The Mello Code

It took two days for Mello to show up at the House. Hal had spent the first day in a state of readiness, watching the monitors and starting at every falling leaf or bird landing in the garden. She had not slept well that night. Matt too had been anxious. She had watched him, sitting up until the early hours, listening to his music over headphones tapped into his laptop computer. The screen, though, had displayed the same camera feeds that she was watching on her monitors. She had challenged him on the issue the next day, demanding to know why he had hacked into The Wammy House framework. He had shrugged, stating miserably that when Mello came, he wanted to be the first to know.



Now Mello was here. Hal was taken unawares. He had not come through the front gate. He was in the hallway before she even knew that he was in the grounds. "Oh fucking Hell!" She spat, grabbing her firearm before rushing out of the door. Mello stood, looking at her, all leather and a supercilious smirk. "Stay right where you are! If you are armed, drop your weapon!"



He raised his hands, his jacket falling open to reveal no gun that she could see. He calmly turned around in a slow circle, before facing her again across the rug. Hal thought fast, but it wasn\'t Mello who spoke up. Matt\'s half-whisper sounded from the staircase behind her. "I\'m sorry, Hal. We had to be sure." She turned and found him standing there, his jacket on and his bag over his shoulder. He finished his descent and flashed her a quick smirk, before skirting her and sauntering into Mello\'s embrace. "Did you pick up some cigarettes?"



Mello leaned in for a kiss, his hand reaching into his pocket and emerging with a packet of cigarettes still in their cellophane wrapper. He pressed them into Matt\'s hand and received a quick smile of thanks. Then the couple both looked back towards Hal. She was caught between freeze and fury. "What the Hell?" She screamed, a little too shrill. They did not look like a couple who had been out of communication for two days. They certainly did not seem like a couple fractured through domestic violence. If Matt was as afraid as he had hitherto appeared to be, then he was giving an oscar winning performance now. "I need to know what is going on."



Mello\'s arm did not leave Matt\'s back. He did have the grace to look a little guilty, though the iciness of his gaze belied that emotion. "In my defence, it was his idea." Mello shrugged. "But I take joint responsibility. We\'ve been investigating you. I\'m sorry."



Matt waved the cigarettes in the air. "And I was down to my last two, so we stopped investigating you." He looked at Mello and smiled. "He wanted to give it a week, but I\'d only packed for a night. He made me stay two as it was. I could have asked you to get me some, but it was also getting boring."



"Because you\'ve got the attention span of a flea." Mello interjected, flashing one of his more charming smiles at Hal. "You think it\'s me who\'s the bully in this relationship? I got a text message at twenty to eight this morning saying, \'the fucking bells have just woken me up again. Pick me up before evensong or I\'m taking the fucking things down\'." He bit his lip. "I wouldn\'t actually put it past him to take out the Cathedral\'s bells. Some of them date from Saxon times. I\'d hate to be responsible for that."



Hal turned on her heel and marched back into her office. "In here!" She yelled back. It took a few seconds before anyone followed her and then it was only Mello. "Where\'s Tweedledum?"



"He\'s nipped outside for a cigarette."



Hal glowered. "Well, get him back, because what I have to say should be heard by the pair of you!"



"Hal, I know you\'re upset."



"Upset?" Hal rounded on him. "Am I upset? Am I really, Mello? Do you know, I\'m not actually surprised about him, because every single, solitary time me and Matt meet, he\'s pulling something like this. I shouldn\'t have trusted the little shit, even if he was bleeding all over my doorstep. But you!" She glared down at him. "You have always been on the level with me, Mello. I might not like your point of view, but it was an honest one. What on earth possessed you to pull a stunt like this?"



Mello touched her arm. Hal grabbed it, twisting, until he would have hit the floor, but he danced backwards. "Ok! Ok!" Mello\'s hands came up in supplication. "I\'ve pissed you off and I\'m sorry. But Hal! Calm." He smiled at her, though his eyes had narrowed, watching her. His voice became low, "Hal, I\'m sorry. We needed to be sure. You\'ll see the sense in it once you understand our motivation."



"I doubt it very much, Mello." Hal stated firmly, though doubt was already creeping in. She had carried out, on several occasions, actions of Near\'s which had seemed nonsensical until they had achieved astounding results. She walked away from him, striking down the switch on the kettle just to have something to occupy her thoughts while she calmed down. Whatever Mello and Matt had been up to, it was unlikely to be stupid. However much the evidence appeared so at the moment. She turned to survey him and received another little smile. "Shut that door please. I will not have the children overhearing what I have to say to you."



Mello flicked a hand against the door and it swung closed with a loud click. "We tricked you and..."



