David Kessler - Mercy

Miles away, another, somewhat more professional, burglar was breaking into the small rundown house rented by Nathaniel Anderson.

But, unlike the man who had entered the lab at Berkeley, Lee Kelly didn’t have any clear idea what he was looking for. His brief was broader than that. He was here to look for anything that might have a bearing on Nat’s origins or past. And anything that might explain his interest in Clayton Burrow or the Finchley Road Medical Centre.

Normally when he did a burglary he was looking for valuables and he knew exactly where to look. Prior to the introduction of the “three strikes” statute he had , in fact, done some domestic burglaries, but never been caught in the act. He knew that jewelry was stored either in a dresser or the bottom of a wardrobe, sometimes in a box under the bed and occasionally — rarely — in a safe. The procedure for searching drawers was to start with the bottom one and work your way up, not closing them. That way time was kept to a minimum.

When he came for electronic goods, it was even more straightforward. But on those jobs he brought a pick-up truck for easy loading, not a motorbike for a fast getaway.

In this case he had to look and make decisions fast. Alex had told him a bit but not much: an employee who was acting suspiciously, the need to check up on his background and whether he had any contact with the press or any prior involvement with the case. Did he grow up in the same town as Dorothy Olsen — the victim of the crime in the case that Alex was working on? Did he know Dorothy or anyone else in her family? Did he know Clayton Burrow?

But how do you check these things out? Photographs, documents, a diary … It was hard to know where to begin.

Lee started with the obvious hiding places: shoe boxes, whether in the wardrobe or under the bed. They were the classic hiding places for documents. But that was only if the person was actually trying to hide the documents. If he was not, then they could be in other more practical places, like a desk drawer or writing bureau or a bedside cabinet.

There were a couple of shoe boxes, but all they contained were an old pair of sandals and a hardly-worn pair of sneakers.

In the living room, there was a writing bureau — he had passed it on the way in. He flicked through several piles of papers quickly. There were bills, credit card statements and such like. Another contained legal briefs, case notes and things obviously to do with his work.

Then he felt something hard against his palm, something rigid. He pulled it out from amid the papers. A passport. He opened it to look at the name and when he did he got a jolt of surprise.

The passport didn’t belong to Nat. It belonged to the dead girl: Dorothy Olsen.

Gaining access to the building on the third floor had been straightforward enough. But Jonathan still had to get to wherever the computer and the scanning tunneling microscope were located.

He thought that at this time it would be easy, that there wouldn’t be many people about. But the trouble was there were a few — and that made it even harder. During the day, when lots of people were about, an unfamiliar face wouldn’t attract any attention. But when there were fewer people, it was the exact opposite. And some of the people who were about, were security people. They didn’t just guard the entrances: they patrolled the corridors.

He had to get to the staircase and down to the ground floor where the microscope was situated.

And the question was what he did when he got there. How would he get what he had come for without David noticing?

He started walking down the central staircase. This was relatively safe as any suspicions that anyone might have would be allayed by the fact that he was walking down the stairs and was therefore apparently leaving.

However, once he got to the foot of the stairs on the ground floor, he turned not toward the exit but toward the lab housing the microscope. On the way he saw two people walking the other way to him in a corridor: a middle-aged woman and a security guard. He was worried that his eyes would give him away so he mumbled something toward the woman and nodded in her direction as he walked past her. He hoped that this would allay the security guard’s suspicions. But, just to make sure, he glanced down at his watch as he got close to the passing point with the security guard.

When he got to the end of the corridor, he turned left and walked up to the doors of the lab. There were two glass port holes that enabled him to look inside. He saw a man with curly hair working alone there — a man whom he assumed to be David Sedaka.

But the problem was what to do now.

Should he go in and challenge him? That would lead to a physical confrontation. Or should he try to lure him out? Or wait for him to leave? He couldn’t just stand here outside watching. He had to act now.

Lee Kelly was staring at the passport trying to figure out its implications.

He realized that if Nathaniel had the passport, he had quite likely taken it off Dorothy Olsen. The question was, how … and when ? He flicked through the pages and looked for the visa stamps. There was only one. It showed that she arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport on May 25, 1998. Alex had said something about her booking a plane ticket for the 24 th- one day earlier. The difference in date was presumably due to the time difference or the length of the flight.

But the interesting thing was that there was no exit stamp to indicate that she had left England.

He knew that some countries don’t stamp the passport on exit, only on entry. Was that the policy in England at the time?

It was before 9/11, so it might have been that they didn’t stamp the passport on exit. The United States didn’t, even now. Did that mean that she had come back to the USA? Either way, the question was when and how did Nat get her passport? Had he stolen it from her? Had he killed her? Had he gone to England and killed her there and then stolen her passport so that she would not be identified? Could that be why they never found a body? Because she had been killed in England and it had been classified as a death of an unknown person? Could he have killed her, taken her passport and then also planted false documents on her so that she had been wrongly identified in England? That would further reduce the likelihood of the body being identified as that of Dorothy Olsen.

But then again, why assume that she was dead? If her passport was here was there not a more obvious answer?

He was hiding her! She was staying here at his place in hiding, unable to go out.

But then why wasn’t she here now? Had she heard him breaking in and run away, thinking he was the police? There was no sign of any open windows, other than the one he had prized open in order to get in. Was she hiding in the house? It was hard to imagine where. He had looked round in all the places large enough.

Or had she been in hiding here until recently until it got too hot for her to hang round? And had she now run away altogether or merely found somewhere else to hide?

Whatever the explanation, one thing was sure: the visa stamp in her passport offered documentary proof that Dorothy Olsen had arrived in London on or about the time she had disappeared. And that was what Alex Sedaka wanted. Lee closed the passport and was about to put it in his pocket when he noticed that something had fallen out.

It was a piece of thin white cardboard.

Jonathan made his way to the basement and sought out the closet where the electricity supply was controlled. It was locked, but with nothing more than a cheap padlock. He didn’t know much about picking locks, but he’d brought a large screwdriver with him. Instead of going for the lock itself, he looked at the flimsy plate on the closet door. Without much difficulty — and with surprisingly little noise — he prized it open.