Tommy left the room, presumably to find more food of mine to pilfer.
Olivia closed the dark, wooden door behind Tommy and sat at the end of the leather couch closest to my chair. I pushed my legs down, bringing myself upright and waited for her question.
"Would you consider working for the LOA to bring whoever is committing these murders to justice?"
That was basically what I'd expected to be asked, and I already knew my answer. "No."
"Thanks for your help," Olivia said and got back to her feet.
"I'll work for you," I clarified. "Only you, not Avalon."
She turned back to me with a quizzical expression on her face. "Why?"
"Don't trust Avalon," I said. "This is an agreement between you and me."
"I can't pay you without putting your name on something."
"I never asked for money," I said.
Olivia sat back down. "What?"
"I've accumulated a tidy sum over the years, I don't need money. But I do want something from you."
"No," she snapped. "I'm not about to jeopardise my career for anyone."
I laughed, I couldn't help it. "Bloody hell, Olivia, nothing like that. What do you know about what happened to me a decade ago?"
"Tommy said that Mordred grabbed you while you were helping children escape his experiments. That he had your memory wiped."
"That about sums it up. But Mordred was getting help from someone, and I'm certain Avalon was involved. So, all I want you to do is call Avalon and ask them to send all the information they have on Mordred, to you."
"Why?"
"Because they'll either comply, which means they have nothing to hide, or the merest mention of his name will have someone calling you to tell you to stay away from it. In which case, we'll know something's going on."
"Mordred's fingers were in a lot of pies, was well known within Avalon circles. He had a lot of friends before he decided to cut ties and go it alone."
"Mordred never went it alone. He just gave Avalon plausible deniability."
"Did you know that he's dead?" Olivia asked.
I'd been the one looking down on him through a sniper scope in New York several months earlier, the one who pulled the trigger and blew the back of his head off. But I wasn't going to tell Olivia that.
"I'd heard that, yes," I said.
"But you're still hoping to jog loose anyone who was helping him."
I nodded, but didn't say what I was thinking. And then I'm going to point out to them how stupid it was to let me live. Preferably over the course of many hours in private.
"That could get me fired, or killed," Olivia said.
"Be quick then."
She raised an eyebrow.
"They're not going to just kill you. You'll get warned to stay away long before that. It probably means someone of power is behind it."
"Tommy told me that you saved a lot of kids from Mordred's filthy hands. That they caught you when you went back to save more. Why'd you do it? You didn't work for Avalon anymore. You haven't worked there for about a century."
"I did it because no one else would," I said. "Because it needed doing. And because I was no longer required to sit by and watch horrific things happen for the greater good of Avalon. They're not always the good guys."
Olivia dialled a number on her mobile. "This is Director Olivia Green of the LOA."
There was a pause whilst someone on the other end replied.
"I need access to Mordred's file."
Another pause.
"Yes, that Mordred."
Pause.
"You don't need to know why, just that I want it. How long will it take?"
Pause.
"Excellent, get back to me." Olivia hung up.
"It'll be a few hours," she said to me. "Most of his file isn't computerised."
"Thank you," I said. "I expect you'll get a call before then to telling you to mind your business."
"What do I say when they ask why I want it?"
I shrugged. "Make something up. Just make it sound believable."
"So, do we have a deal?" She held out her hand.
I sighed and shook it. "I'll need full access to the investigation."
"Deal. You're not what I expected from an ex-member of the Faceless," Olivia said as we left the room together. "Every member I've met before was very cold, almost clinical, closed off to others. You're not like that."
"Probably why I'm an ex-member."
Olivia's phone rang and she walked away to answer it.
"You two sort out what we need to do," Tommy asked as he came in from the kitchen, apple in hand.
"Did you leave me any food at all?"
Tommy bit into the apple and shrugged. "Hungry."
Olivia returned and removed her coat from the back of a nearby chair. "Well, you might not be in a minute," she told Tommy. "That phone was from one of the attendants at the morgue. Apparently there's something we need to see."
Olivia and Tommy took his truck and, as the weather was nice, I decided to use my bike again. Not only did I enjoy riding it, but it allowed me some time to think about what I'd gotten into.
I'd left Avalon in 1890, under what couldn't exactly be considered the best conditions. I cut all ties and spent the next hundred years doing jobs for friends and travelling the world. It had been a good life, and now I'd almost come full circle, although I hoped this agreement with Olivia would be short-term, letting me slip back once again into blissful obscurity
I resisted the urge to over-take Tommy, now driving at a reasonable speed, so that I didn't arrive at the LOA headquarters in Winchester by myself, and have to explain who I was and why I was there. Much easier to arrive with their boss and have people leave me alone.
I'd never actually been to the Winchester office before. It had been built four years ago, when I was in the middle of my memory-wiped years. But as I pulled up to the huge steel entrance gates, it certainly made an imposing impression.
Anyone coming over the fifteen-foot-high, barbed-wire topped brick walls would have to contend with a few hundred yards of open field before getting to the main building. There were two guard posts, one sat on either side of the front gate, and both appeared to be manned. Further inside the compound, to either side of the main building, were two smaller buildings. Each of these had a sniper nest towering at least sixty feet off the ground. Those inside would have complete view of anything coming from any side of the compound.
Tommy had told me that the rear of the building was used as a training facility, and often full of highly trained, not to mention heavily armed, Avalon personnel. The only way someone was getting to the main building was if they were allowed in or if they had an army.
I pulled up behind Tommy's truck as Olivia spoke to one of the guards, who in turn signalled for the gates to be opened. Soon after, I was parking my bike and looking up at the structure of the main building.
Thirty stories high, and a mass of steel and glass, it dominated the landscape. The edges of the building were curved slightly, giving it the unusual appearance of twisting as it rose, but it was impressive nonetheless. The front entrance reminded me of Tommy's business. Completely circular, it sat in front of the main building. Although it only had one floor, it had a huge dome of stained-glass atop it giving it the height of a four story building. From the top of the larger building to the ground that we were standing on had to be over three-hundred and fifty feet.
I removed my helmet and placed it on the bike's seat. "You work in there?" I asked Olivia as she left the truck.
She looked up toward the top of the building. "Floor twenty-nine," she said. "It has one hell of a view."
"How many people work inside?" I asked as we entered the building.
"Over three hundred during the day, maybe fifty at night," Olivia replied as she nodded to several armed guards who watched us enter.
A woman with dark, curly hair that reminded me of Medusa sat behind the receptionist's desk and waved at Tommy and Olivia, reserving a scowl for me as I passed and waved, too.