A Delicate Truth A Novel

nothing for you to know. There was nothing to know, and there will never be anything to know, outside the fantasies of your heat-oppressed brain. Keep it for your novel, and get on with your career.’
    ‘ Giles ,’ Toby pleaded, as if in a dream. But Oakley’s features, cost him what it might, remained rigidly, almost passionately, in denial.
    ‘Giles what ?’ he demanded irritably.
    ‘This isn’t my heat-oppressed brain talking to you. Listen: Jeb. Paul. Elliot. Brad. Ethical Outcomes. The Rock. Paul’s in our very own Foreign Office. He’s a member in good standing. Our colleague. He’s got a sick wife. He’s a low flyer . Check the leave-of-absence roster and you’ve got him nailed. Jeb’s Welsh . His team comes from our own Special Forces. They’ve been struck off the regimental roll in order to be deniable. The Brits push from the land, Crispin and his mercenaries pull from the sea with a little help from Brad Hester, graciously financed by Miss Maisie and legalled by Roy Stormont-Taylor.’
    In a silence made deeper by the clatter round him, Oakley went on smiling fixedly at the river.
    ‘And all this you have from fag ends of conversation you weren’t supposed to overhear, but did? Misrouted files with stickers and caveats all over them that just happened to come your way. Men bound together in conspiracy who just happened to reveal their plans to you in careless conversation. How very resourceful you are, Toby. I seem to remember your telling me you didn’t listen at keyholes. For a moment, I had the very vivid feeling you had been present at the meeting. Don’t ,’ he commanded, and for a moment, neither man spoke.
    ‘Listen to me, dear man,’ he resumed, in an altogether softer tone. ‘Whatever information you imagine you possess – hysterical, anecdotal, electronic, don’t tell me – destroy it before it destroys you. Every day, all across Whitehall, idiotic plans are aired and abandoned. Please, for your own future, accept that this was another.’
    Had the lapidary voice faltered? What with the bustling shadows of pedestrians, the passing lights and din of river traffic, Toby could not be sure.
     
    *
     
    Alone in the kitchen of his Islington flat, Toby first played the analogue tapes on his replica recorder, at the same time makinga digital recording. He transferred the digital recording to his desktop, then to a memory stick for back-up. Then buried the recording as deep in the desktop as it would go, while aware that if the technicians ever got their hooks on it nothing was going to be buried deep enough and the only thing to do in that unhappy eventuality was to smash the hard drive with a hammer and distribute the fragments over a wide area. With a strip of industrial-quality masking tape conveniently left behind by an odd-job man, he pasted the memory stick behind a foxed photograph of his maternal grandparents on their wedding day which hung in the darkest corner of the hallway, next to the coat hooks, and tenderly consigned it to them for safekeeping. How to dispose of the original tape? Wiping it clean wasn’t enough. Having cut it into small pieces, he set fire to them in the sink, nearly setting fire to the kitchen in the process, then flushed what remained down the sink disposal unit.
    His posting to Beirut followed five days later.



3
    The sensational arrival of Kit and Suzanna Probyn in the remote North Cornish village of St Pirran did not at first receive the ecstatic welcome that it merited. The weather was foul and the village of a mood to match: a dank February day of dripping sea-mist, and every footstep clanking down the village street like a judgement. Then at evening around pub time, the disturbing news: the gyppos were back. A camper – new, most likely stolen – with an upcountry registration and curtains in the side windows had been sighted by young John Treglowan from his father’s tractor as he drove his cows to milking:
    ‘They was up there, bold as brass, on Manor parkland, the exact same spot they was last time, proud of that clump of old pines.’
    Any brightly coloured washing on the line then, John?
    ‘In this weather? Not even gyppos.’
    Children at all, John?
    ‘None as I did see, but most likely they was hid away till they knowed the coast was clear.’
    Horses then?
    ‘No horses,’ John Treglowan conceded. ‘Not yet.’
    And still only the one camper, then?
    ‘You wait till tomorrow, and we’ll have half a dozen of the