‘Advise?’
‘Alright – I’m telling you to take her.’
Mac nodded. ‘No problem. Do you want me to do some follow-up work on the Garcia case in the meantime?’
Phil burst out laughing. ‘You’re off the Garcia case, for obvious reasons. And don’t take this personally but I’ve changed your network status so you can’t access information on it – for equally obvious reasons.’
‘Sure, that makes sense.’
His superior seemed relieved there’d been no argument. ‘Good. Why don’t you tidy your desk while I organise a car and a WPC to take you to the hospital?’
‘Good idea.’
But Mac knew he already had the tidiest desk in the police service.
When Phil had gone, he checked on his computer and discovered that he was indeed locked out of everything on the investigation into Garcia. But that was OK. He’d learned during that day eighteen months ago how to work his way around little problems like that.
An hour later, Delaney called him. ‘There’s a car out front to take you to Mission Hill hospital. I’ve arranged for someone to escort you down there. Oh and please . . . don’t do anything stupid Mac, there’s a good boy.’
‘My stupid days are over Phil. I promise.’
When he got outside, he was surprised to discover that his escort wasn’t a female officer but Delaney’s personal PA, Shazia. For the first ten minutes of the journey, Mac kept up a steady barrage of gossip and chatter with his fellow passenger before trying to steer the subject onto the Garcia case. But Shazia stopped him dead.
‘Phil warned me you might try and talk about that and I’m under strict instructions not to. You understand.’
Mac understood. But he understood something else. He was a cop and he was trained to notice details. And he’d noticed in the past that Shazia’s desk was covered with pictures of her children and her nieces and nephews. He decided to bide his time until a better opportunity occurred.
When they reached the paediatric ward of Mission Hill Hospital a nurse escorted them into the private room guarded by a solitary police officer. Mac felt his guts start to contract and his eyes start to moisten. He’d felt the same way after Stevie was born. It was a moment he’d never thought he’d see and had had no time to prepare for. Suddenly Elena, Foster, Garcia and Delaney all seemed far away and completely irrelevant. Only his son and this moment mattered. Shazia squeezed his arm and said, ‘Are you alright? Don’t be afraid to cry. It’s alright . . .’
The nurse opened the door and led them over to a cot where the baby aged slightly less than a year was sitting up, smiling and grasping his bars like a prisoner in a cell. Mac was motionless as he stood over the child. His child. The baby might have his eyes but he had her features: high Russian cheekbones and soft, nearly black hair. He had her smile without any hint of her menace or deceit in it. But he didn’t have her eyes. Mac felt tears run down his cheeks.
‘Isn’t he an angel?!’ Shazia diplomatically ignored Mac’s tears and nearly climbed into the cot to embrace the bundle of joy. ‘What a beautiful boy! Oh Mac! What’s his name?’ She reached over and picked up the notes that were attached to the head of the bed. There was no surname and under forename was merely written ‘Carlos’. Stella decided that must have been what the nanny had been calling him.
‘His name is John Mac.’
That’s what Elena had written on the back of the photo.
‘Pick him up! He won’t break!’ Shazia encouraged.
Mac put his hands under the baby’s arms and lifted him out of the cot. Held him close. Inhaled his sweet baby scent. His son didn’t break his smile. Instead he tried to claw his father’s face as if attempting to discover what was going on underneath. If he had succeeded, he would have learnt that Mac was working out how to get him out of the hospital without being stopped. The cop on the door was no problem. He wouldn’t expect to be attacked and could be knocked out without any problem. Shazia wasn’t fit enough to chase him. He could jack a car and by the time the hospital realised what had happened, he would be miles away. Then he could make a new start, somewhere else. Just him and – he made himself say the name he hadn’t given his son – John Mac.
But Mac took deep breaths and cleared his mind with a deep and deliberate effort. Yes, he was a dispossessed father but he was a father with a mission and he had work to do.
‘If only we knew where his mother was . . .?’
