Without Mercy (2 page)

Ferguson nodded. “She could never forgive him all those years with the IRA, all those deaths. She could never accept that his slate could be wiped clean.”

“And Dillon?”

“Always saw it as a great game. He’s a walking contradiction—warm and humorous, yet he kills at the drop of a hat. There’s nothing I could ask him to do that he would find too outrageous.”

“Everything a challenge,” Blake said. “Nothing too dangerous.”

“And on so many occasions she’s been dragged along with him.”

“And you think that’s what makes him feel guilty now?”

“Something like that.”

“And where would that leave you? After all, you give the orders, Charles.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Ferguson swallowed his scotch down and looked at the empty glass bleakly. “You know, I think I’ll have the other half.”

“Why not?” Blake said. “And I’ll join you. You look as if you could do with the company.”

Dillon arrived at Rosedene in the middle of the afternoon, parked his Mini Cooper outside and went in. As he approached the desk, Professor Henry Bellamy came out of his office.

“Now, look, Sean, she’s just been moved, you know that. Give her a chance to settle in.”

“How is she?” Dillon’s face was very pale.

“What do you expect me to say? As well as can be expected?”

At that moment, Rabbi Julian Bernstein, Hannah’s grandfather, came out of the hospitality room. He put both hands on Dillon’s shoulders.

“Sean, you look terrible.”

Bellamy eased himself away. Dillon said, “This life of Hannah’s, Rabbi, I’ve said it before, you must hate it. You must hate us all.”

“My dear boy, it’s the life she chose. I’m a practical man. Jews have to be. I accept that there are people who elect to take on the kind of work that ordinary members of society don’t want to, well, soil their hands with.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Yes. She’s very tired, but I think you may say hello, show your face and then go. Room ten.”

He patted Dillon on the shoulder, turned away and Dillon passed through the doors to the rear corridor.

When he went in, the room was in half darkness, the matron, Maggie Duncan, drawing the curtains. She turned and came forward. Her voice had a tinge of the Scottish Highlands about it.

“Here you are again, Sean. What am I going to do with you?” She patted his face. “God knows, I’ve patched you up enough times over the years.”

“You can’t patch me up this time, Maggie. How is she?”

They both turned and looked at Hannah Bernstein, festooned in a seemingly endless web of tubes and drips, oxygen equipment and electronic screens. Her eyes were closed, the lids almost translucent.

Maggie said, “She’s very weak. It’s a huge load for her heart to bear.”

“It would be. We expected too much from her, all of us. Especially me,” Dillon said.

“When she was in last year, when that Party of God terrorist shot her, we used to talk a lot and mainly about you. She’s very fond of you, Sean. Oh, she might not approve, but she’s very fond.”

“I’d like to believe that,” Dillon said. “But let’s say I don’t deserve it.”

Hannah’s eyelids flickered open. She said softly, “What’s wrong, Sean? Feeling sorry for yourself, the hard man of the IRA?”

“Damn sorry,” he told her, “and you putting the fear of God in me.”

“Oh, dear, I’m in the wrong again.”

Maggie Duncan said, “Two minutes, Sean, and I’ll be back.”

She went out, the door closed softly and Dillon stood at the end of the bed. “Mea culpa,” he said.

“There you go, blaming yourself again. It’s a kind of self-justification—no, worse, an overindulgence. Is that some kind of Irish thing?”

“Damn you!” he said.

“No, damn you, though that’s been taken care of.” She frowned. “What a terrible thing to say. How could I?” She reached out her thin left hand, which he took, and she gripped his hand with surprising strength. “You’re a good man, Sean, a good man in spite of yourself. I’ve always known that.”

The grip slackened, and Dillon, almost choking with emotion, let her hand go gently. The eyes closed, and when she spoke again her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Night bless, Sean.”

Dillon made it out to the corridor, where he leaned against the wall, breathing deeply. A young nurse pushing a trolley approached and paused at the door, glancing at him with a frown. She was pretty enough, high cheekbones, dark eyes.

“Are you all right?”

Her accent was Dublin Irish. He nodded. “I’m fine. What are you doing?”

“Seeing to the Superintendent’s medication.”

“I think she’s gone to sleep again.”

“Ah, then it can wait.”

