Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

‘Don't tell me you've gone and fallen for the grieving daughter.’

‘Henning-’

‘You have! You're becoming one of those death row lawyers who end up knobbing the widow! Tom, just wrap this up and come back.’

‘Seriously, Henning. I need to work out why Merton was in New York. If he was up to no good, we can see off any legal claim against us. The UN would be completely in the clear.’

‘Look, Tom. You'll still get your fee, if that's what's worrying you.’

‘No, I'm just trying to do what's best for the UN.’

‘Long time since you've talked like that, Tom. Do you really think she'd sue?’

Tom remembered Rebecca's tirade of a few minutes earlier. After that, I'll make sure you're prosecuted for murder and robbery. She hadn't meant it; it had been an outburst. But it would do. ‘She's been making threats, yes.’

‘All right, then. Do what you have to do. But I stress: my overwhelming preference is that you close this thing down. It's the bloody GA this week, remember. I don't have time for another headache.’

Tom went back inside, concluding, not for the first time, that Henning Munchau was the most perceptive man he knew.

He returned to making tea, carefully carrying the two warm mugs upstairs. In the doorway he watched Rebecca replacing chipped and broken picture frames onto the shelf, a cellphone cradled to her ear. She was speaking softly.

‘I know, it's just terrible to see your little girl like this. But please, try to believe me when I tell you that this is only an infection and we can beat it. And once we have, she'll be well enough for the transplant operation.’ Her gaze flicked over Tom. She took the mug he offered and carried on speaking. ‘That's right. We've had the typing back from Anna's brother and he's a ten-antigen HLA match. Sorry, Mrs Reid, that means your son's the perfect donor. We just need to get Anna through this infection and… that's OK. You call whenever you need. Goodbye, Mrs Reid.’

After she had disconnected, he gestured towards the photographs. ‘You should leave that alone,’ he said as gently as he could. ‘For the police.’

‘I'm not going to call the police.’

He tried to hide his relief: the last thing he needed was for this burglary to become public knowledge. If Rebecca Merton had assumed the UN was behind this break-in, there'd be a thousand online conspiracy nutcases ready to jump to the same conclusion. ‘Why not?’

She looked right at him, the green clarity of her irises so bright it was hard not to look away. He had a sudden flashback to the Marvel comics of his youth – an addiction which lasted a good two years – and to Cyclops of the X-Men, the mutant superhero who could fire devastating ‘optic blasts’ from his eyes. Did Rebecca Merton have some similarly mystical power, a gaze that could instantly paralyse any man caught in its path?

‘In the last twenty-four hours,’ she said quietly. ‘I've discovered that my father has died a violent death, shot down in cold blood. My home has been burgled and I've surrendered my father's life story – which I've spent my life guarding with great privacy – because it was clearly the only way to persuade you that my father was not some kind of terrorist.’ The volume was louder now, the face redder. ‘Do you think I can cope with a whole lot more people traipsing all over my home, asking me more questions and more questions and MORE FUCKING QUESTIONS!’

At that, she hurled her mug, still full of tea, across the room so that it hit the wall. There was silence, the two of them watching the hot liquid streak down.

‘Listen, Rebecca-’

‘No, you listen to me.’

Something in her voice made him freeze.

‘You said you wanted to cut a deal, so let's cut a deal.’

‘About the financial contribution, I understand-’

‘I don't want your money, I want your help. It was you – the people you work for – that started all this and now you're going to damn well help get me through it.’

‘I'm listening.’

‘I want to find out the truth of what happened to my father in New York and what it has to do with all this.’ She gestured at the detritus of the room. ‘I can't do that alone. But you're a lawyer, you've got the UN behind you. You know how these things work. I want you to help me.’

‘Deal,’ he said. ‘But no police means we'll have to do this ourselves. We have to start at the beginning. Can you see anything missing?’

They looked around, surveying afresh a room in which every last item had been either displaced or smashed. She caught his eye, both of them thinking the same thing, when the hint of that wonky smile appeared around her lips. He noticed it and smiled back. The absurdity of his question now hung in the air – asking a passenger on the Titanic if he noticed anything out of place – and at last she released a laugh, a laugh powered not by humour or joy but their opposites, by tension and grief coiled up for too long.

The sound coming from her changed. She tried to cover her face, but he could see a tear falling down her cheek. He stepped forward, hesitated a moment, then put his hand on her arm and drew her towards him. She let her head rest for a moment on his chest and in that instant every one of his nerve endings felt as if it were on fire.

But then, just as suddenly, she sprang back, dabbed her eyes and signalled that the moment had vanished. ‘Let's get on with it.’

She started methodically, in the far left corner of the room, picking up books not to replace them but to divine a pattern. She would try to work out which areas had interested the thieves; only then could she begin to deduce why. Tom watched her, noting the concentration engraved on her face. He imagined her as a child, sharp and studious, running to bring home happy news of A grades to a father whose own childhood had been consumed by darkness and evil. She hadn't said so explicitly, but Tom was sure Rebecca Merton had been an only child, the bond with her father almost supernaturally intense.

After a few minutes, she moved back to the desk, working now with greater intensity. Tom watched her head to a specific drawer. As she bent over, he was engulfed by a new surge of desire, like a wave breaking over his head.

She tugged at the drawer and it moved easily. She looked up, as if a hunch had been confirmed. ‘The lock's been broken,’ she said.

‘What was in there?’

‘My father's papers.’

‘What kind of papers?’

‘Legal documents, bank details, things he wanted me to look after. In case…’

Tom stepped closer, examining the desk: a mug of pens, a photograph of Rebecca and another woman sitting on a rock on some sun-drenched beach taken, Tom guessed, about ten years earlier. A rectangle on the wooden desk, marked out by dust, was darker than the rest: from the dimensions, Tom could see what it meant. The monitor, unplugged and useless was still there, but the computer had been taken.

He turned to tell Rebecca, now trying to reassemble the contents of a filing cabinet, when he saw something straight ahead of him, pinned to the corkboard above the desk, that made him start. Two words, filling a single sheet of A4. There was no mistaking it: though clearly scribbled in haste, they were written in the same hand as the notebook he had read that afternoon. The message read simply ‘Remember Kadish’.

‘What's this?’

Rebecca glanced up and for a moment looked utterly startled.

Tom shuddered. ‘Was this not here before? Has this been pinned up just now?’

‘Oh no, it was here before,’ Rebecca replied softly. ‘It's something my father wrote a while ago. He's reminding me to say the memorial prayer for my mother.’

‘For your mother?’

‘Yes. She died six years ago. My father was always very insistent that we do the prayers on the anniversary of her death. That's the name of the Jewish prayer for a dead loved one.’