The establishment wants time to prepare. This week there will be an emergency debate in the House of Lords, and if necessary special legislation will be rushed through both houses to expel Hickstead. By the end of the month you will have all of the evidence together, and we will be in a better position to arraign him. We will oppose bail, of course, and he will sit on remand for months while we prepare for trial.
Gentlemen. For the next few days he will be under virtual house arrest with MI5 ‘protecting him from a terrorist threat’. I can assure you that he will never see the light of day again after that, except through prison bars.”
“Thank you, Commissioner. Can we assume that our colleagues elsewhere in the Yard and in Europol will freeze all of Lord Hickstead’s assets in the meantime?” Boniface asked.
“Yes, with two exceptions. First, we cannot touch his pension funds without agreement from the Union that holds those funds. But in any event he cannot access his pension for another year, by which time he will not need it. Second, we are obliged to allow him to operate a simple credit account so that he can honour his commitments to his creditors. The bank and credit card companies cannot lend him money, or accept any new money. He can only expend funds that he has in his account as of today.”
“Thank you, Commissioner,” Boniface said. “We will ensure that he is securely delivered to Parliament Street.”
Chapter 84
Highbury Clinic, Blackstock Rd, North London. Monday, 6pm.
I realised, as I travelled to the hospital, that I had been quite selfish in my pursuit of Dee Conrad. It was true that I loved her, and it was true that I had sensed that love was reciprocated, but for the last twelve days her life had been on hold whilst she stayed with me. We had talked about her flat mates and her social life, but I actually knew very little about her, and had never seen her flat. I had glibly assumed that if we loved one another we could just cohabit at my flat and perhaps get married. I was not considering her wants or needs; not because I thought mine were more important, but because they had just not entered my mind in the busyness of our lives for the last twelve days.
I was somewhat pleased, therefore, when I heard laughter and girlish giggling coming from Dee’s room. I walked into a girly fest; there were balloons, cards and all things pink, adorning the room. Two women, almost the polar opposite of Dee, stood either side of the bed. These women were dressed fashionably but in clothes that would have suited them more if they had been perhaps ten years younger. Their make-up was exquisite, though. I wondered whether their flat would maybe have three bathrooms, because if it didn’t then surely they must work in shifts in front of the mirror.
One was blonde and the other brunette, but both had long hair, expertly cut by a stylist who was worth every penny of whatever fee they charged. Either one of them could have fronted an advertising for L’Oreal; they both seemed ‘worth it’ to me.
I was introduced to Dana and Gemma by a much improved Dee, who was looking the picture of health, despite her bandages and bruises.
“Ooh, he’s older than I thought he would be,” Gemma said, curling her lip.
“Yes, I imagined he would be more handsome, too,” Dana agreed, contributing to what was obviously a well-practised double act.
“I wonder if his talents lie elsewhere, perhaps?” Dana continued, whilst looking me up and down but holding her gaze over my groin area.
In spite of myself, I blushed. I knew that was what they were expecting but I just couldn’t help it. Dee was laughing too.
We all had a sensible conversation for ten minutes or so, and then Dana and Gemma had to leave so that they could attend their ‘Jazzercise’ class at the gym. After spending another ten minutes hugging and kissing their way through their goodbyes, I was left alone with Dee. I wasn’t sure where to start, so in the end I took a deep breath and simply came out with it.
“Dee, I’ve been doing some serious thinking. I realise you probably feel that I may have taken you for granted. I know how I feel about you, but I haven’t really stopped to consider your needs, or your life, or what you might want.”
She smiled at me.
“There will be plenty of time for all of that, Josh, but for now the girls are looking for a new flatmate. Of course, it’s also quite likely they will convert my bedroom into a giant dressing room with all of their clothes on racks and their shoes stored in transparent stacking boxes.”
“Where are you going?” I asked nervously, knowing that there was only one answer I could live with. She looked me in the eyes.
“I rather thought that I might move in with you. You’ll need help to pay the mortgage now that you have so recklessly frittered away a quarter of a million pounds.”
***
We decided not to make any immediate plans, and to wait until Dee was out of hospital and back with me.
The next hour was spent explaining the events of the day and Lord Hickstead’s spectacular fall from grace. Dee seemed to understand the peer’s motivations, and whilst she couldn’t condone anything he had done, she expressed her opinion that the case would never reach a jury.
“What are you suggesting?” I asked.
“Josh, I love your innocence, but just think this through and then judge the likelihood of a trial being held. It seems to me that there are a number of options here, the least likely being incarceration and trial. First option, release his Lordship on his own recognisance, let him consider his future and give him the opportunity to take the easy way out.”
“Suicide, you mean?” I asked, surprised.
Dee nodded before continuing. “It’s a real possibility, Josh. He will be expelled from the Lords, he will lose the proceeds of his crime, he will be in prison for the rest of his life, and it certainly won’t be a cosy open prison, given the nature of his crimes. The second option is that he doesn’t have the nerve to end his own life and so he is, shall we say, helped along a little.”
I was aghast at the suggestion.
“That would be the equivalent of a state execution!” I stated. “Surely you’re not suggesting that sort of thing actually goes on these days?”
