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Chapter Eight: Pandora's Box

They stole a moment alone together on the back stairs of Thames House. It was a fire exit, strictly speaking, so no one else ever came that way. Empty and draughty, their voices echoed softly when they spoke. But luckily, Harry and Ruth weren't doing much talking. They stood close to each other on the second floor landing, head to head as he embraced her well away from prying eyes. Their earlier squabble forgotten and buried under the latest loss to their team. Close by was the wall of death; on which names were accumulating like notches on Casanova's bedpost. Well, now they had another to add to sorry party: Lucile Adams, lasting a record low of three meagre days. Even by Section D standards, it would take some beating and Harry found himself wryly wondering if there was some posthumous honour he could bestow on her for that.

Harry gently dabbed a stray tear that had leaked from Ruth's eye with the pad of his thumb. A gesture to which Ruth responded with a shudder as she gave herself a shakedown. She turned to her right, looking through the glass doors as though she was expecting someone. But Harry knew she was only checking to see if the coast was clear before kissing him again. After the day they'd had, however, he couldn't have cared less who saw them. Not so long ago – but longer than he cared to admit – he would have worked through all this. He would have gone down the nearest boozer, found something in a skirt and with a pulse to exchange bodily fluids with before regaining consciousness the following morning as though nothing had happened.

But those were simpler days and he knew better now: that he never did forget the dead; he had merely diverted them. They seemed to have accumulated in that closed off no-man's land in his head and lain in wait, ambushing him as soon as the first chink in his armour appeared. A Pandora's Box of ghosts springing open to take him by surprise. He wondered, often, who was the first to open that chink? Was it Ruth? He couldn't honestly say whether it was her, or whether the arrival of her star in his orbit simply coincided with a natural weakening of the will. Now, he saw it hardly mattered. She had seen that weakness in him so he had nothing to hide any more. Not from Ruth.

He remembered the cotton handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket and plucked it out. Ruth took it with a pale smile of gratitude. She dabbed at her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara, blissfully unaware that she already the tell-tale charcoal tramlines running down both sides of her face. When she handed it back, he went to clean it up himself. Realising what was going on, Ruth managed a laugh.

"I'm sorry, I must look a right state," she said, hoarsely.

"Don't be sorry," he replied.

Attempting once more to clean herself up, she descended the stairs to study her reflection in the window that overlooked the rear of the building. It was still bright outside, almost indecently sunny outside given the sombre mood inside. Slowly, Harry followed her and sat down on the lowest step. After a few minutes, Ruth joined him with her face pink and scrubbed and with one decimated handkerchief clutched in her hands.

"No one knew about that bunker, Harry," said Ruth, newly composed.

That information wasn't knew; Ros had said exactly the same thing to him not an hour before, as she was leaving to join Lucas in Suffolk. Jo was on her way back to London with Lucile's body. Now, he would reply to Ruth with what he had initially held back from Ros. It wasn't something he could say with the Secretary of State for Defence and the Home Secretary hanging around and fishing for classified information. But with Ruth off the Grid, he could finally give voice to the thoughts and embryonic theories in his head.

"That's not strictly true," he said, making room for Ruth on the step. "The Home Secretary knew about it. Our team knew about it. The Secretary of State for Defence knew about it."

"Harry, none of our lot would have betrayed-"

"I know! I know and I'm not accusing anyone," Harry stated, before she could accuse him of paranoia again. "But listen, David Shelley was her lover. Most murder victims are known to their killers but obviously, a man in Shelley's position wouldn't do the deed himself. He could easily hire someone."

Ruth sniffed loudly while thinking it over. "That's a lot of trouble to go to for bumping off an inconvenient lover, Harry. But it's definitely a possibility."

It was the first thing that had sprung to mind when he heard of the Minister's death and Lucile's. The Home Secretary would have no feasible reason to want Sinead Kelly out of the way and they had no personal connection that could provide any other motive. However, Ruth was running with his speculation.

