64

GUY’S HOSPITAL, LONDON

IN THE MINUTES FOLLOWING the suicide of Arthur Grimes, Graham Seymour once again appealed to Jonathan Lancaster to cancel his visit to Guy’s Hospital. The prime minister held firm, though he did agree to add two men to his security detail. Two men who shared his opinion that revenge could be good for the soul. Two men who wanted Eamon Quinn dead. The head of SO1, the division of the Metropolitan Police that protects the prime minister and his family, was predictably appalled by the notion of adding two outsiders to his detail, one an officer of a foreign intelligence service, the other a man of violence with a dubious past. Nevertheless, he gave them radios and credentials that would open any door at the hospital. He also gave each a Glock 17 9mm pistol. It was a breach of every known protection protocol, but one that had been ordered by the prime minister himself.

There wasn’t time for Gabriel and Keller to go to Downing Street, so a Metropolitan Police BMW scooped them up outside Vauxhall Cross and shot them up Kennington Lane toward Southwark. The historic Guy’s Hospital, one of London’s tallest structures, rose above a tangle of streets near the Thames, not far from London Bridge. The MPS unit dropped them off outside the futuristic skyscraper known as the Shard. Parking was forbidden on the street under normal circumstances and now, with the prime minister’s arrival imminent, it was empty of traffic. There were several vehicles parked on Weston Street, though, including a white commercial van that was sitting low on its axles. On Gabriel’s order, the Metropolitan Police tracked down the owner. He was a contractor, a veteran of the Royal Navy, who was doing renovation work in a nearby building. The van was loaded with limestone flooring tiles.

The last street adjoining the complex was Snowfields, a narrow urban gully with no parking, and on that day no cars other than police units. Gabriel and Keller followed it to Gate 3, the hospital’s primary entrance, and passed through a cordon of security. The secretary of state for health waited outside in the forecourt, along with a team from the National Health Service and a large delegation from the hospital staff, many in white coats and scrubs. Gabriel moved silently among them, searching for the face he had sketched at the cottage in County Galway, searching for the woman he had seen for the first time in a quiet street in Lisbon. Then he rang Graham Seymour in the operations room at Vauxhall Cross.

“How far out is the prime minister?”

“Two minutes.”

“Any news on the Fleetwood computer?”

“They’re close.”

“That’s what they said an hour ago.”

“I’ll call you the minute they have something.”