Shining Lights Read online

  ‘Why all the interest?’ I ask. ‘Are you planning to organise a surprise school reunion? If you do, I’d avoid mentioning Eric if you want a good turnout. And don’t invite Sandra Buchan. She and Isaac have a history. It ended badly. It was a shame, really, because we were all friends once.’

  The two men synchronously lean back on their chairs and glance at each other. Forrester nods, as if in response to an unasked question.

  ‘Isaac Thurber is one of ours,’ Mather says. ‘But he has slipped off our radar. We’re concerned about what he might be doing. He could be in danger.’

  That takes some thinking about.

  ‘So, is that what brings you here? But why Blackpool, of all places? Nothing terrible ever happens here. Just everyday drink-related violence, rowdy behaviour and petty crime. It’s like Sefton, where I come from. Hardly worthy of an MI5 visit. Is Isaac here somewhere?’

  Mather shrugs. It must be his turn.

  ‘He might be,’ he replies in a non-committal tone. ‘You can imagine our surprise when an old friend of his suddenly appears in the same place at the same time.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ I echo. ‘Is Eric here, too?’

  I get no reply to that. Forrester replaces the documents in the folder.

  ‘I dislike coincidences, Mr Tyler, and, to be fair, your reputation for investigative work, your form for persistence, and your refusal to be deterred from whatever enquiry you’re involved in causes us some concern. This is no place for amateurs.’

  ‘I’m happy to have been able to put your minds at rest.’ I smile. ‘I’m researching illegal raves. Nothing more.’

  It’s obvious that they don’t believe me, but that’s no surprise. I wouldn’t believe me either. I figure that in the grand scheme of things, I’m a long way down the list of accomplished liars they’ve encountered during their illustrious careers. I couldn’t even lie back at school when it was like a rite of passage. Wendy says I’m transparent. My mum says I’m transparent. My boss says… Well, you get the message. I’m transparent.

  ‘Can I ask what Isaac is involved in?’

  Forrester smiles. ‘You can ask, Mr Tyler,’ he says dryly. ‘But with Mr Thurber, you can never be entirely sure. I suspect you know enough about him to understand that he isn’t the most predictable or reliable of people. If he wasn’t particularly good at what he does, they would have dismissed him years ago. But Isaac has a remarkable gift for ferreting out the truth. He shares something of your reputation for doggedness.’

  ‘He was a good friend when I was at school. Someone I could always rely on.’

  Mather emits a smothered laugh, but whether it’s in ironic agreement with what I say or because he knows better, I can’t tell.

  ‘We can always rely on him to ski off-piste, so to speak, when the conditions seem to favour it.’

  Begrudging but not lacking insight. It was always hard to anticipate how Isaac would react in any situation. The only thing you could be sure of is that he would analyse the matter to within an inch of its life, and usually at the speed of a computer processor, before he acted.

  Forrester, more diplomatically, says nothing. He pushes back his chair, gathers up the folder, and stands. He holds out a hand, which I shake, and then he reaches in his pocket and draws out a laminated card and some hand gel.

  ‘If you hear from either Mr Thurber or Mr Redmayne, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know,’ he says, handing me the card. He doesn’t share the gel and I don’t ask. It’s way too late to worry about Covid. ‘Equally, if you feel at any point that you or your family are in danger… After all, other people, unfriendly people, dangerous people, may suspect it’s no coincidence which brought you here at this precise moment. If you feel threatened and need to share your concerns, please use this number.’

  He turns towards the door which Mather has already opened for him. As he’s about to leave, he turns back.

  ‘Just one thing, Mr Tyler. Let me give you a word of professional advice. If you feel tempted to get involved in the matter which brought us here, the matter which has roused the interest of Mr Thurber, please resist the temptation. There are places where you don’t want to go, not if you want to sleep at night and not if you want to keep your family safe. We are not the only interested parties here. The others are—how shall I put this—less patient, more impulsive. You would do well not to meet them. Trust me, Mr Tyler, when I say that this is a matter for the professionals.’

