David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (11 page)

       
“Was there actually a
fire?” I said.

       
“No. And I know what
you’re thinking. But remember your Freud, David. Sometimes a false alarm is
just a false alarm.”

       
I thought about what
Melissa had told me, and I had to agree - you couldn’t rule out the possibility
that nothing nefarious was going on. Not yet, anyway. There was plenty to be
skeptical about - someone attacking the one door in the hospital which led to
the radioactive waste - but that was circumstantial. I could think of several occasions
over the years when I’d scratched the surface of something suspicious and found
only chaos, not conspiracy. But those judgments had been based on evidence, and
evidence was one thing that seemed to be lacking here.

       
“You mentioned CCTV,” I
said. “There’s a camera pointing at the door. Doesn’t it show who did the
damage?”

       
“It should,” Melissa
said. “And that would make my life a million times easier. But on the night of
the fire alarm, it wasn’t working.”

       
“Just that one?”

       
“No. That would be too
coincidental, for sure. Four separate zones were down, spread randomly across
the site. And that’s what our next meeting is about. It’s with the hospital
security chief. I’m going to rattle his cage about his maintenance record, and
see how he reacts.”

       
“Should be fun.
But what about the firemen, themselves?
Could we talk to the
ones who were on duty that night, and see if any of them own up to it?”

       
“I’m sure we could. And
then we could check the geriatric wards for grandmothers, in case any want to
learn to suck eggs.”

       
I didn’t reply.

       
“Obviously, we spoke to
the firemen,” she said. “But here’s the problem with them. All the crews from
all four stations that cover this place are supposed to know that they never,
ever, under any circumstances, try to open that door. So you’re asking them to
land themselves, and probably their commanders too, in seriously hot water.”

       
“So you think we’re
either dealing with an over-ambitious terrorist, or an under-attentive
fireman.”

       
“I know that’s what I’m
here to deal with,” she said, turning her head again to look me straight in the
face. “With thousands of lives potentially in the balance. But I’m not so sure
about you.”

       
“Then why do you think
I’m here?” I said.

       
“We all know what it
means when someone from another agency is brought in to ‘help’ on some flimsy
pretext. The rat
squad are
behind it. They don’t want
to show their nasty little rodent faces, so they’re staying in their sewer and
using you to do their dirty work.”

       
I didn’t reply.

       
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
she said. “There’s no point denying it. That’s not going to change what I
think.”

       
“You can think whatever
you like,” I said, after another moment. “I’m not going to comment.”

       
“Thank you. Only, it
goes further, doesn’t it, what you’re here to do?”

       
“What do you mean?”

       
“They’re after me,
specifically.”

       
“Not as far as I know.”

       
“So they didn’t spell
that part out. So what. Think about it. Only two people from Box were assigned
to the hospital. And since Jones is (a) too new to have had time to get his
nose dirty, and (b) not here cause you conveniently took him out of the
equation, who else does that leave under the microscope?”

       
Put like that, Jones’s
injury did look a little coincidental. I was pretty sure I’d have reached the same
conclusion, in her shoes. You don’t last long in our world, taking coincidences
on blind faith.

       
“You can rule someone
out, as well as in, you know. If
they
’re
even a suspect
in the first place.”

       
“In theory. But here’s
my problem. I’ve been doing this job for twelve years. It’s my life. It’s the
reason I’m not rich. Not married. Not a mother. And don’t have many friends.
But it’s what I love doing. I’m good at it. I’ve never once turned a blind eye
or slipped a hand into the till. And if anyone says I have, I want to look
them
in the eye. I want the chance to prove them wrong. I
don’t want to wake up one morning with a blade in my back, and no way to pull
it out.”

       
“I understand.”

       
“Look, I
realise
you have a job to do. It’s not easy, and I’m sure
you didn’t volunteer for it. I wouldn’t have said anything, only back in the
garden it sounded like you care about doing the right thing, and I just wanted
you to know - well, I do, too.”

We swung by my room so I could change into something more business-like
than my hospital
pyjamas
,
then
headed to the next building to meet the Head of Security. He wasn’t there when
we arrived, two minutes early for our appointment.

       
“
Mr
Leckie
will be here very soon,” his secretary said,
as she showed us into his office. “Please, take a seat. Can I get you some
coffee? Tea?”

       
“No, thank you,” Melissa
said.

       
“I hope there’s not been
another urgent family situation,” I said. “What’s the temperature like
outside?”

       
The secretary flushed
slightly and scampered from the room, but she couldn’t keep her eyes from
flicking up to the array of pictures on the wall above
Leckie’s
desk as she went. They were all of golf courses. I
recognised
St Andrew’s in Scotland, plus one in
Karlovac
,
Croatia, where I once had to arrange the disappearance of a corrupt Serbian
diplomat. I had no idea about the other dozen. They could have been anywhere.

