by Andrew Grant
I was half through my first cappuccino, thinking about the permutations of al-Aqsaba’a and the hospital and Leckie and MI5 and Melissa when a connection sent me reaching for my phone. I dialed Jones’s number, and he answered on the first ring.
“I’m still working on it,” he said. “It’s not easy getting hold of people today, for some reason. So far all I’ve got is some basics on Leckie. His date of birth - which is the same as my dad’s, coincidentally. His address - an ex old people’s home in Harpenden. Snobby place, a few stops up the railway line, and handy for Luton airport if he’s planning a quick getaway. His golf club. Two of them, actually. But not much about his professional life after he left Box.”
“Well, keep on it,” I said. “And there’s something else I want you to look at. I want to know if there’s a link between him and Stewart Sole.”
“The guy who arranged the fiddling of the transfer records, which allowed the caesium to be stolen?”
“Correct.”
“Should there be?”
“Not necessarily. But if there is, it’ll go a long way towards telling us which side of the fence Leckie’s really on.”
“I’m with you. OK. Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can find.”
“Good. And I mean any connection, however small or insignificant it might seem. If their grandparents ever had a drink together, I want to know about it.”
“Understood. Got to go now, though. The cleaner’s arrived. Oh, there are two of them. Anyway, I’ll dig up what I can. Catch you later.”
I put the phone down and returned my attention to my drink, forcing myself to concentrate first on the taste. Then on the smell. And finally the contrast of the pure white foam against the rich, dark liquid. Anything to take my mind away from thoughts of what might be happening at that moment, somewhere outside that room.
The ploy wasn’t very effective, but in the absence of anything better I was contemplating the need for a second cup when my phone rang. I was expecting it to be Jones, but my pulse quickened when I saw the name on the screen: MELISSA (MOBILE)
“Are you OK?” I said, snatching the handset off the table. “Can you talk?”
“I can, now,” she said. “It was just another false alarm. That’s the fourth this year.”
“False alarm? What are you talking about? Where are you?”
“I’m on Millbank. Heading towards Parliament. I was caught in another pointless lockdown. Why? You sound worried.”
“You’ve been in Thames House this whole time?”
“I haven’t set foot outside since you left to get the champagne. I was going to bail early, to meet you and Jones, but the bonehead environmental control system thought it had picked up another airborne contaminant. As usual, it came back negative. And while they were figuring that out, no one in the building could leave. Or send an email. Or even pick up a phone.”
I closed my eyes and took a moment to trace the implications of her words.
“David?” she said. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I said. “Still here.”
“Have you got any idea when you’ll be getting to my place, yet?”
“Melissa, there’s something you need to know about. Just hang on one moment,” I said, getting up and heading for the door.
“What?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“OK, I’m outside now. I was in a café. I didn’t want anyone to overhear me. Now, I’m sorry to be the one to break the news, but there’s a problem with us meeting at your apartment.”
I told her about what had happened with the three guys, and when I’d finished she was completely silent at the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry, Melissa,” I said. “I wish there’d been a way to avoid it. Your place is really messed up. Jones is in there now, dealing with the cleaners. He was worried about you. One of us should tell him you’re OK.”
She still didn’t answer.
“Melissa, are you there?” I said. “Are you OK?”
“I am,” she said. “But what you’re telling me doesn’t make sense. I’m really worried, now, too.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know you’d arrived yet. I hadn’t heard back from you when I texted about the change of time. So, as soon as I got out of the building I called Jones. He told me he hadn’t seen you. He said he’d gone to my building around five thirty, like I’d told him to, but no one was there. He said he waited twenty minutes, then left, assuming there’d been a change of plan.”
“You spoke to him? When?”
“Two minutes ago. Right before I called you.”
“But I spoke to him, it must have been a couple of minutes before that. I had another thing I wanted him to check on. He was still at your place. In fact, he told me the cleaners were just arriving at that moment.”