  With that, he’s gone, leaving me with a feeling that someone has just twisted my intestines into a tight knot.

  Chapter 8

  As I reach my flat, very late in the evening, and in a very uncertain frame of mind, I meet my neighbour from Flat 3 in the first-floor reception area. Sitting on an armchair beside a table, she smokes a cigarette in a long, elegant holder. She looks like someone who would have been at home in a 1920s drawing room. She exhales as she sees me and rises to her feet.

  ‘At last,’ she says. ‘Sit.’ She indicates a chair opposite her. ‘I’m Nina. I should have introduced myself earlier, but I didn’t, so that’s that. Now, to business. First…’ She roots in a pocket and produces a key, which she dangles before me. ‘This is a duplicate key to your flat. I have it. That way I can let myself in when I know you’re out and refresh the minibar and top up the food supplies. I don’t change sheets or do laundry, but if you leave out a garbage bag, I’ll make sure anything in it gets washed, dried and returned. If there’s anything else you need, leave a note on the fridge door. I’m also here to make sure you don’t come to any serious harm. So don’t.’

  I’m about to ask her to clarify for me what she defines as serious harm, but she waves an imperious hand.

  ‘Don’t mistake me for a feeble old lady. I’m not feeble, and I’m not old. People have under-estimated me my whole life. Don’t make that mistake.’

  I assure her I won’t.

  ‘Give me your phone,’ she says, extending an open palm as if to show in the lines the roadmap to my uncertain future. ‘I’ve placed a burner phone beside your bed, which I will replace daily. From now on, you use that for any out-going calls. Tillerman says he’s already told you not to use a phone but you wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Now, our agents have checked your home when your wife was out, and it is secure. You can phone there whenever you want to, but you must say nothing other than everyday family chatter, or I’ll withdraw the privilege. Everything that happens here remains here. Think of it as a high-security bubble. You get the idea. Be very careful who else you try to contact. We will know.’

  I hand her my phone, not entirely happily, and she pockets it.

  ‘You can have it back when, and if, we resolve matters to Tillerman’s satisfaction. Always refer to him as Tillerman, by the way. We think it is advisable to use that name. Now, moving on… Tillerman has recently encountered a few problems which have delayed your meeting. He apologises, but they were beyond his control. There are rather more players in this little game than he at first thought.’

  Again, the hand silences me before I can speak.

  ‘No point in asking. I don’t know what the problems are or who the players may be. It’s not my business to know. It’s my business to keep you as safe as I can until this is over. Until what’s over? That’s what you’d like to know, I suppose. Well, don’t ask me, because I don’t know and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. It’s not my job. Tillerman will tell you what and why, but only when the time is right. By then, though, you will have worked some things out for yourself. Tillerman has a lot of faith in your ability and expects you to use your skills productively.’

  She looks me up and down and sighs, as if questioning his judgement. I squeeze in a question while she pauses for breath.

  ‘What am I to do while I wait for him to make contact? Keep walking on the promenade? There’s talk of a curfew if the virus keeps spreading again. If the lockdown tightens any more, I’ll be stuck in this flat.’

  ‘Tillerman says to te
ll you the answer to the question is, Do what you do. It’s your job. He also said you’d ask about your family.’

  She pauses as if to allow me to perform my predicted role.

  ‘Are they safe?’ I ask. ‘I don’t want them caught up in any of this.’

  Forrester’s words still echo around my head.

  ‘Safe enough,’ Nina says. ‘Tillerman has got people watching. He said I was to be honest with you, so I’ll tell you there are no guarantees. Not if things turn really nasty. But the observers are good people whom he trusts, and they’ll do their best. Tillerman is trying to keep control of things.’

  I wish Tillerman wasn’t so honest.

  ‘If I’d known my family were at risk…’ Nina raises a hand to silence me. She shakes her hand and head synchronously, and then frowns. This is not a woman who will suffer fools or small-town journalists easily.

