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.”
“Do you believe it?”
Melissa rotated her chair a quarter turn to the left, on the spot, and then straightened up again before answering.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” she said. “Given someone’s shoving me towards the same door, with no good reason. But yes. I believe it. He was always pushing the limits, and I think one time he pushed that little bit too far.”
“Did he get a result, that time?”
“Well, yes. But you still can’t condone it.”
“I’m not condoning it. I’m only asking.”
“Not morally. And not practically. It does more harm than good, nine times out of ten. Look at the situation we’re in now, with the firemen.”
“What’s Leckie got to do with the firemen?”
“It’s his fault they’re being so uncooperative.”
“Did he brutalise one of them?”
“Not physically. But verbally, yes. He was furious when he heard what had happened during the alarm, so he got the chiefs of all the fire stations together on a conference call. Then he bawled each one out, one after the other, in front of their peers.”
“Not the most constructive of approaches.”
“No. What we needed was trust and openness, but because of him, that ship’s not just sailed. It’s been torpedoed and gone down with all hands.”
“Maybe he should spend more time playing golf.”
“Maybe he should. Seriously. Normally I hate the game. But if it means golf balls are the only things Leckie hits in future, that’s something I could get behind.”
Chapter Ten
Under different circumstances I’d have been happy to stay in the garden with Melissa all afternoon, but that day it wasn’t to be. She had several more phone calls to make, she said. Plus some preparations to complete for tomorrow, when the hazmat team would arrive. And of course, the inevitable reports to file, to keep her boss safely out of her hair.