Deep Shelter (35 page)

He drove a circuit of the square. Number 1 was a mansion block. He parked, went to the front and checked the entrance hall. No concierge inside. No desk. Just red carpet and an arrangement of dried flowers. Twenty golden buttons gleamed beside the intercom. Belsey rang number 89.

“Yes?” The voice didn’t sound like it belonged to a man in his nineties.

“I’ve got a Miriam Lanzer here. She wants to speak to Lord Strathmore. Can someone come down and help her?”

Belsey went back to his car and reversed out of sight. He waited, watching the front of the block. After a moment a guard came out, broad in a dark suit and mirrored shades. He checked the street then went back in. Belsey took his cosh, skipped up the steps to the door, rang every other bell.

“I’m fixing the roof,” he said. “There’s a leak. Someone called about water leaking down through the flats.”

The door buzzed. Belsey waded across the lobby’s thick carpet to a lift. The numbers above it were lit at floor five. He took the stairs, running.

The stairs were steep. Stained-glass windows let in something that wasn’t light. Belsey got to the fifth floor in time to see the guard unlocking a door. He stepped silently over the carpet and brought the cosh down at the back of the man’s head. It was crisp. He got the sweet spot. The guard collapsed.

No weapons on him. The key was still in the lock. Belsey opened the door, slipped inside and closed it behind him.

The flat was dark. A parquet floor led between oil paintings towards the only lit room. Belsey could see a bank of cigarette smoke around the chandeliers. He waited for any other guards to appear, maybe concerned about their friend. No one appeared.

Belsey stepped towards the smoke. He entered the main room. An old man sat in an armchair to the side. Two transparent tubes ran over his ears, into his nostrils. He watched Belsey with watery eyes. Oxygen came from a portable blue case on the card table beside him, next to a pack of Rothmans and an insulin syringe. His hands rested on a tartan blanket that covered his lap.

The room was grand and bare. Light stole in between curtains and was immediately frozen, forming solid columns of smoke and dust. Glass-fronted cabinets stood empty. There was a discoloured mirror framed like a masterpiece. Several artefacts made out of dark wood kept themselves to the shadows. Only one antique that wasn’t holding up well. He looked towards the empty corridor, then at his guest.

“Michael?” he asked.

Strathmore’s chest rose and fell with effort. Belsey glanced into adjacent rooms, just in case. They were all empty. Off the corridor, to the right, stairs rose elegantly into a darkness of polished wood, an upper floor with no lights on. Belsey returned to the main room. The lord’s eyes followed him as he searched.

“Are you here to kill me, Michael?” His voice was hoarse but still officer class: he wanted to know the order of play. He was very thin. Belsey looked into Strathmore’s weak eyes and saw synapses shutting down, passageways of memory closing one by one. Don’t die on me, Belsey thought. Not yet. The man felt for his cigarettes and knocked them to the floor. Belsey picked them up. He slid one out.

“Why would I want to kill you?”

“I said to keep you alive, you know. I protected you. There were others . . . People with more drastic ideas. Convenience, inconvenience.” He said the words carefully, as if they described two great principles of existence. He dragged himself forward in his chair, weight on his right arm. “Do you want to know what happened? Did William tell you?”

“I want to know where Site 3 is.”

Strathmore considered this over a couple of wheezing breaths.

“Site 3 is abandoned.”

“I’m not looking to rent the place. I need to go there.” Belsey checked an ornate bronze clock on the corner table. Two cherubs guarded ticking hands. Almost quarter to one, although he wasn’t sure he’d trust any timekeeping device in this particular flat. Belsey lit a Rothmans and took a drag. He handed it to the lord. He was curious to see how it worked with the tubes. It worked fairly normally. Smoke rose into Strathmore’s face.

“Do you want an apology?”

“I’ve told you what I want.”

“I knew, when I heard about Douglas, and then William . . . It was a stupid idea having you there. The exercise was ill-judged from the start. But the problem was loved ones, you see.” He flicked the cigarette. Ash fell over the blanket. “Loved ones. Those we supposedly won’t leave behind. We used to call it the family problem. Could we put families down there? How would it work? Simple things. What would it do to a child?”

“Down where exactly?”

