A Time to Lie Read online

  Praise for Simon Berthon

  ‘Dark and twisted, A Time to Lie is a tense and timely novel’

  Adam Hamdy, author of Black 13

  ‘A pulse-pounding thrill-ride that hooked me from the chilling opening, A Time To Lie delivers on every, explosive level’

  Chris Whitaker, author of We Begin at the End

  ‘Fast-paced, thrilling and uncomfortably credible’

  Ross Armstrong, author of The Girls Beneath

  ‘Highly enjoyable. Edge of the seat stuff!’

  Simon Booker, author of Kill Me Twice

  ‘An excellent first book by a writer who knows his stuff. A tense and exciting thriller with a massive twist at the end. Highly recommended’

  Greville W (Netgalley)

  ‘A stunning debut novel … It could not be more timely’

  Gavin Esler

  SIMON BERTHON is a BAFTA award-winning and highly acclaimed investigative film-maker and journalist who lives in London.

  He has spent much of his life delving into the secrets of state, and is also the author of three non-fiction books.

  Also by Simon Berthon

  A TIME TO LIE

  A SECRET WORTH KILLING FOR

  Writing as Will Caine

  THE INQUIRY

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

  Copyright © Simon Berthon 2020

  Simon Berthon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © December 2020 ISBN: 9780008214487

  Version 2020-11-04

  Note to Readers

  This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

  Change of font size and line height

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  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008214463

  In loving memory of Hermione Young

  ‘The role of non-military means of achieving

  political and strategic goals has grown’

  VALERY GERASIMOV, HEAD OF RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES

  ‘A new divide is opening up between anarchists – drawn

  to radical ideas about smashing everything up and

  starting over – and centrists. Remarkably the anarchists

  are more common on the British right than left’

  MIRKO DRACA AND CARLO SCHWARZ, UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  About the Author

  Booklist

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Acknowledgements

  Extract

  Chapter 1

  About the Publisher

  1

  In a parched expanse of bankside wasteland only the cries of river traffic broke the silence. The foreman pointed to cracks in a swollen line of tar.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Careful when you hit it. It’s just a service road. It wasn’t laid that deep.’

  The digger blade pounded into bitumen, descending easily through the layers – tar, concrete, gravel. Two feet down a workman knelt in the ditch to peel away hard core inch by inch.

  His trowel tapped something hard. Gently he ran the tip along its curved and unbroken surface. This must be it – the pipe. Using his gloved hands, he burrowed around and beneath. There was no sign of fracture. Moving along, he exposed what seemed to be a fold of plastic. It was the tip of a package. He removed his gloves and prised it out with his nails. It extended to thirty, maybe thirty-five centimetres. One edge of the plastic wrapping was pierced with small metal rings. There was something familiar, domestic, about them.

  An instinct told him its contents were precious, deserving of their private moment. He unwound the layers of wrapping. Now he understood the rings. This was a crudely cut section from a shower curtain.

  He noticed shapes through the thinning plastic. Pale, straight but at different angles, disjointed. A slender outline of bones. An animal, someone’s lost pet. He unpeeled the last fold to reveal a tightly bound, transparent display, like a vacuum pack. The bones took on a shape. More like fingers, splayed out. He flinched, dropping the package. My God. He turned away, then forced himself to pick it up again.

  The outline of a human hand. Swallowing bile, he began to peel away the seal. A bone wriggled loose. He stopped.

  Fingers, wrist bone, an element of forearm. There was no doubt. A hand, severed above the wrist. Who? That one simple question leapt at him. Who was this? He examined it more closely. Thin bones, a woman’s bones, perhaps a girl’s. Why packaged like this? Why here?

  He stared, frozen in time, his eye drawn to the letters embossed on a faded silver ring dangling around the bone of the hand’s fourth finger.

  2

  Two days later

  The tall, lean figure of Robin Sandford loped into Birmingham’s International Convention Centre, every inch the Lion King. Luxuriant wavy brown hair settled just above the collar. A white shirt beneath an expensively tailored suit so dark grey it seemed almost black. A silk tie of diagonal blue lines. A cheering, clapping crowd of three thousand mainly white, midd
le-class party members turned as one, their eyes following their leader’s passage to the podium. The only hint of discord was standing in an aisle halfway back – an unsmiling, predominantly male group, their collars tieless, their patting of hands no more than obligatory.