Shazia was cooing over John Mac with, ‘You’re a very handsome young man, aren’t you? Yes, you are!’ and didn’t notice Mac’s question at first. But he could see her guard was down as she doted on the little boy. He repeated it.
Phil’s PA broke her joy long enough to say, ‘His mother? According to Phil, FBI intelligence says she’s in California, a drugs trafficker apparently. He checked with them this morning.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Yeah, evil bitch. How can someone that wicked be the mother of this little innocent prince?’
Mac felt his way along carefully. ‘Even drug traffickers don’t like losing their baby sons. How on earth did my little boy end up in London if she’s in California?’
Stella was nuzzling her nose against the baby’s forehead. ‘He smells like a spring day!’
‘The FBI must have a theory on how he ended up in the UK with a character like Garcia?’
He got no answer. Until the absent-minded PA forgot herself completely and said, ‘The Feds know why your baby is here. Phil had a chat with the FBI guy in Los Angeles earlier on Skype. They know all about it . . . You’re beautiful! Yes, you are! Yes, you are!’
Mac could feel his temper rising steadily through his chest and up towards his tongue. He took a deep breath and forced it back down. ‘What do they know?’
Shazia suddenly seemed to remember her instructions from her boss. ‘I don’t know – you’d have to ask Phil or Agent Tom Bracken from the FBI in LA.’
In the car as they returned to the office, Shazia was pensive and silent. When they pulled up, she turned to Mac. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that about the mother and Tom Bracken. You won’t say anything to anyone will you?’
Mac squeezed her arm. ‘You haven’t told me anything and I’m off the Garcia case now so it wouldn’t matter if you had.’ He looked up at Phil Delaney’s office. ‘Besides, what could I do with that information anyway?’
Six
The following morning, on his way to work, Mac bought a pay-as-you-go mobile from a 24-hour shop that supplied everything but didn’t do receipts or returns. He called Stephen Foster. It was still only 7.30 a.m. but the lawyer sounded as if he’d been at work for hours.
He was curt. ‘Meet me at my club at 2.00 p.m. Bring a passport-sized photo with you.’ Then Foster rang off.
It was eight when he got to the office; he went to see Shazia and asked if Phil was in yet. She avoided his eyes but told him Phil had texted her to say he was stuck in traffic but he would be there shortly.
‘How long’s shortly?’
‘How long’s a piece of string?’
‘Can I wait?’
She was still avoiding his eyes. ‘Sure.’
‘In his office?’
She abruptly made eye contact. ‘Of course not.’
Shazia went back to work while Mac took a chair that was placed between her desk and the door to Phil’s office so he could see inside. He peered in through the glass partition and noticed the window was ajar. The PA sat with her back to the office door guarding its entrance. The room was sound-proofed so no one outside could hear what was going on within. It was midnight in Los Angeles.
The plan Mac decided on was a ludicrous risk but it was all he had.
‘I’ll tell you what Shazia – can you bell me when Phil gets in? I’ll be in my office.’
‘Sure, no problem.’
Mac hurried down to the ground floor and went to the stores. He asked the supervisor if he had a length of the black and red rope that the police use to cordon
areas off and a pair of rubber gloves. When they were produced, Mac refused to sign for them, telling the super, ‘Come on mate, it’s me and I’m in a hurry. I’m a cop; I’m not going to steal them am I?’
As causally as a man with a length of red and black rope can be, Mac took the lift up to the fifth floor and went into an empty meeting room. He dropped the rope on the floor and put on the rubber gloves before flinging open the window. Below, the street was crowded with commuters going to work. But that, Mac reflected, was the great thing about London commuters. They never look up. Even if the sky goes green, they don’t look up.
He measured off enough rope to take him to the floor below and then secured the remainder around a leg of the table that dominated the room, paying out the rest of the rope down to the window on the next floor. Then he felt the rope with his gloved hands, established a good grip and climbed onto the sill. He tugged on the rope one more time to m ake sure it secured tightly and then began to climb down the outside wall to Phil’s office.
