More Harm Than Good

by Andrew Grant

  “Which made no sense. No terrorist action could bring down the government. We all agreed on that.”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘the.’”

  “What?”

  “Remember Chaston and the Deputy DG? The misunderstanding about ‘there' meaning the fire station not Parliament?”

  “What about it?”

  “What if we’ve done the same thing? What if the snout did mean ‘the’ government. Just not ours.”

  Melissa didn’t reply.

  “And here’s another thought,” I said. “What do babies do?”

  “I don’t know,” Melissa said. “I’ve never had one. Cry?”

  “They do. But they also grow. And go to school. What if al-Aqsaba’a are coming back for a second attempt on the kid? The kid whose death would bring down a friendly government? Wouldn’t that be more in line with their known M.O. than a grand-scale attack on parliament?”

  “Stay where you are,” Melissa said. ”I’ll call you back.”

  It took Melissa less than fifteen minutes to ferret out what I needed to know.

  “David?” she said, when I picked up. “I hate you. And I have since the moment we met.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “No. But I’m not happy with you. Do you want to know why?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Actually, you do. It’s because of your questions about that kid. It turns out he is still in London. He’s grown big enough to go to school. And he just happens to attend a school in the area served by the fire station where the caesium container ended up.”

  “That doesn’t sound like good grounds for hating me.”

  “On its own, maybe not. But I brought Chaston up to speed. He told Hardwicke. And they agreed, with al-Aqsaba’a as a common denominator and their past record of targeting the kid, we have to regard him as a viable target.”

  “And your problem with that is…?”

  “They want the kid under blanket security.”

  “Sounds wise. Isn’t he guarded anyway, though?”

  “He is, given the past attempt on his life. He attends school under a false name. The Met’s diplomatic protection team is on him 24/7. But they’ve decided that’s not enough, for tomorrow. They want him to have extra cover.”

  “That sounds like a good thing, surely?”

  “It would be. Maybe. If it wasn’t for one detail.”

  “What kind of detail?”

  “The extra cover is to be provided by you and me.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Let me think. I’ve been running with this since the beginning. I’ve done all the donkey work. And tomorrow, instead of being in line for a slice of the glory – not to mention the chance to clear my name – will I be at the Palace of Westminster, where the action is? No. A horde of credit-stealing, bandwagon-riding colleagues will be there. And me? I’ll be stuck in a Kindergarten.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Even if you didn’t know the address of the St Ambrose Academy For Boys, it wouldn’t be hard to find your way to the place. Specially in the morning. All you’d have to do is follow the swarm of out-of-place, oversized SUVs that descend on it at dropping-off time.

  Parking is more of a challenge, however. Melissa hardly spoke after picking me up at the Barbican and darting through a maze of backstreets in the general direction of Westminster, but as we drew close to the school she started to mutter under her breath about the lack of convenient spaces. The whole area within a quarter of a mile of the gates was either clogged with traffic or taken up with bus lanes, and I knew she wouldn’t want to leave the car on a double-yellow for fear of drawing attention.

  “So,” she said, after finally squeezing into a bay around the back of an old telephone exchange. “How are we going to do this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Is Jones coming?”

  “No. He called me, earlier. He’s still sick.”

  “OK. If it’s just the two of us, we could say we’re prospective parents. We’re moving back from the States, and looking for a suitable place for our charming yet precocious twins.”

  “Maybe. But wouldn’t we need an appointment?”

  “That’s why we say we have twins. Have you got any idea how much a place like this costs? And with the state of the economy? Do you think they’d turn down the chance to get their hands on two lots of fees?”

  “I guess not.”

  “It’ll get us through the door, at least. And if you continue acting like Frosty the Snow-Woman we’ll have no problem convincing them we’re married.”

  The school was separated from the street by an eight-foot-high wall. It was built from stone, pitted by age and pollution, and covered in places with dark, straggly ivy. But any promise of old-world charm was broken the second you set foot through the gate. A concrete path led diagonally through beds of crushed purple slate towards a door in a single storey, glass fronted corridor that joined a pair of low slung, rectangular buildings on either side.

  “Which way?” Melissa said, as she stepped inside. “Can you see any signs?”

  “None,” I said. “Shall we toss a coin?”

  “No. Let’s just go right. It’s closer.”

  The corridor led to a large rectangular hall. There was a stage at one end, covered with clusters of collapsible music stands, and various kinds of gym equipment were attached to both long walls. The sight of the benches and ropes and wall bars mingled with a smell of dust and floor polish. It left me half expecting one of my old teachers to appear and start barking sarcastic orders at us for moving too slowly, but when I did hear a voice it had an altogether more helpful tone.

  “Can I help you?” a short, white-haired woman said, emerging from a square archway in the far corner. “You look a little lost.”

  Melissa moved towards her, holding out her hand, but before she could speak we heard a loud whirring sound behind us, then a solid clunk. I looked round, and saw the doors we’d come in through had swung shut on their own.

