28/10/07
10:15 AM
The Grid
Jo jerked fully upright. She'd been on hold for about fifteen minutes waiting for a police chief to be ready to speak to her. She'd given up last night when she'd been told they didn't deal with custody stuff between ten PM and seven AM. She'd got in to Thames House shortly after seven to keep up the pressure to get the driver transferred to MI5's custody.
"Good morning Chief Inspector, my name is Gwen Phillips, I'm calling from Thames House. I spoke to an Inspector Murray last night about a man identifying himself as Jason Brewer."
"Yes, I can see that. You asked us not to offer him bail under any circumstances."
"Yes, I did. Can I ask if anything has changed with you overnight?"
"No Miss Phillips, he's still insisting he was just a driver and that he didn't know what his cargo was."
"Well we've acquired new information overnight."
"Oh really?"
"We've verified that the man he was carrying was an MI5 agent and that the agent has been tortured," Jo heard the man react. "Severely. So as you can imagine this is now a security issue. We need to question Mr Brewer ourselves, see if he knows anything sensitive that could have come from our agent, if not, see if he can lead us to whoever paid him." There was a silence. "Chief Inspector, this isn't about power or about wanting to see to ourselves without needing the police, without the police we'd never have found our man. This is about containing the damage that could be done by what our officer could have given up under duress."
"If he is just a driver?"
"If he's just a driver we can pass him back to you for a nice easy Drugs and Accessory to Kidnap conviction, but the people who hired him might try to assassinate him. If he was involved in torturing our officer, we need to pursue that prosecution."
The policeman sighed. "Okay. He'll be at Thames House by secure transport by 0900 tomorrow."
Jo hissed softly. "Is there any way you could get him to us sooner? We need that information as soon as possible."
"I can try Miss Phillips, but I can't promise you anything."
"Thank you." Jo said. "I'll pop you through to the desk to arrange that." She hit the 'transfer call' sequence and her line went dead. She put the phone down and stretched. Harry had called her a bit after eleven last night to say Adam had confirmed it was Zaf, and that he was alive. She'd texted Adam to ask how Zaf was, Adam had replied to say that Zaf was too doped to tell.
Jo dropped her head in to her hands. She was getting tougher, she knew she was, but this was getting to her. Part of it was what had happened, she'd been warned in training that spooks didn't have the protection that, say, soldiers did, so they could be treated very badly if they got caught. She knew Adam and Fiona had been tortured before, she knew it had happened to Adam twice. It was a horrible thing to imagine happening to someone.
Part of it was that it was Zaf. She'd been very grateful several times to Adam for telling her to move in with Zaf, it had been helpful not to have to worry about what she might say if she was drunk, to have someone at home she could talk things over with in the evenings. It was useful to hear him say yes, everyone feels that way at some point, to have someone to remind her that she wasn't the first person to go through this, that he, Adam, Ros, even Harry, had worked through it and come out still sane. Well, still functional. They'd picked up groceries for each other, learned what the other one would and wouldn't eat (she'd been amazed to find he hated the smell of bacon), cooked for each other, nagged each other to get out of the bathroom. They'd ended up in bed together a couple of times, in a way that wasn't surprising; two people living together, living pretty stressful lives, only able to confide in each other… She didn't regret it. She'd wanted to. But she thought that this might have been easier if they hadn't. She wasn't his girlfriend, there was nothing like a promise between them. Just an understanding. An understanding that the other one was there, the other one would listen, and understand. She picked up her phone. It didn't ring for long.
"Yep?"
"Adam,"
"Hey Jo, any progress?"
"Ros is going to talk to his mother, the cops have agreed to hand us the driver."
"That's good. We've got the photo of the driver you sent us. I'll show it to Zaf when he's awake."
"He's still under?"
"It's their painkillers, they tend to keep people unconscious. So they tell me, anyway. They're tapering the dose off, he's looking less deeply asleep, but he's not up to talking yet."
"Okay."
"When's the driver going to arrive?"
"By nine tomorrow morning."
"Okay, tell Harry I want to be the one in control of this."
"Okay."
Note: I wish to declare at this stage that I do not necessarily agree with anything that any character thinks, says or does in any fiction I write.