“You hated it. We wanted to know what young boys would do. You showed us.” He coughed. “They would not stay still. They would explore. Run away. Maybe you knew more than we did. Wisest of us all.”

He’s stalling me, Belsey thought. It’s an act. He brought the knife out and felt stupid. The clock chimed. Strathmore looked at the knife. “But you have to understand, I am telling you what you need to know.”

“Site 3.”

“What happened at Site 3 was . . . We thought it was an accident. For years. A tragic accident. I had no idea we’d been infiltrated. I know that you care about this.” He uncoiled fingers either side of the cigarette and pointed them at Belsey. “Ferryman. You know it was Ferryman.”

“I was starting to have my suspicions.”

“We hadn’t realised the panic on the Russian side. How could we have known? Instructions from on high, from the Politburo itself, for God’s sake—do whatever feels necessary. Strike at the heart. We didn’t know until it was far too late.”

“Was it you? Were you Ferryman?”

“Me?” The man laughed and then wheezed until he changed colour. He sucked breath in. “But you know . . . I thought you knew. You must know who it was.”

Belsey was pondering this when his mobile rang. The screen said
Jemma
. He stepped out of the room, answering quietly.

“Michael? Speak to me. You’re not going to believe where I am. I’m with Lord Strathmore.” He heard breathing, someone trying to form words.

“Nick?”

“Jemma?”

She gave a small cry.

“Are you OK? Where are you?”

“Nick?”

“It’s me. Where are you?”

“It’s Jemma.”

“I can hear you.”

“Help me.”

“Is he there?”

“No.”

“Where are you?” He couldn’t hear her reply if there was one. It sounded like either his phone or hers kept cutting out. He climbed the stairs to the landing on the floor above.

“Jemma? Hello?”

“Nick.” She was sobbing now.

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What can you see?”

“I can’t . . . He’s coming back.”

She cut out. Belsey swore. He called Vodafone and got put through to the liaison department.

“This is absolutely urgent. I need a ping location on the following number.” He gave them the number. Something in his tone must have communicated necessity. They said they’d run the check. He was pacing the corridor now. He got to a room at the end, a bedroom with sheets folded on the bed.

“We’ll call you back,” they said.

“No, I’ll stay on. I need it now. Immediately.”

Belsey checked his watch. He looked at the room, as cold and varnished as the ones downstairs. No family photos. No traces of service to the nation. He opened a mahogany wardrobe. Five white shirts hung down, all neatly pressed, all different sizes. He opened the drawers beside the bed. Empty. He felt the first inklings of dread.

“OK, call me back,” he said.

He tried other doors on the corridor and they were locked. Belsey went downstairs and stepped into a bathroom of old, white porcelain. No toothbrush, a cabinet above the sink with one wrapped bar of soap. He turned a tap and it coughed, then ran brown.

The window had been sealed shut. It looked like all the windows were sealed.

Belsey returned to the corridor and studied the bar of light on the threshold strip. It flickered. There were people outside. Flypaper, he thought. Lured to a fucking safe-house. They were good, he had to give them that. They were professionals.

Through the doorway to the living room he saw Strathmore move the blanket on his lap to check a gun.

The balcony was his best option. Belsey was wondering about getting onto it when the front door opened.

“Get your hands off me.”

Kirsty Craik was shoved inside.

“This is only temporary,” Finch said.

“What exactly is only temporary?”

She seemed in reasonable condition. She wasn’t cuffed, bore no visible injuries. They both saw Belsey.

“Nick,” Kirsty said.

Finch walked past him to speak to Strathmore. He didn’t look happy.

“Are you OK?” Belsey asked Craik, when Finch was out of earshot.

“Yes. What is this?”

“It’s like a well appointed prison. I need to get out of here quickly.”

“Are you the reason there’s a guy on the floor outside?”

“Partly. I’ve got a lead on Jemma. She just called, but it sounds like she’s still being held somewhere. I need to move fast, but it could get messy. I don’t know how you want to play it. I can try to get help.”

“Oh, you’re getting out of here. That’s a good idea. Shall we call a cab? There are two more guys waiting at the front, Nick. No one’s getting out of here.”

“Are they armed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Strathmore has a gun under the blanket. Keep an eye on that. Know if Finch is armed?”

“Who’s Finch?”

“Your escort.”

