The Becket Approval by Falconer Duncan (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

was in a bad place. I was pissed off with the job. With my life. I was going nowhere. A few million quid might’ve fixed it.’

‘You knew you could never get away with it,’ Neve said.

‘At the time I clearly thought I could. Let me ask you something. You too,’ he said to Bethan. ‘What do you do all this for? Risking your life. Patriotism? Queen and country? Your political party? Your God because you think he’s on your side? What drives you? You have no idea of the depths of my cynicism. I look back on conflicts like Vietnam, the Falklands, Northern Ireland and wonder why anyone thought they were worth the effort of getting up in the mornings, never mind dying for. I visited a mother today. Mother of a bloke who died for who knows what. I wanted to ask her why he did it, but I’m damned sure she wouldn’t have been able to tell me. People knew what they were dying for centuries ago. Maybe all the way up to the Second World War. But after that? I don’t know why they bothered. I know why the people at the top bother. Luxury. We secure their luxuries. So there I am, looking at twenty kilos of a substance that would buy me lots of luxury and I went for it.’

‘You never got it, yet here you are,’ Neve said.

‘Maybe I want a second try.’

‘What do you think?’ Neve asked Bethan.

‘I find you both fascinating,’ Bethan said, taking a sip of her drink.

‘Why are you here?’ Neve asked her. ‘That was a rhetorical question because I know you don’t know. So, tell me about the assassination program.’

‘You’ve read the file,’ Bethan said.

‘I’ve read nothing,’ Neve said. ‘Jervis mentioned the title and nothing else. Sounds interesting though.’

‘Military personnel killing people who killed military personnel and got away with it,’ Bethan explained.

‘And that’s why you went to Albania together?’

‘That’s right,’ Bethan said.

‘And Jervis sent you on that,’ Neve said to Gunnymede.

‘Harlow,’ he replied..

Neve studied him, looking for something. Gunnymede stared back at her.

Bethan looked between them. ‘Excuse me, I’m going to the loo,’ she said, getting to her feet and heading away.

Gunnymede waited until Bethan was out of the room. ‘Why are you bringing her in on this?’ he asked.

‘She’s already in on it.’

‘No she’s not. She’s an analyst. A profiler.’

‘Why’s she here?’

‘You keep asking that.’

‘What’s Jervis up to?’

‘Maybe it’s Harlow.’

‘Maybe it’s Spangle.’

‘Are you involved in the op too?’

‘No one’s involved in the Spangle op but you. And Jervis and Harlow and that strange Greek bloke who hangs around him. Who is he, anyway?’

‘Harlow’s dad and his dad were mates.’

‘And the assassination case is about Spangle. I’m not asking. I’m just curious.’

‘Everything’s about Spangle,’ he said. ‘This operation is somehow about Spangle. He’s the most dangerous single person on this planet.’

‘There’s a lot of competition out there. North Korea. Iran. Russia. China.’

‘Those leaders are all accountable to someone eventually. Spangle isn’t.’

‘Do you really believe you’re the bait?’ she asked.

‘You’re another well-informed oily rag aren’t you,’ he said, staring at her.

‘Echo is foxtrot,’ came a voice over their ear pieces.

They went to their phones and accessed apps as Bethan returned. ‘I heard the message,’ she said.

‘Turns out everyone was waiting for you to go for a pee,’ Gunnymede said to Bethan.

A bird’s eye view of Mrs Saleem’s terraced house came up on Gunnymede’s phone showing someone leaving the front door. It zoomed in to reveal Saleem’s mother wearing a head scarf and zoomed back out to follow her along the pavement.

‘She’s heading in this direction,’ Neve said.

They watched her walk along the residential street, make a right turn at the end and cross the road. At the next junction she turned onto a busy commercial street lined with shops, the pavements heaving with pedestrians. The screen split as a static CCTV joined the follow. It split again as another contributed to the shot.

Saleem’s mother walked down the street, threading her way between shoppers.

‘She knows where she’s going,’ Gunnymede said.

After a few hundred metres she stopped by the kerb, between a lamppost and a phone booth and faced the traffic.

‘That’s a stop, stop,’ a voice said over the radio.

She removed her hands from her pockets.

Gunnymede concentrated on the various views of her. ‘It’s a DLB,’ he said.

‘What’s a DLB?’ Bethan asked.

‘Dead letter box,’ he said.

‘She’s going to leave something for someone to pick up,’ Neve added.

Saleem’s mother put her hands back in her pockets and walked back the way she came.

‘That was a drop,’ Gunnymede said.

‘I never saw anything,’ Neve said.

‘Neither did I but that was a drop,’ he said.

The various cameras watched her walk down the street.

‘She’s going home,’ Gunnymede said. ‘Her job’s done.’

Neve was on her phone to the control room. ‘Play back her static position and examine in slow time. Zoom in.’

The screens remained split, one was a view of the CCTV following Saleem’s mother back down the street while another replayed her at the phone booth and lamppost.

‘There,’ Gunnymede said. ‘On the lamppost. She stuck something to it. Go!’ He hurried out the pub. Bethan followed. ‘You take beyond the booth. I’ll take this side. And make sure mummy Saleem doesn’t see you!’

Bethan hurried down the street searching for Saleem’s mother the other side. She saw her heading along the busy pavement and looked away as they drew opposite each other. Saleem’s mother was focused on returning home. Bethan carried on until she could see the phone booth, went past it and into a shop from where she could see it.

Gunnymede meanwhile stepped into a department and went to a display window from where he had eyes