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Chapter Seven: Aftermath

Harry replaced the telephone receiver and massaged a knot of tension that had tightened between his eyes. Somewhere off in the distance, behind the closed doors of the meeting room, he could still hear his team going over and over the course of events. It formed a dull, indecipherable buzz at the back of his head, speeding up the low headache that was just getting started in his temples. The Home Secretary, at least, had taken the news as well as could be expected: no better, nor worse. One of his cabinet colleagues had just been shot dead on a country road en-route to Durham. Without Ben Kaplan, one of only four surviving eye-witnesses, not even Section D had the full story yet, but Harry still had a vague outline of events in his head. Ben got a message from Lucile, asking him to reroute the Minister. Both Ros and Lucas had confirmed and seconded Lucile's reroute. The gunman was lying in wait, a roadblock having already been placed to stop them.

Once more, for the tenth time in the last hour, Harry picked up the phone again. Lucile's mobile number was on his computer screen, but by now he knew it off by heart. The call connected, the ringing began again and continued … and continued until voicemail kicked in. Lucile's breezy, pre-recorded voice cheerfully invited him to leave a message, before adding that she would call him back as soon as she could. He swore under his breath, not caring whether it was picked up or not, and jabbed the follow on button on the phone. He dialled the number of the bunkers internal phone and repeated the process again. Nothing.

All the while, the foetid stench of betrayal began to grind its way up Harry's olfactory nerves. Still, he reasoned to himself, at least this one wasn't a close, personal friend that he'd worked with for years. If Lucile had acted in cahoots with the assassins, she simply hadn't been on the Section D scene long enough to betray much.

Down the corridor, the noise coming from the meeting room briefly grew louder and clearer as the door opened. Harry got up and moved to the door of his office and raised a pained smile as Ruth rounded the corner. Sombre, but still lovely to him, she clutched a file in her hands as she closed the space between them.

"They're going nuts in there, Harry," she remarked, pointing her file towards the meeting room. "They need direction."

"What's Ros doing?" he retorted, standing aside so Ruth could enter the office. "She is Section Head, you know."

"She's pacing up and down and muttering furiously under her breath. She'll come round eventually, I'm sure."

Ruth flopped into the seat in front of the desk and opened the file she brought with her. It was Lucile's. Harry could see the black and white photograph of the Cryptologist paper clipped to the front. But once the file was open, Ruth didn't study it for long. She looked up at Harry as he reclaimed his own seat and pushed the file towards him.

"There's nothing in here to suggest she would turn on us, Harry-"

"Of course there bloody well isn't," he snapped back, unintentionally waspish. "If there was, she'd have been kicked out of the service long before she got here."

The expression on Ruth's face froze in the wake of his rebuke, making him doubly regretful. But he was in no mood to apologise now.

"Yes, alright Harry. Lashing out at me isn't going to help. Have you been able to reach Lucy? It's going straight to voice mail for me. What about the Home Sec?"

"Same for me, but the Home Sec is on his way to London now. Ros and I will be meeting him at two. In the meantime, I want you to organise a flight back to London for Ben. We need him to brief us in person. While all that's happening, I want Lucas and someone else to go to the bunker. Can you spare anyone?"

"Jo would be best, she's been there before," replied Ruth.

"Of course," said Harry, having clean forgotten who brought Lucile there in the first place. "Send Lucas and Jo out there together. Two should be enough. As far as we know, Lucile herself isn't dangerous."

His words were met with silence, during which Ruth fixed him with wide, clear blue eyes. Imploring; doubly nervous to speak since he'd already chewed her up and spat her out once. It was a look he had seen countless times before, but this was the first since she returned from Cyprus. It was only her fourth day back.

"Harry," she said, speaking softly. "I know Lucy. I know she wouldn't have deliberately done this-"

"Ruth," he cut her off again, just as gently as her. "You hadn't seen her in two years and before that, you only knew her through work. The truth is, neither of us know what she's capable of."

There was a moment's pause while Ruth scratched at her wrists distractedly. "So this is my fault is it?" she asked, barely concealing her own rising frustration.

Harry sighed heavily. "That's not quite what I said-"

"No, no, it's fine," Ruth retorted in a tone that suggested otherwise. "I'll tell Lucas and Jo to bring Lucile in and then just wait for you and Ros to wipe up the rest of the mess. I know my worth."

With that, she got up and swept out of the room without as much as a backward glance. The lingering scent of her perfume hung sweetly in the air of the small office, making Harry's head thump that little bit harder. He closed his eyes, cursing her timing and her fragility all over again.

