“She lost a hand,” I said, leading the way to where she was lying. She’d rolled over into a fetal position since I’d moved, and was hugging her injured arm to her chest. “And a lot of blood. It looks like she’s going into shock.”
“Leckie did this?” he said. “The bastard.”
“No. She lost the hand because I shot her.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because there was no time, she was moving, and the shackle was too narrow to hit.”
“Wow. That’s hard-core. But they’re very narrow, David, those shackles. You can’t blame yourself for this, you know.”
Jones’s patronising tone reminded me of the conversation I’d had with my control when he told me I was being seconded to MI5. That was the morning after I’d hospitalised Jones himself, ironically. How had my control described my actions? As doing more harm than good? I’d dismissed his words, back then. But now, looking down at Melissa’s crumpled body, I couldn’t be so sure he was wrong.
“I know,” I said, consciously shaking off the doubt. “I don’t blame myself. It was the only way to save her. Now, we better hurry. She needs treatment, fast.”
“I’m with you,” Jones said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Drive us,” I said, hoisting Melissa onto my shoulder. “My car’s too far away.”
“No problem,” he said. “Come on. Follow me.”
I fell in step behind him, trying to balance my urge to hurry with the need to not shake Melissa around too roughly as we moved across the treacherous ground. Jones reached the car comfortably before me, paused for a moment, then opened the front passenger door and reclined the seat to its limit.
“You know, David, you’ve been through a lot today,” he said. “You’ve saved two lives, already. Why not let me take care of things from here? There’s no need for you waste your time in another hospital. I know you hate them.”
I didn’t reply until Melissa was in her seat with the belt fastened around her.
“That’s a generous offer,” I said. “I do hate hospitals. But no thanks. I think her chances of pulling through will be a little higher if I take her.”
“Why?” he said.
“Because otherwise, I think it won’t be long before I get another distraught phone call telling me that despite your best efforts, she bled out en route to the hospital. So you’ll be staying here, and I’ll be taking her.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do. And I just have one question before we go. Who was driving the crane, just now?”
Jones was silent for a moment.
“Stan Leckie was driving it,” he said, finally. “Of course.”
“A word of advice,” I said. “If you’re going to lie convincingly, you need to not hesitate so much. And don’t elaborate. Answer quickly, simply, and try to keep your eyes still.”
“I didn’t hesitate. I mean, I didn’t understand the question. I was trying to figure out what you meant.”
“You were? I’m intrigued. Which part of the question was particularly confusing?”
“It’s not that. It’s because you already knew Leckie was driving it, so I couldn’t understand why you were asking.”
“Leckie was driving. What was he trying to do?”
“Kill Melissa.”
“Just Melissa? Or me, too?”
“Both of you.”
“I can understand Melissa. She was chained up. She couldn’t get away. But me? I was mobile. And he had a shotgun. Why didn’t he just shoot me, instead of leaving me free to release her?”
“He must have wanted to use his trademark method.”
“So, not only to kill us, but to make sure the world knew who’d done it?”
“I guess.”
“You’re quite new to this game, aren’t you Tim? Have you crossed paths with many killers?”
“Not too many, no.”
“Because here’s a word to the wise. There are lots of reasons for killing. Money. Revenge. Panic. Covering your tracks. But announcing your own guilt? Inviting the police to catch you? That’s not high on many murderers’ lists.”
Jones didn’t reply.
“And there’s another problem,” I said. “Leckie wasn’t threatening me with that shotgun. He was about to tell me something. And then you conveniently shot him.”
“Leckie was guilty,” he said. “He was tied into al-Aqsaba’a up to his elbows, and I can prove it.”
“Maybe you can. But can you prove who was helping him? From inside MI5? Or are you trying to do the opposite?”
Jones didn’t answer.
“I don’t have time for any more nonsense,” I said, after five seconds of silence. “Where’s your phone?”
“In my pocket,” he said. “Why?”
“Take it out,” I said, leveling my Beretta on the bridge of his nose. “Call your mother. Tell her goodbye.”
Jones didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Don’t you have a mother?”
“No,” he said. “I do.”
“Then don’t you care about her? Don’t you think she’d appreciate the chance to say goodbye to her son? Because if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to do to you what you did to Leckie.”
Jones started to move his mouth, but it was a couple of seconds before any sound came out.
“OK,” he said. “You win. It was me. I was driving the crane.”
“You were?” I said. “How did you get in place to shoot Leckie so soon after you crashed into the wall?”
“I didn’t wait for the impact. I jumped out as soon as it started moving.”
“So why didn’t I see you?”
“The crane was between us.”
“It couldn’t have been, or you’d have been on the other side of Leckie when you shot him.”
Jones shrugged.
“I could call your mother for you,” I said. “After you’re dead. And explain how you were a traitor. How does she feel about Islamic extremists, by the way? Is she a fan?”
“It’s not like that,” he said, as a sharp red dot appeared on his forehead. “No one was supposed to get…”
I dived forward, trying to knock him to the ground, but I heard the bang while I was still in the air. When I landed on him his body was already slack. The red dot had been replaced by a neat, black-edged hole. The back of his skull was missing. And what had passed for his brains were soaking into the dirt next to his corpse.
Chapter Forty-Two
My suspicion about the crane driver had been proved right, but a little more dramatically than I’d planned. I rolled off Jones’s body and scrambled closer to the car, desperate for cover, and trying to steal a couple of seconds to think. I knew from experience that where you found one traitor, a second usually wasn’t too far away. A young, naïve one to do the donkey work, and be thrown under the bus if necessary. And an older, wiser head to lie low, pull the strings, and walk away untarnished. Jones fitted the first bill. But who could his puppet master be? I doubted it would have been someone I hadn’t come across before, because they wouldn’t be close enough to the case to influence it in any major way. The problem now, though, was they were close enough to influence me, permanently. If I could just figure out who it could be, that might give the tiny edge I’d need. I had precious little else to work with, beside a critically injured girl I had to get to the hospital.