Chapter Two

It was the heel of Ros's hand on the horn that startled Lucas out of the sleep he'd slid into halfway up the A3. Her lip curled as he banged his head on the roof and swore.

"Sorry if the company was so dull," she said dryly.

Lucas mumbled a denial that was unlikely to sound convincing, since apart from a curt, unadorned 'no' in response to his query as to whether she was going to share with him what Jeremy Phelps had told her, Ros hadn't uttered a word since they left Shere.

"Do you fancy a coffee?" she asked abruptly. Without waiting for a reply, she got out of the car. Only then realising that they were at her flat rather than his, Lucas did likewise, stretched his cramped limbs and loped down the street after her.

"Make yourself at home," Ros said off-handedly. Lucas yawned, looked around and felt the yawn end in a sigh. Some chance. He had learnt tidiness when the price of failing to display it in his Russian prison cell was three days on short rations. Even so, the rigorous neatness of Ros's flat often left him acutely uncomfortable; he could never really relax on a sofa where the cushions were so precisely geometrically arranged that he could swear she had used a tape measure and spirit level to place them.

"Coffee's on. Back in a sec." Ros disappeared into her bedroom. Lucas unfastened the windows and walked out onto the balcony. He often wondered how Ros had managed to afford a flat like this with its view over the river, and assumed her father had chipped in. Her father. Sir Jocelyn Myers, former ambassador to Russia, former board member of Gas Stream, current guest of Her Majesty in H.M.P Wormwood Scrubs.

"God, that's better." He turned and blinked in surprise as Ros came back in. She had pulled her hair loose from its French plait, tucked it behind her ears, and changed into jeans and a green polo shirt. She gave him a quick, almost mischievous smile. " Would you be standing there like a Hugo Boss advert if you were in your own home, Lucas?"

With a relieved grin, he removed his jacket, wriggled his tie knot undone, and released his throat from the constriction of his collar. He pulled his shirt from his trousers and was just rolling up his sleeves when Ros brought out two mugs of coffee.

"Thanks." He lowered himself onto the wicker sofa against one wall. She leaned against the balcony rails, brushing her bare toes to and fro on the rush matting that covered the floor. Lucas took a sip of his coffee, gauging her mood. Trying to read Ros's face was like trying to get through War and Peace with the knowledge culled from a few pages of a Russian phrase book.

"Who's Podgy?" he asked at last.

Ros gave a faint smile and told him. Lucas burst out laughing.

"Hope to God he never says that anywhere Harry can hear it." He chuckled to himself. "Podgy and Bliss. We could use that as a codename if Harry and Ruth were ever to go undercover."

Ros's eyes flicked up from contemplating her coffee just long enough for him to realise that by suggesting – even in jest – that they might, he had inadvertently rubbed a large handful of salt into her already open wound. He took another hurried swallow at his coffee just as she did the same – for the same reason, buying time – and frantically searched his mind for some safely neutral topic of conversation. When Ros broke the quivering silence first he was so taken aback that he almost spat his coffee all over the pristine beige sofa cushions.

"I hope they like the hotel," she murmured. When he shook his head uncomprehendingly, she added, "In Paris. I told Harry about a hotel I know. The Francois 1er. Small and romantic, just off the Champs Elysees. Kind of thing I thought would be to Ruth's taste."

Small and romantic? Yes, absolutely perfect … for Ruth. He met her eyes. Ros drained her coffee, put her empty mug on the table and answered his unasked question. "I had a … relationship for a while - long time ago. Doctor – someone I knew from university. He took me there once."

"Oh, right." Lucas made the comment sound as casual as he could. Ros sometimes sprinkled tiny droplets of personal information like that into conversation; it was so much in contrast with her usual reticence, and happened so rarely that it always caught him completely off the bat. I'll never understand this bloody woman. She doesn't even like Ruth. Give me the Sphinx any day. "Long as he doesn't take a day trip out to Levallois for a little tete a tete with the DCRI."

Ros gave a twisted smile. "I think Harry's honeymoon with them ended a long way back." She stared out at the river for a long moment, then said quietly: "Phelps told me my father's going to become eligible for parole." When he stared at her, shocked by the abrupt suddenness of the statement, she went on: "It's been seven years, Lucas. Third of his sentence."

"When?" Lucas stuttered.