It was like passing through a lucid nightmare, for Leon. Emma had had to slap him to get him back into the car and back to London. He trembled, sweated and finally vomited all over the backseat before they made it back home. Mercifully, the others had already gone their separate ways and he and Emma were alone again. As soon as they were back inside her apartment she slammed the door shut after him and bolted the doors.

It was cool inside, the curtains still drawn from before she left, two days previously. Emma's cat rubbed against her legs enthusiastically as she opened a tin of Whiskas in the kitchen and filled the kettle. Leon watched her from the doorway as she worked, wondering how she could remain so calm and composed. It was as if she broke into military installations and shot people before breakfast every morning. She made them tea, she slipped bread into the toaster and turned to him, holding the loaf up for him to see.

"Are you up to some?" she asked.

He couldn't say anything and just shook his head. No. His stomach still roiled, a sensation that grew worse as the smell of the toast filled the air. She'd made him a murderer; he'd never know a moment's peace ever again.

"Lee, are you sure?" she repeated. "You might feel better with something inside you."

She had held a woman captive, tortured and shot her dead. Now, she was faffing around in the kitchen and mothering him with toast, tea and sympathy. Just as easily as she slipped out of one persona and into another, she repeated the feat in the opposite direction. She had an alacrity of personality swapping that Leon was almost in awe of. She opened the kitchen blinds to let in the broad morning sunshine before buttering her toast and sitting at the table. It was only then that Emma noticed that Leon was still standing in the doorway. She paused, looking at him curiously with her head cocked to one side.

"Darling, come here," she said, as though beckoning a timid toddler inside.

Reluctantly, Leon entered the kitchen and slid onto the bench beside her. He couldn't bring himself to get too close; he couldn't even bring himself to say anything. All the time, Lucile's final words to him kept coming back: to go to Thames House, to tell them about what's inside her. But it all sounded so cryptic to him now, like she had told him something in a foreign language and he'd only half remembered how to form the words. Ask for Lady Lazarus, she had told him. Lady Lazarus … it rang a faint bell in his memory.

"Do you understand why I had to do it?"

Emma's voice cut over his thoughts, pulling him out of himself with a start.

"What?" he asked, dumbly.

Emma had pushed her plate away and turned on the spot to face him properly. She brought both her hands to his face, tilting his head up gently so they were looking into each others eyes.

"I said, do you understand why I had to do what I did back there?" she repeated, gently.

All of the unfeeling ruthlessness was gone from her now. She was soft and tender as she brushed a kiss against his cheek, but it still made him flinch as though she had slapped him again. But again, Lucile's last words drifted back to him: play along, show no fear, show no dissent and do as they say. He drew a deep breath as he looked back into her eyes. It was like she was studying him, trying to see beneath his skin and read his thoughts. Inside, he felt himself shrinking.

"I just wish you had told me what you were going to do first," he finally explained, not quite able to keep his tone even. "I just thought … I mean, all this stuff was kicking off all round me, and all I could do was watch."

Emma smiled, but the look in her eyes hardened as though she had found some chink in his armour. "For a moment there, Lee, I thought you were on her side; that she'd turned you."

Picking up on the undertones of what she had said, Leon's heart skipped painfully and his stomach lurched. She was suspecting him already.

"Of course not," he replied, injecting a note of disdain in his tone.

Emma seemed pleased, and let her hands fall from his face. "Anyway, this isn't all," she said, leaning over the table to switch on a radio. Already, it was tuned to BBC News. "I got a text from our friend in the North. Mission complete, and we should get confirmation soon."

"Confirmation of what?" Leon regretted asking almost as soon as the words left his lip.

Emma didn't reply immediately. She nibbled at a corner of her toast, thoughtful as she considered how to respond. "Let's just say we've sent a clear and unequivocal message to the government. All we're waiting for now is for it to be delivered."

All through the journey, Jo was agitated. Occasionally, Lucas stole a sidelong glance at her as they drove out of London, onto the A12 bound for Suffolk. One moment she was pulling at her seatbelt, the next fumbling through a pack of cigarettes only to throw them back into her bag with a dissatisfied grunt. Then, she would fall back on biting her nails and staring listlessly out of the passenger window. He had never worked with her before; couldn't tell if this skittishness was normal or not. He cast around for something to say, something to occupy her mind that was clearly working ten to the dozen. Small talk had never been his strong point, especially with someone who was as good as a stranger. He had wanted Ros to come with him; not this girl whose outward agitation seemed like a reflection of his own inner turmoil. He could feel it rubbing off on him.

"Nice day," he said, feeling lame.