  ‘He said to tell you there was never a choice. You are here because you had to be here. If you weren’t here, the risk might ultimately be even greater.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean? Of course there was a choice. If he’d told me my family would be in danger, I would never have accepted his invitation. I’d still be back with them, and they would be safe.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘He said to tell you they’d be in more danger if you didn’t act, and to think of the Hobbits living their nice secure lives in Hobbiton while the forces of Sauron gathered. He said you’d like that image. Here, at least, you can influence what is about to happen. You can be Frodo.’ She smiles. ‘Or you can be a dwarf.’

  At that mind-numbing moment, she rises to her feet as if she has answered my every question in a more than satisfactory manner. ‘Now, if there’s nothing else…’

  I leap to my feet. ‘Of course there’s something else. What the hell does that mean? They’d be in more danger if I didn’t act? You can’t drop that into a conversation and then leave as if you’ve said nothing. Why is my family in such danger?’

  ‘I don’t know what the danger is. But you can be sure it’s real. Tillerman does not exaggerate, as I’m sure you know.’ She is halfway to her flat door by this stage and shows no intention of answering any more idiot questions. ‘The nature of the threat is not my business. My job here is to keep you safe. The role of his people is to keep your family safe. Your job is to wait until he contacts you and, in the meantime, to do what he said. Do what you’re good at. Do your job.’

  At the very last moment, as she is about to open the door to Flat 3, she pauses again and turns.

  ‘Trust no-one,’ she says. ‘Remember that. No-one is quite who they seem or what they profess to be. Except me, of course. And Tillerman.’

  Something which might, in other circumstances, have resembled a smile flickers like a dying flame as she disappears behind the closed door.

  Chapter 9

  Why didn’t I tell Nina about Forrester and Mather? Partly, I guess, because interrupting her monologue was like trying to force a piano through a narrow doorway. But it’s more than that. If I’m going to do my job, which is what Tillerman asked me to do, I need to do it in my own way. And that means keeping a lot of things to myself until I’m clear on what they signify. There are too many things swimming around my head at the moment, and very few of them connect in any sensible way. I shouldn’t trust even Isaac or Nina until I know more. At the moment, I know nothing much.

  I have to do some more digging.

  Forrester and Mather, for example. Are they really MI5? Or is that one assumption Nina has warned me to avoid? No-one is quite who they seem or what they profess to be. They asked me what I knew about Lingard. I guess I ought to look into that, too. Who or what is it? And why is it important?

  If Tillerman is MI5 and has gone rogue—and that’s a mighty big ‘if’, given that I only have Forrester’s word for it—then what is he up to? And why are they all so concerned about Eric Redmayne? And what the hell has Eric been doing since he dropped out of sight? Where is he? An MI5 role would explain Isaac’s disappearance from the radar after his stint in the military, but what about Eric?

  Yes, it’s time to do some digging. Although where I’m going to dig, given the secret nature of so much of this, is a bit of a mystery. Back to Google, I suppose, and Lingard.

  But first, I have to phone Wendy. If this is going to get dangerous, it’s important that I’m as honest as I can be with her, whatever Nina says. It’s the way we work, Wendy and me. We have no secrets. If Nina takes away my phone as a punishment for sharing everything with her, l can always sit in a corner and sulk until they give it back. No promenade walks until I get my phone. So there.

  I take a deep breath and call her.

  When she answers, I can hear a voice in the background. A man’s voice.

  Okay, I’m not the fragile, jealous-at-the-mere-sound-of-a-male-voice-in-my-lounge-with-my-wife type, and our mutual trust is impregnable. Still, I confess to a frisson at this moment. After all, it’s evening when we would normally settle down together, Noah having fallen asleep at last. We’d sit and talk. Alone. Just the two of us.

  ‘Visitors?’ I ask, after our initial greeting.

  ‘He’s called Adrian, and he’s really nice,’ Wendy tells me.

  I try really hard not to gnash my teeth and turn an unenviable shade of green.