"You beat Matt up, just so that he could come in here and claim domestic violence. So, what, so I\'d feel sorry for him?" She frowned. "I don\'t even see how..." Her mind was racing too much for a thought to coherently settle. "Ok, run it past me."



"The case that you gave me looked like a set-up..."



"Stop right there!" Hal turned and pointed a finger. "I did not give you that case. You took that case."



"But that might have been an elaborate ploy to throw me off the scent of the fact that..."



"A what?" Hal shrieked. "Mello, stop talking to me. I need a moment." She leaned against the small sink, counting her breaths. She had not come close to losing her temper like this since she had been a freshman and Corey Badermann had started flirting with Carl Lewis, despite knowing that Hal had fancied him. This was not like her. She swallowed hard and had almost regained her decorum, when the door opened and closed again. Hal looked up. "And you!" She hissed at Matt. "You must have been laughing at me behind that \'oh so frightened\' face all the time you were here."



"He wasn\'t." Mello volunteered. "He was convinced within the first couple of hours and texted me to come home then. I was the one who asked him to stay. I wanted to monitor your e-mails and calls, while keeping him here to frame any questions that were needed to clarify things."



Hal nodded. She walked across to her desk and inspected the computer. "This has the most up to date firewalls that your minds can come up with. It isn\'t even Matt\'s firewall anymore. It\'s supplemented with Near\'s."



"Really?" Matt looked up in interest.



"Matt." Mello warned. "Hal, he didn\'t hack the system. Well, no more than usual. There\'s a little camera on the bookcase behind your desk. There\'s a bug under your desk. He placed them there within an hour of being here. We\'ve both been watching you. You understand how operations like this work. You\'ve done enough of them yourself."



Hal crouched and found the metallic disc stuck to the underside of her desk. She slid her fingers around it and yanked, but it did not come free. Her head rose again so she could see them. She replied coldly, "You do realise that I am never going to trust either of you again." She thought that Mello looked momentarily wounded by that, but he quickly affected a mask of calm indifference. Matt smiled at her and she had a sudden urge to wipe the bemusement off his face. "It Matters, you have shot yourself in the foot. Your lies mean that you will never be able to claim sanctuary here again and be taken seriously."



"He doesn\'t like being called It Matters." Mello informed her, huskily.



"Like I give a shit." Hal opened her drawer and took out a paperknife that had been in there since Roger\'s tenancy. She took it out and rammed it beneath the bug, until the adhesive pad finally came loose and the item dropped into her hand. She turned her attention to the window and, even knowing it was there, it took her a while to locate the miniscule camera. "Are you still here?" She glanced back. Mello was watching her, barely blinking. Matt was standing half behind his husband, his head bowed. Hal frowned. "Are you playing a game?" She asked incredulously.



Matt head shot up. "No! I\'m looking at my lighter." He held it up. "I think the flint\'s come out."



Hal pursed her lips. "So what are you both waiting for? Me to say, \'Oh! I understand why you didn\'t just come to me directly, like friends do, let\'s all put it behind us and...\'" She paused. She realised that she did understand why they hadn\'t done that. "Oh my God! You weren\'t raised to think like that! You were raised in the belief that all suppositions had to be proved or disproved with evidence. Why would you just trust someone? Who taught you how to be ordinary human beings, with friends and," She stared at Matt\'s black eye, "lovers?" She was starting to calm down, she could feel it. "You were raised to be detectives. No-one ever taught you how not to be detectives."



Mello flashed her a charming smile. "If I\'d asked you and you\'d said no, then that would have been the answer I\'d expect you to give, even if you had set me up. You were prepared to believe that I abused Matt..."



"With depressing ease." Matt mumbled.



"... and so it followed that he might turn against me. If I was such a bad person, that is."



Hal nodded. "You are very convincing when you lie, Matt." She placed both bugs on the desk. "There was a lot of detail. I think that more of it was true than either of you are willing to admit."



"You still think I abuse him?" Mello frowned. "Hal, this was his idea! He was the one who said to make it convincing! Granted I might have gone a bit too far on his ear, which was why I had to drop him off and pick him up, because he..." Mello bit his lip. "Doesn\'t matter. We just had to cross our fingers and hope you never asked how he got here."



"I was going to tell her the train."



Mello glanced behind him. "How would you have got from our house to the train?"



"She doesn\'t know where our house is. We could be living over the road from the station for all she knows." Matt chewed on a finger of his glove.



"Point." Mello faced Hal again, smiling. "So are we...?"



Hal raised her hand. "Matt\'s car has been parked outside in the road since he got here." She nodded towards the monitor and both pairs of eyes followed to see. "There!" She strode across and pointed to the barest splash of red, where the bonnet of a vehicle was just visible behind the gatepost.