If he was the blushing type, he's be outshining the traffic lights. Jo turned to him, scowling.

"Lovely," she concurred, nonetheless.

For a moment, it looked as though she was about to resume her fidgeting. But she gave up pulling the threads from the seatbelt and sighed heavily.

"We've got this wrong!" she declared, loud and firm as though she had been itching to say it from the off. "Lucile wouldn't have done this willingly. What if we're walking into a trap? I mean, we're about to head off deep into the woods and we don't know what, or who, could be waiting there."

The same thoughts had crossed Lucas' mind, but he'd pushed them down and blocked them out. They were both armed; they were both experienced, but it still wasn't enough to prevent them from being shit scared. In defiance of these rising tensions, Lucas pressed down on the accelerator as they neared the village to get this call over and done with.

"For what it's worth," he replied, "I feel the same. But the bunker's in the back arse of nowhere. Who could get to it? It's heavily protected. It's just Lucile in there and no one knows she's there except us and GCHQ."

"We'll know soon enough," replied Jo, now resigned. "Turn left here and head towards those woods. There's a public car park about two miles down that road. It's where I parked when I came here before. Then it's another mile or so into the woods themselves, but only on a side track. I remember it."

Lucas followed her directions, grateful for the fine and clear day. It was mid-afternoon by the time they reached the woods, so the roads were also mercifully empty. Only farm vehicles seemed to pass them, headed towards the village itself. A picturesque affair, the likes of which Lucas hadn't seen since he left his own rural town all those years ago. Even the smell of the place – pine and earth – reminded him of home. He breathed it in deep as they parked up and climbed out of the vehicle. He stood by the door, taking in the view of the hills further south, the town stretching out to the north and the large reservoir to the east.

"Lucas."

Jo's voice jolted him out of his reverie and he spun on the spot to face her. She was looking back at him, but gesturing towards the undergrowth. There were fresh tyre tracks coming from within nearby bushes that marked a natural boundary between the car park and the woods. Fresh broken branches marked the spot where overhanging branches had obstructed the vehicle's path. Slowly, he walked round the car to join Jo, all the while never taking his eyes off the recently disturbed undergrowth.

"That wasn't there before," Jo pointed out.

One of the benefits of a rural investigation was that it was easier to tell if the area had been disturbed. No one would notice tyre tracks in the middle of the city, but it boded ill for their op. Reaching through a still open window of their car, he retrieved his gun from the dashboard and double checked that it was loaded. Following his lead, Jo did the same before securing the car. Before they went inside, however, Lucas placed a hand on Jo's elbow, stopping her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

There was only the briefest flickers of doubt crossing Jo's features. "We'll be fine."

Lucas appreciated the inclusion and managed a half-smile of gratitude as he let her lead the way. Jo remembered the directions, only this time she was making the journey with a loaded gun trained directly ahead of her. The pair of them, with adrenaline coursing and their nerves prickling, picked their way cautiously through the trees. Any sudden noises, and they jerked round, guns trained on the spot, only to be met with the sight of more trees leading off into darkness. After all these years away, Lucas had forgotten how dark the woods could be.

"It's okay," said Jo, returning to Lucas' side. "We're nearly there."

He didn't realise, until that moment, that he was the one now trembling, whereas Jo seemed calm and collected. The action clearly suited her more than the waiting. He tried to laugh, to lighten the mood. But the pair of them jumped out of their skin as a mobile phone rang shrilly nearby. The pair of them took a sharp intake of breath as they cast around for the source of the noise. Maddeningly, all Lucas could see was fallen leaves, undergrowth and patches of nettles and gorse. There wasn't a soul nearby, not that either of them could hear.

"Who's there?" Jo called out.

Lucas gulped, kept his gun trained on the middle distance directly in front of him. But the phone rang off and, once more, they were plunged back into silence.

"It was close," he said, still glancing restlessly in each and every direction. "I swear, it was right next to us."

"Lucas, I think I know-"

Jo didn't finish her sentence. Instead, she took out her own phone and dialled a number Lucas couldn't make out. Neither of them spoke as the call connected and the same mobile began ringing again, close by.

"Lucile?" asked Lucas.

Jo nodded.

"Let it ring, we need to find it."

They tracked the ring tone close to the perimeter fence, but didn't find it until Lucas trod on it. It had been covered by falling leaves and kicked into a patch of nettles. Jo used the toe of her boot to nudge the device clear of the nettles and Lucas, crouched down, tentatively picked it up and wiped the face of it down the leg of his jeans.

