‘Who else? Nobody else cared about him. I don’t have a line on who they are because it doesn’t really matter. But I’ll bet they’ve got the FSB oath of allegiance tattooed inside their eyelids.’
‘Why should they care about Clare? If it was a Moscow hit team they’ll be long gone by now.’
‘Maybe. Thing is, she might have heard something, put two and two together. And after the Litvinenko scandal, the last thing Moscow needs is someone leaping out of the woodwork proving they’re a ruthless bunch of bastards who’d murder a helpless man in his hospital bed to stop him talking.’
Harry pushed his coffee away. He had a feeling Ballatyne was being unusually frank about Clare. Rik had already come up against one brick wall on the HM Prison Service transfers database, but was currently trying other ways in. Unless her name had been deliberately kept off any official list, she must have gone to ground for her own reasons.
‘So you want me to find her?’
‘No. I don’t.’
Harry was surprised. ‘Then what are we doing here?’
‘We’re not. We didn’t speak, you haven’t seen me.’ He swept a hand out. ‘None of this took place. If you say it did, I’ll have you taken out and shot.’
It explained the absent minders. Ballatyne was being very discreet.
‘So this is off the books?’
‘So far off, it’s on the other side of nowhere.’ Ballatyne looked grim. ‘I’m not kidding, Harry. You and I don’t know each other.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give me your mobile.’
Harry did so, and Ballatyne keyed in a number and handed it back.
‘That’s how you contact me, but by text message only. It’s an untraceable number. If you need to speak, say so and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’
Harry stared at him. He had never known Ballatyne to be so cautious before. Whatever was worrying the MI6 man had to be internal — something that he couldn’t talk about. Whatever it was, to be using ‘black’ phones and numbers, it was serious.
‘Find Jardine and make it toot-bloody-sweet,’ Ballatyne concluded. ‘If only to prove I wasn’t wrong in putting her in that hospital in the first place. I’ll work out a way of paying reasonable expenses, but it’ll be right under the counter, so keep the costs down.’
Harry nodded. ‘In that case I’ll start here and now. First off, I’d like some clear photos from her personnel file, in case we need to show them around.’
‘Agreed. What else?’
‘Her home address. I doubt she’ll go back there, but it’s a start.’
‘You’d be wasting your time. She sold her flat through a solicitor after the Georgia business; took the money in cash and went underground.’
‘I’d still like the details.’
‘Why — because of friends, drinking buddies, the man at the corner shop remembering her for her cheery hello? That’s a hell of a reach.’ When Harry said nothing, he sighed. ‘Fair enough. You know best. And I owe you that, I suppose. What else?’
‘CCTV in the hospital?’
‘I’ve asked, but they’re playing silly buggers, citing invasion of privacy. It might take time, so work on the basis that you’ll have to do without.’
Harry frowned. ‘It’s a murder enquiry at the very least. Doesn’t that trump those issues?’
‘I thought so, too. But our legal brains say because of other personnel being treated there, it’s rather delicate.’ Ballatyne pulled a sour face. ‘Bloody silly if you ask me, but there you go. Is that it?’
‘Who were her buddies around the water cooler at Vauxhall Cross? You know she had some.’
Ballatyne looked wary. It was a sore point. Following the Red Station debacle, it had become apparent that Clare Jardine had been receiving information from inside MI6, helping her to stay out of reach of the authorities. The friends responsible had so far remained hidden, but Harry was willing to bet that some still worked in the MI6 building.
‘That’s never going to happen,’ Ballatyne said at last.
‘Why? I’m hardly going to make their names public.’
‘I’m sure you’re not. But under the circumstances, having you galloping around London after members of Six isn’t going to help matters — and I’d never get it sanctioned, anyway.’
Harry breathed easily. In spite of his words, Ballatyne hadn’t made an outright refusal. He’d become used to the MI6 man’s language, and he had a way of showing when he was amenable to persuasion. All it needed was the right kind of pressure.
‘I’m not after the entire department. Just one person.’
Ballatyne looked wary. ‘Christ, please don’t tell me you actually have a name.’
‘No. But it had to be a woman. Someone she worked with and trusted, although not necessarily in the same section.’
‘Why a woman?’
‘Because she doesn’t trust men.’
Ballatyne stood up, a flicker of something on his face which might have been understanding. ‘I have to go. I’ve got a round of meetings to stop this thing going global. I’ll see what I can find out. In the meantime, let’s just hope Jardine doesn’t bump into any of Moscow’s bogey-men.’
NINE
Clare pulled back her waistband and inspected her stomach in the bathroom mirror. With no electricity, she was relying on the pallid light coming through the small frosted window to see. It didn’t help appearances much. Gingerly peeling back the edge of the bandage, she found the skin around the wound looking angry and swollen. It wouldn’t look good on the beach, but she wasn’t planning on going swimming any time soon. It wasn’t itching as much as it had been, although she wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign. Good if she was continuing to heal, bad if her body was shutting down around the wound because of infection.
Somehow, though, she felt it was improving. Her core fitness had a lot to do with it, and a resolve to survive, the latter something she had managed to keep a hold on even at her lowest ebb. All she had to do now was take care of the injury.
She put the dressing back in place and listened to the sounds of movement above her head. People were heading out to work, vans and trucks were coming and going, and the intensity of traffic was a faint buzz in the background. It was nine o’clock and another day was well under way.
She decided to wait. She had time and she needed to rest.
After leaving the squat in Pimlico for the first time, she’d scouted the area carefully, looking for somewhere else to stay. Keeping off the streets was essential until she could sort out what to do long-term. Mitzi had given her the addresses of two nearby squats, but she hadn’t liked the feel of the atmosphere. Too many young guys for a start; mostly foreign and far from home, they had the arrogant air of males on the pull. She could do without the inevitable questions or the aggravation, let alone the danger to her wellbeing if things turned rough.
A walk in the area had soon netted her the two things she needed most: ready cash and a mobile phone. Her own mobile had been lost during the shooting. The money was in a Mercedes, several notes tossed carelessly inside the glove box, and the phone had been scored by a simple brush-past of a busy table in a cafe heaving with lunch-time trade. By the time the phone’s owner realised it was gone, Clare was already halfway down the street, her jacket off and folded under her arm to change her profile.
She was now back in touch if she needed to be, and temporarily solvent. And she had a roof over her head.
The house was a narrow, three-storey building at the end of an alley a stone’s throw from Victoria Station. The basement flat had its own entrance and wasn’t overlooked, with no access points for tenants on the floors above. She’d spotted the wrought-iron gate purely by chance as she’d ducked into the alley to take a breather and check on the money she’d found in the Mercedes. It was the junk mail crammed into the letter box which had caught her attention, a sure-fire sign of an absent or lazy tenant. But she’d had to wait before being able to try the gate. The buildings on either side were dressed with scaffolding and protective sheeting, and builders’ skips were piled high with rubble waiting clearance, reflecting the on-going fashion for re-working the premises by attentive landlords and picky tenants.