The Walking Dead

'Does this morsel have provenance, Tristram?'

He stopped, turned. She must have come in late, must have been standing beside him. 'I'm sorry, Mary but I'd rather not…'

'It's a perfectly straightforward question, Tristram. Does the intelligence have provenance?'

It was asked with innocence. The assistant director had not reached his eminence without recognizing danger. He would have said that Mary Reakes — and it was why she had earned the promotion that would put her inside Dickie Naylor's cubicle first thing on Monday morning — had the innocence of a darting snake, a black mamba, and that reptile's venom in her sacs.

'It's an area of delicacy that I am not prepared to expand on, if you'll excuse me.'

'I don't think that's good enough, Tristram.'

There was silence around her — just the subdued bleep of computer screens and the stifled hack of a cough.

'It's what we have. It's where we are.'

'Would that be where Dickie is and where Joe — where the American is?'

'You're pushing me towards areas, Mary, that I'm not prepared to visit'

He had taken two, three steps towards the door, then realized she was in front of him, blocked him.

'May I summarize, Tristram? A prisoner has explosive traces and is in police custody. The forensics are then denied, and the police are instructed to release the prisoner. He disappears into the night. Dickie is not at work today, and the American is off radar. I rang the Naylor home — no, he's not there, not off sick. I rang the American's hotel. He left at four this morning. I assume the two are involved in the gathering of this intelligence. Can you confirm that conclusion or do you deny it?'

She stood straight, shoulders back, legs slightly apart. At that moment, he thought her rather handsome. She was quiet-spoken but there was a spit in her voice. Every other head was turned towards her, as if she were their oracle, their soothsayer. The assistant director had been more than thirty years with the Service and had never before confronted anything that was remotely close to mutiny in the ranks. They were the future of the Service: it would be in their hands when he was gone and when Dickie Naylor was out of the door. He had no answer for her.

'Not confirm and not deny, and conclusions should not be drawn.'

'You see, Tristram, where I and colleagues stand. We stand insulted. We are all officers of the Security Service. The Service is our lives. It gobbles every waking moment available…I offer you a definition of an insult: I and colleagues are not trusted, are outside the loop. My problem is that I understand why you are content to insult us.'

He was close to her, his body and hers separated by a few short inches. What he noticed, her chest did not heave. She was in control and she spoke without bluster.

'Please stand aside, Mary. Please let us all get on with our busy lives.'

'What the Service is doing is a disgrace — a shameful, dishonest and illegal disgrace.'

'If, if, that were true, then I am sure you will be happy to shelter behind your ignorance.'

'A prisoner is undergoing torture. True or false?'

He could have reached out with his shirt-sleeved arm, could have caught her shoulder and shoved her away, cleared his path to the door. If he had touched her his job would have gone, and he would have had ten minutes to clear his desk — he would be history.

'I asked you, Mary, to stand aside.'

'A member of the Service has organized, has aided or abetted, the physical abuse of a prisoner. True or false?'

'I have nothing more to say. Please, get out of my way.'

'We have gone down into the gutter, have come off the high ground. True or false?'

The stiletto she had inserted into him, the blade she had twisted, had gone deep, had hurt. Her audience clung to her words. She held the stage, had held it too long. His temper broke. 'Mary, you can play an excellent imitation of a stupid, juvenile bitch. No, shut up and listen. I was at St Paul's, at that memorial service. I stood far to the back because the best seats were reserved, rightly, for those to whom the service mattered most. They were bereaved parents, widows, children who had been robbed of their mothers or fathers and who stood with shattered grandparents. They were the living — amputees in wheelchairs, faces scarred for eternity by fire, or destroyed psychologically by what they had endured and what they had seen. And for the dead and the living, little candles burned. I vowed, within sight of that altar, that on my watch it would not happen again if anything I could do would avoid it. If you wish to continue your rant I suggest you do so after first visiting the parents, the children and the mutilated, then come to me and preach. It's Birmingham, it's Saturday — you don't need to know any more. Just get on with it.'

She stepped back, gave him room to pass. At the door, Tristram turned and looked at the desk, saw the rows of heads poring over their screens…all except Mary Reakes's. The assistant director knew then that an enemy had been made, one as implacable as any snake with poison in its fangs…What were they supposed to fucking do? Stand on the high ground and lose? Lie in the gutter and win? He slammed the doors after him. God, his head was forfeit, would be on a pole, if Dickie Naylor and his increments did not come up with gold.

* * *

The mobile rang. Naylor was in the doorway of the little squat brick building, could not bring himself to come inside it, to be closer.

The screams came less frequently but were more piercing. The mobile shrilled in his pocket, and he was reaching for it. He sensed another shriek coming, and shut his eyes tightly as if that would be a defence against it. He had the mobile in his hand. In the moments after each shriek, a trifle more intelligence was gained, but the price of it wounded him. Did not appear to wound the American, who sat in his chair and had the small tape-recorder on his lap; the American seemed possessed with hearing acute enough to understand the grunted words that slipped from the prisoner's lips but Naylor, himself, needed them deciphered. The mobile was at his face. The prisoner was still suspended and the two men danced, shadow shapes, round him. They worked at his exposed genitals, and he saw the wretch writhe away from them as far as was possible; nothing of escape was possible.

He pressed the button. 'Yes?'

'It's me.'

'I can't speak, Anne, it's not convenient.'

'It wasn't convenient sitting up half the night wondering if you were coming home. You should make it convenient.'

'What is it you want? Be quick with it.'

'Have you forgotten it's your wife you're speaking to? Where on earth are you? Dickie? Right, I'll be quick. What time will you be home tonight?'

'Won't be.'

'What time in the morning will you be home?'

'Don't know.'

'Perhaps you'd forgotten what's happening tomorrow. Mary — she sounded particularly disagreeable — rang to say that a car will pick us up at five; bring us in and fetch us home…Have you written your speech? Daddy's, when he left, was a great success because he'd written it out and kept it short and remembered only happy times, nothing maudlin.. I want you to promise me you won't drink, not like that Barney Weatherspoon who was pickled and made an ass of himself. Are you listening to me? Dickie, are you—?'

The scream ripped at his ears.

'My God, Dickie, what was that?'

'Nothing.'

And the scream came again, in agony.

'What's happening? Where are you, Dickie?'

'Nothing is happening. I'm nowhere. Can't talk. Sorry, dear.'