"Thirty-eight missed calls, battery almost dead," he remarked. "Most from the Grid, some from Ruth's mobile. If she was fleeing the bunker, she wouldn't have left this lying around."

When Lucas looked up to get Jo's opinion, he saw her looking off towards the perimeter fence. Her eyes were narrowed as she squinted through the gloom. He followed the line of her gaze, trying to make out what had caught her attention.

"The hatch is still open, Lucas."

It was difficult to see, at first. Among the fallen leaves and churned earth, the perfect circle of darkness was deceptively concealed. After a brief glance at one another, they slowly walked towards it. Lucas pocketed Lucile's phone for safe keeping as they both knelt at the rim of the hatch and leaned over the opening, looking down into the darkness. Not a sound could be heard from within but faint running water; only the smell of burning material reached Lucas, but if there had been a fire it had burned out already. There was no smoke. Lucas looked up at Jo, seeing his own mounting fear reflected in her eyes.

"I'll go first," he said. "You stay close behind me."

She nodded, gulped and managed a half-smile by way of encouragement.

Ros had already agreed to cut the man some slack. One of his colleagues had just been murdered in cold blood, after all. But there was only so far her patience would stretch as she watched Nicholas Blake's face turn from pink, to red and then purple as he ranted at Harry. They were sat in Blake's own private offices, Parliament already in summer recess but about to undergo an emergency recall. The Home Secretary seemed hell bent on blaming Harry, personally, for the murder of Sinead Kelly.

"How could you let this happen?" he had stormed at the Section Chief. "We placed the security arrangements in your hands – your hands Harry – on the basis of your reputation as one of the best in the service…"

Harry had made one or two attempts at interjecting into this conversation, only to be steamrollered by the fury of Blake. Ros, however, was sat back in her chair, legs cross and fingers steepled as she watched the scene unfold with a veneer of cool indifference. She watched the largely one-sided exchange between the two men with thinning patience.

"Well, maybe if we all bawl loudly enough at one another the truth will give itself up," Ros finally cut in. When both men turned to look at her, she continued: "Failing that, why don't you let Harry and I actually brief you and then we can get on with our job of finding out who was responsible for this and neutralising them before anyone else can shot."

It was the in-road that Harry needed and Blake was finally cooperating. "Two of my most trusted agents have been dispatched to Suffolk with the sole intention of finding out what went wrong, how it went wrong and what exactly happened. You have to understand, the assassination only happened a few hours ago and we won't have all the answers right away."

For a moment, the room was silent. Ros could hear Blake getting his breath back after ranting and pacing the length of the office. She watched him as he settled back down again, but he seemed lost to them, as though he was preoccupied with something else all of a sudden. Sat back at his desk, Blake propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. Once more, Ros felt a flicker of sympathy for the man.

"Home Secretary," she said, placatory now. "We appreciate that you've lost a colleague and we, of all people, know how that feels-"

"Of course you do," Blake replied, suddenly self-conscious. He sat up straight again. "I'm not going off at you … it's just …" his words faltered as he seemed to struggle to articulate exactly what was happening. "It's just such a bloody mess. Have the press gotten hold of this yet?"

"No," Harry assured him.

"Good. Miss Kelly's family need to be informed and her…" once more, Blake trailed off. "Her partner, you know, David Shelley. He's on his way over. I have to break the news to him, that's all. He'll want answers, Harry."

"I understand that, I really do. But right now, mere hours after the event, it's not possible and I will not give out false information just to make people feel better. We will keep you permanently briefed on the situation as it develops."

Once more, the meeting stalled. Blake and Harry looked at one another across the Home Secretary's desk, each one equally weary and seemingly defeated.

"Tell me honestly, Harry, who do you think it is? Who do you think has done this?"

Ros was also curious about that. They had discussed it in the car on their way over. It had been years since the Provisional IRA had carried out the assassination of a British MP and there were few other groups with the capability and know how. Compounding the confusion was the fact that Sinead Kelly was so new to the job. She hadn't yet made any disastrous decisions that could inspire such murderous urges. The whole thing, in Ros' mind, was so random and Harry had concurred with her. She watched her boss at that moment, as he tried to exercise some tact and sensitivity.

"We just don't know," he replied. "But there are a number of options: we need to look into Al-Qaeda, Irish Republican dissidents and possibly even Black Flag seeing as they've been causing trouble lately."

"Home Secretary," Ros discreetly entered the discussion as soon as Harry finished talking. "Is there anyone else at all that you know of who could have had reason to kill the Minister? Because the fact remains is, she was an obscure back bencher that no one had ever heard of until a month ago."