"Lucile would have been the perfect cover, but she would have to have been neutralised because she knew too much," she added. Although initially inflated by the rush of the theory, she soon sagged again as the drawbacks presented themselves. "But it still seems like a lot of trouble to go to. He already knew her route, so why divert her and have her killed there? He could have hired a hit man and stationed him anywhere along the pre-arranged route."

Harry shrugged. "To make it look like an assassination," he suggested. "Because if that was what he wanted people to think, he would have had to see things from the point of view of someone who didn't know the route. Hence the bunker break in, take Lucile hostage and get her to change the route and possibly even set her up to take the fall for it. Which he very nearly succeeded in doing."

Ruth sighed and ran her hand through her hair, dragging it out of her bloodshot eyes as she concentrated. Her brow creased as she picked the theory apart, testing it for weaknesses. Harry was reminded, once more, of how seemed to have tested him for weaknesses, once. She was very good at finding them.

"If he needed Lucile to take the rap he would not have killed her," she stated. "All he's done is alert us to the fact that was held hostage. Lucas did say there was bruises on her wrists from being bound, right?"

"Yes," Harry replied. "I don't know Ruth. This really is the first possibility that sprang to mind and I'm probably clutching at straws. But given the fact that no one at all outside that room on Sunday knew what we were doing, our scope is limited."

Harry ran through the guest list once more. The Home Secretary, Nicholas Blake, was there. His cabinet colleague, David Shelley. Lucile was there. He himself was there, alongside Ruth. There were one or two others, but they left before the security meeting began.

"There was quite a young boy there," he recalled. "Who was he?"

"That was Shelley's son, Leon. He came down for his tea and was sent straight back out of the room again. He wouldn't have known anything," Ruth explained. Immediately, she fell silent and frowned into the middle distance. "But…" she added.

"But?" Harry prompted her.

Ruth turned to look back at him. "Lucy and the boy were talking. I think Lucy had spilled a drink on him; something like that. They were just chatting. Then I left you and Blake to conspire amongst yourselves and decided to join Lucy. She was all alone apart from a teenage boy and I was worried in case he was trying it on with her."

"And was he?"

Ruth shook her head. "No, not at all. Lucy didn't mind at all. But she wouldn't have told him anything. She couldn't have; she didn't know anything herself at that stage."

Harry sighed heavily. "Speak to the boy anyway. You never know. What's his name again? Leon, isn't it?"

"Yes, but there's others we need to prioritise," Ruth reminded him. "Maybe, just on the off chance, look into Blake as well. You just never know what some people are up to."

Harry considered Blake about as likely a suspect as a teenage boy, but he knew he could leave no stone unturned. Any Politician could be working for any 'higher power'.

When he went to reply to her, he found the words stuck in his throat. But his eyes locked into hers and they looked at each other for a moment. She was only back from Cyprus a month. But it was meant to be her in that bunker. It was meant to be Ruth sending those security messages and it could have been her corpse Jo was currently escorting back to London at that moment. He could have been where Pete Adams is now: drowning in tea and sympathy. A lump formed in Harry's throat. Ten years ago – before the smoking ban in the work place – he could have blamed his watering eyes on that, but there was no such convenient excuse to hand. His hand found hers and he gave a squeeze for reassurance.

"Harry," she said, softly. Her expression relaxed as her eyes continued to hold his own gaze. She tilted her head to one side, quizzically. "Harry, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he lied.

Ruth didn't need to tell him that hadn't washed with her; her expression said it all. With another small sigh, he relented. She always had a way of worming the truth out of him.

"I was just thinking," he finally admitted. "It was meant to be you in there. Only I had refused to let you go."

To his surprise, Ruth raised a smile. "You're not regretting that, are you?"

Stunned, he realised she was joking. Still, he gave an exasperated gasp. "Of course not!"

In a rush of relief, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close. A gesture she responded to eagerly, where once she may have pushed him away. Thank the god of spies for fire escapes.

"I was furious with you too," Ruth confessed, her voice muffled as she spoke into his shoulder.

Even now, Harry felt some perverse joy in being proven right against her. He grinned, grateful that she could not see the look of triumph that made his green eyes glitter in the way that they now did.

"I am never letting you out of my sight again," he said, briefly squeezing her.

