Double Identity

by Alison Morton

  ‘Of course, there are always private arrangements that can be set up through intermediaries,’ Dalca chipped in. ‘Some lenders and investors don’t like to put themselves in the limelight. But they would be very firm about repayments.’

  ‘So, finance, under conditions, wouldn’t be a problem?’

  ‘No, if there was good collateral,’ Mestre said.

  ‘Interesting,’ Mel said. ‘Do you gentlemen have cards?’

  * * *

  In the ladies’ Mel gulped mouthfuls of water from the tap. Dieu, that had been difficult. They must have thought she was an idiot or an amateur. And they were so slick. Still, it was a start. Was it possible that Gérard could have been involved in this sort of trading? Lucrative, but dangerous if he didn’t complete a deal or make timely repayments for whatever reason. She was speculating wildly. She had to go back into the room and talk to some other people. One conversation was worthless.

  ‘Mademoiselle des Pittones.’ As she slid back into the room, she was approached by the head of station with the man he’d been talking to previously. Mel recognised him from her web search before he opened his mouth.

  ‘Roland Fennington, Associated Security Group.’ He smiled with exactly the same expression as on his website. Did he practise every morning in the mirror? Now he was studying her face, scrutinising it almost. ‘Delighted to meet you.’ His firm handshake betrayed his strength of character.

  The head of station beckoned a waiter to refill their glasses then left them to it.

  ‘I understand you’re an old school friend of Madame de Villiers,’ Fennington said.

  ‘Yes, I thought she might be able to give me a job, but it seems none are available.’

  ‘Oh? Are you no longer with the French Army?’

  ‘Heavens, Aimée is such a gossip,’ Mel almost simpered.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Don’t pretend to be what you’re not. I know exactly what you’ve been doing for the past ten years. GAOS doesn’t employ silly girlies.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘What do you want from me?’ She returned his hard look with her own.

  He flipped open an elegant silver case and took out a card.

  ‘Come and see me tomorrow afternoon. Two thirty, at this address.’ He handed her a white card with classic print letters, nodded and left the reception.

  * * *

  ‘Did you get the results you wanted?’ Aimée asked.

  The two women had shed their shoes and were sipping coffee in the corner of a sitting room in the residence.

  ‘I talked to a couple of dodgy financiers, the ones you steered me towards, and to the boss of the Associated Security Group, so yes. And thank you.’

  ‘Not my doing, but you’re welcome.’ Aimée shot a look at Mel. ‘What are you going to do next?’

  ‘My investigation continues.’ Mel stood. ‘I’d better find a taxi. If you or your chief spook think of anything else, text or email me.’

  * * *

  Wearing her black trouser suit, classic white shirt, scarf looped round her neck and carrying her leather mini backpack on one shoulder, Mel presented herself at the Victoria headquarters of the Associated Security Group at exactly 2.25 the following afternoon. In the army, ‘on time’ meant five minutes early, a difficult habit to break for Mel.

  The tinted glass door gave into a small lobby lined with oak. The only access was through a scanner arch. Her bag went into a smaller version as in airports. Once through, a polished young man on the reception desk glanced at her and consulted a list pinned to a clipboard.

  ‘You’re definitely Miss des Pittones?’

  ‘Yes, and I have an appointment at 2.30 p.m. Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said smoothly, but he broke eye contact with her as he held out a visitor pass.

  ‘Please go to the lift on the right. It will take you directly to where you need to be on the sixth floor.’

  When the light in the lift panel glowed 6, the steel doors swished open onto a small landing. She stepped out and the doors closed behind her. Three standard wooden office doors with no names faced her, one to her left, the other two directly in front of her. No signs, panels, no fire extinguisher. In fact, no trace of humans or human activity. She checked the lift sign, but it showed the car was already descending. Mel tensed. The lights dipped. Mel stabbed the lift button. No response. This was a trap. Somehow Fennington’s people had found out about her and Gérard – not difficult – targeted her at Aimée’s reception and baited it with Fennington himself.

  Putain.