As he kicked against the wall and wound his hands down the rope, he felt a surge of triumph in his veins. This again was the undercover work where he’d made his name. Dangerous work: against the clock and with the ever-present threat of detection.
But he’d miscalculated.
His joints, muscles and limbs began to creek and buckle under the strain. The effects of the injuries that he’d sustained chasing the phantom killer of his lover eighteen months earlier had led one doctor to suggest he could be ‘registered disabled’. Mac had laughed at the suggestion but as his grip on the rope began to fail, he knew the doctor had been right. And as he looked down at the window, he realised something else. He’d miscalculated the length of rope needed and he was going to be a couple of feet short. The strain on the rubber gloves he was wearing began to peel them from his hands and only by using his teeth was he able to keep them on.
Then the rope began to give way.
Above, he could hear the meeting room table violently scraping the floor as it was dragged towards the window by his weight. The rope sagged briefly, he was dropped a couple of feet before the rope jerked him violently as he became taut again. For a brief moment he dangled horizontally like a circus performer before gravity pulled him upright again and he swayed like the pendulum on a clock. He looked up and felt his hands reddening under the gloves as he slid down what was left of the length of rope, and then down at the innocent pedestrians below he was about to fall on.
‘Elena,’ he whispered softly.
It was only when he looked back at the wall that he realised the movement of the table above had given him the couple of extra feet he needed. He whispered ‘Elena’ again and then, more angrily, ‘Elena!’ Holding onto the rope with one hand he snatched at the window with the other and pulled it open. With a final scream of ‘Elena!’ he kicked against the wall with his foot and swung backwards. The momentum of the return swing forwards carried him through the window where he tumbled onto the floor of Phil’s office.
Stunned for a few moments, he struggled to his knees and crawled to the desk. Outside, he could see the back of Shazia’s head as she barred the door. He used his nearly dead hands to turn the screen so that it blocked the view from outside and crouching he sat low so he couldn’t be seen if she looked his way. He turned the computer on and went to Skype. He tore off some notepaper and sellotaped it over the camera.
Phil had contact numbers both for Tom Bracken’s work and home. It was just gone midnight in California so Mac knew the work one was a dead loss but he rang the home one and found he’d got lucky twice over. Firstly, a woman in a dressing gown appeared on the other end, looking confused.
‘Can I speak with Tom?’ Mac said.
She called out. ‘Tom honey, some guy’s calling you on Skype.’
In the background was a shout of ‘Who is it?’
‘I dunno. Why don’t you come and see. Oh – and there’s no picture.’
The woman got up and a few moments later, she was replaced by a man who was clearly ‘Tom honey’. That’s when Mac realised he’d had a second stroke of luck. The man was clearly drunk. He wore a dress shirt with an undone black bow tie hung around the collar. Fiddling with an unlit cigar his hair was dishevelled and his eyes glazed. It had obviously been a long evening for Tom Bracken.
‘Phil? Is that you? I haven’t got a picture here man.’
Mac attempted to imitate Phil’s clipped and neutral tone. But he soon realised that he could have been speaking French for all the notice Tom was taking. ‘I can see you Tom. How’s it going?’
‘We had a big day out in court. Convictions all round for our guys! You gotta love our justice system; best in the world. Shame we couldn’t give our guilty boys the needle but you can’t have everything.’
‘Fantastic!’
Tom dropped his cigar, mumbled ‘fuck’ and disappeared while he hunted for it. When he came back, he was attempting to light it with a flame that was way too big. ‘Been out celebrating with my team. I’ll tell you what Phil, when we nail Garcia, why don’t you fly over? You ain’t been to an FBI party, you ain’t lived my friend.’
Tom dropped his cigar again, picked it up and attempted to puff. Then he banged his screen in an attempt to get the missing computer feed showing Phil.
‘I’m glad you mentioned Garcia because that’s what I wanted to talk about. Did I mention that Garcia has got a top London lawyer by the name of Foster? He’s a proper shark Tom and we need to be careful here because he knows every trick in the book. He’s taking a close interest in the kid we found at Garcia’s. He wants to make something of it. Have you any idea what that kid was doing at the guy’s house?’
