“Look,” I said. “Louboutins. You should get a pair of those, if you’re going to do that eyeball trick again. It would cut down on the need for cleaning.”
“In my dreams, perhaps,” Melissa said. “Have you seen the price of those things?”
“No. But seriously, how much could a pair of shoes cost?”
“Oh, David, you’ve got a lot to learn. Let’s get some drinks ordered. Then I can explain women’s shoes to you.”
Melissa poured over the cocktail menu for a couple of minutes, then asked for a pomegranate martini. I ordered a glass of champagne, and wondered what had become of the bottles I’d left in the hallway outside her apartment.
“So,” I said. “Tell me about the world of shoes.”
“I’d love to,” she said. “But perhaps I should tell you my news, first.”
“Perhaps you should.”
“Well, as you probably guessed, it’s about Stan Leckie. After you left Thames House I made a few calls. One to him, about meeting us this evening. And several to people who’d been around the Service when he’d been. He was quick to respond. The others, less so. In fact, it took most of the afternoon before I made any progress with those at all.”
“What did you find out?”
“It wasn’t so much, ‘what.’ It was more, ‘how.’”
“I don’t follow.”
“Remember I told you he’d been kicked out for abusing witnesses? Well, I’d drawn a picture in my head of some strong-arm tactics. Heavy duty ones, obviously, to be bad enough to get himself fired over. But I wasn’t in the right ballpark.”
“How far over the line did he cross?”
“Well, if you hadn’t seen for yourself, I doubt you’d believe me. Remember the workhouse, in Luton? The wall, with the holes from the wrecking ball?”
“What about it?”
She stayed silent, waiting for the pennies to drop on their own.
“That was Leckie?” I said, after a moment.
“It was,” she said. “That’s how he broke the al-Aqsaba’a case. The original one.”
“The man’s a psychopath.”
“Well, his tactics were extreme, that’s for sure, but the outcome wasn’t all bad. He did stop them killing the diplomat’s baby.”
“Melissa, he killed people. Horrifically. I don’t see why he isn’t in jail.”
“He saved an innocent life, and held together a diplomatic alliance in a critical and volatile situation. Plus, no one wanted the scandal. It was much more appropriate to just usher him quietly out of the back door.”
“On to the golf course. And into a comfy chair at St Joseph’s, where it seems he hasn’t made much progress in reforming his character.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“But you cancelled the meeting with him.”
“I did. I wasn’t sure what this all really amounted to, but his behaviour was so extreme I felt like we needed to talk about it before taking another step.”
“You were right,” I said, then paused while a waitress delivered our drinks.
“Did Jones tell you the first three guys who attacked us had yours and my photos with them?” I said, when she was a safe distance away.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Melissa said.
“And one them worked at St Joseph’s. I recognised him.”
“Add that to what the guy we captured told us, and the outline of this thing is getting clearer.”
“Clearer, but by no means definitive. It just narrows the options. It tells us Leckie’s either a deadly threat, or he’s in mortal danger.”
“Agreed. But which one? And how can find out, quickly enough? The State Opening is tomorrow.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should just go and ask him.”
Melissa’s phone started to ring before she could respond. She pulled it out of her bag, looked at the screen, then held it up for me to see.
STAN LECKIE - MOBILE
“Careful what you wish for, David,” she said, then answered the call and talked for a couple of minutes.
“Well, this might put a new perspective on things,” she said, double checking the call had ended. “He was calling to tell me the cameras in the corridor outside the caesium vault have failed again.”
“Failed?”
“Good question. He said they’re not working, anyway.”
“Since when?”
“They went out of service about five minutes ago. His staff reported it to him, he immediately put out three extra teams to cover the area, then called me. He didn’t know what the right procedure was, given that there isn’t actually any caesium in there, now. Just the dummy container.”
“Is there any sign of a break-in?”
“No. He said not.”
“That doesn’t mean much, though. There wasn’t any damage after the robbery, either. Whoever put the container back must have known the code.”
“But the code’s been changed, now.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, either, if there’s a leak.”
Melissa shrugged.
“What about the independent camera your people installed?” I said.
“Let me check,” she said.
Melissa speed-dialed a number at Thames House, and concluded her conversation almost as quickly.
“It’s working fine,” she said. “As far as they can tell. Apart from one small hiccup in the signal.”
“When?” I said.
“Four minutes ago.”
“What about the container? Is it still there? Can they see it?”
“They don’t know. The camera’s facing the door, remember. They wanted face shots of anyone going in.”
“What about the tracker?”
“No signal’s being received. They’re pinging it right now, trying to bring it back on line.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
“You know what that means?” I said.
Melissa nodded.
“We need to look inside that room,” I said.
Melissa called Jones from the taxi on the way to St Joseph’s. He was still at her place when he answered, and said he was feeling suddenly under the weather. I guessed the adrenaline level in his bloodstream had crashed, making way for the impact of the beating he’d taken to replace it.
“Just the two of us tonight, then,” she said to me, slipping the phone back into her bag. “I told him - two things. Medic. Then bed.”
“Wise,” I said. “If this whole thing kicks off early, we don’t need to be carrying any passengers.”
Leckie was waiting for us at the rear entrance to the hospital when the cab pulled over to the side of the road. He stepped out of the shadows, opened Melissa’s door for her, and led the way into the hospital grounds.
The three of us stayed together through the courtyard, into the Admin building, down in the lift, and all the way along the purple corridor until we reached the pair of security guards Leckie had stationed there. Then I continued on my own. I entered the code into the keypad - getting it right first time, without the impediment of the heavy gloves - and cautiously entered the room. The silence from the radiation alarm told me I didn’t need to worry about caesium. Booby traps were another matter, however, so I moved no more quickly than I had done on my last visit.