Reconstruction

by Mick Herron

  ‘I’ll have him long enough.’

  ‘He’s Six. The heavy mob’ll be at the door before you’ve got his name out of him.’

  ‘I already know his name.’

  You think? Faulks had wondered. ‘Sir,’ he’d said.

  The Pedlars and Judy Ainsworth had been taken off in cars; one period of enforced incarceration giving way to another. They’d be fed, watered, and have every last memory of the morning squeezed out of them.

  As for Louise Kennedy –

  ‘You what?’

  ‘She asked for another cup of tea. I went to get her one.’

  Jesus Mary and Joseph.

  ‘And when you got back she was gone.’

  The officer bit a lip. A man had been shot dead twenty yards from where he’d been standing, and all he’d done was fetch a cup of tea for a victim. ‘I didn’t think she was under arrest, sir.’

  ‘You didn’t think, full stop.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Find her.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Joseph Mary and Jesus. That had been 1.20, and the clown had returned within fifteen minutes: ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘She lives down the road. Get her.’

  Press was everywhere, squeezing past the cordons. One bullet had declared open season. This clown was in the right place. Today was a circus.

  And then the spook appeared out of nowhere, right in front of him. ‘I thought you’d been called back to heel.’

  ‘Somebody got their wires crossed. I’ve been sitting tight. Observing.’

  ‘Having fun yet?’

  ‘Who popped him?’ Chapman asked.

  ‘The boy was holding a gun to your colleague’s temple. A highly trained marksman did what they were trained to do.’

  Chapman raised an eyebrow. ‘A woman?’

  ‘Whistler’s been taken to St Aldate’s. I doubt he’ll be there long. A big curtain’s about to be dropped over every-thing, and guess what? It’s us neds will be told we fucked up. So why don’t you piss off somewhere else, and let us get on with our jobs.’

  ‘Did you fuck up?’ Chapman offered Faulks a cigarette. ‘The hostages got out.’

  ‘We’ve got a body on the doorstep of a nursery school. How do you think the leader writers will play it?’

  ‘I assume you’ve got tapes.’

  Faulks was shaking his head already: ‘In your dreams. They’re our property until you get a warrant says other-wise. Speaking of which, you picked my pocket. That was an expensive gadget.’

  ‘I thought I’d be seeing Whistler before you did. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Like hell.’ He changed his mind and took the cigarette. ‘So what did this kid do, anyway? Why did you want him in the first place?’

  ‘Listen to your tapes.’

  ‘Whistler junked the mobile. Then played nursery rhymes to drown the directionals. Whatever they were talking about, they didn’t want anyone to hear.’ Faulks raised an eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t look like any of us are on the same side, does it?’

  ‘Did the name Weiss crop up?’

  ‘What if I don’t know? Will you fake another heart attack?’

  The spook offered his lighter so suddenly, Faulks flinched.

  ‘Sir?’

  The officer was back, the one who’d misplaced Louise Kennedy. Nothing about his expression suggested he’d found her since.

  ‘She’s not at her mother’s.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ Faulks dropped the cigarette he’d barely singed. ‘Crowd control,’ he said. ‘Now.’ He watched while the relieved officer jogged off to join his colleagues. ‘That’s just great.’

  ‘Oh, don’t blame yourself,’ Chapman said.

  Faulks said, ‘Your colleague, the one who was hit by the car. How’s he doing?’

  ‘Last I heard, he was still alive.’

  ‘Pretty impressive. Three of you turn up in our patch this morning. It’s barely lunchtime, and one of you’s dead, one’s in intensive care, and the third’s a fucking twat. And it’s us who’ll be told we did things wrong.’

  ‘You want to watch that temper. Next heart attack round here might not be faked.’

  ‘The boy over there,’ Faulks said. ‘The one under the sheet.’

  The body was still in situ; forensics were dotting is, crossing ts.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘There was no reason for him to die.’

  ‘It was one of your lot pulled the trigger.’