"Harry, we've been through this," Ruth retorted, finally reverting to form and pushing him away. "Cotton wool brings me out in hives, so stop wrapping me in it!"

He groaned and leaned back against the stair railings, eye rolling as he went. "Jesus, woman!"

Once he had composed himself again, Harry straightened himself out and looked back at her. Ruth was smiling again, but it was a weak affair. He held out his hand to help her back to her own feet and together, they headed back on to the Grid. It was time to start the investigation proper.

Ros didn't slow down until she reached Eastleigh. The rural charm passed her windows in a green and brown blaze or spattered across the windscreen as she overtook unfortunate airborne insects. Muttering stifled curses she squirted the windscreen to keep her view of the village clear. Only once she crossed a cattle grid and descended a steep hill into a high street did she bring the vehicle down to the national speed limit. She had already passed the woods where Police vehicles and an ambulance were still stationed, the area cordoned off to the public. But Lucas was no longer there, so she kept on going.

She slowed to a crawl as she passed through the main street, ignoring the impatient honking of the motorist behind her. Only as he finally got the chance to pass her did she flick him off as he went. But he was soon forgotten as she resumed her search for Lucas. No matter how often she told herself he was a big boy and perfectly capable of looking after himself, she would still have those niggling doubts about his true mental state. Never would she allow that to show in front of man himself, but it was always there at the back of her mind nonetheless and after the day he had had, she wouldn't blame him for losing it.

Luckily, the village only seemed to have one pub. Outside, leaning against the low perimeter wall, was Lucas. He studying the screen of his phone intently, jabbing at the buttons with the pad of his thumb. Despite herself, a small surge of relief washed over her as she drew level with the pavement and parked up. Before approaching him, she tried to get a look at his face before he realised she was there and started schooling himself. He looked pale and tired, but then, he always did. He was still hammering out the same text message by the time she caught up with him properly, but he stopped mid-flow and slid the device back into his pocket anyway.

"Sorry, did I disturb you?" she asked.

"Not really," he replied, following her around the back of the pub. "I didn't want to be lurking on a street corner like a flasher so tried to look as if I'd stopped to actually do something."

Ros managed a dry laugh as she brought him to a halt behind the pub. She wasn't sure whether they were actually allowed round there, but nor did she sincerely care. She needed to speak with Lucas privately before they started asking questions of the locals. Bringing her hands to his face, she looked directly at him. Although he didn't say anything, she could tell he was questioning her sanity.

"Are you okay?" she asked, sotto voce. "I mean really okay."

He didn't reply immediately. Briefly, there was just a small wavering uncertainty visible in his expression. A fleeting thing that only Ros would have picked up on.

"Yeah, I'm good," he finally said. "I mean, we were sort of prepared for the worst before we even got in there."

He meant the bunker in which he and Jo had found the body.

"Sort of?" she repeated, eyebrow raised. "If you want to sit this out-"

"No, I don't," he cut in, emphatically. When she made no reply, he continued: "Ros, please, let's see what we can find out here."

She wanted to say more, but Lucas was already turning away and walking back towards the pavement. Ros watched him pull up the collar of his jacket, despite the afternoon heat, with her eyes narrowed. She had to keep reminding herself that he was tougher than he looked. Before Lucas could walk straight past the pub, she caught him by the arm and directed him inside.

"As good a place as any to start," she said, holding the door open for him.

They were greeted by an enormous Irish wolfhound who sauntered over to give their shoes a curious sniff. At a nearby table, four local pensioners lifted their gaze to look at them both, fixing them with quizzical looks. Both Lucas and Ros wilted under the scrutiny, but went straight to the bar where the bar maid was chatting to another elderly customer. Ros only picked up snippets of their hushed conversation, but it was definitely about the body found in the woods. A radio report playing the background reported the assassination of Sinead Kelly – another case she and Lucas would have to look into, soon enough.

The barmaid and the punter instantly fell silent as Ros and Lucas approached.

"What can I get you?" the barmaid asked, doing her best not to sound annoyed at the interruption of her gossip session.

