Free Thunder in the Blood by Graham Hurley Page A

switching on the machine. He and Aldridge have obviously just met because Aldridge is telling him to park his coat on a hanger behind the door. My guess is that Wesley had one of those little hand-held recorders in his coat pocket and switched it on as he put it on the table. There’s certainly a clunk on the tape, the machine hitting something solid, and a silence during which I imagine Aldridge staring at the table and Wesley hanging up his coat.
    Either way, Wesley now sits down. The next bit of the conversation goes as follows. The first voice belongs to Aldridge.
    ‘Is that what I think it is? That Sony?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Is it on?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Why?’
    There’s a pause here. By the sound of it, Wesley’s lighting a cigarette. Whatever’s happening, Aldridge still wants an answer.His tone of voice has changed a little. If anything, he’s sounding wounded.
    ‘Wes, I asked you why. Are we on the record or something? You want to sue me?’
    ‘No. Shit, no.’
    ‘What then? Why tape it all? Don’t you trust me?’
    ‘Not exactly, no.’
    ‘Why not?’
    Wesley draws breath. He’s clearly in no hurry. This absolutely fits the man I later met. Scenes like these, confrontational, potentially embarrassing, he enjoyed enormously.
    ‘Because I think I know what you did with the Irish piece.’
    ‘I spiked it. You know that. I told you. I sent you a letter.’
    ‘Yeah. But now I think I know why, why you spiked it. I think you got the phone calls. In fact I’m pretty certain you got the phone calls.’
    ‘What phone calls, for fuck’s sake?’
    ‘Our friends in Curzon House.’
    ‘MI5?’
    ‘Yeah. I think they nobbled you.’
    There’s another silence here. Four years later, Aldridge’s name came up in my background research on Wesley. I looked him up in Registry’s surname index, what we spooks call ‘the in-tray’, A for Aldridge, and it turned out that Wesley was right. Aldridge got a number of calls from us, four in all, which probably explains the abrupt change in his style on the tape. He is, at first, very bluff, very male, very aggressive.
    ‘Am I hearing this?’ he says. ‘You think MI5 were on? You think that’s why I didn’t run with it?’
    ‘Yes.’ There’s a pause here. Then Wesley comes back, his voice a little softer. ‘I’m not saying it’s as crude as that. It never is. I’m sure it was all very grown up, arms round the shoulder, see it our way, sensitive material, agents’ lives, national interest, all that shit. I expect—’
    Aldridge explodes. No more hurt. Just anger. ‘Give me fucking credit, Wes. In God’s name …’
    Another pause. Wesley unrepentant.
    ‘How did they put it? Straight threats? D-notice? Phone call to the chairman? What?’
    ‘Listen, mate—’
    ‘No, honestly, I’m interested. You know the story. You know what they were into. Don’t get me wrong. I can see their point of view. I just don’t think it should have been ours. Or yours, at least…’
    Aldridge mutters something here I never quite caught. Then there’s the scrape of a chair. I fancy he may have got up at this point. At any rate, when he speaks again, he’s much closer to the microphone.
    ‘Is that why you came here, Wes? Is that what you’ve been up to? Getting the dirt on me?’
    There’s another pause. Then Wesley again, almost sympathetic. ‘They did phone you?’
    ‘You know they did.’
    ‘And what did you say?’
    ‘I told them to fuck off.’
    ‘No, you didn’t.’
    ‘No, you’re right, I didn’t, not in those words. But I told them it wasn’t any of their business.’
    Wesley laughs here. He had a very distinctive laugh, high-pitched, a percussive sound, slightly manic, almost a cackle. Aldridge responds. He’s sounding hurt again.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘What you just said. What you told them. None of their business. That’s the whole point, mate. That’s why they were on to you in the first place. It
was
their business. Most of the