David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (39 page)

       
“Yes. So?”

       
“I need to know where
the kid is, now.”

       
“Why?”

       
“Specifically, if he’s
still in London, what school he goes to.”

       
“Why?”

       
“What did
Leckie’s
snout tell you, right before he died?”

       
“They were planning
something that would close down the government.”

       
“No. That was a
rationalisation
. A dubious one, pushed through to fit in
with
Chaston’s
questionable logic. You told me the
snout actually said, ‘bring down the government.’”

       
“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
curriculum.
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.