When he went in, the room was in half darkness, the matron, Maggie Duncan, drawing the curtains. She turned and came forward. Her voice had a tinge of the Scottish Highlands about it.
“Here you are again, Sean. What am I going to do with you?” She patted his face. “God knows, I’ve patched you up enough times over the years.”
“You can’t patch me up this time, Maggie. How is she?”
They both turned and looked at Hannah Bernstein, festooned in a seemingly endless web of tubes and drips, oxygen equipment and electronic screens. Her eyes were closed, the lids almost translucent.
Maggie said, “She’s very weak. It’s a huge load for her heart to bear.”
“It would be. We expected too much from her, all of us. Especially me,” Dillon said.
“When she was in last year, when that Party of God terrorist shot her, we used to talk a lot and mainly about you. She’s very fond of you, Sean. Oh, she might not approve, but she’s very fond.”
“I’d like to believe that,” Dillon said. “But let’s say I don’t deserve it.”
Hannah’s eyelids flickered open. She said softly, “What’s wrong, Sean? Feeling sorry for yourself, the hard man of the IRA?”
“Damn sorry,” he told her, “and you putting the fear of God in me.”
“Oh, dear, I’m in the wrong again.”
Maggie Duncan said, “Two minutes, Sean, and I’ll be back.”
She went out, the door closed softly and Dillon stood at the end of the bed. “Mea culpa,” he said.
“There you go, blaming yourself again. It’s a kind of self-justification – no, worse, an overindulgence. Is that some kind of Irish thing?”
“Damn you!” he said.
“No, damn you, though that’s been taken care of.” She frowned. “What a terrible thing to say. How could I?” She reached out her thin left hand, which he took, and she gripped his hand with surprising strength. “You’re a good man, Sean, a good man in spite of yourself. I’ve always known that.”
The grip slackened, and Dillon, almost choking with emotion, let her hand go gently. The eyes closed, and when she spoke again her voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Night bless, Sean.”
Dillon made it out to the corridor, where he leaned against the wall, breathing deeply. A young nurse pushing a trolley approached and paused at the door, glancing at him with a frown. She was pretty enough, high cheekbones, dark eyes.
“Are you all right?”
Her accent was Dublin Irish. He nodded. “I’m fine. What are you doing?”
“Seeing to the Superintendent’s medication.”
“I think she’s gone to sleep again.”
“Ah, then it can wait.”
She pushed the trolley away. He paused, watching her go, then made for reception, ignoring Maggie Duncan’s call from behind, went down the entrance steps to the car park and headed for the Mini Cooper.
Roper, having fruitlessly tried some obvious routes through the computer, sat back frustrated. Of course, the real problem was that he didn’t really know what he was looking for, but one thing was certain. There was something wrong here. What was it Blake had said? It was as if it had never happened. But it had.
“Time to get back to basics,” he said softly, and called Dillon on his Codex Four. “Where are you?”
“I was with Hannah at Rosedene. I’ve just parked outside Saint Paul’s.”
“Visiting the Holy Mother again, are we? How was Hannah?”
“Hanging in there.”
“Good. I’ve had a call from Ferguson. Cazalet wants answers on the whole Belov thing. He’s sent Blake Johnson over to help, but it’s up to us, and Ferguson wants an explanation. I’m going round to see the Salters at the Dark Man, so meet me there.”
“As soon as I can.”
Dillon had parked outside St. Paul’s Church, around the corner from Harley Street, for a reason. The priest in charge was a professor of psychiatry at London University, and was much used by people operating for Ferguson who experienced mental problems. This had applied to Dillon on occasion.
He went up the steps to the entrance and entered through the small Judas gate. There was a smell of incense, candles flaring beside a statue of the Virgin and Child, a feeling of being apart, separate from everyday life, the sound of traffic outside very remote. It reminded Dillon of the church of his childhood, in County Down, which was hardly surprising, for St. Paul’s Church was Anglo-Catholic, the oldest branch of the Church of England. However, it moved with the times enough to allow priests to marry and to allow a woman priest, and there she was now, a pleasant, calm woman in cassock and clerical collar who had just opened the door of the vestry and was ushering a young woman inside.
She turned and there was immediate concern on her face. “Sean?” she said, then turned to the young woman. “Go in for me, Mary. Put the kettle on.” She closed the door and said anxiously, “Is it Hannah? She’s not…”
“No.” Dillon put a hand up in a strangely defensive gesture. “Very poorly, but not that. The brain’s been cleared, so she’s been returned to Rosedene, but she’s not good. Bellamy’s worried about the cumulative effect of all her injuries in the past few years. It seems her heart’s not as it should be, but then, you’d expect that.”
She embraced him, holding him tight for a moment. “My dearest Sean. You want to see me?”
“As a psychiatrist or as a priest? God knows. Isn’t it what the truly wicked of this world do? Try and cover their backs?” His smile was cold and bleak. “Anyway, you’re busy. Perhaps another time.”
He walked to the great door and opened the small Judas gate. “It’s appropriate, don’t you think, especially for someone like me? Judas was a political terrorist called a Zealot, and my branch of the great game was the IRA.”
She shook her head gravely. “Such talk is pointless, Sean.”
He said tonelessly, “Ashimov ran her down like a dog, quite deliberately. As I got to her, she was trying to haul herself up by the railings, and I told her, ‘You’re all right, just hold on to me,’ but there was blood on her face and I was afraid. It was different. Special in the wrong way. When I was driving back to Rosedene with her in the seat beside me, I swore I’d kill Ashimov if it was the last thing I did on top of the earth.”
“I thought it was Billy who killed Ashimov.”
“Yes, but I got all those others: Belov, Tod Murphy, even Greta Novikova. I’m very evenhanded, you’ve got to agree.”
“God bless you, Sean,” she said calmly.
For some reason it reminded him of Hannah’s last words to him at Rosedene. He recoiled, God knows why, stepped out through the Judas gate, stumbled down the steps to the Mini Cooper and drove away.
Being a gangster was fine, flashy and showy and menacing, but Harry Salter had learned, at the right stage in his life, that the same talents employed in the business world could make you a fortune without costing you thirty years inside.
The Dark Man at Wapping on Cable Wharf by the Thames was the first property he’d ever owned. It was like a mascot in spite of everything else he had now – the warehouse developments, the clubs, the casinos, the millions he’d made after giving up his career as one of the top guvnors in the London underworld. It was a second home, and it was there that Dillon found him.
The bar was very Victorian: mirrors, a long mahogany bar topped with marble, porcelain beer pumps, Dora the barmaid reading the newspaper. Trade at that time of the afternoon was light. Salter sat in the corner booth with his nephew, Billy, and his minders, Joe Baxter and Sam Hall, were enjoying a beer at the bar.
Roper in his state-of-the-art wheelchair wore a reefer coat, his hair down to his shoulders, his face a mass of scar tissue. Once a highly decorated bomb-disposal expert, his career had been terminated by one IRA bomb too many in Belfast. Soon, a new career had beckoned, and in the world of cyberspace he was already a legend.