Nobody Walks (26 page)

Not that this was set in stone. If you wanted a plan to work, you had to be ready to improvise.

He let himself into the house without bothering Greenfield. Upstairs, he spent ten minutes fiddling with the lock of the door opposite Liam Bettany’s flat. Once he’d have been through it like butter, but his misspent youth was an ancient memory.

The flat was cold, but bearable. He checked it was empty, then dragged an armchair into the hallway. The front door had a peephole, and nobody was getting into Liam Bettany’s place without Bishop knowing about it.

Take him on the landing, take him on the stairs. Quick zap of the stun gun and it was game over, right there.

But be ready to improvise, he warned himself.

He settled in to wait.

The man
pushing the trays of croissants had disappeared through a shop doorway, but the fresh-baked smell lingered. Otherwise, it was the usual street odours—traffic and grime and old clothing.

Bettany said, “Keep walking.”

She said, “Dear boy. Think about it. Why would I have someone killed in order to persuade you to kill someone else? Why wouldn’t I just have had the someone else killed in the first place?”

Because you think in circles, Bettany thought. Because there was always the chance that this moment would happen, and this was always going to be your defence.

And because if you got me to do it, the link between yourself and the act would be invisible. Even I wouldn’t know my true motive.

He took a breath. On these same streets, years ago, he’d daily moved among people who trafficked in weaponry that somewhere down the line would maim and kill innocents. Right now, he’d have preferred their company.

Stay on track, he thought. Follow this through to the end.

He said, “So what are you telling me? That it was actually Driscoll who killed him?”

“That would be neat, wouldn’t it? Are you likely to believe me if I said that was so?”

“I doubt I’d believe you if you told me this was London.”

“Harsh.” She pursed her lips. “Well, then. No, Driscoll had nothing to do with Liam’s death either. Though I confess I had hoped that ten minutes of Mr. Coe trying to convince you otherwise would persuade you that he had.”

It went beyond arrogance. She viewed the world through a prism all her own, by the light of which things existed solely in relation to her.

Whoever had killed him, Liam had been her piece of Lego.

He said, “What was his motive supposed to be?”

“You’ve met Vincent.”

“Yes.”

“How hard would you have to look for a motive? Vincent is … askew.”

Bettany said, “And you thought that would tip the balance for me? That Driscoll’s a touch out there? That’s evidence?”

“I confess, I’d thought you’d be a little less on your game. A little more raddled, after drinking your way round the rougher ports of Europe. No disrespect, dear, but wasn’t that a touch retro?”

“I considered the French Foreign Legion,” Bettany said. “But I didn’t like their hats.”

“There. A quip makes everything rosier, doesn’t it?”

“You’re very sure I won’t kill you.”

She gave him a motherly look. “Oh, you’re not going to do that. You beat a man half to death once, didn’t you? On the McGarrys’ instructions. That was one of the reasons I thought you could be relied on to extract a proper vengeance. But killing me, here, now? There’d be no purpose. I did not harm your son.”

“Somebody killed him.”

“No.”

“You had Kask do it.”

“No. Your son fell.”

And this time there was something in her eyes he hadn’t seen there until now. This time, he thought, she was telling the truth.

“Your son fell,” she said again, gently. “Nobody pushed him.”

“He wasn’t alone on that balcony—”

“A deduction based on the absence of matches or a lighter. I’m right, aren’t I?”

He could almost see it come tumbling down, this house of cards he’d built. She knew. And there was only one way that was possible.

“Straight-line thinking, Mr. Bettany. It’s an asset in a field operative. It prevents clouded judgement, allows you to plough on and get the job done. But it’s not always—”

“What did you do?”

“A piece of evidence was removed. That’s all.”

It was Bettany’s turn to come to a halt, suddenly enough that someone bumped into him. He turned, caught a glimpse of a grey hoodie.

Whoever it was bustled past, and was gone.

Tearney said, “There was a policeman.”

“Welles,” Bettany said.

He remembered Welles’s helpfulness. Taking him to the crematorium, directing him to Liam’s flat. Delivering Liam’s effects.

Minus Liam’s lighter.