  ‘You can hide behind that as much as you want. But it’s you who’s responsible. We both know that.’

  Chapman scanned the nursery grounds: a lot of activity, none of it amounting to much. It was the kind of mess you got when something’s over, and no one’s quite sure what the something was. For most of those here, even the cops, the body by the annexe was the first they’d seen. Factor in violent death, and the number dropped. Factor in gunshot, and it dropped still more. But there was a learning curve in every profession, and Chapman wasn’t here to offer counselling.

  ‘I didn’t put the gun in his hand,’ he said.

  He dropped the cigarette, and walked away.

  But not to the police station. He’d been there already this morning, and hadn’t enjoyed it. Besides, it was easy to bluff someone who wasn’t checking. Faulks had swallowed his lie because, right now, he didn’t care. But if Sam Chapman turned up at St Aldate’s waving ID, they’d check with Vauxhall Cross before letting him through the front door. And Vauxhall Cross wanted him home.

  He had to know what had gone on in that nursery this morning. What had been said. Why Whistler had kept it quiet. And as Whistler was out of bounds, along with Pedlar and the cleaner and the two little kids, that left just one option.

  He’d have to find Louise Kennedy instead.

  A taxi pulled up in front of her. How often did that hap-pen? But before she could reach for the door handle, a voice behind her said, ‘This one’s mine.’

  Charlie Stubbs, immaculate if horsey, nodded ‘Stubbs’ to the driver through his window, and pulled the door open. There was still no gap in the traffic, and the man across the road hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

  Louise said, ‘You couldn’t give me a lift, could you?’

  ‘A lift?’

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘You were rude to me.’

  ‘Yes. But now I need a lift.’

  Charlie shook her head, but she wasn’t saying No. She was saying, Get the nerve on this. ‘You were here to see him, weren’t you?’

  Louise didn’t have to ask who he was. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t let you in.’

  ‘Can we discuss this in the taxi, Charlie?’

  London: you couldn’t count on the traffic keeping moving. Any moment now, he’d be over the road . . .

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Get in.’

  The driver didn’t wait for instructions: Charlie had booked him; he knew where he was going. They were inside the car, and the car was moving. It didn’t move far – they were yards from the junction – but it moved, and there were doors involved now; there was a metal shell around her. For the moment, this passed for safety.

  ‘I didn’t hide in the toilet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you do your belt up, lady?’

  They both looked at the driver.

  ‘You have to do your belt up.’

  Louise pulled the seatbelt across her chest just as the car in front moved. She fumbled with the catch, and then they were mobile again, turning the corner; joining the stream of traffic on the main drag.

  She turned and looked through the rear window. She couldn’t see the man. Had he really been watching? There were lots of dark men in the City.

  Charlie Stubbs said again, ‘I didn’t hide in the toilet.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s what you said. You said I hid in the toilet. The day you were fired. But I didn’t.’

  ‘If you say so
.’

  ‘I do say so.’

  How many times in the last six months had she stepped into a conversation like this? Yes you did/No I didn’t/Yes you did . . . The discourse of infants. ‘I don’t blame you, Charlie. Anyway, it was ages ago. A year. Forget about it.’

  ‘You obviously haven’t.’

  ‘I don’t brood on it. Where’s this taxi going, exactly?’

  ‘It’s a taxi. Where do you want it to go?’

  ‘Your taxi.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Louise, where do you want to be dropped?’

  ‘Are you heading west?’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘Anywhere west will do.’

  She restrained herself from looking through the back window again; then she didn’t – it was the usual welter of heavy metal and busy pedestrians: Louise couldn’t get a fix on any individual. If Bad Sam was running after them, she’d probably notice. But if he’d flagged down his own taxi, the old follow-that-cab routine, he could be yards away, and she wouldn’t know.

  ‘I worried about you, you know.’

  ‘Sure you did.’

  ‘Why are you being so unpleasant?’

