‘Yeah, maybe.’ Rik shifted his feet, then said, ‘I told Mace about the email.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Not much. Just told me to pass it on. Said London would know what to do. Do you reckon they’ll pull us out if things get too hot?’
‘I don’t know,’ Harry said honestly. ‘If they do, it’ll be to assign us somewhere else. Have you passed on the email?’
‘Yes. First thing.’ He wandered away to fiddle with one of the monitors.
Harry stretched his arms and felt his muscles complaining. With Clare a reluctant helper during the night, they had taken the body downstairs to Mario’s flat. He had a feeling the Italian photographer wouldn’t be needing it anytime soon. They had placed it in the bedroom, inside an old blanket box, with a jumble of clothes on top. It wasn’t a pleasant task, but short of dumping the corpse out in the open countryside it was as good as they were going to manage.
He had been debating whether to tell the others about Stanbridge, and still hadn’t made up his mind. Mace might blow a fuse and tell London, as he was officially required to do. If so, there was no saying what might happen. Knowing that a member of your own side, whatever their function, had been murdered, then hiding the body, wouldn’t go down too well. It wouldn’t matter what the likely motive might have been; a death was a death and would have to be investigated.
He waited for Clare to come in. When she put in an appearance, she looked even paler than usual, with dark rings around the eyes. She avoided catching Harry’s eye and went straight to her desk.
No help there, then.
Mace came in and headed for the coffee pot, pouring himself a liberal dose. He looked a mess, as if he’d been on a bender. The others carefully avoided noticing and went about their business.
The Ericsson in Harry’s pocket buzzed softly, and he stepped away from the others. He didn’t think anyone else had heard it, although Rik was giving him an oblique look. Maybe the IT man had developed an especially acute ear for electronic noises over the years, and could identify a model by its tone.
Harry ignored him and went to the toilet on the ground floor. The phone was still buzzing and he realized it wasn’t a text message.
Somebody was calling him.
The screen showed no caller ID. It had to be the former owner. He was surprised they hadn’t tried already. They had probably blocked the phone automatically the moment it went missing, and were now trying to recover it any way they could.
‘Huh?’ he grunted.
‘Who is this?’ It was a man’s voice; thin, reedy, American. Rudi sounded American. Maybe he was calling to offer an upgrade, although Harry doubted it.
‘Why you call me?’ he muttered gutturally. If he was lucky, the man might identify himself.
‘I said, who is this? What the fuck are you doing with my fucking cell, you jerk?’
American. A very angry American. Harry cut the connection. Before he could switch it off, the text tone sounded.
Maloney.
Whre U?
Harry thought about it for a moment. It was just a name, for Christ’s sake. And already all over the news and networks, filling the airwaves, making a trace less likely. He thumbed the name of the town and hit SEND.
The answer was swift and to the point.
Fk!! Gt out of there!!
FORTY-FOUR
He got back upstairs to find the others waiting for him. Mace stepped forward, a determined set to his jaw. ‘Is there something you’d like to tell us, lad?’ He had lost his hung-over expression but not his untidy appearance.
The others stood in the background, waiting. Clare refused to meet Harry’s eye, concentrating on the contents of her mug.
‘Like what?’
‘Like what’s going on. You’ve had a contact with the Clones.’
‘They’ve been pulled out.’ Harry didn’t blame Clare; she would have had a duty to tell Mace eventually. She’d just done it sooner than he’d expected.
‘How the hell do you know that?’ Mace was bristling. ‘What happened last night?’
He told them about finding Stanbridge in his flat, about recognizing the man from Kosovo; about Clare’s call and how he had ‘dissuaded’ the other Clones from hanging around. When he looked at Clare for confirmation, she was staring down at the floor, her jaw clenched tight. Deniability, he thought angrily. It runs deep when your neck is on the block, even for colleagues.
‘You took a bloody big risk,’ Mace muttered. ‘How did you know they wouldn’t have back-up?’
‘Because Stanbridge wasn’t hiding anything. He had no reason to. All he knew was that he and his team had a simple assignment: to watch and follow. They wouldn’t need back-up for that. Clearly our masters don’t trust us very much.’
‘What else?’
‘He told me his team was being replaced this morning.’
‘That would be standard procedure,’ Fitzgerald mused thoughtfully. ‘Rotate them on a regular basis and nobody gets to know their faces.’ He chewed his lip. ‘Are you sure they’re a home team?’
‘Yes,’ Harry replied bluntly. ‘But not friendly. The Clones were, but they’ve gone. The new team is a specialist unit called the Hit. And they’re not coming to audit the books.’
‘What sort of specialists?’ Rik looked worried.
‘With a title like that, what do you think? The leader’s name is Latham. He tracks people for a living… and he’s not always required to bring them back alive.’
There was a stunned silence in the room. Only Mace looked unsurprised, but that might have been because the idea was taking a while to sink through his alcohol-fuelled fog. He looked at Clare, but she didn’t offer any helpful advice.
‘You’ve been busy,’ he said finally to Harry. It sounded like a condemnation.
‘Well, it wasn’t by choice.’
‘It’s nonsense, of course. I’ll be putting that in my report to London.’ Mace was finding comfort in bluster.
‘You do that,’ Harry replied. ‘In the meantime, Latham and his buddies will be dropping by to say hi. They won’t be asking anyone’s permission, either.’
‘You can’t know that.’ Fitzgerald was still frowning. ‘This — Stanbridge? — could have been spinning you a load of tosh. Maybe somebody local showed up and did him in. It’s not exactly law-abiding around here. There’s a lot of poverty and not much in the way of jobs. People get desperate. Random killings happen all the time, mostly over small change and a mobile phone.’
Harry looked at him, trying to determine if that remark was meaningful in any way. He decided not. Fitzgerald wasn’t the sort to make oblique comments. Blunt accusation was more his line.
‘It wasn’t random.’ Clare Jardine finally spoke up. ‘You didn’t see the body. It was a professional hit. Harry had tied Stanbridge up with a clothes line. All the killer did was walk in and shoot him in the head. He had no chance.’
Nobody spoke for several seconds. Then Rik said, ‘What do we do?’ He looked anxious but determined, and Harry decided he would just need pointing in the right direction and he’d be all right.
‘I don’t know about you,’ he said softly, allowing anger to fuel his own resolve, ‘but I’m buggered if I’m going to sit here and wait for a bunch of Vauxhall Cross body snatchers to come and take me out.’
Fitzgerald nodded and went to the door. ‘I’ll get the lights.’
Nobody questioned what he meant.
Outside, someone shouted and a car door slammed, followed by a burst of laughter. Bottles rattled in a crate and somebody gave a wolf-whistle. Normal sounds. Echoes of life being lived.
The minutes crept by, each individual alone with their thoughts, until Harry turned to Mace. ‘Something’s wrong. Do you have any other weapons here?’
Mace shook his head. ‘Never saw the need. Why?’
‘I need an equalizer.’ He moved over to the window and looked out. Nothing moved down there. Then he remembered the operations representative in London saying his sidearm would be sent out in a diplomatic pouch. ‘Did a bag come for me?’