by Emma Jameson
“I used to think it was odd, how he seemed taken by your colleague, Kate. She’s no skinny brunette with doe eyes and half a brain. Then I looked up a picture of Opal Grissom before she married Sir Raleigh and I understood. She was a pretty girl with wild blonde hair, just like Kate. Maybe that’s why Duncan believes Sir Raleigh is alive and well and living at the Leadenhall building. He means to kill Tony Hetheridge. And the No-Hopers are helping him plan it.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Tony! Oh my God! Tony!”
When Henry burst into a room shouting his name that way, Tony found there was no point berating the boy. He seemed to be going through a phase where anything that delighted him had to be trotted over for inspection and approval. Tony had decided the best way to temper this was to silently, unhurriedly finish whatever he was doing, then politely ask Henry to repeat himself. But in this instance, Tony was bench pressing 130 kilograms without a spotter, a somewhat risky act in itself. Unhurriedly finishing up was therefore his only course.
Henry’s face, as round as his owlish specs, drifted into Tony’s line of sight as he lifted the barbell back into the frame. “130? That’s a lot.”
“Yes, it is.” Sitting up, Tony mopped his forehead with a flannel. The suite’s fitness room had come equipped with an elliptical trainer, a stepper/climber, a treadmill, mirrored walls, and a pyramid of free weights. Tony and Kate had moved in their own equipment, including Tony’s powerlifting bench and chain-suspended heavy bag. The rest of the generous space was used either for Tony’s favorite form of exercise, fencing, or for Kate’s, mixed martial arts.
Henry said, “You’re not meant to lift that much without a spotter.”
“True.”
“Not behaving responsibly, are you?”
“I suppose not.”
Henry continued studying him minutely. “Your face is awfully red.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. You do have some reason, I hope, for bursting in this way and subjecting me to critique?”
Ignoring the question, Henry said, “You don’t have to worry about bullies. Why do you care if you stay fit?”
“Because I have a young wife. Now. I see you have the phone. May I assume it’s for me?”
“Oh! Yeah. Sorry.” Henry passed it over. “It’s Paul. He said it was a police emergency and I should put you on the line right away.”
“Then start with that, next time, and leave off the personal questions.” Tony put the phone to his ear. “All right, Paul. What’s happened? It’s not Kate, is it?”
He listened. And listened. And listened some more, all the while quietly going through the stretches that were now a non-negotiable part of his routine. It was all very well to prioritize strength and cardiovascular stamina, but let him pull a hamstring or tear a ligament and he’d be sleuthing in a motorized scooter.
It took Paul almost ten minutes to debrief himself, even without interruption. All the while, Henry hovered about the fitness room, transparently feigning disinterest. It was curious, how easily Tony could balance three tasks in the moment: listening to Paul, performing his stretches, and keeping an eye on the boy. Perhaps nothing focused the mind like a credible death threat.
“Hang on, Paul,” he said when the younger man finally paused for breath. “Henry! I don’t suppose you have any homework for me to look over?”
The boy had the nerve to look blank. What is this homework of which you speak?
“I thought I could suit up and do some fencing practice,” Henry ventured.
“Your teachers expect no papers from you tomorrow?”
“Maths,” Henry muttered. “And a book report.”
“Have you read the book?”
“Mostly.”
“Off you go,” Tony said.
Henry tried his wounded expression, the one that occasionally worked on Kate. Tony was stone.
Sighing, Henry trudged toward the door. He turned back at the threshold. “Will it be on the news? Paul wouldn’t tell me. Is it bad?”
Tony put his hand over the receiver. “Office politics. People are losing their jobs. Paul wants advice on how to weather the storm.”
Henry’s shoulders slumped. “Crikey. I thought it was another terrorist attack.” He left without further complaint.
Tony waited to hear the lift ding on the next floor up before closing the fitness room door and sitting down on the weight bench.
“Sorry, Paul. Had to bundle off the boy. Too clever by half, that one. Now.” He took a deep breath. “Where are you?”
“Men’s room, fourth floor of the new HQ,” Paul said. “AKA the dead zone. I wanted to tell you everything before I told Jackson.”