Ros sat down on the matting, her back against the railings. When Lucas patted the seat next to him, she shook her head. "His case is due to come up for review in three weeks." He watched her fingers tease two loose strands from the matting and begin twisting them into a plait.

"How do you feel about that?" he asked at last.

Ros made a sound that was half sardonic laugh, half derisive raspberry. "How do I feel about it? I've had a skeleton locked in my cupboards for the last seven years. Now it's about to burst out in a rattle of bones and do its own personal Danse Macabre all over the Grid. Perfect bloody timing. How do you think I feel about it?"

Lucas had meant, how did she feel about it personally. It was so utterly typical of Ros, he reflected, to view the matter essentially in terms of how it would affect her professionally. Cautiously he changed tack a couple of points.

"Did he say whether Harry knows?" Surely he must have done. Together,Jeremy Phelps and Harry had formed the sole conduit through which Ros had received news of her father.

"Yes." Ros twined the plaited rushes round her finger. "He told Phelps I would know what the right decision was, and he was confident that I'd take it."

Lucas frowned. "How do you mean? What decision?"

Ros drew her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "Well, normally we wouldn't be involved, but because of the nature of his … offence … the Service will be asked for its opinion. But there's more than that."

Isn't 'that' enough? Lucas thought, aghast. News of Myers's release could prompt retrospectives on Panorama, his picture would be plastered all over the tabloids – and that was without the Lizzie Sandells spreading gossip and rumours through the Thames House sour-grapevine. All of it as Ros was trying to demonstrate her loyalty, ability and reliability to the Home Office and the JIC. Conscious of her watching him, he made an effort to keep the apprehension out of his voice.

"More?"

"Yes. He's made a request to speak to someone from the Service. According to the Governor he has information he says we need to know - about the 'current situation'.

Lucas's immediate thought was that Sir Jocelyn was waving a tempting tidbit under the noses of the authorities in order to score a few Brownie points ahead of his parole hearing. He couldn't imagine that in the seven years of his imprisonment the man could have gleaned any information to which MI-5 didn't already have access.

"And he can't just give it to the Governor?"

Ros shrugged. "I don't know about 'can't'. But he won't, apparently."

Once, as a little boy, Lucas had disobeyed his father and ventured out onto the ice of one of the Cumbrian lakes during a winter freeze. Inevitably, it had begun to creak, and then crack, under his weight. He could still remember his terror as he made his way, step by cautious step, back to the shore, safety, and a thorough spanking with his father's favourite carpet slipper. One false move would have meant disaster. He had the exact same feeling now.

"And do you think he's - "

"Telling the truth?" To his relief, Ros finished the sentence for him. "Or just playing cat and mouse with us?" She shrugged again. "My father understands the value of information, Lucas. He always has. He knows it for what it is – currency. Something to be traded, something you can make a profit from. So I don't know. There's only one way to find out."

And Harry's sailed off to Paris and left you to deal with this? With all the emotional 'Daddy' baggage you're carrying with you? Lucas cleared his throat and went for a neutral question.

"And by 'current situation' he means what – the anti-austerity demos and the bank protests?"

"I imagine so," Ros said dryly. "Unless he's tossing in the tree-huggers in Epping Forest and the Cats Protection League as well."

Lucas toyed with his empty mug. "But Ros … he's been behind bars for seven years. Hasn't he been kept isolated from the other prisoners for a lot of that time?" When she nodded, he asked: "Well then, what information could he possibly know? Where could he have obtained it from?"

"He's had visitors," Ros pointed out. "Friends, colleagues, family. Well - " a slight flush came and went, "the rest of his family. The media, and access to the Net – the prison bush telegraph. I wouldn't put it past him, Lucas, to know what we don't."

Lucas shook his head dubiously. Ros wouldn't like what he was about to say, but he had to say it. "I don't see how he could do. Isn't it far more likely he's just trying to gain an advantage before his hearing?"

