Closer, page 16
We sat in leather wingback armchairs, cradling our glasses.
Sure enough, it was only a matter of minutes before Napier’s face appeared on-screen, lingering for a few seconds before cutting to coverage of the two-car convoy leaving the naval base earlier this afternoon.
I only half-watched the news, which seemed to be rehashing what I already knew – in that way that 24-hour news coverage has of trying to give the impression of something new for a story it’s already shown a dozen times that day.
I was more interested in Napier’s reaction.
He watched avidly, eyes fixed to the screen. I assumed I’d be the same if it were me featuring so heavily in the news and then – oh, the irony – I glanced across at the screen and there I was, looking like a numpty as I stood in the thick of the press scrum around Napier’s car, before pushing my way through so I could climb in the other side.
Next on screen was a mugshot of James Wilson, the ex-SAS sniper who’d shot Napier – before Cassie had shot him, stopping him from taking a second, and almost certainly more deadly, shot.
Now, Napier nodded at the screen before glancing across at me. “They’re only telling the half of it, you know.”
Instantly, I was paying attention. What did Napier know?
He had that look. He knew exactly how I would react to a teaser like that, and was playing the suspense, waiting for me to dig.
I delayed a few seconds before giving in, as he knew I would.
“Wilson. The gunman. He left the SAS five years ago, but he’s been working on government contracts ever since. Security work in Iraq. Other undisclosed contracts in Africa and Eastern Europe. It’s obvious to anyone he’s the kind of freelance gun for hire the security services use whenever they don’t want to get their own hands dirty.”
I tried not to react to that. Was he pressing to see if I said anything about Cassie? Or was he simply reminding me of my own lapses in judgment?
“I know,” I said. “I’ve seen the news stories. Apparently he has close ties pretty high up in the Home Office. They’re expecting heads to roll.”
Napier made a tch sound of disapproval. “Heads rolling... A minister resigns and six months later they’re back in another post. It’s a mockery of any kind of justice.”
Napier had always taken the moral high ground on accountability in public office. It was one of the reasons he had such a good reputation for a political wheeler and dealer, in a world where the general public viewed political manipulators as the lowest of the low.
“What should they do?” I asked, hoping to trigger one of his rants, which would at least be therapy for him.
Instead, he just smiled the same smile he had before, the one that told me he knew far more than he was letting on.
“Oh, Mattie, you should know by now. What you see in the news is only the half of it, if that. By the time it reaches a public forum, the story had been polished and spun to ensure it tells you what the Establishment wants you to hear.”
Okay, so it was another familiar line from him. He seemed to have come alive, just talking, though, which was what I’d hoped to prompt.
“So what’s the real story?” I asked him. “The one hiding behind the headlines and spin?”
“The one they’re desperately trying to cover up, you mean?” He laughed, and took a slow sip from his whisky. “The gunman wasn’t just on government-funded contracts. He had close links to senior people. At least one top civil servant, and a senior minister. We’re talking Cabinet-level control of the kind of jobs he was hired for.”
“You mean the government paid him to do the shooting?”
“That hasn’t been established, but it’s proving hard to refute, at the very least.”
“Who was the target? The news stories all seem convinced it was Sutherland.” One thing I did know was that Sutherland had been whisked away into protective custody after the shooting, which seemed to support the idea that he was the target.
That smile again. He shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, but it was just like Napier to do so, now that he’d emerged relatively unscathed – other than what he’d earlier dismissed as ‘just pain’.
“I was making too many waves, Mattie. Not just with the Sutherland business. The whole political system was already a mess, and getting steadily worse. I always tried to do what I could behind the scenes, but I’d come to be seen as someone who was stirring things up. That didn’t sit well with some people.”
“So... What you’re saying is that the government paid one of their trusted hitmen to stop you making waves?”
Napier shrugged with his good shoulder. “Or, at least, one or two figures high up in government. I don’t think it would ever have been discussed and voted on in Cabinet, you know.”
I took a moment to let it sink in.
What Napier said made sense, in the perverted view of current affairs I was learning to accept as the new normal.
And if the ploy had worked, what would have been the outcome? A big story that would last for a few days – respected public figure saves a hostage and then gets killed in a last gesture by a sniper sent by the hostage’s captors – and then, what? Everything would have slipped from the public view, and things would have returned to normal.
But it hadn’t worked.
I was shaking my head, as I thought this through. “It’s madness,” I said. “Utter madness.”
“I know,” said Napier. “But when you start moving in these circles, the one key thing you have to learn is that the whole system is set up on a controlled form of madness. It’s just a madness the general public rarely even glimpses.”
I took a drink, and let the whisky slide down my throat with that luxurious juxtaposition of smoothness and almost painful burn.