"Er, nothing actually," replied Ros. "I'm Detective Constable Sandra Wilkes and this my colleague, Mark Jones. I wondered if we could ask a few questions."

Beside her, Lucas flinched and turned from the bar to scratch the dog's ears. Instead, it was left to Ros to show her fake ID badge and produce a photo of Lucile from her jacket pocket.

"Have you seen this woman?" asked Ros, showing the barmaid the picture.

The other woman took it, a light of recognition sparking immediately in her eyes.

"'Ere, look Reg," she said, addressing the customer she was speaking to a moment ago. "It's her isn't it? The one doing the nature survey who was here last night."

Ros watched Reg's reaction, which was identical to the barmaid's. Instant recognition. Without adding to what the barmaid had said, he turned to Ros.

"That was never her found in the woods this morning, was it?"

Ros wanted to kick the loose tongued emergency services personnel who had gabbed about that morning's events. For now, she had to paint on a smile as though the flying rumours simply didn't affect her. "I can't actually confirm that, but that's what we think."

They both looked visibly shaken by the news; wide eyed and temporarily struck dumb as they gathered their thoughts. It was the barmaid, who introduced herself as the landlady to Ros, who spoke first. "We're a small town here, so we remember new faces right enough," she explained. "She was here just last night and asking about what wildlife we get in our gardens. Gave me a card with a number on it."

"Was she with anyone or alone?" asked Lucas, finally joining the conversation. Affronted by the sudden withdrawal of attention, the hound began whining up at him.

"Oh yes, alone. She sat out in the beer garden most of the time she was here. From about six until seven or seven thirty-ish, by my reckoning," the landlady answered. "She was talking on her mobile when I brought her dinner out to her, though." As an after-thought, she added: "she had the salmon salad and two G and T's. That, I do remember."

"But she wasn't drunk?" asked Ros.

"No, not all."

"You didn't happen to notice anyone following her out or any other strangers in the vicinity?" Lucas asked.

Reg and the Landlady glanced at one another for a moment. "I didn't see anyone, did you Reg?"

"No one, sorry. Like Linda here says, we remember new faces round here and I didn't see a thing," the punter replied. "But I wasn't up round the woods last night. I went straight home from here and that's in the opposite direction."

"This 'ere's the only pub in this town and I've been running it for nigh on twenty years now. I know just about everyone here at least by name and face," the Landlady confirmed, adding with a note of disdain: "Except the teetotallers."

"What about any strange vehicles, then?" Ros asked.

"Ah, now that's different," Linda the Landlady said. "We get god knows how many motors passing through at all hours. Commuters and the like, passing to and from London. We wouldn't have noticed."

Reg confirmed that, to Ros' dismay. After borrowing a pen from behind the bar, she wrote down the telephone number for the Thames House incident desk and handed it to the Landlady, asking the punter to copy it down as well. "Give us a call if anything comes back to you," she said, as they left.

Outside, they sat at one of the benches in the beer garden, under a parasol. It was another hot day and they were grateful for the shade, seeing as Lucas had already caught the sun on the bridge of his nose. She looked at him in silence for a long moment, trying to second guess what was going through his mind. He was distant, distracted. He had barely slept and found the body of his newest colleague dead in an underground bunker. She recognised the look of someone who had had enough for one day when she saw it, and she realised Jo was probably in the same boat.

"Have you heard from the Police yet?" asked Ros.

"Forensics are in the bunker now," he said, quietly. "They let us remove the body for a post mortem, though. Jo went with her to the mortuary. You know, our friendly mortuary."

Ros nodded. The people examining the body would know who Lucile really was and who she was working for at the time of her death.

"There was water all over the place," said Lucas. "I was ankle deep in it. It washed over the body. It had destroyed all the ciphers she was using. I think it might have washed away a lot of DNA evidence too."

"No," Ros shook her head. "No, it's harder to get rid of than that. Leave it to the experts, Lucas. Those guys could extract shit from a rocking horse if they had to."

To her relief, Lucas managed one of his half-hearted, lopsided smiles. It confirmed her suspicion that he had been beating himself up about disturbing the crime scene and potentially harming the case. However, the smile was gone as soon as it had arrived.

