David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (14 page)

       
“Me too.”

       
“They didn’t get rough,
did they?”

       
“Not even close. But
they did cause a little bit of fall out.”

       
“What do you mean? What
kind of fall out?”

       
“I’ll get to that in a
second. What I want to know is
,
why did they come
after me? Did those idiots actually file a complaint?”

       
“Yes, they did.”

       
“And the police listened
to them?”

       
“Unbelievable, isn’t
it?”

       
“And those morons were
able to describe me so accurately the plod came straight to my room? Seems like
a bit of a stretch.”

       
“There’s a little more
to it than that.
 
David, remember how I
told you that CCTV camera wasn’t working?”

       
“Clearly.”

       
“And remember how
Leckie
told us two zones had been repaired again?”

       
“The garden was one of
them?”

       
Melissa nodded.

       
“But I don’t want you to
worry,” she said. “When we tell the police to forget something, they forget it.
This won’t come back to bite you, David. I guarantee.”

       
“I hope not.”

       
“It won’t. So. This
fallout you mentioned. What was that all about?”

       
I told her about Elvis.

       
“Damn,” she said. “Five
minutes with him and I could have gone home happy.”

       
“That’s what I figured,”
I said.

       
“Oh well. Thanks for
finding him, anyway. That was good work.”

       
“My pleasure.”

       
“What are the chances of
putting your hands on him again, do you think?”

       
“How quickly?”

       
“Let’s say, before the
sun rises?”

       
“I’d say, somewhere
between zero and zero.”

       
“That’s what I was
thinking. OK. So this is what we’ll do. I’m assuming Elvis Presley isn’t his
real name?”

       
“I’d say you were on
pretty safe ground, there. Although, he didn’t sing anything, so I can’t be
sure.”

       
“Right. So, we’ll pull
all personnel records for the maintenance staff. We can eliminate everyone who
shows up for work in the morning. We’ll give the details of the others to the
Met, and they can scoop them up, pronto. In the meantime the
hazmat
team will hopefully prove there’s no
caesium
missing.
Then, if we can get Elvis to ID the fireman, that should get the job done.”

       
“Sounds like a plan.”

We chewed things over a little longer, and came to the conclusion
that there was nothing to be gained by hanging around talking, and nothing to
be lost by finding something decent to eat. It turned out that Melissa’s
favourite
food was steak and kidney pie, and she knew a
little pub that made
their own
less than a quarter of
a mile away. That wasn’t far, but she decided to abandon the wheelchair for the
trip down the bumpy footpaths and narrow passageways that ran alongside the
river.

       
“My sister used a
chair,” she said, when we’d been going for a little over five minutes. “I don’t
know if I told you that before.”

       
“Is that the place?” I
said, nodding towards a half-timbered building at the corner of the next
street. “The Frog and Turtle?”

       
“She was in a motorcycle
accident when she was seventeen. She never walked again. And I’d watch people
looking at her, time after time after time, and only seeing the chair. They had
no idea who she was. How smart she was. How beautiful she was. So that made me
think. Any time I need
cover,
I’ll use a chair, too.
And hey presto.
I’ll be invisible.”

       
“Is that the only reason
you use one? Or is it a kind of tribute to your sister?”

       
“That’s the only reason.
It’s entirely practical.”

       
“Is she younger than
you? Or older?”

       
“She was older.”

       
“She’s no longer with
us?”

       
“No.
She
got hit by a fire engine
, would you believe? Four years ago. Crossing
the road.
About a mile and a half from here, as it happens.
It was late at night. A streetlight was broken, and it turned out the driver
was just someone else who didn’t see her. Or the chair.”

       
“I’m sorry for your
loss, Melissa. Truly. That’s a terrible story.”

       
“The Frog and Turtle?”
she said, after a few seconds. “Yes, that’s the place. Strange name. Good
pies.”

       
“You’ll get no argument
from me,” I said. “You can’t eat a name.”

There were no free tables when we arrived at the pub, so we made our
way over to the bar. A woman was sitting in the booth nearest the door. She was
on her own. There was only a quarter of an inch of wine left in her glass, so I
took my time to deliberate over the eight kinds of beer they had on draught,
watching her in the big mirror on the wall. I finally bought a pint of Timothy
Taylor for myself, and a bottle of hard cider for Melissa. The woman took a
final sip of her wine, so we wandered across and loitered close by till she got
up and left. Then Melissa slid her legs under the table and I settled in
opposite her.

       
The place was busy and
the rumble of background conversation was correspondingly loud, but Melissa
still leaned in close before speaking.

       
“How long are you going
to stick around?” she said.

       
“Tonight?” I said.

       
“You know what I mean.”

       
“That’s not up to me.
I’ll be here till I’m told to be somewhere else.”

       
“Another country?”

       
“Always is.”

