Ли Чайлд - Smile

“Circumstantial,” Glover said.

“He was right behind Anenko, going in the men's room. An arm's length away. He wanted to be there. He made up a lot of ground. He took a direct route through the seating arrangements.”

“Still circumstantial.”

“At least he's the last person to see Anenko alive. We should talk to him.”

“He has an alibi,” Skelton said.

“What alibi? How could he?”

“He was en route to San Francisco.”

“Bullshit. You showed us when that flight took off. He was sitting right there, drinking coffee. He missed it.”

“He didn't miss it. He was on the plane. His passport, his boarding card, both checked by competent officials at the departure gate. Which is a rocksolid government-backed alibi.”

“How is that possible?”

“Watch this,” Skelton said.

He clicked around and came up with a completely new picture. Passengers, getting on a plane. On the right of the screen was inlaid a read-out of what the scanning machine was saying. The competent official was matching names on boarding passes with names on passports. But not passports with faces.

A man in a blue suit stepped up. The agent checked his names and dabbed his boarding card against the reader. The right of the screen flashed in green: REACHER, JACK.

The guy walked into the jet bridge.

“Watch this,” Skelton said again.

He switched back to the first-class lounge and rewound the timeline all the way to the security line. All the way to the guy who had to take his shoes off. He was wearing a blue suit. Skelton stopped the action and put a still frame through the tilting and rotating software until the view seemed to be from directly above the far end of the X-ray belt. Where the small but growing pile of hand luggage was accumulating. Which contained Anenko's handsome leather briefcase, and two identical canvas messenger bags, with leather straps.

“He swapped them here,” Skelton said. “Reacher took the other guy's bag. The other guy took Reacher's bag, which had his passport and boarding card inside. No doubt the reverse was also true. The other guy got on Reacher's plane, and no doubt Reacher got on the other guy's plane. It's incriminating behaviour in itself. And it's all easy enough to prove.”

Glover looked at the Foreign Office woman, who looked at the MI6 woman, who shook her head very slightly, and then they all three looked at me, and I shook my head very slightly.

Glover said, “No, I think Anenko had a heart attack. Then later the thing with the gases toppled him over. Natural causes. He was certainly overweight.”

“Sir, the evidence allows for other possibilities.”

“There are always wild rumours. Generally better to ignore them.”

“Just because no one in this room liked Anenko? Does the end justify the means?”

Glover shook his head.

“I don't like loose cannon,” he said. “Usually they're a royal pain in the neck. I would be happy to find Mr Reacher and have a word. But we can't prove a case without busting his alibi, which we can't do without telling the world we let people get on planes here in London with the wrong boarding card and the wrong passport and the wrong face. In the wider picture it's probably better we don't do that. In the sense of possible damage to an important economic sector. And as you mentioned, no one liked Anenko anyway. So, all things considered, I think we'll let it slide.”

Skelton was quiet a beat.

Then he said, “Reacher knew you would, right? He knew you would think the thing about getting on the plane was more important. That's why he didn't care about the cameras.”

Glover looked at the MI6 woman, who nodded, so he nodded too.

“Reacher took a couple of intelligent chances,” he said. “But overall it was beautifully executed. By which I mean, how the aftermath was handled. The deed itself was routine. What came next was perfectly predicted. But also manipulated. He's daring us to help him. Just this one instance.”

“Will we?”

“Probably better the world doesn't know we let the wrong people on planes.”

“Plus we didn't like Anenko anyway.”

“There's that.”

“And Reacher predicted all this?”

“Apparently.”

“Is it us, paying him?”

“Good lord, no,” Glover said. “We don't do things like that.”

Skelton sought me out. The American.

“We don't either,” I said.

“But you're going to help him.”

I said, “Kid, you need to learn, this whole business is about choosing between a very bad thing and an even worse thing. There are no good answers.”

“OK,” Skelton said. “Anenko died on the toilet.”

“Like Elvis.”

“There's that. All I'm saying is, the evidence could be used against you.”

“Delete it,” Glover said. “We had no need for it in the first place. Anenko died of purely natural causes.”

“Including his neck?”

“He was a big heavy man. He suddenly pitches forward, literally a dead weight, purely naturally his neck breaks on impact. It's simple physics. We don't need hours and hours of recordings. It's a routine event. We just mentioned Elvis. I'm sure there were thousands more.”

“OK,” Skelton said, and he deleted it all right then and there, which is how Anenko stayed dead, and Reacher stayed free. Later he mailed short and cryptic thank-you notes to both Skelton and Glover. Neither officer turned over the notes to the investigation. Both kept them private.