"We should have guessed that the message Lucile sent was compromised," he said, referring to the phone call they got from Ben before the Minister's assassination. "We could have prevented both deaths-"

"Lucas, you're wrong," she firmly cut over him. "Lucile was in a no win situation. If she didn't send the message they would have killed her and just ambushed the Minister later on. And with the correct call signs used, we weren't to know."

"I'm not blaming you-"

"Don't blame either of us," she cut him off again, brooking no nonsense.

Ros expression set in grim determination, shutting off any further self-recrimination from Lucas. But he still looked unhappy. He wouldn't hold her gaze, glancing off to the left instead.

"Look, we got some decent information from those people in the pub; first time lucky," she pointed out. "Now we can start tracking Lucile's last known movements. We've done bloody well today."

Before Lucas could pick holes in their progress, she took out her phone and called Malcolm to tell him to start scouring CCTV from seven pm onwards. Although there was no CCTV on the road leading directly into the woods, there were bound to be clues on the town centre footage. Once that call had been made, she called the local police who were dealing with the murder enquiry proper. They could handle any further reports of sightings and appeals for information themselves, now that they were equipped with Lucile's cover story.

"We need to get back to the Grid," she told Lucas, after she'd dealt with the police. "But after that, I'm taking you straight home. No arguments."

Sensibly, he offered no resistance.

Leon returned to an empty house. A half-drunk cup of coffee was sitting on the draining board in the kitchen, a newspaper open at the centre fold on the breakfast table and an empty saucepan left on the hob. After finding his father's study equally devoid of life, he went through to the main bathroom and ran a shower; turning the temperature up as high as he could stand it. Once stripped and under the water, he scrubbed every inch of himself until his skin was raw. He took a pumice stone to his fingertips, scouring under his nails until they bled. He worked fast and frantically, washing his hair and scratching his scalp repeatedly in the process. Suddenly he fell still, watching the blood-tinged soap suds washing down the plughole, breathless and despondent. Guilt wasn't the same as dirt, you couldn't just scrub it away and hope for the best. Nevertheless, the rinse and repeat cycle went on once more before he shut off the water and towelled himself dry again.

Back in his own room, he shut the curtains to block out the afternoon sun and lay on his bed in silence. He thought to turn the radio on, but every news broadcast was covering the assassination of the Minister. Only Emma was able to carry on as normal: she had dropped him off at the end of his street, on her way to meet someone at Liverpool Street Station. It was the assassin, he was sure of that.

Slowly, he sat up on the bed and drew his knees up under his chin. He could run for it. He could get on the Eurostar and be in France by sundown. There was a suitcase shoved under the bed he was sat on and he wouldn't need much. But those thoughts were shut off by the sound of a key turning in the lock of the front door. Moments later, his father's footsteps echoed from the tiled hallway. Without thinking, Leon rushed out of his room and down the stairs to meet him.

"Dad!"

Shelley senior was still divesting himself of his coat in the hallway when Leon reached him. He looked up at his son through heavily lidded eyes, red and puffy. For a moment, it was though the father didn't recognise the son, and it brought Leon to a halt half way down the stairs.

"You're back early," David remarked, his voice hoarse. He looked his son up and down, his gaze finally resting on his son's hands. "And you're hurt."

Too late, Leon folded his injured right hand under his left arm. "It's nothing," he quickly brushed it off.

"Didn't look like nothing-"

"I came home when I heard about the assassination," he cut in, descending the rest of the stairs. "I'm … I'm sorry…"

It sounded lame because it was lame. His father's expression clouded in response. "You know?"

Now Leon was thrown, too. "It was on the news."

"No, I mean you knew about Sinead and I?"

Leon couldn't think why they were having this conversation. The things he wanted to say the sounds coming out of him now were like two separate languages. Thoughts that had so recently considered running for his life now centred on spilling everything. But the words wouldn't come.

"Everybody knew," he finally replied.

His father reached out to him, looking at the cuts under his nails briefly before pulling him into a hug. Leon didn't resist. On the contrary, he encircled his arms father's neck and broke down in tears, sobbing heavily into his shoulder. A damn had broken, and he couldn't stop.

