Dead Line

TWENTY-ONE

They reached Harwich at three a.m. Gradually the spirits of the female ‘cargo’ had lifted, and there was even a small cheer when The Clacton tied fast in the harbour. The two Middle Eastern men looked a lot less happy. They’d been searched for weapons on board, and once inside the terminal Harrison had them searched again.

Both were carrying British passports, with addresses in London suburbs – Walthamstow and Pinner. The men’s names were Chaloub and Hanoush, which sounded Lebanese to Liz – Veshara’s men.

Not that they were talking: Chaloub, the more senior man, was an old pro, and asked at once to see a lawyer. When he turned and spoke tersely in Arabic to Hanoush, Liz sensed it was to tell the younger man to keep his mouth shut.

Liz saw no point in hanging around; she’d hear from Harrison in due course what he’d managed to get out of the two – not very much, from the looks of it. But there was plenty to charge them with, and the link to Veshara was indisputable; his company was the registered owner of The Dido. What Liz couldn’t see was any connection to Syrian intelligence, or to the Gleneagles conference, which was now just six weeks away.

Though it was now the middle of the night, she decided to drive straight back to London; three hours’ sleep in a Travelodge wasn’t going to do her much good. The A12 was virtually empty, and even the M25 proved comparatively painless, so Liz made good time: the sun was just tipping over the horizon as she reached the outskirts of London. This early, the city looked deserted, like the landscape of a post-apocalypse film.

She drove across north London through Dalston and Holloway towards her flat in Kentish Town, passing a solitary milk float wobbling along Fortess Road. As she turned into her own street, she saw a minicab waiting outside one of the houses. An early-morning start for some young City type, she thought, off for a meeting in Zurich or Rome.

Inside her flat, Liz put the kettle on and ran a bath. Though her bed called seductively, she rejected the idea of a nap; it would just leave her groggy for the rest of the day. Better to soldier on and collapse early in the evening.

An hour later, she slammed her front door, climbed the basement steps and turned towards the Underground station. The neighbourhood was slowly waking up, and she was surprised to see the minicab still waiting further down the street. Her neighbour must have overslept.

There was some traffic now on Kentish Town Road, though not many people on the pavements – it was another week or so before the school term began, and most people still seemed to be away on holiday. Even at work, people were thin on the ground at the moment, though Peggy wasn’t going off until the autumn, doubtless on some cultural jaunt with her new friend Tim.

Charles was still at work, even though his boys must be on holiday. Joanne’s condition meant they didn’t go away on family holidays these days. Liz would see him later this morning, to tell him about the previous night’s escapade off the Essex coast. Sami Veshara must be wondering where his ‘cargo’ had got to, and Liz imagined that Harrison was looking forward to interviewing and then arresting the Lebanese businessman about the covert side of his business. She intended to suggest to Charles that she should see Veshara as well, and try within the rules to leverage the charges he was certain to face, against cooperation with the service.

She stopped at a newsagents’ to buy the Guardian and exchange her daily hello with the cheerful Pakistani owner. She was about three hundred yards from the Underground station now, thinking of how best to squeeze Veshara, when she looked up and saw a woman standing still on the pavement not more than ten feet away. She was looking at Liz with an expression of absolute horror.

Then Liz realised the woman wasn’t looking at her, but behind her. Instinctively she turned around, just in time to see a car, off the road and on the pavement, coming rapidly straight at her.

She leaped desperately to get out of the way, but too late. The car hit Liz side-on, sweeping her legs from under her and catapulting her onto its bonnet, where she bounced like a floppy doll, hitting her head with a sharp crack against the windscreen. She felt a horrible pain in her temple and in her hips, then realised she was rolling off the car. She flailed her arms, but there was nothing on the bonnet to grab onto. As she fell to the pavement her one thought was that the car hitting her had been the minicab. And then she didn’t think at all.

TWENTY-TWO

Charles Wetherby looked up with a frown. He was in the middle of a phone call to the deputy head of GCHQ and there was his secretary, normally the most discreet of women, standing in the doorway waving her hands. Her face was a map of anxiety.

‘Hold on a moment, please,’ he said into the phone, and cupped his hand over the receiver. ‘What’s the matter? I’m busy at the moment.’

‘There’s a policeman on the line. He’s at the Whittington hospital. Liz Carlyle’s been brought in. She’s been hit by a car.’

‘My God. Is she OK? Is she badly hurt?’

‘I don’t know. He won’t say.’

‘Put him on,’ Charles said, rapidly cutting off his other call. ‘This is Charles Wetherby. Who am I speaking to?’

‘It’s Sergeant Chiswick, sir, Special Branch. We had a call from Camden District about a woman named Carlyle who was brought into A and E. She was carrying Home Office ID, but they didn’t get very far when they rang there. So we were brought in.’

‘Is she alive?’

‘Yes, though it was a close-run thing – if the ambulance had been ten minutes slower she wouldn’t have made it. She’s in surgery now, and the doctors seem to think she’ll pull through.’

‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘She was hit by a car in Kentish Town. Near the Underground.’ He paused briefly. ‘The car hit her on the pavement, sir. A witness said it looked as if the vehicle left the street deliberately.’

‘Did the driver stop?’

‘No. We haven’t got much of a description, I’m afraid. It was a man – and that’s about it. The closest witness is a woman and she’s still in shock. But one thing she did say is that the car was a minicab. It had the sticker on the back window.’

Charles thought quickly. ‘Now listen carefully, Sergeant Chiswick. When Miss Carlyle comes out of surgery, I want her put in a single room and kept under police guard -armed guard. There may have been an attempt on her life; I don’t want another. If you have any questions, or if there is any problem, ring me back straight away. Is that understood?’

Once he put the phone down, Charles sat for a moment, tapping a pencil on his desk top, collecting his thoughts. He called his secretary in and asked her to find Peggy Kinsolving, get DG on the line, extract the contact details for Liz’s mother from her file (though he’d wait to ring her until after Liz was out of the operating room), and get the head of media relations to come and see him right away. The presence of Special Branch at the Whittington and now an armed guard on Liz’s room might well draw a reporter, tipped off by a member of staff, and he wanted that possibility closed down straight away.

There was one other call he needed to make. He got through right away.

‘Fane,’ said the voice, in that slow drawl Charles always found annoying.

‘Geoffrey, it’s Charles Wetherby. Liz Carlyle’s been hit by a car.’

‘No! Is she all right?’

At least his concern sounds genuine, thought Charles, though the last thing he was interested in right now was sharing his worry about Liz with Geoffrey Fane. ‘The thing is, Geoffrey, the police say this may not have been an