“And do you know what the irony is?” said Napier, bringing me back to the moment.
“What?”
“It’s completely backfired on the conspiring bastards. Wilson failed, I survived, and the story has picked up a kind of popular momentum they could never have imagined. Right now, every revelation drops the powers that be deeper and deeper into the quagmire. Behind closed doors, the government is ripping itself apart over this right now. I reckon it’s a matter of days before they collapse into the kind of chaos this country hasn’t seen for centuries.”
“And what happens then?”
“Then? People are talking about a national unity government. The great and the good clubbing together to sort out the mess and stabilize things before we work out what the hell to do next. And do you know what? While I’ve been lying on my hospital bed, I’ve become the popular face of all that remains good in the political system right now. Me? Can you believe it? A figurehead who might well be able to pull the country together behind just such a government of national unity.”
I stared.
My god, was I actually sitting here, sharing a rather good single malt with the next leader of my country?
17. Closing In
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
Napier didn’t even try to deny it.
“I was worried when you called, Napier. Genuinely concerned for you.” And now I was starting to get angry with him.
Okay, it wasn’t as if he’d dragged me the length of the country this time, but still, I’d abandoned Cassie and driven an hour to that base so I could be with him when he emerged from hospital and accompany him to his home. I’d driven fast and perhaps a little recklessly along narrow roads to get there as soon as possible because I’d thought he needed my support, my strength.
But instead he’d merely wanted me as – what? – his audience? Someone to share his private glee at the way things were going.
I wondered then about all those other times, right back to that first mad dash to be at his side in Oxford. By the time I reached him he could easily have taken those pills if he’d intended to. With hindsight there was more than a hint of theater about it. Showboating.
Had he just been exerting control? Making me rush to his side simply because he could?
Was that the truth of how our relationship had been from the start? I’d been the weedy new boy, the scholarship boy arriving at a grand private school from a poor housing estate, out of my depth and terrified. The school bullies had descended on me like wolves sniffing fresh meat, and it had been Napier who had fended them off, making it clear that if anyone messed with me they’d be messing with him too.
He hadn’t been the most physically imposing of boys, but there had always been something about Napier. An understanding in anyone who encountered him that he was not someone to cross lightly.
He’d won my undying loyalty on the spot, and that had carried us through adult life too.
I’d considered it friendship, but had it been something else? Had he only ever seen me as a faithful fool, always willing to run errands and support him through thick and thin?
“I thought you needed my support,” I told him, “but all you wanted was to show off.” I sat back, shaking my head. I could have been referring to my recent mad dash to accompany him from the hospital or the entire history of our friendship.
“Och, come on now, Mattie. You know how it is. You always come running. That’s one of the things I love about you. It’s as if I have my own wee lapdog, always at my beck and call.”
I stared. It was as if the combination of whisky and hospital-strength painkillers had loosened his tongue, freed him up to put into words the conclusion I had only just reached myself.
“I’m not sure I like being referred to as a lapdog.”
Something hardened in Napier’s look, then.
“What would you prefer, then? Quisling? Traitor?”
I actually felt my mouth sag open as if to speak, although I knew I was speechless.
He’d gone mad. Had the shooting somehow unhinged something in his brain?
“What are you saying?” I asked him, finally.
“Your girlfriend. I never liked her. Never trusted her.”
“You never like any of my girlfriends.”
“No, Mattie, that’s true. But Cassie Deane is the first one to repay my hospitality by coming here under a false identity, armed to the teeth. You’ll understand, in current circumstances, if I no longer take that kind of thing kindly.”
“And you’re blaming me?”
“You look like the best candidate to take at least some of the blame, no?”
“She saved your life.”
“So you say.”
“She shot James Wilson.”
“And you’ll know already what the press are saying about that. She shot her accomplice to cover her own tracks.”
“She stopped him from taking a second shot.”
“And how pissed off was she that the first shot didn’t do its job?”
“You really think that?” I reached for my glass, but it was empty. Bizarrely, Napier saw the movement and reached for the bottle to top up both glasses, as if we were simply here for an amicable drink.
“You brought her into my home, Mattie.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You’ve been conspiring with her all along. Don’t deny it. You’ve been in touch with her throughout, even when you’ve told me you haven’t. You’ve been meeting her. You’ve lied to me, repeatedly.”
Finally, an accusation I could not deny.
“I was trying to protect her. And you.”
“Oh aye, Mattie. You’ve been protecting her, all right. You knew where she was hiding after she fled Auldbrigg Haw. Did you know she killed one of Macpherson’s men that night, before she did her wee disappearing act?”
I tried to maintain a poker face. I didn’t know if he was telling me the truth. The fact that he might be said an awful lot of my situation: that I accepted the possibility my girlfriend had killed a man in this very house.
