Christopher Brookmyre (37 page)

'It's kind of an insurance policy, or more like an "in case of emergency, break glass" deal.'

Ross went to the wardrobe where his jacket was hanging and retrieved one of the small, innocuous-looking tubes from a pocket.

'I want you to take this,' he said.

His dad held out a hand and examined what he'd been given.

'Lip balm?'

'Don't ask, just keep it safe.'

'What is it, Ross?'

'It's a key, of sorts.'

'To what?'

'Dad, I told you: you can't know. You're safer . . . everything I care about is safer. Just keep it secure and don't let anyone know you've got it, unless . . . Unless things get out of control.'

'You don't think this qualifies as out of control?'

'This is nothing, Dad. This is retrievable. That's for when it's not.'

'And how will I know that?'

'Because at that point you won't have any choice.'

'There could be one in every home, every building,' Mrs Fleming said, her voice breathy, like she was almost afraid to speak this aloud.

'It's goddamn bullet repellent,' suggested Rebekah.

'More like a force-field,' Som observed. 'One that can draw projectiles into its pull or deflect them around its sphere of influence.'

'Now I know what that asshole in my car meant the other day,' Lex said.

'We were talking about the video clips, and he made some crack about why he was carrying a knife and not a gun. This thing could make them obsolete.'

'More pressingly,' said Bett, 'I would remind you also of Mr Willis's analogy regarding the pharmaceutical industry. What would the other drug companies do if they knew you were developing a cure to an ailment for which they sold remedies?'

'Guns aren't a remedy,' Mrs Fleming argued. 'I'd say they were the disease.'

'Yes, and tonight we may have been looking at the first clinical trials of a vaccine. Mrs Fleming, I must congratulate you. Your son has conceived a device of unprecedented humanitarian benefit, something that could save millions of innocent lives. Unfortunately, there are a lot of very wealthy and influential individuals out there who are not going to tolerate that, and therefore he couldn't have picked a more effective way of jeopardising his own.'

'No wonder he ran,' Mrs Fleming said, tears forming. 'He could be making some of the world's most amoral businessmen redundant.'

'Believe me, arms firms wanting to stop him developing this device are just the beginning of his troubles. Those who'd want it for themselves will be just as desperate, and just as ruthless. What lengths wouldn't any government go to in order to have this technology before their enemies? And that could yet be what gives us our chance.'

Mrs Fleming's bloodshot eyes regained sharp focus, her body stiffening to attention like a parade-ground recruit.

'If the man who's got him, this Felipe, or whoever he is, has any idea what he's really holding, he's not going to play first come, first served. Even if he's working for someone specific, he's going to want to renegotiate his price to reflect market value.'

'And how does that help us?' she asked.

'Serendipity,' Bett replied.

Mrs Fleming wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. Lex had no idea what he meant, either, but he said it with a thin, nasty little smile she had long since learned to interpret as 'Fasten your seatbelts.'

The perfect apprentice

In retrospect, Jane interpreted it as a subconscious sign of security that when she woke up on that third morning away from home, she was thoroughly woolly-headed and had, for several seconds, no idea where she was or what she could possibly be doing there. No bouncing straight into her stride, as had happened in the motel, no instant recognition of her surroundings and what that context signified, like how yesterday morning had greeted her, but a churning, disorientated, reluctant dragging herself to consciousness and a hazy coalescence of details and memories.

The need to get up was significantly less imperative than before. Her body was making a strong case for remaining where she was, warm and comfortable, relaxed and regenerating after sustained ill-use. Don't go out there, it was saying. Things will get no better than this today. Her first lucid, motivated thought was of Ross. It tugged at her inside, but it didn't grasp and twist like before. She knew he was safe, for now at least. Well, secure was maybe the word, but either way it was a lull she had to take advantage of now that she understood it was a long game they were playing.

'I can't ask you to banish your fears, your anxiety or your anger,' Bett had said to her. 'But don't let them use you up. In time you're going to need to use them.'

It had been his way of closing business for the day - a very long day, admittedly. His patronising sentiment had failed to disguise a utilitarian diktat intended to dismiss her and her inconvenient feelings, but, as Alexis had warned her, the bugger was usually right.

