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Chapter 28 – Proof
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After returning from his visit to Juliet and Zoe's safehouse, Harry spent the rest of the afternoon in his office, on the phone. In addition to what the team were running up, their new lead over Emily Wood, he had other pressures weighing down his shoulders. Firstly came staffing problems. Deborah Langham was nipping at his heels, following the department's latest performance review. She recommended the addition of a new junior analyst and two new junior field officers to the team but the process for selecting them was far too time-consuming for Harry even to consider, right now. He was simply too busy. They were up to their ears in threat assessments. Luckily, none of them were immediate enough to disturb their lead today but tomorrow they would have to start redistributing staff again. Ruth and Tariq would not be pleased, Harry thought, as he palmed through a report sent over from Section A – some intelligence about a massive shipment of drugs, discovered heading into Hull from the Netherlands. It meant that, if they had not found anything on Emily Wood by tomorrow, she would get away scot free.
Running a hand over his tired head, Harry was just considering whether to chance the Grid and the inevitable questions and requests that would assault him to get a cup of coffee when the phone began to ring on the desk beside him. Having just set it down, not two minutes previous, he fixed it with a very long-suffering look before picking it up and raising the handset to his ear. The extension was the switchboard. This was undoubtedly someone in the field. Perhaps Calum, having sorted out his problem with the Bradford operation. Probably something important.
"Harry Pearce," he greeted them with his own name – an old standby for when he had absolutely no energy left to offer anything else.
"Sir, this is Officer Andrews," a young voice said, then reeled off an authorisation number which he probably did not know that he had to confirm again, once past the switchboard. A new officer, Harry figured, closing his eyes slightly and taking a moment to bolster his already strained patience. "I am outside safehouse Q7 doing a routine check but my superior officer is not answering and the door is ajar. I can't get through to my ranking superior, at Headquarters, because he is in a meeting and I need authorisation to take myself and my partner inside."
Harry frowned. Why was he being asked?
"Sir, your department brought the prisoner in," the young officer reminded him. "Your authorisation should be enough."
His prisoner. His authorisation.
...His assassin.
Harry felt his stomach cool, suddenly, anxiety flushing through him. The situation the young officer had described did not sound like a good one. The men who were supposed to be guarding Juliet and Zoe's assassin were not answering their phones. The safehouse looked as if it had been broken into and left in a hurry. And, this had all happened just hours after Torrance Wood had announced he was going back to Shanghai. Their lead on Emily Wood was suddenly looking even more likely. And even if it wasn't the wife, Harry thought darkly, whomever was behind all of this now had an assassin and motivation to end Wood quickly before he skipped town.
"You have clearance to go," he told the young officer, "but keep the line open. I'd rather hear what is going on live. Do I need to send in backup?" he asked, eyes slipping out onto the Grid and towards Ruth and Tariq who were leaning over her desk, frowning at something or another.
"No, sir. I've already called an armed unit. They're on their way."
"I have to advise you to wait until they arrive," Harry mentioned, knowing full well that the young officers would not hold off on entering the building. He certainly wouldn't, in their situation. Their team members were inside, perhaps injured, perhaps dead, and waiting was how field work worked. You were a unit. You were part of a team. You went in, no matter what.
"Yes, sir," the young man confirmed that he had heard Harry's instruction, then added, "I'm switching to comms."
And with that his voice was gone and Harry was treated to the odd shuffling noise of men moving through the building.
The comms microphone was muffled and punctuated by the rough noise of static. Through it, however, he could hear the snick of a door and the sound of footsteps in a hallway. Tiles. Wood. Laminate flooring. Then no footsteps. Then carpeted stairs and creaking floorboards. He heard two checks. He heard the downstairs cleared and then move on to the top of the house. He heard slightly ragged, nervous breathing as the young officer approached the back rooms, where the assassin had been kept. He heard the door being kicked in and the swearing and faster movement. He heard them asking someone if they were okay. He heard two voices become four.
"Status?" he asked, softly.
"Two guards are unharmed, bound and gagged," young officer Andrews' voice came back, after a moment or so of shuffling and scraping on the microphone. "They report they were taken out with gas canisters by someone who managed to get into the building undetected. The alarm system was disarmed and the CCTV was cut from inside but no distress signals were sent out. Whoever did this is good," he offered, unhelpfully.
"And our prisoner?" Harry asked, not daring to hope.
"Gone. Blood marks on the stairs and in the room he was being held. Not enough for him to be dead but enough to suggest he put up a hell of a fight. Looks like he wasn't taken by a friendly."