And that the logical part of my brain told me that if she had done so then she would have had very good reason.
I straightened in my chair. “Look, Napier, I don’t know where this is going. You should know I’ve always stood by you, always done my best for you. I don’t understand why you’re turning against me now. I’ve only ever wanted the best.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Mattie? I always looked up to you, more than anyone I’ve ever known. I trusted you.”
Was that it? I stared at him. All these years of friendship, he hadn’t just controlled and manipulated me, for some reason he’d seen something in me that he wanted to impress. He’d always sought my approval – I was sure that was at least partly why he’d summoned me to the hospital, that he’d wanted me to see his triumphant procession, wanted me to understand where he had reached and where he was heading.
One last moment of impressing me, before... before this.
“You let me down, Mattie. You betrayed that trust.”
“So what now?”
Napier did that lopsided shrug again, but even that pulled at his injured shoulder and made him wince.
“You and Cassie,” he said, as if musing over a particularly troubling puzzle. “You, in particular, you’ve gone from trusted insider to risk, and all of a sudden I have an awful lot at stake. And Cassie? You have no need to concern yourself over her.”
Instantly, I felt my heart thump hard in my chest. What was he saying?
“What about Cassie? What have you done?”
I should never have left her alone on that hill. And even as I had that thought I knew how foolish it was. She was a trained killer. If she couldn’t defend herself then what hope could I possibly have?
“As I say, you don’t need to concern yourself.”
I wanted to grab him, shake him until he cried with the pain, force from him the truth of what he’d done.
I did nothing.
In truth it was only a pause, while my brain rushed to catch up, but then any impulse to act was halted by Napier’s next words.
If Cassie’s vanishing and the subsequent revelation of her double life had been an absolute shock to my system, then the cold calculation in Napier’s words now surpassed even that.
“What you do need to concern yourself about, Mattie, is your own fate.”
I stared, waited.
“You really have been closer to me than anyone has come, Mattie. Family. More than family. Which is why your betrayal hurts me so. And why you have become a vulnerability I can not possibly afford in my current position.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“It’s over, Mattie. I promise to protect your name.”
“My... name?”
“When you’re gone, laddie. Because it’s so easy for people to assume the worst about a suicide. Particularly after recent events. What secret would drive you to such an extreme measure? Did you betray those closest to you? You wouldn’t want that kind of speculation now, would you?”
It really was as if I’d stepped into another world again. This wasn’t the Napier I had known all these years. Looking at me so calmly as he said these words.
Did everyone close to me lead a double life? Did they all hide from me their true nature?
“Suicide?” I said. “You wouldn’t...”
“Oh, Mattie. You really don’t know me at all, do you? I have so much to lose now. All this... I’ve worked for this my entire life. I can’t risk it all now. Not for anything, or anyone.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly so.”
I stood. “I’m just going to walk out of here now. Go up to my room, get my things, leave. I want nothing to do with any of this, you hear me?”
“Oh no, Mattie. That can’t be allowed.”
He didn’t raise his voice, just talked normally, and that was more chilling than anything.
“You can’t possibly get away with this,” I said. “Suicide? Come on, man, you must know how hard that is to fake. The autopsy always tells the truth.”
I’d seen enough documentaries and films. There was always something: the angle of a gunshot, the distribution of gunshot residue, inconsistent bruising from where the victim had struggled – because surely I was not going to go without a fight!
But Napier was still smiling.
“Och, I know that,” he said now. “The physical evidence never lies, does it?”
He paused, then went on. “But the pathologist does... Or can be persuaded to do so, with the appropriate application of threat or money.”
I stared.
If there was one thing Napier had learned repeatedly, it was that all he sought in life could be bought. Houses, businesses, friendships, honors.
And now, to cover his tracks, the solution was simple: buy the pathologist.
18. Cassie
Why was it so difficult? Cassie had learned to trust her judgment. Not instinct. Believing in instinct was one step away from believing in astrology and the healing powers of crystals, and led to mistakes. But when you have enough training and experience to be able to assess an array of elements in a situation – risks, opportunities, varying outcomes, complications – and compile them into a judgment of the best course of action, all in a split second... To any onlooker that was gut reaction, instinct, but it was anything but that.
Cassie could assess a situation. She could make that judgment call, and act – often in that instant when someone was pointing a gun.
So why was it so difficult now?
She didn’t know what to do, who to trust, who she could turn to.
She could call Doug Connor, she knew. Bring him up to date with events. Take orders from him and act accordingly.
But she knew he would instruct her to withdraw, and how could she do that? How could she abandon Matthew now?
Love. Such a damned stupid complication.
She sat at the top of the cliff, feet dangling over the edge. She’d always hated heights, which was why she did things like this. She’d never been one to turn away from challenges.
