The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [23]
‘You will?’ Somers seemed almost to wilt at the prospect of it.
‘Sure. I won’t be able to get more than a thousand out on my cards today, but if you’ll accept a cheque as a guarantee of good faith, I’m sure we can come to some kind of an arrangement.’
Somers looked shocked, but Gaddis could see that a promise of immediate payment had done the trick. The nurse was ready to spill his guts.
‘I get off shift later this afternoon,’ he said. His earlier antagonism had entirely evaporated. ‘Do you know Batchworth Lake?’
Gaddis said that he did not.
‘It’s in a stretch of parkland. Runs beside the Grand Union Canal. Follow signs to the Three Rivers District Council and you’ll find it.’ Gaddis was astonished by how rapidly Somers was making arrangements for delivery of the cash. ‘Meet me in the car park there at five o’clock. If you’ve got the money, I’ll talk. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ said Gaddis, though the deal had been struck so quickly that he wondered if he was being played. Why hadn’t Charlotte paid this man? Was the information he possessed even worthwhile? Somers could have accomplices, engaged in a simple con. It was quite possible that Gaddis would now go back to Rickmansworth, withdraw a large sum of money from his bank accounts, hand it to Calvin Somers and be told only that the Earth was round and that there were seven days in the week.
‘What guarantees do I have that you have the kind of information I’m looking for?’
Somers paused. He picked up the pen and began tapping it on the desk. Somebody walked past the office, whistling the theme tune to EastEnders.
‘Oh, I’ve got the information you’re looking for,’ he said. ‘You see, I know about St Mary’s Paddington. I know what that nice MI6 did to Mr Edward Crane.’
Chapter 9
CURRY NIGHT – WEDNESDAY.
Gaddis was staring at the poster tacked up on the wall of the pub in West Hyde. The jukebox had shifted to a song he didn’t recognize, an anti-melodic squawk run through software and drum machines. Somers had gone to the Gents again, his second visit inside half an hour. Was he nervous, or had the peanuts disagreed with him? Gaddis didn’t much care either way.
Seven hours earlier, in a trance of determination to find out what Somers knew, he had called for a taxi and driven from Mount Vernon Hospital to a supermarket three miles up the road. At a cash machine he had withdrawn £1000 on three separate cards, maxing out his current account, putting £400 on his already debt-ridden Visa bill, and, to his shame, making up the difference with £100 from an account set up in Min’s name which contained Christening money given to her by her godparents. That had been an absolute low-point and he promised himself that he would put £500 back in the account as soon as he received the signature advance on the book.
As arranged, Somers had been waiting for him in the car park. Gaddis had handed over the cash, along with a post-dated cheque for £2000. He had then accompanied Somers on their damp, enlightening walk along the banks of the Grand Union Canal.
This is what he now knew. That in February 1992, Sir John Brennan, currently the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, had bribed four people to fake the death of Edward Anthony Crane, a former Foreign Office diplomat prominent enough to earn an obituary – albeit one that had been faked – in The Times. Crane was now almost certainly living under an assumed name in some FCO variant of the Witness Protection Programme, his whereabouts known only to Brennan and certain privileged members of MI6.
‘So who do you think he was?’ he asked Somers. ‘Why do you think it was necessary to kill him?’
‘Search me.’
Gaddis had put the questions as a means of discovering what, if anything, Somers had subsequently discovered about