  Alongside Sandford, her elegant legs matching stride, one hand holding his, the other a smart phone, came his wife, Carol, her carefully highlighted fair hair falling on her shoulders; in their wake two daughters.

  He released her, jumped ahead onto the platform, beckoned his family to join him and waved his hands over the baying mob. It hushed.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

  The whooping restarted. He waved his hands again. ‘Thank you so much.’ He flashed a giant grin and lowered his hands. He paused. Faces merged into a featureless heap, sounds into a distant echo. Maintaining his smile but feeling a touch of giddiness, he imagined the sight before him as a giant anthill. He felt his hand being gently squeezed. He turned; Carol was looking up at him, that familiar encouragement in her eyes. He nodded as if to say, ‘I’m OK’ and gestured her and the girls to take their seats on the podium behind. He tapped the microphone, looked down at the lectern and waited for silence to fall.

  ‘Friends and colleagues, we have faced a world and national crisis. A challenge to our country greater than any since the two world wars of the twentieth century. Now we are moving on. We are getting things done. The right things for ourselves and our country. As we said we would when the people of this United Kingdom gave this party, you, all those who worked with us, a landslide victory in a historic general election.’

  A further roar. He repressed it with a firm, instant show of the palms. He spoke softly, only the flat ‘a’s and phonetic ‘oo’s betraying hints of class and origin. A state school boy who had traded up, not a public school boy who had traded down.

  ‘Despite all that has happened, we must not forget why we won that election. We offered a coming together in a nation which, despite its name, had become disunited. We offered a clear path after Brexit. A better life for all our people. And an end to the destruction threatened by a Marxist subset of self-serving London intellectuals. Let us never forget that.’

  This time he allowed the applause, turning round to acknowledge the ministers and party officials sitting on the podium behind him. ‘But, as we pick up the reins of our long-term ambitions, there is one value we never dared to stress enough. We must be a government that is not just practically good, but morally good. At this conference I commit myself to that. And I start with one particular ambition.’

  The ears of Henry Morland-Cross, Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, pricked. Until this moment, he had been trying to interpret that intimate exchange of looks between Mr and Mrs Prime Minister. Sandford had long been a colleague, but never a friend, and he sometimes wondered if all that glittered was truly gold. Was it put on for the cameras – or genuine affection and reassurance? If the latter, lucky man. Might he himself now be Prime Minister if he’d had a woman like that in his corner? The two daughters – adopted as ‘Becca’ and ‘Bella’ by the press – were in their teens. She was young enough – just – to have another child. Always a coup for a male Prime Minister. Youthful adoration of the golden boy leader would reach fever pitch. He pushed the irritating thought aside. Was Sandford actually about to say something interesting?

  ‘The defence of our country,’ continued the Prime Minister, ‘is, and has always been, this party’s priority. We need armed forces. We need arms. We need an arms industry. But…’ He looked from one side of his audience to the other. ‘There is nothing in today’s world more wicked than the arming of evil states to impose terror on their neighbours – and on their own people. We have all seen too many images of innocent children and families being murdered by their own regimes.’

  The audience was silent, knowing they were witnesses to a moment of drama. ‘My commitment is this. My government must legislate to ban all arms sales by British companies to nations which do not adhere to the values of democracy, the rule of law and the freedom of the individual.’

  There was a hush, then murmurings, followed by scattered applause. The standing group of informally dressed men exchanged puzzled looks.

  ‘This ban,’ continued Sandford, ‘will also apply to the supplying of so-called military advisers, special forces, training personnel, mechanics – in other words, all types of mercenary that support such regimes. To repeat, a good government also means a moral government.’

  The speech’s end brought applause less ecstatic than at its beginning. Sandford turned to shake the hands of his government colleagues.

  ‘Interesting, Robbie,’ said Morland-Cross with a derogatory Etonian drawl. ‘When was that morsel added to the speech?’

  ‘Which morsel?’ smiled Sandford.

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘Last night actually. I’ve been mulling it over for a while. I gamed it with the team. And some colleagues, of course.’

  ‘But not me.’

  ‘No, M-C,’ (as Morland-Cross was familiarly known), ‘I wasn’t sure you’d approve.’

  Morland-Cross puffed himself up. ‘Well, I must say…’ he began, before, most unusually, holding himself in check.