  The lights dimmed further, but Mel’s night vision started to come in. The only visible access was via the lift. After another second, the only light on the landing came from the number in the panel above the lift door. She hitched her backpack loops onto both shoulders leaving her hands free and moved to the hinged side of the door to the left. It was furthest away from the lift and out of direct line of sight. Or fire. One of the other doors could be stairs down. All three could be booby-trapped.

  The doors were plain wood. Mel tentatively extended the side of her hand to touch the surface of the one she was standing by. Cool, inert, harmless. In the dim light, she could just about make out there was no keyhole for a lock. The silver-coloured handles were classic horizontal lever type, easy to load electrically. Her mind was anticipating the worst. Her heart sped up. What was on the other side of any of the doors?

  A soft hiss. It grew louder. An off smell. Gas. Hell, she had to get out of here. She pulled her scarf from her neck and wrapped it tightly round her mouth and nose. But that would help only for a few minutes. She had to find clean air.

  Where would the outside window be? She closed her eyes to visualise the layout. Damn – it would be the side of the building through the door she hovered by. Six floors up – an awkward climb down but doable. She pulled her hand up into her sleeve. No way was she going to touch that door handle with her bare fingers. Hot or electrified? Only one way to find out.

  She made a fist inside her sleeve, rammed it down on the door handle and simultaneously kicked the door open. Completely black inside. A click behind her. The door. She held her arm out, tapped along the surface of the door with the back of her hand but found no handle on the inside of the door. What the hell was going on?

  She edged along the wall, slowly, and pulled her scarf off her face. No gas smell. The floor seemed even, so she tried a longer stride. She went back to the door, leant against it for a second to get her bearings. All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. She took a couple of long deep breaths to slow it down.

  Concentrate, Mel.

  Then there it was. Right on the edge of her senses, she detected something. Not a noise, not a light. Nothing colder or warmer than the temperature around her. But something. A threat? She listened for a moment longer. Fennington’s people must have known she’d escaped the gas. She couldn’t hang around. She took a deep breath and launched herself. She calculated eleven metres at the most. Either she’d fall or she’d reach the far wall.

  She stopped after ten strides and stretched out her hand. Cloth. Canvas. Taut. Could they be blinds? She crouched down to the floor to find a catch or roller bar.

  A breath. Somebody else was in the room.

  She stayed crouched down and crawled crab-wise along the wall of cloth. She found a corner. Another breath, so controlled it had to come from somebody trained. Slightly to the right of the previous one. A third. He or she was coming directly in Mel’s direction. One more breath and they’d be within reach.

  Mel sprang up from her crouch, pushing down with her full weight to give herself maximum force. She barrelled into another human being and felled him. A grunt. Mel felt for the clothing at his neck, brought her elbow up and drove it into his face. She heard the crunch of bone. This was no time to be nice, so she knocked his head on the floor. He stopped moving. She frisked his body for weapons. A taser in a leg holst
er. She threw it into the corner. A knife at his waist – much more useful. Catching her breath, she stood and strode out to the cloth-covered wall. She clutched the knife handle, stuck the blade point through the cloth and heaved downwards. Light streamed through the slit. She blinked and then half closed her eyes to let them accommodate to the sudden brightness. Slicing further through the cloth, she tore it apart to reveal a normal window.

  She was only on the first floor. The damned lift. It had been rigged. Clever bastards. The windows were pivot type. She balled her fingers into a fist and hammered at the catch. It wouldn’t budge. Was it welded shut? She turned and slammed her shoulder against the pane. With a groan, it yielded.

  Mel swung one leg out onto a concrete ledge that ran across the width of the building. It was a full twenty centimetres wide. A few cars crawled along below, their drivers probably too anxious about traffic to look up to see some madwoman clambering down a building. Further along, a column of brick ran up the whole building. Mel shuffled towards it, swung her left arm out to embrace it and placed the foot of her left leg in a mortar joint. She scrambled down and landed on the pavement in front of an elderly woman walking her dog.

