NIK MORTON

CHAPTER 1 – Traitorous emotions

Another hose-pipe ban loomed. Still, I was glad to be back in stifling grime- and crime-ridden London, even if sweat pooled in the small of my back. Sweat that caused my scars – and there were plenty – to itch.

Just my luck, the cabbie had to drop me at the end of the ill-lit Dogleg Alley because British Gas repairmen had decided to transform a good hundred yards of road leading to the hostel into a facsimile of the First World War trenches. I don’t know whether the short-cut was named as it has a kink in it or because it seems like all of the city’s dogs cock their legs here. And not only dogs, my nose reminded me.

The cabbie had offered to carry my bags, probably because I was a nun rather than a woman. Oddly, some men make the distinction. I’d declined and tipped him anyway; I thought I could manage. But right now I regretted my sinful little pride. The weight of the bag seemed to increase with every step – there’s probably a scientific law to explain that.

Alexander Pope’s observation felt very true as my shoulders ached: ‘Pride, the never-failing vice of fools.’

Sweat made my hand slippery, so I had to switch the bag and wipe the wet palm on my habit. Thankfully, the black serge didn’t show stains. Right now I yearned for the white cotton habit I wore throughout the lecture tour of Southern Spain, Portugal and Italy.

An open window above emitted flickering purple light from a TV: I could hear laughter and the distinctive baritone of Frasier’s voice. I’d caught the occasional repeat show in Italian and Spanish – they translated quite well.

The window next door was open too, and I heard the sounds of desperate love-making. I stopped and lowered the bag, recalling with a mixture of emotions the nights with Mike, and smiled at the dear memories. The couple probably wanted to get it over with and take a shower to cool off. I know I did, standing there, discovering traitorous emotions long dormant. Strange, how I never expected I would miss sex when I joined the Order. Try telling that to a healthy thirty-year-old body, though.

‘Sublimate, Sister Rose,’ Sister Emily had told me, her eyes twinkling, during those first months in the Mother-house at Godshill, ‘sublimate!’

‘That’s the only mating I’ll be doing from now on!’ I’d replied mournfully.

Arm now rested, I picked up the bag and headed deeper into the alley.

God knows, I didn’t mean to kill him. As a rule – how we religious delight in our rules! – nuns don’t kill or maim.

I was just approaching the dogleg in the alley when he came rushing round the corner out of the darkness. As he thudded into me, methylated spirit fumes fanned my face in heavy gut-wrenching waves.

Winded, I staggered back and dropped the bag.

He swore and raised a hand – which I promptly hit with the edge of my own. Instinct and training took over. I grabbed his arm and twisted it into a painful lock and thrust him away, towards the opposite brick wall.

His forehead made an unpleasant noise as it hit the brick and his legs buckled under him and he slumped against the wall.

I’d acted without thought, in self-defence.

Now, as I took in his clothes – he was wearing two shirts and a wind-cheater in this heat, sports-leggings and Nike trainers – I thought I recognised him.

‘Arthur?’

Tramps tend to wear their entire wardrobe. Arthur was a tramp. About twice a week he’d appear at the kitchen door for a mug of soup and some bread and he’d occasionally ask if we had any stout too. From time to time, I’d see him roaming the Bermondsey streets.

He didn’t move.

Legs suddenly feeling wobbly like jelly, I knelt beside him.

Thank God, he wasn’t dead, only unconscious. His breathing was shallow. I pulled out my Maglite pen-torch and put on my spectacles. I checked under his lids: both pupils dilated to a large size as I passed a hand over them. No signs of subdural hematoma. Apart from a pronounced bruise on his forehead, he looked otherwise unhurt. Though later tonight, I conceded guiltily, he would wake up with an almighty headache.

I thought of Abbess Ursula’s all too frequent admonishment: ‘It is wise not to be over-hasty in action, Sister Rose.’ A few more Hail Marys tonight, I told myself resignedly.

Just before I switched off the torch I noticed something glinting in Arthur’s hand. A gold earring. Definitely not his style. But why would he steal only one? Unless he’d dropped one as he fell? I shone the torch over the ground but couldn’t see any answering gold glint. Gold sells, yes, it buys booze and drugs, though in Arthur’s case he was a drunk, not a user.

I caught myself rubbing the left side of my head under the wimple. A mannerism bred of stress and memories I’d rather forget.

Against my better judgment I stepped over Arthur and walked cautiously further down the alley. I left my bag to keep him company. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Every step tightened the tension in my stomach. An old fear re-surfaced, a fear I had thought long since exorcised by prayer and time. Nightmares had hardly ever visited my sleep in the last six months, for which I was thankful. Yet every fibre of my being convinced me that this ill-lit alleyway promised to be a real nightmare.

There is a distinctive smell about death, a universal death-scent. I’d been on the scene of more deaths than I cared to remember and knew the smell only too well. My palms were sweaty again, but it had nothing to do with the heat of the night. My mouth was dry as I walked slowly, fearing what I would find yet knowing the inevitability of it.

A pile of cardboard boxes and cartons cluttered the area. A black buzzing cloud of flies hovered. A rank stomach-heaving smell wafted up from the boxes. But I couldn’t turn away.

Unmistakable. A corpse among the boxes.

‘Seen one, seen them all’ is a phrase that for me doesn’t apply to dead bodies. Each has an individuality, whether it’s the manner of the death, the deceased’s age, the clues left around and on the body, the life cut short, the loved ones left behind.

Some professions confront death almost daily; yet while the people might behave professionally, they are still affected. That makes them human. Police and fire-fighters, doctors and nurses, they face death in all its guises, but very few can remain cold and indifferent to its presence. Black or gallows humour is only a defence, not disrespect.