Nicholas Blake drew a deep, steadying breath as he mulled it over. "I only knew her vaguely. Why don't you both wait until Shelley gets here; he'd been … having relations … with Miss Kelly for quite some time. He would know more than I."

"Well, I'm waiting for a call back about the situation-"

"Oh, that's fine," Blake waved Ros' concerns away. "Leave your phone on – we understand the situation."

"Stay close to me." Lucas whispered over his shoulder to Jo as they made their way through the bunker. It was cold, but the smell of smoke was still heavy on the air and the sound of running water grew louder. Inside one dormitory the sole lighting came from a blue emergency light, but they could see that it was empty. Moving on, they checked each room in turn, moving between them with their backs pressed to the walls, making a note of the state each room was in.

"The place has been ransacked, but no sign of forced entry anywhere," Jo remarked, sotto voce.

Inside the kitchen, Lucas found a wet towel and more signs of ransacking. The smoke they detected came from inside the ladies toilets, where it looked as though clothing and papers had been burned and immediately dowsed. A makeshift pipe was funnelling water straight from the tap, flooding the toilets themselves. It washed over their shoes as they stepped inside.

"There's definitely no one here," Lucas observed. "Can you film this on your phone for the time being?"

"Sure."

Careful not to touch anything, Lucas continued to pick his way through the bunker. Water from the ladies toilet was now washing down the corridor, making the floor treacherously slippery. Erring on the side of caution, he kept his back to the walls as he moved towards the station door, gun at the ready. The door was still open, but he didn't see Lucile's body until he had stepped inside. She was still in her chair, a bullet straight through her heart. The wall behind her pockmarked where it had passed straight through her and ricocheted off somewhere else. A shell casing was beside his foot.

"Shit," he murmured.

The water leaking from the bathroom mingled with the blood that had spilled from Lucile's wounds, staining it pink, making it look even worse than it already was. Her skin was white and waxen, her eyes half shut; she wouldn't even have seen the shot coming. Or so Lucas hoped as he swallowed the wave of nausea that washed over him. He backed out of the room and came to rest against the wall outside. He doubled over, trying not to throw up and took several deep breaths before calling Jo over. She didn't need to see the body for herself to know what had happened. He reached for his phone, ready to brief Ros and Harry on the latest development.

David Shelley's hands trembled as he pulled his phone from the pocket of his jacket. None of what the Home Secretary had actually sunk in, but he knew the meaning of it. Sinead was dead. Someone had killed her. He knew what it meant, but the enormity of it made him go numb. He was away of the Home Secretary still in the room, those people from MI-5 waiting outside so he could be told of his fiancé's death in private, at least. Finally, he managed to get his phone and check the caller: Leon.

"Not now," he murmured, thumbing the 'ignore' button.

When he looked up again, Blake appeared worried. "The Press?"

David managed to shake his head. "My son, Leon."

Leon, who barely even knew of Sinead's existence. Camping with friends, or so he had been told. The boy didn't need to be dragged into this just yet. Before he could dwell too long on what to tell Leon, a glass of whiskey was pushed into his hands by the Home Sec. For a long moment, he merely looked at it, as though wondering what it was for. Without wasting too much time, however, he knocked it back in one, hoping it would be enough to get him through this briefing without breaking down.

"You ready?" Blake asked.

"No," he replied, honestly. "But I'll have to be."

While Blake went to find the spooks, David turned to stand before the window. He looked out, but saw little of what was happening. He was about to be subjected to the minutiae of Sinead's death, the technical details and the intimate details of her final moments. He would have to take that emotional step back, too, mere moments after being told the news. He marvelled at people who could actually do this; be so cold-bloodedly clinical. He remembered when his wife died; how he could barely look his own son in the eye for months afterwards. That amethyst eyed child, so much like his mother it was like seeing a ghost as he grew older.

Now, here he was again. The grief, following him like a stray dog. Feed it once, it just keeps coming back for more. He was dimly aware of a conversation happening, still outside the door. Voices were being deliberately hushed so he wouldn't hear. Distracted from his own raw pain, he turned to see what was going on. Harry Pearce and his silent side-kick were visibly disconcerted. He'd never seen Harry Pearce so visibly distressed before. Sensing that the news just got worse, David moved towards the door, listening in to what was being said.

"Shot once, through the heart," the normally silent woman was saying. "Dead instantly; no idea how they got in there. That bunker isn't exactly on the A-Z. Whoever it was, they knew what they were doing."

Harry joined in, with some equally wry observation that David didn't quite catch as he rushed to the nearest vase and choked the whiskey shot back up again.

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