  “Don’t worry. It’s just our security system. It’s automatic. The entrances are open for half an hour in the morning, and again at home time. Other than that, except between lessons, they only unlock with one of these fobs,” the white-haired woman said, holding up a black tear-drop shaped piece of plastic on a cord around her neck.

  “Very impressive,” Melissa said.

  “Our parents are reassured by it,” the woman said. “It shows how seriously we take the safety of their children. That’s always been our top priority at St Ambrose.”

  “As it should be.”

  “Absolutely. Now, you were telling me what I could do to guide you?”

  The woman escorted us out of the hall, past the staffroom, and asked us to stay in a waiting area while she tracked down the admissions secretary. I helped myself to coffee from a machine on a table between a pair of Barcelona couches, but Melissa went straight for her phone.

  “The first batch of MPs are there,” she said, when she’d hung up. “Traffic’s at a standstill outside. No one’s approached the sprinkler system, or any of the other vulnerable points.”

  “No one’s going to,” I said. “The action’s going to be here.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “What about the caesium container?” I said. “Is it still at the fire station?”

  “It is,” she said. “No one’s touched it since it was delivered.”

  The rest of our morning was taken up with a guided tour of the premises. The admissions secretary turned out to be a sharp-suited guy in his late twenties. He showed no sign of being upset at our unannounced appearance, and from the moment he set eyes on us he was in full-on selling mode. The smile didn’t fade from his face, and he didn’t miss a single opportunity to stress the benefits of the school. The obscure Scandinavian architect who’d allegedly designed the buildings. The mentor assigned to every child. The daily reviews, to ensure every lesson was fully absorbed. The breadth of the curricu
lum. The after school clubs. Music. Drama. Sport. Foreign languages. And though he didn’t mention them, I also noticed the CCTV cameras that covered every inch of the grounds. The panic buttons every twelve feet in the corridors and behind every teacher’s desk. The diplomat’s son – known at the school as Toby Smith - playing happily in the Kindergarten. The two burly ‘teaching assistants’ who never strayed more than six feet from his side. And the two men dressed as electrical contractors, who were working outside his classroom with tell-tell bulges under their coveralls.

  Melissa spent most of the tour with her phone pressed to her ear.

  “The last MP’s arrived,” she whispered to me as we were leaving the Year One classroom.

  “The Lords are ready,” as we inspected the musical instrument storeroom.

  “One Bishop’s missing,” as we were handed sample menus from the canteen.

  “They’ve found him,” as we left the head teacher’s office.

  “Black Rod’s robed up,” as we paused in front of the trophy cabinet.

  “The Queen’s ten minutes away,” as we examined the selection of books in the library.

  Five minutes later we were back at the waiting area, listening to the admission secretary’s footsteps die away along the corridor. I wasn’t expecting a further update for another five minutes, but before I could even reach for a paper coffee cup Melissa’s phone rang again. She answered, and immediately I could see the tension course through her.

  “A man just entered the Medway Street fire station,” she said, when the call ended. “He was wearing a hazmat suit, and emptied the contents of the caesium container into the main tank of one the fire engines.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “They’re about to make their play.”

  “Not excellent,” she said. “Because we still don’t know where the rest of the caesium is.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Melissa paced relentlessly for the next three minutes, crossing from one side of the waiting area to the other, her path perfectly parallel with the lines of school crests woven into the dark blue carpet. She was holding her phone out in front of her, staring at the screen, willing it to ring. But when there was a sound, it was louder than any ringtone. And it came from the ceiling, above her.

  It was the fire alarm.

  “To the kindergarten,” she said, a look of half surprise, half shock, on her face. “Quickly.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. The staff room door flew open as we rushed past, but we ignored the angry shouts telling us to change direction and carried on along the corridor towards the classrooms. The two electrical workers were on their feet, standing squarely in front of the kindergarten door, and as we approached my nose picked up the first hint of smoke. It was leaking out below the door they were guarding.

  “Stop,” the guy on the right side, reaching into his overall and drawing a pistol. “Armed police. Stay where you are or I will fire.”

  We stopped.

  “Hold it,” Melissa said. “Blue on blue. I’m going to reach into my pocket and take out my ID. Is that OK?”

  “Go ahead,” the guy said, as his partner also drew his weapon. “But do it slowly.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Melissa said, when they were satisfied with her credentials. “Where’s Toby Smith?”

  “He’s fine,” the first guy said. “The others are taking him out to the assembly point. It’s outside, on the playground. All the classes have an allocated spot to wait in. As soon as we get word they’re set, we’ll go around the other way and meet them. We can’t get there through the classroom, like they did. It’s too full of smoke.”

  “We need to go now,” Melissa said. “We have to move the kid. He’s not safe there. The fire’s a ruse to get him out in the open.”

  “What do you mean?” the guy said. “What do you know that we…”

  Melissa’s phone rang and she held up her hand, cutting the guy off and indicating she needed to take the call.

