Reconstruction

by Mick Herron

  ‘What do you know about the money?’ he went on.

  ‘The missing money?’ she said. ‘That’s where it came from. Iraq.’

  ‘Jaime told you that?’

  ‘Whistler did. Jaime didn’t know anything, except that his boyfriend had gone missing. And that you tried to kill him.’

  Chapman said, ‘But Whistler knew. That’s interesting. Did he know about Derek Ainsworth?’

  ‘He wasn’t mentioned.’

  ‘Miro met him. In Iraq. Derek must have had a pretty good idea of how much money could be made over there, because he bought his way into a sub-contract.’

  ‘Bought his way in?’

  ‘It was an American company. They were contracted to build four power stations, which must have made for a multi-billion dollar contract, but as they hadn’t actually been involved in building power stations before, they had to subcontract the work.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Chapman waited.

  ‘If they’d never done it before, how come they won the contract?’

  He raised his eyes to where heaven might have been, if they hadn’t been in a lift. Then said: ‘Derek tendered for a piece of the sub, and no doubt threw in a bribe. He took out a big loan the same time he won the work. Cashed in his pension. Put up his house as security.’ He was fiddling with his unlit cigarette again. ‘The work was probably geared to take years. He must have assumed the outlay was worth it, that in the long run he’d be raking it in. But something happened which I don’t suppose he was expecting.’

  ‘What was that?’ she asked.

  ‘Our Derek fell in love,’ he said.

  Light was fading, and there was a hint of rain in the air, which had the effect of hurrying people up. If anyone was following him, Ben thought he’d notice.

  It was less than thirty minutes since he’d clobbered Moody: more than enough time for a full alert to have been sounded. Ben didn’t do operations, but knew the theory. There was enough CCTV coverage around to track a pigeon through the capital – but they had to pinpoint him first.

  He crossed the main road. Loitered by a shop window: anyone following would have to break stride; or walk on, then look back. But Ben saw no one. He’d just left the Edgware Road. Now he turned down a sidestreet, and let himself into the back door of an apartment block by tap-ping a code on a keypad. When the door, hydraulically sprung, closed in his wake, he felt as if a safety net had dropped over him. An illusion but a comforting one, which was all you could ask of illusions.

  The flat was third floor. He took the lift, and wondered as he rose if the entire block was made up of boltholes: adulterers’ pads and smugglers’ roosts, only ever visited by the furtive. The lift was mirrored, and it was clear Ben would pass for furtive. It was as if another Ben Whistler hid inside his familiar skin; had been hiding there for weeks, but was only now letting himself show.

  Had Miro seen that other Ben, even before Ben knew it was there? Was that why he’d made his overture?

  Miro had said, ‘You don’t think I can do it?’

  ‘I hadn’t pictured you as a thief.’

  ‘Disappointed?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘This is playtime, right? We can talk about whatever we want.’

  ‘Or are you worried that it is a test? That I wait for you to agree to help steal a million pounds, and then I report it to Ashton. And you are out of a job in the morning.’

  It was interesting that he’d specified Neil Ashton, rather than Bad Sam.

  Ben had said, ‘I can picture you as a thief more easily than I can picture you working with Ashton.’

  Miro laughed. ‘That is what I like about you, Ben. You are very honest in your responses.’

  ‘Nice to know. But you’re not being entirely straight, are you?’

  ‘I have just asked if you want to help me steal a fortune. How straight do you want me to be?’

  Ben had said, ‘A million pounds? That would be like robbing a safe and just taking the spare change. Or do you think no one will notice a measly million?’

  ‘A figure of speech, Ben. I wasn’t asking if you wanted to be rich. I was asking if you wanted to steal some money.’

  ‘And do what with it?’ Ben had asked.

  Miro had said: ‘Return it to its rightful owners.’

  ‘What’s love got to do with it?’

  Jesus: as soon as the words were out of her mouth . . .

  Sam Chapman didn’t pick it up. ‘Man of his age, having spent a couple of decades outliving his welcome at home? Nothing more dangerous. Trust me.’

  A faint draught wafted through the lift’s wedged-open door. Noises off, too: footsteps, voices; whether from above or below, she couldn’t tell.

