The Bell Ringers

Read The Bell Ringers for Free Online Page B

Book: Read The Bell Ringers for Free Online
Authors: Henry Porter
court, prime minister, but let me say I think you took the right decision.’
    â€˜Did you see Eyam a lot? Were you a close friend?’
    â€˜Very little over the past few years, but I liked him.’
    â€˜Did you know he was in Colombia?’
    Kilmartin shook his head.
    â€˜Nor did we, and that bothers me, Peter.’
    â€˜Well, he can’t trouble anyone now.’
    â€˜Of course you’re right. But, look, I want you to keep your ear to the ground on this. Let me know if there is going to be any silliness. It would be bad for the country to be distracted by a lot of daft conspiracy theories in the run up to an election. People must feel able to trust government, not just my government but any British government: the procedures, the checks and balances, the good intentions of those whohold power, their fundamental respect for the constitution. People must know that we are trustworthy.’
    â€˜Quite. Do you want me to actively pursue this, or simply tell you anything I hear?’
    â€˜Yes, tell me, or tell Christine Shoemaker, the deputy director of the Security Service: you know her?’ Kilmartin nodded, remembering the blonde northerner with a down-turned mouth, who had all but sidelined the director of MI5, Charles Foster-King, because of her relationships with Temple and the home secretary, Derek Glenny. ‘Good. Contact her if I am unavailable; otherwise telephone my private secretary and come in for a chat. Do a bit of digging around. Put your ear to the ground. Find out what’s being said. Would that be all right, Peter? Do say if it isn’t.’
    â€˜Of course, prime minister: I’m happy to help if I can, though I’m pretty sure that there is nothing much to discover.’
    â€˜Still, I would be grateful.’
    Kilmartin nodded. Unless he was very much mistaken he had just been appointed the prime minister’s personal intelligence officer.
    The bells were being rung open rather than half-muffled, as is usual for the dead. And when the peal fell suddenly into the cold, bright Tuesday morning the people in High Castle’s Market Square glanced towards the church, eyes freshening, as though spring was being announced, or someone had decided that life itself should be celebrated. Kate paused. Above her, a camera in a black hemisphere fixed to the side of a building watched everything in the square yet, like the woman who had followed her on the short walk from the hotel, it almost certainly missed the striking beauty of the moment.
    She was certain about this watcher, a slim woman in her mid-thirties wearing a tan trouser suit. She plainly had more training than practice in surveillance. There was no substitute for experience, as she had always been told by McBride, nominally second secretary (economic) at the embassy in Jakarta, but in reality MI6’s head of station. That was a lifetime ago, when she was married and living in a flat near the embassy, but Kate hadn’t lost the ability to read a street and spot thefalse moves of a bad actor. And this girl, as McBride would have said, wouldn’t cut the mustard in the Scunthorpe Repertory Theatre.
    Kate walked on to the stalls at the centre of Market Square. A police helicopter came noiselessly from the south then hovered high over the square sending a rhythmic thud around the walls of the castle. Twice it repositioned itself by falling away down the valley then nosing into the sharp westerly wind blowing across the Marches. Three civilian helicopters followed at a much lower altitude and landed on a piece of open ground beneath the escarpment of red sandstone, where their rotor blades turned and bounced in the wind. Then the official cars began to arrive, two accompanied by unmarked protection vehicles that sat just to the right of the rear bumper of the saloons and stuck to them like pilot fish. The cars swept into the square in a way that made heads turn, then followed Sheep Street to the

Similar Books

Guardian

Cyndi Goodgame

The Long Journey Home

Margaret Robison

The Bridesmaid's Hero

Narelle Atkins

Donne

John Donne