I remember Moody the Pathologist - he never seemed to show any concern for his raw material. When I tackled him, he said, ‘If you believe in a soul, it’s left the body by the time I get to it. What’s left is meat – meat with a history and clues.’ As I did believe in the spirit surviving death, I thought Moody was probably right.

But it didn’t lessen the shock of seeing Angela’s shapely black body lying among those cardboard boxes.

This was a night for recognition.

‘Always look up at the crime-scene,’ our Sergeant Bishop told us. You never know what might get thrown at you – one policeman on our shift was flattened by a DVD player thrown from a tenement balcony. So I glanced up – another open window. By the way Angela was lying, it looked like she’d been thrown out. My heart tumbled in sympathy at the thought.

Angela was a travesty of the young woman she had been. Gone was the vivaciousness, the amused glint in the brown eyes – eyes that stared now, flattened through loss of fluid. Gone was the playful haughtiness when she laughed, flicking long black curling hair – hair now matted in dried blood. Her mouth was frozen in a scream that betrayed the agony of a terrible death.

I’d seen death and mutilation while working in Peru – and even before taking my vows. And no matter how many autopsies I’d attended, my stomach still squirmed. Knowing Angela had gone to a better place - on to glory - didn’t lessen the grief.

I’m ashamed to admit that I was disappointed and saddened to see her G-string and tassel-decorated bra – the attire of a lap-dancer, a dubious career she’d forsaken when the hostel took her in and rehabilitated her. Father Rogers spent many hours steering Angela back on the right path. And Angela had responded well, agreeing to go straight, to fulfill the promise of her youth – though it would seem for only a brief time.

My dry throat constricted with a sob as I tenderly stroked the side of Angela’s face. It was cool to the touch. An artificial anaconda snake was wrapped round her throat.

A nun I may be, but I could imagine the gyrations and contortions she’d share with that snake.

The muscles in Angela’s jaw and the visible part of her neck were already stiff where early rigor mortis had set in. The lower side of her face against the cardboard boxes had a dark discolouration, and when I pressed a finger gently against her cheek, it blanched. I offered up a short prayer. She’d been dead between four and six hours.

My fob watch read 11:30PM. This would become the legal time of death, the moment of discovery – some hours after the estimated time of death. Of course it seemed likely that Arthur had found her first – possibly only minutes earlier – but he didn’t usually know what day it was, let alone the time.

I didn’t think twice about using the hem of my habit to brush Angela’s eyes, nose, ears and mouth. This action might flout the pathologist’s rules, but I couldn’t bear to think of eggs nestling there. Kelso, the forensic entomologist, had explained how flies lay their eggs in these orifices within ten minutes of the time of death. Twelve hours later, the eggs hatch. Entomologists are pretty useful at determining the actual time of death.

Although I’d unconsciously registered the extent of Angela’s wounds, it was only now that I could acknowledge them, and I shuddered involuntarily. The butchery was horribly reminiscent of the insane Dr. Face all those nightmares ago. That was one thought I pushed back down into the dust of forgotten memory.

Angela was no longer a person. She had become a statistic and a collection of clues to be pored over, some of which might hopefully lead to her killer.

My legs were unsteady as I straightened up and folded away my glasses. Then I walked hurriedly away from Angela, towards the hostel.

I was mindful of Mother Superior’s words during my time as a difficult novice: ‘It is not seemly to run, my dear. Walk. God may prefer punctuality, but He will wait!’

To hell with that, I now thought rebelliously, and ran.

The urgency wasn’t to help Angela, who was beyond any earthly assistance, but to hasten the capture of her killer. The sooner an investigator was at the scene of the crime, the better. The first twenty-four hours were crucial and I guessed that a quarter of that time had already passed.

I rushed out of the alley and crossed the deserted street.

Flashing safety lights and striped barriers were to my left. They surrounded a gaping trench – an image that uncannily mirrored the wound in Angela’s body.

I climbed the hostel steps – an action I’d anticipated with pleasure and even joy, but now found heart-rending.

A sign above the doorway announced, ‘Then will the rags of the poor shine with splendour, and the gorgeous raiment become tarnished.’

Catching my breath, I barely noticed old Mario sitting quietly in his wood-and-glass cubicle in the entrance foyer. He was concealed behind the Evening Standard.

At any other time I would have stopped to chat about the day’s events in the hostel, to catch up on the gossip since my absence, but I needed to get to the privacy of my office and the telephone. No point in causing alarm just yet.

The smell of death still filled my nostrils. It always did that. Even after leaving the crime scene, you were plagued by it, often for days.

This was none of my business, I told myself. Just call the police. It’s their job.

For the moment, prayer was forgotten.

I opened the office door and flicked on the light.

The nightmare got worse.

CHAPTER 2 – Like old times

A nun was sitting behind my desk in the straight-backed wooden chair. She was slumped over a mess of blood-spattered papers. I stood, my hand frozen to the doorknob. It must be Sister Leocritia, who’d been left in charge during my absence. Blood stained the wings of her wimple.

Hesitantly, unaware I was holding my breath, I walked round the side of the desk, my heart hammering, hands trembling as I firmly gripped Sister Leo’s shoulders and lifted her up. The manual may tell me I shouldn’t have moved my friend, but I had to be sure there was no flicker of life, that the soul had departed.

Something bloody was stuffed in her mouth and it was a few seconds before I realised what it was. ‘Oh, my God!’ I breathed. It was a penis and the hairy flaccid skin of a scrotum.

The shock was so sudden I let go and Sister Leo’s head thudded noisily to the desk surface, sending a spray of blood at my face. Something purple and spherical skittered across the desk and papers, leaving a spotted red trail, then fell to the floor.

I froze.

