing Victorian building with a high facade of grimed brick. Inside there was all the light and warmth that fresh-cut flowers could muster. With his eldest sister and his father, he had brought his mother here four years ago.
The tumour in her stomach had been inoperable. The receptionist spoke on the phone and he saw the surprise she registered. She told him that he should go up, the implication being that Matron would clear her desk for him, and he said he knew the way. His mother had lingered for a week in St Matthew's Hospice before ending her life in peace. He loved the quiet of the building, and the smell of its cleanness, the light in the corridors and on the stairs, the scent of the flowers. It no longer held terrors for him.
Matron met him outside her office, wearing a prim blue uniform always decorated with her medal from the British army's nursing corps, and from her chest hung an old gold watch. She was a tall, gaunt-faced woman from the west of Ireland. She was formidable until she spoke, severe until a stranger saw the sparkle of wit in her eyes. On a cold February afternoon, four years ago, when he had brought in his mother, and he'd been refusing to accept the doctors' diagnosis, and he'd seen Matron for the first time, he'd asked defiantly, 'Is it ever possible, does it ever happen, that a patient walks out of here?' Looking him straight in the eye, she'd replied, 'No, it never happens, it isn't ever possible and it would not be helpful to think it.' Few people told Mister the truth, unvarnished, with no adornments. In the next bed to his mother had been an artist who had exhibited with the best, and on the other side of her had been a retired colonel from the Brigade of Guards. His mother, the hotel cleaner, had been between talent and status, given equal care, equal love, equal amounts of pain-killing drugs.
'Good to see you back, Mr Packer. I was wondering… ' She chuckled.
'Were you now? What, hoping the bad penny wouldn't turn up?'
She held his hand. They were both laughing. With his other hand he reached into his hip pocket, took out a small, thickly filled envelope, and passed it to her.
There was never less than two and a half thousand in fifties and twenties in the envelopes he gave her, and seldom more than five thousand. With sleight of hand she slipped it down the V of her uniform under her throat, then winked. She never mentioned his life, or what she read in newspapers. The first time he had gone back to see her, a month after his mother's funeral, he'd asked her what she needed. She'd said that she'd a list as long as her arm, but a cheque would do. He didn't do cheques, but he did cash, as long as there weren't questions. 'How do I put cash through the books if I don't have a donor's name? Do I tell the financial controller that Christmas came early?' she'd asked. He'd grinned. 'You don't tell anybody anything. You do a bit of creative accounting.
You buy what you want to have, you don't have to wait on a committee's delay for authorization. It's yours to spend when and how you want to. I'll send along a man. His speciality's creative accounting.'
Cruncher was the money man. The cash in the little envelopes bought tilting beds, painted the wards, provided new TVs, paid half the annual salary of a Macmillan nurse, put in the computer that tracked the daycare patients, helped towards decent funerals for the dead without funds, the bus for outings, the comedians for parties, and holidays for carers. No other person knew of his financial contributions to the hospice and Matron never inquired into the source of the money she gratefully spent. He stayed away from public fund-raising occasions. His photograph had never been taken at the hospice. She'd told him once that what he did was 'raw, no frills charity', and told him another time that when, alone, late at night, she struggled with income and expenditure she didn't know what she'd do without his generosity. He'd blushed then, and she'd never said anything like that again.
'What can I do?'
'I don't really like to ask you… '
'Try me.'
She rolled her eyes. 'There's a Mr Thompson who's just joined us. He might be with us for a couple of weeks, not much more. He's brought in a box of cowboy books, and his eyes aren't up to reading to himself, and he says women can't read cowboy stories aloud… I don't like to ask.'
'No problem.'
Half an hour later, Mister closed Sunset Pass having read two chapters of Zane Grey's story to a former water-board engineer suffering from terminal lung cancer.
'Well, that's interesting, very interesting.'
At Thames House, the computer registered a trace when fed the name of Duncan Dubbs. They were hard times at the Security Service. The end of the Cold War internal-espionage threat and the reduction in Irish mainland bombings had set in place a furious campaign to find work to justify the ever-climbing budget. A right-wing politician had described the Service as one of 'sound mediocrity'; on the other side of the House a left-winger had called it 'the worst and most ridiculed in the western alliance'. They were
'grey-shoed plodders' suffering 'institutional inertia'.
They were 'boringly parochial' and unable to bring
'intellectual debate' to their future role. As an apology of employment, organized crime had now been dumped on their desks. The computer clattered out the secrets of a man hauled from the Miljacka river in Sarajevo. Success bloomed, a reason for existence.
The line manager pored over the printout.
'Fascinating stuff. What will Mister say? Dear me.
Poor old Cruncher. Best bit of news I've heard all day, all week – Cruncher gone to his Maker… but in Sarajevo. What the hell was he doing in Sarajevo? I tell you what – 'what' is going to cast a certain pall over Mister's face, going to wipe all that joy at walking out of the Old Bailey.' He turned to the young woman who had brought him the printout. 'Cruncher was at Mister's right hand – number cruncher, got it, Irene? – his accountant. That's quite a victory, for us, him losing Cruncher. Can't figure it, what he would have thought he was doing in Sarajevo. I do hope the word spreads that Mister's right-hand scumbag wore silk knickers. Wish it was me who was going to pass on the good news.'
It was twenty-five minutes to midnight when the 5-series BMW turned into the drive. The SIO sat in the passenger seat beside Freddie, the most loyal of his HEOs. Slowly, after Packer and the Princess had gone into the house, he counted to fifty. Then he eased himself up and pushed open the car door. He stood up, coughed, and