“Well done. Did Lady Isabel tell you where she was going after you spoke?”
“She said she was getting out of London for good. No details.”
“Did she say which Godington residence Sir Duncan lives in now?”
“I asked. She said she didn’t know.”
“Did you get a sense if she might ever be persuaded to go on the record?”
“She won’t,” Paul said. “Maybe when we have her brother in custody. Maybe not.”
“If your taped conversation is ruled admissible, it may be enough. Find Vic. Put the wheels in motion from your end,” Tony said. “I’ll go to work on mine.”
Although Ritchie didn’t observe boundaries, Tony still knocked on his open door before entering his room. “How was dinner?”
The plate on the unmade bed was empty, but for a couple of crusts. There was a reason Kate rarely ordered pizza. She saved it for times she wanted to immobilize Ritchie and Henry into food-induced ecstasy. Ritchie, a bit of tomato sauce dried on his chin, had plowed through the unexpected treat. Now he sat cross-legged on the floor, putting together a Batman-themed Lego set. He didn’t answer Tony’s query, or even look up.
“Word is, there may be Mr. Kipling cakes later,” Tony said, popping into the room’s en suite and returning to Ritchie with a damp flannel. “But you and Henry need to earn it by staying up here. Which should be no sacrifice. Lift your chin.”
Ritchie paid no attention.
Tony put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. In the beginning, Ritchie had screeched in alarm when Tony touched him. Now he flinched, but didn’t seem frightened. While he didn’t welcome interruptions, and perhaps never would, he now trusted Tony enough to let him get close.
“Here we are.” With one quick motion, Tony wiped the dried tomato sauce off his brother-in-law’s chin. Kate could do absolutely anything to Ritchie, including spoon-feed him during a meltdown and give him a sponge bath when he felt poorly, but mere mortals like Tony had to attempt violations of Ritchie’s personal space like a surgical strike. One quick move, a yelp of dismay, and that was it. You got what you got and moved on.
“Hey.” Ritchie rubbed peevishly at his now-clean face. “Don’t touch me.”
“Sorry. Remember, there’s a Mr. Kipling cake with your name on it, if you stay upstairs,” Tony said lightly, dropping the flannel back in the en suite. “Keep up the good work with Batman.”
“I want a Death Star,” Ritchie said. “A classic Lego Death Star play-set with Harrods-exclusive Darth Vader figure and collectible trading card.”
It was no good reminding Ritchie that he’d been assembling precisely that item when he’d burnt down half of Wellegrave House. Nor was Tony surprised that his often uncommunicative brother-in-law could recite the precise name of the toy as listed on the Harrods website. For three weeks, Ritchie had been making this demand daily to anyone who would listen: his paid daytime carer, random people in One-oh-One’s lobby, and the man who sold candied almonds near Westminster tube station. All Tony could do was fall back on Kate’s standard response, “Something to ask Father Christmas about,” before going to check on Henry.
“Come in,” the boy called cheerfully when Tony knocked. Like Ritchie, he’d abandoned his empty dinner plate on the bed and set up camp in the middle of the floor. Both Wakefi
eld males seem philosophically opposed to chairs.
“Is it time for Mr. Kipling cakes?”
“Not yet,” Tony said. “Finished reading, I take it?”
Henry, immersed in one of his comic books, closed it reluctantly and opened the assigned book, Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.
“It’s about a girl. That’s it. One girl. There was a boy, and I thought I might care what happened to him, but he died straight away.”
“Keep at it,” Tony said. “I read that years ago. A tale of survival against all odds. As I recall, the girl befriends a wild dog.”
Henry perked up. “But she just tried to kill Rontu, the leader of the pack.”
“Then you’re not far. I’ll check back in a couple of hours. With the promised Mr. Kipling cake, so long as you stay up here without complaint.”
“Any news about when the Internet router will be fixed?”