Now Ros shook her head, but with far more decisiveness than he had done. "You don't know him, Lucas." She got up and joined him on the sofa, perching tautly on the edge, making fierce chopping gestures at the air as she spoke. "Look, we need to know who's behind all the unrest. Who's organising it, who the planners are. It isn't enough just to lump them all in a basket and label it 'Crisis Crusade'. We won't get a grip on this by chasing ghosts. There's a puppet-master behind them somewhere, an individual manipulating these people. If he knows … "

This, Lucas thought, was where his point of view and Ros's diverged beyond the point where they could be reconciled. She was adamant that Crisis Crusade had organised ambitions that went far beyond spontaneous, sporadic protest. Lucas, although he would never have dared to put his feelings into exactly those words, couldn't shake his suspicion that she was succumbing to what he had heard cynically described by some old-timers within the Service as 'plotters paranoia'. Sometimes, there just wasn't an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda. Sometimes, things just were exactly what they seemed to be on the surface. To him, Crisis Crusade was little more than a catchy label being attached to disparate groups of very angry, very resentful and sometimes very frightened people, not a cabal of conspirators trying to overthrow the state. Ros emphatically disagreed with him. He looked up at her. And now -

"She's trying to make the facts fit her pet theory in order to get back the honourable, patriotic, Establishment Daddy she lost." Ros got up abruptly and walked back to the balcony rail, but this time she turned her back on him. "Go on, you might as well say it. I know that's what you think."

Lucas swallowed hard. She had so exactly expressed his thoughts that he had no idea what to say. But there had been the slightest break in her voice in that last sentence. He got to his feet and went to join her. He put a hand gently on her arm, but Ros jerked sharply away from him.

"Well, I'm not. I know you don't agree with me about Crisis Crusade, Lucas." She shot him a quick sideways glance; her eyes were over-bright, but she was still in control of herself. " That's fine. God knows, I don't want to be right. I'll call a conference in the morning; it's overdue. We'll brief the rest of the team, see what the others say. As to - " she stopped, raked a hand through her hair, and began again. "As to my father … Harry trusts my judgement." She didn't say it, but Lucas heard the postscript 'even if you don't '. " He knows I can be impartial and logical." She looked him straight in the eyes. "I will be."

"I know that," Lucas said quickly. "I didn't mean - "

Ros held up a hand. "Don't. Please." She span on her heel. "I'll make some more coffee."

Lucas watched her disappear into the flat. Shit. He couldn't work out whether Harry's swanning off to Paris and leaving Ros to deal with this alone was an act of damn-nigh criminal negligence or a demonstration of the extraordinary level of his trust in her. The latter. If Harry hadn't believed that Section D's share of responsibility for the security of the nation was safe in her hands, then Ruth would have been spending her honeymoon in a small and very unromantic office overlooking the Thames - and marital harmony be damned. He was the one with doubts, not Harry. Yes, Ros had sacrificed her father and her relationship with the rest of her family seven years ago for the sake of preventing a coup from ripping apart the social fabric of the country; the logical assumption was that she'd do the same thing again if placed on the horns of the same dilemma. But Lucas couldn't quite forget those seven years of unanswered letters; that conversation they'd had in this same flat about her rejection as Harry's replacement. He's my father, whatever he's done … his intentions were good. He loves his country …'

He jumped as Ros came back and sat down. She handed him a refilled mug. "I saw you talking to Tom Quinn. What did you think of him?"

OK, if you want to change the subject. "You know him then?"

Ros shook her head. "Adam told me a lot about him. I know him by name and by reputation."

He couldn't help smiling. "That's almost word for word what he said about you. He was Section Chief when I joined Section D. Originally, I mean. Nice guy. Bit po-faced until you get to know him, but he could be great fun. Talks about Harry and Ruth as if they were his favourite aunt and uncle. Even asked about Fidget."

Ros rolled her eyes. "You should have sent him to me. Mrs Evershed must have told me the bloody animal's entire life-story - complete with numbers of kittens fathered, eating preferences and salacious details of his regular nights on the tiles." Lucas chuckled. "She's looking after him while his Auntie Ruth's away. She must keep him under closer surveillance than we do suspects on the Watchlist." She yawned. "God, I'm tired."