Tom burst out laughing. ‘Hey, is it true what I’ve heard – that the kid’s father is one of your undercover cops? I mean, c’mon Phil. What kind of an outfit are you running over there? For fuck’s sake . . .’
‘The kid? What was he doing at Garcia’s?’ Mac looked up. Over the top of his screen, he could see Phil Delaney was in the reception talking to his PA. Mac’s voice went up a tone, ‘Tom – please.’
‘OK, OK. All I can say is that we got a tip-off Garcia was in London and we know that tip-off came from Elena Romanov. You know, the mother – the drugs trafficker? We think she’s skipped town. My guess is—’
But there was no time for Tom’s guess. Outside the office, Phil was laughing and patting the PA on her shoulder. Then he turned to walk to his office door.
‘Tom, gotta go. And Tom, this conversation never happened OK? Even I don’t know about it.’
Mac pulled the plug on the PC which fell silent, then he re-plugged the machine so it rebooted and threw the notepaper over the camera into the bin. There was no time to get back to the window. Silently, he was relieved. He knew if he’d attempted to climb back up the rope to the office above, he would certainly have fallen to his death. Instead his only option was to crawl across the floor to a wall-length filing cabinet and climb inside, like an adulterous lover when the husband has returned. He pulled the door to.
The office door opened.
‘What the fuck?’
Footsteps no doubt moving towards the window.
‘Shazia – has anyone been in my office?’
‘No. Mac was here earlier but he said he’d come back. What’s the matter?’
‘Call security. There’s a rope hanging from the floor above.’
The office fell silent. When he felt it was safe to do so, Mac peered out from his hiding place. The reception area outside was empty. A few minutes later, when Phil came back into the reception area with the rope and his PA returned with a team she’d quickly assembled to search the office, they found Mac seated there and the office door in front of them firmly closed. His grim faced superior gestured to him to follow into his office and told the other officers to wait outside while he spoke to his subordinate. When they were sat opposite one another, Phil broke the silence that followed by saying, ‘If I thought that little in
cident had anything to do with you my friend, you’d be so deep in the crap, you’d need a length of rope to climb out of it . . .’
Seven
Mac devised a plan before he’d completely worked out why he needed one. In a tense meeting with his boss, in which he’d been questioned carefully about the incident with the rope, he’d managed to convince Phil that there was no way an almost-registered disabled man like himself could be swinging out of windows, four floors above the pavement, insisting, ‘I’m not Spiderman . . .’
When Delaney had carefully checked his files, drawers and computer to make sure nothing was missing, he reluctantly let Mac go. ‘But be warned Mac. I’m sending this rope over to forensics. If I find evidence that you’ve been using it . . .’
Mac stared at the rope that was lying on the desk in front of him. ‘That’s a waste of resources at a time when the force is tightening its belt.’
‘Not to me, it isn’t.’
Dismissed, Mac went downstairs, fetched his car and took off at high speed for the hospital where John Mac was under observation. Tom Bracken had said that he thought Elena had skipped town and Mac would swear on the Bible he knew which town she’d skipped off to. So Elena had shopped Garcia to the Feds. Why? As Garcia had had their son he’d assumed they were associates. But maybe they weren’t. Or was this another one of Elena’s double-crosses?
With more questions in his head than answers Mac stopped on the way to buy a padded hoodie and a pair of sunglasses with which he entered the hospital. He took them off again when he reached the children’s ward and placed his police ID badge on a cord around his neck so he looked official. No guard outside his son’s room but Mac wasn’t naïve enough to think one might not be nearby. After checking out the positioning of the staff, he hit the fire alarm with his elbow and picked up a fire extinguisher.
The alarm screamed into action. There was the usual confusion. Was it a scheduled or unscheduled drill? Was there a little smoke somewhere and someone was playing safe? Or was there actually a fire? Mac marched down the corridor with an air of authority and called out, ‘Come on people, it’s a fire alarm, not the front door bell . . .’
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