“In the office,” the woman said.
“Which office?”
“It’s in the same block as mine. One floor down. The far end of the corridor.”
“Good. We’ll find it. Now, I need you to give me your mobile phone.”
“Why?”
“Amany, I like you. I want to be able to help you, and keep this under my hat. But in my experience, mobile phones are too much of a temptation for people to resist. So I want you to give me yours. Just for today. I’ll leave it in the office for you to collect in the morning.”
The woman reached into her bag, pulled out an old Nokia, and handed it to Melissa.
“Thank you,” Melissa said. “Can you find your way home from here? We have an appointment at the hospital.”
The woman nodded.
“OK,” Melissa said. “Thank you, once more, for your help. I know it wasn’t easy, telling us those things. But remember - there’s to be no communication with Stewart whatsoever. No phone calls. No texts. No emails. No IMs. No Facebook. No Twitter. Nothing. Otherwise your whole confession was a waste of time.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I pulled an illegal U-turn, and watched the woman’s forlorn, stationary figure grow smaller in the rear view mirror. Then Melissa squeezed through the gap between the front seats, slid into place beside me, and switched off the camera before calling Chaston and reporting what Amany had told us about a second batch of caesium.
“She was played from minute one,” she said, when she hung up. “Poor girl. I feel sorry for her.”
“It was nice of you not to tell her,” I said. “Not to tarnish her white knight.”
“She knows. She just hasn’t admitted it to herself, yet. This guy Sole is clearly an operator. I can’t wait to have a chat with him.”
“If he needed Amany to falsify the delivery receipt at St Joseph’s, the email from the dispatching hospital must have been nobbled as well. We need to know who else was involved at that end.”
“I think she might have given us the answer to that, too.”
“How?”
“Remember how adamant she was about the date? Of both occasions? August?”
“Yes. So?”
“What happens in August?”
“Lots of things.”
“OK. What doesn’t happen in August?”
I didn’t answer.
“Kids don’t go to school,” she said. “August is in the middle of the school holidays. So I bet that’s the flaw in the whole triangular caesium monitoring system, right there. I bet that when the manager at one hospital is on holiday, the one from the other covers for him. That brings it down to two points of failure. And if one is shagging the other...”
“I bet you’re right,” I said. “And that explains the timing, too. They stole the stuff when they had the opportunity to take it, and stored it - in the place they’d stolen it from - until they needed it. Why else keep it hanging around for so long?”
I parked in almost exactly the same spot where we’d waited for Amany. Melissa flashed some ID at a traffic warden who had immediately tried to pounce on us. I glared a warning at two kids who were looking greedily at the Land Rover’s alloys, and we made our way to the St Joseph’s admin block as quickly as we could without actually running.
There were two desks in Stewart Sole’s cramped corner office. The messier one was occupied, but as soon as its owner opened his mouth it was clear he wasn’t the guy we were looking for. Instead of being Scottish, he had a heavy French accent.
“I am very sorry, but Mr Sole has left for the afternoon,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
I glanced at Melissa, and saw the expression on her face growing harder.
“No thank you,” I said. “It was just a social call. We’re old friends, and happened to be in the area. You can’t remember what time Stewart left, can you? That might give us an idea which watering hole to look for him in.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean Mr Sole has finished with his work for today,” he said. “He was called to a meeting, and didn’t expect to come back. I’m sorry if my words were misleading.”
“Not at all,” I said. “What time did he leave, approximately?”
“Immediately after lunch. He came in, sat down, and straight away his telephone was ringing. He left the second he hung up. Not later than five after one.”
I looked at Melissa again. Her expression was softening. Amany was with us at 1.05. She hadn’t gone back on her word.
“Thanks again,” I said. “I really appreciate you helping us out like this, after we dropped in unannounced. He didn’t mention where his meeting was going to be, by any chance?”
“No,” he said. “He just jumped up and was through the door, as if being pulled on a rope by the person from the phone.”
“So he could have been going to another part of the hospital?”
“I do not think that is likely, because he paused only to put on his coat. I do not think this would have been necessary if his plan was not to leave the building.”
“No, I guess not. Well, thank you anyway. Have a good afternoon. We’ll maybe see you another time.”
Melissa took the car keys as we made our way back out of the hospital, and took a moment to adjust the driver’s seat before pulling away.
“This is a problem,” she said. “The trail goes cold without Sole. What do you think? Is it just a coincidence that he suddenly goes walkabout the afternoon we come calling?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We don’t know how often he does things like this.”
“True. He might walk back in tomorrow, pleased as Punch. Or he might never be seen again.”
“And he’s obviously involved with some pretty dodgy people, so whatever’s happening may not have anything to do with us, anyway.”
“Let’s come back, first thing in the morning, and see if we can pick him up on his way in.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“In the meantime, let’s drop this tractor off back at my office. Then we could maybe grab a late bite of lunch.”
“Count me in.”
Melissa suggested we should eat at the Mint hotel, since it was almost next door to Thames House. Neither of us spoke much as we wound our back through the city traffic, and she dropped me outside while she went to sign the car back into the pool. I found a table in an alcove under a set of stairs, and was still getting to grips with the menu when she slid into the seat next to mine.
“David, are you really hungry?” she said.
“I could eat,” I said. “But if I didn’t, I wouldn’t starve. Why?”
“It’s just, I’m uneasy about doing nothing. I don’t want to wait till the morning to go after Sole. It feels like too much of a risk. So, I was thinking, how would you feel about heading over to his house and seeing if we can pick him up there?”
“Now?”
“We could be there when he gets back from this mysterious meeting he was summoned to.”
“How will we find out where he lives?”
Melissa pulled a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of her jacket, set it on the table, and pushed it towards me.