  ‘Good gracious! Where did you spring from?’ The trim figure with fur-collared jacket, tweed skirt and sensible shoes looked the picture of bourgeois disbelief.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ Mel said, years of good manners intervening. ‘I hope your little dog is not shocked.’ She laughed with nervous relief, then gulped. The woman walked on, with just one backward glance. Mel looked down at her sore hands, grazed with small bubbles of blood seeping out. Her elbow was starting to throb and both hands were trembling.

  Move, Mel.

  She tucked her shirt back in her waistband and shook her head to release her hair that had half fallen down. Glancing up and down the street, she saw nobody pursuing her, nobody even looking at her. If anybody had noticed her, they would be convincing themselves now that they hadn’t seen what they thought they had. Blessing the surreal normality of a London street, she ran across the road and stuck her hand out for a taxi.

  14

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Joanna Evans asked. She was bagging up Mel’s clothes and mini backpack.

  ‘The tea’s helping, but no. I know what I’d like to do to that smarmy bastard and it’s not pretty.’

  ‘Feel free to vent,’ Evans said. ‘I’ve seen and heard some. Anyway, we’ll send the uniforms to pick Fennington up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother. I saw nobody I could identify apart from the boy on the reception desk and the security guard in the lobby. They’ll have been replaced by now. Fennington will deny everything and slide out of it with a slick lawyer. My boss will talk to your Superintendent Fredericks. At least we know Fennington is definitely one of the opposition.’

  Evans looked dubious.

  ‘Well, the CSIs will take samples from you anyway, then we’ll find something better than that grey tracksuit for you to wear.’

  * * *

  ‘Most regrettable,’ Stevenson said from his screen in the Brussels office. ‘Fennington seems to have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to neutralise you. A simple pistol shot, or even one of the old-style Soviet umbrella poison jabs, if he wanted to be dramatic, would have worked perfectly well.’

  ‘I told the cops here not to bother picking him up – he’ll have covered his tracks.’

  ‘That was premature of you, Mélisende.’

  ‘Do you honestly think it would have been worth it?’ she replied. ‘He would have got a lawyer to convince everybody I was imagining things and then slapped a police harassment notice on us.’

  ‘I agree but ask me next time.’

  ‘I can’t refer every operational detail back to you, Mr Stevenson. Really, I can’t. I do have the skills to make critical decisions. If I go into the field with a specific mission, then I must have autonomy.’

  Stevenson frowned. Deep lines ran each side of his mouth.

  ‘You may not always be easily available,’ Mel continued. ‘Or would you prefer I ask Mr Ellis in your absence, if I absolutely have to get somebody’s permission?’ She’d led detachments on missions in extremely hostile territories and had to make instant decisions under the most pressured conditions. Wasn’t this why Stevenson had seconded her to this unit? But she didn’t know him very well and he only had her record on paper to go on. Perhaps he was just being careful.

  ‘No, of course not for operational matters,’ he replied. ‘We’ll talk about this when you come back to Brussels.’

  Mel said nothing but clasped her hands tightly below the screen’s camera angle.

  ‘Write up your report and email it to me as soon as possible,’ Stevenson said. ‘And next time, let me know when you’re going into a potentially difficult situation and I’ll arrange backup. I wouldn’t want to waste your expensive training.’

  * * *

  Mel was writing her report, with Joanna tapping away at her computer in the corner of the office when a knock at the door was followed by a uniformed constable wheeling Mel’s case in. She looked up but before she could say anything Joanna said a brief ‘Thanks’ and the constable was out of the door.

  ‘What’s my case doing here?’ Mel frowned at Joanna.

  ‘I had your things packed,’ she said. ‘You can’t stay at that hotel alone now. I’ve arranged for you to sleep at a safe house. It’s only for forty-eight hours until you go to the college. You’ll be perfectly secure there.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Mel replied. ‘I’d rather just disappear from everybody’s sight or better still, keep moving.’ She turned back to her screen, saved her report and emailed it to Stevenson. She stood and smiled at Joanna.