It was Sister Leocritia, though the failed attempt at stripping off her facial skin had left her barely recognizable; however, she was the only ex Muslim nun in London. She’d proudly taken the name of the Muslim saint who was beheaded in 859 and is now buried in the cathedral of Oviedo. In that brief moment I’d taken in too much detail, images that would continue to haunt me for the rest of my life. The front of Sister Leo’s habit had been cut away and was bloody, a disturbing echo from my past.

Surprisingly, my fingers were steady as I pulled out my spectacles and knelt down. Gingerly, I fingered the spherical thing on the blood stained floor. It was a testicle. I swallowed hard on the bile that threatened to fill my mouth and disgorge the aircraft meal. I prayed for Sister Leocritia, knowing she was not the last soul I would be praying for tonight.

My heart raced as I stood up and crossed the office to stand in front of the door that led to my bedroom – little more than a convent-sized cell. The blood on the office floor was fresh. Sister Leo hadn’t been dead more than an hour. Her murderer could be in hiding. I covered the doorknob with a voluminous sleeve and tried it.

The door opened and an orange glow from the street light filtered in through the high window. They were deliberately set high to admit light but not cause distractions. There were shadows that made my pulse race and my mouth go dry.

I flicked on the light.

The room was empty, the bed too low for anyone to hide under. The hanging-space was open and there were no cupboards.

Letting out a sigh of relief, I backed into the office again and now studied the floor. There were smudged footprints leading to the foyer door, probably a size eight – smudged because I’d stepped over them. I kept clear of them and again felt sick as I realised I was trailing my own bloody footprints.

To avoid overlaying my fingerprints on any already there, I took out a handkerchief and grabbed the phone and dialled 999. I gave the details, surprised at how calm I sounded. Reporting three deaths without any outward emotion.

Three deaths. Because I knew it was not over. Blood from the genitals was still fresh. A man quite near was either massively hemorrhaging or already dead.

Like old times, I thought.

Bury feelings deep down, don’t allow personal fears to obscure the job in hand. Shun personal involvement. Become depersonalized.

Of course it wasn’t that easy. Never was.

With my free hand I removed my glasses and used a sleeve to wipe away the tears from my eyes and the blood from my cheeks. ‘Yes.’ I confirmed the information and address repeated back to me.

There was no sign of a struggle, the papers on the desk hardly disturbed though splattered with blood.

‘I’ll be here at the hostel, of course,’ I added superfluously.

The book-case against the wall behind Sister Leo was as I’d left it and the cork notice-board above it seemed the same, even with my schedule of work and appointments for the next month.

I was told that Detective Sergeant Merriday and Detective Constable Quinlan were on their way.

The filing cabinet in the right-hand corner was still locked.

I put the phone down and my hand trembled.

I left the office and silently closed the door behind me. I locked it and pocketed the key. There were no footprints. The murderer must have removed his shoes or wiped them before coming out of the office. Mario was hunched up in his cubicle, his throat cut, the newspaper still propped up in front of him. Handyman, porter and messenger, he’d been with the hostel from the beginning. His glass eye seemed to have more life in it than the real staring one. It was obvious he had supplied the genitals.

I had no doubt that Mario died before Sister Leo. I prayed she had been dead before suffering that ignominy. I remembered poor Sister Joaquina. She had witnessed her fellow mission nuns and women helpers treated in the same despicable manner; she’d been saved the ordeal in time by Government troops; but her mind was unhinged ever after, always a few beads short of a rosary, as they said not unkindly in the Mother-house. I feared Sister Leo’s death had been long and harrowing.

I made the sign of the cross and whispered a prayer for Mario’s soul then lowered his lids and left him.

CHAPTER 3 – Nightmares made flesh

My lids must have lowered with a combination of fatigue and shock. I saw a face. A face with dark, cold and menacing eyes. Unlike Dr. Face, whose eyes were those of a madman. Dr. Face had been sick, insane; but this man was neither, he was pure evil. Even after all this time in the Order, I still held some silly superstitions. Now, seeing this evil dredged up from my past, I could not give the man his name. As though by denying him an identity he would cease harming me. Stupid superstition. His name was Beadle and he hurt me, more successfully than Dr. Face ever could. And all the while he murmured, like an incantation, ‘Pay-back time, pay-back time…’

‘This is a terrible time to keep asking you questions, Sister Rose Louise,’ said the gentle, deep velvet voice and with a start I recovered from those dark thoughts and found myself covered in sweat, my underclothes and habit clammy with the outpourings of the very real nightmare.

Sitting on an unmade bed, I felt uncomfortable and cold. Then I remembered where I was: this was the hostel sickroom. Of course my office was cordoned off with police tape and the only access to my own living quarters was through the office.

My head was pounding. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. I’m tired after the flight.’

‘Hey, that’s all right, er, Sister Rose Louise.’

‘Sister Rose will do, Sergeant Merriday.’ I opened the bedside drawer and pulled out a card of Ibuprofen. He was alert and quick. Before I’d popped the bubbles he’d filled a glass with water from the sink’s tap. It tasted lukewarm as I swallowed two pills.

Again I rubbed the linen cloth of my wimple down the left side of my face, from temple to chin. The obsessive action had nothing to do with the headache or the odd migraine I suffered at times of stress; it had everything to do with my past. A past I still tried to forget.

The past may be a foreign country, I thought, recalling L P Hartley’s famous phrase, but sadly in my memories and nightmares they don’t do things differently there. The past was always the same and I couldn’t change it.

The ID cards of Detective Sergeant Merriday and Detective Quinlan had alarmed me earlier, sending more unwelcome memories scampering through my mind like demented Peruvian chiggers that burrow into flesh. Nightmares made flesh.

Merriday was patient, which was a good quality to have – especially in a detective. He sat by the sink and produced a vegetable-burger wrapped in a paper napkin. ‘Is it all right if I eat?’ he asked, his dark brown eyes glinting. ‘It’s either my evening meal or my breakfast, don’t remember which.’ He smiled briefly.