       
Melissa pushed one of
the visitors’ chairs aside and wheeled around so that her back was to the
side wall
, which was covered with more pictures.
Paintings, this time, of birds of prey.
I wondered if
Leckie
was into shooting.

       
“It must be nice to have
time for a hobby,” I said. “It’s so annoying when work gets in the way.”

       
“Did anyone brief you
about
Leckie
?” Melissa said, with an eye on the door.

       
“No. But I did pick up
some office gossip. Apparently he’s not the world’s most conscientious
employee.”

       
“That must be a recent
development.”

       
“How do you know?”

       
“He’s ex...” she said,
then
mouthed the word, “Box,” as the door swung open.

       
“Afternoon,” he said, as
he strode into the
centre
of the room. “Sorry to keep
you. Melissa, still using the prop chair, I see. And you must be our cousin,
Commander
Trevellyan
.”

       
We shook hands,
then
Leckie
dumped a pile of
paperwork on his desk and flopped down into his chair.

       
“Did Ms. Wainwright tell
you much about me?”
Leckie
said.

       
“No,” I said. “Should
she have?”

       
“Well, you see, the
thing is, I’m a bit of a mind reader. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say
she’s here to tear a strip off me cause these wretched faulty cameras of mine
have turned what should have been a simple job into a bit of a ball-ache. Am I
right?”

       
I looked at Melissa, and
wondered if this was the kind of
cage-rattling
she had
in mind.

       
“Yes,” she said. “You
took the words right out of my mouth.”

       
“It’s my fault
entirely,” he said, holding up both his hands. “The buck stops with me. All I
can do is
apologise
. And let you know that in fact
five zones were down on the night of the non-fire, not four as originally
reported.”

       
“Five?” Melissa said.
“What kind of outfit are you running, here, Stan?”

       
Leckie
let his hands flop into his lap.

       
“What can I tell you?”
he said. “Civilians.”

       
“That’s not good enough.
What are you doing about it?”

       
“I’ve fired the people who
dropped the ball, obviously,” he said. “And brought contractors in - the best
in the country - to get everything straightened out, double quick. Two zones
are already
back
up and running. They’re busting their
guts on the others. And I was thinking, given what’s at stake here, once the
dust has settled your people and mine should get together and come up with a
way to avoid this kind of cock-up in the future.”

       
A classic exercise in
blame sharing, I thought. How long till the whole fiasco turned out to be MI5’s
fault?

       
“When will the other
three zones be fixed?” Melissa said.

       
“Close of play tomorrow
at the latest, I’m told.”

       
“Is the camera outside
the
caesium
vault one they’re still working on?”

       
“Yes. I believe so.”

       
“Well, your people can’t
be anywhere near that corridor between noon and 4.00pm. The hazmat team will
need free access to do their inventory.”

       
“They’re doing that
tomorrow?
So soon?
I’d stretch it out another couple
of days, if I were you.”

       
“Good golfing weather,
is it?” I said.

       
“I like the way our new
friend thinks,” he said. “But sadly, no. You know what I mean, don’t you
Melissa?”

       
“Stan always found the
rules a little restrictive,” Melissa said. “And he had a theory - the greater
the level of threat, the more you could get away with bending them.”

       
“Exactly,”
Leckie
said. “As long as you know nothing’s really wrong,
drag the panic out as long as you can. Use it to your own ends. Walk a little
less softly, and carry a bigger stick for a while.”

       
“I don’t think so,”
Melissa said.

       
“Oh, come on,”
Leckie
said. “There must be all kinds of doors you’re
knocking on, but can’t quite risk kicking down. This is your chance. It’s the
upside of the pain my antiquated systems have inadvertently caused you.”

       
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,”
Melissa said. “The inventory’s tomorrow.”

       
“They’re going to
confirm that no
caesium
is missing,”
Leckie
said. “We all know they will, cause we all know
there’s no way anyone got through that door. Then you’ll be back on a much
shorter leash. Are you really going to throw away such a golden opportunity?”

       
“I just want to get this
mess squared away, as quickly and cleanly as possible,” Melissa said, turning
to look at me. “And the thing I don’t want to throw away is my job.”

The admin building was crawling with people when we left
Leckie’s
office, so we made our way back out to the garden
to talk.

       
“Tell me something,
Melissa,” I said, lowering myself onto the nearest bench. “Hypothetically
speaking. If I hadn’t been there, and you hadn’t felt like you were in the
spotlight, would you have been tempted to follow
Leckie’s
advice? Use the threat of missing
caesium
to buy you
a little leverage elsewhere? I’m sure that’s been done before.”

       
“No,” she said. “Now,
don’t get me wrong. That approach does work, sometimes.
Leckie
certainly brought down some major villains that way while he was with us. But
look at the end result. He was shown the door. And how much good is he doing
now, playing golf and presiding over a broken down CCTV system?”

       
“He was thrown out?
Why?”

       
“The word on the street
was brutality.”