Her second lucid, motivated thought was of coffee, the absence of which by the bed on this occasion probably accounted for many of the morning's documented symptoms. She settled in the meantime for a shower, during which she discovered that her body had been laying it on a bit thick about the need for more recuperation. As the jets hit her and the events of the previous day became sharply focused, she realised she was feeling as robust as she could ever remember.

She stepped out of the bathroom and saw the black dress draped across the chair where she had left it the night before. In her less awe-struck and 209

disorientated condition, it occurred to her to wonder why this particular item had been selected for her. It had proven surprisingly practical for climbing in and out of cars and indeed helicopters, but no more so than the less figurehugging combination of a pair of trousers and a blouse, and the only garb necessary to yesterday's pursuits had been the chauffeur's uniform. So what was with the little black number? Was it for his amusement, somehow? Or was she flattering herself to think so? Such questions, however, failed to alter the fact that it remained the only thing available to wear, so she donned it once again and ventured out of the self-importantly commodious room he had allocated her.

In contrast to the previous day's ferment, there seemed no evidence of activity, or even habitation, as she stalked the upstairs corridor. No rotor-blades, no tyres on gravel, not even any voices. She reached the landing above the entrance hall, intending to descend in search of company, or at least breakfast, but the stillness and silence caused her to consider other temptations. Dead ahead, another corridor beckoned, irresistibly as it turned out, because Alexis had warned her off it when she first showed Jane to her room. Nothing made a place more alluring than being told it was forbidden, as illustrated by the illicit draw of a long corridor ostensibly identical to the one she'd just left. Jane walked along slowly, her feet soft on the floor tiles, the quiet all around and the thought of Alexis's concerned face making her even more aware of what sound she did make. She passed closed doors, a table bearing dried flowers in a clay pot, landscape paintings along either wall: rural Van Gogh, maritime Turner, urban Ernst. Anger and turmoil, she thought, looking at the prints. Storm and stress. Beautiful chaos. Longing and loss. She felt suddenly most uncomfortable, like she had stepped into someone else's uneasy dreams. The privacy of this place was unmistakable, something she was immediately concerned not to violate. She turned around again, intending to retreat, and was racked with a violent shudder as she found Bett standing in her path.

'Exploring, are we?' he asked, his voice low, the tone of accusation cutting through her.

Our little crimes only seem wrong once we've been caught, Jane reflected, contrasting how guilty she felt with how lightly she had considered her actions only moments before. The corridor was dim, Bett's shape somehow magnified by what illumination there was being behind him. She felt a second shudder, less jolting but just as involuntary, and realised that she was terrified. Here in the forbidden corridor, the light was poor but a veil had lifted from her vision. She had blinded herself to just how frightening she found this man because until then she hadn't seen what he looked like through the eyes of someone who had crossed him.

Fear helped her focus on the search for mitigation. As far as he knew, she might not be aware it was off-limits. He didn't know what had or hadn't been said by Alexis when she was showing Jane around, and the subject hadn't been brought up voluntarily by the girl, only in response to Jane's stare. Tell it to the judge. There was no point compounding the sin by playing daft. She imagined any defence invoking ignorance or personal stupidity would play particularly badly. Bett placed the initiative upon his charges; he expected them to know things without being told. By extension, there would be things he expected them to communicate too.

Rather oddly, then, he proceeded to spell out the nature of her transgression.

'This is my home, Mrs Fleming,' he said. 'A grand home, a privileged one, I would concede, but that grandeur does not render it an exhibit. I attempt to extend whatever hospitality makes my guests most comfortable, but I do ask that they respect my personal privacy.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, as contrite as she was embarrassed, but that more defiant and calculating part of her was wondering at this rare show of sensitivity. There couldn't be a chink in his armour, could there? Her apology certainly didn't quell the hurt.

'Perhaps you find your accommodations insufficient, restrictive,' he suggested sarcastically. The tone of scorn and implicit snobbery dispelled Jane's fears and replaced them with an outrage of her own, which she chose to voice with exaggerated articulacy.

'No. My accommodations are, as you know, beautiful, and, I would wager, purposely ostentatious. I am under no misapprehensions about the levels of hospitality you enjoy it being in your gift to dispense. However, given the way I was peremptorily summoned here, I must say I feel more like a prisoner than I do a guest.'