  Louise turned to face her. ‘Are you joking me?’ A con-struction straight out of the Darlings’ phrasebook. She tried again: ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘You had a bad time, we all knew that. Do you think we didn’t care? You should have taken them to tribunal, Louise. You could’ve hung them out to dry. It happens.’

  ‘You didn’t care. If you cared, you’d have called.’

  ‘I did call,’ Charlie said.

  ‘That’s not the way I remember it.’

  ‘I called twice. Left messages you never replied to. So if you want to get technical, you’re the one who didn’t call me.’

  The taxi had come to another halt: this time at lights, with enough traffic in front of them that it could take several changes to get through. The outside world had an artificial orange glow. They were under the bulk of the Barbican. Engine noises, echoing round the tunnelled road, made it sound as if they were in a starting line-up, but London traffic often felt like that.

  ‘I did call,’ Charlie repeated.

  Well, that was okay. She had her version. Louise knew which was true.

  ‘Somebody said you’re teaching now.’

  ‘Somebody was right.’

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  Louise said, ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  Charlie looked a little wistful. ‘I used to think I’d teach.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’

  ‘It seemed too hard.’

  ‘It is hard,’ Louise said. ‘But at least the pay’s crap.’

  The taxi jolted. She looked out the side window. Across the road she saw a hurrying man, and her breath caught. But he was fair, and carrying a briefcase; and round here, if you weren’t in a hurry, you weren’t going anywhere.

  ‘Are you still in touch with him?’

  And now Louise had to look her full in the face, because there was no other way she could express her total amazement. ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Do you talk to him ever?’

  ‘Well, of course I bloody – no. No, I haven’t spoken to him in a year.’

  ‘He’s getting divorced, you know.’

  The taxi came to a halt again, still on the bad side of the lights. And maybe that was the reason her heart thumped, but probably wasn’t: he was getting divorced . . . Crispin was getting a divorce. For as long as it took the words to vanish, this whole vista opened up in Louise’s heart: Crispin had realized he couldn’t live without her; was sorting out his domestic mess before he came to weep his apologies, explain his new freedom. Christ, she’d feel his throat beneath her heel. The notion died even before Charlie said what Charlie said next, which was:

  ‘It’s this new associate, Karla she’s called. Was she at DFM when you were still there? I can’t remember.’

  Louise said, ‘You’re a beautiful woman, Charlie. Never believe them when they tell you otherwise.’

  ‘I’m only –’

  ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  She nearly caught a cyclist with the door. Charlie was speaking, and the taxi driver had an opinion, but Louise was on the pavement before either mattered; was across the junction before the lights changed again. At the entrance to the tube someone tried to give her a news-paper, but she pushed past; was in the lobby seconds later. Another couple of minutes passed in fumbling for change and coaxing a ticket from a machine. She’d sort out destinations once she was sitting on a tube.

  Already, the station was busy. When she’d worked round here, it was a big day if she was out of the building before six. Here it was, barely past five, and the platform was seizing up. She walked to the far end, and waited in weak daylight until the sledgehammer-echo of the track announced a train’s approach, spending those minutes not thinking about Crispin, who, towards the end of their relationship, had talked less and less on work-related subjects; had worn a furrowed look when the subject of their common employment came up, and had often seemed lost in contemplation of unspecified difficulties. Though not without a sometime glint in his eye. The bastard. Karla, she’s called. A new associate. Not that new, because Louise remembered her: young, of course, and with the kind of pale skin/dark hair combination that brought to mind fairy tales. The bastard. And she herself had been just a sub-plot; a link in the chain connecting Crispin to his future. He’s getting divorced, you know. She knew now.

