Tansey-Williams’ offices were swept by the counter electronic people every three days, from the original Constable over the antique dresser to the plaster-of-Paris dog his granddaughter had made which had pride of place on the solid oak desk. He enjoyed a substantial private income and was old fashioned enough not to expect the service to pay for that kind of thing, so he took up the cost personally. He also supplemented the civil service salary his secretary was paid with a handsome stipend that meant he could demand nothing but the best.
The bed-sized surface of the desk had three chairs placed along the front, and each position enjoyed ample space to spread out papers. Tansey-Williams was a workaholic and was often there in the office ten hours a day – and would frequently conduct meetings simultaneously in adjoining rooms. Today he sat alone, one yellow grade one file on the desk before him and a single bone china cup off to one side, when his secretary put her head round the door.
“Sir Gordon, Sir Martin Callows is here now.”
“Send him in,” he growled.
Tansey-Williams was everything Callows wasn’t. His family had direct links to Royalty and still owned huge estates in the south of England. Lloyds’ names were maintained more for tradition than need, and the family’s trust portfolio kept a small team busy at the Credit Suisse in Zurich. Well over six feet in height and always impeccably dressed, he radiated a charisma that swept others along, and tempered it by understating his actual power wherever possible. He was a product of Repton, Eton and Oxford. A Royalist and politically conservative, he did his job because he liked it.
Callows, meanwhile, was the opposite: a brilliant red brick scholar, he was the son of a Midlands’ shoe merchant who was driven by personal ambition. Although only ten years separated their ages, and both held knighthoods, Tansey-Williams was considered by many to be Callows’ mentor and protector in the minefields of Whitehall.
Tansey-Williams looked down his long nose as Callows entered and jabbed a finger at a chair.
“Martin. Nice of you to come over.”
Callows wasn’t fooled by the bonhomie. He had known Tansey-Williams too long, and he knew what this was all about.
He sat and they made small talk, until the secretary had poured fresh coffee for Tansey-Williams and brought a cup for Callows. Then, finally, rain running in small rivulets down the tinted windows, Tansey-Williams held up the yellow file that had been on his desk.
“Right. What the hell is going on?”
“Presumably you’re talking about...”
“Don’t presume! Know!” Tansey-Williams snapped.
“That’s the problem. We don’t know enough.”
“You know enough to put a kill order on a man we once valued, a man to whom we pay a pension, a man disabled in the line of duty!”
“The end justifies the means,” Callows rumbled back, his great leonine head lowered and his eyes glaring.
“What end? You don’t have an end do you?”
“Good men are dead! Maimed! We don’t know why. Someone who was close to Morton knows something that we don’t. That’s his daughter. We go to pick her up and three men are dead...”
“Shot, very skilfully I might add, by one of your own bodyguards…”
“We didn’t know that. The fact is, we still aren’t sure. Quayle is not only technically capable of having killed them; he was also close to Morton – and could well have been involved from day one. In everything!”
“I would like you to tell me about... everything,” Tansey-Williams said icily, his long manicured fingers drumming on the file.
“You gave me carte blanche to get this resolved. Now, if...”
“I did not give you carte blanche to drag the name of the service through the mud. Which is precisely what is going to happen. You have people at Milburn who think they’ve been ‘got at’, a spate of murders, a blinded man who’s now fearful for his wife’s safety… and rightfully so! For God’s sake, man. They gutted his dog on the living room floor. Who are these people? How close are we? What are they hiding? I’m not concerned with your carte blanche, nor the authority of any of my senior men. I am concerned with the defence of the nation, and by God, I will ask any question I like, of whom I like, where I like and when I like. Understood?”
Callows nodded just once.
“Let’s hear it. A full brief. Then we can consider what else needs to be done.”
Callows talked for a full hour, Tansey-Williams occasionally stopping him with a question, and then letting the brief go on. Finally, he sat back in the big leather chair and fingers steepled together.
“So, after you realised that Quayle hadn’t done the killing, you still didn’t lift the Metro order.”
“No. I thought that, if I left enough pressure on him, he might just bring in the bacon anyway, even if only to get us to leave him alone.”
“Her.”
“Sorry?”
“Her.” Tansey-Williams repeated. “It would work if you positioned the threat at Morton’s daughter. He’s not frightened of you. But,” he said firmly, “we are not the Americans. Call it off.”
“Sir Gordon, we think he’s now out of Germany after that cock-up in Munich. The job is done. Let me leave it alone for another couple of days. Whatever he’s doing, it’s not lying idle. He’ll be looking for whatever it is that’s behind all this, and if he thinks the pressure is off, he’ll go back to his bloody shack on the beach. He might just turn up something, and soon!”
“Just hope it’s not you,” Tansey-Williams said dryly.
Callows gave a dry smile but, deep in his heart, there was a flicker of fear at the thought.
“All right. Forty eight hours longer. Then call in the pack. And then I want to run him.”
“You what?” Callows asked stunned.
“Run him. Like you should have done when you realised how close he was to Morton.”
“You mean