“A man will see to it first thing tomorrow,” Tony lied. In truth, specialists from the MPS Cyber Crimes unit were engaging in a bit of digital sleight-of-hand that might take forty-eight hours to complete. From the outside, the Hetheridge family’s IP address and DNS server would appear unchanged, the better to tempt hackers. But from now on, it would be continuously monitored until the No-Hopers were arrested. Meantime, a secondary closed system, fully secure, would provide the family slower, safer web access, once it was up and running. Cyber Crimes did their job well, but fast was another story.
“Kate said you’re having people over. It’s not a party, is it?” Henry asked.
“Good Lord, no.”
“Who, then?”
“Our interior designer, the head of construction, and a conservation officer from Historic England. Kate and I will be going over samples of reclaimed wood, negotiating about the sort of oil-based paint permitted on the ground floor, and examining vintage wallpaper swatches.”
The boy groaned. “Boring. I don’t know how grownups stand it.”
“Boring, indeed.”
Smiling, Tony closed the door. Within the condo, he usually took the stairs—too much reliance on the lift, and his arthritic left knee would take it as a form of capitulation—but this time, he bowed to technology. Before exiting to the living room, he used the car’s internal keypad to disable it. Then, for good measure, he locked the stairwell door. Now there was no way Henry or Ritchie could slip downstairs, and if they obeyed him, they’d never know the difference. Ritchie was less of an issue, though one never knew what he might absorb and repeat at the wrong moment. But Henry noticed too much, drew astute conclusions, and would recognize Assistant Commander Michael Deaver and DCI Vic Jackson on sight.
It did look like a party in the living room—a hanging party, perhaps, or a wake. Everyone was dressed in black or gray, the colorless tones of men and women with access to secrets. The liaison from the Home Secretary was working quietly on his laptop. Tony’s friend and ex-boss AC Deaver, his long face longer than ever, was on the receiving end of a phone conversation which required him to do no more than murmur, “I see,” from time to time. Vic Jackson, who looked like a man with a rash in an unmentionable place, was thumbing through a thick hardcopy file from his personal collection. In the kitchen, a Cyber Crimes specialist was going over the specs for both of Tony’s cars, the silver Lexus and the classic Bentley. Neither contained the proper computer interface to be hackable, which was one benefit of driving cars until the doors fell off.
As Tony entered the living room the MPS specialist, a young blonde with specs and a jaunty ponytail, looked up from her work. She’d taken over the coffee table, which was now piled with tech debris: empty boxes, torn plastic bags, and bits of paper.
“Your new mobiles are all set,” she told Tony.
“Sir,” AC Deaver corrected the specialist.
“Sir,” she repeated, inflectionless. Apparently her blonde ponytail was the sprightliest thing about her. Tony didn’t care. Like Kate, he’d surrendered his iPhone as a potentially hackable item. If Box 500, as people generally referred to MI5 in mixed company, could give him and Kate more secure mobile phones to use during this crisis, the specialist’s brusque manner troubled him not at all.
“Same number?” he asked as Kate drifted to his side.
“Yes.” The ponytailed specialist handed an identical mobile to Kate.
“We’re restricted to calls only, I take it?” she asked.
“For maximum security, yes. So you won’t forget, I didn’t install an Internet browser or text messenger,” the specialist replied. “For those functions, you’ll have a secure PC. See those laptops, charging on the bar top? They’re downloading the last bits of firmware now.”
“Perfect,” Kate said, sliding an arm around Tony. Before the meeting, she’d been slightly agitated, concerned that Henry or Ritchie might choose this night to misbehave in a way that would reveal the truth. Now that both Wakefield males were happily bribed with take-out pizza and the promise of Mr. Kipling cakes, Kate was perfectly composed.
“Does this have a brand name?” Paul asked, fiddling with his heavy, distinctly unsexy new phone. His iPhone had been entered into evidence hours ago.
“It’s a Blackberry variant. Made for us alone,” the specialist said. “Good news. You hold in your hands the most exclusive, limited-edition mobile you’ll probably ever own.”
“Lucky me. Cheers.” Smiling at Tony, Paul slipped the secure mobile into his coat pocket. “So. Where are we?”
Tony looked toward AC Deaver, who’d quietly concluded his call, an emergency briefing from his counterpart at MI6. This sort of off-the-record coordination between services, bypassing labyrinthine processes in favor of speed and accuracy, was Deaver’s specialty.