  “OK,” she said, hanging up a minute later. “They stopped both engines from leaving Medway Street fire station. Both crews, and everyone inside the building, are under wraps. Two other engines are en route from Victoria, in their place. ETA is four minutes. Let’s make sure we have our hands on the kid before they get here.”

  “Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” the first guy said.

  “I will,” Melissa said. “Off the record, anyway. But only once the kid is safe. So come on. Lead the way.”

  Organising large groups of kids was always my idea of hell, but the teachers at St Ambrose had it down to a fine art. We emerged from the glass corridor on to the playground and instead of the chaos I had envisaged, we found four neat double lines of children. The classes were arranged in age order: kindergarten to the left, Year One in front of us, Year Two to the right. And if the relative size of the children wasn’t enough of a clue, the teaching assistants standing on either side of the diplomat’s kid would certainly have been a reliable guide.

  “There he is,” Melissa said. “Let’s get him away from the crowd, just in case.”

  We’d just started moving towards the youngest children when the alarm bells inside the school were switched off. Without them, we could suddenly hear the excited murmuring of the kids. The background hum of city traffic returned. And we became aware of another sound. Sirens. Several of them. At least four. And they were heading in our direction.

  One of the teachers called for silence, then ordered the children to remain absolutely still. The last words had barely left his lips when the first of the emergency vehicles arrived. It was a police car, closely followed by a pair of fire engines and two ambulances. The car pulled over to the side, near the last of the Year Two children, and the fire engines swooped past it, not stopping till they were as close to the classroom building as possible. Their doors were thrown open and five firemen jumped down from each one, already suited up in their protective clothing. Like clockwork they started towards their prearranged positions, but before a single hose could be connected all ten of the men suddenly froze. They raised their hands, and I followed their gaze to two men I hadn’t seen before. They’d emerged from a black BMW that had made its way up the drive under cover of the second ambulance. They were both wearing suits. They were tall, each well over six foot. And they were both holding guns.

  “Nobody move,” the first newcomer said. “Police. Now, listen carefully.”

  “They’re not police,” Melissa whispered to me. “They’re Box. I recognise them.”

  “I’m speaking to the fire crew only, now,” the newcomer said. “I need to know which one of you is in charge?”

  The man who’d been first out of the leading fire engine raised his right hand even higher than it already was.

  “Good,” the newcomer said. “I need your help. Because before a single drop of water gets sprayed anywhere, we need to test it. And that won’t take long, if you show me how to open the tanks.”

  The fireman made his way to the back of his engine and started to climb the ladder which was built in to the vehicle’s bodywork.

  “The hatch’s up here,” he said. “But you better haul your arse. We’ve got a fire to fight, here.”

  The newcomer followed him up, pulled something about the size of an iPhone out of his jacket pocket, and held it to the mouth of the tank.

  “Good,” he said, without looking at it, and I realised it must be a Geiger counter. “This one’s clear. Let’s check the other one.”

  They repeated the procedure, and again the agent looked satisfied.

  “Clear again,” he said. “Thank you. Now, please, carry on.”

  The chief fireman waved his hand and the others sprang back into a blur of choreographed action. I guess they were eager to make up for lost time, but I wasn’t too worried about the fate of the school. I was pretty certain that whatever kind of device had caused the fire, it was designed to produce more smoke than flames. The idea was to provoke an
evacuation, and that part of the plan at least had been successful. The diplomat’s son had been moved exactly where someone wanted him, and even though he was flanked by four armed guards, if the caesium hadn’t been intercepted, he’d have been as vulnerable as if he was standing naked and all alone.

  Melissa badged the new agents, spoke to them for a moment, then started moving towards the line of kindergarten kids. I don’t know if it was down to the length of time they’d been standing there, the excitement of seeing the fire engines arrive, or the drama of the armed agents appearing, but the volume of noise they were making was increasing and their lines were becoming more ragged. And the degree of fidgeting had grown much greater, too. I started to follow Melissa and as I moved, I caught sight of something flying through the air. It was looping over my head. Something oval and black, like a large egg. The line of children instinctively broke as the object plummeted towards them, and it landed in the exact spot where a tall boy with glasses had been standing. I’d expected it to bounce, but instead it cracked open and the pieces stayed where they’d fallen. It didn’t make much noise, particularly in contrast with the shrieks that were coming from the nearest kids, but red smoke immediately started to spew from its cracked shell. The screaming grew louder and spread throughout the different groups of children, and the last vestige of discipline dissolved in the next split second. The smoke spread, whipped up by the rising wind, and amid the hysterical howling it became impossible to distinguish one set of panicking children from another. I could only hope that despite the chaos, the diplomat’s kid was still in safe hands.

  “Gun,” one of the new agents shouted. “Get down.”

  I spun round and saw spits of flame flickering from the muzzle of his 9mm. A man, twenty feet away from me, staggered back, clutching his chest. Kids were rampaging everywhere. I spotted a second man, twenty feet away in the other direction. He had another gun. He fired two shots, and the agent went down. Then he fired two more shots, over the heads of the children. The screaming became even louder, and under cover of the frenzied movement, the man turned and started to run.