  ‘So he was feeling guilty. And spilled his guts to Miro Weiss.’

  Chapman made a short noise that was probably a laugh. ‘No, he was feeling happy. Far more dangerous. And this woman was working for Medecins Sans Frontières, so that must have pushed him further along. Poor sod was ripe for confession. I’m not certain how he bumped into Weiss, but the company he’d subcontracted to was one Weiss was, ah, looking at.’

  ‘So Derek told him what was happening.’

  Chapman said, ‘It wouldn’t have come as news. It wasn’t like Weiss was checking on who was nicking office supplies. Derek Ainsworth would have told him the same old story, about payments made for work never done, kickbacks from companies supposed to be supplying equipment. About everyone jumping on the money-go-round instead of getting the power back on.’

  ‘To make something happen when you turned on the tap,’ Louise remembered.

  ‘Whatever. Anyway, he spills what he knows to Miro Weiss. Probably nothing new, but it must have fattened Miro’s files. And then something else happened.’

  ‘He died,’ Louise said.

  ‘Jeep went over a landmine, or that’s the official story.’

  (Some kind of landmine thing. Place is full of them, isn’t it? Deirdre Walker had said. Raising her eyebrows: what could you do? The places foreigners chose to live . . .)

  ‘The woman died too. I wonder if that helped Miro decide to do what he did?’

  Their conversation had slipped a track . . . This bastard had hurt her – not hard to guess where his nickname came from – but maybe Ben Whistler was wrong. Whatever else was happening, this man certainly believed Miro had taken the money.

  She said, ‘There were already people dying. Thousands of them. Children, babies . . . Why should one middle-aged man make a difference? He was only there to make money in the first place.’

  ‘Depends how you look at it. Derek spilled his guts to Weiss, because he wanted to make a clean breast or saw a chance to make a difference. Then he died. That might have tipped a balance for Miro. There’s a difference between scavenging the bodies on the battlefield, and murdering the stragglers.’

  ‘You think Derek was murdered?’

  Chapman shrugged. ‘Maybe Miro did. The company Derek was subcontracted to took a big hit when the money went missing. Might have been coincidence.’

  ‘You’re guessing about a lot of this, aren’t you?’

  He said, ‘If I wasn’t, you think I’d be here?’

  On the third floor, Ben Whistler let himself into 32; a one-bedroom misery pit with a view of the neighbouring block. He drew the blinds and flipped the lights on, bringing the room into stark focus: sofa, table, empty shelves; the doorway into a kitchen barely wide enough to swing a Manx cat. Adulterers’ pads needed revision. If the other flats resembled this, they were nowhere you’d look for romance.

  ‘It’s not supposed to be pretty. It’s supposed to be anonymous.’

  Neil Ashton had said this, giving Ben the key.

  He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, which held a bottle of vodka and nothing else. An upside-down glass rested on the draining board. He rinsed it, half-filled it with vodka. He’d had nothing to eat since the Middle Ages, and needed a clear head, but needed alcohol more; needed the jo
lt as it scorched its way clear to his stomach. He wasn’t a big vodka drinker, but it had been a long day.

  ‘Every joe needs a safe house,’ Ashton had said.

  ‘That’s what I am now? A joe?’

  ‘It’s an operation. You might need a bolthole.’

  Ben had said: ‘If things go wrong, you mean.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to go wrong.’

  Words uttered more than a month ago, but would do for famous last ones: spoken by a man now tethered to a hospital bed.

  Things could change in a month, sure, and also in less than a second. Ashton had been himself one moment, and smeared across tarmac the next. And Jaime Segura had been as good as bolted to Ben just a few short hours ago; close enough for Ben to feel Jaime’s heat through his cloth-ing as well as Jaime’s empty gun at his head. And then the world had changed: Ben had hit the ground. Abulletspace later, Jaime had joined him.

  And then, of course, there was Miro . . .

  I wasn’t asking if you wanted to be rich. I was asking if you wanted to steal some money.

  ‘And do what with it?’ Ben had asked.

  Return it to its rightful owners . . .

