I heard stones rattle, somewhere in front of the car. Someone was moving. Changing their angle. Coming closer.
I ran back through the people I’d met since first arriving at St Joseph’s. The things that had happened. The discussions we’d sat through as a result. The opinions that were expressed. The decisions that were taken. And then a couple of subtle phrases and an unexpected set of orders suddenly tied themselves into Jones’s last words, making a shaky kind of connection in my brain. That may not have been significant. But the red dot reappeared. And that was. Because it was hovering over the centre of my chest.
The vague connection was all I had. There was no choice but to gamble.
“It’s a little ungrateful to shoot me, don’t you think?” I said. “Considering how much I helped you, today?”
The red dot started to twitch. Then it moved. Across my body. Up the side of the car. And onto Melissa’s abdomen.
“You didn’t know the fire at the school was just a diversion, did you?” I said.
The dot stayed resolutely still.
“Your plan would have backfired, if I hadn’t been there to save the boy,” I said, deciding it was time to go all in. “Wouldn’t it, Mr Hardwicke?”
The dot disappeared, and more stones rattled directly in front of the car.
“Do you have any evidence for such a wild claim, Commander?” Hardwicke said, emerging from behind a mound of rubble. The front of his coat was covered with mud and brick fragments. The vague, distracted look that had always been on his face at Thames House had been replaced with a focused, angry stare. And the rifle in his hands was still pointing straight at Melissa. “Because otherwise, you’d struggle to make anyone believe you.”
“How about this?” I said. “We take the girl to the hospital, and once she’s safe I’ll hand everything I have straight over to you.”
“Agent Wainwright? I like her. I’d have liked to see her walk away from all this. And I would have let her – you too – if only you’d gone through with your threat to shoot Jones. Everything would have fallen on him and Leckie. But you had to start asking questions. And I can’t take the risk you haven’t been asking them elsewhere.”
“I haven’t.”
“Put your gun down, and pick her up.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s in the wrong place. I want you to move her.”
“So you can kill her?”
“You set that particular ball in motion. I’m just going to let nature finish its work.”
“And me?”
“Interesting question. If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have said you had a bright future ahead of you. Today, I’m forecasting rain.”
“Then, I’m not seeing the incentive to help you.”
“OK. Try this. If you don’t help, I’m going to shoot you in the spine. And I’m going to aim low, so you don’t die straight away. So you lie there for a while, paralysed. Then I’ll take your belt off Wainwright’s arm, and your final sight will be her blood pumping out of the wound you inflicted and mingling in the mud with what’s left of Jones’s brain.”
I didn’t move.
“Oh,” Hardwicke said. “I see. You’re thinking of calling my bluff. Well, that’s your choice. But do you really believe I couldn’t get people over here to dress the scene any way I want it? Or that I couldn’t just leave your bodies here, and think of a way to explain how the chips happened to fall? Because let me tell you – I’ve achieved a lot, today. And I’m not about to see it all go south.”
Hardwicke raised his rifle and lined it up on my stomach. A whole new can of worms was opening before my eyes, but I had no time to deal with it. Getting Melissa to hospital was my priority, which meant putting Hardwicke on ice, at least for a few hours. But that was easier said than done. He was armed. He was too far away to rush. And he was completely unstable. My options were limited. I decided my best shot was to keep him talking, and try to work an angle as quickly as possible.
I put my Beretta on the ground, released Melissa’s seat belt, and lifted her back on to my shoulder.
“I suppose it’s quite ironic, in a way,” I said.
“What is?” Hardwicke said.
“I was brought in to work against you. And here I am, helping you.”
Hardwicke laughed.
“My poor boy,” he said. “You don’t understand. I was the one who requested you. I brought you in to help me, and that’s what you’ve been doing from the start. Didn’t you know?”
“No,” I said. “What else did I do?”
“There’s a group of busy-bodies in parliament who are trying to foist external investigators on the Service, for breaches of security. I’ve been fighting them for two years. And now, you’ve given me the ammunition I need to back them off for good.”
“I did? How?”
“We had two bad apples in our barrel. Jones, and Wainwright. It should have just been Jones, but that number doubled because of you. Wainwright became collateral damage. But anyway, it proves our existing methods work. And if they’re not broken, why fix them? It’s just a shame you had to give your life to expose the vicious traitors.”
“All this so you could avoid some semi-retired ex-superintendent looking over your shoulder?”
“No. That was just the icing.”
I felt a little tension come back into Melissa’s body.
“What else was there?”
“Have you got any idea how much press you get for saving a sweet-looking little kid? Let alone what public displays of success do for funding?”
“You thought al-Aqsaba’a was going to use a fire engine to spray the kids at St Ambrose with the caesium solution? Which is why you dropped the hints at that late night meeting at Thames House, when the container showed up at the fire station, and everyone thought Parliament was the target. And ordered the other pair of agents to be there, even before we’d caught on to what was happening.”
“That’s right. That whole Parliament thing was bizarre. It suited me for a while, after you all misunderstood that snitch’s warning. Frightening MPs is never a bad thing. The only thing they care about is themselves. I thought you lot would get back on the right track eventually, but Leckie having the container moved made things worse. He was trying to nudge you towards St Ambrose, but he’d forgotten the fire station serves both places. And I have to admit – the way time was running out, I was getting a little nervous, myself.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of trouble you went to.”
“Actually, it wasn’t. Leckie did all the heavy lifting.”
“Did you plant him at the hospital, specially for this?”
“No. I’d have planted him in jail, but that would have aired too much dirty laundry. So I told him I’d let him walk away, but only if he kept his head down. I made it clear. One squeak of trouble, and he wouldn’t end up in a cage. He’d end up in a box.”
I could feel Melissa’s stomach muscles working against my shoulder, now, almost as if she was trying to wriggle further down my back.