‘Go ahead.’ I wasn’t surprised that he was still hungry after viewing three corpses; obviously, he’d been around. ‘Do you want a coffee or something to drink?’ I was surprised how natural my voice sounded.

‘No, thanks. By the end of my shift, I’ve got coffee coming out of my ears!’ He smiled briefly again, a pleasant crinkling of a worn kind face. He appeared at odds eating the fast food in his smart charcoal grey suit and immaculate blue shirt. Even in this heat, he wore a Paisley tie, though the collar was undone and the tie loose. He seemed to resemble a buccaneer, with prominent bent nose and black hair down to his collar, dark brows and tanned skin blemished only by a white scar. A fearless corsair, perhaps, only lacking an Antonio Banderas moustache. Clearly, I’d read too much Sabatini instead of St. Teresa.

‘Detective Constable Quinlan is checking out Angela.’

Merriday’s murder team was going to be kept busy with two crime scenes. The apartment above the alley. And my office. Right now a major incident room would be set up somewhere nearby and a pair of detectives would be working with the sketch artist and photographers - Polaroid, 35mm and video. Polaroid shots help locating evidence not readily seen by the naked eye and serve as markers for the forensic people. Scene Of Crime Officers would be busy bagging and tagging: any item found associated with bloodstains should never be put in plastic bags – they must only use glass. They would also take control samples from the same area – such as the carpet. Every tag is marked with the collector’s initials, with the date and time of tagging. Evidentiary items would be triangulated for diagram drawing – ‘single male testicle, 3ft east of the west office wall and 2ft 6ins south of the office door.’

‘I’m sorry about your friend Sister Leocritia – and your man Mario,’ he said and took another mouthful.

‘Thank you, that’s most considerate,’ I said, allowing him to eat. His delivery and accent were Northern London, whereas Quinlan’s had been a definite North-east lilt.

I steeled myself. Might as well voice my fears now. ‘I don’t think Sister Leo was the intended victim.’

‘I see.’ He took a bite and chewed on the food and my words.

I thought he was debating whether I was, like Sister Jo, ‘a few beads short’.

Behind those eyes there seemed an unfathomable sadness, some deep hurt. His face had a serious cast, so that when he did smile it was a relief, lightening his appearance. Without any evidence whatsoever, I surmised that he had little opportunity to smile these days. ‘Because she was in your office, you reckon you were the target?’

I nodded. ‘That and the manner of her mutilation.’

I liked DS Merriday. Of course, as a religious you shouldn’t dislike anyone. Disapprove of, perhaps. But I liked his manner. A hard yet fair man, I thought. I knew his type – work was their religion. Often, only faith kept them going, faith in self, faith in justice winning against the system. He still kept faith even when political correctness had gone mad. Strange, how my own faith had been lacking, yet now it seemed set in concrete.

Brow furrowing, he jotted down a word or two. Some detectives develop their own shorthand, others used the real thing, and a few resort to laborious verbatim. ‘What about the mutilations, Sister?’

‘Did you hear about the Dr. Face serial killer in Newcastle about five years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was a policewoman up there at the time, with my husband Mike.’ Speaking his name aloud at this time seemed strange. I felt a pricking behind my eyes.

His eyes widened, as if he was taken aback by my revelation. Eyes say a lot. Even senior detectives have unguarded moments.

I controlled myself and smiled. He was probably thinking that my revelation explained my calm when confronted with corpses. If only he knew. Inside, I was thrashing about like a drowning woman, engulfed by wave after wave of painful memories and the fear of another madman determined to maim and kill me.

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

The agent who called himself Mr. Swann entered the Queen’s Hotel bar at 2PM, just as he had promised. In my business I’d met a few spies and all of them were nondescript. After all, to be a good agent, you need to blend in, be unmemorable. Swann just didn’t fit that category, so I wondered if I was wasting my time on this mysterious appointment.

He was tall, dark and sanguine. In his early fifties, maybe a little older. His black hair sported a white streak on the left; a livid jagged thin scar continued from there at the hairline all the way down that side of his face to his chin. The bottle-green worsted suit was bespoke, the shoes patent leather. He wore gloves and carried a large brown leather briefcase. Removing a dark grey trilby, he nodded at me. Spots of summer rain had peppered dark blobs on his shoulders and hat.

As I stood to greet him, he gestured for me to remain seated and strode over. He limped ever so slightly, as if one leg was shorter than the other; I’m only a reporter, not a detective, and I certainly wasn’t going to measure his inside leg.

He’d implied he was still in the field but I was beginning to suspect that he’d been put out to grass. A bit harsh, I thought. Because of his physical appearance maybe nowadays he was a desk man at ‘Legoland’, the agents’ popular name for the new headquarters building at Vauxhall Cross on the Thames.

Let’s be honest, he wasn’t going to melt into any background. Besides, these days he was the wrong ethnic type for infiltration. The Twin Towers atrocity changed several priorities and a few careers come to that. Why do we in the media insist on the short-hand ‘9/11’? Sounds more like a deodorant brand to me. What’s wrong with giving that terrible act of violence against the victims of over thirty different nations its proper name? Anyway, the world was not the same since then and now the clandestine services were mainly gunning for fanatical terrorists, not greedy traitors or misguided ideologists, though those sort probably still existed in the woodwork, waiting their chance to emerge.

Sitting opposite me, Swann smiled as the middle-aged blonde barmaid placed a whisky and dry ginger in front of him. Clearly, he was known in this place. Not promising, I thought, though obviously being prominent could also imply that you couldn’t possibly be a spy because spies are shadow creatures. Double blind, or whatever they call it.