Mello shook his head. "Matt\'s car has been mostly parked in our garage. I\'ve been coming in on my bike. I\'ve only brought it today because of picking him up. Talking of which, Matty, we are going to sort you out some leathers today. I was stuck in a five mile traffic jam because of being in your car. I could have got here half an hour earlier, if I could have just shoved you on the back of my bike. We\'ll nip and get some on the way home."



"So a car has been parked outside my gates for two and a half days and it\'s not Matt\'s?" Hal was already running across the room. "Who\'s is it then?" They made to follow her. "Erm, stay here please. I haven\'t finished with either of you." She pulled open the door and dashed outside. She was halfway down the drive before she heard footsteps racing behind her. "What?"



Mello bit his lip. "I thought I\'d come and look at your red car with you. I\'m a very good detective."



"And I suppose that he\'s in there planting another twenty bugs, so that you can watch me doing the job that you dumped on me."



"No. He\'s standing in the doorway watching us." Mello reached to touch Hal\'s arm again and she was filled with an almost irresistable urge to deliver a roundhouse to his groin, following through with a shuto to the temple. Then she would laugh as he lay unconscious on the gravel. Instead she threw his hand off her and concentrated on walking as straight backed as she could. Hal was several inches taller than Mello. She knew that irritated him. "Hal, you would have done the same thing in our position."



They had reached the gates. Hal cast a sidewards glance at him. "No, Mello. I would have called you and confronted you directly. I would have trusted you."



"Yeah, bollocks." Mello muttered. For fear of seriously injuring him, Hal ignored him. She peered through the gates at the car. It was obviously a small Fiesta, not the gas-guzzling monstrosity that Matt usually polluted the atmosphere with. Mello looked with her. "That\'s not Matt\'s car."



"Oh look! I\'ve got Sherlock Holmes with me." Hal shot back. "All my worries are over. Mello, there is a fucking car parked outside the gates of this institution and you don\'t think that\'s something to concern me? May I remind you of the nature of this place?"



"It\'s an orphanage." Mello smirked. He nodded towards a middle-aged man mowing his lawn across the road. Hal doubted very much that the gentleman could hear their conversation over the shrieking hum of his mower. It irked her that Mello felt the need to insinuate that she was endangering them. "And the car belongs to Mr Roper."



Hal blinked. "Who\'s Mr Roper? And what grounds are you...?" Too late, she spotted the notice in the car\'s window. It stated that the vehicle had broken down, that the police were informed and it provided a mobile telephone number for Mr Roper. "Oh good, you can read. I\'m so glad that all education wasn\'t wasted on you." She drew back from the gate and took a couple of steps to return inside. She watched Matt smoking a cigarette barely outside the main entrance. "He\'s going to have to keep the..." She stopped, realising that Mello had not followed her and was tapping numbers into his mobile phone. His gaze flashed from it to the vehicle. "Why are you calling him? I\'m satisfied it\'s not a threat."



"I\'m not." Mello held the phone ready to call. "This is a public highway. He\'s not parked illegally. There\'s no reason for him to display a notice like that in his window. The police would not be interested and neither should anyone else be. In fact, it\'s in his interests not to announce that this isn\'t a car overlooked by its owner in one of those houses. He\'s announcing to the fine, upstanding citizens of Winchester that this is a car which may be broken into. Who in their right mind would do that?" He shook his head. "No. He would only do that if he thought that someone might take an interest. Seeing as he\'s parked outside this House, that makes me wonder what he knows about it." He lifted the phone to his ear. "As I suspected, the number is false."



Hal blinked. "Right, so..." She stopped as Mello leapt up and gripped the top of the gatepost. His feet came up and propelled him onto the top. Within seconds, he was over the other side, landing on the pavement and strolling across to inspect the Fiesta more carefully. "I do have keys, you know." He just smirked, crouching down to peer underneath, before encircling it. "What are you thinking, Mello?"



"I\'m not thinking anything until I get some evidence." He had a long, hard look through the windows. "There\'s a 5% probability that this is dodgy as fuck."



"When Near says things have a low probability, what he actually means is that it\'s almost certainly true."



"Oh!" Mello straightened again and wandered around to the bonnet. "So he makes the percentages up as well. Interesting." Hal couldn\'t tell if he was joking or not. "If I take on the case of the red car, free of charge, will you forgive me for testing our friendship?"



Hal glared. "I\'ll think about it. That\'s the best offer you\'re going to get at the moment, Mello, so don\'t try any shit. I\'ll go and run a check on the licence plate. Do not damage my gate breaking back in."