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2024-10-29 19:42:56Hector Nelson glanced at his watch and grimaced.
"I've remained longer than I anticipated," he said, "and I must be going soon. But I am encouraged that you're interested, and I'll be happy to help you in any way I can. Shall I place a new ad to organise our next get-together?"
"That's a good idea," I said, scribbling a few words on a scrap of paper and handed it to Nelson. "Put this in the Telegraph to tell me when you want to meet again, then be on the westbound platform of East Finchley tube station at eight o'clock on the night of your choice. We'll talk then. Not a single person will disturb us on the train, but tonight it might be prudent to organise an inconspicuous departure. Sandra, would you mind asking Simon Cross to join us?"
A few minutes later, the landlord came back into the room. "I would like our friend to get away quietly," I said. "Can you help us arrange it ?"
"No problem," Cross said. "I'll be back soon."
"I am worried
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IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 23
23 I kept perusing through the articles; even though I wasn't examining them for anything, in particular, I thought I might as well continue until Sandra got back. I found an interesting piece from a local newspaper from Wales, covering a declaration I'd overlooked the first time I'd read it. But now, my interest piqued, and I paid closer attention. ... despite police stating a baffling fatality, Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Jasmine Jae said the conditions insinuate it was a murder. Dr Jae, who has worked on high-profile murder enquiries in North Wales, said apart from instances when someone has died of injuries such as knife or gunshot wounds, determining a cause of death was more multifaceted in a rotting corpse. She intimated that if Ms Davis were poisoned or strangled, a pathologist would have difficulties ascertaining this on a putrefying body. DCI Burton and I agreed that it was a murder. But was it conceivable that her killer strangled T
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"I'm sorry to have left you so unexpectedly," Sharon said, on her return "particularly for a false alarm.""A false alarm?" I asked, and Sharon laughed."It started out like that," she explained, "but it turned out to be very constructive.""How did that happen?" I asked."It was DCI Mark Brooks who called me this morning," Sandra explained. "He believed he was in the middle of a catastrophe. But by the time I reached his office, the whole problem had been settled.""Typical," I said. "I presume he tried to recompense you for your disruption.""How did you know?" Sandra asked."I've worked with DCI Brooks before, remember?""Since he is so well associated with the Assistant Commissioner," Sandra explained, "I asked for his help in finding, the one-time friend of Tina Davis, Suzanne Bowen. It didn't take Brooks long to find her, and I spent most of the morning talking with Miss Bowen.""What was she like?" I pressed.
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 25
I came back a few seconds later with my file in my hands. As I didn't own a computer or a mobile phone, I filed the old-fashioned way, writing everything down on cards designed for my index.I flicked through the sheets until I found the record I wanted. "Ah, here we are," I said. "Ahmed Dastageer, a British Muslim of Pakistani descent. Born in Birmingham. He fled to Pakistan after a fatal knifing of his uncle. Apparently he was quizzed by police in association with that offence but was discharged and permitted to leave the country. He lived in a part of Pakistan where his ancestral relations lived, and married a daughter, or a niece of the creator and mystical leader of the Fist of Allah, an extremist group who have crafted their style by blasting passenger trains in India and Kashmir.""How nice of them," Sandra said."Yes," I said. "Ahmed deceptively revisited England and was allegedly grilled and discharged again this time in association with the tube-and-bu
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26 "For the test," I proposed, "we may as well start with the items one would usually use for cleaning kitchens and bathrooms. We can surely try the dish and laundry cleaners, but it makes common sense to work with the cleansers first, doesn't it?" I started to space on my work surface. "You've got some splendid examples, Sandra," I said. "Put them here, side-by-side, can you? We'll mop them with a sponge, and we can grasp them all at once." "Do you think we should shield the tabletop in some way?" Sandra asked. "Unquestionably some spring-cleaning merchandises will seep through the gaps. Do you have a layer of heavy plastic somewhere?" "Don't bother," I replied. "After the spillages, this table has undergone over the years, a drip of cleanser may come as a delightful surprise. The most liable candidate for leaving a crumbly deposit, would be a powdered detergent, such as, what did you buy? Ajax?" Sandra handed me the tin she had bought, and I
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 28
As the morning dragged on, I paid attention to material about the shadowing, arrest, and tribunal of the Liquid Bombers. It was a long and complex story.Sandra went off to work while I continued with my research.The surveillance of the Liquid Bombers was astonishing. The conspirators shadowed for practically twelve months before their arrest. Police had fitted a covert camera in the Bomb Factory.MI5 had diverted the email that the conspirators had sent, and some of this email presented as proof. Undercover detectives from all over Britain had allegedly brought in to follow the collaborators around. One officer sat across from a conspirator at an Internet cafe and watched him download data used in arranging the attack.Some of the original reports said the police had arrested twenty-five people, and some reports stated that the police released one of them immediately. Later reports put the number of people detained at twenty-four.Several more pe