  ‘Oh?’ I ask in my cheeriest voice. ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘He’s the man your friend sent to protect me and Noah. He explained everything as far as he can, which isn’t very far, but he says there’s nothing to be concerned about and I should tell you not to worry about us. His colleague is called Jenna, and between them and a couple of others whose names I forget, they plan to watch our every move. It’s reassuring, after a fashion.’

  ‘Is Jenna there with you?’ I ask.

  ‘She left about an hour ago.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Adrian is here, though, so everything is alright.’

  ‘What’s he like, this Adrian? Up to the task, is he?’ My inner self is begging her to tell me he is married, has two children, is a devout Catholic devoted to his wife and is pot ugly. She doesn’t comply.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think anyone will mess with him. He obviously looks after himself and… how do I put this? He’s very well put together.’

  I want to cry. I want to reach down the phone line and scratch his well-put-together face. To make matters worse, I’m sure I can hear Wendy smother a giggle. Are they laughing at me?

  Of course not. Of course not. I take a deep breath. This is me and Wendy and Noah, and we are rock solid and I know that. I really do. There is something primitive at work within me which I can easily suppress. I’m a rational being, not some chest-beating alpha.

  ‘Just as long as he keeps you safe,’ I say. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  ‘I feel quite safe,’ Wendy says, and now I can hear a wicked laugh emerging from below the surface of her words. ‘He’s a very fit, healthy man for his age.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s fifty-five. Apparently, he and his partner Joseph are in training for a trip to Peru in the Summer. A trek into the Andes to Machu Picchu.’

  His partner is called Joseph? YESSS! Thank you, God! Thank you, Joseph!

  ‘You mean he’s…’

  ‘Yes,’ she giggles. ‘You should have heard yourself.’

  I hear the lounge door close as Wendy goes through into the privacy of the hall.

  ‘How about you? Are you safe?’ she asks.

  There’s no point lying to Wendy.

  ‘I think so. I’m being guarded by a five foot, sixty-year-old ninja called Nina.’

  ‘Nina the Ninja. That’s cute.’ Wendy laughs. ‘But seriously. Despite what they say, and how they try to reassure me, I’m worried. No-one will tell me precisely what’s going on. They say they don’t know the details. Just that you’re caught up in something serious, but you’re safe. They won’t tell me anything else.’

&nbs
p; ‘Me neither. Apparently, until Tillerman makes contact, I have to figure things out for myself. It’s like manipulating a Rubik’s Cube wearing motorcycle gloves and a blindfold.’

  ‘Adrian says there seems to be a lot resting on you,’ she tells me. ‘He doesn’t know what it is, or he won’t tell me, but he says Tillerman couldn’t trust anyone else. You’re part of his plan.’

  That’s nice. I’d feel flattered if it didn’t scare me shitless.

  ‘It’d be good if I knew which part of his plan,’ I say. ‘I don’t like riddles.’

  Half an hour later, when I finish the call, I spend a fruitless few minutes trying to figure out how I got myself into this situation, locked away in a flat near Cleveleys in the middle of a pandemic, waiting to be contacted by someone I haven’t seen in a decade, watched by god knows who for god knows what reason, with a supporting cast of MI5 agents, while my wife and son are back home protected by a fifty-year-old superman called Adrian who, thankfully, lives with someone called Joseph.

  I give up and spend the rest of the evening working my way through the freshly re-stocked minibar and recalling painful memories of my encounters with Eric Redmayne at the Sefton Grammar School flagship debating society.

  Man, he was competitive. He would do anything to secure an overwhelming victory in his debates, whatever the subject. His sole purpose when he rose to that rostrum was to demolish, destroy and humiliate his opponent, and he’d say anything, reveal anything, use anything to achieve his ends. If you had a flaw of personality, or had even once displayed a moment of juvenile weakness, like joining the railway society or having a crush on Melanie Abbott, he’d prise it into the debate to destroy your credibility and to show your total lack of judgement or maturity.