David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (37 page)

       
“David,” Melissa said,
when she caught sight of how pale the guy on the chair had become. “What
happened to him?”

       
“Nothing,” I said. “We
were just swapping stories, to pass the time. I told him about a guy I once
knew, in Helsinki. He tried to hold out on some information a friend of mine
wanted. Then he fell out of a window. His entrails covered a twenty-foot
radius. Can you believe that? The mess he made? The local kids still love to
play on the stains he left on the pavement, apparently.”

       
Melissa shrugged.

       
“These things happen,”
she said. “Maybe I need to check my window locks?”

       
“Good home maintenance
is important,” I said. “But in the meantime, this chap has some news to share
with you about what he’s doing here tonight.”

       
The guy repeated to
Melissa the story he’d just told me about how the two of them were the back up
team for the guys who’d burst in on Jones and me, earlier. She asked the same
questions that I had, about
who
they worked for. How
they’d been recruited. How their instructions had been communicated. Where they
were supposed to take us. How they’d been paid. And he gave her the same
frustrating answers.

       
“It’s a pretty standard
arms-length deal,” Melissa said. “Our people should be able to break into it.
They’ll need a little while, obviously. But they won’t need this guy, if that’s
all he knows. We’ve killed four of them, already. You might as well make it
five, David. Go for a clean sweep. He’s of no further use to us.”

       
I raised my Beretta and
lined it up on the bridge of the guy’s nose.

       
“No,” he said. “Wait.
Please. I’ve got something else. A name. I heard our contact say a name. Once.
He was finishing a phone call one time when we met him. I don’t think he knew I
could hear what the person on the other end was saying. Parts of it, anyway.”

       
“And you’re telling me
now,” Melissa said. “That doesn’t buy you many credibility points.”

       
“I get that. I know how
this looks. But I’m telling the truth. Please don’t do anything... permanent to
me.”

       
“Have you got any plans
to share this name with me, any time in the near future?”

       
“Of course. But wait.
How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?”

       
“David?” Melissa said.
“Please shoot him.”

       
“
Leckie
,”
he said. “
Leckie
was the name I heard.”

       
“You expect me to
believe that?” Melissa said.

       
“It’s the truth,” the
guy said. “He used it twice, so I’m totally sure.”

Jones made himself useful in the kitchen, brewing up some coffee,
while I kept an eye on our one surviving prisoner. Melissa disappeared into a
guest bedroom to make some calls. She was gone for a good twenty minutes, and
when she reappeared I saw she’d put her coat back on. She was wearing shoes,
too, but not the ones with the lethal heels.

       
“Are you sure you’re OK
with this?” she said, taking Jones by both shoulders before he could retreat
back to the kitchen with our empty mugs.

       
“Definitely,” he said.
“Lightning never strikes twice. Did they give you an ETA for the cleaner?”

       
“He’s nearly here. Ten
to fifteen minutes, tops.”

       
“I’ll be fine, then.
Leave it to me. You two get on your way. I’ll catch you in the morning.”

       
“Call me if there are
any problems,” Melissa said, taking me by the arm and steering me towards the
door. “And not too early in the morning. You need rest. And you need to check
in with the medics. I know your skull is made of concrete, but even so.”

       
“Don’t worry,” Jones
said. “I’ll see them. And I’ll sleep as late as I can.”

       
“Tim?” I said, as Melissa
disappeared into the corridor in front of me. “Keep a close eye on this guy. He
seemed pretty depressed when I was talking to him, earlier. It would be
terrible if his demons got the better of him and he, say, threw himself out of
the window, like the guy in Finland...”

Melissa waited till she was sure the door had shut behind us before
heading for the stairs.

       
“How are you feeling?” I
said, falling into step beside her. “After what just happened?”

       
“I’m fine,” she said.
“It was hardly a unique experience.”

       
“I know.
But in your own home?
Are you going to be OK, going back
there?”

       
Melissa shrugged.

       
“I suppose so,” she
said. “The cleaner will get there soon - the real one - and he’ll do a good
job, I’m sure. Still, I might give it a while, though.”

       
“That would be smart,” I
said. “Have you got anywhere to go?”

       
“I do have friends, you
know. And anyway, this is London. It’s not like there’s a shortage of hotels.
But I’ll worry about that later. There are things I need to update you on
first. Although, after what’s just happened, they’ll hardly qualify as breaking
news.”

       
“That doesn’t matter.
Tell me anyway.”

       
“I will. But I could use
a drink. Do you fancy an adult beverage to go with the conversation?”

The OXO Tower has its own wine bar, so there was no need to go too
far out of our way. The place was a mob scene by the time we got there. The
customers were mainly men in suits and women in power dresses. Some sat in
pairs, but most seemed to be part of larger groups. All the tables were taken,
but the moment we walked in I saw three people gathering their coats together
at the end of the main, horseshoe-shaped bar. It wasn’t a great spot for
looking out over the river and the grand buildings beyond it, but it was ideal
for not being overheard. We slipped in to their places as they were leaving,
and before they were five yards away I saw one of the woman trip and turn her
heel. The sole of her shoe was a vivid red.

