Steven could see that Trish Rafferty was angry. She was standing in the middle of her living room, arms folded and face red. She was clearly having difficulty reigning in her temper. Steven, feeling distinctly uncomfortable because he had no idea why, showed her his ID.
Trish scarcely glanced at it. 'You people…’ she hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You people promised me that I would never see or hear from you again! Promised! Do you hear? What the hell do you think you are doing, coming here to my home?’
‘Steven’s first thought was to say that there had obviously been some mistake and that no one from Sci-Med had contacted her before, but he stopped himself in time. It would perhaps be more useful to let the woman speak her mind.
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of that…’ he said contritely.
‘You promised me!’ stormed Trish. ‘That was the deal. I would tell you everything I knew. You would put a stop to it and he would not get into any serious trouble with the law. That would be an end to it. After that I was not to see you or him ever again!’
‘I really am sorry about this, Mrs Rafferty. It clearly shouldn’t have happened but I’m new to the job and I wonder if you wouldn’t mind just filling me in on some of the details… of the agreement, that is?’
Trish looked Steven for a long moment then said suspiciously, ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘As I said, I’m from the Sci-Med Inspectorate,’ said Steven evenly. He got out his ID card again but Trish waved it away. ‘You’re not one of them at all, are you?’ she said, anger now being replaced by uncertainty in her voice. ‘Get out!’ she said. ‘Just get the fuck out!’
Steven paused outside to look over the wall of the car park and gaze down at the canal for a few moments. Well, well, well, he thought. What was that all about? It was obvious that Trish Rafferty had had some sort of recent dealings with officialdom and she’d mistaken him for one of them, whoever ‘they’ were. Curiouser and curiouser… He hadn’t imagined that Trish Rafferty had been playing any kind of active part in this affair. What was it she’d said? She’d told them everything she knew and that she didn’t want to see them or him ever again. Could the, him, referred to, be her husband? If that were the case, it seemed to answer his original question about the possibility of a reconciliation. There wasn’t going to be any. The rest had been a bit of a bonus.
Steven glanced up at Trish Rafferty’s window before he got in to his car. She was standing there looking down at him and she had a telephone to her ear. He would have given a lot to know at that moment who she was calling.
TWELVE
Steven’s phone rang as he was driving back to his hotel. It was Jamie Brown. ‘Where are you?’ asked Brown.
‘In town. Why?’
‘Can we meet? I’ve come up with something on Childs and Leadbetter.’
Brown was calling from his paper’s offices on North Bridge. They arranged to meet approximately halfway between them, in Bennett’s Bar at Tollcross. Brown got there first: Steven found him standing at the bar with a whisky in front of him. The place was rapidly filling up with after-work drinkers.
‘Did you hear what happened at the Ferguson boy’s funeral?’ asked Brown.
Steven said that he had and agreed that it must have been a nightmare for the parents.
‘The paper’s going to back-pedal on the theatricals as much as possible for the family’s sake,’ said Brown. ‘We’ll have to report the subsequent aquatic adventures of the minister but we’re going to play down his behaviour in the cemetery, drunken sod.’
Steven nodded.
‘Christ knows what the Clarion will do with it. Jeff, my photographer, says they had two snappers there, using big lenses. If they got a shot of the rat on the coffin, McColl will find some way of using it.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Want a bet?’
‘No,’ replied Steven, remembering what McColl was like. ‘You said you had something on Childs and Leadbetter?’
‘I told you I didn’t think they fitted the bill as venture capitalists. I know it’s the fashion to go to the gym these days but these two look as if they live in it. Come to think of it, you don't look too much like a couch potato yourself.’
Steven waved away the comment. ‘Go on.’
‘I had our researchers check on a possible military background for either or both of them and they came up trumps. Both were commissioned in the Royal Engineers and both served nine years. Childs from ’87 until ’96 and Leadbetter from ’88 until ’97.’
‘Well done,’ said Steven. He felt slightly disturbed at the news but tried to make light of it. ‘So they can build bridges or maybe they were REME accountants,’ he said.
Brown looked at him slyly and put on a Japanese accent borrowed from a Bond film. ‘Not ordinary accountants, Bondo-San, but Ninja… chartered accountants!’
‘There’s more?’
‘Both men have gaps in their service record,’ said Brown. ‘Childs disappears between ’89 and ’91, Leadbetter between ’90 and ’94. Mean anything?’
Steven knew damn well what it meant but he wasn’t sure if Brown did and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell him.
‘It should,’ continued Brown. ‘There’s a similar gap in yours.’
Steven looked at him with an expression set in stone.
‘Nothing personal,’ said Brown quickly. ‘And nothing I’ll ever use. I just thought as the folks were checking military records they could take a look at who was on my side.’
‘So we were all seconded to Special Forces,’ said Steven.
‘Except me, of course,’ added Brown facetiously. ‘I’ve got flat feet and an intense dislike of anything that goes bang. Orders are something I give to Chinese take-aways so I guess I’m more suited to being… oh, I suppose, something like a venture capitalist?’
Steven found it hard not to smile. Brown had done well in following up his suspicions. He said so.
‘So all we have to discover now is why our peasant piss-artist, our would-be organic son of the soil, has two ex SAS men as business associates.’
Steven decided that he liked Brown. He was clearly much brighter than he’d given him credit for at the outset. It was time to trust him and give a little back.
‘The stakes have risen,’ he said. ‘This thing is much bigger than I imagined. It’s not some little dirty trick by one company on another. Her Majesty’s Government, or some part of it, is mixed up in it. They’re definitely the ones pulling strings in the background.’
‘Jesus,’ said Brown. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Steven truthfully.
‘Christ,’ said Brown. ‘Does this mean that Childs and Leadbetter are not employed as mercenaries? That they’re actually still working for HM government?’
‘Could be,’ agreed Steven.
‘Not a happy thought,’ said Brown.
‘The operation has the code name, Sigma 5, but I wouldn’t start asking too many questions about it if I were you. Apart from unpleasant things that might happen, you’ll get nowhere, just like I did. It has all the hallmarks of being set up as a covert operation so that no one person will ever be held accountable. No paperwork will be kept and no one in power will ever admit to knowing anything at all about it. If anyone at the sharp end hits trouble they’ll be entirely on their own.’
‘But this is Tony’s World,’ said Brown sarcastically. ‘This just cannot be. Tony wouldn’t allow it.’
‘Tony will know nothing about it,’ said Steven. ‘The “need to know basis” can work both ways. Some things never change. Politicians only think they run the country.’