She pushed the trolley away. He paused, watching her go, then made for reception, ignoring Maggie Duncan’s call from behind, went down the entrance steps to the car park and headed for the Mini Cooper.

Roper, having fruitlessly tried some obvious routes through the computer, sat back frustrated. Of course, the real problem was that he didn’t really know what he was looking for, but one thing was certain. There was something wrong here. What was it Blake had said? It was as if it had never happened. But it had.

“Time to get back to basics,” he said softly, and called Dillon on his Codex Four. “Where are you?”

“I was with Hannah at Rosedene. I’ve just parked outside Saint Paul’s.”

“Visiting the Holy Mother again, are we? How was Hannah?”

“Hanging in there.”

“Good. I’ve had a call from Ferguson. Cazalet wants answers on the whole Belov thing. He’s sent Blake Johnson over to help, but it’s up to us, and Ferguson wants an explanation. I’m going round to see the Salters at the Dark Man, so meet me there.”

“As soon as I can.”

Dillon had parked outside St. Paul’s Church, around the corner from Harley Street, for a reason. The priest in charge was a professor of psychiatry at London University, and was much used by people operating for Ferguson who experienced mental problems. This had applied to Dillon on occasion.

He went up the steps to the entrance and entered through the small Judas gate. There was a smell of incense, candles flaring beside a statue of the Virgin and Child, a feeling of being apart, separate from everyday life, the sound of traffic outside very remote. It reminded Dillon of the church of his childhood, in County Down, which was hardly surprising, for St. Paul’s Church was Anglo-Catholic, the oldest branch of the Church of England. However, it moved with the times enough to allow priests to marry and to allow a woman priest, and there she was now, a pleasant, calm woman in cassock and clerical collar who had just opened the door of the vestry and was ushering a young woman inside.

She turned and there was immediate concern on her face. “Sean?” she said, then turned to the young woman. “Go in for me, Mary. Put the kettle on.” She closed the door and said anxiously, “Is it Hannah? She’s not . . .”

“No.” Dillon put a hand up in a strangely defensive gesture. “Very poorly, but not that. The brain’s been cleared, so she’s been returned to Rosedene, but she’s not good. Bellamy’s worried about the cumulative effect of all her injuries in the past few years. It seems her heart’s not as it should be, but then, you’d expect that.”

She embraced him, holding him tight for a moment. “My dearest Sean. You want to see me?”

“As a psychiatrist or as a priest? God knows. Isn’t it what the truly wicked of this world do? Try and cover their backs?” His smile was cold and bleak. “Anyway, you’re busy. Perhaps another time.”

He walked to the great door and opened the small Judas gate. “It’s appropriate, don’t you think, especially for someone like me? Judas was a political terrorist called a Zealot, and my branch of the great game was the IRA.”

She shook her head gravely. “Such talk is pointless, Sean.”

He said tonelessly, “Ashimov ran her down like a dog, quite deliberately. As I got to her, she was trying to haul herself up by the railings, and I told her, ‘You’re all right, just hold on to me,’ but there was blood on her face and I was afraid. It was different. Special in the wrong way. When I was driving back to Rosedene with her in the seat beside me, I swore I’d kill Ashimov if it was the last thing I did on top of the earth.”

“I thought it was Billy who killed Ashimov.”

“Yes, but I got all those others: Belov, Tod Murphy, even Greta Novikova. I’m very evenhanded, you’ve got to agree.”

“God bless you, Sean,” she said calmly.

For some reason it reminded him of Hannah’s last words to him at Rosedene. He recoiled, God knows why, stepped out through the Judas gate, stumbled down the steps to the Mini Cooper and drove away.

Being a gangster was fine, flashy and showy and menacing, but Harry Salter had learned, at the right stage in his life, that the same talents employed in the business world could make you a fortune without costing you thirty years inside.

The Dark Man at Wapping on Cable Wharf by the Thames was the first property he’d ever owned. It was like a mascot in spite of everything else he had now—the warehouse developments, the clubs, the casinos, the millions he’d made after giving up his career as one of the top guvnors in the London underworld. It was a second home, and it was there that Dillon found him.

The bar was very Victorian: mirrors, a long mahogany bar topped with marble, porcelain beer pumps, Dora the barmaid reading the newspaper. Trade at that time of the afternoon was light. Salter sat in the corner booth with his nephew, Billy, and his minders, Joe Baxter and Sam Hall, were enjoying a beer at the bar.