“Think back, Josh, and not too many years ago you will recall individuals who had, or would have, embarrassed the establishment. Scientists, spies and specialists in Weapons of Mass Destruction have died rather conveniently, or have apparently taken their own lives. Some of these people are placed under such enormous pressure that suicide seems to be the only way out, and if they still don’t act then there a thousand ways they can be assisted. Hickstead proved that, with Sir Max and Andrew. Josh, if Lord Hickstead goes to trial it will be broadcast around the world. The Press would have a field day. The ex-Prime Minister will be made to look incompetent for nominating him as a Peer. The new PM will be embarrassed that he allowed the nomination. They will both blame the security services who carry out the checks before anyone gets a peerage, and the House of Lords itself will be damaged. The hereditary and the life Peers will all be pilloried and discredited in the same way that the expenses scandal tarred all MPs, guilty or not. There will be outrage from the public when they hear of the deaths and the distress he caused; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were calls for the House of Lords to be disbanded. That part of the establishment is deeply unpopular, and Hickstead has handed its opponents a potentially lethal weapon.
The unions will disown him, his party already have, and he will have made dangerous enemies that he could not have foreseen when he started all of this. Our Secret Intelligence Services will be deeply humiliated and angry that they’re being blamed for a political blunder, and will already be preparing their defence.
What I’m saying is this, Josh. If he goes to trial there will be parliamentary commissions, committee hearings and so on, and none of them will show the system in a good light.”
I still couldn’t believe that a country like ours would stoop to those depths to save face. It seemed to me that such mistrust was at the heart of all co
nspiracy theories.
Dee could see the doubt in my face. She squeezed my hand and asked a question that sent a chill through my body. “Josh, earlier today, against all the odds and against all common sense, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was instructed to release Hickstead on police bail. Into whose hands was he released?”
She had a point. Number two Parliament Street was guarded by MI5.
Chapter 85
No.2 Parliament St. Westminster, London. Monday, 6pm.
Lord Hickstead had concluded that the life he had carefully built for himself had gone forever. With his credit cards cancelled and his bank account frozen he had to rethink his strategy.
He had around four thousand pounds in his current account that he was free to use. His other accounts had almost seventy thousand pounds deposited in them, but he would never see that money again. They would claim it as the proceeds of crime, even though it wasn’t true. He did have a very good pension with the union, but it would not pay out until next year. He did, however, have two aces up his sleeve.
Lord Hickstead made a call to his Swiss Bank and checked the balance for the numbered account in the name of Euro Union Financial Enterprises. The balance had been reduced as a result of paying Van Aart a hundred thousand Euros in compensation when the diamonds went missing. Still, the figure quoted to him was the euro equivalent of almost half a million pounds.
Several years of milking the EU coffers had served him well. When he had worked for the Trades Union they had wanted to see receipts for all his expenses. They didn’t particularly care how much was spent, but they wanted receipts. He could hardly believe his luck when he took up his new post and found he was allowed the cost of flying home on a Friday, first class, and back again after the weekend, whether he travelled or not. He could also travel widely in his role as European Commissioner for Labour Relations and rack up all kinds of alleged expenses along the way. But not until the last year or so of his posting did anyone ask for receipts. There was simply a presumption that he had travelled home each weekend at a cost of over five hundred pounds a week, and that he had indeed expended what he had claimed. He wasn’t alone in recognising that loophole.
The only other source of cash he could access was waiting for him across London, and to collect that he would need to find a way to bypass his MI5 minder at the front desk. Lord Hickstead’s problem was that, whilst there were many exits leading to external fire escapes, they were all alarmed. He couldn’t use any of those exits as he hadn’t the first idea how to disable an alarm. That left him only the front door.
***
Quite why this building was so secure Hickstead didn’t know, but then he had never researched its history. Since 1895, number 2 Parliament Street had been used solely as civil service office accommodation until apartments had been created from the offices on the top two floors during the 1970s. At that time the doorman would traditionally have been an ex-serviceman. However, following the assassination of Airey Neave on 30th March 1979, within the confines of the Houses of Parliament, there had been a sea change in security arrangements. The recently converted apartments were seen as potential targets for the IRA, as they housed senior government officials. To offer better protection, Special Branch’s SO12, ‘S’ squad, took an office suite at the back of the building and equipped it with firearms, and staffed the lobby with armed officers.
After the 11th September 2001 attacks on New York, SO12 had their hands full with other commitments and so they had been more than happy to let MI5 use the offices and also handle the doorman duties. It was also a coup for MI5. Because all of the bills for this satellite office were covered by the building owners, Crown Estates, very few people at MI5’s HQ at Thames House knew it existed. This made ‘the cubby hole’, as it was known to operatives, an ideal place to carry out operations without the continuous oversight of the bean counters at HQ.
***
Arthur Hickstead had left the apartment carrying nothing but his cash card. He knew that he could not risk taking anything with him. He had no way of knowing what bugs or transmitters they might have hidden in his personal belongings. Having come to the ground floor via the service stairs, he was now in the photocopier room close to reception. With one quick look through the small window in the door leading to the lobby, he satisfied himself that Malcolm was at his desk.