  The vodka had completed its burning journey; he was waiting for its soothing effects to begin. They were slow in coming. Return it to its rightful owners . . . Who would have thought it: Miro the Mouse had come back from Iraq blazing with righteous fury. Fury he hid because he intended acting on it. But in the end had to share, because he couldn’t do it all on his own.

  ‘It is not just theft they are committing. It’s murder. People are dying, children are dying, because of what they’re doing.’

  ‘I understand that, Miro.’

  ‘I met a man – he went out there to make money. No, let us face facts. He went there to get rich. And even he couldn’t stomach it. He went to make as much money as he could, and he did not like what he saw.’

  ‘Enough to give the money back?’

  ‘He did not get the chance. He died.’

  Another of those split-second moments that change everything.

  But there were things it was best not to dwell on right now. Not if he was to put together the last shattered remnants of what had once been a plan.

  Margaritas, se?oritas, hasta la vistas . . .

  Ben re-rinsed the vodka glass, and replaced it on the draining board. Then went into the similarly grim bed-room, with its stripped-to-the-mattress single bed, and opened the fitted cupboard against one wall, where a strongbox was built into the ground-level shelf of the fitted cupboard.

  Sinking to one knee, Ben keyed its combination.

  ‘Ben would have known about this, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘About Derek Ainsworth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bad Sam shrugged. ‘I’d assume Miro told him.’

  ‘So he’d have known Judy was the reason Jaime was there. That that was the connection he was making.’

  Ben, she’d said. If Chapman did have someone helping him, someone who knew how to shift money around – I think I know who it was.

  Ben had said: Because you’re the lady in the nursery . . .

  ‘But he pretended he thought it was me. Why would he do that?’

  Chapman looked like he had a place to go to where he thought things through – his brow pulled tighter and his eyes became stones. The squawking intercom dragged him back: ‘Hello in the lift?’

  He put a hand to the button. ‘We’re still here.’

  ‘Is there anything obstructing the door?’

  He looked down at his foot doing just that. ‘No.’

  ‘Damn . . . Look, we’ll have you out in a jiffy, okay?’

  Louise said, ‘Tell me again how you found me.’

  Chapman released the button. ‘Like I said. You weren’t at any of the other places I knew about.’

  ‘Because I’d gone to DFM, to confront Crispin.’

  ‘What is this, a state the obvious contest?’

  ‘He encouraged me,’ Louise said. ‘Ben. He wanted me to come after Crispin.’

  Chapman was still partly in his thinking place. His voice might have been coming through a pipe. ‘You went back in when you didn’t have to.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘He knew he could trust you to do the right thing. Or what you thought was the right thing. Which in this case meant coming to DFM. Confronting Crispin.’

  ‘So you’d follow me,’ she said, reconnecting with her train of thought.

  ‘Instead of him. Sowing confusion. You’d think he was a field agent.’

  ‘But you don’t, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Chapman said. ‘I think he’s a thief.’

  Ben keyed the number and, as the strongbox door swung open, rocked back on his heels. Paused. Through the windows came the usual squabble: traffic, weather, London. He reached inside.

  Yes. That was what he’d said to Miro. Yes. I’ll help you. We’ll take the money back.

  Another of those life-changing moments. Often you only recognize them in retrospect. That one, he’d given thought to in advance.

  There’d been the possibility, of course, that it was indeed a set-up; that Miro was trailing a coat in the dust, to see if Ben would jump on it. Miro had even suggested as much: but then, he would, wouldn’t he? Hints within clues within stories. The kind of game the bosses played, when they were working out whether you were destined for greatness or heading for the door. But Miro the mirror man wasn’t the bosses’ tool. He’d been strictly a number-juggler.

  And Ben hadn’t been in the frame for greatness.

  So it was an honest approach: what next? Miro was smart enough to work out how to fool the numbers: Ben didn’t doubt that. All he’d need from Ben was one brief moment of corroboration . . . Of course, they could wind up behind bars, or worse. Not everything finished in court.

  And supposing they got away with it: what was the upside? A ripped-off country got some of its money back? Ben doubted it would set up many roadside chapels in his honour.

  Miro Weiss, there was no denying, was a good man, with ideals chiselled on his heart in stone. Ben Whistler, on the other hand, had a future to consider.