       
“Must be strange, never
being in the same place very long.”

       
“Must strange, always
being in the same place.”

       
She took a couple of
long pulls on the cider,
then
turned back to me.

       
“There’ll be more to
this than just finding Elvis, you know,” she said.

       
I nodded.

       
“Hopefully he’ll lead us
to the fireman, but that won’t be the end of it, either,” she said.

       
I took a sip of my beer.

       
“We’ll have to run his
background,” she said. “Even if he’s a genuine firefighter it doesn’t mean it
was a genuine misunderstanding with the door.”

       
“It doesn’t,” I said.
“And here’s another thing. You guys have been obsessing over whether this
really was a robbery attempt. I guess that’s what your procedures set you up to
do. But have you ever wondered whether actually stealing the stuff was never
part of the plan?”

       
“What do you mean?”

       
“It could be someone just
wanted to do enough damage to cause a radiation scare. Even if none actually
leaked out, it could trigger an evacuation.
Of the hospital,
maybe the whole area.
Then, who knows what would be possible. Are there
any high profile patients, who are normally guarded? What buildings are around
here? What’s stored in them? What about access to
infrastructure,
that
could be sabotaged? Perhaps the attack on the door is the tip of
the iceberg, not you.”

       
Melissa smiled.

       
“All good points,” she said.
“But we haven’t just fallen off some collective turnip truck. I told you,
there’s more to our operation than meets the eye.
Your eye,
anyway.
Remember all the phone calls I’ve been following up? Well, every
patient; every employee; every structure, current and abandoned, above or below
ground; every phone, power, gas, water, TV, and traffic signal network; every
London Underground line; even the old pneumatic pipes the Post Office used to
us - all of that’s been checked and risk-assessed. We’re not worried.”

       
I shrugged.

       
“But I am worried about
starving,” she said. “Are you ready to eat?”

       
I nodded.

       
“My treat,” she said,
and wriggled out of the booth.

Melissa eased her way through the crowd at the bar, and
realised
I wasn’t the only one watching her. A couple of
city boys liked the look of her, too. They were perching on stools with
champagne flutes in their hands, with the rest of the bottle on the bar between
them in a black plastic ice bucket.

       
Melissa spoke to the
barman, and while she was waiting for our drinks to be poured one of the city
boys slithered off his stool. He straightened his tie, ran one hand through his
hair, and sidled up to her. He said something to her and she moved half a step
to her left, away from him. I could see her upper lip curling into an
expression of distaste. He moved after her and said something else. She looked
away. He leaned in close, and presumably kept up his pursuit in a more intimate
tone. He’d have been better advised not to because she spun around towards him,
shot out her right hand and took hold of his ear. I knew what was coming next.
She was going to gouge her thumbnail into his lobe. It was a simple move.
Innocuous, on paper.
But
agonising
in the flesh. And judging by his scream, she executed it perfectly. She held on
for a couple of seconds, then picked up our glasses and moved back to the
booth.

       
“The
food’ll
be here soon,” she said as she sat back down. “And I got you a pint of
something called Old
Peculier
to go with it. I
thought it would suit you.”

       
“Thanks,” I said. “Good
choice. And more popular with you than champagne, tonight.”

       
She shrugged.

       
“Morons,” she said.

       
“Are we going to have
trouble with them, later?” I said.

       
“I doubt it.”

       
I glanced across, and
saw the barman filling their glasses from a fresh bottle of Krug.

       
“They’re sucking down
that bubbly pretty enthusiastically,” I said. “And the one you didn’t pinch is
wearing a rugby club tie.”

       
“Well, if he tries
anything, I’ll give him a taste of my nails too,” she said. “And watch as he
runs home crying to his mummy.”

The conversation moved away from work when the food arrived, but
Melissa paused half way through her pie with a thoughtful look on her face.

       
“Interesting point you
made about following procedures, before,” she said. “Because you’re right.
There are so many, it’s easy to switch into robot mode. And it’s left me with
this sick feeling that I’m missing something. And if I am, you know it’ll be
blindingly obvious with hindsight.”

       
“Easy to be wise, after
the event,” I said.

       
She nodded, and took
another bite.

       
“What if you were in my
shoes?” she said. “How would you approach this? Have you dealt with anything
like it before?”

       
“Not really,” I said.
“But you’ve discounted any idea of the whole thing being a diversion, you told
me. Which means we’re stuck with an attempt to steal the
caesium
.
So, what happens if you put yourself in the burglar’s shoes, instead? Assume
you’ve done your homework, and you know the vault is basically impregnable.
What do you do?”

       
“Try a different vault?”

       
“Could do. Or maybe
you’d try and get this
caesium
moved to a different
vault, where it’s easier to steal?”

       
“Interesting. But that
doesn’t work. The secondary site is equally secure.”