“Something’s wrong with this picture, clearly. OK. The one thing we know for sure is that he has his phone, since we both spoke to him on it. Stay where you are. I’m going to get a location on it, then I’ll be right back.”
I hung up, then made my way through the passage which ran through the centre of the building, emerging onto the broad walkway next to the Thames. A filthy, ragged pigeon swooped down in front of me, almost touching my head with its wings, so I batted it away and crossed to the river wall to wait.
Melissa called back after six minutes.
“He’s in my apartment,” she said. “Or his phone is, anyway. And he must be in trouble, to have spun me a line I was bound to see through straight away.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“We’ve got to help him. Can we risk the police?”
“No. There’s no time. And it’s too dangerous. Whoever’s behind this clearly has a finger in your pie, and we don’t know how many others. We’ll take care of this another way.”
“How?”
“I’m a hundred yards from your building. Leave it to me.”
“No. Wait. I’m already in a cab. I’ll be there in three minutes. Four at the most. And I have a key.”
“OK. I’ll keep an eye on things till you get here. We don’t want him being carted off anywhere else.”
“Good thinking. And David?”
“Yes?”
“I know how this must look. Thanks for not jumping to conclusions.”
Little did she know I’d jumped to lots of conclusions, recently. And none of them good.
I switched my phone to silent, put it back in my pocket, and then spent the next two minutes surveying the immediate area for anyone else who could be watching the door to Melissa’s building. I couldn’t identify anyone at ground level, but there were plenty of places in the surrounding apartments and offices that would offer excellent cover. There was no way to check them in the time I had available, though. And no way to reach them without taking my own eyes off the entrance. So I contented myself with finding a spot in the shelter of the steps that led up to the higher level of boutiques around the base of the Tower, and remaining as vigilant as possible.
Melissa’s cab arrived after another two minutes. She jumped out, paid the driver, and started to hurry across the twenty yards of cobblestones between the road and her building. Her black wool coat was cinched in tight around her waist, and the heels she was wearing - chosen with a day in the office in mind, I guessed - emphasised the delicately defined muscles in her calves. They did nothing for her ability to move quickly over such a slippery surface, though.
I waited till I was sure no one was following, then stepped out into the open and made my way across to join her. She saw me coming and paused a few feet from the door, her key already in her hand.
A gaggle of teenagers pushed past us in the main lobby, but we made it the rest of the way to Melissa’s corridor without seeing anyone else. The door to her apartment was closed, but before we were within fifteen feet of the place we could tell it wasn’t deserted. Because we could hear voices from inside. Men’s. Two of them. And neither of them were Jones’s.
Melissa held up her hand to stop me outside the apartment, then cupped it to her ear to indicate she was listening to them.
“Here’s some free advice,” a man said. “Don’t try and be a hero. There’s no point. No one’s going to thank you for it. You know why? Cause they’ll be dead.”
“We’re going to find them,” a second man said. “Whether you tell us, or someone else does. The outcome’s going to be the same. The only thing to decide is how much pain you’re going to bring on yourself.”
“We’ll put it out there that we had to torture you for hours, if you want,” the first man said. “Just tell us. Where did Trevellyan go?”
There was silence for a moment, then the sound of a fist crashing into a jawbone.
“The woman will tell us, if you don’t,” the second man said. “She’s next on our list.”
“Right,” the first man said. “Maybe you should just keep quiet. We’d have much more fun working on her. Much more options, with a woman. More than just a punch bag, like you.”
“And we won’t even have to go looking for her,” the second man said. “She’ll just come walking on in here, all on her own.”
“Do you know what we’ll do to her, when she gets here, If you haven’t already told us?” the first man said. “Maybe we should keep you alive, so you can watch.”
“Memories like that should be shared,” the second man said. “They’re too good to keep to yourself. You know we’d have to tape it.”
“And post it on the web,” the first man said.
“All the pain and humiliation she’s going to suffer?” the second man said. “You’ll know you caused that. And you’ll know you could have saved her, just by telling us one thing.”