  She was on the train without having noticed getting on. The seat configuration indicated it was a Metropolitan line, which meant she should change at King’s Cross: such considerations ticked away at the back of her mind with-out conscious input. She should change at King’s Cross, catch one of the westbound lines; get a bus back to Oxford. Assure her mother she was fine. Talk to the police, because the police would want to talk to her, right? Tell them everything that had happened, except those bits that had to do with Crispin, because Crispin was getting a divorce; Crispin was marrying somebody else. Which meant Crispin hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened this morning, yes? Her suspicions had partly been based on his odd behaviour, but that behaviour had a different cause; his guilt was born elsewhere. Except, except, it was possible for more than one thing to happen at once, and if Louise was the lady – you are the lady, yes? – it could only be Crispin who had made her so. She should have stayed in the taxi. Should have wrung every last scrap of fact out of Charlie Stubbs. Though at least she’d shaken her follower off, if he’d ever been that in the first place.

  Farringdon was behind her already; people were clustering at the doors, ready for a quick getaway. The woman who’d been next to her stood, and a man slipped into the freed-up space. Louise glanced at the overhead map, wondering which line to change on to, and felt a hand take her by the arm.

  ‘Let’s not make a fuss,’ he said. ‘There’s a card in my pocket says I’m MI6. And in today’s climate, who’s going to believe a suspected terrorist on a tube train?’

  Just another day at the office.

  Ben stepped out of a helicopter for the second time in his life, and felt a Soho rooftop beneath his feet, a moment before feeling a hand on his elbow. Moody, the hand belonged to. Service dog. Who had turned up to rescue him from the Blue Brigade back in Oxford, but wasn’t the kind of rescuer you wanted to fling your arms around.

  He’d shown Fredericks – the cop in charge – ID, then offered him his mobile phone. ‘You don’t have to take my word for it,’ he’d said. ‘Sir.’

  Ben hadn’t known who was down the line, but could guess.

  Fredericks had said into Moody’s phone, ‘There was a shooting. He was involved. I need to know exactly what –’

  This was back at the local station. Ben hadn’t been arrested, but hadn’t been treated like an innocent party either.

  ‘That’s all very well, but –’

  Maybe twenty-five officers had been crowding the lobby, and t
here’d been a low-level hubbub. Ben had been standing where he’d been told to, near a set of security doors, prior to being taken through them and escorted to Superintendent Malcolm Fredericks’ office, when he’d felt himself the subject of a piercing stare. He’d turned, seen a blonde woman in what was probably firearm-gear – several shades of black, tightly cuffed at wrist and ankle – and had felt himself a target. As if her gaze staked out an area all her own, and by being in its ambit, he was in trouble.

  She’d looked away. Ben had felt a draught kiss his cheek, but that was just the door opening.

  Fredericks was saying, ‘I don’t care who you are, I’ll be making an official complaint about this.’

  Moody had raised an eyebrow. A helicopter passed low over the building.

  Fredericks slapped the mobile into Moody’s palm. To Ben, he’d said, ‘You’ll be back. Twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I want to know everything that happened in there. You’re going to tell me.’

  There’d been something fizzing in his eyes, and his teeth shone wet when his lips drew back.

  Moody, leading him out of the station, had said, ‘They can throw all the toys out the pram they want, but if they think they’re screwing with a Service op, they’re out of their tinies.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly an op.’

  ‘Was now.’

  ‘Where’s Bad Sam?’

  ‘That’s Mr Chapman to you.’

  On the flight back, they’d barely spoken. Moody chewed gum mostly, probably for effect. Ben noticed he avoided looking out of the window. But once they’d touched down on the Department rooftop, he had his hand on Ben’s elbow. ‘Downstairs.’

  Ben shook his arm free. ‘As opposed to?’

  Moody’s expression said, What?

  ‘Never mind.’ Ben dragged a hand through his shaggy hair, then examined it, his face blank. ‘I was right next to him,’ he said. ‘I’ve got his blood on me.’

  ‘Jesus, Whistler.’

  ‘Maybe brain, too.’ Ben wasn’t kidding; his fingers felt slick. Jaime’s memories, thoughts and desires had been sprayed into the open air; some of them were smeared on Ben Whistler’s fingers now. The boy had been, what, twenty years old? Never get older now.

  ‘I slipped,’ he said.