  ‘The team reckons the voters will like it,’ said Sandford. He patted him on the shoulder and moved on, glad-handing his way along the podium, with a word here and there, and down the steps to the conference floor.

  Morland-Cross watched him go. ‘Bugger the voters,’ he murmured. ‘Bugger his fucking team.’ He turned on his heel, dismounted the opposite end of the podium and headed towards the group halfway up the hall. A narrow-faced man left it and walked down towards him. Only when they were close enough not to be overheard, did he speak.

  ‘What was that all about?’ murmured Jed Fowkes, the Chancellor’s special political adviser, or Spad as they were known – and feared – in Whitehall. By contrast to Morland-Cross’s impressive girth, Fowkes was thin and tall, the line of his brown hair low on his forehead. He gave the impression of an intellectual – a thinker more comfortable poring over obscure treatises than greasing palms in the political merry-go-round. Unlike Morland-Cross – and more like Sandford – his accent revealed little, barring the occasional hint of Brummie.

  ‘Perhaps he believes it,’ replied Morland-Cross.

  ‘Finally daring to show his true colours,’ said Fowkes.

  ‘Light blue verging to pink,’ muttered Morland-Cross. ‘Like that dress his wife’s wearing.’

  Fowkes glanced back at the group he had come from. ‘You can be sure of one thing. Our side will never allow him to sell the pass.’

  ‘No, Jed, we certainly won’t.’

  ‘I’d better go, I need a word with him. He won’t blank me in front of this lot.’

  Sandford pressed through the hall. He itched to be away, but this was a time for courtesies. He had almost reached the main exit when a familiar figure moved in to block him.

  ‘Hello, Jed,’ Sandford said, battling to hang onto the smile.

  ‘Congratulations, Prime Minister,’ said Fowkes.

  ‘Yes. But none of the formality. I’m still just me. To you anyway.’

  ‘Good. That helps.’

  ‘Helps?’

  Fowkes moved nearer. ‘Robbie, I need a quick word in private.’

  ‘Here? Now?’

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  I can’t refuse him, thought Sandford, can’t afford the fuss. He waved away his entourage. ‘Just give us a moment.’

  ‘I’ll need half an hour. Not right now, I know. But soon. I mean, really soon.’

  ‘What about? M-C? The future?’

  ‘No, the opposite. The past. Something’s come back. Something bad.’

  ‘What do you mean, Jed?’

  ‘I can’t say now. It’s when we had the flat.’

  ‘That was over thirty years ago.’

  ‘I know. It’s about someone we once knew.’
r />   ‘Mikey?’

  ‘No, not Mikey. One of the girls.’

  ‘What do you mean, something bad?’

  ‘Not now.’ Fowkes glanced at the following group. ‘But I’ll need to discuss it with you. For both our sakes.’

  ‘Jed, you’re talking in riddles. This is not the time or place.’

  ‘After the weekend then.’

  Sandford made a show of looking at his watch. ‘OK, I’ll find space.’

  Fowkes leant in and whispered in his ear. ‘There’s a question we have to answer.’

  Sandford frowned. ‘A question?’

  ‘Yes. We have to know.’ Fowkes paused. He looked around. No one was in earshot. He turned back, his breath hot against Sandford’s skin. ‘It’s this, Robbie. Did we kill her?’

  3

  A twitch of the mouth, no interest in a reply, Fowkes marched off. Instantly, Carol was at Sandford’s side. He stood stock still, his face a mask.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’ He forced a smile. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  As the four of them were travelling as a family, along with protection officer and driver, a stretch bullet-proofed Mercedes awaited. Sandford had tried to insist on a Ford people carrier. That was a battle lost but another had been won. To the dismay of civil servants, the Met protection unit and the Security Service, he and Carol had broken precedent. They were a family, he was a family man. They would stay living at the family home in Notting Hill that had been their main base since he was elected to Parliament. If the irregularity of his hours required him sometimes to stay over at the office, the Downing Street flat was always there. He had no urge to live above the shop, as Margaret Thatcher had once put it. Nor did he wish to end up like her, snared in the Downing Street cocoon, divorced from genuine human contact.

  He glanced at his wife, sitting beside him. She turned and rested a hand on his thigh. He held it.

  ‘I was worried it was happening again,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘I know you were, love. So was I for a moment. Being on stage. I sometimes still feel one could come.’