Not surprising. Lucas put his arm round her shoulder and eased her towards him. "Relax, have forty winks." For most of the guests, the wedding would have been a pleasant and relaxing occasion; for Ros, the whole thing had been a cause of anxiety and stress, even before this business with her father hit like an emotional mugging. As she leaned back into the cushions and closed her eyes, he eased his mobile out of his pocket with his right hand and checked his messages and the news feed. The BBC had pushed the demonstration outside Harvey's Bank up its running order; there had been some violence that, according to the report, had been triggered by the unwise decision by the bank's chief executive to leave the emergency board meeting he had been chairing to come and meet the demonstrators. He had suffered nothing worse than a few bruises and the indignity of his Saville Row suit being introduced to a bucket of pig swill, but there had been scuffles with the police and a few arrests made. Lucas made a mental note to look into events more closely the following day and discreetly slid the phone back into his pocket.

"Lucas." The murmur startled him; he thought Ros had dropped off, but when he looked down, her eyes were open and scrutinising his face.

"That's not more than twenty-five - at most," he said reprovingly. When her eyebrows knitted together, he said severely, "Winks."

His wit went unnoticed. "I'm going to need your help."

"You've already got it," he said. "You know that. We'll manage, Ros. God, it's only a week."

"No. That wasn't what I meant." She sat up, ignoring his hiss of disapproval. "No, for something … specific, I mean." She paused. "And difficult."

"Involving?" Lucas asked, his curiosity roused now by her uncharacteristic hesitancy.

"My father. He's been told that Harry isn't available, and that if he'll have to talk to his deputy. But he doesn't know - yet – who it is." She lowered her eyes. "He's refused to acknowledge my existence for seven years. I'm not sure he'll agree to see me now. He'd see it as a climb-down; loss of face. And even … even if he did agree, he'd probably refuse to tell me whatever it is he claims we should know."

Lucas felt his stomach clench as the reason for her hesitation began to dawn on him. A couple of months previously he and Khalida had gone to interview a terror suspect at Belmarsh Prison. Lucas had been nervous, yet hopeful that after the additional therapy sessions following his panic during the decontamination procedures, he had finally exorcised the haunting ghosts of his Russian imprisonment. But after an agonizing hour surrounded by the sense, sounds and smells of confinement, he had been forced to invent a reason for leaving the building. He and Ros hadn't discussed the incident, but he knew that Khalida, who had concluded the interview alone, would have had no choice but to report it to her.

"And you want me to come with you?" He saw what most people would never have noticed, the tiny twitch of her lips at the hollow tone of his voice, and the unwillingness it conveyed.

She shrugged. "I know it's a lot to ask." She sounded weary, and suddenly Lucas felt guilty. He went for compromise, trying to forget the quotation about it being a good umbrella but a poor roof.

"Do you think we could let it stand until Harry comes back?"

The instant change in her attitude told him that he'd made a bad mistake. "No." Suddenly she was visibly bristling. "I'm supposed to be in charge, Lucas! This is national security we're talking about, not a bloody visit to the dentist - make an appointment for ten days time and in the meantime take two paracetamol every four hours and avoid crunchy food! And if he's manipulating us - "

"Harry?" Lucas said, idiotically.

Ros threw her hands up in exasperation. "My father, Lucas! God." She got to her feet. "That's my phone."

Lucas groaned inwardly as she strode into the flat. His shirt was clinging damply to his spine, and his pulse-rate had jumped at the mere idea of finding himself, even temporarily, on the wrong side of the impenetrable walls of Wormwood Scrubs. Ros had the authority to make him accompany her, but he sensed she wouldn't. I need your help. That had been a plea, not an order, which made it all the more difficult to refuse. He muttered a Russian oath to himself. Damn Sir Jocelyn bloody Myers.

He looked up as she returned to the balcony. He had half-expected her to be cracking orders to someone; instead, she was looking at the screen with a faint smile tinged with something you rarely saw on Ros Myers's face – wistfulness.

"What is it?" he asked.

Ros handed over the phone. Lucas read the two messages, one from Harry accompanied by a red-faced smiley with steam coming out of its ears and reading 'tell the techie there's a vacancy in HR ', and a second – 'it's beautiful, thank you. I'm so happy ' - from Ruth's number. Lucas chuckled.

"What did Callum do?" he asked.

" Talked to a mate in the airline and had them presented with flowers, champagne and truffles in the lounge." Ros snorted. "Harry doesn't know how lucky he is; I did talk him out of having them play 'Congratulations' on the muzak tape as well."

Lucas handed her back the phone. Ros muttered scathingly about Mills and Boon as she re-read Ruth's message, but he wasn't deceived; traces of that wistful expression still lingered in the depths of her eyes.