Harry sighed, running his hand over his face again.
"I'm sending forensics in with the backup team. Cordon the place off, double check everything and get your men to medical. I want detailed descriptions of everything that happened," Harry commended, firmly. "Down to the minute," he added, with just a little threat in his voice. "If we don't find out who took this man, things could end very badly."
"I'll be in touch," the young officer signed off, the click on the phone sounding almost precisely as Tariq barged through Harry's door.
"Tariq!" the Section Head griped, mind still revolving around this new information and its implications to his operation. "Have you joined Ruth's campaign to drive me slowly insane? That door is not for aesthetic purposes!"
"Sorry, boss, I have something."
Social problems, a lax approach to formal attire, an irritating habit of barging in when he was not entirely wanted?
"What?" Harry asked, narrowing his eyes at the young man.
"Fifty thousand just left an account under Emily Wood's control. We didn't see it the first time around because neither parent disclosed and it is a saving account for a minor. It didn't come up in our investigations."
Harry stared.
"Emily Wood just paid someone fifty thousand pounds?"
"Yes," Tariq nodded, eyes big and innocent. "Well, two hours ago."
Two hours gave someone plenty of time to break into a safehouse and remove an assassin, thought Harry, biting his inner lip in irritation. If only they had gotten to the bank account sooner. Then they would have had time to stop whomever was paid to go to Torrance Wood and there wouldn't be this horrible half-pain in his chest, right now, as he thought about the distance between where CO19 were stationed and the Consul's Mayfair house.
As he was thinking, Erin and Dimitri tumbled into the room, looking a little lost.
"What's going on? Ruth told us we had a lead."
"Apparently," Harry growled, "Emily Wood has just paid someone fifty thousand pounds and our assassin has gone spectacularly missing from his safehouse holding cell."
"What?" asked Tariq, reacting to the second piece of information.
Erin and Dimitri looked from Harry to Tariq.
"The assassin's missing?" the techie asked.
"I just found out a few minutes ago," Harry sighed. "I'm waiting for confirmation, but he seems to have been 'extracted' from the building."
"Shit. That could mean-,"
"-that the money went to freeing him," Harry finished. "Yes. It certainly looks that way."
"Or using him," Erin pointed out, a little darkly.
Harry nodded.
"I'll call CO19," his Section Chief nodded.
She was just turning, about to head from the room, when loud footsteps in the hall announced Ruth's arrival in the doorway.
"Renee Ferrer is Juliet Shaw!" she exclaimed, striding past the others and slapping a piece of paper down on Harry's desk.
Harry snatched it up.
"What on earth-?"
"-The bank account paid into by Emily Wood belongs to a 'Renee Ferrer'," she announced, punching two numbers into her phone and then flipping Harry's off the cradle when the transfer rang through. "As it turns out, Renee Ferrer happens to be a lot closer than we had thought. Or, she was until she went missing from her safehouse earlier this morning, having been paid fifty thousand pounds." Pressing speaker, she directed her next comment down at the phone. "Zoe, explain," she demanded.
Silence reigned.
Harry looked up to Ruth, then down at the phone again, his body now well and truly wracked with adrenaline and anxiety.
"Zoe?" he asked, sharply.
"Renee Ferrer is an alias Juliet was using when I met her..." Zoe's voice emanated from the speakers, tiny and worried. "It was linked to several accounts in Brazil. I thought she burnt it."
"Where is she, Zoe?" Harry asked, his tone darkening even further.
"No one's seen her since you left this morning. She went up to her room, saying she didn't feel well. We thought she was in there ever since." Zoe paused, her tone somewhere between ashamed and abjectly terrified. "Security can't find a trace of how she got out, but that is definitely one of her aliases and she's had since you left, this morning to get where she is going."
When he left this morning...
Harry swallowed, feeling trepidation sink through him.
...when he told them about their new intelligence about Emily Wood.
This was bad. Juliet Shaw was Renee Ferrer, and linked with a woman who hired assassins and ordered murder. Emily Wood had paid her fifty thousand pounds... and what wouldn't Juliet Shaw do, to escape jail with fifty thousand pounds, he wondered, feeling almost sick. This was everything he had feared would happen and more. She had been involved in this from the start – perhaps since she had found out about the assassin, perhaps before. What on earth her plan was was still beyond Harry. What possible advantage could there be to bringing them the assassin? What was she trying to achieve? What was she going to do...?
"Juliet is definitely missing?" he asked, slowly.
Ruth nodded, her eyes wide and somewhat panicked.