Strictly speaking, Tony had no right to any information about the new investigation of Sir Duncan. Hearsay death threats of current and former civil servants were taken seriously, of course, but they were literally daily occurrences. SIS had the resources to pinpoint the whereabouts of a public figure like Sir Duncan, who carried a BTS mobile, paid for everything with chip and pin credit cards, and traveled in and out of London on his Syberjet Sj30. What SIS couldn’t do, on the basis of a hearsay threat, was pass on that critical data to a retired policeman. And neither, in his official capacity, could Deaver.
“Tony, you have an office one floor down, do you not?” Deaver looked to him for confirmation. “Excellent. Gentlemen. And lady,” he added, nodding at the ponytailed specialist. “Thank you for all your help. Now, if you please, give us the room. We’ll call you back after we’ve had time to confer.”
After the MI5 agents and Cyber Crimes techs had filed downstairs—a comfortable space where they couldn’t overhear anything that would make them a party to improper or illegal actions—only Deaver, Jackson, and Paul remained. Kate sat down. Tony stayed on his feet. It was easier to project calm that way, and above all, calm was essential.
“First,” Deaver said. “The bad news. The No-Hopers aren’t on our radar to any significant degree. They don’t appear to traffic in the drugs or sex trade. One or two people associated with them have been arrested in the last twenty-four months, but in both cases, the charge was aggravated trespass for BASE jumping. Neither stuck in criminal court, and both were reduced to simple trespass in civil court. The No-Hopers are classified as an Urbex group. A nuisance.”
Tony took that in. Perhaps Mariah Keene’s death had been an accident, the unintended consequence of climbing a half-completed high rise for the fun of it. Moreover, perhaps Mark Keene’s influence had not only transformed Sir Duncan’s outlook, but the No-Hopers’ mission, too.
“Second,” Deaver said. “Regarding Lady Isabel Bartlow. She’s liquidating her London real state at what can only be called fire sale prices. She also appears to have purchased a cottage in St. Ives via a shell company. These actions don’t prove she’s in fear for her life, of course, but they indicate her desire to give up the social butterfly routine and go incognito, at least for a time.�
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“I don’t think she was playing mind games with me,” Paul said.
“I don’t think you’re capable of discerning, one way or the other,” Deaver retorted. “At the close of this meeting, you will disassociate yourself from the Sir Duncan and Lady Isabel matter altogether. Rest assured, DCI Jackson will keep you occupied with other concerns.”
As if responding to some telepathic baton pass, Jackson cleared his throat. “You know the drill, Bhar. The less you’re involved, the fewer excuses Godington’s defense brief can make as he stands in the dock. If Lady Isabel leaves you a message, bring it to me. If she calls, use your new mobile’s record option. If something unexpected happens, don’t act alone. Come to me for guidance. Until the situation is resolved, you’re not to visit your mates here, or at Wellegrave House. Even at the office, I’ll ask you to strictly limit any conversations with DS Hetheridge to unrelated professional matters. Am I clear?”
Tony needed no telepathy to perceive Paul’s frustration, but he was pleased when his former subordinate agreed to Jackson’s order swiftly and with due respect. Paul’s desire to redeem himself was perfectly understandable. But if he gave in to that desire, Sir Duncan and his complicit half-sister might once again get away with murder.
“Now comes the good news,” Deaver said, reclaiming the floor. “Our friends at SIS tell us Sir Duncan Godington flew out of Heathrow on his private jet three days ago. London to Brunei. No stops, no tricks. Godington ticked all the requisite security boxes. Heathrow provided CCTV images. See for yourself.”
On his secure laptop, he pulled up the pictures for Tony, Kate, Paul, and Jackson to review. As Tony expected, they had been passed on via an anonymous email account, which signaled the origin was someone in SIS. Although the black and white stills were light on detail, they clearly depicted a tall, well-dressed man with bright blond hair. Judging by the faces of the airport employees, many of whom were beaming, England’s most charming eco-warrior hadn’t lost his touch.