“He was very useful last year,” Dame Ingrid said. “After the unpleasantness with the, ah, gangbanger that Mr. Kask murdered. Policemen are so open to persuasion, don’t you find?”

His mind was still reeling. He felt like he’d taken a blow to the head.

“He was quite happy to let Oskar have the lighter, not that anyone needed to have it. He could have simply disposed of it. But Oskar … Well. Oskar had his own way of doing things.”

He said, “I spoke to Marten Saar. Oskar’s blown. Did you know that?”

“I thought there was probably a reason his body turned up in a lift shaft.”

She knew. He hadn’t read a trace of it in her features, but that was another advantage to her Toby-mug face.

“An accident in the early hours,” she said. “Apparently the doors opened at the wrong moment, and poor Oskar didn’t look where he was stepping.”

“So you lose,” he said. “Both ways, you lose.”

“Be careful, Mr. Bettany.”

“Vincent’s still alive, so your money’s history. And your plan to infiltrate the local franchise of the Russian mafia’s up in smoke too. Not a good day for your bank balance or your job.”

“I’ll survive.”

“And that’s it? You’ll survive? The end?”

“What were you expecting? A desperate rage that you failed to play your part? Mr. Bettany, I run a very large, very busy Service. You have no idea how many schemes I’ve overseen that came to nothing. You get used to it.”

“My son died,” he said flatly. “And you used that for leverage. You used me.”

“Your son was a loser, Mr. Bettany. A pothead and a loser. He fell off that balcony because he was stoned, and he was stoned because he was a loser. He only had a job because he got lucky on a computer game. You have to wonder, don’t you, if he’d had a father around, would he have ended up that way? Please don’t.”

This, because his hand had gone to his pocket, and the heavy warm weight of the gun.

“Do you really think I make this journey alone every day? Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t let me.”

His hand stayed where it was.

“The last thing you’ll know,” she said, “is me tugging my earlobe.”

“And what if you’re bluffing?”

“There’s only one way to find out. That’s why they call it bluffing.”

He didn’t look around. It made sense that she would have people watching her, but he found he didn’t care one way or the other. What mattered more was that he believed her about Liam, that there had been no murder, and that his son’s death was nothing more than a druggy accident. But for all that, she’d used Liam’s death as if it were of no more consequence than a broken bottle.

The ends she’d sought, he didn’t much care about. But the means she’d chosen—for that, he thought, he could kill her.

Perhaps she sensed this, because something in her gaze wavered.

She said, “You do realise that if you do anything foolish, the consequences will be … severe.”

“You think I care?”

“About yourself, perhaps not. But there are protocols. If you produce that gun, there’ll be repercussions beyond your own death.”

“I have no family.”

“And no one you care about.”

“No.”

“Then it won’t disturb you to know that anyone you’ve had contact with since your return to this country will come to harm.”

He almost laughed. “Dancer Blaine? Marten Saar?”

“I was thinking of Felicity Pointer.”

He closed his mouth.

“And Driscoll, and that man of his. And Mr. Coe, of course. Possibly others. Are you prepared to have their deaths on your conscience?”

“That wouldn’t happen.”

“The attempted murder of the head of the Intelligence
Service, Mr. Bettany? There’ll be official inquiries, yes. But there’ll also be payback.”

He stared into her eyes, and saw no sign that she was bluffing.

They were drawing glances now. Standing on this street, in this busy corner of London. Electricity coming off them, probably.

She said, “So what happens next is simple. You return to the life you were, until recently, squandering in the great ports of Europe, and it’ll be like this never happened.”

“Meaning you’ll find some other way of dealing with Driscoll.”

“That would be foolish of me, given what you know. No, Mr. Driscoll will remain unharmed, as will Ms. Pointer and everyone else.”

This with the air of a fairy godmother, waving her wand and promising future happiness.

“My own difficulties will, I’m sure, prove soluble by other means. You didn’t think yours was the only iron in my fire, did you?”

He said, “And I walk away unharmed.”

“You have my word.”

No expression crossed his face. It didn’t have to.

