David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (42 page)

       
She was holding out a
large stainless steel thermos flask.

       
“Here, sweetie,” she
said. “Take some of this. It’s nice and cold. Much nicer than ordinary tap
water.”

       
“Thank you,” he said,
reaching out to take it. “We never drink tap water at home.”

       
“You might want to
rethink that policy,” I said, moving closer. “Bottled water’s bad for the
environment. So do not touch that flask.”

       
The kid screamed, dived
on the floor, and scrambled away from me under the bench. The woman took hold
of the flask’s lid and started to twist.

       
“Stop,” I said.

       
She’d turned the lid
half a revolution. I didn’t know how many it would take to open it. I didn’t
even know for sure there was
caesium
inside the
flask. But bearing in mind Melissa’s description of its effect, I was in no
mood to find out the hard way. The kid wouldn’t need to drink it, to be in
serious trouble. She could just splash it all over him. So I pulled the
trigger. Twice. And then I called for Megan.

       
I didn’t fancy my
chances of coaxing a scared five-year-old out into the open, after that.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Nurse Megan had hesitated to enter the changing room when I’d called
for her. The sight of the woman’s body had stopped her in mid-stride. I was
surprised, given most nurses’ professional familiarity with death. But in the
end her concern for the kid outweighed her reluctance to come near the corpse.
She finally crept in, keeping her back close to the wall, and tried to coax the
boy out from under the bench. Even her most persuasive voice was no match for
his fear, though, so eventually she settled for sitting on the floor next to
him and holding his hand while we waited for the pair of diplomatic protection
officers – the ones who’d been dressed as electricians at the school
– to arrive and take over.

       
The kid’s removal left
me with no excuse to avoid making a statement about the shooting to another
pair of officers. It didn’t take too long, in the end. They didn’t ask anything
too awkward. And I wasn’t too worried about what I said, anyway. I knew that
even if MI5 didn’t make all record of it disappear, the Navy would.

       
When I was finished, I
found that two more detectives were waiting to ask me about the blood I’d seen
under the sluice door. It wasn’t a surprise, but I was still sorry when they confirmed
it had come from the officers who’d accompanied Toby in the ambulance. Their
bodies had been hidden there. Both of them had been shot at close range, with a
.22. Presumably the physiotherapist woman had done it, to clear her path to the
kid. She’d probably lured them inside somehow, because she wasn’t big enough to
easily have moved their bodies. Or she’d had help, from someone stronger. Or
who
they’d have trusted. But whatever had happened, piecing
it together wasn’t my problem. The only mystery I was still interested in at
that point was Melissa’s whereabouts.

       
I hadn’t heard from her
since she’d gone to talk to the triage nurse. There was no answer on her phone.
Or Jones’s.
Chaston
didn’t
know where she was. I even tried
Leckie’s
number. And
no one at Thames House could tell me anything useful, either. As a last resort
I swung by her apartment on my way back to the Barbican, but that was a fool’s
errand, too. The place was cold and dark and empty.

       
I was still wondering
about her when I opened my front door, twenty minutes later. Was she missing?
Had she run away? Had she been the one who’d helped the physiotherapist kill
the officers? Had she left the hospital with someone, as the ward clerk had
thought? If so, was it
Leckie
? And had she gone voluntarily?
Or under duress?
But as soon as I moved into my lounge
and looked out over the unfamiliar silhouette of my home city, my focus
expanded along with my view of the skyline. I began to reflect on the case as a
whole, not just the people who’d been killed in London. What would have
happened if Toby Smith, or whatever the diplomat’s son was really called, had
drunk the radioactive water? How long would the
caesium
solution have taken to eat his organs away? How would his father’s government
have responded to watching his slow,
agonising
death?

       
Part of me knew I should
have felt good about the outcome. I’d saved an innocent kid’s life. And I’d
averted a critical threat to the coalition of pro-western nations. But along
with the successes, I had to
recognise
a significant
failure. I hadn’t done the one thing I’d been sent to do. Expose the traitor
inside MI5. Whether it was Melissa or someone else, who knew what the fallout
would be? What kind of havoc had I left them to
wreak
in the future?

       
I was
brought back down to earth by my phone
. The screen said it was Tim
Jones. I answered, but no one spoke for fifteen seconds. I knew someone was
there, though. I could hear them breathing at the other end of the line.

       
“David?” Jones said,
eventually. “Are you there?”

       
“Yes,” I said. “Are
you?”

       
“Are you on your own?”

       
“Yes. Why?”

       
“There’s a problem. It’s
about Melissa.”

       
“What’s she done?”

       
“Done? Nothing. Why
would you ask that?”

       
“Never mind. Just tell
me what’s happening.”

       
“She’s disappeared.”

       
“I know.”

       
“Well, I know where she
is.”

