My Truth, Your Lies (Heirs And Descendants Book 4) - Daniel Kemp

My Truth, Your Lies (Heirs And Descendants Book 4) by Daniel Kemp

Book excerpt

A Destitute Poet

Without A Poem

I had a decent enough dinner but there was no sign of Sir Walter Scott, the famed Scottish novelist, who I’d read had dined here in bygone days. His attendance at a meal was noted by a grim-faced portrait of the great man hanging on one of the walls of this fine dining room. Instead of him for company I had the two main officers, as well as the Chief Petty Officer and, as a further break from tradition, Second Officer Lucy Walton, WRNS.

Apparently, it was not normal practice for the non-commissioned officers to have cocktails with the commissioned ones, let alone dinner, but my arrival had loosened the traditions for a while, but not the drinking of a pink gin or three!

Before I left the evening company, I asked Captain Lloyd to signal the Admiralty for an increase to the number of ratings available to use as prison guards. I did not want to draw attention to the place by asking the Home Office for private security guards. I thought having them around in garish uniform would be a backward step for local relationships, but what presently existed was lacking sufficient numbers.

The inevitable question of why the sudden need of an increase to security, came from the Lieutenant only micro-seconds before that from the Captain; however, the answer was the same no matter who had asked. “Call it my natural ministerial worry now she’s temporarily in my charge. I hope she will be moved by the time I leave your warm hospitality.”

That night, the naval guard was doubled, with four now on perimeter patrol, and ratings ordered to closely accompany Fields when in the garden. Using my name for the instructions, Captain Lloyd petitioned the Admiralty for additional service personnel to strengthen the contingent at Gardie.

Within an hour, his signal to Admiralty House in Whitehall was answered with a corps of naval personnel arriving by boat from a frigate, HMS Prudent, presently on shore patrol duties. I later learned the warship was to be posted to a British-led carrier group which was cruising near the South China Sea. Without a full complement the posting was postponed. Was it an omen or a case of an unexplained coincidence? I don’t know about you, but I’m not a great lover of coincidence.

I asked about Judith, using her Home Office ascribed surname of Fields, and was told she was in the library. Over drinks, Lucy Walton, the WRNS officer, told me she spent practically every day alternating between the library and the garden, where she was detailed to work. It was too dark for the garden so she would be back in the library at this time of night. Lucy Walton was not only the officer in charge of the WRNS unit; she was the person with overall responsibility for Judith’s welfare. There were seven Wrens on the island. The number was included in the overall strength of eighteen.

Privately, I could not fully understand why Meadows was still alive and being kept in reasonable comfort, having been the number two to probably the greatest Russian master spy since World War II. She had not told her original interrogators anything, but that was not known to her Russian masters, who must be worried. Or, perhaps not!

From inquiries I’d made before I left to travel here, I discovered the visitor she’d had in her first prison was not part of the solicitor’s team she had engaged for her trial. The papers he’d carried had been false. It was highly irregular to get entry into the state-of-the-art prison she was held in at the time, so the lengths that person had gone to in order to see her were, to say the least, extreme. Knowing the intensity of Russian retribution, I wondered why she had been left alive.

* * *

It was a little after nine-thirty when I left the dining room fully satiated but tired and in need of a cigarette. The two naval ratings in the guard room at the end of the garishly lit, broad corridor leading to the open front door recognised me and, after I signed the duty-register, allowed me to pass.

* * *

I had the specifications of Gardie House, which had yet to have a full complement of cameras and microphones added to all the open rooms, but outside the main building it was different, with practically all areas covered by cameras. There was also a directional microphone hand-controlled from inside the camera room, behind the guard room. There was nothing in Jerry’s notes to say the microphone had ever been used, nevertheless, I considered it to be a useful addition. After smoking my compliment of cigarettes during my stroll under the stars, I went to find my room.

With the weight of Gardie’s information overwhelming the contemptible yet confusing memories I had of Judith, my night’s sleep in the austere room I’d been allocated, was agreeable, if on the ascetic side of life. I woke in time for the uninspiring breakfast, then, with nicotine from my Dunhill cigarettes fortifying my reserve, I went for another stroll.

Fortunately, I had never discussed the feelings I’ve mentioned to you before I discovered her to be the murderer she was. Not only was she responsible for two murders, she had successfully shielded a traitor for years. Surely this ‘love’ I’d professed to myself to feel, in a palpable state of achievability, had been eclipsed by these memories of murders. Let me now be strong enough to murder the infantile longings I’d named as love.

It was still early. More importantly, it was earlier than one of the many times on the checklist Lucy read out to me when I declined the after-dinner port. The timing of her work in the garden was one of the few I consigned to my memory, so I knew there were thirty or more minutes to go before Judith’s tidy-up in the garden would commence. I knew where she would be at this time of day, because I’d asked. I took myself off to the library for the start of the reversible roles played out with a murderer I’d had developed uncommon feelings for. I didn’t have long to wait!

I have never before broken down moments in my life into ones referred to as life-changing, but if I had to decide when it was my life changed with the realisation I could finally handle my feelings towards Judith, it was now, as she altered her walking pace from slow to swift, leaving me feeling as though I was in a silent movie as I watched her close the gap between us. It was then, in that moment, it registered I’d been a colossal fool. I was no longer a fool. My once strong but idiotic resolve to chase love, had changed to one of the same tenacity found inside the barren heart of a poet searching for a poem where none exists.

* * *

“Oh, Harry, how I’ve missed you! Have you come to rescue me?” Her hands were clutching my face. I left them where they were.

“They never told me it was you who was coming. They only said someone from the Home Office was coming to see me. I got a brief glimpse of someone, who must have been you, earlier through the laundry room windows, but I couldn’t make out for sure who it was. From the inside they have a coating on the glass that makes everything blurry. Are you back working at Thames House on Millbank?”

She withdrew her grip on my face and took a hasty half-step backwards away from me instead of planting her full, luscious lips on my lips. What was I thinking of? Was she the only one of us thinking straight? Maybe those two murders had once and for all made a mark on her subconscious, compelling her to face the same shame and remorse I felt. Was my remorse a sham? After all, it was true to say I felt no affection for either Edward or Elliot. Was it possible for me to feel shame? I could not find any rationality anywhere inside my head.

I had killed in the past. Two of those I’d killed were married, leaving wives after I had taken their lives. One of those men had a mother still alive to mourn his death. So why am I blaming my loss of love on the murder of two relatives for whom I had little or no feelings? No, I’m not debating this. In the business I’m in, we kill first, love last. Let’s get on with it, Harry, and stop f…… about!