She said, “In the circumstances, I’m not likely to put it in writing. But dealing with you would be an added complication. And it’s not like any of this is on the books.”

For a long moment, Bettany said nothing. His hand remained inside his jacket, resting on the handle of the Makarov.

Dame Ingrid raised her own hand. Let her fingers rest on her little slab of a chin.

“One tug on an earlobe,” she said.

“It would be so easy,” he replied, but didn’t finish the sentence.

She knew.

He turned and walked away.

Ingrid Tearney watched him
go. So this was how a field agent felt. Her heart rate had climbed new heights in the past thirty minutes. For half a moment there, right at the end, she’d thought he was going to kill her.

And the reason he hadn’t, she decided, had nothing to do with her threats of instant reprisal—a tug on her earlobe, an armed response from her security detail. It was the thought of what would follow, the deaths of the others involved.

As it happened, she’d been lying about the security detail, and the widespread slaughter of civilians didn’t feature among the protocols that would follow the murder of the head of the Intelligence Service.

Joes thought a life spent in committee rooms left you soft. But it had taught her to lie like a bastard.

Useful skill.

She reached for her phone now, reflecting on another of her recent lies, that it would be possible for Bettany to return to his old life. Of course, he almost certainly didn’t believe that either.
He had to know that he knew too much. Besides, he had seen her fear, and she really couldn’t allow that.

The number she sought was near the top of her call list.

There was no Oskar to instruct any more. A pity, because a line into the Cousins’ Circle would have been a professional triumph, but hardly a tragedy. Oskar Kask, her wholly-owned gangster, had been malleable, conscienceless, but incapable of subtlety. A blunt object. And since he’d proved not blunt enough to deal with Bettany yesterday, he’d not have been much use to her even if he weren’t dead today.

She called the number.

“Ma’am?”

“I have a name. Majeed Ansari.”

There was a pause, the suggestion of fingers rattling on a keyboard.

“He’s Priority Scott, Ma’am.”

Level one—she knew he was. She’d put him there herself before her first conversation with JK Coe.
Majeed Ansari
was a name that easily lent itself to such a list, readily suggesting that its owner might harbour dangerous, violent ideals.

As far as Tearney was aware, Majeed Ansari had as many terrorist sympathies as a tortoise, but it was the name that counted.

“I’m hearing rumours,” she said. “Check him for contact with former Service personnel.”

She killed the call.

So where
am I now, wondered Bettany?

Adrift again was where.

He’d spent the best part of a decade taking the Brothers McGarry off the board only to find that others had filled the
gap. The world might technically be a safer place, but you’d need pretty sophisticated measuring equipment to be sure. It was the same with Dame Ingrid. Any vacancy she left would have been sealed within hours, another Dame Ingrid springing up like a skeleton warrior sown from teeth. He’d have gained half a moment’s victory before he was dead too, but there’d be no coming back for him. He’d scattered teeth in his time, but they’d fallen on stony ground.

Besides, in the moment he’d come closest to violence, he’d seen the fear in her eyes.

If he’d killed her, and walked away—if she’d been bluffing about her security cover—he’d have had to live with himself afterwards. And she was right, he was no murderer. Witnessing her fear had confirmed that. A monster she might be, scheming away in a labyrinth of her own making, but she was a human being too. Liam wouldn’t have wanted him to kill her. He felt sure of that, on no evidence whatever. Liam would not have wanted the use she’d made of his death to be the reason for her own.

And a line came to him, he didn’t know from where, about snow falling on everyone, like the descent of their last end. On all the living and the dead.

Enough. London wasn’t safe, and he needed to leave. But first he had more scattering to deal with.

Not teeth but ashes.

Tearney’s phone
rang.

She was back in her own world, where the pedestrians were purposeful and the traffic expensive. Big trees scratched each other overhead.
Bare ruined choirs
 …

“Yes.”

“We’ve a positive on your rumour.”

A positive on your rumour. Once upon a time, everyone who spoke English spoke English.

“And?”

“A former agent, Thomas Bettany. Associate, friend and coworker of Majeed Ansari’s in Marseilles, where Ansari’s lived since ’08.”