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 27
I looked up from my empty plate and asked, "What do you think about those files?" I asked, not expecting an enthusiastic answer. "My head is spinning," Sandra responded. We picked a new restaurant between Barnet and Whetstone, which had a fixed menu, changed each day. Today we had beef consommé, bitter greens with tomatoes the size of peas, thin roast beef slices, noodles in a green sauce, cheese that melted on your tongue served with sweet blue grapes. The servers, all young people dressed in blue tunics, move wordlessly to and from the table, keeping the salvers and wine glasses full. "So is mine," I acknowledged. "I can't work it out, at least not yet. But it seems for every aspect that shows clarity, I'm discovering three or four others that make no sense at all. I am unable to put the word misrepresentation out of my mind. Am I are reading a story or am I reading the facts. My instinct served me well, in the past but there is so much about this s
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 29
Friday began warmer and drier than previous days, for which my back was grateful. Before I ate my breakfast, I looked in on the countertop test. The façades were dry, and all except the brownest appeared clean. But I pulled a fingertip across them, and it came up pale white. The deposit was chalky and, to some extent, tacky, and it took a bit of determination to clean it off my fingers. If the purpose of our test were to discover whether a white chalky deposit could have been left behind, perhaps inadvertently, after an almost comprehensive scrubbing with an everyday domestic product, then the answer was clear. I left the countertops untouched so that Sandra could see for herself. After I had eaten my bacon sandwich, I spent time looking from beginning to end through my files in search of articles about the encrypted communications between the conspirators and Ahmed Dastageer. I found a piece in the Daily Mail called POLICE OBSERVED THE CONSPIRACY EVOLVE, THE
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As the afternoon wore on, I tried to disregard the tick of the clock. But my anxiety continued to develop as I anticipated the likelihood of questioning Dr Jodie Smith, who was coming to see us, on my own without DCI Burton's necessary presence. Thankfully, Sandra arrived with ten minutes to spare, and I hugged her with sheer relief. Her presence made my questioning legal. I could not follow the route I was following without her right beside me. Shaking the professor by the hand, I said, "This is my friend DCI Sandra Burton." Sandra rose and shook Jodie's hand, and I gestured toward the other armchair. She was beautiful, with striking blonde shoulder-length hair and crystal blue eyes. Her waist was thin, her bust ample, and her legs languid and long. "Please, take a seat, Dr. Smith. Thank you for coming to see us today. You have saved us a trip to Manchester." Jodie smiled. "It's the least I could do," she said. "I was surprised to hea
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IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 59
59 Sandra raised her eyes suddenly and gave me the same sort of inspection, as if she’d never really seen me before: and I guessed that for her it was much more a radical assessment. I was no longer the man she’d tricked rather easily with her charms and feminine ways, but the man who had discovered her duplicity. I was accustomed by now to seeing this new view of me when people had tried to deceive me, and although I might often regret it, there seemed no way of going back. “They warned me you know,” she said doubtfully. “I kept hearing how good the great Quintus Noone was, and I should tread carefully. They said you’re exceptionally good…exceptionally good…at this sort of thing. But I didn’t believe them. But now I’m standing here in your North London flat banged to rights.” “Afraid so,” I said succinctly. Her eyes were red with tears, but I never fell for crocodile tears. Having three sisters had nullified that emotion. “When did you
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 58
"The three theories," I began, "are positively conceivable. Assuming what we recognise, we may deliberate them quite believable. But they are still theoretical. In extra words, they may be precise, but their correctness is by no way established. As such, they signify three areas of indecision. However, I do not regard these doubts as major flaws in our case, both because in all three examples, several reasonable replacements exist, and because these propositions are all efforts to respond consequential, or even relating, questions. We may never find acceptable responses to all these distant inquiries, but the fundamental of our case is built on solutions to other, more dominant, questions. Do you understand?" "I do," Sandra replied, "but I don't see where you're going with it." "I think Tina Davis was assassinated," I continued. "I think MI6 played a main role in her death, and I think so founded on deliberations dispassionate of these doubts. I think Tina was doing
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"As we move away from the fundamentals, things get ambiguous, Sandra. There is one conceivable response to the subject of why Tina may have focused against her employers. But there are many other probabilities. For what reason did Tina make those trips to the café near the West Finchley tube station. Her recurrent chance encounters with an enigmatic duo, who may or may not be the same as the Mediterranean twosome for whom the police are hypothetically searching. Maybe Tina and the couple were convening to arrange other, less observable meetings, and for this motive, these discussions were seen by Tina's MI6 as duplicitous.""It is likely that the Mediterranean pair, and the West Finchley team may be the identical people," Sandra interjected, "and that they might have been MI6 agents who were allocated to analyse Tina, possibly to deceive her, definitely to obtain whatever she may have been attracted to reveal."