Harry, Ros, Malcolm and Ruth all gathered around the techie's monitor. Lucas and Jo had been sent home to recover from the trauma of finding Lucile's body, while the others made it their task to track her last movements on the night of her death. It stunned Ruth to think it was barely twenty four hours ago.

Thanks to the information supplied to Ros by the pub landlady, they found Lucile easy enough. She was picked up by the pub's cameras, a small and grainy figure, half in shadow, moving mutely towards her own death. She was followed outside the pub by a large, hulking shadow that soon materialised as nothing more than the pub's resident wolfhound. Lucile paused to give his head a good rub, before continuing on her way and the dog skulked back towards his home.

"Make sure the police know about that," said Ros. "The minute they trace a stray dog hair on the body and match it back to the dog, the Landlady and every patron in there will be banged up for life while the real killers might as well shout it from the rooftops."

Ruth's confidence in the local Bobbies roughly matched Ros', and she didn't take it as lightly as it was meant. It wasn't that they were inept, they were just unused to dealing with cases of this magnitude. It'd be the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six all over again. Meanwhile, Lucile on the screen carried on with her final journey. They watched her silent figure pause by windows, or stop to take in the view and check her phone. Other times, Ruth watched her as she glanced over her shoulder as though distracted by something. Had she heard something? Had she seen something from the corner of her eye? The cameras refused to divulge all the answers they sought and, soon, they lost her at the edge of the woods. Lucile stopped at a road crossing, waiting for the little green man to flash up on the crossing opposite, looked left and right and walked off camera and out of frame. A trail of questions unanswered followed in her wake.

For a long time, no one said anything. All eyes remained fixed on the now blank screen, a perfect reflection of their minds. Only Harry's phone ringing broke the silence, and the muffled sound of his voice as he took the call and quickly vanished off the Grid. No one asked where he was going.

"There are no CCTV cameras directed into the woods," Malcolm said. "That was as close as we can get. We're relying on dog walkers or campers who might have heard something."

Ros didn't look hopeful. "There's a car park just outside the woods; Lucas showed it to me. Isn't there anything covering it?"

Malcolm looked apologetic on behalf of Suffolk County Council. "It's not an official car park, though. It's just a natural roadside clearing that people illegally use as a car park."

Ruth sighed and leaned over to eject the disc with the CCTV footage on it. She would scour it again later, after she'd had a chance to get some sleep. But before that, Harry returned to the Grid with a clear plastic bag in his hands. He came straight over to them, where they had gathered in the meeting room, and laid it out on the table.

"This was found inside Lucile's body," he said, gesturing to the back. "Concealed in a tampon applicator, apparently. Although not personal acquainted with such methods, I can just about imagine how it works."

Curious, the others leaned over the bag, studying the contents which appeared to be just one sheet of paper with a long sequence of numbers. Ruth smiled as a bright ray of sunshine broke over their darkest day yet.

"It's a cipher," she said, pulling it close to her.

"Exactly," Harry replied, triumphantly.

"Clever girl," Ros enthused, peering over Ruth's shoulder. "Hopefully, it's a simple substitution code and we can crack it in a few hours. It must be the names of her attackers. It must be."

Ruth couldn't think of any other reason for the cipher being kept up there. Although cautious by nature, that didn't extend to secreting messages up delicate parts of their own bodies. But Ruth also knew one mind alone couldn't work on a professionally concocted cipher. She reached for a large marker pen from inside her bag and wrote the numbers down on a piece of card, exactly as they appeared only larger and bolder.

"I'm photocopying this for all of us to take home," she explained. "Including ones for Jo and Lucas."

"I'll drop theirs off on my way home," Ros volunteered.

"Good idea Ruth," Harry cut in. "Get me one, as well. And email it over to the cryptologists over at GCHQ, they do this sort of thing to pass boring train journeys. But take nothing for granted; I want us all to study the code and try to crack it. When we regroup tomorrow, we'll go over it together. That'll be all, thank you."

Thanks again for reading; reviews would be welcome.