  He reached into the safe. First thing his hand touched was a gun.

  It was strange how the light in the room seemed to flicker.

  ‘Miro must have trusted him.’ Louise was thinking out loud. ‘And said as much to Jaime – something like, any-thing happens to me, go to Ben Whistler for help. And he mentioned Judy, too. The lady in the nursery. Why would he have done that?’

  ‘Guilt,’ Bad Sam said. ‘He reported what Ainsworth told him, and Ainsworth died. You don’t have to be a genius to spot the connection. See it Miro’s way. If Ainsworth hadn’t gone to Iraq, he’d not have met his new woman. Wouldn’t have abandoned his wife, who wouldn’t have gone to work in the nursery . . . ’

  ‘I wonder what made him become a thief.’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ he said, ‘if he planned to give the money back.’ He put the cigarette he was holding in his mouth. ‘I need to smoke this.’

  ‘Not in here.’

  He didn’t light it. ‘He made you think it was me, didn’t he? Whistler.’

  ‘You hurt my arm.’

  ‘It’s not the worst thing I’ve done today.’

  ‘You were there this morning. You tried to kill Jaime.’

  ‘Ashton did. Neil Ashton. He didn’t want me there. Not a lot he could do about it though, me being his boss.’ He leaned back against the lift wall. ‘Miro was a clever sod, but we’re supposed to be able to find clever sods. It’s our job. Made me wonder if we were trying hard enough. And I knew I was. So maybe Ashton wasn’t.’

  ‘How long had you suspected him?’

  ‘Not long enough.’ He inhaled on his unlit cigarette. ‘The three of them were in it together, but there wasn’t much trust there. Ashton was monitoring Ben’s calls.’

  ‘And you were monitoring Ashton.’
<
br />   ‘He was Duty Officer last night. Any unusual calls, he should have alerted me about. He didn’t.’

  ‘But you knew anyway.’

  ‘I checked the call-log.’ He paused. ‘I think the first he knew about Jaime Segura was last night. He must have been crapping himself, wondering how much the kid knew.’ He tucked his cigarette in his shirt pocket. ‘Miro was a fall guy. He’ll turn up sooner or later, in a car boot or a pothole. Maybe the same pothole Jaime was hiding in. Where he should have stayed.’

  ‘But if they stole this money, Whistler and Ashton, they did it weeks ago. Why’re they still here?’

  ‘Same reason Miro isn’t.’ She was aware again of his mixed aroma: tobacco and sweat. ‘You disappear the same time as a quarter of a billion pounds, you might as well write I did it in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. I’ll tell you something else about Whistler. He’s got leave coming up. He’s going abroad.’

  ‘A foreign holiday,’ she said.

  ‘Two weeks. It would turn into forever. But he’d have two clear weeks to disappear in. No one would even think about looking until the day he didn’t come back.’

  The sly bugger. That was what Neil Ashton had said, when Ben had told him of Miro’s plans. The dirty sly bugger . . . He took the gun from the safe. It had a silencer attached, giving it a clunky elongated look. The lights had stopped flickering, if they’d ever started. Ben put the gun on the floor, reached back into the safe, and drew out the false passports and matching credit cards. Ashton wouldn’t be using his, of course. It would be a while before Neil Ashton used anything as complicated as a toothbrush. But the gun – that had been there for one reason only. Ashton hadn’t intended Ben to be using his false passport either. He’d intended Ben to be behind him while he knelt, opened the safe, turned, and put a silenced bullet through his head. The same end that had befallen Miro. The end Ashton must have had in mind from the start.

  Tell him you’ll do it, Ashton had said. You up for this, Ben? You tell him you’ll do it.

  All except the part about giving the money back.

  It was no shock to Louise that men could lie. So Ben Whistler had been acting all that time: okay. What she had trouble with was that she wasn’t the lady, and never had been. Today had started with her, of course it had. This is where it begins. But she’d been peripheral: no more essential than Claire Christopher, absent because of a dental appointment, or Crispin, who was simply the hook she’d grown used to reaching for, whenever something happened. None of this was about her. She’d been discarded, jilted, dumped.