Melissa switched her keys into her left hand, and drew her Sig. Then she turned to me and mouthed, on five.
“David Trevellyan,” the second man said. “Where is he?”
Four.
There was another moment of silence, and the sound of another blow.
Three. I drew my Beretta.
“Tell us, and we’ll stop this,” the first man said. “We’ll stop hurting you, while you can still see, and you’ve still got some teeth. And we won’t hurt her, either.”
Two.
“What are you waiting for?” the second man said. Tell us now. Stop all this pointless pain. Save yourself. Give us Trevellyan.”
One.
“Do it,” the first man said. “Trevellyan didn’t come back and help you, did he? You owe it to yourself. Give him up. Tell us where he is.”
Melissa nodded to me, then with one fluid move she slipped her key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door away from her. I stepped through into the apartment and moved to my left, covering the guy standing nearer to Jones, who was tied to a wooden dining chair in the centre of the room. Melissa followed me in, and moved to her right.
“Are you looking for me?” I said. “Because if you are, I’m right here. You can leave my friend alone, now.”
The guy I was covering started to turn towards me, raising a Smith and Wesson. The other spun round the opposite way and lunged at Melissa.
“Stop,” I said. “Drop it.”
My guy froze, half way round, and let his gun clatter harmlessly to the floor. The other one, though, wasn’t so sensible. He was about six two and broad in the shoulder, so maybe he fancied his chances against a woman. Or maybe he had a death wish. But either way, he took two rapid strides towards Melissa. I expected her to shoot him on the spot, but she actually lowered her Sig. She waited till he was four feet away from her. Then she stepped diagonally to her right and unleashed a tremendous forearm smash directly to the guy’s face. Both his feet left the floor and he crashed down backwards, completely poleaxed. But Melissa wasn’t finished. She lifted her leg and drove her foot down towards his head. I thought she was going for his throat, like I’d done to the guy who’d attacked me in that same room, earlier. But when I saw the prolonged spasm rip through this guy’s body, I realised she’d taken a different option. I looked more closely, and saw it wasn’t one that was open to me. She’d driven the heel of her shoe straight through his left eye and, if there was much of one there, into his brain.
Jones, the guy who’d been interrogating him, and I watched in silence as Melissa extracted her heel. She lifted her foot slowly. The guy’s head followed until it was raised an inch and a quarter off the floor. Then she gently shook her ankle. His eye socket held its grip for a moment, then gave a soft slurping sound, and his skull fell back down onto the polished wood.
“That’s good,” she said, staring directly at the guy next to Jones. “I’ve seen it where the whole eyeball comes out, skewered by your heel like a kebab. Then you’ve got to decide: waste time picking it off, and get your fingers all covered in ocular slime; or just move on to the next home-invading bastard with it still stuck in place?”
The guy took a step backwards.
“Stop,” she said. “Release my friend from the chair.”
The guy pulled a switchblade from his pocket, popped the blade, and cut the four plastic ties that had held Jones in place. He handed the knife to me, then Jones struggled to his feet and staggered away from the chair, ending up leaning against the wall to help keep himself upright.
“Now, sit in the chair, yourself,” Melissa said. “Then look around the room.”
The guy hesitantly complied, and I followed his gaze as he wrestled to keep it away from the four dead bodies that were still lying on the floor.
“I’m going to help my friend get cleaned up,” Melissa said. “We’ll be gone maybe five minutes. While we’re out of the room, I want you to think about your comrades. About what happened to them. And who did it. Then, when we come back in, I’m going to ask you some questions. You better be ready to answer them.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Melissa and Tim were actually out of the room for closer to fifteen minutes. When they reappeared Melissa had changed into jeans and a jumper, and Tim was looking decidedly healthier. The blood had been washed off his face, his skin had regained a little of its colour, and a couple of plasters had been stuck over the worst of his cuts.
“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.”