"How about a glass of wine?" he asked. "Don't see why they should have all the fun." When Ros didn't react, he added: "Maybe we should have a look at the news while we're at it?"

That – as he had expected - brought an immediate response, animating her as surely as if someone had flicked a switch. They moved inside, and Lucas cringed silently through the concluding inanities of an exceptionally moronic television game show while Ros went to find a bottle. Lucas opened it and poured just as the titles began to roll.

It was a particularly dispiriting bulletin, he thought. The buoyant mood that had lifted the entire country during last summer's Olympics had long since burst under the pressure of falling expectations, rising unemployment, inflated prices and shrinking incomes. Protest marches and rallies against cuts to Government services were reported almost daily, and today was no exception. When the scuffles outside Harvey's Bank were shown, with Crisis Crusade banners clearly visible, Ros's eyes narrowed dangerously. The gloom deepened with an item about a senior prelate accused of child abuse, a well-known TV personality denying allegations of tax evasion, and yet another doom-laden prediction of mayhem in the Eurozone. By the time they reached the 'feelgood' filler item at the end – the birth of a baby white rhino at a zoo in the North – the newsreader's smile was distinctly fixed, and reminded Lucas of Ros's when Mrs Evershed had been regaling her with Fidget's exploits at the reception. Even the rhino looked disgruntled.

When the local news began with a woman stridently haranguing a journalist about some aspect of the Crossrail project, Ros stabbed the remote towards the set as if she wished it were a pistol instead, and switched it off, leaving a silence crackling with tension.

"Maybe the Olympics weren't so bad after all," Lucas said lightly, in an attempt to ease it. "Islamic nutcases notwithstanding."

"Don't remind me," Ros spat. "We've already got the crusaders, the last bloody thing we need is the soldiers of Allah on the warpath as well."

"We'll deal with it." Lucas spread pate on a couple of the crackers she had brought in, offered her one and bit the bullet. "Maybe your father will tell us something useful."

Ros glanced at him. "Us?"

"Yeah." He tried to sound unconcerned. "I always like to see the oak tree the acorn fell from."

"Probably suffering from the effects of the jewel beetle by now. Didn't ever produce much in the way of quality harvest." Ros laid her hand briefly on his arm; that was about as touchy-feely as she ever got. "Thanks, Lucas. I appreciate it."

Lucas was touched by the awkwardness of her attempt at nonchalance, but he squeezed her hand and left it at that. She had been put through the emotional wringer today, she was tired, and she was still on edge. Proceed with caution.

They sat quietly for a while, occasionally talking about the wedding, but Ros, who had little time for chit-chat unless it had a specific purpose, was looking increasingly weary. Lucas knew she wouldn't ask him to leave, so in the end he took the decision to do so himself. Gratitude not being one of the emotions most frequently selected from Ros's limited range, she merely nodded, waved him off, and closed the door of the flat before he'd opened the door of his car. Lucas smiled wryly as he drove off. Over the years he had come to terms with Ros's abrasiveness and accepted her abrupt manner for what it often was – a defence mechanism. He still didn't understand her – she was a mass of contradictions, and every time he had thought he was starting to, she pulled another one out of the hat - but more recently he had stopped trying so hard. Ros was what she was, and she wasn't about to change for him. He knew he had become more intimate with her than most people would ever dream of getting, and that – at least for now – was enough.

Knowing that she would be arriving at the Grid the following morning ready to crack the whip and expecting everyone to jump when she did, he turned in early himself. The firmest mattress he had been able to find in London plus the passage of time had gradually lessened his need to spend nights on the floor, so he was fast asleep in bed when his phone rang. Still only semi-conscious, he groped for it and knocked it to the floor. Shit.

He followed the now muffled ringing and the pulsating bluish light under the bed, retrieved it and wriggled back out, several long-unattended dust balls clinging gleefully to his clothes as he did so.

"Lucas?" He sneezed three times in succession before he could manage a hoarse 'yeah'. "Lucas, are you there?"

Ros? He peered at his watch, and his stomach lurched. It was a little short of five a.m.

"Yeah. Yeah, what is it?"

"Phelps called. There's been an incident at the Scrubs." Up until now her voice had been crisp and authoritative; now it trembled. "Someone's tried to kill my father."

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