the shelves, packed with what he could now see was an apparently full set of the Journal of Paediatric Oncology. He waited for her to close the clamshell phone and began, his opening line now duly revised. ‘Dr Merton. You know why I'm here. I've flown into New York this morning because of a grave mistake.’
‘London. You're in London.’ She showed him a brief glimpse of a smile. It was crooked, the teeth sharp between full lips. He worried that he was staring. He could feel his pulse quicken.
‘Sorry. London. Yes.’ He tried to collect himself, to handle this like any other meeting. Remember your objectives: placate this woman without anything resembling an admission of liability. ‘The Secretary-General of the United Nations asked me to come here as soon as this tragedy occurred to convey his personal sorrow and regret at what happened to your father. He speaks for the entire—’
‘You can save the speech.’ She was staring right at him, her eyes dry. ‘I don't need a speech.’
He had planned on her breaking down, needing comfort and solace. Or else hurling abuse at him in a righteous fury. This was not in the plan. ‘There's no speech.’ Tom lifted his hands away from his briefcase.
‘Good, because I don't want a string of platitudes. I want answers.’
‘OK’
‘Let's start with this. How on earth could any police force in the world not recognize a seventy-seven year old man when it saw one?’
‘Well, identification is one of the key issues that—’
‘And what the hell happened to shooting in the legs? Even I know that when police want to immobilize a suspect they shoot in the legs.’
‘Standard procedure in the case of a suspected suicide bomber is to shoot at the head—’
‘Suicide bomber? Fuck you!’
He paused, shocked by the obscenity, the silence filling the air. ‘Listen–’
‘Fuck you.’ Quieter this time.
‘I understand that you—’
‘Have you ever come across a seventy-seven year old suicide bomber, Mr Byrne?’
‘Look. Perhaps it would help if I walked you through the events of Monday morning, as best we know them.’ He didn't even sound like himself, resorting to the plodding legalspeak he hated. He was finding it hard to concentrate; every time he so much as looked at this woman, he felt he was being shoved off his stride.
‘OK. So my Dad's on a little retirement vacation and decides to be a tourist and visit the UN. Then what happened?’
Tom reached into his bag for the sheaf of papers he had brought, the timelines and FBI reports he and Sherrill had got from Allen so that he would be able to maintain at least the pretence of full disclosure. He had seen enough of these cases over the years to know that it was that above all – the lack of openness, the sense that the authorities were concealing the truth – that always enraged the grieving families. He had planned to give Rebecca Merton every detail, show her the precise sequence of events, each split-second decision, until she would, despite her loss, have to concede that it was a tragic but innocent mistake and that the UN security team had been in an impossible position: how could they risk a suicide bomber killing tens, scores of innocents? They had taken one life in the sincere belief that they were saving many more. That was what he needed her to accept.
‘Don't start giving me some presentation, Mr Byrne. I don't want you trying to bury me in papers, blinding me with science. I'm a doctor, I know that trick.’
‘All right.’ Tom put the papers back and leant forward in his chair. ‘Tell me how we can help.’
‘I want an apology.’
‘Of course the United Nations feel the deepest—’
‘Not from you. From the boss. I want a face-to-face meeting with the Secretary-General. I want him to look me in the eye and admit what the United Nations has done. This was not some minor slip-up; this was killing my father. For no reason. And that means a full apology, in person, from the man at the top.’
Tom remembered Henning's sole condition: no grandstanding, no photo-ops. ‘Look, a tragedy happened yesterday. We know that. And the United Nations wants to show that it recognizes the scale of that tragedy. We'd like to make a gesture, to establish a fund available to you for whatever purpose seems appropriate. It could be a memorial—’
‘Sorry, I think I misheard you. What did you say?’ There was a second flash of that crooked smile.
‘I said that the UN is willing to acknowledge the life of Gerald Merton with a one-off payment.’ He immediately regretted one-off.
‘Christ.’ She shook her head, the full lips slowly colouring a deep red, as if her rage was filling them with blood. ‘Maybe the headbangers are right after all. So the UN's not just anti-Israel, it's anti-Semitic as well.’
Tom frowned. ‘I'm sorry?’
‘You'd better be more than sorry, Mr Byrne. Is this really what you think of us? That you can buy us off with blood money?’
‘I don't underst—’
‘You think this is what Jews are like? That we'd let you kill our parents so long as the price is right?’
‘I had no idea—’
‘That's right. You have no idea at all.’
Her mobile rang again. He was trying to digest what she had just said, but as she stood up, all he could focus on was her shape. She was slim, but not skinny. He could see that even in thrown-on jeans and a loose black top, she had the figure not of the anorexic dolls you saw in Manhattan but of a real woman.
‘Hi Nick. How's she doing? How's her chest X-ray look? That's not good.’ She began nodding, murmuring her assent to the voice on the phone. ‘Sounds like she's developing ARDS. That's what I'd worry about with strep, viridans sepsis. All right, tell the parents I'll call them soon. They've been through the wringer: they need to hear a familiar voice. Thanks, Nick.’
He was trying not to stare, but it was an unequal struggle. The intensity of this woman seemed to be burning up all the oxygen in the room. There was a strange butterfly sensation in his chest, as if his heart was trembling. He told himself it was coffee or lack of sleep or jet lag. But still he couldn't look away.
So Gerald Merton was Jewish. Tom had never even considered it. Everything had thrown him off course, the name, the passport – Place of birth: Kaunas, Lithuania – and especially the corpse. Tom Byrne knew what a circumcised penis looked like and Merton's was not it.
She finished the call and turned to him. ‘I have to go: there's an emergency at the hospital.’
‘I'm sorry to hear that.’
‘Yeah, sure you are. Anyway, I don't think we have anything more to talk about, do you?’ She turned around and disappeared into the kitchen, where he could hear the jangle of car keys being scooped up.
He turned to the pile of unused documents next to him on the couch and began pushing them back into his case when he saw it: a small, black notebook on a side table. For a moment he thought it must be his own Moleskine. But as he looked closer he could see it was thicker. It was hers. On impulse, he shoved it into his bag. He would say he'd taken it by mistake: that way he'd have an excuse to come back.
He stood up and followed Rebecca Merton down the stairs and out of her front door.
‘Here's my card,’ he said, successfully repressing his surprise that she took it. ‘If you think of anything more you'd like to discuss, call me.’
She studied it for a moment, then looked back up, those emerald-clear eyes boring into him. ‘So you're not even a UN lawyer. You're the hired help. The guy they brought in to do their dirty work. Goodbye, Mr Byrne. I don't think we'll be seeing each other again.’