       
“You do? Where?”

       
“With Stan
Leckie
.”

       
I took a moment to
think.

       
“Why would she go
anywhere with
Leckie
?” I said.

       
“She had no choice,” he
said. “
Leckie
snatched her.”

       
“How do you know?”

       
“He just called me. He
told me.”

       
“Did you believe him?”

       
“Well, yes. Why wouldn’t
I?”

       
“Did he say where he
snatched her from?”

       
“St Joseph’s.”

       
“When?”

       
“About ninety minutes
ago.”

       
“Where are they now?”

       
“I don’t know.”

       
“Can’t you trace his
phone?”

       
“That’s the first thing
I tried. But it didn’t work. It’s somehow spoofing the network into thinking
it’s
in seventy-two different locations, all at the same
time.
He’s ex-Box
,
remember
.
He knows all the tricks.”

       
“What does he want?”

       
“Not much.
Just two things.
You. And me.”

       
“Why?”

       
“He didn’t spell it out,
but it’s pretty clear. He must have been working with al-
Aqsaba’a
on the theft of the
caesium
. Maybe more. He must
think we’ve pieced it together, and wants to silence us. Even frame us.”

       
“And Melissa?”

       
“He says if we hand
ourselves over to him, he’ll let her go.”

       
Was
Leckie
using Melissa as bait? Or were they working together to lure Jones and me into
a trap? The set-up would sound the same, either way. It was impossible to tell
without more information.

       
“Well,
Leckie
obviously won’t be letting anyone go,” I said.

       
“Obviously,” Jones said.
“But we can’t risk calling the police, or our own people, because he must be
connected to someone on the inside, and we have no idea who that is.”

       
“Agreed.”

       
“He’s given us two
hours. Then he wants us to meet him at the old workhouse in
Luton
.
Remember the place?”

       
“I do.”

       
“Where are you now?”

       
“At home.”

       
“I’m in Croydon. I’ll be
on the road in five minutes. Do you want me to come into town and pick you up?
We could drive up there together?”

       
“No thanks,” I said. “If
the
rumours
about
Leckie
are true, we might not have two hours. Melissa might not, anyway. So drop
whatever you’re doing. Leave now. Go directly to the workhouse. I’ll meet you
there.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

One aspect of owning an apartment in the middle of the city and
spending most of the year abroad is that you don’t need a car. Normally, that’s
an advantage. That morning, however, it was the exact opposite. My ability to
travel beyond walking distance and out of the scope of public transport was
severely limited, and that needed to change. Quickly. So as soon as Jones had
hung up, I made another call.

       
“Logistics Support,” a
male voice said.

       
I pulled open the
centre
drawer in the desk in my living room, scooped out a
letter opener and a collection of other random stationary items, and
prised
up a tight-fitting panel that had been installed
beneath them.

       
“I need a vehicle,” I
said, after running through the standard identification ritual. “And I need it
outside my building in ten minutes, max.”

       
“I’m sorry sir, but
that’s not possible,” he said.

       
I took an ancient Sig
Sauer .22 from the shallow space I’d revealed, and jammed it into the pocket of
my jeans.

       
“Not possible, or not
easy?” I said.

       
“Not possible,” he said.
“I keyed in your details as you told me them, and the system says you’re on
secondment
. Which means I can’t send a car for you. You’re
not supposed to be active.”

       
I took out a
switchblade, and slipped it into the other pocket.

       
“I am active,” I said. “Ignore
the computer. I need that car. You’ve now got nine minutes.”

       
“I can’t do it, sir,” he
said. “I can’t book a car out to you when you’re supposed to be on a different
agency’s headcount. The system won’t release an asset under those
circumstances.”

       
I took a suppressor for
my Beretta, and tucked that into my jacket pocket.

       
“Book it out to Michael
Martin, Major, Royal Marines,” I said. “That’s what we always do in these
situations. And please, hurry up.”

       
“But you identified
yourself as Commander
Trevellyan
, sir,” he said. “You
can’t use someone else’s name, now.”

       
I replaced the concealed
cover.

       
“How old are you, son?”
I said. “Don’t you know who Major Martin was?”

       
“No, sir,” he said.

       
I threw the stationary
back in.

       
“Key his name in,” I
said. “The
system’ll
accept it. Trust me.”

       
I heard computer keys
rattling in the background.

       
“Oh,” he said. “It
worked. Bear with me, please.”

       
The keys rattled again,
more frantically this time.

       
“OK,” he said, after a
moment. “The
car’s
on its way. ETA, it looks like,
twelve minutes. Is that all right?”

       
“It’ll do,” I said. “And
before you go home tonight, go to the library. Find a book about the invasion
of Sicily, in World War Two. Read about the role Major Martin played. If you’ve
got any future in this business, you’ll enjoy it.”