The peer lifted the internal telephone and dialled zero.
Malcolm picked up the old fashioned looking telephone that was in keeping with the decor. “Front Desk,” he said, sounding bored.
Feigning breathlessness and inflecting his voice with pain, the peer stuttered.
“This is Lord Hickstead……..chest pain……..can’t breathe……..help me!”
With that, he hung up the phone.
As anticipated, Malcolm raced up the stairs to the apartments with his mobile to his ear, yelling “Paramedics to Number two Parliament Street immediately! We have a suspected heart attack.”
Lord Hickstead smiled to himself as he let himself out of the glazed internal security doors and out of the original wooden doors onto Parliament Street. No doubt they would review the CCTV footage and realise they had been tricked, but by then he would be long gone.
Chapter 86
Thames House, Millbank, London. Monday, 6:30pm.
Until the 1980s Thames House had been occupied by ICI, for whom it had been constructed in the 1930s. MI5 had moved into the building in the early 1990s, and it was then officially opened by the Prime Minister John Major in 1994. Used as a backdrop before being blown up in Skyfall, the most recent James Bond film, the impressive building overlooks the Thames and Lambeth Bridge. Tourists often visit the office block looking for the entrance familiar to them from the BBC TV series ‘Spooks’. Sadly they are disappointed, because the BBC uses Freemasons’ Hall for their external shots of MI5’s offices.
Timothy Madeley stood in his second floor office looking out over the Thames. His office was neither as ornate as M’s office in the Bond films, nor as high tech as the offices depicted in Spooks. The carpet was beyond office quality, and the furnishings were custom built, not assembled. On the wall was a fabric wall hanging from Afghanistan and an impressive oil painting, on loan from the National Gallery.
The phone rang and he walked over to his desk to pick it up. He stated his surname.
“Sir, this is Malcolm, at the cubby hole. Lord Hickstead has gone.”
There was no hint of fear in his voice, nor was there any expression of surprise from his superior.
“Excellent. Did he escape on his own, or did you have to intervene?”
Malcolm then explained how the peer had hoped to draw Malcolm away from his post, and how Malcolm had played along, pretending to call an ambulance.
“Excellent. So if another agency manages to pick him up he will be convinced he escaped. He is entirely unaware that we allowed him to go?”
“Yes sir, that is correct. Sir, are we running a sweep on this one?”
“We are, Malcolm. We’re guessing which country he runs to. Do you want in? It’s a tenner entry fee and we draw lots on Friday. If he doesn’t make it out of the country, all stakes are refunded. If he settles in a country we hadn’t considered, it goes to the nearest geographically. Agreed?”
“That’s fine, sir. I think he’ll make it across the Channel, that’s child’s play, and after that Europe and Scandinavia are open to him without him even needing a passport.”
“Malcolm, did I ever tell you that I spent a couple of years in the “cubby hole” when I was Liaison with SO12?”
“You did, sir,” Malcolm confirmed, but it made no difference. Timothy Madeley told his funny story anyway, pausing at the appropriate points for Malcolm’s forced laughter.
Chapter 87
City Club Lounge, City Wall Hotel, London: Monday 7pm
The journey across London had been uneventful and now Lord Hickstead was sitting in the club lounge at the City Wall Hotel, giv
ing instructions to the concierge. The concierge disappeared briefly, to return a few minutes later with a briefcase and a holdall.
While he was waiting for his guests he slipped into the leisure club changing room and switched from his suit and tie into a more casual travelling outfit. He placed the discarded clothes carefully in the holdall.
Back at his seat and sipping complimentary champagne which had never seen France judging by the taste of it, the concierge appeared.
“Your guests, Your Lordship,” he announced, distaste written on his features as he ushered the Iraqis into the hallowed surroundings.
The two Iraqis sat down opposite the peer and gawped at their surroundings before their client could attract their attention.
“You have the papers?”
“Yes, here they are.” Faik, the young Iraqi whom Hickstead had been championing for residency, handed over an envelope.
Hickstead looked at the papers. All were genuine; the passport had his photo and carried the name Martin Wells. Even the next of kin section had been completed with the epithet ‘Janine Wells, Daughter’. In addition to the passport he also had a birth certificate, marriage certificate, library card for Hounslow Public Library, a National Insurance Card and an E111 EU Medical Card.
The Iraqis had done well. Hickstead had given them a good start but they had done most of the work. Martin Wells had served in Northern Ireland under Hickstead and had taken a sniper round to the head. He was now in a half-way house for psychiatric patients in Camden. Martin had turned up at a public meeting where the peer was speaking, and to his credit he hadn’t asked for anything, he had simply wanted to greet a familiar face.
Hickstead had bought him a meal and listened to his terrible story. This was four months ago, and Hickstead spotted an opportunity to provide himself with a completely new identity without the chance of being caught with fake documents.
He said that he needed Wells’ documents so that he could raise his case in the House and hopefully save other soldiers from suffering the same indignities. Wells cooperated fully, handing over dirty, tattered and torn certificates and an old driving licence.