The other men were waiting below. They had dragged the bodies into the kitchen and closed the door. They saw the girl holding their colleague’s hand as she came tentatively down the stairs, taking them one by one. They looked up at her, and one said: ‘Jesus.’ If there had been any feeling for the men they had killed, it vaporized.
The team leader helped Jessica Thompson into the Dauphin for the flight back to Credenhill.
He tried to use his mobile phone, only to discover that the dead Zogu could not have contacted his men even if he had tried. That part of the Denbigh Moors has no reception. He climbed in beside the girl and nodded at the pilot.
The other men would stay behind to be collected later. In the meantime, they had some clearing up to do. Down on the road, they had not shot up the engine of the Volvo and it still worked. One of them set off to collect it. There would be five troopers to pick up and four dead gangsters in body bags. The helpful but no doubt puzzled police of Conwy County would be asked to crush the ruined Volvo into a block of scrap.
At Credenhill they delivered Jessica straight to the medical unit. Two female troopers took over, fussing as the girl bathed and shampooed her hair. One of them emerged to tell the commanding officer:
‘They didn’t touch her, you know. They threatened to, and leered at her every time they brought food. So just in time. She’s a clever girl. Head on her shoulders. She’ll need counselling, but she’ll recover.’
The CO rang Sir Adrian, and he told Robert Thompson, who was very much still alive. Sir Adrian had a car with a driver and despatched both on the long drive through the dawn to Hereford for the reunion.
When they arrived back in London Sir Adrian visited Thompson again at his Battersea flat.
‘I doubt you can continue in the civil service after this. Or whether you would want to. Perhaps a change of scene. And guaranteed security for you both.
‘I know a place that is very beautiful. Warm climate, sparkling blue sea. Wellington, New Zealand. Good schools, welcoming people. I think I could arrange something, if you’d like. I know their High Commissioner in London.
‘A good job with the Kiwi government. Nice house. Easy commute – it’s not a big place. New life, perhaps. I think it might be arranged. Let me know.’
A month later Robert Thompson and Jessica left for that new life by the waters of the Cook Strait.
Adrian Weston was a humane man, and he was concerned to find out the true identity of the man whose charred remains had been in the remote-controlled speeding car.
Back in 1943 the Western Allies had been preparing the invasion of southern Europe. It was of concern to try to dupe the Nazi high command, to convince them that the invasion was coming where it was not coming. The British took the body of an unidentified down-and-out, dressed it in the uniform of a major in the Royal Marines and cast it adrift off the shore of southern Spain.
Attached to one wrist by a chain was a briefcase containing documents, apparently top secret, indicating that the invasion would be via Greece. The body drifted inshore, was found on a beach and handed to the Guardia Civil. Franco’s Spain, technically neutral, was actually pro-Axis. The papers were passed to German intelligence and thence back to Berlin.
Greece was massively reinforced. The Allies under Patton and Montgomery invaded via Sicily and Italy. Thousands of lives were saved. Later, a book was written and a film made, both titled The Man Who Never Was. That was where Sir Adrian had got the idea.
The body in the speeding car was also that of a down-and-out, a dweller on the streets and alleys, and also unidentifiable. He had been destined for a pauper’s burial in an unmarked grave. The autopsy revealed that the man had died of pneumonia, probably caught from sleeping out in the rain. Tests showed he had been an irrecoverable alcoholic with an already badly damaged constitution. The only thing left on him that he had not pawned to buy booze was a signet ring.
But once, reasoned Sir Adrian, he had been a man, perhaps one who loved and had been loved, one who had a job, a family, a life. How had he ended up a wreck, dying in a gutter? He decided at least to try to find out.
He put a ‘hold’ on the pauper’s grave. He called in favours, kicked backsides, rattled cages. A DNA sample was eventually retrieved. The national DNA database was consulted. But there was nothing. If the dead man had a criminal record, his sample should have been listed. There was no listing.
Weston was about to let officialdom take its course when a scientist working at the DNA database called him.
‘There might be a sibling match,’ he said.
The possible match on the database had been in a bar brawl years before and had been charged with assault causing actual bodily harm, or ABH, and had been convicted. And he had a name. Drake. Philip Drake. It took a bit of police time to find him through three address moves. But he was found. He was shown the signet ring and confirmed it had belonged to his brother Benjamin, known as Benny.
He had not seen his brother for twenty years, not since the older sibling, ravaged by post-traumatic stress disorder, had slipped through the welfare net and society’s various charities into alcoholism and a life on the streets. But he recalled that Benny’s problems had derived from combat in Afghanistan wearing his country’s uniform.
He had been a Mercian, one of a regiment drawn from the East Midlands, headquartered at Lichfield. Weston rang the commanding officer and told him. And the CO decided that, low as he had fallen, Corporal Benny Drake should have
his soldier’s funeral. He delved into the regimental reserve and found the funds.
A week later the funeral column came out of Main Gate Whittington Barracks and turned into the streets of Lichfield. A hearse topped by the Union Jack carried the coffin, and behind it came a limousine bearing both parents. The people of the city took off their hats and turned to face the road as it went by. The bearer party and a warrant officer brought up the rear. All moved at the slow march.
At Whittington village cemetery the column turned in and was directed to the prepared burial plot. The bearer party took over, six soldiers carrying the coffin the rest of the way, past St Giles’s Church, to the grave. The regimental chaplain conducted the service. When it was over, the flag was removed from the coffin, folded and handed to the parents.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground the firing party stepped forward with the regimental bugler. The sextons waited with their shovels. The riflemen discharged three volleys over the grave and the bugler sounded the ‘Last Post’. Mr and Mrs Drake stood very straight and very proud as their son Corporal Benny Drake was sent to rest. He may have died in a gutter, but he was laid down with fellow soldiers.
As the final note of the ‘Last Post’ drifted away, at the far end of the cemetery a single figure put away his field glasses. Sir Adrian climbed into his car and was driven back to London. There was a score to settle.
The following morning, his bank accounts frozen, Mr Vladimir Vinogradov was requested to leave the country. The formal explanation, which had no justification because, under law, it needed none, simply declared that, in the view of the British government, his continued presence was ‘not conducive to the public good’.