"We don't know when she went missing?"
"She's not been seen since-,"
"-I left this morning. Yes, thank you Ruth, I understood that bit the first time."
Ruth flinched slightly and the others exchanged a slight look.
Harry corrected himself, sending her an apologetic glance before giving a sigh and continuing.
"Do we have CO19 on the way to Torrance Wood's house?" he asked Erin.
"I'll get on it now," his Section Chief nodded, making towards the door.
Harry's voice caught her on the way out.
"You and Dimitri get a car," he instructed. "I'll meet you at the front in three minutes."
Erin nodded and she and Dimitri strode away.
Harry turned to Ruth and Tariq.
"Get Zoe in here now," he told them. "If I need someone to talk Juliet down off a sniper's ledge then it should be her self-professed best buddy."
"She wouldn't do that!" Zoe's voice insisted, from the other end of the phone line. "I know this looks bad, right now, and she doesn't want to go to jail, but she wouldn't go so far as to kill an innocen-,"
Harry reached over and pressed in the 'off' button, picking up the handset and handing it to Ruth. Whatever he believed Juliet had done – and he could not help but share Zoe's instinctive disbelief, because Juliet was many things but not a mercenary assassin – he did not feel ready to hear Zoe justify it, right now. Right now was not the moment for hasty and possibly inaccurate suppositions, or suppositions of any sort. Right now was the moment to get armed guards to Consul Wood's house and make sure that the man they were supposed to be protecting was not going to get shot by the woman he had not thrown in jail when he had the chance. Right now was not about solving anything, it was about damage limitation. Figuring out what on earth was going on came later.
"Try and confirm that Emily Wood is the only one who could have paid from this account," he asked Ruth, meeting her blue eyes and feeling just momentarily calmed by them. "And see if we can link any of the receiving accounts to our assassins. It's a long shot, but it would make our case solid."
"I can try and find Juliet using gait-analysis," Tariq told him. "But I think that's a long shot too."
"Check for car plates cropping up in the areas around both safehouses," Harry advised, instead. "Juliet is not the sort to jump ship before she has a lifeboat to get away in," he added, "but I doubt that she still knows enough people in the area to sort out two cars on such short notice."
"I'll get on it," the young techie nodded and bounded away.
Harry and Ruth were left alone.
"Do you think she'd do it?" Ruth asked, after a few seconds.
"Juliet?"
"Yes."
"I don't know," Harry answered, honestly. "I'd like to think she wouldn't, but I have been invariably wrong about her, in the past."
"Zoe says she's probably just skipped town."
"And miss out on the other fifty grand she will get, when she carries out her contract?"
"Maybe fifty is enough," Ruth suggested. "Or maybe she figured that, since we knew about Emily Wood and she would be stopped before any further payments, that it was not worth staying."
Harry watched the woman on front of him, feeling irresistibly drawn to her.
He needed to go. He wanted to stay.
"Call me if anything changes," he told her, nodding to the door. "I should go. Consuls to save, people to terrorise."
"You do know that is not actually the definition of 'counter terrorism?" she joked, half-heartedly.
Harry smiled, despite himself, despite the situation.
"I know. I'll check in once everything's under control and the perimeter is secure."
Ruth nodded then, as if breaking through some internal barrier, suddenly reached out and slipped her hand around his arm, fingers digging in quite insistently.
"Be careful," she murmured, softly.
Harry felt a rush of gratitude and warmth, despite the anxiety coursing through his system.
"I will," he told her, giving her a soft squeeze back before moving swiftly on. "I have to go."
She nodded and let her hand slip free.
Giving her just a tiny twitch of a smile, he turned and headed towards the Grid's great glass doors.
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Arriving at Consul Torrance Wood's house, they were thrown into the chaos of CO19, security personnel and the panic of the Consul Wood's extended family. Armed policemen had swarmed the house, not five minutes before Harry and Erin arrived, and were currently liaising with security over a search for the grounds. Outside, beyond the perimeter of the street, press had swarmed in again, eager for a glimpse of some sort of scandal. Inside, Torrance Wood had been confined to the living room with his wife, who was crying and throwing herself melodramatically around her husband's shoulders, demanding that she see her son, who was being kept separate. The boy had been found hiding in an upstairs cupboard, with his hands planted firmly over his ears, trying to block the noise of the invasion out. While Harry did not see this as a particularly suspicious thing for a shell-shocked fifteen year old to be doing, CO19 disagreed and he was being subject to interrogation, through in the kitchen, the team arrived.
