‘Well why don’t they just concoct the evidence?’ Gerry asked. ‘It worked on me.’
Cornwall pulled a folder from his briefcase. She read the operation name “Sandstar” on the cover before he opened it up and took out a photograph. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
She stared at it for a moment. ‘That’s Ali Hamsin, translator for the Iraqi interior ministry, father of Rashid Hamsin who I abducted on your orders back in February 2003. I first met Ali Hamsin in January 2003. In your elevated position as director you probably now know I set up a meeting between Hakim Mansour, Sir Hugh Fielding and General Robert Bruckner at Frankfurt airport.’ She paused. ‘The late Dean Furness was present. I bet Fielding and Bruckner are probably both doing very nicely thank you, but I believe Mansour is dead and Furness was killed by person or persons unknown in the Richmond flat belonging to Geraldine Tate who was fitted up for his murder probably by…’
‘Ok Gerry, that’s enough,’ Cornwall snapped, taking back the photo. ‘Notwithstanding your resentment, airing your grievances to me every two minutes is not going to help us is it?’
‘Is it?’ he repeated.
‘Ok!’ said Gerry. She slumped back into the corner of the seat and folded her arms and pouted like a school girl. Then after a moment she began to bite her fingernails and Cornwall noticed that she was trembling slightly. He called to mind the psychologist’s report and tried to engage with her again.
‘I’m sorry Gerry, that was unfair of me. You’ve just been released and now being here with me reminds you of the past. It’s only natural that you are going to be highly sensitive on these matters and I shouldn’t try and make you supress your legitimate emotional reaction.’
She took her fingers away from her mouth, stared at him for a moment and then gave a burst of laughter which he was sure was genuine. ‘Richard, what was my degree in?’ she asked.
‘Er… psychology.’
‘Ok, so you promise not to try that crap out on me and I’ll promise not to air my grievances as you put it. Now tell me about Ali Hamsin.’
‘Very well. Ali Hamsin is one of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. He is not classified as dangerous or a potential threat but the Americans are loath to release him until he has reassured them on certain pieces of information. They have told him that until this information is forthcoming he will remain incarcerated.’
‘But now after Obama’s executive order, they don’t have a choice.’
‘Exactly. But for the last three years Hamsin has insisted that he will give them the information they want but only under certain conditions.’
‘Oh yes? And are these conditions particularly onerous?’ Gerry asked.
Cornwall stared at her. ‘His first condition is that he talks to you.’
‘Well that certainly is unexpected,’ Gerry replied. ‘I had no idea he was still alive or that he was in Guantanamo Bay. But why would he want to talk to me? Apart from the obvious fact that he sees me as much more honest and open, even likeable than the rest of you shits.’
‘Leaving that aside, why he wants to see you has been exercising the minds of the best and brightest in Langley and Vauxhall Cross for some time.’
‘And what was their conclusion?’ she asked.
‘To send you over there,’ said Cornwall.’
Gerry Tate stared around her flat for the first time since she had packed up her suitcases all those years ago. The first thing she noted was the smell of a new carpet and freshly decorated walls in the sitting room and she wondered if Dean Furness’s bloodstains had been slowly rusting in there for years until Cornwall’s people had come round to clean up.
She wandered around inspecting her personal possessions for an hour. It was Friday evening and she was free until Monday morning. She wondered if she should go to Philip’s house and look around, but perhaps that would awaken too many memories. She thought about phoning her brother in Seattle and telling him that she was free but decided that they shared too much mutual resentment. She had turned away from her other friends when she was imprisoned. Four of them had tried to visit her on several occasions in the first two years of her sentence, but she had refused to see them.
‘What do people do when first released from prison?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Contact friends and relatives, decide to go straight or immediately resume a life of crime, go out on the town, get pissed and try and get laid.’ Then she suddenly wondered if the place was bugged. She found an old scanner and switched it on but the battery was dead. Then she decided that technological advances would probably have rendered this detector ineffective. ‘If anyone’s listening, I’m intending to go straight and I don’t want to try and get laid,’ she announced to the empty room. ‘Not tonight anyway,’ she muttered. ‘Maybe I’ll go out and get drunk though.’
She picked up her keys and left the house and walked to the main road and into the pub. Her first impression was that the place had gone downhill in the intervening years but she ordered a dry white wine. She took a few sips and looked around the room. The clientele seemed to be on the one hand young guys and girls chatting and laughing in happy flirtatious groups and on the other older people, couples mostly in their fifties or beyond perhaps. Where were the men and women of her own age? They were at home looking after their children cooking their meals, putting them to bed, helping them with their homework. Somewhere out there was a young school girl to whom she had given birth, and who she thought about every day. Did she look more like Phil or more like her? Was she happy with her adoptive parents?
Gerry signalled to the bargirl and with her rapidly diminishing mental resources summoned up a smile. ‘Hi, I’d like a bottle of this to take out please.’
She returned to her flat and poured out the wine and then pulled out the last photo album that she and Philip had compiled before the world had turned to digital photography. She slowly turned the pages and rapidly drank the bottle of wine. Then she crawled off to the cabinet and found a bottle of ten year old Glenmorangie that Phil had bought in the duty free shop on their return from the Caribbean. ‘It’s twenty years old now, Phil,’ she mumbled. She poured herself a half tumbler and sunk down on to the floor and leant back against the sofa. She switched on the television and found herself half way through an old James Bond film. She snorted derisively but then after a few swigs of neat scotch she began to giggle idiotically at the ludicrous antics. Her head was swimming and she picked a cushion off the chair, lay down and sunk into sleep.
At four o’clock in the morning she woke up, climbed wearily to her feet and staggered off to the bathroom and threw up. Then she washed down two paracetamol with a pint of water, pulled off her clothes and collapsed on to the bed.
After waking up mid-morning she looked at herself in the mirror. ‘Ok you piss head, that’s enough of the self-pity.’ A quick rummage through her clothes drawers turned up some old running kit. She set off down the road and was not surprised when a car pulled out from the kerb and began to follow her. The passenger lowered the window.
‘Tate, we’re meant to be taking you into the office in fifteen minutes!’
‘You can call Cornwall and tell him I’ll be an hour late!’ she replied. She ran down to the river and into the park and past the café where she had met Dean Furness just before he was killed. The man climbed out of the car and tried to jog after her but she lost him easily enough. When she ran back up towards her house forty minutes later she saw him standing outside her front door looking at his watch with a worried expression that turned to relief when he saw her.