Mercy

“Only by getting the computer.”

21:15 PDT

“You know, I don’t understand you, boss.”

Alex and Juanita were sitting in the reception area with mugs of coffee.

“How do you mean?”

“Well you don’t want to pretend to the London clinic that we represent Dorothy, to get them to send the paperwork from when she was there, but you’re ready to get a burglar to break into someone’s house to check him out — even though you trust Nat now.”

“Christ, I forgot all about that!”

Alex went for the phone and started keying in a number.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to call it off!”

“But I thought you wanted to be sure?”

“I am sure! It’s obvious that Nat’s going to call the medical center again. He just doesn’t want us to know. Or rather he doesn’t want me to know. He doesn’t want to compromise my position … Damn it! Straight to voicemail. Kelly’s probably switched it off.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I guess he doesn’t want his phone going off when he’s doing a burglary.”

“I notice you dodged my question — about the irony of the situation.”

“I guess it’s a case of the exposure risk.”

“I thought you said the exposure risk was low in the case of what Nat’s doing.”

“It is. But it would be like a time bomb ticking away — or like the sword of Damocles. That’s an old Greek legend about — ”

“I know what the sword of Damocles was!”

“Sorry,” said Alex, blushing.

“You’d better try again,” said Juanita. “Calling Lee, I mean.”

Her tone was muted by guilt … or was it fear?

21:20 PDT

The light was ebbing and the area round the lab was deserted. The front entrance was locked. Jonathan could press the button and ask to be admitted, but then he would be challenged for ID. He could try forcing an entry. But that would only set off an alarm and alert others long before he had the chance to do what he had come there for.

There was, however, one other way he could gain access. He knew that the fire exits were sometimes left open. In theory they were locked from the inside and could be opened with a handle mechanism inside the door. They were also supposed to close automatically behind people when they left that way. But in practice, the mechanism to close them didn’t always work properly. The doors closed, but they didn’t always click shut. And they had such exits on every floor by the fire stairs.

The area by the fire stairs at the back was used as a small parking lot. The dumpsters were also there. But people didn’t really hang round there and people who were leaving for the day would hardly waste time if they happened to look up and chance upon the sight of a man walking up — rather than down — the outside fire stairs.

So he knew it would be perfectly safe to enter the building that way.

He tried the fire door on the ground floor, but it was locked. The same was true on the first floor and the second. But it was open on the third. That was all he needed.

21:26 PDT

Miles away, another, somewhat more professional, burglar was breaking into the small rundown house rented by Nathaniel Anderson.

But, unlike the man who had entered the lab at Berkeley, Lee Kelly didn’t have any clear idea what he was looking for. His brief was broader than that. He was here to look for anything that might have a bearing on Nat’s origins or past. And anything that might explain his interest in Clayton Burrow or the Finchley Road Medical Centre.

Normally when he did a burglary he was looking for valuables and he knew exactly where to look. Prior to the introduction of the “three strikes” statute he had, in fact, done some domestic burglaries, but never been caught in the act. He knew that jewelry was stored either in a dresser or the bottom of a wardrobe, sometimes in a box under the bed and occasionally — rarely — in a safe. The procedure for searching drawers was to start with the bottom one and work your way up, not closing them. That way time was kept to a minimum.

When he came for electronic goods, it was even more straightforward. But on those jobs he brought a pick- up truck for easy loading, not a motorbike for a fast getaway.

In this case he had to look and make decisions fast. Alex had told him a bit but not much: an employee who was acting suspiciously, the need to check up on his background and whether he had any contact with the press or any prior involvement with the case. Did he grow up in the same town as Dorothy Olsen — the victim of the crime in the case that Alex was working on? Did he know Dorothy or anyone else in her family? Did he know Clayton Burrow?

But how do you check these things out? Photographs, documents, a diary … It was hard to know where to begin.

Lee started with the obvious hiding places: shoe boxes, whether in the wardrobe or under the bed. They were the classic hiding places for documents. But that was only if the person was actually trying to hide the documents. If he was not, then they could be in other more practical places, like a desk drawer or writing bureau or a bedside cabinet.

There were a couple of shoe boxes, but all they contained were an old pair of sandals and a hardly-worn pair of sneakers.

In the living room, there was a writing bureau — he had passed it on the way in. He flicked through several piles of papers quickly. There were bills, credit card statements and such like. Another contained legal briefs, case notes and things obviously to do with his work.

Then he felt something hard against his palm, something rigid. He pulled it out from amid the papers. A passport. He opened it to look at the name and when he did he got a jolt of surprise.

The passport didn’t belong to Nat. It belonged to the dead girl: Dorothy Olsen.

21:31 PDT

Gaining access to the building on the third floor had been straightforward enough. But Jonathan still had to get to wherever the computer and the scanning tunneling microscope were located.

He thought that at this time it would be easy, that there wouldn’t be many people about. But the trouble was there were a few — and that made it even harder. During the day, when lots of people were about, an unfamiliar