Maybe that’s how the character James Bond got away with it for so many years, traipsing round the world using his own name more than the odd pseudonym. Now Quiller, he was much more realistic. Never did get to know his real name. And of course Quiller’s author, Adam Hall, was a cover-name for the late lamented Elleston Trevor. Still, those spies were fiction; Mr Swann was fact and studying me.

Swann’s eyes were a cold blue; one of them, I suddenly realized, was glass. You’d have to be quick to detect the movement, but in an instant his single orb seemed to scan the entire room and its occupants. As it happened, I’d chosen a booth where we couldn’t be overheard.

Despite the very visible scar, it was obvious that he had undergone some plastic surgery: the aging skin round eyes and cheek contrasted starkly with the pristine sheen of his square jaw.

He lifted the briefcase onto his lap and clicked open the metal clasp. He fished out a bundle of paper. ‘Perhaps this manuscript would prove of interest, Mr. Morton?’

I liked the man at once. No skirting round the reason for our meeting, no small talk about the lousy British weather. Straight to the point.

He handed over about a ream of Courier font typewritten paper, secured by a thick elastic band. The corners were turned and the sheets had lost their whiteness. A bit like me, I suppose. It also reminded me of my rejected manuscripts – except there were no coffee-mug stains.

‘Have you heard of the Dobranice Incident?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘It was a while ago, I must admit.’ He’d never make a politician, I thought; they never admitted anything.

‘So when was this incident?’

‘1975.’

‘Good God, the Dark Ages!’ If my shaky memory was to be believed I was an idealistic nineteen-year-old, reporting the Melody Maker pop-scene at the time. I shook my head. ‘I wasn’t into world events then.’ I’m fifty-one now and world-weary. Early retirement would be nice, but it wasn’t going to happen since the politicians had wrecked my personal pension. At least I genuinely liked writing – and getting paid for it. Though, on reflection, no matter how much I wrote, it didn’t get any easier.

‘The incident was trivialized,’ Swann said. ‘Made barely page three in the broadsheets at the time. A postscript, really.’

‘And this postscript – this manuscript concerns that “incident”?’

‘Dobranice. Yes.’ He handed over a single sheet, a typed list.

I glanced at it. Some place-names I recognised as trouble spots from recent history, others I hadn’t heard of and the rest might well be places from a Pirates and Travellers game:

Dobranice

Tehran

Kabul

Caldera

Izmir

Hong Kong

Elba

Naples

Peking

Bulawayo

Mogadishu

Cairo.

‘When you said agent, you didn’t mean travel agent, by any chance?’ I asked.

His mouth made a grimace but his good eye shone, betraying amusement. ‘Keith warned me about your – for want of a better description – sense of humour. No, that’s a list of places – where certain assignments were carried out.’

‘So this manuscript is about Dobranice, the top of the list?’

‘Yes. Top place on the list. Top story.’ He grinned lopsidedly. ‘Top secret.’

I took a good gulp of my cool San Miguel, just to remind me of sunnier climes. This hotel was one of the few places to stock imported Spanish beer. Most of the stuff was bottled in Britain and didn’t taste the same. I glanced at a window. Needless to say, it was raining again. A sultry summer, so the weathermen promised. Weathermen and politicians – don’t believe a word they say.

I nodded at the bundle of typescript, itching to get my hands on it, but I held back. ‘Why give this to me?’

‘Times have changed.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘The Old Order has gone now. Even if the thirty-year-rule allows them to release anything about the incident, I doubt if you’d ever see the full story.’

‘Well, thirty years have gone, haven’t they? I don’t recall anything being released about this Dobranice place, though.’

‘And I doubt if you will, ever. Anyway, that time-release is for Prague and Dobranice. But, as that list suggests, there are other assignments still under the thirty-year embargo. Iran, Afghanistan, Argentina. They’ll definitely be considered as more recent history. And they’re all about Tana. And we feel her story should be told now.’ The look in his eye seemed wistful, as if there was a history between him and this Tana person.

‘Tana?’

‘Tana Standish.’ He nodded at the pile of paper. ‘Read the manuscript – she’s in there.’ He looked sad, almost bereaved, the way he spoke about the mysterious Tana.

Blood throbbed in my temple. Every instinct I’d developed in the news-hunting game told me this might be worth a look. ‘You said “we”. Who wrote this?’

‘Me. And a few others. Keith and Mike. Others. A group effort. Let’s just say that we downed a few drinks and got together a number of times after the Berlin Wall came crumbling down. I know, that’s a long time ago as well.’ His mouth curved. ‘Anyway, it made a pleasant change from dry assignment reports.’

‘But -?’ I offered. There always has to be a but.

He smiled again, thinly. ‘Well, it might be best to rewrite it as fiction, Mr. Morton. Just to avoid the stupidity of another Spycatcher circus.’

‘Or the boredom of Stella Rimington’s Open Secret?’

‘Not so open, was it? In fact, not much action in her prose, I’m afraid. Now, Dobranice – it has more than enough action.’ His features turned rueful. ‘More than enough.’

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘those books were about the Security Service, MI5. This isn’t, is it?’

‘Indeed, you’re quite right. It’s a rather secret part of the Firm, actually.’

‘What do you want in return?’

He studied the remains of his drink and because I wasn’t psychic I couldn’t fathom what he was thinking, but it was more than his words: ‘Just the story. The story is the thing.’

Another question had been nagging throughout our clandestine meeting. ‘Why bring this to me? I’m not exactly well-known, you know.’

‘Jack Higgins turned us down.’

I glared and he grinned. ‘Just joking,’ he said. ‘You’ve been around the block, if you like, you’ve lived through these times, even if you didn’t know what was going on in secret circles. Not many do, if we’re honest. We’ve still got one of the most secret societies on earth, right here in good old Britain. Whatever happened to “Great”?’