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 56
"But why?" Sandra demanded, "I cannot believe you are willing to give up, so easily.""When I said, I was going to drop it, what I meant was that the Home Secretary angle has been shut off to me, but there are more than one way to skin a cat.""Please, Quintus, tell me, what you are planning to do?""Very well. Unless I'm reading it entirely incorrect, the crime concerned as much personality elimination as bodily slaying. What could be the reason? It seems to me that Tina must have been doing something her managers found unbearable, something that made her a burden rather than an advantage, and I don't think she was very careful about it.""Go on," Sandra pressed."She was besieged for a three-branched attack: first, to quieten her forever; second, to make sure she would never be contemplated well-thought-of, though she may have been much more than that; and third, to warn her co-workers of the significances of pursuing the trail she chose."
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 55
I woke up early the following day to find that Sandra had already left, although she hadn't eaten breakfast. Instead, I found a note and a newspaper. I read the note first. Quintus There is terrible news this morning. I have gone to find out what the Commissioner knows about this. All the morning papers say the same. So here is the story in its most diminutive illegible form. I will return as soon as possible. SB Then I picked up the paper and found that Sandra had circled a headline, which read: Two Metropolitan Police Shot In Jewellery Shop Robbery Home Secretary Unharmed, Cabinet Shuffled The text was this: Two Metropolitan Police officers sustained gunshot wounds yesterday after apparently stumbling upon an attempted burglary in progress. Detectives Hector Nelson, 45, and Stewart Alderman, 32, were wounded while chasing suspe
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 54
Under arrest?" the Home Secretary cried. "Are you stupid? I am a Home Secretary! A representative of the Cabinet! I am a fragment of the Government!! Do you comprehend??""Yes!" Nelson said."I cannot be under arrest!" the Home Secretary continued. "I cannot be incarcerated! I cannot be put on trial! Don't you know anything?""I do understand," said Nelson calmly, "that no man's job designation seats him above the rules.""Ha!" the Home Secretary replied, whose pallid face was becoming more sanguine with each occurring second. "We become the law! We are the law! The directive is ours! It is not to be expended in opposition to us!"Sandra, Nelson, and I gaped in incredulity as the manacled man carried on. Alderman, progressing gradually, appeared from the bedroom and began to move toward us. The Home Secretary didn't seem to perceive; he just stormed on."We're the administration!" he bellowed. "We make the regulations. So clearly we cannot r
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 53
"Very well," said the Home Secretary. I sat in an armchair and scrutinised intently at our visitor opposite. "I can begin with the particulars of the tableau. Even though no exact reason of death has been proven, our study has left no misgiving in my mind that Tina Davis was assassinated." "Really!" exclaimed the Home Secretary. "Oh, no! She was the victim of a very strange kinky sex game gone wrong, wasn't she?" "That is not true. The state of the flat and that of her corpse propose an alternative justification completely." "I did not know," said the Home Secretary. "No, I you didn't. There is a great deal of misperception about what happened." "A resentful paramour?" the Home Secretary suggested. "No, definitely not. Offences of lust are generally chaotic; the wrongdoer gets flustered and consigns a profusion of proof. In this case, the lack of scientific verification, among other things, advocates planning." "Fuck me
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 52
52 When we had all finished eating, Sandra brought a tray of coffee. I invited the two policemen to relax on the settee, and we all paid the detective chief inspector kindly accolades as she cleared the table. "I almost forgot to tell you, Mr. Noone," Nelson said, "and it may not even matter. But a couple of interesting details came to my attention, and I would be remiss if I failed to share them." “Please do.” "We have continuously supposed that there are two unexplained couples involved in this case," said Nelson, "but that might not be true, sir." "Why’s that?" "One couple," Nelson said, "the so-called Mediterranean couple, were purportedly buzzed into Tina's residence by a neighbour, apparently after asserting to have a key to Tina’s flat. Detectives are clearly fascinated by the Mediterranean couple, and police artists have even created e-fits of them. The other couple met Tina Davis several times at the
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 51
51 After DI Brooks left, I closed all the drapery, turned on the lights, and sat in a comfy chair to read. "Aren't we going to alter the venue for this evening's events?" Sandra asked. "This is now a crime scene." "If we change it, our suspect will get suspicious." "Very well," Sandra shrugged, and this was followed by a rigorous knocking on the door. "That will be Hector and his mate," I said, standing up to respond to the thumping. But when I opened it, I discovered I was looking at a worn-down old lady. "Good afternoon," she said, in a rumbling and oddly recognisable voice. "Come on in, Stewart. Meet Quintus Noone and DI Burton." We observed an old man waddle into the flat, lugging an overnight case over which he was bowed in understandable distress. The old lady shut the door and removed her coat and then her wig, disclosing the recognisable face of Hector Nelson. "Hello, DCI Burton," he said. "It's a joy to see you
