“Yes sir,” Melissa said.
“I find that rather strange. To bring down the government. How could they hope to achieve that? Look at 9/11. The London Tube bombs. The Falkland Islands, and so on. Politicians are fairly adept at using such things to gain popularity, not lose it. Why would it be different this time?”
No one spoke for over a minute, and in the silence all eyes were drawn to Hardwicke’s relentlessly spinning paperclip.
“What if the government was known to be aware of a threat?” Jones said, eventually. “But did nothing to avoid it. Or responded in such an incompetent way they lost the public’s sympathy?”
“But we haven’t received any threats,” Melissa said.
“No,” Hardwicke said. “Not yet. But there’s still time.”
“Time?” Jones said. “Let’s approach things from that angle, instead. The timescale. Three days, yes?”
“That’s what the informer told me yesterday,” Melissa said.
“So, two days now,” Jones said. “What’s happening over the next two days?”
“Oh,” Chaston said. “Wait a minute. Melissa, let me ask you something. Is there any way the informer could have said ‘close down,’ rather than, ‘bring down?’”
“No,” Melissa said. “Definitely not. I heard him say ‘bring down.’”
“But what kind of state was he in?” Chaston said. “He was in the process of betraying his comrades, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” Melissa said. “And he’d just been shot at, so you could say he was under a fair bit of stress.”
“He hadn’t only been shot at,” Chaston said. “In fact, he was bleeding to death. And what about his language skills? Was he a native English speaker?”
“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “I don’t know his full background. But it sounded like English might not have been his first language. I couldn’t be sure.”
“Where are you going with this?” Hardwicke said.
“Well, sir, if you take two days and add it to ‘close down’ the government, do you know what you get?” Chaston said.
Hardwicke stopped the paperclip’s motion dead.
“The State Opening of Parliament,” Chaston said. “The beginning of the new Parliamentary year. All the MPs. The Lords. The bishops. The most senior judges. Not to mention Her Majesty. All together, in the same place, an iconic location, up to their necks in pomp and ceremony. Can’t you just hear the terrorists drooling?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Deputy DG had said he wanted Melissa and me to get to the bottom of how the caesium had been stolen as a matter of urgency. He’d made that very clear, so I expected us to head straight over to the hospital when the meeting finally wrapped up and start digging. But Melissa had other ideas. She thought she could turn more up from the office, via the computer and the phone. And this time, she didn’t invite me to sit with her.
There was nothing inherently suspicious about that. Plowing two furrows in parallel can be an effective strategy. But when someone’s behaviour unexpectedly changes, it makes me wary. And when I added that to her unexplained absence after our last meeting at Thames House, my sixth sense went into overdrive. So I may have agreed to go to St Joseph’s right away on my own and start the groundwork, but I didn’t actually leave the building. I set myself up in an empty meeting room diagonally opposite the office Melissa shared with Jones. I jammed the door open a tiny crack, just wide enough that I could see out but no one could see in. And I settled down to watch.
Jones came into the corridor three times in the next hour. Twice he returned. Once with coffee. Once with an armful of red folders. And while he was gone the final time, Melissa appeared. She was wearing a coat, but didn’t turn right, towards the exit. She went further into the building and then through an unmarked door, which I knew led to a set of stairs. If she went down, she’d end up in the basement. And in the basement, she’d have access to any of the vehicles in the car pool.
I hailed a cab directly outside, on Millbank, and had the driver loop round into Thorney Street and stop where I could see the exit from Thames House’s garage. A pair of Fords pulled out almost immediately, followed by a Jaguar, but all three were driven by men. An unmarked van was the next to leave. I couldn’t see who was inside it, but my gut told me to ignore it. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the right choice – and the cab driver was becoming increasingly anxious, but for a different reason – when a bottle green Land Rover Discovery cautiously nosed out into the street ahead of us. It sped up once it reached the top of the ramp, but I had enough time to confirm it was Melissa behind the wheel.
We followed as she turned right onto Horseferry Road, then left onto Millbank and along towards the Houses of Parliament. The traffic was light so we had no trouble keeping up as she crossed into Whitehall, and only fell four cars back as she skirted Nelson’s column and started up the east side of Trafalgar Square. My driver was taken by surprise, though, when she lurched without warning into the mouth of William IV Street and came to a sudden stop. I told him to keep going for another hundred yards, and then made my back down the other side of Charing Cross Road on foot.
A gaggle of people had formed outside the box office for the Garrick Theatre, so I joined in the middle of them and kept an eye on the Land Rover. Melissa was still in the driver’s seat. She was sitting completely still, looking to her right, back the way she’d come. I had no idea what she was watching for, though. She could have been checking for a tail. Observing a suspect. Waiting for a contact. Or just getting away from the office for a nervous breakdown. Nothing in the pattern of people or vehicles in the vicinity gave me any clue. I was still none the wiser fifteen minutes later when she climbed down from the vehicle. She made a show of locking the door, but I knew she was really scanning for anyone paying her too much attention. Then she walked across to a broad glass cylinder that sprouted from the pavement – the modern entrance to the ancient crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields church – and disappeared through the door.
I waited two minutes, then followed. There was no sign of Melissa near the bottom of the spiral staircase, or in the church’s gift shop. That left two options: the bathroom; or the cafe, which filled the crypt itself. There could be a perfectly innocent explanation for visiting either place. And both would be ideal locations for a covert rendezvous.
It would have been impossible for me to go into either area without being seen, so I made my way over to a woman who was taking photographs of a set of brass plaques that were leaning against the base of the left hand wall.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a real problem. I was wondering if you could help me?”
“I can’t spare any money,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Money? No. It’s more awkward that. I’m here with my girlfriend. She loves this place – the vaulted ceiling, the golden light, all those kind of things, and...”
“I don’t see any girlfriend.”
“Well, no. She’s hiding in the bathroom. Because what happened is, when we arrived just now, she thought she saw her ex husband go into the cafe. He’s – well, bad news. There’ve been some stalking issues. The police have been involved. There’ve been court orders. I won’t bore you with the details. But the thing is, I need to know if he’s in there. If he is, we’ll just leave. Avoid any trouble. But I can’t go and look myself. He’d see me. And obviously Marie can’t.”