She stared him down, not attempting to kid herself that he wouldn't know it was all front. His eyes narrowed slightly as she dared to put him on the back foot, and she was sure she saw a twitch in his cheek at the 'purposely ostentatious' remark. He knew when he was being called out.

'I have no prisoners here,' he said, stepping to one side to unblock her path. It might even have appeared chivalrous if it wasn't so demonstrably self-righteous.

'No. Not since the Romanian, I gather,' Jane replied.

'You came here of your own free will, Mrs Fleming. The Romanian did not. You know where the door is. You walked right past it on your way to play nosy parker. If you leave, no one will stand in your way.'

'What, you were so anxious to get me here, but you wouldn't blink if I just upped and left right now?'

'Were you to leave, my task would be harder, much harder, but I'd still carry it out. It would be harder for you too, I'd expect, from the sidelines. Which is why we both know this conversation is moot.'

Jane rolled her head to one side, a gesture of acknowledgement.

'You'd carry out your task,' she agreed. 'No doubt. So what's in it for you?'

'You know what's in it for me. You want a figure for what my client is paying to save your son's life? In euros?'

'No, I just . . . '

'Oh, I see,' he said, smiling like a shimmer on black metal in twilight. 'Perhaps you're looking for the hidden message of hope, harboured somewhere in this darkest human heart, is that it? There is no hidden message, Mrs Fleming. This is what I do, for money, and I do it very well, so it's a good thing Willis hired me and not someone else.'

'And what if someone else had hired you . . . ' she paused, her mouth dry as she searched for the words and the nerve to say them, ' . . .
not
to save Ross's life? What else do you do for money, Mr Bett? What did you do to the Romanian for money?'

Bett laughed, bleak and hollow.

'I could use a coffee,' he said. 'How about you?'

'Aren't you going to answer my question?'

'Not without caffeine, no.'

And with that, he turned and walked away, annoyingly sure she would follow, and even more annoyingly spot on.

He led her to the kitchen, a cavernous and handsomely fitted affair, dominated in the centre by a rustic table: vast, old and formidable enough to have been made from reclaimed drawbridge. She ignored the chair Bett pulled out for her, preferring the less subjugated posture of leaning against a slate worktop as he busied himself in front of a brass espresso machine that might well have cost more than her car. He filled two small cups and handed one to her. He didn't ask whether she took sugar, nor did she see any around. She didn't, but she didn't think the lack of offer was because he had taken pains to ascertain her tastes.

'You have quite a house,' she said. 'And my remarks about purposely ostentatious quarters notwithstanding, it is all rather exquisite. Which continues to pique my curiosity as to how you pay for all of this.'

'Back to the Romanian already?'

'You've got your coffee.'

'I have. How is yours?'

'Needs sugar,' she lied.

'You're sweet enough. At least, you were yesterday when your spoon came back from breakfast unused, and when you drank your espresso neat after lunch in Barcelona. But if you require, it's in that cupboard behind you.'

'You don't miss much.'

'I wouldn't say that, but I do pay attention. You have to in my line.'

'Tell me about it. Tell me
all
about it: apart from security consultancy, fake assault exercises and high-end missing-persons retrieval.'

'You didn't get the hidden message of hope, so now you want to know how dark this human heart really is.'

'Never mind how dark it is, is it big enough to own up to itself?'

'I've done nothing I'm ashamed of, Mrs Fleming, let that answer your question. No, I'm not a hired assassin and no, there are no circumstances under which I could be hired to, as you diplomatically put it,
not
save your son's life. But there have been lives I have gladly not saved. Sometimes we . . .
I
have been retained by individuals, by organisations, by
governments
, to do things that legitimate, official forces cannot or will not do. Ilianu, for instance, was legally untouchable, protected by a cocoon of deniability, hierarchical removes and loopholes. He was trafficking girls for prostitution, and when I say girls, I mean girls. He catered to paedophiles in high places, which bought him even more protection, and not just through direct influence, but through the lengths these people would go to cover their own crimes and secrets. His contacts, his supply lines, were key to an entire network of white slavery around the Black Sea, but no court, no policeman, could get near him. Even if he could have been indicted, he would have been murdered before he could possibly name any names. So my team were engaged to bring him in.'