Alex Palmer - The Tattooed Man

‘I kept it from them. I’m not a professional-I’ve been told that before in no uncertain terms. I didn’t want to believe Elena could know what Jerome was doing. But she did. She knew it all.’

‘How did Beck react to seeing you out here?’

‘It was the other way around, Grace. They worked really hard at keeping him out of my way.’

‘How did you take that video?’

‘I always used to wear a gold locket. It was part of my look. Falcon converted it into a camera.’

‘How did you survive the fire?’ Grace asked.

‘I can thank the villager who spoke English. He pushed me into that storeroom, threw us both against that grille and covered me with his body. I could breathe through the grille but I still almost died of smoke inhalation. I think my heart just kept beating. No one bothered to check the dead. Once Jerome and his mercenaries were gone, some of the local people came and found me. The wall beside me had collapsed and I’d dragged myself away from the remains of the building. I don’t remember that at all. They took me to a local aid hospital, where the people took me to Kinshasa. I was conscious enough to give the doctor the emergency phone number Falcon gave to all its agents. The embassy flew me back to London; they chartered a flight to get me out.’ He laughed. ‘They didn’t realise the doctor had taken my locket off me. The chain melted in the fire but I was holding it in my right hand. I’d fallen on that side and it didn’t burn like my left. The doctor had to prise my hand open. She kept the locket for me; she was worried it would get stolen. Then a year later, she tracked me down in London. She’d finished her tour of duty and she wanted to give me back my locket and see how I was. By that time, Falcon had closed down the operation and pensioned me off.’

‘Didn’t you show them that video once you got it back?’

‘I did. It was on that basis they reopened the operation. We viewed the video together and then they asked me if I was prepared to put myself on the line again. I said I was. I overestimated myself. Something I haven’t told you. I’d been rumbled by Jerome before I left for Africa. I didn’t realise that until I was there. I overheard DP and Jerome talking one night. It was what the old man and his daughter wanted, they said. Elena had thought I was using her. I wasn’t. Then I had to realise she knew as much about what was going on as her father did. Everything seemed to implode at once. To be completely honest, it’s another reason I ran when I did.’

‘Did Falcon debrief you?’

‘In depth. For them, the operation had been a complete failure. There was no firm evidence they could use and they were worried their secrecy had been compromised. It wasn’t until I got the video back that we had the key we needed and they were prepared to move forward. I was still suspicious enough to take a copy. I’m glad I did now.’

‘What’s Elena doing out here?’

‘Trying to shake off her father. It was supposed to be a new start after the African debacle. He didn’t let her get away completely. He insisted she take Jerome on whether she liked it or not.’

‘Why should she agree to taking you on after what happened in Africa? She must have known you knew about her.’

‘Guilt, pure and simple. That’s why she put my project in the public domain. I didn’t want Abaris to own it. It’s her way of assuaging her conscience.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t blackmail her with that video?’ Grace asked.

‘I know too much, Grace. It was as simple as that. I knew too much and I was still alive. She couldn’t lock me out.’

‘If she and her father are the sort of people you say they are, why didn’t they have you killed?’

He smiled.

‘I often wonder how they reacted when they heard I was back in London, still alive if barely. There must have been panic. We had no real proof at the time that would stand up in court, but there was enough information to bring pressure to bear on Jean. I’m pretty sure Falcon would have made it clear to him they didn’t want one of their ex-agents being executed. He knew not to push his credit too far.’

‘Did they also ask him to shut down the biological weapons program?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. That would have depended on who his clients were. That was something we never found out. What he did was move it offshore.’

They sped down the motorway in silence. Brinsmead was staring at the road. Grace weighed the alternatives. In the first, Daniel Brinsmead was the murderer Harrigan said he was and this was some kind of trap, the reason for which she did not know. But why would he want to harm her? If he wanted a witness, she was a reliable witness. She had given him no reason to hurt her. She glanced quickly at him. He was too frail and in too much pain to threaten her physically. Harrigan had told her that no guns were allowed in the LPS building. She remembered his description of a place full of people and activity.

In the second alternative, there were the dead. The people she had seen on the net, murdered and then buried in a makeshift grave. She could see this as the kind of operation she did in her own work. Staying with the target, calling in backup when she needed it. But in this case, the man she would have called her target, Brinsmead, clearly wanted to die. Maybe that was the most merciful thing to let happen.

When she had been a singer out on the road with her ramshackle band, she had liked driving those long empty roads in the outback. The name of the town they were going to had never mattered much. She had been driven by a different compulsion. For her, the destination was always a vanishing point in the distance. That was why she was driving towards it, to find out what it was. A hunger to see what was next. She had lived all her adult life with that need; it was a way of cleaning away all that emotional dross from the past that was otherwise stuck to her. That compulsion was in her mind now, driving her to what was next.

One day your judgement has to be wrong. Harrigan’s voice came back to her.

The images of the dead were more powerful than his words. She was on the trajectory; she would see this through.

Harrigan drove the distance from the police building to Australia Square in clear sunlight. It was a quick journey in light traffic. Yesterday’s bodyguard was again waiting for him at the ramp leading down into the car park. He delivered Harrigan to the thirty-third floor, where Damien showed him into Elena Calvo’s office.

‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘Coffee?’

‘Thanks. We’ll have to make this very quick.’

‘We will. Damien, could you get the commander coffee, please? And some for me as well. I think we’re ready to talk business.’

‘I’m ready when you are, Dr Calvo,’ Harrigan said as the bodyguard moved to the door. An instant later, the door was kicked open and Sam Jonas walked in, her gun in her hand outstretched to be fired. She shot Damien in the chest, her actions making up a single movement so fast that to Harrigan’s eyes, paradoxically, it seemed to be in slow motion. Red markings appeared on the man’s shirt. He fell to the floor. The shots had been quiet. Sam had her gun aimed directly at Elena.

‘Put your hands where I can see them, the two of you, now! If you move, Harrigan, I’ll do to both of you exactly what I just did to Damien. Believe me, you’ll be dead before you can blink. If you don’t believe it, try me.’

Elena was standing behind her desk, her mouth open in shock. Harrigan had pushed back his chair and was on his feet, but was stopped where he was. Standing at the door, Sam was too far away for heroics.

‘My other bodyguard,’ Elena said in a shaking voice. ‘Where is he?’