“Myra Hindly was a spinster,” he said – and, seeing Arnold wasn’t following, he carried on, “Look, I’ve had a granny pour hot oil down the stairs on me. I’ve had a mother with a baby in one hand and a machete in the other, and a nice little old dear in Clapham fire a sawn-off at me when I nicked her son. Men are predictable. Women? They are bloody dangerous. Believe me.”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Arnold said and, feeling stupid, he followed the small group up the street to the house.
The Sergeant watched the man to his left discreetly place the sledge hammer against the wall, then pressed the bell which rang shrilly through the glass door.
Through the frosted glass they could see a figure make its way slowly up the hall and, with complete trust, opened it wide, revealing a lined cheerful face beneath a coppery woolly hat.
“Yes?”
“Are you Mrs Mortimer?” the Sergeant asked loudly, leaning forward in case she was deaf.
“Yes,” she replied. “Who are you?”
“I’m from the Police Station. Mind if we come in for a chat?”
“Ooh. Yes that should be all right. I’ll make some tea, shall I?” she said swinging open the door.
The Sergeant moved past her in a fluid motion, his right hand still in his pocket, the other officer going for the kitchen, the Detective Inspector straight into the living room. The last man moved up the stairs quickly, leaving Arnold awkwardly in the hall.
Meredith Mortimer stood before the cold fireplace, solid and still as stone, the blood draining from her face as the realisation set in.
“Miss Meredith Jane Mortimer?” the Detective Inspector asked.
She just nodded once, swallowing silently.
“I think you know why we are here.”
She nodded again.
The old woman bustled importantly in, smiling at one and all.
“I’ll just put the kettle on, shall I?”
Arnold could see the shock settling on the daughter’s face, and was relieved when the Sergeant stepped forward, gently taking the old woman’s arm.
“That would be nice. Let me help you. Kitchen out this way, is it darling?” And he lead her out of the room.
The Detective Inspector waited until they were clear before taking his coat off.
“Miss Mortimer, I am Detective Inspector Romney. Special Branch. I have a warrant for your arrest.” He let that sink in for a moment before continuing, “Now, we can do this the easy nice way, or we can do it the sad way. The easy nice way is if you co-operate and make a statement, and help your people sort out the mess you’ve made. Then we can talk a light sentence. The sad way is: you leave here in handcuffs, your mother in tears, spend four months in remand prison and then go to trial at the Old Bailey, and with what we have on you, you will go down for a long one in some horrible place. The sentence for high treason, in case you’ve forgotten, is twenty five years without remission.” He paused. “So what’s it to be, Miss Mortimer?”
She began to cry big silent tears down her powdery dry cheeks.
“It was just old stuff,” she eventually mumbled through her sobs. Arnold found it all rather pitiful.
Her debrief was given over to Mrs Hogan, the interrogator who had provided the first clue from the ‘FRUITGUM’ case. Meredith Mortimer had signed an interim confession the night of her arrest and the job was now to establish her motive, technique and the scope of her treason. It had been agreed already that there would be no attempt to turn her into a double agent by feeding false information back through her. Her work in registry dealt only with past issues and the Soviets would smell a rat immediately if she were upgraded into a current operational position, supplying hot data.
They sat in a dreary drab green room in the high security remand area of the Royal Military Police facility outside Aldershot.
“It’s over Meredith,” Mrs Hogan said gently. “He will be going home in disgrace with all the publicity we can manage. He will never be allowed out of Russia again because every Intelligence Service in the world will have him flagged. He had a less subtle warning last night from a couple of the Fairies.”
Across the old chipped table, Meredith sat in a tearful silence, broken only by the odd pathetic sob or sniff.
“Was he paying you? Was it for money? Thirty pieces of silver perhaps? Or do we have a dyed in the wool communist here?”
Meredith looked up hurt. “No,” she said righteously.
“Or perhaps you just believe in freedom of access then?” she asked sarcastically.
“No! Why are you being so awful?”
“Because you betrayed your country! My country! You handed over classified information to an agent of a foreign power, to the bloody USSR! What did you bloody expect, you fool?”
Meredith began crying again.
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop crying! Why? Why did you do it? What on earth possessed you? You aren’t a communist. You say he didn’t pay you.”
“You don’t understand. I knew you wouldn’t. None of you would. I love him. That’s why! I love him, and you have sent him away, so damn the lot of you...”
“You have done that quite well already without us. Come on, Meredith. You’re no fool. You must have suspected something when you met him.” Mrs Hogan’s tone had become almost big sisterly. “Men that handsome don’t chase girls like you and I. A sexy foreign accent like that? You’ve done the security courses. It must have been like a flashing light...”
The fight was gone now and she replied almost mechanically. “I meant to tell Mr Black. That’s SOP, but I thought I would just wait and see what happened, then we started... you know. I’d never done it before. He was the first, and then I just knew I couldn’t not see him again. It was only every six weeks or so.”
“A fling is one thing. Treason is another,” Mrs Hogan said dryly.
Meredith looked up with an expression that