       
“Look,” I said. “
Louboutins
. You should get a pair of those, if you’re going
to do that eyeball trick again. It would cut down on the need for cleaning.”

       
“In my dreams, perhaps,”
Melissa said. “Have you seen the price of those things?”

       
“No. But seriously, how
much could a pair of shoes cost?”

       
“Oh, David, you’ve got a
lot to learn. Let’s get some drinks ordered. Then I can explain women’s shoes
to you.”

       
Melissa poured over the
cocktail menu for a couple of minutes,
then
asked for
a pomegranate martini. I ordered a glass of champagne, and wondered what had
become of the bottles I’d left in the hallway outside her apartment.

       
“So,” I said. “Tell me
about the world of shoes.”

       
“I’d love to,” she said.
“But perhaps I should tell you my news, first.”

       
“Perhaps you should.”

       
“Well, as you probably
guessed, it’s about Stan
Leckie
. After you left Thames
House I made a few calls.
One to him, about meeting us this
evening.
And several to people who’d been around the Service when he’d
been. He was quick to respond.
The others, less so.
In
fact, it took most of the afternoon before I made any progress with those at
all.”

       
“What did you find out?”

       
“It wasn’t so much,
‘what.’ It was more, ‘how.’”

       
“I don’t follow.”

       
“Remember I told you
he’d been kicked out for abusing witnesses? Well, I’d drawn a picture in my
head of some strong-arm tactics. Heavy duty ones, obviously, to be bad enough
to get
himself
fired over. But I wasn’t in the right
ballpark.”

       
“How far over the line
did he cross?”

       
“Well, if you hadn’t
seen for yourself, I doubt you’d believe me. Remember the workhouse, in
Luton
? The wall, with the holes from the wrecking ball?”

       
“What about it?”

       
She stayed silent,
waiting for the pennies to drop
on their own
.

       
“That was
Leckie
?” I said, after a moment.

       
“It was,” she said.
“That’s how he broke the al-
Aqsaba’a
case. The
original one.”

       
“The man’s a
psychopath.”

       
“Well, his tactics were
extreme, that’s for sure, but the outcome wasn’t all bad. He did stop them
killing the diplomat’s baby.”

       
“Melissa, he killed
people. Horrifically. I don’t see why he isn’t in jail.”

       
“He saved an innocent
life, and held together a diplomatic alliance in a critical and volatile
situation. Plus, no one wanted the scandal. It was much more appropriate to
just usher him quietly out of the back door.”

       
“On to the golf course.
And into a comfy chair at St Joseph’s, where it seems he hasn’t made much
progress in reforming his character.”

       
“We don’t know that for
sure.”

       
“But you cancelled the
meeting with him.”

       
“I did. I wasn’t sure
what this all really amounted to, but his
behaviour
was so extreme I felt like we needed to talk about it before taking another
step.”

       
“You were right,” I
said,
then
paused while a waitress delivered our
drinks.

       
“Did Jones tell you the
first three guys who attacked us had yours and my photos with them?” I said,
when she was a safe distance away.

       
“That doesn’t sound
good,” Melissa said.

       
“And one them worked at
St Joseph’s. I
recognised
him.”

       
“Add that to what the
guy we captured told us, and the outline of this thing is getting clearer.”

       
“Clearer, but by no
means definitive. It just narrows the options. It tells us
Leckie’s
either a deadly threat, or he’s in mortal danger.”

       
“Agreed.
But which one?
And how can find out, quickly enough? The
State Opening is tomorrow.”

       
“I don’t know. Maybe I
should just go and ask him.”

       
Melissa’s phone started
to ring before she could respond. She pulled it out of her bag, looked at the
screen,
then
held it up for me to see.

       
STAN
LECKIE - MOBILE

       
“Careful what you wish
for, David,” she said, then answered the call and talked for a couple of minutes.

       
“Well, this might put a
new perspective on things,” she said, double checking the call had ended. “He
was calling to tell me the cameras in the corridor outside the
caesium
vault have failed again.”

       
“Failed?”

       
“Good question. He said
they’re not working, anyway.”

       
“Since when?”

       
“They went out of
service about five minutes ago. His staff reported it to
him,
he immediately put out three extra teams to cover the area, then called me. He didn’t
know what the right procedure was, given that there isn’t actually any
caesium
in there, now. Just the dummy container.”

       
“Is there any sign of a
break-in?”

       
“No. He said not.”

       
“That doesn’t mean much,
though. There wasn’t any damage after the robbery, either. Whoever put the
container back must have known the code.”

       
“But the code’s been
changed, now.”

       
“That doesn’t mean
anything, either, if there’s a leak.”

       
Melissa shrugged.