“It has everything to do with it, Chief Inspector. You’re Scotland Yard. Mycroft was… Well, he was Mycroft. What on earth drove you to make a move against Mycroft Holmes, of all people?”

“He was standing in the way of a police investigation,” Lestrade said stubbornly.

I wished my eyes when they glared went grey and cold like Holmes’ instead of light blue, bloodshot, and concealed by spectacles. “Your going after him was not only unlikely, it was uncharacteristic. Add to that my growing suspicion that Brothers has been receiving help from high places, and…” I waved a hand. “That’s why I picked your lock at three in the morning rather than walking into your office.”

Lestrade’s face changed. “Are you accusing me of being a corrupt officer?”

“I would not be sitting here if I thought that. But it is clear that Brothers had help, and from someone other than Gunderson. Some person helped him set up a new identity in this country, back in November. Someone helped him cover up his deeds. I began to suspect it even though I’ve been on the run for the past two weeks. What I am asking is, did that person reach out to you as well, and influence you to intercept Mycroft’s wires and invade his home?”

He stood abruptly and went to rummage through a drawer, coming out with a mashed-looking packet of cigarettes. He got one lit, and stood looking out the dark window. The stove clicked as it cooled; somewhere in the house, a clock chimed four.

“It’s possible,” he said finally. He came back to the table, his face closed. “I don’t take bribes.

“But you want to know if someone got at me, if I gave in to pressure against my better thoughts. The answer is yes.

“Look,” he continued, “I follow orders. The nature of my job gives me a great deal of independence, but when orders are given, I follow them. And something very near to being a command came down to put some pressure on Mycroft Holmes.”

“Down from where?”

“Doesn’t matter. It didn’t originate with the man who gave it, which means it was high enough that it might have come from outside the Yard entirely. And frankly, I didn’t ask too closely about it. Society only works if the police are given a free hand to investigate where they will. No one should be above the rule of law. Even him. You and Mr Holmes have walked the edge any number of times, but always managed to keep close enough inside the bounds that I could tell the difference between personal affront and official wrongdoing.”

“Is that why you issued warrants for Holmes and me as well?”

“Not directly, but it helped move me in that direction. Truth to tell,” he said, “it wasn’t the first time I’d wanted to put handcuffs on your husband.”

“I know the feeling,” I said. He blinked, and laughed.

“This time, it was Mycroft Holmes walking the edge, and over. It didn’t take much to convince me that it was time to snap him back into line. Your brother-in-law is not God, you know.”

“A week ago, I might have disagreed,” I said sadly-and indeed, his use of the present tense testified that Lestrade himself was not altogether willing to quit his belief in Mycroft’s omniscience.

“However, I’ve come to wonder if I may have been wrong,” he said.

“About his divinity?”

“About treating him as the object of an investigation.” He clawed his fingers through his thinning hair. “Mycroft Holmes asked me to meet him privately, that same day he came into my office. He left at one o’clock. Twenty minutes later, I was handed a note that he’d left for me, telling me to meet him at the Natural History Museum, the statue of Charles Darwin, just before closing. He told me to keep it entirely to myself, and to come alone.”

“But you didn’t go?”

“In fact I did, although I’d put it off to the last possible instant. He wasn’t there. The next I heard of him, he was dead.”

Chapter 46

The thud of that word, dead. Inconceivable, inescapable, dead: Mycroft.

I shook away the memory of his prodigious appetite and more prodigious memory, and-

Tell no one.

Come alone.

Where does faith part from loyalty?

I looked at Lestrade, thinking, Russell, you need some sleep, before you forget how to think. “Did you, in the end, keep the meeting to yourself?”

“I did.”

“Surely being instructed to come to a meeting alone must raise a policeman’s suspicions? You weren’t concerned that it might be some kind of a trap?”

“Had it been another man, I’d have been a fool not to tell someone where I was going. But this was Mycroft Holmes-I did check, and it was he who left the message. And although in theory I know nothing about him, in truth I know enough to be sure that if the man wanted to dispose of me, he hardly needed me to come to him. No, I figured the reason for the meeting was the same reason he couldn’t tell me in my office.”

“That being…?”

“One possibility was, he wanted to test me, either to see if I’d do as he asked, or because he wished to propose something so illegal it could bring down his career or mine, and didn’t want to risk being overheard. Or, he suspected a traitor in the ranks.”

I mentally apologised to the man in front of me, for Holmes’ disparaging remarks over the years.

“Your ranks, or his?”

“I thought at the time he meant mine. Why else did he want to get me away from the Yard? And although I have considerable faith in the trustworthiness of my officers, the bald truth is, there’s always an apple in any barrel ripe for spoiling. Bribery or threat-a determined man can usually find a police officer to corrupt.”

“Do you still think it’s one of yours?”

He raised an eyebrow at me, a look that would have been pure Holmes had his features not resembled those of a sleep-ruffled ferret. “I’m not the one going into the ground tomorrow,” he pointed out brutally.

I blew out a slow breath. “It does make one rather wonder.”

“About what?”

“Who could have got close enough to Mycroft for him to let down his guard.”

“You think his organisation-whatever that might be-could have a traitor? Is that why you asked about Sosa?”

“Mycroft was talking to a friend recently, and out of the blue, brought up the topic of loyalty. Who better to betray a man than his secretary? And what more painful treason?”

“What friend was that?”

I shook my head. “Mycroft passed on no information, merely indicated that the idea of loyalty had been on his mind.”

“I need to know who he was talking to,” he said sharply.

“I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, I am not going to tell you. You’ll simply have to trust that if there had been anything more substantial to learn, I’d give it to you.”

He mashed out the cigarette stub with unwonted violence, and snapped, “Tying my hands like this, we might as well turn the country over to the SIS and let us all go back to being rural bobbies.”

“I think we’ll find there’re ways around it. You were asked to investigate Sosa’s disappearance. Surely you would be expected to follow that up, until you can speak with the man himself?”

He looked at me. “I could lose my job.” It was less objection than observation.

“I hope that’s all you could lose.”

He snorted in disbelief. “I’m Scotland Yard-they come after me with paperwork, not weapons.”

“And Mycroft?”

After a moment, his eyes involuntarily flicked upwards, towards his sleeping family.

“Yes,” I said.

“But Sosa is a secretary!”

“I was not thinking directly of Sosa. But it may be that someone has control over Sosa. Someone who has his hand on Scotland Yard as well.”

“But who? And why Mycroft Holmes?”

I could think of any number of nations who would pay to end Mycroft’s meddling. Sixteen of whom had written explosive letters currently resting beside Mycroft’s oven. But without facts, I might as well throw darts at a spinning globe.