  ‘If anybody wants to come after me, they won’t find it as easy as they may think. I’ll check in every six hours and you can track me on my phone. Just tell me where this Ryton is and when I have to report.’

  ‘But—’ Evans’s expression was a mix of frustration and concern.

  ‘Don’t worry, Joanna,’ Mel stretched her hand out and touched the younger woman’s forearm. ‘I’ll be fine. Really.’

  * * *

  Mel drew into the Newport Pagnell service area, past the parked cars to the right and the fuel station to her left. The black of the night was pierced by multiple headlight beams, overhead orange lights and multicoloured signs. Her silver bog-standard hatchback was anonymous in the crowd of similar motorised grubs crawling on the surface of the earth.

  ‘In fifty metres, bear left,’ announced the satnav. At the end of that service road she turned sharp right and parked in front of the motel in the lee of a hedge shielding a service area. The squelch of the central locking was almost muffled in the general din of the services area. How the hell she’d sleep, she didn’t know. She left her main luggage in the boot – it was mostly clothes, so replaceable if her car was burgled – then looped her backpack containing essentials over her shoulder. She set off north-eastwards across the parking area towards a low, anonymous building next to the gated highways depot she’d passed on the way in. Venetian blinds lined the insides of the plastic-framed double-glazed windows. Topped with tall antennae, it had once been a highways police station. Now, it looked like an anonymous service office. At the beige-painted door, Mel passed her EIRS card across the reader and the electronic latch buzzed.

  Inside, a tall, well-built man sitting at a desk rose immediately.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Mel held up her card.

  ‘Investigator des Pittones, EIRS. Can I use your secure link, please?’

  In a tiny room, more of a soundproof cubicle, Mel looked into the worried face of Joanna Evans.

  ‘I’m fine. Yes, Cambridge was lovely. I’m going to Ryton tomorrow morning. I’ll send you a text message about flowers tomorrow when I set off.’

  ‘Just to update you…’ Joanna said. ‘Roland Fennington flew to Washington yesterday, but I’d still be careful. His people must still be a
fter you.’

  ‘If they are, they’ve been on a grand tour of the middle part of England.’ Mel laughed. ‘I’ve changed hair colour twice with wigs and cars once in the past twenty-four hours. I’m happy nobody has tailed me here.’

  ‘Well, you know best.’

  Mel closed the link and sat back. She was reasonably confident she’d lost Fennington’s people, if that’s who were following her. She hadn’t detected anybody on her drive round, nor during her stops for food and fuel. Yawning, she hitched her backpack onto her left shoulder. Back in the main room, she nodded to the duty officer, thanked him and left.

  As she closed the outside door behind her, she caught a movement at the edge of her peripheral vision. She whipped round but saw nothing. She crept to the end of the hedge, then shot round to the other side. Nothing. She held her breath. All she could sense was the increased rate of her heart. Her logical brain told her it was a damned cat or even a fox, but some primitive instinct told her the opposite. And that instinct had never let her down yet.

  Nobody noticed anybody else at these anonymous motorway service stations peopled by strangers; all they wanted were fuel, sandwiches, the loo or a cheap overnight room. If anybody actually did notice Mel amble back to her car, they would think she was just another casual traveller passing through. But Mel was sure that somebody was watching her now.

  She slipped her backpack off her shoulder, letting the loops drop into her hand. Holding it would stop her fingers twitching. Sure, she’d drunk a lot of coffee in the past thirty-six hours, but she was used to caffeine. Probably, it was due to lack of sleep. Only an idiot could go without it, especially when operational. She always laughed at the fictional accounts in the cinema or television where characters went for days without sleep.

  She checked again that the car was locked and entered the hotel. The semi-glazed eyes and bored voice of the receptionist were perfect; he’d never remember Mel who was dressed in jeans, shapeless puffed jacket and mousey wig. In the ground-floor room, she carried out a quick search. Everything as it should be; no bugs, no people who shouldn’t be there, but no character either. But that was the charm of charmless hotels.