Consul Wood, for all of it, was coping rather well. When Harry paced into the living room, his Section Chief in tow, he greeted him with a weary handshake and an offer of a cup of tea. Harry declined the offer and began to outline what was going on to the somewhat overcome politician, stressing the precarious nature of the situation.
"We don't know where the assassin is, or who exactly is behind this." His eyes drifted over onto Emily Wood as he spoke. It had been unanimously agreed to keep her within their sights but not confront the nature of her involvement until the Home Secretary arrived. "But we have a missing asset and a missing assassin and an open threat on your head. We need to be safe rather than sorry."
Once the Consul had assured Harry that he understood, Harry handed him over to Erin, who was far better at dealing with slightly hysterical assassination-attempt victims, and headed back out into the hall. As he walked, he did a check on personnel. Two armed junior officers, from the Tactical Assault Unit. One head security officer, from Torrance Wood's staff, and two members of CO19 – discussing CCTV angles around the house compound with frowns up on their faces. Erin and Dimtri. Himself. Another security guard, on the stairs, looking utterly terrified by the turn of events.
Moving past the frightened young guard, Harry stepped out into the hall and made a quick call in to Ruth, to tell her that they had arrived and that everything was under control. In return, she told him that she had Zoe on the Grid, had no sign of Juliet and no confirmed CCTV image of either Juliet or the assassin leaving the safehouse – though there was a highly probably match of a man and a woman, fitting the description, both wearing hats pulled down over their faces and the man walking with a limp. They were gone almost two and a half hours ago, Ruth told him, just before the payment was made. It was possible, she pointed out, that Emily had simply paid Juliet to remove all connection between herself and the assassin, and that there was no real threat to Torrance Wood at all.
Harry remained the cynic, commenting that there was absolutely no reason to pay someone that amount of money to cover something up and then not ask them to finish the job. And, though Zoe's belief in Juliet's innocence made him feel warm and fuzzy inside, he was still going to keep Torrance Wood away from windows with a direct line of sight.
Staring at the ornate silk wallpaper in the hallway (and wondering whether it was a requisite character trait, for rich people to have bad taste), Harry ran through several other suggestions, for how to find their fugitive asset and assassin, each sounding more unlikely than the last – even to his own ears. Eventually, a commotion outside announced the Home Secretary's arrival and he ended the call, with instruction for Ruth to message Erin if there were any changes. Then, moving further down the hall, Harry awaited Towers' entrance.
As eager as he was, to get Towers in and discussion underway, he was loathe to risk being sighted by the seething mass of press who had appeared on the street, within five minutes of CO19 surrounding the building. The last thing someone in his position needed was to be pictured in what was bound to be a front-page spread. Staying half concealed in the shadow of one of the hall's many doorways, then, Harry watched from a distance as William Towers was shoehorned inside by a PA and two security men, and waited until the door was closed before stepping out and beckoning the politician over.
The two officials met with a quiet greeting and the cursory muttered obscenities about the media. Weary of stalling, Harry rattled off an update of the situation, giving Towers the requisite moment to disbelief that Juliet could have escaped from an MI5 safehouse and then liberated their assassin from another, before moving onto the subject of the Consul's wife. As the first accusatory words left his lips, Towers reacted exactly as Harry had expected.
"Now, just wait a minute, Harry," his face crumpled into a frown. "You cannot seriously be suggesting that Emily is behind any of this?"
Harry sighed.
This was going to be even more difficult than he had thought. He had the proof – not great proof, but proof that would take a while for them to discount and, therefore, give him time to find more – but Emily Wood was a well known and respected member of society. Though she was not greatly influential, in comparison with some other politician's wives, she was still involved in enough philanthropic ventures to paint herself in a certain light. And women of that light were well known not to kill their husbands. This was what Harry would be fighting against, to have his tale heard. This was the irrational trust that people had, out in the real world, which he would have to destroy.
"We have proof," he told the Home Secretary, "that she paid large sums of money, from her son's savings account to two separate private accounts, around both the time of the embassy bombing and the attempt on Torrance Wood once he was back in London. She is the only one with access to the account," he stressed, "and she did not disclose its existence when we originally questioned her. Even if our intelligence is misleading, she is guilty of withholding evidence."
"This must be a mistake!" Towers exclaimed, looking disbelieving. "I've known Emily for nearly twenty years – she is just not capable of this."