‘Sold for a peerage, perhaps?’

He shook his head and smiled. ‘I don’t do politics. Not a good idea in our profession. But as I was saying, actually, Keith liked your articles for the Portsmouth and District Post.’

I didn’t for a minute believe a word of it. Yet... I fingered the manuscript in anticipation. It seemed too good to be true. I was being handed all this secret stuff on a plate.

‘All right, then,’ I said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’

‘Just do her justice,’ he said.

Later, how I wished I’d met Tana Standish. People like me – and those accursed politicians – sit cosily at home with our petty complaints while men and women like her fight the good fight against evil. The Cold War may have ended, but we still need people like Tana Standish, Alan Swann and Keith Tyson. And they get no thanks. Mainly, their stories go unheard and unread. At the most, their achievements probably get a footnote in a newspaper.

After several months shut away from the world of today I have finished this book, which I have called The Prague Manuscript - the first chronicle of Tana Standish’s missions which presages several calamitous adventures with significant revelations from recent history. It is dedicated to all the secret agents who fight behind the scenes and behind the news.

CHAPTER ONE: Prelude

Czechoslovakia, August, 1968

Six Soviet officers stood on the balcony overlooking St. Wenceslas Square and the definition through the sniper-scope was so good that Tana Standish could detect the black-heads round their noses and the blood-shot eyes that testified to late-night celebrating with alcohol. She had ten 7.5mm rounds, more than enough to kill all of them.

Tana had a steady grip but there was no risk of weapon-shake anyway as the new Giat F1 rifle rested on its bipod on the window-sill. She had also made sure that, as this weapon was fresh from the French production-line, it could not be traced back to England.

Dressed in his brown-grey greatcoat with bright red lapel flashes, General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky cocked his head to the left while he listened attentively to his commanders. He was thick-set, with small dark eyes and a pug nose whose nostrils bristled with hair.

Try as she might, she could not detect any thoughts from the officers. But she was able to lip-read. They were in a self-congratulatory mood, since the invasion had gone well, with only a few Czech and Slovak deaths. Vodka had indeed flowed last night.

As one of the main architects of the offensive, Pavlovsky would have the honour to die first. She levelled the cross-hairs on the general’s forehead, just between the close-set eyes.

For God’s sake, don’t! Along with the words that she snatched from Laco’s tumbling thoughts came a familiar dull ache at the back of her neck. Her mouth went very dry. Tana lifted her finger away from the trigger and felt cold sweat start its trail down the side of her brow.

She turned her head as, seconds later, Laco unlocked the apartment door and rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

‘Thank God I caught you in time!’ he gasped, eyes staring at the rifle on its stand.

‘We agreed,’ Tana said evenly, ‘if we got the opportunity, it was too good to pass up.’ Out of the corner of her eye she watched the Soviet officers. They weren’t going anywhere. Two of them were pointing down into the street, where a car was on fire.

Laco heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘We intercepted a radio message.’ He rested his back against the wall by the door and slowly sank down on his haunches, head in his hands. ‘They said there will be reprisals if we kill any of their officers.’

‘If I was one of the other ranks,’ she said, ‘I’d be a bit upset about that.’ But it wasn’t a joking matter. Reprisal was not a nice word in Czechoslovakia.

She stood with smooth grace and he looked up, his wrists resting on his knees, and watched her lithe body; she was dressed in black with a belt of pouches round her small waist. Her every movement seemed fluid, controlled. Cat-like, even.

She drew the lace curtain across the window, concealing the weapon.

Kneeling beside Laco, Tana gently took his hands in hers. She understood. He was only nineteen and he didn’t want another Lidice on his conscience. ‘One day, we’ll beat them,’ she said, ‘I promise.’

*

London, October, 1975

‘Laco Valchik asked for you after we got Torrence back,’ Merrick, the Operations Officer, explained nasally, podgy fingers collating the few sheets of paper in front of him. He always sounded as if he was suffering from hay fever, but he wasn’t. Ops was such a cold fish, she wondered if he had ever suffered from anything. She doubted if he had a conscience; a useful deficiency, in his line of work, which entailed sending agents over the border. His pallid features were slightly flushed as he added, ‘It’s before my time, but I understand you both have a history.’

Tana nodded. ‘Yes, I recruited him,’ she said, ignoring the innuendo. ‘Just before the Soviet invasion. Young and idealistic. Just what we wanted. All fired-up to gain freedom for his people.’

‘Easier said than done, though, isn’t it?’

‘Seven years isn’t a long time in the scheme of things,’ she countered.

His small glasses reflected the light so that she was unable to glimpse the eyes behind them. ‘I mean, we have to be patient. Theirs is an awfully big war machine. It’s not as if the Iron Curtain is just going to crumble in a day, like Jericho, is it?’

‘You might be mixing metaphors there, Ops.’

‘Well, possibly.’ He ran a finger and thumb over his prominent cheekbones in thought, as if this action would peel back some of his memory. ‘But to return to your assignment. Simple regroup and rebuild is called for.’ He put up a hand. ‘I know you were due to work with Fisk down at Fenner House. That spooky stuff will have to wait. Valchik was adamant. He won’t accept anyone else but you.’

‘I’m supposed to be flattered?’

‘No, of course not. But they’ve taken a beating out there. I thought the least we could do was to keep the lad happy.’

‘Happy doesn’t enter into it, Ops. It sounds as though he has become a little distrusting. What on earth did Torrence do?’

‘I wish I knew, Standish.’ He brushed imaginary fluff off his pin-stripe lapel and fingered the typed sheets on the table in front of him. ‘Torrence was all nerves when we got him back. Naturally, the first thing we did was to take him down to a safe-house in Cornwall for debriefing. But he ran off and now he’s missing.’ He shook his head, unwilling to engage her eyes while admitting the department’s blunder. ‘Naturally, we’re trying to locate the man, but it’s obvious he wasn’t up to it in Prague.’ He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I hold myself wholly responsible. I shouldn’t have let him go.’