“I don’t know. He’s not wearing a holster.”

“We need to do this before they get back-up.”

Belsey picked up the bronze clock.

“Hey, Gary.” He threw it hard at Finch’s head. The officer ducked. Belsey piled into him, hard—a rugby tackle that drove him to the ground. Strathmore found the gun beneath the blanket and lifted it unsteadily. Craik grabbed his arm, knocking him and the seat over. The front door opened.

“Stop! Don’t move!’

Finch scrambled to his feet and bolted for a side room. Belsey went for Strathmore’s gun. It was a Webley Revolver, ancient-looking, like something out of a kid’s Wild West kit. Belsey fired at the balcony doors and the kickback almost dislocated his shoulder. Glass rained down. Craik ran for the fresh air and Belsey followed. He had a foot outside when he felt a sharp blow to his right arm. Another shot whistled past: the fizz of a pistol with silencer. He climbed over railings to the adjacent balcony. I’ve been shot, he thought. His phone started ringing. Vodafone. He kicked the balcony doors to the neighbouring flat, then decided to answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Maybe leave the fucking phone,” Craik said. “Get to the roof.”

“We have that location for you,” the caller said.

“Hang on.” The doors wouldn’t budge. Craik dragged a glazed garden pot over. They stepped up and pulled themselves to the roof, confronted by a landscape of trellis and satellite dishes.

“Where is it?” Belsey said into the phone.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, go on. What’s the location?”

“EC4.”

“She’s in EC4?”

“The tower she’s receiving signal from is in EC4. So she must be somewhere near.”

THEY JUMPED DOWN TO A BALCONY ON THE SOUTH SIDE
of the building. This time Craik found doors that were already open. They walked through a startled lunch party with fine china and staff in aprons, out to the corridor. Craik pointed to the back stairs. They led down to a tradesman’s entrance and out past delivery boxes to an alley.

Belsey’s car was where he’d left it. Any security detail had been drawn up to the flat.

“I’ve been shot,” he said. “Get in the driver’s seat.”

She turned and saw the dark patch spreading through his suit.

“Oh shit, Nick.”

“I think it just clipped my arm. I could do with something on it.”

In truth, pain was becoming like a cloud around him. They climbed in. He gave her the keys and she drove.

“Head east. Jemma’s in EC4.”

“You’ve found her?”

“It’s a ping location. She called me. She’s just about in signal. She didn’t sound in a great way. I should possibly go via a chemist.”

“I’m on it.”

“Where’ve you been? Apart from Cromwell Hospital?”

“I don’t know.” Craik turned onto Knightsbridge, checked the mirrors. “I was moved around. Several hours in a hotel room. A lot of time in cars.”

“Did Gary Finch have anything interesting to say? About tunnels? Somewhere called Site 3?”

“He said he was protecting me. From you.”

“What a hero.”

She continued onto Piccadilly, cut left into Mayfair and jumped out at a boutique chemist’s. It had gone 1 p.m. Belsey pulled the kitbag onto his lap.
One hundred times more potent than morphine
. Where were the bastards? He rummaged, found a fentanyl stick and split the foil. He clamped it between his teeth. It tasted of plastic and synthetic fruit but the rush was almost instant. He tried to focus. EC4 was the Merrill Lynch building, the old General Post Office headquarters. City of London. Paternoster Square. St. Paul’s. It would be police-heavy, private-security-heavy. They’d all have photographs of him, all be briefed and on high alert. He didn’t really have a choice, though.

Craik came back with the shopping and told him to strip. He took his jacket and shirt off. She poured water down his arm and pronounced the wound superficial.

“It really doesn’t feel particularly superficial.”

“If you’re conscious enough to feel it, it’s superficial. It might just be a bit of glass.”

“I was shot, Kirsty. I’m pretty sure.”

He held gauze in place while she wrapped bandage and then tape. He put the shirt back on, then the jacket. The shirt had a lot of blood on it. The jacket had a hole above the right elbow that looked like he’d caught it on a nail. He did it up, drank some water. Craik started the car again.

They followed the Strand to Fleet Street, into the City. The lunch surge had begun, buildings disgorging their contents, queues building for sushi and burritos. All was bright and peaceful. Belsey directed her up past the Old Bailey to Newgate