"There is a need for further examination," Harry stated, blunt and diplomatically. There was no way of making the Home Secretary agree with him on this. All he could do was state the situation, state what the law said he was allowed to respond with, and carry that out whilst hoping that more evidence came along in the meantime... and that Juliet did not find some way to subvert to CO19 teams, one MI5 Tactical Assault Unit and the assembled throng of Consul Wood's private security firm. "I need to take her in for questioning."
"Bloody hell, Harry," Towers grumbled, "you can't!"
"I need to."
"Torrance Wood one of the Prime Minster's closest friends," the Home Secretary growled, lowering his voice so that the people who had travelled inside with him, who had moved further down the hall to give the two senior officials space to talk, could not hear. "His wife cannot be paraded through the streets in handcuffs. Can you imagine the impact that would have on the party? And right now, with that other story breaking?" he added, referring to some scandal which had splayed across the morning tabloids. "It would be a disaster!"
Despite thinking that party PR was not really his concern, Harry assured him that he would not be parading Emily Wood through the street in handcuffs.
"My people can take her surreptitiously by the back exit," he told Towers. "We can run with the story that she was not in, when the threat was made on the Consul's life, that she is currently seeking refuge at a friend's house, with her son, while the investigation wraps up."
"Surreptitiously through the back? Are you mad? This is not happening. Torrance Wood is a well respected-,"
"Torrance Wood," Harry interrupted, "could be the bloody King of Spain, for all I care." He fixed the man opposite him with a steely glare, irritation well and truly piqued, now. Towers could be a stubborn ass. The only way to deal with it was to be even more of a stubborn ass. "I work for a Service bound to protect the people of this country. I do not serve a party agenda."
"Spare me the platitudes, Harry. You are here to keep the peace and the fall out of this could be-,"
"Astronomical," Harry agreed, "considering the deals he is working on, in Shanghai. Believe me, Home Secretary, I understand the need for secrecy."
Towers gritted his teeth.
"But," Harry continued, "it is necessary. The alternative, after all, is doing nothing – waiting until our proof on Emily Wood is beyond any reasonable doubt whilst an assassin runs free around London with a fifty-thousand reasons to blow Torrance Wood from the water."
"I thought the assassin was already paid?"
"Half first, half later." Harry explained, with a little movement of impatience. Had Towers really never seen a spy thriller? "That's how it works."
Towers exhaled slowly, looking Harry up and down. Assessing, no doubt, the hiding he was going to receive, from his party superiors, should this all go badly. Not that he really had a choice to make, thought Harry, watching him back. If he told Harry to back off and Emily Wood did end up responsible – and the fact that Towers was even considering she might be made Harry increasingly sure that she was – then they would have far more than a political scandal on his hands. He would have a dead Consul and several energy deals which would founder, without Wood's name on the negotiating table. Energy deals which high-level names, in the government, would be very distressed about losing, seeing as they cemented their country's fuel alliance with a world superpower for the next fifteen years.
"I need to take her in," he stressed again, a little more gently, this time.
Towers looked unconvinced. Still a little confused.
Decisions, decisions.
"If she's not responsible, you can have my resignation," Harry pointed out.
"If she's not responsible, I will turn you on a spit," Towers retorted, a little shortly. Silence followed his pronouncement and both men watched each other a while longer. Harry could see the decision forming in the Home Secretary's eyes before it reached his lips. "Right," Towers eventually sighed, head swinging towards the door of the living room. "I suppose I don't have much of a choice in this, do I?"
"I'll try and make it sound like we need her to answer some questions, to clear her name."
"But you are sure of this?" A frown, "because it really does not sound like Emily. To start with," Towers said, with a wrinkled nose, "she is far too clever to have hired those three idiots who accidentally blew themselves up, trying to bomb the embassy."
Harry nodded, slowly, an idea beginning to take hold in the back of his head; an idea which had been growing, subconsciously, all the way through the last day, as Ruth and the rest of the team brought him snippets and pieces of information.
Emily Wood was too clever for the first failed assassination. He had read her file and background checks. She had been well-educated and succeeded both academically and in the workplace, before she married Wood. She was a smart woman – whatever other qualities she had which made her want to kill her husband. The first assassination attempt did not fit her MO. In fact, Harry thought, the first attack did not seem to fit any woman's MO. The second, on the other hand, was almost perfect. A sniper, from long-distance. Clean. Neat. An almost-success where the embassy bombing had been ridiculous failure. They were two completely different attacks.
"We should go and speak to them," Towers stated.
Harry nodded but was prevented from making any comment by Erin Watts padding over, phone raised and a look of relief spread across her face.
"Erin?"
"Ruth called," she told him, upon arrival at his side. "We have contact with Juliet Shaw."
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