Tana thought back to Laco’s words seven years ago. ‘I’m sorry we have to let Pavlovsky and the others go.’

‘So am I,’ she had said with feeling in reply. Would she regret not squeezing the trigger? Now, after seven years, perhaps she would find out.

*

Geraghty was small-boned and wiry and she guessed that he must be approaching his retirement. He stood alongside Tana as she sat in the dentist’s chair, head back and mouth open.

Even in this position, she was comfortable enough, because she had a view of the door, the room’s only access. Taped music was playing in the background – Debussy’s prélude Feux d’artifice.

‘I really don’t like this, you know,’ Geraghty remarked and she simply nodded. He wasn’t discussing the music, but what he was about to do. Without fail they went through the same ritual each time she prepared for another assignment.

At that moment the door opened and Merrick sauntered in. ‘Hello, Gerry,’ he said in greeting.

Geraghty eyed Ops with cold venom; Tana knew the dentist hated being called ‘Gerry’. She turned her head but decided to lie where she was, now that she was comfortable.

‘Sorry to interrupt, but could I have a quick word with Standish, please?’

‘Of course,’ agreed the dentist. ‘I’ll just be in the waiting room.’ Not that there was anyone out there waiting. It wasn’t as if there was a queue of agents preparing to go out on assignments.

‘Righto!’ Merrick closed the door after the dentist and said, ‘As I’m going to a briefing, I won’t be able to see you off, so I thought I’d pop in now to wish you luck.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘And I stopped by to see Enid. She said the paperwork is all set and Umbra has been fixed up as well. I haven’t a clue what she means - wasn’t that the name of your father’s submarine?’

‘Yes, Ops, it was. You have a good memory.’ Or he has recently been reading her file. Not unusual, since he was sending her into enemy territory. She didn’t enlighten him further.

‘Oh, well, then, I’ll be off. Take care.’

Then Geraghty returned to fit the suicide pill into her molar.

CHAPTER TWO: Tana

Czechoslovakia

Sharp and chill, the October wind whipped across the international airport’s glistening wet apron as Tana Standish joined the other passengers descending the aircraft’s gangway steps. Once on firm ground she stayed with them and headed towards Ruzyne’s customs. She expected her reception to be as cold as the weather and she wasn’t disappointed.

The stern-faced Slovak policeman at the counter repeatedly scanned her passport and list of valuables. Maybe he had difficulty reading, she thought, or perhaps he was simply admiring the set of her high cheekbones. She only hoped he hadn’t been alerted to her arrival. On this occasion she was travelling under her own name; Enid had argued against it, but Tana was adamant: ‘Last time I was in Prague I was Tracy Casey and there’s no way I’m ever going to travel with that name again!’

‘Well, all right,’ Enid had conceded, ‘but change your hair-style and we’ll update your passport photo.’

In dull tones the policeman enquired about her purpose for the visit and she told him she was a tourist which eventually he accepted with bad grace. His inscrutable dark eyes flickered, suggesting there was some intelligence behind them. Perhaps he wondered why on earth a tourist wanted to stay in Prague, of all places. He sighed, boredom only slightly alleviated, stamped her documents and passed her through.

Bureaucratic time-wasting never seemed to change this side of the ideological divide, she reflected. Tana wasn’t unduly surprised. Even now, so long after the Soviet force-of-arms, she’d expected the usual Iron Curtain delays, suspicions, and searching pointless questions. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that brutally ended the ‘Prague Spring’ may have been seven years ago - years of careful silence - but distrust and suspicion can last a lifetime when freedom is stifled.

Pure instinct made her cautious. She’d been vigilant since childhood and given that such watchfulness had saved her life more times than she cared to count, she wasn’t about to change now.

Security police were still in evidence, with ready weapons and grim faces. But her passport and visa were quite in order. The documentation said she was simply a tourist, like her fifty-odd fellow travellers. International Enterprises (‘Interprises’ was an adjunct of the British Secret Intelligence Service) had even booked her flight through Cedok, the Czech Tourist Office.

Most Interprises agents entered target countries openly to liaise with the British Embassies in furthering trade with Great Britain. The Soviets had been doing it for years with their trade delegations. This time, though, the Ops Officer hadn’t deemed it necessary, so Tana was travelling as a tourist.

Her two lightweight cases had already been sent on to the Hotel Alcron on Stepanska, so, carrying only her small travelling-case, she waded unhurriedly past the dour and earthy airport staff and the diverse groups of tourists whose previously carefree attitudes now suddenly appeared affected by the singular constraints of the Communist Bloc.

Perversely, it was good to be back after seven eventful years – dangerous and secret years in far-flung places like Karachi, Iran, Elba, Gibraltar, Hong Kong and Mombasa. Caution and deceit were second nature to her, she reminded herself and grinned. Yes, I feel quite at home again.

The sound of the heels of her calf-hugging black boots added to the general hubbub in the echoing terminal. Tana moved through the wide glass-partitioned entrance and lowered her travelling-case on the steps and checked her watch.

The British Airways flight had been a couple of minutes early - a favourable tail wind. She’d allowed for a much longer delay in customs, so now she had at least ten minutes to wait before Laco would arrive with transport to take her the seventeen kilometres into the city.

The very air seemed grossly oppressive - and it wasn’t the weather.

At least the rain had stopped. But the grey heavens stayed overcast. From the aircraft she’d seen the lights that shone between the rows of Charles Bridge’s Baroque statues, while the Vltava, edged with rain-sodden trees, reflected the city’s winking night-lights and numerous turreted spires and domes. A beautiful city that seemed to benefit from Communist neglect; it lacked modern hoardings, neon advertisements and garish shops and she felt it was probably better for it.

