The lights in the suite were low. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed herself in the mirror, the curves and shadows of her naked body. Her raven hair hung down her back; her breasts were hard and cold. She looked like one of Blanchard’s pre-Raphaelite maidens, transported by ecstasy or death. She wondered if she had the strength for what she had to do. For the first time in her life, she felt utterly alone in the world. In a strange way, that made it easier.
Blanchard began unbuttoning his shirt. ‘We don’t have to —’
She got onto the bed and knelt over him. Her hair brushed his face.
‘I need you.’
She had never made love like it before. A frenzy possessed her: grief, guilt, fear, hatred — a storm of pent-up emotion cracked open like a thunderhead. She prised his lips open and pressed herself inside him: her tongue, her breasts, her fingers. She bit and pinched and raked her nails down his back, raising welts like burns wherever she touched. She forced him into her; she rocked back and forth against his hips, moaning and gasping as if exorcising a demon, careless of who could hear it in the corridor or the world outside. Blanchard finished before she did, but she made him go on, holding him inside her until she screamed. She fell forward on top of him, pressing herself against him. She was sobbing, though she didn’t know what the tears were for. Their faces were so close the tears wet them both. Blanchard wrapped his arms around her and told her he loved her. For the first time since she’d known him, he sounded frightened of her.
She didn’t know how long they lay there. Somewhere in their passion the clock had got knocked over. When she heard Blanchard’s breathing soften, she pushed herself up and looked down.
Blanchard’s face was still. In the hollow of his throat, the small gold key hung where it always did.
Ellie blew on her hands to warm them, then reached down and lifted the key. There was no clasp: she had to loop it over his neck.
The chain brushed his ear and he stirred, murmuring something in his sleep. Ellie went still as stone. If he caught her now he would surely kill her. She waited, not daring to breathe.
The doctored brandy had done its job. Blanchard settled back and let dreams reclaim him. Ellie pulled the key free and rolled away off the bed. She dressed quickly: not in her funeral clothes, but in an old pair of jeans and a tight-fitting jumper. She rummaged in Blanchard’s suit and found his access card, then pulled the cufflinks out of his shirtsleeves.
She grabbed her backpack and tiptoed out of the room. Her watch said half-past midnight. Harry had said the spiked drink should last for about eight hours, but she thought six was safer. And she had a lot to do.
For the first time all week, the bank was dark. The bid teams must finally have gone home. Foil wrappers and wire cradles from champagne bottles littered the lobby floor; she assumed it meant good news. Even the security guard seemed to have indulged: he was nowhere to be seen. She let herself in with Blanchard’s card and went straight to the lift.
From high in the corner of the foyer, a camera’s black eye recorded her entry. The pictures travelled instantly to the fifth floor, where a computer analysed them and compared the face coming through the door with the card that had been used to open it.
Ellie arrived on the fifth floor half a minute behind her image and let herself in to Blanchard’s office. Down the hall, the computer recorded the fact. She pulled a small laptop out of her bag, bought for cash on the Tottenham Court Road. With an electrician’s screwdriver, she prised the mother-of-pearl inlay off the cufflinks she’d taken from Blanchard’s shirt. A small circuit-board, the size of a five-pence piece, lay nestled inside.
‘Is there a video camera or something in there?’ she’d asked when Harry gave them to her. They’d been in the changing rooms at a clothes shop on Oxford Street, pressed into awkward intimacy behind the curtain.
‘The sleeve would obscure a video camera. This is a gyroscope and accelerometer. It measures the pattern of his movements, the distance and direction, and the software can correlate that with the keypad to work out which buttons he’s pressed.’
Ellie had looked doubtfully at the small cufflinks. ‘It sounds like science fiction.’
‘These things are everywhere now — mobile phones, laptops, music players.’ He’d given a sheepish grin. ‘We actually got these from a video-game controller.’
‘And that’s supposed to make me feel better?’
She slid a nail under the circuit-board, pulled it out of the housing and connected it to the computer using a plug that Harry had given her. A window opened on-screen with a picture of a telephone keypad. The virtual buttons flashed; a second later, a number appeared superimposed.
918193.
She swung pack the painting that covered the safe.
Contrary to the office joke, Destrier didn’t live at the bank. His home was a mock-Tudor mansion near the A12 in Essex, which he shared with two Rhodesian Ridgebacks and whoever could be paid or persuaded to share his bed. That night, she was a skinny girl with vacant eyes and no chest; she barely looked thirteen, though the agency had assured him she was old enough. Whatever his impulses, he knew what his employers would do if he got caught out with an underage girl.
And now his phone was vibrating in the darkness. He fumbled for it on the bedside table, rubbing his eyes as he stared at the screen.
INTRUSION ALERT
He tapped the screen to call up the details.
Card 0002 >> facial verification failure
He didn’t have to check the registry to know who card 0002 belonged to. He stared at the picture underneath. The Stanton bitch. Every suspicion he’d entertained for the last six months — every doubt, every worry, every fear — crawled over his skin like lice.
Calm down, he told himself. He knew she’d been fucking Blanchard that night — had listened to it through the mic concealed in her phone. Her moans had still been in his ears when he screwed his own girl, who’d been limp and undemonstrative by comparison.
Maybe she picked up the wrong card. Perhaps Blanchard sent her to the office to get something.
He left the girl and went to the computer in the room next door. He connected to the office and brought up the security log.
01:09 >> Card 0002 entry to BUILDING
01:11 >> Card 0002 entry to ROOM 5-1
Blanchard didn’t allow cameras in his office, or Destrier could have had a look at what Ellie was doing. All he could do was watch the log to see what happened next.
While he waited, he dialled Blanchard at Claridge’s. He let it ring until the voicemail picked up; hung up; tried again. No answer. He swore, though silently. Blanchard wasn’t the sort of man you cursed out loud, even from thirty miles away.
A new line appeared on the security log. Destrier stared at it in disbelief.
01:15 >> ROOM 5–1 access to SAFE
Ellie lifted the red folder out of the safe and laid it on Blanchard’s desk. She hesitated for a second, reading the gold-lettered LAZARUS on the cover and wondering what she would find inside. She felt the leather cords; she tested the seals between her finger and thumb. The wax flexed in her grip: it must have been resealed recently.
No way back from here, she told herself. On the wall, the damsel tied to the tree tipped her head back in a plea to the knight advancing on her. Save me? Don’t hurt me? The paint was silent.
Ellie snapped the seals. Crumbs of wax spilled over Blanchard’s desk, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. He’d find out soon enough.