Roper in his state-of-the-art wheelchair wore a reefer coat, his hair down to his shoulders, his face a mass of scar tissue. Once a highly decorated bomb-disposal expert, his career had been terminated by one IRA bomb too many in Belfast. Soon, a new career had beckoned, and in the world of cyberspace he was already a legend.

“So there you are,” Roper said.

“And twice as handsome,” Harry Salter put in.

Dillon went to the bar and said to Dora, “The usual.” She poured a large Bushmills, which he took down in a single swallow. He put the glass down and she refilled it.

Roper said to the others, “Ferguson’s on his way back from Washington after seeing Cazalet about Belov International. The President wants answers, so he’s sent Blake with him to help out.”

Dillon took down his second drink. “Have you shared the news about Belov’s miraculous rebirth, his appearance in Siberia at Station Gorky?”

“I have.”

“Rebirth, my arse,” Billy said. “Come off it, Dillon, all this talk of some double is rubbish. The photo on the Web site could have been taken anytime.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Harry said. “Look at the Second World War. Doubles all over the place. Hitler, Churchill, even Rommel.”

“I’d say the double story is genuine,” Roper said. “That time in Venezuela and Paris, he couldn’t have been in two places at once.”

“Yes, but the important question isn’t whether they have a fake Belov out there,” Harry said. “The question is why. But never mind that for now. I hear you’ve been to see the Superintendent, Dillon. How was she?”

“Not good.”

“I never was very fond of coppers, but Bernstein is special,” Harry Salter said.

Billy nodded. “A lovely lady. If it hadn’t been for her, we’d never have got together with you, Dillon.”

Roper said, “How was that?”

“Really? You never heard that story?” Billy carried on, “Well, Prime Minister John Major was hosting a function for President Clinton at the House of Commons. There was a question of security. Dillon said it was crap and that he could make it onto the terrace dressed as a waiter.”

“He what?” Roper was incredulous.

“But it could only be done from the river, see? He conned Bernstein into finding him the biggest expert on the River Thames, only it wasn’t anyone in Customs or the River Police.”

“It was me,” Harry said. He smiled. “God bless her, she never forgave Dillon.”

“And why would that be?”

“We’d a little bit of business. Diamonds on a boat from Amsterdam coming upriver. There was an informer at work. Bernstein knew we were going to be nicked that night here on the wharf. We’d have gone down the steps for ten years each, only Dillon here decided to be a naughty boy again, which meant the police didn’t catch us with the loot.”

Roper turned to Dillon. “You dog.”

Dillon reached for the third Bushmills Dora had poured. “It’s been said before.”

“The Superintendent wasn’t pleased at all. Since she works for Ferguson, she’s covered by the Official Secrets Act, which meant she couldn’t open her mouth.” Salter shook his head. “So, as I said, I don’t think she ever forgave Dillon for that, especially as, with our assistance, he did indeed make it to the terrace at the House of Commons dressed as a waiter, and served canapés to President Clinton, the Prime Minister, Ferguson . . .”

“And let me guess,” Roper said, “Superintendent Hannah Bernstein.”

“To be accurate, Chief Inspector, as she was then,” Billy said.

His uncle nodded. “And still a lovely girl.” He shook his head. “However, if we were capable of getting Dillon onto the terrace at the House of Commons to serve canapés to the President of the United States, we ought to be able to come up with an answer to this present puzzle.”

“And that’s what it is,” Roper said. “We all know what happened at Drumore. So what’s all this business with Belov International?”

“The thing is,” Dillon said, “we know, but for obvious reasons we can’t advertise the fact. Belov International could be banking on that.”

“But for what purpose?” Roper demanded. “Life goes on, even where big business is concerned.”

“Especially where big business is concerned,” Dillon said. “Especially international companies worth six or seven billion with powerful government forces behind them.”

“And the bleeding Cold War starting all over again,” Harry said. “Or so I was reading in the Times last week.” There was a slightly stunned silence, as they all looked at him and he shrugged. “So I read the Times now and again. That’s where you learn about these things.”

“So what you’re saying is that the new president of Belov International might just be Putin himself.”