After all these years it was easy enough for her to keep in check her distaste for the Soviets and their system, which had seemed to get even more corrupt. Odd, but Sir Gerald had openly regretted Kruschev being deposed the year before she joined Interprises – ‘Not as shifty as Brezhnev. We thought we had a chance to work with the Russians,’ he’d said. ‘Now, after over a decade of Brezhnev, I’m not so sure any more.’

She really felt for the oppressed Czechs and Russians; they were regularly lied to and deprived of so much, all so that the Soviet hierarchy could live well. Where there was oppression, there was fear, betrayal and personal danger.

Still, so far she had no reason to doubt that Merrick’s assessment was accurate. ‘Minimal risk,’ he’d said. ‘A straightforward repair and rebuild assignment. I thought you’d enjoy it; a return to see old friends.’ Then he’d added, with a lecherous smirk, ‘Laco Valchik’s still in charge, he picked up the pieces and got Torrence out. A close call, by all accounts.’

As soon as she’d heard about Torrence, Tana had contacted Enid Shorthouse, the Interprises filing clerk in the basement Library. Enid had been with Sir Gerald since the beginning in 1963 and, it seemed, had a memory second only to Tana’s. She knew all of the Interprises field agents and their traits. Her filing system was separate to the Ops Officer’s and that’s the way she liked it. Idiosyncratic. Only she could find anything. She was supposed to provide documentation and information back-up for the agents in the field. But Enid took her job too seriously to limit herself so whatever she could find out she put in her files - on paper and in her memory. ‘You know, Enid,’ Tana had remarked, ‘all Moscow Centre has to do is to kidnap you. Interprises might as well fold up then.’

Chuckling, Enid leaned on the enquiries counter, drooping breasts encased in a My Weekly pattern blue-green bobbled cardigan which was well past its best. She lifted her spectacles from her pointed nose and rested them among the permed curls of her blue-rinsed hair. ‘You’re the only agent who knows the full extent of my knowledge, my dear.’ She winked. ‘The Ruskies’d have to be psychic to know, really.’

Tana grinned. ‘Let’s hope so. Now, what can you tell me about Reginald Torrence?’

‘Torrence!’ Enid’s normally kindly features suddenly transformed, lines pronounced around her glaring egg-shell blue eyes. ‘He’s a buffoon. I don’t know why Sir Gerald allowed him to stay after he bungled Izmir.’ She calmed down, waved a hand airily. ‘Fine, he’s good in the classroom, knows the theory, but his people-skills are nothing to write home about, I can tell you.’

So now Tana wondered why Merrick had sent in that buffoon, as Enid called him. Apparently, he bungled the whole operation from the word go. All he had to do was consolidate the underground faction, obtain any useful information, and then return with technical requirements they might have. Instead, he blew it, the whole fabric torn at the seams, one cell disrupted, others in hiding and fearing the worst.

At least Torrence got out – thanks to Laco and his network’s survivors.

Was it Torrence’s fault or was there a mole in Laco’s organisation?

But Tana knew that there was another quite unthinkable possibility.

She still puzzled over what happened to Toker in Istanbul last month – and Enid hadn’t been any help, either, save saying that Dudley Toker had been a real professional and a gentleman as far as she was concerned. ‘I tell you truly, Tana, I really miss his wonderful smile and chivalrous airs. Not much gallantry about since the Sixties.’

A chilly sensation down the furry nape of her neck returned Tana abruptly to the present.

The man was obviously watching her. Hatless, close-cropped black hair, greying at the edges. Stout, short, a broken bent nose, flaring nostrils. He was so blatantly an agent of the StB, their political security police, no doubt sent from his rat-hole in Bartolemejská where they’d taken over the old convent and eighteenth century church of Saint Bartholomew. One day, maybe the church and convent would echo to hymns and psalms again instead of the plaintive cries of tormented citizens. But she wouldn’t hold her breath.

All StB agents wore civilian clothes, yet they might as well have displayed placards with neon lights. It was a combination of their unrelaxed poses, their strained unawareness and something indefinable, almost as though they smelled of decay and corruption.

On the other hand, he could be KGB – they were little better, confident in their superiority and their ability to instil fear into the populace. And if so, then she was probably blown before she started.

She was aware that in the last six months Interprises had lost two other experienced agents, besides Toker. Cornelius in Helsinki and Segal in Berlin. Her thoughts naturally turned to that unthinkable possibility - the existence of a mole inside Interprises. It was unimaginable. Sir Gerald had created Interprises twelve years ago, specifically because MI6 seemed to be riddled with Soviet double-agents.

Only a week earlier, James Fisk had obtained authorisation for Tana to experiment with a new probing technique on the staff of Interprises. It had risks to her mental well-being, he warned, but she had said she was willing to try. The technique used a prototype bio-feedback system combined with remote viewing. Then this mission had cropped up. Bad timing, really. Still, when she got back, they’d set it up and with any luck it just might help identify the mole, if there was one.

As the watcher’s black rodent-like eyes momentarily latched onto hers, Tana’s brain echoed with a loud throaty scream, a woman in extreme agony:

Completely naked, the woman was strapped to a chair, her skin blemished with electrode-burns, lathered in glistening sweat, trembling violently.

The stark moment passed. Tana didn’t superficially react at all; the mental image had been too swift. But her pulse and heart-rate had quickened.

The sensation was not wholly alien to her; it was akin to previous bouts of precognition. But it was also possible that it could have been a captured impression from the watcher’s sewer-like mind. He looked old enough to be an apprentice during Stalin’s time. Probably reliving his stimulating vile memories.

A sibilant hiss of tyres on the wet tarmac caught her attention.